Audiobook · read by volunteers
Iliad
Homer
Read by Joshua B. Christensen, ML Cohen, hefyd, hugh mac, Kirsten Ferreri, Mark F. Smith, Michael Hellein, Anna Simon, Pete Darby, Kelly Dougherty · 24 chapters · 14 h 29
About the book
The Greeks have been camped outside Troy for nine years, and in the tenth the greatest of their warriors quarrels with the leader of the army. Achilles, insulted by King Agamemnon, withdraws from the fighting, and the Trojans, led by Hector, drive the Greeks back to their ships. Gods and goddesses take sides, heroes fall one by one, and a friendship ends in grief and an unforgettable rage. The Iliad is the oldest great poem of European literature, and it has never lost its power to move. It is a poem of war, but it is also a poem of honour, mortality and compassion, and its last scenes are among the most humane ever written. This prose translation by Samuel Butler, in twenty-four books, takes about fourteen and a half hours.
Introduction
The Iliad and the Odyssey are the two ancient Greek epic poems traditionally attributed to Homer. The Iliad is usually dated to the eighth or seventh century BC, and many scholars think it the oldest surviving work of Greek literature, which makes it the starting point of European literature. Whether a single poet composed it is disputed, since both poems bear the marks of a long oral tradition in which many singers must have had a hand.
The poem concerns events during the tenth and last year of the Trojan War, and it centres on the anger of Achilles and its consequences. It is divided into twenty-four books, each with its own episode, from the quarrel between Achilles and Agamemnon at the start to the funeral rites at the end. The poem's world is one of heroes and gods, but its emotional centre is human, in the meeting between enemies and the shared recognition of loss.
The English version heard here is a prose translation by Samuel Butler, who lived from 1835 to 1902 and published it in 1898. Butler was also a novelist and satirist, the author of Erewhon, and his version aims for plainness and directness rather than ornament.
This recording by LibriVox volunteers follows the twenty-four books in order, each with a short title, and runs to about fourteen and a half hours. Why listen? Because the Iliad was made to be heard. Its repeated phrases, its catalogues and its battle scenes build a rhythm that carries the listener forward.
Public domain
The LibriVox volunteers dedicated this recording to the public domain.
Sources : LibriVox page · Files at the Internet Archive · Original text