Iliad

The Iliad (Greek ?????, Ilias) tells part of the story of the siege of the city of Ilium, i.e. the Trojan War, and is, along with the Odyssey, one of the two major Greek epic poems traditionally attributed to Homer, a blind Ionian poet. Scholars dispute whether Homer existed, and whether he was one person, but it is clear that the poems spring from a long tradition of oral poetry. The Iliad and the Odyssey are traditionally dated to the 8th century BC, but many scholars now prefer a date of the 7th century BC (e.g., Martin West) or even the 6th century BC (e.g., Richard Seaford). The epics are considered to be the oldest literary documents in the Greek language, though the classical Greeks thought that the works of the poet Hesiod were composed earlier. The word Iliad means "pertaining to Ilion" (Latin Ilium), the name of the city proper, as opposed to Troy (Greek ?????, Troia, Latin Troja) the state centered around Ilium, over which Priam reigned. The names are often used interchangeably.

References

• Milan Budimir (1940). "On the Iliad and Its Poet."
• {{Book reference | Author=Mueller, Martin | Title=The Iliad | Publisher=London: Allen & Unwin | Year=1984 | ID=ISBN 0048000272}}
• {{Book reference | Author=Nagy, Gregory | Title=The Best of the Achaeans | Publisher=Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins University Press | Year=1979 | ID=ISBN 0801823889}}
• {{Book reference | Author=Seaford, Richard | Title=Reciprocity and Ritual | Publisher=Oxford: Oxford University Press | Year=1994 | ID=ISBN 0198150369}}
• {{Book reference | Author=West, Martin | Title=The East Face of Helicon | Publisher=Oxford: Oxford University Press | Year=1997 | ID=ISBN 0198152213}}