The Iliad - Books 1-10 - Why is it so hard to concentrate??

Well hello again! I've been reading The Iliad like I said, and well... I'm finding it difficult to pay attention so far, hopefully it'll get better. The first time I perked up was in Book 2 when it mentioned someone called Hermione and I was like, OMG Granger! But of course it wasn't referring to the loveable brainbox.

Maybe I should explain what The Iliad is about to those lucky people who haven't read it: it's basically about a short period in the Greek/Trojan War - you know the one with Helen of Troy, Achilles and the legendary Wooden Horse thing. It seems to be written in favour of the Achaeans (Greeks), but I always preferred the Trojans... not sure why. I know the poem is renouned and considered great literature, and I do appreciate the genius of Homer - I mean to create a poem that long (614 pages in my copy) and with all the wonderful metaphors and poetic language is amazing - but it's not exactly my favourite book. I got really annoyed with the treatment and objectification of women by pretty much all the male charcaters and took an instant dislike to Agamemnon because he's so angry, selfish and mean, however I like all the interactions between the gods and godesses - the poet seems sometimes to have shown them in a petty, childlike way: especially the resentment of Hera and Athena to Zeus.

Ok so here are a few things that I thought of when reading so far:

• Book 4 line 50 and Book 8 lines 238-41 - the system of the gods seems pretty autocratic: Zeus is always reinforcing his power over the others, in Books 2 he says, "give me my way", and various times in Book 8 he brags how much stronger than the others he is, and how there's no way they can defeat him or rise against him. I don't know, it doesn't seem a very fair system.
• Book 8 again - there is a point where they Trojans and Argives are fighting and the Trogans are winning so the Argives get scared. So they run to their ships to escape and a leader yells at them to run back and fight, then they get scared and run away again, and this keeps going on for mulitple times, and it was just like, SERIOUSLY GUYS?? Make your minds up! Good Grief.
• Book 8 again, line 654 - There was a really good line here that went, "stallions waited for Dawn to mount her glowing throne". I just thought the imagery here was lovely, and the personification of dawn made me think of Fantasia - you know that Disney animation to classical music? Yeah there was a bit in there where Night glided over the sky as a woman, and I always loved that bit, so I thought about that here.
• There's a heck of a lot of connections I found to Paradise Lost which I studied last year, and I'm not surprised because Milton was pretty into his classics.

I also had to read a chapter of a different books for another of my modules about the Theory of English, and there was a line that instantly made me think about Harry Potter. It was from something that Dante wrote (man, I sound so intellectual here!) saying, "in matters of great secrecy we should have few companions". OK is this not EXACTLY what Dumbledore was saying to Harry in Half Blood Prince when he told him to confide only in Ron and Hermione about the Horcrux mission? That's the whole reason the trio had to work it all out alone, because the more people who knew what they were up to, the more likely it was that Voldemort would find out. So Dante was right.

So I will continue to read The Iliad -I need to finish it by Thursday morning so I'll probably do a new post sometime around then... The next book is, unfortunately, The Aeneid which is apparently pretty much the same as this one but from the Trojans' point of view... oh the joys of English. Hopefully I'll get time to read something more light-hearted soon!