The Iliad

It is a great old story, and George, the AI voice made few mistakes and was pleasant to the ear

Translation by Emily R. Wilson

Halfway through an endless war over a dispute everyone hardly remembers, two powerful men (on the same side) are squabbling. Agamemnon has taken Achilles’ favorite slavewoman, and so Achilles gets pissy about it and refuses to fight in the war. As the best fighter on the Greek side, things don’t go well without him. To inspire the troops, Achilles’ best friend and lover Patroclus dresses up in his armor to fight, but is slain by Hector, golden child of the Trojans. Achilles takes his rage out on Hector, and then on Hector’s corpse.

Wilson is a great translator, and I definitely appreciated this more than the other times I have tried to read it. However, it is not my thing. I found the lists of guys dying boring, and the misogyny was grating. I know this is supposed to be a meaningful poem about how bad war is, but most of the main characters are the ones who could be stopping the horrible war, so it’s hard to have sympathy for them. Women and poor people are the victims, as they always are in war, but we don’t get their perspective. The 24th and last book of the poem is undoubtedly one of the most beautiful pieces about grief ever written, but it’s too hard to get there.

Overrated.

OMG! That Homer guy needs an editor in the worst way.

Emily Wilson has produced what is for the most part a very clear and functional translation of The Iliad. There are of course very many ways of rendering Homeric Greek. I value Robert Fitzgerald's highly as the most 'poetic' modern reading, have always loved Pope as a separate work of art in its own right and been consistently riveted by Christopher Logue's partial retelling in 'War Music'. It seems to me though that Wilson falls between two stools. Despite the choice of iambic pentameter this does not strike me as consistently compelling dramatic verse and the plainness (indeed occasional ugliness) of some of the choices made fall short of Logue's often startling boldness. I know that may be seen as an unfair comment given that Logue was not attempting anything like a line by line translation but I do feel that much of Wilson's version is unintentionally low key even bathetic when it should be the opposite.
The reasons for the choice of iambic pentameter are clearly set out in the helpful translator's note (and Norton have not stinted on other supporting apparatus - there is a very full Introduction and extensive notes) but as well as individual rather flat vocabulary choices the syntax and rhythm occasionally gets very contorted.
The printed version is very handsomely produced. The eBook is correctly formatted with translation and Greek line numbers (which you may feel doesn't need commenting on but believe me given the usual dismal attempts to render verse correctly in HTML in eBooks it does) but there are no hyperlinks to Wilson's really helpful notes on the text which means that there is no way of referring to them except by adopting a clunky bookmarking workflow which is utterly disruptive to the reading experience. And for the audiobook I have to say I find Audra McDonald's rather actorly rendition makes the whole feel rather artificial - one knows one is listening to a 'great poem' rather than being caught up in a visceral drama. Give me Alan Howard performing Logue any day.

Again, how does one rate a book like this? It was part of the curriculum for this semester but I'm also glad I read it just for me.

Drags in places, but is the quintessential "manly men doing manly things" story. I can see why it's survived for so long. The moral of the story is: hubris. Or it could be: don't mess with the gods, or do, it doesn't matter because FATE!

For all Emily's boasting, her translation is prosaic to a fault.

War sucks. Its brutality and the dehumanization of its participants and victims cannot be exaggerated. What strikes me about the Iliad is its violence. The body count of this epic is huge; granted, it tells the story of the high tide of the Trojan War, culminating in Achilles' return to the fray after getting his knickers in a twist about a slave girl.

Reading this after having taught the Odyssey for many years, the theory that Odysseus suffers from PTSD could be supported by the scale of bloodshed he experiences in Asia Minor. Of course, he isn't really able to return to a peaceful domestic life, because he ends up killing 50 suitors at the end of his eponymous epic.

