The ancient city of Troy, immortalized in Homer's Iliad, is located in northwestern Turkey, along the Aegean to the south of Istanbul. Leading up to our visit in April, I read Emily Wilson's new translation of the epic poem. Wilson chose to render Homer's dactylic hexameter, which is a rhythm compatible with the original Greek, into iambic pentameter, which is better suited to English and used by most of our own great poets. It is a vivid experience. Here is just one example:

More than a movie, the Iliad was dozens of hours of premium television, sung by a bard who knew it by heart. Other passages cut deep in a different way:

Standing on what remains of the citadel of ancient Troy and looking out over the plain, beyond which the "swift Greek ships" would have been docked, was one of the highlights of my life. I could hear Hector's wife, Andromache, pleading with him to remain with her and their young son behind the "sturdy walls of Troy" instead of going out to face Agamemnon's coalition; and old king Priam, watching as Hector, his beloved son, was later chased down and mercilessly killed by Achilles; and Hecuba, Hector's mother, wailing on the citadel's walls as her son's body is dragged through the dirt back to the Greek camp. It's a brutal work, and a reminder of the devastating cost of war. In Achilles' own words:

All this, on the plains of Troy.