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The Iliad - Homer

I've searched an I don't think there's a thread like this one on here :biggrin:

I was just wondering how many (if any) of you have read The Iliad, the epic oral poem written about the siege of Troy and the beginnings of the downfall of Achilles. I'd just like to know what you thought about it.

Personally I found it really hard to read. :redface:

Towards the end it got much better though. :smile:

Any thoughts?

Reply 1

~Jen~

Aeana

I've searched an I don't think there's a thread like this one on here :biggrin:

I was just wondering how many (if any) of you have read The Iliad, the epic oral poem written about the siege of Troy and the beginnings of the downfall of Achilles. I'd just like to know what you thought about it.

Personally I found it really hard to read. :redface:

Towards the end it got much better though. :smile:

Any thoughts?

Read it last year - several times - for uni. It's quite tedious the first time through, but once you kind of get used to the style of it it's not bad (t'was a verse edition). I've also read the Odyssey, which I preferred because it consists of more than endless descriptions of battle. :biggrin:

Reply 2

Aeana

OP

10

That's the part I odund really boring. That and he kept repeating himself. He kept saying the same thing before and after a simile and it got tedious after a while. I haven't read the Odyssey yet but I've heard of it. I may read it if I get time to.

Reply 3

Gwen

1

Had to read it for school, with the Odyssey. I didn't like either of them very much - too many pointless characters and repetition. And not only of the similies and metaphores (like every morning there's the line "and then fair-haired Dawn gave birth to the new day..."), but repetition of entire scenes, like every time they sit and eat the whole process of a maid washing someone's hands is drawn out. Drove me nuts. :frown:

Reply 4

~Jen~

Aeana

That's the part I odund really boring. That and he kept repeating himself. He kept saying the same thing before and after a simile and it got tedious after a while. I haven't read the Odyssey yet but I've heard of it. I may read it if I get time to.

Yeah, apparently all the repetition's due to the fact that the poem was originally performed and not written down... made it much easier to remember.

But if you edited out all the repeated epithets & description you'd probably quarter the size of the book :rolleyes:

Reply 5

Weejimmie

1

You didn't say whether you'd read it in greek or which translation if it wasn't greek. George Chapman's translation- the one Keats admired- is very good and Christopher logue is doing a very interesting modern adaptation. Ther's also abook, Homer in English, published by penguin, which gives samples from translations so you can see which you prefer.

Reply 6

cloudofcalm

1

I think it depends on the translation you get, really. I enjoyed it but then I took Classics for two years and Latin, so I got used to the stylistic change that you have to expect. It's no Harry Potter in the 'easy to read' stakes, but if you get into it then it's enjoyable.

Reply 7

yo-less

2

Aeana

by Homer...

Simpson?

Reply 8

CogitoErgoSum

1

I love both the iliad and the odyssey and you ahve to bear in mind that these were oral epic poems- so they had to have a way of remembering them, and so the similes applying to certain characters/times would really help to remember it all.
i prefer the odyssey overall.

Reply 9

pheebs

things that are hard to read are generally more rewarding. i've read a lot of latin stuff this year, both in its original form and in translation. it gets easier. it's like when you first read shakespeare and it seemed really odd but you get past that and it's fantastic!

Reply 10

spider from mars

13

I'm reading it now (I'm on about Book 18). To begin with I found it incredibly tedious, but I'm quite into it now. He does bang on a lot though, I agree. Ok, there are reasons for it but that doesn't make it any less irritating. I don't mind all the similes so much, it's just when he does things like "And then Zeus said to Hera xxx...and then Hera went to Ares and said Zeus has just said xxx." And it's whole passages! Grr! Still, I'm finding it quite interesting, especially the bits with the gods as I used to be quite into mythology.

Reply 11

Aeana

OP

10

clockworkapples

I'm reading it now (I'm on about Book 18). To begin with I found it incredibly tedious, but I'm quite into it now. He does bang on a lot though, I agree. Ok, there are reasons for it but that doesn't make it any less irritating. I don't mind all the similes so much, it's just when he does things like "And then Zeus said to Hera xxx...and then Hera went to Ares and said Zeus has just said xxx." And it's whole passages! Grr! Still, I'm finding it quite interesting, especially the bits with the gods as I used to be quite into mythology.

I'm really into mythology, it's interesting to specualte about lol :biggrin:

. Don't get me wrong I really enjoyed the book but it took me ages to read and it took a while to get the main plot, which was not helped at all by first having watched Troy.

Reply 12

joolux05

The Odyssey is better in my opinion, both epics are repetitive, they are oral poems as such. Try the Aeneid, its the birth of the Romans out of the fall of troy, basically the iliad/odyssey combined (lots of scenes redone) and more readable.

Reply 13

Hashshashin

13

I've just bought it, am planning to read it over half term. Unfortunately, Classics A level isn't available around here. :frown:

Reply 14

x kat x

13

i want to read it and the school library's got the Iliad and Odyssey. I just haven't got round to reading them yet as i'm doing background reading atm for my english course.

Reply 15

Hando

I really liked it - the attitudes of the gods and how they interacted with the men was very interesting. Also, how Homer chose to wrote it is very clever (and highlights why Troy is such an appalling film!)

For anyone planning on reading it; I recommend the Rieu translation. :top:

The Odyssey is a bit better though - more adventure and the ending is really very cool indeed. :p:

Gwen

Had to read it for school, with the Odyssey. I didn't like either of them very much - too many pointless characters and repetition. And not only of the similies and metaphores (like every morning there's the line "and then fair-haired Dawn gave birth to the new day..."), but repetition of entire scenes, like every time they sit and eat the whole process of a maid washing someone's hands is drawn out. Drove me nuts. :frown:

But that's how the poets remembered it originally. I really like that aspect of Homer, it's really irritating when the translator chooses to disregard it:

Resourceful Odysseus
Wise Penelope
Swift-footed Achilles
Bright-eyed Athene :cool:

Reply 16

Madelyn

13

I really don't like the Rieu translation, though admittedly it's quite good as a basic introduction. I love Chapman, though I wouldn't call his version a translation. I think I prefer the Iliad to the Odyssey, most of the time, but there are parts of the Odyssey which I adore. I've just been given a copy of Pope's version, which aside from being very pretty actually seems quite good, though I've only skimmed through it as yet.
Reading Homer in Greek (or the sort of mixed up bits of Greek, bits of other things in which he wrote) is amazing, I can't wait for my Greek to be good enough to read it properly. When I did GCSE we studied a bit of the Odyssey - I forget which book it is, but when Odysseus gets home and strings the bow and so on - and I know they heavily adapt the original text for you at that level, but even so it's so much better than any translation. And I love all the oral tradition stuff, I think it's really interesting. That works better in Greek, too ^_^

Reply 17

staylor

2

I tried to read it but got bored very quickly. It just isnt interesting.

Reply 18

Weejimmie

1

Cold Calls, the latest volume in Logue's recreation of the iliad has just been published.

I love Chapman, though I wouldn't call his version a translation.

chapman sems to have thought that he somehow spoke to homer in his translation, actually.

Reply 19

Madelyn

13

Weejimmie

chapman sems to have thought that he somehow spoke to homer in his translation, actually.

I know, but I think that there's so much of Chapman in it that you can't really call it Homer. This is one of the problems I usually have with translations, it's often hard to tell how much is the translator and how much the original writer. I think Chapman's Homer is a brilliant work in its own right.

The Iliad - Homer

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