absolutely loving the iliad
I've never really been interested in the ancient classics, largely because at the time when I was looking into them (at least a decade ago), I had no patience with reading verse.
However... two or so years ago, as the "What's your Roman Empire?" meme was popping off I accidentally became transfixed with the topic. I started watching a bunch of documentaries on Rome after having a thought in the car that highways are somewhat distant descendants of those old routes. Of course, the Romans did not invent roads, but it seems to me like roads were a big deal for the Roman view of a connected Imperium.
That single documentary sent me down a rabbit hole, and now I'm at my dining table trying to work through Lingva Latina Per Se Illvstrata.
Long story short, I'm now extremely interested in how the ancient days figure in our current understanding of reality, and how the West still hangs1 on to concepts that were being born deep into the BC era.
So I have started reading Homer's Iliad, the Robert Fitzgerald translation. And damn... I can't believe I never got into this earlier, but at the same time I'm glad I'm reading it now, because I can really appreciate the language and the story.
The battles are absolutely brutal, the descriptions of men as they are felled by sword and spear are both gruesome and beautiful at the same time. The setting of the battle scenes are immersive and evocative, and the drama among the gods as they support one side or the other is pure soap opera.
I'd like to quote a few parts of it because Fitzgerald's translation is great but I haven't been taking notes on the parts which I was like... damn. I'm waiting for a physical copy to arrive to scrawl on.
I'm already 35% deep on my Kindle and I honestly look forward every day to grind through a few more pages.
Highly recommended reading if you've been sitting on the thought for a while. I made a decision after finding this great website that has comparisons of the different translations. Give it a go!
And I mean hang on also in a negative way, Plato being a perfect example of an absolute moron who has fucked Western thought up.↩