Download or read book Homer and the Sacred City written by Stephen Scully and published by . This book was released on 1990 with total page 258 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The importance of the polis in Homeric literature is most evident in the Iliad, a poem concerned in large measure with the holy city of Troy. Stephen Scully here deepens our understanding of both the poetic and the social significance of the city in Homer through a close analysis of the poem's formulaic language. Drawing on scholarship in literary studies, archaeology, and comparative religion, Scully demonstrates that it is the urban setting of the Iliad, as well as the collision of the individual fates of its characters, which generates its most profound tragic themes.