Early in the Iliad, Homer’s epic poem about the legendary Trojan War, there occurs a famous digression known as the catalogue of ships, which names all the Greek leaders and contingents who came to fight at Troy. Before unfolding this impressive muster roll, Homer makes a special, public appeal to the Muses to ensure he gets the facts right:

Tell me now, Muses, who have your homes on Olympus –

for you are goddesses, and ever-present, and know all things,

and we hear only rumour, nor do we know anything – .

These verses reflect a central claim of epic poetry – that through the inspiration of the Muses, daughters of Memory, it can preserve the knowledge of people and the events of the past – a formidable power in the non-literate, oral cultures in which the Iliad evolved. The Iliad was composed around 750-700 BC, but its origins lie at least some five centuries earlier, deep in the Mycenaean Bronze Age – the world the Iliad poetically evokes.

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The Mycenaeans themselves knew of writing, but appear to have used it only for bureaucratic bookkeeping in their palace states. When their kingdoms collapsed around 1200 BC, even this limited use was lost. Thus from the end of the Mycenaean Age until the age of Homer, poets who performed and adapted the epic orally kept the tradition alive, and carried memory of the Mycenaean world into new ages.