The poet Homer was a court physician who simplified Greek polytheism to help understand reality

If you read the Iliad with attention, in Greek, it's perfectly obvious that its writer wasn't just a poet, he was a scholar of some considerable training and experience. The descriptions of battle injuries constitute much of the action in the Iliad, and, they are anatomically precise, and disconcertingly so. His presentation of the counsels and speeches of the great Greek and Trojan lords are compellingly real, and psychologically accurate, as you would expect from a court physician regularly in attendance at the feudal councils that constituted government in Homer's time, in ancient dark age Greece. Because, of course, that's what the poet Homer had originally been. He was a court physician, trusted with treating the ills of the Greek Lords, and in attendance as a great wise man at their counsels. When he went blind, later in life, he was still loved and respected, and they kept him on as their poet-philosopher. And, a great philosopher is exactly what Homer was. Like his physician successor, centuries later, the great Aristotle, Homer helped redefine the nature of our understanding of the universe, in Western Civilization. Aristotle developed the concepts of intense empirical observation, and theoretical summaries of these observations, to help predict the define further investigations of reality itself. Homer, the earlier incarnation of Aristotle, helped to simplify and reify our understanding of reality, by moving away from traditional polytheism, with its almost infinite number of Gods. Instead, and in its place, Homer postulated a concept of reality very closely associated with the feudal councils he was so familiar with. Reality was postulated as being composed of a small number of great Gods and Goddesses, who ruled by power and discussion, and whose powers were very great, but, somewhat limited by their competition with each other, and the nature of reality itself. So, people came to understand the universe in strictly anthropomorphic terms, in terms of a few great men and women making decisions, taking actions, controlling the forces of nature, and the behavior of human beings. As such, people came to think very analytically and critically about these things. Why would these human-like Gods choose to do one thing, rather than another. For what reason? When, and why, exactly? How could the Gods be understood, and their decisions be predicted, or influenced? What were the patterns that could be observed in these things? Necessarily, it was much easier to think analytically and try to understand a few Gods and Goddesses, than thousands of Gods of all types, throughout all the material world, all the animal kingdom, and all of society, as was the case in traditional polytheism. So, progress in thought and understanding was more likely with this basis for understanding. And, as well, and perhaps even more importantly, Homer was such a compelling and brilliant poet, because of his scholarly background, that the ancient Greeks specifically developed the first true alphabet specifically to transcribe and record Homer's poetic songs into written form, for accurate repetition. And, this alphabet made literacy easy and universal in ancient Greece, much simpler than earlier logograms, requiring the memorization of hundreds or thousands of symbols. With universal literacy, and Homer's brilliant simplification of polytheism, the Greeks had a terrific advantage in terms of understanding and communicating reality!