The events told here took place—if ever they really did take place—in a period that historians and others refer to as the Bronze Age. The most significant source for our knowledge of the Trojan War is the poet Homer, who lived—if ever he really did live—in the succeeding Iron Age, the better part of five centuries later. I look at Homer and his period in more detail in the second part of this Appendix. Homer wrote about a time long in his past, when the gods still appeared before mortals—befriended them, persecuted them, favored them, cursed them, blessed them, harried them, and sometimes even
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