# The Illiad And The Oddesy



## Elvenswordsman (Nov 23, 2005)

Homer. Amazing writer, don't you think? and those immateur punks who thinks this is homer simpson get a life as that is an old joke...
Whats your favorite part in either or both?


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## Crazy_dude6662 (Nov 24, 2005)

the oddesy, i had to read the illiad for the Junior Cert and it was SOOOOOO BORING!!!!!!!!

what abotu the aneid, i like that too, just started reading it


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## Elvenswordsman (Nov 24, 2005)

It ws good also...


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## Achilles (Nov 24, 2005)

Homer isn't even proven to have existed, and if he did exist the copies we have today of his epics are nothing like the original tellings. First of all he was a storyteller, not a writer, and most of the enjoyment was in the telling. In spite of that, the Odyssey and Iliad are both great works.


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## Graff (Nov 24, 2005)

Most of the writers at that time used pseudonyms anyways. Most of their real names aren't known.


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## Hodge (Nov 24, 2005)

Homer was most probably a real person, but he didn't write the tales down. They were an oral tradition for hundreds of years before they were written down. _The Aeneid_, however, was written by Virgil and meant entirely to capture the style of Homer's works.


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## Crazy_dude6662 (Nov 25, 2005)

the aneaid was also written to praise ceasar and agustous


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## Stewart (Nov 25, 2005)

Have you guys, with the exception of Achilles, read what the _real_ books are actually called?


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## Aevin (Nov 26, 2005)

Well ...  I never would have read those books on my own, and I may not read them again, but I really enjoyed them when I took a class on them awhile ago.  All kinds of English and American literature allude to them or mimic them stylistically (Milton's Paradise Lost comes to mind).  I've even used some things from them in my own work.

Oh ... And it was required in my class to be able to spell "Iliad," "Odyssey" and "Aeneid."  Although I'm sure I've made some horrific mistake just for this and will be mocked accordingly.  :roll:


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## Penelope (Nov 26, 2005)

With a name like Penelope the Odyssey was required reading and I enjoyed it so much I went on to the Illiad.  Neither book was referred to when I reached secondary school but it was irrelevant.  

There aren't many other 'classics' that I've read and I hestitate to determine which fits into that catagory because a 'classic' to me is a book I can read several times.  I could barely choke down Charles Dickens once and couldn't even finish any of Jane Austen's, matter of fact I'd barely began before I became bored to tears.


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## Hodge (Nov 26, 2005)

Jane Austen... Her stuff is only classic because they were the _first_ melodramatic romance novels.

Homer's works are just so damn sexy. My only problem with them is that Odysseus really is just a gigantic prick (Achilles, too), and the extreme patriarchy that was Greek society bleeds in to the stories (the same with _The Aeneid_, but it's not quite as bad and Aeneas isn't quite as big a dick as Odysseus).


I have a fun question regarding Achilles. Who can tell me where the myth of him getting shot in the heel with an arrow came from? It wasn't in _The Iliad_, and I'm pretty sure it wasn't in _The Aeneid_ (but that's where we got the Trojan Horse myth from).


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## Aevin (Nov 26, 2005)

I don't know the names of them, but I know there are other literatures about the Trojan war which probably talk about it--I do remember teachers describing the things which happened between the Iliad and the Odyssey, or the Iliad and the Aeneid, for example.  I do know some of the Greek tragedies dealt with it--what was the name of the one about the wife of Priam, the Trojan King, after the war?


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## Elvenswordsman (Nov 26, 2005)

...


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## Achilles (Nov 26, 2005)

Hodge said:
			
		

> I have a fun question regarding Achilles. Who can tell me where the myth of him getting shot in the heel with an arrow came from? It wasn't in _The Iliad_, and I'm pretty sure it wasn't in _The Aeneid_ (but that's where we got the Trojan Horse myth from).


No idea. I've always wondered where it came from, and what the "true" story abou this death was since the Iliad does not cover it. How did he die, anyway?

I'm having a bit of an identity crisis here.


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