Homer is already what has been called a poet doctus
since Kallimachos (ca. 300 – 245 B.C.): a poet who shines with erudition (as the Assyrian author of the “Eighth Campaign” Sargon’s had before him).
The epic becomes an encyclopaedia of the knowledge of the time. Homer brings – just like Vergil later – a wealth of allusions to contemporary history (see Schrott) and to the works of the still essentially Assyrian literary canon into his epic.