Iliad

welcome to...THE APRILIAD!

for those of you who are new here and do not yet feel the existential dread and heart-stopping moroseness that a title + month pun inspires in the hearts of many...

1) hi.

and 2) you have been cursed to stumble upon yet another installment of PROJECT LONG CLASSICS, in which i divide up an intimidating book into skinny and appealing chunks, dispersed over the course of a month.

in this case, this stems from one of my defining personality traits: pretending that someday i'll reread the million-page classics i half-read in school.

but now i'm doing it.

let's get into it.

BOOK I: PLAGUE AND WRATH
i love that the greek gods had nothing better to do than mess with human rivalries. it's like if you were allowed to pick fights between people while you watched reality tv.


BOOK II: A DREAM, A TESTING AND THE CATALOGUE OF SHIPS
this chapter was roughly 60% roll call and i have to say...homer, if you think i'm remembering ANY of these names, you are in for a posthumous surprise.


BOOK III: A DUEL AND A TROJAN VIEW OF THE GREEKS
ok...the helen stuff is sadder than i remember...

on a lighter note you have to respect homer's commitment to the wartime #OOTD.


BOOK IV: THE OATH IS BROKEN AND BATTLE JOINED
if i were SHOT by an ARROW and everyone wanted to stand around and poetically recap what had happened for paragraphs on end...i would freak the hell out.

and i certainly wouldn't be all "it isn't mortal because of my sick-ass armor, don't worry about it."


BOOK V: DIOMEDES' HEROICS
huuuuge chapter for fans of tongues getting cut off at the root.


BOOK VI: HECTOR AND ANDROMACHE
helen calling herself a "cold, evil-minded slut" and then going on to discuss how her husband is brainless and annoying...kind of a slay.


BOOK VII: AJAX FIGHTS HECTOR
you have to respect homer — that is a CRAZY matchup for this early in the game. getting the big names out there early.

menelaus really catching strays out here...he's the only one brave enough to say he'll fight hector and then agamemnon gets up and calls him old and washed up in front of everyone... #JusticeForOlympian-BredMenelaus


BOOK VIII: HECTOR TRIUMPHANT
pretty quick turnaround on triumph. hector just got his ass beat by ajax in front of everyone iirc

this chapter alone uses the insults "cry-baby" and "barefaced bitch." the ancient greeks: they're just like us.


BOOK IX: THE EMBASSY TO ACHILLES
folks...we're 20 days behind.

i don't know how this happened, but i'm guessing a combination of ennui, laziness, self-pity, distraction, a girls' trip to miami, and a hero's journey of my own involving frozen oreos and learning how to play poker.

but that's just a guess. time to play catchup - 7 days left in april and 15 books left to go!

achilles, petty king.


BOOK X: DIOMEDES AND ODYSSEUS: THE NIGHT ATTACK
i'm going to be honest — this is way, way too many names for me to be keeping active track of who belongs to which long lost city-state. let alone which gods are fans of which one.


BOOK XI: ACHILLES TAKES NOTE
achilles is like...the original person who says they're into self care but is actually just putting an amazing PR spin on being truly selfish and a nightmare to be around.

another crazy bloody chapter. and not in the british way.

although i guess that too.


BOOK XII: HECTOR STORMS THE WALL
this book loves nothing more than having one character say two full paragraphs of dialogue, then having another character parrot the exact same two paragraphs to another audience. it's very me when i'm trying to hit word count-coded.


BOOK XIII: THE BATTLE AT THE SHIPS
literally the only way that the hundreds of character names in this could be harder to track is if it were being read aloud.

which is, you know. the intention.


BOOK XIV: ZEUS OUTMANOEUVRED
look at that fancy spelling. we're in business.

hera is truly #goals in this chapter...i want to spend multiple pages getting all dressed up and be best friends with Sleep. as is we're barely even warm acquaintances.

although i guess your husband listing the various hot women he's slept with and expecting you to be flattered is not ideal.


BOOK XV: THE GREEKS AT BAY
imagine getting killed by a dart to the nipple...tough way to go out.


BOOK XVI: THE DEATH OF PATROCLUS
uh oh. we got here faster than i remembered.

oh, patroclus...you either live slaying or live long along to die seeing yourself become slayed. as the saying goes. (this works on 2 levels, because war is happening and also because patroclus is cool.)