One other point about the Greek pantheon of gods, goddesses, nymphs, and half-gods; most religious systems construct a moral code to tighten the bonds of the community. Homer's attitude towards the gods seems to be that they are entirely capricious, and that any human disaster can be blamed on divine whim. The gods are literally choosing sides in the Trojan War, mainly to gain retribution for old grievances.

The ending of the Iliad feels tragic (maybe elegiac) - Hector's funeral foreshadows the death of Achilles as well as the fall of Troy. I found Hector to be more sympathetic than Achilles, if only because he shows a more human side towards his wife and son. Achilles is portrayed as a hotheaded ultimate warrior, indestructible, a whirling killing machine. To put it in more modern terms, Achilles is Superman, Hector is Batman. Which hero do you find more interesting?

Finally, I heard a debate a while back between Boris Johnson and Mary Beard in which Boris posited that what makes the Iliad brilliant is that it is the first recorded story that promotes meritocracy. Agamemnon outranks Achilles - he is royalty, while Achilles is just the world's greatest warrior and demigod. Ultimately, Agamemnon must concede to Achilles if he ever hopes to sack Troy. In this case, talent outranks status.

So. It's a classic. It's historical. It's arguably one of the most influential books in history. And it's boring as hell. I mean, I guess it reflects the values of the time--there's a lot of tragedy and irony, especially how everyone vaunts heroism and battle but really it's just a bunch of guys getting their eyes poked out. And heroism doesn't count for much when the heroes are a bunch of divas who cry when someone insults them. So maybe that was Homer's intent, to point out the bitter ironies of the culture. But holy moly, I can only read so many incidents of random dudes murdering each other before my eyes glaze over.

This wasn't the story I thought it was. I enjoyed the Odyssey and knew the Illiad was about the Trojan War. When I think Trojan War, I think of the beauty of Helen and the Trojan Horse. The Illiad is about neither. It takes place 10 years into the war, but before it ends. It is mostly a long list of who killed who in what gruesome manner, and a bit of godly and human intrigue sprinkled throughout. Knowing that I probably wouldn't have read it, as battle scenes aren't something that typically appeals to me. However, I do think this translation by Fagles is good. It is in verse and reads smoothly.

I started this in March and spring sprung then summer came and I just didn't pick it up. But when I moved I was w/o a washer & dryer and picked back up while at the laundromat. Then hurricane Irene came along and I finished it.

Legend has it that Alexander the Great held Achilles as his role-model and slept with the Illiad under his pillow. I find that hard to believe: who'd ever look at Homer's Achilles -- this superhuman prima donna holding the entire Aechean faction hostage, leading hundreds of allies and enemies alike to the steps of Hades over his diva behaviour 'cause he's the deadliest thing since sliced caesium -- and find him inspiring? What kind of psychopathic, egocentric, megalomaniacal... oh, never mind.

Thing is that -- at least through a contemporary lens -- Homer doesn't appear to commend anything that happens here: proud Achilles is irreparably left a shell of his former self due to an easily avoidable unfolding of events that he himself orchestrated; the four days' battle decimated the belligerents with no gains to either side; the war itself is in its tenth year due to sunk cost fallacy. And Homer goes to great pains to show just how awful the resulting loss of life is: every man slayed -- and there are many mans slayed -- brings with him a small biography, where he's from, who are his parents, what was his profession until just now... Imagine an RTS where the game pauses for a one-minute wake after every unit killed: that's the Illiad. And mind you, we have it "better" nowadays: we can skim. Imagine Ancient Greece, you're being told for hours on end: "then Ajax thrust his spear into Peneleus, son of this guy and from this place, he did these thing and that at that place and wanted this, but now he descends to Hades instead. Then Ajax sliced Promachus's neck with his sword, Promachus was this and that and this. Then Hector killed etc. etc". The tedium can't possibly be an accident. With my 2021 vision, that reads like Homer making a point of how dehumanizing battle is. Parallels with covid btw: first death, shocking, incredible how it can come and take literally anyone. And oh my god they're holding their own intestines in their hands, feck, this is horrible stuff. Where are we? Page 56. Oh, there goes another one. Gee. Zus. Ouch. And to think of what his wife will go through now... By the middle of the Illiad, you read them like statistics: okay, so here Hector kills one, two... five people, right. Aaaaaand Diomedes took out, let's see, four. Toward the end, you're doing triage with your attention: who killed who? Whatever, just take out Patroclus already, then we can talk.

