3,000 years of The Iliad

Summary

Constance Grady interviews Emily Wilson, a classics professor and translator of Homer’s Iliad. Wilson discusses her approach to translation, aiming for clarity and metrical regularity (iambic pentameter) to honor the original’s performative, oral nature. She reflects on the weight of expectations following her celebrated translation of The Odyssey and why she chose to tackle the Iliad next.

The conversation delves into the core themes of the Iliad: the wrath of Achilles, the human struggle with loss and mortality, and the complex role of the gods. Wilson argues against reading the gods as mere metaphors, insisting on their literal, chaotic presence as a way the poem makes sense of an unpredictable world. She explores Achilles’ obstinacy not as mere petulance but as a profound, human refusal to accept that some losses—like life itself—can never be compensated.

Wilson addresses the poem’s reception, including modern anxieties about its glorification of violence and its appropriation by far-right groups seeking a ‘white, masculine’ ideal. She counters that the Iliad is deeply empathetic, concerned with community, loss, and the value of all life—human, animal, and even natural. The discussion concludes by considering why Homer’s works have lasted 3,000 years: their emotional truth, great storytelling, and their unflinching confrontation with the fundamental truths of mortality and a world larger than ourselves.

Recommendations

Books

The Iliad (translation by Emily Wilson) — Wilson’s new translation, discussed throughout the episode, aims for clarity and metrical regularity to capture the original’s performative power and emotional intensity.
The Odyssey (translation by Emily Wilson) — Wilson’s earlier, celebrated translation of Homer’s Odyssey, which brought her mainstream attention and set the stage for her work on the Iliad.
On the Sublime by Pseudo-Longinus — An ancient text mentioned by Wilson that presents The Iliad as the ultimate example of the sublime (‘hypsos’) in poetry.

People

Robert Fagles — Mentioned as a previous translator of Homer whose work also received wide review and attention from the general public.

Topic Timeline

00:03:00 — Introduction to Emily Wilson and her translation philosophy — Emily Wilson is introduced as the translator of new editions of The Odyssey and The Iliad. She explains her goal of creating ‘read-aloudable’ translations that use regular meter (iambic pentameter) to honor the original’s musicality and performative nature. She discusses the unexpected mainstream attention her Odyssey translation received, partly due to her being the first woman to publish an English translation, though she sees this focus as sometimes a distraction from the work itself.
00:08:00 — The cultural status of The Iliad vs. The Odyssey — Wilson discusses why The Odyssey is more commonly taught than The Iliad in modern times, noting its travel narrative fits world literature surveys. She explains that in antiquity, The Iliad was often considered the greater work for its sublime confrontation with death and complex divine interactions. Modern anxiety, she suggests, stems from the Iliad’s unflinching depiction and potential glorification of war’s violence, a concern that dates back to Plato.
00:11:00 — Balancing poetic meter with clear language — Wilson addresses the perceived contradiction between writing poetically (in metrical verse) and writing clearly. She argues both are essential to the original Homeric style. Using examples from Shakespeare and Frost, she challenges the modern notion that poetry must be obscure or ornate, emphasizing that Homeric syntax is clear yet powerfully poetic, meant to be accessible and experienced aloud.
00:17:21 — The opening of The Iliad and the wrath of Achilles — Wilson translates the Iliad’s first word, ‘menis,’ as ‘wrath’ to distinguish it from other types of anger. She describes Achilles’ wrath as god-like in its destructive capacity. The conversation reframes Achilles’ refusal to fight after Agamemnon takes his slave girl not as mere petulance, but as a deeply human reaction to an irreparable loss—echoing how we feel when faced with the death of a loved one, which can never be made whole.
00:22:12 — The role of the gods in human psychology — Grady asks how modern readers should approach the literal interventions of the gods, like Aphrodite compelling Helen. Wilson insists translators must make the gods feel real, not metaphorical. She argues the polytheistic system makes sense of a chaotic world where outcomes are unpredictable, representing forces larger than individuals, akin to Tolstoy’s ‘spirit of history’ or the unpredictability of nature and battle.
00:29:52 — The gods Ares and Aphrodite as base instincts — Discussing the Olympian gods’ disdain for Ares (war) and Aphrodite (love/sex), Wilson notes that Ares is a relatively thin character who simply loves bloodshed. This depiction, she argues, showcases the poem’s horror of war—a massacre is only good if you’re Ares. The gods’ immortality underscores the tragic permanence of war in human society.
00:31:50 — The Iliad’s lesson on mortality and loss — Wilson reads from her introduction: ‘You will die. Everyone you love will die.’ She explains how the poem’s arc makes readers understand this ‘unfathomable truth’ anew. She traces Achilles’ journey from refusing loss, to grieving Patroclus, to seeking futile compensation through killing, and finally to a moment of shared grief and meal with his enemy Priam—a temporary acceptance of mortality.
00:34:00 — Political reception and ‘woke Homer’ criticism — The conversation addresses far-right criticism labeling Wilson’s work ‘woke Homer.’ Wilson argues these critics haven’t read her work and cling to a fantasy of ancient Greece as a white, masculine ideal. She contends the Homeric poems are inherently political in their deep empathy for all beings—human, animal, divine—and their focus on community and loss, which is a valuable political lens for today.
00:37:29 — The Iliad, climate change, and why Homer lasts — Wilson connects the doomed city of Troy—whose divinely built walls will be washed away—to our climate-threatened world. The poem teaches us to value what is short-lived and to see our own delusions about permanence. She concludes that Homer lasts due to energetic, deeply human characters, emotional truth, great stories, humor, and its core messages: the world is bigger than you think, and you will die.

