#The Iliad - Homer

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foggy flower
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BR duration: <t:1683244800:D> - <t:1686873600:D>
BR leader: @hollow sun
Link: #buddy-reads message

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gusty tapir
foggy flower
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The Iliad - Homer

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YEAHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH

gusty tapir
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Is there a second space after Iliad?

foggy flower
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The Iliad - Homer

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Yes

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Very observant

gusty tapir
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xD

hollow sun
gusty tapir
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I felt my balance shift when looking at it xD

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I’m so hype for this. I spent my morning revisiting this: https://youtu.be/vLn_wmedmT0

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Benjamin McEvoy
Which Translation of Homer's Odyssey Should You Read?

📚 Read the Great Books with the Hardcore Literature Book Club: https://www.patreon.com/hardcoreliterature
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Basically goes for The Iliad as well tbh

tame cliff
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so excited

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my first BR I've ever been in!

gusty tapir
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Oh this actually starts on the fourth for me. That’s good. More breathing room

hollow sun
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I figured more time to start but also plenty of time to read was essential ^-^ plus i need to get my book still it needs to move libraries

tame cliff
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I'm glad it starts may 4th too! realistically my book'll arrive soon after the 4th if the seller ships it tomorrow

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I'd get it from a library but I annotate bookskek

pulsar parrot
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I’ve decided to join! Haven’t read Iliad since high school

tame cliff
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what format and which translator is everyone reading?

gusty tapir
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Fagles for me.

hollow sun
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gotta go with my boi robert fagles B)

foggy flower
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I went for Fagles, I'm reading an epub on my tablet SUCC

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fagles gang

hollow sun
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🤟

gusty tapir
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I might grab a Butler too and cross examine some favorite stanzas to see how the prose deals with them. I would have loved for Wilson’s translation to be out, but alack alas, it won’t be so.

tame cliff
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oof I hope Samuel Butler's translation isn't far off from Fagles's

clear sundial
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I have Fagles too!!!

foggy flower
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Anyone have any ideas on which spring bingo prompt I can use for this book? Uwu

hollow sun
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it could be said it's historical fiction ^-^ Herodotus did talk about Troy I believe

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"The “father of history,” Herodotus, considered the Trojan War a real event. Writing in the fifth century BC, Herodotus placed the famous conflict almost 800 years before his own time. The Romans went even further, presenting themselves as the descendants of the surviving Trojans." - TheCollector

gusty tapir
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Where does one find the spring bingo board?

foggy flower
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#1087188187455180981

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It's inside #1055165735384653885 , if the thread link doesn't work

gusty tapir
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Thanks!

gusty tapir
vital rover
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I gotta decide which copy I wanna read 🤔

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I have a few kicking around

lucid aspen
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I’m most likely going with Fagles though as that’s what almost everyone here seemed to recommend and I found it in my library

subtle kettle
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🤘🏼 joined in. ust placed a pick up order for the Fagles copy
I haven't read this since 10th grade? 🤣🤦🏻‍♀️

gusty tapir
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Yeah it’s been a minute for me for The Iliad. 2009 was when I read it last.

tame cliff
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My Butler copy should be arriving May 8th, so I'll join in then.

foggy flower
hollow sun
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Just got my copy from the library! So shiny :0

pulsar parrot
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I ordered mine. Def want my own version so I can make notes

foggy flower
hollow sun
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It may not show the best but I love the hue of the blue and its all ~shimmy~

uneven timber
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I really want to by this book but i have put myself on a book ban so i will read it on libby and just write notes on my computer

foggy flower
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OOOOH

vital rover
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OH is everyone using the poetry version? Or a prose translation? 👀

hollow sun
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does a prose translation exist?

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I would be very very interested in that

clear sundial
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I spent yesterday plowing through the intro… it’s quite dense (for me) but provided very useful context. The part on how Iliad came to be (only orally recorded or Homer actually wrote it down) was intriguing

hollow sun
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Oh ho ho I'm so excited for everyone to read the first chapter

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And yeah we don't know! Its as much of a dead story as latin is a dead language :3

gusty tapir
gusty tapir
vital rover
hollow sun
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OH SHIZZLE DIZZLES IM GONNA CHECK THAT OUT maybe I can get it before the end of the br so I can pull out some passages for comparison :0

vital rover
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The prose translation can def be more accessible, long form poetry can make my eyes glaze over sometimes wheeze

hollow sun
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In all honesty, I really dislike poetry, but epic poetry seems to skirt around that xD but prose just sounds like a lot of fun and I wonder where the clarity difference would change things

vital rover
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I just ordered the Fagles edition catExcitedHearts it’ll be here Friday! I wanted a big big copy that could lay flat for notes and highlights Shygers

gusty tapir
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It’s time y’all

hollow sun
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Indeed! Long opening but here we go

gusty tapir
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It’s a long book

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May the Fourth be with us.

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o7

hollow sun
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Hey y'all! @gusty tapir @vital rover @clear sundial @foggy flower @uneven timber @tame cliff @lucid aspen @raven birch @subtle kettle @pulsar parrot

I'm super excited to get started on The Iliad and I hope y'all are too! This is a really difficult epic but I promise as you get through it it gets easier to handle. If anyone needs any help with comprehension please feel free to reach out in chat because I'm sure other people will be having the same difficulty.

In order to help with sharing passages, I'm just gonna let y'all know how to cite poetry in epics. You don't have to follow it, but I figure it may help people figure out where you are, so they can engage or show their own translations.

When quoting the text, each line break is signified by a space, then a slash, then another space. At the end, use parentheses to put in the chapter/book number and then the range of lines quoted.

Ex (one of the first lines) : ||"What god drove them to fight with such fury? / Apollo the son of Zeus and Leto." (1.9-10).||

I'm also going to provide a link to some ancient Greek poems by Tyrtaeus. He wrote a lot about war and can lend some context to what the opinions may have been toward the epic from the original audience.

http://demonax.info/doku.php?id=text:tyrtaeus_poems

Without any further ado, here are some opening questions! They're completely optional to answer but I'm super excited to see what your answers are.

⚔️ What, if any, was your first experience with epic poetry, Homer, or ancient Greek literature?

🛡️ Have you heard of the character Achilles before? If so, where? And, do you think he is and/or will be a hero?

🏺 What do you think of the topic of War in literature? Do you think it translates well onto the page? Does it create excitement, anxiety, fear? Let us know your thoughts!

I hope y'all have fun with this BR!

gusty tapir
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⚔️ What, if any, was your first experience with epic poetry, Homer, or ancient Greek literature?
My first experience was in sixth grade when my class read The Odyssey by Homer with Fagles. At the time, I don't think it was a favorite, however as time passed, I grew to like more and more from the era (usually in short story form from authors like Ovid). I read the Iliad by Homer with Fagles in my freshman year of university as well as The Odyssey for the second time. I've also enjoyed Virgil's The Aeneid.

Personally, I'm learning more about __S__toicism and their four virtues: wisdom, courage, temperance, and justice. I've read works from Marcus Aurelius, Epictetus, and I'm very slowly reading letters from Seneca.

Additionally, I've read a few modern retellings of myth with authors like Madeline Miller, Natalie Haynes, and Jennifer Saint. Admittedly, I like these less than earlier texts from Homer, Virgil, Plato, Sappho, the Stoics, and others. But I do love their literary merit and discussing their extreme value to the modern era and we go forward to better our understanding of humankind (particularly through the expansion of the female historical and literary voice).

🛡️ Have you heard of the character Achilles before? If so, where? And, do you think he is and/or will be a hero?

GLORY! TAKE IT! IT'S YOURS! (Troy 2004)

But on a more serious note, I've read both of Homer's works, Virgil, and other Greek authors. I've also read Miller's The Song of Achilles.

What is a hero? Honestly, after all my reading experience, this is a question that is difficult to answer. I think a hero is someone who places the safety and wellbeing of others who cannot help themselves within their own capacity and needs the help. This opens up the question of: What is heroic consent?

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🏺 What do you think of the topic of War in literature? Do you think it translates well onto the page? Does it create excitement, anxiety, fear? Let us know your thoughts!

/shrug

I think war in literature can serve as a warning to the reader to exhaust all possibilities before engaging. However, I also think that war can be necessary once all other options are unavailable. War in literature asks us if the topic of the book is worthy of war.

On a personal level, reading about war usually gives me those good type chills - especially from the virtuous side. I'm thinking (LOTR book 5) ||of when Rohan calls to Gondor's request for aid (I got chills just thinking of it now.)||. Surely I've felt dread before although I can't think of a particular instance. Probably more so when I know a beloved character will end their journey or when I have emotional stock on both sides.

As far as whether it translates well on the page, I think that really depends on the author. I love styles like Tolkien where the hype is before the battle itself and Joe Abercrombie or John Gwynne where the excitement is acutely in battle itself. However, there are a lot more poorly executed battle scenes in literature. I think it mainly depends on the author's skill to keep my interest, which is elusive and challenging to pinpoint.

foggy flower
ebon river
# hollow sun Hey y'all! <@1091697088254967838> <@337110401059913741> <@818759931456913458> <@...

Firstly, hi everyone!! I'm mega super excited to try my hand at this !! I've accumulated about 5 copies of the Illiad throughout my life in several languages in hopes that if it's all around me I'd get to it eventually haha, but no luck so far, hopefully a buddy read will help me out again! I am in the process of finishing my masters' thesis so I will be starting to read in the back end of the buddy read unfortunately, but i'm staying optimistic! Anyways, to the questions! 😄

⚔️ What, if any, was your first experience with epic poetry, Homer, or ancient Greek literature?
I've always been a massive greek mythology fan and as a kid I had 2 children's copies of greek myth, one was the gods and the second was heroes and had a VERY edited version of the illiad and odyssey, so I would say that's the origin!

🛡️ Have you heard of the character Achilles before? If so, where? And, do you think he is and/or will be a hero?
Of course! Like I said, big greek myth fan, so I've read shortened versions of the story many times, I've seen Troy (the movie) lol, and just general knowledge. I don't really know if I'd consider him a hero, I guess in the greek sense of the word, he is?

🏺 What do you think of the topic of War in literature? Do you think it translates well onto the page? Does it create excitement, anxiety, fear? Let us know your thoughts!
You know, for the longest time I always thought I hated reading war passages in movies, I don't know why? But a few years ago I tried reading War and Peace (didn't finish 😭 ) and i actually liked the war sections more than the rest! I'm also a politics student, so it's interestng to me on that level, but also the general idea of what a human tragedy war is.

Looking forward to reading this with everyone!! ❤️

gusty tapir
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Mmmm. I'm considering switching translations! I might do Peter Green or Caroline Alexander 👀

gusty tapir
vital rover
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y’all are so intelligent I’m so intimidated how can my smooth brain answer these questions 😭

hollow sun
vital rover
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⚔️ What, if any, was your first experience with epic poetry, Homer, or ancient Greek literature?

  • Shygers I first experienced snippets of epic Greek poems in Edith Hamilton’s Mythology in high school. I fell in love with mythology, and I majored in Greek and Roman Studies in university, so I have read an enormous amount of Ancient Greek literature and loved every bit of it. My specialization was religion, so most of my time was spent reading nonfiction snippets, but I read both the Odyssey and the Iliad at one time.

🛡️ Have you heard of the character Achilles before? If so, where? And, do you think he is and/or will be a hero?

  • Ahhh, Achilles. I can’t remember where I first encountered him but one of my favourite movies is the 2004 version of Troy. He fits the definition of a Greek hero, but I’m not sure if he would be considered a “hero” by today’s standards.

🏺 What do you think of the topic of War in literature? Do you think it translates well onto the page? Does it create excitement, anxiety, fear? Let us know your thoughts!

  • War is tricky to translate into words, especially in the form of epic poetry, because you can’t really get the nitty gritty exposition/atmospheric descriptions like you could in a novel or creative nonfiction. I would say that War, as depicted in epic poetry, rouses excitement just by being such a grandiose form of written expression. It’s called epic poetry for a reason! y_shibalaugh
hollow sun
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I studied the ancient world in college and I have my own opinion but from the poems and historians I've read from it seems heroicism is a divisive concept in a lot of way

vital rover
# hollow sun Oh wow wait when you get the chance please expand on why he was a hero then but ...

Oh yes absolutely!! kittynod

IMHO he meets the bare minimum requirements to be a Greek Hero: he has divine blood. He also embodies qualities they considered heroic, like skill in battle, pride, all that good stuff. But a Greek Hero was someone who had some kind of extraordinary ability thanks to their divine parentage. Nothing to do with their achievements, their achievements kinda came as a result of that divinity.

I’m not sure if he would be considered “heroic” by today’s standards primarily because of his personality omg he’s so arrogant, angry, and vengeful, and that goes against a lot of what is “heroic” today (like kindness, being forgiving, self sacrificing). To be fair, I don’t think many of the Heroes from Greek mythology would be considered heroes by today’s standards lolcat (like Herakles, for example)

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I think what we would call demigods today is what Greeks called Heroes, essentially

hollow sun
clear sundial
# hollow sun Hey y'all! <@1091697088254967838> <@337110401059913741> <@818759931456913458> <@...

⚔️I think this is my first time reading epic poetry in English! I studied Latin in high school so I have read some Aeneid in Latin before.
🛡️whenever I think of Achilles now I think of Brad Pitt (from the movie Troy) and Eric Bana as Hector 👀 knowing Greek epics, Achilles probably will be a complicated hero
🏺from the intro, it looks like Iliad will be quite violent. I look forward to embarking on this journey!

hollow sun
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I definitely agree Achilles would not be a hero now, I think ||he'd more so be thought of as either a villain or a victim. First with owning of slaves and second his pre-written fate|| as for him being a hero earlier, I think he was in the story of the illiad at least...||but only at the end.|| I'll clarify that later in the br maybe

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I really gotta watch the movie y'all are talking about...

vital rover
hollow sun
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With these glowing opinions I'll definitely give it a go ^-^ at the end I'll ask the question again so people can explain their conclusions :D

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I'm pumped :3

clear sundial
clear sundial
ebon river
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just a question that i've been thinking about -- i think i remember hearing vaguely in the ether that there was a more recent translation done by a woman that kind of added a different dimension to the story, does that ring a bell for anyone? i'm really unsure, i'm not a classics scholar or anything, but i'd love to read an edition by a female translator. 🙂

foggy flower
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Y'all are TALKIN in here huh

hollow sun
ebon river
hollow sun
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And she's writing one for the illiad it comes out in September. Her name is Emily Wilson I think

ebon river
hollow sun
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Ofc! I recommend the read, I haven't read it myself but my friend loved it and I went to a talk by the translator and she has a lot of humor and it goes into the excerpts I've seen

gusty tapir
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^^ Caroline was the first female translator and Emily Wilson releases her translation of The Iliad in September this year—she already released her translation of The Odyssey.

ebon river
ebon river
gusty tapir
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Sure thing. I’m really enjoy the translation. Finished up Book 1 :))

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Are y’all going to keep a certain pace or read whatever whenever? I’m eyeing a book a day. That way it’s not overwhelming and I still end with over a week to discuss with everyone.

foggy flower
# hollow sun Hey y'all! <@1091697088254967838> <@337110401059913741> <@818759931456913458> <@...

HELLO!!!!!!!!! SUCC SUCC

Thanks for the info about citing poetry!! I think I did that in... some university english course I took, but it might take a bit to get used to methinks

⚔️ My first experience was read I read The Song of Achilles as a BOTM, like, 2 years ago? And I loved it so much that I decided I wanted to read more Greek mythology, so I read The Odyssey too!
🏺 It's been a hit-or-miss type thing whenever I read something with war. I enjoyed reading The Odyssey, but I do not enjoy military-type things, like All Quiet on the Western Front heheghost

gusty tapir
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who likes All Quiet on the Western Front /hj

foggy flower
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ok so i wasn't the only one HmmPray

gusty tapir
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xD. Nah. But I do want to try Blood Meriden

tame cliff
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⚔️ What, if any, was your first experience with epic poetry, Homer, or ancient Greek literature?
In high school, we read The Odyssey by Homer. I don't remember it, probably because I didn't pay attention.

🛡️ Have you heard of the character Achilles before? If so, where? And, do you think he is and/or will be a hero?
I have absolutely no clue who he is, so I can't say.

🏺 What do you think of the topic of War in literature? Do you think it translates well onto the page? Does it create excitement, anxiety, fear? Let us know your thoughts!
I think the general concepts of war can be translated well, however the emotions and trauma the soldiers/warriors/etc feel cannot be translated so well. Maybe if the author is talented at putting human emotions to paper exactly as they're felt, but otherwise I don't think that it's so easy to capture the absolute true trauma of war.

ancient heath
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i will begin soon pepeCoolNerd

foggy flower
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I have started pepemegaSUCC

Book One
||Ah yes, we are beginning with a silly little catfight 💅 between Agamemnon and Achilles okurrrrrrrr yas queen purrrrrr||
mikeStare mikeStare mikeStare

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Also I totally forgot who Ajax is

gusty tapir
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He's the cleanup man.

pulsar parrot
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It came!

IMG_0173.jpg
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Dang it’s thick tho

hollow sun
gusty tapir
pulsar parrot
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But why everyone related to Zeus? Jk we know why

IMG_0174.jpg IMG_0175.jpg
gusty tapir
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And finished book 2. Keeping up with that book a day pace.

