SDMB Seminar #1: The Iliad (Reading and Support Thread)

Cafe Society
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See here for background.

Welcome to the first installment of the Straight Dope Seminar[sup]TM[/sup]!

We will be working our way through the reading list of St. John’s College, won’t you join us? Each text will get two threads: A “Reading and Support” thread opened when we start reading, and an in-depth “Discussion” thread opened on the ‘due date’ for that reading, in which we will dazzle and edify one another (or muddle through to some murky insights, as the case may be).

Given the varying schedules and prior knowledge of the material held by interested Dopers, the syllabus will be somewhat fluid WRT dates for getting the reading done. I think a month isn’t too ambitious for our first selection, the Iliad, so I will plan to open the discussion thread on Monday, March 10. We’ll see how that goes, and slow down or speed up if necessary for future texts.

There has been much discussion about possible rules for the seminar in the above-linked thread, and I’m sure we’ll come up with more as we move along. Luckily, the Dope, and CS especially is full of reasoned thinkers and clever writers, so I am looking forward to seeing the shape of these discussions almost as much as I am to the texts themselves.

As a start, I suggest that we try to keep this thread light and welcoming in tone, and encourage each other with our page counts and such, saving the deep discussion for the next thread so that those who read fastest/have prior experience with the material can wait for us slow ones to catch up. This is also a good place for suggestions of other books, movies etc to go along with the readings, leaving the eventual discussion thread open for “pure” (or nearer so) analysis of the text itself. Toward the end of the reading period, it would be great if some of you could come up with discussion-started questions to leapfrog us into the second thread, but there shouldn’t be any pressure.

Whew! What a lot of info… Basically this is just a reading club to help us get through some material that for many if not most (myself definitely included) is difficult verging on impossible to make headway in alone. Also, I want to make it clear that while I hope that many of you are , like myself, interested in reading these texts for the first time, those of you who are alums of St. John’s or have otherwise gone through this material before are more than welcome to chime in, whether you are re-reading or simply going over your notes.

So, in light of the TLDR factor above, the vital stats:
Current text: The Iliad
Due Date/opening of discussion thread: March 10

Pick any translation that appeals to you, I’ll put a link to the internet archive below.

free texts!

I think it would be nice to start off this thread by introducing ourselves, why we are interested in this project and what translation we will be using.

P.S. Please chime in with your ideas for the running of the Seminar- I’m no dictator, I just want this to happen!
P.P.S. I can’t seem to cure myself of run-on sentences, especially when I’m excited. So Sorry.

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Hi. I’m Margo. You may have noticed my giant post above.

I was inspired to start this project by the suggestions in noblebaron’s thread here . I went to Art school, graduated last May. I don’t regret my decision, I still think it was the right place for me, but I feel a bit lacking. I didn’t even take Ancient Art History, much less an in-depth study of ancient texts. Now that I’m not in school, I think I can apply the rigor that used to be for my studio work to the classic Liberal Arts, if only I have a group of people to work along with.

I have very little experience with the classics- I’ve never even tried to read the Iliad. I did read the Odyssey in high school and Ulysses last semester of college (we spent a significant amount of time going over the influence of Homer for that class).

I’m going to be reading this edition. It is a “modern verse translation,” and I don’t know how good that is, so I’m prepared to find another if need be. I got it at a library book sale last year, and it is a handsome TPB so it will be physically nice to read.

I can’t wait to hear from the rest of you!

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Hi, I’m NAF1138 (or Nick, whatever),

I just saw this thread and thought it looked like an interesting idea. I graduated as a theater major from UCLA almost 3 years ago now (yikes!) and I enjoy reading and discussing literature. I have some experience with some of these books (I read all of the Greek plays in school, and the Illiad and Odyssey in High School.) and none with others.

I tend to overuse parenthetical phrases, and I can’t spell for beans. For this I apologize in advance.

I will be using anonline version of the text, because I really disliked the version I read in high school (all rhyming couplets) and although I am sure I still have it, damned if I know where it is. :wink:

Don’t know if I will be able to keep up or not, but it seems like it will be fun to try.

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I don’t know if I’ll be able to join this, but I’ll try.
I’ll mention, for the ambitious, that the Loeb classical library has editions showing the original Greek and the English translation on the facing page. Check it out at the library if they have it!

http://www.hup.harvard.edu/catalog/L170N.html?show=catalogcopy

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I’m Maeglin. I’ve spent a bit of time with this sort of stuff before, but I love any excuse to revisit my long-dead friends. It also gives me another motivation to get my language skills back up to speed, since I plan to go back to grad school next year.

I will be reading the Lattimore translation. If in the course of our close readings we encounter big differences between the translations, I have the Oxford edition to refer to if we want to sort something out.