Episode Info

Podcast: The Gray Area with Sean Illing
Author: Vox
Category: Society & Culture Philosophy News Politics News Commentary
Published: 2023-12-04T10:30:00Z
Duration: 00:36:55

References

URL PocketCasts: https://pocketcasts.com/podcast/the-gray-area-with-sean-illing/1d3ce9a0-ae3d-0133-2e33-6dc413d6d41d/3000-years-of-the-iliad/6e1ac186-2530-4ff7-aed7-2d3c9059a026
Episode UUID: 6e1ac186-2530-4ff7-aed7-2d3c9059a026

Podcast Info

Name: The Gray Area with Sean Illing
Type: episodic
Site: https://www.vox.com/vox-conversations-podcast
UUID: 1d3ce9a0-ae3d-0133-2e33-6dc413d6d41d

Transcript

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[00:00:57] that it kind of just seems like a fact.

[00:01:01] Oh yeah, one of our most revered works of literature is a long poem about a bunch of men violently murdering each other over who gets to own what sex slave.

[00:01:10] That’s normal, right?

[00:01:13] The Iliad is the first one of the Homeric poems.

[00:01:16] The other is the Odyssey.

[00:01:18] Even for Greek literature, the Iliad is bizarre.

[00:01:21] Mostly it’s about Achilles getting offended that one of the Greek generals confiscated a slave girl,

[00:01:27] his, and he refuses to fight because of it.

[00:01:29] And then there are long descriptions of the rest of the Greek army going off and fighting battles without him.

[00:01:36] It’s a poem about petty, angry men and the violence they do to each other.

[00:01:42] And it’s the basis for the 3000 years of literature that has come after it.

[00:01:47] Every battle scene, every tragic death, every depiction of rage and grief and humans being awful to each other.

[00:01:55] The Iliad.

[00:01:57] Is at the bottom of everything.

[00:02:01] I’m Constance Grady, and this is The Grey Area.

[00:02:10] My guest today is Emily Wilson.

[00:02:13] Emily is a classics professor at Penn.

[00:02:16] In 2017, she published a celebrated new translation of The Odyssey.

[00:02:21] Earlier this year, she followed it up with a translation of, you guessed it, The Iliad.

[00:02:27] Emily’s translations are straightforward and vivid and alive.

[00:02:32] They let you feel the strangeness of this alien culture from 3000 years ago.

[00:02:39] I wanted to talk with her about the parts of The Iliad that feel very alive and urgent,

[00:02:45] and the parts that feel very far away.

[00:02:48] I really want to know, why does The Iliad last?

[00:02:57] Emily Wilson, welcome to the show.

[00:03:00] Thank you so much.

[00:03:02] So, Emily, tell me what draws you to translating these ancient texts?

[00:03:06] So, I love these ancient texts, and I want them to be available to new readers

[00:03:11] and available to readers who may have read them before in different translations in a different way.

[00:03:16] One of the big things that I wanted to do was to create very regular metrical translations

[00:03:20] to honor the musicality and rhythm of the original,

[00:03:24] and the way that in antiquity, the Homeric epic,

[00:03:26] as well as ancient tragedy, were performed out loud, experienced out loud.

[00:03:31] So, I want to create read-aloudable translations.

[00:03:34] And your translation of The Odyssey in 2017 got a lot more mainstream attention

[00:03:40] than classical translations usually do.

[00:03:43] So, why do you think that is?

[00:03:44] Yeah, I mean, I feel very lucky that it got so much attention.

[00:03:48] I mean, I think the Robert Fagel’s translations also got pretty widely reviewed.

[00:03:52] I mean, it’s not that it’s never happened before that a translation of Homer

[00:03:56] has sort of seemed like this might change things

[00:03:58] in terms of how does the general public read Homer.

[00:04:02] I mean, I think one thing was the factoid,

[00:04:04] which isn’t really all that much to do with me,

[00:04:06] of I was the first woman to publish an anglophone translation of The Odyssey,

[00:04:11] which I think is more something about the state of translation of ancient texts

[00:04:17] and its gendering and the particular mutations of that

[00:04:22] than it is about me.

[00:04:23] But I think it’s a worthwhile thing to talk about,

[00:04:25] even though it wasn’t central to my work.

[00:04:27] Yeah, and since then, you’ve sometimes talked about that idea

[00:04:30] as sort of a distraction, this focus on your status

[00:04:33] as the first woman translator of The Odyssey into English.

[00:04:39] So, what makes you feel that it’s a distraction?

[00:04:42] I mean, I don’t usually spend much time thinking about my gender

[00:04:45] during my average workday.

[00:04:46] I mean, I spend quite a lot of time thinking about terms for gender

[00:04:50] within the Homeric poems or within ancient tragedy

[00:04:53] when I’m translating tragedies.

[00:04:55] And I think the Homeric poems are pretty interesting

[00:04:57] in their representations of gender.

[00:05:00] In the Iliad, for instance, there’s a whole cluster of terms

[00:05:02] that suggest excessive masculinity,

[00:05:05] and then also terms that suggest courage,

[00:05:08] but bleeding into this could be a rash, destructive kind of courage.

[00:05:13] And there are words like agenoria,

[00:05:16] which is cognate with the word for man, ane.

[00:05:18] So, sort of wrestling with how do I translate that?

[00:05:21] How do I represent the ways that the poem itself sees masculinity?

[00:05:25] Yes, sometimes a problem.

[00:05:27] But that isn’t about whatever gender identity I may be inhabiting.

[00:05:30] It’s about the way the poem is quite complicated

[00:05:32] in its representations of gender.

