How are you going to get any Greek warrior
To follow you into battle again?
You know I don't have any quarrel with the Trojans,
They didn't do anything to me to make me
Come over here and fight, didn't run off my cattle or horses
Or ruin my farmland back home in Phthia, not with all
The shadowy mountains and moaning seas between.
It's for you, dogface, for your precious pleasure--
And Menelaus' honorÑthat we came hereÉ
I never get a prize equal to yours when the army
Captures one of the Trojan strongholds.
No, I do all the dirty work with my own hands,
And when the battle's over and we divide the loot
You get the lion's share, and I go back to the ships
With some pitiful little thing, so worn out from fighting
I don't have the strength left even to complain.
Well I'm going back to Phthia now. Far better
To head home with my curved ships than stay here,
Unhonored myself, and piling up a fortune for you.

...claimed to describe events that had taken place approximately five hundred years before. For the Greeks of the eighth century and afterward, these were works of history, authoritative records of their own past. A modern historian might be more inclined to label them historical fiction, thinking that whatever conflict lies behind the story of the Trojan War is more likely to have been fought over trade routes to the Black Sea thenÑas Home retells itÑover the Trojan's theft from the Greeks of the world's most beautiful woman, Helen of Troy...Historians and archaeologists who have tried to match the culture described in the Homeric epics to what we know of Greek history from other sources have found that the culture unselfconsciously combines element of the Bronze Age with elements of the Dark AgeÉThis can be seen in the depictions of combat that are a major feature of the Iliad While it is repeatedly mentioned that the weapons being used are made of bronzeÑwhich fell out of use for weapons after the Bronze Age, being replaced by ironÑsome of the specified implements and fighting practices belong to a late time.

(Murnaghan: Introduction l-liii).

"Status", for Weber, is a sense of who you are. To people to whom it is important this sense gives meaning to their lives. People will die rather than do any thing that threatens this sense of who they are, since without it life is meaningless.

Because no battle is ever won he said. They are not even fought. The field only reveals to man his own folly and despair, and victory is an illusion of philosophers and fools.ÑWilliam Faulkner, The Sound and the Fury

His studies read like a catalog of some of the ways in which people make life meaningful in the face of death: religion, making the world a better place, increasing knowledge, passing things along to one's children. But he also talked about something he called status.

"Status", for Weber, is a sense of who you are. To people to whom it is important this sense gives meaning to their lives. People will die rather than do any thing that threatens this sense of who they are, since without it life is meaningless.

Line 1:
RAGE:

Sing, Goddess, Achilles' rage,
Black and murderous, that cost the Greeks
Incalculable pain, pitched countless souls
Of heroes into Hades' dark,
And left their bodies to rot as feasts
For dogs and birds, as Zeus' will was done.
Begin with the clash between Agamemnon--
The Greek warlord--and godlike Achilles.

Logical Patterning

There are logical patterns to most configurations of data, and the dactylic hexameter is no exception. If we observe the following statements about verse, and are prepared to follow them with a bit of intelligent guesswork, we can start reading Homeric lines right away. Reading many lines will establish in our memory an acoustic pattern, which in turn confers an intuitive sense of what the line should sounds like as we read the words. But start with these formal statement now, later they will become an unconscious part of the reading process.

1) There are only two patterns in the Homeric dactylic line, the dactyl ( ) and the spondee ( ). These are the patterns on which the hexameter rests, hence they are appropriately called 'feet'.

2) Every line starts with a long syllable.

3) This long will be followed by either another long (spondee), or two shorts (dactyl).

And so forth, enting with this: 10) Fear of saying it wrong will often block a good reading of a dactylic line. One must go ahead a try it out, listen to the sound see if it rings true. After getting a few dozen lines to ring right, the bad one will stand out as unsatisfying, somehow metrically inept and in need of acoustic repair..

If unsure about your musical ear, put down the Homer for a few minutes and listen to a recording of Bach's Goldberg Variation, noting the careful cadencing and minor variations of the fairly regular patterns. This is pretty much what the dactylic line is doing, but in music we expect it whereas in Greek verse we are still thinking of doing it by the rules.

It seemed to me that in this work one could see how Force abandons Words and how Words abandon Force. With a little more elaboration I would say that we can see in the Iliad how words, language, conversation, negotiation, and argument serve to humanize--to treat people as human beings as ends with their own purposes and not merely as means. We can also see clearly how threats, force, violence, and silence dehumanize.

