Month: June 2023

My First Classics Club List: Finished/It’s a Wrap!

~ Jane ~ 34 Comments
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When I signed up for the classics club challenge in 2017, I had no idea what a blog was and after setting myself the challenge in June I couldn’t press the Publish button until October for fear of ?, I don’t know what really. Anyway, little did I know how difficult I was always going to find the blogging and so although I finished the reading to schedule in June 2022 it’s taken me a whole nother year to get the reviews finished.

But finished they are and to carry on with my habit of always being late to the party, for a wrap up post I’m going to use the questionnaire that the club set last year when they celebrated 10 years of classic clubbing.

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The Song of Achilles

~ Jane ~ 9 Comments
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In The Iliad Patroclus is always by Achilles’ side, he might be in the background serving food or he might be offering or being asked for advice, but they are constant companions and whatever their relationship is it’s at the very least soul mates, brothers-in-arms. When Patroclus dies the effect on Achilles is catastrophic, not just angry for revenge but he’s completely lost.

‘Achilles wept ceaselessly
as he remembered his dear companion, and sleep that subdues
all took no hold of him. He tossed and turned, thinking with
longing of Patroclus, of his manhood and his valiant strength, of
all that he had accomplished with him and the trials he had endured,
of wars of men undergone and the arduous crossing of seas.
As he called all this to mind he let fall huge tears,
lying at one time on his side and at another on his back,
and then again on his face; then he would rise to his feet and
wander distraught by the shore of the salt sea, and would never
fail to see the Dawn as she appeared over the sea and its shores.’

In The Song of Achilles Madeline Miller brings Patroclus out of the shadow of Achilles and using the snippets of information we have tells his story. The disappointing son of King Menoitius he unintentionally kills a boy who falls while they’re playing and so is exiled to the court of King Peleus in neighbouring Phthia. Arriving with just a few belongings that are immediately taken away and no longer a prince he would rather hide in the store room than train with spears and swords and that’s how he meets Achilles, who’s already pretty glorious and swift-footed

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The Iliad

~ Jane ~ 14 Comments
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The Bible was meant to be my last review for my first classics club challenge, but despite reading it in 2020 and having a beautiful notebook full of notes, it’s still sitting staring at me because I just don’t know what to do with it. So instead its place is being taken by our latest buddy read, The Iliad, and deservedly so because it was brilliant..

‘Sing, goddess, the anger of Achilles, Peleus’ son,
the accursed anger which brought the Achaeans countless agonies. . . ‘

First a brief summery of the plot and an apology for the length of this post, it’s an indulgence!. The poem is set sometime towards the end of the Trojan War and begins with a priest of Apollo coming to King Agamemnon to plead for the return of his daughter Chryseis, who Agamemnon has taken as a slave. When Agamemnon refuses, Apollo is outraged and sends a plague that devastates the Greek camp. Eventually Agamemnon agrees to let the girl go but demands recompense for his loss – namely, Briseis, the slave of Achilles; who’s anger is so great that he simply decides that he will not fight. He returns to his quarters with his soul mate Patroclus and stays there. Leaving the Greeks without their greatest weapon.

The Trojan’s storm the Greek’s gates and wall and in the face of imminent defeat Agamemnon agrees to return Briseis, but no! Achilles has been so affronted that he still refuses to fight. Wily Odysseus is sent with all his skills of diplomacy but nothing. Seeing the dead and injured piling up Patroclus makes a plan to save the day and it’s agreed that he will go out in Achilles chariot, wearing Achilles armour – it would be enough for the Trojans to think that Achilles is back in the game for them to retreat. But the plan fails and it’s the death of Patroclus at the hands of Hector that gets Achilles back in the fight. Determined to avenge him by killing Hector, his behaviour is so extreme that even his men turn from him unable to bear his treatment of Hector’s body as he lashes it to his chariot and drags it around the burial-mound of Patroclus. The poem ends with Achilles and Priam, Hector’s father, sharing a meal and agreeing for Hector’s body to be returned for burial.

It’s a story about the destructive power of beauty, of politics, war, gods and mortals, revenge, jealousy, failure of leadership, love and death. It’s bloody and gory but also funny and human and exciting. And what I loved the most was the storytelling.

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