That the Iliad is poetry may seem to need little further comment. The idea may arouse various kinds of excitement in the modern reader – but also, perhaps, a degree of dread, a mild distaste at the thought of special barriers to be overcome. This is, after all, a narrative poem, and it may be said of most narrative that it is better done in prose. Enthusiasm is more easily aroused by lyric poetry, rhythmically less severe and better adapted to the personal and emotional expressiveness for which poetry can claim to be a privileged medium. Against that, it can be said that the Homeric hexameter is a metre both lively and surprisingly flexible; that the Iliad's brilliant combination of speech with objective narrative substantially removes the monotony of most such epics; and that the ‘oral’ characteristics which are such an important feature of Homeric style, far from making it merely naive, give it a liveliness and a sheer pleasurable quality that most desk-bound narrative poems tend to lack.

Far more can be gained from reading and listening to this Homeric poetry if certain technical aspects of versification, beyond what is revealed by that basic acquaintance with the dactylic hexameter which most users of a commentary such as this can be assumed to possess, are examined and described. It is an initial assumption of the present work that one of its most important functions is to help the reader understand and appreciate the Homeric style – those special ways of conveying facts, images and ideas that are unique to the Iliad and Odyssey.