The historicity of the Iliad has been a matter of continuing interest and concern ever since antiquity, with new impetus from Robert Wood in the eighteenth century and Schliemann in the nineteenth. It can hardly be ignored in these introductory chapters. Yet at best only a provisional treatment can be offered–it would be ‘safer’ to avoid the issue and attempt none at all – since so much remains to be discovered and rethought. Further reflexion on the modes of destruction and probable dates of Troy VI and VIIa (see pp. 40f.), further study of the Hittite archives (pp. 42f.), further excavation around Besika Bay on Troy's Aegean shore (pp. 49f.), further consideration of the nature of the oral tradition and its Near Eastern antecedents (pp. 20f.), will all alter the way we look at the Iliad in relation to its historical background, as well as the characteristics of the oral tradition as a whole.

One preliminary question can hardly be avoided: does ‘historicity’ really matter? Clearly in some ways it does. The history of the Late Bronze and Early Iron Ages in the central and eastern Mediterranean is of obvious importance in itself, and there are still many respects in which the Homeric epic affects that history. Archaeologists sometimes suggest that for armour, weapons, buildings and other concrete matters the information of the poems has been overtaken by actual discovery; even that is not yet entirely true, but there are broader concerns which are less easy to resolve.