The Iliad

The poem covers only a few weeks near the end of the long siege of Troy. It opens with a quarrel: Agamemnon, leader of the Greek army, is forced to return a captive woman, and to save face he takes Briseis, the prize of Achilles. Furious and humiliated, Achilles withdraws with his men and asks his mother, the sea nymph Thetis, to make sure the Greeks suffer without him.

What follows is a vast, vivid story of battle and of the people inside it. On the Trojan side, noble Hector fights to defend the city, and in one of the most famous scenes says goodbye to his wife Andromache and their baby son on the walls. The Olympian immortals, Zeus, Hera, Athena, Apollo and others, take sides and intervene. When the Greeks are pushed back to their ships, Achilles's beloved friend Patroclus goes into battle wearing his armor, and what happens to him finally brings Achilles back to the war in grief and rage. The poem ends not with the fall of Troy but with an unexpected moment of shared sorrow between enemies.

Grand and sometimes harrowing, yet deeply human. About 704 pages, with an introduction and notes by Bernard Knox.