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The Iliad

by Homer, Robert Fagles (Translator), Bernard Knox (Introduction)

3.76 of 5 stars 3.76 · rating details · 126,575 ratings · 2,452 reviews

Rage—Goddess, sing the rage of
Peleus' son Achilles,
murderous, doomed, that cost the
Achaeans countless losses,
hurling down to the House of Death
so many sturdy souls …

Thus begins the stirring story of the Trojan War and the rage of Achilles that has gripped listeners and readers for 2,700 years. This timeless poem still vividly conveys the horror and heroism of men and...more

Paperback, 683 pages

Published November 1st 1998 by Penguin Classics (first published -800)

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Mar 03, 2009 Abigail rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition Recommends it for: Anyone Who Reads...

Shelves: greek-roman-antiquity, literature-classics, poetry, epics-sagas

Review Temporarily Removed.

77 likes · like · see review

Dec 24, 2012 Sandy Tjan rated it 4 of 5 stars

Shelves: 2011, classics, doorstoppers

What I learned from this book (in no particular order):

1. Victory or defeat in ancient Greek wars is primarily the result of marital spats and/or petty sibling rivalry in Zeus and Hera’s dysfunctional divine household.

2. Zeus “the father of gods and men” is a henpecked husband who is also partial to domestic abuse.

3. If you take a pretty girl who is the daughter of a priest of Apollo as war booty and refuse to have her ransomed, Apollo will rain plague on your troops. And he won’t be appeased un...more

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May 22, 2013 [P] rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: modern-life-is-rubbish

Sing – O Muses – of an epic poem,
Homer-written, but Fagles-translated;
the illustrious Iliad, is its name.
Regarding the content, content competent readers
with a brief but brilliant description,
of how Achaeans and Trojans
became embroiled in bloody battle -
hot-Helen was the cause,
whom preening-Paris had taken
from her red-haired husband Menelaus.
At first it seemed that war may be averted,
when Paris proposed a pact -
he will fight mighty Menelaus, one-on-one;
the victor’s prize will be hot-Hel...more

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Oct 13, 2012 Sparrow rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition Recommends it for: grads

Recommended to Sparrow by: Professor Borin

Shelves: favorites, classic-or-cannonical, poetry, reviewed

At my college graduation, the speaker was a gruff professor. He was one of those older men whom people somewhat patronizingly describe as a teddy bear to convey the idea that while he looks like Santa Claus, they wouldn’t be surprised to see him arraigned on assault charges at the local courthouse. I liked this professor in general, and his graduation speech was a grand: warm congratulations on a crisp early-summer day. He decided to inform us, however, that anyone who had not read The Iliad and...more

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Jan 05, 2013 Terence rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition Recommends it for: Everyone

Shelves: audio-books, poetry, mythologies

UPDATE JAN 2013: I finished reading Stephen Mitchell's translation soon after the New Year and can't recommend it enough.

And, as with any good literature, I find that upon rereading the Iliad, I got something more out of it. Something that had nothing to do with my first impressions noted below (and that I'll elaborate upon more fully in my review of David Malouf's Ransom: A Novel when I finish that book).
____________________________________________

Up to now, I’ve only read fragments of The Ilia...more

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Jan 23, 2012 Chris rated it 5 of 5 stars

I have only made it all the way through Homer's celebrated wonder once: the decent prose version crafted by E. V. Rieu. Otherwise, I have taken bits and pieces from Lattimore's - and pieces and bits from Fitzgerald's - verse translations, preferring the lordly grandeur of the latter, though I have been advised that the former holds truer to Homer's original Greek. Two years ago I purchased Fagles' well-received kick-at-the-can, but again have never made it beyond flipping through favorite passag...more

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May 22, 2008 Alison rated it 5 of 5 stars

I'm often kept up at night brooding on my troubles, wishing I could find some solace that would help me sleep. But now I know that the best way to keep insomnia at bay is to get out of bed, hitch up my chariot, tie the corpse of my mortal enemy to the back, and drive around for a few hours, dragging him, until I cheer up and can go back to sleep. The Iliad is unmatched, in my reading, for works that describe the bloody, ridiculous, selfish lengths people will go in order to feel better. The stic...more I'm often kept up at night brooding on my troubles, wishing I could find some solace that would help me sleep. But now I know that the best way to keep insomnia at bay is to get out of bed, hitch up my chariot, tie the corpse of my mortal enemy to the back, and drive around for a few hours, dragging him, until I cheer up and can go back to sleep. The Iliad is unmatched, in my reading, for works that describe the bloody, ridiculous, selfish lengths people will go in order to feel better. The sticks and stones fly (and gouge out eyes, smash skulls, slash livers and veins until the blood sprays--this poem is definitely not for the squeamish), but the real weapons of the Trojan War are name-calling, cheating at games, and stealing your best buddy's girlfriend or mixing bowl or ox. Most of the action occurs when somebody gets his feelings hurt, the baddie won't apologize, and the sensitive one throws a fit, which can involve letting all of his friends die while he gets an olive-oil massage, or else razing a city, raping the women, and joyriding over other men's bones. The Iliad suggests that even at its most glorious, war can be advocated only by people with the emotional lives of spoiled four-year-olds.

