What events do the iliad and odyssey tell about?

Answer 1

Although the stories are supposed to tell of events in the 12th Century BCE, they were eventually written down, after cursive writing was developed, in the 8th Century BCE and generally reflect the political and social conditions of that latter era, which underlies the superficial 'kings' of an earlier era. The farmers who owned and tilled the land employed a 'hero' warrior to organise and lead defence against predatory nomads, pirates and neighbours. The 'hero' lived in princely style on the high defensible ground, and there the people could take refuge in time of threat. As employer, however, their council directed the activity of the 'hero'.

Outside these farming communities in the mainland and islands were the pirates, a quite respectable profession, and necessary when you look at the barren, rocky islands they lived on. Indeed the story of the attack on Troy is that of a great 10 year pirate raid by early Greeks - the Achaeans - on the coast and islands of Asia Minor, which they looted for ten years culminating with the rich prize of the trading city of Troy in the tenth year.

The nomads, which the Greeks themselves had been when they moved in, in successive waves, and took over Greece from the Mycenaean inhabitants after the time of the reputed Trojan War (12th Century BCE), had become settled on the land by the time Homer wrote the Iliad and Odyssey in the late 8th Century BCE. And being prolific breeders, the limited arable land could not support their expanding populations, so they established colonies all around the Mediterranean in Southern Europe, North Africa and Western Asia to support them, which explains the spread of the Greek world.

It was a world of subsistence farmers who were also fighters to defend their land and take the land of others. They lived a precarious life on their tiny farms, fought to protect or plunder, and progressively began developing and borrowing a civilisation which came to lead the world in building, the arts, science, trade, government, warfare and callous butchery.