A Rose of Women - by Meleager - Greek poet of 1st cent. B.C. How do you like it ?

This guy got it spot on...They'll screw us over, act all silly and make our lives a complete misery but then, one breathtaking smile will make it all worthwhile. Itz kinda unfair on Godz part to give these women such complete power over us.

Well, this is similar to a question I was asked not too long ago, except about Shakespeare. Shakespeare, although most believe he is real, has been under investigation now, as was he in the past. It is believed that he was just a pen name for someone else, some even say royalty, so that they could get their work out to the public and have it criticized fairly. It was also believed that Shakespeare really did exist, but was not a writer and was either given the writings and they were put under his name, or he was just someone who found a lot of literature and published it under his name. There will always be doubt about it probably. No matter who actually created the writings we know that were "supposedly" written by Shakespeare, whether Shakespeare was a real person and wrote them himself, or not, there had to have been a person who did write them no matter what. Therefore we should also be able to conclude that someone in the 8th century BC wrote the Iliad, Odyssey, so whether Homer was a real person, or a pen name, the person we are describing with the name as the writer of these works does exist. However, there is always a chance that the person we are think about may have never existed, or never wrote what we believe they wrote. Because that is probably a bit confusing, think of this example, Jack the Ripper. With the name, Jack the Ripper, we are describing someone (we do not know who exactly) and we know that they did exist, however, the image of a stranger in a cloak with a top hat in the foggy streets of London at night may not be an accurate portrayal at all to the person the name relates to, in fact, who is to say it shouldn't be Jill the Ripper? I guess in a way, even if Homer was someone else completely and was accredited with the work, I usually look at it like whoever wrote it truly can just adopt the name of who we believe wrote it. We didn't know who this other person was, so just give them the name already printed on a few million copies of something. In my head, the logic works, really well, I think this will confuse most people however. Giving a name to the nameless, a face to the faceless. EDIT: I really like the one answer above about some of his works having hundreds of years difference. If this is true (It may be true, but its knowledge I do not yet process) then "he" would have to be more then one person. This intrigues me.