Iliad

Ennis Rees. The B&N Classics version.

Recognize the Satya and Dvapara Yugas(Golden and Bronze) within Achilles and the Treta and Kali Yugas(Silver and Iron) in Hector.
Perfect individual versus perfect citizen.

Yes, this poem shows the transition from the bronze age to the iron age. That is why Diomedes isn't the main focus even though he does some of the most impressive feats of the battles. Diomedes is the bronze age hero while Achilles and Hector are representing the new ideas of the iron age.

even then I'd state there are higher aspects of the heroes themselves. like when Hector goes to the ships with Zeus on his side that is of the Silver Age trait of total god worship while when Achilles finally realizes that he can't change destiny but can fulfill it in a meaningful way that is Golden Age Heroism

What do I read to understand the differences between the golden/bronze/silver/iron? I have already read the odyssey and most Greek plays, and am reading the Iliad right now.

Is anyone else kind of awed by how much a sum totality of humanity the Iliad is? How despite being a relatively simple story (Girl gets stolen, guys chase girl, guys fight other guys, gods get involved, city gets destroyed) it manages to pack so much of the human experience into it?

It's got love, anger, revenge, honor, loyalty, hatred, (dark) comedy, sex, theology, philosophy, war, peace, fatherhood, motherhood, the question of what a man should be, of what a woman should be, and on and on and on.

>tfw academics over-intellectualize bronze age genre fiction near me
>tfw they don't hallucinate the battle scenes like I do because they are too busy analysing

>Who am I supposed to root for?
Where's your farm?

The decadence of the new generation. Achilles represents the descent of civilization, rise of the soymale. When Achilles is getting cucked by Agamemnon, he states that the Troyans never did any bad to him, and that he's on the war just because. He doesn't understand the national spirit. He fights only for material prizes, and when he's denied of that pleasure, he is so badly hurt, that millions of lives of his countrymen means nothing to him. He isn't hurt by the taking of the prizes itself, but to the fact that for society, he isn't valuable enough to not mess with him, as you can see when he cries to his mother.

>He fights only for material prizes
Then why didn't he return to fight when offered millions times more than was originally taken from him?

Why would he continue to fight when Agamemnon did to him the exact same thing Paris did to menelaus, which was the whole cause of the war in the first place?

>Then why didn't he return to fight when offered millions times more than was originally taken from him?

Rage. He's not rejecting the prizes out of grief but out of revenge. See when he cries to his mother

>waah waah mom i'm tha best warrior and they still cucked me :(

Why would he continue to fight when Agamemnon did to him the exact same thing Paris did to menelaus, which was the whole cause of the war in the first place?

Taking one for the team. A respectable man would at least go back to the war for his countrymen. Of course Achilles doesn't do that. He only goes back when someone dies with his armor. And it's not an action of guilt but one of shame. He could claim that he countless men die because he was fighting for his right against Agammenon. But to let a man use his armor and die, when he could've won the war and settle the matter? That's too much even for a beta cuck soy booooy.

Classics major here. Don't waste your time reading it. You said it man, you don't know who to root for, there's no plot : hell, I bet it doesn't look like the movie at all, right?
Dude, it's all right. Just drop it, man. Move on. There's Percy Jackson, which is written with all the same gods, and there 100 times more action. Or there's movies, like Clash of the Titans. Don't waste your time reading it. It's just for old people to be pretentious.
Don't start with the greeks either, don't waste your time with them. There's so many great videogames to play, dude. Why waste your time with the "actual" thing, when the remakes we do are 10 times better?

you're alright.

and especially
>bla fucking bla bla bla
Just play the videogames, dude.

What is a good videogame alternative to starting with the Greeks? God of War? What about philosophy?

Idk but I've always loved Fable 2. There's something about it.

titan quest

M I N E C R A F T

>not reading the Lattimore translation
I thought it was good from the start, OP. But I also knew the general plot before I even read it so I don't know if that helps.

It has impressive depth for its time. I like the dynamic between Hektor and Paris.
I did this too.

God of War is genuinely pretty good.

>Who am I supposed to root for?
Hector.

the Kali Yuga started in 500 BCE you fucking faggot
this is incredibly stupid but has at least the benefit of being historically accurate
they’re making shit up and using Evola and other shit to make more things up
please fuck off you fucking retards with your decadence and nonsense terms. it represents the end of the olympian hero and the dawn of earthly rule of the kings, the rise of Greece as a regional power taking prescience over Anatolia and other Med peoples. Fuck off back to /pol/ you fucking niggers

Kali yuga started in 3000 bce which is still 2000 years off from the trojan war so its still dumb, my mistake. the rest stands you’re all stupid pseuds

>No one said age of mythology yet

baka

>reading translations

>reading

It's a good translation

Nice to know you're a classics major, my guy.

