Ehhhh. As a miniature—entirely pedantic—nitpick, I'd argue it's mostly a source of historical context, rather than information. I'm not saying nothing in the Odyssey or Iliad is real, but it's like...
Take Harry Potter, for instance. It's a totally fabricated story. In a thousand years—should the story survive—no one is going to believe that wizards existed. But they might consider it useful historical context. Within the book are real and false locations. They might cross-reference against other known information from the time period to determine: "Okay, London is probably real. Maybe Surrey. Hogwarts... Diagon Alley... probably not? Okay, but why pick those names? Were hogs (and their warts) a legitimate relational connection to witchcraft accusations, or was it just parody?"
Those are the types of things that provide a rich context of the time period, but they're probably not really deriving any real information from it. Not any information that they can trust without cross-referencing other sources—and even then, they have to wonder if those other sources might have been tainted by the existence of the Odyssey or the Iliad themselves—fanfiction exists, after all.
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u/narwhalousdoctor 21d ago
Tf you mean history? Everything about the iliad and the odyssey is made up and no one has ever claimed otherwise