Sure, you enjoyed hear­ing the way Ancient Greek music actu­al­ly sound­ed last week, but what about the way Ancient Greek poet­ry actu­al­ly sound­ed? We can find few­er fin­er or more rec­og­niz­able exam­ples of the stuff than Home­r’s Ili­ad, and above you can hear a read­ing of a sec­tion of the Ili­ad (Book 23, Lines 62–107 ) in the orig­i­nal Ancient Greek lan­guage. Even those of us who nev­er learned Ancient Greek — if I may speak for this pre­sum­ably large group of read­ers — can get a feel for Home­r’s tale of the Tro­jan War and the sol­diers’ long return home by lis­ten­ing to the pro­fes­sor’s deliv­ery alone. “Pro­fes­sor Lom­bar­do trans­lat­ed anew the immor­tal epics and immersed him­self so deeply in their world his voice sound­ed as believ­able as the hills and val­leys we crossed. His voice knows the tales and their endur­ing charms, and sounds for all the world like an ancient bard’s.