I first encountered Homer’s Iliad as a young child, when my mother read it to me as a bedtime story. It was love at first listen. Here is a short essay I wrote about that, published today in The Independent’s “Book of a Lifetime” series. In it, I mention one of my favorite similes from the Iliad, describing Patroclus as he weeps for the dying Greek soldiers. Here is the simile:
“Patroclus stood by Achilles, shedding warm tears like a darkened spring which pours its black streams down a steep rock.” Iliad, 16.2-4