I have no problem reading a book. I don't play video games either. I'm at page 150 since I posted this thread and am devoted to the story. God forbid someone attempt to discuss the themes of a piece of literature on a board dedicated to literature, though, right? And God forbid they lace in some sarcastic humor. Let's continue to strawman this, though, so we can be super cool to fellow elitist nerds on Veeky Forums. What a noble goal, dearest member of the literati, dearest classics major. Please continue the good craft of the ancients; we are in a dying, degrading age and need your unbridled protection from the atrocities of modern living.

Fun fact: Helen came from Sparta... you know, the city-state with a eugenics program... and which was reputed to have the hottest women in Greece.

88

notice the unsure, almost programmatic manner of the post, the usage of news caster, Fox News no doubt, clauses to draw attention; the idiot mention of Sparta. Now look at the intentional spacing of the 88 at the end, isolating it like a sigil for your mind to connect with the last sentence. Notice the mention of eugenics in connection with the disloyal stupid whore and the unnecessary nature of the entire thing. This is fascism, this is what it does to people. Fox News built this mind, Fox News and Breitbart, Drudge Report, /pol/ news, infowars, Veteran’s Today and having no class.

Spitting on you and your family

Fox news is connected to fascism?

>long before Rand's cheap novel
Stopped reading there

Aside from the repetitive button mashing, they did a great job with the background and immersion of God of War. Scale and presentation are great, as well as the interaction with the Gods and other beings in that universe. Story line pretty much boils down to leave a trail of bodies to sate Kratos' vengeance though.

>Who am I supposed to root for?
That's the point. You're supposed to root for these poor mortal pawns to get over their petty differences and stop killing each other, making their parents weep. The neutrality of the authorial voice in the Iliad is one of its great strengths. It's not petty propaganda, "Greeks are good" or "Trojans are good".

Zeus doesn't hurt the Greeks out of any concern for honor - Zeus hurts the Greeks out of petty god politics.

>This is fascism,
Excuse me, that poster has plainly not even read the Doctrine of Fascism, stop associating us with Fox News watchers

Classics major here, man.

Didn't mean to come off as elitist, although I kind of was when writing the post, as I had you figured as video game player. Anyway.

The Iliad is the single greatest work of poetry ever produced by mankind. Of poetry, I repeat. Do not understand it as a story, but rather as a long poem. 95% of the poetry is lost to translation (and I am not kidding, Homer is seriously one of the most untranslateable authors, mostly due to the extremely intricate play of focus, "zoom" and other visual tricks of his poetry, which is only thoroughly rendered by the Greek). But the 5% left should be enough to make it an enthralling read.
The Iliad is exceedingly visual. You have to accustom yourself to the practice of picturing yourself what Homer is representing. At the risk of sounding crude, it is somewhat close to a "cartoon" ; imagine the Greek vase, and its representation. Each verse of Homer is an image as seen on those vases. The slow pace, the heavy rhythm and the great length of Homer's verse, the dactylic hexameter, makes it so that the poet has the time to construe, through each verse, which usually stands out as an individual unit of meaning, a coherent "picture" which the reader, --- or in Greek times the listener --- should represent himself.

Let me give you an example with the first few lines of the sixth book of the Iliad. My translation is literal,, with some respect for word order, where possible.

Τρώων δ᾽ οἰώθη kαὶ Ἀχαιῶν φύλοπις αἰνή:
πολλὰ δ᾽ ἄρ᾽ ἔνθα kαὶ ἔνθ᾽ ἴθυσε μάχη πεδίοιο
ἀλλήλων ἰθυνομένων χαλkήρεα δοῦρα
μεσσηγὺς Σιμόεντος ἰδὲ Ξάνθοιο ῥοάων.

The baneful melee of the Trojans and Achaeans was then left alone :
Much, here and there throughout the plain, stretched the battle,
Each one thrusting towards another with their bronze-tipped spears,
Between the streams of the Simoïs and the Xanthus.

The first line, explains that the gods left the battlefield, yet, as they are already gone and the focus now shifts to the quarreling men, they are not mentioned, and their departure is described through its consequences. Since the reader knows the line mentions the departure of the gods back to Olympus, the battle is presented from above, after the gods are gone. This is furthered by Homer's use of "phylopis" for battle, which in fact, means melee : it is an indescriptible chaos, through which we cannot really distinguish the two armies ; the distance, also, is too great. The second line introduces its subject only at the end, and indeed "stretches" the stretching of the battle through the first three quarters of the verse. Suddenly the battle is presented, in a vast pan, as a single line stretching across the plain. Men are not mentioned yet. cont.

