Uncovering Writing

5 of 5 stars

A really wonderful read and I do love me my Loeb editions so I can learn more/remember tiny bits of my classical Greek. Great introductions to the three sections, useful footnotes and a valuable index. I’m sure to turn to this volume in the future for reference.

The Hymns were my favorite, explaining the origin/mythologies of various gods. I especially loved the rascal Hermes and the piece on Aprodite. The Apocrypha were enjoyable, if short and not fully extant. I’ve read the Battle of Frogs and Mice before and it’s still so good and a fun read. The Lives of Homer was the least fun to read but useful for all the thoughts people in antiquity had about who they thought Homer was.

My rating: 5 of 5 stars

This is a fantastic new translation of Quintus Smyrnaeus’s Posthomerica. The first time I read this was a free edition from the early 1900s. This new, fresh translation made a big difference. As many people note, while Quintus certainly “ain’t Homer”, it is an important read that touches on many non-longer extant episodes of the Epic Cycle that lie between the Iliad and the Odyssey.

There were many enjoyable passages and phrases, in both the original Greek and in the translation. One I highlighted was: “Eos reached the deep stream of Ocean and great darkness came upon the dimmed earth–the time when mortals have some slight relief from their troubles” (IV. 62-64, p. 198/9). I also liked Poseidon warning Apollo to not kill Achilles’ son Neoptolemus, “Off you go back into divine air: if you make me angry, I shall force open a broad chasm in the vast earth and instantly plunge the whole city of Ilium, walls and all, down into that broad darkness; then you will be the one who is grieving” (IX 313-323, p. 470/1). My side note to this was “Damn.”

For my rating, I gave 4 stars for content, 3 stars for the quality of writing by Quintus, 5 stars for the translation by Neil Hopkinson and 5 stars for my pure, unfiltered joy reading this particular volume! Hurrah and well done, Loeb Classical Library.

My rating: 5 of 5 stars

This was really good, easily 5 stars. It is not a general reader book but is worth the time and effort to explore her arguments. Dué ends the introduction with her main thrust: “Achilles is bound by fate and by narrative tradition, but Achilles’ poem, the Iliad, was not fixed and monolithic in antiquity. It was multiform” (p. 16). She presents examples, discusses possibilities and offers a new way to look at the Homeric works.

One thing she drives home many times, importantly, is that most of our modern editions of Homer are based on medieval texts that “postdate the oral tradition by more than a millennium” (p. 6). “The quotations of the Iliad and the Odyssey that we find in such fourth-century BCE authors as Plato, Demosthenes, and Aeschines likewise present numerous plus verses, minus verses, and other significant variations from the medieval texts of Homer” (p. 46). Plus verses are in Homeric papyri yet missing from medieval manuscripts while minus verses are those in the medieval texts that are missing from the papyri (p. 45). These papyrus fragments “reveal that the texts of the Iliad and the Odyssey were still somewhat fluid even after the Classical period in Athens. It is only starting around 150 BCE that the texts seem to become standardized” (p. 45). Dué also gives credit to some of the ancient Alexandrian editors who “used athetesis marks and did not in most cases remove verses judged to be ‘not by Homer’ from their editions” (p. 139).

Even after studying the Homeric epics for so long, both as a reader and critically, I learned many new things from this work. I recently became aware of the mentioned extra line at the end of the Iliad that talks of the coming of the Amazon warrior Penthesileia (pp. 85-90), but I had never heard several alternative first lines of the Iliad (p. 57-58). I was stunned that I didn’t know the “real” names of Briseis and Chryseis, since these are simply patronyms: “daughter of Brises” and “daughter of Chryses.” There was a scholion in Venetus A that notes Chryseis was Astynome and Briseis was Hippodameia” (p. 108).

I didn’t always agree with her idea “to treat each of the surviving quotations as valid, even if fragmentary, instantiations of the Iliad or the Odyssey in their own right” (p. 80). But, I don’t believe in the existence of an “Ur” text of the Homeric poems so my concern may be unfounded. She made me think, I responded, then I responded to myself again questioning my initial response. That, in my opinion, is good scholarly writing. It’s not just facts but making one think for oneself.