To me Nestor demonstrates the first part of this theme in his attempts to negotiate a truce between Achilles and Agamemnon.

The philosopher Immanuel Kant captures this when he talks about a person as a being who must be respected as an end and not merely a means to some other end. We use things for our ends or purposes--hammers to nail. We are beings who have purposes. So if we use other persons for our purposes, say to get ahead, with no regard for the fact that they like us have their own purposes, we use them as things.

Like cranes beating their metallic wings
in the stormy sky at winter's onset,

Banks of mist settle on mountain peaks
And seep into the valleys. Shepherds dislike it
But for a thief it is better than night,
And a man can see only as far as he can throw a stone.

But silent, breathing rage, resolved and skill'd By mutual aids to fix a doubtful field

However, this collapse does seem to have been related to a wider upheaval that sent people wandering over the entire eastern Mediterranean. Egyptian records in particular give a fairly clear picture of "Peoples of the Sea," who twice descended on the Nile delta. They were beaten offÉbut their incursions did bring down the mighty Hittite empire, and that alone must have destabilized the region.

The collapse of the Mycenaean order was shatteringly complete. Even the art of writing was lostÑthe only known example of such a cultural regression. For several hundred years, down to about 750 BC, the Greeks were illiterate, and with a few exceptions, unable to organize or build on any scale. Understandably, the period between 1100 and 750 has been celled the Dark Age of Greece.

Many obvious features of the Dark Age society have been clearly incorporated intoÉ the poem, but other events which might have been thought to be well known have been excluded, it would seem deliberately. In some ways, therefore, the political, social, and economic conditions depicted are an artificial conglomeration. Nevertheless, the element belong to real societies, even if their combination is in some aspects unreal : to a large extend Homer present a coherent portrait of Greek society towards the end of the Dark Age.

An invasion c 2200 BC brought to an end the Early Bronze Age in GreeceÉ.Three centuries later came another but less destructive incursion, when the Indo Europeans brought with them horses and a new kind of potteryÉ.

They are much in evidence in Mycenaean Greece from the 16th C BC onwards, and two skeletons of horses have been found near Marathon at AtticaÉHorses were both ridden and use for chariots. The chariot figures prominently in the Linear B tablets...Because good pasture-land was rare in Greece and fodder expensive, horses were the possession of the very rich.

EXTREMELY LITERAL TRANSLATION OF ILIAD 1.1-7
Note that added words are between parentheses ()
menin aeide thea, Peleiadeo Achileos, 1
rage sing goddess, Peleides Akhilleus'



oulomenen, he myri'
destroying (rage) which (a) myriad,



Akhaiois alge' etheke 2
(on the) Akhaians, pains set



pollas d' iphthimous psychas Aidi pro - iapsen 3

and many strong psyches (to) Hades' forth-threw


heroon, autous de heloria teuxe kynessin 4
heroes'
(psyches) and themselves seizable (spoil) made (for) dogs


oionoisi te pasi; Dios d' eteleieto boule, 5
and all birds; and Zeus' plan was realized



ex hou de ta prota dia-steten erisante 6
from that (time when) indeed first apart-stood quarelling



Atreides te anax andron, kai dios Akhilleus 7
Atreides (Agamemnon) king of men, and godly Akhilleus

poisoning the atmosphere and possibly creating an enormous tidal wave that hit Crete with terrible destructive force. The theory provided an attractively neat explanation for the decline of Cretan civilization; but the question of dates is crucial--and accumulating evidence from scientifically verifiable sources such as tree tings and polar ice cores suggests that the eruption took place much earlier, in about 1628 BC.

Here me, Trojans, allied troops, and Dardanians (who are they?)

The victory clearly belongs to Menelaus.

Surrender therefore Argive Helen.

But we should decide all this now.
Should we let war rage again
Or establish peace between the two sides?
If somehow we could agree to do this.
Priam's city might still be a place to live
And Menelaus could take Argive Helen home.
<br

In literature, an epic is a mutative poem on the grand scale and in majestic style concerning the exploits and adventures of a superhuman hero or heroes engaged in a quest of some serious endeavour. The hero is distinguished by his strength and courage and is sustained by a sense of honour. The subject matter of epic includes myth, legends, history and folk tale. It is usually set in an heroic age of the past and embodies its country's early history and expresses its values. Battles and perilous journeys play a large part, as do gods, the supernatural, and magic; scenes are often set in the underworld or in heaven. Certain formal features are conspicuous: the narrator vouches for the truth of his story, there are invocations, elaborate greetings, long speeches, detailed similes, digressions, and the frequent repetition of "typical" elements, for example the stock adjective or formula, the stock scene such as the hero arming for battle. Epic represents a delight in the physical world, shown by painstaking descriptions of such things as arms, clothing, or ships.

