Versophia

Reading · Perpetual

The Epic Cycle

Five poems, each written with the one before it in view. Virgil answers Homer, Dante takes Virgil as his guide, and Milton writes against all of them.

I read one poem a season, each time round in a different translation or edition.

Progress

Reading now

Iliad

1 of 5 · Fall 2026 · Robert Fagles’s translation, the Folio Society edition

Due by November 30 · 514 pages left: 9 a day, about 19 minutes, from September 27

A red-figure painting in the round bowl of a Greek cup: the old king Priam, bearded and cloaked, reaches toward a young man with a spear at the door of Achilles' hut.
Priam comes to Achilles' hut to ransom the body of his son Hector — the last book of the Iliad. Attic red-figure cup by the Briseis Painter, about 480 BC. British Museum, E75. Photograph by Marie-Lan Nguyen, public domain.

Up next: Odyssey · Winter 2026–27

Readings finished
0
Works read at least once
0 of 5
  1. Iliad Homer 8th century BC
  2. Odyssey Homer 8th century BC
  3. Aeneid Virgil 19 BC
  4. Commedia Dante c. 1308–1321
  5. Paradise Lost Milton 1667

Then begin again with the Iliad.