The Iliad

The Iliad is an epic poem that chronicles the story of the Greek and Trojan war in six volumes. Written by Homer in the Archaic period, this document has provided much insight about this war, the time period, and people and their beliefs at that time. It was first translated by Alexander Pope in 1715.

Homer supposedly lived around 700 B.C. in Greece. He was rumored to be blind, but many poets at the time were to help them "see" things others could not. He was the first to actually write down the events that take place in The Iliad as well as The Odyssey. It was during this time that the alphabet was adapted by the Greek's from the Phoenicians. Some still debate today whether or not Homer was a real person. According to Wikipedia.com,

"The study of Homer is one of the very oldest topics in all scholarship or science, and goes back to antiquity. Purely in terms of quantity it is one of the largest of all literary sub-disciplines: the annual publication output rivals that on Shakespeare. The aims and achievements of Homeric studies have changed over the course of the millennia; in the last few centuries they have revolved around the process by which the Homeric poems came into existence and were transmitted down to us, first orally, and later in writing."

It has been suggested that he was actually a group of people under the name of Homer. No one really knows if Homer, whose name means "witness" in Greek, were blind, a woman, or one person. It has also been suggested by historians that Homer could not have written both the Iliad and the Odyssey because they may have possibly been written decades apart. Homer is also accredited with hymns, and possibly more stories. The Iliad and the Odyssey were the only two to survive the passage of time. Even though who he really was is still in question, it is agreed that his works were remarkable and important. Historian C. Warren Hollister states about the importance of Homer's writings that, "The Iliad and the Odyssey were the Old and New Testaments of Ancient Greece, studied by every Greek schoolchild and cherished by Greek writers and artists as an inexhaustible source of inspiration."