Book 2 ||Y’all. I forgot how much the first couple chapters—especially Book 2—pain the tongue. Name after name of warrior born of blah blah with X number of ships. I cannot wait to get into the meat of the story. I’m particularly looking forward to the dilemmas stemming from the gods themselves.||

vital rover
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My copy arrived!!! catExcitedHearts I will be starting tomorrow

hollow sun
gusty tapir
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Yup yup. Just not ||fun to read||.

tame cliff
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My copy should be arriving today. But I gotta finish my current book before I start.

gusty tapir
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Book 3
||The wait is over and we are back into the thrall of it. I love this chapter so much. I forgot that Paris also goes by Alexandros, and it threw me for a loop at first—could be a translation thing too. What does Fagles (or other translations than Alexander) name Paris?

Can I give a little highlight to Priam? I love the way he approaches Helen to learn more about his enemies: Agamemnon, Odysseus, and Ajax. It’s a great way to highlight warriors and see their importance and role for the Argives.

Do y’all think he takes the right approach with Helen? He sees his whole kingdom at war because of a malicious deed done by one of his sons. But instead of taking his rage out on Helen, he calls her blameless. Is not Paris and Helen to blame? Should Paris only be to blame because of the inequality between man and woman? What about Meneloas? Should a thousand ships set sail because of the failings of one marriage?

Also, Hector is a great dude. He loves his brother and cannot stand to see him be the coward. “You started this. You finish it. Let the remainder find friendship instead of death.” All around one of the greats.

I do think the sneaky duel conditions are interesting because to me they seem to land much more in favor of the Archaeans due to the “recompense” bit. Yo Troy, you need to pay us for the last 8+ years of warring to get here to kill you or else we shall continue to knock at your walls—no matter the turn of the duel, win or lose.||

Anyways, a book a day it is, and I cannot wait for tomorrow!

Oh! Also I totally forgot that ||Aphrodite pulled a magic trick. Sneaky sneaky.||

vital rover
gusty tapir
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Starting today or tomorrow?

foggy flower
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I thought that was a syringe kek

gusty tapir
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spicy’s life is spicy

vital rover
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A hello kitty syringe Flooshed

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I’m starting today! I just finished Book One penguinbass

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Book One: ||Agamemnon and Achilles are such babies kek I have to put myself in the mindset of “honour above everything” when I read this stuff. So I can understand Achilles’ rage, but Agamemnon should always know to never mess with the gods, especially the younger ones, because they’re always looking for an excuse to fuck around with humans omg||

||ZEUS SUCKS SO BAD. He sucks so so so bad. I’ve always loved Hera and I hate how terribly she’s treated. Zeus’s fling comes to beg him for help and he’s like, my wife is gonna get mad but okay I’ll help. And then he threatens Hera in front of everyone! And her no good son complains about how hard it would be for him to watch her get beaten by Zeus? Like cmon. Zeus sucks. bcePeekWaiting||

foggy flower
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Two

||As ravening fire rips through big stands of timber high on a mountain ridge and the blaze flares miles away, so from the marching troops the blaze of bronze armor, splendid and superhuman, flared across the earth, flashing into the air to hit the skies. Armies gathering now as the huge flocks on flocks of winging birds, geese or cranes or swans with their long lancing necks — circling Asian marshes round the Cayster outflow, wheeling in all directions, glorying in their wings — keep on landing, advancing, wave on shrieking wave and the tidal flats resound. So tribe on tribe, pouring out of the ships and shelters, marched across the Scamander plain and the earth shook, tremendous thunder from under trampling men and horses drawing into position down the Scamander meadow flats breaking into flower — men by the thousands, numberless as the leaves and spears that flower forth in spring. The armies massing . . . crowding thick-and-fast as the swarms of flies seething over the shepherds' stalls in the first spring days when the buckets flood with milk — so many long-haired Achaeans swarmed across the plain to confront the Trojans, fired to smash their lines.||

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chefskiss so pretty

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Ok that's kinda long 😭

gusty tapir
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It is very pretty though

clear sundial
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Book 1 ||It's a battle of egos between Achilles and Agamemnon. Even the gods here seem to be consumed by "human" emotions regardless of their immortality: parental/filial love, jealousy, rage.. Zeus was brutal but I chuckled a little when he and Hera were taunting each other - sounded like a marital spat (taken to the next level when Zeus threatened to kill Hera at the end). It's also interesting to note how the gods were influenced by men ("flinging the gods in chaos just for mortal men" 1.693). The gods seem contemptuous of mortals but not free of them.||

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Note on translation so far: I can feel the brutality and rage coming through, but I find some phrasings a bit awkward e.g. ||trusty Odysseus (1.171) savory smoke (1.371)||

gusty tapir
clear sundial
gusty tapir
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What would be the Greek line numbers for the 1.171 line?

clear sundial
gusty tapir
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Oh gotcha. Is that this paragraph?

1.141-148

|| For now, come, let us drag one of our dark ships to the bright salt sea, / and assemble in it suitable rowers, and place the sacrifice in it, / and take on the girl herself, Chryseïs of the lovely cheeks; / and let there be one man in command, some man of counsel, / either Ajax or Idomeneus, or noble Odysseus, / or you, son of Peleus, most terrifying of all men, / you might reconcile to us Apollo who works from afar, and perform / the sacrifice.”||

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So it would be ||noble instead of trusty|| in my translations (both Alexander and Green use the former)

clear sundial
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I get the feeling that your translation reads more lyrical and mine (Fagles) is more literal (but doesn’t flow as well)

gusty tapir
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Here’s Peter Green for those lines (1.141-147)

|| “For now, let us haul down a black ship to the bright sea, / and assemble a crew of oarsmen, place oxen on board / for sacrifice, together with Chrysēs’ fair-cheeked daughter / herself; and let one man, a counsellor, go as captain— / Aias, or Idomeneus, or noble Odysseus, / Or you, son of Pēleus, of all men the most fearsome, / to make sacrifice for the appeasement of the deadly archer.”||

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This is a good exercise because I now see that I prefer Alexander over Green.

clear sundial
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||Now come, we haul a black ship down to the bright sea, / gather a decent number of oarsmen along her locks / and put aboard a sacrifice, and Chryseis herself, / in all her beauty... we embark her too. / Let one of the leading captains take command. / Ajax, Idomeneus, trusty Odysseus or you, Achilles, / you -- the most violent man alive -- so you can perform / the rites for us and calm the god yourself."||

gusty tapir
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They all feel different. Gotta love translation.

clear sundial
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Book 2 ||Interesting reverse psychology Agamemnon tried to pull there... except his men actually geared up to go home. Not sure if it was Agamemnon's intention to defy Zeus' wishes or "test" his men as the text suggested.||

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Some random observations on Book 2:

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||- Phenomena such as Dawn and Rumor are personified and given characters||

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||- Repeating verses (almost word for word) e.g. in relaying Zeus' dream and Hera's command, or explaining the procedures in sacrificial rites - they remind me of choruses in songs.||

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||- Just for kicks, I did some quick maths and there are 1146 ships listed in the Greek army -- oh my!||

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||I particularly enjoy the beguiling similes used on the massive armies, where Homer often compared them to scenes of everyday life. e.g. "The armies massing... crowding thick-and-fast / as the swarms of flies seething over the shepherds' stalls / in the first spring days when the buckets flood with milk" (2.555-559) "The armies grouping now - as seasoned goatherds / split their wide-ranging flocks into packs with ease." (2.560-561) (both in Greek: 2.467-496).||

clear sundial
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Book 3 ||Here, we get a POV rundown from the Trojans on the Greek heroes. I now cannot unsee Menelaus as a ginger and Paris as a soft boi. Helen was more stubborn than I remembered (I always thought of her as passive), even taunting Aphrodites to become a mortal.
Some of the best lines so far in this book:
Beauty, terrible beauty! (3.189; Greek: 3.158)
There was a world... or was it all a dream? (3.219; Greek: ~3.180-183)||

gusty tapir
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That last line: 3.180

||He was my brother-in-law, dog-faced as I am—if that ever happened.”||
Definitely not as pretty 😂

vital rover
gusty tapir
#

It’s their way of calling each other cute

hollow sun
#

As for Helen, there's an amazing poem about her being a confidant woman and actually in favor of the war but I can't find it from a cursory google search, I'll try and find it later :D

pulsar parrot
#

There's so many poems about Helen

hollow sun
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i know but it was a particularly good one

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and usually they write her as the victim >.>

pulsar parrot
#

Oh yeah, it sounds interesting. I just googled it and was like oh crap, there's so many

hollow sun
#

yeah xD I'll find it tomorrow and share it cause it's an easy read (even if you don't like poetry like me)

hollow sun
#

Book 1
||I wonder if anyone's translation differs from Fagles here: "What if you are a great soldier? That's just a gift of god." (1.211)||
||I honestly forgot this line was in here because it spells so much trouble for a world that is constantly stirred by Gods, to the point at which they appear right in front of them.||
Spoiler for the Odyssey:
||This line also foreshadows Odysseus' slight to Poseidon that makes a year-two year trip home take 10||

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Rereading book one was so much fun now that I understand the story 😅 I remember needing summaries when I first read this and I still missed so much

gusty tapir
hollow sun
#

Ah okay I'll do that when I have my book I left it at work :D

sharp flameBOT
#

Ah okay I'll do
that when I have my book I
left it at work :D

- Wrathy
gusty tapir
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No worries. I tried looking it up but none of the keywords from yours showed up in mine. Should be interesting to see the difference.

gusty tapir
#

Okay sooo I read book four the other day and book five yesterday. Book 5 was a big one involving some interesting maneuvers by ||the gods. I gotta say that I’m also struck by how stupid or dull Ares comes off. Like why is he “the god of war” when it doesn’t seem like he does it all that well—unlike Athena (who is coincidentally also a god of war)? He should be the god of bloodlust or something. How is he not able to take down Diomedes, son of Tydeus? He is but a man empowered by a god, not a god himself, nor the god of war. Just saying.

Also, it seems like the Greeks are just better overall in the ways of fighting. The warriors allied or from Troy itself don’t seem to be doing all that well without the aid of Aphrodite or the occasional arrow via Apollo. Sarpedron, Aeneas is not as much a badass as I remember tbh. He seems to have gained some great horses but loses them quickly and the companion he encourages to war… well… parishes via a spear to back of the throat. Pretty tough going. This says nothing of like the fifth son of Priam to die.

Is Hector the only great warrior sided against the Argives? Is Ilion only great because of its wall?||

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Ahhh! I forgot to say something about book 5: ||Zeus is a prick|| pepemegaSUCC

hollow sun
# hollow sun Book 1 ||I wonder if anyone's translation differs from Fagles here: "What if you...

Okay so more of the lines here ||"But the lord of men Agamemnon shot back, / "Desert, by all means--if the spirit drives you home! / I will never beg you to stay, not on my account. / Never--others will take my side and do me honor, / Zeus above all, whose wisdom rules the world. / You--I hate you most of all the warlords / loved by the gods. Always dear to your heart, / strife, yes, and battles, the bloody grind of war. / What if you are a great soldier? That's just the gift of god."|| (I.203-211)

hollow sun
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Also, ||this is a story written by the greeks, they ain't gonna let any other army seem powerful compared to them unless they heel themselves xD Although it might've seemed like they were stronger if they introduced the Trojans as masters of war, then beat them in the end||

gusty tapir
gusty tapir
#

Book 6
So far this is one of my favorite chapters. It speaks volumes of ||brotherly love, love of country, and love of family. Duty is then drawn parallel to these loves, leaving us the reader to determine whether they crash or ride together like foe or friendly chariots.

We first see Meneloas nearly express pity (and greed if one wants to think that he was going to spare the warrior only for the ransom) on a fallen foe but his brother, Agamemnon steps in and educates his brother by killing the man—no mercy. We then see Hector and Paris/Alexandros inside the city walls: Hector to set the city praying to Athena and grab his brother; Paris admiring the beauty of his armor on display. I cannot imagine want Agamemnon would say (or probably do) if he found Melelaos doing the same—death most likely. That’s where we see the difference between the brotherly pairs. Hector wants to believe the best in his brother because he knows there’s potential in vain and blame worthy Paris. So Hector checks the rage he feels inside and wields affection as the carrot rather than use of stick. Hector wants to stop hearing his soldiers talking smack against his brother. He wants Paris to succeed in his own right and to fix his wrongs—which I find interesting as a whole because is there a fix? Winning surely is still a loss due to the amount of death and all because of wrong doing by Paris no matter the outcome of the war. I suppose the iron profit found by carrion could be seen as reparations and this is a time when war is not seen with as much disfavor.

I was touched by how much Hector loves his wife and child. The scary outlook for Andromache is one I don’t wish to think about but one that plagues every step of Hector. How can one fight with such a crowded head? The Greeks do not have this worry as their women and children are across the seas and years of travel away—safe.

Anyways, Alexandros/Paris had best get his butt into gear and do better.||
_ _

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||Hector’s|| tough love speech really gets to me (6.324-331):

||And seeing him, Hector reviled him with contemptuous words: / “Unnatural man, it is not good to store this anger in your heart. / Men are perishing about the city and steep walls / as they do battle, and it is on your account the battle shout and war / blaze all around this city; you would confront another man / were you to see him anywhere hanging back from hated war. / Up now; lest the town is soon made hot by enemy fire.”||

Do y’all think this is tough love or actual revilement?

pulsar parrot
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I like the idea of reading a book a day, so I’m starting now and skipping all of the intro stuff cause I feel like it. How many books are there?

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Book 1 ||I feel like we have started rather abruptly in the middle. I know that’s a Greek thing, but I was kind of expecting the “record needle scratch yeah that’s me, Achilles. I bet you’re wondering how I got into this mess?” And so far, 3 pages in, I am still waiting||

gusty tapir
gusty tapir
pulsar parrot
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Ok ok hear me out… a tv series of the Illiad but it’s 90% Odysseus looking into the camera like Jim from the Office

hollow sun
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HONESTLY that would work so well

pulsar parrot
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And then the same with The Odyssey, but it’s Athena looking in the camera

foggy flower
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LMFAOOOOOOO

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LMFAOOOOOOOOO

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Let's start funding this

pulsar parrot
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Zeus is played by this guy

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What We Do in the Shadows

clear sundial
gusty tapir
#

Didn’t comment much the last couple days but Book 8 was ||a whole new level of emotions with the gods and goddesses—especially Zeus vs. Hera and Athena. The rage the goddesses must have felt; that even in all their power, Zeus cannot be stunted by anyone is simply infuriating. I mean, what better example of “a man’s world” than this (or the patriarchy, if you will). I do this topic is an important one to address in the work, however, I’m not sure how to talk about it in a public server because of lawful limitations about politics and other sensitive issues. I shall say simply this: I think targeting individual actions is a better method than pointing to an entire system at once. Systems are powerful and have a lot of resources to stay alive—something we see in Zeus being the head of a hierarchy. The way to defeat his thinking is not by dismounting Mount Ida itself but rather by changing the perspectives of the individuals who make up the hierarchy either by persuasion or lawful change (including legal action, new laws, new appointments, etc.). We’ve seen from history that “War on X” whether X be Terror, Drugs, etc. doesn’t work and wastes resources and decades of potential progress. Zeus acts awfully here and his wife and daughter attempting to subvert authority isn’t correct either. But how does one change the perspective of a god as powerful as Zeus? Hopefully The Iliad will reveal an answer.||

gusty tapir
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Omgosh. I did an accidental edit when merging messages. Fortunately, I posted it in my private server and had a logging bot that was tracking edits. I can’t post on Book 9 until I get to a computer though. Still though, I was pretty sad to think I almost lost a huge post over three messages omg

clear sundial
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Book 4 || Taunting among the Gods broke out in bloody violence in the mortals. Gory and Glory! I'm struck by some of the violence depicted: bowels spilling out, spears going straight through bodies. Quite the reality check. The metaphor of a fallen soldier as an axed poplar tree filled me with sorrow.||

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Also my book’s notes mentioned Homer “made up” a lot of the mythologies. I thought that was pretty badass lolol

glass abyss
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  1. i've read books from virgil, dante and homer but it was a long time ago. i'm a huge classic roman/greek mythology and history fan so i'm excited to reread this as an adult.

  2. yes. hero.

  3. i think it's up to the reader to decide what it creates. i personally don't mind reading the topic of war in literature, it's a genre i enjoy.

tame cliff
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Dropping out of this BR, I decided to read The Shining animeBlushOhMy

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It's more up my alley than The Iliad because I'm a horror fan.

glass abyss
#

i started book one today and ||i keep reading jove as love 🤡|| i've read this book a long time ago but i genuinely cannot remember much (wrong book lol), however, ||i have a friend named briseis so it's cool to see that.|| i'm hoping to get to book 3/4 this weekend. enjoying it so far.

