This anthology makes accessible to the reader sixteen of the most important studies of Homer and the Iliad to appear in the last forty years. The essays, by leading Homeric scholars from Great Britain, the United States, and Europe, deal not only with the aesthetics and artistry of the Iliad as a poetic artefact, but with its historical context, its cultural background, and its ethical and political framework.

• 1: Ian Morris: The Use and Abuse of Homer


• 2: Walter Burkert: The Making of Homer


• 3: R. B. Rutherford: From the Iliad to the Odyssey


• 4: Richard Gaskin: Do Homeric Heroes Make Real Decisions?


• 5: Albin Lesky: Divine and Human Causation in Homeric Epic


• 6: Douglas L. Cairns: Affronts and Quarrels in the Iliad


• 7: Malcolm Schofield: Euboulia in the Iliad


• 8: R. B. Rutherford: Tragic Form and Feeling in the Iliad


• 9: C. W. Macleod: Homer on Poetry and the Poetry of Homer


• 10: Jean-Pierre Vernant: A 'Beautiful Death' and the Disfigured Corpse


• 11: Oliver Taplin: The Shield of Achilles within the Iliad


• 12: Jasper Griffin: The Epic Cycle and the Uniqueness of Homer


• 13: Wolfgang Kullmann: Past and Future in the Iliad


• 14: Laura M. Slatkin: The Wrath of Thetis


• 15: M. M. Willcock: Mythological Paradigms in the Iliad


• 16: James Redfield: The Proem of the Iliad: Homer's Art


• 17: Irene J. F. de Jong: Iliad I. 366-92: A Mirror Story

Lecturer in Classics, University of Glasgow