Schools Division Phone: (502) 855-4824 T he Iliad is the first great book, and the first great book about the suffering and loss of war. The Iliad and Odyssey are the beginnings of Western literature. It has been immortalized in modern romance languages, in modern scientific languages, and in its own great literature. At the turn of the millennium, there were many lists of the greatest works of the twentieth century. This is not just normal war; for example he takes some Trojans alive so he can sacrifice them at the funeral of Pafroclus which he holds after killing Hector. But the Iliad, we discover, is a book about the Civil War. The story of Greek and Roman literature begins with the story of Troy. There is no passage in all of literature more moving than when Priam comes to beg for the body of Hector and kisses the bloody hands of Achilles, who has slaughtered so many of his sons. Why don’t we read something useful, like a book on the Civil War? And the Iliad ends, “Thus was the funeral of Hector, tamer of horses.” The Iliad is a strange poem when you think about it. When reading it in my head or aloud I ignore the accents; I stress the long syllables; I don’t pronounce the thetas or phis or chis correctly. If taken lightly, the bible is a great piece of literature like Homer’s “Iliad.” It teaches you lessons from that time and incorporates the beliefs of those people at that time. In … It describes the events of the Trojan War from around 1200 B.C. PLAY. In the cycle of vengeance that is the curse of the House of Atreus and the unspeakable fate of Oedipus we see that the Greeks were certainly not afraid to ask the dark and hard questions. Eventually Achilles partly relents and lets his comrade and dearest friend Patroclus lead the Myrmidions out but tells him only to drive the Trojans away from the camp and when he has done this to return. And who is his guide in the afterlife but Virgil, Dante’s symbol of human wisdom and, of course, the author of the Aeneid. and it is in verse-form. I read at least a hundred lines very day in Greek. ... history beginning more or less at the time of the Iliad and continuing to the spread of Hellenism under Alexander the Great. Written by the great Roman poet Virgil and modeled on the Iliad and the Odyssey, the Aeneid tells the story of Aeneas, who was destined to escape from the burning city of Troy and found a new city, Rome. Authors today could learn from how Homer lays out his plot and plays the characters off against each other for maximum reader involvement. He goes on a killing spree killing many Trojans without mercy until he eventually kills Hector. This anger caused the death of many Greeks but he never took any responsibility for this. It … We love to tell stories about war. I started off reading each of the first twelve books twice then when I had completed those books I read them all again for the third time. In this great Christian epic, Dante must travel through Hell in order to learn about the true nature of man and the reality of sin. It makes the actions that are described seem important. The Iliad instead is a story of confusion, of vagueness, of mixed messages and muddled motivations. As far as he was concerned the fault lay entirely with Agamemnon but his revenge hurt not only Agamemnon but his other fellow Greeks. The story actually takes places during only a few weeks during the last year of the war, but it recalls the events leading up to the siege of Troy and even predicts future events, like the death of Achilles. Change ), You are commenting using your Facebook account. “The Iliad“ (Gr: “Iliás“ ) is an epic poem by the ancient Greek poet Homer, which recounts some of the significant events of the final weeks of the Trojan War and the Greek siege of the city of Troy (which was also known as Ilion, Ilios or Ilium in ancient times). The Iliad conforms to this definition in many ways. My vowels must be all over the place but even with all this an incredible amount of the poetry comes through. The heart of a classical education is the cumulative study of Latin and the classical civilizations of Greece and Rome. Mail: 10901 Shelbyville Road, Louisville, KY 40243, USA. The first thing but not the most important is the poetry or the actual sound of the words. Iliad is considered ad as the oldest master peace literature which managed to survive into current period. And what is he at the end. Now our lives do not reflect Achilles’ but there are parallels and this is what makes the Iliad great. The Iliad is first of all a poem, and a very great one too. The Iliad and Odyssey are the beginnings of Western literature. Critical appreciation of a poem is defined as the critical reading of a poem. Well that’s the basis of the story although there are many diversions along the way. The normal and decent behaviour would be to return the body to the family for a ransom so that it can have a decent burial. The Odyssey. He is fighting to protect his city and the women and children. He loves and shows affection for his wife and child. 2 … Greek literature dates back from the ancient Greek literature, ... the Iliad and the Odyssey. critical appreciation 1066 Words | 5 Pages. They were not sensitive and sentimental like us. The only thing left for him is death. Homer is traditionally held to be the author of the ancient Greek epic poems “The Iliad ” and “The Odyssey”, widely thought to be the first extant works of Western literature. What makes a great work of literature. The epithets such as “swift-footed Achilles” … Cheryl discovered Latin when she homeschooled her sons and was a self-styled apostle of Latin, claiming that Latin has more educational value than any other subject you can teach your children. There must be a distinction between literature of great quality which is ... 