Introduction

'Sing, goddess, the wrath of Achilles.' The Iliad does not tell the whole Trojan War but a few dozen days in its tenth year. Insulted by the commander Agamemnon, Achilles, the greatest of the Greek heroes, withdraws from the fighting, and the Greeks are driven back until his beloved friend Patroclus is killed by the Trojan prince Hector; only then does Achilles return to battle for revenge. The poem ends with Hector's funeral. The first great work of Western literature, it portrays the cruelty of war and the dignity of human beings as nothing else has. This translation will be in prose.