Homer's mighty epic, the Iliad, is the first work of western literatureand one of the defining masterpieces of our culture. The purpose ofthis new line-by-line commentary is to help as wide an audience aspossible to understand and appreciate the poem through the best ofrecent scholarship on the man and his work.

Peter Jones hasselected three of the most widely used translations on which to basehis commentary, those of E.V. Rieu (revised and updated by PeterJones), Martin Hammond, and Richmond Lattimore.
There is a usefulintroduction to the whole work and separate short introductions to eachbook of the Iliad. Each passage selected for comment is given aline-reference and quoted from all three translations.