Perspective.

In the quest to "understand" one has to put into perspective the history of learning and of mankind's attempt to understand himself first and foremost, before he can turn his attention on others. 

Homers Iliad and it's companion the Odyssey were written around the period of the battle for Troy and it invoked man's position, vis a vis the gods, gods which represented the noble and idealistic features of life. Mankind borrowed from these mythical figures, his understanding of the complexity of life but mankind had no direct ,part to play in this theatre other than as observers.
The world and its norms were 'fixed' and 'pre-ordained'. What ever happened to you was fixed in the stars and the mythology which explained everything. 
Homer was writing about a period that pre-dates the glory of Greek philosophical thought. It pre-dates Socrates and his observance that man was tied through his relationship to the gods for structure in his everyday affairs to the teaching of Plato, when man first began to see himself rid of the mythological structure and consider himself an individual observing the world with a proper perspective of his place within it. Mankind was important if for no other reason than that he could begin to rationalise the world around and not process it with gods to carry his burden.
Plato and the philosophers who followed began to see mankind as having, within their individual status, the essence of "morality" and "ethics", the substance of "truth" and "law", all issues which are human.
We are describing a period 300 years before the birth of Christ, when the rest of Europe, the French,the Germans  (a recent description not much more than 200 years old) and the Brits, who were simply groups and tribes, no nationality, no name. Virtually every living soul on the planet other than the old civilisations of Mesopotamia Hinduism and the Chinese, were running, during this time of the magnificence of Greece, as near to being savages as makes no difference 
Today we decry the Greek for his extravagance and waste, his lack of western savvy about how a modern economy is run. We ask why can't the inventors of the democratic principle and orderly governance understand that paying tax to run a State is fundamental.
Well 2300 years ago they invented the idea, and only recently have we cottoned on to it.  Perhaps we should give them some slack ?