"""The Iliad"" was originally written in what language?"
Iliad "Odyssey", also attributed to Homer. Along with the "Odyssey", the "Iliad" is among the oldest extant works of Western literature, and its written version is usually dated to around the 8th century BC. In the modern vulgate (the standard accepted version), the "Iliad" contains 15,693 lines; it is written in Homeric Greek, a literary amalgam of Ionic Greek and other dialects. According to Michael N. Nagler, the "Iliad" is a more complicated epic poem than the "Odyssey". () After an invocation to the Muses, the story launches "in medias res" towards the end of the Trojan War between the Trojans
Written language However, that is still often considered as one language, between literary language and other registers, especially if the writing system reflects its pronunciation. Native readers and writers of English are often unaware that the complexities of English spelling make written English a somewhat artificial construct. The traditional spelling of English, at least for inherited words, preserves a late Middle English phonology that is never used as a speech dialect. The artificial preservation of that form of the language, in writing, might make much of what is now written intelligibly to Geoffrey Chaucer (1343–1400) even if the medieval writer's speech could