Comment by bee_rider
I read the Illiad in high school, but as far as I remember it was mostly just lists of so-and-so from such-and-such fought this other guy.
Spoiler alert for thousand year old book: Then the hero gets killed by the invincible brat and dragged around the city a bunch of times (Hector, he’s obviously the hero, normal guy defending his home against a bunch of jumped up god-empowered jerks, trying to prevent this silly Paris/Everybody else spat from inflicting itself on everybody else).
Sad story.
If it were a modern book we wouldn't talk about it in terms of story, we'd talk about it in terms of world building. A world where gods and goddesses exists and directly influence humanity. A world with great heroes and kings and warriors and battles. A world where everyone is pretty flawed and its frankly pretty hilarious - Achilles pouting and kicking his heels is one of the funniest plots in western literature.
Any story anywhere can be stripped to 'x does y and then z'.