The term "foundational" is overused. It too often assigns significance to works that have, for good reason, been forgotten. However, in the case of the Iliad it could not be more appropriate. Western culture has two equal origins: the Hebrews and the Greeks. While the Torah resides at the base of the immense edifice that is the Semitic tradition, so too, Homer is the bedrock of the Hellenistic. If one wishes to understand the Greek psyche and way of life it is inevitably begun with the Iliad.

Candidly, I was unfamiliar with the contents of the Iliad until this first reading. I only knew that it involved the Trojan War. So, naturally I assumed it contained the common cultural references to that event; namely, the judgment of Paris, the theft of Helen, Achilles’ heel, and of course, the Trojan horse. I was midway through the poem before I began to doubt my assumptions. I cheated and googled if they were included in the epic. They aren’t. I was a bit disappointed.

Yet, a significant question quickly followed that discovery: What, then, is the story of the Iliad? It is the story of a war. Or is it a story of rage? Or is it both? While there is plenty of war to be found in its lines (not to mention some gruesome imagery), rage is the primary concern of the work. That should not be surprising. In the invocation the poet asks the goddess to sing, not the "war of the Achaeans and Trojans", but the "Rage of Achilles" (1.1). The war is the backdrop, the setting. My annoyance with the missing Trojan Horse was abated. This is a war story, not the story of a war. And rage is the main actor.