Product Description

A groundbreaking reading of the Iliad that restores Homer's vision of the tragedy of war, by the bestselling author of The Bounty

Few warriors, in life or literature, have challenged their commanding officer and the rationale of the war they fought as fiercely as did Homer's hero Achilles. Today, the Iliad is celebrated as one of the greatest works in literature, the epic of all epics; many have forgotten that the subject of this ancient poem was war-not merely the poetical romance of the war at Troy, but war, in all its enduring devastation.

Using the legend of the Trojan war, the Iliad addresses the central questions defining the war experience of every age: Is a warrior ever justified in standing up against his commander? Must he sacrifice his life for someone else's cause? Giving his life for his country, does a man betray his family? How is a catastrophic war ever allowed to start-and why, if all parties wish it over, can it not be ended?

As she did with The Endurance and The Bounty, Caroline Alexander lets us see why a familiar story has had such an impact on us for centuries, revealing what Homer really meant. Written with the authority of a scholar and the vigor of a bestselling narrative historian, The War That Killed Achilles is a superb and utterly timely presentation of one of the timeless stories of our civilization.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #2703 in Books
• Published on: 2009-10-15
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Hardcover
• 320 pages

Features

• ISBN13: 9780670021123
• Condition: NEW
• Notes: Brand New from Publisher. No Remainder Mark.
• Click here to view our Condition Guide and Shipping Prices

Review
"In her spectacular and constantly surprising new book, Caroline Alexander has taken the 'original' war book and turned it upside down, making it, as all wars are, an excruciating story of loss...The War that Killed Achilles is a triumph."
-Ken Burns

"This riveting tale of ancient wars, legendary warriors, and mythical gods is at once a great adventure story and a cautionary tale of the enduring perils of hubris and ego. Achilles' life and death are instructive lessons for all of us today."
-Tom Brokaw

"Spirited and provocative...a nobly bold even rousing venture...it would be hard to find a faster, livelier, more compact introduction to such a great range of recent Iliadic explorations."
-Steve Coates, The New York Times

"Penetrating...reflecting her own skills [Alexander] provides her own translation of an entire chapter...a real bonus for the reader, comparing favorably with Lattimore and Fagles."
-Boston Globe

About the Author
Caroline Alexander is the author of the international bestsellers The Endurance and The Bounty. A Rhodes Scholar, she was a lecturer at the University of Malawi, where she established the department of classics. She received her doctorate in classics at Columbia University, where she was a Mellon Fellow in the humanities. Alexander is a contributing writer to National Geographic Magazine and has written for The New Yorker, Smithsonian, and Outside.

Customer Reviews

The Trojan War From A Scholar
Caroline Alexander does superb research as seen in her other books, "The Endurance" (1998) and "The Bounty" (2003). Here she does a running commentary upon "The Iliad" of Homer, quoting and summarizing to tell the tale of the Trojan War. If the reader wants the entire story, they are directed to Robert Fagles' translation edition (1990) which is my favorite. The author explains the background story well and points out the choices made by the characters (Greek gods and humans). At its heart, she asks, why all the slaughter? Ms. Alexander is an excellent writer and this short (nearly three hundred pages) book could be read in two nights.

Not what I expected, but not in a bad way
Because I failed to "read the label" when I picked this book up, I had the completely wrong impression that "The War that Killed Achilles" was going to be a historical rendering of the real Trojan War. I didn't know there was enough information for a true history on this topic, so off I went to the library.

It didn't take long, even for me, to realize that this was an interpretation of The Iliad. Appropriately, as fate would have it, I'd had Homer's Iliad and Odyssey sitting on my bookshelf for well over a year. Many good intentions to crack the cover sat next to these works, collecting just as much dust as my handsome 2-volume set complete with stylish cardboard box. I admit it - I had been too intimidated to start them given the length, my experience with Euripides and Sophocles in high school, and the fact I had almost no context for these classics.

Enter Caroline Alexander stage right. Not only does Ms Alexander provide her interpretation of the key themes of The Iliad in simple enough language that I can follow, she provides the context which would make an actual attempt at reading The Iliad possible. Homer's many references to the mindset of 8th Century BC Greeks and contemporary (read: also really old) works would have been completely lost on me, and the accumulation very likely would have left me hating myself for trying.

