The wrath of Achilles turns the tide of the Trojan War through slaughter, grief, and the fall of Hector.
Books that mention Iliad (54)
The Just City by Jo Walton: “we knew all about the Trojan War—a version of the Iliad was one of our favorite books.”
The Art of Public Speaking by Dale Carnegie & J. Berg Esenwein: “Ben Jonson could repeat all he had written. Scaliger memorized the Iliad in three weeks.”
Jude the Obscure by Thomas Hardy: “I have read two books of the _Iliad_, besides being pretty familiar with passages such as the speech of Phoenix in the ninth book, the fight of Hector and Ajax in the fourteenth, the appearance of Achilles unarmed and his heavenly armour in the eighteenth, and the funeral games in the twenty-third.”
Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea by Jules Verne: “He related his fishing, and his combats, with natural poetry of expression; his recital took the form of an epic poem, and I seemed to be listening to a Canadian Homer singing the Iliad of the regions of the North.”
The Last Chronicle of Barset by Anthony Trollope: “He had a mutton chop at home that evening, and spent his time in endeavouring to read out loud to himself certain passages from the Iliad;--for he had bought a Homer as he returned from his office.”
The Last of the Mohicans by James Fenimore Cooper: “Thus spoke the sage: the kings without delay Dissolve the council, and their chief obey." --Pope's Iliad”
Walden by Henry David Thoreau: “In those days, when my hands were much employed, I read but little, but the least scraps of paper which lay on the ground, my holder, or tablecloth, afforded me as much entertainment, in fact answered the same purpose as the Iliad.”
Billy Budd by Herman Melville: “till a better epic came along, swear it was not very far behind the _Iliad_.”
Leaves of Grass by Walt Whitman: “…priests, and those of Ethiopia, The Hindu epics, the Grecian, Chinese, Persian, The Biblic books and prophets, and deep idyls of the Nazarene, The Iliad, Odyssey, plots, doings, wanderings of Eneas, Hesiod, Eschylus, Sophocles, Merlin, Arthur, The Cid, Roland at Roncesvalles, the Nibelungen,…”
Spoon River Anthology by Edgar Lee Masters: “I have written the Iliad and Hamlet; And I have explored your mysteries, And searched for you without ceasing”
Quo Vadis by Henryk Sienkiewicz: “AEschylus would not have written his Prometheus had there been no fire, just as Homer would not have written the Iliad had there been no Trojan war.”
The Story of My Life by Helen Keller: “It was the Iliad that made Greece my paradise. I was familiar with the story of Troy before I read it in the original”
Fraternity by John Galsworthy: “lighter literature: “The Iliad”; a “Life of Francis of Assisi””
Three Soldiers by John Dos Passos: “A phrase out of some translation of the Iliad came to his head: “Ambrosial night, Night ambrosial unending.””
The Secret History by Donna Tartt: “"There was no signature, but instead a tag from the Iliad, in Greek ... Be strong, saith my heart; I am a soldier; I have seen worse sights than this." Also: "that line from the Iliad I love so much, about Pallas Athene and the terrible eye”
Why Read the Classics by Italo Calvino: “Odyssey essay: 'even before The Odyssey (and also before The Iliad)'”
The Philosopher Kings by Jo Walton: “No Amorgians were mentioned in Homer's Catalog of Ships.”
Necessity by Jo Walton: “"Like the shield for Achilles," I said. "We'd recently read that part of the Iliad in the current rhapsode."”
The Maidens by Alex Michaelides: “Homer begins The Iliad with 'μῆνιν ἄειδε θεὰ Πηληϊάδεω Ἀχιλῆος'—'Sing to me, O goddess, of the menis of Achilles.'”
Alexander Hamilton by Ron Chernow: “He ended one “Monitor” essay with a quote from Pope’s Iliad that begins: “Death is the worst, a fate which all must try...””
Grant by Ron Chernow: “She loved the Iliad and the Odyssey and anything that savored of mythology and history.”
An Unnecessary Woman by Rabih Alameddine: “the most touching scene from the twenty-fourth book of the Iliad is carved into the old stone”
Crito by Plato: “'The third day hence to fertile Phthia shalt thou go.' (Homer, Il.)”
Poetics by Aristotle: “he made the Odyssey, and likewise the Iliad, to centre round an action that in our sense of the word is one.”
My Brilliant Friend by Elena Ferrante: “he resembled Hector as he was depicted in the school copy of the Iliad.”
A Separate Peace by John Knowles: “"...the Iliad with the English translation of each sentence written above it, Brinker's file of Betty Grable photographs..." — one of Finny's prizes on the Prize Table.”
