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The Iliad?and?The Odyssey?are first and foremost, poetry.??However, as illustrated herein, they do have a good deal of historical merit.??The nature of the oral tradition of Dark Age?Greece?and archaeology illuminate the subject of the historicity of the Homeric poems.?They help scholars to fill in the gaps of the historical record.??Homer looked back into history to a previous time whose nature, in some respects, still eludes the historical record.??Homer was a poet who preserved much of Greek myth and legend for his audiences, and managed to create a piece of art that preserved something of their history as well (albeit inaccurate in some areas).??Percy Bysse Shelley observed that?every good historian is a poet.??As in the case of Homer, it can be said that the reverse is not always
