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Rating: 
Summary: Homer's Iliad
Review: E.V. Rieu's revised translation of the Iliad is probably the best overall version for the normal reader. The names are the familiar Latinized version with some exceptions, and the thumbnotes and outlines help the student find the passages quickly. The story itself is familiar to most people: Achilles is insulted by Agamemnon, and pulls his Myrmidons out of the ten year siege. After a lot of fighting, and losing, Patroclus is allowed to lead the Myrmidons back into battle and is killed, incurring Achilles return and Hector's death and funeral. The book has many passages of the futility of war (all this over an unfaithful wife) and dark humor and insults. A student of military history will see that "war got its bad names from the soldiers" from the earliest poem in Western Civilization.
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Summary: My new favorite book
Review: For those who don't know, this is the story of the Trojan War. This book is full of action, as well as amazing descriptions of Greco rituals and life. You will find yourself turning the pages to see what happens in battles.
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Summary: Reasons why this is a Classic
Review: I missed out on this book in my younger days, but have since made up for that lacking. Overall, I truly enjoyed this story, and the translation provided the Rieus. A comprehensive introduction is given, and the translators provide a basic summary of the action at the beginning of each book, and which lines they encompass. The latter was especially helpful between long breaks in reading.However, from a reading standpoint, I found several of the books in the Iliad superfluous, e.g. the entire book devoted to describing where the soldiers were from and how many soldiers were fighting in the Trojan War. Parts such as this did little to nothing to advance the plot of the story. If you seek a more academic treatment of this Homeric classic, I would highly recommend this book (5+ Stars). If you are simply interested in the story as a leisurely read, I would then suggest that you seek out another version, particularly an abriged version.
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Summary: Kind of good
Review: I read this for school and hated it. It was hard to understand. Now that I've re-read it I seem to like it a bit more but it still is not that good. Read the Odyssey instead
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Summary: There are better translations
Review: The Iliad is a magnificent poem, and has, appropriately, been translated numerous times. Rieu's translation is a somewhat older translation, and it is showing its age.
Whatever your desires, there are better translations.
If you want the poem in poetic form that most closely tracks the majesty and glory of the original, choose either the Lattimore or the more difficult to find Fitzgerald translations. Lattimore is the more generally preferred translation for scholars who don't read Homer in the original Greek.
If you want a more colloquial version, but one that still brings poetic grandeur to the poem, choose the newer Fagles translation.
If you want an easier to read, prose translation that doesn't have to adapt its language to the poetic form, Butler's translation is probably your best bet.
If you want the most literally accurate translation, you could choose the Loeb Classical Library edition, though it is more costly and in several volumes -- it has the Greek on the left page and the translation on the right, and because it is designed to assist Greek students with their translation it tends to be the most literal translation.
But for the most Homeric experience outside of reading it in Greek, the Lattimore translation is the way to go. It is a bit more difficult than Fagles or Butler, but worth the effort.
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Summary: "Yet death and inexorable destiny are waiting for me."