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||i also kind of feel like i'm interrupting something??? lmao||

#

||omg agamemnon is testing my patience!||

hollow sun
gusty tapir
# glass abyss ||i also kind of feel like i'm interrupting something??? lmao||

I read that as ||coming into the narrative years into the journey because Troy is the last stop for these Argives. The way we're dropped into the story made me feel like war is ubiquitous and constant. That there is promise of fair lands, riches, and romantic partners but this is the reality because no matter how much they want times of peace and festivity, there's always something driving them to arms.|| I don't know if that's accurate or what not. But I don't really see the purpose of the drop in without there being some purpose. Is this story supposed to be History or fiction?

glass abyss
glass abyss
hollow sun
gusty tapir
#

How y’all going on this?

clear sundial
#

I’m a bit behind and hoping to catch up on some books today!! Where are you at in the book?

gusty tapir
#

I finished book 12 yesterday. I may take day/book 13 off (today) just to enjoy some other stuff. But maybe not. I have my nephew from school, today, so it’s a lot harder to read something like Homer when he’s around.

clear sundial
#

Totally!! I get distracted easily and definitely need some quietness for Homer

hollow sun
#

I'm trying the book-a-day thing but it's hard cause I only have time at work and it can get busy 😅

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Book 4
||Something that is striking me now that hasn't before is how intentional everything is. Even the wind means that Zeus is active and expressing. Even though the offspring of the gods can meet tragic fates there are very few surprises or factors that aren't in some way planned. In that way it's almost like this isn't real war even for the humans. War is chaos, this is controlled. I wonder how much the citizens of the ancient world felt that, if they did||

clear sundial
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Book 5 ||The line between gods and mortals blurred further - Diomedes managed to physically wound and inflict so much pain to two gods that they both went up to Olympus crying to mommy and daddy. Regardless, Homer reminds us the vast difference between those above and those below:
On Diomedes
as a man at a loss, helpless, crossing a vast plain / halts short at a river rapids surging out to sea, / takes one look at the water roaring up in foam / and springs back with a leap. So he recoiled (5.686-9; Greek: 5.598)
On Ares
Quickly as fig-juice, pressed into bubbly, creamy milk, / curdles it firm for the man who churns it round, / so quickly he healed the violent rushing Ares. (end of book 5)||

vital rover
glass abyss
clear sundial
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Book 6 ||The death toll climbed steadily. Darkness descended between the eyes (Homer's favorite way of describing death) of many heroes, who all left their families and riches behind to fight this brutal war. Was it all worth it? Homer gave us some heartwarming scenes of friendship, family, and continuation of mortal life through generations in this book - Glaucus and Diomedes trading armors like soccer players exchanging jerseys, Hector's tender love for Andromache and his baby son, generations of lives compared to the sprouting of new leaves and turning of seasons.||

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Book 7 ||Kinda feels like a filler book here - both Trojans and Greeks get to burn their dead during a short truce.
A sad line:
the neck of Troy's in the noose - her doom is sealed (7.465)||

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Book 8 ||Ok Zeus has joined the group chat and the Trojans raged on under his favoritism.
I particularly liked these lines on the death of one of Priam's son Gorgythion:
As a garden poppy, burst into red bloom, bends, / drooping its head to one side, weighted down / by its full seeds and a sudden spring shower, / So Gorgythion's head fell limp over one shoulder, / weighed down by his helmet. (8.349-53; Greek: 8.292-322)||

clear sundial
gusty tapir
clear sundial
pulsar parrot
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Book 2 ||They also called Agamemnon breaker of horses faceAngryCry I like “tamer of horses” better||

pulsar parrot
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Book 2 ||ngl that was a struggle to get through all those names||

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Book 3 ||”Accursed Paris, outstanding only in beauty, woman crazed, seducer— would that you were never born and died unwed” (39-40) Damn Hector, drag his ass blobPeek Also did anyone else’s book identify Paris as Alexandros at first? That was confusing||

pulsar parrot
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Men really are obsessed with other men’s heights

gusty tapir
#

My thought on that would be that it’s pretty important in battle. Longer reach. Applies to sports too.

hollow sun
pulsar parrot
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Yeah I just thought it was weird that the story had one name and then Hector called him a different one. Maybe it was more a family name

gusty tapir
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I think in my book the first mention in the book did a Name1/Name2 but then stopped after that. It surprised me too because I don’t remember that at all

pulsar parrot
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The name vomiting from Book 2 didn’t help either. I was like who’s that but then just assumed it was someone in that big old fat list and I just forgot. Then I was like oh shit I remember him

hollow sun
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I think Book 2's ||catalogue of ships|| was just a way for the orators to vamp a little before getting into the story xD

pulsar parrot
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Ooo they were gassing it up. Ok makes sense

gusty tapir
pulsar parrot
#

Same translation

hollow sun
#

I thought of it as ||breaking them in||

gusty tapir
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Yeah that was my initial thought too. I’m just looking at it from a different viewpoint. I find it a little strange that there’s so many with that title if it’s that way. Seems to me like a strange title.

honest wraith
#

Hey guys! I've never read any Greek translations other than some philosophy which was accompanied by discussion. I'm wondering if anyone had any tips for a first time Homer reader? I really wanna give The Iliad a try, but if anyone has any tips on how to read it, I'd really appreciate it!

hollow sun
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Also just understanding reading Homer can be really hard. Don't be afraid to read summaries and then the passages

pulsar parrot
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Does anyone else have a thing where you’re reading a long passage and you come across end quotes and you’re like, wait someone was talking? 😂

gusty tapir
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xD

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I can't say definitively if this is the case, however, there have been times when I'm like... shit is that dude Greek or Trojan? Especially when a name is like:

Aploothe vs. Aplothë or whatnot.

I'm reading this on my phone and turning it sidewise actually helps me with paragraph breakup because of the formatting. It's very hard in portrait mode to read though.

hollow sun
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Book 6:
||Helen: Rambles about how she wishes she was never born and how she's incredibly depressed and hates herself for all this
Hector and Paris: ||

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||"...anyway..."||

pulsar parrot
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Book 5: ||The number of people telling Aphrodite to stay in her lane is priceless||

pulsar parrot
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Book 6: ||Glaukos and Diomedes are such bros I love it and hope they don’t eventually kill each other omg ||

gusty tapir
honest wraith
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Thanks guys!!

pulsar parrot
sharp flameBOT
#

Book 6 was really
a masterclass in how not
to talk to women

- Tink
hollow sun
pulsar parrot
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I also love how ||Hector was like, “yeah it’s gonna suck for you but back to work”, and Andromache was like, fuck that, ladies let’s have a crying party. Good for her||

pulsar parrot
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In fact, was it the author who wrote Ariadne who did one about the women of Troy?

gusty tapir
#

No, that’s Pat Barker if we’re thinking of the same book. The Silence of the Girls and The Women of Troy (series name is also women of Troy)

pulsar parrot
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I was thinking of Elektra by Jennifer Saint. Cassandra’s also a character in it

pulsar parrot
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Half this book is just like:

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That gif is really making me laugh. I don’t think hurling his hat was the tough-guy move Marty thought it was

glass abyss
pulsar parrot
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That’s so fun! I love to binge these every once in a while

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Book 8 ||”So he spoke, nor did the Gerenian horseman Nestor disobey” (111) that’s not where we get the base word for geriatric from is it? Probably not, but thats a crazy coincidence if not||

glass abyss
#

my partner, too. they're his favourite movies so every once in a while we make some time to watch them lol. i really love BTTF, and reading a classic like iliad prior to it is awesome too.

pulsar parrot
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It just shows how universal some themes are, I love it

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I totally want to do a comedy sketch with people from The Iliad and what their names became synonymous with. Achilles is all excited like, “my prowess in battle right? Def not my ||ankle|| right? Guys? Seriously?!?”

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Odysseus ||(right after the Iliad about to sail home) “my schemes and plots right? What do you mean, a long journey, how long?”||

hollow sun
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So halfway yeah! I love etymology I had to find out xD

pulsar parrot
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Right but where did the geras come from?

hollow sun
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Apparently Geras was the God of Old Age

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I bet the word came from him and then Gerenian may have been a title derived from the word...that's usually how it goes 🤔

pulsar parrot
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I like the idea that someone heard the Illiad and old Nestor and was like her was from Gerenia: geri = old

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I just found an endnote that says “apparently Grenia was a place associated with Nestor” which is supremely helpful

honest wraith
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I read the Song of Achilles a while back and so it's honestly helping me settle into the writing style of the Iliad having some vague understanding of the story. I'm reading the Chapman translation, and i sometimes get into the rhyme but other times it trips me up and i lose it as the sentence continues across the line. I'm very much not a poetry reader so I'm not used to this kind of thing. But I'm having good fun with it, and when i get into the flow, it's great!

pulsar parrot
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Book 9 ||Achilles is so petty and I’m here for it. And then some guy gives a TED talk about Persephone. Maybe I’m too sleepy to be reading, but what the heck was that?||

gusty tapir
#

Which TED talk are you referring to?

pulsar parrot
#

A fictional one in Book 9

gusty tapir
#

no no like I don't get what you mean. I see one line around 9.570. Is the one you mean?

pulsar parrot
#

That whole thing wasn’t about ||Persephone? Idk I guess I blacked out||

#

Idk what it was about, ||it was like the entire oral history of Greek mythology for pages, it was weird as fuck||

gusty tapir
#

This whole thing is weird asf. There's a whole theory by one of the translators that Homer was a girl. Have y'all seen that? https://www.bustle.com/p/was-the-odyssey-written-by-a-woman-its-not-as-far-fetched-as-you-may-think-15898917

Bustle
Was 'The Odyssey' Written By A Woman? It's Not As Far-Fetched As Yo...

If there's one thing we know about the Victorians, it's that they loved to be scandalized. The dominant moral values of British society during the 19th century were fairly vanilla, you see. Hetero-normative gender norms were rigidly enforced.…

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Although this is for The Odyssey and not The Iliad, which is interesting

pulsar parrot
#

I have seen that before

gusty tapir
#

Books 16 and 17

There is sooooooo much ||grief over the body of Patroclus. Like holy fuck. Firstly, him going to war in someone else's gear is kinda silly considering everyone knows it's not Achilles (including the Trojans). I mean... I guess it's legendary armor and all, but like... doesn't Patroclus have great stuff too? Isn't he a favored son of Zeus like Achilles or Sarpedon or the pretty much 90% of our heroes? If Achilles likes this dude so much, then I feel like there would be some rich friend benefits.

Okay so then Patroclus dies because he didn't listen to Achilles lol. Albeit, the death of Sarpedon is a pretty big deal due to Lycian/Trojan politics. Especially when our bro dude, Glaukos (Lycian) rebukes Hector for constantly retreating and letting the Lycians do battle for the Trojans. He says that the Lycians won't do this any longer if Hector doesn't step up and fight more (points to Sarpedon as evidence).||

(17.142-3) ||"Hector, best in beauty, so it turns out you fall far short in battle; / rumor has you excellent for this--for being a runner."||
||Glaukos wants a trade: Sarpedon for Patroclus, otherwise, the Lycians will most likely go home. Hence all the fighting for the corpse, which is basically all of Book 17. This zinger from Glaukos though is amazing as I had the impression that Hector was a great warrior to all, but the more I think abou tit, the more I realize that Hector does flee quite a bit. When is he going to destroy one of the biggies from the Greeks like Melelaos, Ajax, Meriones, Idomenus, Diomedes, Antilochos, etc.? Hector is good at scaring the Greeks but he's really only taken out lesser men individually and tends to run wherever Ajax turns up.||
My favorite line:
(17.372) ||So they fought in the likeness of fire;||
||Fire cannot distinguish between itself and it only grows more intense until there is nothing else to destroy. Notice that Odysseus is not in the fray. He adds some depth to the story with his intelligence.||

pulsar parrot
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What are y’all’s favorite death euphemisms? I think mine is unstrung limbs, but sinking down to Hades is pretty good too

pulsar parrot
#

Book 11 ||Patroclus: who was injured? Nestor: five pages of ranting||

pulsar parrot
#

Book 12 ||Ok so if I have this right, the Greek soldiers built a wall around the beach, to protect their ships, and it has a gate, and the Trojans broke down the wall||

pulsar parrot
#

Book 13 ||If there’s apparently one thing we can all agree on, it’s that Paris is the worst, lmao. Hector is just constantly giving him shit and calling him pretty||

gusty tapir
pulsar parrot
#

Yeah, but then again, they did have 10 years to build it lol

pulsar parrot
#

This song came up while I was reading, and the words are weirdly applicable to the Iliad. Like if the Iliad where a middle-grade coming-of-age Wes Anderson movie instead of a ||bloody 10 year struggle over an abducted woman that ended in the sack of an entire city||

pulsar parrot
gusty tapir
pulsar parrot
#

Book 14 ||sexy bass line||

pulsar parrot
#

This was only a small portion of it too

IMG_0253.jpg
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Book 14 ||Omg Zeus really is wild. “Hera let’s go bone cause you really are more desirable than all of my girlfriends, let me list them”. Dude really knows how to set the mood. I double-down on my casting choice of Matt Berry for Zeus||

hollow sun
gusty tapir
pulsar parrot
#

Book 15 ||I do not get why they are having so much trouble lighting boats on fire. My dudes clearly have not invented Molotov cocktails or the concept of a burning arrow yet||

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Ch 15 ||Also this foreshadowing. I mean I guess it’s not technically foreshadowing since Zeus has already said exactly what’s going to happen to Hector, but damn. That line about how Hector was short-lived, and already Pallas Athena was stirring against him/his fated day of death”. Shivers||

gusty tapir
# pulsar parrot Book 15 ||I do not get why they are having so much trouble lighting boats on fir...

I would think ||it's harder to do that than my own surface ideas of how that would go about. There's probably some folk who are splashing the boats with water and stuff. Molotov cocktails though... 1930's during the Spanish wars. Surely there's something like it though? Granted, Homer did write this in -750 CE. Like surely there's the invention of torches and how to keep fire on a stick longer than the length of burning a stick.|| massively failing here lol

pulsar parrot
hollow sun
pulsar parrot
#

Yesss just yeet that shit

gusty tapir
#

I think that (Book 15) ||espionage would have been needed. Like someone sneaking into the camp and lighting flames to boats on one flank then planning a larger burning on the other side. Imagine 50 people to a boat x 1000 boats. That's a lot of individuals standing in front of the boats. Getting close enough to throw a spear let alone a torch would be near impossible. Especially since there was "the wall". Arrows would be the best bet, however, the invention of the fire arrow didn't come about until 9th/10th century in China. So nearly 2000 years beyond the time of Homer lol. Idk... it would be really hard without sneaking into the camp or literally killing everyone in front of the boats themselves. Granted... I think there's a passaged about Ajax standing on his boat and killing 12 people (looked and it's the end of Book 15), soooo idk how far the Trojans/Lycians/Dardanians were from the boats themselves because conceptually it seems impossible for them to be literally touching the boats themselves... and yet...||

pulsar parrot
#

Yeah it’s probably more complicated than I’m making it out to be, it just seems like it can’t be that hard

gusty tapir
#

tbh, they are probably just praying to the wrong gods. (Book 18) ||Need to be praying to Hephaestus who seems to just control fire like little minions. Dude rarely gets praise, so he might be eager. He could probably toss fire like Pikmin.||

gusty tapir
#

Book 19 was short, today! Kinda feels like cheating when the chapter is so short, but I think it had one of the more powerful quotes of the book:

(19.85-9) ||Many times did the Achaens speak this charge against me (taking Briseis from Achilles), / and kept faulting me; but it is not I who am to blame, / but Zeus and Fate and the Fury who walks in darkness, / they who in the assembly cast savage Delusion in my mind / on that day when, on my own authority, I took away Achilles' prize.||
I mean really... what a rat bastard to be ||blaming women for his own faults.||

pulsar parrot
#

Book 16 ||This sudden 2nd person when Patroclus is attacking the Trojans “so rider Patroclus, straight for the Lycians you rushed, and for the Trojans, your heart enraged over your companion.” It’s happened a few times, but idk why it is particularly moving here||

gusty tapir
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^^ I was really thrown by this. I think we get this narrative style when the story hyper focuses on ||the tragedy of Achilles. It's a call back to Book 1 when our narrator asks the Muses to tell us the story of Achilles.||

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Thrown is probably not the correct word. More... "caught up in the emotions of"

pulsar parrot
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Yeah it’s a really interesting stylistic choice ||Most of the other examples of this were like addressing the Muses or the gods directly, but hardly ever by “you”. Idk it was just very attention grabbing. And then it goes right back to “he” again||

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Book 16 ||This feels so childish when Aeneas is like, “fuck you, Meriones, I would have killed you if you hadn’t dodged my spear!” (my synopsis of course, the real line is 617-618) Like how petty. Also the fact that Ares made him miss is just hilarious and makes me think of two guys just swinging and missing because unseen gifs are standing behind them and making the other guy miss. I wonder if this line was ever played comedically when it was performed orally back in the day||

gusty tapir
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I agree. I think (book 16) ||Patroclus says as much just after that with lines 16.626-31. The last lines being:||

16.631 ||therefore there is no need to pile up words, but do battle."||

pulsar parrot
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I just remembered in the movie they (Book 14 or 15 ish and 2004 movie discussion) ||lit those like balls of … I don’t even know what they were. They almost looked like giant tumbleweeds, and they lit them on fire and rolled them down the beach to the ships and tents and stuff while the Greeks were sleeping. You know, I bet a wall and a big ditch would have kept them from doing that lol||

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I have so many movie thoughts too, I’m going to try to hold them and dump them all after I’m done reading

pulsar parrot
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Book 18 ||Awww Hephaestus doesn’t seem to get a lot of visitors||

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||All that was on the armor?!?||

pulsar parrot
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Book 20: is this a typo on line 17 ||”Are you are concerned for the Trojans and Achaeans?”||

pulsar parrot
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These last few books are flying by

gusty tapir
hollow sun
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Yeah your pace is inspiring I gotta up my game 😅

gusty tapir
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I’m still just doing my one book a day. Book 20 for me tomorrow

gusty tapir
hollow sun
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I think book 9? I had to leave work early today and I left my book. Looks like I'm doing two a day from now on 😅 serves me right for trying to read three books at once

pulsar parrot
hollow sun
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Oh for sure, i think having read it before has made it both slower and faster plus I work too much xP

pulsar parrot
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I finished! But it’s late for me, so final thoughts tomorrow

pulsar parrot
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Ok so final thoughts ||the funeral games thing was kind of weird and a bit of a pace killer. I ended up skipping most of it. It’s wild that they had to wrestle cause it’s what Patroclus would have wanted. But other than that I liked the ending. I was a little surprised by where it started and ended. Like I kept waiting for them to roll out a horse lol. It was also focused much more on the gifs than I expected.

The thing I remembered most from reading the Odyssey was how repetitive it was, but I actually kind of liked it. It got to the point where they would say Apollo and I’d be like “he who strikes from afar” like some kind of catechism. But it varied up enough that it didn’t get boring.

I was also surprised by how violent and yet not over the top gory the battle scenes were. I mean, they def got a little explicit, and I was kind of impressed by how creative some of the deaths were. It also felt like you never lost sight of their humanity, he was always reminding you of where they grew up, or their wives and mothers who would miss them. It was def not pro-war, which kind of surprised me||

Overall I gave it 4 stars. I was really impressed by the writing and how compelling and interesting 2500 year old writing could be!

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Also it totally threw off my stats and I love it!

IMG_0255.png
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Also if I had made this graph in grade school, I would have been deducted points for the truly batshit number intervals on the y axis of this graph

pulsar parrot
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Ok now for the movie rant (this is the 2004 movie) ||Like omg this movie had such promise. Wolfgang Peterson, who yeah, he’s had a few flops, but he’s a good director. Then acting: Brad Pitt in 2004, at the height of his acting career. Then the number of classic actors: Peter O’freaking Toole eating up the screen as Priam, Julie Christie who looked like a freaking goddess, and Nigel Terry who will always be once and future king to me. Then we had some British/Irish powerhouses: Brian Cox, Brendan Gleason, and Sean Bean himself, ironically playing the one character in this movie who doesn’t die?!? Hilarious!

Then you have the up-and-comers: Orlando Bloom, off of the success of Lord of the Rings and the first Pirates of the Caribbean, weirdly playing a hybrid between the two characters. Eric Bana, who wasn’t big yet, but Munich came out the next year. Then Diane Kruger, Saffron Burrows, and Rose Byrne, all terribly underrated actresses. Also I just realized Garrett Hedlund played Patroclus, who I loved in On the Road and that Tron sequel they did.

Anyway, funny story, I was watching it a few years ago and then the end credits came up, and it was like, based on the Iliad by Homer, adapted by David Benioff. Yes, that David Benioff that ruined Game of Thrones. So anyway that’s why it sucked. As evidence I present this awful scene. It’s literally just the worst||

glass abyss
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i am so behind!!! i've started exams and been crazy busy with them - i plan to continue on with the books tonight

hollow sun
# pulsar parrot Ok so final thoughts ||the funeral games thing was kind of weird and a bit of a ...

Mazel on finishing the book!

||Yeah it didn't seem pro-war to me either, but mostly because Homer makes you see Hector as a person rather than a soldier--at least to me.

As for the repetition, I just remembered a lesson I was taught in elementary school about play acting, when you alliterate you need to stress the alliteration harder and harder each time. I wonder if the gore would be layered with more adjectives and violence in order for the bards to keep their crowds||

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Book 10:
||I don't know exactly why but the part where Odysseus and Diomedes go infiltrate and kill enemy soldiers while they're sleeping has such a campy vibe to it. It's funny because I wrote a paper on how letting someone surrender was considered noble, while killing them after they've resigned is beastly, but it still seems like such a fun adventure for this duo. I wonder if becoming beast like for a second is like a release for them.||

clear sundial
clear sundial
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Also came across a prose version of Iliad (penguin cloth bound classic) in the bookstore today!

clear sundial
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Each chapter has a synopsis at the beginning it’s kind of cute

clear sundial
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Book 9 ||Achilles rolls his eyes||

Book 10 ||As soon as Dolon dons that weasel cap, I know he's done for. His fit doesn't pass the vibe check, not when Odysseus has a super cool hat made with rows of boar teeth!||

Book 11 ||It's the Greek's day, apparently. Grisly war continues. Some skewering and skull busting, you know how it is. Diomedes and Odysseus makes an iconic duo.||

Book 12 ||Both sides meet at the trench and seem to come to a standstill. I kind of miss the gods bickering at each other after several books of human slaughtering at this point.
Some interesting lines on mortality and the spirit of fighting:
Ah my friend, if you and I could escape this fray
and live forever, never a trace of age, immortal,
I would never fight on the front lines again (12.374-6)||

gusty tapir
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Book 22
||rip Hector||

hollow sun
# clear sundial Book 9 ||*Achilles rolls his eyes*|| Book 10 ||As soon as Dolon dons that wease...

In regards to book 12
||It's so strange to me how much of a love-hate relationship they have with war. In ancient literature it seems to just be inevitable rather than liked or disliked. Maybe because the gods spur them to fight? But it seems like whenever they fight the inevitability--like when hector or Paris offer a single fight to end the war--it's a relief. I wonder if those agreements are like loopholes to fate||

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That was a bit of rambling, I'm very tired 😅

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OH DIP WE HALFWAY THROUGH HUH

pulsar parrot
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I totally agree though, there seems to be a lot of inevitability and fate in the Iliad

hollow sun
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Yeah! I always thought living in a world where the gods really seem to exist in society would be really freeing because nothing would be random, but now I wonder how much of life back then felt inevitable. Like, did Romulus and Remus really fight over power or did they think that the gods would be disappointed in them if they didn't take over the other

hollow sun
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@gusty tapir @uneven timber @raven birch @honest wraith @subtle kettle @glass abyss @lucid aspen @vital rover @clear sundial @ebon river @foggy flower @shrewd kayak @pulsar parrot

Okay y'all! We're around halfway through the BR and I wanted to check in to see where people are at and to encourage those who haven't started the read yet to jump on in ^-^

Here's some discussion questions:

🌕 Who do you think in ancient times could have been the target audience of Homer? Who do you think that is now?
🌗 Who do you think is the hero of the story so far? Who do you think could be the villain? Or, are either roles present in the story?
🌑 What is a song you think connects with the story or your reading of it? Post the link so other readers can give it a listen!

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(you too haikubot)

honest wraith
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  1. The way that its written in poetic format, with rhyme and dramatic speeches gives me the impression this is written for the fireside. Ireland has a really rich history of storytelling, particularly of dramatic myths (went to a storytelling event recently, it was amazing)
  2. Im too early in the story to tell, although from where I am in book 4, || Achilles is most certainly not the hero I would be proclaiming ||
  3. Hmmm not sure, I mean the first thing that comes to mind is Achilles Come Down by Gang of Youth (couple tw in that song, so be careful) https://open.spotify.com/track/22TntnVO3lQNDR5nsvxGRs?si=b72f423b8dfd4ca2
Spotify
Achilles Come Down

Gang of Youths · Song · 2017

hollow sun
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Great song 😊

foggy flower
clear sundial
# hollow sun <@1091697088254967838> <@907276216682291240> <@194873512316502016> <@75083263729...

🌕 I’m imagining Homer entertaining crowds at the pub or on the streets/country fairs (or whatever is the equivalent in the past lol). Nowadays it seems like people who like classics or mythology would read Homer eventually, though it’d be cool to see this performed in a real theater.
🌗 Hector is pretty heroic but many Greek fighters are also portrayed heroically, like Diomedes, Odysseus, Nestor. Agamemnon has villain vibes but people respect him tremendously.
🌑 ohhh that’s a neat idea. No song pops into my head as of right now and I’m excited to see what other people has posted!

glass abyss
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🌕 i would say maybe philosophers, educated scholars, and maybe specific elitist circles.

🌗 i'm not too far in, but i like achilles and don't like agamemnon. let's see what happens as i progress further.

🌑 i don't have a thought of what a good song could be while reading this. it's a great question!

honest wraith
glass abyss
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i think the translation im reading online is very dated and makes it hard to read. does anyone have another one i can read from?

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sob sob

hollow sun
gusty tapir
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Finished Book 23! Only one left to go! 🐎 📦 🏆

gusty tapir
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Might just finish up and break my rule of a book a day. I have some time this afternoon before picking up my nephew. Could be good to finish before the weekend.

gusty tapir
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Done done done done done

glass abyss
glass abyss
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a bit behind in contributions for this one! my apologies. exams have started and they've consumed my life, but i have taken notes for the books.

book 3:
||i really liked the bravery of which paris showed, despite hector criticising him for being a coward. i thought it was funny that he tried to save face and fight menelaus lol. it's almost as if he was embarrassed after being told his looks won't do much on the battlefield||

book 4:
||this is when i thought it started to get juicy. i liked reading about the god's on mount olympus and reading how they contribute to the story. i was kind of scared when zeus began to taunt hera, it reminds me of when a mom and dad begin to argue and you're kind of sitting there observing like omg||

book 5:
||when athena granted diomedes strength for the battle i knew it was going to begin. rip trojans 😭||

book 6:
||it's interesting because i'm reading this and i have friends who are named ajax and aeneas, i'm not going to go into too much detail but i though it was interesting to point out. also, when hector reached the gate of troy and told the people to pray omg and i thought it was beautiful how much hector loves his family. ||

clear sundial
glass abyss
vital rover
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Omg I gotta drop this one I think, sorry y’all omg stretched myself too thin!!

pulsar parrot
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It happens to us all

hollow sun
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Totally understand my dude!

clear sundial
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Book 13 || Poseidon has had enough and decides to back up the Greeks. War killing has become extremely gruesome - bowels spilling out, eyes skewered, and heads lolling about. Here is a taste:
lunging as Menelaus hacked Pisander between the eyes,
the bridge of the nose, and bone cracked, blood sprayed
and both eyes dropped at his feet to mix in the dust -- (13.708-10) ||

Book 14 ||Hera honey traps Zeus, with the aid of Sleep. The Greeks get some short-lived reprieve, but the "raw, yawning wound" (14.609) festers on both sides as the men clash and the gods watch on.||

Book 15 || Zeus wakes up and is not pleased to find himself tricked by Hera (he definitely deserves it though). We again witness the immense power of deathless gods, set aside the mortal struggles of men. A vivid example:
Apollo heading them, gripping the awesome storm-shield
and he tore that Argive rampart down with the same ease
some boy at the seashore knocks sand castles down --
he no sooner builds his playthings up, child's play,
than he wrecks them all with hands and kicking feet,
just for the sport of it. (15.424-9) ||

hollow sun
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Ngl I'm having trouble reading the last bit 😅 I love epics but they can be exhausting

clear sundial
gusty tapir
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Yeah I can’t do that either. Book a day for me was a great pace. I’ll repeat when I read The Odyssey and The Aeneid. In retrospect, a book every other day would have been better. Giving that day of rest between would have been nice on some days. But that could have been because I was reading The Lord of the Rings simultaneously as a daily. Sometimes it felt like a lot of epicness xD.

glass abyss
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i feel so behind in the iliad. i'm so sorry i didn't contribute more to this discussion! i've made a few notes on my phone about some of the books i've read that left an impression. i'll post them when i finish this one

glass abyss
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Book 9:
||There was a bit in the translation I’m reading that left an impression on me and it was when Phoenix spoke and it was after the illustration of Proserpine. I think the story is quite sad, quite dramatic.||

Book 11:
||I was kind of reading this book not expecting much then Zeus just kind of got up and decided to ⛈️ “the forest shakes; earth trembled as he trod,” and idk about anyone else but the visuals and words they used in this book were absolutely superb. Great stuff. It also would’ve been terrifying. I also love the illustration of Neptune rising from the sea in this book.||

I'm going to be quite honest and say this book is pretty hard for me to read. I enjoy classics and seeing how much literature changes depending on the translation you read, but also the environment of which you begin to read them in. However, I do think that I will read it again and I will probably hunt for another translation or a students/study based one.

hollow sun
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I need to post some impressions too I think I'm on Book 15. I'm gonna try and marathon a bit of it today. I will say, it's super rewarding reading it the second time and being able to understand what's happening unlike the first run-around xD

glass abyss
hollow sun
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I could think of some reasons xD but hey the end of the book is my favorite part so I hope you enjoy it!

gusty tapir
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Is it really?

hollow sun
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Book 15:
||This is one of the chapters that makes me think the Iliad is the best war story. The pacing is quick and erratic and the violence is detailed but not derailing. Honestly, violence usually doesn't translate into writing for me because it lacks umph but the Iliad seems to perfect it||

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Ye! ||It's doesn't drone on for me like the other chapters concerning the battles||

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Sorry I can't reply on mobile it bugs out

gusty tapir
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no worries. I don't know if I could pinpoint a favorite Book but I do like Book 14 with ||Hera's plan for deception.|| Pretty much any time we get more gods, my interest piques.

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I do love in Book 15 that ||Poseidon gives us that little bit of knowledge that he thinks Zeus, Hades, and he are equals and not subjugated under Zeus almighty.||

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(15.186-189) ||(Poseidon) "Oh for shame! Great though he is, what he says is insolent, / if he will hold me down, his equal in honor, against my will by force! / For we are three brothers whom Rhea bore to Cronus, / Zeus and I, and third is Hades who rules the dead. / And everything was divided into three parts, and we each had a share of honor;"||

hollow sun
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Oh for sure the gods are super entertaining, but there's only so much that they can meddle in this one, and it's surrounded by ||long battle scenes||

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Yeah I wish there was a moment to hear ||hades weigh in. Seeing as he can either be self loathing or self righteous||

gusty tapir
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Before this read along I don't think I could have said which story I liked best. Tbh, I think I prefer Homer's The Odyssey best and then Virgil's The Aeneid. I did enjoy myself with this and it's great to be reading the classical works again (I want to read Ovid casually xD)

gusty tapir
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There was one scene I believe

hollow sun
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Oh I must have forgotten it!

hollow sun
gusty tapir
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There's like a single verse or perhaps two where (full Iliad) ||there's a description of Hades (the place) and showing briefly all the ghoulish things down deep. Although, the more I think about it, I'm not sure it was Hades who initiated that as much as Poseidon breaking the earth to reveal what's down below.|| I may need to find that verse.

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Ah yeah, it starts at 20.61 and goes throughish 20.66

hollow sun
gusty tapir
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Oh I thought you meant specifically Book 24. I like a lot of the books tbh. It's kinda weird, I don't exactly love reading this but then I look back at the text now and I'm interested in it. Kinda odd.

hollow sun
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Haha yep! It's a definitely a classic to look back on and discuss

clear sundial
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Book 16 ||The way Homer addresses Patroclus as "you" makes it intimate and his death (already foreshadowed multiple times) more tragic. It seems like Patroclus is the first casualty directly caused by a god (Apollo), though Hector makes the fatal blow.||

Book 17 ||Patroclus' corpse is now the center of contentions, even immortal horses weep warm tears for the poor soul. Zeus is so capricious, turning the battle tides back and forth, while men suffer at the whims of the father god. It seems futile that men still fight despite god's wills, but Diomedes in Book 5 showed that human will should not be overlooked.||

hollow sun
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Looks like we're reading around the same area right now xD

Book 16: ||I love this part so much. There's plenty I find really interesting: Zeus's refusal to accommodate both of Achilles' prayers, Sarpedon's very long last words which almost signify that while he could cling onto life, there's an inherit understanding when one's fate is death in this world, and the pacing of the writing. It feels as though this is a last-ditch effort to shift the tides and the writing is quick and intense to pair it. This particular scene I think is written and translated so intelligently. I can almost hear the words:

"But Sarpedon hurled next with a flashing lance / and missed his man but he hit the horse Bold Dancer, / stabbing his right shoulder and down the stallion went, / screaming his life out, shrieking down in the dust / as his life breath winged away. And the paired horses / reared apart--a raspy creak of the yoke, the reins flying, / fouled as the trace horse thrashed the dust in death-throes," (16. 553-559).||

hollow sun
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Book 18:
||This is my second favorite book because of the famous shield and the reveal of Achilles' fate. It was hinted at for a while, but Achilles and Thetis now fully know that he will die in the war because he's determined to fight and kill Hector. And while I think it's so interesting that Achilles knows he'll die and still volunteers to commit himself to this fate, what excites me more is that the shield that Hephaestus makes for him shows what his fate could've been if he decided to go home.

