“Now tell me, Muses/ who have your houses high on Mount Olympus/ For you are goddesses, and you are here/ and you know everything, you see it all/ while we can only listen to the stories—we have seen nothing and we do not know.“ (Wilson 41, lines 579-584)
In 1785 a statesman living in Paris took up his pen to write to his nephew. The young fellow was about to embark on a diplomatic career of his own and wanted his uncle’s advice as to what he ought to read to improve his mind and his understanding of history.
And oh, did his uncle have advice.
“I have long ago digested a plan for you, suited to the circumstances in which you will be placed,” he wrote. “I advise you to begin a course of ancient history, reading everything in the original and not in translations. First read Goldsmith’s history of Greece. This will give you a digested view of that field. Then take up ancient history in the detail, reading the following books in the following order: Herodotus, Thucydides, Xenophon Anabasis, Arrian, Quintus Curtius, Diodorus Siculus, Justin. This shall form the first stage of your historical reading, and is all I need mention to you now.”
Well, of course. You wouldn’t want to overwhelm the boy.
He went on: “The next will be of Roman history. From that we will come down to modern history. In Greek and Latin poetry, you have read or will read at school, Virgil, Terence, Horace, Anacreon, Theocritus, Homer, Euripides, Sophocles.” (Wright 225)
“At school, you’ll have read Homer”, he says. School, in the late 18th century, meant roughly from age seven to age 15. Knowledge of those Greek and Roman poets was a requirement for entry into most European universities – when our statesman would go on to establish his own university in 1817, he would require them, too. (An elder colleague of his, who also founded a university, let students in even if they had only read these works in translation. This elder statesman once remarked, while traveling in Italy, that a good recipe for making Parmesan cheese would “give me more satisfaction than a transcript of any inscription from any stone whatever.”) (Franklin, quoted in Roberts)
Our statesman took up his pen again in 1787 to write to a French acquaintance of his about an article in the newspaper which had piqued his patriotic pride.
“I see by the Journal of this morning that they are robbing us of another of our inventions to give it to the English,” he sniffed. “The writer indeed only admits them to have revived what he thinks was known to the Greeks, that is the making the circumference of a wheel of one single piece. The farmers in New Jersey were the first who practiced it, and they practiced it commonly . . . . The writer in the paper supposes the English workman got his idea from Homer. But it is more likely that the Jersey farmer got the idea from thence, because ours are the only farmers who can read Homer.” (Jefferson to Crèvecoeur, 15 Jan. 1787)
I have to say, that’s really not a claim we Americans make about our farmers anymore, and it almost certainly wasn’t true at the time. But Thomas Jefferson – for it was he who wrote these letters – was more of a romantic than people often let on. By boasting that farmers in the newly fledged United States could read Homer, he was saying that the country was truly civilized. From the lowest to the highest class – at least in Jefferson’s mind – men could navigate the thickets of ancient Greek dactylic hexameter to uncover glories and tragedies, glittering mythology, echoes of history—and, on occasion, advice for making a better wagon wheel.
I’m Rose Judson. Welcome to Books of All Time.
Books of All Time is a podcast that’s tackling classic literature in chronological order. This is episode nine: The Iliad, Part One – We Wretched Mortals. As always, if you want to read the transcript of this episode or see the references I used to write it, you can visit our website, www.booksofalltime.co.uk. There’s a link in the show notes if you need it. Let’s begin.
So, here we are. Homer. The big stuff. The first name most people think of when they think of “Ancient Literature” (capital letters, there). The two major works attributed to Homer, The Iliad and The Odyssey, are probably the most-analyzed works of western literature out there. That’s partly because of their age – the earliest-known written copies of the poems date back to 800 BCE, so 2,800 years. Assuming that a generation lasts twenty years, we have had 141 generations of people discussing Homer, arguing about Homer, creating art and new literature based on Homer, and sometimes even reading Homer.
It’s a remarkable survival. It’s even more remarkable when you consider that those 2,800-year-old fragments of Homer probably hearken back to oral poetry composed centuries before that. From what most scholars can tell, the poems of The Iliad and The Odyssey probably began to circulate around 1500 BCE, which is roughly the same time that our friends in northwestern India were writing down the hymns of The Rig Veda. The Iliad is very much a story from the Bronze Age, but I’ve put it where I’ve put it in this show’s chronology based on the earliest texts, which are from the Iron Age.
Consisting of 15,000 lines of poetry spread across 24 “books” (chapters, basically), The Iliad tells the story of the siege of Troy by a federation of Greek-speaking warriors. Well, part of the story. The siege of Troy lasted ten full years, but the plot of The Iliad only covers 50 days in the ninth year of that siege. (And why’s it called The Iliad, you ask? Because another name for the region was Ilium.)
For this episode, I read the wonderful new translation of The Iliad by Emily Wilson – a classicist based at the University of Pennsylvania, which was founded by Benjamin Franklin, the statesman who loved Parmesan cheese more than he loved Latin. Wilson’s translation is currently only available in hardback – it came out just last year – so grab it from a local bookshop or have a look to see if it’s at your local library. It’s worth your time.
And now, I’m going to drop you straight into the story, because that’s what Homer does, kicking things off with a banger of an intro:
“Goddess, sing of the cataclysmic wrath
of great Achilles, son of Peleus,
which caused the Greeks immeasurable pain
and sent so many noble souls of heroes
to Hades, and made men the spoils of dogs.” (Wilson 1: 1-5)
We find ourselves immediately among the Greek camp, which is in a bay near “the hollow ships”. Now into the ninth year of their siege of the walled city of Troy, the Greeks have taken to raiding the countryside for supplies to keep body and soul together, and loot to keep the men committed to the cause.
A priest from one of the villages around Troy has arrived at the camp. His name is Chryses, a priest of Apollo. He’s seeking an audience with the most powerful leader of the federation, Agamemnon, king of Mycenae. In their most recent smash-and-grab mission, the Greeks carried off several women to be kept as trophies, including Chryses’s daughter, Chryseis. Agamemnon chose this poor girl for himself.
Chryses presents himself humbly, with his golden priest’s staff and diadem held before him. He offers Agamemnon gifts in exchange for the return of his daughter – gifts, and a promise that he will intercede with Apollo to give the Greeks victory against the Trojans. But Agamemnon’s not having it. He likes his toy.
He says he won the girl fair and square, and nothing Chryses can say will change that. “Be off with you, old man,” Agamemnon declares, “and don’t come back, or I’ll have you killed.”
