Sing, O goddess, the anger of Achilles. The Trojan War, in its ninth year; a quarrel over a captive woman; and the chain of violence that follows when the greatest warrior withdraws from battle. Homer composed this around 750 BCE, drawing on centuries of oral tradition, and Western literature begins. The epithets, the similes, the formal beauty of death: these shaped every epic that followed. The poem does not glorify war. It shows war in its full terror and beauty, and refuses to look away.