I Think the Iliad Was a How Too Manual for Oral Society

At every point in the story, disaster could have been averted if marriage rights were respected. Achilles had accepted compensation for that dishonour then it could have been curbed. And so just at every n point, things get worse and worse and worse. There's really, really detailed descriptions of how to build a boat. It was kind of expected that everybody knew the iliad - you could recite portions from memory.