The Iliad is riveted on what may be called the enduring realities of war: the fact that an individual warrior must risk his life for a cause in which he does not believe, or must subject himself to the command of a lesser man; or that a successful warrior needs not only skill, but the good luck of being loved by the gods—and that these same gods are fickle, and the outcome of any combat mission is therefore fraught with mortal uncertainty; above all that war blights every life it touches.
