Homer
Homeris generally identified as the author of the two seminal epic poems of the classical world, the Iliad and the Odyssey. The earliest written versions of what were originally oral poems date from the middle of the 8th century BC.
The Iliad dramatizes the siege of the city of Troy or Ilion (as it was also known) in Asia Minor by a Greek expedition led by Agamemnon of Mycenae. The purpose of the Trojan War was to recover Helen of Sparta, the beautiful wife of Menelaus, Agamemnon's brother. She had been abducted by Paris of Troy. The Odyssey tells of the turbulent return home from Troy to Ithaca of the resourceful Odysseus. It was his ruse of the wooden horse which caused the fall of Troy.
Shakespeare did not know Homeric epic in the Greek original, but he probably would have seen a version of George Chapman's Seven Books of the Iliads (1598) or Arthur Hall's Ten Books of Homer's Iliads (1581) before...
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