The Iliad

Homer · 750–700 BCE · Ancient Greece

Originally Ἰλιάς (Ancient Greek) · translated by Robert Fagles

Why it matters

A few weeks of rage near the end of the Trojan War (Achilles sulking, fighting, and finally grieving) become Western literature's founding poem. War's glory and its obscene waste held in a single unblinking gaze, three millennia old and still unsurpassed.

At a glance

Formulaic epithets, long battle catalogues, and an alien heroic code demand patient acclimatization.