The Iliad

The Iliad is one of two major ancient Greek epic poems attributed to Homer. It
is one of the oldest extant works of literature still widely read by modern
audiences. As with the Odyssey, the poem is divided into 24 books and was
written in dactylic hexameter. It contains 15,693 lines in its most widely
accepted version. Set towards the end of the Trojan War, a ten-year siege of
the city of Troy by a coalition of Mycenaean Greek states, the poem depicts
significant events in the siege's final weeks. In particular, it depicts a
fierce quarrel between King Agamemnon and a celebrated warrior, Achilles. It
is a central part of the Epic Cycle. The Iliad is often regarded as the first
substantial piece of European literature. The Iliad and the Odyssey were
likely written down in Homeric Greek, a literary amalgam of Ionic Greek and
other dialects, probably around the late 8th or early 7th century BC. Homer's
authorship was infrequently questioned in antiquity, but contemporary
scholarship predominantly assumes that the Iliad and the Odyssey were composed
independently and that the stories formed as part of a long oral tradition.
Given widespread illiteracy,audiences were more likely to have heard the poem
than read it; it was performed by professional reciters of Homer known as
rhapsodes.