The reason everyone knows who Homer was or who Sappho was is that there was a continuous line of people quoting them and being inspired by them, from Ancient Gr

The reason everyone knows who Homer was or who Sappho was is that there was a continuous line of people quoting them and being inspired by them, from Ancient Greece to today. There were probably Greek poets before homer that we just don’t know about and even if we did discover a pile of pre-Homeric Greek poetry, most people would never study it or learn about it.