Two excellent books that offer new insight into The Iliad
The Iliad, Homer’s extraordinary epic poem, begins with Apollo, the god of light, zooming down from heaven “like night,” bringing plague to the Greek camp before Troy. Many days later, after the Trojan Hector’s funeral rites, the poem ends, at dawn. The light god brings darkness; dawn brings the doom of Troy. Such are the ironies that underpin the epic, revealing it as a work of supreme artistry, probably composed by one hand alone. For decades, I have lived in the light and shadow of The Iliad, reading it at first piecemeal in Greek, then in various translations, then all the way through in Greek (an experience both taxing and exhilarating). My Loeb edition, its prim English translation opposite the raw Greek, is never far from my side.
