Almost 3000 years ago a Greek poet sung one of the greatest stories ever told and it remains the beginning of Western Literature. It took the singer over 15,000 lines of hexameter verse to tell the epic story of Greece vs. Troy. Romance, vengeance, politics, religion and a ten-year war, ostensibly because a woman left her husband for another man. Characters like Helen of Troy and the Greek hero Achilles have affected literature, art, and film down to the present day. With a cast of thousands, gods, heroes, and lots of blood on the battlefield, the Iliad is an astonishing panorama of pre-literate society in the eastern Mediterranean. Even Alexander the Great is said to have slept with a copy of the Iliad under his pillow while he was on campaign.
We now understand that the putative “author,” Homer, most likely began an illiterate singer who entertained Greek nobles with sections of his enormous creation. Only its oral beginnings can explain the method of composition, its use of repetition of scenes and long battle descriptions, the frequent formulas (“winged words”), and the poet’s use of epithets attached to individual characters.
We will read Robert Fagles’ translation of the Iliad as our core book, and consider a variety of themes as we proceed through the epic. We have suggested some topics for the weekly presenters, though of course you may find other interesting elements to explore including contemporary ramifications of the story.