And the final bitter note Homer puts in: the ellipsis ending, promising that these four days' meaningless carnage were just the start, that future skirmishes would be even more cruel, to avenge what transpired. If the Illiad came out today, it would have been considered an anti-war novel, I'm sure of it. Then again, exchange Achilles for Steve Jobs and the siege of Troy for shady business dealings and wannabe entrepreneurs the world over would sleep with the outcome under _their_ pillows, so maybe I read this the wrong way. Homer's dead so he can't correct me, but centuries of Classics research likely can.

Reading the Illiad for myself, I was surprised at the Classical philosophers' protests at its inclusion in the at-the-time curriculum. It doesn't seem to present anyone as an example to follow: the major characters are all flawed, and their flaws leave them suffering / dead. Even the proto-sophist Odysseus gets beaten up and out of the story. However while characters display actions more in tune with the philosophic virtues, they suffer less. For example, the cowardly / lazy prince Paris is ridiculed and his death foreshadowed severely, _until_ he gets his act together. Then, once he assumes his role in service of his people, the story becomes more benign toward him, and the character you initially most assumed would be gruesomely killed is alive by the end. Another example, Hector. While his behavior was virtuous he was basically indestructible: in his bravery he'd get mortally wounded but live to get mortally wounded again. But when his bravery turned to hubris, awakening the beast-diva Achilles in the process, that's when his luck changed. You may accuse me of making here too secular a reading of the story beats, seeing the important role played by fate, but for the philosophers I imagine it would be these pragmatic concerns that mattered most re the curriculum. Then again, they could have had a stock of wannabe Alexanders to contend with, and I know from experience the efficiency with which a megalomaniac will miss the point of a story to suit his warped view of the world.

It's a classic. C'mon people. Read it.

I know the story well, through years of younger/abridged versions, but I did not enjoy this translated version, which was my first time reading as an "adult" version. It could be the timing, or it could be the story itself. Not sure. But it was just ok for me. That's all. It was difficult to endure the infantile bickering of the gods. The Greek and the Trojan warriors were the playthings - their puppets - and they manipulated them to work out their own selfish pride and jealousies. It was cruel and contentious, and very annoying.

It's amazing how such beautiful language and imagery, such bloody and exciting action and adventure...can also draaaaag through the middle. I blame my fits of boredom on aborted action (Paris vs. Melelaus duel cut off when Aphrodite whisks Paris to his bedroom, Hera and Athena prep for war only to stop while riding off to battle in they're chariots because they've suddenly remembered they're afraid of Zeus) and repetitive incidents of people being introduced and then immediately dying. Seriously, almost no one we know or care about dies until the very end. Oh, and being a chariot driver sounds a lot like being a Star Trek redshirt--how many times does someone throw a spear only for it to miss the target and kill the driver?

All joking aside, the language and metaphors really were beautiful, even if Caroline Alexander does lean into the repetition more than Emily Wilson did with her translation of The Odyssey. (I ended up just opting to read translations by women because they're some of the newest and, with such a flooded field, why the heck not?)

And The Iliad itself is a fascinating historical document--even if the historicity of the Trojan war itself isn't a sure thing, the cultural details that almost certainly came from ancient Greek society were well worth the read: that grabbing someone's knees was a sign of begging for mercy, that the upper levels of society rested from battle to nosh on what sounds like wine-soaked oatmeal, that funerals could be incredibly elaborate, that ships were pulled all the way up onto the beach, and of course the whole relationship with the gods. It was interesting to see when gods were credited with great deeds and with failures; it almost seemed like blaming the gods was a way to abdicate responsibility for major mistakes...though, admittedly, the gods make a lot of mistakes, seeming pettier even than the humans, and that's saying a lot considering this war started because a husband decided he needed whole armies to go after his runaway wife.

