The Iliad

Homer's epic about the horrors and heroism of the final year of the Trojan War is one of Western literature's most enduring and moving tales. Joe Sachs, whose translations are known for being faithful to the original Greek, brings new layers of depth, understanding, and interest to the poem.

Why translate the Iliad? Joe Sachs explains his motivation:

My own reading of the poem has been influenced less by the books and essays that discuss it than by its translators. I have read quite a few, and the variety among them is striking…Once, long ago, I expected that eventually I would find one translation the most satisfying. What I found instead was that it was the very multiplicity of them that was getting me closer to Homer. Felicitous phrases from them all have remained with me, and the way their words move and sound has helped me come to hear, in my inward ear, Homer’s voice.

Renowned philosophy professor Joe Sachs taught for thirty years in the Great Books program at St. John’s College in Annapolis, Maryland. He has translated Homer’s Odyssey (Paul Dry Books, 2014); Aristotle’s Physics, Metaphysics, On the Soul and On Memory and Recollection, Nicomachean Ethics, and Poetics; and Plato’s Theaetetus, Republic, and Socrates and The Sophists.