Should I read the Iliad or is it boring shit?
>>23313667>Should I read x?Just read it if you're curious about it. Takes like 8 hours for an average reader. Then come back and tell us if you found it boring and why.
>>23313667It is boring shit, but you should read it anyway.
>>23313667Picture pic related but with beautiful, poignant and simultaneously vibrant language.
>>23313667You should not read it. There's no point in people like you reading at all.
It's an IQ test. If you don't like it, you're retarded.
>>23313667Nah bro the ur-text of Western literature is "boring shit", you've cracked the code, you don't have to come to this site anymore, congratulations!
>>23313720it took me like a year to read it
just re-read book 1 because fuck oinobares OP
>>23314624Well you are what is known as completely motherfucking stupid and a waste of oxygen. Even if you read only two chapters a day you would finish in twelve days.
>>23314649If you're going faster than a page a day you aren't truly appreciating homers genius
>>23314660That would still only take two hundred days.
It’s shit but like all classics receives undue reverence because of supposed “ancient wisdom”
>It’s shit but like all classics receives undue reverence because of supposed “ancient wisdom”
>>23313667It’s kino and yes you should
>>23314667
>>23314660>>23314624Most people probably wont read it with their dick in their hand slow-jacking to how erudite they are for really rolling every last word around in their sopping wet pussy of a brain like you did. I'm sure if someone wanted to just read the fucking thing they could knock it out in a day or so, then decide later if they wanted to be an obnoxious pseud about it.
I thought it was amazingI felt my ancestral warrior spirit emerging from the deepest recesses of my genetic memory
Currently reading it and have been hateposting about it for weeks now. Sucks, needn't bother.>>23313995Obviously, you are mistaken. The amazing thing is that the repeated imagery of violence, which should naturally have some appeal for any young man, manages to become boring in Homer's hands. Stabbing a guy to death in his bladder becomes DULL, which is no small feat for an author.
you must read it so you can read Simone Weil, and you must read Simone Weil.
>>23314825You are the most obnoxious poster currently on this board. So it doesn’t grip you because it’s boring? What do you even expect to get out of it? It’s not even really about the battle scenes. The battle serves to highlight the character of Achilleus and to portray his plight. Those aren’t even key to the themes you should be enjoying the book for.
>>23314624ye took me very long to read odyssey because i kept putting it down for weeks between sections
Ok, I bought it yesterday, I start today after my wageshift
>>23314664What version are you reading? Most have 500 pages or so
>>23316405The Richmond Lattimore translation in the Great Books of the Western World Series. I just checked and the Iliad is 306 pages in this volume with the average book averaging ten to fifteen pages.
>>23314649I have 129 IQ. I know it's not a lot but at least slightly above average. I don't know why I can't read fast but I just can't.
>>23317385Mine is 140, same deal. It takes me on average 2 minutes to finish a page. Harder books like Moby-Dick and Pierre can take up to 5 minutes.Probably has something to do with me starting to subvocalise in order to appreciate poetry and great prose. I used to read much faster when I absorbed the words on the page "directly", but that made me hate poetry as a child.
yeah but if your takeaway is "war is glorious" and not "war strips fathers of their sons" ur a brainlet for sure
>>23317550homer smuggles into book 23 a bitter comment on the monstrous slavery it entails, by awarding the winner of the wrestling match a copper cauldron worth twelve oxen, and the loser a captive trojan noblewoman valued as highly as four, because she is skilled at the loom.
>>23317427that's pretty fast bro I guess my problem is that I don't read a lot each day and have long breaks from reading, I'm not disciplined enough
>>23314825> The amazing thing is that the repeated imagery of violence, which should naturally have some appeal for any young man, manages to become boring in Homer's hands.It's one thing to find Homer boring, as many midwits do. However, to find the only thing of value to be the violent imagery, and grow even bored with THAT, is a symptom of mental disability.Perhaps something like Marvel's Avengers War of the Super Aliens or whatever is more your speed? At only a few hours long, and no big words, surely you'd be more happy consuming that. Or if that's too much brainpower, I'm sure there are some tiktok accounts with only the fighting parts in it.
>>23317550>yeah but if your takeaway is "war is glorious" and not "war strips fathers of their sons" ur a brainlet for sureIt really says something about our society(tm) that the message of "War fucking sucks, and even the good guys had to sell their honor to win" is completely lost, when it was so obvious a premise in a supposedly "savage" age. For people that chopped each other up with swords and enslaved anyone in one piece left over, despite their close daily association with death (or, duh, because of it), they were hippy-dippy peace and love flower child types.
>>23317633Try to ensure that you read a set amount of pages every single day. Even if it's something small like 10. Come back home tired from work? Doesn't matter, whip it out and do the bare minimum. Cultivate a habit. You can slowly expand it or leave the bare minimum and read more when you feel like it.Remember, 10 pages a day for 365 days is 3650 pages.
>>23317633> I'm not disciplined enoughThe thing that gets me reading is turning it into a pleasure time. Put on a record, burn some incense, get your favorite drink, and really roll the words around in your head. Rotate those apples. Picture the sounds of bronze blades screeching through breastplates, the looming Skaian Gates, Athena and Hera riding out of heaven in glittering divine armor, Aries screaming with the voice of TEN THOUSAND MEN AT ONCE.
