Revisiting 'The Iliad,' 3,000 Years Later

The Iliad is one of the oldest surviving stories of Western civilization, and is often referred to as if we know it — or, at least, we should. The epic is usually credited to Homer, the ancient Greek storyteller who first sat down to orally weave the story for his audiences 3,000 years ago. The war story chronicles the final weeks of the Trojan War, and it has been translated into dozens of languages — dozens of times.