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Homer and His Iliad
A “compelling and impressive” ( Sunday Times ) reassessment of the Iliad , uncovering how the poem was written and why it remains enduringly powerful
The Iliad is the world’s greatest epic poem—heroic battle and divine fate set against the Trojan War. Its beauty and profound bleakness are intensely moving, but great questions Where, how, and when was it composed and why does it endure?
Robin Lane Fox addresses these questions, drawing on a lifelong love and engagement with the poem. He argues for a place, a date, and a method for its composition—subjects of ongoing controversy—combining the detailed expertise of a historian with a poetic reader’s sensitivity. Lane Fox considers hallmarks of the poem; its values, implicit and explicit; its characters; its women; its gods; and even its horses.
Thousands of readers turn to the Iliad every year. Drawing on fifty years of reading and research, Lane Fox offers us a breathtaking tour of this magnificent text, revealing why the poem has endured for ages.
The Iliad is the world’s greatest epic poem—heroic battle and divine fate set against the Trojan War. Its beauty and profound bleakness are intensely moving, but great questions Where, how, and when was it composed and why does it endure?
Robin Lane Fox addresses these questions, drawing on a lifelong love and engagement with the poem. He argues for a place, a date, and a method for its composition—subjects of ongoing controversy—combining the detailed expertise of a historian with a poetic reader’s sensitivity. Lane Fox considers hallmarks of the poem; its values, implicit and explicit; its characters; its women; its gods; and even its horses.
Thousands of readers turn to the Iliad every year. Drawing on fifty years of reading and research, Lane Fox offers us a breathtaking tour of this magnificent text, revealing why the poem has endured for ages.
464 pages, Hardcover
First published July 13, 2023
99 people are currently reading
1234 people want to read
About the author
Robin Lane Fox
38 books239 followersRobin Lane Fox (born 1946) is an English historian, currently a Fellow of New College, Oxford and University of Oxford Reader in Ancient History.
Lane Fox was educated at Eton and Magdalen College, Oxford.
Since 1977, he has been a tutor in Greek and Roman history, and since 1990 University Reader in Ancient History. He has also taught Greek and Latin literature and early Islamic history, a subject in which he held an Oxford Research Fellowship, and is also New College's Tutor for Oriental Studies.[1] He is a lecturer in Ancient History at Exeter College, Oxford.
He was historical adviser to the film director Oliver Stone for the epic Alexander. His appearance as an extra, in addition to his work as a historical consultant, was publicized at the time of the film's release.
Lane Fox is also a gardening correspondent for the Financial Times.
He is the father of the internet entrepreneur Martha Lane Fox, the founder of Lastminute.com.
They are not related to, and should not be confused with Robin Fox, anthropologist, and his daughter Kate Fox, social anthropologist.
Lane Fox was educated at Eton and Magdalen College, Oxford.
Since 1977, he has been a tutor in Greek and Roman history, and since 1990 University Reader in Ancient History. He has also taught Greek and Latin literature and early Islamic history, a subject in which he held an Oxford Research Fellowship, and is also New College's Tutor for Oriental Studies.[1] He is a lecturer in Ancient History at Exeter College, Oxford.
He was historical adviser to the film director Oliver Stone for the epic Alexander. His appearance as an extra, in addition to his work as a historical consultant, was publicized at the time of the film's release.
Lane Fox is also a gardening correspondent for the Financial Times.
He is the father of the internet entrepreneur Martha Lane Fox, the founder of Lastminute.com.
They are not related to, and should not be confused with Robin Fox, anthropologist, and his daughter Kate Fox, social anthropologist.
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 49 reviews
June 10, 2023
Over the course of my life, I've accumulated a total of 23 translations (and counting) of Homer's The Iliad. Do not, however, ask me which translation is the "best," I didn't collect them for comparative purposes, I'm not a scholar or have any kind of formal education in the Classics; it was all love for the epic poem. The same love that compelled me to pick up Lane Fox's excellent historical and literary analysis of The Iliad.
Robin Lane Fox isn't a specialist in Homeric studies either, but he shares this love and it shines in this book. He writes persuasively and accessibly, he isn't super-dense and doesn't wander around, so even readers with little knowledge of the Iliad will find this easy to read. I'd dare say that even those that haven't read the Iliad might, though I'd also argue you do need to have at least a summed-up knowledge of the plot from pop culture, in order to understand what Lane Fox is getting at.
The author has divided the book in five neat parts, each dealing with a specific aspect of the epic poem, from its author to its cultural impact in our day. For me, the most intriguing and thought-provoking were Parts I, II and III, in which Lane Fox presents arguments of his own on still hotly debated in academia questions such as "Where?" "How?" and "When?" did the poem get composed. Whilst I by no means possess the academic training to debate or rebate his arguments, his conclusions that Homer did indeed exist and was one real author who composed The Iliad whilst singing and then his heirs put it down in writing were sensible and well-argued to my lay fan understanding. Others might think otherwise, but I can't personally disagree; it's all arguments I've seen in one form or another by other scholars as well, so they're not entirely new as to be a surprise or otherwise unpersuasive.
The last two parts, IV and V, deal with the Greek conception of heroes and the heroic. What did they understand by hero in Homer's time and in Classical Antiquity in general? It's a very different world to ours, so it had to be a different conception to ours, which accounts for why most people find it difficult to see how Greek mythic characters could even be deemed "heroic" if they're not "good people" in our modern conception. It also deals with the gods and their behaviour, which also tends to shock our modern sensibilities. It's nothing new to Homer fans and Greek history buffs, but it'll help the general public understand the ancients' worldview better.
All in all, 4.5 stars rounded up for an excellent book! Thorough, readable, well-researched, and on point.
I received an ARC through NetGalley in exchange for an honest review.
Robin Lane Fox isn't a specialist in Homeric studies either, but he shares this love and it shines in this book. He writes persuasively and accessibly, he isn't super-dense and doesn't wander around, so even readers with little knowledge of the Iliad will find this easy to read. I'd dare say that even those that haven't read the Iliad might, though I'd also argue you do need to have at least a summed-up knowledge of the plot from pop culture, in order to understand what Lane Fox is getting at.
The author has divided the book in five neat parts, each dealing with a specific aspect of the epic poem, from its author to its cultural impact in our day. For me, the most intriguing and thought-provoking were Parts I, II and III, in which Lane Fox presents arguments of his own on still hotly debated in academia questions such as "Where?" "How?" and "When?" did the poem get composed. Whilst I by no means possess the academic training to debate or rebate his arguments, his conclusions that Homer did indeed exist and was one real author who composed The Iliad whilst singing and then his heirs put it down in writing were sensible and well-argued to my lay fan understanding. Others might think otherwise, but I can't personally disagree; it's all arguments I've seen in one form or another by other scholars as well, so they're not entirely new as to be a surprise or otherwise unpersuasive.
The last two parts, IV and V, deal with the Greek conception of heroes and the heroic. What did they understand by hero in Homer's time and in Classical Antiquity in general? It's a very different world to ours, so it had to be a different conception to ours, which accounts for why most people find it difficult to see how Greek mythic characters could even be deemed "heroic" if they're not "good people" in our modern conception. It also deals with the gods and their behaviour, which also tends to shock our modern sensibilities. It's nothing new to Homer fans and Greek history buffs, but it'll help the general public understand the ancients' worldview better.
All in all, 4.5 stars rounded up for an excellent book! Thorough, readable, well-researched, and on point.
I received an ARC through NetGalley in exchange for an honest review.
December 6, 2024
Ah, this was a little bit tedious, which was a complete surprise because, if I was stranded on a desert island, The Iliad would be one of five books I would love to have. So what was it about this book didn’t resonate with me?
First of all, speculation. We just don’t know tons about Homer and we know a little more about his culture. I would rather a writer say: this is what we know, this is what we can surmise from reasonable evidence and this is what we just don’t know. However, Fox tends to build on theories with his own theory and then states his theory / conclusions as fact, or close to fact. Such as his belief that Homer composed orally but at some point had his poems written down to edit or extend, and the poem was probably written down by his daughter. Where is any evidence of this? There isn’t any. It’s just a supposition.
He also tends to use allusion or comparison that run the gamut from Homer’s time to the 20th century and he does it with limited introduction, so you are nicely ensconced in the world of ancient Greece and then jarringly pulled into the 19th century with references to Florence Nightingale and Thomas Hardy, etc. Yikes!
From the prologue, I could tell that Fox attempted to organize his work into sections that were logical, however, his communication within those sections felt disorganized. For example, when he referenced C.S. Lewis and his three qualities that epics must have, those qualities were mentioned but not clearly in his writing. And at times he would insert weird observations that did not tie to the poem itself, for instance, “for Homer indeed, dark lives matter.”
But there were some nice highlights. I particularly enjoyed the topographical journey that Fox took us on which gives the reader a deeper connection to the poem. There was also some nice insight into some of the characters and I particularly enjoyed his unusual focus on Sarpedon, who is one of my favourite characters.
At 454 pages, one feels like Fox was trying to add as much information as he could and cover every angle. My preference would be for it to be more focussed and better organized. 2.5 stars bumped to 3 simply because of the volume of information and the interesting pictures included at the end of various scenes of the Iliad.
First of all, speculation. We just don’t know tons about Homer and we know a little more about his culture. I would rather a writer say: this is what we know, this is what we can surmise from reasonable evidence and this is what we just don’t know. However, Fox tends to build on theories with his own theory and then states his theory / conclusions as fact, or close to fact. Such as his belief that Homer composed orally but at some point had his poems written down to edit or extend, and the poem was probably written down by his daughter. Where is any evidence of this? There isn’t any. It’s just a supposition.
He also tends to use allusion or comparison that run the gamut from Homer’s time to the 20th century and he does it with limited introduction, so you are nicely ensconced in the world of ancient Greece and then jarringly pulled into the 19th century with references to Florence Nightingale and Thomas Hardy, etc. Yikes!
From the prologue, I could tell that Fox attempted to organize his work into sections that were logical, however, his communication within those sections felt disorganized. For example, when he referenced C.S. Lewis and his three qualities that epics must have, those qualities were mentioned but not clearly in his writing. And at times he would insert weird observations that did not tie to the poem itself, for instance, “for Homer indeed, dark lives matter.”
But there were some nice highlights. I particularly enjoyed the topographical journey that Fox took us on which gives the reader a deeper connection to the poem. There was also some nice insight into some of the characters and I particularly enjoyed his unusual focus on Sarpedon, who is one of my favourite characters.
At 454 pages, one feels like Fox was trying to add as much information as he could and cover every angle. My preference would be for it to be more focussed and better organized. 2.5 stars bumped to 3 simply because of the volume of information and the interesting pictures included at the end of various scenes of the Iliad.
May 16, 2023
Robin Lane Fox is a knowledgeable historian, familiar with both the history and geography of the Iliad. I have read only parts of the Iliad, although reading Fox's work has inspired me to plan a full reading in the near future.
One of the questions I've always had about the Iliad is whether or not Homer actually lived, or whether "Homer" represents a conglomerate of oral histories/narratives. Fox approaches this question methodically and although I remain unsure, I have new facts to consider along with Fox's excellent interpretation of the debate.
