This was a knowledgeable if dense look at not just the text of the Iliad but its origins. Definitely assumes a higher level of understanding and is probably not for the casual reader.

Utterly brilliant and very well written. I highly recommend this and will use it for work. I recommend all classics students purchase a copy,

This was not the book that I was looking for, but that might not be the fault of the book.

I was planning to visit Greece for the first time in my life. This seemed a good time to also read The Iliad, also for the first time in my life. I had a copy of the Richmond Lattimore translation of The Iliad, plus A Companion to the Iliad: Based on the Translation of Richmond Lattimore, by Malcolm M. Willcock. The latter is an excellent assistant, with a detailed line-by-line key to the many, many aspects of The Iliad which might easily get by you if your education is as lamentably lacking as mine.

Just about this time, Netgalley offered this book as a free advance electronic copy. I thought: Oh, great, this will be like having an expert friend at my elbow, enhancing my appreciation of this book. While the author is certainly an expert, he is not like the ideal expert friend. He is more like that friend who knows a lot about something and assumes that everyone else knows it, too. For example, at the book's beginning (Kindle location 102), the author says “I have not presupposed knowledge of the poem”, yet later there is a lot of explanation of how poetic meter works in ancient Greek, which (in my opinion) required some knowledge of how ancient Greek is pronounced. This would be almost impossible to acquire without also knowing quite a bit about The Iliad.

The most interesting part of the book, for me, was about the story behind the story, by which I mean, such questions as: Homer: individual or committee? When did the poem get written down? Did Homer write it down himself? If not, then who? How long did the poem exist in purely oral form before it was written down?

The author has the habit of pronouncing people with whom he disagrees on subjective matters (e.g., Simone Weil (location 4446), Adam Nicholson (location 7810)) are wrong, which I guess is the way it works in academia, but if you tell me someone else's ideas are wrong, I want you to tell me exactly why. If you don't have the space or inclination to do so, don't tell me that they are wrong, let me decide for myself.

In the fourth part of this book, the author selected his favorite ten books (of The Iliad’s 24), which, he promised, would help readers have more of a grasp of the poem as a whole, but I don't think the author carried out his promise. It was hard to tell what the point of this entire section was, except to let the author write about things which interested him.

Perhaps my opinion of this book was influenced by my opinion of The Iliad. As is the case with many people in this age, The Odyssey, a story of a man trying to get home to his family, speaks to me more directly than The Iliad, which can be interpreted as powerful people sending less powerful people to slaughter for the lowest selfishly personal reasons while mouthing the cliches of honor, courage, glory, etc.

I received a free advance electronic copy of this book from the publisher via Netgalley.

A thousand ships are grounded on a remote shore, where an army of Achaean warriors has fought for ten years to recover a beautiful, absconding queen from a bride-stealing Trojan prince. Homer’s epic narrative of this struggle—among the most influential memes in Western culture—has inspired acolytes and retellers for nearly or, arguably, at least 3000 years.

Scholars have trotted out scads of grandly academic questions about Homer’s Iliad. Among them: Did this clash of arms really happen as its creator or creators describe it? Was the doomed city we now call Troy a real place? Could a lone—and purportedly blind—poet have composed this fifteen-thousand-verse masterpiece from scratch, and in his head? Other commentators skirt the scholarly controversies, maintaining that the Iliad is so brilliant an artistic achievement that the underlying facts of its creation are less important than its sheer power and narrative unity.

Oxford classicist Robin Lane Fox, in Homer and his Iliad, gracefully straddles the critical divide. For him, the Iliad’s historicity and provenance are matters of high concern, as is the actuality of a single, oft-visualized Homer himself. At the same time, Lane Fox passionately declares, the poem is a brilliantly constructed and profoundly moving work of art.

With septuagenarian erudition and insight, Lane Fox weighs in elegantly on both streams of Homeric commentary, the academic and the aesthetic, drawing on his decades of scholarly familiarity and classroom experience with the poem.

But first, a refresher, story-wise…the Achaeans have been skirmishing before the walls of Troy for a decade when their leader, Agamemnon, thuggishly appropriates the captured mistress of the peerless Achaean warrior Achilles. [Trigger Warning: the whole sexual slavery convention is a hatefully reprehensible notion but, still, it’s the inciting incident in the Iliad’s plot.] This insult to Achilles’ pride causes the outraged warrior to sit out the hostilities for a time, which in turn shifts the balance in the struggle and brings on its climactic events.

