High-browed pounders
Crashing, sonorous waves drowning that wonderfully rustling sound of ‘skittish shingle’, pebbles and shells dashing up and down the beach...
Handsome-bodied warriors
Ah, it all boils down to wounded pride and vexation over the loss of a woman. Achilles withdraws from the...
World-class Achilles
World-class Achilles – as a warrior yes, but as a man, there are other Homeric heroes more admirable, though most...
Wide-apart eyes
Athena is for me the most memorable goddess, apart from the supreme and supremely bad-tempered Hera. I love the ‘prussic...
Hard-hearted Hera
Hera is Goddess Numero Una, but for all her beauty and creaminess, she is, as Virgil has it, full of...
Chopping and changing
I like how Logue places the words so they don’t flow smoothly but themselves wallop, slap back, chop and change,...
As quiet as…
Christopher Logue’s vivid, muscular version of some episodes in the Iliad abounds with striking metaphors – I noted about 60...
Ajax and Alamein
Logue’s rendering of Homer is powerful because he makes it immediate, either by transporting you through sheer force of description...
Anagnorisis
Normally referring to the moment in a play or other work when a character makes a critical discovery, perhaps understanding...
Grey-eyed Athena
Much is made of Athena’s beautiful eyes; elsewhere they have a ‘prussic glare’ and are ‘wide-apart’. Remember, Athena is the...
The walls and towers of Troy
Three triologisms demonstrating the strength of the protective masonry encasing Troy; the first being in the mouth of Agamemnon, chief...
Diplomacy and dogs
This rich if none too favourable description of the Greeks – ‘hatched from the slag we cast five centuries ago’...
© Beatrice Otto 2020 - design & content unless otherwise stated - all rights reserved