BOOK XVII: THE STRUGGLE OVER PATROCLUS
mess with the body of patroclus and your brain WILL ooze bloody out of the crest-socket...i know that's right!!! patroclus hive we stay winning


BOOK XVIII: ACHILLES' DECISION
uh oh hector!!!!! get your ass ready!!! here the boy comes!!

we just have a dozen pages of the most stunning and poetic and emotive writing of all time to get through first. but then we're on our way.


BOOK IX: THE FEUD ENDS
you might think that if war is raging and we have bodies to collect and there's stolen armor on the lose and the battle is about to be lost that we DON'T have time for 30 pages of emotional exploration via dialogue. rookie mistake.


BOOK XX: ACHILLES ON THE RAMPAGE
i'm gonna say it...go off, king.

also extremely funny to be pleading for your life and fairly convinced it's going to work because you're the same age as your opponent. fellow 25-year-olds, we are in a permanent truce!


BOOK XXI: ACHILLES FIGHTS THE RIVER
he's just that good.

excellent strategy to hear someone's whole life story, all their suffering and sadnesses, plus YOUR involvement in it, and just go "idiot." afterward. this book is like a how-to guide for absolute sass at this point.


BOOK XXII: THE DEATH OF HECTOR
you read this title and you're all hell yeah and then you remember that little scene by the wall with the baby freaked out at the helmet and the wife and and and...

i see what you did there, homer.

and it's only slightly undercut by the beginning of this chapter being about how hector saw achilles and ran away and achilles had to chase him around the city limits thrice.


BOOK XXIII: THE FUNERAL AND THE GAMES
kind of a tough itinerary but okay.

it is a testament to the power and beauty of the conversation between patroclus' spirit and achilles that the reader only spends some time like "okay...kind of insane that we're doing the olympics right now."


BOOK XXIV: PRIAM AND ACHILLES
oh, the humanity!


OVERALL
usually i find the various installments of this project fairly easy to read, because of the whole They Are Very Short thing, but this never ended up feeling effortless. that's fine — what it did feel was incredibly evocative and impressive, a bajillion years after its writing.
rating: 4

”The true hero, the true subject, the center of the Iliad, is force. Force as man’s instrument, force as man’s master, force before which human flesh shrinks back. The human soul, in this poem, is shown always in its relation to force.” - Simone Weil (L’Iliade ou le poème de la Force)

***SPOILERS AHEAD (If it's possible to spoil arguably the best-known story in history, 3000 years after its creation... You can never be too careful)***

Hear me fellow bookworms, children of Zeus whose shield is thunder, lords of the war cry, noble charioteers, those who are a match for Ares! Readers of words, flippers of pages, inserters of… of bookmarks! For I, breaker of chains, Father of Dragons, straddler of donkeys, purveyor of nonsense; have a few words of laughably little importance to say about this cornerstone of Greek Mythology.

The Iliad was most likely composed somewhere between the late 8th and early 7th centuries BC (725-675 – They lose track of evidence around 700BC). The first known printed version dates back to 1488 meaning it was likely passed on orally and then copied by hand for about 2200 years! Bernard Knox, the man responsible for the introduction in Robert Fagle’s translation, covers some interesting historical questions about the text. Offering several different standpoints, in a respectably objective manner, Knox discusses opposing views on the original nature of the poem: Was it written or oral? Was Homer illiterate? Was it an individual effort at all or, in fact, the sewing together of many smaller works from different authors into one cohesive whole? Much of the Chinese philosophical texts were believed to have gone through a similar process of compiling and editing over time with the existence of the great Lao Tzu often met with scepticism and the Analects of Confucius of course not being the writings of the man himself but of his pupils. Knox himself draws parallels to other patchwork epics like the Finnish Kalevala and the French medieval epic, La Chanson de Roland.