It's a picture of weddings, battles, kinghood, farms and dances. It also shows classic Greek struggles like that of lost cattle, thievery, and death, but it's still life. Achilles will have to use the shield to block hits in order to fall Hector. Essentially, the shield will be attacked at the same time he destroys his chance at the life it shows for him. The thing is the shield doesn't have the most important picture: Hector being a king too, which was supposed to be his other fate as well. I absolutely adore the shield it drives me nuts xD||

hollow sun
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Finished! ^-^

gusty tapir
# hollow sun Finished! ^-^

Hype hype hype. Also, really liked your stuff on the ||shield||. Kinda changed my mind about that Book because I found it boring at first.

hollow sun
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Also it's interesting because in the Odyssey ||Achilles tells Odysseus he regrets it. He would have rather let Patroclus die unavenged and be a king||

gusty tapir
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Yeah because the verse is like ||one million words for the shield and oh yeah, he had on a helmet and chest plate.||

gusty tapir
clear sundial
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Book 18 ||I petition to have Achilles' shield on display at an art museum instead of used in battle (what a waste).||

Book 19 ||Agamemnon blames his rage on the gods, ok bro. At least Achilles acknowledges his bad temper.
There is a tender moment at the end when Hera speaks through one of Achilles' horses (btw they all have very cool names) to prophesize Achilles' downfall. Fate seems insurmountable, yet the most courageous mortals try to forge on regardless.||

Book 20 ||It's not everyday that the Father, Zeus, claims "I fear he'll raze the walls against the will of fate." (20.36) Achilles' overwhelming rage to avenge his good friend Patroclus thunders even the hearts of gods, who all come to pitch in the battle. There's an endearing parallel between Achilles' four attempts to charge at Hector, and Patroclus' four attempts to charge at the Trojan walls (Book 16).
Even though Achilles enters the battle late, his killings are extremely gory (bone marrow foaming from the spinal cord etc).||

hollow sun
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Hey y'all! capooYay

We're about done with this BR, and I don't know how many of you agree, but I thoroughly enjoyed the read and I hope some of you did as well. ghostDidGoodJob

I'm not sure if I should give a final question/ping here but to those who want to answer it, I have two discussion questions:

kermitTellMeMore What did you think of the read?

kermitTellMeMore Do you still/now think Achilles is a hero?

Thank you guys for participating. It's a tough read, but a rewarding one!

lucid aspen
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Thanks for hosting Wrathy! blobHeart
I’ve had a busy couple weeks and couldn’t make the time to start this but I’m really glad this BR made it because now I can just check this forum post whenever I do end up reading the book pepeDreamy

gusty tapir
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Thanks for hosting!

I'll answer in a while. There's so much to the hero question.

clear sundial
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I’ll answer this when I finish the book :))) I’m planning on wrapping it up by end of this week. Excited to read other people’s thoughts!

clear sundial
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Book 21||
If I had to summarize this book, it would be: a showdown between Xanthus the river and Hephaestus the God of Fire, at the bequest of Hera on behalf of Achilles, whom Xanthus all of a sudden decides to attack but then regrets. Yes, chaos.||

Book 22||
Alas, one cannot escape destiny or fate, even when Zeus pities Hector, his scale is still tipped to Hector's downfall.||

Book 23||
After building a magnificent funeral pyre for his dear friend Patroclus, Achilles corralled the Greeks into some exciting sporting events. I really think Homer would be a great sports commentator!||

Book 24||
We have, at last, come to the end. Pity the old man Priam, king of Troy, who has to beg Achilles for the body of Hector and 12 days for a proper burial - fatherly sorrows, the grief of a parent losing a son too soon:
I have endured what no one on earth has ever done
I put to my lips the hands of the man who killed my son. (24.590-1)
In his final touches, Homer again reminds us of the mortality of men:
So the immortals spun our lives that we, we wretched men
live on to bear such torments - the gods live free of sorrows. (24.613-4)
Yet, throughout The Iliad, gods, despite being impervious to physical suffering, display many "human" emotions, like Hera/Athena's jealousy (even more petty than Achilles' rage tbh), Thetis' tender love for his son, Zeus' rage. The line between men and the gods thus blurs.||

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Overall
||I went into this book blind, meaning I had no idea it'd be about war, violence, gods and men. Despite these being topics I'm not naturally drawn towards, I immensely enjoyed this classic.
Fagles' translation was easy to follow and captured the gory and suffering I imagine Homer had intended. I most enjoyed Homer's use of metaphors: comparing warriors to wild beasts like lions and eagles, death of fighters to stately trees being axed down, clash of battle lines to the brutality of nature like wind vortexes or waves crashing against the cliff, and (perhaps my favorite) scenes of battle to scenes of everyday life - as if showing us violence and serenity are intertwined, and both exist in the human heart.||

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Oh yeah, has anyone read Song of Achilles (Madeline Miller)? I've read her Circe and I'm curious about Song of Achilles now that The Illiad has given a quite extensive portrayal of Achilles

sonic radish
clear sundial
sonic radish
clear sundial
sonic radish
turbid lodge
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From <t:1738108800:D> to <t:1741996800:D> | Leader(s): @foggy flower

Book Link

ID: 6795d2298cd1ac8fdce82aa3
Announcement: #buddy-reads message

1371.png
turbid lodge
foggy flower
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DAMN

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THAT WAS FAST

exotic aspenBOT
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@foggy flower,@obsidian summit,@dawn tulip,@lucid aspen,@grizzled geyser,@eager pumice,@clear sundial,@uncut timber,@thorn hornet,@proven prairie,@drifting dune,@turbid lodge,@native sinew,@pulsar parrot,@flat ocean,@wispy nebula,@spring abyss,@winter spade,@glass abyss,@south silo

foggy flower
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Hello friends 🫶 welcome to the buddy read for The Iliad!
I'm so excited to read this with you!!

I've tried to join BRs for The Iliad, like..... maybe 3x already kekcry and I dropped out of all of them LOLLLL so hopefully I won't drop out this time

This BR starts in a few hours, but I know some of you will be starting in Febuary!

To start us off, let's go over some optional discussion questions!

🗡️ What's your reading plan going to look like? Will you be tackling one book/chapter per day, or are you planning to blitz through it in big chunks over a few days?
  - The Iliad has ~700 pages, and this BR is (currently) 45 days long, so you could be doing 15-16 pages a day!
  - Or, there are 24 books/chapters, so you could do half a chapter a day!

🛡️ What does your background in Greek Mythology look like? Did you study it in school? Have you read other texts of Homer's? Have you read Greek Myth retellings? Do you already know about the Trojan War?

⚔️ What draws you in to this BR catsus

🏹 How do you like to approach texts from very different times and cultures? Do you have any strategies or tips to share?

🔪 Are you scared?

Godspeed, readers! See y'all in a few weeks 🫡

foggy flower
turbid lodge
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🗡️ I'm a mood reader so i guess probably when I really have to start I'll start kekcry but this is on my #1322543858944577657 and im sure i can't read the entirety of the Cosmere this year anyway so lets goooooo

🛡️ I'm an absolute noob, i read 30% of circe and i know the basic stuff from like the Hades game or Hercules movie, that's it.

⚔️ I got my hands ont he Emily Wilson translation and want to read as much classics as I can for #1322543858944577657

🏹 I like to make notes in my notion pages when I have lore or stuff I like from fantasy books and while I don't particularly do the same for historical fiction I do like to do that from time to time. Things that are like important context to remember

🔪 uhh.......... should i? AwkwardMonkey Flooshed modCheck

dawn tulip
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🛡️ I have read a few Greek Myths in school and BR Odyssey with OBC. I also have read Circe the retelling. Yes

⚔️ One is, I'm reading Plato's Republic and he cited Iliad more than one time, so I think it's good to also read Iliad.
Another is...I have already watched the movie Troy (2004) and I really want to read the original text.

🏹 I like it. Maybe doing some background checks.

🔪 I am more worried about the thickness of it 😂

eager pumice
# foggy flower Hello friends 🫶 welcome to the buddy read for *The Iliad*! I'm so excited to re...

🗡️ i'll likely read it in chunks instead of every day. i chose emily wilson's translation, and (at a glance) her verse seems very easy to fall into and read for a while

🛡️ i studied some greek mythology back in school and performed in several greek-based plays. i've read retellings, reimaginings, and engaged with it on a more casual level (e.g., hades the video game)

⚔️ i've started and failed to read this several times, but always with an older translation. i'm hoping emily wilson's will hold my attention 😂

🏹 i try to keep an open mind. i also read footnotes where appropriate. if something strikes me as wildly out of left field, i often pause and do a bit of research to see if it was common in that time/place

🔪 never blobknife

grizzled geyser
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🗡️ i calculated the pages that i need to read per day considering that i rarely read on the weekends so i'll try to do that

🛡️ we did study some greek myhtology in school but it was very basic, like the major gods or myths. then at uni i'm sure i was supposed to read passages from the odyssey and the iliad but i don't think i did. or if i did i don't remember anything.

⚔️ when it was announced that nolan was going to direct a movie about the odyssey some people started commenting on the most recent translation because it was a little controversial. i got curious and found that she also translated the iliad, so when i saw the br i thought it was a good opportunity to read it

🏹 i find it difficult at times and tbh i don't have any tips or strategies

🔪 not really. just hoping i will actually retain something lol

uncut timber
# foggy flower Hello friends 🫶 welcome to the buddy read for *The Iliad*! I'm so excited to re...

🗡️ my copy is 407 pages because it is abridged (it's the barnes and noble iliad and odyssey edition), was still very hard to get through the last time i tried it so glad it's not the full thing aha
🛡️ i adored greek myth as a child, found a copy of some in the library in primary and have loved it ever since. i have never read the originals however, a few retellings. i only know what most know i imagine
⚔️ i want to finish this at some point aha
🏹 haven't read many tbh, oldest i've read is pride and prejudice and as much as i would like to i tend to read books mostly from aus/usa/uk writers
🔪 terrified lol

glass abyss
turbid lodge
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Starting right now because I’m curious omg also this edition feels so nice in my hands: the pages have such a unique texture to them

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foggy flower
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THAT'S SO PRETTY

grizzled geyser
foggy flower
# foggy flower Hello friends 🫶 welcome to the buddy read for *The Iliad*! I'm so excited to re...

stinky announcement by stinky leader

🗡️ i plan to read somewhere around 1 book a day!
🛡️ i've read Miller's The Song of Achilles, Galatea, and Circe, and Homer's The Odyssey. I don't know anything else kek nothing about the trojan war tbh
⚔️ me the br leader
🏹 to approach texts from other cultures and time periods, I just keep reading and assume that the things I find unnatural, are things natural in that period/culture. I search things up or ask questions if I'm overly curious. Just try to be open-minded methinks
🔪 me scared despairge

dawn tulip
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My copy of Iliad. I will start reading tonight or tomorrow 🙂

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turbid lodge
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I forgor to tell last night but, I opened the book and remembered it was poetry so I read one sentence and closed it again. kekrunkekrunkekrun
I've never read poetry before so I'm a little intimidated but looking for some tips on how to best approach this gives me confidence. So gonna do a little more research and deffo gonna need to annotate this book

dawn tulip
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I post a little info about Troy not long ago
#non-fiction message

foggy flower
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i forgot to ask which translation everyone is reading kek

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but in other news i am determined to start today 💪

clear sundial
# turbid lodge I forgor to tell last night but, I opened the book and remembered it was poetry ...

I hear ya!!! But I think epic poetry is more like an oral story, so definitely easier to understand than other poetry imo. There are also prose versions of the Iliad if that’s more helpful! Depending on the translator, some try to recapture to the meters and what not but I usually don’t pay too much attention to that kekcry I hear the new Emily Wilson’s translation is easy to approach (I haven’t read this version yet) so definitely give that a shot!

dawn tulip
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I only read a bit introduction this afternoon. Flooshed
The style of Fitzgerald's translation is blank verse

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turbid lodge
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i'll start tonight 💪

foggy flower
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Book One
||k so I remember a little bit of this from TSOA; Agamemnon taking Briseis from Achilles, though I don't remember Chryseis. And also LMAO at Agamemnon and Achilles fighting kekcry ok girlies purrrr take out your earrings before fighting 💅

I forgot how the Greek Gods were written to be so......... human lol
They're not just gods to be prayed to, but also characters who do stuff||

dawn tulip
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Book One finished.
I found the 2004 movie was trying to stay true to the original text: || Akhilleus' mother is a goddess (though not obvious in the movie) ; there is dispute between Agamemnon and Akhilleus; the Argives held a priestess of Apollo captive.|| So I am excited when reading the book! To find the differences and similarities between the book and the movie.

pulsar parrot
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Omg that movie. It had such potential

dawn tulip
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iirc, the movie wasn't loved by many on this server 😓 maybe my opinions will change after finish the reading

pulsar parrot
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It’s not all bad but damn it’s not all good either

final hawkBOT
foggy flower
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I haven't watched it, I should watch it after the BR pepemegaSUCC

dawn tulip
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I hope you will like it. But I usually found movies less interesting after reading the origin texts. So, don't hold high hopes/expectations. eyesShaky

foggy flower
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Book 2 is boring Sadge

grizzled geyser
clear sundial
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Is that the book where they listed all the armies lmao?

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Like how many ships

foggy flower
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LMFAOOOOO

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Bro in The Odyssey they listed generations and generations and generations of people

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What is with Homer kekcry

clear sundial
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Maybe he’s ocd kekcry and wants to record everything

turbid lodge
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I'm still only at the introduction, but im going to skim because im getting spoiled left and right and i wanna enjoy the book, not study it

uncut timber
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Introductions in classics always seem to assume you already know the plot, they would work much better as conclusions

foggy flower
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Book 2:
||Tf is "decked in gold like a girl" wym||

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Is that really just a girl thing

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Me does not believe it tbh

pulsar parrot
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Like jewelry?

foggy flower
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Into battle?

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That makes sense then

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I was expecting gold armor

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But then why the girly jewelry into battle

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Just for aesthetics? kekcry

pulsar parrot
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Oh I misunderstood you. Who is he describing? But yeah overly showy gold armor, maybe it’s supposed to make them sound vain? Or just important, hard to tell

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Greeks might like that kind of thing but to my modern sensibilities it sounds impractical and showy

foggy flower
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It was Nastes
It's at the very end of book 2

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I googled it, I think you might be right

He was described as "flamboyant" in my translation, and Google says he's known for wearing gold into battle(s), which represents Carian wealth

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So I guess he really was gold and girly for the aesthetics, albeit... not the best for battling???

Women, now: girl lemme take my gold hoops off before fighting you

Nastes: lemme put my gold hoops in so I can fight you

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Originally what I was first thinking, is that Nastes was wearing gold armor, which didn't seem girly to me, because wtf would a woman be doing in gold battling armor. I thought this was of the "women belong in the kitchen" times

pulsar parrot
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I do not remember Nastes but that’s a hilarious name omg

strong cave
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Hello, everyone! I just joined the server yesterday. And I received an invitation to join this Buddy Read today. It has been years since I read "The Iliad" (for my world literature classes). I'll start reading tonight, so I can keep up with everyone. 🫶

dawn tulip
foggy flower
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I think I'm going to switch translations and read Emily Wilson's translation instead

dawn tulip
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36/58 of Book Two || whoever this officer taunting Agamemnon is, I think he is going to have big troubles ||

dawn tulip
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39/58 of Book Two || I like the prophecy planted in the book and how they decipher it. I also love reading how the gods interfere mortals lives. It's so ancient and mysterious.||

dawn tulip
dawn tulip
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finished Book Three. || The contrast between Menelaos and Paris is huge in the movie, but not so much in the poem.|| So far, I hadn't find the reason why Helen followed Paris to Troy. Maybe it's mentioned in previous Books but I forgot. Hope I will find the answer in latter ones.
I am so glad Helen has her own voice in this ancient lit work! Although I don't follow her logically and emotionally. || She seems to still think of her ex-husband and obviously get angry at Paris in this Book. ||

obsidian summit
# foggy flower Hello friends 🫶 welcome to the buddy read for *The Iliad*! I'm so excited to re...

I am starting this tonight! As to the questions:

  1. I'm just gonna read this like any other book, as much as I can every day, unless it starts to weigh me down and then I might intersperse it with something else to keep up my momentum.
  2. I took a course on Greek Mythology during my undergrad and did very poorly in it tbh, it was a lot of memorizing myths and trying to keep track of genealogy trees. BUT as an adult I've developed a bit of an interest in Greek myth and I've watched several film and tv adaptations of The Iliad.
  3. I was gifted a copy of Emily Wilson's translation for Christmas and I thought that if I didn't read it as a BR, it might take me a lot longer to come around to it.
  4. As much as there is a risk of spoilers, I generally read the introductions to texts like these and try to get a sense of what those authors think is important background or contextual information.
  5. Not scared but a liiiiittle bit daunted
foggy flower
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Go Britt!!!!

obsidian summit
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Oh I forgot to mention, my copy is signed by the translator which is cool!

