The Only Illustrated Manuscript of Homer’s Iliad from Antiquity

Despite its sta­tus as one of the most wide­ly known and stud­ied epic poems of all time, Home­r’s Ili­ad has proven sur­pris­ing­ly resis­tant to adap­ta­tion. How­ev­er much inspi­ra­tion it has pro­vid­ed to mod­ern-day nov­el­ists work­ing in a vari­ety of dif­fer­ent tra­di­tions, it’s trans­lat­ed some­what less pow­er­ful­ly to visu­al media. Per­haps peo­ple still watch Wolf­gang Petersen’s Troy, the very loose, Brad Pitt-star­ring cin­e­mat­ic Ili­ad adap­ta­tion from 2004. But chances are, a cen­tu­ry or two from now, human­i­ty on the whole will still be more impressed by the 52 illus­tra­tions of the Ambrosian Ili­ad, which was made in Con­stan­tino­ple or Alexan­dria around the turn of the sixth cen­tu­ry.

As not­ed at HistoryofInformation.com, “along with the Vergilius Vat­i­canus [pre­vi­ous­ly fea­tured on Open Cul­ture] and the Vergilius Romanus, [the Ambrosian Ili­ad] is one of only three illus­trat­ed man­u­scripts of clas­si­cal lit­er­a­ture that sur­vived from antiq­ui­ty.” It’s also the only ancient man­u­script that depicts scenes from the Ili­ad. Its illus­tra­tions, which “show the names of places and char­ac­ters,” offer “an insight into ear­ly man­u­script illu­mi­na­tion.” They “show a con­sid­er­able diver­si­ty of com­po­si­tion­al schemes, from sin­gle com­bat to com­plex bat­tle scenes,” as Kurt Weitz­mann writes in Late Antique and Ear­ly Chris­t­ian Book Illu­mi­na­tion. “This indi­cates that, by that time, Ili­ad illus­tra­tion had passed through var­i­ous stages of devel­op­ment and thus had a long his­to­ry behind it.”

Above, you can see the Ambrosian Ili­ad’s illus­tra­tions of the cap­ture of Dolon (top), Achilles sac­ri­fic­ing to Zeus for Patro­clus’ safe return (mid­dle), and Hec­tor killing Patro­clus as Autome­don escapes (bot­tom). You can find more scans at the War­burg Insti­tute Icono­graph­ic Data­base, along with oth­er Ili­ad-relat­ed arti­facts. Some of the lat­er artis­tic ren­di­tions of Homer in that col­lec­tion date from the fif­teenth, sev­en­teenth, eigh­teenth, and even the nine­teenth cen­turies, each inter­pret­ing these age-old poems for their own time. Indeed, the Ili­ad and Odyssey have proven endur­ing­ly res­o­nant for the bet­ter part of three mil­len­nia, and there’s no rea­son to believe that they won’t con­tin­ue to find new artis­tic forms for just as long to come. But there’s some­thing espe­cial­ly pow­er­ful about see­ing Homer ren­dered by artists who, though they may have come cen­turies and cen­turies after the blind poet him­self, knew full well what it was to live in antiq­ui­ty.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

The Vat­i­can Dig­i­tizes a 1,600-Year-Old Illu­mi­nat­ed Man­u­script of the Aeneid

One of the Best Pre­served Ancient Man­u­scripts of the Ili­ad Is Now Dig­i­tized: See the “Bankes Homer” Man­u­script in High Res­o­lu­tion (Cir­ca 150 C.E.)

A Handy, Detailed Map Shows the Home­towns of Char­ac­ters in the Ili­ad

Hear Homer’s Ili­ad Read in the Orig­i­nal Ancient Greek

See the Ili­ad Per­formed as a One-Woman Show in a Mon­tre­al Bar by McGill Uni­ver­si­ty Clas­sics Pro­fes­sor Lynn Kozak

Hear Homer’s Ili­ad Read in the Orig­i­nal Ancient Greek

Greek Myth Comix Presents Homer’s Ili­ad & Odyssey Using Stick-Man Draw­ings

Based in Seoul, Col­in Marshall writes and broad­casts on cities, lan­guage, and cul­ture. His projects include the Sub­stack newslet­ter Books on Cities and the book The State­less City: a Walk through 21st-Cen­tu­ry Los Ange­les. Fol­low him on the social net­work for­mer­ly known as Twit­ter at @colinmarshall.