Regular marked price: $12.95Discount Price: $11.65
Cost Savings: $1.30 (10%)Price fluctuation possible.
How soon does it ship: Normal ship time within one day
Shipping? Absolutely FREE if you qualify for Super Saver Shipping.
Type of bind: Paperback
Dewey Decimal Number: 883.01
EAN num: 9780872203525
ISBN number: 0872203522
Label: Hackett Publishing Company
Manufacturer: Hackett Publishing Company
Quantity: 1
Page Count: 516
Printing Date: 1997-06
Publishing house: Hackett Publishing Company
Sale Popularity Level: 28600
Studio: Hackett Publishing Company
Other books you might be interested in perusing:
Editor's Notes and Comments:
Amazon.com Review:
So great is the impact of ancient Greek literature on Western culture that even people who have never read Homer's Iliad or The Odyssey know a lot about them. The Trojan Horse, Achilles' heel, the Sirens' call, Scylla and Charybdis--all have entered popular mythology, becoming metaphors for the less heroic situations we face in our own lives. Ever since these oral poems were committed to paper (probably in the 8th century B.C.E.), people have been translating them. The version of Iliad translated by Stanley Lombardo is a brave departure from previous translations; Lombardo attempts to adapt the text to the needs of readers rather than the listeners for whom the work was originally intended. To this end, he has streamlined the poem, removing many of the stock repetitions such as the infamous 'rosy-fingered dawn,' or rewriting them in ways dependent on their context. What emerges is a vivid, lively rendition of one of the world's great stories of men and war.
But classicists, beware: This Iliad has something of a '90s sensibility, from the cover art (a photograph of the D-Day Normandy landing) to Achilles' Rambo-like diction. It might well outrage the purists, but for those who remember their musty high-school reading of Homer's great epic with a barely suppressed yawn, Lombardo's energetic translation is just the version to change their minds.
User popularity level:
Rated by buyers 
-
I'm not going to comment much on the contents. Other reviewers have adequately praised it as a superb translation. Instead, I just want to quickly remark on the cover. It shows Allied soldiers landing at Normandy during World War 2. Driving home the point to the modern reader about the timeless appeal of the Iliad. The struggles it describes will be relevant as long as wars continue to be fought.
The cover choice was inspired. It differs from the traditional depictions of the original war, that you might perhaps see on other translations of the Iliad. This cover is meant to be jarring and to make you realise that this is not just dusty poetry from a long dead society of the Bronze Age. At a deeper level, the photo from Normandy also evokes the titanic struggle of World War 2, underpinning the seminal magnitude of the Trojan war for its contemporaries.
Rated by buyers -
One of the greatest poem you have to read. The translation is great and with only two minor mistakes. It's easy to understand and you'll love it if you are into Ancient Greek tragedy.
Rated by buyers 
-
Book delivered in proper manner but the book was not in that good of shape. Book has writing in it...many pages of writing and few pages glued together. Should maybe look over books before put up for sale.
Rated by buyers -
Out of all the translations I compared of "The Iliad", this was the one that shattered me (positively) the most!
It's drive, energy, fire, warmth, vision, poetry, simplicity, music, and most importantly... conviction!
The print layout, font, and spacing as well are incredible!
I am part of the Iliad when I read this one...I am on the battlefield, I am crossing the waters, I am in the heavens, I am with the Gods, I am Achilles, I am Agamemnon, I am Paris, I am Hector, I am Menaleus, I am Athene, I am Zeus...I feel that I am one with Homer...
All praise for Lombardo and Hackett Publishing.
Thank You
Rated by buyers -
"Sprung out of bitterness, the philosophy of the Iliad excludes resentment." Thus Rachel Bespaloff, stating the seemingly impossible. Years ago I read the Iliad in Fitzgerald's fine translation, but every page had the heavy cadence of a "classic." Now I'm reading Fagles' and Lombardo's translations back to back, and am surprised how much I'm enjoying the poem. I don't dispute those who judge Fagles the superior translator, but for me the Lombardo version is far more stirring.
Consider the opening lines. Fagles translates:
Rage--Goddess, sing the rage of Peleus' son Achilles,
murderous, doomed, that cost the Achaeans countless losses,
hurling down to the House of Death so many sturdy souls,
great fighters' souls, but made their bodies carrion,
feasts for the dogs and birds,
and the will of Zeus was moving toward its end.
Lombardo captures the rage and waste in way Fagles does not:
Rage:
Sing, Goddess, Achilles' rage,
Black and murderous, that cost the Greeks
Incalculable pain, pitched countless souls
Of heroes into Hades' dark,
And left their bodies to rot as feasts
For dogs and birds, as Zeus' will was done.
This is bitterness on the edge of blasphemy. It sounds like the war we're reading about every morning, where soldiers' bodies are blown to shreds and the bloody will of God is invoked by each side. Lombardo also brings an unexpected poetry to the brutality of the poem, reminding me of the best of Logue's ongoing masterpiece. For example, in Book 6, Hector returns to Troy for a rushed moment and is met by the wives of men dying on the plain.
He told them all,
Each woman in turn, to pray to the gods.
Sorrow clung to their heads like mist.
Again, more bitterness -- the gods regard the heroes as little more than chess pieces to be sacrificed in the course of their game. The final line evokes not only grief but the blind futility of faith. (Fagles translates the line, inertly, as "Hard sorrows were hanging over many.")
Whether this is your very first go at the Iliad or if you're ready to re-read it, I recommend Lombardo's performance version, with its "heroes more godlike than the gods, and more human than men." (Bespaloff again -- from her essay "On the Iliad." NYRB recently republished it, along with Simone Weil's magnificent "The Iliad, or the Poem of Force" under the title "War and the Iliad," a slim volume which page for page beats any commentary on the Iliad I've ever read.)
Find other books like this one:
