Bruno’s Reviews > The Iliad > Status Update

Also in book 6, on the topic of fate entangled with the fact of the poem's existence, at the end Hector, who enters book 6 pitying the women who don't know the men are dead, does a 180, imagines a compensatory fiction: "In future times/ we shall make this all turn out right..."

In book 6, fate becomes entangled with the fact of the poem's existence, that all those hearing it/reading it know what happened already. Other discrepancies of knowledge: Hector returns to the city, can't bear to tell the women that the men they pray for are already dead. Helen rails at the lot (fate) of Zeus making "us topics of a singer's tale/ for people in the future still unborn."

Kind of speed-reading it, in advance of a class on it. I'm listening to it while I read along. I don't know Greek, and I've read Emily Wilson makes some odd choices at times, unpoetic ones, but for sense, I really like it.