Indeed, most people are like spoiled four-year-olds, and truisms like that have resulted in some very tedious books and movies, but the Iliad is never tedious, or rather, only ever horrifically tedious (more on that below), first because it's good art, and secondly because, while many artists have stated, "My emotional life is a shambles," Achilles' emotional life results in the destruction of the rules of engagement, of "civilized" warfare, and of a civilization itself: babies thrown from ramparts, old men cut down at their altars, generations murdered, while Zeus snickers. The Iliad demands that the individual reflect on his or her engagement with the world at large, and the world is not a comfort zone: is it okay to decimate a town, in retaliation for your best friend's death? (Yes.) When you're kidnapped from home and thrown to the soldiers for sexual sport, are you supposed to be grateful? (Yes, and cook them some cheese to show it.) When a man murders your son and desecrates his corpse, what will the gods, to whom you and your son have given many, many sacrifices, do to help you out? (Send you groveling to kiss the murderer's hands, give him some fancy shirts, and have him treat you to some barbecue.)

What else does The Iliad say? That every life matters, and every death. The poem is a rolling casualty list, in which every man who dies has a name, a home, friends, and family who love or mourn or curse or disown him, sometimes a specified quantity of livestock who wonder where he is at milking time. Characters are introduced only to be killed, but their deaths are unique, and nobody dies without causing a change in the fortunes of his comrades or enemies, mostly by precipitating their own deaths. This is where the tedium comes in, but it's a harrowing kind of tedium: gruesome deaths, piled on, can cease to move Achilles, Agamemnon, or us, but they don't stop happening just because we've ceased to pay attention.

And what else? That war can make for great poetry. Fagles' translation is awesome (apart from a couple infelicities--the first "So help me" was hilarious. The fourth one was a little old). The verse is crisp, lucid, immediate, and very, very violent: the accessibility of the syntax and vocabulary make you read faster and faster, so the terrible scenes come upon you like an onslaught, entrails flying, chariots mowing people down, goddesses getting punched in the boobs, and behind it all the ever-present weeping. Egad.(less)

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Mar 07, 2009 Trevor rated it 5 of 5 stars

Shelves: history, literature

I read the Odyssey at Uni and really loved it. A romp off to parts unknown with a man who is good company from a distance. As with much of fiction, the people I am delighted to spend lots of time with on the page are not necessarily those I would want to spend anytime with otherwise.

I’ve always meant to get around to reading this. I mean, this Homer guy only wrote two books and I had enjoyed the other one, so … so, a mere twenty years later (how time flies) I got around to reading this one.

The p...more

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Feb 17, 2008 Stevelvis rated it 1 of 5 stars · review of another edition

This review has been hidden because it contains spoilers. To view it, click here. THE ILIAD by HOMER translated by Robert Fagles

Oh My God, I absolutely HATED the Iliad. If you want to read a bunch of reviews by people who loved this book, go to Amazon and read the reviews there. The fans of this book will say that this is the ultimate book of war and this is the best translation ever, that this story shows the courage and manliness and heroics of the soldiers on both sides of the Trojan war even as they are being manipulated by the gods who are having their own arguments amon...more THE ILIAD by HOMER translated by Robert Fagles

Oh My God, I absolutely HATED the Iliad. If you want to read a bunch of reviews by people who loved this book, go to Amazon and read the reviews there. The fans of this book will say that this is the ultimate book of war and this is the best translation ever, that this story shows the courage and manliness and heroics of the soldiers on both sides of the Trojan war even as they are being manipulated by the gods who are having their own arguments amongst themselves. Perhaps I have simply read the wrong translation as there seems to be the opinion that the translation by Rouse while less poetic is more prosaic and a better read as much of the repetitious poem is edited out.

The Iliad takes place in the 10th year of the Trojan War and its location is between the Argive Greek ships on the beach, the city of Troy, the battlegrounds between the beach and the city, and a tiny bit of story among the Olympiad gods. Actually there is very little of the action that isn't a bloody fight to the death on the battlegrounds. The story takes place in only about 40 days of the 10th year of the war and leaves out all of the most interesting action: the abduction of the princess Helen by Paris the Prince of Troy which starts the war, and the final days of the war in which the city is sacked and Achilles and many of the heroes are killed. What you are left with is an argument at the beginning of the story between Achilles and King Agamemnon, followed by nearly nonstop bloody fighting leading up to the death of Hector the hero of Troy. The story begins by saying that so many thousands of soldiers were killed in the war that it would be impossible to name them all. Then in the next paragraph, the attempt to name all of them begins as you have almost 600 pages of characters who are strangers with no part other than to be introduced and led off the stage as they have been killed by one or another of the heroes.

