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10 things you didn’t know about the women of Troy

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10 things you didn’t know about the legendary women of Troy

Circe and the Cyclops

'You must be Odysseus, man of twists and turns...' 
 
The tales of Odysseus's struggle with a man-eating Cyclops and Circe, the beautiful enchantress who turns men into swine. 
 
Introducing Little Black Classics: 80 books for Penguin's 80th birthday. Little Black Classics celebrate the huge range and diversity of Penguin Classics, with books from around the world and across many centuries. They take us from a balloon ride over Victorian London to a garden of blossom in Japan, from Tierra del Fuego to 16th-century California and the Russian steppe. Here are stories lyrical and savage; poems epic and intimate; essays satirical and inspirational; and ideas that have shaped the lives of millions. 
 
Next to nothing is known about Homer's life. His works available in Penguin Classics are The Homeric Hymns, The Iliad and The Odyssey.

Next to nothing is known about Homer's life. His works available in Penguin Classics are The Homeric Hymns, The Iliad and The Odyssey.

The Iliad

A stunning Penguin clothbound edition of Homer's great epic, in E. V. Rieu's classic translation. 
 
The Iliad is the first and the greatest literary achievement of Greek civilization - an epic poem without rival in the literature of the world, and the cornerstone of Western culture. The story centres on the critical events in the last year of the Trojan War, which lead to Achilleus' killing of Hektor and determine the fate of Troy. But Homer's theme is not simply war or heroism. With compassion and humanity, he presents a universal and tragic view of the world, of human life lived under the shadow of suffering and death, set against a vast and largely unpitying divine background.. 
 
Seven Greek cities claim the honour of being the birthplace of Homer (c. 8th-7th century BC), the poet to whom the composition of the Iliadand Odyssey are attributed. The Iliad is the oldest surviving work of Western literature, but the identity - or even the existence - of Homer himself is a complete mystery, with no reliable biographical information having survived. 
 
E. V. Rieu initiated Penguin Classics with Allen Lane and his famous translation of the Odyssey was the first book published in the series in 1947. The Iliad followed in 1950.

Penguin Classics

The Odyssey

Part of Penguin's beautiful hardback Clothbound Classics series, designed by the award-winning Coralie Bickford-Smith, these delectable and collectible editions are bound in high-quality colourful, tactile cloth with foil stamped into the design. 
 
The epic tale of Odysseus and his ten-year journey home after the Trojan War forms one of the earliest and greatest works of Western literature. Confronted by natural and supernatural threats - shipwrecks, battles, monsters and the implacable enmity of the sea-god Poseidon - Odysseus must use his wit and native cunning if he is to reach his homeland safely and overcome the obstacles that, even there, await him.

HOMER is thought to have lived c.750-700 BC in Ionia and is believed to be the author of the earliest works of Western Literature: The Odyssey and The Iliad. 
 
E. V. RIEU was a celebrated translator from Latin and Greek, and editor of Penguin Classics from 1944-64. His son, D. C. H. RIEU, has revised his work. 
 
PETER JONES is former lecturer in Classics at Newcastle. He co-founded the 'Friends of Classics' society and is the editor of their journal and a columnist for The Spectator.

Translated by Robert Fitzgerald

Penelope has been waiting for her husband Odysseus to return from Troy for many years. Little does she know that his path back to her has been blocked by astonishing and terrifying trials. Will he overcome the hideous monsters, beautiful witches and treacherous seas that confront him? This rich and beautiful adventure story is one of the most influential works of literature in the world.

The best poetic version of The Odyssey to have appeared this century - Hugh Lloyd-Jones

Homer's Odyssey is still enchanting readers after thousands of years

Surely the best and truest Odyssey in the English language

Fitzgerald is taking his place beside Chapman and Pope in the unbroken lineage of English Homeric translations...it has the economy and soar of a poet

A strong salty flavour of its own. And it makes you see things

The Homeric poems are interesting...because of the way in which they present human shocks and surprises... It is the surprising twist that war brings to the domestic...which makes Homer repeatedly shocking

Of all bookes extant in all kinds, Homer is the first and best...writ from a free furie, an absolute and full soule

Homer is a much-debated figure traditionally considered to have composed the two great oral poems The Odyssey and The Iliad in eighth or seventh-century-BC Greece. 
 
Robert Fitzgerald was Boylston Professor of Rhetoric and Oratory Emeritus at Harvard University.He was a member of the National Academy of Arts and Sciences and a Chancellor of the Academy of American Poets.He published four volumes of his own verse during his lifetime.His translations of The Odyssey and The Iliad, and of Virgil's Aeniad, won him many honours and are universally acknowledged to be among the finest of their kind this century. He died in 1985.

When Robert Fagles&rsquo; translation of the Iliad was published in 1990, critics and scholars alike hailed it as a masterpiece. Now one of the great translators of our time presents us with the Odyssey, Homer&rsquo;s best-loved poem, recounting Odysseus&rsquo; wanderings after the Trojan War. 
 
With wit and wile, the 'man of twists and turns' meets the challenges of gods and monsters, only to return after twenty years to a home besieged by his wife&rsquo;s suitors. In the myths and legends retold in this immortal poem, Fagles has captured the energy of Homer&rsquo;s original in a bold, contemporary idiom.

This is an Odyssey to treasure for its sheer lyrical mastery.