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obsidian summit
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okay I have read all the introductory material and the translator's note, and I feel excited to delve into the poem itself now. Wilson's passion for this poem and its deep humanity really come through in the introduction

obsidian summit
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Book 1: okay, the stage is set! The language of this translation reads really easily and rhythmically, it's very pleasant to work through. It's interesting to me that ||the relationship between Breseis and Achilles is often depicted through the lens of romance in adaptations that I've seen, maybe to help contemporary viewers understand why Achilles would be so offended that he would refuse to fight. But like Wilson explains in the intro, it's actually about his social status, which Agammemnon disrespects by taking Achilles's trophy, a woman that he had claimed after a previous battle. ||

obsidian summit
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Book 2: Still some scene setting. That is also ||a very long and detailed catalogue of all the men fighting on both sides of the battle. I'm trying to think beyond finding it a bit dry, to considering what its role might have been within its broader oral context. Is it possible that folks listening to the poem would recognize some or many of these names, would know their stories and be able to draw connections that I can't?||

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These first two chapters ("books") do a really good job of building tension. I really get the sense that both sides are anticipating this battle and it feels a bit like the text is holding its breath at this point. Very cool.

obsidian summit
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Book 3: ||Dammit Aphrodite, I know it wouldn't make much of a story but her intervention is so annoying, letting Paris die to Menaleus would've saved so many lives and mitigated so much suffering. ||

obsidian summit
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Book 4: ||I find the interventions of the gods so aggravating haha. Just leave them alone! Stop using people as playthings and just casually exchanging cities as though they were pennies! The way the battle is described is really interesting, there is a real ebb and flow, as one person falls, another takes its place, and we get the rhythm of the battle by following individual characters as they take their final actions. ||

obsidian summit
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Book 5: I find it interesting that ||the narrator tells a little story about every single warrior who falls. It really hammers home the theme of war and loss, of each one of these fallen warriors being an individual, having a family, coming from somewhere that they won't ever return to. ||

obsidian summit
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I think it's funny that ||both sides stop in the middle of battle to have little side chats, steal horses, or strip armor from fallen enemies. Sometimes this disrupts the pacing of the story a bit, but you kind of just have to go with it.||

obsidian summit
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Book 6: Sometimes this book ||becomes a bit silly tbh. Like when Diomedes and the other guy stop in the middle of the battle to exchange genealogies, and then armor, because they realize they're buddies? And Hector saying to his wife, "It pains me that you will be taken as a slave but luckily for me I will be dead, so oh well."||

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The|| pacing is very weird, with main characters just wandering on and off the battlefield to have conversations||

obsidian summit
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Book 7: ||These 1v.1 duels are so anticlimactic! Just once I'd like the gods to hold off and let the duel actually come to its natural conclusion haha. The fact that the gods always intervene kind of kills the tension. I know Hector will eventually be killed by Achilles, but the author could still have let Hector kill Ajax in their duel first. ||

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The gods are ||so fickle and frustrating. They're like, "The Greeks have done this really cool and impressive thing, but they didn't first sacrifice to us, so we're pissed about it!" Sorry Greeks, you thought you had a good idea but you forgot to ask the gods so naturally you have to suffer. ||

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I am just fully beefing with the gods at this point kekCry

clear sundial
obsidian summit
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But I agree, ||petty, very much like humans and less as we think of deities today||

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Like the part where ||Athena and Apollo are just sitting in a nearby tree, like kicking their heels and giggling while the humans all slaughter each other|| kekCry

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They really don't have anything better to do? So goofy

obsidian summit
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Book 8: ||It's sometimes hard to keep track of what all the gods are up to and why, especially because they seem to swap sides or change their minds fairly regularly, but it seems like the most important thing to keep in mind is that Zeus has promised Thetis that the Greeks will experience defeat so that they realize the value of Achilles, even if Zeus occasionally feels bad for the Greeks and also promises that they won't be slaughtered. ||

foggy flower
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Book 4:
||CHIRON MENTION RAAAHHHHHH

ok so we have two Ajax's lol
not confusing at all
I did some googling on "Ajax and Ajax of the Greeks" and they are named "Ajax the Great" and "Ajax the Lesser" 😔

ODYSSEUS MENTIONED RAAAAHHHHHH
clearly i missed something because he's written to be a prick lol||

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Book 5:
the little boy in me giggled at ||"Meriones caught up and speared him through his right buttock" hehehe
BUT ALSO is there much meaning to why Homer states how each person dies and in what BODY PART?

NOOO APHRODITE
GIRL, WHY ARE YOU IN BATTLE???||

foggy flower
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I've been reading the sparknotes summary after each book, but I think I'm going to try reading the sparknotes before each book, then I'd have an easier time understanding lol

obsidian summit
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Aphrodite ||just can't help herself, she's such a meddler. I also thought it was funny that she got a little injury on her wrist and ran to Zeus to complain, meanwhile the Greeks and Trojans are killing each other by the hundreds haha||

grizzled geyser
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book 13 ||damn how many children did priam have?? i feel like every chapter there’s a new one, sometimes more||

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on a completely different note ||i like how the narrator describes the deaths as darkness taking them. maybe it’s a common metaphor but it creates a nice image||

clear sundial
obsidian summit
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Book 9: ||I aspire to be as petty as Achilles. ||

obsidian summit
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Book 10: I feel like ||Odysseus is often described as cunning and intelligent but before this chapter we didn't really get to see him do anything to deserve this moniker. But I guess it's kind of like referring to Achilles as "swift-footed" even when he's sitting in his tent for days at a time, this is just how these characters are described.||

obsidian summit
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Book 11: That was a long one. I find it interesting ||that the narrator uses so many similes between warriors and nature or warriors and wild animals, when war is the farthest thing from nature and only humans undertake it. Also, it's nice to finally see Patroclus, though I hadn't realized that the idea to wear Achilles's armor and lead the Myrmidons had come from Nestor, not from Patroculs himself. Also, Nestor with the old man rambling in the middle of battle haha, classic. ||

clear sundial
obsidian summit
obsidian summit
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Book 13: ||I swear like half of the deaths in this book are the result of battle looting haha. Stop trying to strip armour from your enemies in the middle of a war!||

obsidian summit
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Book 14: ||So many eyeballs popping out of skulls in this chapter. Also, Zeus is the worst. He's like, "Hera, I want you, even more than alllll of these other women I've slept with in the past!"||

#

I admit that ||I'm kind of flagging, this book is pretty slow and repetitive ||

wispy nebula
obsidian summit
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I forgot to update a bit but I'm picking back up.

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Book 17: ||I find it interesting that the narrator refers to Patroclus as "you" at several points in this chapter. I'm trying to think about what this does for the reading. It makes Patroclus seem more sympathetic or closer to the reader, maybe? This isn't the only place that the narrator uses "I" or "you," just one of the more notable instances of it. I'll think more about what the switch from "he" to "you" accomplishes.||

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Book 18: I do ||really appreciate the use of simile in this book. It's very evocative, it breaks up some of the more repetitive descriptions of one guy killing another guy, and it also tells us a bit about Greek life in the late Bronze Age, their relationships with nature, the way they care for their livestock, the kinds of symbols they would use to make sense of the world, and I dig that.||

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Also, ||the main fighters on the Greek side have such heavy plot armour. They keep dodging out of the way of flying spears just in time. Who knew that plot armour was made from bronze.||

obsidian summit
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Book 18: ||The shield that Hephaestus makes for Achilles sounds cool as hell.|| I wonder if there are any artist renditions of it. I will look.

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Also, I just realized that the last 200 pages of my copy are notes and an index, and that I'm way closer to the end than I thought. Let's gooooo

clear sundial
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Ya I think you are 5 books away???

obsidian summit
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So I went down a rabbit hole and read a whole bunch about the shield that Hephaestus makes for Achilles. There are several really stunning artist renditions of it. Then passage of Book 18 that describes the shield is the first instance of art being described through text in Greek myth? All very interesting

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Book 19: ||Agamemnon's speech about Delusion being responsible for his actions is really interesting. We definitely see the gods intervening, and we know that the Fates determine when each person will die, but this idea that Delusion can cloud the mind of a man and make him behave in ways he wouldn't otherwise brings to up questions of free will in this universe that are complicated to wrangle with.||

obsidian summit
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Book 21: ||I love the section where the river takes issue with Achilles filling it with corpses, so fights back.||

obsidian summit
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Done! It's pretty late so I will post comments for the last few chapters and my overall thoughts tomorrow

obsidian summit
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okayyy some missing thoughts

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Book 24: I was ||honestly a bit disappointed with this chapter. The moment when Priam comes to Achilles in the night, putting himself in danger, to plead for the return of his son's body is my favorite moment in most adaptations of this myth. It's so touching and deeply human, and the two men see their grief reflected in the other and treat each other with kindness and empathy. It's lovely. But in the book, the idea to go to Achilles doesn't even come from Priam himself, but the gods. The gods arrange for him to go, protect him, arrange for him to return, basically arrange and facilitate the whole thing. And this, for me, took away from the moment. With so much intervention from the gods, it kind of takes away from the intensity of the moment. It's not Priam deciding to seek out Achilles in a moment of desperation. Instead, he's just doing as the gods say because they want to see Hector receive funeral rites. ||

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Also, regarding the last three or four books, I've been thinking about ||how disproportionate the mourning was for Patroclus and Hector. The entire book has spent hundreds of pages listing all of the great men who died in this war, but they're all treated as secondary to these two men. I appreciate that Achilles is the main character, so his grief for Patroclus is foregrounded, but it seems like all the other Greeks mourn for Patroclus way more than they mourn for literally any other person, so that was weird. ||

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Anyway, final thoughts. I ||mostly enjoyed this. It had real pacing issues and dragged quite a bit at around the 40-50% mark but it definitely picked back up again. I've learned that I find the Greek gods really annoying. I do not like how they dictate events, intervene, take away agency from the human characters, and generally behave like dicks. They're not that compelling to me, more so a bit annoying. My favorite god interactions were between Thetis and Hephaestus, when he made the armor and shield for Achilles. All of the stuff between Zeus and his family was a bit eye-roll inducing. I don't think I'm going to give this a star rating because it's so culturally removed from my context that I'm sure there are things that I missed or fundamentally didn't understand. ||

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I will also say that my copy has extensive notes and even chapter summaries at the end, which I appreciated. I skimmed through the notes last night and I thought it was cool how much depth was available to the reader. If you wanted, you could read each chapter and then read the notes and really dig into this text. I feel pretty good about my understanding of the book, I don't feel like I really missed anything, so I'm happy to just engage at the level of having read the text for myself.

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That's my yapping done!

foggy flower
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YAYYY

obsidian summit
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I will say that I feel very accomplished for having read this haha

exotic aspenBOT
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@foggy flower,@obsidian summit,@dawn tulip,@lucid aspen,@grizzled geyser,@eager pumice,@clear sundial,@uncut timber,@thorn hornet,@proven prairie,@drifting dune,@turbid lodge,@native sinew,@pulsar parrot,@wispy nebula,@spring abyss,@winter spade,@glass abyss,@south silo,@hearty nova,@strong cave,@sharp copper,@solar osprey,@high swan

foggy flower
#

Hi friends 🫶
Just checking in on all of you! We're a little past the halfway mark (I think, idk i didn't do the math kek) How is everyone doing so far?

If you need some help with discussions, here are a few optional discussion questions
For Books 1-8

  • ||In Homer's writing and in your translator's writing, do you find that there are biases between the Achaeans and the Trojans? Do you find that the writer or translator has taken a side in the conflict?||
  • ||In your opinion, do you find that the women take an important role in the poem/story?||
  • ||Which side do you think is stronger pepemegaSUCC disregarding the actual ending of the battle (if you know of it), which side do you think is more capable of beating the other? The Archaeans or the Trojans?||

General

  • Which translation are you reading pepemegaSUCC I forgot to ask this in the beginning LOL
    I seen a lot of translations from Emily Wilson so far!

So far we have some readers, some non-readers, and ONE finisher!
Reading: manouk, kai, clock, spicy
Finished: thelastpage

foggy flower
obsidian summit
# foggy flower Hi friends 🫶 Just checking in on all of you! We're a little past the halfway m...

Oooh question prompts.

  1. I don't know if ||the narrator/writer has chosen a side but they definitely prefer individual heroes over others, based on how much screen time they get, how much plot armour they seem to have, and how they're described.||
  2. I feel like ||women are very under represented in this story. We briefly get the perspectives of Helen, Andromache, and Hector's mother (whose name is escaping me) throughout, particularly at the end, I think to drive home the point that the people who are left, who have to endure the effects of the war after it has ended, are the women who survive their men. But I would have liked to hear more from them, Helen in particular, and also more from Briseis since she's actually so central to the plot but it mostly treated as an object to be traded back and forth. ||
  3. ||Hector notwithstanding, I think the Greeks are stronger based on the sheer number of named heroes on their side haha. ||
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I mentioned this before but I read the Emily Wilson translation and would definitely recommend it. The language is very accessible.

grizzled geyser
# foggy flower Hi friends 🫶 Just checking in on all of you! We're a little past the halfway m...
  1. ||i think there’s a bias in favor of the greeks but i couldn’t explain why. just the vibe feels more in favor of them.||
  2. ||i think they have an important role in the story in the way that they can motivate some actions on the other characters but it doesn’t feel like they have any agency. like the girlfriends in movies that are only there to die so that the mc evolves||
  3. ||i feel like just having achilles on their side makes them stronger even if he’s not fighting with them ||

i’m reading emily wilson’s translation

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ch 16 ||what’s up with the narrator addressing patroclus directly?? i went to check the book’s notes but it basically just says “yup, that happens”. my only theory so far is that it serves like an ode to him but i’m not convinced||

clear sundial
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Ya it’s very interesting how Patroclus is ||the only one (iirc) who’s addressed as “you”. I think it enhances the intimacy of this character, since he’s a loyal companion to Achilles ||

obsidian summit
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I don't think ||he's the only one, but he's definitely the one who gets the most "you" treatment in the book. I noticed that too! I've been meaning to read about what the shift in pronouns does for the book but I haven't had the chance!||

eager pumice
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book 1 - ||i love how much of this conflict is born of people and/or gods being proud and offended. 😂 i know the broad strokes of this story, but am unfamiliar with all the details. really enjoying it so far! i like the descriptions like 'swift-footed achilles.' it helps to remind me who is who and what they're good at||

i'm reading emily wilson's translation. i'm currently listening to the audiobook, which has an excellent narrator and flows beautifully. it's very engaging!

eager pumice
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book 2 -

||"we bicker endlessly with all these speeches, wasting our time and finding no solution"||

||that bit just made me laugh. 🤣 which was good, bc whew what a list of names… i'm glad for the little bits of background that broke up the names, at least||

thorn hornet
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Hello @foggy flower I've jumped out of this one. I was not enjoying it at all unfortunately. Maybe another time! Happy reading everyone! pepeLove

dawn tulip
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I am pretty sure I can't finish the book in time even with extentions. But I will be slowly read through the book this year. readPenguin

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Book Four: || it read like the opening scene of the war. but they are already in war. I don't quite get it here why Athena told the Trojan archer to shoot the arrow. Isn't she supposed to call truce and bring peace to both sides|| ?

eager pumice
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book 3 - ||LMFAO i love aphorodite just snatching paris up and taking him back to his bedroom. no duels for him! only time with helen 🤣||

dawn tulip
sharp copper
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i FORGOT THIS WAS ON-

uncut timber
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i am not finishing this by the 15th of march, i have spent all month on the edge of a slump and as much as i want to read this i know it would push me over the edge

pulsar parrot
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If anyone else wants an extension, I’d be down. Somehow this didn’t make it on my master list of BRs, but I can add it to the end of March prob

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We can also check back a little later

eager pumice
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an extention would be nice!

turbid lodge
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i need an extension too Shy

foggy flower
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Sounds good! I'll extend til end of March

eager pumice
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book 4 - ||at the halfway point, i thought the only "first blood" in this was going to be the arrow that nearly but did not actually kill menelaus (thanks to more godly meddling on both sides). but wow, the war has begun in earnest!||

gentle oriole
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It is time

20250301_050627.jpg
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Chiefly reading Wilson, but going to poke through the other two when it pleases me to see how certain areas might differ

dawn tulip
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Book 5 : || So now we know which god takes which side.. I just don't like Athena anymore :/ and hate Zeus even more. Firstly he listened to Achilles's mother and seems to be on Troy's side. Now he turn against Troy. :/ Athena must be his favorite child. ||

gentle oriole
#

-# What's your reading plan going to look like? Will you be tackling one book/chapter per day, or are you planning to blitz through it in big chunks over a few days?
Binging. Violent aggressive reading in a manner that can only be described as unhinged.

-# What does your background in Greek Mythology look like? Did you study it in school? Have you read other texts of Homer's? Have you read Greek Myth retellings? Do you already know about the Trojan War?
I have no formal education regarding it, it has just been my singular obsession for years. I have read a lot of Greek myth retellings, as well as quite a few old myths. Anne Carson is my favourite translator, and I loved her Grief Lessons and H of H Playbook! As for the Trojan War, I could tell you it from memory from the golden apple to the purple tapestry.

-# What draws you in to this BR?
As a professed lover of all things ancient Greek, I think I'm a sham for not having read Homer kek I think I was intimidated because I can only ever read it for the first time once. In particular, I really love Alexander the Great as well and this was his cherished book so I always get excited like YEAH WE'RE READING THE SAME LITERATURE! Which just feels really cool to me.

