Friends,
The Iliad is the first of the great books in the West save the Bible, and Ascend has everything for you to read it well. The video discussions below are on the back half of the Iliad, Books 13-24, along with a bonus episode explaining some of the traditions of what happened after the Iliad (since there is a gap before the Odyssey starts).
Everything you need to read the Iliad well. Be sure to also check out:
Homer is a teacher. He is worth your time and attention. Keep up the good work!
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The Iliad: Books 13-24
By Book 12 the poem has done its work of beginning. Achilles still sits at the ships; Hector has the favor of Zeus; the Achaeans have learned what it is to fight as if the best of them will never come. The guide has already marked what now presses in: the “doom of Zeus,” the question whether the Greeks even need Achilles if the gods stay out, and the burial of the dead as a theme that “will take on central significance.” Books 13–24 are where Homer, as teacher, refuses to leave those threads as setup. The will of Zeus and the nameless fate are weighed again—Knox’s tension between “the overriding power of Zeus’s will” and “a nameless destiny.” *Arete* is no longer only a contrast between Hector’s piety and Achilles’ rage; it is tested when honor, friendship, and the city all claim the same man.
Read the second half the way the guide asks you to read the first: book by book, then the conversation. Watch for how messages are repeated with a gloss, how the gods keep intervening just enough that you cannot tell whether Troy would stand without them, and how the poem that “lives and moves and has its being in war” turns, at last, toward what is owed the dead. Then take the Ascend discussions on Books 13–24 and let the questions do their work—especially the one Homer has been asking since Book 1: what it means to be an excellent man when glory and a long life cannot both be kept.
Between the Iliad and the Odyssey
What happens after the Iliad that is not recorded in the Odyssey? Dcn. Garlick and Adam Minihan discuss the fall of Troy and the fates of various characters in preparation for starting Homer’s Odyssey next!
Good work! You’ve read the first of the great books, a fantastic foundation to your reading of the great books and of wisdom overall. The “Year of Homer” continues with episodes on the Odyssey (2024). Also, Ascend hosted a new 12-week study of the Odyssey in 2026 in anticipation of the new Christopher Nolan movie. The 2024 study is more of the same pace and style as this Iliad series. The 2026 series is more compact and the commentary is more in-depth with each episode features a Homeric scholar. Both are good!
Good work on the Iliad.
Be sure to read the Odyssey with Ascend next!
Dcn. Harrison Garlick lives in rural Oklahoma with his wife and five children. He serves as a deacon at Holy Family Cathedral and as Chancellor & General Counsel for the Roman Catholic Diocese of Tulsa. Follow him on X at Dcn. Garlick or Ascend.