Given all the action and the high, bloody death count, it's hard to understand how the Trojan war dragged out for ten years. The action came thick and fast, with thrilling cinematic moments that, for some reason, Troy ignored instead of, um, great balls of fire. There's the Achean wall, a powerful counterpart to the walls of Troy; sneaky spy missions by night; eyes popping out of their sockets; brains spattered inside helmets; angry river gods; leaping from beached ship to beached ship while stabbing people below with long spears; seriously, why isn't Netflix or HBO adapting this into a miniseries?

It was also notable to me how many "best of the Acheans" there were. So much is made of Achilles from the very outset ("sing of the wrath of Achilles") but we've also got the Ajax pair, Menelaus and Agamemnon, Diomedes, Petroclus, Odysseus, and a fantastic archer; and on the Trojan side it isn't just Hector, there's a Zeus-beloved demigod, Aeneas, and others whose names I now forget because, hey, there are a lot of names.

I'm talking a lot about the action in part because I'm sure much has already been made of the commentary about war, about how many lives it senselessly cuts short. Even the language used to describe death--knees cut out, biting and clenching the earth--is often gritty and real, the occasional metaphor of a great tree falling in the forest reminding readers of the pyres that will, hopefully, consume the dead and release their spirits. After the first truce to tend to the dead, I kept thinking of that every so often: whether all the many dead left on the battlefield would be left to rot, or whether they would manage to get their final rites.

I do regret that this "review" focuses so much on the action rather than the language, but alas, my copy of The Iliad is a library book and there was no way to mark the passages. Despite my efforts to avoid acquiring more books, I kind of wish I'd bought this one so I could mark it up.

Some other random thoughts that I need to jot down so I can finish this review before it's time to go to work:
> Why the heck does anyone worship these self-centered, careless gods? Perhaps the cruelties of ancient life are reflected in the changing whims of indifferent, selfish beings.
> One of my favorite moments was when Hector goes to visit his wife and baby; his baby cries when he doesn't recognize his father all dressed up in armor, and Hector and wife share a laugh and a moment of levity. It's easy to imagine it as nervous, sad laughter, and it's one of the few times when there seemed to be genuine love between a man and a woman rather than just playing politics (no matter what Achilles protests about Breisis (sp?)).
> How disturbing, to modern eyes, that rape of all Trojan woman is repeatedly thrown around as a goal.
> I found it amusing how people really ribbed Paris for causing this whole catastrophe, including getting on his case about how his major attribute is beauty, gifted by Aphrodite ("I can't help it that I'm beautiful!"). For all that, he still has some moments in battle to redeem himself.
> At the same time, I loved that Aphrodite had her moment in battle. Maybe it didn't work out the way she wanted and she didn't end up getting an Eowyn moment, but I felt that her effort and failure were very poignant.
> Um, what the heck was with a) Zeus giving away the entire plot with Patroclus wearing Achilles' armor; and b) everyone, including the Trojans, knowing it was Patroclus? What was the point if everyone knew it wasn't Achilles?
> At one point, Zeus invites Hera to bed by naming all the women he has slept with and all the demigods that had come from those unions. If Hera's goal hadn't been to distract him in the first place, I hope she'd have raged at him for that. Seriously Zeus, is that your idea of a smooth move?
> Patroclus only falls in battle because Apollo undoes Achilles' armor, which is totally cheating.
> I've heard so much made of the Achilles/Patroclus relationship that I was kind of surprised there wasn't more evidence of a romantic relationship between the two. I hate to be *that person*, but in a society where women basically counted for nothing and male friendship was the only friendship, there doesn't seem to be much to support more. Of course, I'm totally at the mercy of translator interpretation...
> Speaking of translations, while it was definitely a shock to move from Wilson's iambic pentameter in her Odyssey to Alexander's long lines of blank verse, I can't imagine how any translator could fit all the words into such rigid rules.

