Volume 46, Number 5 · March 18, 1999

Homer Lives!

By Peter Green
Who Killed Homer?: The Demise of Classical Education and the Recovery of Greek Wisdom
by Victor Davis Hanson, by John Heath

Free Press, 290 pp., $25.00

At first sight the rhetorical question Who Killed Homer? looks rather like one of those trick questions attributed to mythical lawyers, like 'Have you stopped beating your wife?,' since with half a dozen paperback translations of the Iliad and Odyssey selling nicely, and more appearing every year, Homer might seem, to the casual observer, to be very much alive. But then we discover that Victor Davis Hanson and John Heath's jeremiad against the alleged sins of academic classicists has itself sold about 30,000 copies in hardback and is to be issued in paperback by a major university press. [1]



Review, 5083 words

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