What are the different periods in poetry?

Homer's two great epics, the Iliad and The Odyssey, deal with the Trojan war and its aftermath. Homer wrote about 800 B.C. and he wrote stories that were more myth than history, tales which came down to him through oral tradition. Troy was a real place in Asia Minor, and there is probably a historical root to the stories. If so our best estimate for the date was about 1190 B.C.