The Iliad

by Homer

To the memory of my mother, Katherine Duncan-Jones (1941–2022), who first taught me to love poetry.

The beautiful word minunthadios, “short-lived,” is used of both Achilles and Hector, and applies to all of us. We die too soon, and there is no adequate recompense for the terrible, inevitable loss of life.

But in war, killers recognize no binding obligation to compensate the families of their victims. The only way the bereaved can recoup their losses is to kill the killer—whose comrades will demand vengeance in their turn. Killing begets killing, death begets death, and every loss of life generates further loss of life.

“Cowards and heroes have the same reward. Do everything or nothing—death still comes.”

You can raid fine cattle or well-fed sheep, and you can trade to get tripods and horses with fine golden manes. But human life does not come back again after it passes through the fence of teeth. No trade or rustling can recover it.(9.524–29)

You already know the story. You will die. Everyone you love will also die. You will lose them forever. You will be sad and angry. You will weep. You will bargain. You will make demands. You will beg. You will pray. It will make no difference. Nothing you can do will bring them back. You know this. Your knowing changes nothing. This poem will make you understand this unfathomable truth again and again, as if for the very first time.

I have now lived with this poem for some thirty-five years—rereading it, teaching it in the original and in various translations, and, now, rendering it into English. For the past six years, I have worked intensively on this translation. But even now, when I turn back to lines I have read hundreds of times already, I find that the raw power of the Greek still startles me, like Athena suddenly tugging Achilles by the hair to stop him in his tracks. Often, I am unable to read without goose bumps, tears, or both. Human mortality is at the center of it all. I know no other narrative that evokes with such unflinching truthfulness the vulnerability of the human body.

Goddess, sing of the cataclysmic wrath of great Achilles, son of Peleus, which caused the Greeks immeasurable pain and sent so many noble souls of heroes to Hades, and made men the spoils of dogs, a banquet for the birds, and so the plan of Zeus unfolded—starting with the conflict between great Agamemnon, lord of men, and glorious Achilles.

A leader is more powerful and stronger 80 when he is angry with a lesser man. 110 He may consume his anger for that day, but he will keep the grudge inside his belly until at last he acts on it.