2 Responses to “‘Good’ and ‘bad’ literature: Why the Iliad is mere ... Laura. The two enemies, one old and one young, sit down and weep together over what they both have lost. The story was composed around 800 B.C. But it is his story that the book is about and it is his emotions we are caught up in; not Agamanenon who,overreached himself when he took Achilles’ girl, nor Hector although we may be more sympathetic to him. If the great poets, who flourished at the bright period of Grecian song, of which, alas! At the end of the story Achilles has been through this great emotion and come out the other side. They were not politically correct at all. Twenty-eight hundred years after Homer wrote the Odyssey, it still echoes through the words of the poets of the twentieth century. And then our ninth graders read the Divine Comedy, written at the opening of the Renaissance, almost one thousand years after the fall of Rome. The Iliad is mostly about people, not war, and it gives us unforgettable and universal character types. This was not the first time I had read the Iliad but it was the first time for many years. It is deduced that … Continue reading "Explain in detail why The Iliad has lasted through the ages" Back to Top of Page. Latin is truly the most influential language in human history. His anger is abated enough to allow Hector’s  body to be ransomed. The only way to understand it is to examine your emotions once you have read it. We do not know exactly how  Ancient Greek was pronounced. Some features of the poems reach far into the Mycenaean age, perhaps to 1500 bc, but the written works are traditionally ascribed to Homer; in something like their present form they probably… ... Flaxman was considered one of the great artists of his time and a reputation built on works such as his Iliad illustrations led to commissions for similar work and a great deal of sculptural pieces too. glory of war. He also asks his mother Thetis, a goddess of the sea, to intervene with Zeus to turn the tide of victory to the Trojans so that Agamemnon will pay for the slight. That is what literature should be, but rarely is. The Iliad and The Odyssey are important because they Ancient Literature: Literature has been around for millennia, and we know this because of ancient works of literature that still exist. Hector a son of the Trojan king and their chief warrior is unstoppable and many Greeks are slain. I would say that we are intensely aware that his time is over. And your children will be a little wiser and a little more human for having read it. When I am reading more quickly the poetry just works on me without me noticing how he does it. I am sure that the audience for Homer would have been able to have held these opposing ideas in their heads without any problem although for some such as Plato it did cause problems. Email: sales@memoriapress.com romanticized honor: hero never backed down from a challenge, if you did it was considered dishonorable and your status sunk. STUDY. Hector, in fact, is just the opposite of the John Wayne, Clint Eastwood, make-my-day kind of hero that we so admire. We live our lives, all of us knowing that we are mortal and even if we are not short lived we will die in the end. It is a book about all wars, about the people and characters that you find in every war—and in every town—the wise, the foolish, the clever, the noble, the base, the ambitious, the old, and the young. Iliad Questions and Answers - Discover the eNotes.com community of teachers, mentors and students just like you that can answer any question you might have on Iliad Why is the Iliad still important today? The Iliad tells the story of the last years of the Trojan War. It's definitely a great work. Cheryl Lowe was the author of the popular Latin programs, Latina Christiana, Lingua Angelica, and the Forms Series. Cheryl and her son Brian founded Memoria Press in 1998 and in 2000, the highly successful Highlands Latin School where all of the Memoria Press products are taught and field tested. ( Log Out /  The greatest prose achievement of the 4th century BC was in philosophy. There is no book on the Civil War—or any war—that compares with the Iliad. But that is not what Homer gave them—or us. And at the end there may be a time when we have done all this and we are just waiting for the end; a time when we are diminished, no longer active participants in the world. Agamemnon has to give up the girl who been alloted to him as part of his share of booty so after a quarrel with Achilles takes a girl who has been allotted to him. ( Log Out /  The classics of Greece and Rome are not optional: if we skip them, we have no hope at all of teaching literature with any real understanding or meaning. But what makes it great? And it achieves its primary meaning not through fearless Achilles or great Hector, but through the relatively minimal Patroclus. Each year, our students at Highlands Latin School read the Iliad, under the guidance of Mr. Wheatley, our head of school, and, knowing the death of Hector is imminent, they often express the fear that they are going to cry in class. Now most of this must be lost even when reading in Greek. This means that the poem was composed at a unique moment in time, when both the oral-illiterate and the literary-literate worlds coexisted for a short period and the old medium was gradually converted into and adapted to the new medium. When he has killed Hector, he tries to desecrate