Readers who are particularly new to classic epic poetry may note (Read: do note; established by reading a number of GR reviews) the long, epic titles at every introduction of an important character (“ornamental epithets”), as in my first paragraph. These are hallmarks of oral epic poetry. The heavy repetition of such epithets, along with repeated analogies (looking at you Lion/Wolf/Defenceless Goatherd) cannot be justly criticised as it was a deliberate mechanism allowing the poet to improvise, with choice of epithet dictated by the meter. Recurring passages gave poets time to focus on the upcoming scene. I’m unsure whether the quirky 2-line obituaries following even the most irrelevant character’s deaths can be included here as they tended to be specific to each character. It’s almost as though it was an attempt to get you to care about a character despite their death being the first time you’d ever heard of them. I’d put this down more to the importance placed on lineage than any poetic strategy. In any case, if you compare ‘The Iliad’ to something like ‘The Epic of Gilgamesh’, the verbatim repetition is actually not remotely as severe and has a much wider variation.


War, war and more war is what you can expect to find in the pages of the Iliad. At surface level you could be forgiven for thinking it might’ve been written by two brothers, in their early adolescence, trying to outdo each other with the addition of blood, gore and masculine bravado. Characters exchange blustering taunts, the likes of which you’d find on a football field; 70% of the book is just brothers-in-arms haranguing one another for their perceived cowardice; there are spears penetrating skulls, cut off tongues, disembowelment, it’s all very OTT and not in the least bit pretty, but then again, neither’s war!

There are a number of bizarre occurrences and non-sensical events. At one stage, Aeneas and Achilles stop, in the middle of a battlefield, for a prolonged d and m, and a leisurely exchange of life stories. In at least two cases, that of Diomedes/Glaucus and Hector/Ajax, two enemy fighters are set to engage in battle but instead end up discussing each other’s lineages, exchanging gifts and agreeing to a pact of friendship! I was left thinking, “I don’t wanna spoil this lovely moment guys, but your respective comrades are literally tearing each other to pieces all around you!!”
Equally, the idea that Menelaus and Paris could’ve settled the dispute between themselves is absurd. The Achaeans and their allies travelled 10 years to get to Troy! Regardless of the result of one-on-one combat, they’re not exactly just going to turn around and go home are they! It’s kind of a “Well, we’re here now so may as well sack the city!” type scenario.


Peculiarities aside, The Iliad hits a sound note with its contrast between reality (the ugly brutality of war) and delusion (the glorification of war) . Courage and Bravery are most coveted traits by Achaeans and Trojans alike (how easily stupidity and recklessness can be misinterpreted) and its through brave acts and courageous deeds that heroes are born, a God’s favour is found, and names are written into the history books. This foolish glorification of War, however, is at odds with the ugly narrative of the Trojan War in which men can often seem inherently cowardly and Gods pull all the strings. We’re led to question whether supposed “heroes” are ever acting of their own free will or if their courage and power (force) is all just a matter of divine intervention; Zeus and his dysfunctional family playing just another trivial game of ‘Risk – Trojan War Edition’. Homer’s opinion seems clear, we’re all most certainly subject to the whims of the Gods/the Forces at play. Any individual excellence is stripped from men as the God’s bless who they will with skill and strength, those they have fathered/mothered, those that offer the largest and most prolific sacrifices in their names, those they pity; while condemning those that have slighted them, however mildly, or perhaps those who remind them of their own partner’s infidelity (*cough* Hera).

In the end, I think Hector is the greatest example of the role the Gods play in Homer’s Iliad. The “bravest” of the Trojans by far throughout the poem, the breaker of horses, dripping head to toe in glory, an unstoppable force with Gods always at his side, whispering words of encouragement; but in the end, when all the Gods, even Zeus, are nowhere to be found and he must stand to face the mighty Achilles man-to-man, mano-a-mano, he loses his nerve (the nerve clearly instilled by the Gods) and runs for his life, 3 times around Priam’s walls!