I read the Iliad because I wanted to read the Odyssey and so decided to read both of the epics together and in order. For anyone else I can now recommend skipping the Iliad altogether, and just go on to the Odyssey. The Iliad was a struggle for me, a very experienced reader, to make it all the way through. More than once I wondered if I should just stop or was it worth reading to the end. Well, now I can say with no problem that I should have skipped it entirely. It was a total waste of my time. I can't imagine being forced to read this as a book assignment in school. It might have turned me off of reading forever. If you're a teacher, please, have mercy on your students, just assign the 10 or 20 good pages. If you're thinking of reading the Iliad for pleasure, go to the bookstore and pick it up and read a few pages and then flip it forward and read another page. Try that a few times and you'll probably decide against it like I should have. The Odyssey on the other hand is a wonderful book that is thoroughly enjoyable, and full of the adventure, mystery and mythology that I had wrongly expected out of the Iliad.(less)

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Nov 13, 2012 Terry rated it 4 of 5 stars

Shelves: this-may-take-awhile, poetry

Am I really going to bother reviewing Homer’s _Iliad_? I mean, what am I going to say that hasn’t been said by generations of scholars, reviewers or readers? Does another drop in the ocean matter? Well, even if it doesn’t I’ll give it a go I guess. Reading the _Iliad_ was mostly done by me as a correction to a perceived gap in my education. I had always known bits and pieces about the poem and its heroes from various sources and the culture in general, but I had never read the poem itself. Given...more Am I really going to bother reviewing Homer’s _Iliad_? I mean, what am I going to say that hasn’t been said by generations of scholars, reviewers or readers? Does another drop in the ocean matter? Well, even if it doesn’t I’ll give it a go I guess. Reading the _Iliad_ was mostly done by me as a correction to a perceived gap in my education. I had always known bits and pieces about the poem and its heroes from various sources and the culture in general, but I had never read the poem itself. Given that it is a foundational text (perhaps *the* foundational text along with its sister epic The Odyssey) of the western canon it’s a pretty big gap. Well, I did it! I found myself both compelled and, I will admit it, sometimes bored by the text (though mostly only when we came upon the epic tradition of having the lineage of each character spelled out in gruesome detail before said hero was gruesomely despatched by an enemy’s spear thrust). Still, once I made it through Book II’s interminable catalogue of the Achaean heroes who came to Troy along with the number of ships and men they brought with them I knew that nothing could stop me.

My biggest surprise was probably the way in which the heroes, all seemingly spawned by gods, are not all that unlike superheroes in a comic book: forces of raw destruction whose primary wish is for glory and the mad rush of violence and battle. And yet even these great figures pale next to the gods who play them like puppets on a string watching events unfold before them and giving a nudge here and there when the outcome for their favored side is in doubt (indeed, for me some of the most humourous moments came about when a god would unceremoniously pluck a warrior from the ground and punt him into the distance in order to keep him safe like some giant hand in a gamer’s favourite RTS strategy game). It was these images and analogies, inadequate as they may seem, that kept springing to mind for me as I read of the epic battle between the Achaeans and the Trojans. It was, in that sense at least, a surprisingly modern text for me.

The poem is chock-full, on both sides of the conflict, of men who are larger than life. Of course the great exemplars of each side, Achilles and Hector, stand heads and shoulders above the rest, but both armies are lousy with seeming giants whose every action in battle is a superhuman carnage fest; the roll call of the Achaeans alone is impressive: wily Odysseus, prideful Agamemnon, wise Nestor, courageous Diomedes, and both the Greater and the Lesser Ajax. Of course, if you’re not a hero and don’t boast either a god or at least a royal personage in your near lineage, then you’re really just spear fodder whose primary purpose is to allow the real fighters to show off their skill in the art of death-dealing. Indeed fighting is all about the individual fighter's glory and his desire for booty...stripping the corpses is more important than pursuing a tactical advantage. Ego is all. This is a frightening vision of what a world of superheroes might look like with the lowly peons at the whim of their violence and glory-seeking. The boast and the taunt are also on full display. Each hero seeks to undermine his opponent with a war of words before the spear has even left his hand. Lineages are vaunted, or disparaged; deeds are proclaimed, or ridiculed; most of all threats are made and reciprocated. Old Spidey of the glib tongue has nothing on these guys. (“I too could battle the deathless gods with words — it's hard with a spear, the gods are so much stronger. Not even Achilles can bring off all his boasts…” – Hector)

The violence in the poem is explicit and all-pervasive, a veritable orgy of death and dismemberment. From the brains splattered inside helmets by a spear’s intrusion, to the “lethal hit that’s loosed [a body’s] springy limbs”, we are constantly presented with a panoply of violence that brings down the mists of death, a “dark [that] came whirling down across [their] eyes”, upon the stricken warriors. Homer was apparently no prude and was happy to indulge his audience’s apparent appetite for such scenes. The battle scenes are also truly cinematic, both in their colourful gore and in the superhuman skill displayed by the combatants, as foe after foe is handily dispatched in an almost balletic whirl of pure violence. Achilles is perhaps the most conspicuous in this, no more so than when he at last enters the fray near the end of the poem, maddened at the death of his friend Patroclus, and fells Trojans left and right:

