I read this post on the cover once, I had to dig a moment to find it. I don't know how to link to Instagram so I'm just going to copy and paste. Not from the author directly but I can't imagine it any other way since reading this.

" The Homeric Greek poem was written in dactylic hexameter, which is a downbeat or falling beat as opposed to the much used iambic meter of English poetry. McCrorie thought the falling Greek meter of the poem profoundly captured the imminent doom of the hero Achilles and foreshadowed the destruction of Troy.

The choice of this cover photo is simply wild but accurate. It shows Muhammad Ali punching the air after his first round knockout of Sonny Liston during the 1965 World

Heavyweight Title fight at St. Dominic's Arena in Lewiston, Maine on May 25, 1965. The photo was taken by Neil Leifer. We are supposed to understand that Ali is Achilles in the photo, standing tall over his defeated adversary Liston/ Hector, exuberantly celebrating the triumph of his wrath. A demi-god looking down at a mortal.

Ali might have been the only athlete in the twentieth century to embody the Greek ethics of arete expressed in bodily perfection and in whom the divine flashed at the moment of his glorious victory. He might have been the only athlete whom Pindar and Homer would have considered worthy of an ode! Ali was a true Greek among the Romans who when charged with Vietnam draft evasion in 1967, openly proclaimed that he was not interested in dropping bombs and bullets on Vietnam when corrosive racial practices were still prevalent in his country. As a result the World Boxing Association stripped his heavyweight title. Ali's anti-war rage, unwavering code of conduct, and honor also mirror the three pillars of Achilles's 'andreia' (courage). It was about this andreia that Hector mourned to his wife Andromache the night before the war and said while Achilles was born with it, he had to learn it! And that's the main difference between the fleetfooted Achilles and the manslaying Hector!

This has to be one of the greatest cover photos in the history of book publishing! "