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Understanding Homeric Poetry and Reading Slowly

If you really want to read a book about the background of the Homeric Iliad, just read the Homeric Iliad-- and read it fast first and then slowly afterwards. The reason I say that is that in the 5th century BCE, a great thinker like Herodotus, who today is considered the so-called Father of Ancient Greek History, Herodotus actually said that in order to be civilized, you've got to know Homer and Hesiod. Herodotus is saying in this very important period of Greek intellectual history that if you know the Homeric Iliad, if you know the Homeric Odyssey, plus, let's say, two other poems, you're civilized. You have the background. You have what it takes. So if we even read the Iliad fast, we already have a major chunk of what it takes to be a civilized person as far as Herodotus is concerned. The beauty of the art of reading slowly, if I can go back to what Nietzsche said about philology, is that you can really apply the art on your own. Sure, with guidance at the beginning, but then you get more and more confident, and then you become a slow- reading artist. That's my ambition for you. Here I am at my age, there's still some things that I haven't read carefully in the Homeric Iliad and Odyssey. It's, after all, the product of over 2,000, maybe 3,000, years of the most highly refined performer-audience interaction. It's one of the most beautiful, perfected systems of communication that we can find in the history of civilization. So for heaven's sake, let's not beat up on ourselves if we don't understand something in the Homeric Iliad or the Homeric Odyssey. They'll be plenty of that, including for me. But the rewards of the experience of reading slowly will just keep on coming. It's a gift that really, seriously, keeps on giving.