The Iliad is the greatest piece of literature ever written. I think about it every day

Diomedes and Glaucon

reddit: the post

>/ourguy/ diomedes btfoing the queen of thots

One of my fave parts, achilles chasing around hector gives me a funny mental image I enjoy as well

For me, it's the Odyssey. I don't know why Yea Forums prefers Iliad.

I actually liked the catalogue of ships. If you know some Greek history, it's amazing to see all these city states that were always at war to be united against a greater foe
Agamemnon giving the arcadians ships because they don't have any is rather fitting, as the arcadians were one step above savages
Having prior knowledge makes it somewhat better

>Am I retarded or was she?
the fact that you're asking lmao

You can not appreciate the Odyssey without the Iliad. The amount of crap the troops went through at troy adds a weight to the Odyssey that it wouldnt have otherwise
I love both, don't know if I have a favorite

My favorite part is Hector seeing his wife and kid. Shows that the Trojans are not evil, they are men, just as the Argives. Both are in a bloody conflict, doomed to die. But for just a moment you see some himanity

Diomedes rampage. I don't know if it changes with each translation but I only had in my mind Diomedes killing everyone and nipples.

The Odyssey is pretty shallow by comparison, like some kind of picaresque novel, whereas the Iliad is like the Bible crossed with Dragon Ball Z.

My post was sincere, and I agree with you.

so you dont think it reminds you of die hard?

i thought it was a funny and insightful comment

fuck

it's literally been written down, and don't call me a pedant or i'll btfo you.

She is the greatest women ever created. I think about her everyday.

Attached: FUCK.jpg (633x758, 49K)

>The Odyssey is pretty shallow by comparison,
How So? You have the weight of the return home, the weight of brothers in arms as seen from Agamemnon in the house of the dead.
The view that the men at troy were mightier than others is still upheld when Odysseus chucks a discuss and tells the guy trash talking him that he could still whip him.
There's even that bitter sweet moment when Odysseus sees his dog. It had been waiting to be sure he made it home safe. And when it knew he was home he could stop worrying and rest
The Iliad is great, but the Odyssey is by no means shallow

*throws dead bodies at u*

Attached: da0e34d08e68e8ccbfb4350b608e26ff.jpg (1666x1129, 321K)

Helen was a ho

no dude

Ah ok. Most comments about the catalogue seem to be sarcastic or negative, tough to tell when someone's serious

Honestly you're so retarded I'm having a hard time convincing myself this isn't bait.

There is more to the Iliad than "moments that gave me feels." The ethical implications, the unimaginable suffering, people are still analyzing this work 3000 years after its creation. Read it again. You completely missed the point.

well youre gonna love this, I still stand by what I said\

every fucking sentence in the iliad reads like an action screenplay.

BOB KILLED JOES THIRD BROTHER WHO HAD A HOUSE IN MYCONOS AND 2 HORSES.
JEFF KILLED BOB, WHO HAD 3 DAUGHTERS CALLED MO, SUE AND LARRY.
LARRY KILLED SUE WHO HAD A DOG.

that is literally the iliad in 3 sentences

>BOB KILLED JOES THIRD BROTHER WHO HAD A HOUSE IN MYCONOS AND 2 HORSES.
Do you understand why it does this?

>The ethical implications, the unimaginable suffering, people are still analyzing this work 3000 years after its creation.
People still analyze the Odyssey 3000 years later too.
I don't think I missed the point. They are different stories, but the Odyssey is by no means shallow. It speaks of our own returning war veterans who come home to find a land in shambles, and often their wives taken. It provides an end to the soldier's story
Yes it speaks to real life as does the Iliad, because they are based on an actual war
If you do not see the importance of the Odyssey you have missed it's point and should re read it

Welcome to oral tradition

>They are different stories
The Iliad is a complete microcosm of civilization.

No I dont please explain

I dont understand why that format is traditional can you explain?

>Here is a man of noble blood, with family, friends, and wealth, and in just one instant he is reduced to a corpse

Do I need to read the Iliad before I read the Odyssey?

The Iliad (and odyssey) were passed down for a long time verbally before they were written. As such, certain phrases and patterns repeat so that it's easier to remember and thus retell to the next generation so that they can memorize it and pass it down

You don't have to. But it makes the Odyssey richer, as characters from the Iliad are in it and you know what Odysseus went through at troy

No, but you should.

>Catalogue
Some say that to this very day, Solon is still crying

My re-read of the Iliad took so much longer than the first time I read it because I had to stop and cry for Hector every time he was happy. Hector did nothing wrong.

