The Iliad: Overview

HEROIC LITERATURE COURSE | Iliad overview

The Iliad is undoubtedly one of the most important and influential texts in all of literature. It is often called “the Bible of the Greeks,” but its influence continued long after the Christianization of Europe.

Thanks to Heinrich Schliemann’s archaeological discoveries and records from the Hittite Empire, we know that the Iliad is based, to some extent, on historical events. The city of Troy (Ilium) unquestionably existed, and we have evidence for the historicity of some characters in the Iliad.

Although the Iliad is set during the Bronze Age (circa 1200 BCE), it was composed and written down much later, around 800 BCE, during the Archaic Period. Linguistic evidence indicates that it evolved over centuries as part of an oral tradition before it was eventually written down. The epic is composed in dactylic hexameter, the traditional meter of Greek epic poetry, ideal for memorization and oral performance.

The Iliad was part of the longer Greek Epic Cycle, which covered the events of the Trojan War from its cause and start, to the heroes’ homeward journeys and fates. Of these, only the Iliad and Odyssey, the only works in the Epic Cycle attributed to Homer, survive. I discussed this in greater detail in the Greco-Roman section overview.

NARRATIVE BACKGROUND

Here is an overview of what we know from summaries and fragments about the plot of the entire Greek Epic Cycle. I tried to keep it as concise as possible.