Ancient Greek was the original language of the Iliad and the Odyssey, the epic poems traditionally attributed to Homer. Their language is usually called Homeric Greek, a literary form that combines features from several Greek dialects.
The poems were composed in an oral tradition and are written in dactylic hexameter, a meter suited to repeated performance and memorization. Scholars generally date the written crystallization of the epics to the late eighth or early seventh century BCE, though their stories and formulaic language developed over generations.
Homeric Greek is not identical to everyday speech from one city or period. Its vocabulary and grammar preserve older forms and draw especially on Ionic and Aeolic dialect traditions. This explains why the language of the poems can differ from Classical Attic Greek.
The Iliad focuses on events connected with the Trojan War, while the Odyssey follows Odysseus’s return journey. Both works became foundational texts for Greek literature and later European literary education.