Fox's explanation of the geography of the Iliad's setting provided me with a background I'd previously lacked. I do find it remarkable that Homer described topography that existed decades prior to the Iliad's events or, in some cases, invented topography that while making sense, likely never actually existed.
As for the claim that we could never write an Iliad today, I believe this is true for a number of reasons. When the Iliad was first composed, oral retelling was a necessity. Today, the written word is accessible nearly everywhere on Earth. It is unusual, if not unheard of, for great works to be crafted over time as the Iliad was. Translations may offer a glimpse into this type of crafting, however translation technology helps to preserve the original narrative and most works don't deviate much as a result. The Iliad was perfected over time via clarification, additions, likely omissions. This is something that Fox delves into very well.
Would I recommend this book? Yes. I recommend it to an audience of readers interested in delving into questions after reading the Iliad, those familiar with Homer's work, those familiar with Trojan War history, Greek history or perhaps even Turkish history or anyone interested in learning more about the questions scholars have raised for centuries about Homer and the Iliad.
One of the questions I've always had about the Iliad is whether or not Homer actually lived, or whether "Homer" represents a conglomerate of oral histories/narratives. Fox approaches this question methodically and although I remain unsure, I have new facts to consider along with Fox's excellent interpretation of the debate.
Fox's explanation of the geography of the Iliad's setting provided me with a background I'd previously lacked. I do find it remarkable that Homer described topography that existed decades prior to the Iliad's events or, in some cases, invented topography that while making sense, likely never actually existed.
As for the claim that we could never write an Iliad today, I believe this is true for a number of reasons. When the Iliad was first composed, oral retelling was a necessity. Today, the written word is accessible nearly everywhere on Earth. It is unusual, if not unheard of, for great works to be crafted over time as the Iliad was. Translations may offer a glimpse into this type of crafting, however translation technology helps to preserve the original narrative and most works don't deviate much as a result. The Iliad was perfected over time via clarification, additions, likely omissions. This is something that Fox delves into very well.
Would I recommend this book? Yes. I recommend it to an audience of readers interested in delving into questions after reading the Iliad, those familiar with Homer's work, those familiar with Trojan War history, Greek history or perhaps even Turkish history or anyone interested in learning more about the questions scholars have raised for centuries about Homer and the Iliad.
August 31, 2023
The magic of old books...priceless treasures!💖
April 7, 2024
This was not the book that I was looking for, but that might not be the fault of the book.
I was planning to visit Greece for the first time in my life. This seemed a good time to also read The Iliad, also for the first time in my life. I had a copy of the Richmond Lattimore translation of The Iliad, plus A Companion to the Iliad: Based on the Translation of Richmond Lattimore, by Malcolm M. Willcock. The latter is an excellent assistant, with a detailed line-by-line key to the many, many aspects of The Iliad which might easily get by you if your education is as lamentably lacking as mine.
Just about this time, Netgalley offered this book as a free advance electronic copy. I thought: Oh, great, this will be like having an expert friend at my elbow, enhancing my appreciation of this book. While the author is certainly an expert, he is not like the ideal expert friend. He is more like that friend who knows a lot about something and assumes that everyone else knows it, too. For example, at the book's beginning (Kindle location 102), the author says “I have not presupposed knowledge of the poem”, yet later there is a lot of explanation of how poetic meter works in ancient Greek, which (in my opinion) required some knowledge of how ancient Greek is pronounced. This would be almost impossible to acquire without also knowing quite a bit about The Iliad.
The most interesting part of the book, for me, was about the story behind the story, by which I mean, such questions as: Homer: individual or committee? When did the poem get written down? Did Homer write it down himself? If not, then who? How long did the poem exist in purely oral form before it was written down?
The author has the habit of pronouncing people with whom he disagrees on subjective matters (e.g., Simone Weil (location 4446), Adam Nicholson (location 7810)) are wrong, which I guess is the way it works in academia, but if you tell me someone else's ideas are wrong, I want you to tell me exactly why. If you don't have the space or inclination to do so, don't tell me that they are wrong, let me decide for myself.
In the fourth part of this book, the author selected his favorite ten books (of The Iliad’s 24), which, he promised, would help readers have more of a grasp of the poem as a whole, but I don't think the author carried out his promise. It was hard to tell what the point of this entire section was, except to let the author write about things which interested him.
Perhaps my opinion of this book was influenced by my opinion of The Iliad. As is the case with many people in this age, The Odyssey, a story of a man trying to get home to his family, speaks to me more directly than The Iliad, which can be interpreted as powerful people sending less powerful people to slaughter for the lowest selfishly personal reasons while mouthing the cliches of honor, courage, glory, etc.
I received a free advance electronic copy of this book from the publisher via Netgalley.
I was planning to visit Greece for the first time in my life. This seemed a good time to also read The Iliad, also for the first time in my life. I had a copy of the Richmond Lattimore translation of The Iliad, plus A Companion to the Iliad: Based on the Translation of Richmond Lattimore, by Malcolm M. Willcock. The latter is an excellent assistant, with a detailed line-by-line key to the many, many aspects of The Iliad which might easily get by you if your education is as lamentably lacking as mine.
Just about this time, Netgalley offered this book as a free advance electronic copy. I thought: Oh, great, this will be like having an expert friend at my elbow, enhancing my appreciation of this book. While the author is certainly an expert, he is not like the ideal expert friend. He is more like that friend who knows a lot about something and assumes that everyone else knows it, too. For example, at the book's beginning (Kindle location 102), the author says “I have not presupposed knowledge of the poem”, yet later there is a lot of explanation of how poetic meter works in ancient Greek, which (in my opinion) required some knowledge of how ancient Greek is pronounced. This would be almost impossible to acquire without also knowing quite a bit about The Iliad.
The most interesting part of the book, for me, was about the story behind the story, by which I mean, such questions as: Homer: individual or committee? When did the poem get written down? Did Homer write it down himself? If not, then who? How long did the poem exist in purely oral form before it was written down?
The author has the habit of pronouncing people with whom he disagrees on subjective matters (e.g., Simone Weil (location 4446), Adam Nicholson (location 7810)) are wrong, which I guess is the way it works in academia, but if you tell me someone else's ideas are wrong, I want you to tell me exactly why. If you don't have the space or inclination to do so, don't tell me that they are wrong, let me decide for myself.
In the fourth part of this book, the author selected his favorite ten books (of The Iliad’s 24), which, he promised, would help readers have more of a grasp of the poem as a whole, but I don't think the author carried out his promise. It was hard to tell what the point of this entire section was, except to let the author write about things which interested him.
Perhaps my opinion of this book was influenced by my opinion of The Iliad. As is the case with many people in this age, The Odyssey, a story of a man trying to get home to his family, speaks to me more directly than The Iliad, which can be interpreted as powerful people sending less powerful people to slaughter for the lowest selfishly personal reasons while mouthing the cliches of honor, courage, glory, etc.
I received a free advance electronic copy of this book from the publisher via Netgalley.
September 7, 2024
”Homer’s Iliad is the world’s greatest epic poem. In my view it is the world’s greatest poem, despite the existence of the Odyssey. In antiquity, most people agreed. ––– The city of Troy was a ruin in Homer’s lifetime and the intense action of his poem was only a brief part of a siege which was said to have laster for ten years. Homer made it speak to us all.”
Homer and His Iliad is a deep-dive into Homer’s legendary epic, the Iliad, which details events of the final year of the ten-year Trojan War. In the book, Robin Lane Fox explores the epic from multiple different angles, focusing on its language, setting, historical background, characters, impact and themes. It’s a must-read for any fan of Homer and the Iliad in particular.
I am an Iliad girlie through and through. I love the epic a lot – I’ve read it twice – and I’ve read and seen quite a few adaptations of it, listened to a musical adaptation and so on. As a story, it is so important to me. So naturally when I learned of this book, an analytic nonfiction all about the poem’s importance, background and meaning, written by a respected scholar who has dedicated years upon years of his life to researching it, I was sold. I am happy to report that the book did not disappoint me. I had a blast reading it, even though some sections were a bit difficult for me to understand. For example, when discussing the Homeric hexameter, my mind wandered, cause that is not what I personally find the most intriguing about his poem. I appreciated all the detailed analysis of structure, but my favorite sections were definitely part 4 and 5, which focused more on the content of the poem: characters, relationships, themes and so on.
I learned a lot regarding the background of the Iliad and Homer himself. It was both frustrating and amusing how Robin Lane Fox went into detail about all the ways we can, for example, date Homer and his poem, but is forced to end pretty much everything with ”But the truth is, we don’t know for sure”. Homer is shrouded in mystery: he might’ve been an illiterate blind poet, or he could’ve been able to write. He most likely lived around western Asia, near the coast of the Aegean sea, but most likely he also travelled far and wide. Iliad was probably composed around 760–740 BC, but some people have argued for a much earlier or later date. Troy – the subject of his epic – was a real city, but was there a Trojan war against the Greeks? Maybe? Robin Lane Fox clearly has his ideas about when and where Homer lived and how he composed, and even though he quite forcefully brings forth his own ideas, he does allow time for other views too. He does explore the idea of Iliad being a collective work of many poets or a poem that developed throughout centuries. I think Lane Fox’s arguments for why Iliad is the work of, mainly, one man are quite plausible – he points out the thematic and structural coherence and its coherent use of language – but it is important to remember that, truly, we do not know. One aspect of the poem that Lane Fox highlighted that I also enjoyed reading about was how he combined both mythical and realistic landscape. It is quite clear he had visited Troy, but he is also a poet, a storyteller, and when he needed to change things, he did. Sometimes a river that is there magically switch places cause it adds to the narrative’s power. Just like Homer combined features from different historical eras – the Bronze Age Mycenae and his own time – he combined, took and added what he needed to make as good a story as possible. The poem’s power does not lie in realism, but in its poetic, thematic impact and the poignancy of its story. Lane Fox also made me appreciate Homer’s sense of pace more: he breaks up the barrage of long speeches with short, snappy arguments, delivers long descriptions of battle and warfare to the point of it getting nearly too much to read only to then enchant the reader with a fast-paced duel or an emotionally devastating sequence between a husband and wife. The reader knows from the beginning what will happen ¬– all the big beats are foretold – but still Homer manages to leave everybody on the edge of their seats. I think one of the truly genius things about Homer is how knowing does not ruin anything, but makes everything hit all the harder. The reader is desperate for another outcome, their eyes glued to the page that reveals that there is, indeed, no other outcome to be had. Lane Fox calls Homer’s use of irony and the reader knowing what the gods know but mortals don’t the poem’s ”ruthless poignancy”, a term borrowed from C. S. Lewis’ analysis of the epic. I think that’s a perfect way to describe the Iliad. It is a ruthless read and bound to be a gut-punch.
