Iliad in A Sentence

    1

    A further appendix consisted of Anecdotes, Letters and Rescripts of the emperor Hadrian; fables of Aesop; extracts from Hyginus; a history of the Trojan War, abridged from the Iliad; and a legal fragment, Hepi iXethEpci €wv (De manumissionibus).

    2

    A relation between objects of art described by Homer and the Mycenaean treasure was generally allowed, and a correct opinion prevailed that, while certainly posterior, the civilization of the Iliad was reminiscent of the Mycenaean.

    3

    About this time he ventured to send in to the Academy a translation of the passage from Homer proposed for their prize, and, though his attempt passed without notice, he received so much encouragement from his friends that he contemplated translating the whole of the Iliad.

    4

    Aemilius Macer must be distinguished from the Macer called Iliacus in the Ovidian catalogue of poets, the author of an epic poem on the events preceding the opening of the Iliad.

    5

    Again, the Trojan legend has itself received some extension between the time of the Iliad and that of the Odyssey.

    6

    All these rulers appear to have borne the name of Pylaemenes, as a token that they claimed descent from the chieftain of that name who figures in the Iliad as leader of the Paphlagonians.

    7

    All those parts of Peloponnese and the islands which in historic times were " Dorian " are ruled by recently established dynasties of " Achaean " chiefs; the home of the Asiatic Dorians is simply " Caria "; and the geographical " catalogue " in Iliad ii.

    8

    Although the Avesta is a work of but moderate compass (comparable, say, to the Iliad and Odyssey taken together), there nevertheless exists no single MS. which gives it in entirety.

    9

    Although Wolf at once perceived the value of the Venetian Scholia on the Iliad, the first scholar who thoroughly explored them was C. Lehrs (De Aristarchi studiis Homericis, Konigsberg, 1833; 2nd ed., Leipzig, 1865).

    10

    Among other aids should be mentioned the Index Homericus of Seber (Oxford, 1780); Prendergast's Concordance to the Iliad (London, 1875); Dunbar's id.

    11

    And if some of the incidents (those of the third book in particular) seem to belong to the beginning of the war, it must be considered that poetically, and to the hearers of the Iliad, the war opens in the third book, and the incidents are of the kind that is required in such a place.

    12

    Apellicon's library contained a remarkable old copy of the Iliad.

    13

    Beowulf's own burial is minutely described in terms which have a strong resemblance to the parallel passages in the Iliad and Odyssey.

    14

    Besides pamphlets on the Catholic and slavery questions, as well as several fugitive jeux d'esprit, and a number of unsigned articles in the Analytical Review, Geddes also published a free metrical version of Select Satires of Horace (1779), and a verbal rendering of the First Book of the Iliad of Homer (1792).

    15

    Besides this important monument, which is about twice as large as the Iliad and Odyssey put together, we only possess very scanty relics of the Zend language in medieval glosses and scattered quotations in Pahlavi books.

    16

    Between the Iliad and these poets the Odyssey often occupies an intermediate position.

    17

    But between these lays and Homer we must place the cultivation of epic poetry as an art.2 The pre-Homeric lays doubtless furnished the elements of such a poetry - the alphabet, so to speak, of the art; but they must have been refined and transmuted before they formed poems like the Iliad and Odyssey.

    18

    But in Homer the interest is purely dramatic. There is no strong antipathy of race or religion; the war turns on no political event; the capture of Troy lies outside the range of the Iliad.

    19

    But in the Iliad the whole stress is laid on the anger of Achilles, which can only be satisfied by the defeat and extreme peril of the Greeks.'

    20

    Consequently the type of epic poem which would be produced by an aggregation of shorter lays is not the type which we have in the Iliad.

    21

    During the first nine years of the war as described in the Iliad, Achilles ravaged the country round Troy, and took twelve cities.

    22

    Examples have been found at Tiryns and Mycenae, and references are made to it in the Iliad and the Odyssey.

    23

    Finally, Grote objected to the two last books that they prolong the action of the Iliad beyond the exigencies of a coherent scheme.

