The Iliad

I read Homer's Iliad, it was awesome... I got it in Russian translation of Pyotr Gnedich (П.П. Гнедич) and the translation is so great and world-famous that they say it is the greatest translation of foreign book ever. And I must agree with this. Gnedich used epic, grandiloquent, heroic words and clauses, bringing poem into high level of poetry.

As for the text itself, my favorite piece is Iliad 5.735-745 (Athena is preparing for battle):
But Athene, daughter of Zeus that beareth the aegis, let fall upon her father's floor her soft robe, [735] richly broidered, that herself had wrought and her hands had fashioned, and put on her the tunic of Zeus, the cloud-gatherer, and arrayed her in armour for tearful war. About her shoulders she flung the tasselled aegis, fraught with terror, all about which Rout is set as a crown, [740] and therein is Strife, therein Valour, and therein Onset, that maketh the blood run cold, and therein is the head of the dread monster, the Gorgon, dread and awful, a portent of Zeus that beareth the aegis. And upon her head she set the helmet with two horns and with bosses four, wrought of gold, and fitted with the men-at-arms of an hundred cities. [745] Then she stepped upon the flaming car and grasped her spear, heavy and huge and strong, wherewith she vanquisheth the ranks of men — of warriors with whom she is wroth, she, the daughter of the mighty sire.

And here are my pictures about Iliad. First of all, the mapped Catalog of ships. See also http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Catalogue_of_Ships and http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trojan_Battle_Order.

Full size: https://sites.google.com/site/tealyatina/share/iliad-map.png

Shields or hoplons. They are not historical accurate, and many of them from a later age, but who cares? Some of shild logos I took from ancient vases, other ones from textual descriptions.

Full size: https://sites.google.com/site/tealyatina/share/hoplons.png

My favorite analysis, a color reference chart, or book portrait. To make it you should just count number of references of color names in whole book. Not so hard to apply (especially with propram http://a.teall.info/bookportrait/).

The Chart of Number of Color References:

Well, as expected, a lot of blood red, bronze and gold. This is an epic warfare poem after all, isn't it?
As for heroes and gods... List of most frequently mentioned names: Achilles, Hector, Zeus, Agamemnon, Ajax (both), Priam, Athena, Patroclus, Menelaus, Apollo, Odysseus, Hera, Diomed, Nestor, Aeneas, Idomeneus, Paris, Ares, Meriones, Helen, Poseidon. I love such lists of useless enumeration, lol.