So, how is this book? Worth a read?

Probably one of the most important books Ive read made me understand that the literary life is not for me

Lacks in comparison to the Odyssey with being memorable, and doesn't have any cool scenes like the Iliad or as much anthropological or social-sentimental worth that makes it special. Metamorphoses is the best Latin epic t.b.h, and perhaps the best Latin poetry there is.

>People just lack conviction
B-but i'm already learning Italian to read the Divine Comedy!

It's alright.
Virgil is a more refined, civilized storyteller than Homer. The Æneid is a lot shorter than even the Odyssey, and you won't find the same kind of 200-page-obituary tedium you get in the Iliad.
But everything is so artificial and derivative and railroaded, there's no freshness or authenticity. It's like a theme park version Homer. Every book, especially in the first half, is a piece in a different "genre" or theme, with a very thin story connecting them. There are lots of really ridiculous scenes- the one wherein the Carthaginians somehow have all the famous Trojan War scenes on their temple comes to mind. And there's a fucking miracle every five lines. The hero just follows the gods' constant direction from point A to B to C, and nothing he does makes any sense whatsoever except in this context. There are machine-born-gods coming of Virgil's ears. It's like Skyward Sword. It certainly doesn't have anything like the philosophical and melancholy fury of the Iliad, nor the immense intellectual interest of being a massive artifact of Indo-European culture.
There are some really potent parts- Pyrrhus kiling Priam, Dido's issues, Mezentius's death. But, for instance, Book 5 is basically pointless and just there since Homer had a sports episode too. I'd say the second half is better and more organic than the first. On that I'm in the historical minority. And even there the actual set-up to the war is rushed through in less than a book, and the very fact the the poem is neatly divided in the Odyssey Half and the Iliad Half is a discredit to it.
Obviously it's probably more appreciable in the Latin, especially if you're into poetry (I'm not).

Nos debemus munire existentiam nostri gentis et felicia futura nostris Latinis et Etruscis filiis. Ave Turne.

This was like the essays on Phil Collins and Whitney Houston in American Psycho - I just drifted right by while nodding my head.

Well-played, sir.

Really great post, man. I could not agree more about you saying that it doesn't really feel artificial, and I think most of that comes from the huge amount of influence that the Iliad and Odyssey had on Virgil, to the point where he's almost trying to compete and outdo Homer, instead of just making his art.

Would you mind elaborating on "200-page-obituary tedium you get in the Iliad"? The only boring thing I read in it was the catalogue of ships, but even that wasn't so bad. Did you find all the piercing of nipples and darkness shrouding people boring?

Danke; I wasn't expecting any positive reception.
>Did you find all the piercing of nipples and darkness shrouding people boring?
After a while it gets old, ja. That said, probably not reading the books all at once, or hearing rather than reading, would render it much more pleasant.

Have any of you read the more obscure surviving epics- Statius's Thebaid, Apollonius's Argonautica, Nonnus's Dionysiaca, or Silius's Punica?

>Statius's Thebaid, Apollonius's Argonautica, Nonnus's Dionysiaca, or Silius's Punica?
Or Lucan's Pharsalia, I knew I was forgetting someone.

I think a sizable portion of readers of the Iliad would agree with you that that gets tedious, but I found it wonderful. The epic similes are really amazing and they're everywhere in those long battle scenes.

I've read the Argonautica, but I do intend to get around to the Thebaid sometime.

As for the Argonautica, I thought it was just awful. Just so, so awful a travelogue without any interesting episodes in it. I think a lot of it comes down to the length of it: it's only something like 150 pages. Compared to the ~450 of the Odyssey, you don't really have a lot of room to put in a lot when you're writing something about travelling all over the place. I remember there being some location they visited for a while that was in the book for less than half a page, before it moved onto something else that was also very short.

I appreciate this post

>Rome was looking for a unifying text to lock down their cultural identity and they released it despite its incomplete nature
Damn, now I'm picturing Virgil writing away at high speed while Augustus keeps running in shouting 'get the fuck on with it, Mr Genius Writer! I told everyone to expect our national epic two weeks ago!'

It's good, but start with the Greeks and avoid the P+V translation.

Thanks for the warning. But, to be honest, isn't that not too different from the wandering books in the Odyssey? IIRC Hyperborea and Lotus-eaters were like a page each.
It's a shame that the Roman "national epic" was just a pastiche of a Greek author in a Greek meter. It's a shame that Ennius's work hasn't survived; that at least was in a native Latin meter.
I really should read Lucan and see how he compares to Virgil.
Then again, the idea of a "national epic" is kind of problematic. It's one thing to say that a culture has exalted a certain poem or novel to the core of its education and frame of reference. It's another to say that this work somehow embodies the ""spirit"" of the nation. If one looks at Homer, clearly these values- be they those of the depicted culture at large or those of Achilles' and Homer's critique of it- and this culture are not at all those of the classical Greeks. Rather, as Plato and the tragedians reveal, in spite of other statements depicting Homer as the source of wisdom, they more used Homer as a frame of reference, being the story everyone knows, imposing their own values onto him.
I'd say the "classical Greek spirit", as unscientific as that must be, is probably much better represented by the Athenian tragedians than by the illiterate Aryan anarcho-monarchist Homer.

