Alexander the Great “esteemed it a perfect portable treasure of all military virtue and knowledge.” The death of Gorgythion prefigures the poppies of Flanders Field. West Point cadets study the epic. The scene of Achilles dragging Hector’s body from a chariot has been replayed in Mogadishu and Fallujah. There’s even “spin”: a 1st-century historian argued that Homer “suppressed the truth,” which was that the Greeks lost.