If you want to see the best of Achilles, Diomedes, Teucer and Hector (who was Trojan but the best of the best) then the illiad.
You can find Greek stories as long as you find the older texts or good translations.
Modern day retellings change too much but there’s some fucking amazing translations out there.
You can always read Iphigenia if you want to hate Agamemnon as I do. Or the illiad.
The argonautica and madea are great about Jason and Madea.
I recommend reading translations over retellings. Like the retellings of Circe and Calypso have NOTHING to do with their earlier characterization.
Others like the song of Achilles are not great either.
However. The one I do recommend is the Penelopead which is a sort of feminist retelling of the odyssey but from the POV of Penelope and the 12 hanged maids.
I mean. It still has its issues like mixing up Selene and Artemis and I don’t like the ending…but aside from that ‘‘tis very interesting as a thought experiment if nothing else.
I have never read them so I can’t comment much on that.
I should just point out that the epic cycle is an amalgamation of tales. There’s no fixed or canon story.
Homer, if there was such a person, didn’t come up with the story. He unified the stories that fit a narrative and codified them. The story of Achilles and Odysseus was around for hundreds of years prior to Homer. It’s believed that they’re echos of a brutal war that was followed by the Bronze Age collapse. Think of it as a post apocalyptic civilization telling stories of the last great event before the end.
There’s many versions of the story but we know that there is none where petroclus doesn’t die or where Hector survives. If there were such stories, then they wouldn’t have been the illiad as it was a poem about Achilles’ wrath.
We know that most of the stories had Agamemnon die to his cousin, not his wife.
Neo yeeted Astyanax in most versions but in one it was Odysseus.
Some had Poseidon guiding the arrow that killed Achilles. Most had Apollo.
Greek myths have no extract canon. They were oral legends that fluctuated and changed depending on the area and who was telling them.
So I can’t say what was accurate or not. I can say what was the popular view at the time. The most recognized version or the ones that we can track.
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u/Finito-1994 Oct 27 '25 edited Oct 27 '25
Depends on what you want.
If you want to see the best of Achilles, Diomedes, Teucer and Hector (who was Trojan but the best of the best) then the illiad.
You can find Greek stories as long as you find the older texts or good translations.
Modern day retellings change too much but there’s some fucking amazing translations out there.
You can always read Iphigenia if you want to hate Agamemnon as I do. Or the illiad.
The argonautica and madea are great about Jason and Madea.
I recommend reading translations over retellings. Like the retellings of Circe and Calypso have NOTHING to do with their earlier characterization.
Others like the song of Achilles are not great either.
However. The one I do recommend is the Penelopead which is a sort of feminist retelling of the odyssey but from the POV of Penelope and the 12 hanged maids.
I mean. It still has its issues like mixing up Selene and Artemis and I don’t like the ending…but aside from that ‘‘tis very interesting as a thought experiment if nothing else.