Between Lions and Men

Author's Note

Afterword

I wrote this largely as an adaption of the Iliad focusing on certain major plot points that I find interesting that aren't commonly adapted or focused on. The Iliad itself is a really long, complex text, with multiple translations of varying worth. I read and referred to multiple while writing this, the Pope translation,  and the Lombardo translation namely, though I also referenced multiple other documents such as Emily Wilson's fantastic translation of the Odyssey.  I'm going to give in depth my source material and the reasons I chose the interpretations I did for the characters.  The setting I chose because I wanted the book to feel like a modern Iliad adaption, but in the way that Shakespeare's plays are often produced (especially in community theater) in modern period garb, keeping the same lines. It creates a fun lens to view an ancient story through, and honestly the Trojan War is very analogous to trench war far during WWII. We had these long battle lines, trying to break lines, barely gaining an inch of ground in a day. I tried to keep the dialogue that is original highly archaic, so that I could rip as many direct chunks as possible from the Iliad without it sounding off. In general, I changed everyone's names to their last name of the place they are from or their father's name, in part because a lot of the Iliad they call each other 'son of so-and-so' in part because I was trying to separate these famous names from the narrative to prevent any preconceptions. But more on that with each character.

But first, the Iliad overall.

Iliad

So the Iliad is like a massive crossover event. It's to ancient Greek audiences like Infinity War is to comic book fans. They would know history on basically all of these characters and all of their favs are making appearances. That's why modern audiences tend to go 'huh' about the long lists of characters or characters who show up for two seconds. Having the Iliad and Odyssesy is basically like several hundred years from now just having Infinity War and the Loki TV series, first three episodes.

The Iliad doesn't take place over the full ten years of the so called 'Trojan war' in fact it's just the last three weeks. And it doesn't end with Achilles' famous death, in fact, it ends with Hector's funeral. That's it. Troy is still standing.

I would summarize the whole thing for you, but honestly Overly Sarcastic Productions has a youtube channel where they do just that pretty darn accurately. If you're not interested in reading the whole thing, watching that is the next best thing. Also it's like 10 minutes of your time.

And reading the Iliad is very choppy. Trust me, I did it a few times while writing and researching this. It doesn't feel very cohesive, some parts, like Book 10 (my personal favorite) have this very set narrative structure similar to what we would see in a Shakespeare or Middleton play, and feel even comedic. Some Books are just lists of who died in battle pretty much. Characters like Diomedes or Ajax kick ass throughout a whole book or couple of books, only to be largely sidelined at the end of the narrative. People like Diomedes don't even really get a follow up for the last few books he just disappears.

Brises

Ah Brises. The reason for the entire book, and yet a minor character at best in the Iliad. Similar to Helen (more on her later) Brises gets largely sidelined. Despite causing the dispute with Agamemnon, (almost exactly like the whole Helen-Paris-Menelaus thing hmm), she really doesn't do a whole lot. Even in the opening lines of the poem when she gets taken, Achilles gets mad she's being taken but she doesn't actually get any lines. Agamemnon calls her 'fair eyed' but that's it. Her name comes up fifteen times in the whole thing. And she's described as beautiful but that's about all we get.

One important thing is, the Iliad makes it very clear that Agamemnon did not rape her. That's kind of to appease Achilles, but it's an interesting distinction not only  in poem that doesn't care a lot about women, and when Achilles really could care less at that point that she's returned. Yet the poem makes it clear she was in fact unharmed.