When I first read The Iliad in college some 20 years ago, I thought that it would make for a great big screen action movie. And, despite Hollywood’s recent effort, I still feel that way. There is plenty of action (it is, after all, a war story), with heroes and main characters on both sides of the battlefield and in the heavens. It can also be viewed as a psychological drama in the way the characters relate to one another and grapple with such concepts as glory, pride, and fate. Ah well, maybe one day a motion picture that captures all the swirling details of The Iliad will be made.
Homer’s great poem is widely considered to be the beginning of literature in the Western civilization. The tales told about the 12th century B.C. war between Greeks and Trojans had been passed down for generations and enjoyed for centuries as an oral tradition. Homer, who lived in the 8th century B.C., has been generally ascribed the story’s author for combining the various tales into one narrative, divided into 24 chapters or books. Yet The Iliad offers only one small glimpse inside the Trojan War. As the story unfolds, we discover that the war has been going on for nine years, and an account of the events that led up to the war are sketched in for us here and there through dialogue between the characters.
From such dialogue we learn that the war started when the Trojan prince Paris (sometimes called Alexandros), abducted Helen, Queen of Sparta. The leaders of the Greek city-states rallied around the Spartan king, Menelaos, and, led by Menelaos’ brother Agamemnon, organized a fleet to sail to Troy (located in modern Turkey) with the intention of sacking the city and returning Helen to Sparta.
In Homer’s day, and indeed in the centuries after The Iliad was transcribed, the details of the Trojan War were common knowledge among the Greeks. But a modern reader might become frustrated by what is perceived to be entire sections missing from the tale. For example, you will search in vain looking for the story of the Trojan horse within the pages of The Iliad. As I said, this poem concerns itself with just a window of time within the ten-year war.
So instead of a full account of the war, The Iliad concentrates on the war’s larger-than-life heroes. Although both sides had proud warriors fighting for them, more Greeks are mentioned than Trojans. The reason for this, no doubt, is because the Greeks won the war. Homer knew his audience whom, one can be sure, expected no less than to hear tales of their great forefathers in this celebrated victory.
Among the Greek heroes who fought for Menelaos and Agamemnon were Odysseus, whose 10-year journey back home after the Trojan War is the story of Homer’s other great work, The Odyssey, the giant Ajax and his wily smaller cousin, known as little Ajax, the youthful Diomedes, and Achilles, the Greek’s greatest fighter. Paris’ older brother Hector led the Trojans. Other Trojan characters include Paris and Hector’s father King Priam, and Aeneas, whose own wanderings after the fall of Troy are recounted in Virgil’s The Aeneid.
One last set of characters that needs to be introduced is the Greek gods. From their vantage point on Mt. Olympus, they watch the war like spectators at a gladiator fight. However, often in the poem they are said to control the actions of some individuals, and even to actively fight alongside the two armies. Indeed, each book is filled with moments where a god or goddess figures into the scene. Their supernatural powers also allow some of the heroes to converse with rivers and horses.
It is curious to note that the goddesses Hera and Athena sided with the Greeks, while the male gods Ares and Apollo took the Trojan side. Since it was the Greeks who were victorious, what does that say about who were the stronger, more powerful gods?
The gods also provide comic relief from the harshness of the battlefield, which is welcomed in such a tension-filled epic. Homer describes them as argumentative and childish, not at all like the wise and omnipotent deities the Greeks and Trojans believe them to be. Zeus, the father of the gods, remains neutral, bent on guiding the war toward its destined end, but he does it in such a way that the other gods do not know his intentions. Thus, he indirectly creates the turbulence that exists between them. His wife Hera comes across as spiteful and Athena does not conduct herself much better. The war god Ares acts like a schoolyard bully and Aphrodite, who started the war by promising Helen to Paris, behaves like a spoiled child. Only Apollo displays some sort of restraint, bowing out of the conflict when Zeus’ scales tip against the Trojans.
“Anger” is the first word of the poem. Specifically, it is the anger of the Greek warrior Achilles, who refuses to fight because of a wrong he feels he has suffered from Agamemnon. This is the key plot twist of The Iliad, as Achilles’ pride and perceived affront to his honour get in the way of the greater well being of his fellow soldiers.
Much of the first third of the book is devoted to a two-day battle. At times, the action in the story becomes very intense. Homer does not mince words and has a way of describing death and mutilation in graphic detail. Take this example of how Diomedes slew a Trojan named Pandaros:
His weapon being guided by Athena
To cleave Pandaros’ nose beside the eye
And shatter his white teeth
His tongue the brazen spearhead severed, tip from root,
Then plowing on came out beneath his chin. (Book V)
When there is a pause in the battle, it is a welcome relief, as when Diomedes befriends another Trojan fighter, Glaucus, or when Hector takes a break from the battle and visits his wife and infant son.
Achilles’ continued absence from the war bookmarks the middle third of The Iliad, the events of which take place within a twenty-four hour period. In Book IX, he makes a series of stirring anti-war declarations when Odysseus tries to persuade him to return to the battlefield. Then in Book XVI, he makes the fateful decision to send his close friend Patrocles into battle. Though Achilles appears only sparingly up to this point in the poem, his presence, or lack thereof, overshadows much of what goes on in the middle eight books.
Achilles’ pride affects his decision to enter the war and makes it appear that he does not care about his fellow Greeks. But he does take an interest in the daily battles, particularly when the Trojans drive the Greeks back to the beach and threaten to set fire to their ships. Achilles was promised that Zeus shall redeem him before the whole army, so he can afford to not be too hasty to enter the battle because he knows he has divine right on his side.
Though the Greeks sorely miss Achilles, they are still able to make small advances on their enemies, as when Odysseus and Diomedes attack the Trojan camp in a night raid or when Agamemnon rouses his army to fight. However, many of the army’s best warriors receive wounds and must withdraw from the battle, leaving a scant few healthy leaders to rally the troops. It is during those times that they miss the strength and valour of Achilles. Indeed, the Trojans take advantage of his absence by waging war so far away from their city that they feel their courage and boldness increase as the battle wages on.
The final third of Homer’s epic resolves the struggle that began the work. Achilles wins back the honour lost to him and learns mercy and compassion. That is his lesson and the purpose of telling this story within the context of the war.
The evolution of Achilles is a slow one. For two-thirds of the book he broods, then after Patrocles is killed, he is vengeful. It is only in The Iliad’s final two books, during the funeral games and when King Priam visits him, that we witness what his character was probably most like before the epic opens. There are allusions to his humane treatment of captured Trojans in previous battles, as well as his kind manner towards visitors of his camp, but much of what we see in the epic is a rash, temperamental young man.
Of all the characters in The Iliad, Hector seems the noblest. This is somewhat surprising considering the Greek audience for this story. But Hector displays the leadership role of a hero, and he is not afraid to admit his mistakes, as when he foolishly decides to camp outside of the city the night before Achilles re-enters the battle. His momentary decision to face Achilles unarmed and negotiate a peaceful settlement shows that he believes in other options besides fighting. It is only when he realizes that Achilles is out for blood that he dismisses the idea. His death is a tragic one, because he is all too aware that he cannot defeat the powerful Greek warrior, yet he fights him just the same. The one Greek who comes closest to matching Hector’s gallant character is Diomedes, though his youth sometimes makes him act too brash.
I have read both a verse and a prose translation of The Iliad. W.H.D. Rouse’s 1938 prose translation uses contemporary English, reads like a novel, and at 300 pages makes for a good pocket paperback edition. It is available as a Signet/Mentor book.
Robert Fitzgerald translated The Iliad into verse in 1974. Though it is a bulky 600 pages, the verses practically leap off the pages. I imagine them to be close to the essence of Homer’s original poem, at least as close as one can get when translating a 2,800 year old work from the original Greek to a poetic English. It is available through Anchor Press.
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