Ἰλιάς
1505
- odysseus (greek mythology)
- greeks
- poetry
- classical literature
- poesía
- greek epic poetry
- hector (legendary character)
- textual criticism
- achilles (greek mythology)
- greek mythology
The story
This long-awaited new edition of Lattimore's Iliad is designed to bring the book into the twenty-first century—while leaving the poem as firmly rooted in ancient Greece as ever. Lattimore's elegant, fluent verses—with their memorably phrased heroic epithets and remarkable fidelity to the Greek—remain unchanged, but classicist Richard Martin has added a wealth of supplementary materials designed to aid new generations of readers. A new introduction sets the poem in the wider context of Greek life, warfare, society, and poetry, while line-by-line notes at the back of the volume offer explanations of unfamiliar terms, information about the Greek gods and heroes, and literary appreciation. A glossary and maps round out the book. The result is a volume that actively invites readers into Homer's poem, helping them to understand fully the worlds in which he and his heroes lived—and thus enabling them to marvel, as so many have for centuries, at Hektor and Ajax, Paris and Helen, and the devastating rage of Achilleus.
What it’s like
Clean, unhurried pages with the verse set in long lines and the notes, maps and glossary waiting at the back like a reference shelf. Lattimore's translation reads fluent and grave, with its repeated epithets ("swift-footed," "wine-dark," "rich in bronze") settling into a steady, incantatory rhythm that sounds best read aloud. The tone moves between sweeping catalogues of ships and armies, quiet domestic interludes in Troy, and long stretches of battle, where the violence is blunt and frequent: spears through bodies, armour stripped, grief-stricken lament, and a rage that drives the poem's late books. Its emotional register is elegiac rather than cosy, concerned with honour, mortality and the cost of pride, and its central figures are proud men and anxious families who slowly come to understand what they are fighting for. Richard Martin's added material makes this edition suit a slow, attentive reading with a notebook or a second window open, a long winter project rather than a bedtime read. It is for readers who want the classic epic in its full scale, with the context to follow its gods, genealogies and battlefield geography, and for anyone drawn to the sound of ancient verse in English.
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