The Siege of Troy: A Modern English Retelling of Homer's - he Ilead

by Greg Tobin (Editor)

It was the Age of Heroes

Valiant warriors like Hector, Ajax, wily Odysseus, and brave Achilles, their exploits in battle, their secret passions and hidden strengths, their friendships and rivalries -these are what legends are made of.

It began with a stolen kiss and the abduction of the beautiful Helen, wife of a king.

Diplomacy gave way to insults, and soon it fell to Agamemnon to restore the honor of his brother, Menelaus of Sparta, by leading an army of heroes to the gates of the enemy fortress.

Combat raged for nine years, neither side able to dominate the other. Until a brave Spartan dreamed up a desperate and daring gambit that just might turn the tide of battle in Sparta's favor.

Intrigue, deception, betrayal, and the love of a woman whose face launched a thousand ships brought two great armies to war.

The place was Troy . . . and this is the epic story known as The Iliad .

Genres: Historical Fiction, Fiction

340 pages, Paperback

First published April 19, 2004

About the author

Greg Tobin is the author of several books on the Catholic Church. He was the editor of The Catholic Advocate, and during the April 2005 papal transition he appeared frequently on national radio and TV programs as an expert commentator on the popes and the papal election process. His books Selecting the Pope and Holy Father were widely used as authoritative resources on the subject and were quoted in the Los Angeles Times and The New York Times, as well as the Associated Press. He lives in West Orange, NJ."

Reviews

[Vishy · Rating 3 out of 5]

After reading Francesca Petrizzo's book about the story of the Trojan war from Helen's perspective, I thought I'll read the original book, Homer's 'The Iliad'. I wondered which translation I should read. I've always wanted to read the Robert Fagles and the Richmond Lattimore translations. There is also the Alexander Pope translation which is highly rated. I have the Robert Fitzgerald translation somewhere but couldn't find it now. So I was wondering what to do and was thinking whether I should buy one of these translations. Then I remembered this prose translation I had. I felt that I should read the book I had in hand rather than get a new one. So I went and read it.

Everyone knows what is the story told in 'The Iliad'. It is simple. The Trojan war is on. Something happens on the Greek side. The Chief Commander of the Greeks, Agamemnon takes away a woman who is Achilles' companion. Achilles is upset and angry and refuses to fight in the war and watches it from the sidelines, while he broods. The pendulum of war moves back and forth between the Greeks and the Trojans. At one point, it looks like the Trojans might win. They've injured most of the Greek heroes and are close to taking over the Greek ships. Achilles' close friend Patroclus says that he can't sit quietly anymore and he wants to go and fight. Achilles gives him his blessing. Patroclus does well and pushes the Trojans back. But he ends up against the Trojan crown prince, Hector, who kills him. When Achilles hears of his best friend's death, he is heartbroken. He feels that he's done enough of the brooding nonsense and goes to fight. This can end in only one way. Achilles is the greatest warrior on both the sides. He takes revenge and kills Hector. But he does the nasty stuff after that. He refuses to hand over Hector's body to the Trojans. So Hector's father, King Priam comes to Achilles' tent and begs for his son's body so that he can give him a proper funeral. Achilles' heart melts, he feels that King Priam is like his own father, he treats him like a honoured guest and then later hands over Hector's body. Hector gets a funeral as befits the crown prince.

So that's it. This is the story. It can be told in a page. But the book I read was 340 pages long. What is it then that is told in the other 339 pages? Most of it is about war. About who killed whom. And how did they do it. It is violent and it is hard to read. I think that the German epic 'The Nibelungenlied' is the most violent epic that I've ever read. I think 'The Iliad' will come a close second. After a point, the battle scenes and the violence and the killing are hard to read. I almost wanted to scream at Homer – "What is this, man? Why are you inflicting this on us?"

There are some nice, quiet, beautiful lines in the book in the middle of all the war and the violence. Like this one –

"...and many a noble pair of steeds drew an empty chariot along the highways of war, for lack of drivers who were lying on the plain, more useful now to vultures than to their wives."

