The epithets such as “swift-footed Achilles” … Well that’s the basis of the story although there are many diversions along the way. ( Log Out / ... A third historian, Xenophon, wrote "Hellenica," which is considered an extension of Thucydides's work. Meanwhile we are all trying to do something with our lives whether big or small; furthering our career, raising a family or just battling with our own demons. Iliad is an old epic with great reputation. Authors today could learn from how Homer lays out his plot and plays the characters off against each other for maximum reader involvement. STUDY. The earliest Sumerian poems dealing with Gilgamesh date back to around 2100 BCE. Achilles in his turn refuses to fight and refuses to let the Myrmidions who serve under him to fight. Likewise, students who study Greece and Rome soon see that those cultures are everywhere, and they have been living as Greeks and Romans all of their lives. Cheryl discovered Latin when she homeschooled her sons and was a self-styled apostle of Latin, claiming that Latin has more educational value than any other subject you can teach your children. ... Flaxman was considered one of the great artists of his time and a reputation built on works such as his Iliad illustrations led to commissions for similar work and a great deal of sculptural pieces too. This is not just normal war; for example he takes some Trojans alive so he can sacrifice them at the funeral of Pafroclus which he holds after killing Hector. The cultures of Greece and Rome live around and through us every day. ( Log Out / He is human; he makes a tactical error when he does not draw back the Trojans to the city when Achilles is roused but he takes full responsibility for the error with fatal consequences for himself. Public Domain. They were not politically correct at all. Rome brought an unprecedented two hundred years of peace and prosperity to the ancient world, preparing the way for the coming of Christ and the spread of the gospel to the ends of the known world. You can’t say it’s great for this or that reason. We love to tell stories about war. ( Log Out / His chief opponent, Hector, is a thoroughly decent man. And then our ninth graders read the Divine Comedy, written at the opening of the Renaissance, almost one thousand years after the fall of Rome. So now let’s get to the story. Nice work. Mail: 10901 Shelbyville Road, Louisville, KY 40243, USA. Phone: (877) 862-1097 or (502) 966-9115 But in doing so they prepared the way for the even darker and harder answer—the Crucifixion. It … And at the end there may be a time when we have done all this and we are just waiting for the end; a time when we are diminished, no longer active participants in the world. The Iliad is still worth reading though, even without that background knowledge, since so many of our cultural references are still based on the Homeric tales. Cheryl and her son Brian founded Memoria Press in 1998 and in 2000, the highly successful Highlands Latin School where all of the Memoria Press products are taught and field tested. And who is his guide in the afterlife but Virgil, Dante’s symbol of human wisdom and, of course, the author of the Aeneid. Change ), You are commenting using your Google account. I would say that we are intensely aware that his time is over. The only thing left for him is death. Cheryl Lowe was the author of the popular Latin programs, Latina Christiana, Lingua Angelica, and the Forms Series. When I am reading more quickly the poetry just works on me without me noticing how he does it. The story of that war and its aftermath continues in the Aeneid, which our students read in the eighth grade. F. Scott Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby is distinguished as one of the greatest texts for introducing students to the art of reading literature critically (which means you may have read it in school). He is fighting to protect his city and the women and children. I notice the poetry more when I am reading slowly and with difficulty. Written by the great Roman poet Virgil and modeled on the Iliad and the Odyssey, the Aeneid tells the story of Aeneas, who was destined to escape from the burning city of Troy and found a new city, Rome. COMMENTARY | TRANSLATIONS The original crowd pleaser. Instead of being a superhero he is now diminished. And I hope you can see that the Greek and Roman classics first told those stories that reverberate through all of literature. ... history beginning more or less at the time of the Iliad and continuing to the spread of Hellenism under Alexander the Great. The Iliad and The Odyssey are important because they Ancient Literature: Literature has been around for millennia, and we know this because of ancient works of literature that still exist. They, too, are immortal in their architecture, art, law, government, languages, mythology, literature, and philosophy. Iliad Questions and Answers - Discover the eNotes.com community of teachers, mentors and students just like you that can answer any question you might have on Iliad I have just spent the last eight months reading the Iliad. This anger caused the death of many Greeks but he never took any responsibility for this. The story of Greek and Roman literature begins with the story of Troy. The Iliad is an epic poemfrom ancient Greece written by Homer in dactylic hexameter. Change ). The extent of the historical basis of the Homeric epics has been a topic of scholarly debate for centuries. This one has it all. In … What do they have to say to us? They don’t give us the answers that we find in revelation, but they do give us the questions. There is another way that Homer makes human actions seem important that is by involving the gods. This means that the poem was composed at a unique moment in time, when both the oral-illiterate and the literary-literate worlds coexisted for a short period and the old medium was gradually converted into and adapted to the new medium. And who does Dante see on his journey through the afterlife but those ancient heroes of old, Achilles, Odysseus, Caesar, Brutus, and, of course, the saints and sinners of the Bible and of Dante’s own age. To summarise, the Greeks are trying to capture the city of Troy. And the destiny of Rome, Virgil tells us, was to civilize and rule the world. He can do this because he is commander in chief. Twenty-eight hundred years after Homer wrote the Odyssey, it still echoes through the words of the poets of the twentieth century. What makes a great work of literature. First making its appearance in scroll-format around the 8th century B.C.E., the Iliad is the earliest known work of European literature. Patroclus disobeys and continues to drive the Trojans to Troy until he is killed by Hector. Now most of this must be lost even when reading in Greek. And there is something else about Achilles; we know that his death is imminent. What makes a great work of literature. As far as he was concerned the fault lay entirely with Agamemnon but his revenge hurt not only Agamemnon but his other fellow Greeks. Beyond its significance for promoting a historical understanding of a Greek identity, The Iliad also serves as a lesson in warfare in modern days. romanticized honor: hero never backed down from a challenge, if you did it was considered dishonorable and your status sunk. The poem is set during the Trojan War, which was a siege of the city of Tory that lasted for ten years and tells tales of battles and other events during the dispute between Achilles and King Agamemnon. We do not know exactly how Ancient Greek was pronounced. critical appreciation 1066 Words | 5 Pages. However, your question in interesting as it raises the issue of what becomes canonized and why, and who should decide what is a 'classic' and what isn't. Funny to think about Plato as the Harold Bloom of his day, condemning all popular literature. But that is not what Homer gave them—or us. It makes the actions that are described seem important. At this point Achilles is roused to a great fury against the Trojans who have killed his best friend. Iliad by Homer: Explain in detail why The Iliad has lasted through the ages People continue to wonder why Iliad has lasted for a long time. glory of war. Why is the Iliad still important today? I never could understand why you can’t wonder if God really exists. The normal and decent behaviour would be to return the body to the family for a ransom so that it can have a decent burial. I repeated the process for the next twelve books and then when I had read all twenty four books three times I read the whole lot again for the fourth time. Many people are intimidated by the length of the Iliad and its status as ancient literature. Students who study Latin soon see that Latin is everywhere, and that they have been speaking and reading Latin all of their lives. But you'll get much more out of it if either (a) you are an ancient Greek or (b) you get a good Iliad translation with notes to explain everything. The two enemies, one old and one young, sit down and weep together over what they both have lost. They are also the basis of literature, teaching us about natural man (man at his best and worst, but natural man). They were not sensitive and sentimental like us. Our students at Highlands Latin School read the Iliad and the Odyssey in the seventh grade, and at first, the warrior culture of these early Greeks seems very alien. He loves and shows affection for his wife and child. The Iliad by Homer is considered to be a masterpiece of Western literature. But it is his story that the book is about and it is his emotions we are caught up in; not Agamanenon who,overreached himself when he took Achilles’ girl, nor Hector although we may be more sympathetic to him. The Iliad is one of the oldest works of literature to survive intact. The Iliad tells the story of the last years of the Trojan War. And your children will be a little wiser and a little more human for having read it. Change ), You are commenting using your Twitter account. I hope you can see that literature taught in this way is a continuous story. “The Iliad“ (Gr: “Iliás“ ) is an epic poem by the ancient Greek poet Homer, which recounts some of the significant events of the final weeks of the Trojan War and the Greek siege of the city of Troy (which was also known as Ilion, Ilios or Ilium in ancient times). So the travails of our life in a way reflect those of Achilles’ and at the end we are spent but nevertheless, as Achilles is elevated by the poetry and force of the story, so our lives feel elevated by reading the Iliad. His anger is abated enough to allow Hector’s body to be ransomed. The Iliad (Greek: Ιλιάς Iliás) is an epic poem from the Trojan Cycle describing a few months in the ninth year of The Trojan War, a siege of the great city of Troy by an alliance of Greek city-states.It is considered one of the cornerstones of Western literature and attributed to Homer. The only way to understand