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0:36

This is CBS Eye on the

0:38

World with John Batchelor. Here's

0:40

John Batchelor. And

0:43

I welcome Professor Emily Wilson.

0:45

Her new work is the

0:47

Iliad, a translation and iambic

0:50

pentameter for those of us in

0:52

the 21st century who do not have the

0:54

original or any Greek whatsoever. It's

0:57

a pleasure to welcome the professor and

0:59

to thank her for how she

1:01

has worked so diligently not

1:04

only to present in

1:06

English all the depths of

1:08

Greek language with the nuance,

1:10

but also to make it easy to

1:12

read on the page and to hear

1:14

it read by the extremely

1:17

talented and gifted Audrey McDonald

1:19

in the audible.com version.

1:21

I recommend having the book in front

1:23

of you as you listen

1:25

to the reading. Not only will all the

1:27

pronunciations come through, but the

1:30

music, the beat helps

1:32

a deal to understand the comedy and

1:34

the tragedy. Professor,

1:36

congratulations. I understand this

1:38

is a lifetime's work. You've been at this

1:40

since you were in high school. It

1:44

is a pleasure to begin, however, in history. Good

2:00

evening to you. Good evening to

2:02

you. It's lovely to talk to you. So

2:04

Troy is on, it's

2:07

in what's now Turkey, it's

2:10

on the Dardanelles, in

2:12

antiquity was called the Hellespont, and

2:14

you can go visit the ruins of Troy today.

2:18

And archaeologists have been working since

2:20

the 19th century to uncover the

2:23

ruins of Troy and have realised

2:25

that there are many, many layers

2:27

of settlements after settlements after settlements

2:29

on that same spot, which was

2:31

clearly a rich, thriving city in

2:33

several periods of antiquity. And

2:36

the city itself, layer after

2:39

layer after layer, layer down, and

2:42

sometimes I would get lost about

2:44

how many layers down you go,

2:46

what time period we're looking for.

2:49

The Iliad is make-believe, it's

2:51

a work of invention. So

2:56

Schliemann, for example, the great German

2:58

archaeologist, did he believe the Iliad

3:00

was based on fact? Was

3:03

he looking for what in

3:05

biblical studies is known as Heilzgeschichte, you

3:08

know, a way of understanding the lesson

3:10

of history? Did he think he'd found

3:13

the real Priem home? Yes.

3:16

Schliemann famously said after he

3:18

discovered a grave

3:21

containing various gold funerary masks,

3:24

I have looked into the face

3:26

of Agamemnon because he theorised that

3:28

these funerary possessions were

3:31

the remains from Homer's

3:33

Troy. In fact, there are several

3:35

centuries too early to be from the same

3:37

period as the Iliad because, of course,

3:39

this settlement, as we said, was

3:41

built over and over and over again. And

3:43

of course, also, the Iliad

3:45

and the Odyssey are poems

3:48

rather than historical documents. They're not

3:50

claiming to provide you with, here

3:52

are all the footnotes that show

3:54

my historical research. They're poetic imaginings

3:57

of a partly historical and partly

3:59

mythical world. I was

4:01

going back and forth though because for

4:03

this is maybe eighth or ninth century

4:05

BCE. Probably seventh, I

4:08

mean it's probably the actual composition of the

4:10

poems is fully late a little later like

4:12

seventh is probably maybe a good guess. All

4:14

those hundreds of years

4:16

between then and Schliemann's

4:18

search in the 19th century was

4:21

the opinion that it was history

4:23

similar to looking for the historical

4:25

Jesus. Did they go and search

4:28

in their minds? I understand it was

4:30

translated into English what 17th century when

4:33

they brought it back. But

4:35

the Indian is based on it. Did they believe

4:37

the original was an

4:39

historical document for all those

4:41

centuries? I

4:44

mean that's a good question. To what

4:46

degree did the Greeks actually believe in their myths?

4:49

To what degree was the encounter

4:51

between Achilles and the goddess Athena

4:53

seen as is that a historical

4:55

event? If you read the

4:57

beginning of Herodotus' histories, he takes

4:59

it all the way back to the Trojan

5:01

War and seems to have an

5:03

idea that we can date when that would be.

5:07

Of course by modern standards that dating doesn't

5:09

seem to make much sense. But

5:11

there was an idea that in some sense

5:13

the Iliad is a record of

5:15

historical as well as of a mythical

5:17

event, the Trojan War. So

5:20

the men we know vividly for

5:22

political purposes, the Romans, they

5:24

believed that it was an historical document.