And this one –

"As when there is a heavy swell upon the sea – they keep their eyes on the watch for the quarter from where the fierce winds may spring upon them, but they stay where they are and set neither this way nor that till some particular wind sweeps down from heaven to determine them – even so did the old man ponder whether to make for the crowd of Greeks, or go in search of Agamemnon."

And this one –

"Thus high in hope they sat through the livelong night by the highways of war, and many a watch fire did they kindle. As when the stars shine clear, and the moon is bright – there is not a breath of air, not a peak nor a glade nor a jutting headland but it stands out in the ineffable radiance that breaks from the serene of heaven; the stars can all of them be told and the heart of the shepherd is glad – even thus shone the watch fires of the Trojans before Ilium midway between the ships and the river Xanthus. A thousand campfires gleamed upon the plain, and in the glow of each there sat fifty men, while the horses, champing oats and corn beside their chariots, waited till dawn should come."

I also had a sneaking suspicion that 'The Iliad' may not be a complete book. Maybe it is one part of a five-part or ten-part epic. Because I've never read an ancient epic like this. Epics always have a beginning, a middle, and an end. They always have something in the story for everyone – there will be some nice plot, some dialogue, some romance, some humour, some tragedy, some war. 'The Iliad' starts somewhere in the middle and ends somewhere in the middle. Maybe the whole book was available together once upon a time till some crazy guy like Savonarola burnt it. And now we have this incomplete thing which gets translated every decade by a new translator.

I can't say that I enjoyed reading 'The Iliad'. It was hard reading, and atleast two times, once when I'd reached around a 100 pages, and the second time when I'd reached around a 200 pages, I nearly DNFed it. But I hate DNF-ing books and so I ploughed on both times. After reaching 200 pages, I speed read and got through the book. I think I caught all the important scenes.

I've always hated Agamemnon and Achilles, but when I read this, I discovered that they are not as bad as I thought. Agamemnon, after his initial arrogance, realizes his mistake and apologizes for it and tries to make amends. He has a big heart. I didn't expect that at all. Achilles, inspite of his brooding, is likeable. I was expecting to like Hector, but I found him okay. My favourite character was Nestor. He was old and wise and everyone listened to him. I've heard some people hypothesize that Achilles was gay and Patroclus was his boyfriend, but there is nothing to indicate that in the book. It seems to be 21st century imagination imposed on a 3000-year old story. Most of the women characters played only minor roles in the story. It was to be expected in a tale of war. Many Greek gods and goddesses appear in the story and they influence the events of the war. I didn't like them much. Most of them were imperfect, flawed and crazy.

I'm glad I read 'The Iliad'. I can't say that I liked it, but I'm happy to check it off my list. I am wondering whether it would have been a better reading experience, if I had read a verse translation. I don't know the answer to that question, but I feel that a verse translation wouldn't have been able to improve the story, and so wouldn't have made much of a difference. I want to read some of the other ancient classics too – The Odyssey, and the Roman epics, The Aeneid and Metamorphoses. I think they'll be better because they have self-contained stories. But unless we read it, we can never tell. I hope and pray that they are better.

Have you read 'The Iliad'? What to you think about it? Which translation did you read?

[Jkgross · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is a good proses treatment of the Iliad. It is unclear from the information in the book whether it is a translation, starting with the Greek text and bringing it to English, or a paraphrase, starting with one or more good translations and updating them to fit modern English conventions. It retains much of the feel of Homer's poetry while being accessible for modern school aged readers. That being said, it is riddled with typographical/editing errors. Even with that problem, I still prefer it to the Rouse translation for use in my classroom.

[Tony Laplume · Rating 4 out of 5]

Back in 2004 when Wolfgang Peterson's Troy was released in theaters, Tor Books had the idea to release a new translation of the movie's chief inspiration, The Iliad, renaming it The Siege of Troy, y'know, just in case most moviegoers weren't hip to Troy also being referenced, obliquely, as Ilium. Greg Tobin, I don't know, was given this challenge, but his editors took the day off, and the the resulting effort was littered with typos.

