ABSTRACT
Few would go as far as Antoine Houdar de la Motte, who reduced the twenty-four books of the Iliad to twelve in his translation, not only for reasons of propriety-he left out the “anatomical details of wounds”—but also because he read the original in terms of the genre that dominated the poetics of his time: the tragedy. He therefore feels quite justified in asking: “Would a theater audience accept having characters come out during the intervals in a tragedy to tell us all that is going to happen next?” Consequently, he cuts all the passages in the Iliad where this can be said to happen.
