Your favorite passage from the Iliad

[Decemvir]

Hello all,
I thought it might be interesting for us all to give examples of some of our favorite passages from the Iliad. Here is my favorite excerpt:

Just as are the generations of leaves, such are those also of men. As for the leaves, the wind scatters some on the earth, but the luxuriant forest sprouts others when the season of spring has come; so of men one generation springs up and another passes away.

I think this is an amazing verse. These lines made me fall in love with the Iliad. The timelessness of the ideas and sentiments contained within the work are stunning. When I shared these lines with my girlfried we thought how these lines proved that great writing is timeless, beautiful even.
Please, share your favorite lines from the Iliad and feel free to tell us all why you enjoy them.

[Cluny the Scourge]

Your idea isn't all that great, since it would in very large part depend upon the exact translation you were quoting from. The quotation you've given reads in my version (the 1974 Fitzgerald translation) as:

"Very like leaves upon this earth are the generations of men - old leaves, cast on the ground by wind, young leaves the greening forest bears when springs comes in. So mortals pass; one generation flowers even as another dies away." [Glaucus addressing Diomedes]

I find the Fitzgerald one more poetic.

The Iliad as a whole I find repetitive and tedious, overall, though I do enjoy the graphic ultra-violence that is repeated again and again. Like this:

"Idomeneus thrust hard at Erymas' mouth with his hard bronze. The spearhead passed on through beneath his brain and split the white brain-pan. His teeth were dashed out, blood filled both his eyes, and from his mouth and nostrils as he gaped he spurted blood. Death's cloud enveloped him." (16, 344-349)

Now THAT'S writing - ****ing hard core, man. And the book is FULL of that stuff.

[Decemvir]

Your idea isn't all that great

ouch
Well I disagree (obviously, since I posted the thread). I did not mean to imply that one translation or another of the Iliad should be used to portay everyone's favorite line/passage from the Iliad. So by including the book and line everyone could see what I was referencing and, like yourself, find it in their own respective copies. The sentiment of the lines is (should be depending upon the translator/translation) similar.
Anyway, I am still interested in hearing from others and learning what their favorite excerpts are.

BTW, I also enjoy the ultra-violence contained within the Iliad. Your selection is a good example.

[The White Knight]

I've once bravely started reading it, but I've given up on page... 36 (out of the 745 in my translation) where Homeros asked the Muses to tale of Greece's leaders... and endless summing up of names followed, starting with Peneleos, Leitus, Archesilaos, Prothoënor and Clonius of the Beotians and ending with Sarpedon and Glaucos of the Lycians on page 47 (!).

I might want to start again though. But when 'Achilles' is mentioned I always get an image of Brad Pitt (watching 'Troy 'before reading the Iliad is not, I repeat, not healthy)...

[Tom Paine]

Just out of interest, how many of you know the most common phrase in the Iliad?

[Spiff]

hmm i remember hearing about Dawn and her rosey fingers an awful lot in the poem

[Tom Paine]

Someone got it! Spiff, you win... nothing.
I must say my favourite phrase actually comes from the Odyssey, the Iliad has nothing to compare with this:

By god, I'd rather slave on earth for another man-
some dirt-poor tenant farmer who scrapees to keep alive-
than rule down here over all the breathless dead

[Spiff]

Someone got it! Spiff, you win... nothing.

lol really? How do you know its actualy the most repeated? i just took a guess..

and yea they Odyssey was much better

[Tom Paine]

Because my Greek teacher two years ago told us it was