[self-quote] David Rohl attempted to use a solar eclipse of 1012 BC to date one of the el-Amarna letters to support his chronology. Ugarit was burned by Shalmaneser III in 855 BC, so using the fire to push back the date of the tablet by a century and a half is ill supported at best. [end]
Both Rohl and Velikovsky put the Trojan War in the ninth century B.C., give or take a decade. Thus, Homer would have lived then, or in the early eighth century.