Iliad

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Iliad

by Homer

THE LITERARY WORK

A Greek epic poem, set in the ancient city of Troy (Ilios) around 1200 bce; composed around 750–700 bce.

SYNOPSIS

A quarrel between King Agamemnon and the warrior Achilles disrupts the tenth year of the Trojan War, resulting in devastating losses for both the Greek and Trojan armies.

Events in History at the Time of the Epic

The Epic in Focus

Events in History at the Time the Epic Was Composed

For More Information

Little is known about the poet to whom the Iliad and the Odyssey are ascribed. Present scholarship believes that the two epics developed into their present form over many centuries, originating as songs. Although there has been debate over whether more than one person wrote down the two epics, most scholars also believe each poem to have had one final author who added passages that connected episodes and otherwise refined the overall story that each epic tells. The personal background of the Iliad’s author, who may have been called Homer, re-mains uncertain. The best evidence places his birth around the eighth century bce and his home ground in the city of Smyrna or Chios by the Aegean Sea. According to ancient tradition, Homer was blind, though this attribute, like other details of his life, remains debatable. It can be said with greater certainty that legends of a Trojan war that took place in Mycenaean times, some five centuries before Homer’s own day, circulated in his era and may have been frequently told in his birthplace. His epics probably preserve memories of events during the Mycenaean war more than the events themselves. Also they likely include elements that have been grafted onto the epics from post-Mycenaean times. Homer’s Iliad is in any case based upon legends that developed about the war, while the sequel, the Odyssey, relates subsequent events. Famous for its graphic depictions of battle, the Iliad contains vivid scenes of human suffering while capturing the heroic values and traditions of a bygone age.

Events in History at the Time of the Epic

The legend of the Trojan War

Although Homer’s epic covers only a brief but pivotal span of weeks during the last year of the war, he pre-supposes the reader’s knowledge of the various myths making up the saga. Throughout the Iliad, there are glancing references to those other myths.

The seeds for the Trojan War were first sown at the marriage of Peleus, king of Phthia, and Thetis, a goddess of the sea. All the gods were invited to the celebration, except Eris, the goddess of Discord. Angered, Eris intruded on the guests and flung a golden apple inscribed “for the fairest” among them. The goddesses Hera, Athena, and Aphrodite all laid claim to the apple, but none of the other gods could decide whom the winner should be. Zeus, the king of the gods, appointed a young shepherd, Paris, a son of the Trojan king Priam, to decide among the three. Vying for his favor, each of the goddesses promised Paris a reward if he picked her. Hera, Zeus’ wife and the goddess of marriage, promised wealth and lands; Athena, goddess of war and wisdom, promised fame and military glory; Aphrodite, goddess of love and beauty, promised Paris the most beautiful woman in the world as his bride. Paris chose Aphrodite, incurring the lasting enmity of Hera and Athena.

Paris soon traveled to Sparta, where he be-came a guest of King Menelaus and Queen Helen, the beautiful woman that Aphrodite had promised to him. Aided by the goddess, Paris ran off with Helen to Troy.

Accounts vary as to whether Helen was complicit in her flight from Sparta. In any case, when Menelaus discovered Paris’ treachery, he called upon his elder brother, King Agamemnon of Mycenae, for aid in recovering his wife and punishing his enemy. Agamemnon, in turn, summoned the many princes and chieftains who had wooed Helen before her marriage to accompany them. After Homer’s day (beginning in the sixth century bce), versions of the epic tale claim that prior to her marriage, Helen’s many suitors took an oath to fight on her husband’s side if anyone ever tried to abduct her. No doubt there were mixed motivations for joining the fight, including the winning of booty and fame. A huge expedition of Greek warriors, including the princes or chiefs and their ships full of followers, was launched to reclaim Helen and to wreak vengeance against the Trojans; its members included Odysseus, the king of Ithaca; Achilles, the son of Peleus and Thetis; and Diomedes, a ruler in the northern Peloponnesus (the peninsula that forms the southern part of mainland Greece).

Despite the might of the Greek army, the city of Troy (in northwest Asia Minor, a few miles or kilometers from the Aegean Sea) held out against the invading forces for ten years. Its strong walls and the prowess of its military leaders, especially Priam’s eldest son, Hector, enabled it to endure for a decade. Many warriors perished over the course of the war, including Hector, Achilles, and even Paris. Ultimately, the Greek army conquered Troy by trickery, building a huge wooden horse, which they left outside the city walls, and then sailing their ships out of sight. Believing their enemies had departed and left the horse behind as a gift, the Trojans dragged it inside the city. At night, the Greek warriors hidden within the horse’s hollow interior swarmed out and opened the city gates to the rest of their army. It proceeded to sack and burn Troy, and slaughter the city’s inhabitants, only a handful of whom escaped. Menelaus reclaimed Helen as his wife, while other Greeks took the surviving Trojan women as prizes, and the expedition finally sailed homeward.