É.his comrade pulled the spear
Out of his thigh. His spirit left him,
And a mist poured down over his eyes.
Then the North Wind blew upon him, and he
Breathed again, though he had gasped out his soul. (749Lff)

Don't be in awe of Ares. He's nothing but
A shifty lout. He promised Hera and me
He would fight against Troy and help the Greeks.
Now he's turned Trojan and abandoned us. (884ff)

No one is going to send me to Hades before my time.
And no man has ever escaped his fate, rich or poor,
Coward or hero, once born into this world.

Choose your time.
When the Greeks have left with their ships for home,
Smash the wall to bits and sweep it out to sea.

Leddy: There are some moments in your translations that are startling in their contemporaneity Ñ for instance, Little AjaxÕs exclamation ÔShit!Õ during the funeral games for Patroclus. I can imagine a reader objecting that an Iliadic hero would never say such a thing (and, literally, doesnÕt). Yet other such moments are entirely true to the Greek. IÕm delighted to see, for instance, that your inspired phrase in Iliad 5, Ôthe automatic gates of heaven,Õ with its suggestions of estates and gated communities, has its basis in the Greek, in the word automatai . Are there other such moments, where HomerÕs Greek has a surprisingly exact fit in contemporary English?

Lombardo: Let me find one in Iliad 7. Hector is challenging the Greeks to a duel, and Menelaus is the first to stand up. ItÕs his job, you know.

ÔThis day will go down in infamyÕ Ñ

which is of course another modernism, but perfectly in context Ñ
ÔIf no Danaan meets HectorÕs challenge now.
May you all turn to mud.Õ

Leddy: ÔBite the dustÕ would be another example of the startling and literal, wouldnÕt it?

Lombardo: Yes, thatÕs exactly whatÕs said. ThatÕs the literal translation.

William Levitan, who has been with me since graduate school as an arbiter of literary taste, looked at a lot of my Iliad. When I sent this to him, he didnÕt believe it, and then he looked at the Greek and it said exactly that. Sometimes whatÕs startling is whatÕs simply literal, what other translators may feel they have to soften. Similar expressions, equally startling, that are not exactly there in the Greek but the spirit is there, are thus completely justifiable. That level of diction is already established by Homer.

---

When HomerÕs audience heard Ôan Achaean wall,Õ I think thatÕs exactly what they heard. ItÕs right there, and Ajax is an in-your-face kind of guy. [Markedly dropping his voice] ÔYour move, Hector.Õ ÔThe gristle that was his face arranged into a smileÕ [Iliad 7] Ñ

---

I am not so angry with her, since she
Always opposes whatever I say.

Line 485ff:

Hector will not be absent from the war
Until Achilles has risen up from beside his ship
On the day when the fighting for Patroclus' dead body
Reaches its fever pitch by the ships' sterns.
This is divinely decreed.

Weil studied Greek in her school days and taught Greek literature and language during her adult life. She carried in her memory large passages of Greek tragedy and was keenly aware of the nuances of poetic diction.

The strong is never perfectly strong, nor the weak perfectly weak, but neither knows this. They believe they are of different species; the weak man does not consider himself like the strong, nor is he regarded as such. He who possesses force moves in a frictionless environment; nothing in the human matter around him puts an interval for reflection between impulses and action. Where reflection has no place, there is neither justice nor forethoughtÉ hence the ruthless and mindless behavior of warriors. É

Other men do not pause in their actions to have some regard for their fellow man; they conclude that destiny has granted them every license and none to their inferiors. From this point they overstep the force at their disposalÑinevitably, for they fail to see its limits. They are then surrendered ineluctably to chance and things no longer obey them. Chance sometimes helps, sometimes hurts them; they are exposed quite naked to sorrow, without the armor of power that had shielded their spirit with nothing to insulate them any longer from tears.

This geometrically stringent chastisement, which spontaneously punishes the abuse of force, was the primary issue in Greek thought. It constitutes the heart and soul of epic; under the name "Nemesis," it is the subject of Aeschylean tragedy; the Pythagoreans, Socrates, Plato move from this starting point to their reflections on man and the cosmos. The concept is familiar wherever the spirit of Greek thought has penetrated. This Greek idea perhaps survives as "karma" in religions of the East pervaded by Buddhism. But the West has lost it, lacking even a word for it in any of it languages. The notions of limit, measure, balance, which should shape the conduct of life, are employed only in a mundane way in the technical sphere. We are geometricians of mere matter; the Greeks were, from the outset, geometricians in the apprenticeship of virtue.

