The Iliad vs Life of St. Francis of Assisi
Both counted from their full texts, the same way, on the same day.
1,588words between them — 6 min of it
The Iliad is longer — 153,347 words against 151,759 for Life of St. Francis of Assisi, a difference of 1,588 words or about 6 min of extra reading. The Iliad is the harder read, at grade 13.5 against 9.3.
SOURCE·Project Gutenberg full texts·both editions counted the same way·REVIEWED JUL 2026
Side by side
| The Iliad | Life of St. Francis of Assisi | |
|---|---|---|
| Author | Homer | Sabatier, Paul |
| Words | 153,347 | 151,759 |
| Reading time at 250 wpm | 10h 13m | 10h 07m |
| Unique words | 7,720 | 13,781 |
| Sentences | 4,262 | 8,218 |
| Average sentence length | 36 words | 18.5 words |
| Reading grade | 13.5 | 9.3 |
| Reading ease | 62.4 | 61.6 |
| Long words | 4.7% | 12.7% |
Highlighted cells are the larger figure — except reading ease, where higher means easier.
SOURCE·Project Gutenberg full texts·both editions, same counting rule·REVIEWED JUL 2026
How this is worked out
- Both texts are counted the same way, from the same source, with Gutenberg's header and licence footer struck first.
- The gap is stated in words and then in time at 250 words a minute — the rate is printed because a duration without one cannot be checked.
- Difficulty is compared on Flesch–Kincaid grade, which reads sentence and word length only. It cannot see irony or dialect, so treat it as a measure of surface, not of effort.
gap = |153,347 − 151,759| = 1,588 words 1,588 ÷ 250 wpm = 6 min of extra reading
The second question
Which is longer, The Iliad or Life of St. Francis of Assisi?
The Iliad is longer — 153,347 words against 151,759 for Life of St. Francis of Assisi, a difference of 1,588 words or about 6 min of extra reading. The Iliad is the harder read, at grade 13.5 against 9.3.
Colophon
Both figures computed from Project Gutenberg plain-text editions — ebook no. 2199 and no. 18787 — and from no other source. Neither book’s text is set on this site.
SOURCE·Project Gutenberg full texts·US public domain·REVIEWED JUL 2026
Word counts and reading levels are computed from a specific public-domain edition and will differ from other editions and from other counting methods — see the method page.
