Homer: Iliad Book IV

Book IV of the Iliad moves from the truce between Greeks and Trojans and the duel between Menelaos and Paris in Book III to the gods' decision that the Greeks will sack Troy, Athene's persuasion of Pandaros to break the truce by shooting at Menelaos, and the reciprocally and mutually destructive fighting between the two armies that ensues. This edition with commentary enables readers at all levels to interpret Book IV and Homeric poetry generally with heightened pleasure and understanding. It provides help with the morphology, grammar, syntax, and style of Homeric Greek, including the extended similes, speeches, and mythological allusions in Book IV. It also elucidates the poem's characterization of major and minor figures and its ethically charged representation of relations between gods and humans. Although intended primarily for undergraduates and graduate students, this edition also contains much of value for the scholar.

List of contents

Preface; Quotations, citations, and abbreviations; Abbreviations of standard reference works; Introduction; ¿ note on the text and apparatus criticus; Homer: Iliad Book IV; Commentary; Works cited; Indexes.

About the author

Seth L. Schein is Emeritus Professor of Comparative Literature at the University of California, Davis. He is the author of seven previous books, including The Mortal Hero: An Introduction to Homer's Iliad (1984), Reading the Odyssey: Selected Interpretive Essays (1996; edited), and Homeric Epic and its Reception: Interpretive Essays (2016). He has also edited Homer, Iliad: Book I (2022) and Sophocles: Philoctetes (2013) for the Cambridge Greek and Latin Classics series.

Product details

• Assisted by: Schein Seth L. (Editor)
• Publisher: Cambridge Academic
• Languages: English
• Product format: Paperback / Softback
• Release: 31.05.2026
• EAN: 9781009225663
• ISBN: 978-1-009-22566-3
• Weight: 250 g
• Illustrations: Worked examples or Exercises
• Series: Cambridge Greek and Latin Classics
• Subjects: Humanities, art, music > History > Antiquity; Poetry, HISTORY / Ancient / General, Ancient Greece, Classical texts, Translation & interpretation, Ancient World, Ancient (Classical) Greek, BCE to c 500 CE, Ancient Greek and Roman literature, For higher / tertiary / university education, c 1000 to c 500 BCE, Educational: literature in languages other than English, Translation and language interpretation, Classic poetry / poems, Literature of Greece