Achilles now like inhuman fire raging on through the mountain gorges splinter-dry, setting ablaze big stands of timber, the wind swirling the huge fireball left and right — chaos of fire — Achilles storming on with brandished spear like a frenzied god of battle trampling all he killed and the earth ran black with blood.…so as the great Achilles rampaged on, his sharp-hoofed stallions trampled shields and corpses, axle under his chariot splashed with blood, blood on the handrails sweeping round the car, sprays of blood shooting up from the stallions' hoofs and churning, whirling rims — and the son of Peleus charioteering on to seize his glory, bloody filth splattering both strong arms, Achilles' invincible arms

Indeed the rage of Achilles is a primal thing. The seemingly excessive violence of his comrades and their enemies prior to his entering the fray is made to seem a pale, simpering thing in comparison. Achilles is a whirl of bloodlust, hatred and retribution whose only aim is the eradication of the Trojans and their great prince Hector as payment for the death of his old friend.

Despite the great power that each of these heroes displays, it is not necessarily an altogether innate function of the hero’s mighty thews and prowess alone, for it is made evident throughout the text that the real perquisite for success is the blessing of a god, regardless of the native power and skill of the individual fighter. The gods seem at first content to mostly sit on the sidelines, restricting themselves to aiding and abetting their favourite hero with a nudge here and a push there until, with the advent of Achilles and his killing rage, even Zeus fears that the outcome of the battle may change and the decrees of fate may be unbalanced by a mere mortal. He then lets the gods loose and they fight for their chosen sides in a free-for-all that is impressive in its violence and imagery where one telling things comes immediately to the fore: the gods are much less interested in maintaining the balance of fate for the betterment of the cosmos than they are at using this excuse to fight their own grudge matches against perceived and real slights from their divine rivals.

In many ways the gods are perhaps even more prevalent in the battle for Troy than are the human participants. This is fitting given the fact that a contest amongst the major goddesses, and the perceived slight of its result by the losers, were the direct antecedents to the war that would destroy a civilization. I’m not sure how Paris could have judged the beauty contest between Aphrodite, Athena and Hera in a way that wouldn’t have ended in bloodshed and mass genocide, but he certainly didn’t try very hard once the goddess of love dangled the prospect of Menelaus’ beauteous wife before him. This picking of love above worldly authority or wisdom and supremacy in war may seem like a purely pacific and even noble choice, but it often seems that even love as expressed in _The Iliad_ appears to be a fundamentally selfish thing. Helen, the human paradigm of beauty, and her divine patron Aphrodite, are both interested in ‘love’ not as something that expresses affection or devotion to another, but rather something that glorifies the self. Helen’s beauty is a great power and she uses it to glorify her own position. She deserts her husband and child for Paris and even this ‘love’ seems to be more a reflection of her own egoism and an expression of her power over him than any sort of true affection for the son of Priam. That being said there is one set of relationships that seem to look beyond the demands of heroic culture and the vanity of the self: these are primarily seen in the quiet moments of humanity in Hector’s love for his wife and child (and really for all of his family, even spoiled bratty Paris, and for Troy itself). One could also point to the love of Priam for his dead son, and the need to redeem his mutilated corpse at any cost (even unto walking into the enemy camp with only a servant and a cart full of booty), as another example of the love of others overcoming the love of self.

There were a plethora of great moments in the poem, but this review is already getting overlong, so allow me to simply name the ones that immediately spring to mind: the night raid of Diomedes and Odysseus into the Trojan lines, the lone stand and battle cry of Odysseus after the Achaeans run in terror from pursuing Trojan warriors, the coming ashore of the Nereids at the bidding of Thetis to comfort Achilles, Athena’s arming with the storm-shield of Zeus, the gathering of the Rivers in Olympus, Hephaestus boiling a river god in his own bed in defence of Achilles, and the empowerment of Achilles before his death-dealing drive amongst the Trojans to name but a few. In the end this was a greatly entertaining read that surprised me in many ways. Of course, it wasn’t all dismemberment and bloody glory, there was human suffering and despair (both at the hands of the ‘heroes’ and of the gods) and many questions raised about freewill versus one’s fate (Fate seems to have the deck stacked in his favour). I was constantly surprised at little touches made by Homer: Zeus being wooed by Hera so she could distract him from aiding the Trojans (in the course of which he enumerates the allures of his former lovers as part of his seduction strategy…what a charmer!); Hector deciding to leave his men to face death alone in a tight moment and the twin episode of Hector’s very real fear of death, such a great fear that he actually runs away from Achilles in panic before deciding to face his fate (not exactly the inhuman hero I was expecting to see); Agamemnon showing himself to be a blustering politician, attempting to save face and excuse himself at the same time as he tries to apologize to Achilles. The fact that the poem both begins and ends in medias res may leave some modern readers a bit baffled (we enter the fray ten years after the war’s inception and leave with the city of Troy still standing), but it truly is a tour de force of the poet’s art. Whether Homer was one man or many, whether he composed it primarily from an amalgam of the existing tradition of epic poetic devices or it came primarily from the mind of a genius it is a work that does stand the test of time and is well worth the time of any reader (or listener) ancient or modern.(less)

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Oct 09, 2010 Christopher H. rated it 5 of 5 stars

Shelves: adventure, classics-of-antiquity, my-western-canon, poetry, favorites, read-in-2010, favorite-rereads, translations, mythology-mythopoeia, american-authors-translators, iliad-odyssey-homer

This review of The Iliad is associated with the translation by Robert Fagles (1990)--

"Homer makes us Hearers, and Virgil leaves us Readers." So wrote Alexander Pope, in 1715, in the preface to his translation of The Iliad.

