title: The Iliad of Homer
author:  Homer 
description: The Iliad tells the story of the Greek struggle to rescue Helen, a Greek queen, from her Trojan captors. The Odyssey takes the fall of the city of Troy as its starting point and crafts a new epic around the struggle of one of those Greek warriors, the hero Odysseus.
zlib_text: 
  
  
  ![image](../Images/00001.jpeg)
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
    
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  FOR MY OLD MAN,
  
  
  
  
  
  who never told me what to love but did show me how
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
    
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  And none of the other men
  
  
  
  
  
  failed to protect him; they all held their shields out in front
  
  
  
  
  
  and lifted him up and carried him out of the fighting
  
  
  
  
  
  to the horses waiting for him at the rear of the battle
  
  
  
  
  
  with their charioteer and handsome, bronze-inlaid car;
  
  
  
  
  
  and they brought him, groaning with pain, back toward the city.
  
  
  
  
  
  But when they came to the ford of the swirling Xanthus,
  
  
  
  
  
  they lifted him out, laid him upon the ground,
  
  
  
  
  
  splashed water over his face, and he came to
  
  
  
  
  
  and opened his eyes and got onto his knees
  
  
  
  
  
  and coughed up dark blood, then sank back to earth, and night
  
  
  
  
  
  covered his eyes, for the mighty blow still overwhelmed him.
  
  
  
  
  
  —Homer, Iliad (translated by Stephen Mitchell)
  
  
  
  
  
  … but the way I got spun around and nailed in the side by a helmet right where
  I was vulnerab