The Essential Iliad is a new rendition of Homer’s Iliad by Wesley Callihan, containing the six essential books of this great epic, with a Foreword by Dr. Dale Grote, introductions, and summaries of all 24 books of the Iliad. Unabridged Books Included About this edition This Essential version of Homer's Iliad is an abridgment in the form of six complete books, rather than an abridgment of the entire work in the form of condensing the text. Our philosophy of reading great books is that you should encounter the author directly, which can still be done with this kind of abridgment. If a student reads a traditional abridgment or paraphrased work, it is common to have the feeling of not having actually read the author. But if you read unabridged sections, you walk away knowing “this is what Homer is like.” The purpose of this Essential version of the Iliad will do just that, and give you a true taste of Homer, a sweet and pleasing taste that will make you desire more. A Note about the Translation The six books included in this volume are taken from the full edition, which is a new prose rendering based on the 1883 translation of Andrew Lang, Walter Leaf, and Ernest Myers. Although that is an accurate translation, the storytelling is obscured, sometimes to the point of incomprehension, by the archaic Elizabethan and Sir Thomas Mallory diction and style, which they thought suited the story but for the modern reader only creates problems. This new rendering attempts to preserve the accuracy but make the story far more readable. I have revised the text into contemporary American English (though on occasion archaic words were necessary) while attempting to preserve as much of the syntactical structure and style as possible; sometimes the revision is light, but more often it is radical, and if one were to compare this text with the original the connection might not be apparent at all. I have aimed to give a reading that is plain and direct, but still noble; you will find no attempt at casual, much less slangy, diction. This version of the Iliad is more than just a revision—it is a new version based on that older one. – Wesley Callihan, from the introduction
Authors
In the Western classical tradition, Homer (Greek: Ὅμηρος) is considered the author of The Iliad and The Odyssey, and is revered as the greatest of ancient Greek epic poets. These epics lie at the beginning of the Western canon of literature, and have had an enormous influence on the history of literature. When he lived is unknown. Herodotus estimates that Homer lived 400 years before his own time, which would place him at around 850 BCE, while other ancient sources claim that he lived much nearer to the supposed time of the Trojan War, in the early 12th century BCE. Most modern researchers place Homer in the 7th or 8th centuries BCE. The formative influence of the Homeric epics in shaping Greek culture was widely recognized, and Homer was described as the teacher of Greece. Homer's works, which are about fifty percent speeches, provided models in persuasive speaking and writing that were emulated throughout the ancient and medieval Greek worlds. Fragments of Homer account for nearly half of all identifiable Greek literary papyrus finds.
