From My Bookshelf

I'm feeling sort of martial today, what with the Fourth being last weekend and all, so I chose the best - and first - of the war stories.

The Iliad by Homer translated by Robert Fagles
   If you want a war story, one full of blood, guts, betrayal, personal grudges, sex, gods, goddesses and dirty tricks, you can't get a better one than the Iliad. It's the story of the last weeks of the last year of the ten-year-long Trojan War. It starts with Achilles - greatest of the Greek warriors - refusing to fight because Agamemnon took his treasure, a girl names Briseis. See? Two pages in and already there's sex and betrayal. What more could you ask for?
   Classics was one of my majors in college, and I actually translated a bit of the Iliad from ancient Greek. While there are other translations out there, this one comes very close to the poetry, majesty, and stomach-churning violence of the original. This is not a book you'd just sit down and read, most of you anyway, it's one you turn to when you want to immerse yourself in the language.
   It ends with the death of Hector, Hero of Troy, Breaker of Horses, son of King Priam. Most people think that it ends with the Trojan Horse, but that's from the Aeneid. Which was written five hundred years later by Vergil, who was Roman, not Greek.

Quote: "Giant Ajax hoisted [the rock] high and and hurled it down, crushed the rim of Epicles' four-horned helmet and cracked his skull to splinters, bloody pulp - and breakneck like a diver went the Trojan plunging off and away from the steep beetling tower as life left his bones."

   How about that? Pretty descriptive, huh?