One very minor critique is that I felt like I was reading a series of papers that had been collated into a book and that the flow wasn’t as good as it could have been. For example, information was repeated when it didn’t need to be. Please note that this did not diminish the power of her argument, especially since each chapter could stand on its own, but after it happened several times to me, I thought it worth mentioning. One more editing pass might have smoothed things over.

Finally, what a great time to read this work. We have Emily Wilson’s new translation of the Odyssey and Caroline Alexander’s version of the Iliad. We also have Madeline Miller’s excellent rethinking/retelling/recovering of Briseis from the Iliad and Circe from the Odyssey. And, we have Alice Oswald’s Memorial, a piece that powerfully translates only the deaths of people from the Iliad. I actually thought of Oswald’s work when I was reading “Of the Boeotians Peneleos and Leitos were the leaders” in Chapter 4 (p. 120).

My rating: 4 of 5 stars

A very good reference book that takes some pretty deep dives into how Homer’s works were received in antiquity. It’s broad so I’m sure I’ll come back to it in pieces and work through the meat that Hunter provides. I was very pleased that he included a great deal of original text (Greek and Latin) with translations, so that I can work on my own vocabulary and readings. The large bibliography at the end is an excellent jumping off point for further research.

I was fascinated by the section on Aristarchus of Samothrace (pp. 148-166). He was one of the greatest of the Homeric scholiasts and one of the important librarians at Alexandria. The section covers athetesis, the condemning of so-called non-Homeric parts that are thought to have crept into his poems. Sections were seen as spurious for various reasons, such as not being in the style of Homer, seemingly being redundant, or even for threatening contemporary understandings or morals. Thankfully, Aristarchus did not simply throw away the lines he felt didn’t belong, but marked them, so we can look ourselves to see what we might think today and reflect on why he made the choices he did.

Two things that I didn’t like about the book were that the text wasn’t very accessible. It is hard to write such a detailed analysis and also make it flowing writing, but it is possible. But, if I want to look at this as purely a reference book, then perhaps that isn’t as important. Second, and this is less forgivable, the book had no conclusion, further thoughts, or anything to tie together the great work Hunter produced. The text just stops, like hitting the edge of a papyrus fragment. One wonders what Hunter might have said at the end.

My rating: 5 of 5 stars

I gave Caroline Alexander’s study of the Iliad five stars, only because I wasn’t given the option of six stars. This book was that good. I have been reading and studying Homer since the mid 1980s and this book is a perfect companion that reaffirmed some of my interpretations but also opened my eyes to many new possibilities.

Throughout this work, she challenges our assumptions about the Iliad and its epic hero, Achilles. She weaves her analysis to show how Homer really perceives war, heroes and humanity. I despised the Iliad the first time I read it. I thought it was all about anger, rage, machismo, and the glorification of war and killing. She talks about this in the preface (p. xiv) as well as throughout the text and the endnotes, discussing how Homer was received and deployed by different groups with different needs over the ages. She notes that the geographer/historian Strabo wrote about how disastrous the Trojan war was, not just for the Trojans but for the the Greeks (p. 220). Alexander sums it up so perfectly “That after the roll of centuries, this same Iliad, whose message had been so clearly grasped by ancient poets and historians, came to be perceived as a martial epic glorifying war is one of the great ironies of literary history … Homer’s insistent depiction of the war as a pointless catastrophe that blighted all it touched was thus adroitly circumvented” (p. 220). This makes me think of Horace’s “dulce et decorum est pro patria mori” (‘it is sweet and proper to die for one’s country’) and the retort from Wilford Owen, an English soldier and poet in World War I, who called that saying the “old Lie.”

Interlaced with thoughts on the epic, Alexander talks about each of the heroes and gods, various social and religious practices, and discusses theories about where and when these ideas originated and when they were incorporated into the Iliad itself. Some ideas came from the Mycenaean era, others from about the time the Iliad was written down. Some character traits were Greek, others from further east. She brings in other parts of the Epic Cycle, that include scenes from the Judgement of Paris through the Nostoi (“returns” of the main characters, of which the Odyssey is a standalone work).