Gods and heroes

While some religious practices varied from region to region, the Greek world appeared to worship the same group of major deities, or pantheon. Situated on Mount Olympus, a high mountain in central Greece, the pantheon consisted of a dozen gods, headed by Zeus, father of gods and men. The remaining eleven deities were all siblings, spouses, or off-spring of Zeus: Hera (goddess of marriage), Poseidon (god of the sea), Demeter (goddess of the harvest), Hestia (goddess of the hearth), Aphrodite (goddess of love and beauty), Athena (goddess of wisdom and war), Ares (god of war), Phoebus Apollo (god of healing and prophecy), Artemis (goddess of the hunt), Hermes (god of trade, commerce, and thieves), and Hephaestus (god of the forge). Later, Dionysus (god of wine) joined the Olympians. Zeus’ brother Hades, who ruled the underworld as god of the dead, figured among the mix of important deities too. There were also lesser deities, who inhabited forests, mountains, and bodies of water.

Although the Olympian gods could take other forms, they were usually envisioned as resembling humans in deeds as well as looks. Neither wholly good nor evil, they could be brave, cowardly, wise, foolish, merciful, cruel, loyal, or fickle, as the whim took them. At times, they quarreled among themselves like the members of any large, contentious family. Unlike humans, however, the gods were immortal, possessing eternal life and youth. Conscious of their own powers, they tended to treat human lives and struggles lightly, as a source of divine entertainment.

Nonetheless, mortals who won the gods’ favor could achieve wealth, power, and status with their help. It was apparently furthermore thought, in Homer’s day and earlier, that once a special class of mortals had existed, the heroes, men who were themselves born of or favored by the gods, such as Achilles, Aeneas, and Sarpedon, and there-fore enjoyed certain privileges. In the Iliad, Homer distinguishes between these heroes, descended from or favored by the gods and so regarded as semi-divine, and the common men who follow them into battle. The heroes’ continual displays of great physical strength and feats of valor set them apart from ordinary soldiers, whose roles are merely to fight and die. Significantly, though, even the heroes cannot avoid their destinies: Achilles, for example, is fated to die at Troy; Aeneas, to escape the fallen city and lead the surviving Trojans to another land.

To win the gods’ favor, humans prayed to their deity of choice, then offered a sacrifice (usually an animal that they slaughtered and roasted on the god’s altar), libation (drink), or gift in ex-change for the god’s aid. In reaction to the offering, the god either granted or denied the supplicant’s prayer. Apollo answers the prayers of a priest whose daughter has been taken prisoner by the Greeks; Agamemnon refuses to give her up for a ransom, so, in response to the priest’s prayer, Apollo visits a plague on the Greeks until they return her and sacrifice 100 oxen to him. Later in the epic, through prayers and votive offerings, the Trojan women beseech Athena to spare their city, but she ignores them because she favors the Greeks and resents Paris for not deeming her the fairest goddess.

Despite a tendency to treat mortal life lightly, the gods could become deeply involved in human troubles. In the Iliad, several of them take sides in the Trojan War. A few gods have offspring in the war and side with the army for which their children fight. From brief love affairs with humans, Aphrodite, Zeus, and Ares have mortal offspring whose army they favor. Other gods have a hand in the fray to avenge an insult—thus, Hera and Athena ally themselves with the Greeks because the Trojan prince Paris gave the golden apple not to them but to Aphrodite. Finally, a few mortals win divine aid simply because of their virtues. Apollo aids the Trojan warrior Hector on account of his valor, while Athena rewards the martial prowess of Diomedes and the cunning of Odysseus. In the end, an equal number of deities support either side:

Greeks Trojans
Hera Aphrodite
Athena Apollo
Poseidon Ares
Hermes Artemis
Hephaestus Zeus*.
*He favors the Trojans only briefly, and then it is because of an internal squabble among the Greeks, to help Achilles avenge an affront to his honor.

Greeks	Trojans
Hera	Aphrodite
Athena	Apollo
Poseidon	Ares
Hermes	Artemis
Hephaestus	Zeus*.

Greek warfare a la Homer

Homer’s writing conveys certain details about the way wars were fought, or perhaps more exactly, the way they were ideally fought. Communities at war tended to rely on friends and kinfolk to either volunteer manpower or comply with requests to join an invasion in return for a share of the expected war booty. An assortment of bands assembled, each congregating behind a head warrior. Some but not all conflicts also included a supreme commander. To mount an invasion, spearmen with shields would move together as a tight front line while archers shot their arrows over and around them. But mostly the fighting seems to have consisted of informal bouts of one-on-one combat. The focus of Homer’s battle description is on such combat between the leading heroes. High-status warriors would recognize each other by the chariot, a horse-drawn lightly wooded vehicle driven to the front by the warrior’s charioteer. The warrior would dismount, fight, then climb back up to stow his booty, doctor a wound, or ride elsewhere. The hit-and-run tactic was common; warriors saw no shame in fleeing before finishing off a wounded foe unless he was clearly weaker. Another common tactic was the surprise attack. Archers would leap from behind to shoot a victim unawares, warriors would stab a retreating foe in the back, and anyone recovering the corpse of a dead friend from the battlefield could easily be killed in the process.

