Set in the Trojan War, the ten-year siege of Ilium by a coalition of Greek states, it tells of the battles and events during the weeks of a quarrel between King Agamemnon and the warrior Achilles.
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My summary thus far, in two sentences: Agamemnon and Achilles squabble over concubines; Achilles loses, sulks. Achaeans and Trojans begin battle, fueled by Gods; many great sons of great men described, then slaughtered.
Update: Spiraling cycles of revenge. Many men become heroes, then die gruesomely.
Reading and listening to this was a great experience, and I recommend it. I definitely wasn't expecting it to engage my emotions, but it really did. I never studied it in school, and I'm glad to have made the time for it now. I listened to a little every day, and reread and relistened to a lot of it before moving on, too, since it is more challenging for me than my usual reads. I wouldn't say this translation reads like natural English, but that was okay; the phrasing helped me pay attention to the language and think about what was being said. But different translations might be easier to read. Dominic Keating narrates the audiobook and he's excellent.My favorite thing: all the glimpses of the time in which this story was told, which was probably different from the time it was told about. There are so many details about daily life, such as food preparation, smithing, and farming. Now I know what Homer thought a woman (well, a goddess) would wear when she got extra dressed up in order to seduce her husband. I also know, judging by Homer's most common metaphors, that lions were serious countryside pests in Greece, and that everyone was intimately familiar with the sea. I did read this because I enjoyed [b:The Song of Achilles 13623848 The Song of Achilles Madeline Miller https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1357177533l/13623848.SY75.jpg 16176791], and I see now that Miller made some choices that are very different from the original. Just to name a couple things, I'm not sure why she wrote Thetis as so unsympathetic, or Patroclus as a non-warrior. If you also liked SoA, give this a try sometime too. Or, if you had to (or were supposed to) read it in school, you probably didn't enjoy it. I don't think I would've liked answering factual questions about it. This translation might be a good opportunity to revisit it.
“So the gods pulled alternately on the rope of this violent and evenly balanced battle, to make it tout over the two sides. The rope was indestructible and no one could break it; but it broke many men.” The Iliad, Book 13.
