It's interesting how Western Literature begins with Homer's Iliad, and it also never surpasses it.

It's interesting how Western Literature begins with Homer's Iliad, and it also never surpasses it. The Iliad is the beginning and end of Western literature, it's only downhill from here folks. They tell you start with the Greeks because the Greeks really are the best.

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  1. 2 months ago
    Anonymous

    Wait until Max Lawton release his novels, chud.

    • 2 months ago
      Anonymous

      If Jake Paul ever decides to go IQfy
      >watch out!

  2. 2 months ago
    Anonymous

    The Odyssey is better

    • 2 months ago
      Anonymous

      Wrong

      • 2 months ago
        Anonymous

        Right (my opinion not yours)

  3. 2 months ago
    Anonymous

    This gay thinks western literature is a competition for coolest story

    • 2 months ago
      Anonymous

      Is it not?

      • 2 months ago
        Anonymous

        That’s one component of it, but it’s also the source of a classical education. A man who reads from the western canon will be better than a man who does not. The same cannot be said for a man who reads just the Iliad. There’s more to learn.

  4. 2 months ago
    Anonymous

    >western
    Bullshit pseud term used to justify brownoid influence on europe

    • 2 months ago
      Anonymous

      Take your meds

      • 2 months ago
        Anonymous

        He's right for the wrong reason. The West is an interesting construct. There's been far too much interaction in history for me to believe in anything more than a semi-permeable and amorphous West.

    • 2 months ago
      Anonymous

      The Iliad is the first notable western book because it makes emphasis to separate the noble west of Achaea from the barbarian easterners from Anatolia/ Troy.

      • 2 months ago
        Anonymous

        Wrong

      • 2 months ago
        Anonymous

        That doesn’t seem right Troy isn’t depicted as alien or barbarian. The Trojan’s all speak Greek, worship Greek gods, and maintain Greek customs. They are some kind of pseudo-Greek Dardan people. I don’t know exactly how Homer would have divided the various regional ethnic groups of if that even was the most salient division for him. I think it was Herodotus and later Greeks who emphasized the East vs West aspect in light of the Persian conflicts.

        • 2 months ago
          Anonymous

          Hector is also incredibly sympathetic and arguably the better man (though certainly not the better fighter) than Achilles. Even Socrates compares himself to Hector.

        • 2 months ago
          Anonymous

          The real life Wilusa was a borderland, vassal kingdom of the Hittites so politically they weren’t Greek. They may have been Greek speaking however as the Greek name Alexandros turns up occasionally in mentions of Wilusa.

    • 2 months ago
      Anonymous

      And the /misc/ ideologues just keep getting dumber, folks.

    • 2 months ago
      Anonymous

      True, if they hadn't forced written language upon us we would still be blissfully chucking spears at each other and listening to based blind bard recitation instead of r*ading b*oks... VGH...

  5. 2 months ago
    Anonymous

    How much money have the Iliad and Odyssey made over the years?

    • 2 months ago
      Anonymous

      Bout tree fiddy

      • 2 months ago
        Anonymous

        Lel

  6. 2 months ago
    Anonymous

    yeah

  7. 2 months ago
    Anonymous

    >The noble west of Achaea from the barbarian easterners from Anatolia/ Troy.
    That makes no sense. The Achaeans are represented as more barbaric. They otherwise may as well be as a singular identity, with no distinct divide of culture or personality, they share the same Gods as well as the favor of those Gods, and you never read the Iliad.

    Compare Priam and Aggaememnon. Compare Hector and Achilles. Consider the fact that AENEAS is with the Trojans. Stupid

    • 2 months ago
      Anonymous

      meant for

      The Iliad is the first notable western book because it makes emphasis to separate the noble west of Achaea from the barbarian easterners from Anatolia/ Troy.

    • 2 months ago
      Anonymous

      I was being facetious but the Iliad is actually sort of like the Greek founding mythos and the Greek characters stand in stark contrast to the Trojans as a clear divide between us vs them. Your opinion is tantamount to saying that portraying your enemies in a dignified manner means that you are upholding them as your kin which I shouldn’t have to clarify why that is dumb. Also the Aeneas foundation story of Rome is from the Romans and a thousand years later. Aeneas in the Iliad is some random Trojan dude and given not much more significance than other minor Greek and Trojan soldiers.

