By the time The Odyssey was composed, the Bronze Age palace societies that helped inspire its fictional world had been gone for centuries. Several shorter-term climate patterns then aligned in ways that intensified drought around the time of the Late Bronze Age collapse. The Hittite state was one of the major powers disrupted at the end of the Late Bronze Age. (The National Gallery, London)The imagined age behind the poemCenturies after the Bronze Age palace societies disappeared, The Odyssey imagined a heroic world of palaces, warriors, vulnerable households and perilous journeys. Most experts agree that the poem cannot be read as evidence of a historical drought or Bronze Age migration.