The Odyssey was part of the Epic Cycle, so Homer likely inherited the figure of Odysseus from those stories. Whether he made up the name or the name Odysseus was already established, we simply do not know. Much has been lost to time, sadly.
Wether or not Homer’s writings are part of the Epic Cycle is very much a matter of… strong opinions of historians. There’s good reasons to include them (They’re about the same thing) and not to (Written later, and not lost, like all the other ones, so it makes the discussions annoying). We only know about most of the epic cycle because people wrote about the poems and made summaries and cliffnotes.
Many people don’t realize the original Cliff was a hunter-gather circa 9342 BCE who began taking notes on cave walls, then passed down this practice for millennia before it was adapted to parchment and ultimately became the notes we read today.
The Odyssey was part of the Epic Cycle, so Homer likely inherited the figure of Odysseus from those stories. Whether he made up the name or the name Odysseus was already established, we simply do not know. Much has been lost to time, sadly.
Wether or not Homer’s writings are part of the Epic Cycle is very much a matter of… strong opinions of historians. There’s good reasons to include them (They’re about the same thing) and not to (Written later, and not lost, like all the other ones, so it makes the discussions annoying). We only know about most of the epic cycle because people wrote about the poems and made summaries and cliffnotes.
Many people don’t realize the original Cliff was a hunter-gather circa 9342 BCE who began taking notes on cave walls, then passed down this practice for millennia before it was adapted to parchment and ultimately became the notes we read today.