Whats the best translation of it to read? I've tried to read some free versions of it off the internet but they always come off as being very dull to me, and I end up giving up within the first chapter.

Fagles is good, at least for a first time read

Pope is best.

Iliad is good but Mahabharata is better

Attached: 91UgGEMbClL.jpg (1662x2560, 1006K)

>this 200,000 line schizophrenic clusterfuck is better than a skillfully crafted epic
nigga what

skillfully crafted by a hundred dudes across a hundred generations? lmao
nothing in the Iliad is a match for the Gita alone

>Iliad is good because le banter/Die Hard/Dragonball/thots btfo
Neck yourselves and fuck off back to rebbit

illiad: public life
odyssee: private life

prove me wrong

Europeans larping as greeks is interesting, we basically have nothing in common with them at this point and it's still more potent than roman larping ever was.

Do you think you're on YouTube? Fucking piece of shit

Nice try. But Odysseus is a public person, the king, and his survival and fidelity of his queen are certainly not just private matters. Odysseus' return is reestablishment of order in the entire state.

iliad: death
odyssey: life

still, the main focus is on odysseus' adventures while being absent from public. it cannot be completely disconnected just like achilles' personal escapades in iliad.

das it, public death and inner life

The moment I find most striking in the Iliad and Odissey taken together is when Odisseus goes to Hades and finds Achilles, and talks about Achilles about his fame in the world above, only for Achilles to say that he would rather be a slave or the dog of a slave in the world under the sun rather than king of all legions of the shadows and the dead.

As for the greatest work, I consider it to be War and Peace. If I had to choose a single book as the greatest it would be War and Peace at this moment. I think that Shakespeare is probably the greatest writer of all time, but he hasn’t a single book that rivals that novel of all novels.

About Homer, it’s funny that he (or the whole team of poets that together composed his works over many years) is careless and repetitive and primitive at many points, and yet his epic poems seem far more alive and fresh and humane than the Divine Comedy.

I also like this thing that Tolstoy once said to a painter who was making his portrait “I’ve been learning Greek to read Homer. He sings and shouts and it’s all the truth.” (pic related)

Attached: E296ED05-DD4F-45F1-A4DD-383F8BE4ABE9.jpg (4032x3024, 2.46M)

>He sings and shouts and it’s all the truth.”

iliad is 15,693 lines of sober dead serious thought about men hacking each other to pieces,its revelations are absolutely terrible

L O N D O N
O
N
D
O
N

I'm reading it now. Gonna go through all the major epics in order. Pope translation.

Do you think you're on Yea Forums? Faggot retard

>Pope translation.
This meme really has to die

I think the same. I honestly think that the most faithful the translation the better. Far more important is to retain the exact same vocabulary and imagery and abandon all the pretensions or keeping the metric alive. Pope is even worst because of his using of rhyme, something that isn’t even used by Homer.

If one wants to read Pope and admire his skill, then by all means, go for his translation. But for Homer himself is better to seek the most faithful translation of his verses.

Which is?

I’m not from an English speaking country, can’t really say what’s the best English translation. However I know Pope’s translation and his method, and I disagree with his vision, and with most translators of poetry in general (who try to save the metric and the rhymes and sacrifice metaphors and imagery - that are far more important - in the process).

Fagles is the best middle ground. Start with him and if you find you like the Iliad, go back and read the other translations, too.

can anyone here read it in Greek?

isn't ancient greek one of the hardest languages to learn by far

So you're useless then, thanks. Trying to tell me not to read.
I already like it, and if I'm going to re-read with different translations then why does the order matter? And you didn't even tell me which one is the most faithful. What a pointless exercise.

There are some peculiar scenes in the Iliad, like protofurry Dolon running around and gets killed by Diomedes after he is assured his safety is secured so long as he reveals information about the Trojan camp. Or when Achilles in the middle of battle gets pulled away by a river god and almost drowns. That said, aside from that there are some great parts.

Hector bidding farewell to Andromache
Diomedes injuring a god
Achilles justifying his pacifism to the party entreating him to return to the fighting
Achilles unquenchable rage as he tears across the battlefield
Priam begging Achilles for the body of his son

Who's larping as Greeks?

bend over and i'll show you

Attached: dolon.jpg (600x800, 447K)

This. Neither the Greeks nor the Trojans are fully good nor fully evil. We think it’s so subversive when our media does this today, but one of the world’s oldest books just takes that for granted.