The following scenario plays out repeatedly in Homer’s work, with slight variations to suit the individuals: the warriors leave their chariots to fight on foot, exchange ritual boasts and insults in an attempt to intimidate their opponent, and then engage each other in combat. Most heroes favor spears as their weapons—lighter ones for throwing, heavier ones for thrusting—but also use the broadsword for fighting in close quarters. The bow and arrow are usually reserved for the common soldiery or for a very few heroes. Significantly, Paris, one of the least skilled Trojan warriors, uses the bow and arrow.

The Troy of history

Interest in the city of Troy persisted for centuries. Despite the lack of written sources before Homer, his audience tended to believe that Troy was a real place on the western coast of Asia Minor (modern Turkey). Ancient Greek historians such as Thucydides (c. 460–400 bce) believed at least partly in Homer’s story; Thucydides even composed a plausible account of how war might have broken out between Mycenae and Troy. Also ancient travelers claimed to have journeyed to Troy and seen the tombs of Hector and Achilles and other such sights. According to an account of the first century ce, Alexander the Great even laid a wreath on Achilles’ tomb, “calling him a lucky man, in that he had Homer to proclaim his deeds and pre-serve his memory” (Arrian in Wood, p. 30).

The first scholarly attempts to pinpoint Troy’s exact location occurred in the eighteenth century. In the mid-1800s Hissarlik, a mound on the northwest coast of Turkey, was identified with the lost city of Troy. The German archaeologist Heinrich Schliemann, who had long been fascinated with the legends of ancient Greece, received most of the credit for this discovery.

Schliemann’s excavations, and later those of Carl Blegen, uncovered evidence of numerous civilizations having existed upon the site. The most likely models for Homer’s Troy were the civilizations designated as Troy VI (c. 1700–1270 bce) and Troy Vila (early 1100s bce). Both showed signs of having been destroyed by violence, whether natural or man-made, in the form of fallen masonry and traces of fire (at least one of these instances was probably an earthquake). Blegen asserted that the presence of a bronze arrowhead of Greek design was enough to make Troy Vlla the leading contender:

We believe that Troy Vlla has yielded actual evidence showing that the town was subject to siege, capture, and destruction by hostile forces at some time in the general period assigned by Greek tradition to the Trojan War, and that it may be safely identified as the Troy of Priam and of Homer.
(Blegen in Wood, p. 114)

While historians still question the degree of truth of Homer’s story, along with the findings of Schliemann and Blegen, many agree that there is sufficient evidence to suggest hostilities between Troy and Mycenae, which contributed to the decline of both civilizations.

The Mycenaean age

Heinrich Schliemann also uncovered the Mycenaean civilization, which dominated the classical world from 1600 to shortly after 1200 bce. The Greek-speaking Mycenaean peoples came from western Asia perhaps, settling in southern mainland Greece around 1900 bce. Mycenaean fortifications were established at Tiryns (south of the hilltop fortress of Mycenae), Pylos (on the southwest coast of the Peloponnese), Thebes (in central Greece), lolkos in Thessaly, and the Acropolis at Athens. Also Mycenaeans gained control over several Aegean islands, including Crete.

While many details of Mycenaean society had disappeared by the time the Homeric epics were composed, it appears that the Mycenaeans were city dwellers, governed by kings with the help of well-organized bureaucracies and a militaristic ruling class. Agamemnon in the Iliad may faintly recall Mycenaean rulers. Evidence of Mycenaean literacy has been found in the form of the script known as “Linear B,” used mainly to keep inventories and for other bureaucratic purposes. Archaeologists also uncovered pottery, weapons, and elaborate tombs, further evidence of the civilization’s wealth and craftsmanship. Unlike the Greeks in Homer’s poetry, the ancient Mycenaeans buried rather than cremated their dead (likewise, in the eighth century bce, when the Iliad was written, Greek society normally buried its dead). Besides their military abilities, Mycenaeans apparently flourished as traders in the Mediterranean region, exchanging goods with Egypt, Syria, Sicily, and southern Italy. Archaeological evidence—the discovery of Mycenaean weapons at the site designated as Troy—suggests that Mycenae and Troy were trading partners as well.