      • 2 months ago
        Anonymous

        I don't think it's dumb to argue that portraying your enemies in a dignified manner suggests that they are your 'kin'. The Iliad suggests that a great tragedy of war is needless suffering and the loss of human life. It would be quite barbaric and antithetical to your point if the Greeks indeed viewed the Trojans as lesser and, therefore, had no moral significance. What is the point of dignifying a rat?

  8. 2 months ago
    Anonymous

    >it also never surpasses it.
    *blocks your path*

  9. 2 months ago
    Anonymous

    2/3 of the poem is just mind-numbingly repetitive battles.

    • 2 months ago
      Anonymous

      Maybe try reading it before talking about it

      • 2 months ago
        Anonymous
        • 2 months ago
          Anonymous

          Again, that's a IQfy post. Try actually reading the book until you make comments about it.

        • 2 months ago
          Anonymous

          unironically those sections go hard in both Homer and Vergil.

        • 2 months ago
          Anonymous
        • 2 months ago
          Anonymous

          I made a post like this on IQfy years ago and got insulted relentlessly. Seriously why the frick should I care if a guy who owned 5 boats died in the same paragraph he was introduced?

        • 2 months ago
          Anonymous

          honestly, I laughed at so many of these parts. Some elaborate description about his family and his grandfathers sheep, just to tell me he got stabbed above the nipple and died

    • 2 months ago
      Anonymous

      Maybe try reading it before talking about it

      https://i.imgur.com/nb54Ing.jpg

      Again, that's a IQfy post. Try actually reading the book until you make comments about it.

      Let's just compromise and admit that a few books and long passages are indeed like that but not 2/3rd of the entire work.

  10. 2 months ago
    Anonymous

    How readable are these books if you have aphantasia? I can't form an apple in my mind's eye and in fact don't have a mind's eye and instead think in concepts rather than images.

    • 2 months ago
      Anonymous

      Aphantasia isn't real. Next

  11. 2 months ago
    Anonymous

    Haven't read the Iliad or Odyssey yet, but I'm curious as to why it's good. Do you mean by "good" anything more than "influential"? Are you judging it by different literary standards? Call me a psued, but I'm a bit sceptical of the idea that a 2800 year old greek poet created a work of literature which remains unserpassed.

    • 2 months ago
      Anonymous

      It is good because it makes me feel good whilst I read it

    • 2 months ago
      Anonymous

      The Odyssey is an incredible reflection on the nature of man’s identity and his relationship to the world around him, both natural world and also to his peers and his wife and family. It is a book where you search for your own identity within it much as Odysseus seeks to reclaim his own birthright.

  12. 2 months ago
    Anonymous

    this reads like a half-baked first impression; you haven't read a modicum of the canon.

  13. 2 months ago
    Anonymous

    The Iliad and the Odyssey are strange literary artifacts, in that in modern times they can only ever be viewed from an external and technical viewpoint. They're profoundly spiritual works, but the Greek warrior ethos on which they were built and must be experienced through has long since ceased to exist, thus the works can never truly be understood on a deeper level, beyond the superficial structure.

  14. 2 months ago
    Anonymous

    I'm getting filtered hard by lattimore's translation bros, I picked it up as a challenge for myself but it's kicking my ass. I skimmed over the entire second half of book 2 because all of the names of people and places blended together and I barely retained any of them except for the singular mention of Achilles and his angsting. am I doomed? what am I missing?

    • 2 months ago
      Anonymous

      that's the catalogue of ships, it not really part of the "story," just something that was important to the greeks historically like the parts of the bible where barazoam begat zagabodiel who begat karablazon and so on for 10 pages. just realx bro, getting all anxious about whether you "get" what you're reading is precisely how you end up not getting it

      • 2 months ago
        Anonymous

        that's good to hear. I'm trying to relax but I might be relaxing too much, as I frequently need to go back and reread passages. I'm going to take my time and focus on comprehending anything that isn't a list of people, places, and boats

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