The Iliad: Difference between revisions

[[File:Coypel, Charles-Antoine - Fury of Achilles - 1737.jpg|Charles-Antoine Coypel, ''Fury of Achilles'' (1737)|thumb|500px]]

The ''Iliad'' (a song about Ilium, or Troy) along with its companion [[Epic Poetry|epic]] the ''[[Odyssey]]'' form the foundation of ancient Greek culture and address the extremes of human experience through war and peace. Both [[Epic Poetry|epic]] are primary, or oral, epic that draw on an enormous wealth of cultural stories in unified structures that we attribute to the poet [[Homer]], in eighth century B.C.E. The [[Epic Poetry|epic]] are written in an unsentimental style: the ''Iliad'' depicts the ambivalence of war in meticulously accurate details. Both the nightmare of war and its excitement find expression in the ''Iliad'', just as the ''[[Odyssey]]''’s pages quest for a home, or a peace that seems hard-won after the devastation of war.

In book one of the ''Iliad'', we discover that because of [[Agamemnon]]’s refusal to relinquish [[Chryseis]], [[Apollo]] has rained a plague upon the Achaean forces. Because he is eventually challenged by [[Achilles]] — who represents the wishes of the rest of the men — Agamemnon decides to claim Achilles’ prize (a girl named [[Briseis]]) to reassert his authority and put Achilles in his place for his challenge. Achilles shows cunning and restraint — qualities that are usually associated with Odysseus — in his argument with Agamemnon, while the latter rages and rails like a wounded child. Yet, when Agamemnon’s men take Briseis, Achilles, also child-like, begins to pout by his ships, cries to his mother, and refuses to play the war game anymore. This final decision precipitates the death of many Achaeans, including Achilles’ friend [[Patroclus]]. Achilles’ resulting rage ends with the death of Hector in book twenty-two, and Achilles’ own apocryphal death under the bow of [[Paris]] before the war’s end.

* [[/Book 7/]]

* [[/Book 8/]]

* [[/Book 9/]]

* [[/Book 14/]]

* [[/Book 15/]]

* [[/Book 16/]]

* [[/Book 18/]]

* [[/Book 19/]]

* [[/Book 20/]]

* [[/Book 21/]]

* [[/Book 22/]]

* [[/Book 23/]]

* [[/Book 24/]]

As the narrator states first thing: the subject of the ''Iliad'' is the rage of Achilles and the consequences of that rage for both the Achaeans and the Trojans. War effects not only the men who fight the battles, but also the women and children whose lives are then shaped by its outcome. War represents the worst and, ironically, the best of humanity: ugly brutality and terrible beauty. We both pity with Hector and sympathize with Achilles; neither side of the war holds all of our sentiments. The final outcome of the war, then, becomes truly tragic: only one culture can continue while the other is destroyed or enslaved.

The brutality of Achilles and its consequences are most evident in Book XXII of the ''Iliad''. Achilles’ rage blinds him to anything but the death of Hector, the Trojan champion that kills [[Patroclus]]. Replete with [[Epic Poetry|epic]] [[simile|similes]] of the hunt, book twenty-two illustrates Hector’s own reluctance to do what he sees as his duty to face Achilles, yet thinks only of himself and what his people might think if he doesn’t face the Greek killing machine (cf. ll. 108-156). Hector’s resolve is soon shaken as he sees Achilles closing, bloody rage the only thing that Achilles sees. Hector flees, but is soon tricked by [[Athena]] into stopping to face Achilles, perhaps a commentary on Hector’s need for companionship and Achilles’ desire for only personal vengeance and renown. Hector is mercilessly murdered in front of Troy’s walls, like a fawn at the jaws of a lion.

The death of Hector, then, is given a final cultural context from Hector’s widow [[Andromache]]. She now sees the demise of Troy, but personally she sees no future for their son [[Astyanax]]. The death of the father, then, is a weighty metaphor for the Trojans: the order that they secured will soon be rendered useless by the barbarity of war; the father’s death leads to the destruction of social order. This theme will be taken up in the ''[[Odyssey]]'' as well: what is the responsibility of the son for maintaining order in the absence or death of the father? As [[Andromache]] sees no future for [[Astyanax]], life does continue even after the carnage of war, yet a new order is imposed on the losers — those who escape death. This theme of continuity is also addressed by [[Virgil]] in his ''[[Aeneid]]''.

Is war, then, a necessary component of human life? Just because it has been historically up until this point, are we to be like Achilles who could not hear reason through his bloody thoughts: “No truce / till one or the other falls and gluts with blood” (XXII.313-14)? When do we decide that war is better than order?

 

=== The Gods ===

* [[Zeus]]

* [[The Humaness of Iliad's Gods|The Humaness of the ''Iliad''’s Gods]]

* [[Achelous]]

* Ceram, C.W. ''Gods, Graves, and Scholars''. New York: Alfred A. knopf 1967.

* Graves, Robert. ''Greek Mythology''. London: Penguin Books 1981.  

* Grimal, Pierre. ''Larousse World Mythology''. New Jersey: Chartwheel Books Inc. 1973.

* {{cite web |url=https://grlucas.net/grl/Homer%27s_Iliad |title=Homer’s ''Iliad'' |last=Lucas |first=Gerald R. |date={{date|2000}} |website=G. R. Lucas |publisher= |access-date={{date|2021-08-01}} }}

* Willcock, Malcolm M. ''A Companion to the Iliad''. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press 1976.

[[Category:Literary]]