For millennia, the epic poems of Homer have profoundly shaped Western literature and thought with their timeless tales of heroism, gods and the enduring human spirit. While The Iliad plunges us into ...

Homer's Epics, Iliad and Odyssey, brought the ideas of Greek civilization to the world, serving as the foundation of Western literature.

Some three millennia ago, a blind bard whose name in ancient Greek means “hostage” is said to have composed two masterpieces of oral poetry that still speak to us. The Iliad’s subject is death, and ...