The characters in The Siege and Fall of Troy are similar in their human emotions and weaknesses to people today.

The society in which they live, however, is very different. Homer, who lived about the eighth century B.C., wrote about the Mycenaean culture that preceded his era by more than five hundred years.

This culture valued physical prowess, particularly in war, and had little regard for women, commoners, or slaves. Thus the story of the Trojan War is a tale of kings and princes, revered even though they often behave in a less than admirable fashion. Graves has done little to ennoble his mortal characters. In Homer's version, when Priam visits Achilles to beg for the body of his unburied son, Achilles is moved by Priam's resemblance to his own aged father and talks about the universal sorrow of life.

In Graves's version, Achilles is...