it is to examine your emotions once you have read it. I don’t know any substitute for Latin for training the intellect and sharpening the mind. The Iliad and Odyssey are the beginnings of Western literature. My vowels must be all over the place but even with all this an incredible amount of the poetry comes through. We live our lives, all of us knowing that we are mortal and even if we are not short lived we will die in the end. These are very difficult questions to answer. The first thing but not the most important is the poetry or the actual sound of the words. One of the reasons for the epithets or formulaic constructions (#5 in the list above) is that the Iliad is a poem written in a particular combination of syllables, and these combinations give the poem its rhythm. The story of that war and its aftermath continues in the Aeneid , which our students read in the eighth grade. It is not at all what we expect from a story about a great war hero. The classics of Greece and Rome provide us with a set of connected stories and a cast of characters that teach us what it means to be human. The most difficult part of classical education for parents to understand is not Latin, but rather our classical studies curriculum. The Iliad is first of all a poem, and a very great one too. There is no passage in all of literature more moving than when Priam comes to beg for the body of Hector and kisses the bloody hands of Achilles, who has slaughtered so many of his sons. When he has killed Hector, he tries to desecrate his body by dragging it behind his chariot and exposing it for the dogs and carrion birds to eat. And I don’t know any substitute for the Iliad for humanizing and civilizing the young. The Iliad is mostly about people, not war, and it gives us unforgettable and universal character types. The story actually takes places during only a few weeks during the last year of the war, but it recalls the events leading up to the siege of Troy and even predicts future events, like the death of Achilles. It describes the events of the Trojan War from around 1200 B.C. Schools Division Phone: (502) 855-4824 Cheryl had wide teaching experience, in both content and venue, teaching everything from phonics, reading, math, Bible, and chemistry to Shakespeare and Latin, and teaching in public and private schools, as well as homeschooling. Agamemnon has to give up the girl who been alloted to him as part of his share of booty so after a quarrel with Achilles takes a girl who has been allotted to him. It is about their pettiness, their heroism, their adventures, their sacrifices, and their sufferings. In the last book under the instructions of the gods he returns Hector’s body for a ransom. It is deduced that … Continue reading "Explain in detail why The Iliad has lasted through the ages" The primary importance for The Epic of Gilgamesh as a piece of world literature is its age. Hector, in fact, is just the opposite of the John Wayne, Clint Eastwood, make-my-day kind of hero that we so admire. If taken lightly, the bible is a great piece of literature like Homer’s “Iliad.” It teaches you lessons from that time and incorporates the beliefs of those people at that time. Homer is traditionally held to be the author of the ancient Greek epic poems “The Iliad ” and “The Odyssey”, widely thought to be the first extant works of Western literature. Ulysses, of course, is the Roman name for Odysseus. There is no book on the Civil War—or any war—that compares with the Iliad. At the top of every list was James Joyce’s Ulysses. The Odyssey. We can’t really read English literature with understanding and profit unless we know this classical heritage as they did. It's definitely a great work. Some features of the poems reach far into the Mycenaean age, perhaps to 1500 bc, but the written works are traditionally ascribed to Homer; in something like their present form they probably… The poetry is there to enhance and embellish the story, to make it vivid. There is no analytical answer. There is a bit of supension of disbelief for us and we have to understand that the gods can both represent our basic emotions and life in a profound way and at the same time be objects of comical ridicule. Homer’s poetry can be considered to a great extent behind why the Ancient Greeks viewed the Trojan War as such a significant historical event. The heart of a classical education is the cumulative study of Latin and the classical civilizations of Greece and Rome. 2 … Eventually Achilles partly relents and lets his comrade and dearest friend Patroclus lead the Myrmidions out but tells him only to drive the Trojans away from the camp and when he has done this to return. And what is he at the end. Fill in your details below or click an icon to log in: You are commenting using your WordPress.com account. Homer’s specificity within the Iliad allows the audience to learn the collective Ancient Greek sense of a collective identity. But the Iliad, we discover, is a book about the Civil War. And the Iliad ends, “Thus was the funeral of Hector, tamer of horses.” The Iliad is a strange poem when you think about it. As a classic text, “The Iliad” has its “own charisma,” she said, which has drawn readers for hundreds of years. I have just spent the last eight months reading the Iliad. And it achieves its primary meaning not through fearless Achilles or great Hector, but through the relatively minimal Patroclus. And the story continues in the ninth grade, when students read Greek drama and follow other heroes who return home from the Trojan War. I started off reading each of the first twelve books twice then when I had completed those books I read them all again for the… The Iliad and Odyssey are the beginnings of Western literature. Cheryl graduated from the University of Louisville with a degree in chemistry and from Western KY University with an M.S in Biology. That is what literature should be, but rarely is. helps us understand the Greek culture. It has been immortalized in modern romance languages, in modern scientific languages, and in its own great literature. At the end of the story Achilles has been through this great emotion and come out the other side. Email: [email protected] The story was composed around 800 B.C. I have said many times that Latin is not dead: it is immortal. So my purpose in this post is to try to show what the power of the Iliad is and why almost three thousand years after it was composed it it is still regarded as a major work. The fact is that, even though the Iliad stands at the beginning of one tradition— the written tradition—it also comes at the end of an entirely different tradition. But what makes it great? And then when his anger mounts against the Trojans he loses all decency. If the great poets, who flourished at the bright period of Grecian song, of which, alas! He is considered by many to be the earliest and most important of all the Greek writers, and the progenitor of … He also asks his mother Thetis, a goddess of the sea, to intervene with Zeus to turn the tide of victory to the Trojans so that Agamemnon will pay for the slight. He goes on a killing spree killing many Trojans without mercy until he eventually kills Hector. Chaucer, Shakespeare, and all of our great English writers take this basic canon for granted; references to it are everywhere. There must be a distinction between literature of great quality which is ... 2 Responses to “‘Good’ and ‘bad’ literature: Why the Iliad is mere ... Laura. Or put it another way why is the Iliad a great work. Back to Top of Page. In the Western tradition, education has always been synonymous with classical education. ... earliest known work of European literature It just suddenly strikes me how Homer has achieved an effect by meter or the sounds of the consonants or vowels or by various devices. and it is in verse-form. The Odyssey is not only a great romantic, adventure epic, but it's terribly realistic in its depiction of human nature and a brilliantly crafted narrative. Therefore, the Iliad truly is a … The Iliad instead is a story of confusion, of vagueness, of mixed messages and muddled motivations. At the turn of the millennium, there were many lists of the greatest works of the twentieth century. At the beginning of Greek literature stand the two great epics, the Iliad and the Odyssey. Iliad is considered ad as the oldest master peace literature which managed to survive into current period. ( Log Out / As William Faulkner said, “The past is not dead, it’s not even past.”. This was not the first time I had read the Iliad but it was the first time for many years. Hector a son of the Trojan king and their chief warrior is unstoppable and many Greeks are slain. Each year, our students at Highlands Latin School read the Iliad, under the guidance of Mr. Wheatley, our head of school, and, knowing the death of Hector is imminent, they often express the fear that they are going to cry in class. I am sure that the audience for Homer would have been able to have held these opposing ideas in their heads without any problem although for some such as Plato it did cause problems. Now our lives do not reflect Achilles’ but there are parallels and this is what makes the Iliad great. Meanwhile Achilles is a more one dimensional character governed by the single emotion of anger. I’m sure the Greeks were just like us and would have much preferred a poem that showed that they were number one, that they were right, and deserved to win over the Trojans. Hector, in some sense, prefigures Christ, for he was not at all the Greek ideal of a hero, godlike in beauty and strength. Eventually the Trojans get the upper hand and are in danger of overwhelming the Greek camp and setting their ships on fire. Change ), You are commenting using your Facebook account. How did this happen? Throughout the book Achilles was gripped by anger; at first a slow mouldering anger against Agamemnon. Or put it another way why is the Iliad a great work. Achilles was certainly not a nice Christian gentleman like Abraham Lincoln. I started off reading each of the first twelve books twice then when I had completed those books I read them all again for the third time. When he meets Achilles for the final battle, at first he runs away but then turns round showing a more human courage which can waver but then collects itself. Fax: (877) 300-7051 Latin is truly the most influential language in human history. Just as Latin is not dead, it is also true that Greece and Rome are not dead. The Iliad is considered to be one of the earliest masterworks of world literature, ... you are not reading the Iliad as a work of literature, and these notes do not treat it from a literary perspective. It is a book about all wars, about the people and characters that you find in every war—and in every town—the wise, the foolish, the clever, the noble, the base, the ambitious, the old, and the young. 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