I have just completed reading a magnificent translation of Homer's The Iliad, and couldn't have enjoyed the experience more. I had read bits and pieces of The Iliad over the course of my life, but I had never read the entire poem from start to finish. I recently purchased the P...more

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Oct 28, 2010 Ian rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: kicked-my-ass, love-strong-women

How could one so humble as I and so disfavored by the gods as to have the poetic ability of a blind cosmetics-testing monkey rate a work so great as The Iliad, a poetic masterpiece that has astounded and inspired for over 3,000 years, anything less than five stars? The answer to that question, which you seek with the zealous lust of tigress in heat, is, of course, that I could not. I dare not, lest I risk the wrath of Olympus. As a cow stands lowing over her first calf, so will I jealously guard...more

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Jun 30, 2009 Keely rated it 5 of 5 stars

Shelves: epic-poetry, reviewed, greek, favorites

Pablo Picasso spent his entire life trying desperately to do something new, something unique. He moved from style to style, mastering and then abandoning both modern and classical methods, even trying to teach his trained artist's hand to paint like a child.

In 1940, four French teens and a dog stumbled upon a cave that had lain hidden for 16,000 years. Inside, they found the walls covered in beautiful drawings of men and animals. When the Lascaux caves were opened to the public, Pablo Picasso vi...more Pablo Picasso spent his entire life trying desperately to do something new, something unique. He moved from style to style, mastering and then abandoning both modern and classical methods, even trying to teach his trained artist's hand to paint like a child.

In 1940, four French teens and a dog stumbled upon a cave that had lain hidden for 16,000 years. Inside, they found the walls covered in beautiful drawings of men and animals. When the Lascaux caves were opened to the public, Pablo Picasso visited them, and as he stared at the prehistoric hunting scenes, was heard to remark in a despondent tone: "We have invented nothing".

The Iliad is equally as humbling to a writer, as complex, beautiful, and honest as any other work. The war scenes play out like a modern film, gory and fast-paced, the ever-present shock of death. Though some have been annoyed at how each man is named (or even given a past) before his death, this gives weight to the action. Each death is has consequence, and as each man steps onto the stage to meet glory or death, Homer gives us a moment to recognize him, to see him amidst the whirling action, and to witness the fate Zeus metes.

The psychological complexity and humanism of this work often shocked me. Homer's depiction of human beings as fundamentally flawed and unable to direct their own lives predicts existentialism. The even hand he gives both the Trojans and the Argives places his work above the later moralizing allegories of Turold, Tasso, or even Milton.

Of course, Homer's is a different world than theirs, one where the sword has not yet become a symbol for righteousness. In Homer, good men die unavenged, and bad men make their way up in the world. Noble empires fall to ravenous fire and the corpses of fresh-limbed young men are desecrated.

Fate does not favor the kind, the weak, the moral, or even the strong. Fate favors some men now, others later, and in the end, none escapes the emptiness of death. Though Homer paints some men as great, as noble and kind and brave, these men do not uphold these ideals for some promised paradise, but simply because they are such men.

There is something refreshing in the purity of the philosophy of living life for yourself and yet expecting no entitlement for your deeds. A philosophy which accepts the uncontrollable winds of fate; that when the dark mist comes across our eyes, no man knows whence he goes.

Later traditions make other claims: that the righteous will be rewarded, that the lives of good men will be good and the bad will be punished. In thousands of years of thinking, of writing, of acting, have we gained nothing but comforting, untenable ideals? Then Picasso was wrong, we have invented something, but it is only a machine which perpetuates itself by peddling self-satisfaction.

I read and enjoyed the Fagles translation, which may not be the most faithful, but strikes that oft-discussed balance between joy of reading and fidelity. He makes no attempt to translate the meter into English, which is a blessing to us. The English language does a few meters well, and Homer's is not one of them.

The footnotes were competent and interesting, though I could have stood a few more of them; perhaps I am in the minority. I also thoroughly enjoyed Knox's introductory essay. I would normally have had to research the scholarly history of the book myself, and so Knox's catch-me-up was much appreciated.(less)

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Jan 01, 2008 Jim Coughenour rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: greekmythology

"Sprung out of bitterness, the philosophy of the Iliad excludes resentment." Thus Rachel Bespaloff, stating the seemingly impossible. Years ago I read the Iliad in Fitzgerald's fine translation, but every page had the heavy cadence of a "classic." Now I'm reading Fagles' and Lombardo's translations back to back, and am surprised how much I'm enjoying the poem. I don't dispute those who judge Fagles the superior translator, but for me the Lombardo version is far more stirring.

