EpicClassical · c. 750 BCStudy guide · no full textDemanding

The Iliad

Not a war epic so much as an epic about the cost of war to the people who win it. The most important scenes happen inside the enemy city.

War Power Mortality Honour

Study guide

This work is still in copyright, so there is no full text on the page. What you get instead: the context, the cast, the ideas and the themes — enough to read it well, and to know exactly what to watch for in the first thirty pages.

“Sing, goddess, the anger of Peleus' son Achilles.”

The cast, in the Character Atlas →Literary devices →Where it sits in time →

Go deeper

Mortality — how other works handle it →Power — how other works handle it →

Now read the first page with all of this in mind.

The notes here are the map; the book is the journey.

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