The Iliad

Homer's epic of the wrath of Achilles in the final year of the Trojan War.

Specifications & Metrics

author

Homer

type

Epic poem

era

Archaic Greece (c. 8th century BC)

language

Ancient Greek (Homeric dialect)

verse form

Dactylic hexameter

cantos count

24

Core Principles & Analysis

• Divided into twenty-four books of dactylic hexameter.
• The poem covers a few weeks of the war's tenth year, not the whole Trojan cycle.
• Its earliest complete text survives from the Alexandrian scholarly tradition.

Sources

• Wikipedia: Iliad