"Are vitality and creativity somehow connected with bellicosity? Could there have been Greek civilisation without this restless obsession with fighting? The place of Homer, especially the Iliad, in Greek culture accentuates these disturbing questions. While the cliché that Homer was "the Bible of the Greeks" is misleading – his was in no way a sacred or unquestionable text – he was central to their basic education, and at least as familiar as Shakespeare is to us, if not more so."