>>23313787I liked that about the book. Made you really feel the death.
>>23318264I don't use social media (4chan doesn't count), and I don't care for capeshit (superheroes in general have some DNA in the Homeric it seems, as the men of old were superhuman, "much stronger than the men today"). But I am enjoying getting a rise out of anons by expressing sincere dislike for their precious classical work. Giving personal offense, upsetting their sensibilities of "honor" and "decorum". This is why I like Thersites, and find him to be the only character of value in the work.Bear in mind I'm only two thirds of the way through and I've never read the thing, so I'm unclear on whatever's coming up with Achilles and Hector (although one chapter is titled The Death of Hector so there's that).
>>23317550It is truly neither. Homer talks about the ill effects of war in his works but he stands away from delivering any moral stance on any of the events. His book is really “this is how the Trojan war went down. This is how it happened.” Achilles begrudgingly learns to respect Priam and to see where he is coming from but this isn’t some sort of stance against war. War causes pain to everyone but it also delivers them unending glory. The events, both political and godly which led to the story of Troy can not have been easily halted by any of the members of the playing cast.
>>23318418You are a dullard and your favorite character is quite literally a straw man of literal plebeians attempting to rise up against their own kings because they feel they know better. You may not be politically or morally a bad person but your sense as an aesthete is formidably mediocre.
>>23319766Actually I think he's got the right idea. A lot of people (students esp) are put off Homer by the air of stagnant reverence and bad translations that treat the Iliad as a schoolroom textbook and make him out to be unbearably dull. Homer was an entertainer.The most sensible and telling speech at Agamemnon’s assembly is made by that anti-monarchical commoner. Whom Odysseus thereupon flogs. To dissociate himself from Thersites' sentiments, Homer presents him as bow-legged, bald, hump-backed, horrible-looking, and a general nuisance; but the speech and Odysseus' brutal action stay on record.
>>23319787On your second point that is a great look at Homer’s view of the events that led up to Troy. The monarchy system and the gods themselves were at fault though it was entirely unavoidable. The bow legged pleb though is hardly the best character and the first guy is just trying to be super cool and Reddit by calling him “the only character of value.”
>>23319787Yeah my main idea overall I have been trying to get at is that Homer isn’t saying war is bad = war is wrong but war is bad and it is unavoidable. See this guys remarks here >>23317550 for what I was attempting to refute.
>>23319794Not many people come out well in the Iliad. Maybe only Hector
>>23319820None of them come out well but they are at each others throats over personal interests clashing and not even ones which are outside of their jurisdiction I guess like Paris and Agamemnon took women from other men because it was their role to. That is what I’m saying.
>>23319826>None of them come out well but they are at each others throats over personal interests clashing and not even ones which are outside of their jurisdiction I guess like Paris and Agamemnon took women from other men because it was their role tocould you rephrase this
>>23319846Paris did what the goddess Aphrodite allowed him to and Agamemnon was working under his capabilities as king of all Greeks when taking Briseis. They both seem like jerks but what they did is nothing their “roles” do not allow. They simply clash with interests.
>>23319862The gods come out even worse. Still, Homer satirizes his rulers. in book 2 Agamemnon calls an assembly and tests the troops' morale by offering to abandon the siege. But he so over-acts his defeatist part that he convinces even himself, and the war-weary soldiers rush cheering down to the ships until the goddess Athene is obliged to intervene.
>>23319890Is that really satire? He wanted to leave. He didn’t want to be there.
>>23319897It was meant to be a test and turned into a fiasco. Or after armistice is broken and he goes from contingent to contingent of his army, encouraging the commanders; but only succeeds in getting their backs up by his ill-chosen phrases. Idomeneus is barely civil; Diomedes a resentful silence; Odysseus and Sthenelus are downright rude to their High King.
>>23314624and did you understand it
>>23320125No, I read it in Homeric Greek blindfolded without any reference guide.
>>23317562that seems ridiculous to us but a cauldron being a massive luxury back then seems perfectly reasonable
>>23317562That's not a criticism, you stupid commie fuck. That's just him relating how things were.
>>23313667It's pretty alright. >>23319759Good take.
>>23317562bitter? it's one of the highlights of the book, pure idillic male-centric society on display
>>23320226how does the poem start off? 'sing to me, o goddess'
>>23320282The goddess considers herself superior to all humans so making any judgement of their moral character isn't something she would do. Remember Hera offered Zeus three cities of humans to kill as he wishes just because.
>>23320282and? Greeks had a widely better opinion of female divine beings than human ones, whose creation was literally a punishment and bane on men
>>23320287 homer doesn't ask us to approve of athene's mean behaviour when the lovable hector at last faces achilles, a far stronger champion than himself, and she robs him of his advantage.
>>23320294His "advantage" was hiding away from his for and denying the fate allotted to him. He was to die followed quickly by Achilleus himself. It would err for the gods to deny leading Hector to death.
>>23320294ok, but I don't see how this is relevant here, they are gods, and do as they please, that's kinda a major theme of ancients especially in Homer, though even them can't escape or trick fate, if anything, Athena there was acting in line with what was the destiny of Hektor
>>23320298homer lets his gods behave far worse than the one royal family to which he introduces us (the trojans). zeus throws horrible threats at his wife and the rest of the olympian family, well aware of their jealousies, grudges, deceptions, lies, and adulteries.
