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The War That Killed Achilles: The True Story of Homer's Iliad and the Trojan War |  | Author: Caroline Alexander
Publisher: Viking Adult
Category: Book
List Price: $26.95
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Seller: 1267
Rating:  7 reviews
Sales Rank: 3318
Media: Hardcover
Pages: 320
Number Of Items: 1
Shipping Weight (lbs): 1.2
Dimensions (in): 9 x 6.3 x 1.2
ISBN: 0670021121
Dewey Decimal Number: 883.01
EAN: 9780670021123
ASIN: 0670021121
Publication Date: October 15, 2009
Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days
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Product Description
A groundbreaking reading of the Iliad that restores Homer's vision of the tragedy of war, by the bestselling author of The Bounty
Few warriors, in life or literature, have challenged their commanding officer and the rationale of the war they fought as fiercely as did Homer's hero Achilles. Today, the Iliad is celebrated as one of the greatest works in literature, the epic of all epics; many have forgotten that the subject of this ancient poem was war-not merely the poetical romance of the war at Troy, but war, in all its enduring devastation.
Using the legend of the Trojan war, the Iliad addresses the central questions defining the war experience of every age: Is a warrior ever justified in standing up against his commander? Must he sacrifice his life for someone else's cause? Giving his life for his country, does a man betray his family? How is a catastrophic war ever allowed to start-and why, if all parties wish it over, can it not be ended?
As she did with The Endurance and The Bounty, Caroline Alexander lets us see why a familiar story has had such an impact on us for centuries, revealing what Homer really meant. Written with the authority of a scholar and the vigor of a bestselling narrative historian, The War That Killed Achilles is a superb and utterly timely presentation of one of the timeless stories of our civilization.
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Showing reviews 1-5 of 7
 A different look at the Trojan War November 21, 2009
Margaret Dybala (Pearland, Texas United States)
The Iliad's Trojan War has always been portrayed as a war unlike any other war. A war full of opportunities for glory, bravery, loyalty, a personal fulfillment of destiny... But Caroline Alexander, with deft scholarship, shows that there has been a misreading of the Iliad, purposefully, that in the past could convince and justify young men going to war. Think of the generations of British school boys reading the Greeks (certainly prior to World War I) and being told that there was glory in war. Alexander shows that, instead, the Iliad actually shows the sadness and loss, the irremedial end of things that comes with war. And using the text, she shows that the main players are aware of it, too.
In addition, this book has a wealth of information in the footnotes. I never knew, for example, that Paris was Alexandu of Wilusa (probably, maybe) in Hittite documents. That piece of trivia will serve me well in many a discussion of the Trojan War :) . But seriously, it IS interesting that she places the war in the context of its era, and discusses many aspects of Greece and eastern coast of Turkey during that period.
I bought this book as an impulse buy at an airport bookstore, and might never have found it otherwise. That is a shame because it is a truly interesting and well written book that will please both the scholar and the general reader like myself.
Not what I expected, but not in a bad way November 19, 2009
Andrew Berschauer (London, UK)
2 out of 2 found this review helpful
Because I failed to "read the label" when I picked this book up, I had the completely wrong impression that "The War that Killed Achilles" was going to be a historical rendering of the real Trojan War. I didn't know there was enough information for a true history on this topic, so off I went to the library.
It didn't take long, even for me, to realize that this was an interpretation of The Iliad. Appropriately, as fate would have it, I'd had Homer's Iliad and Odyssey sitting on my bookshelf for well over a year. Many good intentions to crack the cover sat next to these works, collecting just as much dust as my handsome 2-volume set complete with stylish cardboard box. I admit it - I had been too intimidated to start them given the length, my experience with Euripides and Sophocles in high school, and the fact I had almost no context for these classics.
Enter Caroline Alexander stage right. Not only does Ms Alexander provide her interpretation of the key themes of The Iliad in simple enough language that I can follow, she provides the context which would make an actual attempt at reading The Iliad possible. Homer's many references to the mindset of 8th Century BC Greeks and contemporary (read: also really old) works would have been completely lost on me, and the accumulation very likely would have left me hating myself for trying.
I'm not well-read in the classics, but I now feel like I have some minimum degree of context to give The Iliad the ol' college try - it doesn't seem quite as intimidating as it did a few days ago. I hope a companion volume entitled "The Voyage that let Odysseus' Dinner Grow Cold" follows.
As of this writing there is one 1-star review which abuses Ms Alexander for wasting the reviewer's time with trivial information about The Iliad. That reviewer, obviously very learned in this subject matter, is not Ms Alexander's intended audience... I am.
The Iliad as anti-heroic epic November 1, 2009
Bruce Trinque (Amston, CT United States)
4 out of 5 found this review helpful
In "The War that Killed Achilles" Caroline Alexander sets forth the view that "one of the great ironis of literary history" is that the Iliad "came to be perceived as a martial epic glorifying war". Alexander's firm conclusion is that instead Homer depicted "the war as a pointless catastrophe that blighted all it touched, and that this perception of the Iliad's underlying theme was shared by ancient poets and and historians. It is a view perhaps engendered by Alexander's own times, an era in which the point of war in Vietnam and Iraq is at best elusive and, no matter how often images of heroism and noble sacrifice are evoked, the physical and emotional cost of war seems evident. But, I think it safe to say, Alexander would argue that such a view would be perfectly cogent in the particular word in which the Iliad was written (or composed or recited or dictated or whatever), the world of Greek colonists whose ancestors had fled from the Greek homeland in the aftermath of destruction and decline on the heels of the Trojan War. I should think it a mark of the genious of Homer (whomever or whatever you conceive "Homer" to have been) that the Iliad as a work of art can speak simultaneously as a heroic epic and as a lament of the futility of epic heroism. Anyone trying to grasp the real nature of Homer's great poems owes it to themselves to read Alexander's thoughtful study.
