 Thus Epigram 4 mentions a blind poet, a native of Aeolian Smyrna, through which flows the water of the sacred Meles.Here is doubtless the source of the chief incident of the Herodotean "Life," the birth of Homer, named Son of the Meles to conceal a scandalous affair between his mother and an older man who had been appointed her guardian.The epithet "Aeolian" implies high antiquity, inasmuch as according to Herodotus, Smyrna became Ionian about 688 BC.