In 1939 an American named Carl Blegen dis-covered the “palace of Nestor,” named after the wise old Greek counselor from Pylos in the Iliad. Blegen’s discovery revealed the actual existence of a rich center of the Mycenaean world in the southwest corner of the Peloponnesus. Far from the great palaces of eastern and central Greece, the ruins suggest that in fact there existed wide-spread pockets of splendor in the Mycenaean world. From such sites comes evidence of this world’s downfall. The Mycenaean Empire collapsed around 1200 bce, after several of its great palaces were burned; it is not known whether foreign invasions or internal disputes were the cause. Then came the period from 1150 to 750 bce—the so-called Dark Age—which was marked by the loss of written communication, an increase of poverty, and the decline of the arts. While Homer’s Iliad is, in many respects, a product of its times and has perhaps even integrated material from a later era, it may also be read as an idealized recollection of the last years of Mycenae’s might, before its civilization was destroyed and the Dark Age ensued. In fact, the epic may draw on all three periods—the Mycenaean era (1600–1200 bce), the Dark Age (1150 to 750 bce), and Homer’s own eighth century bce.

The Epic in Focus

Plot summary

The epic begins with an invocation to the muse, describing the rage of Achilles “that cost the Greeks / Incalculable pain, pitched countless souls / Of heroes into Hades’ dark, / And left their bodies to rot as feasts / for dogs and birds as Zeus’ will was done” (Homer, Iliad, book 1, lines 2–6). The Trojan War is entering its tenth year, and the Greeks (alternately referred to as Achaeans, Argives, and Danaans), unable to take Troy itself, have instead been sacking and plundering the surrounding cities.

During their last campaign, the Greeks took the surviving women as spoils of war; one woman, Chryseis, the daughter of a priest of Apollo, became the prize of King Agamemnon, leader of the Greek expedition to Troy. Although Chryseis’ father tries to ransom his daughter, Agamemnon rejects his terms. The priest calls upon Apollo to punish the Greeks until they re-lease his daughter; Apollo strikes the army with a deadly plague. After ten days, the foremost Greeks meet to discuss the crisis. At Achilles’ urging, Agamemnon resentfully consents to return Chryseis, but only if Achilles yields to him another captive woman, Briseis. A violent quarrel erupts, and Achilles ultimately agrees to Agamemnon’s terms, but he is furious and feels that his honor has been compromised.

Swearing an oath that he will no longer fight for the Greeks until Agamemnon makes recompense, Achilles retires to his own encampment and calls upon his mother, the goddess Thetis, to help avenge the slight against him. At her son’s behest, Thetis appeals to Zeus, king of the gods, to make the Trojans victorious until the Greeks, especially Agamemnon, acknowledge Achilles’ superiority on the battlefield. Zeus grants her request, despite noting that his actions will cause further dissension on Mount Olympus, where even the gods have taken sides in the struggle.

Zeus sends a deceptive dream to Agamemnon that urges the king to muster the troops and at-tack Troy, promising that he will take the city at last. Heartened, Agamemnon assembles all the soldiers and tests their morale by suggesting that they abandon the war and sail for home. To his chagrin, the common soldiers rush to board the ships. With the help of the goddess Athena, Odysseus, king of Ithaca, manages to restore order and discipline, reminding the men of a prophecy that the Greeks will win the war in the tenth year. The soldiers agree to continue the fight, and heralds are dispatched to summon all the Greeks to battle. Achilles and his troops, the Myrmidons, are conspicuous by their absence.

Meanwhile, the Trojans, led by Priam’s eldest son, Hector, have also mustered for battle. When the two armies meet on the field, Hector and Paris propose that the issue of war be settled by single combat between Paris and Menelaus. The Greeks agree, and both sides swear to abide by the out-come of the match. While not the mightiest of the Greek warriors, Menelaus easily defeats the cowardly Paris, but Aphrodite rescues the Trojan prince from certain death and carries him safely back to his chamber in the royal palace. The goddess also reunites Paris with Helen, who has long since become disillusioned with her lover and now regrets her flight from Sparta.

Back on the battlefield, Hera and Athena manipulate the Trojans into breaking the truce. Fighting erupts on the plain in front of Troy, with significant losses on both sides. One Greek warrior, Diomedes, performs amazing feats of valor with the help of Athena, even wounding two of the gods—Aphrodite and Ares—who are trying to aid the Trojans. The Greeks succeed in pushing the Trojan forces back toward the city. Reentering his father’s palace, Hector urges his mother, Hecuba, to offer gifts and prayers to Athena to take pity on the Trojans. She obeys, but Athena, who favors the Greeks, ignores her supplications. Hector reunites briefly with his beloved wife, Andromache, and their infant son, Astyanax; the couple confesses their fears about Troy’s fate should Hector fall in battle, but he re-mains determined to defend his city. After retrieving Paris, who is still dallying with Helen, Hector returns to the war, where he has an inconclusive combat against the Greek champion

LEADING CHARACTERS

Greeks

Achilles Son of Peleus, King of Phthia, and the sea goddess Thetis; leader of the Myrmidons; the mightiest Greek warrior

