Menu Close

Articles on the Iliad

Displaying all articles

A scene from a 1911 staging of the ancient Greek classic ‘Oedipus Rex.’ Imagno/Getty Images

Plagues follow bad leadership in ancient Greek tales

Greek epics remind audiences that leaders need to be able to plan for the future based on what has happened in the past. They need to understand cause and effect.
Scene from the movie, Troy, loosely based on Homer’s Iliad. (Troy)

Toxic masculinity fostered by misreadings of the classics

A classics professor is haunted by the co-optation of his discipline by the so-called “alt-right,” toxic masculinity and other self-styled “defenders of Western civilization.”
The Greeks defend their ships from the Trojans in Alfred Churchill’s Story of the Iliad, 1911. Wikimedia

Guide to the classics: Homer’s Iliad

A central idea in the Iliad - a poetic work focused on the war for Troy - is the inevitability of death. The poem held a special place in antiquity, and has resonated in the millennia since.

Top contributors

More