[Iliad1] Intro

[Tim Reagan]

As an intro to the Iliad study group of Reading Odyssey:

My name is Tim Reagan.  I'm a retired labor union editor-graphic designer-publicist, and have been interested in the ancient Greek world and Greek mythology for many years.  An effort to write a novel concerning secondary characters in the Iliad has stalled, but I still am very much involved.  I live in Oakland, about a mile and a half from the U.C. Berkeley campus, and I have been "sitting in" on a number of U.C. classes connected with this topic--Greek Mythology, Ancient Greek History, and Greek Tragedy.  Next month I'm starting a class on The Epic, but ... we'll be reading the Fagles translation, not the Lombardo--so I'll be reading the two translations simultaneously.  (I've read the Fagles before, but only part of the Lombardo, which I have found majestic).

This is my third Reading Odyssey group, all with the expert guidance of Andre--Xenophon and Herodotus were my two previous groups.  There's probably no way I could have appreciated, and completed reading, Herodotus without the group.  The discussions seem to always bring up points that I'd missed or not sufficiently understood and were  always provocative and friendly, probing and informal.

I also sat in on most of the Reading Odyssey lectures of the Marathon 2500 series, about the Battle of Marathon, 490 B.C.   In 2009, I spent three days at Troy, and toured other ancient sites in Greece and Turkey as well--Tenedos, Ephesus, Prienne, Miletos, Didyma, Athens, Mycenae, Tiryns, Nauplio, Epidauros, Sparta, Pylos, Delphi.  So put me down as a fan, of ancient Greek history and culture, of the Iliad, and of Reading Odyssey. 

I'm really looking forward to the Iliad group.

Tim