There are several translations of the Iliad available. The first one was in two pocket sized but thick volumes. They contained the original Greek on the left pages and the English translation on the right. This does not make for pleasant reading, and in addition this translation was full of impossible, paragraph-sized sentences. The other copy the library had was more agreeable, and I checked that out to read.
The story begins in the middle of the Trojan War. The two sides are the Trojans and their allies, and the Achaeans and their allies, who are called collectively the Danaans. King Chryses, a minor ally of the Trojans, comes to King Agamemnon, the chief of the Achaeans, and offers Agamemnon a large ransom if he would be willing to return his daughter, whom Agamemnon had carried off as a prize in a raid on the city of Chryses. Agamemnon really likes the daughter of Chryses, so he refuses. This annoys some of the gods, and Agamemnon, seeing his mistake, gives Chryses back his daughter without accepting the ransom. To take the place of his lost wife Agamemnon takes the second prettiest girl captured in the raid, whom he had previously rewarded to Achilles. Achilles loves the girl and hates Indian givers, so he storms off after losing his girl and vows revenge. He says that when Agamemnon needs his help with the war he shall not provide it. This doesn’t bother Agamemnon too much, as he is winning the war and saw a good omen involving a snake eating up some birds. Achilles then goes off to his ships and sulks. His mother, a bit goddess, sees him unhappy. Achilles tells her the story and asks her to do something about it. She then goes to Jove, the "son of mighty Saturn and king of us all," and flirts with him until he agrees to help the Trojans beat the Danaans so Agamemnon will see how important Achilles really is and how stupid he was to anger him.
Now I must talk about the gods, who are divided amongst each other. Juno and Minerva are solidly in favor of the Danaans, and so is Mars at first, but he is mostly interested in spreading chaos rather then helping one side out so he helps the Trojans later on. Apollo is the god who most wants to help the Trojans, and Venus is the main goddess because her son by a mortal lover is fighting for the Trojans. She is not much help as the love goddess though, in fact she is injured by a Diomed, a mortal, whom Minerva (the war goddess) has given the power to see gods. Later on Diomed also injures Mars, who, along with Venus, complains to Jove about this presumptuous mortal who thinks he can take on gods. Jove reluctantly forbids the gods from helping out the Achaeans knowing that his wife Juno will be sure to nag him about it. She does.
Without the help of the gods or the army of Achilles, the Danaans are beaten back, primarily by the Trojan hero Hector, brother of the Paris who started the war. The Acheaens then go to Achilles and offer him lots of money and also seven beautiful lesbians if he will help them but Achilles is still very angry and rebukes them. The Acheaens then built a wall around the land where their ships were docked so they could retreat without their ships being set ablaze. Neptune, god of earthquakes, then gets angry at them because they didn’t offer him a sacrifice so he wouldn’t destroy their wall. He is calmed down by Juno.
Juno, seeing how bad the Acheaens are doing but not wanting to make her husband angry, has an idea. She goes to Venus, apologizes for the wound, and then asks Venus for something that'll turn Jove on. Venus has just the thing: a magic girdle. Juno then asks the god Sleep if he will put Jove to sleep while they are together. Sleep doesn’t want to, but Juno charms him into doing it. Juno’s plan works. With Jove asleep she gets all the gods friendly to the Acheaens to rally for them now that Jove won’t know about it.
After Jove wakes up he gets angry. He goes off and really helps out Hector on the battlefield, so much so that in a few hours Diomed, Ulysses, and one of the two Ajaxes, are all wounded, and the Danaans are now behind their wall. The Acheaens now go ask Achilles to help them. By now Achilles has proven his point so he agrees to help them out.
With Achilles not angry anymore Jove is glad to withdraw from the war and let the other gods do as they please. A huge battle comes next. Apollo, Mars, Diana, and Venus line up for the Trojans while Juno, Minerva, Mercury and Neptune (who has forgiven the Acheaens about their wall) for the Danaans. First Minerva goes after her brother and fellow war-god Mars. She gets him with a large rock. When Venus comes to rescue him she gets slapped upside the head by Minerva. Neptune then challenges Apollo to a fight but Apollo talks his way out of it and leaves. Juno grabs Diana’s bow and beats her with it.
Without the help of their gods the Trojans fall back to the wall around Troy. Right outside the wall Achilles catches up with Hector. They then fight mano a mano with Achilles winning (though he had help from one of the gods). With his dying breath Hector asked Achilles to not let the vultures and dogs eat his body but rather give it to his family for a ransom so they can bury and weep over it. Achilles refuses and calls in his army. Every one of his soldiers stabs Hector’s body. Then they tie the body to the back of a chariot and drag it back to the camp after they were sure that Hector’s mother saw his body. This bothers Apollo, who protects the body with his aegis. When the other gods hear about this they get angry at Achilles and order him to return the body to Troy. He does. The book ends with an elaborate and uninteresting description of the funerals of Hector and a friend of Achilles whom Hector killed earlier.