Chryses goes. Homer tells us he walked alone down the shoreline, away from the ships and the pitiless, haughty Greeks in their bronze armor. You can picture him shaking with fear and anguish for his daughter. He can’t face down an army by himself. So there, as the waves lap foam over his feet, he looks up and prays to his god, Apollo, begging him to punish Agamemnon and his people. “Fulfil this prayer for me, and let the Greeks / suffer your arrows to avenge my tears!” (Wilson 3)
Apollo hears him, and he’s only too happy to help. He speeds down from Mount Olympus, where the Gods dwell with his bow in hand, peppering his golden arrows among the Greek camp. A plague breaks out. Men begin to die, and their bodies are heaped up and burned before the ships for nine days. It’s at this point that another of the Olympians intervenes – and it’s at this point that I’ll pause to tell you, briefly, about how the gods operate in this story.
So, there’s a Team Greeks vs. Team Trojans dynamic happening here. Different gods take different sides in the conflict. Apollo is team Trojan, along with the goddess Aphrodite. Hera, wife of the chief god Zeus, is Team Greek. When gods are moving among the mortals, they’re usually either invisible or in disguise, unless they want to be seen. And, of course, they are a hilariously messy, fractious bunch – the Real Housewives of Mount Olympus.
Anyway. Hera (Team Greek, remember) now appears in the camp, disguised as a soldier. She sidles up to the great hero Achilles. While Agamemnon is considered the most powerful political leader, because he brought the most soldiers, Achilles is the most powerful warrior. In fact, like our old friend Gilgamesh, he is semi-divine: his father was a petty king called Peleus; his mother is a minor sea-goddess named Thetis.
“This plague is Apollo’s doing,” Hera tells Achilles. “He listened to the old priest’s lament. Go get that blockhead Agamemnon to see sense, will you?”
Achilles summons a council. “We can’t handle war and plague,” he tells Agamemnon. “We need to find out how we can placate Apollo.” It’s decided that they have to give Chryseis back to her father without demanding anything in return.
Agamemnon – not making a great impression so far, is he, Agamemnon? – is furious. This girl Chryseis belongs to him; she’s his prize. He brought the most soldiers and ships to Troy, and now they expect him to give up what he won fair and square? Achilles tells him to quit whining. There’ll be plenty more to go around when they finally take the city.
“Are you telling me what to do, pretty boy?” Agamemnon snarls. “You can’t talk to me like that even if your mother is a goddess. I’ll do it as long as you give me your trophy, Briseis. If not, I’m happy to keep burning bodies.”
Achilles is on the point of drawing his sword to kill Agamemnon when suddenly someone grabs him by his golden hair and pulls him back. It’s another Olympian from Team Greek: the goddess Athena. “Don’t fight him,” she says to Achilles. “We need you to win the war. Give in to him now, and you’ll be rewarded later.”
Achilles is not about to disobey the goddess who sprang fully formed from the forehead of Zeus. He puts his sword away. He decides to stick it to Agamemnon metaphorically, if not literally. He calls him a coward and a blowhard. He says he’ll go on strike, him and all the men he brought with him, and soon Agamemnon will be sorry. He marches off to his ship, closely followed by his retinue, in a semi-divine huff.
“Whatever,” says Agamemnon. He orders the next-most-important Greek lord, Odysseus, to sail Chryseis and a hundred assorted livestock animals – what’s known as a hecatomb – around the coast to her father’s village. There Odysseus can make the exchange and sacrifice a bunch of animals to Apollo for extra credit.
Once that’s in progress, Agamemnon orders a couple of heralds to go and take Briseis from Achilles. After she’s gone, Achilles goes and has a little cry by the seashore. “MOOOOOM,” he calls, and Thetis appears. “Help me make Agamemnon pay for this,” Achilles whimpers. “Go talk to Zeus and ask him to let the Trojans win – not completely, just for a little bit, so Agamemnon suffers.”
“Of course, baby,” says Thetis. Off she flies to Mount Olympus, where she begs Zeus very prettily for a favor. “Give the Trojans power until the Greeks respect my son and grant him glory,” she says. (Wilson 20)
Zeus isn’t sure about this – he’s more or less stayed out of this whole contretemps for the last decade. It would anger his wife, Hera, if he did anything to help the Trojans, even temporarily.
But Thetis guilt-trips him until he agrees. She flits off to tell Achilles the good news, while Zeus withdraws to the hall of the gods. He immediately gets into an argument with Hera: she suspects he’s up to something; he tells her to drop it, or she’ll feel the back of his hand – and poor lame Hephaestus has to intervene, begging his mother to do as Zeus says. She does, and they have an evening of feasting and singing.
Later, in the small hours of the night, Zeus sends a deceptive dream down to Agamemnon. In the dream, Agamemnon’s trusted counselor Nestor appears by his bed, telling him that now is the time to make an assault on the city of Troy – the Greek forces will be divinely protected! The gods have chosen to take his side after all! Agamemnon wakes and decides, after relating his dream to a select group of the lords, to administer a cruel test to the common warriors, to see who’s still loyal to him. “I had a dream that we would be destroyed, friends,” he tells them. He plays on their homesickness:
“Great Zeus has let nine years go by. The timbers
and cables of our ships are rotten through.
Our wives and little children sit at home
waiting, and we still have not done the work
for which we came here.” (Wilson 29-30)
Naturally many of the ordinary men are overjoyed to hear that they’re going home. They rush around, packing their things, readying the ships. Athena once again comes down to give one of the Greeks a nudge – this time it’s Odysseus she taps, and he begins working on the men to get them in line, cooing platitudes at the anxious ones, administering thumps on the head to the stubborn ones. Eventually order is restored, and Agamemnon’s little trick is revealed. This ticks off one of the common men, Thersites, who is ugly, annoying, rude—and absolutely right as he starts ranting at Agamemnon.
“What do you need?
What is your grievance? You already have
Huts full of bronze and full of handpicked women
Whom we Greek warriors assigned to you.” (Wilson 33)
He says that everything Agamemnon has was won for him by ordinary soldiers – and possibly Achilles, who was a model of rectitude after Agamemnon humiliated him in front of everyone.
This gets Thersites a thrashing from Odysseus, which the men appreciate – there’s no love for speaking truth to power here in the Bronze-Age Adriatic basin. Then Odysseus addresses them, revealing that he saw an omen of his own when they took Chryseis back to her father. A snake came from under the altar, devoured eight sparrow chicks and their mother, and then was turned to stone. He takes this to mean that they will defeat the Trojans in the tenth year of fighting.
