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My first read of the Iliad surprised me with what it is not. It doesn't describe the departure of Agamemnon's armies (or the role of his daughter Iphegenia), t
by chasil 3y ago
My first read of the Iliad surprised me with what it is not.
It doesn't describe the departure of Agamemnon's armies (or the role of his daughter Iphegenia), the fall of Troy due to the horse, the journey back, or the fates of those who returned.
It really only addresses the fate of two characters, Patroclus and Hector.
It's like an old Polaroid photo of the Grand Canyon - none of the major stories fit within it.
- adrian_b 3y agoThere have been many other epic poems which described the rest of the war, but they have been lost and we know their content only from summaries or short quotations included in later texts. The Iliad and the Odyssey were considered the best from all those poems, so they were used in schools and they were preserved in much more copies than the others, which ensured their survival.
- chasil 3y agoActually, if you want the bigger picture of the Trojan war, Virgil's Aeneid and the plays of Aeschylus and Euripides will go much further.