Therefore we find that the Iliad and Odyssey present to us a picture of life and religion composed of selected elements and so universalized that it was understood everywhere and at all later times. Exactly as the Homeric dialect, probably never spoken in any place or period, was universally comprehended, so the contents of the poems seemed nothing strange or difficult to audiences in the remotest parts of the Greek world; in the Greek colonies in Sicily, along the western shores of the Mediterranean, or on the borders of the Black Sea, the epic tales were as easily understood as at Delos, Olympia, or Athens. Yet we have no warrant for using the Homeric poems as sources for the full history of Greek religion in the ninth and eighth centuries B.C. We must remember that the epic bard was least of all composing systematic treatises about religion; on the contrary he was narrating heroic tales, such as the wrath of Achilles, the death of Hector and the ransoming of his body, and the return of Odysseus; he introduced the gods solely as mighty actors in the struggles and adventures of his mortal heroes. The divinities who play their parts in the Iliad, for example, were summoned, like the Achaean princes, so to speak, from many places to take part in the combat before Troy, and in the Odyssey only those gods appear who are required by the story. In short, the poet used the gods and religion exactly as he used his other materials, drawing from a great stock of beliefs and practices that which suited his tale, disregarding all the rest, and troubling little about consistency. Homer’s aim, like that of most poets, was primarily artistic, and least of all didactic.