A Companion to The Iliad

Rating:
Summary: Thorough commentary
Review: Though not for the impatient, this companion to Lattimore's translation of the Iliad is quite accessible to the non-specialist. Difficult passages are explained by making reference to archaelogical and linguistic evidence, other ancient texts (including the scholia and the Odyssey), and recent research on the transmission of oral literature.

The reader is thus better able to place this seminal literary work in its proper context. Willcox helps us understand the cultural, political and human forces that shaped the Iliad during the centuries it was an oral poem, and the slight variations it probably underwent once committed to the written word.

Overall, an outstanding work of scholarship.