The Iliad is both deeply alien and poignant. It is set in a world very unlike our own with its own strange customs and morals, but the heart of the story – its themes of loss, love, the futility of war, the impending death coming for us all and the dreadful physical and mental toll of battle – is eternally relatable and honest. The Iliad is often referred to as the ”war epic” while the Odyssey is the ”monster epic” or the ”adventure epic”, but I think this does the Iliad a major disservice. It is about a war, yes, but it is also about so much more than that. It is not a poem that glorifies war, but neither does it strictly condemn it: its view of it is very realistic. War is brutal, cruel, it makes monsters of everyone, it causes loss and pain, and it leaves no one untouched, whether you are in the battle field or not. As he puts it: ”The Iliad is neither an anti-war poem about war, nor celebration of violent killing: Homer, as ever, is not one-eyed. He presents war’s duality, one which is still a ’troubling and unsettling mystery’, as Margaret MacMillan well emphasizes in her important book on how war has shaped us.”
The characters are what, for me, make the Iliad. Achilles is the central hero of the book and an absolute trainwreck of a boy. I liked how Lane Fox highlighted his different traits and sides, the complexity of his character: he is a brutal warrior, a poet and a singer, a loving son, a devoted partner, a half-god, a fair judge at games and an arrogant aristocrat. He is famously prone to anger, but he is also capable of profound love and deep compassion for the enemy. It is not easy to say that Achilles – or any other character – develops, but Achilels is capable of changing, tapping into different sides of himself and making new decisions based on the people and events around him. He is not simply static. Yes, he and the others do not function as characters do in modern art, but it is unfair to say that they are simply one thing, lacking in background or depth. In terms of the characters, I also liked how Lane Fox explored Patroclus – his duality as being both noticably kind and a brutal warrior just like all of them – and the women of the poem, most importantly, Helen, Hecabe and Andromache. Andromache especially is, it seems, to Lane Fox, a character who really brings out the heart of the poem. He argues that even though women are not present as much as the men and are often seen as just someone’s wife, daughter or mother, or – in Helen’s case – the root cause of the war, they are what makes the poem hit: they bring out the humanity of the poem.
On the topic of women, I especially liked how Lane Fox wrote about Helen, one of my favorite characters from mythology ever. She is such a fascinating woman, hard to pin down and full of self-loathing, savage anger, desire she would rather leave behind and regret over her past actions. She is a mother but hardly ever described as one, a daughter of Zeus, the cause of all this killing but still someone you are called upon to care for and a woman with hardly any allies. Lane Fox calls Homer’s Helen a character who ”invites interpretation”. She also has this fascinating moment of almost being somehow aware of her role in mythology: ”She ends by referring to her and Paris’ role as subjects of song for future generations, as ’Zeus has laid an evil destiny upon us’. In the plot of the Iliad, Helen, cause of the war, has little more to do, but Homer makes her remind us that she will remain a celebrity nonetheless, the enduring subject of poetry, not least his own.”
I found the exploration of heroic ethics and what heroism means very intriguing. Heroism is often linked to just fighting or the slaying of monsters, but heroes are bound by so many other ideals as well. They are expected to be aristrocrats and behave accordingly, fight for glory (but not without regard for others – personal and communal glory-seeking can coexist), exercise mercy and compassion (Achilles’ unyielding heart is not a compliment), value kindness (the reason why the Greeks fight so desperately to rescue Patroclus’s body was that they respected his kindness), take revenge on fallen comrades, obey the laws of xenia aka hospitality and guest-friendship and so much more. Heroism is not just about killing and its foolish to think so. Lane Fox also emphasized how Homeric heroes lived in a culture of shame – the fear of losing face, shaming yourself or your people, being judged by others is a constant worry and source of anxiety. Shaming yourself is deeply, profoundly upsetting and something heroes go to extreme lengths to avoid. Heroes are not multidimensional in the way we expect characters to be, but they are torn between different desires (glory vs. safety, victory vs. homecoming, love vs. duty and so on), express many kinds of emotions and react in their own ways to the society they live in. And they are all laid equal in the face of death. As Lane Fox puts it: ”In these heroes’ lives, as in ours, there is only one certainty: death. Every one of them knows that it is his allotted destiny and that he will not escape whenever his time comes.”
The gods are present in the Iliad from the beginning. They shape its narrative and the lives of its characters, and everything that happens is according to Zeus’s plan that we know he is enacting from page one. But the gods do not control everything: free will and divine will coexist. One of my favorite aspects of the Iliad – and Greek mythology in general – is how vivid the gods are and how they are both so out of this world and extremely, painfully human. The gods rage, fuck, trick, protect and love, they live in a culture of shame just like humans and the structures of their hierarchy and family are echoes of real-life patriarchal, aristocratic societies. I think people, when reading about how Hera has to worry about her husband hitting her or Hephaestus remembering how Zeus hurt him and his mom, Hera, once, will recognize deeply relatable, abusice family dynamics still common in our world. Their humanity – all their flaws, weaknesses and strengths – are magnified cause they are immortal beings. Everything, with them, is so, so much. The goddesses are especially fascinating in the Iliad. I love the depiction of Hera, especially. She gets to be really hella conniving and cunning, full of headstrong rage, but you also feel for her cause she is clearly trapped in a marriage with an abusive spouse who is, though godly like her, so much stronger than her. He is the ultimate patriarch. But he is not above pity: he is perhaps the only god who seems to feel pity for mortals and be undecided between who to help and who to take down. His pity is not as tied to partisan belief as the others'.
I would recommend Homer and His Iliad to any fan of Homer’s epic poems or the man himself. Reading this book made me want to read the Iliad all over again, even though I only read it last year. I feel like Lane Fox’s book deepened my understanding and appreciation for the epic a whole lot.
Homer and His Iliad is a deep-dive into Homer’s legendary epic, the Iliad, which details events of the final year of the ten-year Trojan War. In the book, Robin Lane Fox explores the epic from multiple different angles, focusing on its language, setting, historical background, characters, impact and themes. It’s a must-read for any fan of Homer and the Iliad in particular.
I am an Iliad girlie through and through. I love the epic a lot – I’ve read it twice – and I’ve read and seen quite a few adaptations of it, listened to a musical adaptation and so on. As a story, it is so important to me. So naturally when I learned of this book, an analytic nonfiction all about the poem’s importance, background and meaning, written by a respected scholar who has dedicated years upon years of his life to researching it, I was sold. I am happy to report that the book did not disappoint me. I had a blast reading it, even though some sections were a bit difficult for me to understand. For example, when discussing the Homeric hexameter, my mind wandered, cause that is not what I personally find the most intriguing about his poem. I appreciated all the detailed analysis of structure, but my favorite sections were definitely part 4 and 5, which focused more on the content of the poem: characters, relationships, themes and so on.
I learned a lot regarding the background of the Iliad and Homer himself. It was both frustrating and amusing how Robin Lane Fox went into detail about all the ways we can, for example, date Homer and his poem, but is forced to end pretty much everything with ”But the truth is, we don’t know for sure”. Homer is shrouded in mystery: he might’ve been an illiterate blind poet, or he could’ve been able to write. He most likely lived around western Asia, near the coast of the Aegean sea, but most likely he also travelled far and wide. Iliad was probably composed around 760–740 BC, but some people have argued for a much earlier or later date. Troy – the subject of his epic – was a real city, but was there a Trojan war against the Greeks? Maybe? Robin Lane Fox clearly has his ideas about when and where Homer lived and how he composed, and even though he quite forcefully brings forth his own ideas, he does allow time for other views too. He does explore the idea of Iliad being a collective work of many poets or a poem that developed throughout centuries. I think Lane Fox’s arguments for why Iliad is the work of, mainly, one man are quite plausible – he points out the thematic and structural coherence and its coherent use of language – but it is important to remember that, truly, we do not know. One aspect of the poem that Lane Fox highlighted that I also enjoyed reading about was how he combined both mythical and realistic landscape. It is quite clear he had visited Troy, but he is also a poet, a storyteller, and when he needed to change things, he did. Sometimes a river that is there magically switch places cause it adds to the narrative’s power. Just like Homer combined features from different historical eras – the Bronze Age Mycenae and his own time – he combined, took and added what he needed to make as good a story as possible. The poem’s power does not lie in realism, but in its poetic, thematic impact and the poignancy of its story. Lane Fox also made me appreciate Homer’s sense of pace more: he breaks up the barrage of long speeches with short, snappy arguments, delivers long descriptions of battle and warfare to the point of it getting nearly too much to read only to then enchant the reader with a fast-paced duel or an emotionally devastating sequence between a husband and wife. The reader knows from the beginning what will happen ¬– all the big beats are foretold – but still Homer manages to leave everybody on the edge of their seats. I think one of the truly genius things about Homer is how knowing does not ruin anything, but makes everything hit all the harder. The reader is desperate for another outcome, their eyes glued to the page that reveals that there is, indeed, no other outcome to be had. Lane Fox calls Homer’s use of irony and the reader knowing what the gods know but mortals don’t the poem’s ”ruthless poignancy”, a term borrowed from C. S. Lewis’ analysis of the epic. I think that’s a perfect way to describe the Iliad. It is a ruthless read and bound to be a gut-punch.
The Iliad is both deeply alien and poignant. It is set in a world very unlike our own with its own strange customs and morals, but the heart of the story – its themes of loss, love, the futility of war, the impending death coming for us all and the dreadful physical and mental toll of battle – is eternally relatable and honest. The Iliad is often referred to as the ”war epic” while the Odyssey is the ”monster epic” or the ”adventure epic”, but I think this does the Iliad a major disservice. It is about a war, yes, but it is also about so much more than that. It is not a poem that glorifies war, but neither does it strictly condemn it: its view of it is very realistic. War is brutal, cruel, it makes monsters of everyone, it causes loss and pain, and it leaves no one untouched, whether you are in the battle field or not. As he puts it: ”The Iliad is neither an anti-war poem about war, nor celebration of violent killing: Homer, as ever, is not one-eyed. He presents war’s duality, one which is still a ’troubling and unsettling mystery’, as Margaret MacMillan well emphasizes in her important book on how war has shaped us.”
The characters are what, for me, make the Iliad. Achilles is the central hero of the book and an absolute trainwreck of a boy. I liked how Lane Fox highlighted his different traits and sides, the complexity of his character: he is a brutal warrior, a poet and a singer, a loving son, a devoted partner, a half-god, a fair judge at games and an arrogant aristocrat. He is famously prone to anger, but he is also capable of profound love and deep compassion for the enemy. It is not easy to say that Achilles – or any other character – develops, but Achilels is capable of changing, tapping into different sides of himself and making new decisions based on the people and events around him. He is not simply static. Yes, he and the others do not function as characters do in modern art, but it is unfair to say that they are simply one thing, lacking in background or depth. In terms of the characters, I also liked how Lane Fox explored Patroclus – his duality as being both noticably kind and a brutal warrior just like all of them – and the women of the poem, most importantly, Helen, Hecabe and Andromache. Andromache especially is, it seems, to Lane Fox, a character who really brings out the heart of the poem. He argues that even though women are not present as much as the men and are often seen as just someone’s wife, daughter or mother, or – in Helen’s case – the root cause of the war, they are what makes the poem hit: they bring out the humanity of the poem.
