Name: The Iliad review
Item: The Iliad
Rating: 4

Question 1

Is The Iliad worth reading?

Accepted Answer

A war poem that is really about anger turning into grief and then mercy. The last book is the best argument for it; the long battle books, the catalogue of ships and the lists of named dead can be skimmed. Four out of five (draft). Read it if: you want the original story behind troy, achilles and hector; you want a classic you can read free in plain prose; you like stories where one choice cascades through twenty-four books. Skip it if: long battle sequences and lists of names test your patience; you expected the wooden horse: it is not in this poem; you want verse: this translation is prose.

Question 2

Is there a summary of The Iliad?

Accepted Answer

The Iliad summary in Butler's prose translation: the poem's own day count, the plague, Patroclus, Hector, the funeral, and a tally of named deaths. Full spoilers.

Question 3

What is the Iliad about?

Accepted Answer

It is the story of the anger of Achilles during the Trojan War. After Agamemnon takes his prize Briseis, Achilles quits the fighting, his friend Patroclus dies wearing his armour, Achilles kills Hector, and the poem ends with Hector's funeral.

Question 4

How does the Iliad end?

Accepted Answer

With a funeral, not the wooden horse. In Samuel Butler's translation Priam begs Achilles for Hector's body, Achilles agrees to hold back the war, and the last lines are about the funeral of Hector tamer of horses. Troy has not fallen yet.

Question 5

Is the Trojan Horse in the Iliad?

Accepted Answer

No. We searched Butler's text for a wooden horse and found none. The fall of Troy is foretold in passing but does not happen inside the poem.

Question 6

How many days does the Iliad cover?

Accepted Answer

The poem gives no total. It states nine days of plague, a tenth-day assembly, twelve days of Jove away, and at the end Hector lying twelve days by Achilles's ship and a nine-day truce for his funeral. By my reading the fighting itself fills four days plus one truce day; that is an inference from the dawns and sunsets the text names.

Question 7

Which translation does this summary use?

Accepted Answer

Samuel Butler's prose translation, free as Project Gutenberg ebook 2199. Library catalog records give 1898 as its year. Butler uses Roman names for the gods, so Zeus is Jove, Hera is Juno, Athena is Minerva, Aphrodite is Venus and Poseidon is Neptune.

Question 8

How many named characters die in the Iliad?

Accepted Answer

By my reading of Butler's text, about two hundred and thirty-two named men die, with the most in books five and sixteen (thirty-nine each). Eight of the twenty-four books have no named death. Treat the total as approximate.

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