The Iliad

The Iliad is one of the oldest works of Western literature, dating back to classical antiquity. Homer’s epic poem belongs in a collection called the Epic Cycle, which includes the Odyssey . Written in an early literary dialect of ancient Greek, both poems were originally composed in dactylic hexameters. This meter is beautiful in the original but can sound awkward in modern English; Eric McMillan humorously described it as resembling “pumpkins rolling on a barn floor.” In the translation presented here, William Cullen Bryant avoids the problem by using iambic pentameter, a more familiar meter