THE ILIAD is thought to have been composed in the second half of the eight century BC. Stephen Mitchell is a bestselling translator. His translation of Gilgamesh sold over 800,000 copies in the States. He also received great acclaim for his translations of the Bhagavad Gita, The Taoof Ching, Rilke's Sonnets to Orpheus, and The Book of Job. He was educated at Amherst College, the Sorbonne and Yale University.