Iliad

The Iliad ^[1] is the oldest surviving work of Greek literature. It was an oral epic poem. People spoke it without reading it. It was written in the 8th century BC. It is an epic (or very long) poem with 24 chapters written in hexameter. The poem includes early Greek myths and legends. It may have been based on a Bronze Age attack on the city Troy. People usually say that Homer wrote the Iliad. However, scholars are not sure that only one person really wrote the whole poem.

The story happens during the Trojan War, some time around 1200 BC. It talks about the confrontations of the warrior Achilles and King Agamemnon. The story is only about a few weeks at the end of the war, but it also talks about many of the Greek myths about the war. It tells the story from the wrath of Achilles, to the death and funeral of Hector and the siege of Troy.

Together with another of Homer's poems, the Odyssey, it is one of the two major Greek epic poems.

Some important characters in the Iliad are Achilles, Odysseus, Agamemnon, Menelaus, Priam, Hector, Paris, and Helen.

1. ↑ Greek: Ἰλιάς; spelled in English with a single l, as in Greek. The word comes from Ileum, an alternative name for Troy.