Invocation
rage
goddess sing the rage
of Peleus' son Achilles
the accursed rage
which brought the Achaeans countless agonies
hurling down into Hades
many mighty shades of heroes
making them the prey of dogs and birds
so that the plan of Zeus was fulfilled
sing from the time
the two men were first divided in strife,
Agamemnon, lord of men, and glorious Achilles
Μῆνιν ἄειδε, θεά, Πηληϊάδεω Ἀχιλῆος
οὐλομένην, ἣ μυρί’ Ἀχαιοῖς ἄλγε’ ἔθηκε,
πολλὰς δ’ ἰφθίμους ψυχὰς Ἄϊδι προΐαψεν
ἡρώων, αὐτοὺς δὲ ἑλώρια τεῦχε κύνεσσιν
οἰωνοῖσί τε πᾶσι· Διὸς δ’ ἐτελείετο βουλή·
ἐξ οὗ δὴ τὰ πρῶτα διαστήτην ἐρίσαντε
Ἀτρεΐδης τε ἄναξ ἀνδρῶν καὶ δῖος Ἀχιλλεύς.
(I, 1-7)The generation of leaves
like the generations of leaves
so are those of humanity
the wind scatters the old leaves on the ground
but the live timber burgeons with new leaves again
in the season of spring returning
so one generation of men comes to life
while another dies away
οἵη περ φύλλων γενεὴ τοίη δὲ καὶ ἀνδρῶν.
φύλλα τὰ μέν τ’ ἄνεμος χαμάδις χέει, ἄλλα δέ θ’ ὕλη
τηλεθόωσα φύει, ἔαρος δ’ ἐπιγίνεται ὥρη:
ὣς ἀνδρῶν γενεὴ ἣ μὲν φύει ἣ δ’ ἀπολήγει.
(VI, 146-149)The Night Sky
as stars in the night sky
round the moon's brilliance
blaze in all their glory
when the air is windless
and all the mountain peaks stand out
and the jutting cliffs
and the steep ravines
and down from the high heavens
bursts the boundless bright air
and all the stars shine clear
and the shepherd rejoices in his heart
ὡς δ᾽ ὅτ᾽ ἐν οὐρανῷ ἄστρα φαεινὴν ἀμφὶ σελήνην
φαίνετ᾽ ἀριπρεπέα, ὅτε τ᾽ ἔπλετο νήνεμος αἰθήρ:
ἔκ τ᾽ ἔφανεν πᾶσαι σκοπιαὶ καὶ πρώονες ἄκροι
καὶ νάπαι: οὐρανόθεν δ᾽ ἄρ᾽ ὑπερράγη ἄσπετος αἰθήρ,
πάντα δὲ εἴδεται ἄστρα, γέγηθε δέ τε φρένα ποιμήν
(VIII, 555-559)
[Attic Black-figure Neck Amphora "Two Warriors Fighting Over a Corpse."
Workshop of Exekias, ca. 540 BCE]
The Iliad is an early Greek epic attributed to the shadowy poet Homer (8th c. BCE), although scholars agree that this form of poetry was probably first transmitted orally and only later written down. The title is taken from Ilios or Ilion, the ancient Greek name for Troy, a city located in Asia Minor on the northwest coast of Anatolia. The Trojan War was waged against the city of Troy by the Achaeans (Greeks) after Paris of Troy took Helen from her husband Menelaus, king of Sparta.
The main theme of the book is not so much the whole war, as an incident during the last period of the war: the "resentment of Achilles." He had claimed a girl, Briseis, as spoils of war. The expedition leader, Agamemnon, however, ordered him to part with her because he had had to give up his own spoils of war. Achilles is so furious about this unfairness and rank-pulling that he isolates himself and refuses to fight any further in the war. Achilles remains out of the picture for most of the book as the fighting continues and the Greeks find themselves in a dire situation. Only towards the end, after Achilles learns that his friend Patroklos has been killed by the Trojan Hektor, does he rejoin the war to take revenge on Hektor. This will eventually allow the Greeks to achieve victory.
That victory itself is not described, but from the predictions of gods and warriors it is known what the fate of all the protagonists in the story is and how the battle will end. The Iliad ends when Achilles is relieved of his grudge thanks to Hektor's death.
[The Rage of Achilles by Giovanni Battista Tiepolo, 1757]
Above I have cited three fragments which are often anthologized: the beginning of the epic, about Achilles' rage; the well-known simile in which Homer compares the life and death of humans with the effects that autumn and spring have on deciduous trees; and another simile about the bright moon in the night sky around which the stars are arranged as if around a leader. It is difficult to quote from a long narrative poem (reason why I skip Homer's other famous epic, the Odyssey), but these sections are deservedly famous.
Homer - to whom also the large epic The Odyssey has been ascribed - has grown into the Homeric Question: his name just serves as a label, we don't know anything at all about him (the view that he was a blind bard from Ionia, a region of central coastal Anatolia in present-day Turkey, is pure legend). Instead of having been written by a single poet of genius, it seems plausible that the Homeric poems were the result of a process of working and reworking by many contributors.
But the influence of the Homeric epics on Western civilization has been huge, inspiring many famous works of literature, music, art and film - as regards the Iliad, starting with Aeschylus' trilogy Oresteia, and to Shakespeare's Troilus and Cressida, the opera King Priam by Micheal Tippett, and the Hollywood film Troy.
The above versions are my composite of various translations.
Translations:
The Iliad, trans. Robert Fagles (Penguin, 1991)
The Iliad of Homer, trans. Richmond Lattimore (University of Chicago Press, 1951)
Also at Wikiquote.
Links to translations and commentaries at Wikisource
Greek text from Perseus Digital Library.
Photo:
Greek vase: Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons