Homer

The Iliad

• Broschiertes Buch

Produktbeschreibung

The Iliad is the earliest work of Western literature, and along with the Odyssey is the wellspring for much of Western culture. Beginning "Sing, goddess, the anger of Peleus' son Achilles / and its devastation" the Iliad describes the devastation unleashed by Achilles's rage, engulfing soldier and civilian, hero and coward, ruler and slave and even women and children. It is a story of heroes of immense pride and animal strength operating in their element. But it is much more than a great war epic. Homer creates complex human characters. A Greek and Trojan pair, Diomedes and Glaucus, meet on the battlefield, but realizing that they have an ancestral connection, they exchange conversation and armour rather than taunts and blows. King Priam kisses the hands of Achilles, saying "I have endured what no one on earth has endured. I have kissed the hands of the man who killed my son," an act which provokes deep sympathy in Achilles, who in turn returns the body of heroic Hector which he had defiled. The nearly invincible Ajax struggles to choose between heroic glory on the battlefield and the blessing of returning to the beloved land of his fathers. The Iliad is the story of the Trojan War, but much more: it has many tender scenes, it critiques the idea of the hero and it examines the role of the Gods in history. Homer was called "the teacher of all Greece," and "the leader of Greek culture," by Plato. Indeed, in the classical age, the Greeks regarded the Iliad and Odyssey as much more than works of literature; they knew much of them by heart, and they valued them as symbols of Hellenic unity and heroism but also as sources of moral and even practical instruction. Homer's works have been studied, quoted and translated in every corner of Europe and his influence on the Western imagination is immense. This prose edition was translated by Samuel Butler, the iconoclastic English author of the Utopian satirical novel Erewhon and the semi-autobiographical novel The Way of All Flesh. The latter was published posthumously as he was afraid to publish it in his lifetime.

Produktdetails

• Verlag: Benediction Classics
• Seitenzahl: 244
• Erscheinungstermin: 6. August 2020
• Englisch
• Abmessung: 234mm x 156mm x 15mm
• Gewicht: 390g
• ISBN-13: 9781789432169
• ISBN-10: 1789432162
• Artikelnr.: 59973324

Autorenporträt

Homer (750 bc - unknown) Popularly known as Homer, Melesigenes authored two of the oldest extant epics of Greek mythology: the Iliad and Odyssey. Said to have been blind, he narrated both his books as poetry, and they were first written down in the format of a script in the 8th century bce. Melesigenes's travels across the country of Greece as a poet brought him to the Hermaean plain in the county of Cumae where he adopted the name, Homer - a name that was given by the people of the county to blind men. His promises of bringing the county reclaim if they supported him were met with resistance, and this drove the poet to Phocoea, and then to Erythrae. Thereafter, he arrived in the town of Chios, where he married and started a family. Originally written in Homeric Greek, both the Iliad and Odyssey have been translated into multiple languages across the world. His descriptions of love, loss, friendship, anger, angst, war, brotherhood, and kinghood transcend time and age, and continue to pull a reader towards his works. This edition of the Illiad was translated by Alexander Pope (1688-1744), a poet whose satirical poetry won him widespread acclaim. His translations of the Iliad and Odyssey are considered some of his best works till date.