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Iliad (Paperback)

~ Homer (Author), Stanley Lombardo (Author) "Sing, Goddess, Achilles' rage,..." (more)
Key Phrases: shining sprinter, upswept hulls, beachhead camp, Pallas Athena, Telamonian Ajax, Phoebus Apollo (more...)
4.5 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (41 customer reviews)
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Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review

So great is the impact of ancient Greek literature on Western culture that even people who have never read Homer's Iliad or The Odyssey know a lot about them. The Trojan Horse, Achilles' heel, the Sirens' call, Scylla and Charybdis--all have entered popular mythology, becoming metaphors for the less heroic situations we face in our own lives. Ever since these oral poems were committed to paper (probably in the 8th century B.C.E.), people have been translating them. The version of Iliad translated by Stanley Lombardo is a brave departure from previous translations; Lombardo attempts to adapt the text to the needs of readers rather than the listeners for whom the work was originally intended. To this end, he has streamlined the poem, removing many of the stock repetitions such as the infamous "rosy-fingered dawn," or rewriting them in ways dependent on their context. What emerges is a vivid, lively rendition of one of the world's great stories of men and war.

But classicists, beware: This Iliad has something of a '90s sensibility, from the cover art (a photograph of the D-Day Normandy landing) to Achilles' Rambo-like diction. It might well outrage the purists, but for those who remember their musty high-school reading of Homer's great epic with a barely suppressed yawn, Lombardo's energetic translation is just the version to change their minds. --This text refers to the Hardcover edition.

From Library Journal

With the publication of Robert Fagels's impressive translation of the Odyssey (Viking Penguin, 1996, pap.) and now this equally impressive translation of the Iliad by Lombardo, this year seems to blazon something of a Homeric renaissance. Lombardo concedes from the start that "Homer's musicality cannot be heard in any kind of English," and so he does not compose his Iliad in hexameters or, for that matter, in any standard, regular meter. Instead, based on his experience as an oral performer of Homer's poetry, he writes the lines "based on the cadences of natural speech." The result is a Homer that "is brought to life" for the modern reader with no loss of original integrity?the achievement of a scholar, translator, and performer. Accessible and readable as Lombardo's translation is, it is rendered even more so by the superb, comprehensive introduction by Sheila Murnaghan, which provides a rich but lucid discussion of the classical context of the epic. A helpful appendix provides thumbnail sketches of the major characters, a catalog of combat deaths, and an "Index of Speeches." This handsome, superbly done Iliad will be read and enjoyed by everyone. Highly recommended for all libraries.?Thomas F. Merrill, formerly with Univ. of Delaware
Copyright 1997 Reed Business Information, Inc.
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Product Details

  • Paperback: 516 pages
  • Publisher: Hackett Pub Co (June 1, 1997)
  • Language: English
  • ISBN-10: 0872203522
  • ISBN-13: 978-0872203525
  • Product Dimensions: 8.4 x 5.4 x 1.1 inches
  • Shipping Weight: 1 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
  • Average Customer Review: 4.5 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (41 customer reviews)
  • Amazon.com Sales Rank: #51,903 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

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    #17 in  Books > Literature & Fiction > World Literature > Mythology > Greek & Roman
    #20 in  Books > Literature & Fiction > Authors, A-Z > ( H ) > Homer
    #34 in  Books > Literature & Fiction > Poetry > Epic

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Homer
Homer
Stanley Lombardo
Stanley Lombardo

Front Cover | Table of Contents | First Pages | Index | Back Cover | Surprise Me!
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Inside This Book (learn more)
First Sentence:
Sing, Goddess, Achilles' rage, Read the first page
Key Phrases - Statistically Improbable Phrases (SIPs): (learn more)
shining sprinter, upswept hulls, beachhead camp, forty black ships, bronze point, hollow ships, great sprinter, beaked ships, great warlord, lame god, immortal horses, spear hit, bronze spear, horsehair plume, white barley
Key Phrases - Capitalized Phrases (CAPs): (learn more)
Pallas Athena, Telamonian Ajax, Phoebus Apollo, Western Gate, Lord Apollo, Lord Zeus, Oïlean Ajax, Son of Laertes, West Wind, Lord of Lightning, Zeus Aegis-Holder, Argive Helen, Olympian Zeus, War God, Helen of Argos, Cronion Zeus, Dardanian Priam, Greeks Some, King Agamemnon, Menelaus Came, Son of Asclepius
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The Odyssey of Homer by Richmond Lattimore
 

