Revisiting the Iliad

In my junior year of high school I attended boarding school and was tasked with slogging through the Iliad.

I found it tiresome with it's never ending cycle of anger, jealousy, war and death.

It was just page after page of killing and being angry and then killing and making someone angry so they would go off and kill and make someone angry.

Also, women were stolen as trophies.

Gross.

The only levity during that time was when our German exchange student Bjorn asked "What means booty?"

While the professor explained that it was another term for the spoils of war the rest of us tittered and exchanged knowing glances.

Tonight the NPR asked that I read over a paper she is writing for Classics on a comparison between the Iliad and the movie Troy.

I was first struck by the fact that her class only had to read a synopsis of the Iliad with selected passages. What gives?

Then the old irritation with the text returned and I proclaimed it to be "an overlong poem about epic butthurt."

I told the NPR she was welcome to put that in her paper and quote me but upon further reflection, I decided I don't want to be featured in another contentious pull quote right now.