This is an objectively terrible take and you should feel bad

>you can not appreciate

Fuck off yes you can. More than 50% of the epic cycle is lost and you can appreciate both the iliad and odyssey just fine.

yes, but any 100 IQ man could learn it if they applied themselves enough

our media doesn't tell us to help our friends and murder our enemies,can you imagine a state of the union address where the president tells us to stop dicking about and kill the enemy even the unborn child in the womb like agamemnon advised menelaus or achilles vowing to genocide the sons of priam.

i liek when the horse talks XD

but its clown world and media tells people to kill their own unborn children

Anyone read Chapman? I just started reading it. FUCKING BRILLIANT.

i'm with you on this one. wife and friends prefer illiad, but i alone seem to prefer the odyssey. it's more personal/individual than the illiad. father struggling back to his family while his son grows up without him and constantly trying to live up to the idea/expectations of that man.

illiad is fun, no doubt about it, but odyssey is a hell of a lot more insightful/modern than many might suppose.

Your Christian bias is showing. In antiquity it was virtuous to do good to your fiends and harm to your enemies. And the second part was just as important as the first.

which might be why some people prefer the odyssey since it's far more individual than the illiad. lot of people shitting on the odyssey and glossing over the very modern individual conflicts and introspection. makes me wonder if all they read was "hurr my name is no one, i blind da cyclops, fuck poseidon and kill all suitors".

>our media doesn'
stopped reading your bullshit right there
didn't even complete the apostrophe

I think the divine comedy is more alive fresh and humane (and generally of better quality) than the Iliad as great as it is

agree wholeheartedly. unless you're planning to be a classics professor, fagles gives a great translation of how the original greek sounded to the ancient greeks. he also doesn't flub the proemic verse like shit-tier translators.

Beta!

>yes you can
No, not all of it. You can not appreciate Agamemnons happiness for his brother in arms getting his home back fully. You can not appreciate Odysseus weeping when he hears the blind bard play the song about troy fully, as you have not read how brutal it was

And while the original epics are gone, there is posthomerica, as well as the myth that helped make up the Cypria

This. Most people in this thread are a bunch of weak, shy and lonely incels who praise the work only because of their dreams of “military glory, the good old days, muh conservative mindset, traditional values” and etc. The work itself is great, but these faggots here are just a bunch of 18-22 year olds who fancy themselves as original when they are only following the trends of the day.

Should I be reading it with Greek or Roman deity names?

Wow if it took you until the scene where hector meets his wife to realize the trojans were not the bad guys then you're a literal retard.

Unlike you!

>dat depth of generalisation!
Excellent thinking, bro.

Disgrace by J.M. Coetzee is the greatest piece of literature ever written. I think about it every day.

Roman names are more poetic
Jove>Zeus
Mars>Ares
Juno>Hera
Besides the Pope translation, which is still the best, despite the naysayers, uses the Roman names

>Roman names are more poetic
that's such a stupid thing to say

based

No she wasn't. The gods are the ho's. Helen is based.

I was wondering what kind of sick fuck would prefer Pope's translation

>use the roman names tee hee
>you know, the ones that were slapped on several centuries later by a different civilization

Was Troy the norf of Ancient Greece

pope's is a bad translation but lots of translations use the roman names, they were more fashionable until pretty recently

It's alright. Most of it was boring fan fic quality writing. But that conversation between Achilles and Priam about Hector's remains is one of the most iconic and important scenes in all of literature.

why is it one of the most important scenes?

No. Troy was in asia minor on the other side of the Aegean from Greece

The description of the shield of Achilles i probably my favourite part, it encapsulates everything about these people’s life, why and what they are fighting for, but at the same time it is purely a mythical object, it would have to be a massive shield or of extraordinarily intricate detail to cover everything in the description. And the sad irony is that after it is described to us, the readers, Achilles just goes on to use as any other shield, neither him nor any other character mentions it again. There’s something in that that describes the Argives’ whole situation, they’ve been in this war so long all they know is war, it’s hard to imagine they even care what the war is about anymore. The world could be peaceful as the scenes on the shield, with only a small part dedicated to war, but it’s not like that, these people are not like that. And once that chapter is over we’re back to pure violence again and again.

It's not "one of the most important", it's literally the only reason the story is still around.

youtube.com/watch?v=aofPdMbXzUQ

>which might be why some people prefer the odyssey
if by people you mean teenagers and women, then yes

Attached: 1454707357606.jpg (634x858, 110K)

i'm not watching that whole video, what makes it (literally) the only reason the stories still about?

Am I hipster for really liking the Odyssey more? The illiad is good but I think the Odyssey is just amazing. I love the idea of a man trying to get home and just being whisked away from his woman and family.

