The Iliad, and its sister composition the Odyssey, were, in their early years, understood as a single work: the story about the Trojan War, and the story about Odysseus, one of the war's heroes; thus, the story of the Iliad —the grand historical picture of Troy and its time— is somewhat diminished without the Odyssey, and the Odyssey, without its forerunner, the Iliad, is utterly lost to the reader.