Since the dawn of Western literature, going all the way back to Homer and his sanguinary epics of men in battle, war has captivated poets. And yet the Iliad and the Odyssey, though they cover traditional heroic materials, are strangely ambivalent regarding their central heroic subject: the striving for glory through warfare. Homer’s poems, to be sure, recreate the melod (...)
Short Take
The ‘Glory' of War
FROM HOMER TO BAGHDAD
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