greek literature

Just picked up the Iliad today after long absence–it’s a good book to turn to when I find myself growing impatient with all the other options at hand, and especially when I find myself growing impatient with the prose of all the other options at hand. Because Homer crafts words like no one’s business, at […]

At the start of book 10 of the Iliad, Agamemnon can’t sleep. Possibly he’s a bit freaked out by his men’s conviction that of course they’re going to kick butt, so long as Agamemnon is leading them. Then again, it could be those thousand Trojan fires burning out there, too. Or the fact that he’s

So in book 8 of the Iliad, the Trojans finally began kicking some serious Greek butt. In book 9, the Greek response to this is … pure, blind, raging panic.Maybe they’re not used to losing? Even Agamemnon, who until now seemed to have his entire being set on autopilot for “die, Trojans, die!” begins wondering

So in book 8, Zeus comes up with a brilliant plan for ending the war. And the plan is: “Let’s not anyone interfere anymore. Except for me.” He threatens to hurt any other god who interferes, and hurt them good. The gods, who don’t really much fancy being fried by lightning bolts and hurled down

I got distracted from my Iliad reading by Anne Ursu’s The Immortal Flame, last book of The Cronus Chronicles. Finishing that series and Rick Riordan’s Percy Jackson and the Olympians in the past few months has, not surprisingly, bounced off my reading of the Iliad in interesting ways. Ursu and Riordan both start from the

I went in to catch up on book 7 of The Iliad, only to find I have far less to say about it than book 6. Hector and Paris storm into the fray, and Paris actually takes down a man. Athena, seeing that her Greeks are actually losing, storms down, meaning to help them out.

In book 6 Hector’s brother Helenus, the “best of the seers who scan the flight of birds,” sends Hector back to Troy so that he can tell the women to mount some serious prayers to Athena, see if she won’t call off her boy Diomedes. Helenus gives reasonably detailed instructions as to what’s to be

Book 5 has the intriguing title “Diomedes Fights the Gods.” This being the Iliad, this of course is meant literally and not metaphorically.Athena, after goading the Greeks on for a while to “fight, you bastards, fight!” (or words to that effect), decides to go for broke and put so much power into one man, Diomedes,

Book 4:Agamemnon: “Menalaus, my brother, the Trojans have killed you! The Trojans will pay!”Menalaus: “Chill, it’s not a mortal wound. Seriously.”Agamemnon: “The Trojans will still pay!”The truce falls apart. Men die. We begin to wonder why Agamemnon, whose wife the Trojans did not abduct, seems so much more bent on killing them all (all! all!)

And Iris came on Helen in her rooms …weaving a growing web, a dark red folding robe,working into the weft the bloody strugglesstallion-breaking Trojans and Argives armed in bronzehad suffered all for her at the god of battle’s hands.Book 3 being the book in which we meet Helen, who I found I disliked less than