Nestor – the real Nestor – finally mentions the causus belli for those of us in the audience: the Greeks have gone to war because Paris, the son of King Priam of Troy, seduced a beautiful Greek queen named Helen and ran off with her, taking quite a lot of treasure with him in the process. Helen was married to Agamemnon’s brother Menelaus. This is what this whole operation boils down to: it was meant to be a simple raid to get this woman back.
Stirred up by the speeches, the men prepare for war. And then we get the famous catalog of ships. The poet declares:
“I could not tell or name the multitude,
Not even if I had ten tongues, ten mouths
A voice that never broke, a heart of bronze” (Wilson 41)
Bless me, the poet sure tries, though. He rattles through the names of the chief lords, naming 29 contingents of Greeks which have 46 captains and a total of 1,186 ships. You’ve got to imagine that when this was performed live, this section had to be especially dramatic in an attempt to hold people’s attention. Maybe members of the audience would listen for their home region to be mentioned and give a cheer, the way concert audiences do when the lead singer yells “THANK YOU, CLEVELAND!”
As a reader, it’s not too bad to get through. I appreciate how Homer weaves in lots of little biographical details about the captains, or descriptions of each city or region. A lot of it washes over you even if you’re taking care to read carefully, but some things stand out: the fact that there are other half-divine men here, sons of Ares, the god of War, and of Hercules. It’s notable that Odysseus has a paltry 12 ships with him – compare that to Agamemnon, with 100, or even Nestor, with 90. And also the fact that there are two guys named Ajax who will both be important later.
And where’s Achilles? He is sulking in his hut, of course. I hope he had some kind of hobby to occupy himself – the Bronze Age equivalent of ice cream and a TV binge. Although given that he’s famous and pretty, in our era he’d most likely be posting his way through it on TikTok.
Anyway, after the catalog, Iris, the messenger goddess who serves Zeus (temporarily Team Trojan), goes zipping off to Troy to warn King Priam that the Greeks are mustering. We get a (much shorter) catalog of the Trojan contingent. Chief among them is Hector, elder son of King Priam, who is a warrior to rival Achilles, Aeneas, who is a mortal son of Aphrodite, and Priam’s younger son Paris, the wife-stealer. Hector gets his men armed and the Trojans march out of the city to face the Greeks.
A brief note on warfare: both sides have charioteers and footsoldiers. The chariots are a two-man affair: a driver who controls the horses and a fighter who’s either shooting arrows, throwing javelins, or thrusting a spear. Everyone’s in bronze armor; their weapons are bronze. This is brutal, personal, hack-and-slash fighting.
As soon as Menelaus spots Paris, he jumps down out of his chariot and strides forward, ready to kill. Paris, frightened, slinks back into the mass of soldiers, but he’s called out by Hector—his own brother, remember—for being a coward.
“Pathetic Paris! Womanizer! Cheat!
You are the very best at looking pretty.
Oh, how I wish that you had never lived
Or died unmarried.” (Wilson 58)
Way harsh, Hector. Paris takes this on the chin, to his credit, and says that Hector shouldn’t blame him because Aphrodite has taken his side. “How about this,” he suggests. “I’ll fight Menelaus in single combat to decide this whole thing once and for all. Winner takes Helen and the wealth, and that’s that.”
Hector confers with the Greeks, who agree to this. The mass of soldiers withdraw, laying down their weapons and clearing a space for the fight. Iris goes back into Troy to tell Helen what is about to happen. Helen, who’s busy weaving a tapestry about the war, and who seems thoroughly unhappy with her choices in life, goes out of her chambers to the walls of the city to see what she can see.
King Priam is there, and Helen describes the various commanders to him – Odysseus, apparently, is a short, hairy guy with a barrel chest. Tragically, she notes that she doesn’t see her brothers, the twins named Castor and Pollux. “Maybe they were ashamed of me and didn’t come,” she says. But the poet tells us that they never left Sparta because they are buried there, dead in some other conflict.
Anyhow, the duel begins. And, no surprise, Menelaus is the better fighter, even though his blows come to nothing. He throws a spear at Paris which just misses. He whacks Paris with his sword, but it breaks on his helmet. Furious and frustrated, Menelaus grabs the horsehair plume on Paris’s helmet, which has a strap under the chin Paris can’t undo, and drags him back toward the Greeks.
Aphrodite realizes her pet Paris is in trouble. She breaks the strap on the helmet. Paris scrambles up and tries to run for it. He’s about to be skewered by Menelaus when Aphrodite wraps him up in a magical mist and teleports him back into his bedroom in Troy. Then she goes to Helen. “Your husband is waiting for you,” she says. “Go visit him and cheer him up.”
Helen is disgusted. “Paris just lost his fight! For all I know Menelaus is my husband again. Go snuggle with Paris yourself!”
Aphrodite doesn’t appreciate back talk. She warns Helen that if she disobeys, Aphrodite will abandon her, and let her die a terrible death. Helen, cowed, goes to Paris’s bedroom. She calls him a coward and tells him she’s ashamed of him and wishes they were both dead. He tells her she’s so hot when she’s angry. They have sex.
Back on the battlefield, Agamemnon declares his brother the winner of the duel – by default, if by nothing else – and demands that the Trojans pay up as agreed. There’s argument, a stalemate – then Athena slips in among the Trojans and convinces a dim-witted archer named Pandarus to shoot at Menelaus. It’s a good shot, but Athena brushes it aside so it just causes a nasty flesh wound.
The sight of blood running down Menelaus’s thigh is enough for Agamemnon – he yells at the men to get moving. The Greeks start putting their armor back on, and so do the Trojans, and then we have the first proper battle. It’s got a lot of repetitive tags and similes that Homer uses to fill space in the line – “his armor clattered about him”, “black night covered his eyes”, “his words took wing,” “godlike so-and-so.”
But it’s also fantastically, imaginatively gory – spears are thrust right through heads, intestines spill onto the dusty earth, and there’s even one poor soul who has both his legs shattered by a stone someone hurls at him. This first part of the fight is heading for a draw until Athena steps in and inspires one of the Greeks. This is the hero Diomedes. After Achilles and the Big Ajax (there’s also a little one), Diomedes is one of the best warriors in the Greek army. Athena hypes him up into a berserker rage, and the onslaught that results inspires his comrades. Athena pulls the god Ares, who’s Team Trojan, off the field, and the Greeks begin to rout the Trojans.
