The Iliad - Homer

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graves's version is really very...idiosyncratic, shall we say? there always lempriere's classical dictionatry, which you'll find in second-hand shops.
also, there's alot of them in robert burton's anatomy of melancholy- that's where keats got his classical myths.

Reply 41

silence

Madelyn

I just saw a bit of that, and found it so irritating and patronising that I had to turn it off. There was some interesting stuff in there, but not enough to make it worthwhile, I felt.

the presenter was a tiny bit scary and tried to come across all erotic. also, those cut scenes where they have soliders fighting in smoke machines and blurry clips of girls dancing and laughing are annoying. some stuff was interesting.. but once she went to turkey/troy it started to get a bit boring. was better than anything else that was on though.

Reply 42

milady

silence

the rieu translation has it and it can be ambiguously confusing at times. the epithets are best expressed in a way with no parentheses/hyphens etc; i guess that's how it is in the greek so it seems more authentic. a (made up) example of how it gets difficult would be something like "Athene daughter of Zeus the almighty thunder bearer".. i suppose if you know your stuff you can work out what goes with what contextually, but mentally slip commas after 'Athene' and 'Zeus' and you'll get yourself in a great branston pickle.

Yeah, (how did you know? :eek:

), I've got the rieu - penguin, i think - version.

Madelyn

Totally. I don't much like Achilles, either.

No, neither. But Agamemnon is worse. He got his just deserts when his wife topped him.

Reply 43

username9303

I'm looking to read Odyssey, the Iliad, and the Aeneid - so i looked in Waterstones, and they had these Everyman's Library ones, translated by a bloke called Fitzgerald. They're hardcover, but were wrapped in film, so i couldn't look inside.

Anyone have an idea about the quality of these?

Reply 44

Weejimmie

They're all right. Fitzgerald is a contempoary US poet- you can get Chapman's Homer which I [and John keats] think is the best of all in Wordsworth pb for £2 or £3.

Reply 45

andrena.

My greek isn't amazing but I struggle through bits of Homer and enjoy it immensely...but the one thing that I really enjoy about it is reading it aloud (in greek of course). My teacher has always made a point of reading aloud everything before we translate it and while I used to hate this because i couldn't do it, I am now so grateful because regardless of whether i understand everything or not, when you read it as it was meant to be read, the rythems come through and the sound is just so...compelling. Ooooh I love it :biggrin:

. I also love the style-there is something so romantic and mysterious about the wine dark sea over which the hollow ships of the bronze greaved achians speed (etc etc). But if I did not study greek I imagine that I would find it tedious, frustrating and incomprhensable so I have a great amount of respect for all those people who read it in translation without having studyed classics.
Homer rocks!!!

Reply 46

Weejimmie

"Homer" was almost certainly composed verbally long before it was written down and learned by heart by the people who recited it, so it's meant to be listened to rather than read.

Reply 47

silence

mm i agree with that to an extent, but we have to move on to some extent. i know there's a slight difference here, but most people would rather read pepys' diary in an english translation (decipherment to be exact) than in the code in which he wrote it. whilst there is probably a significant loss in reading english translations of homer rather than listening to the original greek being read aloud, our ears/minds are trained to read rather than to listen. the closest thing today that we have to homer really (as my lecturer demonstrated) is rap music suppsedly, yet i don't see 50 cent releasing any covers of the iliad or odyssey in the mean time. also, even if a modern scholar were very well acquainted with ancient greek, they probably wouldn't hear it the same way that greeks did in 700 BC. also, if somebody did create a version to be listened to in translation, would/should they stick with hexamter? i'm sort of arguing with myself here, but despite there being more inherent "beauty" in the text/reading in its original language, i believe that, unless you were superhumanly excellent in the study of that language, a good translation would take us closer to the sentiments and even poetic nature of the original.

Reply 48

ExitMusic

Weejimmie

"Homer" was almost certainly composed verbally long before it was written down and learned by heart by the people who recited it, so it's meant to be listened to rather than read.

It was certainly meant to be recited for others to hear but since we are never going to know the exact pronunciation of the text we will never really get an idea of how it sounded originally. Of course we can always mark the significance of elisions, long vowels, spondees etc and make inferences about them and try and figure out what they represented to the ancient greek audience but thats about as far as we'll get.

Reply 49

Weejimmie

Yes, I should have said was meant to be listened to: after all, the very act of writing it changed it.

Reply 50

Hashshashin

The closest you're likely to get to hearing anything Homer-based is Symphony X's album The Oddysey, which is absolutely incredible, especially if you're into prog rock/prog metal.

http://www.play.com/play247.asp?pa=srmr&page=title&r=CD&title=152973