-# How do you like to approach texts from very different times and cultures? Do you have any strategies or tips to share?
squirtlederp man I just sorta go for it. I am lucky and grateful that reading classics from any time period has never been particularly challenging for me but no I have no idea what my brain is doing in there that makes it so

-# Are you scared?
tee hee 🩷

obsidian summit
gentle oriole
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Yes! He's alleged to have kept a copy with him always, even sleeping with it :3 he's even believed to have strongly identified with Achilles and his companion Hephaestion was equally attributed to Patroclus yanlove

obsidian summit
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oh totally, that makes sense

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the long life of a text like The Iliad is kind of awe inspiring when you think about it like that

gentle oriole
#

Right? it's so rad

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Alexander inspired by Achilles, Julius Caeser inspired by Alexander

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even that is neat to me

clear sundial
gentle oriole
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Me: I'm not gonna fully read them in tandem because that will take too long
Also me: *is fully reading them in tandem*

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I am barely through book 1 so opinions are yet to be fully lain, but thus far Green is not my favourite. He certainly has his moments, like his Athena is neat so far, but for the most part he has a more sterile tone

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I cam see why Fagles has been the favourite for so long, he's very fluid and natural in tone. Wilson is great too and certainly more palatable to the general audience. Sort of reminds me of that line from RF Kuang's Babel where they say there are two different kinds of translation: either you bring the text to the reader (making it easier to read in the target language) or you bring the reader to the text (staying true to the original language with a more literal translation)

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Wilson is definitely the former imo

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I'm basically reading a passage from Wilson first, then Fagles, then Green

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Wilson popped off with this line for SURE ||Achilles to Agamemnon:||

||Cannibal king, you eat your people up!||
||You are a leader of nonentities!||

gentle oriole
#

Okay another interesting difference. This is Nestor talking to Agamemnon and Achilles about those he has known in his long, old life.

Book 1, line 361 from Wilson:

||"I never saw their like. I do not now."||

VS line 307 (same part tho) from Fagles:

||"I've never seen such men, I never will again . . ."||

||And Green read about the same as Fagles. Overall Wilson's Nestor feels much more heated in this scene than in both Fagles and Green. In Fagles he's almost pleading, gentle.||

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||"I do not now." seems like a slam dunk on them lmfao I was literally like dang pop off Nestor. Then read it from the other two translations and thought huh. Way less curbing on them kids||

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Fagles included this later, line 330, which the other two didn't. Once again from Nestor to Agamemnon now:

||"Atrides, end your anger—look, it's Nestor!||
||I beg you, cool your fury against Achilles."||

Which was just. a really interesting line. ||Lays out a much more intimate relationship between Agamemnon and Nestor than the other two translations, more of a familiarity.||

gentle oriole
#

MY SHAYLAAAA

Wilson, line 447:

||Achilles: "Go then, divine Partroclus, bring the girl"||

Fagles, line 398:

||Achilles: "Go, Patroclus, Prince, bring out the girl"||

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||DIVINE. PRINCE.||

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||Fr tho Fagles choosing to have Achilles refer to Patroclus, an exile, as still a prince made me gasp out loud||

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Green, get it together

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Now I gotta break out the Patrochilles playlist

gentle oriole
#

||"This said, she took herself off, and left him there, enraged at heart on account of the fine-clad woman they'd taken from him by force, against his will."||
Green, line 428-430

waow I wonder what that must be like, Achilles sad_peace

gentle oriole
#

Near the end of book 1 and ||Zeus being like. SIGH. my WIFE is gonna agro me for helping you 😩 Ill do it but scram before she sees you 🫵||

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||and then gets immediately caught anyway kek||

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||"I never get away with anything." mans really said bunPout2||

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Hephaistos <3

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Book 1 done! Now to bed

clear sundial
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I LOVE this translation side by side comparisons!! Keep them coming if you are still planning to read the book this way

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I’ll be following along fosho

gentle oriole
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Book 2, first 50 or so lines: ||In every translation they call Agamemnon a poor fool kekCry oh, to be a plaything of the gods||

gentle oriole
#

Wilson, book 2, line 339-342

||And then Odysseys, sacker of cities, straightened up and held his scepter high. Athena stood beside him, with flashing eyes.||

Dang, what a visual. If I was an artist Id be inclined to draw this sparkleeyes

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The others didn't translate it with quite the same punch of coolness

clear sundial
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ya it's interesting.. i always picture Odysseus as a wily (but gentle) old man, but his moniker is sometimes ||"sacker of cities" which shows us his brutal side. ||

exotic aspenBOT
#
Ongoing BuddyRead
The Iliad - Homer, Bernard Knox, Robert Fagles
Description

There's been some talk around the server ro read The Iliad together! I've personally read The Odyssey already and am missing out of The Iliad. I'd love to read it with some of you!

The translation you choose is up to you! I will be reading the Fagles translation, but look forward to seeing what other translaters will be read <3

Start Date

<t:1738108800:D>

End Date

<t:1743379200:D>

Thread(s)

#1102327612392624128

Requested By

@foggy flower

Leader(s)

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Interested (26)

@foggy flower,@obsidian summit,@dawn tulip,@lucid aspen,@grizzled geyser,@eager pumice,@clear sundial,@uncut timber,@thorn hornet,@proven prairie,@drifting dune,@turbid lodge,@native sinew,@pulsar parrot,@wispy nebula,@spring abyss,@winter spade,@tiny turret,@south silo,@hearty nova,@strong cave,@sharp copper,@solar osprey,@high swan,@gentle oriole

Event ID: 6795d2298cd1ac8fdce82aa3
foggy flower
#

Buddy read extended til <t:1743379200:D>!

foggy flower
gentle oriole
gentle oriole
#

Wilson, book 2, lines 456-461

||"Achilles and myself exchanged harsh words. We fought about a woman. I began it. But if one day we strategize together, the Trojans will have no relief from pain, not even for a moment."||

Fagles, book 2, lines 449-453 (same scene)

||"I was the first to let my anger flare. Ah if the two of us could ever think as one, Troy could delay her day of death no longer, not one moment."||

I bolded my favourite parts from each line. I like how forthright Agamemnon is with Wilson, but I like the almost wistfulness from Fagles'.

gentle oriole
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Fagles kinda poppin off with Agamemnon's prayer scene. Kind of a long snippet here but essentially after ||Agamemnon summons all the kings and lords to his bull sacrifice||:

Fagles, book 2, lines 484-491

||The lord of the war cry Menelaus came uncalled, he knew at heart what weighed his brother down. They stood in a ring around the ox, took up barley and then, rising among them, King Agamemnon raised his voice in prayer: 'Zeus, Zeus, god of greatness, god of glory, lord god of the dark clouds who lives in the bright sky, don't let the sun go down or the night descend on us!'||

Wilson, book 2, lines 492-501

||And Menelaus, the master of the war cry, came to join his brother without needing to be called. He knew what Agamemnon had been doing. These leaders formed a circle around the bull, and took some barley grains, and Agamemnon spoke in their midst.||

||"Almighty Zeus, great god of dark clouds, god in heaven, before sunset, before the shadows come, may I hurl down the hall of Priam [...]"||

Green, book 2, lines 408-414

||Menelaos, great at the war cry, chose to come with them, for he knew in his heart how hard-pressed his brother was. They stood there around the ox, and held up the barley groats, and in prayer the lord Agamemnon spoke among them: "Zeus, most glorious, greatest, lord of the storm clouds, heaven-dweller - let not the sun go down, or darkness come upon us until I have levelled Priam's palace [...]"||

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OKAY for starters. ||I am a bit intrigued why Wilson chose not to include Menelaus and Agamemnon's brotherly understanding there. Both other translations made mention of Menelaus essentially knowing something was on Agamemnon's mind, whereas Wilson simply made it seem like he just knew about the sacrifice. Which I guess you wouldn't make a grand sacrifice of a five year old fat ox if it wasn't important but idk. The lack of subtext is missed||

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and then ALSO ||I love the way Fagles described Agamemnon's prayer to Zeus. Overall Fagles is a lot more eloquent and poetic. Green is very blunt and unemotive, and Wilson seems a combination of the two. I feel like that difference is really displayed well here||

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||Zeus with the offering hand_1||
||Zeus with the prayer seen||

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I love the detailed how-to of animal sacrifice at every opportunity. thank you homer very cool

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will finish book 2 tomorrow, I sleep sleep

wispy nebula
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I forgot the pure joy that comes from reading this text

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Namely, || how a character is sometimes introduced and killed off in the same sentence: “[Name] was the son of [Name2]. He came to Greece and died by spear through the skull.”||

gentle oriole
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Wilson, book 2, lines 542-545: ||Agamemnon summoned the men for war, and Athena lends a hand||

||She roused in every heart the will to fight forever. At once, the thought of war became to them sweeter than sailing home in hollow ships back to their native lands, the homes they loved.||

Oooo once again what a line. ||Athena the woman that you are||

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and then later down the page

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Wilson, book 2, lines 571-545

||And powerful Agamemnon stood in their midst, and in his eyes and stature he looked like thunder-loving Zeus.||

Ughughghghugh, so COOL

clear sundial
gentle oriole
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I think it's very easily palatable

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When I was originally looking up the differences between the major translations, hers kept being called "accessible" and I can get that now

clear sundial
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Ya that’s the impression I got too, from second hand resources hahaha

gentle oriole
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I really like how poetic and lovely Fagles' is, but I wonder how much of my enjoyment is derived from reading Wilsons passages first and so having a real clear visual of whats going on already 🤔 to make a poetic version easier to digest

gentle oriole
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YO SIX PAGES OF LORD AND CAPTAINS?

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Homer: Im only gonna mention the captains teehee 🥰
300+ lines later

eager pumice
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book 5 - ||love how athena tells ares, 'let's get off the battlefield,' and then proceeds to continue messing around on the battlefield 😂

was very interested in the gods actually being injured in this mortal war! didn't expect that tbh. also felt a bit bad for aphrodite, no one believing that she was injured in battle

the interactions between the gods (and between the gods & humans) are so layered. it's making me want to read more greek myths etc so i pick up more context||

foggy flower
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Book 6

||But as for me, I hope I will be dead, and lying underneath a pile of earth, so that I do not have to hear your screams or watch when they are dragging you away.||

DAMN that's bars

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Finished chp 6 ✅ gotta get back to the Homer grind
If I do 1 book a day I can finish before the BR ends pepemegaSUCC

gentle oriole
#

Fagles, book 3, lines 10-11

||When the South Wind showers mist on the mountaintops, no friend to shepherds, better than night to thieves [...]||

raw line, thank you Fagles

gentle oriole
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Lads we got another long snippet bear with me

After ||Paris runs from Menelaus in battle, and this is Hektor giving him grief for it||. All snippets are from the same scene, I just think theyre all neat

Wilson, book 3, lines 48-72

||"Pathetic Paris! Womanizer! Cheat! You are the very best at looking pretty. Oh, how I wish that you had never lived or died unmarried. That would be far better than life as such an object of contempt. The Greeks will surely laugh at you and say you look so handsome, like a champion, but in your heart there is no will to fight, no courage—yet, despite your feebleness, you gathered up a crew of trusty men and sailed in sturdy ships across the sea to intermingle with the foreigners, and brought a pretty woman back with you, whose relatives by marriage are strong spearman. You brought great suffering to all of us—your father and your city—all our people. You pleased our enemies, but shamed yourself. Why could you not face warlike Menelaus? You ought to know the man whose wife you took. The gifts of Aphrodite will not help you—your lyre, your hair, and your attractiveness—when you are lying mingled with the dust. The Trojans are such cowards! Were they not, they would have dressed you in a shirt of rocks for all the evils you have perpetrated."||

#

Fagles, book 3, lines 42-68

||At one glance Hector raked his brother with insults, stinging taunts: "Paris, appalling Paris! Our prince of beauty—mad for women, you lure them all to ruin! Would to god you'd never been born, died unwed. That's all I'd ask. Better that way by far than to have you strutting here, an outrage—a mockery in the eyes of all our enemies. Why, the long-haired Achaeans must be roaring with laughter! They thought you the bravest champion we could field, and just because of the handsome luster on your limbs, but you have no pith, no fighting strength inside you. What?—is this the man who mustered the oarsmen once, who braved the seas in his racing deep-sea ships, trafficked with outlanders, carried off a woman far from her distant shores, a great beauty wed to a land of rugged spearmen?||
||You... curse to your father, your city and all your people, a joy to our enemies, rank disgrace to yourself! So, you can't stand up to the battling Menelaus? You'd soon feel his force, that man you robbed of his sumptuous, warm wife. No use to you then, the fine lyre and these, these gifts of Aphrodite, your long flowing locks and your striking looks, not when you roll and couple with the dust. What cowards, the men of Troy—or years ago they'd have decked you out in a suit of rocky armor, stoned you to death for all the wrongs you've done!"||

#

Carl bot doesn't like the Green version, apparently

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Will adjust

turbid lodge
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i'll remove the warn though thumbcat

gentle oriole
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Green, book 3, lines 38-57

||But Hektor, seeing him, rebuked him with shaming words: "Wretched Paris, so handsome, so mad for women, seducer, I wish you had never been born or had died unmarried! Yes, that I'd prefer: far better than being left with you as this object of other men's ridicule and contempt. Oh, they'll snicker aloud, indeed, will the long-haired Achaians, and say, here's a leading man who gets to be champion on good looks alone, without strength or courage in his heart. Were you such a one when in your seafaring vessels you sailed the deep, with the trusty comrades you'd mustered, consorted with foreigners, brought back a beautiful woman from a far-off land, the child of warrior spearmen, a great grief to your father, your city, your whole nation: a delight to our enemies, to yourself a cause of shame? So will you not, then, confront the warlike Menelaos, find out the kind of man whose lusty bedmate you've taken? No help for you from the lyre, or the gifts of Aphrodite, or your hair or your good looks, when you're laid low in the dust. The Trojans are arrant cowards: otherwise by now you'd be wearing a shower of stones for all your evil deeds!"||

gentle oriole
#

||Between the three, I find it interesting that Wilson seems to be the only one (at least in my opinion) who suggests that Paris stole Helen whereas the other two suggest a more equal share of ownership.||

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I also like how Green's version is ||almost more pitying? I guess? Over Paris. The others seem to indicate Hector putting a lot more blame on Paris' shoulders directly||

gentle oriole
#

Wilson, book 3, lines 80-84 - ||Paris to Hector||

||"But do not blame me for the lovely gifts of golden Aphrodite. Glorious gifts that come from the gods, that they themselves have given, must not be thrown away—although no human chooses them willingly."||

Fagles, book 3, lines 76-81 - same scene

||"Still, don't fling in my face the lovely gifts of golden Aphrodite. Not to be tossed aside, the gifts of the gods, those glories...whatever the gods give of their own free will—how could we ever choose them for ourselves?"||

Green, book 3, lines 63-66 - same scene

||"[...] do not bring up against me the sweet gifts of golden Aphrodite. Not to be cast aside are the gods' illustrious gifts, of whatever sort—even if no man would choose them."||

REALLY interesting how the intention can change with just a few words. In particular focusing on the bold lines, each translation completely altars the meaning. Wilson and Green ||both take on a POV of receiving these gifts unwillingly, but Green's specifically seems almost like a slight against Aphrodite.|| Whereas Fagles ||reads with more respect, subservience. 'How could we, mere mortals, be expected to choose a gods gifts for ourselves?' Whereas the other two are more like 'these gifts are forced upon us.'||

gentle oriole
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Menelaus the man that you are

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||"Ares, the god of tears, the god of war"|| WHAT A LINE, WHAT A LINE

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so that line ^ is from Wilson and then this is Fagles version: ||"A moment ago they longed to kill each other, longed for hreatbreaking, inhuman warfare on the plain."|| I love when they use ||a gods name interchangeable for a thing. It's heartbreaking warfare or it is Ares, god of heartbreak and warfare. They are one and the same, he is it and it is him. RAAAH frothing||

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Green whyTho

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if this wasnt For Science I would stop reading Greens translation althogether

obsidian summit
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Pilot, I am getting so much from your close reading of this text and your side by side comparisons of the different translations

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thank you for sharing them!

gentle oriole
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yanlove 🩷

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I am glad my rambling is at the very least not a bother 😂

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So in every translation ||Iris is putting the longing for her old home and old life back into Helen's heart, which lends credence to the belief that she went willingly, or at the very least that she misses them no longer||

gentle oriole
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||Helen to Priam after joining him watching the men on the battlefield||

Wilson, book 3, lines 210-216

||"Father-in-law, I love you and respect you. I wish that I had chosen painful death the day I came here with your son and left my bedroom, kinsmen, late-born precious daughter, and cherished group of women friends. I did not. That is why I have melted into tears."||

Fagles, book 3, lines 208-214

||"I revere you so, dear father, dread you too—if only death had pleased me then, grim death, that day I followed your son to Troy, forsaking my marriage bed, my kinsmen and my child, my favorite, now full grown, and the lovely comradeship of women my age. Death never came, so now I can only waste away in tears."||

Green, book 3, 172-176

||I revere you, my husband's dear father, I stand in awe of you! A sorry death should have been my choice when I came here following your son, abandoning marriage and family, my growing daughter, my sweet loving girl companions. But that's not how things turned out, and I'm worn with weeping."||

Okay so a) ||Fagles having Helen say she dreads Priam is really interesting, especially that none of the others include it. Was that drawn from the translation, do we think, or a creative liberty?||

