Iliad sung
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Homer's Iliad Book 1 Recitation | Lines 1-21 | Restored Ancient Greek | Greek History
(4/19/26) 2:27
The famous Iliad was composed by Homer or unknown author(s) (800-700 BCE) and was likely orally transmitted before being standardized in the contemporaneously developing Greek script [Robert L. Fowler 2004]. The Iliad by Homer is the oldest European poetic and liturgical tradition, and has been significant in historical linguistics for its striking similarities with the Rigveda of Ancient India and the Gathas of Ancient Persia [John J. Lowe 2015].
This recitation of the Iliad Book 1:1–27 with pitch accents and dactylic hexameter in Homeric Greek is an original reconstruction of @perquunos which synthesized comparative and diachronic analyses of morphophonetic developments in attested Ancient Greek dialects and reconstructable Proto-Hellenic and Proto-Indo-European stages of the language.
The digamma Ϝ/ϝ is reconstructable intervocalically, word-initially and finally but never in clusters with the yod /j/, whereof assimilation yields in geminated /jj/. E.g. PIE *h₃éwi- → PH *hówi- + *ōnós = *owjōnós → PG *ojjōnós → HG ojjōnós (not ojwōnós or owjōnós); PIE *diwjós → PH *dijjós → HG dĩjjos (not dī̃wos!). Additionally, digamma Ϝ/ϝ is not reconstructable where it breaks the meter and when the etymology does not require a digamma reconstruction.
The phonetic value of Zeta ζ is debated but is metrically always a cluster in Homeric Greek, and is result of PIE *j in certain clusters, e.g., PIE djḗws → PH dzews → HG dzews; PIE h₁jeǵjómh₁nos → PH hjədzómɘnos → HG hadzómenos.
The following phonetic values are reconstructable for each Greek character: υ = [ʊ]; ῡ = [uː]; η = [ɜː] ~ [æː]; ω = [ɔː] ~ [ɒː]; ϝ = [w]; j = [j]; ζ = [dz].
This recitation uses four pitch accents namely the acute ά (high), the circumflex ᾶ (falling), the unaccented α (medium) and the grave ὰ (low).
English Translation is from Anthony S. Kline, William Cowper, Robert Fagles and Augustus T. Murray.
Copyright Disclaimer
This recitation includes the corect poetic meter, the pitch accents and the restored pronunciation of Homeric Greek. © Perquunós 2025. All rights reserved. This is an original audio recording of recitation of the Iliad (800-700 BCE) produced by Perquunós
Selected readings
- "Greeks in ancient Central Asia: the Ionians" (10/20/10)
- "The Vulture Reading Room feeds the eternal flame" (9/22/09)
[thanks to Rodrigo Spain]
Martin Schwartz said,
April 24, 2026 @ 9:29 pm
Leaving expert comments on this interesting post to others,
I'll just say: 1) The Gathas were not composed in Persia,
but somewhere in Central Asia, the homeland of Iranian culture,
perhaps at a time when there were no Iranians yet in Persia,
i.e the southern part of the present Islamic Republic of Iran;
2) in the subtitles, make that "goddess" with two d's.
Martin Schwartz
Martin Schwartz said,
April 24, 2026 @ 9:42 pm
In view of the 1st 2 sentences of the intro., I recall that
witticism of an earlier age, "The Iliad was not composed by Homer
but by another Greek of the same name."
Martin Schwartz
Victor Mair said,
April 24, 2026 @ 10:16 pm
Received the following shortly after making this post:
"A passage from Homer’s Iliad has been discovered inside the abdomen of a Roman-era Egyptian mummy"
A snippet of text from Homer’s famous epic recounting the siege of Troy was apparently placed inside this body as part of the mummification process
Scientific American (4/23/26) By Adam Kovac edited by Claire Cameron
Lucas Christopoulos said,
April 24, 2026 @ 11:06 pm
The person who recites the Iliad in this video has an accent from a particular country; it's noticeable.
