Description

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One of the oldest extant works of Western literature, the Iliad is a timeless epic poem of great warriors trapped between their own heroic pride and the arbitrary, often vicious decisions of fate and the gods. Renowned scholar and acclaimed translator Peter Green captures the Iliad in all its surging thunder for a new generation of readers.

Featuring an enticingly personal introduction, a detailed synopsis of each book, a wide-ranging glossary, and explanatory notes for the few puzzling in-text items, the book also includes a select bibliography for those who want to learn more about Homer and the Greek epic. This landmark translation—specifically designed, like the oral original, to be read aloud—will soon be required reading for every student of Greek antiquity, and the great traditions of history and literature to which it gave birth.

About the Author

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Peter Green is Dougherty Centennial Professor Emeritus of Classics at the University of Texas at Austin and Adjunct Professor of Classics at the University of Iowa. He is the author of both historical studies and translations of poetry, including The Poems of Catullus and Apollonios’s The Argonautika, both by UC Press.

Praise For…

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"A fine translation, accurate and energetic."
— Thomas L. Cooksey

"Taken as a whole this is the best line-for-line translation of the poem I know."
— Colin Burrow

"By “preserving the strangeness” of Homer, [Peter Green] gives the reader the fullest possible access to the ancient mind, into Homer’s distant universe of wine-faced seas, god-like men and bronze skies."
— Kate Havard

"Translating Homer into English is almost a genre of its own. . . . Is there still a gap in the market? Peter Green’s new translation shows that there is. . . . his particular merit lies in achieving a clarity and fluidity that carries the reader (or indeed the declaimer) forward. . . . a notable achievement."
— Richard Jenkyns

"Readers will learn a great deal about the Iliad from Green's detailed introduction and from comprehensive synopses of each book.  A list summarizing the roles of main characters (Achilles to Zeus) and an index of names will benefit new readers as well as pros. . . . Summing Up: Highly recommended."
— R. Cormier

"Green shows the wonderful things that can happen when Homeric rhythms are combined with a free-flowing and naturalistic English."
— ARGO

"Everything [in this book] is oriented towards helping us to understand the poem on its terms, and to appreciate its intricacy and subtlety, its grandeur and pathos, and its incomparable beauty."
— Claremont Review of Books

"As reading Great Books migrates from the core of a college education to the margins, it’s worth reflecting on just what students are missing and celebrating that there is a new addition to the Iliad family."
— National Review

“[Green] gets the interpretation right without interrupting the forward motion that is always Homer’s aim—and this is one of the great virtues of Green’s translation as a whole: its limber fluency.”
— New York Review of Books