Homer and His Iliad

Contributors

By Robin Lane Fox

Read by Steve John Shepherd

Formats and Prices

Price

$38.99

Format

Format:

  1. Audiobook Download (Unabridged) $38.99
  2. ebook $19.99
  3. Hardcover $32.50 $41.00 CAD

A groundbreaking reassessment of the Iliad, uncovering how the poem was written and why it remains enduringly powerful 

The Iliad is the world’s greatest epic poem—heroic battle and divine fate set against the Trojan War. Its beauty and profound bleakness are intensely moving, but great questions remain: Where, how, and when was it composed and why does it endure? 

Robin Lane Fox addresses these questions, drawing on a lifelong love and engagement with the poem. He argues for a place, a date, and a method for its composition—subjects of ongoing controversy—combining the detailed expertise of a historian with a poetic reader’s sensitivity. Lane Fox considers hallmarks of the poem; its values, implicit and explicit; its characters; its women; its gods; and even its horses. 

Thousands of readers turn to the Iliad every year. Drawing on fifty years of reading and research, Lane Fox offers us a breathtaking tour of this magnificent text, revealing why the poem has endured for ages. 

  • “Lane Fox is an Oxford don, and his book the result of a lifetime’s dedication to the Iliad — personally and professionally. As such it is rigorously academic, but also winningly idiosyncratic…. This is a compelling and impressive work.”
    Times (UK)
  • “This is a compelling and impressive work.”
    Sunday Times (UK)
  • “A bold reassessment of how [the Iliad] came to life.” 
    The Spectator (UK)
  • “Excellent … This book is the expression of [Fox’s] lifelong love for the poem.”
    Country Life
  • “An engaging, scholarly commentary.”
    The Oldie
  • “A lucid, scholarly exploration into an immortal work.”
    Kirkus
  • Homer and His Iliad is rich, imaginative, perceptive and gorgeously written.”
    Literary Review

On Sale
Oct 24, 2023
Publisher
Hachette Audio
ISBN-13
9781668632819

Robin Lane Fox

About the Author

Robin Lane Fox is an emeritus fellow at New College, Oxford. His books include The Invention of Medicine, Augustine (winner of the major Wolfson History Prize), and The Classical World. He lives near Oxford, England. 

Learn more about this author