Where Achilles Loses It

The Iliad Translated by Samuel Butler by Homer
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

(As always, I'm ranking this work of literature by how much I enjoyed reading it, how much fun it was, how interesting I found it. I am not gauging it's worth--I don't know how to do that. Not gonna try.)

My review of the Iliad: I liked it some. It's okay.

I don't remember if I've read it all the way through before, though I've definitely read big chunks at different times. I got this new hardcover version of an old (1898) translation as a gift, and though I may still read one of the new translations sometime, I decided to start here.

I thought it was not too bad--speaking both of the original work and the English translation. My least favorite part of the translation was that he used the names of the Roman gods instead of Greek--Jove, not Zeus; Minerva, not Athena; Juno, not Hera; and so on. Apollo was still Apollo.

I kinda forgot how narrow the story was. This takes us from Achilles deciding not to fight anymore to Hector's funeral (sorry! Spoilers!). The origins of the war and the first 9 years are skipped over; the end of the war isn't reached. What we do have is a lot of fighting and arguing, and naming of men as they die and which gruesome way it comes to them.

The parts I found most interesting were the places where they talked about the allies that came from this region or that city, on both sides of the war, and when they referred to towns and cities taken by the Achaeans before reaching Troy and the events of those campaigns. (The woman Briseis was was taken as a prize of war in one of those earlier fights, as were many slaves and treasures.) To be honest, it's this background stuff and the everyday life of the region I'm most interested in, like how much they knew about other lands, how much they traded with neighbors, what languages were spoken nearby, how the societies were set up, things like that, and in the midst of this war story we get some clues.

As far as storytelling and modern expectations, where we look for tension and a conflict that the main character tries to work through, where they succeed or fail on their merits, the Iliad is disappointing. This is largely due to the years separating them from us, and part of the issue is that they have different literary expectations. For example, it's clear that a lot of the background would be well-known to ancient listeners long before they heard any of the Iliad. Many of the characters that we barely get to know or know only by name could be heroes in other stories that Homer's audiences already loved, like Spiderman showing up in an Avengers movie. We don't have their background knowledge, so any pleasure we should have taken from that name-dropping goes whoosh over my head. And back then they might have been cool with all of the Olympian meddling going on, but I hated that. The gods move people around, deciding who wins today and who wins tomorrow, who lives and dies, so that striving makes no difference. Intention, bravery, effort all become pointless as far as storytelling goes if the gods are deciding everything. In a way, the story that matters is just what falls in the cracks between the interventions of the gods.

Priam begging Achilles to return his son's body to him is the most human and entertaining (IMO) part of the story. Even this was preordained, but at least their conversation is in their own words, and it's very dramatic and sad. That scene was probably the most similar to modern literature you could find in the whole epic, and it was the one that worked best for me.

I found things to entertain me in this, and some parts of it are straight up engaging on their own. Lots of it is less fun, tbh, but anybody picking up an ancient piece of literature expects that.

My recommendation? If you think you might want to read this, look for one of the new translations. You may enjoy it.

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Where Xenophon Gets The Greeks Out of a Jam

The March Up Country by Xenophon
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

My 4-star evaluation is a blend of the original story itself (kinda cool, though flawed enough to only be about a 3 from me) and the English translation (which I thought was excellent, 5 stars).

I can't find a definitive date for the translation, but it appears to come from just before or around the time of World War II, and there's no doubt in my mind that someone could do an amazing translation in 2024 that reads more smoothly or, for that matter, has better notes. But I don't have any quibbles with the language, and I barely even thought about the translation as I read, and that usually means he's done the job. So hat tip to Mr. Rouse.

The story itself, in the original Greek, is very cool in its way. It's amazing to hear the thoughts of someone from 24 centuries ago. Kinda shocking, actually. His morality is very different from that of a modern man. And at a surface level, this is a very exciting, illuminating, almost unbelievable adventure story. Ten thousand Greek soldiers 1500 miles from home, in enemy territory, surrounded by armies, have to fight their way back to Greek lands by crossing rivers, climbing mountains, facing tribe after tribe of hostile natives, negotiating or fighting to acquire enough supplies to hold off starvation, devising new defensive strategies to survive, all while trying to hold together a coalition among the various Greeks so that they didn't fracture and die separately.

That's all pretty great.

But then the story reaches a sort of climax, very near to resolution, then proceeds to wander off into random wars that they sign on for, long passages that sound like a courtroom, boring personal and political disagreements, all leading to a vague, unsatisfying conclusion. What I'm saying is that the final third is nothing like a Hollywood script. I would have to end it when they reach the Black Sea and find some Greek colonies, small cities along the shore. Yay! We're saved!