On death, she has an excellent insight, writing “The slain warriors of the Iliad are mostly obscure fellows who have received no previous mention in the epic, but who are evoked– brought to life– at the moment they are killed by some small personalizing detail” (p. 66). In the next paragraph, she writes about how most of the deaths are of Trojans, yet “the Iliad ensures that the enemy is humanized and that the deaths of enemy Trojans are depicted as lamentable. The Iliad is insistent on keeping to the fore the price of glory” (p. 66). And in general, she shows that Achilles believes (both in the Iliad and in the Odyssey where he appears in the Underworld) that “Life is more precious than glory; this is the unheroic truth disclosed by the greatest warrior at Troy” (p. 98). Two years after Alexander’s book was published, Alice Oswald published Memorial, a ‘translation’ of the Iliad that only included the death scenes. It was a harsh read, beautifully wrought, like the reading of the names of the dead from some list. But, as Alexander notes, with some personalizing detail included. Alexander closes her book by noting that Homer ended his epic with “a sequence of funerals, inconsolable lamentation, and shattered lives. War makes stark the tragedy of mortality” (p. 225).

On leadership, I really enjoyed her thoughts on Achilles vs. Agamemnon. She discusses a potential confrontation between these two during the funeral games for Patroklos. She writes that it serves as a “bittersweet reminder of the difference real leadership could have made to the events of the Iliad” (p. 200) where Achilles defuses the situation in a “masterpiece of diplomacy” (p. 201).

Except for Book XXII, Alexander uses Richmond Lattimore’s classic translation of the Iliad from 1951. I’d read Lattimore’s Odyssey, but never his Iliad, so I blame her for enticing me with his translation. I bought it even before finishing her book. As for her translation of Book XXII, I have to mention that similar to when I read Emily Wilson’s translations of Seneca’s tragedies, I was reading Alexander while listening to classical music. Her rendition of Book XXII pairs most excellently with Schubert’s Death and the Maiden.

In a way, her translation of one book of the Iliad reminded me of Lord Derby’s translation of the Iliad in the 19th century. He translated only Book I, and shared it with some friends. He didn’t publish it. Everyone liked it so much that they encouraged him to translate the rest, which he did a few years later. In Alexander’s case, six years after releasing this analysis of the Iliad, she published her own translation of the full Iliad, which quickly became my favorite translation of Homer.

This book is worth perusing and owning simply for the massive endnotes. I don’t think I’ve ever read EVERY end note in a book. This time, I did. They were insightful and led me deeper into particular issues. They offered a mass of references for new books that I now need to check out.

There is so much here yet she keeps her narrative focused and flowing. I can’t say it enough, this is a well-executed book. I suggest you read this book and her full Iliad. It will be time well spent.

My rating: 5 of 5 stars

Phenomenal. An excellent novel. Miller pays homage to the mythology while creating new points of view for Circe’s story. I didn’t think she could top her first book on Achilles and Patroclus (The Song of Achilles), but she has outdone her self and then some. Her storytelling craft is running at 110%. Her word choices and style echo the classical works but they are also fast-paced, unstilted and breathe new life into these ancient storylines. She had me from the opening paragraph.

This work has everything: Titans vs Olympians, gods vs humanity, humanity vs itself, love, hate, revenge, passion, principles and egotism. Miller complicates the “complicated man” (Odysseus), but he is not even the main supporting actor in the work. We encounter so many: Medea, Prometheus, Daedalus, Scylla, Athena, Hermes, Helios, Aeëtes, Pasiphaë, the Minotaur, Telemachus, Penelope, Telegonus, and others.

This book should be on any reading list that includes Homer’s Odyssey or any mythological work from the classical period. Circe’s comments about a future poet singing of her meeting with Odysseus nails the perspective and power of Miller’s work: “I was not surprised by the portrait of myself: the proud witch undone before the hero’s sword, kneeling and begging for mercy. Humbling women seems to me a chief pastime of poets. As if there can be no story unless we crawl and weep.” Powerful and important words, backed up throughout the novel.

Two words to close: Well Done.

