Should I read the Iliad or is it boring shit?
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Should I read the Iliad or is it boring shit?
Should I read the Iliad or is it boring shit?
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>Should I read x?
Just read it if you're curious about it. Takes like 8 hours for an average reader. Then come back and tell us if you found it boring and why.
it took me like a year to read it
Well you are what is known as completely motherfricking stupid and a waste of oxygen. Even if you read only two chapters a day you would finish in twelve days.
If you're going faster than a page a day you aren't truly appreciating homers genius
That would still only take two hundred days.
What version are you reading? Most have 500 pages or so
The Richmond Lattimore translation in the Great Books of the Western World Series. I just checked and the Iliad is 306 pages in this volume with the average book averaging ten to fifteen pages.
Most people probably wont read it with their dick in their hand slow-jacking to how erudite they are for really rolling every last word around in their sopping wet pussy of a brain like you did.
I'm sure if someone wanted to just read the fricking thing they could knock it out in a day or so, then decide later if they wanted to be an obnoxious pseud about it.
I have 129 IQ. I know it's not a lot but at least slightly above average. I don't know why I can't read fast but I just can't.
Mine is 140, same deal. It takes me on average 2 minutes to finish a page. Harder books like Moby-Dick and Pierre can take up to 5 minutes.
Probably has something to do with me starting to subvocalise in order to appreciate poetry and great prose. I used to read much faster when I absorbed the words on the page "directly", but that made me hate poetry as a child.
that's pretty fast bro
I guess my problem is that I don't read a lot each day and have long breaks from reading, I'm not disciplined enough
Try to ensure that you read a set amount of pages every single day. Even if it's something small like 10. Come back home tired from work? Doesn't matter, whip it out and do the bare minimum. Cultivate a habit. You can slowly expand it or leave the bare minimum and read more when you feel like it.
Remember, 10 pages a day for 365 days is 3650 pages.
> I'm not disciplined enough
The thing that gets me reading is turning it into a pleasure time. Put on a record, burn some incense, get your favorite drink, and really roll the words around in your head. Rotate those apples. Picture the sounds of bronze blades screeching through breastplates, the looming Skaian Gates, Athena and Hera riding out of heaven in glittering divine armor, Aries screaming with the voice of TEN THOUSAND MEN AT ONCE.
ye took me very long to read odyssey because i kept putting it down for weeks between sections
and did you understand it
No, I read it in Homeric Greek blindfolded without any reference guide.
It is boring shit, but you should read it anyway.
Picture pic related but with beautiful, poignant and simultaneously vibrant language.
I liked that about the book. Made you really feel the death.
You should not read it. There's no point in people like you reading at all.
It's an IQ test. If you don't like it, you're moronic.
Currently reading it and have been hateposting about it for weeks now. Sucks, needn't bother.
Obviously, you are mistaken. The amazing thing is that the repeated imagery of violence, which should naturally have some appeal for any young man, manages to become boring in Homer's hands. Stabbing a guy to death in his bladder becomes DULL, which is no small feat for an author.
You are the most obnoxious poster currently on this board. So it doesn’t grip you because it’s boring? What do you even expect to get out of it? It’s not even really about the battle scenes. The battle serves to highlight the character of Achilleus and to portray his plight. Those aren’t even key to the themes you should be enjoying the book for.
> The amazing thing is that the repeated imagery of violence, which should naturally have some appeal for any young man, manages to become boring in Homer's hands.
It's one thing to find Homer boring, as many midwits do. However, to find the only thing of value to be the violent imagery, and grow even bored with THAT, is a symptom of mental disability.
Perhaps something like Marvel's Avengers War of the Super Aliens or whatever is more your speed? At only a few hours long, and no big words, surely you'd be more happy consuming that. Or if that's too much brainpower, I'm sure there are some tiktok accounts with only the fighting parts in it.
I don't use social media (IQfy doesn't count), and I don't care for capeshit (superheroes in general have some DNA in the Homeric it seems, as the men of old were superhuman, "much stronger than the men today"). But I am enjoying getting a rise out of anons by expressing sincere dislike for their precious classical work. Giving personal offense, upsetting their sensibilities of "honor" and "decorum". This is why I like Thersites, and find him to be the only character of value in the work.
Bear in mind I'm only two thirds of the way through and I've never read the thing, so I'm unclear on whatever's coming up with Achilles and Hector (although one chapter is titled The Death of Hector so there's that).
You are a dullard and your favorite character is quite literally a straw man of literal plebeians attempting to rise up against their own kings because they feel they know better. You may not be politically or morally a bad person but your sense as an aesthete is formidably mediocre.
Actually I think he's got the right idea. A lot of people (students esp) are put off Homer by the air of stagnant reverence and bad translations that treat the Iliad as a schoolroom textbook and make him out to be unbearably dull. Homer was an entertainer.
The most sensible and telling speech at Agamemnon’s assembly is made by that anti-monarchical commoner. Whom Odysseus thereupon flogs. To dissociate himself from Thersites' sentiments, Homer presents him as bow-legged, bald, hump-backed, horrible-looking, and a general nuisance; but the speech and Odysseus' brutal action stay on record.
