The Iliad by Homer

"Euripides trousers - Emendates trousers."
The Young Ones, Episode One.

     Reviewing The Iliad is like reviewing the sky. It always been there and it always will be. A friend of mine licks every book and CD that he reviews. His theory is that you need to experience an artistic endeavor with all your senses. He's always hoped to review the Lilith Faire. My point? I guess it's that some of my friends are pretty messed up.

     As messed up as my friends are, they've got nothing on the cast of characters in The Iliad. It all begins with Agamemnon and Achilles fighting over a woman. Well, that's where the book starts. The Trojan War started nine years earlier when Paris made off with Menelaus' wife, Helen. Today, this would all be settled on Springer, but those were simpler times, so everybody went to war. The story ends with the burial of Hector, perhaps the only decent guy in the book.

     It's not my job to judge people who haven't read the Iliad. It's my job to judge people who know all the words to "The South's Gonna Do It Again" by the Charlie Daniels Band. Those people are assholes. Where was I? Oh, right, the Iliad. While the Iliad has remained a timeless story, it's suffered through hundreds of translations, and therein lays the rub. Last month I was reading The Secret History by Donna Tartt. In that book, one of the characters quotes the Iliad - the part in book eleven where Odysseus is surrounded and he says "And then my heart spoke on to me 'I am a soldier; I have seen far worse than this'". I remembered that line from the first time I read the Iliad, about twenty-five years ago. Wanting to see it in print again, I went out and bought a new copy, this one was translated by Robert Fagles. The line appears nowhere in the book. What the fuck?

     What does appear in Mr. Fagles "Translation" are the words "Berserk", "Bitch", and "Volkswagen". OK, I was kidding about the last one, but the other two are in there. I know that it's tough to translate things into modern English (who sang "Melt With You") from ancient Greek. For example, what most scholars translate as "swift Achilles", literally translates as "Achilles. Swift with respect to his feet.", so I'm willing to cut Fagles a little slack. But "Bitch" and "Berserk"? Anyway, inspired by Mr. Fagles, I now present a brief portion of my own translation of The Iliad:

     And then Achilles stepped forward, fixing Agamemnon, the King of men, in his gaze. And then Achilles spoke "You are a coward. While brave Achaeans die before the Trojan walls, you hide in the bowels of your black ship."

     "Fag" said Agamemnon.

     "Double-Fag" answered Achilles, swift with respect to his feet.

     "Fag to infinity" replied Agamemnon of Argos.

     And then Odysseus, a mastermind like Zeus, strode forth and exclaimed "Hey guys, what's with the "Fag' this and 'Fag' that talk? It's 800 BC, OK? By now everybody knows Homophobia is not cool."

     "When did the mighty Odysseus become so PC?" asked Patroclus, a masturbator, like Pan, "When kingly Agamemnon offered Achilles nine lusty women from Lesbos, wasn't it you who suggested that they 'all ate from the bushy bowl'?"

     "You want a piece of me?" challenged Odysseus. "Didn't think so… pussy."

     Granted, my classic Greek is kind of…oh, what's the word? Shitty. But that sure was exciting reading wasn't it? Makes ya' wanna read (or re-read) the Iliad, doesn't it? Good, because that was my goal. Despite what people like to say about Huck Finn, writing really starts with The Iliad.