The Iliad

In Our Time: Culture

BBC

History

4.5 • 1K Ratings

🗓️ 13 September 2018

⏱️ 49 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the great epic poem attributed to Homer, telling the story of an intense episode in the Trojan War. It is framed by the wrath of the Greek hero Achilles, insulted by his leader Agamemnon and withdrawing from the battle that continued to rage, only returning when his close friend Patroclus is killed by the Trojan hero Hector. Achilles turns his anger from Agamemnon to Hector and the fated destruction of Troy comes ever closer.

With

Edith Hall Professor of Classics at King's College London

Barbara Graziosi Professor of Classics at Princeton University

And

Paul Cartledge A.G. Leventis Senior Research Fellow and Emeritus Professor of Greek Culture at Clare College, Cambridge

Producer: Simon Tillotson.

Transcript

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0:46.5	the programs. Hello the Iliad is one of the greatest works in world literature,
0:50.8	one of the first and most influential. It explores a few crucial bloody weeks in the
0:56.0	long Trojan war when the Greeks might win at last, if only their greatest warrior, the
1:00.5	godlike Achilles will return to the fight and forgive Agamemnon the leader who pulled
1:05.2	rank and put him into an implacable fury.
1:08.4	The poem is composed in the 8th century BC and attributed to Homer yet the story is set long before then
1:13.7	perhaps 400 years before in the midst of a bronze age when immortal gods had
1:18.0	mortal children and here everywhere we see the consequences of that mortality.
1:23.0	We meet to discuss the Iliad are Edith Hall, Professor of Classics as King's College London.
1:28.0	Barbara Graziosi, Professor of Classics at Princeton University,
1:32.0	and Paul Cartilage, A.G. Lervantes, senior research
	...

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