Homer: Eighth Century, B.C.E.

"The Iliad and the Odyssey tell the story of the clash of two great civilizations, and the effects of war on both the winners and the losers. Both poems are about the Trojan War, a mythical conflict between a coalition of Greeks and the inhabitants of Troy, a city in Asia Minor. These are the earliest works of Greek literature, composed almost three thousand years before our time. Yet they are rich and sophisticated in their narrative techniques, and they provide extraordinarily vivid portrayals of people, social relationships, and feelings, especially our incompatible desires for honor and violence, and for peace and a home" (222).

You may recall the opening chapter of your text, which recounts a Dark Age for Greek society. This period came after a nearly 600-year reign by the Myceneans. Not until the eighth century, B.C.E., when a nomadic trading people, the Phoenicians, introduced a variety of formal writing, did Greece have a written literature: instead, Greek history was preserved during this 'dark age' through the recitation of folk legend, as in the Iliad and the Odyssey epics. Your text points out the irony that an "illiterate bard" who sang the lines of the great epics did so against the emergence of written texts--and the fact that if recited in full, the Homeric poems would have held audiences for up to twenty hours. The editors conclude that these poems ascribed to Homer were the work of either a bard who became literate, or the collaborative work of bard and scribe (223).

The term "epic" translates from Greek as "story" or "word" and focuses on the exploits of heroes. Further, as narratives of their culture's history, the epics Iliad and Odyssey became well-known throughout the ancient world, appearing as murals on pottery and interiors, and represented in countless ways through performance and committed to memory.