The Iliad

The wrath of Achilles, the fall of heroes and the will of the gods – The Iliad is Homer's towering epic of the Trojan War, published here in Alexander Pope's celebrated verse translation.

Set in the final weeks of the ten-year siege of Troy, The Iliad follows the Greek champion Achilles, whose quarrel with his commander Agamemnon drives him from the battlefield and sends the war spinning toward the duel that will decide the fate of Hector and of Troy. Composed in ancient Greece and traditionally ascribed to Homer, it is the foundational epic of Western literature, a heroic poem of glory, fate, and ruin that has shaped storytelling for nearly three thousand years.

This Wine Dark Press edition presents the epic in the celebrated verse translation of Alexander Pope, first published in six volumes between 1715 and 1720, which carried Homer's Greek into the soaring heroic couplets that made it one of the most admired English poems of its age. Pope's version keeps the metre, the music, and the grandeur of the ancient poem in its truest form. Gathered here with a selection of accompanying writings, this beautiful edition is perfect for those seeking the story as it was first told, designed to be read and returned to over a lifetime.