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Customer Reviews

41 Reviews
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Average Customer Review
4.5 out of 5 stars (41 customer reviews)
 
 
 
 
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65 of 65 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars A must-have translation, February 28, 2002
By Graham Henderson (Toronto, Ontario Canada) - See all my reviews
I think I must have read every major translation of the Iliad by now. They all have something to recommend them. There are some to which I will never return. I think I would rate Robert Fagles translation as the best. All of which will afford some context when I say that Lombardo is a must read. Enough glowing things have been said here by other reviewers, so I will refrain from commenting over much on the translation per se.

What I will say is this. I SAW Book I of Lombardo's translation enacted on the stage in New York about a year and a half ago. If EVER one needed a reminder that the first auditors of this tale were listeners and not readers and that the Iliad was composed first and foremost FOR listeners, actually seeing Book I brought to life was it. It was magnificent. I had read Lombardo in preparation for the play. I LOVED it -- the immediacy of it, the currency, the urgency, the sheer page turning pace into which he rendered the Iliad. But actually seeing it? It is something I shall never forget. The audience was actually laughing outloud at certain points -- and we forget, don't we, that there is much humour in the Iliad? That laughter brought a sense of community. And it was actually possible, closing your eyes, to imagine yourself transported back in time, listening to a retelling of the Iliad -- so very, very long ago.

Traditionalists will no doubt have MAJOR problems with Lombardo. I consider myself to be reasonably traditional, but I fairly EMBRACED this translation. But I can imagine many will, like my father, run with horror from lines like:

"Now get this straight. I swear a formal oath:
.......
When every last Greek desperately misses Achilles,
Your remorse won't do any good then,
When Hector the man-killer swats you down like flies.
And you will eat your heart out
Because you failed to honour the best Greek of all."

Or:

"I've never seen men like those, and never will,
........
The strongest men who ever lived on earth, the strongest,
And they fought with the strongest, with wild things
From the mountains, and beat the daylihts out of them.
I was their companion......"

But I LOVED it -- I found my heart pounding and my blood racing at points. Buy this book and settle down in your favorite chair for a great read -- oh, and buckle your seat-belt.

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40 of 40 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars The best Iliad for the general reader, September 2, 2005
The Iliad is one of the greatest treasures of Western Civilization-and not just because a teacher told you it was. On the surface, it offers raw emotions, visceral action sequences and colorful characters you admire and hate, often at the same time. But it is much, much deeper than that. The scene where Hector bids his young wife good-bye and holds up his infant son to the gods, praying that the boy will one day be a better man than ever he himself was, has never been equaled as a statement of what it means to be a man, husband or father. The debates about honor and duty are still the same we face every day. The humanity, insight and profound philosophy are remarkable-especially for a work now 3,000 years old.

The problem? How do you convey all that power? How do you do so in a way that captures the feel of original?

Iliad translations have started to come fast and furious, as every ten years or so someone tries to tackle the monumental task of bringing the poem to modern readers. The process isn't helped by the fact that the text was already 300 years old to the classical Greeks like Aristotle, Sophocles and Euripides-making it as vaguely old-fashioned as Shakespeare is to us. Should it sound antiquated to us, too? If you really want a line by line translation, one that has some kind of meter that approaches the Greek original, the obvious choice is Lattimore's classic translation. It has the side benefit now of being somewhat dated in its English usage too. That said, for just a good ol' read of the Iliad, Lattimore isn't even my third choice. For all its accuracy, I've always felt I was reading a textbook, written by a classics scholar rather than an honest-to-goodness writer.

