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15 books match the query 'Iliad'
A Companion to The Iliad of Homer
Malcolm M. Willcock
University of Chicago Press, 1976
Those who are able to read Homer in Greek have ample recourse to commentaries, but the vast majority who read the Iliad in translation have not been so well served—the many available translations contain few, if any, notes. For these readers, Malcolm M. Willcock provides a line-by-line commentary that explains the many factual details, mythological allusions, and Homeric conventions that a student or general reader could not be expected to bring to an initial encounter with the Iliad.
The notes, which always relate to particular lines in the text, have as their prime aim the simple, factual explanation of things the inexperienced reader would be unlikely to have at his or her command (What is a hecatomb? Who is Atreus' son?). Second, they enhance an appreciation of the Iliad by illuminating epic style, Homer's methods of composition, the structure of the work, and the characterization of the major heroes. The "Homeric Question," concerning the origin and authorship of the Iliad, is also discussed.
The book's accessible commentary can be used with any translation of the poem, though it is based on Richmond Lattimore's landmark translation, which is regarded as the outstanding English-language version. This clearly written commentary, which includes an excellent select bibliography, makes of the touchstones of Western culture accessible to a wider audience.
Grief and the Hero
The Futility of Longing in the IliadEmily P. Austin
University of Michigan Press, 2021
Grief and the Hero examines Achilles’ experience of the futility of grief in the context of the Iliad’s study of anger. No action can undo his friend Patroklos’ death, but the experience of death drives him to behave as though he can achieve something restorative. Rather than assuming that grief gives rise to anger, as most scholars have done, Grief and the Hero pays close attention to the poem’s representation of the origin of these emotions. In the Iliad, only Achilles’ grief for Patroklos is joined with the word pothê, “longing”; no other grief in the poem is described with this term. The Iliad depicts Achilles’ grief as the rupture of shared life—an insight that generates a new way of reading the epic. Achilles’ anguish drives him to extremes, oscillating between self-isolation and seeking communal expressions of grief; between weeping abundantly and relentlessly pursuing battle; between varied threats of mutilation, deeds of vengeance, and other vows. Yet his yearning for life shared with Patroklos is the common denominator. Here lies the profound insight of the Iliad. All of Achilles’ grief-driven deeds arise from his longing for life with Patroklos, and thus all of these deeds are, in a deep sense, futile. He yearns for something unattainable—undoing the reality of death. Grief and the Hero will appeal not only to scholars and students of Homer but to all humanists. Loss, longing, and even revenge touch many human lives, and the insights of the Iliad have broad resonance.
Iliad, Book 1
Homer
University of Michigan Press, 2002
Nature and Culture in the Iliad
The Tragedy of HectorJames M. Redfield
Duke University Press, 1994
Penelope’s Bones
A New History of Homer’s World through the Women Written Out of ItEmily Hauser
University of Chicago Press, 2025
Achilles. Agamemnon. Odysseus. Hector. The lives of these and many other men in the greatest epics of ancient Greece have been pored over endlessly in the past three millennia. But these are not just tales about heroic men. There are scores of women as well—complex, fascinating women whose stories have gone unexplored for far too long.
In Penelope’s Bones, award-winning classicist and historian Emily Hauser pieces together compelling evidence from archaeological excavations and scientific discoveries to unearth the richly textured lives of women in Bronze Age Greece—the era of Homer’s heroes. Here, for the first time, we come to understand the everyday lives and experiences of the real women who stand behind the legends of Helen, Briseis, Cassandra, Aphrodite, Circe, Athena, Hera, Calypso, Penelope, and more. In this captivating journey through Homer’s world, Hauser explains era-defining discoveries, such as the excavation of Troy and the decipherment of Linear B tablets that reveal thousands of captive women and their children; more recent finds like the tomb of the Griffin Warrior at Pylos, whose tomb contents challenge traditional gender attributes; DNA evidence showing that groups of warriors buried near the Black Sea with their weapons and steeds were, in fact, Amazon-like female fighters; a prehistoric dye workshop on Crete that casts fresh light on “women’s work” of dyeing, spinning, and weaving textiles; and a superbly preserved shipwreck off the coast of Turkey whose contents tell of the economic and diplomatic networks crisscrossing the Bronze Age Mediterranean.