Consider the opening...more

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Jul 12, 2011 htanzil rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Tahukah Anda kalau di dunia ini ada dua kisah peperangan yang begitu melegenda dan abadi? Jika kita bagi dunia menjadi dua kultur (Barat dan Timur) di timur kita mengenal perang Bratayudha, sedangkan di kultur Barat kita mengenal kisah Perang Troya.

Jika Perang Brathayuda yang merupakan klimaks dari kisah Ramayana ditulis di India oleh Begawan Vyasa Dwaipayana pada 1500 SM, kisah perang Troya ditulis oleh Homer pada tahun 800 SM dalam dua buku karyanya yaitu The Iliad dan Oddysey. Sayangnya kedua...more

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Jan 14, 2013 Marta Querol rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: clásicos, drama

No sabía si comentar el libro por ser un clásico archiconocido, pero daré mi impresión general. Es una interesante lectura que te acerca a la mitología griega y a la mentalidad de aquella época lejana tan distinta en valores y costumbres a cualquier otra época d.c. . La forma de relatar, con descripciones repetidas para recordar las características principales de los héroes, dioses y resto de contendientes, hacen la lectura un tanto pesada, y la profusión de personajes y dinastías también contri...more

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Aug 06, 2007 Robert Rubin rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition Recommends it for: anyone

Richmond Lattimore's is the definitive translation into English of Homer's masterwork. It comes closest to the original in word for word meaning, and in poetic form, and in spirit. I've re-read this for almost 40 years, and it never fails to reveal new beauties and new depths. Through the prism of a civilization different from our own, Homer sees the human essence. Homer describes almost all that's admirable or despicable in people, and almost all that drives them, with clarity, feeling, and an...more

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Apr 19, 2012 matt rated it 5 of 5 stars

Shelves: worldly-lit, shaggy-monsters, fictions-of-the-big-it, historical-fiction, ancients

OK, deep breath here...I haven't read, or better to say understood, Homer as much as I ought to. I've picked up and put down The Odyssey a few times and I just hate to admit that it's not clicking for my modern mind as much as it ought to. It's not the deep brow'd blind sage, it's me. Did not read it in high school, was unfortunately lacking in my ancient Greek history and mythos (getting better, hopefully) and therefore the gods, and gods upon gods, and the drama between them all plays out so i...more OK, deep breath here...I haven't read, or better to say understood, Homer as much as I ought to. I've picked up and put down The Odyssey a few times and I just hate to admit that it's not clicking for my modern mind as much as it ought to. It's not the deep brow'd blind sage, it's me. Did not read it in high school, was unfortunately lacking in my ancient Greek history and mythos (getting better, hopefully) and therefore the gods, and gods upon gods, and the drama between them all plays out so intricately that my eyes start to wobble and my head it spins. Man, do I hate admitting it, and in the sparkling company of Goodreads at that, but it's just the damn truth. I like to quietly judge people who don't dig the classics because their "boring" or "weird" or "long-winded" or "old fashioned" as much as anybody, but in this case I have met the enemy and he is me.

Homer's one of those writers who hover over...well...everything, of course. My beloved Joyce puts him to some obvious use in the obvious place. Philosophy professors are always referencing it, Nietzsche and Bernard Williams like to use him, Keats, Pound, Milton, etc etc...it's the kind of thing that a voracious reader will sort of get an inkling of even if they've never actually cracked the pages themselves. Isn't it strange how that happens?

So I am now no longer burdened by master's thesis woes (PASSED! On my birthday, no less! Whut whut!) and thus am free to tackle a big dog guilt-free. I just cannot call myself an educated reader without having the Homer in my brain-shelf, I just can't. It really is a kind of shame that it's not as central a part of the curriculum as it used to be...I'm embarrassed by how little I really know about these characters, or rather how much I thought I knew and really hadn't retained.

So I'm going straight to the source- the battle of Troy, 2700 years of accumulated rage and blood and wisdom...and luckily I found the translator who can make it happen (for me, at least). Fagles. Fagles! His "Orestia" rocked my world and now he's the go-to guy for all things classical. I wish I were smart and worldly enough to get a comparison of translations under way but I'm doing all I can to take on the challenge The Iliad is throwing down.

Glad to say that at around book 5 the confusion is a presence, but not a hinderance. It's fucking death metal. Compulsively readable, incredibly gutsy and frank and vivid. There's a humanity here which really does shine through all the blood grudges and slaughter and dick-waving and general bellicosity, as a lot of other reviewers have pointed out. People start fights, rend flesh, and either cry to their mamas materializing out of the sea (!?) or are whisked away in the nick of time by generous goddesses. Men die for their comerades, beg favor from the gods who are in the midst of a Honeymooners row the likes of which are no man's buisness. The gods feel pain, but they do not die...

