(6) The author and the audience:
The audience, to whom Homer presented episodes
from the Iliad as a lecture or on festive occasions, was as mixed as the epic is multi-layered.
The outward epic narrative was understandable to the general public, educated citizens and political decision-makers, and the lecture was an event that created cultural identity.
When the Assyrian rulers withdrew from Cilicia between 650 and 630 B.C.,
Homer and his fellow scribes became unemployed. They cultivated the art of poetry and gave lessons, preferably in astronomy, in order to turn hungry landlubbers into navigation-safe sailors.
The excellent astronomical star charts of the Assyrians, with whose help Thales of Miletus could later predict the solar eclipse of 28 May 585 B.C., helped them to learn astronomy.