Essential reading for fans of Madeline Miller or Natalie Haynes, this riveting new history brings to life the women of the Bronze Age Aegean as never before, offering a groundbreaking reassessment of the ancient world.
Perfidy and Passion
Reintroducing the IliadMark Buchan
University of Wisconsin Press, 2012
Homer’s Iliad is often considered a poem of blunt truthfulness, his characters’ motivation pleasingly simple. A closer look, however, reveals a complex interplay of characters who engage in an awful lot of lies. Beginning with Achilles, who hatches a secret plot to destroy his own people, Mark Buchan traces motifs of deception and betrayal throughout the poem. Homer’s heroes offer bluster, their passion linked to and explained by their lack of authenticity. Buchan reads Homer’s characters between the lies, showing how the plot is structured individual denial and what cannot be said.
Reading Homer's Iliad
Kostas Myrsiades
Bucknell University Press, 2023
The Argument of the Action
Essays on Greek Poetry and PhilosophySeth Benardete
University of Chicago Press, 2000
This volume brings together Seth Benardete’s studies of Hesiod, Homer, and Greek tragedy, eleven Platonic dialogues, and Aristotle’s Metaphysics.
The Argument of the Action spans four decades of Seth Benardete’s work, documenting its impressive range. Benardete’s philosophic reading of the poets and his poetic reading of the philosophers share a common ground, guided by the key he found in the Platonic dialogue: probing the meaning of speeches embedded in deeds, he uncovers the unifying intention of the work by tracing the way it unfolds through a movement of its own. Benardete’s original interpretations of the classics are the fruit of this discovery of the “argument of the action.”
The Best of the Grammarians
Aristarchus of Samothrace on the IliadFrancesca Schironi
University of Michigan Press, 2018
Francesca Schironi presents a more robust picture of Aristarchus as a scholar than anyone has offered previously. Based on her analysis of over 4,300 fragments from his commentary on the Iliad, she reconstructs Aristarchus’ methodology and its relationship to earlier scholarship, especially Aristotelian poetics. Schironi departs from the standard commentary on individual fragments, and instead organizes them by topic to produce a rigorous scholarly examination of how Aristarchus worked.
Combining the accuracy and detail of traditional philology with a big-picture study of recurrent patterns and methodological trends across Aristarchus’ work, this volume offers a new approach to scholarship in Alexandrian and classical philology. It will be the go-to reference book on this topic for many years to come, and will usher in a new way of addressing the highly technical work of ancient scholars without losing philological accuracy. This book will be valuable to classicists and philologists interested in Homer and Homeric criticism in antiquity, Hellenistic scholarship, and ancient literary criticism.
The Confessions of Odysseus
Nalin Ranasinghe
St. Augustine's Press, 2021
Predrag Cicovacki in his indispensable preface to the book, elucidates: “In Ranasinghe’s view, Odysseus is both the first recognizable human being and a model of curious and concupiscent human rationality that constantly strives toward the virtues of self-knowledge and moderation. Homer leads us to believe that the cosmos leans toward virtue, although its fundamental truths may be inherently unspeakable. This is the line of thought that Ranasinghe believes was further developed by Socrates, Plato, and Jesus, while being obscured by Aristotle, Augustine, and their followers. Homer’s later epic and his central insights are, according to Ranasinghe, the most fertile soil on which a humane civilization can grow and flourish.”
Yet Ranasinghe ultimately says it best. “Homer must be read as the wisest Greeks did, not for fantastic tales of the Olympians but because his myths reveal eternal constants of the human state: the soul’s ruling passions and the possibility of knowing and educating these false gods. Wrestled with thus the Iliad becomes a cautionary tale, not one urging literal reading or mindless mimesis. It may always be that for the few who grasp Homer, many more will obey his gods or imitate his antiheroes; but the Odyssey hints that while its poet sees this potential for misuse, he is willing to take a noble risk and hope that eros can listen to and educate thumos. This faith is implicit in his tale of Achilles and the Trojan War. It is vital today that we see how the West’s end resembles its angry origins, as depicted in the Iliad. This is why Homer is said to be as fresh as the morning newspaper. His wisdom may outlive our literacy.”
