History & The Arts
Introducing Homer's Iliad
...creative endeavours. So here, the poet is asking the Muse to tell the story of Achilles’ anger through him, suggesting that he is a vessel for divine inspiration. The other two features highlighted – singing and the descriptions of the heroes, which we call ‘epithets’ – are closely linked to the oral nature of the Iliad. While we read Homer in a book, and are...