Day 1: The Beginning

Rage is what the great storytelling of the last three thousand years begins with. The rage of Achilles at Agamemnon's insult and its dreadful consequences for the Achaean armies under the walls of Troy. Through this blog, I will attempt to understand how that master storyteller Homer created an epic that still has the power to captivate the human imagination almost three millenia on.

The first English translations of the Homeric epics were not made until the eighteenth century, so it was not the English words that made these works immortal, but the original Greek words of the master poet who sung them when civilization in his land was yet young, though it had already grown old in others. So, what I intend to do is to teach myself Homeric Greek via Clyde Pharr's master work Homeric Greek: A Book for Beginners.

This blog is being set up first as a way to motivate myself to continue with what will undoubtedly be an arduous task and second I am hoping to maybe, just maybe, if I can attract an attention at all, create a stir in someone's heart out there that just might lead to a bit of curiosity which might possibly lead them to appreciate this unrivalled poet who deserves to be ranked with Moses, Jesus, and Muhammed as one of the iconic founders of the Western world.

Things will be organized as follows: Starting at Lesson XIII (which I have reached) of Pharr's book each lesson covers a short section of the first book of the Iliad, starting with line 1 and going to the end. After completing the lesson I will post the lines in the original Greek, then render my own translation and offer some, or no commentary, depending on the situation. Tomorrow, we shall start tomorrow and see what happens...