My rating: 4 of 5 stars

I picked this book up at Autumn Leaves Used Books in Ithaca, NY. The previous owner inscribed his name and the date he bought this little volume. I did some research and found that he was from Cortland, NY, which is near to Ithaca and Homer, NY. How could I pass up a book with those kind of connections! :-)

I’d never read Ennis Rees’s translations of Homer, but I do have his Odyssey in my to read pile. He was a professor and a poet, even named the South Carolina Poet Laureate in 1984-85. His free verse translation of the Iliad is wonderful. It flows, it’s fast, it’s exciting, it keeps many of the repeated epithets of the gods and heroes, which I savor but some find too repetitive.

In Matthew Arnold’s lecture “On translating Homer,” he lays out four items necessary for a good translation. It must be eminently rapid, plain and direct in syntax and words, plain and direct in substance of thought (i.e. in manner and ideas) and noble. Rees hits all of these and makes an excellent translation. I still like Caroline Alexander’s and Lord Derby’s a bit more, but I am so happy to have read and a have a copy of this book on my shelf. The only thing I missed was that there were no line numbers to correspond to the original text. They are very useful to be able to go back to the Greek or to compare sections with other translations.

As for the Iliad itself, I continue to learn new things, or I come across the same topic multiple times that it finally makes an impression on me. I loved how Homer goes back and forth in history as he tells his story, mentioning the endgame then returning to the present (e.g. the deaths of Patroclus, Hector and Achilles; as well as the destruction of the wall protecting the Achaean ships by Apollo and Poseidon long after the war). I liked the spooky/scary nature of a River or a Horse speaking in a human voice. It isn’t comic or silly, but startling, as it would have been to Achilles. And the battle with the River Xanthus/Scamandar is mind-blowing. Achilles fighting a river, the river fighting back and then Hephaestus fighting the river with fire (Book XXI).

My rating: 3 of 5 stars

Atwood offers us a very intriguing telling of the Odyssey from two different points of view: Penelope and her twelve maids. These maids were executed at the end of the Odyssey. It gives a different and valid perspective that challenges one to look more closely at Homer’s epic and at similar instances in literature and life. Emily Wilson, in her new translation of the Odyssey, also commented on these maids and how they have been misinterpreted by male translators over the centuries, adding words that weren’t there in the original Greek and implying they were simply throwing themselves at the suitors and deserving of death. Atwood offers another, more active, perspective, for these maids and for Penelope. Penelope calls out blatant sexism but Atwood weaves a more complex tale, adding a class dimension as well. Atwood complicates Penelope too, with respect to her relationship with the maids and how the maids view her in the underworld. Attempts at justice for these maids feels like reading a newspaper article today. Atwood’s prophetic writing streak continues.

Atwood roots her story firmly in the Homeric tradition and mythology. I smiled at references I knew and learned several new ones, such as Odysseus possibly being the son of Sisyphus (p. 46). She nails some important facets of male vanity too, especially when Penelope says of Odysseus: “it’s always an imprudence to step between a man and the reflection of his own cleverness” (p. 137).

I have to say I loved the reference to Tennyson’s poem, Ulysses. Penelope and Odysseus are just reacquainting themselves with each other and are telling each other stories. She says to him, “We’re not spring chickens any more,” to which he responds, “That which we are, we are” (p. 172). His words are a direct quote of Tennyson. Well-woven, Ms. Atwood!

Her story is somewhat similar to the burlesque translations of Homer that were popular up to the Victorian era. More often, those tended to be risqué just to be risqué, whereas Atwood has a definite set of points to make. But, at times, I felt her writing was a bit too much. Not in the content but in the “wink wink”, breaking the 4th wall, cutesy modern-day commentary. I might be somewhat influenced by having immediately just finished Madeline Miller’s excellent The Song of Achilles", a retelling/revealing of the lives of Achilles and Patroclus. Miller told an amazing story without the pithy asides and snarky commentary.