>The very first word of the Iliad is “RAGE.” The “RAGE” of Achilles when his honor is violated and his rightful prize and love is taken from him by his very own commander.
No it's not, it's "Sing."

On the third line, we are suddenly among men : the verb used for their act of "thrusting" is the same as that used for the battle, at the previous verse. The word Homer uses, "allelôn", means reciprocity : the two lines of men are caught together in this horrific, chaotic melee, where spears keep flowing out of nowhere, and killing people. We are now standing right between the two lines, with spears thrusting around us. This verse has a really slow rhythm ; it tries to produce impact by suddenly introducing men, in a not really heroic setting, where the battle is a glory-less chaos : "phulopis" the word used by Homer in the first verse to describe this situation, is a pejorative one, and made even more so, by "aine", "baneful". Suddenly battle is revealed in its downside, its sheer brutality. The fourth verse then hits, and recasts all that has been said within a geographical framework. Homer doesn't do that because he wants us to understand where the battle is taking place. These two rivers are the most important around Troy. We know about them, he's not trying to tell us about "where" the battle is taking place. He is contrasting the senseless violence of battle with the calm of "the flows of the Simoüis and the Xanthus" to show its absurdity even more. Suddenly we experience a "zoom out" both in "physical view", as this is now a bird eye's perception of the battle, and a "zoom out" in "moral view", as we now see the battle as an outside observer, and realize, through its taking place in a wider, almost "cosmic" context, its absurdity.

I could go on, with the whole of the Iliad. Homer spent his life writing this. Everything, every single word, is thought through. I have skipped over most of the "poetry" in those four lines, such as that produced by sound of rhythm, or by the oppositions of words and meaning which only appear in the Greek, but know that they are there. Every single line. Those are not the "best verses", I barely cherry-picked them, and they do not stand out when you read them casually. Homer is the greatest poet to have ever lived, and one could spend a lifetime going through the jewels he put in his Iliad.

It's rage.

μῆνιν ἄειδε θεὰ Πηληϊάδεω Ἀχιλῆος
the first word, "menin", means "divine rage" actually ; it is never used of men in the Iliad, except in Achilles' case.

In Greek word order, the first line goes :
The rage, sing, goddess, of the son of Peleus, Achilles

yes, intimately
you are Fox News watchers spiritually, that’s what /pol/, that’s why the frogs talk the way they do on soc media. you are not even a hair’s breadth apart from Tucker and Bill faggot

How is Fox connected to fascism?

by promoting the values of tribalism, capital-state collusion, martial values over diplomatic, occulted mercantilism, anti-rational propagandist discourse, the cult of beauty, faux gregarious talking heads, hyper-patriotism, bloodthirst, xenophobia and the holy myth of the sanctity of the middle class nuclear family, also always has been implicitly white supremacist as Rupert Murdoch is a deeply racist man who hates non-whites but is ok with the Jews because he likes money. There's more, for instance the use of false information as pretenses for starting a war in Iraq, the cooperation of Fox News broadcasters with the CIA, the rampant culture of sexual assault, the farming of beautiful aryan women to parade in front of lascivious bored aryan workers etc.

If i had to pick any organization on Earth that was crypto-fascist I would say Fox and Friends is the greatest embodiment of Goebbels and Himmler's visions. All of it ticks off the list of Crypto-Fascism.

Volke (white republicans), State (the military and presidency, the congress is ignored), Capital (the production of the nation, the measure of the power of the nation exalted)

Corporate Fascism, exactly what Nazi Germany was implicitly is what the Republicans are explicitly, there is functionally no difference, the exoteric aspects are just subdued because they're unnecessary but they remain implicitly. Ann Coulter's anti-Semitism and racism is another significant image of incipient fascism. It was all there waiting, they literally even deny basic science because its "liberal" (read: Jewish) and they reject the idea of rational debate (Liberal Democratic Value) for violent rhetoric (Fascist value). Fox more than anything else is what Adorno was writing about

"We, wretched mortals! lost in doubts below, But guess by rumour, and but boast we know"

You are so brainwashed its sickening reading your post.

nonsense, I'm no liberal. I'm just cognizant of what is associated with what and the form that underlies Fox News is Crypto-Fascism or just Corporate Fascism, which is what Trump is and what the """alt-right""" (i kno you all hate that word) is. You think I watch CNN and voted for Bernie/HRC? Out of your mind user, you've spent too long shouting at animals and forgot there are men among you.

You are like the feminists who see "patriarchy" everywhere, only you see fascism. Actually felt pity reading your post. Move away from ideology, it is rotting your brain and blatantly making you unhappy

>What’s the developing theme, if there even is one?

