Iliad Book Seventeen

Iliad Book Seventeen


This is a translation of the seventeenth book of Homer’s Iliad and features the immediate aftermath of 

the pivotal event of the poem, the killing of Patroklos. The book deals with the attempts 

on the parts of both Greeks and Trojans to recover the body, the Greeks to honour it, and the 

Trojans to dishonour it. 


The poet avoids it becoming a rather dismal catalogue of “vignettes of violence” by skilful use

of diversionary tactics such as Hektor’s attempts to capture the horses of Akhilleus. The immortals 

are again intimately involved both explicitly and implicitly, but the book ends with the result yet 

in doubt as Menelaos and Marionas attempt to remove the body protected by the two 

Ai-ases.