What Emily Wilson’s Iliad Misses

As knowledge of Greek has become more exotic—the mark of pedants, nerds, and graduates of expensive schools—capturing the barbarism of ancient Greek, and of the ancient Greeks themselves, has become harder. The ghost of Snowman Dyer would be a helpful tutor. Classical Greece is often thought to be a pillar that holds up modern civilization, and that impression is not wrong. Take away the tradition that begins with Greece, and everything political from Cicero to Machiavelli to Thomas Jefferson to Barack Obama tumbles down, and along with it a literary inheritance extending through Virgil to Wole Soyinka.