Briseis A woman from Lyrnessus, given as a war prize to Achilles but later seized by Agamemnon

Agamemnon King of Mycenae and commander-in-chief of the Greek forces in Troy

Chryseis Daughter of Chryses, a priest of Apollo, given as a war prize to Agamemnon who must return her to appease Apollo’s wrath

Ajax Son of Telamon, leader of the band from Salamis; the mightiest in battle after Achilles

Diomedes Leader of the bands from Argos and Tiryns; a skilled warrior favored by Athena

Menelaus King of Sparta and Agamemnon’s brother; the husband of Helen; a prominent warrior

Nestor Elderly king of Pylos, who serves as a wise counselor to the Greeks and participates, ineffectually, in the fight

Odysseus King of Ithaca, skilled fighter, orator, and problem-sol ver, favored by the goddess Athena

Patroclus A warrior in the Myrmidon contingent; Achilles’ closest friend and companion

Trojans

Aeneas Son of Anchises and the goddess Aphrodite; renowned Trojan warrior who ultimately survives the war and escapes Troy

Hector Eldest son of Troy’s King Priam and Queen Hecuba; military leader of the Trojan forces; Troy’s foremost defender

Andromache Beloved wife of Hector and mother of their infant son, Astyanax

Paris (also called Alexandros) Hector’s younger brother and Helen’s lover; skilled archer but less esteemed than Hector

Helen Daughter of Zeus and Leda of Sparta, accounted the most beautiful woman in the world, married to Menelaus of Sparta until seduced and carried off by Paris, considered the cause of the Trojan War

Priam Wealthy, aged king of Troy

Hecuba Priam’s wife and queen of Troy

Sarpedon Son of Laodamia and the god Zeus, co-leader with his cousin Glaucus of the Lycians, who are Trojan allies

Ajax, son of Telamon. The two warriors exchange gifts at the end, and both armies agree to a brief truce to cremate their dead. The Greeks also spend the day building a wall and ditch to protect their shore-beached ships.

On Mount Olympus, Zeus forbids the other gods to intervene in the war on either side. When the battle resumes, he fulfills his promise to Thetis on behalf of her slighted son, Achilles, by favoring the Trojans over the Greeks. The tide of battle turns and the Greeks are forced back towards their ships, with the Trojans in pursuit. At a council of war, a demoralized Agamemnon admits to his fellow chieftains that he was wrong to offend Achilles and offers immediate restitution, including the return of Briseis, whom the king has not touched. Odysseus, Ajax, and Phoenix are dispatched to convey this message to Achilles, who remains hostile toward Agamemnon and refuses to return to the war, despite harrowing accounts of the Greeks’ misfortunes.

Although the appeal to Achilles failed, the Greeks are encouraged when Odysseus and Diomedes capture a Trojan spy who reveals military secrets about a Trojan ally, the king of Thrace. The two Greeks enter the Thracian encampment by night, kill several men, and steal the king’s horses.

Heartened, the Greeks meet the Trojans in battle the following day, but again Zeus favors the Trojans. Despite many deeds of valor, several important Greek commanders are wounded, including Agamemnon, Diomedes, and Odysseus. At this juncture, Achilles begins to take an interest in the fighting again, dispatching Patroclus to inquire about the Greek casualties. Nestor, an elderly Greek king, informs Patroclus of their wounded commanders, laments Achilles’ hard-heartedness and pride, and proposes that Patroclus assume Achilles’ armor and lead the Myrmi-dons into battle. Meanwhile, the Trojans, under Hector’s command, have breached the wall built by the Greeks to protect the ships.

Fighting to defend their ships, the Greeks are given a brief respite when Hera distracts Zeus with a love charm borrowed from Aphrodite. While Zeus sleeps, Poseidon, god of the sea, aids the Greeks. The wounded commanders return to battle to boost the troops’ morale, Ajax stuns Hector with a stone, and the Trojans are driven into retreat. On awakening, Zeus rebukes Hera for her duplicity, forces Poseidon to abandon the Greeks, and revives Hector, who helps his troops regain their lost ground. Reaching the ships at last, the Trojan army starts setting fire to the Greek vessels.

Patroclus persuades Achilles to lend him his armor so he can frighten the Trojans into believing he is the mighty Achilles as he leads the Myrmidons into battle. Achilles reluctantly agrees but commands his friend to return once he has driven the Trojans away from the ships. Armed like Achilles, Patroclus performs many deeds of valor, slaying several prominent Trojans and driving the army back toward the walls of Troy. With the help of Apollo, Hector slays Patroclus and claims Achilles’ armor for himself. The Greeks fight fiercely to defend Patroclus’ body, ultimately bearing it back to their encampment.