The Heart of Achilles
Characterization and Personal Ethics in the IliadGraham Zanker
University of Michigan Press, 1996
"[Zanker] investigates altruistic behavior in the epic with professional sophistication but in a way that makes his investigation available to a wide audience from undergraduates to advanced scholars. . . . [A] very useful interpretative study." --Choice
Graham Zanker is Senior Lecturer in Classics, University of Canterbury, New Zealand.
The Iliad
Homer
University of Michigan Press, 2007
nuances of English."
---Stephen G. Daitz, Professor Emeritus of Classics, City University of New York
Rodney Merrill's translation of Homer's Iliad offers a form of English poetry particularly relevant to the epic, producing a strong musical setting that brings many elements of the narrative truly to life. Most notable are the many battle scenes, in which Homer's strong dactylic hexameters make credible the "war-lust" in the deeds of the combatants.
The Iliad of Homer
Translated by Richmond Lattimore
University of Chicago Press, 1951
"Certainly the best modern verse translation."—Gilbert Highet
"This magnificent translation of Homer's epic poem . . . will appeal to admirers of Homer and the classics, and the multitude who always wanted to read the great Iliad but never got around to doing so."—The American Book Collector
"Perhaps closer to Homer in every way than any other version made in English."—Peter Green, The New Republic
"The feat is decisive that it is reasonable to foresee a century or so in which nobody will try again to put the Iliad in English verse."—Robert Fitzgerald
"Each new generation is bound to produce new translations. [Lattimore] has done better with nobility, as well as with accuracy, than any other modern verse translator. In our age we do not often find a fine scholar who is also a genuine poet and who takes the greatest pains over the work of translation."—Hugh Lloyd-Jones, New York Review of Books
"Over the long haul Lattimore's translation is more powerful because its effects are more subtle."—Booklist
"Richmond Lattimore is a fine translator of poetry because he has a poetic voice of his own, authentic and unmistakable and yet capable of remarkable range of modulation. His translations make the English reader aware of the poetry."—Moses Hadas, The New York Times
The Iliad of Homer
Homer
University of Chicago Press, 2011
The epic story of the Trojan War in the most faithful and compelling translation available
"Sing, goddess, the anger of Peleus’ son Achilleus / and its devastation." For sixty years, that's how Homer has begun the Iliad in English, in Richmond Lattimore's faithful translation—the gold standard for generations of students and general readers.
This long-awaited new edition of Lattimore's Iliad is designed to bring the book into the twenty-first century—while leaving the poem as firmly rooted in ancient Greece as ever. Lattimore's elegant, fluent verses—with their memorably phrased heroic epithets and remarkable fidelity to the Greek—remain unchanged, but classicist Richard Martin has added a wealth of supplementary materials designed to aid new generations of readers. A new introduction sets the poem in the wider context of Greek life, warfare, society, and poetry, while line-by-line notes at the back of the volume offer explanations of unfamiliar terms, information about the Greek gods and heroes, and literary appreciation. A glossary and maps round out the book.
The result is a volume that actively invites readers into Homer's poem, helping them to understand fully the worlds in which he and his heroes lived—and thus enabling them to marvel, as so many have for centuries, at Hektor and Ajax, Paris and Helen, and the devastating rage of Achilleus.
The Mourner's Song
War and Remembrance from the Iliad to VietnamJames Tatum
University of Chicago Press, 2002
Tatum's touchstone throughout is the Iliad, not just one of the earliest war poems, but also one of the most powerful examples of the way poetry can be a tribute to and consolation for what is lost in war. Reading the Iliad alongside later works inspired by war, Tatum reveals how the forms and processes of art convert mourning to memorial. He examines the role of remembrance and the distance from war it requires; the significance of landscape in memorialization; the artifacts of war that fire the imagination; the intimate relationship between war and love and its effects on the ferocity with which soldiers wage battle; and finally, the idea of memorialization itself. Because all survivors suffer the losses of war, Tatum's is a story of both victims and victors, commanders and soldiers, women and men. Photographs of war memorials in Vietnam, France, and the United States beautifully augment his testimonials.
Eloquent and deeply moving, The Mourner's Song will speak to anyone interested in the literature of war and the relevance of the classics to our most pressing contemporary needs.