The Iliad and the Odyssey Homr (2000)

Hector bidding farewell to his wife and baby son, Odysseus bound to the mast while listening to the Sirens, Penelope at the loom, and Achilles dragging Hectors body around the walls of Troy are scenes from Homer that have been re-created in every generation. The questions about mortality and identity asked by Homers heroes, and the bonds of love, respect, and fellowship that motivate them, have gripped audiences for three millennia. George Chapmans Iliad and Odyssey are great English epic poems as well as two of the liveliest and most readable translations of Homer. Chapmans freshness makes the everyday world of nature and the craftsman as vivid as the battlefield and Mount Olympus. His poetry is driven by the excitement of the Renaissance discovery of classical civilisation as both vital and distant, and is enriched by the perspectives of humanist thought. The volume includes introductions by Jan Parker.