How did the Iliad arrive to us?

There is nothing such an Iliad text before Homer. The Homer experts generally accept that the epics are delivered orally (like the Anatolian epic tradition) from Trojan War around 1200 BC until 8th century BC when Homer lived and that finally the poet transcribed in 730 BC. After Iliad transcribed, it became very famous among Greece until the last quarter of 7th century BC. It was portrayed in many works of other poets and vase paintings. Although we don't have a handwriting of the Iliad from the 8th century BC, experts are almost sure that there were copies of this epic. The influence of the Iliad went so far that after 522 BC, with the order of Tyrant Hipparkos of Athens, it became a tradition to meet every four years in a festival to read the Iliad and the Odyssey from beginning to end by a group of poets. Maybe this was the reason to divide the epics in 24 episodes. Because these epics were read in the curriculum of Athenian schools, many copies of them are made. In the 4th century BC, the developed book trade caused to circulate the epics in wider regions: This tradition of copying of the books continued especially in Egypt until Byzantium. After Byzantium, in the Middle Age Euгоре, the epics are translated to Latin and arrive until our time.