Rating: 
Summary: A wonderful epic, an imperfect recording
Review: The Iliad puts all other war stories to shame; it is a work of great depth, complexity and nuance that has survived 3000 years and will undoubtedly last another 3000. But, having completed the Penguin audio edition, I cannot give a wholly positive review. First, I'll stress the strengths of this audio edition:
- Robert Fagles' translation is wonderful - both beautiful and consistent in tone.
- Bernard Knox has written another excellent essay, which accompanies the audio edition.
- The voice of Derek Jacobi is just right for this edition. Jacobi has tremendous range and feeling in his inflections, he is alternately arrogant as Agamemnon, impetuous as Diomedes, and tender as Helen. He was the ideal choice for this edition. However . . . This is an abridged work. By now you've noticed this fact, as did I when I purchased it. But perhaps, like myself, you don't realize: it's ABRIDGED. Which is to say that chunks of the text are missing, and not from any one place in the poem. I found that I loved the poem so much that these gaps were fairly agonizing. They are bridged, not by Jacobi, but - oddly - by Maria Tucci. Tucci's sparse and occasionally inane summaries are a poor substitue for Homer. I found myself seething at the gaps, waiting for Jacobi to take over. (Penguin's audio edition of the Odyssey is much better in this regard - featuring the uninterrupted unabridged narration of Ian McKellen.) So, if you're thinking of getting this audio edition, ask yourself how much you would mind the abridgement. If you think the absence of entire books of classic Homeric text might detract from the experience, it's probably a good idea to look at an unabridged audio edition, such as the one narrated by George Guidall. I'll probably keep mine, since there's much to like about it; but if I had to choose again I would go with an unabridged version.
Rating: 
Summary: Belongs on your bookshelf
Review: The Robert Fagles translation of the Greatest War Story of All-Time is a masterful achievement. To comment on the Iliad itself is superfluous: it is a classic of world literature, one of the oldest stories extant, and the true beginning of Western literature itself. It is it not only a must-read for everyone as part of their basic cultural education, but it also a very exciting and entertaining tale that reveals a lot about human nature to us. The question, then, is not whether or not you should read it: you should. The task is to decide which of the many translations to pick up. I nominate this one. This truly epic poem, which, as the Introduction speculates, may have been composed in its final form with the aid of writing, was, originally, a long, poetic story spoken aloud. Fagles has done the seemingly impossible: given us an Iliad which we can read aloud, full of all the grandeur and epic, majestic sweep that the original must have contained -- and also a version that reads very well on the page, its sweeping prose and forward-pushing narrative helping to keep one forever reading on and making the poem exciting and invigorating to read. For those who have never read The Iliad before, this is, without a doubt, the translation to get: its form, in modern verse, is extremely easy to read and it is very enjoyable and endearing. You'll get the story loud and clear, without missing out on the grandeur and majestic poetry inherent in the original piece. For the scholar, or those who have read previous translations of the masterpiece, it is worthwhile reading as well: it shows, very clearly, the pure colossal power of the STORY, while being less poetically cluttered than the Pope and Lattimore translations, and easier reading than the Fitzgerald version. The edition is great as well, generously lavishing us with extras galore. Included is an extremely nice, 60+ page introduction by Bernard Knox which provides all of the necessary background of the story, rounds up the facts and succinctly summarizes the speculations regarding Homer and the composition of The Iliad, and offers great analyses of the various different aspects of the story. Also included are very helpful materials such as maps, a very thorough pronouncing dictionary for all of the characters in the story, complete with definitions of the characters. It is all topped off with a very-well-done book that feels good in your hands. An absolute must-read for anyone and everyone.
Rating:
Summary: A real modern classic
Review: Compulsory literature in school is never attractive. Many students after leaving school look back in disgust on the works they had to swallow, mostly in the original language.
For Homer's Iliad this is an error.
The epic contains everything a book needs to make it an everlasting bestseller: fights for women, adultery, deadly contests, comradeship, clever negotiators, bullying generals, blatant cowards or big mouths.