[00:05:34] And similarly, I find the Homeric poems fascinating

[00:05:37] in how they are intelligently intersectional about gender,

[00:05:42] that they don’t sort of equate all female characters

[00:05:45] are more disempowered than all male characters.

[00:05:48] Instead, there are very, very powerful divine goddess characters,

[00:05:52] and they were also very much lacking in power,

[00:05:54] male mortal characters.

[00:05:57] So, I like that they’re complicated about it.

[00:05:59] Unlike the headline writers,

[00:06:01] they sort of acknowledge that being female, being male,

[00:06:04] there’s a lot to say about that,

[00:06:05] and it can’t be summed up in a headline.

[00:06:08] So, The Odyssey is this big hit in 2017,

[00:06:11] and then you sit down to start translating the Iliad.

[00:06:14] Did you feel a weight of expectations on you

[00:06:17] as you sat down with that?

[00:06:18] I did.

[00:06:19] I mean, when I first, it was in my contract for The Odyssey

[00:06:22] that if I ever did the Iliad,

[00:06:23] that Norton would publish it or would consider doing it

[00:06:26] if The Odyssey had been a success.

[00:06:28] And I had thought for many years

[00:06:30] that I would probably need 10 years off,

[00:06:32] and I would write a different kind of book for a while.

[00:06:34] I mean, I didn’t start off my career as a translator,

[00:06:37] and I thought maybe I won’t just do translations continuously.

[00:06:41] But then I changed my mind because I thought

[00:06:43] the best training for translating an epic poem

[00:06:46] is translating an epic poem.

[00:06:47] I’d just done that,

[00:06:48] so when will I ever be in a better position

[00:06:50] to do this than I am now?

[00:06:52] But certainly,

[00:06:53] I did feel the weight of expectations

[00:06:54] when I turned to The Iliad

[00:06:56] because, of course, when I published The Odyssey,

[00:06:58] no one had heard of me,

[00:06:59] whereas that’s not the case once I published The Iliad.

[00:07:02] And I knew that there would be

[00:07:03] a sort of different kind of media reception

[00:07:05] and different kinds of expectations.

[00:07:07] And I also felt that The Iliad is,

[00:07:10] I love both the Homeric epics,

[00:07:12] but I think The Iliad is even greater,

[00:07:13] and it’s also extremely different.

[00:07:15] It has a lot in common with The Odyssey

[00:07:17] and a lot that’s extremely different.

[00:07:18] So I felt the weight also just of the greatness of the poem

[00:07:22] and can I read it?

[00:07:23] I really live up to it

[00:07:24] and live up to the emotional and sonic

[00:07:26] and aesthetic intensity of The Iliad.

[00:07:28] And it’s interesting that you went for The Odyssey first

[00:07:32] and The Iliad as your second project

[00:07:35] since in the world of the story chronologically,

[00:07:38] The Iliad comes first.

[00:07:39] So why did you decide to start with The Odyssey?

[00:07:41] I mean, none of that was really my choice.

[00:07:43] I got asked by the publishers to do The Odyssey first

[00:07:46] and you can see why they would want The Odyssey

[00:07:48] more than The Iliad

[00:07:49] because nobody really,

[00:07:51] I mean, hardly anyone reads The Iliad.

[00:07:53] In ninth grade,

[00:07:54] whereas a lot of kids,

[00:07:54] especially in the US,

[00:07:56] read The Odyssey in translation in ninth grade

[00:07:58] or first year of college.

[00:08:00] The World Literature Survey very often starts with The Odyssey.

[00:08:03] It doesn’t usually,

[00:08:04] I mean, some instructors like to flip it around

[00:08:06] and start with The Iliad instead,

[00:08:08] but The Odyssey in a way makes more sense

[00:08:09] as a beginning of a world lit class

[00:08:12] because Odysseus travels the world,

[00:08:14] whereas nobody in The Iliad goes anywhere beyond to death.

[00:08:18] Right now, the sort of cultural consensus

[00:08:21] is that The Odyssey is like the more human,

[00:08:23] and the Iliad seems to be out of favor.

[00:08:27] But I understand from your introduction

[00:08:29] that in antiquity,

[00:08:31] people thought of The Iliad as the great one.

[00:08:33] So how do you think we came to that sort of switcheroo?

[00:08:36] I mean, I think in antiquity,

[00:08:37] people thought they were both pretty great.

[00:08:39] I mean, there are some ancient critics

[00:08:41] who seem to imply The Iliad is greater.

[00:08:43] I mean, like in Pseudo-Longinus’ On the Sublime,

[00:08:46] which presents The Iliad as the ultimate sublime

[00:08:49] or tohupsos, the height of poetry is in The Iliad.

[00:08:53] Because it has so much more heroic confrontation with death

[00:08:57] and so much more divine human interaction

[00:09:00] in a more complex way.

[00:09:01] And also so much more sort of very intense nature imagery.

[00:09:05] It’s so much more of a, in modern terms,

[00:09:07] it’s a much more ecological poem.

[00:09:10] I mean, I think different later cultures,

[00:09:12] post-Tumeric cultures have wrestled in different ways

[00:09:14] with The Odyssey versus The Iliad.

[00:09:16] A lot of The Iliad and The Odyssey

[00:09:18] both were not really read at all

[00:09:20] in the quote-unquote Western world for many centuries.

[00:09:23] Dante hadn’t read Homer,

[00:09:25] but people were reading Virgil for a long time.

[00:09:27] And I think once Homer started to be read again

[00:09:30] in the early modern period,

[00:09:32] there was a lot of anxiety about how violent is The Iliad

[00:09:35] and how much is it endorsing,

[00:09:37] whipping you up to want to slaughter lots of people,

[00:09:40] which on some level, that is what The Iliad does.

