Epigram about Homer's Origin (Ostracon)

This irregular fragment of earthenware contains several lines of Greek text written in black ink. Such shards were frequently used in antiquity as an inexpensive alternative to papyrus for school exercises and short literary transcriptions. The text lists Smyrna, Chios, Colophon, Ithaca, Pylos, Argos, and Athens as the competing origins of the legendary author.

Homer was regarded by Neoplatonists like Proclus and Porphyry not merely as a storyteller, but as a divine 'theologian' whose epics contained hidden metaphysical and cosmological truths. This artifact represents the foundational status of Homeric tradition in the intellectual lineage that would later inform Renaissance Neoplatonism and the concept of the 'Ancient Theology' (prisca theologia).