The story evolves with such eternal human characters as Andromache and her young son, the old Nestor, the valiant Hector, the ingenious Odysseus, the bullying Aias or the angry Achilleus.
The only 'ancient' ingredient is the omnipresence and omnipotence of the Gods, who treat all human beings as mere puppets. But the interventions of the Gods are mostly nothing more than today's psychological explanations of normal human behaviour.
The Iliad, compared with the Odyssey is more a poetic than a story-telling epic. It contains more Homeric comparisons, more repetitions (bis repetita placent) and lenghty enumerations of victims in the evolving war drama.
The movie 'TROY' by Wolfgang Petersen is a most welcome reminder of this timeless epic of human evil and ultimate destruction.
A must read.
Rating:
Summary: A readable Iliad in modern idiom
Review: Robert Fagles's translation of Homer's Iliad is spiritually if not literally true to the original. Both versions repeat set speeches and descriptions in precisely the same words, and the translation exhibits a fairly regular rhythmic beat. But Homer's Greek was chanted, and the set passages were like refrains in which listeners could, if they chose, join in as a chorus. In English, the repetitions sometimes become tedious, especially when the same speech is given three times in two pages, as in the relay of Zeus's orders in Book II. Especially noteworthy is Bernard Knox's long and fascinating Introduction, a masterpiece of literary criticism and scholarship which conveys Homer's grim attitude toward war, the interplay of divine and human will, and the ancient concepts of honor, courage, and virility in the face of the stark finality of death. Knox also includes a succinct explanation of the quantitative, rather than accentual, basis of Greek (and Latin) verse. For easy readability, Fagles's translation is without rival. For elegance and poetry, however, I recommend Richmond Lattimore's older but still gripping and fluent translation.
Rating:
Summary: Lattimore is still the best.
Review: Fagles is a distinguished translator and I have enjoyed his work on Aeschylus and Sophocles, but compared with Richmond Lattimore's Iliad, Fagles language is rather banal and flat. I also prefer Lattimore's Iliad to that of Robert Fitzgerald. Fitzgerald is probably the most elegant versifier of the three, but his version is a bit too much of a loose paraphrase for my tastes and his style doesn't always match up well with this fierce, fierce poem.
Rating:
Summary: The best book... period.
Review: The Iliad contains all the knowledge you will ever need in human affairs. It imparts wisdom in understanding people and psychology which no other book can. The Iliad is the first book ever written in a European language, and it is also the best. It preserves the essence of Western culture in a capsule from the warrior days of prehistory. The heroic ethos displayed in the Iliad underlies all later warrior codes and societies; medieval knights, viking adventurers, and American cowboys, for example, all can trace their ethos back to this protohistoric 'macho' culture. In the days of Homer, and indeed of all ancient Indo-european societies, one's relationships with others and one's skill in speaking could mark the difference between life and death. In our more comfortable lives today, we cannot reproduce this precarious breeding-ground of cleverly persuasive speech, so we benefit greatly from learning these skills from the best of that period's speakers: Homer, as he puts 'winged words' in the mouths of his heroic men and women. The Iliad is 50% dialogue and vicious debate: it is almost a play more than a book. In this book, it is not the pen that is mightier than the sword, but rather the tongue. It comes to me as no surprise that the Greeks and Romans looked at this book, as they did no other, as their 'soly scriptures', albeit in a non-religious kind of way, to be studied, quoted and memorized for the sake of gaining wisdom and understanding in human affairs.
