Archaeological sources from the Dark Age are less rich than those from the periods that came after, and so they are often used in conjunction with literary sources written in later centuries to give us a more complete picture of the era. Unlike the Hebrews, the Greeks had no sacred book that chronicled their past. Instead they had epics, poetic tales of legendary heroes and of the times when people believed the gods still walked the earth. Of these, the Iliad and the Odyssey are the most important. Most scholars think they were composed in the eighth or seventh century B.C.E.

The Iliad recounts the tale of the Trojan War of the late Bronze Age. As Homer tells it, the Achaeans (uh-KEE-uhnz), the name he gives to the Mycenaeans, sent an expedition to besiege the city of Troy and to retrieve Helen, who was abducted by Paris, the Trojan king’s son. The heart of the Iliad, however, concerns the quarrel between the Mycenaean king, Agamemnon, and the stormy hero of the poem, Achilles (uh-KIHL-eez), and how this brought suffering to the Achaeans.

Homer’s Odyssey recounts the adventures of Odysseus (oh-DIH-see-uhs), a wise and fearless hero of the war at Troy, during his ten-year voyage home. He encounters many dangers, storms, and adventures, but he finally reaches his home and unites again with Penelope, the ideal wife, dedicated to her husband and family.

Both of Homer’s epics portray engaging but flawed characters who are larger than life yet human. The men and women at the center of the stories display the quality known as arête (ah-reh-TAY), that is, excellence and living up to one’s fullest potential. Homer was also strikingly successful in depicting the great gods and goddesses, who generally sit on Mount Olympus in the north of Greece and watch the fighting at Troy, although they sometimes participate in the action.

Greeks also learned about the origin and descent of the gods and goddesses of their polytheistic system from another poet, Hesiod (HEH-see-uhd), who most scholars think lived sometime between 750 and 650 B.C.E. Hesiod made the gods the focus of his poem, the Theogony. By combining Mesopotamian myths with a variety of Greek oral traditions, Hesiod forged a coherent story of the origin of the gods. In another of Hesiod’s poems, Works and Days, the gods watch over the earth, looking for justice and injustice, while leaving the great mass of men and women to live lives of hard work and endless toil.