About the Book:

Homer’s Iliad, the oldest of Greek literary works, was probably composed around 700 to 800 B.C. It arose out of an oral poetic tradition which must have gone back at least a few centuries before that. The circumstances of Homer’s life, who he was, where and exactly when he lived, how he composed his epics, all are unknown. What we do know is that we possess a number of manuscripts of remarkable uniformity, which have led many, though not all, scholars to deduce a single authorship. Whatever the biographical facts may have been, the Iliad undoubtedly belongs to those works to which Thoreau referred with “...here are golden words, which the wisest men of antiquity have uttered, and whose worth the wise of every succeeding age have assured us of....”

This book offers a listing of modern English words, with their ancient-Greek equivalents, drawn from the Iliad. It is hoped that this reference will help to bring the reader, the student, closer to what some have considered not only the greatest of literary works, but the supreme achievement of the human imagination.

About the Author:

Mark Winterrowd began his work on ancient Greek at the University of Tu+bingen. He has also studied at Monterey Peninsula College, the University of California, the Claremont Colleges, and Stanford.