The Iliad of Homer

by Homer

The Iliad is about heroes as humans, and what constitutes humanity. Its enduring value lies in the poem’s recognition that even the worst enemies are deeply, fundamentally the same—desirous of glory and immortality, while subject to pain and death. Its power—like that of so much Greek literature—comes from the realistic depiction of mortals as they gradually learn that they can never be gods. In this existential recognition, it transcends the anxieties of tribe or state.

By extension, the concerns of the poem are most likely not those of the original fighters at Troy but of a society—or multiple societies—generations later that looked back to the Trojan War as an important symbolic event, perhaps for the very foundation of their own communities.

Above all—as literary critics since Aristotle have acknowledged—the epic makes no attempt to narrate the whole story of a war against Troy, focusing instead on only a few days in the tenth and final year of the Greek siege against the city, and on a personal dispute (albeit one with vast consequences) within the ranks of the assembled Greek warriors.

By the seventh century BC, a town was established by settlers of Greek ancestry on the ruins of an earlier site. It was called Ilion—a name used already in the epic for Troy, and the word from which the Iliad gets its name.

What counts is that generations of military leaders associated their own deeds with those from the gloried past through their ostentatious tourism at the spot.

Both Julius Caesar, before him, and the emperor Constantine, three centuries later, contemplated building a new Roman capital on the site.

The British historian George Grote (1794–1871) in his influential twelve-volume History of Greece chose 776 BC—the traditional date for the founding of the Olympic games—as the beginning of reliably recorded history. Within thirty years of the publication of his first two volumes (1846), Grote was proved mistaken: the Homeric epics, which he had spurned as evidence, emerged as more trustworthy guides to the past than had been imagined. Civilizations with features described by Homeric poetry, going back to seven centuries before Grote’s starting date for Greek history, were now laid bare.

further evidence that might explain why a war could have been fought over this place. The major political force in Anatolia (present-day Turkey) in the second millennium BC was the Hittite empire,

Troy must have been an important ally, given its strategic location in ancient times on the seacoast, before accumulated silt pushed the shoreline farther from the city. An attack could well have provoked a defensive response from a number of cities in the Hittite sphere of influence

The Iliad, in fact, represents the number of far-flung Trojan allies as far outnumbering fighters from the city itself and, since they speak many languages, harder to control than the unified Greek forces

Scholars soon recognized that the centers of this newly emerging archaic culture matched, to a remarkable extent, the fabled sites celebrated in Greek myths, some of which had no longer been inhabited in historical times. Thebes, Athens, Orchomenos, Tiryns, Sparta, and Pylos arose as Mykenaian powers; they also were the subject of rich storytelling traditions about the age of heroes from a generation or two before the Trojan War. The circumstantial evidence that the Mykenaians were, in fact, Greeks, took longer to verify. Arthur Evans, a British archaeologist, in 1900 uncovered a vast palace complex at Knossos, Crete, predating Mykenaian remains on the mainland, and characterized by signs of high civilization—masterpieces of wall painting, elaborately carved gemstones, precious vessels, imports from Egypt, statuettes, and ritual artifacts. He dubbed this newly found culture “Minoan,” after the mythical King Minos, who was said to have ruled the vicinity at the time of the hero Theseus. Evans also found thousands of clay tablets bearing inscriptions in an unknown, picture-based writing system.

There are no extended flashbacks in the poet’s own voice. In order to reconstruct the entire series of relevant events, we must go back to the origins of the world, according to Greek myth.

Zeus chose a Trojan youth named Paris to decide the contest. He favored Aphrodite’s promise of pleasure (after rejecting the lure of wisdom or power offered by the others) and received, as his reward, the ability to seduce the world’s fairest woman, Helen—inconveniently married at that time to Menelaos, a powerful king in Greece.

In this latter version, it is Odysseus on a recruiting mission who tricks Achilleus into giving himself away. Pretending the island is under attack, he sounds a trumpet and the young man, eager for martial glory, leaps to arms. Ironically, Odysseus himself had been tricked into going to the war from his home island:

The failure to take Troy for nine years, as the Iliad depicts it, stems less from poor strategy than from the natural advantage of the defenders: the citadel is well fortified and allied cities from all over the Troad and beyond have sent troops to swell the number of fighters.

As noted already, the events narrated in the Iliad occupy only a few weeks in the tenth and final year of the siege of Troy. Part of the remarkable artistry of the poem is the way in which it manages to allude to many previous and subsequent events

The Iliad derives much of its force from a simple, lucid structure—cause, effect, solution—with each of these three narrative movements generated by crucial human decisions.

