Based on the 1958 book The Wrath of Achilles, The Iliad of Homer by I.A. Richards. In this seventh episode, "Professor and Lowell Television Lecturer at Harvard University" I. A. Richards reads from his abridged translation of the Iliad, The Wrath of Achilles. He begins by noting that this program will continue the emphasis on war from the last episode, and asks why we should be dragging ourselves through such horror. The greatness of the poetry is not enough of an answer, he says. Rather, the relevance of the Iliad lies in its abiding influence on the present: "We are its inheritors. We are the descendents of all this. It's what shaped us up and is shaping us still. These nightmare horrors, however ancient The Iliad may be, are with and in us today." Like Achilles, we belong to a nation convinced of its superiority and "pitiless" in its action, and the "twofoldness" in Achilles, his violence and his zealous defense of his fellows, is in us too. The Iliad reminds us of what we "most deeply are," and Richards enjoins us to remember because "We'll help men in the future best if we don't forget ourselves." Once he has considered this problem of the violence portrayed in Homer's poem, Richards offers a vigorous reading of book twenty-two, wherein Achilles kills Hector and drags his body back to the Greek camp. Summary and select metadata for this record was submitted by John Marx & Mark Cooper.
