Achilles
The bloody prequel
Following her translation of the Odyssey, Emily Wilson has turned her hand to the Iliad – and it is a triumph, writes A.E. Stallings
The one and only
With its carefully calibrated sense of time, the Iliad is clearly the work of a single man and not a ‘rolling snowball’ of different contributions, argues Robin Lane Fox
![‘Achilles has a dispute with Agamemnon [following Briseis being taken away, and Achilles refusing to fight until she is returned]’, J.H. Tischbein, 1776, oil on canvas. (Bridgeman Images)](https://spectator-australia-preprod.go-vip.net/wp-content/uploads/2018/09/achillies.jpg?w=410&h=275&crop=1)
Pat Barker travels to Troy, but finds herself diverted somewhere outside Ypres
Sing muse, begins The Iliad, of the wrath of Achilles. We are dropped straight into the tenth year of the…
The greatest anti-war poem of all
The Iliad begins with a grudge and ends with a funeral. In between are passages, if not necessarily of boredom,…
Poetic injustice
‘Why do another translation of Homer?’ Richmond Lattimore asked in the foreword to his own great translation of the Iliad…
