Volume 23, Number 7 · April 29, 1976
Dogs and Heroes in Homer
By Bernard Knox
Nature and Culture in the Iliad: The Tragedy of Hector
by James M. Redfield
University of Chicago Press, 287 pp., $14.50
A Companion to the Iliad (Based on the Translation by Richmond Lattimore)
by Malcolm M. Willcock
University of Chicago Press, 293 pp., $4.50 (paper)
It is a remarkable testimony to the fierce vitality of the literature which has survived from ancient Greece that no interpretation of it, however magisterial, goes unchallenged for very long; each new generation sees its own problems reflected in the ancient mirror and brings to the formulation of that vision the insights and terminology of new sciences, new critical vocabularies. Sometimes these reevaluations are attempted from the inside, by Greek scholars whose fresh, understanding of the material in the light of modern psychological or anthropological insights is based on mastery of the Greek language and control of the vast scholarly literature which has increased in volume year by year since the Renaissance. E.R. Dodds's epoch-making The Greeks and the Irrational is such a book, and G.S. Kirk's work in the field of Greek mythology presents the same stimulating combination of professional expertise and new perspectives.
Review, 4657 words
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