Pandarus, whose arrow started all this, takes aim at Diomedes and shoots him. It’s a bad wound, but Athena intervenes to repair it. Diomedes decides to go after Pandarus, who jumps into Aeneas’s chariot and tries to ride Diomedes down. It doesn’t work. Diomedes puts a spear right through Pandarus’s face, “smashing his white teeth” (Wilson 109) and cutting off his tongue. Diomedes is about to go for Aeneas when, yet again, Aphrodite intervenes and does the trick with the mist.
Diomedes isn’t having that – Athena has given him temporary power to see the gods, so he actually takes a whack at the goddess, scratching her wrist before she can teleport out of there. Apollo steps in to protect Aeneas, but Diomedes is even ready to fight him. Apollo warns him off and rescues Aeneas. Then he calls Ares back to inspire the Trojans, who rally. There is one arresting image here of the death of Mydon, a minor chariot driver for one of the Trojan leaders. He’s hit by a swordsman, flies out of the chariot headfirst:
“His head and shoulders smashed into the ground.
it happened to be very sandy there,
So that the corpse stayed upright, upside down
until his horses kicked him to the ground.” (Wilson 119)
Poor Myrdon – the only comedic-relief death in The Iliad. Stuck in the dirt like a Tiki torch.
On this goes, with the Trojans gaining the upper hand until Athena and Hera intervene again. The Greeks rally. Diomedes and Athena ride at Ares while he’s looting some bodies, and Diomedes wounds the god of war with his spear.
Ares’s groan of pain and subsequent flight into the sky terrifies the Greeks and Trojans, but once the gods are off the battlefield, they resume fighting. Diomedes continues to lay about him, an unstoppable killing machine. Hector goes back into Troy to ask the women to sacrifice to Athena to get her to call Diomedes off. It does not work.
Hector goes through the palace looking for his wife, Andromache. Along the way he encounters Paris and Helen – still squabbling, still hating each other. He eventually finds Andromache along the ramparts of the city – she’d been watching the progress of the battle. She’s in despair – Achilles killed her father and brothers during one of the Greeks’ looting expeditions, and she now has a premonition that Achilles will take Hector, too. He is her only family. She begs him to stay with her in Troy.
Hector is as understanding as any man can be in this story – he tells her he wishes he could, but honor demands that he return to the fighting. Husband and wife part – he to return to the fray with Paris, she to her house, where she holds funeral rites for Hector as if he is already dead.
Once on the battlefield, Hector is recruited to fight another duel the gods have set up. Agamemnon doesn’t want Menelaus to fight again – he’s been shot already; Hector would win. A group of volunteers put their names into a helmet and shake it up. Yes, really: they choose their champion for this climactic duel the way kids choose kickball teams. Out of the helmet comes Ajax’s name – Big Ajax. Telemonian Ajax. You know.
Ajax and Hector set to. Ajax is right up there with Achilles for skill, so he holds his own. They fight all day – cut, cut, stab, stab, never laying a decisive blow – until heralds from both armies step forward and tell them to knock off for the night. Ajax and Hector exchange gifts, and the two sides retreat.
The Greeks allow the Trojans to collect their dead for cremation. Once they have done that, the Greeks immediately set about burying their own dead in mounds. They realize there is a way for the dead men to continue defending them – they make the mounds the basis for a hastily constructed wall, one with a defensive ditch dug in front of it.
Meanwhile, the Trojans argue about whether to offer the Greeks a truce. Paris eventually comes up with the plan of keeping Helen, but giving the Greeks a great deal of treasure in exchange for her.
Meanwhile, Zeus thunders in the distance. He has decided to take this entire thing into his own hands. He forbids his fellow gods from further interference in the conflict. The next day, as the two sides resume fighting, Zeus tips the scales of fate in favor of the Trojans. Then, just to let the Greeks know they’re on notice, he hurls a thunderbolt into their midst. Terrified, Agamemnon and the Ajaxes retreat, leaving poor old Nestor pinned under his injured horse as Paris approaches to kill him.
It’s up to Diomedes again – he hacks his way through the fighting and scoops Nestor into his chariot. Nestor takes over as driver, and we get a scene where they play chicken with Hector’s chariot. At the last second Diomedes kills Hector’s driver. As Hector regroups, Diomedes wheels around, ready to go in for the kill, but then Zeus throws another thunderbolt right in front of him. “Take the hint,” suggests Nestor. And he and Diomedes flee. Hector gives chase – he figures if he catches and kills Diomedes, that will knock the morale out of the Greeks to the point that they’ll leave Troy entirely.
Led by rampant Hector, the Trojans drive the Greeks back to the wall they built. It looks very bad for the Greeks. As the sun sets they seem to be flagging.
Up on Mount Olympus, Hera and Athena have had enough. In defiance of Zeus’s orders, they again arm themselves for war and drive their own chariot of fire down to attack. Zeus warns them back, reminding them that there’s a reason he’s doing this: to fulfil the promise he made to Thetis, Achilles’s mother: “Give the Trojans power until the Greeks respect my son and grant him glory.” (Wilson 20) The Greeks will be in danger until Achilles returns to the fighting.
And where is Achilles during these last two manic days? In his tent, presumably doing an Instagram live about his skincare routine. “Hey guys, welcome back to the channel. I promised I’d show you my olive oil facial recipe. First let’s talk about products…”
Hera and Athena withdraw. Night falls, meaning a pause in the fighting. Agamemnon is desperate, so after a council, he sends Odysseus to Achilles with authority to offer him anything – land, women, cattle – so long as he returns to his fighting.
Achilles is playing the lyre when the negotiators arrive – a lyre he took from Andromache’s hometown – Hector’s wife, you remember, whose male relatives were all murdered by Achilles. He’s courteous to the delegation, but refuses their offer. Reward isn’t really the point, he says:
“A man who fights his hardest in the war
Gets just the same as one who stays behind.
Cowards and heroes have the same reward.
Do everything or nothing—death still comes.” (Wilson 208)
It’s the humiliation Agamemnon put him through after everything he has done for them. No, Achilles is determined to set sail in the morning. At this, a man called Phoenix speaks up. Phoenix takes care of the horses now, but he reminds Achilles that he once took care of him when he was young, cutting up his meat for him, enduring spit-up on his clothes. He begs him not to leave the rest of the Greeks vulnerable to the Trojans. Achilles, moved, says he’ll sleep on it. Ajax also begs Achilles to stay. He says he’ll fight if the Trojans break through the defenses.
