The Iliad
Homer · 750 BCE
Twenty-four books tracing the rage of Achilles and the last weeks of the Trojan War, composed around 750 BCE. Homer invented the epic form here, and his psychology of honor and grief set the terms for all subsequent literary ambition. Every war poem written since lives in its shadow.
The case against
Hundreds of lines cataloguing ships and captains, then battle after battle in which men die identically, spear through the nipple, darkness covering their eyes, formulas recycled for oral performance. Anyone arriving for the Trojan Horse should know it never appears; the poem ends before the city falls. Achilles spends half of it sulking in his tent.
Poetry · the Pro canon
The case for it and the rest of the canon open with Pro.
if this one calls to you, so will these →
