I was casual about the reading lists from my English courses in high school. “Recommended” reading looked different to me from required reading. I interpreted recommended as “not quite assigned.” When I read Edith Hamilton’s Mythology – the required starting point for what was at the time a 3-year Advanced Placement English curriculum – I was urged to pick up the Iliad and Odyssey as well. Nope. I had other things to do.
Half a century later, I am taking up Homer for real. My Substack adventures have led me to Michael Long’s edifying Beyond the Bookshelf site. Mr. Long’s creativity extends to sharing classics with his readers and hosting online discussions. Under his tutelage and organization, we’re spending 2025 on the Iliad and the Odyssey, a bit at a time.
No grade looms. No one’s going to call on me. There’s no one to impress. We’re just a bunch of adults exploring these works of art and literature, some of us for the first time.
We’re reading the Iliad first. I knew the gods of the tale would be meddlesome and flawed. Other aspects of the story catch me by surprise, such as the pitiless violence of the battles between Greeks and Trojans. As I read, I shudder at what must have been the fate of the wives and children of fallen warriors. (Yes, I’ve seen Euripides’s The Trojan Women performed. It will henceforth hit me harder.)
The story touches me differently than it would have half a century ago. I’m a more experienced and somewhat more discriminating reader. I’m a mother, and I’ve felt the apprehension that comes with seeing a child off to war. The cultural heritage of which the Iliad is a part can only be a vague thing to a tenth-grader; it’s of keen interest to me.
I’m reading with humility and gratitude, two things I had yet to develop back in the days when a teacher suggested that I read Homer. She knew what she was doing, even if it took me a long time to appreciate her efforts.
You won’t regret subscribing to Matthew Long’s Beyond the Bookshelf. Neither will you regret reading Hamilton’s Mythology, to which I return for reference time and again.
Mr. Long helpfully recommended translations of the Iliad by Fagles and Wilson. I had a free edition on my Kindle, an 1864 translation by the Earl of Derby, which I found difficult to read. I’ve settled on reading a prose translation by Butler which I found in a forgotten volume on a downstairs bookshelf, a hidden treasure in my own home.
This post is shared on the #OpenBook linkup hosted monthly by My Scribbler’s Heart and CatholicMom.com. Header image: attributed to the Hattat Painter, CC0, via Wikimedia Commons.
Ellen Kolb 