That’s the best offer the delegation is going to get. They head back to Agamemnon and tell him that the offer failed. Diomedes bitterly remarks that Achilles was never going to agree to help them, and they’ll just have to fight on.
“But I have a plan,” says Odysseus. He and Diomedes decide to sneak out of the camp at night to spy on the Trojans. As they are creeping toward the enemy lines, they stumble across someone coming the other way – this is a Trojan named Dolon, who’s been sent by Hector to spy on them. Odysseus and Diomedes easily overpower him. They pump Dolon for information about how the Trojan camp is guarded.
He gives them the layout and mentions that there’s one group isolated from the rest of the camp: the Thracians. Their leader Rhesus has weapons chased in gold and fine white chariot horses. “That’s our target,” says Odysseus. And having no more use for Dolon, Diomedes cuts his head off.
Diomedes and Odysseus find the Thracians sleeping in tidy rows next to their horses. Diomedes kills 12 of the men and Rhesus while Odysseus nicks Rhesus’s white horses and various other bits of loot. He yokes them to Rhesus’s chariot and, whipping them with his bow, since he forgot an actual whip, makes a clean getaway with Diomedes. They return in triumph to the Greek camp. It’s a small win, but one sorely needed.
When the third day of combat dawns, it looks like things have turned in the Greeks’ favor. Agamemnon is racking up kills, but takes a non-fatal wound and has to withdraw. Zeus, watching from nearby Mount Ida, sends word to Hector that it’s time for him to make an assault. Hector rides into battle, rallying the Trojans again. Diomedes and Odysseus are also injured and have to retire from the field. It’s up to the Ajaxes, little and big, to hold the line.
Runners alert Achilles of the situation, most likely interrupting him as he’s recording sponcon for Tiktok – “Achaean Camp Mattresses are comfortable, portable, and huge: sleeps you, your bestie, your second-favorite trophy girl and his second-favorite trophy girl all at once!”
Achilles has the grace to show concern. He sends his dearest friend and lover Patroclus out to see if things are really as dire as they seem. Patroclus heads toward the front lines, where he crosses paths with old Nestor. “How’s it going?” asks Patroclus. “Well,” says Nestor, then launches into a long rambling story about a different battle he was in one time and how that was going badly, but they all survived – finally coming to his point, which is that the Greeks need Achilles, pronto. “You’ve got more influence than anyone, Patroclus,” Nestor says. “You’ve got to convince him to fight again. Or, if he’s that stubborn, you can:”
“Be a light to help the Greeks
and let him give you his own splendid armor.
The Trojans may believe that you are him
and keep away from battle.” (Wilson 274)
Inspired, Patroclus runs off toward Achilles’s tent to make the suggestion. But on the way he encounters a wounded comrade, and takes him to find the medics.
Meanwhile, the Trojans are struggling with this wall the Greeks have thrown up – their chariots can’t get near it because of the ditch. Homer gives us a glimpse of the future of this wall (and a spoiler for who wins the war): in years to come, after the Greeks have destroyed Troy and sailed away, Zeus and Poseidon will change the courses of several rivers to send a flood that crumbles the wall and wipes the plain clean.
So we know Hector won’t destroy it. But he doesn’t know that, so he’s going to try. He takes a suggestion from a subordinate to storm it on foot. The Trojans leave their chariots and spread out into five assault groups all along the wall. Hector gives the order to charge, but just before his group of troops begins to march, an omen appears: an eagle flies overhead with a snake in its talons. The snake is alive and still fighting; it bites the eagle, which releases it. The snake hits the ground in front of Hector and wriggles away.
The men of Hector’s group are troubled. Hector scoffs. Birds don’t mean anything, he says.
“Let us trust instead
To the plan of mighty Zeus who rules us all,
The lord of mortals and immortal gods.
Patriotism is the one true bird.” (Wilson 285)
Off the Trojans go, assaulting the wall with fire and spears, hacking at its foundations, picking off Greek archers trying to repulse them. Blood flows, spears shatter, armor crashes. The Ajaxes make a valiant attempt to repel the assault, but at length the Trojans break through one of the gates. The Greeks run for their ships, pursued by their relentless enemies.
“Welp,” says Zeus, standing up and dusting his hands. “That should do it. I’ve brought the Greeks to the very brink, and now that Achilles’s ship is threatened I’m sure he’ll finally join the fray and get the glory his mother begged me for. And I’m sure the other gods will continue to keep out of this like I told them to. I’ll just let things take their natural course from here.”
And off Zeus goes, to go see what’s afoot elsewhere in the world.
Immediately after Zeus turns his back, Poseidon pops up from under the sea. He’s been reflecting, and actually, he’s pretty fond of the Greeks. They’re always so courteous about asking his help whenever they build a ship, and they offer him the tastiest sacrifices. He’d be sorry to see them wiped out. Surely Zeus won’t be too mad if he just encourages them a bit.
Poseidon goes into the camp disguised as one of the heralds. He finds the Ajaxes, who are exhausted and in despair, and hypes them up with a rousing speech. The Ajaxes rush out and begin a rally. Hector and his men are pushed back, and the Trojans suddenly find themselves with a wall behind them and a horde of furious Greeks in front.
There’s a shouting match between Hector and Big Ajax. “It’s gonna be so funny when you run away home,” Ajax jeers. Hector replies,
“[M]y long spear . . .
will feast and have a banquet
upon your lily skin, and you will feed
the dogs and birds of Troy.” (Wilson 325)
I think Hector won. And he charges again, and things once again look grim for the Greeks. Our three wounded commanders – Odysseus, Diomedes, and Agamemnon – can hear the commotion from the hut where they’re being treated.
So can Hera, up on Mount Olympus. She looks down and sees Poseidon meddling on the battlefield. She realizes that Zeus must be distracted, and that if she can keep him distracted, the Greeks might prevail after all. She leaps into action: she dolls herself up in her best dress. She goes to see Aphrodite (who’s Team Trojan, remember), and spins a yarn about needing a love charm – the gods Ocean and Tethys, a married couple, are squabbling and she wants to go help them reconcile. Aphrodite’s a little suspicious, but she gives Hera the charm anyway.