That's as much as you need to know about how this particular book came about, or as near as I can tell. Otherwise, it's got nothing to do with Troy, which removed all overt influence and elements of Greek gods from the story, and is, like many other people have done over the past few millennia, a new version of the classic tale as originally developed by someone we know as Homer, based on, yes, the siege of Troy.

So much scholarly obsession has gone into trying to figure out who Homer was (which is a folly akin to trying to explain who Shakespeare was, assuming that it could not possibly have been Shakespeare himself) that few people stop to try and actually analyze the story of The Iliad, reducing it when they do to basics that don't conform to what Homer at the very least helped codify many hundreds of years after the events depicted in the narrative. Tobin's version is not hugely different from translations from the likes of Robert Graves (The Anger of Achilles) or Robert Fitzgerald, and is probably, as Tor Books hoped, one of the cleaner, friendlier versions now available that retains the flavor and character of the original (such as it can be called) text. It's just strange that even when someone like Alessandro Baricco (An Iliad) attempts to do a more modern version, they still cling to the same fairly archaic outline that treats it like an antique, which is fine as far as preserving history goes, but there are so many versions that it's hardly likely that the original will be lost anytime soon. That's what makes what Zachary Mason did in The Lost Books of the Odyssey so brilliant (except, as the title suggests, Mason mostly concentrates on variations of The Odyssey, though he references the Trojan War frequently as well, just as Margaret Atwood does in The Penelopiad).

The story, for anyone interested, basically boils down thusly:

Agamemnon is told that one of the women he's taken into possession along a series of raids in the lead-up to the Trojan War must be relinquished, and his reaction is to claim someone else's prize (another woman), and since Achilles pipes up, he chooses to claim Achilles', which Achilles is so vexed about he opts to remove himself from the fighting around the walls of Troy. This has bad consequences, because Achilles is the best and most effective fighter in the Greek alliance. His opposite in the Trojan army, Hector, benefits a great deal, since none of the warriors who attempt to fill the void left by Achilles can manage the task. Diomedes, Agamemnon, and Odysseus are all eventually wounded in their efforts, and must withdraw from the fight. Two men named Ajax do their best, and Menelaus, the man whose wife (Helen) was stolen by Paris and brought to Troy, thus triggering the conflict, can't quite fit the bill, either, but is probably the most effective of the remaining warriors. Eventually, crazy Nestor, the old warrior everyone relies on for council, convinces Patroclus, who is the trusted right-hand man of Achilles, to try and fill the void, and Hector kills him. Then Achilles, mad with grief, finally returns to battle, slays Hector, and eventually gives the body up to Hector's father, Priam, all the while reflecting on the ironies of fate and fortune. Oh, and various Greek gods interfere like crazy, but mostly to the effect of echoing the same things.

Modern storytellers would probably want to explain how the war eventually ends, or even how Achilles dies not so long after these events in the same conflict, but that's not what The Iliad does, nor even include the Trojan Horse depicted on the cover of Tobin's book. The brilliance of it, faithfully preserved by generations of scholars who don't seem to truly appreciate what they're doing, is that the story isn't about the war, but about how Achilles chooses to ignore both his stature and the folly of man in order to stand on principle, to be free to be in control of his own destiny, which seems incredibly odd if you don't understand his reasoning very well, because he knows exactly what that destiny is. He isn't ultimately concerned with that end result so much as how he reaches it, and will not be coerced unless he himself agrees with the decisions. he rejects treasures because he knows they are meaningless to the dead, and very nearly chooses to accept an alternate destiny that would rob him of earthly glory and a short life and instead give him a long, mundane one, because he values life and dignity (a little funny, that, considering how many times he drags Hector's dead body around Troy).

Anyway, there's a reason why I've been obsessed with this story, and Tobin does a good job of making that clear with his precise language (again, even though there are numerous typos). Modern readers would do well to read The Siege of Troy.

[Joe B. · Rating 3 out of 5]

Not as good as the Iliad itself.