Given the authoritative position of Homer in Imperial society, his symbolic value as the foundation of Greek paideia, and his association with the origins of Greek history, the mere invocation of the poet's name (not to mention the quotation of his verses) by an orator, philosopher, or essayist, could be seen as an attempt to inscribe oneself within the Greek literary and cultural tradition. In this sense, the intimate knowledge of Homer and Homeric criticism that Strabo, Dio, Lucian, and Philostratus display in their texts mark them as quintessentially Greek: the frequent quotations and allusions to the poems, the obscure references to scholarly controversies, and the novel ‘solutions’ they propose to classic Homeric problems speak to a mastery of Greek paideia that reflect their place among the Imperial elite. Moreover, by employing their expertise to discuss Homer's relation to heroic history – and in particular whether he accurately depicted that era, its people, and its events – they enmesh themselves in a discourse about the place of the historical (and not just the literary) origins of Greece within Imperial Greek culture. In this book I have traced the ways in which these four Imperial authors formulate their own individual responses to the issue by deploying, in various and inventive combinations, their knowledge of Homer, Homeric scholarship, historiography, and literary criticism.