I would expect an epic poem about a war to be full of violence, but the Iliad caught me off guard at Book 13, line 615.

Menelaos struck him as he came onward
in the forehead over the base of the nose, and smashed the bones, so that
both eyes dropped, bloody, and lay in the dust at his feet before him.

I had gotten used to the impaling, disemboweling and beheading, but this was not a level of detail I was expecting. Although, it does cast 300 in a good light, as being exactly the kind of thing contemporary storytellers would have made.