[00:09:43] It makes you feel the glory

[00:09:45] as well as the terrible pathos and tragedy of war.

[00:09:49] There has been, you know, in different ways,

[00:09:51] in different cultural moments,

[00:09:53] a lot of anxiety about

[00:09:55] the glorification of violence in The Iliad.

[00:09:57] I mean, in antiquity, there was a lot of anxiety

[00:09:59] about both Homeric poems insofar as, you know,

[00:10:02] Plato bans them from the semi-ideal republic

[00:10:04] and they stir up all the wrong emotions.

[00:10:07] They make you sympathize with all the wrong people.

[00:10:10] The idea that Homeric characters are heroes

[00:10:13] in a Superman sort of way

[00:10:14] is a very sort of modern American projection

[00:10:17] back onto these ancient poems.

[00:10:19] Whenever I see classicists talking about your work,

[00:10:21] they get really excited about,

[00:10:23] two things.

[00:10:23] One is that you’re writing in metrical blank verse.

[00:10:27] And then the second thing that people get really excited about

[00:10:29] is that your language is very clear and limpid

[00:10:33] and sort of transparent.

[00:10:35] And I can see both of those things in the work,

[00:10:37] but it’s sort of fascinating to me that they also seem like

[00:10:40] they should be contradictory in a way.

[00:10:42] Like you shouldn’t be writing either poetically

[00:10:44] or very straightforwardly and plainly

[00:10:47] rather than both at the same time.

[00:10:49] So how did you think about maintaining both of those ideas

[00:10:53] in your head as you translated?

[00:10:55] And what was important to you about keeping them both present?

[00:10:58] They were both essential to me

[00:10:59] because they’re both essential, I think, in the original.

[00:11:01] I mean, both, as I said, the metricality,

[00:11:04] the original is composed in dactylic hexameter.

[00:11:06] I used iambic pentameter,

[00:11:08] though I experimented for a very long time

[00:11:10] with trying to use a longer metrical line,

[00:11:13] but I couldn’t make it work so it felt alive in English.

[00:11:16] And I think iambic pentameter sort of triggers a sense

[00:11:18] of this is a very traditional poetic form,

[00:11:21] which is a sort of analogous experience,

[00:11:23] to the experience of dactylic hexameter,

[00:11:25] if you’re listening to a poem in archaic Greece.

[00:11:28] To me, it’s a, I mean, we talked a minute ago

[00:11:30] about preconceptions about Homer.

[00:11:31] I think there are also so many interesting preconceptions

[00:11:34] about poetry and the idea that poetry has to be

[00:11:37] either obscure or flowery or ornate in certain ways.

[00:11:41] I mean, that doesn’t hold up if you read Robert Frost, even.

[00:11:44] I mean, there are plenty of lines of Shakespeare

[00:11:46] that don’t use fancy words.

[00:11:48] To be or not to be, that is the question.

[00:11:50] None of that’s vocabulary words,

[00:11:52] and yet it’s a metrical,

[00:11:53] and extremely powerful line.

[00:11:55] So I think it’s sort of interesting that people think

[00:11:57] of that as a paradox, which I think is to do

[00:11:59] with a peculiarly sort of contemporary idea

[00:12:02] of poetry is this very esoteric thing,

[00:12:05] which of course was not the case for most centuries

[00:12:08] of people composing and loving poetry.

[00:12:10] It certainly wasn’t the case in antiquity.

[00:12:12] It wasn’t esoteric.

[00:12:13] It was something that everyone can hear, listen, respond to.

[00:12:17] And Homeric poetry in particular, in so far as,

[00:12:21] I mean, I guess I’ve done translations

[00:12:23] of other ancient poetic texts,

[00:12:25] such as Sophocles, Seneca, Euripides,

[00:12:28] all of whom I think are in certain ways

[00:12:30] more difficult than Homer.

[00:12:32] Homeric syntax is very clear,

[00:12:34] and yet it’s also totally poetic.

[00:12:36] There’s no arguing with the poetic qualities of Homer,

[00:12:39] who was called Hopoietes, the poet in antiquity.

[00:12:49] We’ll be back with more of my conversation

[00:12:51] with Emily Wilson after a quick break.

[00:12:53] We’ll be right back.

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[00:16:47] So I want to turn into the text a little bit now. And just for those of our listeners who

[00:17:12] maybe haven’t read the Iliad in a while or haven’t had a chance to read it at all,

[00:17:17] can you set us up and tell us how the poem opens?

[00:17:21] The poem opens,

[00:17:22] The first word is menin for menis, which means wrath. I translate it as wrath rather than anger

[00:17:38] or rage because the Iliad has a whole spectrum of vocabulary for different kinds of fury that

[00:17:44] people and gods can feel.

[00:17:47] The wrath of Achilles is different from mortal human anger. If a man gets mad at another man,

[00:17:52] what usually happens in the Iliad is that he slaughters a few other men.

[00:17:56] When Achilles is possessed by this overwhelming wrath against his fellow Greek, Agamemnon,

[00:18:02] he manages to cause a huge massacre, both on the enemy’s side and very unusually on his own side.

[00:18:09] He’s acting like a god insofar as he can kill without doing anything. Swift-footed Achilles

[00:18:14] barely moves for three quarters of an hour.

