“Patroclus came up to Achilles shepherd of the people, weeping hot tears like a dark spring trickling black streaks of water down a steep rock-face.”

This has been on my shelf, sitting there, looking intimidating for a while now, and I decided to finally pick it up this year. In all honesty, I had read (and loved) so many Iliad retellings, with more on the TBR pile, so I decided after my fourth re-read of The Song of Achilles that I should give the original a go.

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It was both what I expected and not at the same time. For starters, I thought it was going to be ten years worth of warfare that dragged dryly on as we went through yet another battle, meeting, attempt at diplomacy, and that it was going to be impossible to keep track of. I was pleased to find out that the Iliad itself only spans a short period of the Trojan War, allowing the action and characters to be given much more depth. It was engaging, entertaining, and at times even funny which was the last thing I expected.

That’s not to say it didn’t have its dull moments; I soon gave up on trying to keep track of absolutely everyone in the battle scenes, instead just enjoying the fray and recognising a name here and there. That being said, the involvement of the gods added another dimension to the story that I really enjoyed, especially the dynamics between Zeus and pretty much everyone else.

I don’t have a degree, or even an A Level, in Classics or in English Literature, so there isn’t much point in my trying to give some kind of fresh analysis or to draw attention to any particulars of the writing style. As a reader, though, I can say that I very much enjoyed it, and if your copy is sitting on your shelf and trying its best to look intimidating, pick it up and give it a go!

Reading Challenges:

This book is counting as my translated fiction in Back to Classics, and also contributes to my Chunksters Reading Challenge (450+ pages).