The progression of war in the Iliad comprises a simple seesaw movement. The victor of the moment feels himself invincible, even though a few brief hours earlier he encountered defeat. He forgets that victory is ephemeral. At the end of the first day of the campaign recounted in the Iliad, the victorious Greeks could undoubtedly have gained the object of their efforts, namely Helen and her riches; at least if one imagines, as Home did, that the Greek reason had reason to believe Helen was in Troy. The Egyptian Priests, who must have known stated to Herodotus much later that she was actually to be found in Egypt. At all events, that evening, the Greeks do not want her any more (7. 400-403)

They want nothing less than the whole. All the wealth of Troy as booty, all the palaces, the temples, and the houses in ashes; all the women and children slaves; all the men corpses.

SeniorNet Books is very excited and grateful to Dr. Lombardo for this opportunity to ask him questions about his translation of The Iliad.

Q:1. "A wooly menace, A Dream" (2: 10) You are the only translator we have found who used this term and we love it. What is the Greek and what made you choose wooly menace? Fitzgerald says "fatal dream"ÑPat H.

• Will Dr. Lombardo tell us about the word involved here? And then there is Agamemnon's dream. Is that parody? Or the beginning of a long tradition in which Freud rang another change? Translating it as a 'wooly menace' is certainly doing it with poetic inspiration. One can conjure with that. Just as suggestive are Fitzgerald's 'fatal dream', already mentioned; Chapman's 'pernicious dream'; Hammond's 'evil dream'. ---Jonathan and Joan.

A: ÒA wooly menace, a DreamÓ (2.10) The word That I translate here as ÒmenaceÓ (and Fitzgerald as ÒfatalÓ) is a homonym for a word meaning Òcurly, wooly.Ó Sometimes I translate a word or phrase in such a way as to bring out suggestive associations latent in the Greek. Freud is very good on the relation between myth and dreams: both express our fears and desires.



Q:2. In Book 2 line 504, you don't use italics for the simile, why not? This occurs several times in the text, is there a reason why some similes are set off in italics and others not?

A: The one-line simile at 2.504 is not italicized. I usually italicize only the longer similes, the ones that develop a poetic life of their own and draw us into themselves.







Q:3. Bk 3/1-19:

Two armies,
The troops in divisions
Under their commanders,



The Trojans advancing across the plain
Like cranes beating their metallic wings
In the stormy sky at winterÕs onset,

• So far as we can see you are the only translator to use the cranes metallic wings imagery. Whatever made you think of that unforgettable comparison? What is the Greek?
  

A: "Metallic wings" (3.5)[Dr. Lombardo is requesting more time to develop that simile...ginny]

Q:4. How to pronounce Eumelus? In Lombardo's line the emphasis sounds good on the first syllable. In Chapman an emphasis on the second sounds right. It makes such a difference in one's enjoyment of the lines if these strange names can be made to roll off one's tongue.---Jonathan

A: Pronunciation of Eumelus: I like Yoo-MEE-los. There is no canon of pronunciation of Greek names in English. Sometimes I donÕt agree with the pronunciations given in the glossary of my own translation, but those given would be acceptable to most classicists.



Q:5. In the back of the Fagles book, there is a pronouncing glossary; and since I know no Greek, I keep flipping back to find out how to pronounce the names. I try to guess the pronunciation and then check to see if I guessed right. But I also have Dr. Vandiver's tapes, and her pronunciations are not the same as Fagles'. She will use a short where Fagles uses a long i. Which is correct? Or are they both correct? ---Shasta

A: There is a range of acceptable pronunciations. Long ÒiÓ generally reflects a British pronunciation.



Q:6. 'Sing, Goddess.' Mark the capital G, in Dr Lombardo's translation. And what a wonderful translation. It would seem that Homer has, with that capital G, one of the muses in mind. One of the nine. Why not name her? (Jonathan)

A: The Muses have names as early as Hesiod, who is roughly contemporary with Homer, but their functions are not distinguished until much later. I donÕt think Homer has any one of the nine Muses in mind here or in the opening line of the Odyssey. In the Odyssey I translate ÒSpeak, MemoryÉÓ The Muse is the Mind, which is what the word actually means in Greek (originally MONT-YA, the MONT being the same Indo-European base as Latin MENT, Eng. MIND).







