With her virtuoso translation, classicist and bestselling author Caroline Alexander brings to life Homer’s timeless epic of the Trojan War
Composed around 730 B.C., Homer’s Iliad recounts the events of a few momentous weeks in the protracted ten-year war between the invading Achaeans, or Greeks, and the Trojans in their besieged city of Ilion. From the explosive confrontation between Achilles, … between Achilles, the greatest warrior at Troy, and Agamemnon, the inept leader of the Greeks, through to its tragic conclusion, The Iliad explores the abiding, blighting facts of war.
Soldier and civilian, victor and vanquished, hero and coward, men, women, young, old—The Iliad evokes in poignant, searing detail the fate of every life ravaged by the Trojan War. And, as told by Homer, this ancient tale of a particular Bronze Age conflict becomes a sublime and sweeping evocation of the destruction of war throughout the ages.
Carved close to the original Greek, acclaimed classicist Caroline Alexander’s new translation is swift and lean, with the driving cadence of its source—a translation epic in scale and yet devastating in its precision and power.
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Let me preface this by saying that I read it casually- not for a class or academic research or anything. And I don’t have a whole lot of background on the classics. My background is mostly just what one picks up from having an interest in fantasy, mythology, and opera.
Things relating specifically to the kindle edition (probably): Some random lines were repeated twice. The formatting on them had some weirdness to it so I’m pretty confident it wasn’t deliberate. It doesn’t happen often enough to get really annoying though, and I’ve definitely seen worse in kindle editions of classic literature.
Also, while the notes section at the end has links to the passages each note is about, there’s no indication in the text when there’s a note about a passage- no link, no number, no asterisk, nothing. The notes aren’t vital for understanding the story, but they do have information I would have liked to have known as I was reading (for example, what is meant by “single-hoofed horses”).
Things relating to the translation: My boyfriend said that his favorite thing about the Iliad is that most editions start with the word “rage.” Well, this edition starts with the word “wrath.” Is that a thing people often care about? I don’t know.
It sometimes gets hard to keep track of which character is saying or doing what. Part of that may have just been an issue with the kindle pages not having very many lines on them at a time, or with me being inattentive.
For some characters they’d be referred to as their name, but also as the Son of [father’s name] or Slayer of [name of someone they killed earlier]. There are tons of names in this book. Lots of characters appear on the battlefield, get a few lines of backstory, and then get killed. So I think it would have been nice if some of those Son of [name]s and Slayer of [name]s had had a note with the character’s actual name just to clarify. But maybe that’s me asking the translator to do my homework for me.
Things relating to the story (for casual readers): I went into this knowing that it was about the Trojan war. I expected the battle scenes to be from a general perspective- sort of like the battle scenes of Lord of the Rings where they describe the armies as a unit and only sometimes follow what individual characters are doing. In the Iliad there is very little in terms of general tactics, almost all of the battle scenes are just describing the activities of individual characters- blow by blow fighting, how people are getting killed or injured, that sort of thing. I guess I can see how the more generalized view of battles might be a relatively modern stylistic choice, I just hadn’t thought of that before. Anyway, if you’re squeamish about reading all these creative ways people get killed, you might want to skip this one.
Oh, and a random side note: I read this right after reading the book “The First Fossil Hunters” by Adrienne Mayor. Apparently, the Greeks would find fossilized mammoth skeletons and think that they were the bones of heroes (Greece is pretty geologically active, so the skulls would be smashed or missing and most of the bones would be jumbled enough to make it not so obvious they came from an elephant-type thing). Anyway, when the characters are described as being larger than modern men (this happens several times), what the poet had in mind was a person whose skeleton is as large as a mammoth skeleton arranged to be bipedal. I enjoyed knowing that random bit of background information, so I figured you might enjoy it too.
Easier to read than to translate in class.
The Iliad is a classic. Aside from that, it has a great story, interesting characters, and provides insight into other literature.
Listen to this translation instead of reading. It was meant to be heard.
Read This classic as a new story. It’s that good. Five stars.
A classic of war which will never get old or out of date.