 Completely misleading title October 30, 2009
Frank Dobbs (New York, NY)
16 out of 31 found this review helpful
The author completely breaks faith with the reader. The title promises a meditation on war and the underexplored character of the godlike warrior Achilles. Neither is provided and the author is not qualified to sail in such deep waters.
Moreover, if you love literature and the world's greatest epic, note that the author is tone deaf to literary beauty, as evidenced by her fawning over Lattimore's translation, which is basically pretentious prose masquerading as verse. There is no literary insight here.
Think of her as a successful graduate student willing to share her beavering in scholarship with a popular audience. She writes simply enough to share this motherload of trivia with the masses. Her take on scholarship is somewhat reasonable, showing neither penetrating insight nor foolish misunderstanding, just as one would expect in a competent, but not inspired student.
The book is a summary of the plot of the poem, sprinkled with frequent apercus provided by the latest scholarly irrelevancies and the occasional interesting insight into the characters and events of the epic.
For someone like me who had a professional interest in the subject some decades ago, it was interesting to see how the state of knowledge has inched forward in several not very important directions. However, for the deeper part of me that understands how this work has helped form the mind and soul of Western man, it is a big disappointment.
I would give it 5 stars for regurgitating trivial knowledge, 3 stars for being a competent plot summary with about a dozen sentences with interesting insights, and a zero for actually coming to terms with the subjects that the book is supposedly addressing.
If you're a literary type, you'll get far more out of WB Stanfords The Ulysses Theme. On the Iliad, Homer & The Heroic Tradition by Cedric H. Whitman has a lot more meat. (Note that my bibliography is dated.) Of course, read Homer in translations by Fagles, or even Alexander Pope, if you want to get a taste of the real thing.
Undying Fame October 28, 2009
V (Lathrup Village, Michigan)
10 out of 12 found this review helpful
I agree with the majority of other reviewers that Alexander's THE WAR THAT KILLED ACHILLES bristles with interesting observations and insights.
At the risk of being a killjoy, however, I take issue with Alexander's treatment of the embassy scene in Book 9 of THE ILIAD. Like quite a few commentators, she forgets Book I entirely, apparently having been thrown off the scent by Achilleus' disingenuous expression to Odysseus of contempt for dissemblers:
For hateful unto me as the gates of Hades [is] that one
Who indeed may hide in mind the rest, but say another.
--- ILIAD, Book 9, Lines 312 - 313 (my translation)
Alexander asks on p. 87, "What does Achilles want?" She continues in the same paragraph: "Achilles...not only rejects the Embassy but, as will be seen, goes further, challenging the very premises of the heoric way of life, which is to say the heroic way of war that epic traditionally extols." This is a misreading. Yes, Achilleus does explicitly inform the ambassadors that he now rejects his own heroic destiny and the popular valuation of fame and glory. But, in truth, he is hiding one thing in his mind while saying another. Significantly, Achilleus does NOT inform the ambassadors that he has secured from Zeus a promise to inflict defeat upon the Achaian army until Agamemnon abases himself by admitting by his transgressions to Achilleus personally:
Mother, since at least thou bore me being very short-lived,
Howbeit the Olympian ought to have vouchsafed me honor,
Zeus high-thundering; but now he honored me not e'en a little.
--- Achilleus to his goddess mother, ILIAD, Book 1, Lines 352 - 354 (my translation)
...............................................................
Thereof now having reminded him[,] sit beside [him] and grasp [his] knees,
If haply he might wish to give succor unto the Trojans,
And 'gainst both the sterns and 'bout the sea to crowd th' Achaians
Being slaughtered, that all may enjoy the king,
And even wide-ruling Agamemnon son of Atreus may know
His folly, who nowise honored e'en the best of th' Achaians.
--- Achilleus to his goddess mother, ILIAD, Book 1, Lines 407 - 412 (my translation)
No, despite his protestations to the Embassy, the Achilleus of Book 9 has NOT rejected his own heroic destiny; nor has he discounted the value of undying fame. Quite the contrary: he privately INSISTS upon both of them. And it's precisely for the SAKE of both that he spurns Agamemnon's offer of restitution. The thesis that Achilleus rejects, or even seriously questions, the heroic ethos finds no support anywhere in THE ILIAD apart from about 100 lines (from the caesura in line 316 through line 416) out of his reply to Odysseus in Book 9. Significantly, Homer's characters never for an instant doubt the value of mnemonic immortality. None of them wants to die young, but all of them appreciate the undying fame conferred by a poet's carmen gloriae.
What does Achilleus want? Personal apotheosis and total vindication, which he expects to achieve when Agamemnon is compelled by Heaven itself to confess his sins, publicly and abjectly, to Achilleus' face. THIS is why he doesn't follow through on the threat to take his marbles and go home: he sticks around because he expects Zeus to make good on his promise. The irony is that by the end of Book 8 (cf. Book 8, Lines 472 - 477) Homer's audience knows full well something of which Achilleus in Book 9 has no inkling, viz., the personal price he'll end up paying to get what he wants.
Fans of Alexander's THE WAR THAT KILLED ACHILLES may find another interesting perspective on Homeric violence in Jonathan Gottschall, THE RAPE OF TROY (Cambridge University Press, 2008).
Showing reviews 1-5 of 7
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