Q:7. You said in the interview that you have memorized Book I, how could any human being memorize this huge book? How do you envision the old storytellers telling this story, would they use notes of some kind? The details are staggering.

A: As I say in the TranslatorÕs Preface, the powers of the human memory are vastly under-rated these days. The more you memorize the easier it gets. It is entirely plausible to me that an individual could hold all of the Iliad and Odyssey in his or her mind.

Q:8. What does haekwang mean? We were so excited to see you in the discussion we forgot to ask!
A: Hae Kwang is my Buddhist name. The Chinese words mean Òwisdom-light.Ó



Q:9. We are having a continuing argument, no source we have consulted has been accepted as authoritative, everyone wants to turn to you on this question of Agamemnon's authority?

• What right does Agamemnon have to be the leader of the combined Greek forces? In Book 4 line 306, Agamemnon tells Odysseus, "I would be out of line if I issued you orders." Can you describe what Agamemnon's role really was and if Achilles WAS challenging him in Book II? Here is one theory, will you comment on it?
  
  

  I have recently read a history book: ÒA Distant MirrorÓ by Barbara Tuchman, about France in the 14th century. I am extremely struck by the parallels between the ideas of ÒchivalryÓ in the middle ages and the description of the Greek army in the Iliad two thousand years earlier: the ideals and the way in which the army was organized and used. It helped me understand a lot of things about the Iliad. The first thing is that Greece was not a country. There was no overall leader and organization: instead our "heroes" are a lot of independent kings in independent kingdoms who aren't used to taking orders from anyone. Even when they band together, under a nominal "leader", they have no idea of the modern concept that in war there should be one commander and everyone should obey them. To these kings, their personal honor and dignity was too important to allow them to be subservient to anyone. Agamemnon is more like the chair of a committee than a military leader, and they obey him when they feel like it. This proved a disaster in medieval France, and may do so here too. They reveal that Mycenaean society was complex and highly specialized (from a separately functioning king and commander in chief down to distinctions between crafts whose meaning we can now only guess at), and also that it was strictly controlled form the top"

  
  
  
• This is the opposite of what I thought: that these were independent kings. I was going by the sense of the Iliad, I am not an historian, I would like to hear Dr. Lombardo's take on this: ---Joan K
  
  
  
  
• Let's ask Dr. Lombardo about that: Dr. Lombardo, I would be interested in your comments on JoanK's parallels between the Greek warfare and the 14th century ÐPat H.
  

A: Barbara TuchmanÕs description of the political structure of chivalric Europe makes an excellent parallel for Iliadic Greece, but there was less structure and more independence in the Greece Homer represents. Another parallel might be the old mafia families, with Agamemnon being the Òcapo di tutti capi.Ó



A:10. You quoted Herodotus as saying Homer gave the Greeks their Gods, is Homer the ultimate source for Greek mythology? IS the Iliad then the oldest reference to the Greek gods? We have read excerpts of " Herodotus and religion in the Persian war" in the Classical review by Jon D. Mikalson, and would like to know your thoughts on the origin of Greek mythology: ARE we looking at it?

A: You have to look at Hesiod, too, especially Theogony, for the origins of Greek mythology. What Herofotis said was that Homer and Hesiod gave the Greeks their gods. Maybe I didnÕt mention Hesiod in the interview.

Q:11. Homer seems to treat both sides of the Trojan War with respect. Do you feel this was because he wished to please his audience or does it have a different meaning?



A: Homer treats everything with respect, even inanimate objects. This is to me the most attractive aspect of his mind.

Q:12. I recently read a translation of "The Song of Songs" with many notes on the original Hebrew. The translator noted that there were some words that only appeared in one place, and nowhere else in all the literature. So unless the root was recognizable, translators had to simply guess from the context what was meant. Does this occur in the Iliad? --Joan K

A: Words occurring only once are called hapax legomena (sing: legomenon). There are many of these in Homer, but context usually makes the meaning pretty clear.



Q:13. "Thus Hector." 6:299. We love this expression, and do not notice it in other translators, what is the Greek for it and what made you think of this particular expression?



A: ÒThus Hector.Ó Homer usually introduces his speeches with an entire line. I usually translate this line in its entirety. After a speech the typical phrase is something like ÒThus he spoke.Ó I usually leave this out or leave out the verb and put in the name of the speaker. I like the finality of it, the summary quality.