>Thanks for the warning. But, to be honest, isn't that not too different from the wandering books in the Odyssey? IIRC Hyperborea and Lotus-eaters were like a page each.

The thing is is that those things are welcome little adventures in the Odyssey because there are more fleshed out adventures on top of it, like Circe, the Cyclops, the suitors, and the Underworld. Imagine 3/4 of a book composed of things like that, with 1/4 being a longer story that still doesn't have enough time spent on it.

Why does Homer still hold up so well?

Aside from the obvious beautiful poetry, in translation at least, though I've heard people say that reading it in Greek is akin to a spiritual experience, there's just so much going on in his stories. I haven't seen it commented on in my little outside reading of him, but I think a lot of the reason Homer endures is because of how different the Iliad and Odyssey are from one another, so more people will be drawn to at least one of those. They're not so idiosyncratic as, say, Dostoevsky's works, where if you dislike one or two of his major works you probably just won't like him in general. With Homer you have an episodic adventure story mainly about hospitality and voyages and so on, but you can contrast that to the Iliad with all its rage, death, fate, and gods. I also think the books are just perfectly laid out. What you referred to as 200 pages of tedious obituaries in the Iliad I see more as keeping in line with the theme and not shying away from war, both the good (winning valor, camaraderie, honor) and the bad (death, mercilessness, pain of loved ones lost); it's all very honest and has the organic qualities that you critiqued Virgil of not having earlier.

What would you say?

The dramatic capabilities of specifically The Iliad and the narrative capabilities of The Odyssey feel unprecedented as fuck. These are ancient texts - you expect to look at them in passing, like an artifact in a museum. Instead the Iliad makes you cry and tremble, The Odyssey engages you like the best of stories

Like, who doesn't cry with Achilles and Priam?

Agreed. I've come across a couple of works that are almost as engaging and dramatically satisfying as Homer, but nothing quite on par with him, let alone that surpasses him. Have you?

>I've heard people say that reading it in Greek is akin to a spiritual experience
Damn. Almost makes one want to learn Greek, but I imagine that would take quite a while.

What English translation would you recommend of the Iliad?

>Damn. Almost makes one want to learn Greek, but I imagine that would take quite a while.

Yeah, it's reputed to be a very difficult language, unfortunately for us.

As for translations, I've only read Fitzgerald's and have skimmed Fagles. I've listened to an audiobook of the Odyssey translated by Fagles and enjoyed it. I would recommend either of those, but really you ought to look at comparisons of excerpts from different translations and see which sounds the best to you.

This is kinda the right thread:

I've been reading the Iliad in Pope's translation. I know he utterly overrides Homer's voice, so now I'm wondering if I fucked up. Is Pope's poetry worth not getting the same work? In other words, does Homer's work transcend flowery words, or is the poetry an integral part of the work?

It's because he was literally inspired by the literal goddess.
: ^)

Pope's style is extremely his own. I would call it a neoclassical, exalted interpretation of a classical work that was exalted in its own way.

Pope's is a bit more fast paced -- the word order places emphasis on action, etc. In the first two lines for example:

> Achilles' wrath, to Greece the direful spring
> Of woes unnumber'd, heavenly goddess, sing!

the original first line is closer to (iirc):

> Sing of wrath goddess, of Achille's (wrath)...

Inferior to Homer, superior to everything except for maybe Dante, Shakespeare, Milton, Tolstoy, and Joyce.

If you liked the Odyssey better than the Iliad, you'll like the Aeneid

I'm halfway through a book called 'The Song of Achilles' at the moment, and I'm not sure if i have the will to finish it. I found it randomly on my kindle and it turned out to be a recently written sort of fanfic of the Iliad, in which the author plays on a gay relationship between Achilles and Patroclus. Anyway, don't read it.

Blog post over, moving onto the Illiad what are the general opinions on translations? I've already read The odyssey via Fagles' translation. Is his more like prose than verse?

Honestly, has anyone here read Homer in its original language? Is it worth spending more than three years on it? would make me say yes, but I would like other opinions on that.

>is a single work worth three years of your time
No.

If you want to dive into the whole of ancient Greek literature, and you want it to be a major part of your life, then yes, it can be worth it.

The general opinions are to read either Fagles, Fitzgerald, or Lattimore. Lattimore is the most literal, Fitzgerald the most poetic, and Fagles in between the two.

Does Fitzgerald keep to Homer's voice, or is he similar to Pope?

digitalcommons.unl.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1018&context=classicsfacpub

Oh, well it's a moot point, because I can't find the thing online anywhere.

What're the main differences between Lattimore and Fagles, then?

Ah ok. Thanks.

bopsecrets.org/gateway/passages/homer.htm

Thanks.