Many people have some vague notion about Achilles, Helen, and the wooden horse.
But very few have read the Iliad.
That loose, inherited picture is not the masterwork that sits at the foundation of Western Civilization. Homer does not tell of the fall of Troy. Homer tells a story about the rage of Achilles—a story that he uses to teach you about excellence, fate, glory, justice, and immortality.
If you never read the Iliad, these lessons are lost. The foundations of the West remain muddled.
But Homer is worth taking seriously. He is a teacher—but not always an easy one to understand.
That is why we’ve published articles, podcasts, videos, and a 100+ question and answer guide to help you read the Iliad.
Read Homer well. He will not leave you as he found you.
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The Iliad is worth your time
Homer wrote the Iliad—but he did not invent the stories about Troy.
The Iliad did not originate as a written epic. The city-state (“polis”) of Troy in Asia Minor fell to the Achaeans (Greeks) around 1150 B.C. The events of Troy and the surrounding histories gave rise to oral poems or rhapsodies memorized and performed by Greek bards (or rhapsodes). Homer is actually “an inheritor of a centuries old tradition of oral stories about the Trojan War.” His brilliance was “his capacity to compose a written epic out of a myriad of oral traditions spanning several centuries.” He receives the threads of a complicated, even contradictory tradition and weaves them together into a beautiful, rich epic. Homer is said to have written (or dictated to a scribe) the Iliad around 750 B.C.—around the time of the prophets Amos and Hosea in the Bible.
However, is the Iliad actually about the fall of Troy?
Well, a few things to note. The fall of Troy is not in the Iliad. In fact, the famous “Trojan horse” is not even in the Iliad. Moreover, the Iliad does not tell of the whole ten year war of Troy, but rather begins in media res toward the end regarding a dispute between Achilles, the greatest Achaean fighter, and the Achaean high king, Agamemnon. Homer invokes the Muses at the beginning to help him tell the story, but he does not invoke them to tell of the fall of Troy—he invokes them to tell of the “rage” of Achilles, a divine-like rage boiling in the heart of a demigod.
You must ask yourself what story Homer intended to tell?
And this raises an obvious question—why?
Why does Homer not tell of the Trojan war overall or of the fall of Troy but focuses on the rage of Achilles. And to this question, people tend to have two answers.
One school advocates simply not overthinking it. Homer is a man of his time and place. He is simply a flat echo of the traditions he has received. Homer has no teaching insight, no pedagogical purpose. It is just a story cobbled together from other stories that has some historical importance.
Another school advocates that Homer is a teacher—that he is very meticulous in his similes, allusions, and epithets inviting the reader to contemplate the nascent concepts that nourished Western civilization, like excellence (arete), free will, fate, the divine, immortality, and politics. The Iliad merits a deep, careful read that takes seriously the subtleties in the text. In fact, others will even claim that Homer is a philosopher and a theologian.
Ascend follows the second school.
You want to read Homer and read him well—and to accomplish this goal, Ascend is offering some tremendous resources.
First, check out our FREE 100+ question and answer guide to the Iliad. It is an incredibly helpful resource to read the Iliad deeply—great for first time readers and those more familiar.
Second, read the Iliad with Ascend. We have a discussion posted on each book of the Iliad, twenty-four in all, along with an introduction episode and an episode explaining what happens after the Iliad. Ascend can be like a small group to you! Check out: Read the Iliad with Ascend: Books 1-12.
Ascend can provide you podcasts, videos, a written guide, and articles to help you understand the Iliad.
But all of that can be a little overwhelming.
So, here are eleven quick, clean recommendations to keep in mind when reading the Iliad.
11 Recommendations for Reading the Iliad Well
1. Read the book before the guide. Read the preliminary questions on the guide, but then wrestle with the text first. Read the book, then check the guide. In this manner, you can start to sharpen your own reading, i.e., what you noticed before looking at the guide. You’ll start to understand how to read Homer. The goal isn’t to have you reliant on our guide. Our goal is to get you to reading Homer well yourself.