    24

    For instance, the word 4 6/30s, which in Homer means " flight in battle " (not " fear "), occurs thirty-nine times in the Iliad, and only once in the Odyssey; but then there are no battles in the Odyssey.

    25

    From "Greek Heroes" to the Iliad was no day's journey, nor was it altogether pleasant.

    26

    Further, the want of smoothness and unity which is visible in this part of the Iliad may be due to other causes than difference of date or authorship. A national poet such as the author of the Iliad cannot always choose or arrange his matter at his own will.

    27

    He applied to the Nibelungenlied the method which Friedrich August Wolf had used to resolve the Iliad and Odyssey into their elements.

    28

    He divided the Homeric poems into books (with capitals for the Iliad, and small letters for the Odyssey), and possibly was the author of the calculation of the days of the Iliad in the Tabula Iliaca.

    29

    He is a rough, kind, good-humoured being in the Iliad.

    30

    He then devoted himself to literature, translating Tasso's Gerusalemme liberata (1774), and the Iliad (1776).

    31

    Here, then, is direct evidence that the Aegean peoples of the Mycenaean Age knew how to write, and it is no longer necessary to assume that the verses of the Iliad were dependent on mere verbal transmission for any such period 'as has been supposed.

    32

    His Aethiopis was composed as a sequel to the Iliad; and the structure and general character of his poems show that he took the Iliad as his model.

    33

    His argument, however, rests on an assumption which we are apt to bring with us to the reading of the Iliad, but which is not borne out by its language, viz.

    34

    His best book is a Life of Cardinal Wolsey (London, 1724), containing documents which are still valuable for reference; of his other writings the Prefatory Epistle containing some remarks to be published on Homer's Iliad (London, 1714), was occasioned by Pope's proposed translation of the Iliad, and his Theologia speculativa (London, 1718), earned him the degree of D.D.

    35

    His epic in fourteen books, known as Ta µe6' "Oµrjpov or Posthomerica, takes up the tale of Troy at the point where Homer's Iliad breaks off (the death of Hector), and carries it down to the capture of the city by the Greeks.

    36

    His leave-taking of Andromache in the sixth book of the Iliad, and his departure to meet Achilles for the last time, are most touchingly described.

    37

    His materials are borrowed from the cyclic poems from which Virgil (with whose works he was probably acquainted) also drew, in particular the Aethiopis of Arctinus and the Little Iliad of Lesches.

    38

    His translation of the Iliad appeared at Sarospatak in 1821.

    39

    His wife was Charis, one of the Graces (in the Iliad) or Aphrodite (in the Odyssey).

    40

    Homer, he said, was dumb to him, while he was deaf to Homer; and he could only approach the Iliad in Boccaccio's rude Latin version.

    41

    Homer's "Iliad" tells the story of how their sister, Helen, launched a thousand ships during the Trojan War with her beauty.

    42

    I already have the seventh and eighth books of the "Aeneid" and one book of the "Iliad," all of which is most fortunate, as I have come almost to the end of my embossed text-books.

    43

    I kept Homer's Iliad on my table through the summer, though I looked at his page only now and then.

    44

    If one of the two is to be rejected it must be the tenth, which is certainly the less Homeric. It relates a picturesque adventure, conceived in a vein more approaching that of comedy than any other part of the Iliad.

    45

    Iliad Books is located in Los Angeles, California and carries over 100,000 used and rare books.They specialize in books on literature and the arts but also carry many other subjects.

    46

    In 1729 he published the first twelve books of Homer's Iliad.

    47

    In Homer's Iliad he is described as of great stature and colossal frame, second only to Achilles in strength and bravery, and the "bulwark of the Achaeans."

    48

    In matters bearing upon the arts of life it is unsafe to press the silence of the Iliad.

    49

    In puritanical circles, from which plays and novels were strictly excluded, that effect was such as no work of genius, though it were superior to the Iliad, to Don Quixote or to Othello, can ever produce on a mind accustomed to indulge in literary luxury.

    50

    In the Iliad 9 will be found some of the crudest Homeric myths.

    51

    In the Iliad even the epic " singer " is not met with.

    52

    In the Iliad he is described as the prince of augurs and a brave warrior; in the Odyssey he is not mentioned at all.

    53

    In the Iliad he is the favourite of Athena, by whose aid he not only overcomes all mortals who venture to oppose him, but is even enabled to attack the gods.

    54

    In the Iliad the word denotes an underground prison, as far below Hades as earth is below heaven, in which those who rebelled against the will of Zeus were confined.

    55

    In the Iliad, Aphrodite is the daughter of Zeus and Dione, a name by which she herself is sometimes called.

    56

    In the Odyssey, she is the wife of Hephaestus, her place being taken in the Iliad by Charis, the personification of grace and divine skill, possibly supplanted by Aphrodite, the goddess of love and beauty.

    57

    In the Trojan cycle alone we know of the two epics of Arctinus, the Little Iliad of Lesches, the Cypria, the Nostoi.

    58

    In this way there arose a conservative school who admitted more or less freely the absorption of pre-existing lays in the formation of the Iliad and Odyssey, and also the existence of considerable interpolations, but assigned the main work of formation to prehistoric times, and to the genius of a great poet.

    59

    In which case, the second book in this very occasional series is Homer's epic poem of the Trojan War, The Iliad.

    60

    It had come to be a current belief that the Iliad was first committed to writing in the age of Peisistratus.

    61

    It is like a beautiful maiden, who always lived in a palace, surrounded by a magnificent court; while the "Iliad" is like a splendid youth, who has had the earth for his playground.

    62

    It is spoken of in the Iliad as the stormy abode of Selli who sleep on the ground and wash not their feet, and in the Odyssey an imaginary visit of Odysseus to the oracle is referred to.

    63

    It may be urged, too, that the story of the Iliad is singularly free from the exaggerated and marvellous character which belongs as a rule to the legends of primitive peoples.

    64

    It may even be admitted that the swift-flowing movement, and the simplicity of thought and style, which we admire in the Iliad are an inheritance from the earlier " lays " - the 104a &v&p&v such as Achilles and Patroclus sang to the lyre in their tent.

    65

    It seems clear, however, that the hypothesis of epics such as the Iliad and Odyssey having been formed by putting together or even by working up shorter poems finds no support from analogy.

    66

    It was Homer's requiem; itself an Iliad and Odyssey in the air, singing its own wrath and wanderings.

    67

    It was the Iliad that made Greece my paradise.

    68

    Many of the works once attributed to him are lost; those which remain are the two great epics, the Iliad and the Odyssey, thirty-three Hymns, a mock epic (the Battle of the Frogs and Mice), and some pieces of a few lines each (the so-called Epigrams).

    69

    Meyer is of opinion that the writer of the Iliad was probably acquainted with the lion, but this does not prove its former existence in Greece.

    70

    Moreover, the Iliad expresses an elaborate theology, which does not fall behind the Quran in the slightest iota.

    71

    Moreover, these marvels - which in their original form are doubtless as old as anything in the Iliad, since in fact they are part of the vast stock of popular tales (Mdrehen) diffused all over the world - are mixed up in the Odyssey with the heroes of the Trojan war.

    72

    Much, however, is to be gathered from the arguments of the Trojan part of the Epic Cycle (preserved in the Codex Venetus of the Iliad, a full discussion of which will be found in the Journal of Hellenic Studies, 1884, pp. 1-40).

    73

    Myers and Walter Leaf in a prose version (1883) of the Iliad, both of them remarkable for accurate scholarship and excellence of style.

    74

    Night is a person in Greek mythology, and in the fourteenth book of the Iliad we read that Zeus abstained from punishing Sleep " because he feared to offend swift Night."

    75

    Now, in the Iliad these passages are the finest and most characteristic. The element of connexion and unity is the story of the " wrath of Achilles "; and we have only to look at the books which give the story of the wrath to see how essential they are.

    76

    On its linguistic side, as discourse it was used for any combination of names to form a phrase, such as the definition " rational animal," or a book, such as the Iliad.

    77

    On the other side, if words such as &aµcvOos, " a bath," XEpvc 1 G, " a basin for the hands," XEaxn, " a place to meet and talk," &c., are peculiar to the Odyssey, we have only to remember that the scene in the Iliad is hardly ever laid within any walls except those of a tent.

