Deaths in the Iliad: A Classics Infographic

Fantastic! I read the Iliad a few years ago, and just got round to reading the Odyssey while on holiday last week. I'm still amazed by how readable and downright enjoyable something written ~2700 years ago can be.

I think what I really liked about the writing style of Homer is how he conveys human emotions and personalities. In fact sometimes the raw emotion can seem over the top: I'm not sure what is done more in the Odyssey, eating and drinking, or crying.

Read the Iliad and the Odyssey if you get the chance, they are surprisingly accessible and fun!

The Illiad is a surprisingly good read, although I freely admit I skipped the one chapter that was just a big long list of ships and men. Oddly enough, I didn't immediately recall any of the deaths mentioned as the top three grimmest in that infographic. It was the gruesomely detailed descriptions of disembowelments that got to me!

The combat and gorily detailed deaths of the Illiad are so vivid that I've often wondered if Homer was himself an experienced combatant or, alternatively, when all that detail was added. The Illiad was passed down as an oral tradition before being written down, so many veterans of war could have added embellishments over the years, or perhaps the man who finally wrote it down was a soldier or physician (or possibly both)!

The rise of the infographic that is actually harder to comprehend than the tabular data it was designed from is horrible, horrible, thing.

This should probably link to http://greekmythcomix.wordpress.com/comic/deaths-in-the-ilia... instead of the comic's front page.

I love it. You can even change pages with Cmd-Left & -Right. Nicely done.