Learn about Kids: Why the tale of Achilles and his lover still has the power to move us

A novel reinterpretation of Homer's Iliad is the latest in a series of works inspired by the classics

When Madeline Miller won the Orange Prize for fiction last week for his first novel The song of Achilles

, it seems natural to wonder how the mythical Greek hero of the book might contain. "I think it would make a very epic," he said, laughing. "And fortunately, one of the sponsors precious [Price] gave me a bottle of champagne."

Book Miller, writing in his spare time, while the teaching of Latin in secondary schools in the United States, is based in Homer Iliad strongly and reinvents the history of Patroclus, Achilles's brother in arms. Although Miller's inspiration was old, his themes are modern:

The song of Achilles deep trace relationship and love between two people of the same sex in a period of war and brutality.

"I think we are at a place in our culture, where we can still accept this interpretation of history," says Miller. "It felt as if it were a story love already, but sometimes I think the idea of ??a couple was a little bleached disk. " Indeed, the reinterpretation of the epic novel of 2700 years for the 21st century marks a period of cultural renaissance for the classics. In recent years, the

Iliad

inspired writer David Malouf (his novel 2009,

Ransom

begins in the moment Hector, Prince of Troy, was killed by Achilles) and

Memorial a radical overhaul of the original poem . / Aa> A production

modern dress

Antigone Sophocles

just opened at the National Theatre, while on television, interest in ancient history is at an all: Mary Beard BBC series

Meet the Romans

attracted nearly two million viewers and Bettany Hughes is filming a documentary on the Roman archeology ITV

Cinema, also became filled with heroes and scantily clad Trojans, Spartans: 2004 Wolfgang Petersen film

Troy

offered muscled torso rippled like Brad Pitt Achilles while

300

was a fictionalized account of the Battle of Thermopylae. Both were blockbusters. Why

classics making a comeback? According to Hughes, the classical historian and broadcaster, which has to do with the emotional connection.

"You think of the great epics and think you are more to do with war and conflict, but Homer actually writes beautiful lines," she said. "There is a line on an arrow Athena wiped" as a mother brushing a fly from the face of a sleeping child. I read it and I thought to do that with my own son.

"Then all of a sudden there is an immediate emotional connection, 27 centuries later, to me as a mother in the 21st century. Philosophical connections are great, but the connection to the base of what is human.

"I think, after the millennium and post-9/11, people have become much less embarrassed to ask the big questions about why we are here. If something can be answered, which is the wisdom of the ancients, because the Greeks and Romans were not swanning around the Mediterranean sun, they lived in difficult times. You could be dead at the age of 45 years. You were in a time of war. "

experience of living through the war is of particular importance for today's audiences used to seeing news coverage 24 hours conflicts in Afghanistan and Iraq. Miller said he was "absolutely" aware of parallel writing

The song of Achilles

National Theatre Production

Antigone

with Christopher Eccleston and Jodie Whittaker, the similarities are even more explicit: The game opens with general and officials gathered around watching television late in the war. Players are willing to play the now famous photograph of U.S. President Barack Obama, surrounded by his advisors and his Secretary of State, Hillary Clinton, seeing the death of Osama bin Laden.

"We wanted to create a glass panel clearly as possible between us and him," said
Antigone