Okay, I'm out of time. On to the Aeneid!

(No quotes because, again, library book.)

Well damn. That was fun!

The last time I read this novel was in Mr. MacNamee's Grade 12 English class around 1979/1980 (if memory—that elusive bitch—serves), which means I'm running on memories five decades past.

I remembered—or at least, I thought I remembered—the main story points and I was mostly right. It taking place in the dying days of the tenth year of the ongoing war. Menelaus coming after Paris whole stole Helen—she of the "face that launched a thousand ships" fame. Agamemnon pissing off Achilles by stealing his woman, and Achilles sitting most of the story out on the sidelines. Big battles with Achilles' soul brother Patroclus and Hector. Achilles finally getting pissed enough to come back into the fray and literally wipe the floor with Hector.

Yup, remembered it all. But...

I also firmly remember the death of Achilles, and the Trojan Horse. But, as I got closer and closer to the 24th and final book of The Iliad, neither were in sight. Could those things really have been in The Odyssey? Really?

Apparently, because we only get the prediction of Achilles' demise, and there ain't a Trojan Horse to be found. Huh. So much for fifty year old memory.

Still, I have to say, Lombardo's more "plain English" translation made it a breeze to run through (though I still may go back to the more prosaic dactylic hexameter version soon, just to compare). But like I said, overall, this was fun as hell. The battles were crazy and bloody and over-the-top with a lot of popped eyeballs and swords and spears through either nipples or tongues, and lopped off heads. Even crazier were the capricious gods who just couldn't stop themselves from interfering for one side or the other. And seriously, did every damn god get it on with a human at some point or another? There's an awful lot of god-spawn kids on these battlefields.

Finally one note about something I found more and more amusing the more it came up. Rarely were the characters' inner thoughts shown, but without exception, every time we were treated to them, each character always did the same thing: they'd ruminate about what they should do, then in the middle of it, suddenly think, why am I talking to myself like this? then carry on talking to themselves like that until they decided what they needed to do, and then get on with it.

Every time I got that why am I talking to myself like this? I just had to laugh.

Overall though, I found myself eagerly anticipating the next dive into the story, and now I'm quite pumped for The Odyssey.

This book is excellent.

I found it fast paced and thoroughly enjoyable from beginning to finish.

A worthy addition to your bookshelf.

If I were rating this on its historical significance and undeniable influence on the structure of modern narrative, I’d have been more generous in my rating. However, I’m rating this on aspects of its readability as a work of fiction first, poetry second.

Translation was great. The sheer number of classical names and lineages is a bit daunting in the first few books (chapters). The overall story is a bit...primitive, though I think this is to be expected with all things considered. Similar to novels compiled from a series of short stories, the books of The Illiad are similar in that assemblage and, perhaps due to the posterity of the work, makes for a few jarring transitions (eg. Book 22 -> 23).

From a poetic perspective, all I can really say (in this translation at least) is that the line is relatively transparent throughout the reading. At least a couple times per-book there’s a few verses that come off a little ditty, but (from what I can remember) the words are chosen well. A few verses were quite illustrious and could stand alone (indeed, a few of them I jotted down), particularly during the thick of the siege (books 8 -> 17).

If you’ve been meaning to read this but find you’re always hesitant pick it up next, I’ll tell you the read may not be worth it.

Not an easy read or a pleasant one. The brutalities of war aren't shied away from, but the poetry does manage to reach the heights of sublime beauty. Gives a pretty comprehensive look at that era.

