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, prefigured and alluded to more and more vividly, so that when it reaches an end, the poem has told a more or less 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 eighth century BC.. Recent statistical modelling based on language evolution has found it to date to 710–760 BCE In the modern vulgate (accepted version), the
Iliad contains 15,693 lines; it is written in
Homeric Greek, a literary amalgam of
Ionic Greek and other
dialects.