The Trojan War Story told in the Iliad

The Iliad (meaning a song about Ilium) and the Odyssey are Greek epic poems, conventionally attributed to a singularly talented poet named Homer, who lived in the east Greek region of Ionia in the 8th century B.C.E.  Most scholars today, however, question the idea that one singer-poet composed either or both poems, at least not as we would imagine a poet composing today.  Further, a growing number of scholars contest the 8th century date of composition. There were multiple Trojan War story traditions developing at that time; homeric epic is not the earliest nor did it emerge as especially influential or important until the 6th century B.C.E.  That much said, in classical antiquity the songs that became our Iliad and Odyssey did eventually achieve a unique and honorific status, which lived on in western European culture and literature.

People today know the Iliad as a book, usually printed as lines of poetry and translated from the ancient Greek into English or another modern language.  They experience it in the silence and solitude of reading.  The first lines plunge most contemporary readers into the middle of an unfamiliar story populated by dozens of equally unfamiliar characters.  The modern-day encounter with the Iliad however, is unlike that of most Greeks in the ancient world, especially before the time of Alexander the Great at the end of the 4th century B.C.E.  Outside of a lettered elite in the historical period, most ancient Greeks would have read Homer rarely if at all.  Instead, from childhood, they would have heard Trojan War poetry, including precursors to our Iliad, sung by poet-singers in feasting halls and during regional athletic festivals or musical competitions. The basic plot and the cast of characters were not only common knowledge, they were woven into the fabric of Greek social and cultural life.