I don't know enough to compare this translation to any other, of course, but it seemed excellent to me! I knew bits of the story but not the whole of it -- I kept expecting things to be in there that were not and vice versa. Pretty amazing how the endless descriptions of armor translate perfectly to the focus on acquiring new armor in current video games. The intertwining of the gods' action and the humans' actions was striking. (And know I can appreciate Song of Achilles even more...)

Great translation--liked it better than Fagles'.

The Iliad takes place in the ninth year of the Trojan War. Achilles avenges the death of his loyal companion Patroclus by killing Hector, son of King Priam.

READ IN DUTCH/GREEK

Also by Homer, but less well known than The Odyssey. I translated this book in my Greek class. But I'm still planning to read the whole book (as a book rather than translating)

First, I was cheated, since the only thing I know about the Trojan war is that it was won by the Greeks using the "Trojan Horse" and that Achilles was killed by being shot by Paris through the ankle. Neither of these episodes are in the Iliad! I was surprised that it was just a snapshot (about a month) of the ten-year long war. It seemed to end somewhat abruptly, but I read somewhere that the Iliad is focusing on Achilles, and his fall (and the struggle of the Greeks) through his pride. If I remember right, this is a common Greek theme, the hero’s tragic flaw that ruins him. Through this lens, the timespan of the Iliad makes more sense though I wish it would have at least continued to the death of Achilles for some closure.
Another common Greek theme is that of our fate being fixed, which is evident for many characters throughout the book. Sometimes it may take the form of Zeus forbidding the gods to interfere so that the predestined fate is not tampered with, and sometimes it is much more literal, where the gods do interfere, creating a fog or whisking someone off the battlefield. I always knew that the gods quarreled along with mortals in the Iliad, but I didn’t realize that they would be quite so vindictive—or also quite so physically involved, getting out on the battlefield and getting wounded!
I read the translation by Pope, which I thought was very good. I can’t verify its authenticity, but Pope did justice to the Iliad in his word choice. I noticed another review mentioned that the word “refulgent” was used over and over in the Caroline Alexander translation—it’s used continuously in Pope’s! Pope did mention in his introduction that the Iliad can be repetitive at times, and that he chose to keep the repetition in for authenticity’s sake. I think I like that better. I guess I am the kind of person that, if I had to choose, I would prefer more authentic to easier-to-read.
Some of the most tedious parts for me were the listing of all the characters, where they came from and who their parents were. All to promptly kill them off in the next paragraph. I admit I did some skimming over the lists of people. Some of the best parts, however, were the myriad ways that Homer came up with to describe someone dying and their body giving up the ghost. He was most creative. Some even made me laugh out loud.
What I don’t want to admit is that the most valuable thing about reading the Iliad is that know I understand the references that other authors make to the Iliad. Just started reading Anna Karenina and they references specific scenes from the Iliad -twice- in the introduction. Now I know what they are talking about! And I can (sort of) understand what they mean when they are comparing Tolstoy to Homer.

Important in the history of literature and classical Greek thought.

Better than the movie! Once you get the rhythm it sucks you in like a time machine. Amazing.

The Iliad beings in the ninth year of the Trojan war and the Greeks laying siege to Troy's capital. The 24 book story covers about a seven week period that sees the Greeks beaten back to where their ships are laid up, enduring slaughter at Trojan hands because their hero Achilles refuses to fight; he's angry that Agamemnon took the Trojan woman he'd selected as his prize. Not until Achilles' battle buddy Patroclus is killed (in Achilles' armor) by the Trojan hero Hector does Achilles rise to fight. When Hector dies, we have a good sense that Troy won't be long either.

Homer's Iliad and the Odyssey are oft referenced as a pair, but it's always the Odyssey that ends up assigned reading in American junior high and middle schools. They're both long (epic!) but I assume teachers pass on the Iliad due to the amount of violence and perhaps fewer "teachable moments." The Iliad is probably one of those 'must reads' in the profession of arms, especially for infantry. I would assign it to any elected official overseeing or directing military activity. The war between Greeks and Trojans isn't just a human affair, rather the gods of Olympus are ever meddling, sometimes influencing and at other times outright spiriting their favorites out of the field of battle to spare their lives. The gods are capricious, given to their own passions, and prone to change their minds, so they frankly bear strong resemblance to politicians if one wants to relate it to real life. It's a reminder that there are always two conflicts going on, one on the battle field and one back in the halls of government; they don't always combine well.

