The Iliad

[duchess of malfi]

I have been rereading this lately as part of home schooling my younger son for this year. I had not read it since I was in college.

While I remembered the basic plot, I had forgotten so many details!

Things that irk me nearly beyond words:
* the catalog of ships
* almost any scene involving a god or goddess, and their constant intervention in the war and with individual warriors

Things that are still very good or very cool:
* when Thetis visits Haphastos to get the new armor for Achilles, and the smith god has robots (or what sounds like robots, anyway) in his service
* Hector and Andromache saying good bye
* Priam, begging for the return of Hector's body

I have always rooted for the Trojans to win, even knowing they are doomed. The Greeks seem like such barbarians in this story- Menelaus is just an jerk (as are nearly all of the Greek leaders) and I can see why any woman would leave him - and the Trojans were fighting for home and family (though many of the Trojans seem like jerks, too).

Today's disgusting trash talkers in sports had nothing on these guys!!

Also, I have heard the theory many times that Achilles and Patroclus might have been lovers - a theory which I have usually brushed off.

However, given Achilles's extreme reaction to the death of Patroclus (wanting to make twelve human sacrifices in his honor, etc.) I now think that is is possible.

[Avatar]

* almost any scene involving a god or goddess, and their constant intervention in the war and with individual warriors...

...Also, I have heard the theory many times that Achilles and Patroclus might have been lovers - a theory which I have usually brushed off.

However, given Achilles's extreme reaction to the death of Patroclus (wanting to make twelve human sacrifices in his honor, etc.) I now think that is is possible.

Yeah, they loved their Deux Ex Machina, the Greeks did. And it certainly wasn't uncommon in those times for fellow-soldiers to be lovers as well IIRC.

--A

[duchess of malfi]

I know that from reading various books written by ancient Romans, it sure sounded like it was more uncommon for a man to have sex with only women or only men than it was to have relations with both sexes back in the founding days of the Roman Empire. I was not sure if that was also true for Bronze Age Greece?

[dlbpharmd]

I have always rooted for the Trojans to win, even knowing they are doomed. The Greeks seem like such barbarians in this story- Menelaus is just an jerk (as are nearly all of the Greek leaders) and I can see why any woman would leave him - and the Trojans were fighting for home and family (though many of the Trojans seem like jerks, too).

Ah, the romantic "Cause." I also always sympathized with the Trojans.

[Holsety]

Great timing - I've just begun reading this book. Well, my father read it to me and my bro when I was a kid, but it was just assigned in school.

I've actually thought about reading The Illiad before, since I've already read shorter versions and the full version of The Odyssey. But knowing it'd almost certainly be assigned as reading at some point, I waited...and though it didn't in the mainstream english classes at the HH or AP levels (probably because The Odyssey was freshman year reading), it did make it into a humanities class I'm taking this year.

I did, however, read a passage in junior year in Classical Rhetoric, specifically the arguments of Ajax, Nestor, and Odysseus (IIRC) for Achilles to return to battle...and man, it was very well written rhetoric, with the various levels of persuasion divided between the three mediators. It's not Demosthenes, but it's damn good.

[I'm Murrin]

I've been meaning to buy this edition sometime, so when I finally read it it's in what seems a pretty comprehensive edition (and also looks good--this has a great textured cover, and the galleys are cut in alternating rough and smooth edges, giving the pages an interesting profile).
(For similar reasons (quality of the text, that is, not looks), I'm looking at a Lucimay-recommended edition of Gilgamesh to read instead of/along with my Penguin Classics ed)

[duchess of malfi]

My son and I thought that this was a pretty good companion:

www.amazon.com/Trojan-War-New-History/d ... F8&s=books

A history professor gathers together the latest research on Bronze Age Greece and Turkey, along with what they have found in the Hittite Imperial archives (Troy was the capital of a Hittie vassal state), and archaeological finds.

Surprisingly, he finds much of Homer to be plausible; warriors really did act that way (up to mutiliating the corpses of high born enemies like Achilles mutilated Hector); in what fragments of Bronze Age literature that have survived, people really did believe that the gods constantly intervened just like that.