En la Antigüedad se consideraba que este poema se basaba en la historia real y que los personajes que aparecían en él eran un modelo de comportamiento y heroísmo. Los acontecimientos que narra tienen lugar en el transcurso de los últimos cincuenta y un días de un conflicto que duró diez largos años, y se desarrollan en torno a la figura del héroe heleno Aquiles, «el de los pies ligeros». ( )

I've read three, maybe four translations of the Iliad. It's not as interesting as Homer's Odyssey. ( )

This is less a story and more of a giant exercise in genealogy, explaining in great detail how hundreds of men die in gruesome ways and listing how they are related to each other and/or the gods and who they left behind, all for a war that honestly in the end just seems utterly pointless and a waste of life and resources.

There is less dialogue than you might imagine, owing to the numerous and lengthy descriptions of skirmishes and "grim armor" they wear. When people do speak, it tends to be diatribes about what is honor and what is not, how far does loyalty take us and how far astray does betrayal lead us, who the gods favor and who they do not (spurred on by the gods' interference, of course), all interwoven with rallying speeches, persuasion attempts, endless waffling about whether they should stop fighting or not, arguing over who gets certain dead bodies, and some serious trash talk.

There are metaphors aplenty to describe the how the dying die, how bodies are defended, how certain individuals charge into war, all of which often refer to weather, animals, hunting parties, and fallen trees.

While I do recommend reading this if you are interested in Greek mythology just for well-roundedness, I enjoy it much less than The Odyssey and find it a lot more difficult to consume (I strongly recommend the audiobook of the Robert Fitzgerald translation read by Dan Stevens). ( )

So. It's a classic. It's historical. It's arguably one of the most influential books in history. And it's boring as hell. I mean, I guess it reflects the values of the time--there's a lot of tragedy and irony, especially how everyone vaunts heroism and battle but really it's just a bunch of guys getting their eyes poked out. And heroism doesn't count for much when the heroes are a bunch of divas who cry when someone insults them. So maybe that was Homer's intent, to point out the bitter ironies of the culture. But holy moly, I can only read so many incidents of random dudes murdering each other before my eyes glaze over. ( )

Listened to an abridged translation of Robert Fagles, read by Derek Jacobi with interpolated narration by another reader. It is indisputably moving, and makes me find Julian Jaynes's argument that the heroes of the Iliad were not "conscious" by his definition, a little harder to embrace. Either Robert Fagles was doing the epic a lot of favors, or it's the world's first novel.