[00:18:17] It’s interesting to me, when I first read the Iliad as a teenager, I just, I hated Achilles so

[00:18:23] much. I think I really resented that he acted as though he was the only one in the war whose

[00:18:30] losses really mattered, right? It starts with him refusing to fight because Agamemnon has

[00:18:34] taken away his slave girl. And even after Agamemnon offers him this enormous apology

[00:18:38] with a million backup gifts, he’s still refusing to fight. And then one of the things that your

[00:18:46] translation and interpretation of the Iliad has done is that it’s really, really, really, really,

[00:18:47] I really loved was it sort of made me reframe this attribute of Achilles into being something

[00:18:54] very human. This idea that when we’re confronted by loss, we just want to say, no, I don’t accept

[00:19:00] any recompense. My loss can never be made whole, which is probably how we all feel when we’re

[00:19:05] faced, especially with the loss of human life. So I’m wondering if you can speak to how you see

[00:19:10] Achilles’ obstinacy sort of functioning within this poem and what work it does.

[00:19:15] Yes. So Achilles is unlike his fellow Greeks in that he’s the son of a goddess as well as

[00:19:22] of a mortal man. And he’s also the swiftest footed and therefore the best at the form of

[00:19:28] fighting, which involves throwing a spear, running in really fast to collect it, throwing another

[00:19:32] spear to kill another person and so on. He can kill more people in quick succession through his

[00:19:37] athleticism on the battlefield than any other member of the Greek army can. So he’s special,

[00:19:43] both because he’s semi-divine and because he’s really,

[00:19:45] really good at his job. And yet he also is wrestling with the fact that he’s even a person

[00:19:51] as special as that is both mortal and vulnerable to all kinds of losses. What happens in that

[00:19:57] quarrel scene at the start, where, as you say, it hinges on really quite an unattractive quality of

[00:20:03] two very privileged men getting furious because one of them doesn’t get to enslave the woman that

[00:20:09] he’d hoped to be enslaving, which doesn’t seem like it’s going to sympathize with any of them

[00:20:14] in that kind of context.

[00:20:15] I mean, I think if you can get yourself into the mindset of this poem’s emotional and social world,

[00:20:21] you can sympathize because Achilles, he’s also unlike his fellow Greeks and Trojans in that

[00:20:26] he knows for sure if he stays at Troy, he will die. So he knows that he’s trading his life for

[00:20:32] honor. So any diminution of his honor means that he’s given his life for nothing. And I think you

[00:20:38] can sort of see from that perspective that it’s not surprising that he’s upset. He’s dying for

[00:20:43] absolutely nothing. And this is in a way, even though

[00:20:45] he’s very unlike us in so many ways. Most of us aren’t sons of goddesses. Most of us aren’t quick

[00:20:51] spear warriors. We also will all die. And we also all have that sense of sometimes you lose things

[00:20:57] that you’ll never get back. If you lose your life, you never get it back. As Achilles himself is the

[00:21:01] one who says most powerfully in book nine, when he’s insisting that there are some types of

[00:21:06] things, maybe you can get it back. You might be able to get some horses or some cattle or steal

[00:21:11] some tripods from somebody, all of which he’s great at doing. But you can’t get life back once

[00:21:15] it goes past you.

[00:21:15] And one of the things that sort of comes out in that argument also seems sort of central to

[00:21:21] one of the things the poem is grappling with is this question of whether humans can be blamed

[00:21:27] for the things that the gods make them do. And conversely, if they deserve the credit for their

[00:21:32] accomplishments, if they’re helped by the gods. And when I read this poem, I always find it really

[00:21:36] difficult to wrap my head around that question. I always sort of have this instinct to make the

[00:21:43] gods action in some way metaphorically. And I think that’s one of the things that I think is

[00:21:45] really important. And I think that’s one of the things that I think is really important. And I think

[00:21:46] the poem is really fighting me on that. So for instance, my instinct is always to read Helen of

[00:21:52] Troy as someone who was metaphorically overcome with lust when she met Paris and was abducted by

[00:21:59] him. But the text of the poem is like very clear that she was literally the victim of Aphrodite and

[00:22:06] her influence on her. So how would you recommend modern readers approach the problem of the gods

[00:22:12] when it comes to understanding the psychology of these characters and

[00:22:15] how they interact with this world where immortal creatures can change fundamental

[00:22:21] ideas about their natures? Yeah, that’s a great question. I mean,

[00:22:26] people in antiquity also wrestled with that. I mean, people in late antiquity, especially once

[00:22:31] there was attempts to fuse the Homeric poems, which remained canonical with versions of

[00:22:37] Neoplatonism and nascent Christianity. The only way to make it work is you have to make the gods

[00:22:43] metaphorical. And it sort of works up to a point.

[00:22:45] I mean, I think that Helen’s seen in book three where Helen doesn’t want to go to bed with Paris

[00:22:50] because she despises him and he’s just been humiliated on the battlefield. And she doesn’t

[00:22:55] think that’s a sexy look. She doesn’t want to go to bed with a man she doesn’t respect.

[00:22:59] And yet, I mean, I think most of us have been overcome with lust for people we don’t respect.

[00:23:03] So it’s possible to read it metaphorically. And yet the goddess herself seems so uncannily real.

