Out of the three great Hexametrical verse, how would you rank them Anon? Mine
1.Odyssey
2.Aeneid
3.Iliad
Post em and also general Homer/classics thread
Go home Anon, you're drunk.
>>7778167
I am reading the Iliad right now and I think it's good myth-history and imagery.
Or at least the Fagles translation is good to read.
I tried to read the Loeb Classical Library edition but the English verse is antique.
Fagles is more direct, effectively "American" prose.
But that Loeb edition is useful since it's English translation on one side and ancient Greek on the other side.
Fagles translation is published by Penguin Classics and there's an informative introduction to the Greeks and Homer.
p.s. The Aeneid was written by the Roman Virgil in homage to Homer.
I've also got this visual history book by C.M. Bowra.
It was published by Time Life Books and it's affordable.
There's a ton of classical texts and Greek history books at my local university.
I've been there five or six times and I check the catalog: nobody seems to read the Greeks anymore.
That's good for me I guess but sometimes I feel untimely.
But not as much as Nietz did in the 1870s.
I haven't reached Silenus-mode yet.
1. Aeneid
2. Odyssey
3. Iliad
However I still believe The Iliad is fantastic just the least of the three.
My suggestions for tackling Homer are these: take notes on key terms and events in the story; and try to find the characters motivations for acting and talking how they do. When I read a couple pages and don't take notes I lose the plotline and mix up things that happen. Then it just gets overwhelming.
Does anyone know why Virgil was considered a sorcerer back in the Middle Ages?
Homer was the first poet to show the value of art for life.
>>7778167
Why is Agamemnon so worthless?
>>7779163
read Faust and you will get an impression of pious scholars anxieties with antiquity and naturalism; the mindset of most clergy in 16th probably wasn't so different in the 13th
>>7779297
Not OP but I really don't know. He gets shat on and denigrated in every single poem and play and myth I've come across. It makes me wonder if there really was an Agamemnon some time in the Mycenaean Age, and that he was such a fucking awful ruler a whole generation of poets decided to immortalize his shittiness. This trickled down to what we got in the Classical Age.
>>7779355
Yes and I've wondered if the Greeks considered Agamemnon to be "lord of men" who caused the Trojan war from acting on his lust; or maybe Homer intended to portray him as a king but nothing like a god and in fact a vehicle of the gods at certain times. Sometimes Homer seems to suggest the gods Apollo and Athena below Hera and Zeus who are pulling the strings; and at other times he lays a pretext of the theft of Helen by Paris or the Agamemnon's theft of the oracle of Apollo's daughter. So the chain of causes is not so obvious and that leads me to think in terms of "fate" and I imagine that's what Homer was doing too, since he relied on those terms a lot. "Destiny weighs me down" and the "bloody press of battle" are two illustrations I like.
>>7779297
Family curse if I remember right
>>7779447
that's in Aeschylus' tragedy
>>7779490
Not just. I think that is actually cemented in Greek myth, though I can't say definitively.
>>7779495
From my reading of Homer the son of Atreus, Agamemnon is just an asshole royal who gets pitied by the Zeus and defended by Achaean buddies like Odysseus. But maybe I need to shed my democratic and naturalist prejudices to understand Homer's meaning.
>>7779087
Durr i know its writen by virgil im not a total pleb
>Mfw no virgil discussion
>"Homer was an idea or a heroic character of Grecian men insofar as they told their histories in song."
So do guys think that Homer was one person's story or many people whose common stories were written down?
>>7779522
virgil is for romanists and undergrads lol
>>7779531
The illiad is a collection of ballads with a long oral history. Definitely not one persons story, but a story transcribed in full by one person. At least that's the short answer. The fagels Iliad has a really great 70pg intro you should read
Is the Aeneid even worth reading after the trip to hell?
>>7779546
>What did Aeneas say after he crossed the river Styx to meet his father?'DIS nuts'
>>7779534
>>This bait
Virgil made Dante.
>>7779538
Yeah I've read that and he even quotes Vico who I posted above - and that idea you've put forward is Vico's
>>7779560
>Dante
ok lit boy ok don't get the dogs
Does the Odyssey make sense on its own without knowing the background? I thought it's about the protagonist who's a veteran of the big war in the Iliad.
>>7779626
Yes. It's okay to just dive in.
>>7779433
>I've wondered if the Greeks considered Agamemnon to be "lord of men" who caused the Trojan war from acting on his lust
Que? The war had been going on for nine years before the Briseis incident, no?
>>7779650
Agamemnon took Chryseis the daughter of the priest of Apollo first. That's what the first couple passages of the Iliad tells us. And then later in Book One the Briseis slave-girl is stolen from swift-footed Achilles. So you're right, but the capture of Chryseis is what set off Apollo to plague the Achaeans. From what I can remember Homer doesn't say when Agamemnon took her from her father. I remember reading somewhere that a deed that's a crime against the gods need not be paid for immediately. The gods' wrath and the fates of souls are bound about men and only actualized later in life, sometimes when its least expected. So the theft that's a crime against Apollo may have happened at an unspecified point in the past and Apollo's arrows of plague may have been a long time coming. This may also be one of the ambiguities in Homer that I commented.
Why would far-sighted Apollo shoot the serpent foe at point-blank range?
>>7779087
You may have picked up an old Loeb. The older editions are notorious for having clunky and even absurdly antiquated English translations.
The old Loeb translation of Statius' epic poem Thebaid had almost Shakespearean English grammar, employing "thou" and all that.
>>7779699
Have you picked up the Alexander Pope translation? Robert Fagles said that was his most favorite. I've read half of Lang's and that's good if you like his poets style. Here's a vid of Fagles talking about how he translates. It's pretty interesting if you're into this stuff.
http://www.c-span.org/video/?95780-1/odyssey-iliad-translations
>>7779722
Everyone should watch this vid too.
>"Mr.Fagles, Mr.Robards and Ms.Walker read portions of Homer’s epic The Odyssey. It tells the stories of Odysseus' attempts to return home to his family in Ithaca after the Trojan War."
http://www.c-span.org/video/?95781-1/readings-odyssey
>>7779638
calypso i see what you did there
>>7779760
ayyy lmao.
>>7779532
>making Virgil out to be a pleb
>sat in your own filth as a neet who hasnt contributed to the world of literature
Kek
Iliad >>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>> Odyssey >>> Aeneid
The Illiad is the greatest/2nd greatest poem in the history of literature. The Odyssey is another masterpiece too, but can't really approach that level. The Aeneid is a work of genius technique, but ultimately soulless.
>>7779538
I've read the intro today just cuz you said soand it was a good read, thanks anon
