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Written by Homer - Translated by Ian Johnston - Abridged Poetry - Audio book performed by Anton Lesser - 4 COMPACT DISCS - 5 hours, 10 minutes

Publisher, Naxos Audiobooks (September 2007)

Listen to an MP3 audio clip.

One the earliest and greatest epic poems of the Western world, The Iliad tells the story of fifty critical days towards the end of the Trojan war. Achilles has quarreled with Agamemnon and sulks in his tent while Hector brings his Trojans to the brink of victory; but fate will have the last word. While the heroes fight before the walls of Troy the gods have also drawn up battle lines, and it is their disagreements as much as the heroes’ efforts which will decide the conflict. Despite the poem’s antiquity, the very real, human qualities of the protagonists and their dilemmas make The Iliad immediately accessible, especially in the hands of a master story-teller such as Anton Lesser.

The Iliad was composed in the eighth century B.C. almost certainly as an oral composition incorporating a number of different stories from a rich poetic tradition of works now lost to us. The identity of Homer has been fiercely but inconclusively debated since ancient times. The Greeks believed he was a single person, and various cities competed for the honour of naming him a citizen. However, nothing reliable is known about him, although some traditions insist that he was blind. The poem was originally designed for recitation on important occasions by a professional bard, at least until the sixth century BC when, according to Greek traditions, the Athenian tyrant Peisistratus had the poem written down and codified in a form similar to the work we know today.

The Translation - This vibrant new translation comes from the prolific pen of Ian Johnston. Born in Chile in 1938, educated in England and Canada, Johnston graduated from McGill with a BSc in Chemistry and Geology, from Bristol with a BA in English and Greek, and from Toronto with an MA in English. He taught for many years in the British Columbia post-secondary system: at the University of British Columbia, the College of New Caledonia (in Prince George), and at Malaspina University-College (in Nanaimo). He is now retired and lives in Nanaimo, British Columbia, where his main preoccupation is maintaining and adding to his internet collection of lectures, essays, and translations. He has translated many key texts from Ancient Greece – poems, plays, philosophy – but also translates from German.

This Recording - Anton Lesser, one of Britain’s leading classical actors, has become a key voice on Naxos AudioBooks. His recorded work ranges from Aesop and Oscar Wilde, to his numerous Dickens recordings, as well as poetry and drama. He recorded Homer for Naxos AudioBooks originally in the eighteenth century translations by John Cowper (abridged), and was delighted when he was given the chance to record the whole works. The unabridged recording of Johnston’s translation has now been abridged for greater accessibility.

The Music - As with most Naxos AudioBooks’ abridged recording, this is presented with classical music to enhance the production. It contains music by Holmès, Debussy and Franck.

About the Author: Homer, the Greek poet to whom are attributed the great epics, the Iliad, the story of the siege of Troy, and the Odyssey, the tale of Ulysses’ wanderings. The place of his birth is doubtful; Smyrna, Rhodes, Colophon, Salamis, Chios, Argus and Athens contend for the honour of having been his birthplace; his date, formerly put back as far as 1200 B.C. is, from the style of the poems attributed to him, referred to 850–800 B.C.. Wolf in 1795 fiercely assailed the current opinions about Homer, defended the view that the Iliad and Odyssey were not by the same hand; and contended that both had their origin in lays by Homer and his followers (Homeridæ) in Chios, chanted and altered for centuries by the Rhapsodists, and finally digested into the poems we know, by Pisistratus about 540 B.C. Even those who insist most strongly on the general unity of plan of the poems and assign the main authorship to one man, Homer, probably born in a Greek colony on the coast of Asia Minor, admit that they were, doubtless, based on current ballads, and have, since they were moulded into the two great epics, been considerably modified and extended. The various problems of the Homeric question cannot be regarded as solved; and of the true Homer we know nothing positively, not even that he was blind. The so-called ‘Homeric Hymns’ and the humorous Batrachomymachia (Battle of the Frogs and Mice) are certainly of a later age.

About the Performer: Anton Lesser has played many of the principal Shakespearean roles for the RSC and performed contemporary drama, notably The Birthday Party by Harold Pinter. Appearances on TV include The Cherry Orchard, The Mill on the Floss and The Politician’s Wife.