”My son stood and fought for the men of troy and their deep-breasted wives with never a thought of flight or run for cover.” - Hecuba
….Um? Yeah, ok…


One last point I’d like to touch on is the Friends/Lovers “controversy” regarding Achilles and Patroclus. I don’t feel particularly strongly about it either way but having now completed it and read reviews of both ‘The Iliad’ and ‘The Song of Achilles’ I’m a bit taken back by some of the aggressive reactions towards any adaptation of the Iliad, screen or print, that portray them as heterosexual. I’m left scratching my head and wondering, seeing as the heavily opinionated reviews are for ‘The Song of Achilles’, how many of these people have actually read ‘The Iliad’ and how many just enjoy getting on board the outrage train! I just really dislike this modern pandemic that is false public displays of self-righteousness by uninformed people! The irony of that is that I may be historically uninformed myself however, to me, there is nothing in this text that suggests, unequivocally, that they are in a romantic relationship. It is most definitely open to that interpretation, and I welcome it (I look forward to reading TSOA myself), but could we perhaps not unjustly (in my opinion) villainise those who don’t interpret it the same way?


In closing, I very much enjoyed my reading of this seminal classic; it took me a while to get through but that’s nothing to do with the quality of the text (even if it was, who am I to say?), but more to do with a little baby girl suddenly appearing in my house! Hoping to get through, at the very least, ‘The Odyssey’, ‘The Homeric Hymns’ and ‘Hesiod’s Theogony’ in 2022 and then I’ll take it from there. Happy reading!


n  ”Like the generations of leaves, the lives of mortal men.
Now the wind scatters the old leaves across the earth,
Now the living timber bursts with the new buds
And spring comes round again. And so with men:
As one generation comes to life, another dies away.”n

They lived in a house where a narrow enfilade made up for a pitch to make up for an amateurish game of cricket with one opening to the hall room and the other two to a bedroom and kitchen facing opposite to each other. As any elder sibling is wont to do, he sneaked into the younger sibling’s bedroom and passed taunts in an attempt to slake his vengeance for the previous match lost. The challenge of a re-game to settle the dust on who is the better player would finally lead to a recollection of past games which were remembered distinctly by the two challengers in a way that favored them. The younger brother readily accepted the challenge of a replay of the previous final to settle the mad confusion of pride.
In a series of events rife with verbal intimidation and disagreements they reached up to the last ball of the final over where the younger brother had to take up a run to win the game. The bowler weighed his options and decided to propel the final ball to the weak-spot of the batsman, a well-known weakness although taking the risk of the batsman correctly anticipating it. The ball was bowled out of the reach of the batsman with its first bounce onto the floor which would in its further movement move inwards leaving the batsman with no option other than to send the ball into the hallway and in order to completely execute the shot the batsman had to shift to his weaker leg leaving him in an awkward position which made it a difficult shot to play.
As feared by the bowler, the ball was anticipated correctly and was successfully sent into the hallway and the batsmen hurtled towards the opposite end to get the single run and win the game. Little did he realize the ball dragged across the complete diagonal of the hall and reached for the showcase containing the statue of the famed discus thrower.





The statue was bought from Italy by a young man with the same smile the boy had when he reached the crease and made the winning run. The toppling sound of the statue wiped the familiar grin of the little boy’s face. He launched a frenzied run towards the showcase. He dropped to his knees and held the tiny piece of the disc thrower’s ankle which was separated from the statue owing to the ball’s force. Contrary to reacting like a child and blaming his ill-fate, he marveled at the lithe body frame of the man holding the disc, the smooth curves of the statue and why it held a special place in his father’s heart. It wasn’t just the materialistic build of its physical form. It existed among all the other antiques in the shelf but it held a special place in his father’s remembrance of his younger days indulging in Greek mythological sculptures and paintings. It had held him in a peculiar state of rapture every time he glanced at the statue.
That is the exact point of commencement of a passion the younger brother still pursues to this date. His love for statues depicting stories of an expansive mythology where men talked to the Gods, where empires fell, where heroes retaliated against a higher force, how men exulted and pride blinded them, how the Gods would favour their mortal child and often fought against other deathless Gods only realizing the mortality of humans and their petty battles leading to nothing other than a purposeless satiation of one’s ego. What merely seemed like stories found a home in the boy’s heart.
The passion sill goes strong. Have you ever been deeply conscious of a passion you pursue so as to precisely depict the impingement of an ongoing rush of adrenaline hitting you every time you think of it? The tragedy, the unending conquest of humans as well as the Gods to extend their hands and rapaciously grab onto something higher than self ultimately leading to their downfall. The realization of hubris and the rationale behind it and yet repeating our mistakes seem to be a common theme yet the circumstances and the reasoning behind it always make the stories worth the read. This conspicuous theme with a backdrop of bloody violence and unfair dealings to the mortals leaves with the same expression and the same learnings which could be possibly abstracted from other pieces of Greek literature but it still connects me to the human side of events guided by force. Interesting thing about force is the way a human being would perceive it. It might just be the different emotions depicted as Gods. Or simply an ephemeral piece of conscious driving motives in the characters.

