Before It Was Armor, It Was Ore: Edith Hall Reads the Iliad From the Ground Up

Anyone who has stood before a case of ancient bronzes in an American museum has looked at the end of a story that starts in the earth. In her book *Epic of the Earth*, Professor Edith Hall brings that view to Homer's Iliad, a poem usually remembered for its combat, its arms and its ships built of timber. Her reading asks what all that war took from the land and the forests that supplied it. For readers who live with objects, it is a useful reminder that every blade and every hull was once part of a landscape.

With reporting from The Collector.