The Iliad in Reading Classics, Chronologically Through the Ages

Sep 19, 2021 Yules added it

Shelves: western-canon, ancient-classical-myth-retelling

Reading this poem took me six weeks on brain fog. Overall, I’m really glad I did it because now I feel more grounded in Western civ and have greater context for other Western lit. Here’s the deal:

The Iliad covers several weeks of the decade-long Trojan War, during which the warrior Achilles refuses to fight because king and commander-in-chief Agamemnon had taken away his sex-slave. I’ll explain all of that in a minute, but first: why is Agamemnon fighting the Trojans in the first place? Because Reading this poem took me six weeks on brain fog. Overall, I’m really glad I did it because now I feel more grounded in Western civ and have greater context for other Western lit. Here’s the deal:

The Iliad covers several weeks of the decade-long Trojan War, during which the warrior Achilles refuses to fight because king and commander-in-chief Agamemnon had taken away his sex-slave. I’ll explain all of that in a minute, but first: why is Agamemnon fighting the Trojans in the first place? Because Agamemnon’s sister-in-law, Helen, ran out on his brother Menelaus with her lover Paris, a Trojan prince.

Though this is the foundational myth around which ancient Greeks formed their national identity, they do not come out of this poem looking good. Agamemnon and his armies kill thousands of Trojans, force the rest into slavery, pillage and destroy a city, all because one (1) man's wife voluntarily left her husband. Enraged over this relatively trivial slight, Agamemnon cries, “No baby boy still in his mother’s belly, not even he escape—all Ilium blotted out, no tears for their lives, no markers for their graves!” No markers for their graves, my man? Well, damn. I love the intensity of Homer’s lines and how the petty premise of the war makes them seem more than a little batshit.

On the Trojan side, the war doesn’t make any more sense. Trojan king Priam and wife Hecuba indulge the whims of their son Paris at too great a price. Even Paris’ own brother Hector snaps at him: “Our prince of beauty— mad for women, you lure them all to ruin! Would to god you’d never been born, died unwed. That’s all I’d ask.” Listen, if you’re going to go as far as wishing he’d never been born, you might as well strip him of his power to steal other people’s wives. Why did the Trojans not take Helen and send her back to the Greeks? Why did their royal family allow this not-favored son to make such perilous decisions?

Now back to the sex-slave. As the Greeks slaughter the Trojans, they take their wives and daughters as prizes (as I said, they don’t come out of this looking particularly righteous). Achilles takes a young girl named Briseis, while Agamemnon takes another named Chryseis. But when Agamemnon is forced by the god Apollo to give back his own “prize,” he snatches Briseis from Achilles. “What do you want?” he says to his soldier. “To cling to your own prize while I sit calmly by—empty-handed here?" Uh, yeah, he does. That's what it means to pay your employees. If business isn’t going well, the owner can't just take back the paychecks he’s already handed out.

Unsurprisingly, Achilles feels dishonored and refuses to continue fighting. "My honors never equal yours,” he says to his commander, “whenever we sack some wealthy Trojan stronghold— my arms bear the brunt of the raw, savage fighting, true, but when it comes to dividing up the plunder the lion’s share is yours." I read the taking of Briseis as an opportunity for epiphany. Achilles realizes that Agamemnon is a bad leader and that their fight against the Trojans is senseless. “Why must we battle Trojans, men of Argos? Why did he muster an army, lead us here, that son of Atreus? Why, why in the world if not for Helen with her loose and lustrous hair? Are they the only men alive who love their wives, those sons of Atreus? Never! Any decent man, a man with sense, loves his own, cares for his own as deeply as I, I loved that woman with all my heart, though I won her like a trophy with my spear.” Achilles knows, because his mother Thetis revealed to him the prophecy, that if he continues to fight he is destined to die in this war and win eternal fame. But on this occasion he finally realizes that his life is worth more.

Unfortunately, Achilles rejoins the war after his friend Patroclus is killed by Hector. I read The Song of Achilles earlier this summer, so I was already primed to see Achilles and Patroclus as lovers. Even so, Achilles' behavior makes that interpretation very easy to make. Compare his feelings for Briseis and Patroclus. When Agamemnon takes Briseis from him, Achilles weeps, calling her “the bride I love,” but in the same breath says of Agamemnon, “Well let him bed her now—enjoy her to the hilt!” He does nothing to get her back and has half a mind to return to Phthia to marry any woman his father chooses. He refuses to fight for her, and instead replaces her with another beautiful sex-slave. Later, when he regrets the fallout of his absence from the battlefield, he wonders how the feud between him and Agamemnon happened “all for a young girl? If only Artemis had cut her down at the ships— with one quick shaft—that day I destroyed Lymessus, chose her as my prize.” Wow. So much for Bresies.

But for him Patroclus is irreplaceable. Achilles calls him “the dearest life I know” and longs “for Patroclus’ manhood, his gallant heart.” When Patroclus dies, Achilles says he’s “lost the will to live.” Patroclus is worth fighting and dying for (Achilles returns to the battlefield for revenge though he knows that killing Hector spells his own doom.) The ghost of Patroclus comes to him in a dream and tells him “Never bury my bones apart from yours, Achilles, let them lie together.” Homer lets us determine the exact nature of their relationship (it has been debatable since antiquity), but I’m all for the romantic interpretation. It’s all so much more heartwarming than murdering a girl's whole family in front of her eyes and then raping her daily, you know?

My favorite thing about the ancient Greek texts I’ve been reading lately is their deterministic stoicism. They don’t take wins or losses too personally: “Victory shifts, you know, now one man, now another.” The gods share ultimate responsibility: “the will of Zeus will always overpower the will of men.” The Iliad is mainly a poem of rage and grief, and though there are understandably A LOT of fight scenes, there are also some beautiful lines of resignation: “Like the generations of leaves, the lives of mortal men. Now the wind scatters the old leaves across the earth, now the living timber bursts with the new buds and spring comes round again. And so with men: as one generation comes to life, another dies away.” Then again, it must be possible to resign oneself to fate while allowing for a marker on your ex-wife’s new husband’s grave, right? ...more

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Dec 22, 2024 Kelly rated it really liked it

Shelves: classics, mythology, 2024, tbr24in24

This was a bit of a slog for me to get through. Instead of finishing within weeks it took me months until finally in December I was motivated to finish it before the end of the year. I’m glad I did. It was a “have to” read for me instead of a “want to”, but after I’ve completed it I do feel it is a worthy read if only that it is so foundational for other works. It was much more violently graphic compared to The Odyssey and also more pedantic in details I felt which made the experience drag on. T ...more

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Feb 16, 2022 Emily rated it liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: old-books

This was such a violent book! I listened each day while I walked the dog - is was the only way that I could handle the gory descriptions of the fighting and death. It is hard to grasp some nuances of the storyline in the midst of it all.

I'm ready to move on to The Odyssey! I am glad that this book was stretched out over the past month - there are bits that have stuck with me. ...more

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