I had originally intended to write a review sticking to my usual skeptical reader perspective trying to base them on facts and giving ratings depending on the degree of mitigating my skeptical nature towards a book but I have failed in doing so and I’m happy I did. I apologize for the disjointed review though and would gladly agree that my bias towards Greek mythology drove me to give this book a 5 star rating.

Also, this probably might be the only passion I share with my father and in a recent telephonic conversation since we hardly meet thrice a year I told him I was reading ‘Iliad’. He replied, “Now? But you already know the complete story.” And yes I would still give it a 5-star if I re-read it.

51 ημέρες που συγκλόνισαν τον κόσμο!

My very best experience with the Iliad. In fact, one of my best audio book experiences. I highly recommend this version translated by Robert Fagles and narrated by Derek Jacobi.

The Iliad was originally recited, performed orally for an audience rather than being read individually. Homer, man or group, is credited with writing it down, but it continued to be recited. I find that this is still the way to enjoy it.

From the Publisher

This set, translated by Robert Fagles, includes an abridged Iliad on six audio cassettes (nine hours) accompanied by a nine page booklet. The text is read by Derek Jacobi.

About the Author

Translator ROBERT FAGLE is chairman of the Department of Comparative Literature at Princeton University.

What I got from The Iliad:
Pantheon of Greek gods was one big hell of dysfunctional family.
Zeus was the most indecisive god ever and a terrible father who won't saved his son for fear of losing his face, so he rather just killed all of them.
The only difference between mortals and gods was just immortality and power.
Every moment of your life was literary on the whims of gods.
Heroes were only heroes if gods willed it.
One could be irrational or brave or filled by fear, weak or strong from second to second as how gods made you felt.
The admirable struggle of men and their endurance in life even as gods doomed them.
Women, mortal and immortal alike were decoration or prize or spoil of wars that could only, maybe got their way by manipulation.
Men were only worthy if they were warriors who got fame by sacking cities, stolen, enslaved and raped women and basically a mass murderer.
Women, once captured developed a severe case of stockholm syndrome that they wailed for the death of their captors.
A captured woman skilled in all arts worth 4 oxen while a tripod worth 12 oxen.
Gods was how you cheated in a game.
Never, ever bragged in front of gods, or you and your whole family will suffered the most terrible death.

To read a work of over 2000 years was in itself a fortune. To travelled back in time that far ago and glimpsed the culture and values that people hold, the life and the belief that shaped their literature was a privilege. The fact that it used to be passed orally from multiple generations and persisted to today was just majestic and in itself contained the question of why? And what it said about us.

Pablo Picasso spent his entire life trying desperately to do something new, something unique. He moved from style to style, mastering and then abandoning both modern and classical methods, even trying to teach his trained artist's hand to paint like a child.

In 1940, four French teens and a dog stumbled upon a cave that had lain hidden for 16,000 years. Inside, they found the walls covered in beautiful drawings of men and animals. When the Lascaux caves were opened to the public, Pablo Picasso visited them, and as he stared at the prehistoric hunting scenes, was heard to remark in a despondent tone: "We have invented nothing".

The Iliad is equally as humbling to a writer, as complex, beautiful, and honest as any other work. The war scenes play out like a modern film, gory and fast-paced, the ever-present shock of death. Though some have been annoyed at how each man is named (or even given a past) before his death, this gives weight to the action. Each death is has consequence, and as each man steps onto the stage to meet glory or death, Homer gives us a moment to recognize him, to see him amidst the whirling action, and to witness the fate Zeus metes.

The psychological complexity and humanism of this work often shocked me. Homer's depiction of human beings as fundamentally flawed and unable to direct their own lives predicts existentialism. The even hand he gives both the Trojans and the Argives places his work above the later moralizing allegories of Turold, Tasso, or even Milton.

