The Iliad (Penguin Classics Deluxe Edition)
by Homer
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Book Summary Information
Author: HomerEditor: Bernard Knox
Introduction: Bernard Knox
Translator: Robert Fagles
Edition: Paperback
Audio: English (Unknown); English (Original Language); English (Published)
Published: 1998-11-01
ISBN: 0140275363
Number of pages: 704
Publisher: Penguin Classics
Product features:
- ISBN13: 9780140275360
- Condition: New
- Notes: BRAND NEW FROM PUBLISHER! 100% Satisfaction Guarantee. Tracking provided on most orders. Buy with Confidence! Millions of books sold!
Book Reviews of The Iliad (Penguin Classics Deluxe Edition)
Book Review: A note on the difference between ancient Greece and Us
Summary: 5 Stars
This book is one of the greatest masterpieces of Greek Civilization - and yet to become the Greece we today know (i.e., the Greece that we both remember and revere) the single-minded values of Heroism and Honor that resound throughout these pages had to be diluted, if not entirely set aside, for the 'cosmopolitan' values that eventually lead to us. If you were today to randomly stop people in the street and ask them 'who was the greatest Greek?' you could expect to hear the name of a philosopher, poet, tragedian or perhaps a (probably Athenian) politician. But if we were to ask that question of the Greeks of the Classical age or even the later periods (Alexandrian, Roman) they would almost certainly answer Achilles. Achilles! But it is difficult to imagine him even living in a city without eventually destroying it...
This dividing line between the Archaic Greece of Homer and the Classical Greece we idolize is personified by the heroes Achilles and Odysseus. Achilles, and his rage, represent the old-fashioned way of doing things, while wily Odysseus represents the cosmopolitanism of later Greece - the Greece we know, remember and revere. Look at Book 9, 'The Embassy to Achilles', for a dramatic representation of this transition and see how skillfully Homer works his magic. The rage of Achilles is still unimaginably self-absorbed; it experiences nothing but itself. His dishonor by the leader of the Greek alliance, Agamemnon (who had taken, among other things, Achilles' war prize - 'white-armed' Briseis), still boils in his heart. As a result Achilles, and his men, have withdrawn from the battle. When the embassy arrives (consisting of Odysseus, Phoenix and Ajax) it finds Achilles worse than indifferent to the suffering of his allies. Odysseus speaks, giving what seems to be an exact re-presentation of Agamemnon's 'priceless ransom' to appease Achilles rage. But wily (or if you prefer, diplomatic) Odysseus leaves out the concluding remarks of Agamemnon: "Let him submit to me! Only the god of death is so relentless, Death submits to no one- so mortals hate him most of all the gods. Let him bow down to me! I am the greater King, I am the elder-born, I claim - the greater man."
Odysseus shrewdly leaves these last remarks out - but Achilles is not deceived. "I hate that man like the very Gates of Death who says one thing but hides another in his heart." This is said not only of Agamemnon but also to the face of our dear Odysseus - the man who, far more than any other hero who fought at Troy, personified the ability to say one thing but mean another. Literary theory has often (more often in the past than today) been hesitant to place Achilles and Odysseus in opposite corners - but let's not be so delicate! Nor should one assume that these remarks of Achilles are meant for the entire embassy. After each subsequent speaker, each one less eloquent than the preceding, Achilles relents a little from the initial total refusal he threw in Odysseus' face.
The next to speak, Phoenix, is Achilles teacher - failed teacher apparently, he intended, after all, to teach Achilles both what to say and what to do. But the Achilles that stands before the embassy is no man of words. Phoenix recounts his life-story to Achilles, which is also one of betrayal and rage - but one in which Phoenix does, at least, step back from the brink. He does not murder his father who had so dishonored his mother. Thus there are things more important than honor, or so Phoenix teaches. But Achilles will have none of it, but still - Achilles does hesitate; he says after this speech that if Phoenix stays with him tonight then tomorrow they will decide whether to leave or stay.
Note that staying must here eventually mean fighting - if only to defend his own ships. But apparently Achilles has not drawn that conclusion - yet. Ajax now gives the shortest speech. It is little more than a simple, honest heartfelt farewell with one last plea to relent. Begging does not come easy to this giant among men. (Helen, of such 'terrible beauty' that it caused the deaths of thousands and eventually causes the ruin of Troy, had much earlier described Ajax as a 'wall, or bulwark, unto the Greeks'.) Indeed, Achilles says of this simple speech that it alone is most akin to his own heart. And so again Achilles relents a bit; he will now fight, but only when the Trojan Hector reaches his own ships. So, the three speeches of Odysseus, Phoenix, Ajax had these three results: Achilles will leave, Achilles will decide tomorrow whether or not to leave, and lastly, Achilles will not leave but he will only fight when the Trojans reach his ships.
A very great pity for the Greeks that there was not three like Ajax to send to Achilles! But that is not the end of it; the embassy has an 'ally' in Achilles' camp: Patroclus. Now, there are many people today that want to say that Achilles and Patroclus were not only the greatest of friends but that they were also lovers. But this is only an important point for our au courant culture wars - to the Greeks who fought at Troy this would have been either an idiosyncrasy or an irrelevancy. In any case, Patroclus, later during the ensuing battle (but before the Trojans reach Achilles' ships), convinces Achilles to let him go and fight in Achilles' own armor. Hector slays Patroclus - and thus eventually Achilles returns to the fight. He has discovered that there is indeed something outside his own sense of Honor and Rage at Agamemnon: friendship, or if you prefer, love. ...Though one can understand this as the replacement of one Rage (aimed at Agamemnon) for another rage aimed at Hector.
So, eventually Achilles slays Hector but he then refuses to allow the body to be ransomed by Priam - who is Hector's father and King of Troy. This is the same selfish Rage that had earlier caused the great warrior Achilles (the 'slayer of men') to sit idly in his tent while battle raged all about him. This selfish rage was cooled by Phoenix and Ajax (during the embassy, Book 9) and finally the death of Patroclus brings him back to the conflict. After slaying Hector Achilles attempts to desecrate the corpse but the gods don't allow it to decay. Now, something completely unexpected happens; King Priam sneaks into the camp to beg Achilles to return his sons corpse! These two great enemies share their even greater anguish and Achilles is moved to forgiveness. It is here that Achilles actually has a change of heart; that is, he doesn't merely replace rage with rage. One anguish has spoken to another. It is here that 'godlike' Achilles joins the human race.
The only other human being that is 'godlike' in the Iliad is Helen. Of course you see the pattern. Helen, by leaving her Spartan husband, Menelaus, for (the Trojan Prince) Paris, causes the Trojan War; Achilles, in his rage against Agamemnon, is prepared to let the Greeks be destroyed by the Trojans. It is only another rage -caused by the death of Patroclus- that forces him to return to battle. Human civilization becomes sustainable because its inhabitants no longer simply follow their impulses - as do gods and animals... Oh, but the beauty we have lost due to civilized moderation!
Perhaps you doubt that one can draw such a deep line dividing Achilles from Odysseus, - did the Greeks themselves ever think in this manner? Let me conclude by calling on the testimony of the greatest poet of Greece; Pindar is of the ancient race, and his judgments belong to an Archaic Greece that was gradually being transformed into the 'Classical Greece' we revere today.
"I believe that Odysseus story has become greater than his actual suffering because of Homer's sweet verse, for upon his fictions and soaring craft rests great majesty, and his skill deceives with misleading tales. The great majority of men have a blind heart, for if they could have seen the truth, mighty Aias, in anger over his arms, would not have planted in his chest the smooth sword. Except for Achilles, in battle he was the best..." (Nemean 7.)
Ajax (or Aias), and not Odysseus, deserved Achilles arms! This is the ancient (that is, the archaic) Greek judgment, but today, we who have been formed by a history that truly begins in Classical Greece all feel differently. We moderns, for the most part, all believe that Odysseus deserved Achilles armaments upon Achilles death. But Homer knows better. Thus Homer weaves into this tale the petit fait that it is Ajax whose speech (in the embassy to Achilles) is said to be closest to Achilles heart. When I was young and first read the Iliad and Pindar it was then that I realized that there had once been a different world...
But I think that most moderns would prefer the Odyssey - with some reason. Odysseus' native 'wiliness' makes him a much more 'modern' man than Achilles could ever be. I am unusual in that it is the Iliad that I have loved since youth, not the Odyssey. The Odyssey, to the archaic (and even the classical) Greeks, must have been an extremely strange book. It really is so 'un-Greek'! The chatty friendship between Odysseus and the Goddess, the centrality of Penelope in the tale, non-Greek myths (like the people who thought that an oar was a winnowing fan; i.e. they had never seen a ship!) and the fact that the struggle in the Odyssey is not for glory but rather to get home, to remain faithful, etc., all add up to a profoundly (ahem) 'un-Greek' work. No wonder Butler detected a woman's hand in it! (For those that don't know Samuel Butler once proposed that the Odyssey was written by a woman!) The Odyssey is often mentioned in the secondary literature as if it were the defining Homeric book - and who knows, today that may in fact be the case. But I think it more likely that it is the defining book only for post-classical readers.
This is a work of unsurpassed beauty, nobility, suffering and, for us, strangeness. Do not impose an unwarranted familiarity upon this text! The Greeks, who adored beauty but did not think it was easily found, used to beg the gods to allow them to see three beautiful things in their lives. The Iliad is one of those things...
Summary of The Iliad (Penguin Classics Deluxe Edition)
Robert Fagles, winner of the PEN/Ralph Manheim Medal for Translation and a 1996 Academy Award in Literature from the American Academy of Arts and Letters presents us with his universally acclaimed modern verse translation of the world's greatest war story. 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 gods wrestling with towering emotions and battling amidst devastation and destruction, as it moves inexorably to its wrenching, tragic conclusion. Renowned classicist Bernard Knox observes in his superb Introduction that although the violence of the Iliad is grim and relentless, it co-exists with both images of civilized life and a poignant yearning for peace. Combining the skills of a poet and scholar, Robert Fagles brings the energy of contemporary language to this enduring heroic epic. He maintains the drive and metric music of Homer's poetry, and evokes the impact and nuance of the Iliad's mesmerizing repeated phrases in what Peter Levi calls "an astonishing performance."
@RageAgainstTheAchaean Pissed. I am so, so very pissed.
First I have to go to this beach. Then I have to kill all these dudes. And NOW ? now! This prick stole my biscuit. Who does that? Am I right?
Can?t resolve this problem on my own ? calling Mom!
From Twitterature: The World's Greatest Books in Twenty Tweets or Less
This groundbreaking English version by Robert Fagles is the most important recent translation of Homer's great epic poem. The verse translation has been hailed by scholars as the new standard, providing an Iliad that delights modern sensibility and aesthetic without sacrificing the grandeur and particular genius of Homer's own style and language. The Iliad is one of the two great epics of Homer, and is typically described as one of the greatest war stories of all time, but to say the Iliad is a war story does not begin to describe the emotional sweep of its action and characters: Achilles, Helen, Hector, and other heroes of Greek myth and history in the tenth and final year of the Greek siege of Troy.
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