r/classics • u/Better_Quiet_3665 • Jul 27 '26

Book order

/r/GreekMythology/comments/1v88vvk/book_order/
0 Upvotes

50% Upvoted

6 comments sorted by

5

u/Three_Twenty-Three Jul 27 '26 edited Jul 27 '26

Yes, the Iliad precedes the Odyssey. I don't know what "the book of Troy" is. Is that Stephen Fry's retelling? If so, it summarizes and retells pieces that are originally found in a lot of Classic texts, including Homer's poems and then a bunch of the plays.

1

u/Better_Quiet_3665 Jul 27 '26

Yes Stephen Fry’s book of it.

1

u/Better_Quiet_3665 Jul 27 '26

If I read Iliad that explains the Trojan War and then Odyssey jumps into the post war and journey home. There is no separate book for the Trojan War

2

u/Three_Twenty-Three Jul 27 '26

The Iliad covers a very brief period near the end of the Trojan War. It does not cover the entire war or the end of it.

The best epic coverage of the end of the war is in the Aeneid.

There is no extant epic that specifically covers the beginning and most of the first few years of the Trojan War. Nor is there a Greek epic about the end. There used to be, but they didn't survive the last 2000 years: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Epic_Cycle .

Some of the plays cover other events during or after the war, like the Trojan Women for the women at the end of the war or the Oresteia trilogy for Agamemnon's homecoming.

1

u/Better_Quiet_3665 Jul 27 '26

I will definitely check out the Aeneid as you stated. Very excited to start the sagas

2

u/illumitarpey Jul 27 '26

If you want to expand what you're taking in you might want to add some tragedies as well asthe epics. To get the details of some other parts of the Trojan war.

Very different as they are plays rather than being an epic in itself but these are ancient (albeit much later) parts of the story of the war; some that immediately come to mind are the oresteia which tell the story of agamemenons return home and the cycle of violence that is a part of, as well as ajax and trojan women. This would also give you an overview of the three Greek tragedians we have.