Notes on Camp by Susan Sontag: “By such standards, we appraise The Iliad, Aristophanes' plays, The Art of the Fugue, Middlemarch, the paintings of Rembrandt...”
A Little Life by Hanya Yanagihara: “he had been preparing to shoot The Odyssey and was rereading it and The Iliad...”
Fire from Heaven by Mary Renault: “Phoinix had given Achilles his own Iliad, a secret from Timanthes... At the top sat the leather scroll-case of the Iliad.”
SPQR: A History of Ancient Rome by Mary Beard: “the mythical war between Greeks and Trojans that is the backdrop of Homer's Iliad”
The Mask of Apollo by Mary Renault: “I read the Iliad through and through, coming back to the passage where Priam tries to keep Hector from the death-fight”
The Nature of Alexander by Mary Renault: “a specially precious casket was taken by Alexander to house his copy of the Iliad, edited for him by Aristotle when he was a boy”
The Persian Boy by Mary Renault: “"So you've never read the Iliad?" ... "If Kallisthenes is above bringing you Homer, I am not."”
Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow by Gabrielle Zevin: “A player asks an NPC "What's your favorite part of The Iliad?" and the NPC recites lines describing Andromache”
Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance by Robert M. Pirsig: “The Iliad is the story of the siege of Troy, which will fall in the dust, and of its defenders who will be killed in battle.”
Babel by R. F. Kuang: “You take things too far, and you get something like Pope's translation of the Iliad”
Crossing the Wine-Dark Sea by Emily Wilson: “a haunting, capricious patchwork of poetic narratives based on Homer's Iliad”
Glorious Exploits by Ferdia Lennon: “You think Homer knew when he’d written The Iliad that he’d written The Iliad?”
The Republic by Plato: “You know the first lines of the Iliad, in which the poet says that Chryses prayed Agamemnon to release his daughter, and that Agamemnon flew into a passion with him; whereupon Chryses, failing of his object, invoked the anger of the God against the Achaeans.”
Don Juan by George Gordon Byron: “His reverend tutors had at times a tussle, And for their AEneids, Iliads, and Odysseys, Were forced to make an odd sort! of apology, For Donna Inez dreaded the Mythology.”
Gargantua and Pantagruel by Francois Rabelais: “Do you believe, upon your conscience, that Homer, whilst he was a-couching his Iliads and Odysses, had any thought upon those allegories, which Plutarch, Heraclides Ponticus, Eustathius, Cornutus squeezed out of him, and which Politian filched again from them?”
The Satyricon by Petronius: “I asked the hall-porter what pictures were in the middle hall. "The Iliad and the Odyssey," he replied, "and the gladiatorial games given under Laenas."”
The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire by Edward Gibbon: “The rights, powers, and pretensions of the sovereign of Olympus are very clearly described in the xvth book of the Iliad; in the Greek original, I mean; for Mr. Pope, without perceiving it, has improved the theology of Homer.”
The Anatomy of Melancholy by Robert Burton: “Homer, Iliad. 1, brings in Achilles eating of his own heart in his idleness, because he might not fight.”
The Faerie Queene by Edmund Spenser: “In which I have followed all the antique poets historicall: first Homer, who in the persons of Agamemnon and Ulysses hath ensampled a good governour and a vertuous man, the one in his Ilias, the other in his Odysseis:”
Plutarch's Lives by Plutarch: “Most writers say that Solon brought the great authority of Homer's 'Iliad' to his aid, by interpolating in the catologue of ships”
Barry Lyndon by William Makepeace Thackeray: “the child starting back from my helmet like what-d'ye-call'im--Hector's son, as described by Mr. Pope in his 'Iliad');”
The Napoleon of Notting Hill by G. K. Chesterton: “This one poor rhymster, having burnt his own rhymes, began to live that life of open air and acted poetry of which all the poets of the earth have dreamed in vain; the life for which the Iliad is only a cheap substitute.”
Tom Brown's School Days by Thomas Hughes: “The shell, in which form all our dramatis personae now are, were reading, amongst other things, the last book of Homer's "Iliad," and had worked through it as far as the speeches of the women over Hector's body.”
The Adventures of Peregrine Pickle by Tobias Smollett: “The self-sufficient physician, who did not expect such a repartee from a youth of Peregrine's appearance, looked upon his reply as a fair challenge, and instantly rehearsed forty or fifty lines of the Iliad in a breath.”
Inside My Glass Doors by Natsume Sōseki: “I gave the children's new friend the grand name of Hector. It was the name of the greatest Trojan warrior in the Iliad, who was struck down by Achilles when Troy and Greece went to war. [auto-translated]”