Those who are able to read Homer in Greek have ample recourse to commentaries, but the vast majority who read the Iliad in translation have not been so well served—the many available translations contain few, if any, notes. For these readers, Malcolm M. Willcock provides a line-by-line commentary that explains the many factual details, mythological allusions, and Homeric conventions that a student or general reader could not be expected to bring to an initial encounter with The Iliad.
The Homeric Hymns have survived for two and a half millennia because of their captivating stories, beautiful language, and religious significance. Well before the advent of writing in Greece, they were performed by traveling bards at religious events, competitions, banquets, and festivals. These thirty-four poems invoking and celebrating the gods of ancient Greece raise questions that humanity still struggles with—questions about our place among others and in the world.
In the nineteenth century, epic poetry in the Homeric style was widely seen as an ancient and anachronistic genre, yet Victorian authors worked to recreate it for the modern world. Simon Dentith explores the relationship between epic and the evolution of Britain's national identity in the nineteenth century up to the apparent demise of all notions of heroic warfare in the catastrophe of the First World War. Paradoxically, writers found equivalents of the societies which produced Homeric or Northern epics not in Europe, but on the margins of empire and among its subject peoples.
Course No. 301 (12 lectures, 30 minutes/lecture) Taught by Elizabeth Vandiver Whitman College Ph.D., The University of Texas at Austin 1. Introduction to Homeric Epic 2. The Homeric Question 3. Glory, Honor, and the Wrath of Achilles 4. Within the Walls of Troy 5. The Embassy to Achilles 6. The Paradox of Glory 7. The Role of the Gods 8. The Longest Day 9. The Death of Patroklos 10. Achilles Returns to Battle 11. Achilles and Hektor 12. Enemies' Tears—Achilles and Priam