***

Finished! Stayed up (almost) all night to cap it off at last!

No sense in trying to communicate the breadth and density and power of the text, so I'll just post some of my favorite quotes in due time (i.e. when and if I get around to it).(less)

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Jan 30, 2010 max rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: greek, homer, favorites

See http://paircreation.com/projects/troy... for an overview of the Trojan War and the city of Troy.

The Iliad permeates Greek civilization to a degree that is difficult for us to fathom. It is a monumental, transcendent work of art. There are many reasons why the Iliad occupies the topmost peak on world literature's Himalayan ridge; in this review I can only touch upon a very few.

Encountering the Iliad is like walking into a museum where numerous products of secondary or tertiary importance in s...more

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Jul 05, 2007 Ryan rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Wow, what can I say about this book? First of all, it’s 600 pages of pure, incredibly gruesome action. It is also the first war book I’ve ever read that names every single soldier who takes part in the battle, their background, and, of course, an incredibly detailed account of how they are slain. Let me give you an example of poor Erýmas’ fate (Book Sixteen, Line 403):

“Idómeneus thrust hard at Erýmas’ mouth
with his hard bronze. The spearhead passed on through
beneath his brain and split the white...more

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Jan 03, 2009 Joe rated it 4 of 5 stars

Shelves: poetry

Man, this is THE textbook for a constellation of representational issues surrounding the intersection of torsos and javelins.

Also, any study of war texts should include this or at least keep it in mind. It's just a hop, skip and jump from here to Mallory, Chretien de Troyes and all those other bedrock narratives from which other English language romanticizations of war and combat spring.

It's kind of stupid to rate a book like this. But here it is: 4 stars. Because Chapman dicked us out of some...more

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Apr 02, 2013 Io rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: ancient-greek, epic-poem

Materia viva che pulsa da quasi tremila anni, segno indelebile della nascita della nostra cultura occidentale, segno indelebile della nostra rovina. Una cosa mi colpito – le lacrime – le lacrime di Achille, le lacrime di Agamennone. Il pianto degli eroi bambini che li umanizza e li rende partecipi di una umanità a volte meschina, a volte dolce, a volte crudele ma che mai - mai e poi mai - impara dai propri errori.

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Apr 16, 2013 Lona rated it 2 of 5 stars · review of another edition

الإلياذة والأوديسة، لطالما تعثرت بهما أثناء قراءتي للعديد من الكتب والروايات، بالإضافة إلى أنهما من الكلاسيكيات التي إن شئت أو أبيت لابد من قراءتها يوما ما، وخصوصاً أنهما أفسدتا عدة قراءات سابقة لي بكونهما محور ترتكز عليه تلك القراءات. مثل رواية "الاحتقار" لألبيرتو مورافيا التي ترتكز كثيراً على الأوديسة، ومحاورة أفلاطون "الجمهورية" التي قررت التوقف عن قراءتها لحين الانتهاء منهما للتمكن من دخول أجواء ومجاراة هذه المحاورة

أحد أهم الأسباب التي بسببها أجَّلت قراءتهما طويلاً هي كونهما ملحمة شعرية و أ...more

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Oct 11, 2011 Christopher H. rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: adventure, american-authors-translators, favorite-rereads, favorites, classics-of-antiquity, my-western-canon, poetry, read-in-2011, translations, mythology-mythopoeia, iliad-odyssey-homer

This is my review of Robert Fitzgerald's translation (1974) of Homer's The Iliad--

This makes the third translation of The Iliad that I've read over the past year or so, and I quite liked it. While Fitzgerald's translation is perhaps not as rhythmically poetic as that of Robert Fagles (1990), or perhaps as ruthlessly faithful to the Greek text as Richmond Lattimore's verse translation (1951), it really is incredibly lyrical and reads very, very well. The Iliad is one of the greatest works of lite...more This is my review of Robert Fitzgerald's translation (1974) of Homer's The Iliad--

This makes the third translation of The Iliad that I've read over the past year or so, and I quite liked it. While Fitzgerald's translation is perhaps not as rhythmically poetic as that of Robert Fagles (1990), or perhaps as ruthlessly faithful to the Greek text as Richmond Lattimore's verse translation (1951), it really is incredibly lyrical and reads very, very well. The Iliad is one of the greatest works of literature of all time, and this translation stands up tall with the best of them, in my opinion.

I think what I really came to love the most about Fitzgerald's blank verse translation was that he doesn't waste any words. It is spare and remarkably hard-hitting, but still maintains a rugged and distinctly powerful lyricism. You can almost feel the 'tramp' of marching feet and the reverberation of bronze swords crashing against ox-hide shields, or hear the 'thrum' of bow-strings snapping as they launch arrows into the sky. It is visceral and living poetry that Fitzgerald has assembled and presented in his translation. Of course, I can't read the original Greek text and I can't judge if his translation fully captures and incorporates the essence of those ancient words, but I can tell you that this text is compelling and enthralling from the get-go.