5:27

They believed that there had been a

5:30

warrior named Achilles or

5:32

a king named Agamemnon. Was

5:35

that in their education? I

5:37

mean it was certainly in their education. I'm not sure how

5:39

much we should be saying. I mean it makes them sound

5:41

like idiots. They thought

5:43

every line of this was absolute

5:46

fact. They believed in these poems

5:48

as documents and

5:51

books of fantastic poetry which

5:53

can teach you things. And

5:55

certainly they, Romans in

5:57

politics as well as in literary spheres and

5:59

as well. well as Oreta's thought, the Iliad

6:01

gives you a model for how to think

6:04

about government, how to think about how can

6:06

powerful men get along together or fail to

6:08

get along together, and how

6:11

can you provide strategy speeches which either

6:13

fail to persuade or do persuade. In

6:17

those ways, the Iliad in particular

6:19

was extremely important in both ancient

6:22

Greek and Roman education, as

6:24

well as extremely important for just

6:26

pure entertainment and also in

6:29

Greece as a

6:31

performance text which

6:33

appeared at religious as well as civic

6:35

festivals. I'm glad you mentioned performance because

6:37

we need to understand

6:40

the original Greek is in

6:43

dactylic hexameter, which

6:46

is a form of scanning that

6:48

doesn't rhyme as I understand it. Yes,

6:51

no ancient Greek or Roman poetry rhymes.

6:53

It has a quantitative meter which is

6:55

in a way like a musical rhythm.

7:00

The first line of the

7:03

Iliad is, men in aeida

7:05

thea peleador achileos. It

7:08

has this unit of la la la, which

7:10

goes all the way through its hexameter, so

7:12

there are six of those units through

7:14

each line. It has

7:17

that rhythm all the way through and

7:19

was presumably very often chanted with musical

7:21

accompaniment. And you've taken an extra 150

7:24

years to render this in dynamic pentameter.

7:26

Why did you make that choice, Professor?

7:29

I felt that the only real

7:32

equivalent in English poetic

7:34

traditions to dactylic hexameter, which

7:36

was the usual meter for

7:39

narrative verse in archaic Greece within

7:42

the Anglophone tradition, we don't have

7:44

a tradition of writing in dactylic

7:46

hexameter. Instead, we have several centuries

7:48

of poets writing in English composing

7:51

in iambic pentameter. And I played

7:53

around with could I make some

7:56

version of hexameter work in English and

7:58

I've tried that many, many times. and

8:00

I thought it didn't work. I thought it just

8:02

felt flat in a way that

8:04

the original doesn't feel flat. The original

8:06

invites reading out loud and was in antiquity

8:08

mostly experienced orally. So I wanted

8:10

to have the English reader have some equivalent

8:13

experience of this feels with Michael, this invites

8:15

you to read out loud, you can hear

8:17

a beat when you're listening to it. Oh

8:19

no, and I experimented, not only listening to

8:22

Audrey McDonald, but also I experimented reading it

8:24

to myself. And it

8:26

has that magical rhythm

8:28

of Shakespeare. That's purposeful,

8:31

right? Because that's what we're comfortable with. It's

8:36

what we're comfortable with. And it's also,

8:38

I mean, East Gillis, the great Athenian

8:40

tradition, famously said all of his

8:42

work was slices from the great banquet of

8:44

Homer. So Athenian drama was

8:47

all of those dramatists, East Gillis,

8:49

Socrates, Euripides, they were always looking

8:51

back to Homer. There were proto-dramatic

8:53

qualities already in the Iliad where

8:56

you have these very clearly characterized

8:58

figures who are both larger than

9:00

life and deeply human. And they

9:03

all speak in different ways and

9:05

perform in different ways in very much

9:07

the same way that you get in Shakespearean

9:09

tragedy and comedy. I'm speaking

9:12

with Professor Emily Wilson. Her

9:14

new work is the Iliad. This is an

9:17

English translation read by Audrey

9:19

McDonald if you have the audible, which

9:22

I recommend simultaneously with reading it

9:24

on the page. It

9:26

is decision after decision. And we're

9:28

going next to understanding

9:31

how it was first presented to

9:33

the people of the

9:35

Mediterranean basin and how it's

9:37

been presented over 2,500 years to

9:41

audiences who know the ending

9:43

and yet still are

9:45

vividly engaged. This

9:47

is CBSI and the World, Han Jeong. Some

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