For centuries, Homer's epic Iliad was considered a literal interpretation of the Trojan War. Only recently has the reliability and accuracy of the Iliad in terms of its depiction of war been called into question. Modern historians and scholars have come to the same conclusion that the Iliad should not be perceived as entirely historically accurate. To evaluate the amount of historical knowledge present and the reliability of the epic as a literary source, the Homeric question comes into play, the perspectives that historians and scholars have on the poem and the archaeological evidence of the Trojan War. related to the Iliad. Say no to plagiarism. Get a tailor-made essay on "Why Violent Video Games Shouldn't Be Banned"? Get an original essay The Homeric question calls into question the identity of Homer and the authorship of the Iliad (and the Odyssey). The origin and authorship of the poem are central to this discussion as they describe the reliability of the literary work. All known information about Homer came from the knowledge of the ancient Greeks; therefore, it is most likely partial material since Homer's work was deeply admired and had a great influence on Greek culture. Ancient historians and scholars disagreed on the time span of his life, but they all believed he was blind, a claim based solely on a character in the Odyssey who was written as a blind bard. It was also generally assumed that Homer composed his epic poems with the aid of writing; however, in the eighteenth century the hypothesis of Homeric illiteracy was proposed. The scholar Robert Wood suggested that Homer was as illiterate as his Iliad characters. This proposal raised the question of how Homer composed the long poems attributed to him, if he was illiterate. This was later answered by Friedrich August Wolf's thesis that the Iliad was originally an oral composition and that, preserved by memory, it was eventually compiled in a form similar to the current Iliad. The Iliad being considered an oral history and being passed down orally are factors that immediately change its validity, as oral histories are significantly less reliable than written ones; memory can be easily manipulated, making such history imperfect and subject to change. Therefore, oral histories have the capacity to be fluid and changing. Likewise, Giambattista Vico argues that the Homeric poems were not the creation of one man, but rather the product of generations of nameless bards who perfected the epic, a theory that debunks Homer as the true author. This theory is the most plausible, as it explains the inconsistencies between the narrative and the poetic language used in the Iliad. Therefore, if the Homeric question raises valid doubts and the epic was based on numerous different perspectives and went through a process of refinement, this affects the overall reliability and accuracy of the depiction of the Trojan War. The Iliad remains a subject of debate among historians and scholars regarding its historicity. Modern historians generally agree that the Iliad reflects a number of historical events, but that the Iliad's accuracy regarding those events varies. However, it is not possible to separate facts from pure myth in the poem because not enough evidence is produced about those historical events. Historian Moses Finley notes that the Iliad was not a contemporary, historical work, but rather a work of reflection and nostalgia. Countless others believe that the epic poem was a subjective piece of literature, due to its glorification of war. In contrast, Herodotus and Thucydides gave weight to Homer's wordsin the Iliad and used the Homeric epics as a source of information about ancient Greece and its past, as the poem reflected on the ideals and morals of Greek society. Both historians believed that the Iliad illustrated the events of the Trojan War, yet Herodotus disagreed with Homer's account of Helen's abduction and accused him of favoring that version to fit his narrative and to heighten drama. This disparity indicates the variety of possible versions of the Trojan War, in the absence of knowledge of the accurate account. Consequently, this reading affects the validity of Homer's Iliad, as there is no evidence to support that his depiction of events is entirely accurate. The views of modern and ancient historians differ as they are influenced by their respective historical periods, along with their own values ​​and perspectives leading to opposing opinions in the ongoing debate over the historicity of the Iliad. As more is discovered about the Bronze Age, Finley concludes that the Iliad contains historical knowledge of the Greek Dark Ages, or Mycenaean Greece. Historians similarly analyze the bardic traditions of ancient Greece to evaluate the historicity of the epic poem. The Iliad being an oral composition, the bards spoke and sang the story, naturally allowing it to undergo slight modifications and improvisations in the course of acting and acting. This reflects on the aforementioned unreliability of oral histories. Bards rely on improvisation whenever they tell the narrative, without regard to historical accuracy or linguistic coherence; they follow the pattern of the story but the oral text itself is changeable. It is impossible to identify which version of the Iliad was written and recorded in history. Through an analysis of the different perspectives that historians and scholars have of the Iliad, it is evident that there is a discrepancy between perspectives. This discrepancy is due to the absence of independent evidence on the historical events that occurred in ancient Greece in terms of the reliability of the Iliad. Passages from the Iliad appear to match found archaeological evidence of the Trojan War, which supports the debate over whether epic poetry possesses some form of reliable historical accuracy in its contents. Heinrich Schliemann, a German archaeologist, had complete faith in the historicity of the Iliad; he took it as literal truth and set out to discover the city of Troy using the poem as a map of the area. Schliemann's distorted expectations lead him to inadvertently destroy the remains of other possible artifacts that supported Homer's Troy. However, Schliemann's excavations at Troy and Mycenae revealed new information about a previously unknown Bronze Age civilization; its weapons, bronze armor, and various other objects appeared to match Homer's descriptions, and the date of these artifacts coincided with the theorized date of the Trojan War. Modern archaeologists currently interpret Troy VIIa as the Troy depicted in the Iliad. The cause of the fall of Troy Vlla appears to have been caused by war, perhaps the Trojan War. The size of the city correlates to the size of Troy depicted in the Iliad, thus further validating the possible historical knowledge present in the epic tradition. The Iliad corresponding to archaeological evidence found among the Hissarlike disproves the theory that the Iliad is purely legendary; as much as it romanticizes and glorifies, it actually contains some significant historical basis of a city similar to Homer's Troy existing in the same period as the assigned date of the Trojan War. Please note: this is just an example. Get an article customization now from our expert writers. Get an essay.