I'm not well-read in the classics, but I now feel like I have some minimum degree of context to give The Iliad the ol' college try - it doesn't seem quite as intimidating as it did a few days ago. I hope a companion volume entitled "The Voyage that let Odysseus' Dinner Grow Cold" follows.

As of this writing there is one 1-star review which abuses Ms Alexander for wasting the reviewer's time with trivial information about The Iliad. That reviewer, obviously very learned in this subject matter, is not Ms Alexander's intended audience... I am.

Undying Fame
I agree with the majority of other reviewers that Alexander's THE WAR THAT KILLED ACHILLES bristles with interesting observations and insights.

At the risk of being a killjoy, however, I take issue with Alexander's treatment of the embassy scene in Book 9 of THE ILIAD. Like quite a few commentators, she forgets Book I entirely, apparently having been thrown off the scent by Achilleus' disingenuous expression to Odysseus of contempt for dissemblers:

For hateful unto me as the gates of Hades [is] that one
Who indeed may hide in mind the rest, but say another.
--- ILIAD, Book 9, Lines 312 - 313 (my translation)


Alexander asks on p. 87, "What does Achilles want?" She continues in the same paragraph: "Achilles...not only rejects the Embassy but, as will be seen, goes further, challenging the very premises of the heoric way of life, which is to say the heroic way of war that epic traditionally extols." This is a misreading. Yes, Achilleus does explicitly inform the ambassadors that he now rejects his own heroic destiny and the popular valuation of fame and glory. But, in truth, he is hiding one thing in his mind while saying another. Significantly, Achilleus does NOT inform the ambassadors that he has secured from Zeus a promise to inflict defeat upon the Achaian army until Agamemnon abases himself by admitting by his transgressions to Achilleus personally:

Mother, since at least thou bore me being very short-lived,
Howbeit the Olympian ought to have vouchsafed me honor,
Zeus high-thundering; but now he honored me not e'en a little.
--- Achilleus to his goddess mother, ILIAD, Book 1, Lines 352 - 354 (my translation)
...............................................................
Thereof now having reminded him[,] sit beside [him] and grasp [his] knees,
If haply he might wish to give succor unto the Trojans,
And 'gainst both the sterns and 'bout the sea to crowd th' Achaians
Being slaughtered, that all may enjoy the king,
And even wide-ruling Agamemnon son of Atreus may know
His folly, who nowise honored e'en the best of th' Achaians.
--- Achilleus to his goddess mother, ILIAD, Book 1, Lines 407 - 412 (my translation)

No, despite his protestations to the Embassy, the Achilleus of Book 9 has NOT rejected his own heroic destiny; nor has he discounted the value of undying fame. Quite the contrary: he privately INSISTS upon both of them. And it's precisely for the SAKE of both that he spurns Agamemnon's offer of restitution. The thesis that Achilleus rejects, or even seriously questions, the heroic ethos finds no support anywhere in THE ILIAD apart from about 100 lines (from the caesura in line 316 through line 416) out of his reply to Odysseus in Book 9. Significantly, Homer's characters never for an instant doubt the value of mnemonic immortality. None of them wants to die young, but all of them appreciate the undying fame conferred by a poet's carmen gloriae.

What does Achilleus want? Personal apotheosis and total vindication, which he expects to achieve when Agamemnon is compelled by Heaven itself to confess his sins, publicly and abjectly, to Achilleus' face. THIS is why he doesn't follow through on the threat to take his marbles and go home: he sticks around because he expects Zeus to make good on his promise. The irony is that by the end of Book 8 (cf. Book 8, Lines 472 - 477) Homer's audience knows full well something of which Achilleus in Book 9 has no inkling, viz., the personal price he'll end up paying to get what he wants.

Fans of Alexander's THE WAR THAT KILLED ACHILLES may find another interesting perspective on Homeric violence in Jonathan Gottschall, THE RAPE OF TROY (Cambridge University Press, 2008).