Less cohesive in theme as it goes on and too philological for me to be able to get much from the analysis, but the conclusions Nagy reaches are always fascinating. It's also so strange to start with the preface that announces this book as a radical departure from the scholarship of its time and then read what feels like the traditional position every recent bit of work I've read starts from.

A fantastic thesis that has always seemed evident to me reading Homeric poetry, but Nagy really lays on the evidence for it in this book, including non-Greek works

This treatise was my first encounter with Nagy's thinking many years ago. Nagy has found the "outgrown track to Language" and knows how to instruct the track to a modern academic reader. He changed my approach to the thinking of the ancient Indo-European man and after that moment of realization, this change has been irreversible. Humble thanks.

Perhaps one of the best books ever written on the subject. HIghly informative.

Prof. Nagy's interpretations were essential for my novel version of Euripides' Madness of Herakles https://jasonkassel.substack.com/.

2.5

After all the interesting books analyzing the Iliad I have read lately, this was just too dull.

I approached "The Best of the Achaeans" with a certain amount of dread. I wasn't sure what to expect and feared it might be a dull treatise on heroism. In fact, it was frequently fascinating and right up my alley. Gregory Nagy's main focus was on language and how it reveals deep traditional patterns.

Though Homer's two epics take a prime place in the discussion, Nagy also draws widely on other ancient literature. After Homer, Hesiod is cited second-most, then Pindar, then Archilochus and other archaic poets. And not just the principal works, but also bare fragments and snippets from ancient biographies of Aesop and Pyrrhos, among others. Sometimes Nagy even drew on parallels with Sanskrit, Old Irish, or other Indo-European literature.

His main technique was to drill down on a few particular words to see how they were used, what other words they tended to be associated with, what themes they were related to, etc. The text features numerous excerpts in Greek, alongside Nagy's translations. But in the main body of text, Nagy will refer to the relevant Greek words in transliteration (akhos, penthos, bie, etc.). His translations also use the words in question in an interesting way. For instance, if there is a verb derived from the noun akhos, he might translate it as "brought me akhos" rather than, say, "troubled me." Seeing translations like this made me read the Greek with new eyes.

The book is organized in an interesting way, as well. It is divided into books and chapters like an ordinary book, but then each chapter has numbered paragraphs (§1, §2, etc.). The footnotes frequently refer backwards or forwards to a particular paragraph in the text. An organization like this made it easy to see how Nagy developed his arguments, and also had the benefit of dividing a long, dense book into bite-sized chunks.

My one disappointment was that I imagined the book would be building to a grand summation and conclusion. Instead the last chapter seemed no different in kind than the previous 19 chapters. It was almost like a circular novel a la Infinite Jest, where the "ending" just leads you back to the beginning again. In the end, I feel like I got a lot out of reading "The Best of the Achaeans," specifically in how I approach reading Greek texts.

N.B. Though one can read this book without understanding Greek, I suspect that it will prove daunting. Even when written in Roman letters, the text is thoroughly imbued with the Greek language. Many aspects of grammar and terminology appear without (much) explanation. And it goes beyond Greek as well. I was lucky in that I had recently learned the Sanskrit concept of bahuvrihi, which Nagy alludes to several times. Anyway, caveat lector.

Interesting ideas. A great read. Intelligent, articulate, intellectual, compelling. I took Prof. Nagy's class on the Hero and Greek Civilization during college. One of my all-time favorite classes by one of my all-time favorite professors.

This world is known to us through Homer and the artifacts left behind. Nagy does an excellent job at giving us a glimpse of these heroic people - Achilles and co.