The "Iliad," a grand epic consisting of approximately fifteen and a half thousand dactylic hexameter verses, is the first monument of Greek poetic discourse that has been preserved for us.

Its premise is the wrath of Achilles against Agamemnon, the leader of the campaign, and its terrible consequences. The episode that triggered the conflict is presented to occur at the beginning of the tenth year of the Trojan War. This war, according to tradition, arose because Paris, son of Priam, the king of Troy, came to Sparta, where Menelaus, the brother of Agamemnon, reigned, and took his wife Helen and many treasures.

The Achaean kings then took the young men of their people and, united under the general leadership of Agamemnon, came to Troy to retrieve Helen and the treasures, and for this purpose, they fought for nine years. In the tenth year, at the moment the narrative begins, the great quarrel occurs. The cause is Apollo, who was angered because Agamemnon insulted his priest Chryses and did not return his daughter, who had been captured by the Achaeans and given as a gift to their king.

For nine days, a plague sent by the god ravaged the army; on the tenth day, Achilles, son of Thetis, the bravest of all the Achaeans, summoned the army to an assembly, and in this meeting, the seer Calchas revealed the cause of the evil. Agamemnon promised to return the girl but demanded in exchange another one. Achilles spoke out against him, and he threatened that he would take Achilles' own slave Briseis. Then Achilles became enraged and swore not to return to battle.