Achilles is brutal, vain, pitiless – and a true hero

Homer’s idolised demigod in the Iliad has plenty of loathsome aspects – but remains a magnetic figure it’s hard not to admire

After a week spent discussing the challenges the Iliad presents modern readers, I’m going to try for something more positive. I say “try” because if there’s one thing that reading ancient Greek literature has taught me, it is to beware of hubris. If I were to try to list all the things that I think matter about this book it might well result in a list as long as the catalogue of the ships. Instead, I’d like to focus on just one aspect of the poem: the man who gets its first line and whose wrath sets it all in motion, Achilles.

Achilles does not fit modern sensibilities. He is a killer, arguably a rapist, certainly a pillager. He is sulky, high-strung and oh boy, is he temperamental. He can be pitiless – actively enjoying the iron in his heart – and he can be murderously cruel. Yet there is still something fundamental about him to which we can all relate, even if it is also something particularly hard to rationalise and explain. He is faster, sharper, bigger, brighter and more important than other men. He is more beautiful. He rides on deeper emotional currents (when Achilles is upset, he is seriously upset). He is semi-divine and wholly precious. Other men cannot even aspire to be like him. At his most resplendent, men cannot even bear to look at him. He is just above and beyond.

Related: Can Homer's Iliad speak across the centuries?

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