I possess a relatively large number of this series of books; some are excellent and some I find rather more challenging; this one most definitely fell into the excellent category. Graziosi has a knack of speaking directly to readers and drawing them in with her passion (this is a word I generally discourage as it appears far too often in personal statements, but here it is correct). This book would be an invaluable addition to any school or department library. Beginning with a brief survey of the arguments surrounded the authorship of the Iliad and the Odyssey, Graziosi carefully traces the academic work that has been done on oral poetry and clearly explains Milman Parry's work on oral poetry and metrical analysis as relating to epithets i.e. that ‘if a Greek singer had two measures to fill, he would always say ‘luminous Achilles” since there was no other formula that would fit’. Some might say that research such as this tarnishes the beauty of the poetry and makes it seem over-formulaic, but that can be easily countered with the argument that it demonstrates the poet's skill in having the flexibility and tools to produce vast quantities of poetry in a particular style for live performance. The poetry itself is infinitely flexible and allows for insights into the human (or semi-divine in Achilles’ case) condition as when Achilles finds himself unable to catch Apollo (Il 22 8-20) and bemoans his powerlessness against a god. From the Odyssey too she uses the example of Odysseus’ dilemma when woken by Nausicaa and her slave-girls playing ball (Odyssey 6 119) and the internal dialogue about how he should proceed. Such insights into human character are what make these poems still relevant to us today. Moving from the linguistic to the material Graziosi explains how Schliemann's drive to prove the reality of Homer led him to Mycenae and Hissarlik. This is not the place to discuss Schliemann's rather questionable methods, but it is an important part of the after-life of the Homeric epics and any book on Homer needs to mention him. More interesting perhaps are the passages on Linear B and evidence directly from the text about agriculture and food as seen in the similes. Fishing for instance provide several striking similes – Scylla grabbing Odysseus’ men off their ship (Od 12 251-255) or the suitors lying like fish pulled out of the sea by fisherman to lie on the sand (Od 22 384-388) – but eating fish is never done in the Iliad and only once in the Odyssey (Od 12 331) and the technology used to fish effectively is well described as are building processes whether divine or mortal (Od 7 81-94) and the descriptions of drinking vessels that are scattered throughout both poems. The skill of ordinary people is contrasted implicitly by the comparison of heroes with wild animals – lions, boar – that threaten the settled farmer. Such subtleties are commonplace within this rich poetry. There is discussion of the poet's voice and the way that he can focus in on the minutiae but then pan out to take a panorama of the battlefield, or perhaps an aside to a specific character as he does on two occasions to Eumaeus in the Odyssey. Graziosi's account of Homer's description of the shield of Achilles is an excellent survey and gives us a beautiful and varied account of agricultural work, dancing and city life as in people shouting at each other in a court case – all told in an almost cinematic way. There are wonderful touches too, and my personal favourites are the two occasions where eyebrows are used to signal – Odysseus tries to order his men to set him free as the Sirens work their musical magic on him, and again in book 16 when Athene summons Odysseus from Eumaeus’ hut by gesturing with her eyebrows - and the meeting with Argus the dog in Book 17 which never fails to bring a tear to the eye even of the most hardened 6^th formers. Homer, whoever he (or they) was certainly knew how to touch a nerve. It is only once the more general topics have been covered that Graziosi moves on to the two most famous works of Homer, the Iliad and the Odyssey, and each has three chapters devoted to it. These chapters pick out key scenes to illustrate the topic of the chapter e.g. the wrath of Achilles discusses Achilles’ behaviour following the initial quarrel with Agamemnon and how that wrath becomes less like that of a god and more like that of a mortal since Achilles can die, continuing the representation of the human condition. There is also a typically well-argued discussion of the role of Hector and his part in the narrative as the major protagonist on the Trojan side. Odysseus, ‘the man of many turns’ is shown to be described by a ‘wider range of animals than any other hero’; there is the lion when he meets Nausicaa, the octopus when he is clinging to a rock before he makes landfall at Scherie and a bat when he is clinging to the fig tree in book 12; of these the lion is a relatively common comparator, but the latter two are most inventive and typical of the Homeric poet. Understandably the journey to the Underworld (nekyia) is a chosen theme to explore and explain Odysseus’ character and motivation to return home to Ithaca and to cheat death in the process. Overall, this is an excellent resource and accessible to students, though the sections on the epics themselves would be best read after the text has been studied.