The Iliad

The heroic story of the siege of Troy is presented here in a stunning hardback edition featuring gold cover embossing, patterned endpapers and printed page edges.

After nine years of war, the Greeks are still fighting to reclaim the beautiful Helen and it is hardly the time for their supreme warrior, Achilles, to drop out of the fighting. But he does, in revenge against the overlord Agamemnon for seizing his concubine, Briseis. Only the death of his best friend, Patroclus, persuades Achilles to return to battle and confront the Trojan leader Hector in single combat.

This handsome gift edition features a classic prose translation by Samuel Butler and is presented with stunning gold cover embossing, luxury creamy paper, illustrated page edges and striking neoclassical illustrations throughout.

ABOUT THE SERIES: Arcturus Epic Classics brings together stunning hardback gift editions of classic works, presented with striking illustrated page edges and illustrated throughout by such greats as Gustave Doré and Harry Clarke.

About the Author

Sources from classical antiquity posit Homer as a blind bard from what is now Anatolia, Turkey. The Homeric question debates this, asking if The Iliad and The Odyssey, written in the late 8th or early 7th Century BC, were indeed the work of one genius or of a series of contributors and numerate rewrites. Whichever is true, Homer as a person, or a group of people, there is no doubting the significance of their contribution to Western literature.

Samuel Butler (1835-1902) was an English novelist, essayist, and critic whose satire Erewhon (1872) foreshadowed the collapse of the Victorian illusion of eternal progress. He is known for his translations of the Iliad and Odyssey which are still consulted today. The Way of All Fresh (1903), his autobiographical novel, is generally considered his masterpiece).