The Trojan War, although no one is certain, would have taken place around 1225 BC, the date chosen by the last archaeological works (carbon-14 dating) realized on the site of the Trojan No. VII, discovered by Schliemann in 1870. The story of Homer was composed in turn around the eighth century, between 850 and 750 BC. Those who know the adventures recounted in the Iliad and through its cinematic adaptations will be a bit disappointed after reading the book because there appear or the episode of the abduction of the beautiful Helen, nor that of the Trojan. Indeed, the Iliad, the Odyssey and its twin, the survivors are fragments of a more ambitious collective work known as the Trojan cycle and which we know the missing pieces that through the indirect testimony of contemporaries successors of Homer ....
The Iliad begins while the Achaean army, already present in Troas for ten years, has completed the destruction of small cities, allied of Troy, the Hellespont. A quarrel then opposes the generalissimo of the Greek armies, Agamemnon, king of Mycenae and brother of Menelaus, King of Sparta (and husband dishonored by the fickle Helena), the hero Achilles, the demigod son of the goddess Thetis and Peleus mortal, about the distribution of the spoils of war including the possession of a woman, the beautiful Briseis. Humbles Agamemnon Achilles decides that he and his Myrmidons not participate in the war against Ilion proud ... After many adventures and battles deadly clash where men and Gods, the book ends with the funeral Hector, the Trojan prince, son of King Priam and tamer of horses, not that we have seen the tail of a wooden horse ....
It is symptomatic that the first literary work bequeathed to posterity is a war song, an ode to the carnage, a hymn to the devastation. That says a lot about the underlying nature of mankind and his passion for evil for evil ... But the Iliad also proves something else, it is a fascinating and universal work, if one judging by the success it continues to win almost 3,000 years after his birth. It contains the whole range of human emotions, the complexity of the man face his destiny, whatever their degree of freedom and the will that manifests remains subject to forces beyond the physical, social forces or spiritual. The Gods that symbolize them are there to remind humans that even the bravest, Achilles and Hector eventually succumb ....
The Iliad is a demanding, difficult work to read, both in the style as by the number of characters, men, gods and demigods, integrate, and many of which are listed with their ancestry as rather die, struck down by the sharp bronze. But over the pages, we finally identify the main actors in the drama which is tied: Agamemnon, Menelaus, Odysseus, Diomedes, both Ajax, Patroclus, Paris, Aeneas, and of course Polydamas Achilles and Hector especially, true heroes history. For if Achilles, whiny, angry, has a maturity and self-control that are poor, not only to its near invincibility status of demigod, however Hector mortal among mortals, shows man duty, courageously taking up the fatal outcome his rank and his brother errors, cowardly and inconsistent Paris, for which he yet never harsh enough words ...
To appreciate the Iliad in all its fullness, it is important to choose the right version of a book, there are multiple translations. This one, in prose modernized in 1943, rebuilt in 1956 and 1961. It is the work of Mario Meunier, distinguished Hellenist and incidentally veteran of the Great War, of whom a college is named today. It will appeal to readers sensitive to the classical style, emphatic, almost theatrical, which attaches great importance to passionate declamations and rhythm of the sentence. Iliad
A great book for a legendary epic ....