    78

    Originally, Helen was perhaps a goddess of light, a moon-goddess, who was gradually transformed into the beautiful heroine round whom the action of the Iliad revolves.

    79

    Paley, even went so far as to doubt whether a single written copy of the Iliad existed in Greece at the time of the Peloponnesian War.

    80

    Rather the Iliad is itself a single lay which has grown with the growth of poetical art to the dimensions of an epic.

    81

    See Homer, Iliad xiv.

    82

    See Homer, Iliad, ii.

    83

    See Homer, Iliad, v.

    84

    She had previously obtained permission from General Loring, Supt. of the Museum, for me to touch the statues, especially those which represented my old friends in the "Iliad" and "Aeneid."

    85

    She holds no considerable place in the Iliad; in the Odyssey, Nausicaa is compared to her, as to the pure and lovely lady of maidenhood.

    86

    She is not mentioned in the Iliad or the Odyssey, but in Hesiod (Theogony, 409) she is the daughter of the Titan Perses and Asterie, in a passage which may be a later interpolation by the Orphists (for other genealogies see Steuding in Roscher's Lexikon).

    87

    Sicyon's primitive name Aegialeia indicates that its original population was Ionian; in the Iliad it appears as a dependency of Agamemnon, and its early connexion with Argos is further proved by the myth and surviving cult of Adrastus.

    88

    Some parts of the Iliad, moreover, seemed to him to be older than the poem on the wrath of Achilles; and thus in addition to the " Homeric " and " post-Homeric " matter he distinguished a pre-Homeric " element.

    89

    Such, in the Little Iliad (e.g.), are the story of the Palladium and of the treachery of Sinon.

    90

    That it was the mode of recitation contemplated by the author of the Iliad or Odyssey it is impossible to believe.

    91

    The "elders" (*ovrES) of the Iliad are the same as the subordinate " kings "; they are summoned by Agamemnon to his tent, and form a small council of nine or ten persons.

    92

    The "Iliad" is beautiful with all the truth, and grace and simplicity of a wonderfully childlike people while the "Aeneid" is more stately and reserved.

    93

    The "Iliad" tells of almost nothing but war, and one sometimes wearies of the clash of spears and the din of battle; but the "Odyssey" tells of nobler courage--the courage of a soul sore tried, but steadfast to the end.

    94

    The Aethiopis of Arctinus of Miletus took up the story of the Iliad.

    95

    The Apollo of the Iliad has the character of a local Asiatic deity - " ruler of Chryse and goodly Cilla and Tenedos."

    96

    The author of the Iliad, at least, was evidently a European Greek who lived before the colonization of Asia Minor; and the claims of the Asiatic cities mean no more than that in the days of their prosperity these were the chief seats of the fame of Homer.

    97

    The book in short forms so good a prologue to the action of the war that we can hardly be wrong in attributing it to the genius which devised the rest of the Iliad.

    98

    The chief references in ancient writers are Iliad i.

    99

    The commentaries of Barnes, Clarke and Ernesti are practically superseded; but Heyne's Iliad (Leipzig, 1802) and Nitzsch's commentary on the Odyssey (books i.-xii., Hanover, 1826-1840) are still useful.

    100

    The conjectures of Hermann, in which the Wolfian theory found a modified and tentative application, were presently thrown into the shade by the more trenchant method of Lachmann, who (in two papers read to the Berlin Academy in 1837 and 1841) sought to show that the Iliad was made up of sixteen independent " lays," with various enlargements and interpolations, all finally reduced to order by Peisistratus.

    101

    The custom of giving a bride without demanding bride-price, in reward for a great exploit, is several times alluded to in the Iliad.

    102

    The earlier part of it treated of the mythical adventures of Aeneas in Sicily, Carthage and Italy, and borrowed from the interview of Zeus and Thetis in the first book of the Iliad the idea of the interview of Jupiter and Venus; which Virgil has made one of the cardinal passages in the Aeneid.

    103

    The epic of Gudrun is not unworthy to stand beside the greater Nibelungenlied, and it has been aptly compared with it as the Odyssey to the Iliad.