Review: The movie Troy has revitalized my thirst for The Iliad and the reading of which has long been overdue. I decide to re-read this first work of Western literature in a different literary form: the prose translation by E. V. Rieu, who had first published in 1950 and has since achieved its classic status. Never before had this greatest of ancient Greek poet seemed so vivid, so accessible, approachable, and immediate to the English-speaking readers. This edition in review is a Penguin Classics 1988 revision of Rieu's translation that has timely incorporated the changes in linguistic and cultural idioms. E. V. Rieu's prose translation is as vivid and readable as Professor Richmond Lattimore's verse translation, which I had read in my undergraduate English class. The Iliad is set in the last year of the Greek siege of Ilium, a town in the region of Troy, which is now the northwestern Turkey and it all begins with a quarrel over a woman. On a visit to Sparta, Prince of Troy seduced and ran away with Helen, the wife of the Spartan ruler Menelaus. King Agamemnon, the imperial overlord of Greece, with his brother Menelaus, induced the princes who owe him allegiance to join forces with him against King Priam of Troy. The Greeks for 9 years had encamped beside their ships on the shore near Troy but without bringing the matter to a conclusion, though they had repeatedly looted and captured a number of Trojan towns, under the leadership of Achilles, Prince of Myrmidons, who had cultivated a gripe against Agamemnon. Success of raiding Troy led to a feud between Agamemnon and Achilles. Agamemnon had been allotted a girl named Chryseis as his prize, and he refused to give her up to her father, a local priest of Apollo, when he came to the camp with a ransom for her release. The priest prayed to Apollo and a plague ensued, forcing Agamemnon to give Chryseis up. But the unruly Agamemnon couped himself by confiscating one of Achilles' own prize, a girl named Briseis. It was such violet, public, unjust, and deeply humiliating attack on Achilles' assessment of his significance to the Greek army, along with Agamemnon's seize of Briseis that drove Achilles to withdraw himself and the Myrmidon force from the battlefield. Homer has written the epic with a delay of action, deferring Achilles to later part of the book in order to create a perception that he has covered the entire Trojan War. The Iliad, in this regard, in fact covers a few days of the last year of Trojan War, filling the pages with tight packing of action, the tugging to and fro between the two sides. It only centers on the aristocratic heroes (i.e. Hector, Paris, Aeneas, Achilles, Menelaus, Agamemnon, Diomedes, Ajax, and Odysseus), of whom they are named, but not the general mass of troops. As the Trojans got the upper hand and stormed the Greeks' defenses, Hector, the Trojan Commander-in-chief succeeded in setting fire to one of the Achaean ships. At this point Agamemnon had realized he had wronged Achilles, who had remained obdurate to all entreaties and repeated to the embassy the original accusation that he did all the fighting and Agamemnon got all the rewards. Achilles' bitter and grumpy speech against Agamemnon sheds light to what possibly Homer tries to convey as he has remained restrained in his narrative, leaving much room for private interpretation that one might experience difficulty to supply a definitive answer to question about the one main theme. Achilles had altered his view in life: no compensation could ever pay him back, because all the compensation in the world could not equate the worth of one's life, moreover the Trojans never did him any wrong until death had befallen Patroclus. All he had suffered by constantly risking his life in battle had left him no better off than anyone else. The Iliad tragedizes a hero who had been viscerally wronged: a man who was the son of a great man and a goddess, and yet for whom death and inexorable destiny were waiting. Patroclus' disastrous death brought Achilles to life and gave him a cause to fight. To him life was worth revenge on the person who killed his beloved companion. Achilles' greatness lies in his refusal to disclaim the responsibility for his actions, even though his own death would be the inevitable consequence. The greatness of The Iliad lies in the fact that Homer presents a broad mental picture of what he thought the Trojan battlefield looked like. The poetry may be linked with a tradition of oral poetry, which manifested fully in the repetition of patterns and descriptions that prevailed the epic that existed in the Mycenaean age. The modern reader can enjoy the book, as it was by the contemporary, for its own sake, as a vivid description of the Trojan War. Homer took what the tradition offered him and shaped it into The Iliad we now read, in perfect accordance with his own cultural assumptions. 2004 (40) ©MY
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Summary: Homer's Iliad
Review: This book takes a skilled reader to understand the contents. Prior knowledge is needed to understand whose whom through the extensive list of characters. There are different versions of the Iliad. The one I choose is hard to follow but interesting. I recommend this book for advanced readers who carry an interest for the Trojan War. Enjoy!
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Summary: Are You A Skilled Reader?
Review: This book takes a skilled reader to understand the contents. Prior knowledge is needed to understand whose whom through the extensive list of characters. There are different versions of the Iliad. The one I choose is hard to follow but interesting. I recommend this book for advanced readers who carry an interest for the Trojan War. Enjoy!
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Summary: Classic for a reason
Review: This book was great. I sometimes find reading epic poems in their poetic form distracting so the prose translation was perfect for me. The introduction was brief and general, which is nice in a book that some would call long and difficult. Other than that, one of the greatest stories of all time. The only person I would steer away from this particular version of The Iliad is someone looking for a poetic translation.
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