One of my favorite examples of the eloquence and pathos of Fitzgerald's translation is in Book 24, near the end of the poem, when Akhilleus and Priam meet late at night, and Akhilleus says to the King--

"Come, then, and sit down.
We'll probe our wounds no more but let them rest,
though grief lies heavy on us. Tears heal nothing,
drying so stiff and cold. This is the way
the gods ordained the destiny of men,
to bear such burdens in our lives, while they
feel no affliction. At the door of Zeus
are those two urns of good and evil gifts
that he may choose for us; and one for whom
the lightning's joyous king dips in both urns
will have by turns bad luck and good."

That small section has always very powerfully affected me, and I have come to realize that young Akhilleus is an amazingly mature and astute man, wise well beyond his years.

Personally, I am of the opinion that Fitzgerald's translation is a very comfortable fit for a modern reader in our modern time who is reading an epic poem of nearly 16,000 lines that was first written down nearly three millenia in the past, but may well have existed in the oral tradition a thousand years before that. I think what I'm really trying to say is that Fitzgerald has crafted an interpretation of the poem that flows with regularity and dignity, and is very respectful of Homer and his legacy. In so doing, Fitzgerald has not simply made his blank verse contemporary, nor has he erred and slipped into sounding stilted, archaic or pedantic. This translation is a good one--a very good, and one that I highly and unhesitatingly recommend. Read it, savor it, speak and hear it; and most of all, just enjoy it!(less)

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Mar 03, 2013 Roland Allnach rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Though there are many translations of Homer's epic 'Iliad', the Richmond Lattimore translation is by far the best I have read. I say this for several reasons. First and foremost, this is not a prose translation, this is a full translation kept in the original verse form. I have read prose translations of Homer and they simply do not do Homer's language justice. I was first exposed to this translation in college, and I could not put it down. Besides conveying the majesty of the characters, the rh...more

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Dec 18, 2012 Mike W rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: fiction, history

*Note: this is not a suspense story, so I didn't hide the review. But there are "spoilers" in it.

Homer's "Iliad" is one of the great monuments in all of literature, and Lattimore's translation captures the rhythm and feel of it beautifully. Along with the "Odyssey" it illustrates the ethical ideal that moved the ancient Greeks for centuries.

It is the story of the final year of the war between the Greeks (or Achaeans) and the Trojans, in which the Greeks had sailed from afar to recover Helen, wh...more

1 like · like · see review

Apr 01, 2012 اویس rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: favorites

Robert Graves translation really made the text come alive..his choice of prose and verse was just magnificent and I know what a superb translator he is after reading his translation of "The Twelve Caesars". I was suprised and disgusted by the numerous ways of man slaughter that Homers's imagination invents although this might just be his way to show how awful war is..Homer has a knack for language which immediatly hits you..his choice is fluid and just right..nothing overdone which is what makes...more

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May 01, 2012 Stefan rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

The Grand-Daddy of all epic tales!

I had never read the Iliad before now, and since it was assigned to me in my current college course, I really had no choice but to embrace it. What a great read! I knew most of the storyline of course through general knowledge of mythology and Greek legend and also (though I cringe a little to say it) from the film, Troy.

If you haven't read the Iliad and fancy yourself a fan of legend or fantasy novels, I would highly recommend it. For those out there who aren'...more

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Jul 20, 2012 max rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: greek

Another Iliad? It's the poem that that has launched a thousand translations, and here we have one more. Stephen Mitchell has an impressive resume of translations, including such renowned classics as Gilgamesh, Bhagavad Gita, various books of the Bible (Genesis, Job, Psalms), and Tao Te Ching. He is no lightweight and certainly up to the task of rendering the world's greatest war poem into English that is remarkably lucid.

I am familiar with Homer in Greek and have read many popular translations o...more

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Sep 11, 2011 Lucinda Elliot rated it 3 of 5 stars Recommends it for: those with many hours to spare

Recommended to Lucinda by: nobody

Shelves: never-read-again

I was disappointed; I suppose, it had been 'so bigged up' that was to some extent inevitable. While it was an interesting story, familiar since childhood to some extent to all of us,there were many parts that I had to force myself through. This was particularly so of the battle scenes, which I know many (particularly male) readers find fascinating. Someone said that he was so rivited by it that he even read it on the bus, but sadly I had no such urges,on the bus or anywhere else. I found these d...more

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About Homer

Homer (ancient Greek: Ὅμηρος), or Omero (in Italian), is a legendary ancient Greek epic poet, traditionally considered the author of the epic poems the Iliad and the Odyssey. No reliable biographical information about Homer survives from classical antiquity, and he is generally considered a legendary, rather than a historical figure. The Iliad and the Odyssey are now considered by many to be the p...more

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The Essential Homer: Selections from the Iliad and the Odyssey

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“Hateful to me as the gates of Hades is that man who hides one thing in his heart and speaks another.” — 172 people liked it

“…There is the heat of Love, the pulsing rush of Longing, the lover’s whisper, irresistible—magic to make the sanest man go mad.” — 171 people liked it

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