Reviews

Well, after hearing of the Iliad and the Odyssey for my entire life through the miasma of culture, media, and that one primary school teacher who, to my memory, taught me nothing but greek myth (big up Miss Fahey), I finally got around to reading them.

Well, kind of.
Reading stories this old is like saying you finally heard Bohemian Rhapsody, but it was played by some guy in a pub who heard another guy describe it (admitantly, really well) on the radio from the time his dad played it for him after hearing a woman sing it in a talent show after she heard it from etc. etc. etc. etc.

Homer Looking at His Writing Credits

We call the author 'Homer', but from the original story, how much of Homer's work is actually Homer? How much of Homer was the OG Homer? Do we even know if any of Homer's words even survived the subsequent changes the other Homers added to the text? And what about the text? Do we count the person who first put it to paper as a 'Homer'? Or are they just counted as translators? And what about translators??

These are too many questions to sift through and I'm no where near qualified enough to answer any of them so I'm not getting involved in that whole nebulous "oral tradition" malarky, it's irrelevant as I can only judge what I have read in this here collection of words that made up two long (but brilliant) poems. All the points I have about these epics, positive and negative, stem from the literary collection that I imbibed.

So here is what I think of that pysical thing that I bought which had two epic poems called The Iliad and The Odyssey, which were both written down onto the page by some guy other than Homer, then Translated by another dude who also wasn't Homer, and read by a guy who really isn't Homer. I'm talking about that.

Oh! And to make it even more confusing, I listened to them via audiobook. Yeah, this review is already a mess...

The Iliad: Hot Take
"Like a girl, a baby running after her mother, begging to be picked up, and she tugs on her skirts, holding her back as she tries to hurry off—all tears, fawning up at her, till she takes her in her arms… That’s how you look, Patroclus, streaming live tears."

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So, when I finished the Iliad I made a joke that what Homer had written really was the foundation of storytelling because he wrote the Iliad before endings were invented. *ba-dum-tiss*
For those who don't understand, the Iliad does not include the fall of Troy, the wooden horse, nor even the death of Achilles. They're all (save for the wooden horse) alluded to, foreshadowed, and set up throughout the poem, but they're not described or shown. Long story short; no pay off. The poem ends before any of that occurs.
Now I hear you say, "but Tom, that's not what the Iliad was about! It was about Achilles, his argument with Agamemnon, and his rage at the death of Patroclus. Everyone knows all of that is going to happen anyhow, you don't need to show it."
Yes, granted, Achilles' plot is integral to the story, and all of those points are valid.
BUT
The structure and time given to the overarching plot of the war, its soldiers and its greater surroundings, not to mention the battle between the gods, is left unfinished. For HUGE swathes of the poem, we were brought inside battles, raids, plans for tearing down walls, loss of naval escape routes, people's families back home and debts that are forever left unpaid and crimes that are left unresolved due to the actions and the bloodshed of the trojan war. This story arc takes up a greater proportion of the poem than Achilles' arc does, and it's left unresovled.
Hell, I'd even argue Achilles' arc is left unresolved. The poem ends with him recieving the glory deserved to him from gods, enacting his revenge on Hector, giving a funeral for Patroclus, and giving Hector's body back to his father, the king. But what it doesn't show is him paying for all of these great deeds with his own death, a death that every immortal being, including Achilles' own mother, won't stop talking about.
It would be like ending the play 'Dr. Faustus' with him becoming the greatest magician in the world, and as the punters are leaving the theatre telling them, "Oh obviously he goes to hell after this. Everyone could see that coming!"

Many will disagree, and that's fair, but in my view that's a poorly structured pay-off and it hindered my enjoyment of the poem, hence my rating it 2/5 stars.

The Odyssey: the Comeback of the Millennia

Aw man, what a recovery. What. A. Recovery. Both for Odysseus, and for Homer. This poem has everything, non-linear storytelling, cyclopses, dead mothers, unrelenting suitors, domestic abuse, a thirsty goddess stuck on paradise island, Odysseus crying like all the time and as soon as he gets home he tells his son not to be such a woman.
What a ride, what a change in the quality of structure, everything is remembered and tied off with a neat bow. Whichever Homer that was in charge of taking care of the Odyssey did a stellar job. I actually have no complaints - save for the rampant woman hating in the poem, obviously. I mean Odysseus had all of his female servants who slept/ were raped by the suitors lynched at the end, which has NOT aged well.
Then again, this story is older than the written word so you can't blame it for being outdated at times.

5/5 stars

Conclusion

Despite my faults found with the Iliad, I'd still suggest reading it. It's a brilliant poem and so many turns of phrase have stemmed from its writing, not only that, the descriptions of the battles are of mid 2000s anime levels of scale and hype proportions. At one point Achilles fights a fucking RIVER and WINS.
I will say that the Iliad is an unfinished text, and you need to read both together for a completion. To me, they're two sides to the same aegean coin, and you NEED the Odyssey to pick up the slack that the Iliad drops.

Overall: 4/5 stars

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