Literature's grandest evocation of life's journey, at once an ageless human story and an individual test of moral endurance, Homer's ancient Greek epic The Odyssey is translated by Robert Fagles with an introduction and notes by Bernard Knox in Penguin Classics. 
 
When Robert Fagles' translation of The Iliad was published in 1990, critics and scholars alike hailed it as a masterpiece. Here, one of the great modern translators presents us with The Odyssey, Homer's best-loved poem, recounting Odysseus' wanderings after the Trojan War. With wit and wile, the 'man of twists and turns' meets the challenges of the sea-god Poseidon, and monsters ranging from the many-headed Scylla to the cannibalistic Cyclops Polyphemus - only to return after twenty years to a home besieged by his wife Penelope's suitors. In the myths and legends retold in this immortal poem, Fagles has captured the energy of Homer's original in a bold, contemporary idiom. 
 
Seven greek cities claim the honour of being the birthplace of Homer (c. 8th-7th century BC), the poet to whom the composition of the Iliad and Odyssey are attributed. The Iliad is the oldest surviving work of Western literature, but the identity - or even the existence - of Homer himself is a complete mystery, with no reliable biographical information having survived. 
 
If you enjoyed The Odyssey, you might like Robert Fagles' translation of The Iliad, also available in Penguin Classics. 
 
'Wonderfully readable ... Just the right blend of roughness and sophistication' 
Ted Hughes 
 
'A memorable achievement ... Mr Fagles has been remarkably successful in finding a style that is of our time and yet timeless' 
Richard Jenkyns, The New York Times Book Review 
 
'His translation of The Odyssey is his best work yet' 
Garry Wills, New Yorker

Homer was probably born around 725BC on the Coast of Asia Minor, now the coast of Turkey, but then really a part of Greece. Homer was the first Greek writer whose work survives. Both works attributed to Homer &ndash; The Iliad and The Odyssey &ndash; are over ten thousand lines long in the original. 
 
 
Robert Fagles is Arthur W. Marks 1919 Professor of Comparative Literature at Princeton University and a member of the American Academy of Arts and Letters.

The Iliad is the first and the greatest literary achievement of Greek civilisation - an epic poem without rival in the literature of the world, and the cornerstone of Western culture. 
The story of the Iliad centres on the critical events in the last year of the Trojan War, which lead to Achilleus' killing of Hektor and determine the fate of Troy. But Homer's theme is not simply war or heroism. With compassion and humanity, he presents a universal and tragic view of the world, of human life lived under the shadow of suffering and death, set against a vast and largely unpitying divine background. The Iliad is the first of the great tragedies.

'Martin Hammond's modern prose version is the best and most accurate there has ever been' - Peter Levi in the Independent

'The best modern prose translation of The Iliad' Robin Lane Fox, The Times 
 
The first of the world's great tragedies, The Iliad centres on the pivotal four days towards the end of the ten-year war between the Greeks and the Trojans. In a series of dramatic set pieces, it follows the story of the humiliation of Achilleus at the hands of Agamemnon and his slaying of Hektor: a barbarous act with repercussions that ultimately determine the fate of Troy. The Iliad not only paints an intimate picture of individual experience, but also offers a universal perspective in which human loss and suffering are set against a vast and unpitying divine background where fickle, quarrelsome gods decide the fate of men. 
 
Translated with an Introduction by Martin Hammond

Much the best modern prose translation of the Iliad

This new prose translation of the Iliad is outstandingly good . . . to read it is to be gripped by it

Superbly direct and eloquent . . . by its sensitivity, fluency, and flexibility, it will win a permanent place on the shelves of Homer-lovers

Martin Hammond's new version is the best and most accurate there has ever been, as smooth as cream but as clear as water . . . Hammond's Iliad deserves to become a standard book

Surely the best Iliad in quite a few decades

Here is a fine Iliad for our times, to be read with great pleasure

The Greeks attributed both the Iliad and the Odyssey to a single poet whom they named Homer. Nothing is known of his life, though the main ancient tradition made him a native of the island of Chios in east Aegean. His date too is uncertain: most modern scholars place the composition of the Iliad in the second half of the eighth century BC. 
Martin Hammond has taught in England and in Greece. He has also translated the Odyssey. He is now Headmaster of Tonbridge School

Homer

Caroline Alexander

Read this stunning translation of Homer's great war epic, the legendary tale of honour, love, loss and revenge during the fall of the city of Troy. 
 
 
High on Olympus, Zeus and the assembled deities look down on the world of men, to the city of Troy where a bitter and bloody war has dragged into its tenth year, and a quarrel rages between a legendary warrior and his commander. Greek ships decay, men languish, exhausted, and behind the walls of Troy a desperate people await the next turn of fate. 
 
 
This is the Iliad: an ancient story of enduring power; magnetic characters defined by stirring and momentous speeches; a panorama of human lives locked in a heroic struggle beneath a mischievous or indifferent heaven. Above all, this is a tale of the devastation, waste and pity of war. 
 
 
Caroline Alexander's virtuoso translation captures the rhythms and energy of Homer's original Greek while making the text as accessible as possible to a modern reader, accompanied by extensive extra material to provide a background to the poem. 
 
 
The result of 3,000 years of story-telling, Homer’s epic tale of the fall of Troy has resonated with every age and every human conflict: this is the Iliad at its most electrifying and vital.

Homer

The Iliad

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