Most people figure that when Homer finished writing The Iliad, publishing houses were breaking down his door to get first crack at it. Nothing could be further from the truth. When Homer put the finishing touches on his opus magnum, he was just another blind Greek poet who had to go out and market his work like everybody else.

This was no piece of cake, given that the major publishing houses were all located in downtown Athens, hundreds of miles away from Homer’s home, located somewhere in West Minoa. But what posed an even bigger problem was the unwieldy nature of the work itself. The Iliad, it will be remembered, was basically a performance piece, meant to be recited aloud, but existing in no written form. Publishers hated that kind of stuff. It seemed a bit fussy and elitist on the part of the author to operate like this. But it also meant that before Homer could begin lining up buyers for his word-of-mouth epic, he first had to hire someone to sit down and memorize The Iliad as it was being recited, and then go to Athens to repeat sample chapters to prospective publishers.