Along the way, Homer gives us bloody one-on-one engagements galore, behind-the-scenes domestic episodes on the Trojan side, a slew of extended similes comparing battle tactics to scenes from nature, and an ensemble of loquacious deities taking sides in the fighting. Inspired complexities all.

Lane Fox addresses the tangled challenges of the poem’s historical origins at the outset, covering when and where the war might really have happened, and if the poet we’ve come to know as Homer truly walked the earth. He weighs in with well-argued (and thoroughly cited) assurance, delivering a crash course in the geography of coastal Asia Minor and the pioneering investigations of 19th century German amateur Hans Schliemann in locating the likely site of the city. As for Homer himself, Lane Fox mounts a speculative discussion of the poet’s seeming familiarity with the area’s topography that seems to clinch the case.
But is Lane Fox’s Homer the primary creative genius behind the Iliad? Which is to say, is the epic an artfully crafted narrative helmed by a single creator, rather than a farflung cohort of oral performers?

“Some [analysts] regard the Iliad as a patchwork stitched together from separate short songs of which only some were by Homer. Others regard it as a rolling snowball, whose nucleus was composed by Homer, but which grew when others added bits to it over time…”

Lane Fox leans hard into the snowball school’s position, citing the footprints of genius and conscious aesthetic design in story structure and characterization. “Achilles is a constant, brooding presence in the poem, even in physical absence…The Iliad's plot is so pervasively signposted that a single author is evidently guiding its course. This author is certainly an individual ‘he’, not a long impersonal tradition…”

The epic poetry of pre-classical Greece may hold little interest for most modern—and time-pressed—readers, but Robin Lane Fox has produced a commentary on its shining star that urges, at the least, a passing (re)read by the intrigued.

It seems that the world has rediscovered its fascination with Ancient Greece and this book is fantastic fuel for that fire. Excellently written and chock full of facts, a fantastic reference book for a classic piece of literature.

I'm fascinated by Homer's Iliad and the world he writes about, but I don't have any kind of real specialist knowledge on any subject connected with it. So I was hoping for a book that had something that might be a 'behind the scenes' look into the Iliad or the world that scholars currently think Homer was writing about. There was definitely some of that here, and I really enjoyed the sections on the archaeology behind what is now believed to be the site of Troy. A lot of it was interesting, though got a little too in-depth for me as a casual reader and would probably appeal more to a more scholarly reader. This might be a book I recommend a casual reader take in small pieces so they don't get too overwhelmed when reading about whether Homer existed, where and when he might have lived, how he might have written (or not), and the world he lived in versus the world he wrote about.

Interesting, but it felt more like it was written towards scholars than the casual reader and I definitely got overwhelmed sometimes.

I received an ARC of this book from NetGalley in exchange for an honest review

As someone who's attempted to start the Iliad many times but never finished, I appreciate Fox's background on the poem and how it was composed. A great defense of a classic and why it should still be relevant.

My thanks to both NetGalley and the publisher Basic Books for an advanced copy of this book on the the history of a work that actually deserves the word epic, a poem that continues to inspire, cause scholarly debates and wars, while inspiring others in many different ways.

I grew up in a small town that had a great library. So great that even during the worse of the Satanic Panic, and while everything for kids was cut, or ignored, still let us have Dungeons and Dragons in the meeting room. There was an interesting mix of young and old, private school and public school, and a lot of different ideas, far different than the ones I would have with my friends. One kid who went to private school starting talking about trying to make an campaign out of the siege of Troy. It had gods, battles, maybe add some creatures, it could be a blast. We were all versed on every fantasy book imaginable, but Troy, that was new. What books were these? Well its a poem and epic poem. And that is where I first heard of Homer, and the Iliad and the Odyssey. Being at the library made it easy to get a copy, and even cooler were the Cliff Notes. And minds were blown. So much so that all my talking made my brother interested, and he went on to write about Homer in college, for his degree. Homer is not one I read often, in fact I have probably read more books about the Iliad, or pastiches than I have read the Iliad or the Odyssey. However the story has always fascinated me. And the same for Robin Lane Fox. Homer and His Iliad is a look at the history of this epic, from ideas of where it came from, why it was written, and why it continues to have a hold on people so many years later.

