Episode 1
January 18, 2019
The Iliad
Hosted by Chris Piuma and Suzanne Conklin Akbari
For a young man all is decorous
when he is cut down in battle and torn with the sharp bronze, and lies there
dead, and though dead still all that shows about him is beautiful;
but when an old man is dead and down, and the dogs mutilate
the grey head and the grey beard and the parts that are secret,
this, for all sad mortality, is the sight most pitiful.
Suzanne and Chris begin their conversations about great books with a very big and very old one: Homer’s Iliad. This Ancient Greek poem about the Trojan War is, of course, widely known, but if you haven’t read it (or if you haven’t read it in a while), you might not remember how complex (and downright strange) it gets with its reflections on war and the fallout of war. They also talk about the joys of dipping in and out of books, rather than reading them from cover to cover.
![[Episode artwork]](/images/podcast/art/s/spouter.png)
The Spouter-Inn Homer’s epic poem about war and anger. (And family?) More episodes
Show Notes.
The Iliad by Homer, in the Richmond Lattimore translation. [Bookshop.]
A review of English translations of the Iliad.
Another review of English translations.
A quick taste of what Ancient Greek might have sounded like.
“‘Homer can help you’: War veterans use ancient epics to cope.”
“‘The Iliad’ as illustration of epic struggle with post-Vietnam stress.”
“Here, Bullet” by Iraq war veteran Brian Turner, along with a short bio and two podcasts on war poetry.
Teaching classics to convicts.
A lecture on “The Disordered Soul: Thémis and PTSD”.
Writers & Company interviews Pat Barker, author of a recent novel that retells the Iliad from Briseis’s perspective.
Christopher Logue’s War Music is a classic recent radical translation/retelling of the Iliad.
Next episode: The Symposium by Plato.