Martin Schwartz said,
April 25, 2026 @ 3:48 am
@Victor Mair:
The Trojan horse had an army in its tummy:
will it emerge in the tummy of the mummy?
Martin Schwartz
Martin Schwartz said,
April 25, 2026 @ 4:06 am
A tale of Troy:
Berkeley has a restaurant called Troy Greek Cuisine.
I thought it odd that Greeks would name a restaurant Troy.
Hmm, thought I, it must be a pun on Mod. Gr tróï/troy 'he eats'
(tróye 'eat'!). So I ask the restaurateuse; she, a Jordanian,
said no, she was in Greece and liked the food, so she opened a place
with a name resonant of ancient Greece.
I thought it best not to hector her.
Martin Schwartz
Lucas Christopoulos said,
April 25, 2026 @ 4:21 am
The Iliad was like the Bible for the Greeks before Christianity, just as the Mahabharata was for the Indians. They read it from childhood and considered it sacred. They aspired to imitate its heroes and feats, and the book itself carried the power of the gods. As it seems here, the mummy would read it in the afterlife.
For Achilles, I did a fun reconstitution (a bit Hollywood or Bollywood-style) of him dragging Hector behind his war-chariot while reciting the Iliad in front of the Walls of Troy. Also, note that Mehmed II (Fâtih Sultan Mehmed), when invading Greece, saw himself as a second Hector, aiming to punish Greece.
Ἀχιλλεύς… https://www.youtube.com/shorts/JqEc1_a45uM
Laura Morland said,
April 25, 2026 @ 4:37 am
To echo Martin somewhat: I'll leave the experts in ancient Greek to comment on the reconstruction. I will say that the phrase that the Iliad "was likely orally transmitted" is a laughable understatement. Over ninety years of oral-formulaic studies should have long put to rest a modifier like "likely."
The scholar Milman Parry, his student, Albert Lord, and his student, John Miles Foley found in their fieldwork with Yugoslavian guslari oral poetry containing type-scenes that are clearly from the same oral tradition as those of the poet we call Homer. That is to say, the very structures of Homeric poetry — from the micro to the macro level — contain elements peculiar to compositions originally sung before an audience, not composed with a pen.
Unrelated point: was anyone else bothered by the relentless drumming?
P.S. Victor, speaking of "echoes," would you kindly delete the last two of Martin's posts in triplicate?
Philip Taylor said,
April 25, 2026 @ 4:44 am
A comment from a Greek scholar who has himself recorded texts written in polytonic Greek —
J.W. Brewer said,
April 25, 2026 @ 8:32 am
The same person also has youtube content reading excerpts from the Rig Veda in what I assume is probably also a novel/contrarian/innovative pronunciation. To be fair, I'm now thinking my Homeric Greek classes 40 spring semesters ago would have been a bit livelier if we'd had a drummer accompanying our attempted recitations.
David Marjanović said,
April 25, 2026 @ 10:43 am
Not bad, actually, just the aspiration is overdone, η and ω merge as [aː] a lot, and the velarized /l/ comes out of nowhere. I feared much worse.
The basic idea is that the tune was 100% predictable from the lyrics – like in Vedic chanting, where it is entirely determined by the stress, or even more like traditional Cantonese music, where the exaggerated tones are the tune. I'm not aware of any specific evidence for or against this (the tune was forgotten about a thousand years ago), but it's an entirely reasonable hypothesis.
And why would that be? Just because it doesn't sound like Modern Greek, i.e. actually scans?
Yes. It's a feature of the 20th century AD blithely projected into the 20th century BC…
Yes, you did – it got through the first time; the software just refused to tell you that, so you tried again. Just refresh the page the next time a comment seems not to get through.
David Marjanović said,
April 25, 2026 @ 10:54 am
That's in a pronunciation only very slightly reverse-engineered from the pronunciation that's actually transmitted. It should be uncontroversial so far – except the poor fellow can't do voiced aspirates and uses voiceless ones instead. Pitiful!