Grief-stricken over Patroclus’ death, Achilles renounces his anger against Agamemnon and vows to return to the war so he can avenge his fallen comrade. Thetis has Hephaestus, the god of the forge, fashion splendid new armor for her son. Achilles formally makes peace with Agamemnon, accepts the king’s gifts, including Briseis’ re-turn, and prepares for the upcoming battle.

Zeus grants the gods permission to engage in battle again if they choose; several descend to earth and openly oppose each other, including Hera, Athena, Apollo, Ares, and Aphrodite. The newly armed Achilles charges into battle and slaughters many Trojans on the bank of the river Xanthus, which becomes choked with corpses. The river god sends the waters rising up against Achilles in protest, but Hephaestus checks the water with fire. A disguised Apollo tricks Achilles into pursuing him long enough for the Trojan army to escape back into the city. On discovering the ruse, Achilles returns to the walls of Troy and finds Hector waiting alone for him outside the gates. They engage in single combat, which Achilles, aided by Athena, wins. The dying Hector pleads with Achilles to allow his body to be ransomed by his parents but Achilles refuses. Once dead, Hector is stripped of his armor and the other Greeks gather around to inflict more wounds on his corpse. In full view of the Trojans, Achilles ties Hector’s feet to his chariot and drags the body back in the dust to the Greek encampment. Priam, Hecuba, and Andromache lament Hector’s death.

Back among the Greeks, Achilles makes preparations for Patroclus’ funeral: his remains are cremated and Achilles kills 12 Trojan prisoners of war, who are also laid on the pyre as a sacrifice. Funeral games are held the following day, with Achilles offering prizes in such events as chariot racing, wrestling, and javelin throwing.

Achilles’ grief for Patroclus remains overwhelming, and he continues to drag Hector’s corpse—miraculously preserved from decomposition by the gods—behind his chariot. After nine days, Thetis, acting on Zeus’ commands, persuades her son to allow Hector’s body to be ransomed. Zeus also sends a heavenly messenger to Priam, bidding him go to Achilles’ tent that night with the ransom. Despite Hecuba’s fears, Priam loads a wagon with a rich ransom and sets out for the Greek camp. Guided by Hermes, Priam reaches his destination safely, kneels before Achilles, kisses his hand, and pleads for the re-turn of his dead son. Achilles receives him kindly and they weep together for their respective dead. Accepting the ransom, Achilles orders Hector’s body bathed and dressed for transport. The two men then eat together and a bed is provided for Priam. Achilles also agrees to a truce of 11 days for Hector’s funeral.

Before daybreak, Priam conducts Hector’s body back to Troy, again guided by Hermes. The Trojans mourn their champion’s loss, with Hecuba, Andromache, and Helen leading the laments. The epic concludes with a brief account of Hector’s cremation, and interment: “That was the funeral of Hector, breaker of horses” (Iliad, 24.860).

A warrior’s honor

In the Iliad, Homer’s warriors take to the battlefield for various reasons. The Trojan army fights for the defense of their homeland from hostile invaders. Other warriors may fight to avenge insults or slain comrades, as Achilles does for Patroclus. However, the Homeric warrior was also deeply concerned with his honor and reputation. Fighting valiantly, slaying many enemies, and acquiring a hefty share of the spoils were all ways to increase his status in the eyes of his society.

The pursuit of glory and honor led Homer’s heroes to behave in ways that modern readers might consider savage, even barbaric. In several instances, the victor not only kills his opponent but strips him of his armor and weapons, even at risk to personal safety. Warriors considered the acquisition of such trophies necessary to demonstrate their martial prowess. It was, in fact, common practice to plunder the enemy dead, even to the extent of going onto the battlefield at night to strip the corpses. Several warriors even boast about what they have taken; Idomenus, the Cretan commander, offers to lend his comrade Meriones a weapon, saying “spears I take off Trojans, / I kill in close combat. I have plenty, / Shields too, and helmets, and breastplates” (Iliad, 13.275–277). Not to be outdone, Meriones counters, “The hut by my tarred ships is also filled / With Trojan spoils, but it’s not close by. / I know what it means to fight up front / And win my share of glory in war. There might be one or two Greeks around / Who haven’t noticed, but not you” (Iliad, 13.279–284).

Even in death, honor remains a primary con-cern for Homeric warriors, who hope—often in vain—for proper funeral rites, cremation, and burial. Wartime savagery can prevent or delay such rites. The victors not only strip but also of ten mutilate the vanquished, mocking the latter in his last moments. The Greeks fight fiercely to prevent Patroclus’ corpse from suffering indignities like the ones they themselves inflict on Hector’s corpse. Gathering round, the Greeks stab

SPOILS OF WAR

In the world of the lliad, a warrior won honor not only by defeating his opponent or outstripping his comrades in feats of arms but by receiving a sizable quantity of the prizes taken by the army. These spoils were distributed among the ranking warriors, each receiving a share commensurate with his position and achievements. Money, jewels, valuable weapons and artifacts, livestock, and even women all qualified as spoils of war.