Next, Hera rushes off to see Hypnos, the god of Sleep. “I need you to help me knock Zeus out,” she tells him. “Uh, no thanks,” says Hypnos, “I did that for you once before, when you wanted to mess with Hercules, and Zeus was furious with me afterwards.”
“Will you do it if I give you some pretty minor goddess to marry?” Hera asks. “What about one of the Graces?”
“Well, if you’re gonna twist my arm like that,” says Hypnos.
Plot in motion, Hera flies off to find Zeus. “Hey, Honey—just wanted to let you know that, Ocean and Tethys are fighting again, so I’m going to go visit and help them work it out.”
“Not looking like that you’re not,” Zeus says. “Come here and give me some of that ambrosia, woman, just like you did when we were kids growing up together. In the same house. Because we’re also brother and sister as well as man and wife.” (No, really, he reminisces about them hiding their incest from their parents – it’s right there in book 14, line 384 of Wilson’s edition.)
And they go to it right there in the open, as plants and flowers spring up to make a bed for them. Once it’s over, Zeus drifts off into a pleasant sex coma. He won’t interrupt Poseidon for a while yet.
Meanwhile, down on the battlefield, Big Ajax manages to nail Hector in the chest with a large rock. Semi-conscious, coughing blood, Hector is taken off the field by his men. The Greeks take out several of Hector’s lieutenants, and the Trojans turn to run, shoving their way back through the gates in the wall.
Zeus wakes up. He takes in the situation at the seaside and realizes he’s been duped. He rounds on Hera: “This is just like that time with Hercules! Remember what I did then? Remember how I hung you up in the sky with anvils chained to your feet?”
“I had nothing to do with Poseidon sticking his nose in this,” Hera says. A very deft reply, no? I hate arguing with people like Hera, where if you say they did x, they side-step it by saying, well, I didn’t do y, what are you mad at me for? Technically true, but not the issue!
She points out that Poseidon will surely stop if Zeus tells him to. “True,” says Zeus. He orders Poseidon off the battlefield, but in the interest of equal time, he lets Apollo (Team Trojan) back on it. Sort of a penalty kick situation. Apollo quickly heals Hector and sends him back to the front lines.
The tide of battle turns yet again. Some of the Greeks panic; some run back to defend the ships—if the Trojans burn their boats, they’re done. The Ajaxes and their retinues are the key defenders, killing as many Trojan torch-bearers as they can.
In his tent far down the beach, Achilles pops off his LED facemask and listens hard. “Is that fighting getting louder?” he wonders. In bursts Patroclus, wild with fear. He tells Achilles that Agamemnon, Odysseus, and Diomedes are all wounded, that the Trojans have broken through, and that only the Ajaxes stand between them and the ships.
“Sounds serious, babe,” says Achilles. “But maybe not serious enough.”
Patroclus tells Achilles he’s impossible, monstrous.
“Peleus the Horseman
was not your father. Thetis not your mother.
Gray sea and soaring rocks gave birth to you
and so you have an unrelenting heart.” (Wilson 380)
Achilles eases up a little. He tells Patroclus to borrow his armor, go out, and do just enough to keep all the ships from being torched. “Don’t do too much,” he warns. “You’ll make me look bad.”
Patroclus yells to Achilles’s men to get ready, and starts to suit up.
But time is running out. Back at the ships, Big Ajax, weary and battered, breaks his last spear. He falls back, and the Trojans set fire to a boat. Before they can proceed down the line, however, they’re horrified to hear the war-cry of Achilles! His chariot comes hurtling through the chaos, followed by his foot soldiers. At the sight of that famous armor the Trojans panic. The Greeks quickly save the half-burned ship.
Patroclus begins riding down as many Trojans as he can in his borrowed chariot. He kills Hector’s trusted lieutenant Sarpedon, and the Trojans again flee for the city. Patroclus, wild with bloodlust, oversteps his orders. He drives out beyond the wall, racing to catch the Trojans as they flee across the plain.
Apollo, however, is still lurking. He tells Hector that the warrior who looks like Achilles isn’t: it’s actually Patroclus. Hector wheels around to face off Patroclus. Patroclus trained with Achilles in his youth, and it shows here – he gives Hector a run for his money. He kills Hector’s charioteer with a rock to the face. When he jumps out of Achilles’s chariot to despoil the body, Hector dismounts to fight him off.
Patroclus has the upper hand when Apollo sneaks up and knocks off his helmet. When Patroclus is surprised by that, Apollo unclips his breastplate, and that gives a random Trojan the opportunity to put a spear between Patroclus’s shoulder blades. It doesn’t kill him, though. Hector does that, driving his own spear straight through Patroclus’s front ribs and out the other side.
With his dying breath, Patroclus gasps out that Achilles will avenge him. Hector, undeterred, strips Achilles’s armor off the cooling body. Menelaus and the Ajaxes hack through to Hector, and a full-scale pitched battle erupts over who will get the custody of Patroclus’s naked, gore-clotted corpse.
A mist spreads over the field, the work of Zeus. Menelaus retrieves Patroclus’s corpse and takes it back behind Greek lines.
Meanwhile, back at his hut, Achilles is waiting for his friend to return. He’s already fretting at how long Patroclus has been away when a runner arrives and breaks the terrible news to him: Patroclus is dead at Hector’s hands, and your enemy is now parading around in your armor.
Achilles collapses in grief. His anguished wails reach his mother under the sea. Thetis rushes ashore. “Darling, why are you crying? Zeus has done what you asked; he’s made the Greeks suffer so you can save them.”
Achilles groans. “That is what I asked for,” he admits. “But in asking for that I have killed the person I loved most in the world. I won’t rest until I’ve avenged Patroclus.”
Here there’s a clunky bit of exposition – clunky to a modern mind, anyway; you have to assume an Ancient Greek audience would be caught up on the lore. Thetis reveals the existence of a prophecy which predicts that Achilles will die not long after he defeats Hector.
Achilles doesn’t care. Seeing his determination, his mother rushes off to procure some new divine armor for him.
That night, when the fighting pauses, Achilles receives Patroclus’s body. He washes it and prepares it for burial, reproaching himself for causing his friend’s death through his own stubborn pride. He makes a terrible vow:
“I will not hold your funeral until
I bring back here the armor and the head
of high and mighty Hector, who killed you.” (Wilson 450)
We’re whisked away for a brief Olympian interlude, most of which is spent watching Hephaestus at work making new armor for Achilles. The shield especially is a work of art: it depicts as many facets of life as possible: the sky and stars, scenes of city life, scenes of country life, feasting, dancing, farming, animals, and all around the rim, the waves of the ocean. It is as if Achilles will go into battle protected by all there is to love about being alive.
