The Iliad (sometimes referred to as the Song of Ilion or Song of
Ilium) is an ancient Greek epic poem in dactylic hexameter,
traditionally attributed to Homer. Set during the Trojan War, the
ten-year siege of the city of Troy (Ilium) by a coalition of Greek
states, it tells of the battles and events during the weeks of a quarrel
between King Agamemnon and the warrior Achilles.
Although the story covers only a few weeks in the final year of the war,
the Iliad mentions or alludes to many of the Greek legends about the
siege; the earlier events, such as the gathering of warriors for the
siege, the cause of the war, and related concerns tend to appear near
the beginning. Then the epic narrative takes up events prophesied for
the future, such as Achilles' looming death and the sack of Troy,
although the narrative ends before these events take place. However, as
these events are prefigured and alluded to more and more vividly, when
it reaches an end the poem has told an almost complete tale of the
Trojan War.
The Iliad is paired with something of a sequel, the Odyssey, also
attributed to Homer. Along with the Odyssey, the Iliad is among the
oldest extant works of Western literature, and its written version is
usually dated to around the 8th century BC. Recent statistical modelling
based on language evolution gives a date of 760-710 BC. In the modern
vulgate (the standard accepted version), the Iliad contains 15,693
lines; it is written in Homeric Greek, a literary amalgam of Ionic Greek
and other dialects.
