Ex. The Iliad was said to have been written in around 7 BC before the creation of the modern Latin alphabet. How did we, for example, decipher and give the word “Trojans” to name the people who were fighting off the Greek armies? Is it just some word we made up and then assigned?
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The modern Latin alphabet did not exist in 7 BC. The Classical Latin alphabet did exist. It added Y and Z Old Latin alphabet that had existed since the 6th century BC.
To reach the Latin alphabet that English uses you need to add J, U, and W. So it is extremely few changes the last 2000 years. Look at [https://images-cdn.bridgemanimages.com/api/1.0/image/600wm.XXX.0030290.7055475/917121.jpg](https://images-cdn.bridgemanimages.com/api/1.0/image/600wm.XXX.0030290.7055475/917121.jpg) that is 1st century BC Latin inscription. It is not hard at all to read the letter if you can read this post. You might not understand it because you do not know Latins but the script is not a problem.
7 BC also have very little to do with the Illiad, it is probably from 8th or early 7th century BC so centuries earlier. It was in Greek and use the Greek, not the Latin alphabet. We know how the Greek alphabet has cahnged from it inception in the 9th century BC to today
The older know manuscript of it is https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Venetus_A that is written in the 10th century AD in Greek. So exactly how stiff was written in 7 BC or 7th century BC is not relevant because it is a copy that is a lot later.
Greek and Latin are languages that were used in ancient times and then disappeared. There has been continual usage and they have changed a bit over time. There is not anyone today that has Latin as the native language but is has been the language of the catholic church, the change to church service in local languages was in the 1960s.
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