On the topic of women, I especially liked how Lane Fox wrote about Helen, one of my favorite characters from mythology ever. She is such a fascinating woman, hard to pin down and full of self-loathing, savage anger, desire she would rather leave behind and regret over her past actions. She is a mother but hardly ever described as one, a daughter of Zeus, the cause of all this killing but still someone you are called upon to care for and a woman with hardly any allies. Lane Fox calls Homer’s Helen a character who ”invites interpretation”. She also has this fascinating moment of almost being somehow aware of her role in mythology: ”She ends by referring to her and Paris’ role as subjects of song for future generations, as ’Zeus has laid an evil destiny upon us’. In the plot of the Iliad, Helen, cause of the war, has little more to do, but Homer makes her remind us that she will remain a celebrity nonetheless, the enduring subject of poetry, not least his own.”
I found the exploration of heroic ethics and what heroism means very intriguing. Heroism is often linked to just fighting or the slaying of monsters, but heroes are bound by so many other ideals as well. They are expected to be aristrocrats and behave accordingly, fight for glory (but not without regard for others – personal and communal glory-seeking can coexist), exercise mercy and compassion (Achilles’ unyielding heart is not a compliment), value kindness (the reason why the Greeks fight so desperately to rescue Patroclus’s body was that they respected his kindness), take revenge on fallen comrades, obey the laws of xenia aka hospitality and guest-friendship and so much more. Heroism is not just about killing and its foolish to think so. Lane Fox also emphasized how Homeric heroes lived in a culture of shame – the fear of losing face, shaming yourself or your people, being judged by others is a constant worry and source of anxiety. Shaming yourself is deeply, profoundly upsetting and something heroes go to extreme lengths to avoid. Heroes are not multidimensional in the way we expect characters to be, but they are torn between different desires (glory vs. safety, victory vs. homecoming, love vs. duty and so on), express many kinds of emotions and react in their own ways to the society they live in. And they are all laid equal in the face of death. As Lane Fox puts it: ”In these heroes’ lives, as in ours, there is only one certainty: death. Every one of them knows that it is his allotted destiny and that he will not escape whenever his time comes.”
The gods are present in the Iliad from the beginning. They shape its narrative and the lives of its characters, and everything that happens is according to Zeus’s plan that we know he is enacting from page one. But the gods do not control everything: free will and divine will coexist. One of my favorite aspects of the Iliad – and Greek mythology in general – is how vivid the gods are and how they are both so out of this world and extremely, painfully human. The gods rage, fuck, trick, protect and love, they live in a culture of shame just like humans and the structures of their hierarchy and family are echoes of real-life patriarchal, aristocratic societies. I think people, when reading about how Hera has to worry about her husband hitting her or Hephaestus remembering how Zeus hurt him and his mom, Hera, once, will recognize deeply relatable, abusice family dynamics still common in our world. Their humanity – all their flaws, weaknesses and strengths – are magnified cause they are immortal beings. Everything, with them, is so, so much. The goddesses are especially fascinating in the Iliad. I love the depiction of Hera, especially. She gets to be really hella conniving and cunning, full of headstrong rage, but you also feel for her cause she is clearly trapped in a marriage with an abusive spouse who is, though godly like her, so much stronger than her. He is the ultimate patriarch. But he is not above pity: he is perhaps the only god who seems to feel pity for mortals and be undecided between who to help and who to take down. His pity is not as tied to partisan belief as the others'.
I would recommend Homer and His Iliad to any fan of Homer’s epic poems or the man himself. Reading this book made me want to read the Iliad all over again, even though I only read it last year. I feel like Lane Fox’s book deepened my understanding and appreciation for the epic a whole lot.
June 7, 2025
Lane Fox has an aura of genius about him in this book. (The potential Homeros pun in Hesiod is indeed a theory I’ve only heard from him—and it’s not unconvincing.) Previously, I’ve been a pretty staunch Analyst; it’s the mode in which what I was taught and I’m a little ashamed to admit that this is the full-length defense of the Unitarian position that I’ve read, though I’ve been familiar with the sketch of the position and its arguments. While not every piece of evidence used by Lane Fox is entirely compelling—there are a few leaps in his exact movements of how the Iliad came to be dictated (if it was)—most of it is at minimum plausible.
However, Lane Fox’s claim that Achilles’s character was “in no way shaped by an awareness of the Gilgamesh” must be rejected, and especially by me. While the differences between Achilles and Gilgamesh are vast and valid, their relationships and trajectories are interconnected and certainly the Iliad owes a debt to the Gilgamesh. The evidence of the text supports this, especially in the familiar, ritual mourning of both men for their beloveds.
I’m giving this five stars not because it’s a perfect interrogation of every piece of Homeric evidence. Not because it’s the most comprehensive examination of the Homeric debate to date—though it might be! Or anything else superlative. I’m giving this five stars because it’s accessible in a field of frequent opacity; thoughtful and personal in its reflections on the Iliad and Homer at large; and because it is evident in every page that Robin Lane Fox has spent a career loving Homer and archaic epic.
However, Lane Fox’s claim that Achilles’s character was “in no way shaped by an awareness of the Gilgamesh” must be rejected, and especially by me. While the differences between Achilles and Gilgamesh are vast and valid, their relationships and trajectories are interconnected and certainly the Iliad owes a debt to the Gilgamesh. The evidence of the text supports this, especially in the familiar, ritual mourning of both men for their beloveds.
I’m giving this five stars not because it’s a perfect interrogation of every piece of Homeric evidence. Not because it’s the most comprehensive examination of the Homeric debate to date—though it might be! Or anything else superlative. I’m giving this five stars because it’s accessible in a field of frequent opacity; thoughtful and personal in its reflections on the Iliad and Homer at large; and because it is evident in every page that Robin Lane Fox has spent a career loving Homer and archaic epic.
December 27, 2024
Seamos claros: no es fácil encontrar en el mercado editorial un tratamiento de un tema mil veces recorrido ya tan valiente e imaginativo como el que administra Robin Lane Fox (1946) en su último libro: Homero y su Ilíada (Crítica). A fin de cuentas, cuando los datos son tan escasos, ¿por qué repetir otra vez las mismas hipótesis? El historiador británico, y profesor emérito de Oxford, cierra cincuenta años de carrera con un libro tan fascinante como embriagador en torno al mejor poema de todos los tiempos (sin discusión), dictado por el mayor poeta que jamás ha existido (sin discusión), sobre una guerra que probablemente nunca tuvo lugar (en discusión).
Seguir leyendo la reseña / entrevista aquí:
https://www.zendalibros.com/robin-lan...
Seguir leyendo la reseña / entrevista aquí:
https://www.zendalibros.com/robin-lan...
September 21, 2025
What an excellent book to explore after reading the Iliad. This book talks about the Iliad in the context of ancient scribes, their audiences and travelling storytellers. I loved hearing about the sound recordings of storytelling poets from the early 1900s that seem to be doing just what Homer did thousands of years ago. These sound recordings are available on line at Harvard.. amazing stuff!
But mostly I liked how the Iliad can indirectly help us to understand the ancient greek world in ways we might not immediately expect.
I have read the Iliad three times now and spent a lot of time annotating and thinking about it but this book gave me so much more to consider and mull over. I greatly enjoyed the authors personal views and ideas. That he loves the book so much came over beautifully. It was extremely inspiring. All in all, I thoroughly enjoyed this and it is a book I will dip into regularly in the future. It will enrich my next reading of Homer very agreeably!
Robin Lane Fox is opinionated in a good way.. great reading!
But mostly I liked how the Iliad can indirectly help us to understand the ancient greek world in ways we might not immediately expect.
I have read the Iliad three times now and spent a lot of time annotating and thinking about it but this book gave me so much more to consider and mull over. I greatly enjoyed the authors personal views and ideas. That he loves the book so much came over beautifully. It was extremely inspiring. All in all, I thoroughly enjoyed this and it is a book I will dip into regularly in the future. It will enrich my next reading of Homer very agreeably!
Robin Lane Fox is opinionated in a good way.. great reading!
April 16, 2024
Fox has done a wonderful job giving us a "commentary track" for the Iliad. The book traces Homer's influence, deals with issues related to authorship, composition, dating, and theme before tracing into an engaging if encyclopedic reading of the poem. Fox puts a great deal of scholarship in your hands made interesting by his life long love and engagement with the poem. Throughout the book he points out that scenes in the poem might come from real places, how textured the composition is between written and oral elements, and just why the pathos and impact of the poem on the reader have rarely if ever been matched in Western literature.
My only disappointment was wanting more information about the reception history of Homer and more stories about different translations and presentations of the material. I was expecting more of this than the book had but I still enjoyed the book.
My only disappointment was wanting more information about the reception history of Homer and more stories about different translations and presentations of the material. I was expecting more of this than the book had but I still enjoyed the book.
March 28, 2025
Es war eine große Freude, nachzuvollziehen: Es gibt bis in die Gegenwart eine Tradition mündlicher Dichtung ohne Schrift, und in einer Zeit beginnender Schriftlichkeit wird auch begreifbar, wie ein Werk aufgeschrieben wurde. Der Inhalt der Ilias wird erschlossen - das ist auch nötig, die Welt ist sehr fremd. Es macht richtig Lust darauf, demnächst Homer zu lesen - und leider nicht im Original…
March 4, 2024
Well-written, and with a wealth of new information even for longtime students of Homer. Critically, Fox delves into the evidence and arguments for his stances on matters which can never be fully known, something we don’t get from most analyses.
Read
August 24, 2023Faced with a jumble of bewildering ruins, modern visitors to Hisarlik in northwest Turkey, the site of ancient Troy, may find themselves perplexed and sometimes disappointed. The wide bay where the Greeks so famously beached 1,000 ships is gone, buried in silt from a local river, while beyond the fine sloping walls, a palimpsest of settlements spanning 4,000 years lies scarred and disfigured by the deep trench gouged by Heinrich Schliemann, its first archaeologist, during two decades of digging in the 19th century. Schliemann had been drawn to Hisarlik, and also to mainland Greece, by his passion for the Homeric poems, the Iliad and Odyssey, and his conviction that they described or reflected real societies and events, not least the decade-long Trojan War. So enthusiastic was he that when (in controversial circumstances) he ‘found’ a cache of jewellery at Troy, he proclaimed it had belonged to Helen. At Mycenae, excavating a royal grave, he lifted a gold mask and, swearing that the features beneath it had survived for an instant before crumbling to dust, informed the king of Greece by telegram: ‘I have gazed on the face of Agamemnon.’ In fact, both artefacts were earlier than the presumed date of the Trojan War: the mask by some centuries; the jewels by more than a millennium. In a sense, however, this did not matter. Schliemann had achieved what he set out to do. He had discovered key Homeric sites and shown that the poems were grounded in reality.