Lombardo, on the other hand, is my preferred translation for sitting back and reading what is still a rip-roaring adventure (with enough deep thoughts to give it extra weight). Lombardo confesses there really is no way to adequately convey the "musicality" of the original, and goes on to re-cast it in freer poetry, based on natural speech. He's built up his translation thru multiple performances of the poems, with drum accompaniment, in public places, and his Iliad is honed to a razor sharp edge. The musty old poem students rolled their eyes at becomes a terrifying, beautiful beast that grabs you by the throat and doesn't let go. It is so immediate, trilling and relevant. Lombardo's translation is an Iliad you will feel, not just respect.

Pick up the Lombardo translation and you will understand immediately why this work is still called the cornerstone of Western culture.
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18 of 18 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars The high-octane stylings of Stanley Lombardo, November 6, 2002
By Ray Farmer (Concord, MA USA) - See all my reviews
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After attempting to read Butcher & Lang's dry and archaic translation of the Iliad, I switched over to Lombardo and encountered a poem that was forceful, dynamic, and full of adrenaline. In his preface, Lombardo justified his use of modern-day colloquial English in order to bring out the urgency and energy that a poem of war deserves, and I believe that he has done so brilliantly. At times, I thought I was bearing witness to a professional wrestling match, because of the way the Greek and Trojan heroes would taunt each other during combat. The descriptions of combat can be quite graphic at times, but such is the nature of warfare and violence. In addition to his colloquial translation, Lombardo introduced a number of structural changes, such as getting rid of dactylic hexameter and changing the way similes are handled, in order to accomodate the peculiarities of the English language. Although a traditional Homerist might gawk at many of these innovations in style and structure, I think that they go a long way to increasing accessibility and arousing interest in the general readership.
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Most Recent Customer Reviews

5.0 out of 5 stars Wonderful Readable Iliad
Lomadardo's translation is amazing. I last tackled Homer's Iliad a quarter of a century ago during my undergraduate studies. Read more
Published 27 days ago by eric nelson

3.0 out of 5 stars Not translation, but performance
I understand many of the comments of the lowest-rated reviews here: this retelling of the story is much shorter than any of the translations, and does feel self-consciously... Read more
Published 1 month ago by Abel Vargas

4.0 out of 5 stars Not the best translation of one of the best stories
Having just read The Iliad for a Greek Civilization class in the spring of 2009, I owned a copy of the Robert Fagels translation. Read more
Published 4 months ago by C. Barry

5.0 out of 5 stars The first anti-war story?
You would think that The Iliad is about the war against Troy because Paris abducted Helen, wife of Menelaos - one of the greek commanders. Read more
Published 5 months ago by Jan Dierckx

4.0 out of 5 stars Avoid the Introduction
I liked this version of the Epic but I do still prefer the antiquated versions. I had a hard time imagining Homer using the same kinds of language that Lombardo used. Read more
Published 6 months ago by H. L. Gossett

5.0 out of 5 stars The ground is dark with blood
With many books, translations are negligible, with two obvious exceptions, one is the Bible, and surprisingly the other is The Iliad. Read more
Published 10 months ago by bernie

4.0 out of 5 stars Epic Origin
The Grand-Daddy of all epic tales!

I had never read the Iliad before now, and since it was assigned to me in my current college course, I really had no choice but to... Read more
Published 13 months ago by Stefan Yates

5.0 out of 5 stars inspired choice of cover
I'm not going to comment much on the contents. Other reviewers have adequately praised it as a superb translation. Instead, I just want to quickly remark on the cover. Read more
Published 16 months ago by W Boudville

5.0 out of 5 stars Great Book~~
One of the greatest poem you have to read. The translation is great and with only two minor mistakes. Read more
Published 16 months ago by I. Isabel

2.0 out of 5 stars Illiad
Book delivered in proper manner but the book was not in that good of shape. Book has writing in it...many pages of writing and few pages glued together. Read more
Published 17 months ago by Noah W. Funk

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