Of course, Homer's is a different world than theirs, one where the sword has not yet become a symbol for righteousness. In Homer, good men die unavenged, and bad men make their way up in the world. Noble empires fall to ravenous fire and the corpses of fresh-limbed young men are desecrated.

Fate does not favor the kind, the weak, the moral, or even the strong. Fate favors some men now, others later, and in the end, none escapes the emptiness of death. Though Homer paints some men as great, as noble and kind and brave, these men do not uphold these ideals for some promised paradise, but simply because they are such men.

There is something refreshing in the purity of the philosophy of living life for yourself and yet expecting no entitlement for your deeds. A philosophy which accepts the uncontrollable winds of fate; that when the dark mist comes across our eyes, no man knows whence he goes.

Later traditions make other claims: that the righteous will be rewarded, that the lives of good men will be good and the bad will be punished. In thousands of years of thinking, of writing, of acting, have we gained nothing but comforting, untenable ideals? Then Picasso was wrong, we have invented something, but it is only a machine which perpetuates itself by peddling self-satisfaction.

I read and enjoyed the Fagles translation, which may not be the most faithful, but strikes that oft-discussed balance between joy of reading and fidelity. He makes no attempt to translate the meter into English, which is a blessing to us. The English language does a few meters well, and Homer's is not one of them.

The footnotes were competent and interesting, though I could have stood a few more of them; perhaps I am in the minority. I also thoroughly enjoyed Knox's introductory essay. I would normally have had to research the scholarly history of the book myself, and so Knox's catch-me-up was much appreciated.

n  TROY VI: THE INVENTION OF ACHILLESn

“The Classics, it is the Classics!” William Blake is said to have exclaimed, with pointed reference to Homer, “that Desolate Europe with Wars!”

Blake's exclamation might not be as atrocious as it sounds at first. There might be some truth to this, a universal truth.

Significantly however, this is not how the ancients understood it. They understood war as the catastrophe that it is.

Strabo, the Roman geographer, talking about the Trojan wars, puts it thus: “For it came about that, on account of the length of the campaign, the Greeks of that time, and the barbarians as well, lost both what they had at home and what they had acquired by the campaign; and so, after the destruction of Troy, not only did the victors turn to piracy because of their poverty, the still more the vanquished who survived the war.”

It is in this spirit that I chose The Iliad as my first read for The World War I centenary read.

However, over the war-hungry centuries throughout the middle ages and right till the World Wars, this sense of the Epic was twisted by manipulating the images of Achilles & Hector - Hector became the great defender of his country and Achilles became the insubordinate soldier/officer - the worst ‘type’, more a cause for the war than even Helen herself. Of course, Achilles’ romance was never fully stripped but Hector gained in prominence throughout as the quintessential Patriot.

Precisely because of this the Blake exclamation might have been more valid than it had a right to be.

This is why there is a need to revisit the original tragic purpose of the Epic - most commentators would say that (as above) this original purpose was against ALL wars. But there is much significance to the fact that the epic celebrates the doomed fight of two extinct peoples.

The Iliad starts on the eve of war and ends on the eve of war. Of a ten year epic war, the poem focuses its attention only on a couple or so of crucial, and in the end inconclusive, weeks (for it does not end with any side victorious but with Hector’s death).

In fact, it opens with both both Hector & Achilles reluctant and extremely ambivalent towards war. And closes with both Hector & Achilles dead - by mutually assured destruction!

In that clash of the Titans, the epic defines itself and creates a lasting prophecy.

However, before we explore that we need to understand Hector & Achilles better and also the Iliad itself.

In Medias Res

The Iliad opens in medias res, as it were, as if the epic-recitation was already on its way and we, the audience, have just joined. It is part of Homer’s genius that he creates a world already in process. The art of Iliad is then the art of the entrance, the players enter from an ongoing world which is fully alive in the myths that surround the epic and the audience.

The poem describes neither the origins nor the end of the war. The epic cuts out only a small sliver of insignificant time of the great battle - and thus focuses the spotlight almost exclusively on Hector & Achilles, narrowing the scope of the poem from a larger conflict between warring peoples to a smaller one between these two individuals, and yet maintaining its cosmic aspirations. So the important question is who are Hector & Achilles and why do these two heroes demand nothing less than the greatest western epic to define and contrast them?

n  The Long Wait For Achillesn

In Iliad, how single-mindedly we are made to focus on Hector, but all the while, the Epic bursts with an absence - that of Achilles!

