The divine origin story Homer assumes you already know. Written roughly contemporary with Homer, Hesiod's Theogony lays out the genealogy of the gods — how Zeus came to power, which gods are related to which, and why the Olympians behave the way they do. A short read that pays enormous dividends when the gods start intervening in the Iliad.

Thucydides treated the Trojan War as a genuine historical event but applied skeptical scrutiny to Homer's numbers and claims. His brief analysis in Book 1 is essential: he accepts the war happened while doubting its scale. This ancient critical distance is a useful corrective to both dismissing Homer entirely and accepting him too literally.

Herodotus placed the Trojan War in a broader eastern Mediterranean context, seeing it as an early episode in the long conflict between Europe and Asia. His account of how the Egyptians and Phoenicians remembered the story of Helen is a fascinating counterpoint to Homer's version — a reminder that the Greeks were not the only people with opinions about what happened at Troy.