Agamemnon mistreats one of his men. This brings the Greeks to the precipice of ruin. Couple that with an emphatic look at the enemy, subtle and not-so-subtly humor, themes of human weakness and forces beyond their control, and much action-packed killing too.

People have enjoyed it for four thousand years for a reason.

>he's sulking to his mother on the beach because he got cucked

Honor demands this of him.
It's pretty wild if you think about it.

In a way, the Illiad takes the honor of a warrior to its logical extreme (a sort of strange pacifism) all the while building tremendous suspense for the eventual joining of battle.

...

euxe!

If you listen to this while you read

youtube.com/watch?v=dugDPx0dW7E

the Iliad becomes 10x better

>Achilled is a badass
I think you are actually starting to understand

I enjoyed reading this.

If you hate it so much, at least speedread through a prose translation so you understand the plot. But really, you should be able to appreciate Fagles if you're not a total pleb.

Beautiful. I'm going to go reread the Iliad this weekend now.

holy shit this post is so embarrassing

>.0001btc has been deposited into your acc

This thread has inspired me to reduce my pleb level. What is the best translation of Iliad?

>only you see fascism
CNN isn't fascist its veiled techno-socialism
>felt pity
pity is a dangerous emotion id advise you to quiet it before you engage with anything that inspires it. better men than you have been consumed by it
>move away from ideology
and what ideology is that?
>making you unhappy
interesting. so you are concerned for my happiness? what about you user?

>this whole thread

"I DONT GET HOMER" is literally highschool tier

Some of the better posts I've read here in a while.

Highschool tier of 20 years ago is college tier today

I think you meant Lattimore

Lattimore translation. Closest to Greekij English. I'd also suggest getting a companion book to read along side it, which is what I'm doing. I've got one by Malcom Willcock if you're interested.

OP here. This was a dumb thread and I regret it. I was being a pussy.

The Iliad is enjoyable. I'm at Book X and look forward to seeing where else it goes.

the Iliad is an examination of the proper response to cuckoldry within hierarchy, between king and vassal, man and god, rival and rival

The Odyssey is infinitely more entertaining.

Go back to wherever you came from

Which Iliad translations would you guys recommend?

they're all fucking gay assholes and it's boring, also no real ending

This gets asked every day, but I don't have the meme comic about it saved.
Anyways, the Veeky Forums recommendations are:

Lattimore (1951)
Tell me, Muse, of the man of many ways,
who was driven far journeys, after he had

Fitzgerald (1974)
Sing in me, Muse, and through me tell the story
of that man skilled in all ways of contending,

Fagles (1990)
Sing to me of the man, Muse, the man of twists and turns
driven time and again off course, once he had plundered

Pope (1715)
Achilles' wrath, to Greece the direful spring
Of woes unnumber'd, heavenly goddess, sing!

Fagles if you have little prior experience with poetry; Lattimore or Fitzgerald if are familiar with poetry; and Pope if you have already read the Iliad.
If you want detailed information, check out
iliad-translations.com/translation-comparison/

ancient texts are a meme.

kys

working on it

Which translation should I read?
I bought the Lawrence of Arabia translation of the Oddysey since it was $5 at the book store.

you have to pretend to like old greek pretentious shit otherwise youll be called a pleb op
just read on and then masturbate to the greeks here on Veeky Forums like the rest of the homosexuals here

Did Lattimore do another translation because mine starts out different. It would also be good to mention that the Lattimore translation is the closest to the Greek as posible in English

I guess you're responding to the first line of the Odyssey and yours is the Iliad.

What's your stance on the Homeric question?

Aeneid is better

What edition are you reading? I think I might be too stupid for Illiad, I bought a copy years ago and just cannot read it;

>Never snobbish, Lombardo deliberately lowers the intellectual level with dull clichés until the dialogue has been dumbed down enough to suit a bitter whining drunk at the corner bar.

>Fitzgerald’s lines do not come close to forming units of composition, but instead are broken without concern for sentence structure and then cluttered with anachronisms and bombast (which I have put in italics).

Wow... the guy who wrote that article pretty much slaughters every single translation

Attached: 1433851789876.jpg (499x499, 48K)

Is there a book that goes through the Iliad/Odyssey in full just like this?

Underrated. OP is a lying faggot

>defying the king
>not ba af
pseud

Any verse by verse commentary, I guess.

I'm a pseud who doesn't generally read commentaries since I have 50+ years to read, so I just need a point in the right direction. Who is a good Homer commentator, let's say?

are you a woman?

>I have 50+ years to read
Well then spend the time of reading the Iliad verse by verse and write your own commentary.