I've reached, at long last, Book XXIV of The Iliad (the entire poem being divided into twenty-four smaller "books"). What's left is for Priam to come down to Achilles and beg for Hector's body, and then it's on to The Odyssey....but I have to admit that I was really baffled by Book XXIII. In that book, Achilles is basically ecstatic after he's killed Hector, so he stops and gathers up all the Argives and, after burning Patroclus's body, has a big athletic competition! There are chariot races and boxing matches and archery tourneys and whatnot, and I'm thinking, "Ummm, aren't you fellows still at war with Troy? Shouldn't you be, oh, building a big-ass wooden horse or something?"
What weird Greeks. No wonder the Romans clobbered them a few hundred years later.
The personal blog of author Kelly Sedinger, chronicling the adventures of one overalls-clad wanderer.
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