Wounding and Death in the ‘Iliad’: Homeric Techniques of Description

W.-H. Friedrich’s Verwundung und Tod in Der Ilias was originally published in 1956. Never before translated into English, its importance has slowly come to be recognised: first, because it discusses in detail the plausibility (or otherwise) of the wounds received on the Homeric battlefield and is therefore of considerable interest to historians of medicine; and second, because it makes a serious and sustained effort to grapple with the question of style, and thus confronts an issue which oral theory has scarcely touched.
Peter Jones adds a Preface briefly locating the work within the terms of oral theory; Kenneth Saunders (Emeritus Professor of Medicine at St George’s Hospital Medical School, London) updates Friedrich’s medical analyses in a full Appendix.