Realism in "The Iliad": quotes taken from penguin classics/ Mark Hammond translation.

Homer's "The Iliad" is an epic poem that touches on the lives of the everyday people of Ancient Greece, particularly the soldiers, as well as the "lives" of the gods and goddesses in which they believed. Some critics claim that the crowning achievement in this work is Homer's sense of realism in the characters and plot. Literary Realism, as defined by the Literary Encyclopedia at www.literarydictionary.com, is "a genre of fiction in which …

…the story. The fact that the gods and goddesses played such major roles in Homer's plot does show a larger picture of what the religion of the Ancient Greeks was like. The myths were created by the ancients in order to explain the unexplainable, therefore, the scenes with the gods probably served to explain events during the battle that were unaccounted for or unexplainable. Therefore, The Iliad is a definite early example of literary realism.