I have read the Iliad in its original Greek, and I can tell you that the rhythmical enchantment of the original can not in any way be reproduced in English, or in any other language. There is no way to capture the same hilarious moments or grand episodes of bravery with the same music in our language as Homer did with his Greek. An English translation can only be an interpretation. Robert Fagles seems to give the Iliad a slightly darker mood than I felt it has in the Greek, but that could just be my own 'interpretation'. I think there is a great deal of humour in the poem: characters making stupid mistakes, gods behaving like buffoons, and little witty comments from the teller (Homer). These are not lost in Fagles' wonderful work, but are perhaps slightly harder to notice than in the original. Again, this is just my own feeling. I also find the over-the-top excitement in the poem very amusing, such as the build up of the tale to the point where the gods openly join in the war, and among others the god of fire swoops down to do battle with a god of a river, and Achilles in his fury even fights against the water. The Iliad is like the orchestral piece by Edvard Grieg "The Mountain King", which steadily but surely accelerates anxiously to a truly explosive climax. Robert Fagles has captured very much of this, perhaps as much as can be reasonably expected in an English non-chanted translation. Richmond Lattimore's translation is essentially a word for word extremely faithful rendering in Enlglish (even to the point of having the same number of lines of poetry per 'book')and it is wonderful for those who would like to get closer to Homer's actual words, but on the other hand, Robert Fagles' translation is so eminently readable, speakable and memorable in our own language that one can feel the heartbeats of the warriors pulsing in their chests while reading it. "Rage- goddess, sing the rage of Peleus' son Achilles": so it starts, and Homer's heroes rise, breathing, from the dust.
Rating:
Summary: In so many ways, the ultimate story...
Review: The other reviewers have done an excellent job of describing the plot of "The Iliad," so I'll just pass on some tips that have helped me enjoy this amazingly enriching work. The challenge of reading "The Iliad" is reading it as it was meant to be read. That means you have to let go of our modern notion of accessing literature. This text is not a "book" or a "novel," and was never meant to be. (The notion of printed books and private reading of novels came along more than twenty centuries after Homer finished his poem!) So you'll have to pretend, as you hold your copy of "The Iliad" in your hand, that you're actually back in Ancient Greece sitting in a small crowd of people on a hillside listening to an orator recite the poem. The reading would have been spread out over several days (or perhaps several nights) and the orator would have been a professional, sort of like a one-man theatre troupe. His performance (perhaps recalled from memory, perhaps read from a parchment script--no one knows for sure) would have had the timing, fire, and precision that the great Shakespearean actors would perfect two millenia later. In short, pretend you're hearing the text, rather than eye-balling it. As you read each line in this top-notch modern English translation, enjoy it and gnaw on it and savor it as though it were from a short verse poem. If you've got the guts, read each line aloud, and listen to the echo. Don't let the work's complexity intimidate you: "The Iliad" gets better as you go along, as the work itself slowly tutors you how to read it. Understand that Homer meant it to be a challenging, marathon event, so don't be discouraged. As you advance (take your time!) in your reading, the beauty of the vocabulary, the drama of the situation, and the baseness or nobility of the various characters will slowly emerge. The grandeur of the courage and humanness of the characters builds progressively, and in the end your reading of this masterpiece will leave you exhausted yet enlightened. You will never forget it. AUDENTES FORTUNA JUVAT!
Rating:
Summary: An Inspired Translation
Review: This is a beautiful, poetic translation of Homer's classic Iliad, sure to be enjoyed even if you aren't a great lover of ancient works. This edition sings with crisp, clear language, not muddled like Fitzgerald, Lattimore, etcetera. Professor Fagles has used a more modern verse to make this wonderful story more accessible and understandable, but does not lose the beautiful, awe-inspiring epic poetry of the original Greek text. Obviously not nearly as poetic as A. Pope's classic translation, this edition is thousands of times more accurate and true to the language. The enduringly popular story of Achilles' rage has once again been brought to us, this time in a thrilling version to be enjoyed time and time again. All hail to the king--the king of the Iliads! P.S. I suggest getting the hardcover edition. It has a nice built-in bookmark. It's also a bit more sturdy.
Rating:
Summary: Sing to me, Muse . . .
Review: In a lifetime of reading, this is simply, and by far, the best book I have ever read. I am just very grateful that my body, eyes and brain have held out long enough for me to have read (and re-read) this wonderful book, and that my moral and intellectual development were deep enough in this life to allow me to appreciate so much of what it has to offer. Read it, and read it aloud.
Rating:
Summary: AWESOME!
Review: I am a big fan of Greek History, having read many diffrent versions of the Iliad, this one is by far the best. Actually I have read it five times my self. This story is so good, everybody should find somthing for them to enjoy in it. This classic should be read by all!
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