The “Iliad” was thought to be pure fiction until Troy was discovered.

Ruins at Hisarlık

Homer’s Iliad is perhaps the most famous work of mythology in history, not to mention one of Western literature’s foundational texts. And though the Trojan War and its legendary combatants are fictional, the city of Troy is not — not that everyone always knew it. First settled in the Bronze Age, Troy was destroyed and rebuilt several times during its 4,000 years of existence, and was eventually forgotten and lost to history. Because of this, The Iliad was thought to be pure fiction for centuries until the city of Troy was rediscovered in the 1870s. It was uncovered by Heinrich Schliemann, a businessman and amateur archaeologist from Germany, who also excavated the ruins of Mycenae and Tiryns.

What was once called Troy is now Hisarlık, an archaeological mound in present-day Turkey. Schliemann’s discovery also reignited the debate around whether the Trojan War itself actually took place. The ancient Greeks themselves certainly thought so, but there simply isn’t enough evidence to state that a conflict of the sort portrayed in The Iliad actually lasted 10 years and was waged by such larger-than-life figures as Achilles, Odysseus, and Agamemnon. There were certainly wars (or at least battles) fought in Troy, but not of the stature depicted in the epic poem.

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Very little is known about Homer, including whether he was a real person.

If you were to ask 10 historians when and where Homer was born, you might get 10 different answers. Very little is known about the famed poet, including what century he lived in, if he was actually blind, and whether he was a real person or rather a composite of several people. The consensus is that Homer — if he indeed existed — was born between the 12th and eighth centuries BCE, possibly on the coast of Asia Minor, and that he died on the Greek island of Ios. Because The Odyssey, The Iliad, and other epic poems were spoken aloud, not written down, some believe they were composed by a group of people to whom the single name Homer was later given, or that Homer was simply the one to compile their efforts. Even the idea that he couldn’t see is based solely on the fact that Demodocus, a poet in The Odyssey, is blind, and that Homer based the character on himself.