The solution of the conflict between Agamemnon and Achilleus, with Achilleus’ final acknowledgment of his foe’s humanity, leads to the conclusion of the Iliad but not the war. The poem foreshadows the imminent death of Achilleus in several passages.

fully narrated, it seems, in the Nostoi (Returns). As with the other non-Iliadic episodes just mentioned, our main source for this lost epic comes from late antiquity in the form of a condensed plot summary of the so-called Cyclic epics. These poems of the archaic period (seventh–sixth century BC) are attributed to a number of obscure poets thought to have lived later than Homer. They include the Cypria, which told of events from the wedding of Peleus through the first nine years of the Trojan War; the Aithiopis, which picks up where the Iliad ends and continues the story to the dispute over Achilleus’ armor; and the Little Iliad and Sack of Ilium, which together narrate the last days of the city and the departure of the Greeks. Although the Cyclic epics might have been designed after the composition of the Homeric poems, to fill in the gaps and provide details not narrated in them, it is also likely that earlier versions of their material existed even during the era in which the Iliad was shaped.

What is more important is the strong possibility that the early audiences for the Iliad had in their minds the entire Trojan saga as it came to be written down later in the Cyclic poems, including the origins of the conflict and the ultimate fates of the Greek veterans. Every Iliad character and theme would have taken on greater resonance and depth for such listeners. That a body of such lore, perhaps even in poetic form, already existed when the Iliad was composed can explain why the Homeric poet is at liberty to begin the poem in the midst

On the basis of detailed grammatical resemblances among the historically attested tongues, an unrecorded parent language, dubbed “Indo-European,” has been reconstructed.

In the universe painted by the Iliad, humans are at the blazing center. Their motivations and concerns generate the action in the poem, while the gods are often reduced to the role of enablers or spectators.

Because men and women, human psychology and social institutions, are at the heart of the Iliad, it is inevitably a poem about death, the chief element that distinguishes mortals from gods.

Death is neither abhorred nor celebrated in this world, however. Instead, just as the Iliad distills the Trojan saga into a few days of intense fighting, it crystallizes by means of this one theme—death in battle—the essence of what it means to be human. Life is a struggle each person will ultimately always lose; the question is how one acts with that knowledge.

Sing, goddess, the anger of Peleus’ son Achilleus and its devastation, which put pains thousandfold upon the Achaians, hurled in their multitudes to the house of Hades strong souls of heroes,

yet this pleased not the heart of Atreus’ son Agamemnon, 25 but harshly he drove him away

Achilleus of the swift feet

For a king when he is angry with a man beneath him is too strong, and suppose even for the day itself he swallow down his anger, he still keeps bitterness that remains until its fulfillment deep in his chest.

Achilleus of the swift feet:

“Seer of evil: never yet have you told me a good thing. Always the evil things are dear to your heart to prophesy, but nothing excellent have you said nor ever accomplished.

brilliant swift-footed Achilleus:

it is unbecoming for the people to call back things once given.

brilliant Odysseus,

you yourself, son of Peleus, most terrifying of all men,

Achilleus of the swift feet

“O wrapped in shamelessness, with your mind forever on profit, 150 how shall any one of the Achaians readily obey you

Always the greater part of the painful fighting is the work of my hands; but when the time comes to distribute the booty yours is far the greater reward, and I with some small thing yet dear to me go back to my ships when I am weary with fighting.

To me you are the most hateful of all the kings whom the gods love. Forever quarreling is dear to your heart, and wars and battles; and if you are very strong indeed, that is a god’s gift. Go home then

the anger came on Peleus’ son, and within his shaggy breast the heart was divided two ways, pondering 190 whether to draw from beside his thigh the sharp sword, driving away all those who stood between and kill the son of Atreus, or else to check the spleen within and keep down his anger.

If any man obeys the gods, they listen to him also.”

Peleus’ son once again in words of derision spoke to Atreides, and did not yet let go of his anger:

man-slaughtering Hektor

Yes, and in my time I have dealt with better men than you are, and never once did they disregard me. Never yet have I seen nor shall see again such men as these were, men like Peirithoös, and Dryas, shepherd of the people, Kaineus and Exadios, godlike Polyphemos, 265 or Theseus, Aigeus’ son, in the likeness of the immortals. These were the strongest generation of earth-born mortals,

Nor, son of Peleus, think to match your strength with the king, since never equal with the rest is the portion of honor of the scattered king to whom Zeus gives magnificence. Even 280 though you are the stronger man, and the mother who bore you was immortal, yet is this man greater who is lord over more than you rule. Son of Atreus, give up your anger; even I entreat you to give over your bitterness against Achilleus,

darkly brilliant Achilleus

“So must I be called of no account and a coward if I must carry out every order you may happen to give me. 295 Tell other men to do these things, but give me no more commands, since I for my part have no intention to obey you. And put away in your thoughts this other thing I tell you. With my hands I will not fight for the girl’s sake, neither with you nor any other man, since you take her away who gave her. 300 But of all the other things that are mine beside my fast black ship, you shall take nothing away against my pleasure. Come, then, only try it, that these others may see also; instantly your own black blood will stain my spearpoint.

crafty Odysseus.

Agamemnon did not give up his anger and the first threat he made to Achilleus,

there shall be need of me to beat back the shameful destruction from the rest. For surely in ruinous heart he makes sacrifice and has not wit enough to look behind and before him that the Achaians fighting beside their ships shall not perish.”

“Since, my mother, you bore me to be a man with a short life, therefore Zeus of the loud thunder on Olympos should grant me honor at least. But now he has given me not even a little.