The Iliad

Scholars and poets regard Fitzgerald's translations of The Iliad and The Odyssey as among the best published and are seen as great poems in English on their own. Now they are available as audiobooks, narrated by actor Dan Stevens. The Iliad places the listener amid the Trojans and Greeks as they engage in a give-and-take warfare before the walls of Troy. Achilles initially refuses to fight, as Agamemnon has taken a Trojan women Achilles claims as a prize. Athena, Hera, and Poseidon side with the Greeks, while Troy finds allies in Apollo and Aphrodite. Zeus oversees all, favoring one side, then the other. The Odyssey recounts the trek of the great warrior Odysseus from the sacked Troy back home to Ithaca. Gods, goddesses, mortals, and monsters conspire to derail the voyage. Both Zeus and Poseidon intervene, destroying Odysseus's ships and killing his crew. In Ithaca, many suitors court Odysseus's wife, Penelope, in hopes to marry the widow of the supposedly fallen hero. Stevens's (of Downton Abbey fame) superb narration brings both stories to vivid life, giving the listener a feel for what it was like to hear it recited back in ancient Greece. Both audiobooks include bonus tracks of portions of the poem recited the original Greek.