The Iliad

War, glory, despair, and mourning: for 2,700 years, the Iliad has gripped listeners and readers with the story of Achilles' anger and Hector's death. It is a tale of many truths, powerful emotions, the failures of leadership, the destructive power of beauty, the quest for fame, the plight of women, and the cold, callous laughter of the gods. Above all, it confronts us with war in all its brutality--and with fleeting images of peace, lovingly drawn, images which punctuate the poem as distant memories, startling comparisons, and doomed aspirations. That listeners and readers have returned to the Iliad, generation after generation, is a testament to its extraordinary power as the greatest of all epic poems.

Anthony Verity's elegant and compelling new translation mirrors the directness, power, and dignity of Homer's poetry. Verity captures the essential features of oral poetry, such as repeated phrases and scenes, without sounding mannered or archaic, and his remarkably accurate verse hews closely to the original line numbers, invaluable for readers wishing to consult the secondary literature.

Barbara Graziosi, an authority on Homeric poetry, offers a full introduction that illuminates the composition of the poem, its literary qualities, and the many different contexts in which it was performed and read. In addition, extensive notes offer book-by-book summaries and shed light on difficult words and passages, mythological allusions, references to ancient practices, and geographical names. An annotated bibliography offers a succinct guide to further scholarship in English; a full index of names enables the reader to trace particular characters through the text; and two maps elucidate the Catalogue of Ships and the Catalogue of the Trojans.

Anthony Verity is former Master of Dulwich College. He has also translated Theocritus' The Idylls and Pindar's Odes.

Barbara Graziosi is Professor of Classics at Durham University. She has written extensively on Homer.