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b) ||Helen's regret is so interesting, especially given that it's inferred she went with Paris willingly. Yet Iris had to "fill her with longing" so did she just become adjusted with time?||

eager pumice
#

book 6 - ||menelaus wanting to take a prisoner, and agamemnon refusing to allow it… 😭 they're really here to slaughter every single man

genuinely love that the long recitation of lineage ended in two men agreeing that they didn't want to fight, and upholding their ancestor's oaths. if only more would talk!||

eager pumice
#

book 8 -

||"Now Swiftfoot, Blondie, Flame, and godlike Sparkle"||
||this line has brought me so much joy 🤣 bless hector for naming his godlike stallion "Sparkle"||

||"You Greeks are only good at looking pretty!||
||THIS BURN lmaoooo||

clear sundial
clear sundial
eager pumice
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book 9 - ||genuinely love that this whole book was just trying and failing to convince achilles. 😂 such generous gifts, but not enough to soothe achilles' pride!||

eager pumice
#

book 10 - ||loved all of the intrigue in this book! the greeks making the best of the trojan allies' proximity and striking in the night was excellent. i had no idea how it would end, so i was hooked!||

foggy flower
eager pumice
#

book 14 - ||absolutely loved odysseus calling agamemnon out there. 'you want us to run after all this???' great speech

having played hades the video game, i got so excited when sleep appeared. 😂 he didn't want to get in trouble again! he was fooled once already!||

eager pumice
#

book 16 - ||i knew patroclus' death was coming, but still! blobOohCry if only he'd listened to achilles

hector's boasting (and assumptions about what achilles said) have made him very unlikable imo. which is saying something, considering how much boasting there is in this overall||

turbid lodge
#

I'm currently reading through book 2 and ||this is the first novel where im struggling to not fall asleep to while reading it kekCry so much yapping without much happening. So many namedrops that I'm not really remembering at all. I dont feel like i should, but it's making it very hard to focus on what's going on.||

turbid lodge
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Book 2 ||i finished this chapter and then immediately went back to the back of the book to read the summary because HOLY SHIT THIS WAS SO BORING I hate past-self for thinking I could read this book. (preface: if this is a book you enjoy, please dont take my saltiness very serious, i respect you even more for that) I'm not gonna remember these names which is gonna bite me in the ass probably. anyway. I hate that I might realise here that greek classics might not be my thing reading the first book of many that I committed to read. I understand that maybe in those times storytelling hasn't been as well thought of as now, but it's just so convoluted and unnessesarily long that I really am considering quitting already||

dawn tulip
turbid lodge
# dawn tulip Technically it's not a novel but an epic poem. They were created for speaking to...

||just all the names being thrown like "and then there was this guy, son of this guy, who was on a ship somewhere over there, and they were going over there, and then they also had in their fleet 5 other ships with this guys, that guy, this person, that person, some other guy, and this guy." It's like just information overload that I just dont understand at all. I don't see how these names matter in the grand scheme of things and it just bores me so much||

turbid lodge
#

also ||iif you enjoy thiis book, that's totally valid. I just have never read ancient greek classics before and thought this was an easy start kekCry, having a hard time rn||

dawn tulip
turbid lodge
dawn tulip
turbid lodge
clear sundial
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I don’t quite remember if it gets better… but personally it didn’t bother me. So totally valid if you don’t wanna go on haha

turbid lodge
gentle oriole
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Had a brief interlude wherein I read two other books but we back at it

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Book 3, Wilson, lines 358-362 - ||Agamemnon's prayer as they vow to the terms on the Paris v. Menelaos battle||

||"But if Priam and Priam's sons refuse to pay the price when Paris is defeated, I shall fight to make them give me recompense, and stay right here until I make an end of war."||

VS

Book 3, Fagles, lines 342-345

||"But if Priam and Priam's sons refuse to pay, refuse me, Agamemnon—with Paris beaten down—then I myself will fight it out for the ransom, I'll battle here to the end of our long war."||

I bet you can spot the difference eyes2 and Green is similar to Wilson in structure, which makes me wonder why Fagles ||had Agamemnon take sort of center stage here. Refuse ME. Granted, he is certainly claiming to end the war himself, so it stands to reason he'd claim the offense, but I wonder at the nuance in stating it so plainly as opposed to the ommision by Wilson and Fagles||

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😂 ||Priam having 0% confidence in his son is so||

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Also love that ||the general prayer from both sides is that "whoever started this dies" because ultimately screw that guy, we want to go home. Which is so real||

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GREEN. GET IT TOGETHER. ||This man forgot where he was I swear. Swaps Odysseus with Achilles. HOW did that get through editing, that's a pretty big goof 😂||

gentle oriole
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Book 3, Fagles, lines 460-462 - ||After Paris is whisked away by Aphrodite in his battle with Menelaos||

||"Maddening one, my Goddess, oh what now? Lusting to lure me to my ruin yet again? Where will you drive me next?"||

Ooooooooo ||Helen they could never make me hate you. The resignation in that "my Goddess, oh what now?" LET THE GIRL LIVE||

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And then later on when ||Helen tells Paris she wishes Menelaos killed him. That's the second time in the morning where one of Paris' own wishes he was dead 😂😭||

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THUS ENDS BOOK 3. I really need to read at any other time than 4am because I just get sleepy and throw in the towel 😭 need to pick up my slack

eager pumice
#

book 23 - ||ngl throughout all the funeral games, i just kept thinking about tournament arcs in anime. 😂 suddenly the action screeches to a halt and it's game time!

that said, achilles' grief for patroclus has been so enormous. i know the poem itself is about the trojan war, but it seems a lot more like 'all about achilles, and how things go Really Really Terribly when patroclus is killed'||

eager pumice
#

1finished finished!

||i was very surprised that it ended where it did! i thought it would continue on until troy's fall. but no, it really was a story about achilles on the greek's side and hector on the trojan's

this isn't the sort of book i normally read, so it's a bit hard for me to rate? but i enjoyed emily wilson's translation, and i'm glad i can (finally!) say i read it!||

foggy flower
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I haven't read this in ages despairge

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I need to get back to it

grizzled geyser
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book 23 || i finally get why everyone’s ships patroclus and achilles.
also why is their way of dealing with grief playing mini olympics?? ConfusedNick ||

obsidian summit
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hahaha just Ancient Greek things

clear sundial
grizzled geyser
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finished!!
||i can’t believe priam and his wife were mourning hector being like, he was the best son we had, as if the other 100 couldn’t hear them lmfao. on a similar note, they mention priam’s wife had 19 children???? that poor woman

in general i’ll say i enjoyed the book, which i really didn’t expect to happen. i do have to say that the parts where the gods appeared were more interesting for me. i guess they had a little bit more drama and less “i’m angry i kill”||

foggy flower
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I'm back on ts

Book 9
||Nestor: point Agamemnon you fkd up point
Agamemnon: YOU ARE OLD and you are not wrong Uwu 😤

OKAY BUT ALSO
Achilles: "I have great wealth at home in Phthia, I will bring home more wealth, my share of war loot."
HOLD ON BROTHER, didn't you do NOTHING? What war loot have you earned bro?||

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Phoenix's ||infidelity trauma|| pepeMonkaOmega

foggy flower
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Book 11
Oh no omg sobAUGH

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Book 12 & 13
Kinda gorey cattoCry

turbid lodge
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I got to book 4 just reading the book without the audiobook cause the narration style of the audiobook didn't really work for me. Unless there can be an extension though, I don't think I can finish this one in time despairge (no pressure if there's no extension though ❤️ it's my fault)

foggy flower
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I can extend it to some date in April but I think that will be the last extension from me! I only need about a week to finish the book comfortably and I will be busy again in May despairge

I'll send out a broadcast sometime this week to see what everyone is interested in

turbid lodge
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dw, i mismanaged my br's so it's my fault kekCry

exotic aspenBOT
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@foggy flower,@obsidian summit,@dawn tulip,@lucid aspen,@grizzled geyser,@eager pumice,@clear sundial,@uncut timber,@thorn hornet,@proven prairie,@drifting dune,@turbid lodge,@native sinew,@pulsar parrot,@wispy nebula,@spring abyss,@winter spade,@glass abyss,@south silo,@hearty nova,@strong cave,@sharp copper,@solar osprey,@high swan,@gentle oriole,@ember veldt

foggy flower
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Salut mes amis!
This BR ends <t:1743379200:R>

Discussion Questions
Books 10 and beyond

  • What do you think about the relationship between Achilles and Patroculus? ||Are they friends? Brothers? Cousins? Lovers?||
  • Do you have any favourite characters?
  • There are lots of fight scenes! What do you think about the scenes in The Iliad? Do you like fight scenes in general?

Full book spoilers

  • ||Achilles becomes more of a main character later on, do you think he's had enough "page time" or do you think someone else should've been the main character all the way through? How do you think the story would go if Achilles was a side character?||

Other fun questions

  • Hey you YOU have you started yet? Do you need an extension? (/gen) If we get an extension, are you actually going to read? Hmmmmmmmmmmmm or will you put it off til the end again hmmmm
  • Do you fw the edition you're reading from, or do you wish you tried something else?

Status Updates
Currently reading: manouk, Pilot, Clock
Finished: kai, windflower, thelastpage, spicy, tink

I look forward to hearing everyone's thoughts for this last push! 🫶

foggy flower
eager pumice
# foggy flower Salut mes amis! This BR ends <t:1743379200:R> __Discussion Questions__ Books 10...
  1. i read the song of achilles before reading this, and i still subscribe to that as canon 😌
  2. hard to name a favorite, but i liked agamemnon more than i expected to
  3. there were indeed a lot of fight scenes. more than i was into but y'know, it was a book about a super long war! makes sense! there were some that were very intense, some that seemed almost filler
  4. i thought the role of main character was fine as it was. ||i appreciated that it kinda went from achilles, to hector, back to achilles||
  5. i finshed!
  6. i really liked emily wilson's translation!! there were some killer lines in it. also, it was the first & only time i've managed to read the whole thing, so 😂 i'd tried others before, and only hers won
grizzled geyser
# foggy flower Salut mes amis! This BR ends <t:1743379200:R> __Discussion Questions__ Books 10...

  1. ||since fate exists in their universe i’m gonna say their something like soulmates. cause they’re not typical friends but i also think their dynamic is different from what we (or even the ancient greeks) understand as a couple. they definitely care about each other. a LOT||

  2. my favorite characters are the gods. they’re so dramatic and they either dgaf or give too many

  3. i don’t like fight scenes but it’s bc i always find them difficult to follow. so it’s a me thing

full book
||for the beginning of the book i feel like agamemnon appears enough that he could be the mc. but his personality is not enough for him to be the mc.
it’s hard to imagine achilles as a side character bc without him as a mc they’d lose the war ||

fun questions
yes! i loved the emily wilson translation. i think if i had read a different one i probably would not have finished or if i did i would have understood a lot less

foggy flower
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My prof just briefly spoke about The Iliad in class and all he said was that "in half the book, the gods were ||haphazardly making decisions and inspiring people to do shit||"

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Facts 🗣️

lucid aspen
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Book 14
||Hera is dressing up all fancy faceYasHeart love me a pretty girlboss

But also

"in her well-pierced lobes she places a triple-clustered set of earrings"
Hold on hold on... does this imply that there are badly pierced earlobes? How bad can it be?|| pepeStarege

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Book 2 ||I love the way Zeus and Hera both tell Dream and Athena respectively to go tell Agamemnon and Odysseus something, and they just 100% repeat what was told to them. It’s giving “Mom/Dad said…”||

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Book 16
|| pepeSeriously ||

turbid lodge
dawn tulip
grizzled geyser
gentle oriole
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BUT I will definitely finish it....evetually. Probably May

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I considered abandoning the other translations to power through just one of them but I have been having such a good time reading all three translations I own in tandem that I dont wanna rush it SO yes, another time

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I'm almost done faceYasHeart 3 chapters left

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Book 3 ||Love how the common factor everyone but Aphrodite can agree on is that Paris sucks kek ||

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Book 4 ||My favorite literary devices for death: darkness covered his eyes, and unstrung his limbs. Another line I love: “for many Trojans and Achaeans on that day/lay sprawled face down in the dust beside one another”

Despite being a work all about war, I don’t think it glorifies actual battle as much as some war movies I’ve seen lol||

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I finished

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Homer was on x games mode fr

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Book 5 ||More war portrayals, plus gods directly interfering in the outcome of combat. I wonder if Homer used this as a means to stir up feelings of his audience. I mean isn’t it a little unfair that Menelaos for example was about to bitch slap Paris into next week when Aphrodite whisks him away to Helen’s bed? I wonder if that made the listeners angry||

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Book 5 ||Why is every Greek god like dracoFather and their father is just like uhhhh ||

lucid aspen
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My book’s here but I’m definitely not making it before the deadline as I won’t be starting at least for the next 3 days

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Book 5|| “And one day may someone say of him, ‘this man is far better than his father’.” blobOohCry ||

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I’m noticing so many things I didn’t hit upon the last time I read! Book 9 ||Achilles asking “Do the sons of Atreus alone of mortal men love their wives?” Like yeah man, your wife was taken, but does that justify starting a war that will deprive so many Greek women of their husbands and Greek children of their fathers?||

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Book 11 ||Diomedes calling Paris an “ogler of girls” has big “Say Drake, I heard you like em young” energy kek ||

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Not in the sense that I think he’s calling ||Paris a pedo, that’s not something Greek people really reviled and I’m pretty sure Helen is an adult woman, it’s more of the vibe that’s similar to me||

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Book 14 ||Bold seduction strategy, Zeus. “Damn Hera I want you even more than I wanted all those women I cheated on you with” Zeus be so fr rn kekCry ||

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Book 16 ||When Homer speaks to Patroclus, idk why it gets me every time|| going to try to finish today!

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One of my favorite things about the Iliad is that it mirrors that meme about scifi, when all the names are like: Feyd-Rautha, Pardot Kynes, Paul, Mohiam, Chani, Jessica. And then you read shit that’s 2800 years old and it’s like: Phorkys, Chrimios, Ennomos, Hector; Andromache, Briseis, Helen lmaoooo

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Book 17 ||You know you’re fucked when Zeus feels sorry for you||

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Book 21 ||Gods face-off bibble
Also got gems like Achilles trying to fight the river? And “Come friend, you die too; why bewail this so?/ even Patroclus died, who was far better than you.” Also his acceptance of his death vs Hector who keeps getting told he’s fated to die and seems to shrug it off/ deny it, love a good dichotomy faceChefsKiss ||

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Book 23 ||”Achilles, what’s wrong?” “sniff sniff my friend is dead.” “Awww. Would it make you feel better to beat us in a race?” “sniff sniff yeah” “ok let’s have a race”|| that’s how I imagine it went down

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I'm going to send in the ending report after Tink and I send in our finishing thoughts!

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POINTS POINTS POINTS pepemegaSUCC

obsidian summit
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I have been enjoying all your comments!

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something about the collective approach to reading this book through a contemporary lens has been really entertaining to me

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"the Tik Tok generation reads The Iliad"

pulsar parrot
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Ouch lol

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I mean I guess it proves it’s still relateable

foggy flower
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It's so entertaining to read and review in that mindset

pulsar parrot
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Genuine question ||did Paris die? I do not recall that at all, it’s like he fought Menelaos and then he tried to fight someone else cause I remember the first half was just making fun of Paris constantly, and then he disappeared||

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Finished and I enjoyed that reread again ||I love how the story is about battle but also more about the characters and ritual and belief. Like I’m always surprised that the story starts 9 years in (what have they been doing all this time?) and doesn’t end with the Trojan horse. Like that’s just so unexpected.

Parts of it are repetitive, sure. But I try to think of how it would affect a listening audience.

I think my favorite parts are the deeply flawed individuals. Achilles and his frankly kind of petty reaction to Agamemnon’s stealing his girl, who then offers to give her back and gifts and Achilles is still like yeah no. Paris vs everyone, Helen’s pov (still can’t tell if she came willingly or if Aphrodite is supposed to have like bewitched her or something). The gods themselves are just kind of running around the battlefield with the Benny Hill theme running in the background.

Achilles and Patroclus always tugs at my heartstrings, including that cute little sleepover with the two and their girlfriends (polycule) and Achilles mourning (I’m a Song of Achilles fan, what can I say). But I specially find Achilles and Priam especially moving. Achilles wasn’t even in the wrong, Hector was def trying to defile Patroclus’s corpse as well. But once he let go of his anger, he could find compassion for the father of his enemy, and the end of the work is not the sacking of this city (which we know is inevitable) but a man putting aside his pride to beg his enemy for his son’s remains, so that he could be laid to rest.

And then yeah, we’ll have more war and pillage angryflame ||

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Also want to put it out there that I am the biggest hater of the movie Troy from 2004, so if anyone wants to rip it apart with me, hit me up in #movies-shows-anime that movie is such a pos and I hear it recommended all the time and it drives me nuts

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OKAYYY
Finishing thoughts
|| k so I didn't really fw the beginning of the book, the plot was just FIGHT FIGHT FIGHT and LET THE GODS INTERVENE and I didn't find it that much entertaining. Onyx Storm had better fight scenes tbh
Things started picking up for me around Book 16 when Patroclus went out in the battle. I'm pretty sure the whole climax of the story occured when Patroclus died because things started slowing down, despite all the tension and anger and sadness from Achilles lol (but imo that's a part of the falling action anyway)
Also OH MY GOD
The poetry of despair that Achilles was spitting after Patroculus died was SO FIRE
I highlighted SO MANY QUOTES I thought they were so emotional and passionate and so beautiful. Homer walked so Shakespeare could run type shit fr
I'm not too sure through what to rate it. The beginning SUCKED but the ending was GREAT.|| The ending alone I'd give 5 stars, but the beginning gets like 1 or 2...... I'll give it 3.5 😭

I'm going to try to watch Troy!

pulsar parrot
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Oh let me know what you think

foggy flower
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Points added to everyone
also I just recently noticed that we get 8 points for this book!