It is often said that history is written by the victors. But obviously for this they need someone to do the work. One of the earliest known forgers in history lived in 5th century BC Athens, and he was actually much more than that. His name was Onomacritus, and this is what is known about him.
He was born around 530 B.C. and therefore his life spanned the centuries, dying around 480 B.C. None of his works have survived, not even fragments, but the evidence collected from numerous sources presents a fairly uniform profile. The description that Herodotus provides of him gives the impression that he was not only an outstanding forger, but also a professional in such activity.
It is known that he was dedicated, among other things, to the chrestomatia. That is, the compilation of outstanding texts from different authors, in order to preserve them for posterity and for educational purposes. Athenodorus mentions him as the author of an annotated edition of the works of Homer.
One of his main tasks was the compilation of oracles from the Greek sanctuaries of Delphi, Dodona, Olympia, Oropos, and others. For this reason, the tyrant of Athens Pisistratus hired him to elaborate a chrestomathy of the oracles of the poet Museo. This was a semi-legendary figure, supposedly prior to Homer, and related to Orpheus and the Eleusinian mysteries.
Prompted by one of Pisistratus' sons, Hipparchus, Onomacritus seems to have added to the compilation some oracles of his own invention. According to Herodotus, the deception was discovered by the poet Laso de Ermíone, who is considered the founder of Hellenic musical science, and for this reason Onomacritus was banished from Athens.
Another theory points to a kind of lyrical competition between the two, in which Laso would have convinced Hipparchus that Onomacritus was reciting false verses, specifically one that predicted the sinking of the neighboring islands of Lemnos. And the hypothesis that the modification of the oracles would have been unfavorable for the Pisistratidae is also considered.
Soon his name would become synonymous with counterfeiting . Pausanias, for example, affirms that of all the work in the Museum only one poem must be authentic, while the rest were written by Onomacritus. He also blames you for adding new information about the Titans, which would make much of the mythography about them an invention of the Titan.
Curiously, Aristotle mentions him as one of the main legislators of Antiquity in his Policy , which puzzles the researchers. Some believe that he is a different character, and others that Aristotle mentions him to establish a forced connection with the renowned Sicilian and Cretan legislators, since it would have been in the latter place that Onomacritus would practice this activity.
Once expelled from Athens he went into exile in Persia, where later the sons of Pisistratus would also go. There, once again according to Herodotus, Onomacritus would have interpreted the oracles for Xerxes, the Persian king, in such a way that he convinced him to invade Greece.
But there is more still. Aristotle affirms that Orpheus never existed, and in fact does not even mention him in his Poetics . Previously Homer does not quote him either, even though Orpheus was supposed to have preceded him. The first mention of Orpheus that we know of dates back to the 6th century BC, in the work of the Ibycus poet, born in Rhegium (present-day Reggio Calabria in southern Italy). There are several suspects of having been the authors of the Orphic poems of which Plato speaks. One of them was Pythagoras, but the main one is, indeed, Onomacritus.
Finally, suspicions also fall on the Iliad and the Homeric Odyssey. Being Onomácrito as he was a true professional of literary forgery, there are those who think that he very well could have composed both poems mixing sources of different origin, and hence the dialectical inconsistencies they present. But most experts think that's pretty unlikely, given its high quality.
Onomacritus's trail is lost in Persia and nothing more is known about his life or his death. Although it is not difficult to conjecture what could have happened to him when Xerxes realized the deception.