Homer and Iliad

The Iliad by Homer, tr. Samuel Butle
Good to know. The wreath of laurel leaves on one's head does not make one a tree, and does not necessarily mean one aspires to become one either. The ancient custom of using laurel wreaths on one's head, is linked to the Greek god Apollo. He is represented wearing a laurel wreath on his head. In ancient Greece wreaths were awarded to victors in athletic competition and in poetic contests; in Rome they were symbols of martial victory. To wear a laurel wreath outside conventional and prestigeous settings today, may be regarded as freaking out. The same principles may be much into drastic hairdos. [WP, "Laurel Wreath"]
The poem
The Iliad and the Odyssey are two ancient Greek epic poems traditionally attributed to Homer. Both the Iliad and the Odyssey are commonly dated to the late 9th or 8th century BCE. A few scholars think a century or two later is fit. The poems show evidence of a long oral tradition.
The poem describes events during the tenth and final year of the Trojan War. The plot centers on the Greek warrior Achilles and his anger - and combats.
The Iliad comprises 15,693 lines of verse. Later ancient Greeks divided it into twenty-four books or scrolls. The title is the name of the city that Greeks besieged in the state of Troy.
Homer devotes long passages to blow-by-blow descriptions of a bloody and brutal combat. The poem's large number of warriors and other characters connects the Trojan War to many ancient myths.warrior who attempts to fight Achilles in Book 21.
The poem goes into warriors' conflicts between nostos (homecoming) and kleos (glory). Achilles must choose between the two. Achilles acknowledges that he must lose his nostos in order to gain his kleos. There is also timê, (respect, honour) to consider for the combattants. Fate is portrayed as a driving force behind many of the events. Homer questions whether even gods can alter fate. Zeus seems able to change fate but does not. Aeneas is fated to survive the Trojan War and is duly saved from Achilles.
The poem uses repetition and stock phrases, and gods, goddesses, and demigods play central parts of the plot of the Iliad.The Iliad and the Odyssey were the basis of Greek pedagogy in antiquity, and recited as a central part of Greek religious festivals.
The Iliad has been translated into English several dozen times.
The ascribed author
Both the Iliad and the poem about Odyssevs (Ulysses) deal with glorified persons and encounters from the Bronze Age.
Very little is known about the legendary poet Homer. According to tradition he was born on the Greek coast of Asia Minor. Homer inherited from other poets many figures of speech, fixed phrases, ideals, ways of descriptions, images, and style devices, and used them well. He benefitted from oral story-telling and a well-developed "formula system" of poetic composition. He had a vast treasure of stories and variants of myths to draw on, and built the Iliad in that tradition.