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osprey_archerI finished the Iliad! Actually I finished it a bit ago, but I’ve spent some time mulling over the best way to explain the weird experience that is listening to this ancient epic, and finally hit on this one: it’s like watching someone playing a video game. Occasionally there’s a cut scene where some plot happens, but mostly it’s just fight scene after fight scene and “then his eyeballs popped out of his head because Diomedes hit him with a rock so hard.”
They hit each other with rocks a lot. Also, no one’s armor works unless a god is literally standing there going “Function, armor!”
You know which Iliad character has been totally shafted by history? Diomedes. There’s a cleaner named after Ajax, a tendon named after Achilles, and a word based on Odysseus’s name (admittedly, for the Odyssey and not the Iliad, but still), but Diomedes makes like 50% of the kills in this book (not a scientific estimate) and have I ever heard of him before? NO. The unfairness. He actually wounded the goddess Aphrodite! And lived to tell the tale!
There does not appear to be a follow-up story where Aphrodite gets her revenge by making Diomedes fall in love with someone totally unsuitable, like a ninety-year-old swineherd or something. How can you let this insult stand, Aphrodite? Athena turned a lady into a spider for way less.
They hit each other with rocks a lot. Also, no one’s armor works unless a god is literally standing there going “Function, armor!”
You know which Iliad character has been totally shafted by history? Diomedes. There’s a cleaner named after Ajax, a tendon named after Achilles, and a word based on Odysseus’s name (admittedly, for the Odyssey and not the Iliad, but still), but Diomedes makes like 50% of the kills in this book (not a scientific estimate) and have I ever heard of him before? NO. The unfairness. He actually wounded the goddess Aphrodite! And lived to tell the tale!
There does not appear to be a follow-up story where Aphrodite gets her revenge by making Diomedes fall in love with someone totally unsuitable, like a ninety-year-old swineherd or something. How can you let this insult stand, Aphrodite? Athena turned a lady into a spider for way less.
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Date: 2018-06-17 07:29 pm (UTC)Well done on having made it to the end. Are you also going to do the Odyssy or was that enough for one year?
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Date: 2018-06-17 10:09 pm (UTC)