But what of those poems themselves, specifically the Iliad, which takes its title from Troy’s alternative name, Ilion (itself derived from the Hittite Wilusa)? Since antiquity, scholars have debated but never agreed on how it came to be written. Multi-layered Hisarlik might well serve as a metaphor for their often-contorted arguments. Most accept that the Iliad has its roots in oral poetry performed at gatherings held in the Greek ‘Dark Ages’ and perhaps earlier; some suggest that it is an amalgam, a ‘stitching together’ of shorter works made over many years; others that it is a ‘snowball’ with a core of original material expanded over generations by different hands. While classical authors believed that it was the product of one man, sometimes imagined as a blind poet from Samos, few in modern times have felt compelled to try to track down who that man might have been. Enter Robin Lane Fox. Having used topographic and literary detective work to ‘find’ Hippocrates on the island of Thasos (in his recent and brilliant book, The Invention of Medicine), he now uses his sleuthing skills to try to discover Homer, the man who he believes authored most of the Iliad.
‘Authored’, not ‘wrote’. Homer was, Lane Fox maintains, an oral poet, taught by great masters, part of a long tradition which may have stretched back to the Bronze Age. But whereas previous reciters were content to link together existing free-standing episodes to form a linear narrative, the Iliad is different, its details interlinked throughout the text, which ‘only make sense in the light of the whole’. It is partly this structure which reveals the genius of a single author who dictated his rehearsed, perfected composition to scribes versed in the newly honed Greek alphabet (which may even have been invented for this purpose). Already well known, his oral Iliad (Lane Fox’s ‘preferred guess’ is that Homer ‘first performed a version for troops who were out at war’) was the product of autopsy and experience. Based on the west coast of Asia Minor, somewhere between Ephesus and Miletus, he travelled south to Lycia and north to Troy to garner detail. But according to Lane Fox he was not simply a poet. He may have been a charioteer – ‘I like to believe he drove a racing team himself’ – a hunter, even a ‘putative gardener’. In fact, as he sharpens into focus, this Homer increasingly becomes a mirror image of Lane Fox, himself a great horseman, who once declared: ‘On my deathbed I will think of Homer, then gardens, the great women I know, and lastly my best days fox hunting. And then I’ll die.’
Read the rest of the review at HistoryToday.com.
David Stuttard is the author of Phoenix: A Father, a Son and the Rise of Athens (Harvard University Press, 2021).
But what of those poems themselves, specifically the Iliad, which takes its title from Troy’s alternative name, Ilion (itself derived from the Hittite Wilusa)? Since antiquity, scholars have debated but never agreed on how it came to be written. Multi-layered Hisarlik might well serve as a metaphor for their often-contorted arguments. Most accept that the Iliad has its roots in oral poetry performed at gatherings held in the Greek ‘Dark Ages’ and perhaps earlier; some suggest that it is an amalgam, a ‘stitching together’ of shorter works made over many years; others that it is a ‘snowball’ with a core of original material expanded over generations by different hands. While classical authors believed that it was the product of one man, sometimes imagined as a blind poet from Samos, few in modern times have felt compelled to try to track down who that man might have been. Enter Robin Lane Fox. Having used topographic and literary detective work to ‘find’ Hippocrates on the island of Thasos (in his recent and brilliant book, The Invention of Medicine), he now uses his sleuthing skills to try to discover Homer, the man who he believes authored most of the Iliad.
‘Authored’, not ‘wrote’. Homer was, Lane Fox maintains, an oral poet, taught by great masters, part of a long tradition which may have stretched back to the Bronze Age. But whereas previous reciters were content to link together existing free-standing episodes to form a linear narrative, the Iliad is different, its details interlinked throughout the text, which ‘only make sense in the light of the whole’. It is partly this structure which reveals the genius of a single author who dictated his rehearsed, perfected composition to scribes versed in the newly honed Greek alphabet (which may even have been invented for this purpose). Already well known, his oral Iliad (Lane Fox’s ‘preferred guess’ is that Homer ‘first performed a version for troops who were out at war’) was the product of autopsy and experience. Based on the west coast of Asia Minor, somewhere between Ephesus and Miletus, he travelled south to Lycia and north to Troy to garner detail. But according to Lane Fox he was not simply a poet. He may have been a charioteer – ‘I like to believe he drove a racing team himself’ – a hunter, even a ‘putative gardener’. In fact, as he sharpens into focus, this Homer increasingly becomes a mirror image of Lane Fox, himself a great horseman, who once declared: ‘On my deathbed I will think of Homer, then gardens, the great women I know, and lastly my best days fox hunting. And then I’ll die.’
Read the rest of the review at HistoryToday.com.
David Stuttard is the author of Phoenix: A Father, a Son and the Rise of Athens (Harvard University Press, 2021).
September 23, 2024
Excellent historical and literary examination of Homer and his greatest poem. Full review at Miller's Book Review here.
January 14, 2024
This is a fantastic overview of both Homer, his contexts and methods and what makes the Iliad in specific a classic of western literature. Fox does an excellent job both synthesizing and explicating scholarly discussions and views of Homer and Ancient Greece as well as being one of the best literary readers of the Iliad itself. Highly recommend for anyone interested in Homer, the Trojan War, the Iliad, or the nature of classics in general.
April 19, 2024
Lovely book by a true lover of Homer.
December 5, 2023
This is a book about the Iliad written by an expert in his field. I have previously read RLF's Alexander the Great, which I found slightly heavy going, and Travelling Heroes in which he attempts to show that colonists from the island of Euboea were instrumental in many of the early advances of the classical Greek world. Like Travelling Heroes, Homer and his Iliad is full of ideas and simply stuffed with scholarship but rather incoherently present. I never found it difficult to understand but as an intelligent non-specialist, I rather lost the wood for the trees. He was trying to establish some facts about Homer but often the evidence seemed to amount to little more than his opinion and is distributed about the book is such a way that I found it difficult in my head to assemble all the little snippets to decide whether he had adequately supported his main thesis.
For example, he works hard to establish that Homer was a single author who wrote the entire Iliad, except for the Catalogue of Ships in Book 2 and the 10th Book, which, he claims, were interpolations by later authors. But his supposition that the Iliad was created as a spoken or recited poem (evidenced by features such as repetition and ring composition which he says are typical of oral poetry) militates against the single author theory: other epic poems in the oral tradition are reinterpreted each time a new poet recites them. So RLF maintains that Homer must have dictated the poem, thereby fixing its form (and dating the composition to after the introduction of alphabetic literacy in Greece). But then he cites other passages which suggest a later date for composition than he now maintains and he can only explain these away by assuming that they are interpolations by those subsequent to Homer. Indeed, as I discovered in Hidden Hands, it was common for scribes when copying a manuscript to make additions or amendments. But surely this undermines his argument against the 'patchwork' theory: that the Iliad was created by a number of authors. He states “In general terms it is a fallacy to assume that unity of design entails a single author, but the rest of the Iliad’s plot is so pervasively signposted that a single author is evidently guiding its course.” (Ch 6) which seems to underline the feeling that RLF has started with a theory and isn't prepared to let inconvenient facts spoil it.
Furthermore, the arguments for dating the composition of the Iliad seem to be scattered over several chapters and presented in no particular order. I found this confusing. It would have been clearer if RLF had concentrated on a few key dates. For example, even though his stories are set firmly in the Bronze Age there is a mention of iron-tipped arrows ploughshares and this therefore dates (at least that passage which may, of course, be a later interpolation) to after this technology was introduced which puts an earliest composition date at c1020 BC. On the other hand, Homer never mentions coinage and, since this was introduced into that area of the world in about 650 BC it might be inferred that the Iliad was written after that date. Simple arguments such as this, especially if presented on a timeline would have made the dating of the poem clearer.
One feature that I desperately needed was the addition of a map. RLF repeatedly refers to places such as the Troad and I for one wasn't sure where they were. (He also repeatedly refers to the land-mass known to the Romans as Asia Minor and nowadays as Turkey as 'Asia' which is surely bound to lead to confusion!). He even gives geographical arguments, such as Chryse walking down the shore to a temple. My understanding of these arguments would have been massively enhanced with a few simple maps.
There were times when his obvious partiality for the Iliad (and for a couple of other epic poems that he had studied) seemed to lead him to make instant judgements. For example, after establishing how careful Homer was with his geographical references in the Iliad (saying that “throughout antiquity, Greek poetry and cult shows a strong connection to particular sites and landscapes in the real world.” Ch 3), he then dismisses generations of scholars who have tried to use geographical references in the Odyssey to trace the path of Odysseus (for example Ulysses Found by Ernle Bradford) by calling it "a journey into neverland" (Ch 3) without, so far as I can see, a single shred of evidence to back this statement up. This isn't the only time when RLF appears to want to have his cake and eat it.
Don't get me wrong, there were many interesting things in this book, just as there were with Travelling Heroes. But the incoherence confused me and the apparent cherry-picking of facts left me unconvinced. Map and a timeline too, please.
For example, he works hard to establish that Homer was a single author who wrote the entire Iliad, except for the Catalogue of Ships in Book 2 and the 10th Book, which, he claims, were interpolations by later authors. But his supposition that the Iliad was created as a spoken or recited poem (evidenced by features such as repetition and ring composition which he says are typical of oral poetry) militates against the single author theory: other epic poems in the oral tradition are reinterpreted each time a new poet recites them. So RLF maintains that Homer must have dictated the poem, thereby fixing its form (and dating the composition to after the introduction of alphabetic literacy in Greece). But then he cites other passages which suggest a later date for composition than he now maintains and he can only explain these away by assuming that they are interpolations by those subsequent to Homer. Indeed, as I discovered in Hidden Hands, it was common for scribes when copying a manuscript to make additions or amendments. But surely this undermines his argument against the 'patchwork' theory: that the Iliad was created by a number of authors. He states “In general terms it is a fallacy to assume that unity of design entails a single author, but the rest of the Iliad’s plot is so pervasively signposted that a single author is evidently guiding its course.” (Ch 6) which seems to underline the feeling that RLF has started with a theory and isn't prepared to let inconvenient facts spoil it.
Furthermore, the arguments for dating the composition of the Iliad seem to be scattered over several chapters and presented in no particular order. I found this confusing. It would have been clearer if RLF had concentrated on a few key dates. For example, even though his stories are set firmly in the Bronze Age there is a mention of iron-tipped arrows ploughshares and this therefore dates (at least that passage which may, of course, be a later interpolation) to after this technology was introduced which puts an earliest composition date at c1020 BC. On the other hand, Homer never mentions coinage and, since this was introduced into that area of the world in about 650 BC it might be inferred that the Iliad was written after that date. Simple arguments such as this, especially if presented on a timeline would have made the dating of the poem clearer.
One feature that I desperately needed was the addition of a map. RLF repeatedly refers to places such as the Troad and I for one wasn't sure where they were. (He also repeatedly refers to the land-mass known to the Romans as Asia Minor and nowadays as Turkey as 'Asia' which is surely bound to lead to confusion!). He even gives geographical arguments, such as Chryse walking down the shore to a temple. My understanding of these arguments would have been massively enhanced with a few simple maps.