[00:23:09] And as a translator, I thought it’s absolutely essential that the reader must believe in the

[00:23:13] gods and the goddesses and must feel the sense of the gods and the goddesses. And I think that’s

[00:23:15] when the sea looks misty, but then all of a sudden there are 50 sea goddesses emerging from

[00:23:20] those waters. You have to believe it. And you have to believe that this really is Poseidon

[00:23:26] striding over the mountaintop in three strides. And this really is Hera in her magical chariot

[00:23:31] and putting on her sexy earrings and her sexy bra that will make you be distracted from the

[00:23:36] battlefield. You have to believe in the gods. So I mean, I personally don’t have any problem

[00:23:41] believing in the gods because I think they make sense of the world we live in, in certain ways,

[00:23:45] so much better than monotheism does. Because it’s a complicated world out there. And so many

[00:23:51] things happen that no particular single human seems to be in charge of. And if you’re sort of

[00:23:56] trying to make sense of how exactly did that person make that decision, which might have been

[00:24:00] a bit surprising, maybe there were several things going on in their mind at once. Could it have been

[00:24:04] that a goddess tugged him by his hair? Who knows? Maybe. Why did the armies suddenly flee or

[00:24:10] suddenly get invigorated to fight? I mean, again, I don’t think even the greatest military strategy,

[00:24:15] just can always explain why did they lose morale at that particular moment? Or why did that person

[00:24:21] happen to die when it seemed like he was winning? And yet then the other person won. We have sports

[00:24:27] betting because you can’t always predict things. And I think the gods are a way of saying that we

[00:24:33] can’t always predict things. And also they’re a way of saying nature is bigger than us, the world

[00:24:37] is bigger than us. The forces out there, we can’t understand. It’s like Tolstoy’s Spirit of History

[00:24:43] is the chaotic Olympian gods coming down.

[00:24:46] Absolutely. And yet they also have so much personality. I love that they’re both this

[00:24:51] sort of abstract sense of the world is so much bigger than humans. And yet they’re also so

[00:24:56] detailed in their psychological anxieties and desires and fears and rages and griefs. And that

[00:25:02] they’re in so many ways just like humans, except that they’re far more powerful and won’t die.

[00:25:15] More of my conversation with Emily Wilson after one more quick break.

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[00:29:13] I was so struck by the idea you talk about in your intro

[00:29:23] that most of the Olympian gods look down on Ares and Aphrodite

[00:29:28] who are the gods of war and love or sex

[00:29:32] because they’re the gods of the baser human instinct,

[00:29:35] especially since arguably the whole poem is set in motion

[00:29:37] in the first place by lust and by the desire for war.

[00:29:41] So how did you think about that dynamic between the gods

[00:29:45] in this sense that Ares and Aphrodite are sort of on a different

[00:29:48] social and emotional plane as you were approaching the poem?

[00:29:52] I mean, I thought about it in particular with Ares,

[00:29:54] who I think is the thinnest characterization of all the Olympian deities.

[00:29:58] I mean, Aphrodite gets more sort of layers to her characterization

[00:30:01] because she gets to interact with more different other deities.

[00:30:05] Whereas with Ares, in a way, he’s quite similar

[00:30:08] to his various horrible henchpeople,

[00:30:10] like conflict and terror and flight

[00:30:12] who are constantly rushing with him across the battlefield

[00:30:15] wanting to slaughter everybody.

[00:30:17] I see it as part of the way the poem is.

[00:30:20] I said a few minutes ago that people in the early modern period

[00:30:22] were quite often anxious about the Iliad as a poem that celebrates warfare.

[00:30:26] But I think the depiction of Ares, the ruin of humanity,

[00:30:29] as he’s often described, the Brotoloigos Ares,

[00:30:33] it showcases the way the poem represents the horror of war

[00:30:37] and represents the ways that…

[00:30:40] A massacre is only a good thing if you’re Ares.

[00:30:43] And Ares loves bloodshed and is always happy

[00:30:46] if a lot of people get slaughtered.

[00:30:48] The other gods very often enjoy the battlefield

[00:30:50] if the right people are dying,

[00:30:52] but they don’t enjoy it if some of their favorites are dying,

[00:30:55] which, I mean, they have a more nuanced vision of war,

[00:30:58] whereas Ares is just all for it in any context whatsoever.

[00:31:01] Yeah, I kept having this image of him

[00:31:03] just sort of crouched on the edge of the battlefield,

[00:31:05] just like grinning this giant smile.

[00:31:08] Yes, the giant bloody smile, yes.

[00:31:10] And of course, also, he’s immortal,

[00:31:12] and that’s also part of how the poem is sort of acknowledging

[00:31:15] that we’ll always have war.

[00:31:17] There’s never been a human society where there hasn’t been war,

[00:31:20] and probably there never will be.

[00:31:22] Yeah, so I want to, on that note,

[00:31:23] turn to this quote from the end of your introduction.

[00:31:26] You wrote,

[00:31:27] You already know the story.

[00:31:29] You will die.

[00:31:30] Everyone you love will die.

[00:31:31] You will lose them forever.

[00:31:32] You will be sad and angry.

[00:31:34] You will weep.

[00:31:34] You will bargain.

[00:31:35] You will make demands.

[00:31:36] You will beg.

[00:31:37] You will pray.

[00:31:37] It will make no difference.

[00:31:39] Nothing you can do will bring them back.

[00:31:40] You know this.

[00:31:41] Your knowing changes nothing.

[00:31:43] This poem will make you understand this unfathomable truth

[00:31:46] again and again as if for the very first time.

[00:31:49] How does it do that?

[00:31:50] It does that in so many different ways.

[00:31:53] I mean, I think it does that on a macroscopic level

[00:31:56] by showing you the story arc of Achilles’ rage,

[00:31:59] which gets mutated, his wrath against Agamemnon,

[00:32:03] which results in him sitting out of the battlefield,

[00:32:06] refusing to acknowledge that he could accept

[00:32:09] a diminution of his honor,

[00:32:10] in exchange for when he’s going to die for his honor.

[00:32:14] He refuses to accept that loss.

[00:32:16] And I think that’s connected to a refusal to accept

[00:32:19] the death that he knows is soon about to come.