Thetis takes the armor to her son just as dawn is breaking on this, the fourth day of fighting. Achilles dresses. He calls an assembly – all the Greeks together. He apologizes, at last, to Agamemnon.
Agamemnon, the weasel, says that he does not think he is actually to blame for his side of the quarrel – some god or other put him up to it. Regardless, he magnanimously accepts Achilles’s apology and says he will give him all the gifts Achilles previously refused. So at last the righteous bone of contention is set aside (or the contention over boning rights, I guess).
Sacrifices are made. Auguries taken. Then at last, at last, the Greeks ride forth with Achilles at their head. Homer describes their coming like a blizzard or a river:
“Out of the ships poured forth the gleaming helmets
the shields with bosses, firmly fastened breastplates,
and spears of ash. The glimmers reached the sky
and all the earth around them seemed to smile
with flashing bronze.” (Wilson 476)
As the Greeks form their lines, Achilles steps into his chariot and gives his horses a little pep-talk, asking them not to steer him toward death today. To his surprise, one of the horses turns around and answers back: “It won’t be our fault if you die out there. It will be destiny. Your hour is coming.”
“So everyone says,” Achilles replies. Then he lets loose with a war cry, and the Greeks roll forward like thunder.
Up on Olympus, Zeus calls a council. “I’m just going to sit back and watch from here,” he says. “Trying to keep the rest of you out of it is a mug’s game, so I won’t. Head down there, mess around as much as you want. Go wild.” So down they go, with Team Greek represented by Hera, Athena, Poseidon, and Hephaestus; Team Trojan is Aphrodite, Ares, Apollo, and Apollo’s sister Artemis.
Battle ensues. The Greeks and Trojans clash. The gods marshal natural forces – Apollo raises the river Scamander; Poseidon calls up earthquakes, and these are so violent that Hades, down in the underworld, jumps off this throne in alarm, yelling to Poseidon to knock it off. This is his one appearance in the story, and he’s basically an old man banging on his ceiling with a broomstick, trying to make his noisy upstairs neighbors shut up.
The first Trojan to encounter Achilles – the first one who isn’t instantly slaughtered, anyway – is Aeneas, Aphrodite’s son. They exchange threats, argue about whose mother-goddess is stronger, and then fight. Aeneas’s spear is no match for Achilles’s marvelous shield; Aeneas’s shield is no match for Achilles’s marvelous spear. Aeneas is on the point of death when, sigh, again, a god intervenes and snatches Aeneas to safety.
Achilles is startled at the sudden disappearance of his adversary, but he regroups and starts hacking his way through the Trojans. We get a series of forensically detailed deaths: Achilles drives his spear through one warrior’s forehead. He runs another down and cuts him in half by running his chariot over him. He rips a hole clean through the body of another, sending his guts snaking out through his fingers. Heads, arms, livers, faces – Achilles is rampant, unerring; his horses trample the bodies of his enemies; the glorious shield of Hephaestus is black with blood.
Achilles’s onslaught is so intense that he breaks the Trojan line in half. Some of the Trojans run in blind panic into the river Scamander. Achilles follows them, stabbing, hacking, slaying until the water foams red. We get a particularly grim look at the fate of one corpse, quote:
“Dark water lapped
around the body, soaking it and soon
the fish and eels were busily at work
nibbling at the fat around the kidneys.” (Wilson 508)
Scamander, the god of the river, is horrified. He gathers himself and blasts Achilles with water, trying to stop him. Achilles pops right back up after being knocked down. The river bursts its banks and chases Achilles across the plain, a surging, foaming wall of water bearing corpses, shattered chariots and weapons aloft. Hephaestus sends fire to counter the river, and Achilles makes his escape.
Back in his chariot, he drives toward the walls of Troy. The main force of the Trojan army, now in full retreat, is able to rush into the city. The gates are shut. But one Trojan remains outside the walls: Hector.
King Priam calls down to Hector – don’t fight him! We need you here! Hector dithers briefly. He considers to himself that he could just surrender, offer himself and Helen to Achilles and end these 10 years of madness – but his resolve returns. He is determined to fight, right until the moment when Achilles pulls up with a deadly light in his eyes.
Hector runs. And runs. And runs. Three times Achilles chases him around the walls of Troy, constantly cutting off Hector’s attempts to reach the gates. Finally, on the fourth circuit, Hector decides to stand his ground.
Achilles throws his spear. Hector dodges. He throws his spear at Achilles. It bounces off that amazing shield. They draw swords. Achilles looks over Hector, and realizes that there is a gap in his armor he’s wearing – Achilles’s old armor, remember – right at the base of the throat. Hector lunges for Achilles. Achilles parries, then stabs Hector in the neck.
Hector drops to the dust. Achilles stands over him gloating as the blood spurts out. “Please have pity on my family; give them my body when I’m dead,” Hector gasps.
“You killed Patroclus,” Achilles replies. “Not even if your father gave me your weight in gold would I do this. The dogs will crack your bones with their teeth.”
Hector dies. Achilles strips the body. Other Greek soldiers come running up and get their licks in, stabbing and jabbing at the corpse of the man who sent so many of their comrades to hell. Achilles shoos them away. He ties Hector’s ankles to the back of his chariot and takes a ghoulish victory lap around the walls of Troy, dragging the dead hero behind him as Priam, his wife Hecuba, and Hector’s wife Andromache all look on in horror.
The Greeks return to their ships. Achilles and his men dump Hector at the foot of Patroclus’s funeral bier. After some rituals and feasting – both to mourn and to show gratitude for their victory – the men retire. Achilles, still in his blood-caked armor, sinks down to sleep on the beach.
As he lies there, Patroclus’s ghost appears. He begs Achilles not to delay his funeral, and also to preserve his bones so that when Achilles dies, he and Patroclus can be buried together. Achilles agrees, then plaintively cries,
“But please, come nearer and stand next to me,
And let us put our arms around each other
For just a little while, and have the joy
Of grief and lamentation.” (Wilson 549)
And Achilles reaches out to Patroclus, but the spirit vanishes like smoke at his touch.
