The Iliad

Rating:
Summary: A good edition for anyone...
Review: This version of the Iliad is very appealing for a variety of reasons. First of all it's the Iliad, which is one of the masterpieces of Western Civ. Second, the translation by Rouse is very readable and is in plain English. Third, the price is just right, fairly affordable for a classic. The only potential drawback would be that this edition is not meant to be majestic, it's really rather plain and the print is fairly small. But for someone like myself who just wants the story for a good price, this edition cannot be beat.

Rating:
Summary: Awesome War Novel With Two Stories: The Tragedy & The Comedy
Review: What a great war novel! Intense it is, and after seeing first the movie TROY, it made it somewhat more easier to visualize the story. The W. H. D. Rouse translation was a pleasure to read. It is written in novel form, not poetry as others and it was not boring or hard to comprehend style, but rather very enjoyable, although there are some portions that are somewhat repetitious with lineages and phrases. This is an excellent translation.

Now this story is really two stories, whereas the move TROY only conveys the tragedy. And this is what the story is: a brutal tragedy coupled with a comedy, the story of a tragic human war and bloodbath and the story of the gods who are actively involved in the story, which the movie completely omits. So as much as the movie helps to visualize, it lacks the comedy, omitting the entire second story behind the story.

The gods are actively involved in the story, Apollo arrowshooter helping the Trojans, Hera and Athena helping the Achaians, Queen Hera seducing Zeus to sleep while she slyly aids the Achaians, Poseidon earthshaker helping the Achians, and back and forth with many other gods. The gods arguing on Mount Olympus over various actions being performed by both warring parties and each others involvement.

This is a facinating war novel and opens your mind up to the Greeks during the days of Homer and their later civilization in its adhering regard to this story. It really is meaningful in understanding the later writings of Plato and others, as in the playwrights of Sophocles, Euryphides, Aristophanes and others. I think is is significant to learn and understand about the ancient Greek civilization to open up the mind in tolerant pragmatism, hopefully away from the fundamentalist one sided mind set that is so prevalent in our current day and attempt to understand this world so different than ours.