The book begins with an introduction not to the work but to the writer, Fox, discussing his fascination with Homer and the Iliad, and what background he brings to the discussion. Fox discusses the translations, the longevity of the poem and its influence on writers and historians, both good and bad. From there the book is broken into five sections. The first is Where. Where was Homer from, was there a Homer, how did a blind mind do research, along with mentions and excavations of cities that are mentioned in the Iliad. Following that is How, dealing with the creation of poem, focusing on the idea of the oral tradition, and again how Homer could learn such a long work. When deals with both when the writing began, and also more importantly when the events transpired, using archeology, and other studies. The forth section deals with the acts committed by heroes, and villains, and the Gods, the wars, the battles, the curses, and other events that add so much atmosphere. Followed by a look at the different worlds in the book. The world of man, the world of the gods, and the world of women, and how these worlds influence so much of the storytelling.

Robin Land Fox is quick to point out that he is not a Homeric scholar, but Fox is a historian, and has taught Greek and Latin, which sounds pretty good to me. The book is very interesting, and broad, looking at many details that some would not think would go together, and yet the book flows very well, never bogging down in esoterica. If Fox doesn't have an answer, he admits it and moves on. If he extrapolates there is always a few ideas why, based on the work of others that he admits good be right, but that we will never really know. Fox is a very good writer, sometimes assuming the reader is a tad smarter than the reader actually is, but never writing in a style that made me throw my hands up and go I don't get it. This book is a book from a fan, who wants to share what this fan has learned over 40 years, and hopes that one will enjoy it also.

This is a book for readers of the Iliad, readers who are new to the Iliad, or even more, for people who might even be teaching it to students. I really enjoyed it far more than I thought I would, and know that I will be buying a copy for my brother for the holidays.

Over the course of my life, I've accumulated a total of 23 translations (and counting) of Homer's The Iliad. Do not, however, ask me which translation is the "best," I didn't collect them for comparative purposes, I'm not a scholar or have any kind of formal education in the Classics; it was all love for the epic poem. The same love that compelled me to pick up Lane Fox's excellent historical and literary analysis of The Iliad.

Robin Lane Fox isn't a specialist in Homeric studies either, but he shares this love and it shines in this book. He writes persuasively and accessibly, he isn't super-dense and doesn't wander around, so even readers with little knowledge of the Iliad will find this easy to read. I'd dare say that even those that haven't read the Iliad might, though I'd also argue you do need to have at least a summed-up knowledge of the plot from pop culture, in order to understand what Lane Fox is getting at.

The author has divided the book in five neat parts, each dealing with a specific aspect of the epic poem, from its author to its cultural impact in our day. For me, the most intriguing and thought-provoking were Parts I, II and III, in which Lane Fox presents arguments of his own on still hotly debated in academia questions such as "Where?" "How?" and "When?" did the poem get composed. Whilst I by no means possess the academic training to debate or rebate his arguments, his conclusions that Homer did indeed exist and was one real author who composed The Iliad whilst singing and then his heirs put it down in writing were sensible and well-argued to my lay fan understanding. Others might think otherwise, but I can't personally disagree; it's all arguments I've seen in one form or another by other scholars as well, so they're not entirely new as to be a surprise or otherwise unpersuasive.

The last two parts, IV and V, deal with the Greek conception of heroes and the heroic. What did they understand by hero in Homer's time and in Classical Antiquity in general? It's a very different world to ours, so it had to be a different conception to ours, which accounts for why most people find it difficult to see how Greek mythic characters could even be deemed "heroic" if they're not "good people" in our modern conception. It also deals with the gods and their behaviour, which also tends to shock our modern sensibilities. It's nothing new to Homer fans and Greek history buffs, but it'll help the general public understand the ancients' worldview better.

All in all, 4.5 stars rounded up for an excellent book! Thorough, readable, well-researched, and on point.

Like many people my age, my first experience of The Iliad was in high school. Even though many of the ancient poem’s richness no doubt eluded my adolescent mind, I still knew there was something about it that drew me in, and I suspect it is at least partially responsible for my enduring love of and fascination with antiquity. When I saw that NetGalley had a copy of Homer and His Iliad, by the noted Oxford historian and classicist Robin Lane Fox–whose works I have much enjoyed in the past–I immediately requested one. And, as soon as I sat down and started reading it, I found myself completely enthralled.