There were times when his obvious partiality for the Iliad (and for a couple of other epic poems that he had studied) seemed to lead him to make instant judgements. For example, after establishing how careful Homer was with his geographical references in the Iliad (saying that “throughout antiquity, Greek poetry and cult shows a strong connection to particular sites and landscapes in the real world.” Ch 3), he then dismisses generations of scholars who have tried to use geographical references in the Odyssey to trace the path of Odysseus (for example Ulysses Found by Ernle Bradford) by calling it "a journey into neverland" (Ch 3) without, so far as I can see, a single shred of evidence to back this statement up. This isn't the only time when RLF appears to want to have his cake and eat it.
Don't get me wrong, there were many interesting things in this book, just as there were with Travelling Heroes. But the incoherence confused me and the apparent cherry-picking of facts left me unconvinced. Map and a timeline too, please.
June 9, 2023
Like many people my age, my first experience of The Iliad was in high school. Even though many of the ancient poem’s richness no doubt eluded my adolescent mind, I still knew there was something about it that drew me in, and I suspect it is at least partially responsible for my enduring love of and fascination with antiquity. When I saw that NetGalley had a copy of Homer and His Iliad, by the noted Oxford historian and classicist Robin Lane Fox–whose works I have much enjoyed in the past–I immediately requested one. And, as soon as I sat down and started reading it, I found myself completely enthralled.
What Fox has given us is a rich, textured, and erudite examination of Homer’s magnificent poem, and it will soon come, I think, to be regarded as one of the best guide’s to one of western literature’s most beloved and influential literary works. Fox’s obvious love for Homer shines through every chapter of the book, whether he’s discussing the topography that the poet drew on as he created his awe-inspiring story about the wrath of Achilles and its impact on the armed efforts of the Greeks or the way that the poem gives a remarkably empathetic insight into the lives of its women, particularly Helen, Hecuba, and Andromache.
Among other things, Fox offers his own interpretation of the authorship question, one of the most contentious issues within Homeric scholarship. He proposes that there was, in fact, one author of the poem, that he likely composed while he was singing, and that the poem might have been written down by his descendants. In formulating this theory, Fox draws not only on aspects of the poem itself but also on anthropological studies that have pointed out how various groups have undertaken a similar compositional process. Fox also argues, compellingly, I think, that The Iliad shows evidence of Homer having actually visited the site of Troy itself. The level of detail that the speaker evokes time and again shows, Fox argues, an intimate familiarity with the terrain that could only have emerged from someone who had actually been there.
What I found particularly useful about Homer and His Iliad is the extent to which it breathes fresh life into the poem itself. Even if you’ve read it dozens of times in all of its many translations (for me, Lattimore’s remains my favorite), there’s always something new to appreciate, some new facet that is just waiting to be brought into the light. I appreciated the depth with which Fox engaged with his subject, pointing out both the expected elements of the poem–Achilles’ wrath, the nature of the gods, the world that the poem depicts with such detail, its clever and subtle use of language–and also those elements which some might not have always paid attention to. In this regard, I particularly appreciated his attention to the women in the poem, for while The Iliad isn’t quite as finely attuned to the experiences and mindsets of its female characters as, say, The Odyssey, there are still some key moments when their voices can be heard even amid the din of battle.
Fox concludes his book with a discussion of the powerful pathos that remains one of the most extraordinary things about The Iliad. Though it is of course very much about the anger of Achilles and the meddling of the gods and the thrill and brutality and ugliness of battle, it is also about feeling, about allowing us to see how heavy weights the hand of fate on the great and the small alike. From Fox’s point of view, the sense of pathos is made even more wrenching by the fact that so much of the poem is premised on a certain level of dramatic irony, in that the characters labor without the knowledge that we, the readers/listeners, possess.
A word to the wise, however. There are times when Fox does get a bit deep into the weeds when it comes to examining The Iliad. While a thorough knowledge of the poem isn’t absolutely necessary to appreciate his work, it definitely helps to have read it at least somewhat recently. Nevertheless, despite this, there is still a great deal in Fox’s book that is sure to appeal to both classicists and laypeople alike. It will open your eyes to new avenues of appreciation for one of the great works of western literature. If, like me, The Iliad has always been one of your favorite texts, then I think you will find much to reward you in Homer and His Iliad. And if you have yet to fully explore its depths and its thematic and linguistic richness, then you couldn’t ask for a better guide to Homer’s genius than Robin Lane Fox.
What Fox has given us is a rich, textured, and erudite examination of Homer’s magnificent poem, and it will soon come, I think, to be regarded as one of the best guide’s to one of western literature’s most beloved and influential literary works. Fox’s obvious love for Homer shines through every chapter of the book, whether he’s discussing the topography that the poet drew on as he created his awe-inspiring story about the wrath of Achilles and its impact on the armed efforts of the Greeks or the way that the poem gives a remarkably empathetic insight into the lives of its women, particularly Helen, Hecuba, and Andromache.
Among other things, Fox offers his own interpretation of the authorship question, one of the most contentious issues within Homeric scholarship. He proposes that there was, in fact, one author of the poem, that he likely composed while he was singing, and that the poem might have been written down by his descendants. In formulating this theory, Fox draws not only on aspects of the poem itself but also on anthropological studies that have pointed out how various groups have undertaken a similar compositional process. Fox also argues, compellingly, I think, that The Iliad shows evidence of Homer having actually visited the site of Troy itself. The level of detail that the speaker evokes time and again shows, Fox argues, an intimate familiarity with the terrain that could only have emerged from someone who had actually been there.
What I found particularly useful about Homer and His Iliad is the extent to which it breathes fresh life into the poem itself. Even if you’ve read it dozens of times in all of its many translations (for me, Lattimore’s remains my favorite), there’s always something new to appreciate, some new facet that is just waiting to be brought into the light. I appreciated the depth with which Fox engaged with his subject, pointing out both the expected elements of the poem–Achilles’ wrath, the nature of the gods, the world that the poem depicts with such detail, its clever and subtle use of language–and also those elements which some might not have always paid attention to. In this regard, I particularly appreciated his attention to the women in the poem, for while The Iliad isn’t quite as finely attuned to the experiences and mindsets of its female characters as, say, The Odyssey, there are still some key moments when their voices can be heard even amid the din of battle.
Fox concludes his book with a discussion of the powerful pathos that remains one of the most extraordinary things about The Iliad. Though it is of course very much about the anger of Achilles and the meddling of the gods and the thrill and brutality and ugliness of battle, it is also about feeling, about allowing us to see how heavy weights the hand of fate on the great and the small alike. From Fox’s point of view, the sense of pathos is made even more wrenching by the fact that so much of the poem is premised on a certain level of dramatic irony, in that the characters labor without the knowledge that we, the readers/listeners, possess.
A word to the wise, however. There are times when Fox does get a bit deep into the weeds when it comes to examining The Iliad. While a thorough knowledge of the poem isn’t absolutely necessary to appreciate his work, it definitely helps to have read it at least somewhat recently. Nevertheless, despite this, there is still a great deal in Fox’s book that is sure to appeal to both classicists and laypeople alike. It will open your eyes to new avenues of appreciation for one of the great works of western literature. If, like me, The Iliad has always been one of your favorite texts, then I think you will find much to reward you in Homer and His Iliad. And if you have yet to fully explore its depths and its thematic and linguistic richness, then you couldn’t ask for a better guide to Homer’s genius than Robin Lane Fox.
September 7, 2023
My thanks to both NetGalley and the publisher Basic Books for an advanced copy of this book on the the history of a work that actually deserves the word epic, a poem that continues to inspire, cause scholarly debates and wars, while inspiring others in many different ways.
I grew up in a small town that had a great library. So great that even during the worse of the Satanic Panic, and while everything for kids was cut, or ignored, still let us have Dungeons and Dragons in the meeting room. There was an interesting mix of young and old, private school and public school, and a lot of different ideas, far different than the ones I would have with my friends. One kid who went to private school starting talking about trying to make an campaign out of the siege of Troy. It had gods, battles, maybe add some creatures, it could be a blast. We were all versed on every fantasy book imaginable, but Troy, that was new. What books were these? Well its a poem and epic poem. And that is where I first heard of Homer, and the Iliad and the Odyssey. Being at the library made it easy to get a copy, and even cooler were the Cliff Notes. And minds were blown. So much so that all my talking made my brother interested, and he went on to write about Homer in college, for his degree. Homer is not one I read often, in fact I have probably read more books about the Iliad, or pastiches than I have read the Iliad or the Odyssey. However the story has always fascinated me. And the same for Robin Lane Fox. Homer and His Iliad is a look at the history of this epic, from ideas of where it came from, why it was written, and why it continues to have a hold on people so many years later.
The book begins with an introduction not to the work but to the writer, Fox, discussing his fascination with Homer and the Iliad, and what background he brings to the discussion. Fox discusses the translations, the longevity of the poem and its influence on writers and historians, both good and bad. From there the book is broken into five sections. The first is Where. Where was Homer from, was there a Homer, how did a blind mind do research, along with mentions and excavations of cities that are mentioned in the Iliad. Following that is How, dealing with the creation of poem, focusing on the idea of the oral tradition, and again how Homer could learn such a long work. When deals with both when the writing began, and also more importantly when the events transpired, using archeology, and other studies. The forth section deals with the acts committed by heroes, and villains, and the Gods, the wars, the battles, the curses, and other events that add so much atmosphere. Followed by a look at the different worlds in the book. The world of man, the world of the gods, and the world of women, and how these worlds influence so much of the storytelling.
Robin Land Fox is quick to point out that he is not a Homeric scholar, but Fox is a historian, and has taught Greek and Latin, which sounds pretty good to me. The book is very interesting, and broad, looking at many details that some would not think would go together, and yet the book flows very well, never bogging down in esoterica. If Fox doesn't have an answer, he admits it and moves on. If he extrapolates there is always a few ideas why, based on the work of others that he admits good be right, but that we will never really know. Fox is a very good writer, sometimes assuming the reader is a tad smarter than the reader actually is, but never writing in a style that made me throw my hands up and go I don't get it. This book is a book from a fan, who wants to share what this fan has learned over 40 years, and hopes that one will enjoy it also.
This is a book for readers of the Iliad, readers who are new to the Iliad, or even more, for people who might even be teaching it to students. I really enjoyed it far more than I thought I would, and know that I will be buying a copy for my brother for the holidays.
I grew up in a small town that had a great library. So great that even during the worse of the Satanic Panic, and while everything for kids was cut, or ignored, still let us have Dungeons and Dragons in the meeting room. There was an interesting mix of young and old, private school and public school, and a lot of different ideas, far different than the ones I would have with my friends. One kid who went to private school starting talking about trying to make an campaign out of the siege of Troy. It had gods, battles, maybe add some creatures, it could be a blast. We were all versed on every fantasy book imaginable, but Troy, that was new. What books were these? Well its a poem and epic poem. And that is where I first heard of Homer, and the Iliad and the Odyssey. Being at the library made it easy to get a copy, and even cooler were the Cliff Notes. And minds were blown. So much so that all my talking made my brother interested, and he went on to write about Homer in college, for his degree. Homer is not one I read often, in fact I have probably read more books about the Iliad, or pastiches than I have read the Iliad or the Odyssey. However the story has always fascinated me. And the same for Robin Lane Fox. Homer and His Iliad is a look at the history of this epic, from ideas of where it came from, why it was written, and why it continues to have a hold on people so many years later.
The book begins with an introduction not to the work but to the writer, Fox, discussing his fascination with Homer and the Iliad, and what background he brings to the discussion. Fox discusses the translations, the longevity of the poem and its influence on writers and historians, both good and bad. From there the book is broken into five sections. The first is Where. Where was Homer from, was there a Homer, how did a blind mind do research, along with mentions and excavations of cities that are mentioned in the Iliad. Following that is How, dealing with the creation of poem, focusing on the idea of the oral tradition, and again how Homer could learn such a long work. When deals with both when the writing began, and also more importantly when the events transpired, using archeology, and other studies. The forth section deals with the acts committed by heroes, and villains, and the Gods, the wars, the battles, the curses, and other events that add so much atmosphere. Followed by a look at the different worlds in the book. The world of man, the world of the gods, and the world of women, and how these worlds influence so much of the storytelling.
Robin Land Fox is quick to point out that he is not a Homeric scholar, but Fox is a historian, and has taught Greek and Latin, which sounds pretty good to me. The book is very interesting, and broad, looking at many details that some would not think would go together, and yet the book flows very well, never bogging down in esoterica. If Fox doesn't have an answer, he admits it and moves on. If he extrapolates there is always a few ideas why, based on the work of others that he admits good be right, but that we will never really know. Fox is a very good writer, sometimes assuming the reader is a tad smarter than the reader actually is, but never writing in a style that made me throw my hands up and go I don't get it. This book is a book from a fan, who wants to share what this fan has learned over 40 years, and hopes that one will enjoy it also.
This is a book for readers of the Iliad, readers who are new to the Iliad, or even more, for people who might even be teaching it to students. I really enjoyed it far more than I thought I would, and know that I will be buying a copy for my brother for the holidays.
April 1, 2024
Realizing I don't have a category for literary analysis. This book does a convincing job of pinpointing Homer's time, his location, his methodology, and his concerns. A couple of things were confusing. For example, he seemed almost to be arguing that the Iliad and the Odyssey had to be written by different people, but I do not think that was actually his point. And the book went on for so long. It was really hard after a while to follow every little point or to care. For me anyway. All the same I learned a whole lot and I appreciated it. I thought maybe some of the minutiae could have gone into footnotes or endnotes. I am just much more of a big picture person. Give me the sweep of the argument and enough to support it. But this gets you down into what flowers were alive during Homer's exact lifetime even though he's reporting something that happened centuries or millennia before. How important horses must have been in Homer's time, etc. I see that he has to do this because he needs to be able to show us what conclusions he can draw about. Homer and Homer's world from the Iliad. But after a while I'm like. Please. Nevertheless, I found it more interesting than the iliad itself.
I had a friend who said that her prep school classics teacher had been very upset about the school's going coed. It'll be the end of classics. He said. While that wasn't completely true, she thought his point was more about whether women or girls would be interested in all those battles and he-man stuff, not that he was saying girls couldn't do it. I think classics has survived in those schools but they probably aren't quite the center that they used to be. There are probably several reasons for this, but one of them probably is that.girls and women could NOT give a shit about Troy and Achilles. Fox is that pains to discuss the role of women in the Iliad, but in the end it is still a story by for and about men and a very stupid world they created. So are most westerns for that matter.
Because of the general stupidity, not the artistry, I had a hard time sustaining my interest. Nevertheless, Homer's achievement itself is worth studying. Lane thinks that despite the fact that Greece was considered to be in a dark age at that time, which means that most people including Homer himself were illiterate, he probably had the Iliad transcribed in his lifetime. Fox thinks he had a guild, consisting largely of his own sons but perhaps other apprentices, of Homerites who were the approved purveyors of the tale. The reason for this is that there are only a couple of sections that everyone can agree were inserted by other poets at other times/performances. While examples from Eastern Europe and Central Asia show that people can memorize even longer epic poems and perform them orally, in every performance of such pieces they are customized by the poet. The Iliad by contrast has remarkable integrity. Probably going all the way back to Homer himself. Which is why Fox argues for a single author except for these few intrusions. Which is why he then argues for what Homer had seen with his own eyes of the geography around Troy or at least heard quite a bit about. And can argue for a possible home for Homer. And using the references in the piece that he argues convincingly are contemporary to Homer, he also pretty much dates the poem's composition.
So, worth reading. I listened to it on audible, and don't blame myself for spacing out on the narrative sometimes while driving.
However, it is a fantastic example of expository writing, so if you happen to be teaching that at least the first couple of chapters would be good examples to use. 4.5 stars
I had a friend who said that her prep school classics teacher had been very upset about the school's going coed. It'll be the end of classics. He said. While that wasn't completely true, she thought his point was more about whether women or girls would be interested in all those battles and he-man stuff, not that he was saying girls couldn't do it. I think classics has survived in those schools but they probably aren't quite the center that they used to be. There are probably several reasons for this, but one of them probably is that.girls and women could NOT give a shit about Troy and Achilles. Fox is that pains to discuss the role of women in the Iliad, but in the end it is still a story by for and about men and a very stupid world they created. So are most westerns for that matter.
Because of the general stupidity, not the artistry, I had a hard time sustaining my interest. Nevertheless, Homer's achievement itself is worth studying. Lane thinks that despite the fact that Greece was considered to be in a dark age at that time, which means that most people including Homer himself were illiterate, he probably had the Iliad transcribed in his lifetime. Fox thinks he had a guild, consisting largely of his own sons but perhaps other apprentices, of Homerites who were the approved purveyors of the tale. The reason for this is that there are only a couple of sections that everyone can agree were inserted by other poets at other times/performances. While examples from Eastern Europe and Central Asia show that people can memorize even longer epic poems and perform them orally, in every performance of such pieces they are customized by the poet. The Iliad by contrast has remarkable integrity. Probably going all the way back to Homer himself. Which is why Fox argues for a single author except for these few intrusions. Which is why he then argues for what Homer had seen with his own eyes of the geography around Troy or at least heard quite a bit about. And can argue for a possible home for Homer. And using the references in the piece that he argues convincingly are contemporary to Homer, he also pretty much dates the poem's composition.
So, worth reading. I listened to it on audible, and don't blame myself for spacing out on the narrative sometimes while driving.
However, it is a fantastic example of expository writing, so if you happen to be teaching that at least the first couple of chapters would be good examples to use. 4.5 stars
September 15, 2023
I know there are different translations, so some of my dislike may be from that (I got the free PDF from Google).
The Pros: The poetry was not as difficult to understand as I was told, and you don't really need any background in Greek Mythology or history to get into it, which is good. It might expand your vocabulary some, and some scenes are fun.
The Cons: This story is way too long to justify. I would get the length if there was a lot of adventure and plot, but the majority of this story is just people fighting and killing each other, while Zeus threatens the other gods with domestic abuse. Also, all the characters are selfish, self-entitled, and murderous (I get killing in war, but this is leaning more towards War Crime). The author also will randomly hyper-focus on a non important detail, and proceed to write all about it, comparing it to other things, even using the same analogy multiple times. I would not be bugged by that if it was used a hand full of times, but you could easily drop a hundred pages by cutting those moments out.
The characters also talk WAY too much, but still end up saying basically nothing. A dude could get stabbed, and their friend will go on a page long monologue about the issue, which could basically be summarized as, "I should find you a doctor before you bleed out." But the biggest issue I have with this story is that it doesn't have a solid start or finish. It kind of feels like it just chooses a random moment to drop into things, and then it ends on an equally random moment. You COULD justify those selected spots, but no modern author would choose those moments.
In Conclusion: There's better things to read with your time.
The Pros: The poetry was not as difficult to understand as I was told, and you don't really need any background in Greek Mythology or history to get into it, which is good. It might expand your vocabulary some, and some scenes are fun.
The Cons: This story is way too long to justify. I would get the length if there was a lot of adventure and plot, but the majority of this story is just people fighting and killing each other, while Zeus threatens the other gods with domestic abuse. Also, all the characters are selfish, self-entitled, and murderous (I get killing in war, but this is leaning more towards War Crime). The author also will randomly hyper-focus on a non important detail, and proceed to write all about it, comparing it to other things, even using the same analogy multiple times. I would not be bugged by that if it was used a hand full of times, but you could easily drop a hundred pages by cutting those moments out.
The characters also talk WAY too much, but still end up saying basically nothing. A dude could get stabbed, and their friend will go on a page long monologue about the issue, which could basically be summarized as, "I should find you a doctor before you bleed out." But the biggest issue I have with this story is that it doesn't have a solid start or finish. It kind of feels like it just chooses a random moment to drop into things, and then it ends on an equally random moment. You COULD justify those selected spots, but no modern author would choose those moments.
In Conclusion: There's better things to read with your time.
November 18, 2024
What Homer is to poetry, Robin Lane Fox is to prose.
This work is exceptionally well written, and always remains far from dry. Lane Fox’s reverence for the poem and the surrounding scholarship is clear, even for other authors with whom he disagrees.
The first part of this book brilliantly posits theories on the origin of the Iliad. Lane Fox suggests that the coherence of the poem, historical references (both prior to and contemporaneous with Homer), and idea that the poem was dictated (with the rediscovery of writing by the Greeks of the time) soon after oral composition suggests a single author (except for the later additions in book 2 and 10) dictating the work to a scribe around 750-740 BC. I am in no place to comment on the accuracy of his theories, but they were certainly convincingly argued.
The second part deals with themes of the Iliad, by no means novel but certainly a wonderful synthesis and presentation of so complex a poem. I look forward to rereading, indeed, reading aloud the work and bearing in mind when the really powerful parts of the poem are happening. The Iliad was created to make us feel emotion, but this certainly benefits from surrounding knowledge and clear performance.
While written for a lay audience rather than academics, it certainly assumes the reader has a basic grounding in Greek Mythology. Accordingly, I think I am in fact the closest to the target audience for this book, having a familiarity with the ideas and story of the Iliad, and other epic poetry, but otherwise not abounding with knowledge of the Iliad itself and no Ancient Greek.
I read the Iliad many years ago now, and although I have a long-time interest in classics, I am yet to properly revisit the poem. This work has certainly spurred me on to do so.
This work is exceptionally well written, and always remains far from dry. Lane Fox’s reverence for the poem and the surrounding scholarship is clear, even for other authors with whom he disagrees.
The first part of this book brilliantly posits theories on the origin of the Iliad. Lane Fox suggests that the coherence of the poem, historical references (both prior to and contemporaneous with Homer), and idea that the poem was dictated (with the rediscovery of writing by the Greeks of the time) soon after oral composition suggests a single author (except for the later additions in book 2 and 10) dictating the work to a scribe around 750-740 BC. I am in no place to comment on the accuracy of his theories, but they were certainly convincingly argued.
