Bird-signs! Fight for your country—that is the best, the only omen!
The Iliad is peculiar. It's the greatest story of ancient Greece (though it predates their golden age), was the envy Rome (they attempted to match it—and failed), has become one of the most well-known and celebrated stories of western culture (though few read it), and stands as one of mankind’s greatest masterpieces (though it was composed three thousand years ago by illiterate barbarians). The parenthetical statements express my confusion with the text’s status in our society: celebrated but not read, studied but not replicated, ancient but not obsolete. What's the best way to approach this famous-yet-remote tale?
Let’s begin by summarizing the story. “The Song of Ilium,” or Troy, actually only focuses on about ten days out of a 10 year war. Paris, a prince of Troy, steals the wife of Menelaus, King of the Spartans, and brings her back to his home city. Menelaus and his brother Agamemnon rally the tribes of Greece (collectively called the Achaeans) and sail to Asia Minor where they siege the city for 10 years, eventually conquering it with a ruse. The ten-day period the Iliad covers concerns Achilles, the greatest hero of the Greeks, who gets mad at Agamemnon for stealing his girlfriend. Achilles withdraws from the fighting until Hector, the greatest hero of the Trojans, kills his cousin. Achilles returns and kills Hector, desecrates his corpse, but eventually returns the body to Troy after the father of Hector implores Achilles for mercy. The tale ends with Hector being buried.
Historically speaking the tale is fiction. A league of Greek tribes did siege the city of Troy around 1200 BCE, though this was probably due to the control of the Hellespont rather than love. Following the death of so many adult males coinciding with devastating fires of capital cities, Greece submerged into a dark age. Here the “Trojan War” was preserved and transmuted within an oral tradition that bound the communities together. Homer, a chief bard and editor of the Iliad, helped the story get written down around 800 BCE. We know that this was only one of a few epics circulating around this time, but all we have are Homer’s. Greece was to draw inspiration from these works for centuries to come, eventually holding the epics as golden standards of art. They’ve retained a similar status ever since.
Does the Iliad still live up to its reputation? Absolutely. Written as a long poem in elevated (“heroic”) language, the story is primarily a war drama. Horrific yet beautifully rendered fight scenes litter the book, and I have yet to find their superior. Homer’s masterful use of similes, where combat is contrasted with analogues of peace, gives poise to senseless butchery:
Patroclus rising beside him stabbed his right jawbone,
ramming the spearhead square between his teeth so hard
he hooked him by that spearhead over the chariot-rail,
hoisted, dragged the Trojan out as an angler perched
on a jutting rock ledge drags some fish from the sea,
some noble catch, with line and glittering bronze hook.
Framing violence within scenes of calm and banality has two effects. We are jarred by how identifiable the act is, now that our imaginations have tethered the two activities together. But we also see through the lens of a warrior, whose kaleidoscope vision transforms scenes of war into peace, and peace into war. These two walks of life blur and the dichotomy fades: the world isn’t divided into soldiers and civilians. We’re both. War and civilization are inexorably joined, and both are given equal weight. This is exemplified within Achilles’ famous shield; scenes of destruction live alongside scenes of creation, and though we may favor one over the other, both make up the circle of life.
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Achilles (left) slays Hector. From a red-figured volute-krater
(a large ceramic wine decanter), ca. 500–480 B.C.E.
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But none of it matters. The great conflict in the Iliad—and this is a story of many conflicts—is of barbarism versus civilization. The Achaeans are, if we can use such reductive terms, the bad guys. They siege the walls of hallowed Troy for a woman and their own twisted sense of pride. The Trojans have families, art, allies, technology, temples, wealth, and everything else civilization entails. But it’s not enough; in the end Ilium falls to the wrath of Achilles. It’s not their character, views, or beliefs that doom Troy, simply their inability to defend themselves against aggression. Hector, for all his humanity, could not defeat the Achaeans.
The ending of the epic provides a ray of hope. Achilles’ submission to Priam’s request—his ability to feel empathy for his enemy—is both surprising and puzzling. At first light his decision is of little consequence. Troy will still burn to the ground, Achilles will soon meet his fate, and Zeus will get his way. But amongst all this death and chaos such a small act of kindness, particularly from the cruelest man, means a great deal. A redemptive choice that rebels, even impotently, against fate is heroic. More so than proficiency on the battlefield. Homer both celebrates and insults warfare; with the same breath destroys civilized values and infuses them with meaning. Achilles, by returning Hector, regains some of his humanity. It’ll change nothing, but it’s precious all the same.
This rare tenderness is worlds away from the idiocy of the gods, who rule and play with men’s fate without any regard for their well-being or value. Zues, Athena, Hera, Apollo: these are characters in a story. They are not real or logical; they represent the chaotic forces that destroy or make men’s lives. Their comical antics make the human tragedy that much more painful to experience. They will not be forced to endure the consequences of their decisions. They are incapable of change or loss that would bring significance to their existence. They simply are, and so cannot identify with humanity. It is a good thing both Helen and Achilles shed their destructive selfishness for self-criticism. It is no compliment to be called godlike.
I adore The Iliad: an artistic creation that houses such maddening destruction, with gems of hope and beauty if one is brave enough to look. Homer’s community, slowly reclaiming their civilized life from dark barbarism, poured hundreds of years of hard-earned wisdom into this epic tale. They would not abandon their past, not completely, but they would learn from it. And what they learned was courage in the face of death; art in the face of destruction; and simple human decency in the face of war.
