The Oxford Critical Guide to Homer's Iliad

Achilles’ quarrel with Agamemnon opens the Iliad, but the poem refuses to stay with a single hero. It moves from the walls of Troy to the Greek camp, from battle to mourning, and finally to Priam’s meeting with the man who killed his son. Those shifts are part of what makes Homer so rewarding, and so difficult, to read closely.

Jonathan L. Ready has brought together twenty-four scholars, one for each book of the Iliad. They place each episode in the story before looking closely at passages, characters and the choices behind Homer’s storytelling. The discussions draw on modern scholarship without requiring knowledge of ancient Greek, and can be followed alongside the poem in translation.