J. Paul Getty Museum, Los Angeles

A young boy steadies a blind musician in this 3-inch-high bronze statue from Crete, dating to the early seventh century B.C.E. According to ancient tradition, Homer was a blind poet who traveled from place to place reciting his creations—the Iliad and the Odyssey—from memory. Possibly, then, this statue was cast in honor of the man who bequeathed those epics to the Greek-speaking world.