The second part deals with themes of the Iliad, by no means novel but certainly a wonderful synthesis and presentation of so complex a poem. I look forward to rereading, indeed, reading aloud the work and bearing in mind when the really powerful parts of the poem are happening. The Iliad was created to make us feel emotion, but this certainly benefits from surrounding knowledge and clear performance.
While written for a lay audience rather than academics, it certainly assumes the reader has a basic grounding in Greek Mythology. Accordingly, I think I am in fact the closest to the target audience for this book, having a familiarity with the ideas and story of the Iliad, and other epic poetry, but otherwise not abounding with knowledge of the Iliad itself and no Ancient Greek.
I read the Iliad many years ago now, and although I have a long-time interest in classics, I am yet to properly revisit the poem. This work has certainly spurred me on to do so.
March 22, 2024
Meh.
This is two books in one. The first half is Fox trying to dig into how the Iliad was written and what we know of Homer. He figures that Homer was illiterate but alive at a time when there was some literacy, and late in life he had his poem written down to help his family for posterity. He reckons the transcription of it came from 750-740 BC for .... reasons I can no longer recollect. He bases this on some thorough reasonsing on some things statedin the poem and things we know that went on in the ancient world. There's also analysis of what we know of 19th and 20th century oral epic poets who weren't literate. I believe he theorizies that Homer was from the eastern Aegen. Fox also makes a compelling argument that one guy wrote The Iliad, as so much of it sees one part of the poem foreshadow and allude to later parts of the poem. He thinks two portions probably didn't come from Homer: the catalog of ships and warriors early on, and a night time raid by Odysseus and Menelos for some horses -- a chapter that has nothing to do with the rest of the story.
The second part of the book is Fox offering his thoughts and analysis of the poem and .... I just found this weak and my eyes kept glazing over. Fox came off like Homer's hype-man. "Look at what Homer did here! Wow, didn't Homer do that great!" Maybe it would help if I liked Homer as much as Fox apparently does. Mostly, his analysis read like Jann Wenner interviewing Mick Jagger ("This song is so wonderful - Why is it so wonderful?")
2.5 stars, but I'm rounding up -- a decision I'm not fully sure is a good one. I will give him credit for the details of his analysis in the first half of the book.
This is two books in one. The first half is Fox trying to dig into how the Iliad was written and what we know of Homer. He figures that Homer was illiterate but alive at a time when there was some literacy, and late in life he had his poem written down to help his family for posterity. He reckons the transcription of it came from 750-740 BC for .... reasons I can no longer recollect. He bases this on some thorough reasonsing on some things statedin the poem and things we know that went on in the ancient world. There's also analysis of what we know of 19th and 20th century oral epic poets who weren't literate. I believe he theorizies that Homer was from the eastern Aegen. Fox also makes a compelling argument that one guy wrote The Iliad, as so much of it sees one part of the poem foreshadow and allude to later parts of the poem. He thinks two portions probably didn't come from Homer: the catalog of ships and warriors early on, and a night time raid by Odysseus and Menelos for some horses -- a chapter that has nothing to do with the rest of the story.
The second part of the book is Fox offering his thoughts and analysis of the poem and .... I just found this weak and my eyes kept glazing over. Fox came off like Homer's hype-man. "Look at what Homer did here! Wow, didn't Homer do that great!" Maybe it would help if I liked Homer as much as Fox apparently does. Mostly, his analysis read like Jann Wenner interviewing Mick Jagger ("This song is so wonderful - Why is it so wonderful?")
2.5 stars, but I'm rounding up -- a decision I'm not fully sure is a good one. I will give him credit for the details of his analysis in the first half of the book.
December 29, 2025
Robin Lane Fox’s Homer and His Iliad is a work of staggering depth, yet it collapses under it's own weight. Intended as a comprehensive study of the Trojan War’s greatest epic, the book lands as a dense, exhausting trek through the weeds of classical scholarship.
A significant portion of the book is dedicated to the "Homeric Question"—the where, how, and when of the poem's composition. Fox delves deep into whether Homer was a single genius or a collective of oral poets, and where he might have called home (Ionia vs Chios). While these arguments are foundational for academics, for the general reader, they are tedious. What could have been a concise, fascinating chapter on the poem's origins instead becomes a protracted debate that lacks a sense of narrative momentum and absorbs 60% of the book.
The book is at its best when Fox explores the Greek worldview. His analysis of the "heroic code" highlights how ancient concepts of honor and glory depart radically from our modern moral compass. Furthermore, his comparison of the Iliad to other oral traditions in the Balkans and Central Asia was novel for me, though these sections sometimes wandered into tangential territory.
Perhaps the biggest pitfall is the lack of a basic summary or commentary on the poem itself. Fox assumes the reader already possesses knowledge of the Illiad. Ultimately, Homer and His Iliad is a book for a scholar, not a companion for the casual reader looking to engage with the world of Achilles and Hector.
A significant portion of the book is dedicated to the "Homeric Question"—the where, how, and when of the poem's composition. Fox delves deep into whether Homer was a single genius or a collective of oral poets, and where he might have called home (Ionia vs Chios). While these arguments are foundational for academics, for the general reader, they are tedious. What could have been a concise, fascinating chapter on the poem's origins instead becomes a protracted debate that lacks a sense of narrative momentum and absorbs 60% of the book.
The book is at its best when Fox explores the Greek worldview. His analysis of the "heroic code" highlights how ancient concepts of honor and glory depart radically from our modern moral compass. Furthermore, his comparison of the Iliad to other oral traditions in the Balkans and Central Asia was novel for me, though these sections sometimes wandered into tangential territory.
Perhaps the biggest pitfall is the lack of a basic summary or commentary on the poem itself. Fox assumes the reader already possesses knowledge of the Illiad. Ultimately, Homer and His Iliad is a book for a scholar, not a companion for the casual reader looking to engage with the world of Achilles and Hector.
August 24, 2025
Non si tratta di una lettura critica dell'Iliade, ma è un lungo e interessante e viaggio nel suo processo di elaborazione. Citando ampiamente le innumerevoli ricerche e ipotesi formulate dall'antichità ad oggi su Omero, l'autore dà le sue risposte su alcuni interrogativi: dove, cone e quando fu composta l'Iliade. Particolarmante affascinanti i capitoli sulle ricerche, effettuate con particolare intensità nel XIX e XX secolo, sui poeti orali ancora in attività in Asia Centrale e nei Balcani, soprattutto in Bosnia. Infatti la tesi dell'autore è che Omero non conoscesse la scrittura. Era un poeta orale, partcolarmente bravo, declamava i propri versi in occasione di cerimonie, anche militari, feste e giochi. La migliore delle versioni che creó la dettó perchè fosse conservata. Cio' non impedì che venissero apportate qua e là delle aggiunte postume, le più note delle quali (e sulle quali c'è ormai unanime consenso) sono il lungo elenco delle navi del libro secondo e l'incursione notturna del libro decimo.
Nela seconda metà del libro si parla invece di alcuni temi ricorrenti del poema: i valori, gli eroi, gli dei, i cavalli, le donne, le similitudini.
L'autore sostiene che il suo saggio è adatto anche a chi non ha (ancora) letto l'Iliade, anzi spera con la sua opera di incoraggiare qualcuno. Personalnente invece ritengo che sia meglio affrontare questa lettura dopo aver letto l'Iliade, oppure contemporaneamente.
Nela seconda metà del libro si parla invece di alcuni temi ricorrenti del poema: i valori, gli eroi, gli dei, i cavalli, le donne, le similitudini.
L'autore sostiene che il suo saggio è adatto anche a chi non ha (ancora) letto l'Iliade, anzi spera con la sua opera di incoraggiare qualcuno. Personalnente invece ritengo che sia meglio affrontare questa lettura dopo aver letto l'Iliade, oppure contemporaneamente.
July 7, 2024
I loved this book so much; it's now very dear to me, and I'm already excited for my next re-read (and the countless notes I will be taking!) Overall Lane Fox writes well and accessibly. He's the first scholar to ever actually explain Homeric metre in a way I could understand! He also does a wonderful job at presenting and synthesising information without relying too much on academic jargon. For this reason alone it's worth a read, especially if you aren't a classics scholar. I found that he made a lot of interesting points about things I'd never considered before, but not everything was given as much room or discussion as I would've liked. Particularly in the second half, which I found overall less strong than the first half, many aspects of the Iliad were brought up but never fully explained. But I guess that's good news, because it means there is still work to be done and avenues to explore. That is my only complaint, though. Apart from that, I think this book is as close to perfect as it could get. You really do feel Lane Fox's sense of wonder and deep admiration for Homer and the Iliad throughout it. As impossible as it sounds, I may have come away from this book loving the Iliad more than I did before.
November 15, 2023
I'm fascinated by Homer's Iliad and the world he writes about, but I don't have any kind of real specialist knowledge on any subject connected with it. So I was hoping for a book that had something that might be a 'behind the scenes' look into the Iliad or the world that scholars currently think Homer was writing about. There was definitely some of that here, and I really enjoyed the sections on the archaeology behind what is now believed to be the site of Troy. A lot of it was interesting, though got a little too in-depth for me as a casual reader and would probably appeal more to a more scholarly reader. This might be a book I recommend a casual reader take in small pieces so they don't get too overwhelmed when reading about whether Homer existed, where and when he might have lived, how he might have written (or not), and the world he lived in versus the world he wrote about.
Interesting, but it felt more like it was written towards scholars than the casual reader and I definitely got overwhelmed sometimes.
I received an ARC of this book from NetGalley in exchange for an honest review
Interesting, but it felt more like it was written towards scholars than the casual reader and I definitely got overwhelmed sometimes.
I received an ARC of this book from NetGalley in exchange for an honest review
June 4, 2025
I just love this study of "The Iliad" and the way that Robin Lane Fox tackled questions about authorship, genre, date, and setting. In the first half of his book, Fox applies considerable archeological and historical knowledge to "The Iliad" with a good deal of common sense. His speculations about Homer and his methods are all founded on solid evidence. The result is a compelling argument about Homer as an oral poet, and the poem as a brilliant piece of mythmaking. In the second half, Fox turns to ten books in "The Iliad" and reads them closely to discuss such themes as war and death, the role of women, and the purpose of natural imagery. I find each of these readings illuminating and beautiful.
December 24, 2024
For any readers of the Iliad who want a deeper dive into the history, themes, and authorship of the world’s most famous epic poem, Robin Lane Fox is the ideal compatriot across the plains of Troy. Fox makes a convincing case that Homer was indeed the true author of the poem, dictating the narrative to a scribe, or scribes, while hewing to the power of his prior performances. Fox relates the magic of a poem conceived thousands of years ago, with different armor, religion, and customs, and yet something that still speaks to readers and spectators across the many ensuing centuries.
March 24, 2025
A fine-grained analysis of the Iliad, by a translator and life-long scholar of the work. Mr. Fox looks at it from every conceivable angle, for example, there are chapters about the horses in the Iliad, the women, the nature described, etc. While he presents his own well-reasoned theories on the dating, authorship, evolution, and more, he also comments on the competing views of other scholars. A really excellent work and a pleasure for Iliad admirers. I really enjoyed it, despite some of the intricate detail.
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