The Iliad by Homer (8th century BC)

The Iliad is set during the Trojan War the ten-year siege of the city of Troy by a coalition of Greek kingdoms. It focuses on a quarrel between King Agamemnon and the warrior Achilles lasting a few weeks during the last year of the war. The Odyssey focuses on the ten-year journey home of Odysseus king of Ithaca after the fall of Troy. Many accounts of Homer’s life circulated in classical antiquity the most widespread being that he was a blind bard from Ionia a region of central coastal Anatolia in present-day Turkey. Modern scholars consider these accounts legendary. The Homeric Question – concerning by whom when where and under what circumstances the Iliad and Odyssey were composed – continues to be debated. Broadly speaking modern scholarly opinion falls into two groups. One holds that most of the Iliad and (according to some) the Odyssey are the works of a single poet of genius. The other considers the Homeric poems to be the result of  a process  of working and reworking by many contributors and that “Homer” is best seen as a label for an entire tradition. It is generally accepted that the poems were composed at some point around the late eighth or early seventh century BC.