The initial quarrel between Achilles and Agamemnon erupts because Agamemnon, forced to yield up his female captive to her father, lays claim to a woman whom Achilles won in a previous campaign. Each man feels that his honor has been insulted and his status diminished by having to give up a prize. Achilles literally sulks in his tent, refusing to fight until his worth as a warrior is publicly recognized with greater gifts and the return of his prize. Significantly, the victors never take the feelings of the women themselves into consideration. As spoils of war, they were expected to accept their fate, whether it involved slavery or concubinage. Hector sadly predicts such a future for his beloved wife, Andromache, once Troy falls to the Greeks:

Deep in my heart I know too well
There will come a day when holy Ilion will perish…
All that pain is nothing to what I will feel
For you, when some bronze-armored Greek
Leads you away in tears, on your first day of slavery.
And you will work some other woman’s loom
In Argos or carry water from a Spartan spring.
All against your will, under great duress.
And someone, seeing you crying, will say,
“That is the wife of Hector, the best of all
The Trojans when they fought around IIion”
(Iliad, 6.470–471,477–485)

the Trojan prince’s body, jesting that “Hector’s a lot softer to the touch now/Than he was when he was burning our ships” (Iliad, 22.413–414).

Achilles makes sure his friend Patroclus receives the funeral he requests, followed by the posthumous honors due him. Proper disposal of the dead was believed to ease the soul’s passage from one world to the next. Instructed by the spirit of his dead friend, Achilles performs the rites exactly as the ghost asks, to the point of using an urn large enough to hold not only Patroclus’ ashes but his own when he too must die. After Patroclus’ cremation, his comrades honor the fallen soldier’s memory with feasting and contests of skill. Similar rituals mark Hector’s passing after Achilles relents and permits Priam to ransom his son’s body. The king of Troy negotiates a lengthy truce while Troy buries its greatest defender, explaining to Achilles, “We would mourn him for nine days in our halls, / And bury him on the tenth, and feast the people. / On the eleventh day we would heap a barrow over him, / And on the twelfth day fight, if fight we must” (Iliad, 24.714–717).

Greek attitudes to war

The attitude toward war in the Iliad seems deeply ambivalent. The Greek warrior fights for everlasting fame; Achilles, destined for either a long but obscure life or a brief but glorious one, chooses the latter almost without hesitation. However, death remains the common lot of mortals, as Achilles himself points out: “It doesn’t matter if you stay in camp or fight— / In the end, everybody comes out the same. / Coward and hero get the same reward: / You die whether you slack off or work” (Iliad, 9.324–327). The Trojans, fighting a defensive war, have even greater cause to be weary of the ongoing strife and to long for peace. At one point, Sarpedon of Lycia, a Trojan ally, remarks to his comrade Glaucus, “Ah, my friend, if you and I / Could get out of this war alive and then / Be immortal and ageless all of our days, / I would never again fight among the foremost / Or send you into battle where men win glory, / But, as it is, death is every-where” (Iliad, 12.333–338).

The ambivalence toward war expressed in Homer’s poems reflected that of many Greeks. War, in fact, was a recurring phenomenon, figuring largely in Greece’s history. Over the years, the Greek world had participated in such major conflicts as the Persian Wars, the Peloponnesian War and its sequels, the rise of Macedonia, and the conquests of Alexander the Great, as well as numerous local wars. War shaped Greek institutions, society, and economy; the Greek philosopher Heraclitus observed, “War is the father of all things” (Heraclitus in Hornblower and Spaw-forth, p. 774). However, the negative aspects of war were continually emphasized in Greek literature, not only in Homer’s epics but also in the tragic plays of the Greek dramatists. Moreover, the Greek historian Herodotus summed up the human cost of war in the following statement: “No one is so foolish as to prefer war to peace; in peace, children bury their fathers, while in war, fathers bury their children” (Herodotus in Hornblower and Spawforth, p. 774).

Sources and literary context

No single source appears to have inspired the Iliad. When composing his poem, Homer most likely drew upon the various legends concerning the Trojan War. The Iliad is concerned only with one slice of this war, that is, one episode in the string of these legends. Allusions to incidents not depicted in the Iliad —such as Helen’s flight to Troy or Achilles’ revelation that he is destined for an early death—suggest that the poet expected his audience to be familiar with these legends.

The Iliad and its sequel, the Odyssey, are “epics,” a term generally applied to narrative poems that illustrate the past deeds of gods, heroes, and men, frequently engaged in a grand and often perilous quest. The simplicity, directness, and frequent repetitiveness of Homer’s language—formulaic phrases such as “He fell / With a thud, and his armor clanged on his body” occur repeatedly throughout the Iliad (Iliad, 5.49–50)—seem to indicate that his works were initially meant to be recited before an audience rather than read. The formulaic language suggests that the works were conceived in the tradition of orally composed poetry (whether or not they were originally written).

