The Iliad is about "klea andron", the glorious and terrible deeds of men in relation to other men, the raw content of the soul of man, but not of woman. It is a vast lagoon of dream fragments of the male unconscious, haunted with eternal shadows that compete, strut, fight, kill and rape, and above all seek the approval of other men.

In this book, I have traced the history of the Iliad from papyrus, to parchment, to paper, to e-book. Next, I have looked critically into the first ten lines of Book 1 of the Iliad in the Latin, French, Greek (vernacular), and lastly English translations, beginning with the first translations of Hall, and Chapman. New translations of passages recovered from papyri and parchment, done by the present author, are included. Lastly, a theory of translation of poetry is attempted.