Narrator: they weren't saved. That wasn't the end.

But it's still fun in parts and well worth reading for the insights into the minds of people then. I'm not sure, even after googling, if the frequent sacrifices made through the story were animal or human. (They are often called "victims," which points one way, but might be misleading. Or so I read online.) Putting that question aside, the "might makes right" morality of the story is disturbing but informative. Nobody has any qualms at all about raiding a peaceful village, killing a bunch of people, taking all their food, and making the rest of the people captives to be sold as slaves later. They don't seem too worried about breaking agreements. In fact, using force to hold someone to an agreement seems to be the norm. Being fooled by someone is more shameful, apparently, than fooling someone. It's things like this that I really didn't know that I found particularly interesting.

I wish Xenophon knew the questions we'd have, because I have more now than I did when I started. Very near the end he mentions his servant, and I realize it's the first I've heard of it. I imagined him setting up his own tent and cooking own his food, but nope. These guys had non-combatants with them, even a thousand miles from home. Probably some of the slaves they took. Women aren't mentioned, or I missed it if they were--Cyrus had women with him, members of his family, all in fancy litters, but I thought it was just him--but maybe the Greeks had women with them. Some of the things Xenophon assumes everyone knows are exactly the things I want to read about. He told us how wide every river was, but he didn't tell us everything I wanted to know about their life in camp.

There is a lot of military strategy here, and that's great. It shows how they created a small mounted group because they were getting torn up without it, and how they recruited some of their guys to be slingers, holding off the armies chasing them with their lead bullets. And there are many things like this, where we see them growing more and more sophisticated in order to survive.

Anyway, this is pretty entertaining and quite informative. At about 150 pages, it's not too long to look into if one has a little curiosity about it.

Recommended for writers and history nerds.

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Where Myke Cole Proves His Point and Pisses Off RWNJ's

The Bronze Lie: Shattering the Myth of Spartan Warrior Supremacy by Myke Cole
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

This is an informative, entertaining, persuasive reckoning of the real character of Sparta and Spartan history. Myke Cole writes well, of course, but what's most impressive about this book is his careful scholarship. A great deal of study went into this book.

The author is reacting to the right-wing fetishizing of Spartan training and Spartan domination in war--supposed, one must add. Because of modern mythologizing, Sparta has come to hold a strange position of honor among gun lovers and others on the far right, and Myke Cole does an amazing job of setting the record straight here. He does it methodically, chronicling the victories and defeats, the bribes offered and bribes taken, the errors and oversights and bungled campaigns over centuries, giving credit where credit is due but also brutally casting in sharp relief all of the deviations from the myth of Spartan invincibility and Spartan honor.

The argument is devastating and undeniable.

What I like is how Cole brings the reader along the whole time. Every example of Spartan fallibility is brought back to the main argument, showing how it doesn't match the myth. Everything is made explicit, and the thousandth (possible exaggeration) time he tells us how they should have scouted ahead and walked into an ambush or refused to innovate and got overrun or relied too much on hoplites and got beaten by archers, the reader knows that he has proven his point. Sure, the Spartans were good fighters, better trained than the typical fighters of the time, but as a culture they had huge blind spots that an innate conservatism made almost impossible to correct.

What I found most interesting to learn was how the Peers--the heart of Spartan society and army--dwindled in numbers over time because of a rigid economic system that squeezed families out if their wealth dropped below a certain point. Instead of broadening the base, instead of reforming the system, they allowed their greatest asset to dwindle. They would rather have fewer Peers every year than allow undeserving citizens to qualify.

They believed their own PR, and they choked on it. It was a slow moving tragedy.

The strength of this book--a minute recitation of historical events in context--becomes tedious, I'll admit. I enjoyed reading about their history to a point, but the last third got hard to read. I stopped caring about the parade of names and places that I had never heard of before. (That's on me, btw.) But it serves its purpose by being comprehensive, which it absolutely must be to make his point. Cole doesn't overlook any part of their history, laying it all out for the reader, and this completeness seals the deal.

This is an excellent education in Spartan history in particular and Greek history in general and should be read with interest by anyone curious about the topic. Excellent scholarship (with sources constantly declared), clear prose, and an unrelenting focus on the argument he is making ensures that this book achieves its purposes, not least of which is to provide the reader with an engaging and entertaining education.

Highly recommended.

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