From the Introduction:

“The Iliad has not always had the cultural prominence that it now enjoys. Virgil's Aeneid—which includes more of the famous myths, such as the story of the Wooden Horse, and offsets the tragic fall of Troy with a more hopeful narrative about the survival of refugees and the rise of Rome—was far more popular for many centuries after antiquity. The Homeric poem was not translated into English until the early seventeenth century, by the wonderful playwright and poet George Chapman. Many readers continued to prefer the stately Latin hexameters of Virgil over the emotional intensity and corporeal vigor of The Iliad.

But over the past century, in the wake of the two world wars and amid shifting attitudes…” ~Emily Wilson