Homer and the Poetry of War

Extract

Homer has been called the Bible of the Greeks. These two, the Iliad and the Odyssey, were certainly their traditional books par excellence. They offered a vivid picture of their heroic past, where fact merged indissolubly into fiction, but each enjoyed the truth of high art; they offered a living panorama of their Olympian religion, now serious, now gay and mocking; more important, a panorama of men and manners, and a vision of nature almost incidental to man the foreground, but seen with an intense awareness and enjoyment. They were recited at public gatherings, they formed the staple of education for several centuries, were learnt by heart, and passed into the common stock of knowledge and feeling and conduct.