    104

    The events of the Iliad take place in a real locality, the general features of which are kept steadily in view.

    105

    The further question, however, remains, What shorter narrative piece fulfilling the conditions of an independent poem has Lachmann succeeded in disengaging from the existing Iliad?

    106

    The further question, whether the Iliad and Odyssey were originally written, is much more difficult.

    107

    The greatest philologist of antiquity was, however, his successor, Aristophanes of Byzantium (195), who reduced accentuation and punctuation to a definite system, and used a variety of critical symbols in his recension of the Iliad and Odyssey.

    108

    The Iliad and the Odyssey are as familiar to him as Shakespeare to the educated Englishman.

    109

    The Iliad concludes with the funeral rites of Hector.

    110

    The Iliad contains two versions of his fall from heaven.

    111

    The Iliad is much more historical in tone and character.

    112

    The Iliad is not a history, nor is it a series of incidents in the history, of the siege.

    113

    The later poets sought to complete the story of the Trojan war by supplying the parts which did not fall within the Iliad and Odyssey - the so-called ante-homerica and post-homerica.

    114

    The Little Iliad and the Phocais, according to the Herodotean life, were composed by Homer when he lived at Phocaea with a certain Thestorides, who carried them off to Chios and there gained fame by reciting them as his own.

    115

    The most ancient of these, it is now agreed, is the fragmentary copy of the Iliad, on vellum, in the Ambrosian Library of Milan, which consists of cuttings of the coloured drawings with which the volume was adorned in illustration of the various scenes of the In 1897 Illorin was occupied by the forces of the Royal Niger Company, and the emir placed himself "entirely under the protection and power of the company."

    116

    The Odyssey and Iliad were then translated into prose, and the Arabian Nights, after undergoing an extraordinary change in Italian and modern Greek, appear in Rumanian literature at the middle of the 18th century under the name of Halima.

    117

    The Odyssey is in this respect perceptibly below the level of the Iliad.

    118

    The oldest sources as literary documents are the Homeric and Hesiodic poems. In the Iliad and Odyssey the gods and goddesses are beautiful, powerful and immortal anthropomorphic beings.

    119

    The only passage which can be interpreted as a reference to writing occurs in the story of Bellerophon, told by Glaucus in the sixth book of the Iliad.

    120

    The opening pages of his commentaries on the Iliad and the Odyssey dwell with enthusiasm on the abiding influence of Homer on the literature of Greece.

    121

    The philological analysis of Wolf and his successors had raised doubts as to the very existence of Homer, and at one time the main current of scholarly opinion had set strongly in the direction of the belief that the Iliad and the Odyssey were in reality but latter-day collections of divers recitals that had been handed down by word of mouth from one generation to another of bards through ages of illiteracy.

    122

    The plainness and directness, both of thought and of expression, which characterize Homer were doubtless qualities of his age; but the author of the Iliad (like Voltaire, to whom Arnold happily compares him) must have possessed the national gift in a surpassing degree.

    123

    The poet who brought the exploits of Diomede into the Iliad doubtless had his reasons for doing so, which were equally strong whether he was the poet of the AchilleIs or a later Homerid or rhapsodist.

    124

    The quotation from the Iliad is of interest because it is made in order to show that Homer supported the story of the travels of Paris to Egypt and Sidon (whereas the Cyclic poem called the Cypria ignored them), and also because the part of the Iliad from which it comes is cited as the " Aristeia of Diomede."

    125

    The representatives of this race in the Tain Bó Cualgne play a somewhat similar part to the gods of the ancient Greeks in the Iliad, though they are of necessity of a much more shadowy nature.

    126

    The representatives of this race in the Tain Bó Cualgne play a somewhat similar part to the gods of the ancient Greeks in the Iliad, though they are of necessity of a much more shadowy nature.

    127

    The result of these various considerations seems to be that the age which we may call the Homeric - the age which is brought before us in vivid outlines in the Iliad and Odyssey - lies beyond the earliest point to which history enables us to penetrate.

    128

    The singer, too, who is so prominent a figure in the Odyssey can hardly be thought to be absent from the Iliad merely because the scene is laid in a camp.