[00:32:22] Then his friend Patroclus goes out as his second self

[00:32:26] and the second self of Achilles is killed.

[00:32:29] And of course, Achilles is devastated by grief.

[00:32:32] And on some level, he’s accepting that Patroclus is dead

[00:32:34] and on another he’s not because he’s saying,

[00:32:37] he’s sort of insisting, I can recoup this loss.

[00:32:39] If only I can kill.

[00:32:40] The person who killed Patroclus.

[00:32:42] If only I can obliterate the Trojans.

[00:32:45] I can keep on killing.

[00:32:46] And even when Hector is dead,

[00:32:47] I will keep on humiliating him in front of his parents

[00:32:50] and his people.

[00:32:50] And I’ll keep on raging and grieving forever.

[00:32:53] And I will never eat and I will never stop

[00:32:55] and I will never sleep.

[00:32:56] And the loss will never be recouped,

[00:32:58] but he won’t stop looking for remuneration for that loss,

[00:33:01] looking for something to make up for it.

[00:33:04] And the poem’s story arc, the story of Achilles’ wrath

[00:33:07] ends when Achilles is able to form,

[00:33:10] a very temporary, very contingent,

[00:33:13] very, in a way, quite implausible kind of kinship

[00:33:16] with his greatest enemy, the King of Troy.

[00:33:18] And they weep together for their losses

[00:33:20] and they eat together.

[00:33:21] And so there’s a sort of way that that story arc

[00:33:24] of how Achilles refuses to accept his death

[00:33:27] or anyone that he loves’ death,

[00:33:29] and yet in the end, all he can do is accept it and eat.

[00:33:33] And similarly, Hector is sort of in denial about his own death

[00:33:36] or about the possibility that he will die.

[00:33:37] He thinks he can make it.

[00:33:38] He thinks he can keep on pushing on,

[00:33:41] out onto the plain, leave his family and save his city.

[00:33:45] And he doesn’t.

[00:33:46] I want to zoom out a little bit now,

[00:33:48] looking at some of the reception of these poems.

[00:33:52] I know there’s been some anger on the far right,

[00:33:56] not really as far as I’ve been able to see in the Academy

[00:33:58] about your translations.

[00:34:00] I’ve seen some people call your work woke Homer

[00:34:03] and claim that you’re bringing in a political agenda.

[00:34:06] It seems like it’s part of this larger trend

[00:34:09] in these kind of…

[00:34:10] Crypto-fascist or sometimes outright fascist spaces

[00:34:14] to want to try to preserve this understanding of Homer

[00:34:18] as specifically the wellspring

[00:34:22] of a white, masculine, European idea of heroism

[00:34:27] and one that they can see themselves as fighting specifically to preserve.

[00:34:31] So I’m wondering if you can speak to how

[00:34:34] your understanding of Homer is, I would imagine,

[00:34:37] quite different from that

[00:34:38] and what political lens, if any,

[00:34:40] you feel is the most important.

[00:34:40] Yeah, I mean, I find all that response,

[00:34:44] which, as you say, there’s a whole pocket of the internet

[00:34:47] that seems to belong to people who love the idea

[00:34:51] of ancient Greece as a fantasy time

[00:34:54] when everyone recognized that only white men matter

[00:34:57] and women didn’t matter and didn’t get to say anything.

[00:34:59] And that’s why we idolize the ancient Greeks

[00:35:02] because they were just as misogynistic and fascistic

[00:35:05] as we want our society to be.

[00:35:07] And I personally don’t see my…

[00:35:10] I work as sort of inherently political acceptance

[00:35:13] so far as the Homeric poems are about people and communities.

[00:35:17] And I think they’re very empathetic about people, communities.

[00:35:20] I mean, people seems like the wrong word

[00:35:22] because I’m including deities in that world.

[00:35:26] And I’m also trying to include the natural world and animals as well.

[00:35:29] I mean, they’re empathetic about

[00:35:30] what’s it like to be a horse on the battlefield?

[00:35:32] What is it like to be a dog who’s hungry for meat?

[00:35:35] What’s it like to be a spear?

[00:35:36] I mean, I think these are very sort of deeply empathetic works,

[00:35:40] of imagining about what is it like to be a member of a community

[00:35:44] or to be isolated from a community

[00:35:46] and how can communities stick together?

[00:35:50] How can communities get blown up

[00:35:51] by various different kinds of speech and rage and action and violence?

[00:35:57] And so in that sense, I think they are absolutely political.

[00:36:00] And I think empathy is a political concept,

[00:36:02] which is a very important one and useful for today’s politics.

[00:36:05] I wish there was more of it and more sense of everyone matters,

[00:36:09] which I think is very important.

[00:36:10] I think the Homeric poems teach you.

[00:36:13] But are they political in that they’re going to tell you exactly who to vote for?

[00:36:17] I mean, I don’t think it’s quite like that.

[00:36:19] I don’t think an ancient poem can have that kind.

[00:36:21] I mean, I think it takes some teasing out and dwelling with the poem too,

[00:36:26] because it’s not just about the point of reading a poem,

[00:36:30] which will take you many hours to listen to or read,

[00:36:32] isn’t to get a moral that you can write down on a Post-it note.

[00:36:35] It’s to go through the whole experience.

[00:36:37] And that is also, I think, a political thing.

[00:36:39] I mean, I think it’s potentially,

[00:36:40] political to say, I wish people would read more

[00:36:43] and would read complex, difficult texts,

[00:36:45] which aren’t sort of easily summarizable,

[00:36:48] which is not, I think, the lesson that the anti-woke people on the internet are taking.