I’m also a brainlet who really likes fantasy and sci fi ans the Odyssey is the basis of every Hero’s Quest ever written in the western world. Prose versions It basically reads like a fantasy novel

Attached: 399FDC26-3490-488A-89CA-0A82CC1DC692.jpg (225x225, 11K)

>”...unlike me who dislikes it because other people like it”

More seriously though I honestly wouldn’t care if you died bro. You’re just like a filler background scarecrow person for this planet.

No, Yea Forums just has a hate boner for the Odyssey for some reason.

probably you're a hipster if you prefer the iliad.

The Iliad surpasses the Bible.

Attached: F60F048F-464E-4D63-A20A-656A46867560.jpg (220x218, 11K)

The illiad is basically an anime

that isn't controversial.

Nah

what anime

>Am I hipster for really liking the Odyssey more?
No, this was a recent change, but the Odyssey is more widely read now. Iliad isn't even taught in schools in America any more, but the Odyssey is.

>Iliad isn't even taught in schools in America any more, but the Odyssey is
Can confirm. We didn't read the whole thing though. Read from Cyclops through him killing the suitors.
Was kinda mad that we didn't read the Iliad cause it felt like I was missing info when troy was mentioned. Actually helped drive me to read the iliad

>read Fagles and now Pope is coming in the mail -- plan to read Lattimore later too
>still no desire to read the Odyssey
what's my problem

Just buy yourself a Loeb and learn Ancient Greek.

I'm too low energy for that, I'm already chipping away at German.

High school was boring. We never studied anything I hadn't already read. My teacher was an old fat christian black lady that used to randomly volunteer me to explain things to everyone when I was trying to sleep at my desk and she told the whole class I slept all the time because I was in a deep depression. She was right and I'm still a miserable piece of shit.

Attached: 1557347256351.jpg (554x586, 39K)

>she told the whole class I slept all the time because I was in a deep depression.
based negro teacher lady

How does the odyssey compare

Attached: 1557553474584.png (863x730, 177K)

The Bible is just too didactic for me. It seems Homer or whoever composed the Iliad really understood something fundamental about what makes a good story, and it literally can be done without the gods too like the director of Das Boot somehow managed to pull off in Troy to the dismay of every reader

>Das Boot
We get it, you recently watched a good film. Stop comparing shit to gold now. Ping ...Ping......Pingggggg......ACHTUNG

>not Atenea humiliating Ares

>having read so few books that your favorite is a fucking Homer poem
please leave, then come back when you've read more than five books

>Diomedes and Glaucus

‘why ask my lineage? Like the generations of leaves are those of men. The wind blows and one year’s leaves are scattered on the ground, but the trees bud and fresh leaves open when spring comes again. So a generation of men is born as another passes away.

Lol, you won’t post ten of your favorite books I bet

Dorian Gay, Dorian Gay, Dorian Gay, Dorian Gay, Dorian Gay, Dorian Gay, Dorian Gay, Demian, Dorian Gay, and Dorian Gay

>calling any book "the greatest"
Go back

anyone here teached himself ancient greek? is it possible?

this
kleos and nostos

I really want to read this but I also want to read more about the end and Achilles fate and the trojan horse, I understand that it was Virgil who wrote more on the events after the end of the illiad, or am I wrong. What should I read?

I am halfway in and already fatigued by the endless battle scenes. Will it get more varied as it goes along, or is the whole book like this?

Attached: 1544861652300.jpg (480x542, 31K)

you can skip the battle scenes if you want. homer only put them in because he had to, it's not what the poems about

HOT GIRLS ILIAD ANIME FUCKING WHEN

The Mahabharata is better

>Aethiopis
>Little Iliad
>Iliou persis
they're lost but summaries exist

>anyone here teached himself ancient greek? is it possible?

Only to the most disciplined and dedicated. It's not a language for pussies. It's not French.

If you want a more complete account of the events between the Iliad and Odyssey (that's not just a summery of a fragment of the actual poems) look up posthomerica/The fall of Troy by quintyus Smyrnus.
He seems to have had access to documents we don't and filled in some of the gaps, though he did write it centuries after homer in the time of rome
Here's more info on that and the Trojan war as a whole

en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Posthomerica

en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Epic_Cycle

i know,but even in christian beowulf the idea of do good to your fiends and harm to your enemies exists.

that's the genius of homer,iliad takes place in the 9th year of the war and covers only like 52 days.these men are operating with the fatigue of years of war,the killing just goes on and on .

you might as well watch porn and skip past the sex scenes

you are all retarded
Aeneid is best, it shows the best of the Iliad and Odyssey

Attached: main-image.jpg (1082x1200, 376K)

Attached: sb.jpg (721x327, 63K)