The Iliad was composed as one continuous poem. History and archaeology also teach us that there may have been a historical “Trojan war” at the end of the second millennium BC (at Hissarlik in western Turkey), although it was very unlike the one that Homer describes. This tradition of oral composition probably reaches back hundreds of years before the Iliad.Įarly epic poetry can be a way of maintaining the cultural memory of major conflicts. The Iliad was probably put together around 700 BC, or a bit later, presumably by a brilliant poet immersed in traditional skills of oral composition (ie “Homer”).
We know virtually nothing about Homer and whether he also created the other poem in his name, the Odyssey, which recounts the return journey of Odysseus from the Trojan war, to the island of Ithaca. Achilles dragging the body of Hector behind his chariot.
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