In the last thirty years, historians have generally concentrated attention on the institutions found in the poems and on the question of to what stage of early Greek history (if any) they belong. The problems arise from the general agreement on three points – first, that the poems were oral composition; second, that they reached substantially the form in which we have them in the course of the eighth century BC; and third, that they purport to describe events taking place in the thirteenth century BC. These assumptions, all of which are accepted here, have given rise to a very wide range of opinions.