Homer · 1835
5–8 unknown words per 100 at CET-4 level. Looking each one up will stall you; this one wants glosses that appear in place.
Coverage = the share of words in the text you already know. The research gives two lines: 98% before independent fluent reading is realistic, 95% for the instructional level that needs support (Hu & Nation, 2000). Proper nouns are not counted as unknown — recognising that it is a name is enough; this book has 1,096 of them.
CET-6 and up, or read it with glosses. 153,347 words in total; at 150 words a minute for a non-native reader, about 17 h 2 min to finish. Average sentence length 30.9 words — on the long side, so the load comes from sentence structure as much as from vocabulary. Reaching 95% coverage on this book (the floor for readability) takes roughly 17,000 word families.
The opening of The Iliad, word for word. Tap any word you don't know and its meaning here appears beside it — no sign-up, tap as often as you like.
Sing, O goddess, the anger of Achilles son of Peleus, that brought countless ills upon the Achaeans. Many a brave soul did it send hurrying down to Hades, and many a hero did it yield a prey to dogs and vultures, for so were the counsels of Jove fulfilled from the day on which the son of Atreus, king of men, and great Achilles, first fell out with one another.
And which of the gods was it that set them on to quarrel? It was the son of Jove and Leto; for he was angry with the king and sent a pestilence upon the host to plague the people, because the son of Atreus had dishonoured Chryses his priest. Now Chryses had come to the ships of the Achaeans to free his daughter, and had brought with him a great ransom: moreover he bore in his hand the sceptre of Apollo wreathed with a suppliant’s wreath, and he besought the Achaeans, but most of all the two sons of Atreus, who were their chiefs.
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The numbers above are computed, but we haven't cut The Iliad into passages yet.
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These are already built, and closest in difficulty to The Iliad.
Ordered by unknown words per 100. Lower reads easier; to step up a level, pick a higher number.
Computed by Readii from the public-domain text (updated 2026-10-21), not estimated by hand. The Readii reading level is our own scale, anchored on unknown-word density; it is not the same system as Lexile or AR and does not convert directly. Unknown words are measured against the CET-4 ∪ Gaokao lists, so this is difficulty for a Chinese-speaking learner, not a native-child reading level.