I first encountered Homer’s Iliad as a young child, when my mother read it to me as a bedtime story.  It was love at first listen.  Here is a short essay I wrote about that, published today in The Independent’s “Book of a Lifetime” series.  In it, I mention one of my favorite similes from the Iliad,  describing Patroclus as he weeps for the dying Greek soldiers.  Here is the simile:

“Patroclus stood by Achilles, shedding warm tears like a darkened spring which pours its black streams down a steep rock.”  Iliad, 16.2-4