What Fox has given us is a rich, textured, and erudite examination of Homer’s magnificent poem, and it will soon come, I think, to be regarded as one of the best guide’s to one of western literature’s most beloved and influential literary works. Fox’s obvious love for Homer shines through every chapter of the book, whether he’s discussing the topography that the poet drew on as he created his awe-inspiring story about the wrath of Achilles and its impact on the armed efforts of the Greeks or the way that the poem gives a remarkably empathetic insight into the lives of its women, particularly Helen, Hecuba, and Andromache.

Among other things, Fox offers his own interpretation of the authorship question, one of the most contentious issues within Homeric scholarship. He proposes that there was, in fact, one author of the poem, that he likely composed while he was singing, and that the poem might have been written down by his descendants. In formulating this theory, Fox draws not only on aspects of the poem itself but also on anthropological studies that have pointed out how various groups have undertaken a similar compositional process. Fox also argues, compellingly, I think, that The Iliad shows evidence of Homer having actually visited the site of Troy itself. The level of detail that the speaker evokes time and again shows, Fox argues, an intimate familiarity with the terrain that could only have emerged from someone who had actually been there.

What I found particularly useful about Homer and His Iliad is the extent to which it breathes fresh life into the poem itself. Even if you’ve read it dozens of times in all of its many translations (for me, Lattimore’s remains my favorite), there’s always something new to appreciate, some new facet that is just waiting to be brought into the light. I appreciated the depth with which Fox engaged with his subject, pointing out both the expected elements of the poem–Achilles’ wrath, the nature of the gods, the world that the poem depicts with such detail, its clever and subtle use of language–and also those elements which some might not have always paid attention to. In this regard, I particularly appreciated his attention to the women in the poem, for while The Iliad isn’t quite as finely attuned to the experiences and mindsets of its female characters as, say, The Odyssey, there are still some key moments when their voices can be heard even amid the din of battle.

Fox concludes his book with a discussion of the powerful pathos that remains one of the most extraordinary things about The Iliad. Though it is of course very much about the anger of Achilles and the meddling of the gods and the thrill and brutality and ugliness of battle, it is also about feeling, about allowing us to see how heavy weights the hand of fate on the great and the small alike. From Fox’s point of view, the sense of pathos is made even more wrenching by the fact that so much of the poem is premised on a certain level of dramatic irony, in that the characters labor without the knowledge that we, the readers/listeners, possess.

A word to the wise, however. There are times when Fox does get a bit deep into the weeds when it comes to examining The Iliad. While a thorough knowledge of the poem isn’t absolutely necessary to appreciate his work, it definitely helps to have read it at least somewhat recently. Nevertheless, despite this, there is still a great deal in Fox’s book that is sure to appeal to both classicists and laypeople alike. It will open your eyes to new avenues of appreciation for one of the great works of western literature. If, like me, The Iliad has always been one of your favorite texts, then I think you will find much to reward you in Homer and His Iliad. And if you have yet to fully explore its depths and its thematic and linguistic richness, then you couldn’t ask for a better guide to Homer’s genius than Robin Lane Fox.

Robin Lane Fox is a knowledgeable historian, familiar with both the history and geography of the Iliad. I have read only parts of the Iliad, although reading Fox's work has inspired me to plan a full reading in the near future.

One of the questions I've always had about the Iliad is whether or not Homer actually lived, or whether "Homer" represents a conglomerate of oral histories/narratives. Fox approaches this question methodically and although I remain unsure, I have new facts to consider along with Fox's excellent interpretation of the debate.

Fox's explanation of the geography of the Iliad's setting provided me with a background I'd previously lacked. I do find it remarkable that Homer described topography that existed decades prior to the Iliad's events or, in some cases, invented topography that while making sense, likely never actually existed.

As for the claim that we could never write an Iliad today, I believe this is true for a number of reasons. When the Iliad was first composed, oral retelling was a necessity. Today, the written word is accessible nearly everywhere on Earth. It is unusual, if not unheard of, for great works to be crafted over time as the Iliad was. Translations may offer a glimpse into this type of crafting, however translation technology helps to preserve the original narrative and most works don't deviate much as a result. The Iliad was perfected over time via clarification, additions, likely omissions. This is something that Fox delves into very well.

Would I recommend this book? Yes. I recommend it to an audience of readers interested in delving into questions after reading the Iliad, those familiar with Homer's work, those familiar with Trojan War history, Greek history or perhaps even Turkish history or anyone interested in learning more about the questions scholars have raised for centuries about Homer and the Iliad.