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The Iliad

The Iliad

Summary

'The best modern prose translation of The Iliad' Robin Lane Fox, The Times

The first of the world's great tragedies, The Iliad centres on the pivotal four days towards the end of the ten-year war between the Greeks and the Trojans. In a series of dramatic set pieces, it follows the story of the humiliation of Achilleus at the hands of Agamemnon and his slaying of Hektor: a barbarous act with repercussions that ultimately determine the fate of Troy. The Iliad not only paints an intimate picture of individual experience, but also offers a universal perspective in which human loss and suffering are set against a vast and unpitying divine background where fickle, quarrelsome gods decide the fate of men.

Translated with an Introduction by Martin Hammond

Reviews

  • Much the best modern prose translation of the Iliad
    Robin Lane Fox, Financial Times

About the author

Homer

Homer is a much-debated figure traditionally considered to have composed the two great oral poems The Odyssey and The Iliad in eighth or seventh-century-BC Greece
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