The sheer amount of similar sounding names, or indeed identical names in the case of Ajax and Ajax, was also something that didn’t help my understanding, despite the excellent translation by Robert Fagles. My main takeaways from the book were how gory the story is how much repetition there is in the wording with each Olympian or main warrior described as for example ‘the swift runner’ to help the verse scan how often the Greek gods interact with humans and interfere with the battle despite Zeus telling them to remain impartial and finally that there’s no ruddy mention of the Trojan Horse or the death of Achilles – although the prophesy is alluded to numerous times. I read The Iliad a year ago, spurred on by Stephen Fry’s books, which stopped frustratingly short of any Homeric content. It tells the story of the face that launched a thousand ships, the siege and fall of Troy, how Achilles met his fate, about why you should be wary of Greeks bearing unexpected gifts and made sense of Homer’s The Iliad which only seems to tell half the story.
Troy is everything I had been hoping for after reading Stephen Fry’s other Greek mythology books – Mythos and Heroes.
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