After the initial skirmish with Agamemnon and the withdrawal that forms the curtain-raiser, Achilles plays no part in the events described in Books 2 through 8; he sits by his ships on the shore, playing his harp, having his fun, waiting for the promised end.

“The man,” says Aristotle in the Politics, “who is incapable of working in common, or who in his self-sufficiency has no need of others, is no part of the community, like a beast, or a god.”

Hector is the most human among the heroes of The Iliad, he is the one we can relate with the most east. The scene where Hector meets Andromache and his infant son is one of the most poignant scenes of the epic and heightened by Homer for maximum dramatic tension.



On the other hand, Achilles is almost non-human, close to a god. But still human, though only through an aspiration that the audience might feel - in identifying with the quest for kleos, translated broadly as “honor”.

‘Zeus-like Achilles’ is the usage sometimes employed by Homer - and this is apt in more ways than the straight-forward fact that he is indeed first among the mortals just as Zeus is first among the gods.

Zeus and the Gods know the future, they know how things are going to unfold.

Among the mortals fighting it out in the plains of Ilium, only Achilles shares this knowledge, and this fore-knowledge is what allows him (in the guise of rage) to stay away from battle, even at the cost of eternal honor. Fore-knowledge is what makes Achilles (who is the most impetuous man alive) wiser than everyone else.

Hector on the other hand takes heed of no omens, or signs, nor consults any astrologer. For him, famously, the only sign required is that his city needed saving - “and that is omen enough for me”, as he declares. He is the rational man. He is the ordinary man. Roused to defense.

But everything Hector believes is false just as everything Achilles knows is true - for all his prowess, Hector is as ordinary a soldier as anyone else (except Achilles), privy to no prophecies, blind to his own fate. Elated, drunk with triumph, Hector allows himself to entertain one impossible dream/notion after other, even to the extent that perhaps Achilles too will fall to him. That he can save Troy all by himself.

Hector & Achilles: The Metamorphosis

Like other ancient epic poems, the Iliad presents its subject clearly from the outset. Indeed, Homer names his focus in its opening word: menin, or “rage.” Specifically, the Iliad concerns itself with the rage of Achilles—how it begins, how it cripples the Achaean army, and how it finally becomes redirected toward the Trojans. But, it also charts the metamorphosis of Achilles from a man who abhors a war that holds no meaning for him to a man who fights for its own sake.

On the other side, it also charts how the civilized Hector, the loving family man and dutiful patriot Hector becomes a savage, driven by the madness of war.

Before that, an interlude.

The Other Life Of Achilles

One of the defining scenes of the Epic is the ‘Embassy Scene’ where a defeated Agamemnon sends Odysseus & co to entreat Achilles to return to the battle. That is when Achilles delivers his famous anti-war speech. This speech of Achilles can be seen as a repudiation of the heroic ideal itself, of kleos - a realization that the life and death dedicated to glory is a game not worth the candle.

The reply is a long, passionate outburst; he pours out all the resentment stored up so long in his heart. He rejects out of hand this embassy and any other that may be sent; he wants to hear no more speeches. Not for Agamemnon nor for the Achaeans either will he fight again. He is going home, with all his men and ships. As for Agamemnon's gifts, “I loathe his gifts!“

This is a crucial point in the epic. Achilles is a killer, the personification of martial violence, but he eulogizes not war but life - “If I voyage back to the fatherland I love, my pride, my glory dies . . . true, but the life that's left me will be long . . . “  (9.502-4)

n  Hector & Achilles: The Battle Royalen

Notwithstanding Achilles’ reluctance and bold affirmations of life, slowly, inevitably, Homer builds the tension and guides us towards the epic clash everybody is waiting for. But though it might seem as preordained, it is useful to question it closely. The confrontation is crucial and deserves very close scrutiny. We must ask ourselves - What brings on this confrontation?

On first glance, it was fate, but if looked at again, we can see that Homer leaves plenty of room for free-will and human agency - Hector had a choice. But not Achilles - instead, Achilles' choice was exercised by Patroclus.

