It has bickering and meddling gods, a pouty demigod and a doomed hero, love and heartbreak, triumph and defeat. It’s no wonder The Iliad has influenced western literature for thousands of years.
The word ‘Iliad’ comes from ‘Ilion,’ an ancient name for Troy, and the story takes place in the last few days of the ten-year siege of that city at the end of the Trojan War. The poem is usually attributed to Homer, a Greek poet writing in the late 8th or early 7th century B.C. Homer may have been the sole author, or perhaps was the person who first wrote down a poem adapted from a long oral tradition. In any case, the events depicted in the poem took place several hundred years before it was written.