I have to say that in the last 15 years or so, women have brought such fresh air, new ideas, and solid scholarship to Homer. Caroline Alexander’s Iliad and Emily Wilson’s Odyssey are great additions to the list of translations (Alexander’s is the best translation I’ve read of Homer, ever, in my opinion). And now Atwood’s reimagining of the Odyssey and Miller’s take on the Iliad add to the corpus. Avail yourself of these wonderful works.

My rating: 5 of 5 stars

Dorothea Wender has done it again. A fabulously argued piece of scholarship that has depth, breadth and an appropriate amount of snark. I thoroughly enjoyed this. Having just finished Emily Wilson’s Odyssey translation, I have to say my thoughts of this Homeric epic work have improved a bit. Well done.

My rating: 3 of 5 stars

I was so excited to read Emily Wilson’s Odyssey, the first full translation into English by a woman. I’d recently finished Caroline Alexander’s Iliad, the first translation of that work into English by a woman. Alexander’s was the best Iliad I’d ever read and I savored each line. She blew away translations I’d read from the 19th, 20th and 21st century. I have to say I wasn’t as enamored with Wilson’s edition of the Odyssey.

To be fair, a chunk of my unhappiness was that I really dislike Odysseus. If you asked me five or ten years ago, I’d have said the Iliad sucked and the Odyssey rocked. I’ve totally flipped and prefer the Iliad these days. I find Odysseus to be arrogant, selfish, vain, and ungrateful. Homer perhaps meant us to see Odysseus this way, and if he did, he succeeded. Of the 20 years he was away from Ithaca, he spent 10 at war in Troy, 8 years in bed with two different goddesses, and the other two years mouthing off and strutting around, often leading to his men being killed. My reaction to Odysseus reminds me of the TV series MASH. Larry Linville was an amazing actor for creating such a hated character as Frank Burns, I can’t like Burns, and by proxy, Linville. I should praise Linville for creating such a deep & real character. I should praise Homer for showing us how awful Odysseus is. And, therefore, I should praise Wilson for conveying Homer’s intent into English.

As for Wilson’s translation, her introduction was amazing. I loved that she gave the original Greek words for certain things, a definite help with my study of the language. I was so happy that she tracked her translation close to the original, line for line. It makes study and following along with an original text (and Latin translation) so much easier. Caroline Alexander did that too and I was forever grateful. As reviews of Wilson’s translation (and Alexander’s) noted, many translators have embellished the text, adding so much more than was actually there in the original epic. Some of that is male arrogance. Some is academic pomposity. Either way, it often slows the story down and complicates tracking with the original. Wilson’s Odyssey flowed smoothly and quickly. I welcome her approach.

Some of the choices she made I didn’t find so exciting. For example, her choosing to update the language to a more contemporary, colloquial tone. This reminded me of Stanley Lombardo’s recent translations of both of Homer’s epics. Wilson chose things like “pigheaded” for “boaster/big talker” in the original. She described Demeter “with the cornrows in her hair”. The original Greek meant godly locks or fair-tressed. That seemed a stretch for me. Now, these are translator choices and translation by definition is meant to reach out to a larger audience (i.e. those who can’t read the a text in its original language). I got hooked on Homer a long time ago, in translation, and the one I read fit for the time I read it. If I’d first encountered Alexander Pope’s or George Chapman’s translation, I would have politely did my class report and then moved on and never looked back. The translation I read worked for me. People encountering Homer for the first time today might want language that is different, that they can relate to. If it captures them, then they can move into all the varied versions in English since the early 1600s, and maybe explore further.

While word choices can be battled over by both sides with both sides being correct, one decision Wilson made that I can’t be happy with was her disposing of the repetitive epithets. These are phrases found in Homer that modify the name of people, deities or objects. “Rosy-fingered dawn”, “bright-eyed Athena”, etc. She said that these were due to it being an oral poem originally and that they weren’t necessary for a written work. I disagree. I find them useful to root the story and characters, giving something familiar to hook onto as you move through the work. “Comfort words”, if you will, like comfort food. Caroline Alexander kept them in and I loved them and didn’t feel like they were repetitive or slowed the flow of the story. Wilson changed the translations around, choosing alternative forms each time she came upon one. She changed “rosy-fingered Dawn” to “her fingers bright with flowers” and also “the early Dawn was born; her fingers bloomed.” Perhaps valid translations, but the “nickname” for these characters is something I remember and I like re-encountering it when I meet them.

