 |
| A 19th century painting of a scene from the Iliad in the style of Greek vase painting |
Story-telling played an enormous part in the entertainment of ordinary Greeks, from the second millennium BC right up to the start of the archaic period. With low levels of literacy, tales of myth and legend were recited from memory around the fire and passed on from generation to generation.
The greatest of these epic poems was the Iliad, which told of the Trojan War and the Odyssey, which relayed the adventures of the hero Odysseus on his way back from the war. Although these poems were the result of hundreds of years’ of performance, they were first written down around 750BC. This final form is attributed to Homer, a blind poet from Anatolia of whom we know very little. But whether he even existed or not, his stories continue to fascinate us.
|
You are not logged in