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Your link to the free version didn’t work for me. Here’s another copy:

http://classics.mit.edu/Homer/iliad.mb.txt

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I’m CJJ*, a classics scholar who has read both Homeric epics and translated major portions from Greek. The Fagles translation linked to by The Lovely Margo Lane is an excellent new (~1990) translation; I highly recommend it over, say, the Lattimore translation or the much older Loeb.

I’ll probably be lurking on this thread more than commenting, as I’m interested more in the reaction of readers coming to the work (somewhat) fresh. IMO the Iliad is a better epic than the Odyssey, but the latter is more interesting because it has at its heart an adventurous plot.

But far be it for me to derail the reading with endless commentary; Μηνιν αειδε, θεα, Πηληιαδεω Αχιληος…Of anger sing, Goddess, (the anger) of Peleus’ son Achilles…

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I’ll lurk for The Iliad, at least, because I happen to be reading that now - the Fagles translation. I’ve started it before (a different translation) but I’ve never finished it.

I read a lot but not usually classics.

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I’m reading the Richard Lattimore translation. In college, we read selections from the Illiad, but didn’t cover the entire work.

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And then Hector killed Guy Number 5, from the valley of Valleyia, he fell and his armor clattered around him.

And then Hector killed Guy Number 6, from the mountain of Mountainia, he fell and his armor clattered around him.

And then Hector killed Guy Number 7, from the island of Islandia, he fell and his armor clattered around him.

And then Hector killed…

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Ooh! I might well keep tabs on this thread; I too read the Illiad, both in translation and in the original Greek (I took Greek A level), over 20 years ago.

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Hi, everybody. I’m Capybara. . . and I’m a nerd.
I’ve never gotten around to a lot of texts that I should have, so this will be edifying. I’ve a main interest in art history so I fear some of my thoughts may be related to art and archaeology, so apologies if I start ranting about Schliemann or something. I do not read Greek but am very interested in etymology and translation so I look forward to the input of the real classics people.
I suspect that I’ll be reading Lattimer’s since that’s what I can grab at the library nearby.

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I am also a classicist, and I loathe Fagles. If we really want to sidetrack the discussion, we can debate the merits of the translations endlessly. :slight_smile:

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I’m commasense, a 1984 graduate of St. John’s College in Annapolis. So obviously, I already know everything about all these books.

Uh, no. It’s been more than a quarter of a century since I read most of them. (I have re-read a few since then, but not many.) So in most cases it will probably be like reading them anew. Hell, I don’t even remember who won the Trojan War. (Was it Troy? No, better not spoil it for us!)

So I’m looking forward to participating as much as I can, and I promise not to be too unbearably brilliant and insightful. Thanks to Margo for coming up with the idea and starting the threads. (And thanks for adopting my title idea, Margo. FYI, you can hold ALT and type 0153 on the number pad to get the ™ character the easy way. You can also put it in the thread title that way, if you want.)

BTW, I think it might be a bit ambitious to plan to work through the entire St. John’s Program. Tackling as many as half of the books would be a fairly tall order, IMHO. And I can probably rattle off at least a dozen that I’d flatly refuse to read again. (I’m looking at you Hegel!) But let’s see how the first few go. Sufficient unto the day is the seminar thereof.

I read Lattimore 27 years ago, and still have my copy. But based on CJJ*'s recommendation was considering getting a copy of Fagles. So I’d be interested in why you don’t like it.

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What’s our spoilers policy?

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I’m Eureka. I have a background in Chemical Engineering, and a Master’s in Information Science–read Librarian with lots of computers–except not so much on the “gainfully employed as Librarian” bit.

Still, I’m a voracious reader of a lot of fluffy contemporary stuff, and the idea of exposing myself purposely to a variety of Classical works that I sometimes feel like I should have read but haven’t actually read in practice appeals to me.

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Hi, I’m Fretful. I have a PhD in English, so you’d think I would already know everything about all of these books, but it’s been twelve years since I read the Iliad in my undergrad Epic and Romance class and I’m looking forward to giving it another shot.

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Good question. Maybe it’s just that I was a classics minor, but I imagine that almost everyone is at least vaguely aware of the key elements of the plot of the Iliad, let alone major elements such as:

Trojanz r in ur horze!!!

:slight_smile:

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Yeah. I was just thinking about linking to some swell illustrations on vases that I know of and spouting about it for a bit for inspiration (Exekias is da bomb).

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Fagles is a great translation for people who think the Iliad is too boring.

If you love the Iliad for the work of polished marble that it is, you might find Fagles’ technique to be grating at best, offensive at worst. Fagles is a wonderful translator of drama, but for epic, his work sits very uneasily with me.

Let’s look at his first few lines:

His use of alliteration, assonance, and half-lines belong in Beowulf, not in the Iliad. His translation sensationalizes, dramatizes, and conveys Homer’s linguistic hirsuteness in ways that simply rub my ear the wrong way.