So, as I was getting into the book, I was thinking 4 stars. That dropped to 3 stars through the bulk of it and when I finished, I initially chose 3 stars. I changed that a few seconds later to 2 stars. Goodreads rankings are roughly “Hated”, “Ok”, “Liked”, “Really Liked”, “Loved”. I’m torn. 2 is too low, 3 seems a teensy bit too high. But, I’ll go with my original gut feeling and choose 3 stars.

On a person note, I have to say that after Odysseus’s men kill the cattle of Helios, I wanted to become a full-time vegetarian: “It did no good; the cows were dead already. The gods sent signs–the hides began to twitch, the meat on skewers started mooing, raw and cooked” (Book XII: 391-394). Wow.

My rating: 1 of 5 stars

I love Homer, and I love reading translations of Homer. This is the first one I think I ever gave so low a rating. I do feel kind of bad about it, and initially changed it to two stars, but then dropped it back to one. It’s primarily about the translator’s choices. First, he chose to eliminate or spice up the many repetitive items in the original Greek text, things like epithets for people and adjectives for events (e.g. rosy-fingered dawn). I think that the repetition of epithets and phrases work. Indeed, they are likely due to the poems originally being oral works as the introduction states, but they continue to add value in a written work, especially one of this length. They provide markers for the reader/listener and I think help build excitement and drama. I recently read Caroline Alexander’s translation of the Iliad and her use of repetition that is in the original text was beautiful. I highly recommend her Iliad.

Another choice the narrator made, and one that might be useful for some, is to bring colloquial American language to the text. Curses, slang, etc. pop up. Now, I don’t want crazy archaic words and seriously twisted Miltonian phrasing, but the contemporary slang just doesn’t work for me. Perhaps it would be useful to get young people excited by a text that can be daunting, overwhelming and at times boring. For whatever reason, I took to Homer when I read the Odyssey in high school and I’ve been with him ever since. Maybe some of these words will hook new people who then might explore the text deeper through other translators and the original text.

My rating: 5 of 5 stars

What an amazing translation of the Iliad. I’ve read many different translations, new and old, and this one wins hands down. It’s mind-boggling that this is the FIRST full translation published by a woman. I can’t believe it took so long but Caroline Alexander’s effort was worth the wait. This is not to say that all the other translations are bad (though some are), but hers brought this epic tale back to me again with new eyes and simply transformed it. As an added bonus, her introduction was excellent.

I took so long to read it since I savored each line. I pulled out a copy of the Iliad I had in classical Greek with a Latin translation and read it along with many of her lines. She often kept Homer’s repetitions. Some translators choose other words or try to change things around, since it can seem to be repetitive or cumbersome. But, looking at the Greek, the text backs her up. Hers is not a literal, simplistic translation. She adds her tone and flourish to the work, but she lets the original verses flow off the page. Homer was a storyteller, an oral one, and the repetition of lines, reuse of epithets and cadence are essential to sustaining understanding and building drama.

I have to say that I so enjoy Homer’s metaphors and similes. I smiled at some and was wowed by others. I was taken by the opening lines of Book 11: “Dawn from her bed arose by the side of good Tithonos, to bring light of day to deathless gods and mortal men.” And the concepts of guest friends and hospitality give one hope (6.212-231, 11.777-780, 18.385-390).

Someone once called the great poet Sappho the 10th Muse. I might go so far as to call Caroline Alexander the 11th.

My rating: 3 of 5 stars

I’ve wanted to read more of Pope’s translations of Homer and I was glad to have a chance with this little academic book that chose four books from the Iliad and added notes and an introduction. I have to say that the heroic couplet looks fun when you read a few lines here and there, but for a sustained piece of epic poetry, it became cumbersome and got in the way of the story. Yes, there was a rhythmic flow, but after awhile, all I could hear was the rhythm, not the content. Further, as many have noted, Pope embellished upon Homer, adding things that just weren’t in the text. It makes for a good yarn but after having read the Iliad several times, I felt that it didn’t need these extras to make it good.

I’m glad I’ve read it and now I can go back to other translations and explore new ones. I’m looking forward to reading Caroline Alexander’s recent translation of the Iliad (2015).

My rating: 5 of 5 stars

A beautiful edition of Tryphiodorus’s tale of the destruction of Troy with an in-depth introduction, English translation by Merrick with copious notes, and the original Greek text with a Latin translation below it. The story follows the sack of Troy from just before the Trojan horse to when the Greek forces leave Troy for the last time.

Tryphiodorus’s tale starts out slow but builds as we get into the poem. It is not Homer, but he tells a tale that if you know the story, you will enjoy his telling. And there are moments when it shines. The description of the Trojan horse, how it is brought into the city and Helen’s attempt to get the Greeks hiding inside to give themselves away are exciting and beautifully sketched. Tryphiodorus gives moving and chilling descriptions of the joyous celebration of the Trojans at the Greek “departure” and then the violence that flowed through the streets as the sack was at its height.

Possibly the best thing of the volume I read were the notes. They were detailed, exciting, full of material explaining the text, issues surrounding the events and the creation of the text, etc. In one example, the note on p. 96 discusses the controversy of whether Odysseus strangled and killed Anticlus while they hid in the Trojan horse. Tryphiodorus story says that’s what happened and he was backed up by the texts of Ovid and others. However, other scholars, such as Spondanus (Jean de Sponde), have said that Odysseus just kept his hand over his mouth while Helen called out. Such discussions in the notes made this book come even more alive, as though it were a lecture in and of itself. Perhaps that’s how learning progressed among scholars at that time. It still works today. For me, this book was truly an enjoyable experience.

My rating: 5 of 5 stars

R.C. Jebb provides a great introduction, especially with his information on geography and history. The whole work is filled with nice little snippets like this, always well documented back to the Homeric texts, scholia, or other scholarly writings. One such interesting tidbit was the suggestion that Homer knew of Greece and Egypt, but nothing of the great empires of Assyria and Babylonia.

The book is divided into four sections, each addressing an important part of Homer and how we relate to the person, text and its history. The first section deals with the general literary characteristics of the poems. He then turns an exciting light on the Homeric world and follows that with a look at how Homer was received in antiquity. The final section deals with the Homeric question, i.e. who wrote the Iliad and the Odyssey, how were they written and when were they written. It goes into textual analysis, history, geography, language (e.g. the digamma), etc. The notes at the end of the third section lists the important sources of the actual Homer texts (p. 101, notes 1&2). Jebb also ends the book with a list of important Homer editions (Greek and translations) as well as scholarly books (Note, p. 198-202).

I really enjoyed that he discussed the Epic Cycle, of which the Iliad and Odyssey are a part. There are eight main stories that cover the period from before the Trojan War all the way to the death of Odysseus by his son with Circe. The pieces are:

1. Cypria: Peleus & Thetis’s wedding up to beginning of Iliad opens
2. The Iliad
3. Aethiopis: the contest between Ajax & Odysseus for Achilles’s armor
4. Little Iliad: up to the capture of Troy
5. Ilioupersis: the fall of Troy and the departure of the Greek forces
6. The Nostoi: the returns of Menelaus and Agamemnon
7. The Odyssey
8. The Telegony: the story of Odysseus’s son with Circe and how he comes to Ithaca and unwittingly kills his father. After this, Telemachus marries Circe and Telegonus marries Penelope

My rating: 4 stars.

I stumbled across a reference to this work and was intrigued. It contains the first extant reference to Achilles being dipped in the River Styx to make him invulnerable (p. vii). In a Latin text, not even a Greek one! His mother, the goddess Thetis, held him by his heel, thus keeping that part from being invincible and giving us the term Achilles' heel. I had to read this short work and I picked up the translation by Stanley Lombardo with an introduction by Peter Heslin. I’d rate the story 4-5 and the translation 3-4, so I picked 4 for my overall rating.

