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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Kobold Stew" data-source="post: 9112001" data-attributes="member: 23484">The Iliad.I can say without irony that it's one of the two books that I've read cover to cover that has changed me, deeply, into who I am today. Part of the reason why is that it helped set the course of my job and career, teaching Greek poetry. That's not where I started, but it is where I went once I started reading Homer. But more than that:The Iliad can find immense beauty and therefore meaning in transient moments of human contact, within a brutal world in which suffering exists and divine justice is either absent or inscrutable. It identifies being human as an inevitable struggle, but one that can become purposeful, even if it is also tragic. It is a poem about war in which (almost) every death is named, and therefore not forgotten. It celebrates life and peace even as it recognizes so much of human activity as fundamentally destructive.</blockquote>