On your second point that is a great look at Homer’s view of the events that led up to Troy. The monarchy system and the gods themselves were at fault though it was entirely unavoidable. The bow legged pleb though is hardly the best character and the first guy is just trying to be super cool and Reddit by calling him “the only character of value.”
Not many people come out well in the Iliad. Maybe only Hector
None of them come out well but they are at each others throats over personal interests clashing and not even ones which are outside of their jurisdiction I guess like Paris and Agamemnon took women from other men because it was their role to. That is what I’m saying.
>None of them come out well but they are at each others throats over personal interests clashing and not even ones which are outside of their jurisdiction I guess like Paris and Agamemnon took women from other men because it was their role to
could you rephrase this
Paris did what the goddess Aphrodite allowed him to and Agamemnon was working under his capabilities as king of all Greeks when taking Briseis. They both seem like jerks but what they did is nothing their “roles” do not allow. They simply clash with interests.
The gods come out even worse. Still, Homer satirizes his rulers. in book 2 Agamemnon calls an assembly and tests the troops' morale by offering to abandon the siege. But he so over-acts his defeatist part that he convinces even himself, and the war-weary soldiers rush cheering down to the ships until the goddess Athene is obliged to intervene.
Is that really satire? He wanted to leave. He didn’t want to be there.
It was meant to be a test and turned into a fiasco. Or after armistice is broken and he goes from contingent to contingent of his army, encouraging the commanders; but only succeeds in getting their backs up by his ill-chosen phrases. Idomeneus is barely civil; Diomedes a resentful silence; Odysseus and Sthenelus are downright rude to their High King.
Yeah my main idea overall I have been trying to get at is that Homer isn’t saying war is bad = war is wrong but war is bad and it is unavoidable. See this guys remarks here
for what I was attempting to refute.
Nah bro the ur-text of Western literature is "boring shit", you've cracked the code, you don't have to come to this site anymore, congratulations!
just re-read book 1 because frick oinobares OP
It’s shit but like all classics receives undue reverence because of supposed “ancient wisdom”
>It’s shit but like all classics receives undue reverence because of supposed “ancient wisdom”
It’s kino and yes you should
I thought it was amazing
I felt my ancestral warrior spirit emerging from the deepest recesses of my genetic memory
you must read it so you can read Simone Weil, and you must read Simone Weil.
Ok, I bought it yesterday, I start today after my wageshift
yeah but if your takeaway is "war is glorious" and not "war strips fathers of their sons" ur a brainlet for sure
homer smuggles into book 23 a bitter comment on the monstrous slavery it entails, by awarding the winner of the wrestling match a copper cauldron worth twelve oxen, and the loser a captive trojan noblewoman valued as highly as four, because she is skilled at the loom.
that seems ridiculous to us but a cauldron being a massive luxury back then seems perfectly reasonable
That's not a criticism, you stupid commie frick. That's just him relating how things were.
bitter? it's one of the highlights of the book, pure idillic male-centric society on display
how does the poem start off? 'sing to me, o goddess'
The goddess considers herself superior to all humans so making any judgement of their moral character isn't something she would do. Remember Hera offered Zeus three cities of humans to kill as he wishes just because.
and? Greeks had a widely better opinion of female divine beings than human ones, whose creation was literally a punishment and bane on men
homer doesn't ask us to approve of athene's mean behaviour when the lovable hector at last faces achilles, a far stronger champion than himself, and she robs him of his advantage.
His "advantage" was hiding away from his for and denying the fate allotted to him. He was to die followed quickly by Achilleus himself. It would err for the gods to deny leading Hector to death.
ok, but I don't see how this is relevant here, they are gods, and do as they please, that's kinda a major theme of ancients especially in Homer, though even them can't escape or trick fate, if anything, Athena there was acting in line with what was the destiny of Hektor
homer lets his gods behave far worse than the one royal family to which he introduces us (the trojans). zeus throws horrible threats at his wife and the rest of the olympian family, well aware of their jealousies, grudges, deceptions, lies, and adulteries.
>yeah but if your takeaway is "war is glorious" and not "war strips fathers of their sons" ur a brainlet for sure
It really says something about our society(tm) that the message of "War fricking sucks, and even the good guys had to sell their honor to win" is completely lost, when it was so obvious a premise in a supposedly "savage" age. For people that chopped each other up with swords and enslaved anyone in one piece left over, despite their close daily association with death (or, duh, because of it), they were hippy-dippy peace and love flower child types.
It is truly neither. Homer talks about the ill effects of war in his works but he stands away from delivering any moral stance on any of the events. His book is really “this is how the Trojan war went down. This is how it happened.”
Achilles begrudgingly learns to respect Priam and to see where he is coming from but this isn’t some sort of stance against war. War causes pain to everyone but it also delivers them unending glory. The events, both political and godly which led to the story of Troy can not have been easily halted by any of the members of the playing cast.
It's pretty alright.
Good take.