The story covers Achilles, from after he was left with the Centaur Chiron and up to when he sails away with the Greek fleet to go to Troy. It mostly covers his mother’s attempt to hide him from the Greeks so that he would not go to Troy and die as he was fated to from birth. An interesting love story that has Achilles hiding dressed as a girl and being found out by Odysseus. It’s short, unfinished likely due to Statius’s death, but still, it is polished and was presented to the public before he died. It stands on its own and tells a fun and interesting story.

I’ve read so much about Achilles, Greek and Latin mythology, etc. but hadn’t heard this tale. There is so much more for me to learn. And yet, the saddest part is that so little has survived from antiquity. What we do have is but a small portion of these great myths and epics. Writers like Statius, Ovid and others knew these stories as did their readers. How much more did they know that we only see flashes and glimpses of, or never hear about at all.

So … keep reading. I picked up Ovid’s Metamorphoses based on Heslin’s introduction!

My rating: 5 of 5 stars

I stumbled across a review of an upcoming collection of poetry from Alice Oswald (Falling Awake, August 2016) and read about this little volume called Memorial. One of the best unexpected things to happen to me in 2016. A very interesting and thought provoking translation/transformation of Homer’s Iliad. I’m a big fan of the Iliad and have read it many times in various translations. I’ve even taken a whack a few times with the Greek text. Her take is new and is so worth the effort. She writes in the preface “I write through the Greek, not from it – aiming for translucence rather than translation.”

Alice Oswald has created a stripped down Iliad, that focuses on those who died in the epic poem. But, she’s added to it as well, as any good oral poet would with such a great tale to tell. She starts, powerfully, with a list of the names of the people who died in the poem. It’s like when they do readings of victims names at memorial services, or on monuments like the Vietnam Veterans Memorial. At first thought/glance, you think it’s nothing. But, as you read one name, then another and continue on for pages, it builds in your mind and your heart. When you read the last name, here Hector, and then silence, it stops you dead (pun intended).

The afterword by Eavan Boland is well worth reading. He writes of the people who died: “They are the brothers, husbands, sons of every war. And as we put down Memorial we wonder whether we first met them in Homer’s epic or saw them on last night’s news bulletin” (p. 85). He highlights many things I saw, but also showed me things I missed.

I read this in one setting. Her pacing is fast but not rushed. I will have to return to this poem again and let it wash over me and transform me. Alice Oswald has created an excellent work with her version of the Iliad. I am so lucky to have stumbled upon it.

My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Unlike Francis Newman’s screed, Matthew Arnold’s final essay on translating Homer, written in part as a response to Newman, is a calm, well-considered and organized lecture. In 69 pages, he responds to the larger claims of Newman as well as expounding further on advice for future translators of Homer, and translation in general.

I enjoyed his discussion of simplicité vs. simplesse (natural vs. artificial simplicity) As an illustration, he compares Wordsworth’s Michael and Tennyson’s Dora. But, Arnold does suggest that Walter Scott’s Lay of the Last Minstrel is wanting, especially the beginning of the 6th canto, which I adore. Now, granted, I adore this for reasons that might be different than Scott’s intention (his was mostly about nationalism and love of one’s native land).

Overall, this was a good read but if you had to pick one book on translating Homer, I’d suggest Arnold’s first set of three lectures. They can stand alone and they give great guidance.

My rating: 1 of 5 stars

This was Francis Newman’s response to a series of three lectures that Matthew Arnold did on translating Homer. Arnold viscously, but with full explanations, attacked Newman’s translation of Homer’s Iliad. While Newman could have provided a calm and nuanced response, he didn’t. This is a 104 page screed against Arnold, making personal attacks and unsubstantiated claims. There is no organization to his thoughts, argument or the entire work. It’s as if he scribbled it down within moments of reading Arnold’s essays and then never went back over what he wrote. It is simply an incoherent, unorganized rant. Almost as if he wanted to prove Arnold’s analysis, Newman provides many at-length translations that are awful to read (pp. 28-30).

This book is good to read in the flow of Arnold’s original three essays and Arnold’s response to Newman’s response. As a whole, they are worth the read together. But this work on its own, as well as Newman’s translations, are best left to history.