Achilles carries out Patroclus’s wishes. He is cremated; his bones placed reverently in a golden casket for reburial with Achilles later. Achilles arranges funeral games, holds feasts, but is gnawed at by grief to the point where he can’t sleep. One cause of his disquiet is Hector’s corpse – it won’t rot, and he seems unable to disfigure it beyond the wounds it sustained at death. Dogs won’t eat Hector; flies won’t settle on him. Clearly Hector has some measure of divine favor even in death.
And, indeed, up on Mount Olympus, the gods argue about whether to save Hector. Hera and Athena are opposed – and, again, some clunky exposition here – because they are still angry at the Trojans on account of how Paris insulted them. He was asked to judge which of Hera, Athena, and Aphrodite he deemed most beautiful, and he chose Aphrodite because she offered him the power to seduce Helen, the woman he coveted. This is the only time in the whole Iliad that Homer mentions the judgement of Paris, one of the key events which instigated this entire war.
Zeus tells King Priam to take gifts to Achilles and beg for Hector’s body in return. Priam piles a wagon with loot and rides out from Troy, in spite of the protestations of Paris and his other sons. Priam bitterly dismisses them, saying now that Hector is dead,
“Only trash is left—you tricksters, dancers,
superb at tapping rhythms with your feet,
Thieves of your neighbors’ lambs and baby goats.” (Wilson 591)
He rides out to the Greek camp, divinely protected. He goes straight through to Achilles, who’s brooding in his hut. Before Achilles can react, Priam gets down on his knees and begs him to accept the ransom he has brought.
Achilles is moved to pity and remorse. He raises Priam up, speaks words of comfort, and asks him to rest while Achilles’s slave women prepare Hector’s body. Over a meal, Achilles and Priam agree to an 11-day truce to let the Trojans mourn for Hector.
Priam takes his son’s body from the slave women – he is so relieved to see the body is beautifully preserved, not mutilated – and drives it back to Troy. The soldiers and the people mourn. The women of Hector’s family wail over him – Andromache, Hecuba, and even Helen, who again says she wishes she had died so this would never have happened.
Then the men erect a towering pyre to cremate their hero, and, finally, bury him in a mound. Back into the city the Trojans go, to feast and mourn in a glorious banquet – perhaps the last they will ever celebrate in Troy. Their hour of final doom draws near.
And that’s it. That’s where The Iliad ends – with Hector’s mournful homecoming. It’s a turning point in the war, but not the end. If you’re like me, and you’ve not read The Iliad in a while (or perhaps never – no shame in that, it’s a bit like climbing a mountain), you may be feeling puzzled. Where’s the bit with Paris and the golden apple? Is that really all we see of Helen? And where on earth is the Trojan Horse? The answer is that these parts of the story are told in other epics, most notably the Roman poet Virgil’s story about Aeneas leading refugees out of Troy after it’s destroyed. That story is The Aeneid, which we’ll get to some time in the back half of 2025.
Meanwhile, I don’t think The Iliad really needs those set pieces. It has plenty of its own.
I was a little trepidatious about re-reading The Iliad. It has a monumental status, and in my faded memory of the story it seemed like something remote and chilly – bare white marble cunningly carved, but cold to the touch. I am so glad to be so wrong. We are beyond lucky to have this work of art; so fortunate to be able to hear this voice chanting to us across the ages. It speaks of things alien to us – the Gods and their tricks, the omens and the offerings, the names of commanders and places long since vanished – and also of things as familiar to us as our own faces: the sky reddening over the sea, the havoc wounded pride can unleash, and the many, many ways that the soft bodies of men can break.
You have to read it, or at least try to. Emily Wilson’s translation is terrific. She has rendered it in clean, spare English. She uses iambic pentameter – the same poetic form Shakespeare wrote in, which makes the rhythm and the pulse of it more accessible to English readers. This gives it, as she says in her Translator’s Note, “a voice of bronze, a voice of wind, a voice of fire.” (Wilson lxiv)
You can also find many other English translations for free online – Alexander Pope’s is probably one of the most famous – it’s the one Benjamin Franklin would have read, given that it was published between 1715 and 1720. But it’s a little hard to digest since you have to wade through 18th-century vocabulary along with the Greek place names.
There is a Penguin Classics prose edition translated by R.V. Rieu. It was originally published in the 1950s, but it’s been reissued several times. I have a 2003 edition, and it looks like inexpensive paperbacks are plentiful. It’s fine – he puts handy plot summaries at the head of each section, and has an indispensable pronunciation guide – but his translation of The Odyssey is much more fun. We’ll talk about that in Episodes 11 and 12, which are a way off yet.
For now, it’s time to get meta with The Iliad. Our next episode addresses two questions. Number one: was there a real Homer? Number two: did the Trojan War actually happen? We’ll also look at what scholars have been able to reconstruct about what it would have been like to hear epic poetry performed live back in ancient Greece. Join me on Thursday, July 4 for Episode Ten, “The Iliad, Part Two – The Blind Poets Department.”
Books of All Time is written and produced by me, Rose Judson. The Disclaimer Voice of Doom is Ed Brown. Lluvia Arras designed our cover art and logo. Special thanks to Yelena Shapiro, Cathy Merli, Matt Brough and the Books of All Time Advisory Council: Ed Brown, Beck Collins, Neil Dowling, Caitlin McMullin, Hugh Parker, and Jonathan Skipp. You can support the show by subscribing and leaving a rating or review at Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you get your podcasts. Thanks for listening! I’ll be back in two weeks.
References and Works Cited:
Burstein, Stanley M. “The Classics and the American Republic.” The History Teacher, vol. 30, no. 1, 1996, pp. 29–44, https://doi.org/10.2307/494218.
Homer. The Iliad. Translated by Emily R. Wilson, W.W. Norton and Company, 2023.
Homer. The Iliad. Translated by R.V. Rieu, Penguin Classics, 2003.
Jefferson, Thomas. “Founders Online: From Thomas Jefferson to St. John de Crèvecoeur, 15 January 1787.” National Archives and Records Administration, National Archives and Records Administration, founders.archives.gov/documents/Jefferson/01-11-02-0041. Accessed 16 June 2024.
Vermeule, Emily Townsend. “Jefferson and Homer.” Proceedings of the American Philosophical Society, vol. 137, no. 4, 1993, pp. 689–703, http://www.jstor.org/stable/987083.
Wright, Louis B. “Thomas Jefferson and the Classics.” Proceedings of the American Philosophical Society, vol. 87, no. 3, 1943, pp. 223–233, http://www.jstor.org/stable/984869.
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