Iliad

(THE,) (il'e-ad.) [From Ilion, Troy.] (Lit.) One of the so-called Homeric poems, and the oldest epic known. It is written in Greek hexameters, is divided into 24 books, and commemorates the deeds ofAchilles and other Greek heroes at the siege of Troy. The date of its composition may, with much probability, be a igned to the 9th cent. B. C., and the poem is so deficient in continuity, and contains so much that is inconsistent and irrelevant with the main topic, that it has been thought by many critics to have been the performance of several persons, although its authorship is still nominally accredited to Homer. [s. 477]