Extract

Sing, O goddess, the anger of Achilles son of Peleus.

A warrior sits by his ships and refuses to fight, and the entire war pivots on the axis of his wounded pride. Homer's epic, composed around the eighth century BC, covers only weeks of the Trojan War's tenth year, yet contains everything the ancient world knew about glory, grief, and the price the body pays for both. Achilles' rage reveals what every character is made of, from Hector's doomed nobility to Priam's shattered dignity as he kisses the hands that killed his son. The poem does not flinch from slaughter, naming each fallen soldier to insist that every death is particular. Its final image is not victory but mourning, and in that choice the poem declares its allegiance: not to triumph but to the cost of being human.