But, as we all know, the poems that form the _Iliad_ were songs out of a much larger cycle. If one desires to use sections of the _Iliad_, then, it is comparatively easy to collect out of all the material a complete and unified form of the legend of the siege and downfall of Troy--using the Homeric episodes when it is possible. From sources other than the _Iliad_ must be gathered the causes of the war, the education of Achilles, the summons of Odysseus, the sacrifice of Iphegenia, the death of Achilles, the building of the wooden horse, and the fall of Troy. Into this can be inserted in their places the parts selected from the _Iliad_--perhaps the quarrel in the assembly from the second book; the deeds of Diomedes, from the fifth and sixth; the visit of Hector within the city and his farewell to Andromache, from the sixth; the Trojan triumph, in the seventh; the vengeance upon Dolon, in the tenth; the main incidents of the battle among the ships; the deeds and death of Patroclus; Achilles' arming and his appearance in the fight; the main incidents of the funeral of Patroclus; the visit of Priam to Achilles. These should be arranged in a sort of "say and sing" narrative, the events previous to the action of the _Iliad_, and those subsequent to it, to be told in prose narrative; those taken from the _Iliad_ itself to be read or recited in some poetical form, linked together, of course, by a running and rapid narrative. Only a verse translation--or, if a prose translation, one much more picturesque and eloquent than any we have yet had--will at all represent the nobility of the _Iliad_. Bryant's translation is the best we now have, and it is too formal and difficult to be understood by the children to whom one desires to give the hero-tales. One can easily see that an arrangement of the _Iliad_ made under all these conditions would not finally convey to the children many of the best things we want to give them in their literature.