Taken together, the Iliad and the Odyssey form part of what would later become the Epic Cycle that purports to tell the entire legend of the Trojan War. Besides Homer’s two epics, there were six shorter works, written by different authors, which fit in around the Iliad and Odyssey to relate a complete sequence of events from the marriage of Thetis and Peleus to the death of Odysseus many years after the fall of Troy. Chronologically, the Epic Cycle consists of Cypria, Iliad, Aithiopis, Little Iliad, Sack of Troy, Returns, Odyssey, and Telegony. Only the Iliad and the Odyssey survive in their entirety; the others exist only as summaries, attributed to an obscure writer called “Proclus” (c. second century ce). While the Iliad concerns one brief phase of the ten-year war, other works in the cycle focus on different aspects. The Cypria, for example, treats the causes and early events of the Trojan War; the Little Iliad, the death of Paris among many other events; The Sack of Troy, the wooden horse and the final capture of Troy. In general the six other poems in the cycle are regarded as more recent efforts than Homer’s epics, which were famous even in antiquity for their scope, length, and complex themes.

Events in History at the Time the Epic Was Composed

The Greek Renaissance

Around 800 bce the Greek world experienced a resurgence of cultural and social activity that some scholars have described as a renaissance. The Euboean cities of Chalcis and Eretria became the dominant settlements in Greece; they were largely responsible for establishing overseas trade—especially with the East—and colonial expansion. Euboeans also founded a trading post at Al Mina on the mouth of the Orontes (in north Syria), which became a mixed community of Greeks and Phoenicians, a Near Eastern people inhabiting the coast of the Levant.

Contact between Greeks and Phoenicians led to several important developments, the most significant being the Greeks’ adoption of the consonantal Phoenician alphabet. Writing was re-discovered, becoming widespread throughout the Greek world between 750 and 650 bce. Written records noted the first Olympic games, held in 776 bce; from 683 bce onward, Athenians inscribed lists of their magistrates on stone tablets. Even more significantly, poems and legends acquired a definite form. While songs of gods and heroes had long been part of Greece’s oral tradition and thus handed down to successive generations by word of mouth, they achieved a more lasting status through writing. Set down around 750 bce, the Iliad and the Odyssey may have been among the earliest works of literature to be thus preserved.

Impact

As one of the oldest surviving examples of Greek literature, Homer’s Iliad enjoyed lasting fame and popularity for over a thousand years. Homer himself was often hailed as an incomparable poet. Later classical writers—such as those whose works made up the Epic Cycle—drew upon Homer’s version of events to complete the saga of the Trojan War. That these works were lost while the Iliad and the Odyssey survived in-tact is perhaps a further testament to Homer’s supremacy among Greek poets.

Homer’s treatment of the Trojan War influenced not only writers but warriors as well. According to historians, the Persian king Xerxes and the Macedonian conqueror Alexander the Great both made pilgrimages to the site where Troy supposedly had stood. In addition, the Romans—who conquered Greece around 146 bce—also fell under Homer’s spell. Several prominent Romans, including Julius Caesar, claimed descent from Trojan heroes, and the Roman poet Virgil composed his own Homeric epic, the Aeneid (c. 30–19 bce), detailing the founding of Rome by the Trojan hero Aeneas, one of the few to escape from the fallen city.

Even after the fall of the Roman Empire in the fifth century ce, Homer’s epic continued to fascinate readers and historians. Medieval and Renaissance authors integrated elements of the Trojan legend into their own works. Benoît de Sainte-Maure, an Anglo-Norman trouvère (narrative poet) at the court of Henry II of England, composed Roman de Troie (c. 1160; Story of Troy) an influential vernacular poetic version. William Caxton subsequently translated Benoit’s work into English prose as Recuyell of the Historyes of Troye (c. 1475). Caxton’s version later influenced Shakespeare’s play Troilus and Cressida (c. 1603), about the doomed romance between a Trojan prince and a Trojan priest’s daughter, who proves faithless to her lover when given to the Greek warrior Diomedes as a war prize.

Despite the success of some of these later versions, the appeal of the original Iliad has endured. Numerous translations appeared in sixteenth-century England, including that of George Chapman in 1611. Noted for its vigor and energy, Chapman’s Homer was later praised in a sonnet written by the Romantic poet John Keats (1795–1821). During the eighteenth century, the English poet Alexander Pope composed another translation in heroic couplets, which won high praise. The translations into English continued, with one at the turn of the twenty-first century sizing up the poem’s achievement: “The violence of the Iliad can be overpowering… yet… Homer makes that violence coexist with humanity and compassion, as close together as the city of war and the city of peace emblazoned in Achilles’ shield (Fagles in Homer, The Iliad / Homer, p. xiv).

—Pamela S. Loy