his body by dragging it behind his chariot and exposing it for the dogs and carrion birds to eat. Agamemnon, the leader in chief of the Greeks quarrels with Achilles, the mightiest warrior in the Greek army. The cultures of Greece and Rome live around and through us every day. Written by the great Roman poet Virgil and modeled on the Iliad and the Odyssey , the Aeneid tells the story of Aeneas, who was destined to escape from the burning city of Troy and found a new city, Rome. Cheryl had wide teaching experience, in both content and venue, teaching everything from phonics, reading, math, Bible, and chemistry to Shakespeare and Latin, and teaching in public and private schools, as well as homeschooling. Homer’s poetry can be considered to a great extent behind why the Ancient Greeks viewed the Trojan War as such a significant historical event. Public Domain. I notice the poetry more when I am reading slowly and with difficulty. And there is something else about Achilles; we know that his death is imminent. Iliad is an old epic with great reputation. Many people are intimidated by the length of the Iliad and its status as ancient literature. Our students at Highlands Latin School read the Iliad and the Odyssey in the seventh grade, and at first, the warrior culture of these early Greeks seems very alien. The extent of the historical basis of the Homeric epics has been a topic of scholarly debate for centuries. Nice work. The Iliad is often paired wit… What do they have to say to us? It is about their pettiness, their heroism, their adventures, their sacrifices, and their sufferings. At the top of every list was James Joyce’s Ulysses. He is considered by many to be the earliest and most important of all the Greek writers, and the progenitor of … And I hope you can see that the Greek and Roman classics first told those stories that reverberate through all of literature. Fill in your details below or click an icon to log in: You are commenting using your WordPress.com account. Hector is the real hero of the Iliad, and he dies at the hands of Achilles, who desecrates his body and drags it around the walls of Troy, Venus then restores his body to perfection before it is returned to Priam. Beyond its significance for promoting a historical understanding of a Greek identity, The Iliad also serves as a lesson in warfare in modern days. And the story continues in the ninth grade, when students read Greek drama and follow other heroes who return home from the Trojan War. ... A third historian, Xenophon, wrote "Hellenica," which is considered an extension of Thucydides's work. He can do this because he is commander in chief. And then when his anger mounts against the Trojans he loses all decency. However, your question in interesting as it raises the issue of what becomes canonized and why, and who should decide what is a 'classic' and what isn't. Fax: (877) 300-7051 Patroclus disobeys and continues to drive the Trojans to Troy until he is killed by Hector. We can’t really read English literature with understanding and profit unless we know this classical heritage as they did. It is not at all what we expect from a story about a great war hero. ( Log Out /  These are very difficult questions to answer. Or put it another way why is the Iliad a great work. I’m sure the Greeks were just like us and would have much preferred a poem that showed that they were number one, that they were right, and deserved to win over the Trojans. The Odyssey is not only a great romantic, adventure epic, but it's terribly realistic in its depiction of human nature and a brilliantly crafted narrative. At this point Achilles is roused to a great fury against the Trojans who have killed his best friend. I never could understand why you can’t wonder if God really exists. F. Scott Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby is distinguished as one of the greatest texts for introducing students to the art of reading literature critically (which means you may have read it in school). There is no analytical answer. COMMENTARY | TRANSLATIONS The original crowd pleaser. And the destiny of Rome, Virgil tells us, was to civilize and rule the world. The story of that war and its aftermath continues in the Aeneid, which our students read in the eighth grade. The Iliad is considered to be one of the earliest masterworks of world literature, ... you are not reading the Iliad as a work of literature, and these notes do not treat it from a literary perspective. There is another way that Homer makes human actions seem important that is by involving the gods. His chief opponent, Hector, is a thoroughly decent man. Achilles in his turn refuses to fight and refuses to let the Myrmidions who serve under him to fight. Rather, he was a hero that was defiled and humiliated. Chaucer, Shakespeare, and all of our great English writers take this basic canon for granted; references to it are everywhere. They, too, are immortal in their architecture, art, law, government, languages, mythology, literature, and philosophy. And who does Dante see on his journey through the afterlife but those ancient heroes of old, Achilles, Odysseus, Caesar, Brutus, and, of course, the saints and sinners of the Bible and of Dante’s own age. I don’t know any substitute for Latin for training the intellect and sharpening the mind. Throughout the book Achilles was gripped by anger; at first a slow mouldering anger against Agamemnon. He is human; he makes a tactical error when he does not draw back the Trojans to the city when Achilles is roused but he takes full responsibility for the  error with fatal consequences for himself.