Is Homer's Odyssey a True Story?

Homer’s Odyssey is one of the most famous stories of all time: a legendary tale of kings, gods, and monsters.
It’s hard to make any definitive claims about a 2,500-plus-year-old story. But these are experts’ best theories on what’s fact and what’s fiction in the Odyssey.
Odysseus is the hero of the Odyssey—and the epic’s title, meaning a long journey, comes from his name. Historians believe the site of Ithaca to be a small island in the Ionian Sea, so that part is real—but there’s no evidence that the region ever had a king called Odysseus.
The ruins of Troy were first unearthed in the mid-19th century, hidden beneath a mound in Turkey called Hisarlık. Actually, archaeologists have found nine Troys built on top of each other over thousands of years. Think of the mound like a large and oddly shaped layer cake.
Today experts suggest that two layers are most likely to have inspired stories of the Trojan War. Troy VI was a prosperous city that imported Greek pottery, but it was destroyed by an earthquake about 1300 BCE. Troy VII, which emerged quickly from the rubble, was pillaged and burned about 1200 BCE, and there are signs that the city may have been under siege.
But were the agents of destruction Greeks bearing gifts? Some scholars think not. The Greeks had serious problems of their own in 1200 BCE. They were entering a period of decline—and probably needed their best warriors to protect their own cities from attack.
A high-ranking woman leaving her husband could have sparked war in the ancient world—theoretically. But there’s no record of someone like Helen existing, in Sparta, Troy, or elsewhere. (Even if you filter out the parts of the story that say she’s half-god and was originally hatched from an egg.)
So we aren’t 100 percent sure about the status of the Trojan War—but most scholars agree that the Trojan Horse didn’t exist. The story could have been inspired by real ancient siege weapons, which soldiers would cover with damp horsehides to protect from fire. The horse could have been a metaphor for a real weapon, like a battering ram. Or it could have symbolized an earthquake—a disaster that ancient Trojans may have blamed on Poseidon, god of horses and friend to the Greeks.
What about the guy who made all this up?
The Odyssey and the Iliad have been attributed to Homer since antiquity—but we don’t know if “Homer” ever existed.
Homer could have been one guy’s real name. But it could also have been a nickname or referred to a group of collaborators.
And since the Odyssey was passed on through oral tradition for so long, it’s likely that different storytellers and performers made their own tweaks along the way.
Somewhere between 725 and 675 BCE, the Odyssey was written down in ancient Greek for the first time—and ever since, we’ve been telling and retelling the story.
Thanks, “Homer”—whoever you are.