I'm unable to vouch for the quality of the translation in terms of remaining true to the Greek, but Robert Fagles deserves much credit for turning it into beautiful, modern English epic poem. The usual complaints against the Iliad are the instances of repetition and a fathomless well of detail when it comes to describing mortal combat with spear, sword, and the occasional rock stoving a skull in. As much as the Iliad glorifies manly virtues in war (like courage, bravery, camaraderie) it also showcases its horrors (the violence, fear, and waste) to the same degree. One comes away with the feeling at the end: why did we bother with all of this? What did we gain? Can we even quantify what we lost, or is it immeasurable?

Overall, a long read, but worth the epic journey from page to page, book to book.

This version was quite the tome and I suffered from RSI just from holding the book. I have embarked upon the Great Books series as set out by Hutchins and Adler at the University of Chicago and this great tale is number 1. This is no small task but it is essential. Time and again I have seen movies about Achilles and the fall of Troy but there is something to be said about the various translations and notes that direct the reader to a long history of debates, arguments, and disagreements over Homer (or whether it was Homers), and then the translations that incorporate the Latin amendments (such as Samuel Butler's), and then how the "folk tradition" has twisted and turned this nation-building epic to suit different times. The movies have it that Hector was simply out-classed, not that he ran three laps around the walls of Troy trying to escape Achilles, not that the gods intervened time and again, even helping to kill other soldiers and so on. I like the introduction's idea of Hector as a complete man, husband, father, prince, warrior; whereas Achilles is the unbalanced warrior, hell-bent on death and glory. I have now started on The Odyssey and I did not know that the Trojan horse was not of the first book, I had suspicions but I did not know that Ulysses was the Latin name, and so on. Even the unpacking of these issues helps with my reading of Plato and Aristotle. I felt I had arrived at a place where reading more of the classic scholars made no sense unless I had at least a working grasp of Homer. But the manly ideal that has been bastardised by Hollywood and others has set me thinking deeply. Honour didn't mean masculine aggression at all costs, or that any man could do anything, or that class could not hold one back and so on. In the translation (rather than bastardisation) of the original, an entirely different view of masculinity emerges. These people were all fallible, all helped or thwarted by fortune, the gods played a major role in the plot (religion is all but excluded from the Brad Pitt version of the story), and Paris, a snivelling coward, is not helped out by Hector. Hector hates him! So much to unlearn from reading one of the oldest "western" texts. I shirk at this title - much like the re-writing of Greek ideas about masculinity, all of a sudden the Eastern Europeans get a guernsey in the Great Race Race because they were so brilliant. But it really does set me at ease to now see the portrayals of the Greek ideal and be able to see it for what it was meant to be. This does not help me to feel more secure in the world, but it does help me to see the world differently, and, maybe, more accurately.

So I don't much like flying. Like really, I do not like flying. And I had to fly to the US for work. In which case the coping mechanism is tranquilisers and a book I have to concentrate on - it serves to distract me. Having read [The Odyssey] earlier in the year, I figured I'd go all classical and try [The Illiad] this time.

It's one of those occasions when you know what's going to happen, this is all about how you arrive at the ending. It's quite intense, being set over a limited number of weeks towards the end of the 10 year siege of Troy. Despite the intervention of the gods, the entire thing is very human, with the whole gamut of emotions present, from the great and heroic to the petty. It's all very sad, and there's no sense of resolution at the end of the book, the war continues without seeming to have resolved anything, despite the bloodshed. I found the introductory notes interesting and informative and it was worth wading through them initially.