    129

    The story of the Wooden Horse is not only unknown to the Iliad, but is of a kind which we can hardly imagine the poet of the Iliad admitting.

    130

    The subdivision of a poem like the Iliad or Odyssey among different and necessarily unequal performers must have been injurious to the effect.

    131

    The subject of the Iliad, as the first line proclaims, is the " anger of Achilles."

    132

    The use of that dialect (instead of Aeolic) by the Boeotian poet Hesiod, in a kind of poetry which was not of the Homeric type, tends to the conclusion that the literary ascendancy of the epic dialect was anterior to the Iliad and Odyssey, and independent of the influence exercised by these poems.

    133

    The Wind, by certain mares, became the father of wind-swift steeds mentioned in the Iliad.

    134

    Then comes the "Iliad."

    135

    There are two sources that are imperative to consult concerning the accounts of the mythological gods - Homer's Iliad and Hesiod's Theogony.

    136

    There is an old and seemingly trustworthy tradition that some lines in Homer's "Catalogue of the Ships," Iliad, ii.

    137

    These facts point to a familiarity with the Greek colonies in Asia which contrasts strongly with the silence of the Iliad and Odyssey.

    138

    These speeches form the cardinal points in the action of the Iliad - the framework into which everything else is set; and they have also the best title to the name of Homer.

    139

    They find that the documents are of composite origin, partly notes from Mary to Darnley, partly a diary of Mary's, and so on; all combined and edited by some one who played the part of the legendary editorial committee of Peisistratus (see Homer), which compiled the Iliad and Odyssey out of fragmentary lays !

    140

    This conclusion he then supports by the character attributed to the " Cyclic " poems (whose want of unity showed that the structure of the Iliad and Odyssey must be the work of a later time), by one or two indications of imperfect connexion, and by the doubts of ancient critics as to the genuineness of certain parts.

    141

    This description applies very well to the Iliad, in which Argos and Argives occur on almost every page.

    142

    This manuscript, written in the 10th century, contains (1) the best text of the Iliad, (2) the critical marks of Aristarchus and (3) Scholia, consisting mainly of extracts from four grammatical works, viz.

    143

    This sobriety, however, belongs not to the whole Iliad, but to the events and characters of the war.

    144

    Three years after his death appeared also the last twelve books of the Iliad, published by his son Samuel Clarke, the first three of these books and part of the fourth having, as he states, been revised and annotated by his father.

    145

    Thus the successive episodes of the siege related at length in the Little Iliad, and ending with the story of the Wooden Horse, are nearly all taken from passages in the Odyssey.

    146

    Two critical editions of the Iliad and Odyssey were produced by his successor, Aristarchus, who was librarian until 1 4 6 B.C. and was the founder of scientific scholarship. His distinguished pupil, Dionysius Thrax (born c. 166 B.C.), drew up a Greek grammar which continued in use for more than thirteen centuries.

    147

    While still a child he could declaim most of the Iliad in Greek without a book, and read and quoted Tacitus with enthusiasm.

    148

    Why all the cities of Greece dispute the honour of being his birthplace is because the Iliad and the Odyssey are not the work of one, but of many popular poets, and a true creation of the Greek people which is in every city of Greece.

    149

    Why have the works of Arctinus escaped the attraction which drew to the name of Homer such epics as the Cypria, the Little Iliad, the Thebaid, the Epigoni, the Taking of Oechalia and the Phocais.

    150

    With the lessons of recent Oriental archaeology in mind, few will be sceptical enough to doubt that some such contest as that described in the Iliad actually occurred.

    151

    Wolf had argued that if the cyclic writers had known the Iliad and Odyssey which we possess, they would have imitated the unity of structure which distinguishes these two poems. The result of Welcker's labours was to show that the Homeric poems had influenced both the form and the substance of epic poetry.

    152

    Zenodotus produced before 274 the first scientific edition of the Iliad and Odyssey, an edition in which spurious lines were marked, at the beginning, with a short horizontal dash called an obelus (-).

    153

    Zeus and the Titaness, Dione, are given as parents of Aphrodite (counterpart of the Roman Venus - goddess of love) in Homer's Illyiad / Iliad.