[00:36:53] Because many of the people who get most enraged about my existence

[00:36:57] clearly haven’t read more than a line or two of my work or none at all.

[00:37:01] They just know that I’m female.

[00:37:04] And that’s more or less all they need to be infuriated.

[00:37:07] In the introduction, you draw a parallel

[00:37:10] between Troy and its last days

[00:37:12] and the world that we live in now,

[00:37:14] destabilized by climate change.

[00:37:16] So if reading the poem is about the whole experience of going through it,

[00:37:20] do you think there’s anything in that experience

[00:37:22] that can help us see more clearly the world

[00:37:26] that we are potentially losing right now?

[00:37:29] I mean, I think the Iliad certainly teaches you

[00:37:32] to value the short-lived,

[00:37:34] I mean, the word minanthadios,

[00:37:36] short-lived, which is applied both to Hector and Achilles,

[00:37:38] but in a way applies to,

[00:37:40] the whole world,

[00:37:41] to applies to the city of Troy,

[00:37:43] which will be flooded by Poseidon and Apollo

[00:37:46] after the warriors think that they’ve built monuments

[00:37:50] through their actions and their glorious deaths

[00:37:52] that will last forever.

[00:37:53] The walls that Poseidon and Apollo themselves constructed

[00:37:56] will be washed away.

[00:37:58] The Great Achaean Wall around the encampment

[00:38:00] will also be washed away.

[00:38:01] It’s a sort of picture of loss

[00:38:03] and a picture also of how can we appreciate the things

[00:38:06] that we are losing?

[00:38:07] How can we learn not to delude ourselves with,

[00:38:10] also with the acknowledgement

[00:38:11] that we probably will keep on deluding ourselves?

[00:38:14] I mean, that desire to think it’s not true,

[00:38:17] that maybe we’re going to make it,

[00:38:18] is also there in the poem and there for many of us

[00:38:22] that we keep on, you know, building on coastlines

[00:38:24] and voting for people who won’t necessarily do anything

[00:38:30] to mitigate climate change.

[00:38:32] Just to bring it home,

[00:38:32] I’m going to go to the question you’ve probably answered

[00:38:35] quite a few times over the course of this tour,

[00:38:37] but I’m hoping you can answer it one more time.

[00:38:40] Homer’s poems have survived 3,000 years.

[00:38:43] Why have they lasted so long?

[00:38:44] And what is the most important thing for us

[00:38:47] to get out of them now?

[00:38:48] They’ve lasted so long because they have

[00:38:50] these enormously energetic and sort of deep pictures

[00:38:54] of these characters who are fascinating,

[00:38:56] who aren’t sort of either evil or amazingly good,

[00:39:00] but who are engaged in these deeply human sort of quests,

[00:39:04] like the quest to grapple with mortality

[00:39:08] or to win some kind of glory,

[00:39:10] or lasting name or celebrity.

[00:39:12] I mean, who doesn’t care about those things?

[00:39:13] Who doesn’t care about grief?

[00:39:15] I mean, the Iliad, we haven’t really talked about the way

[00:39:17] that the Iliad, it goes on this trajectory from male rage,

[00:39:22] but ends with female grief and lamentation.

[00:39:26] I think they’re very truthful emotionally,

[00:39:28] and that’s a lot of the reason why they’ve survived.

[00:39:30] And they also have great stories.

[00:39:31] We also haven’t mentioned that despite the intensity

[00:39:34] of the Iliad and the Odyssey as well, to some extent,

[00:39:37] they also have really funny scenes.

[00:39:39] And there are…

[00:39:40] comic moments, both the sort of black comedy

[00:39:43] of the trash-talking in the quarrel,

[00:39:45] but also the more straight-up comedy

[00:39:48] of the seduction of Zeus,

[00:39:49] or the moments when Meriones and Ideas

[00:39:52] are measuring their spears against each other.

[00:39:56] They’re just really good stories, I think, is a lot of it.

[00:39:59] I didn’t do the lesson of Homer.

[00:40:01] Part of that could just be that there isn’t really a lesson of Homer.

[00:40:05] There isn’t really a lesson.

[00:40:06] Yes, I mean, people in antiquity also thought

[00:40:08] Homer is the greatest teacher,

[00:40:10] and Homer was used in the education of children.

[00:40:13] But the question of what exactly Homer teaches,

[00:40:16] who knows?

[00:40:17] I mean, I think there’s a…

[00:40:18] I think Homer teaches you

[00:40:19] the world is bigger than you think,

[00:40:22] and you will die.

[00:40:23] And maybe that’s enough.

[00:40:25] I don’t know.

[00:40:25] Who could argue with both of those?

[00:40:30] Well, thank you very much for coming by

[00:40:32] and bringing us the truth that we will all die in the end.

[00:40:36] Yes, thank you.

[00:40:37] That is Emily Wilson.

[00:40:39] She has translated,

[00:40:40] Homer is the Iliad,

[00:40:41] out in stores now.

[00:41:01] Patrick Boyd engineered this episode,

[00:41:04] Alex Overington wrote our theme music,

[00:41:05] and A.M. Hall is the boss.

[00:41:07] Special thanks to Caitlin Boguchi.

[00:41:10] As always, let us know what you think of the episode.

[00:41:13] Drop us a line at thegrayareaatvox.com.

[00:41:17] And please share it with your friends on all the socials.

[00:41:21] Sean will be back next week.

[00:41:23] New episodes of The Gray Area drop on Mondays.

[00:41:26] Listen and subscribe.

[00:41:33] The Gray Area is part of Vox,

[00:41:35] which doesn’t have a paywall.

[00:41:37] Help us keep Vox free by going to vox.com.

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