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The Iliad is often regarded as the first substantial piece of European literature and is a central part of the Epic Cycle. [2] 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
Map of Homeric Greece. In the debate since antiquity over the Catalogue of Ships, the core questions have concerned the extent of historical credibility of the account, whether it was composed by Homer himself, to what extent it reflects a pre-Homeric document or memorized tradition, surviving perhaps in part from Mycenaean times, or whether it is a result of post-Homeric development. [2]
"Many great deluges have taken place during the nine thousand years, for that is the number of years which have elapsed since the time of which I am speaking; and during all of this time and through so many changes, there has never been any considerable accumulation of the soil coming down from the mountains, as in other places, but the earth has fallen away all round and sunk out of sight.
In The World of Odysseus, Finley presents a picture of the society represented by the Iliad and the Odyssey, avoiding the question as "beside the point that the narrative is a collection of fictions from beginning to end". [14]: 9 Finley was in a minority when his World of Odysseus first appeared in 1954. With the understanding that war was the ...
Unlike the Iliad and the Odyssey, the cyclic epics survive only in fragments and summaries from Late Antiquity and the Byzantine period. The Epic Cycle was the distillation in literary form of an oral tradition that had developed during the Greek Dark Age , which was based in part on localised hero cults .
Map of Homeric Greece based on the Catalogue of Ships in the Iliad (right-click on map to enlarge). The locations mentioned in the narratives of Odysseus's adventures have long been debated. Events in the main sequence of the Odyssey take place in the Peloponnese and in what are now called the Ionian Islands (Ithaca and its neighbours).
"Earth and water" (Greek: γῆ καί ὕδωρ; Persian: آب و زمین) is a phrase that represents the demand by the Achaemenid Empire for formal tribute from surrendered cities and nations. It appears in the writings of the Greek historian and geographer Herodotus , particularly with regard to the Greco-Persian Wars .
the wanderer, harried for years on end, after he plundered the stronghold on the proud height of Troy. He saw the townlands and learned the minds of many distant men, and weathered many bitter nights and days in his deep heart at sea, while he fought only to save his life, to bring his shipmates home.