Homer and His Iliad

by Robin Lane Fox

Overview

A “compelling and impressive” (Sunday Times) reassessment of the Iliad, uncovering how the poem was written and why it remains enduringly powerful

The Iliad is the world’s greatest epic poem—heroic battle and divine fate set against the Trojan War. Its beauty and profound bleakness are intensely moving, but great questions remain: Where, how, and when was it composed and why does it endure? 

Robin Lane Fox addresses these questions, drawing on a lifelong love and engagement with the poem. He argues for a place, a date, and a method for its composition—subjects of ongoing controversy—combining the detailed expertise of a historian with a poetic reader’s sensitivity. Lane Fox considers hallmarks of the poem; its values, implicit and explicit; its characters; its women; its gods; and even its horses. 

Thousands of readers turn to the Iliad every year. Drawing on fifty years of reading and research, Lane Fox offers us a breathtaking tour of this magnificent text, revealing why the poem has endured for ages. 

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781541600447
Publisher:	Basic Books
Publication date:	10/24/2023
Pages:	464
Sales rank:	68,785
Product dimensions:	3.00(w) x 9.40(h) x 1.10(d)

About the Author

Robin Lane Fox is an emeritus fellow at New College, Oxford. His books include The Invention of Medicine, Augustine (winner of the major Wolfson History Prize), and The Classical World. He lives near Oxford, England. 

Editorial Reviews

10/30/2023

Oxford historian Lane Fox (Augustine) examines in this enlightening account the origins and the lasting impact of Homer’s Iliad. Drawing on historical and archaeological evidence, he pinpoints the method and location of the poem’s creation, suggesting that it was an oral narrative, with portions sung, that was dictated not long after its composition, which occurred along the Aegean Coast of Asia sometime between 750 and 740 BCE. (He zeroes in on such a precise time frame because it is bounded on the late end by the earliest appearance of lines from the poem on pottery shards, and on the early end by political and social developments which Homer seems to reference.) According to Lane Fox, the Iliad has endured because of the universal appeal of its themes, including the male heroes’ fascination with kudos or fame, the divine intervention and intermittent absences of the gods, and the contrast between the glory of war and the futility of conflict. The shifting behavior of the hero, Achilles—from anger to rage to revenge and finally to pity and compassion—receives special attention. Combining a historian’s meticulous methodology with a lifelong appreciation of the Iliad, Lane Fox presents a thorough reassessment of the poem and a moving interrogation of its themes of pathos, pity, and irony. It’s a rewarding investigation. (Oct.)

Publishers Weekly

Valuable… [an] earnest appreciation.”—Wall Street Journal

“Fiercely argued.”—Financial Times

“The best book on the Iliad in years and an exemplary work of historical and literary criticism.”—The Washington Examiner

"A masterly survey of the Iliad, its majesty, its pathos and its unparalleled progression from wrath to pity.”—History Today

“In his magisterial new book Homer and His Iliad, the eminent British classicist Robin Lane Fox reaches exegetical heights.”—Bloomberg Opinion

“Lane Fox is an Oxford don, and his book the result of a lifetime’s dedication to the Iliad — personally and professionally. As such it is rigorously academic, but also winningly idiosyncratic…. This is a compelling and impressive work.”—Times (UK)

“This is a compelling and impressive work.”—Sunday Times (UK)

“A bold reassessment of how [the Iliad] came to life.” —The Spectator (UK)

“The product of a lifetime’s contemplation of study… a stirring introduction to the sometimes alien Homeric world.” —The Spectator (UK)

"State-of-the-art discussion of the date and origin of the Homeric Iliad, melded with a fine personal account of the impact of the poem as a profound meditation on our human condition in what remains a dangerous world."—Bryn Mawr Classical Review

“Excellent … This book is the expression of [Fox’s] lifelong love for the poem.”—Country Life

“An engaging, scholarly commentary.”—The Oldie

“An enlightening account…. Combining a historian’s meticulous methodology with a lifelong appreciation of the Iliad, Lane Fox presents a thorough reassessment of the poem and a moving interrogation of its themes of pathos, pity, and irony. It’s a rewarding investigation.”—Publishers Weekly

“A lucid, scholarly exploration into an immortal work.”—Kirkus

“A spirited, erudite argument.”—Booklist

“Homer and His Iliad is rich, imaginative, perceptive and gorgeously written.”—Literary Review

“Fox’s book is as fiercely intelligent and scholarly… a marvelous grappling with a poem and his masterpiece.”—Open Letters Review

“Treasured, entertaining, and knowledgeable.”—Shelf Awareness

“Lane Fox weighs in elegantly on both streams of Homeric commentary, the academic and the aesthetic, drawing on his decades of scholarly familiarity and classroom experience with the poem.”—Washington Independent Review of Books

From the Publisher

An audiobook that tracks Homer's composition of THE ILIAD sounds speculative at best. Such discussions usually rely on verbs like "might have" and "could have." But working largely from the poem itself, Oxford scholar Fox assembles a remarkably rich and convincing portrait of a figure who could have composed and recited from memory a poem of over 15,000 lines. Narrator Robin Lane Fox, who also narrates the Penguin Classics ILIAD, brings elegance and grace to a narrative that is highly accessible. Field studies of illiterate Eastern European bards in the last century demonstrated they could retain thousands of lines of verse. Ironically, once they learned to read, that ability was lost. D.A.W. © AudioFile 2023, Portland, Maine

NOVEMBER 2023 - AudioFile

2023-07-18
A thorough analysis of “the world’s greatest poem.”

Classicist Fox, author of Augustine and The Classical World and winner of the James Tait Black Award and Duff Cooper Prize, reminds readers that the verses of the Iliad survive in three times as many ancient papyri as those from the Odyssey, with other literary works far more scanty. At 15,000 lines, it’s far longer than other Greek poems, but it remains distinctive for the “concentrated direction of its plot and the compression of its action’s timespan.” In this deeply learned literary companion, Fox makes use of more than 2,000 years of opinion and scholarship, settling many longstanding controversies to his own satisfaction. “It remains overwhelming,” he writes. “It makes us marvel, sometimes smile and often cry. Whenever I read it, it reduces me to tears.” The author maintains that an individual named Homer wrote the Iliad around 750-740 BC, rejecting the theory that it is a “patchwork” assembled by many poets. Fox points out that the poem contains accurate descriptions of landscape features in the relevant regions; together with archaeological findings, this satisfies him (and most scholars) that Troy was a real city, although it remains uncertain that a specific Trojan war took place. The author maintains that Homer is a master of literary pathos and irony, with perhaps Tolstoy being “his only equal.” But there is no doubt that Hellenic culture of the era he describes, as well as the motivations of his characters, requires a nearly page-by-page explication. The result is a rich textual companion for university students majoring in classics or world literature with a rare bonus of being entirely free of turgid academic prose. For average readers, Fox’s book contains far more information than they will want to know, although a Homer enthusiast will learn a great deal.

A lucid, scholarly exploration into an immortal work.

Kirkus Reviews