Actually we know very little about the war itself. Was it fought over Helen of Troy and did it include great heroes from all over Greece and Asia Minor? Probably not. The Iliad is about the Trojan War, but was there really such a thing as the Trojan War? Apparently there was, at some time in the late thirteenth century BCE. To explain what I mean, I must condense the work of many scholars who know this material far better than I do. But The Iliad is not simply a poem the way, say, a verse work by Wordsworth is a poem, for the story of its creation was entirely different. None does this as well as the translation by Richmond Lattimore, though, to my ear, the more recent translation by Robert Fagles is a close second.

My feeling is that it is vital to read a contemporary poetic translation that captures the feeling of the original Greek. There are many fine translations of The Iliad, and some of them translate the poem into prose. It is worth stressing, in the first place, that when we read The Iliad, we are reading a poem. Furthermore, I find The Iliad to be so profound, so true in what it says about being a human being and living in this world, that it never fails to make me see and understand the world differently and, I hope, better.įor a number of reasons, The Iliad is different from most of the literature we are accustomed to, and it helps to know something about those differences and the reasons behind them before reading the poem. When I read these books, I visit with these friends. So why have I read Homer’s Iliad fifteen or twenty times? A better answer is because I love it.Īs I said earlier, I like to think of books-the physical objects, books-as holding a world that I can enter and as I also said, some of my best friends, some of the people I know best, live in books. I obviously could teach the book without rereading it, and besides, no one requires me to teach this particular book. Why have I read Homer’s Iliad fifteen or twenty times? The simple answer is that I have taught it many times and each time I teach a book I like to reread it.

The illiad book 2