The Iliad

A few weeks in the tenth year of the siege of Troy, organised not around the war but around one man’s anger: Achilles withdraws from the fighting over an insult, the Greeks lose without him, his friend dies wearing his armour, and he returns to kill Hector and then to give the body back to Hector’s father. Composed in Greek hexameter in the oral tradition around the 8th century BC and, with the Odyssey, the oldest surviving work of Western literature. Every printed edition is somebody’s translation, which is why it is cited by book and line.

Why it’s on the list: Li Lu’s History of Western Civilization section opens with Plato, then Homer, then Aristotle — it is a primary-source reading list of the West rather than a shelf of histories about it. The Iliad is where that sequence starts, and what it establishes before any of the political philosophy arrives is the cost side: honour, rage, mortality, and what men do to each other over them.

Where I saw it: On Li Lu’s Recommended Book List, entry 4 in the Western civilization section, cited with no edition or year — as are all the classical entries in that section. Kyle saved the list as two X posts that between them photographed only its value-investing section; the full list was recovered from the source PDF.

Connections

• Li Lu’s Recommended Book List — the bibliography this came from.
• The Odyssey — its companion, entry 3 on the same list.
• Classics · Literature — the canon it opens.
• War — the subject it is usually read for, and the one it is most reticent about glorifying.