The recitation is also far too fast (same for the Iliad, I bet) and fails to follow the rules for creating the tune, which, in Vedic chanting as we know it, go as follows:
1. All unstressed syllables that immediately precede a stressed one (even in the next verse) get low pitch.
2. Of the remainder, all unstressed syllables that immediately follow a stressed one get high pitch if they have a short voiced nucleus; if they've got a long one, they're broken in two, of which the first gets middle and the second high pitch.
3. All the rest get middle pitch.
David Marjanović said,
April 25, 2026 @ 11:00 am
Oops, 10th! Or 9th or something.
Tom Dawkes said,
April 25, 2026 @ 11:14 am
On the pronunciation of vowels:
η = [ɜː ] ~ [æː ] should read η = [εː ]~ [æː.]
To [ɜː ] is human.
Richard Futrell said,
April 25, 2026 @ 1:43 pm
This reconstruction is much better, you can turn off the drums, and it includes the entire Iliad. https://hypotactic.com/homer/iliad1.html
TR said,
April 25, 2026 @ 2:48 pm
@Richard Futrell, I'd have to disagree — that speaker mostly ignores accents, and does the Germanic thing of gratuitously diphthongizing long vowels. I agree with DM re the OP video.
gds555 said,
April 25, 2026 @ 3:20 pm
If you go to the specifically YouTube posting of this video (click on “YouTube” in the bottom right corner of the screen here), there’s a comment section, comment count currently 117, containing abundant technical discussion of the reconstruction and performance, including many remarks by the creator of the video himself.
David Marjanović said,
April 25, 2026 @ 5:23 pm
Urgh. η and ει merged as a very English [eɪ̯], the very first circumflex rendered as rising instead of falling, π/τ/κ not distinguished from φ/θ/χ (both variably unaspirated or just barely aspirated), and the northern German thing* of inserting a glottal stop into every vowel cluster.
And that's all just in the first line!
* Used to be more widespread – Old English had it too. But in Vedic chanting, for what that's worth, glottal stops occur only after pauses.
Indeed.
To my surprise I find myself recommending comments on YouTube.
David Marjanović said,
April 25, 2026 @ 5:46 pm
…most of them anyway. :-)
Anyway, the author "probably" blames the microphone for the exaggerated aspiration and promises a video that explains how he made this one.
Nelson Goering said,
April 26, 2026 @ 2:32 am
"the Gathas of Ancient Persia [John J. Lowe 2015]"
Assuming Lowe's book on participles is meant, he certainly does not place the Gathas in Persia there (and it would have been surprising if he had, since he's more than passingly familiar with Avestan).
I have to say, though, that this is an odd citation. Lowe does mention, in passing, that there are similarities between the Rigveda, the Gathas, and Homer, though in context his emphasis is on language rather than poetics. But he's just mentioning this as a bit of well-known background in his introduction. There are countless more pertinent and detailed things one could have cited on this point!
This is in no way to disparage Lowe's book, which is fantastic — but it's on participles, which is not the first topic I'd think I'd want to direct someone so new to the subject that they needed to be told that Avestan and Homeric Greek might make for interesting comparison…
Yves Rehbein said,
April 26, 2026 @ 9:52 am
Um, if the Gathas are not from Ancient Persia, surely the orally transmitted Homer is not from Ancient Greece either – just my unpopular opinion.
Lucas Christopoulos said,
April 26, 2026 @ 4:53 pm
SPP 350, Footnote 139. Dion 53.6 "For example, it is said that Homer's poetry is sung even in India, where they have translated it into their own speech and tongue." Many scholars have already credited Dion and confirmed that the stories of the Mahabharata are linked with the Iliad, including Christian Lassen (1800–1876), Max Duncker (1811–1886), and Albrecht Weber (1825–1901), in his History of Indian Literature (Varanasi: Chowkhamba Sanskrit Series Office, 1974).
Chris Button said,
April 28, 2026 @ 5:52 am
@ David Marjanović
Could you elucidate?
David Marjanović said,
April 28, 2026 @ 10:26 am
I'm pretty sure I misheard – it isn't velarized, it's apical.
That's found today in English and very northern German, but not even in Danish.