The Story of the Iliad – A Dramatic Retelling of Homer′s Epic and the Last Days of Troy

I read this in one sitting as befits a play script. I’m sure Simon Armitage would be the first to agree that his drama is no substitute for either Homer or Virgil. The sentiments are true to the original apart from the ending, when the war is said to be about plunder rather than the return of Helen. Homer, however, records nobody profiting from the fall of Troy. Odysseus has to raid the first coastal town he comes to after leaving Troy in order to gain spoils, Menelaus spends several years collecting booty in the eastern Mediterranean before he returns home and the only treasure recorded for Agamemnon is Cassandra. The greater tragedy is that Troy was but one of the many dominos to fall at the end of the late Bronze Age.