Tan mottled calf binding with black title plate, gilt banding and lettering on the spine. Dimensions are for one volume.

• F.B.A. provides an in-depth photographic presentation of this item to stimulate your feeling and touch. More traditional book descriptions are immediately available.

This copy in superb form is refurbished by Brian Cole, and consequently is fit for a further 200 years of use.

Homer’s Iliad is set to a bawdy verse by Thomas Bridges (c.1710-c.1775), originally published in 1762 under the pseudonym Caustic Barebones. The work achieved some popularity, and was reprinted several times, the last in 1797. In 1765 Bridges wrote The Battle of the Genii, a burlesque of John Milton’s Paradise Lost, which was once attributed to Francis Grose. Bridges’ only novel was The Adventures of a Bank-Note, published in 1770.

A hilarious parody translation of Homer’s Iliad, published in 1762. The work achieved some popularity, and was reprinted several times, the last in 1797.

Thomas Bridges (c. 1710 – 1775 or later) was an English writer of parodies, drama and one novel. He was born in Hull, the son of a physician. He became a wine merchant and a partner in a banking firm.

In 1762 he published, under the pseudonym Caustic Barebones, A Travestie of Homer, a parody or burlesque translation of Homer’s Iliad. The work achieved some popularity, and was reprinted several times, the last in 1797. In 1765 he wrote The Battle of the Genii, a burlesque of John Milton’s Paradise Lost, which was once attributed to Francis Grose.

Bridges’ only novel was The Adventures of a Bank-Note, published in 1770. He wrote two plays: Dido, a comic opera produced at the Haymarket Theatre in 1771, with music by James Hook; and The Dutchman (1775), a musical entertainment also with music by Hook.

The Iliad ( “a poem about Ilium (Troy)”) is one of two major ancient Greek epic poems attributed to Homer. It is one of the oldest extant works of literature still widely read by modern audiences. As with the Odyssey, the poem is divided into 24 books and was written in dactylic hexameter. It contains 15,693 lines in its most widely accepted version. Set towards the end of the Trojan War, a ten-year siege of the city of Troy by a coalition of Mycenaean Greek states, the poem depicts significant events in the siege’s final weeks. In particular, it depicts a fierce quarrel between King Agamemnon and a celebrated warrior, Achilles. It is a central part of the Epic Cycle. The Iliad is often regarded as the first substantial piece of European literature.

The Iliad and the Odyssey were likely written down in Homeric Greek, a literary amalgam of Ionic Greek and other dialects, probably around the late 8th or early 7th century BC. Homer’s authorship was infrequently questioned in antiquity, but contemporary scholarship predominantly assumes that the Iliad and the Odyssey were composed independently and that the stories formed as part of a long oral tradition. The poem was performed by professional reciters of Homer known as rhapsodes.

Critical themes in the poem include kleos (glory), pride, fate and wrath. The poem is frequently described as a masculine or heroic epic, especially compared with the Odyssey. It contains detailed descriptions of ancient war instruments and battle tactics, and fewer female characters. The Olympian gods also play a major role in the poem, aiding their favoured warriors on the battlefield and intervening in personal disputes. Their characterisation in the poem humanised them for Ancient Greek audiences, giving a concrete sense of their cultural and religious tradition. In terms of formal style, the poem’s repetitions, use of similes and epithets, are often explored by scholars.