This calls for a significant re-look at the central conflict of the epic: it might not be Hector Vs Achilles!

Patroclus and Hector instead are the real centerpiece of the epic - Achilles being the irresistible force, that is once unleashed unstoppable. It is a no-contest. Hence, the real contest happens before.

This is because, that unleashing depended entirely on Hector and Patroclus - the two heroes who only went into battle when their side was in dire straits - to defend. Both then got caught up in the rage of battle, and despite the best of advice from their closest advisors, got swept up by it and tried to convert defense into annihilation of enemy - pursuing kleos!

It is worth noting the significant parallels between Hector and Patroclus, while between Hector and Achilles it is the contrasts that stand forth.

Hector, instead of just defending his city, surges forth and decides to burn the Achaean ships. Now, the Achaean ships symbolize the future of the Greek race. They constitute the army’s only means of conveying itself home, whether in triumph or defeat. Even if the Achaean army were to lose the war, the ships could bring back survivors; the ships’ destruction, however, would mean the annihilation—or automatic exile—of every last soldier. Homer implies that the mass death of these leaders and role models would have meant the decimation of a civilization.

Which means that the Achaeans cant escape - in effect, Hector, by trying to burn the ships is in effect calling for a fight to the death!

This decision was taken in the face of very strong omens and very good advice:

In the battle at the trench and rampart in Book Twelve, The Trojans Storm the Rampart, Polydamas sees an eagle flying with a snake, which it drops because the snake keeps attacking it; Polydamas decides this is an omen that the Trojans will lose. He tells Hector they must stop, but Hector lashes out that Zeus told him to charge; he accuses Polydamas of being a coward and warns him against trying to convince others to turn back or holding back himself.

Hector is driven on by his success to overstep the bounds clearly marked out for him by Zeus. He hears Polydamas’ threefold warning (yes, there were two other instances too, not addressed here), yet plots the path to his own death and the ruin of those whom he loves.

Thus, sadly, Hector pays no heed and surges forth. Which is the cue for the other patriot to enter the fray - for Patroclus.



And thus Hector’s own madness (going beyond success in defense) in the face of sound advice brought on a crises for Achaeans to which their prime defender and patriot, Patroclus responded - and then paralleling Hector’s own folly, he too succeeded and then went beyond that to his own death. Thus Patroclus too shows that knows no restraint in victory; his friends too warned him in vain, and he paid for it with his life. By this time Hector had no choice, his fate was already sealed. Achilles was about to be unleashed.

The most important moment in Iliad to me was this ‘prior-moment’ - when Hector lost it - when he lost himself to war fury: Hector’s first act of true savagery - towards Patroclus and his dead-body. “lost in folly, Athena had swept away their senses, “ is how Homer describes Hector and his troops at this point of their triumph.

Achilles, Unchained.

Yet, Homer gives Hector one more chance to spurn honor and save himself and diffuse/stall the mighty spirit of Achilles that had been unleashed on the battlegrounds. In his soliloquy before the Scacan gate, when he expects to die by Achilles' hand, he also has his first moment of insight: he sees that he has been wrong, and significantly enough Polydamas and his warnings come back to his mind. But he decides to hold his ground for fear of ridicule, of all things!

So even as all the other Trojans ran inside the impregnable city walls to shelter, Hector waited outside torn between life and honor (contrast this with Achilles who had chosen life over honor, the lyre over the spear, so effortlessly earlier). Hector instead waits until unnerved, until too late. And then the inevitable death comes.



Thus the Rage was unleashed by two men who tried to do more than defend themselves - they tried to win eternal honor or kleos - the result is the unleashing of the fire called Achilles (his rage) which burns itself and everything around it to the ground. What better invocation of what war means?

I ask again, what better book to read for the centenary year for The World War I?

The Last Book

The last words of The Iliad are : “And so the Trojans buried Hector, breaker of horses.”

Thus, fittingly, Homer starts with the Rage of Achilles and ends with the Death of Hector. This is very poetic and poignant, but it is time for more questions:

Again, why start and end on the eve of battle? Because that is the only space for reflection that war allows. Before the madness of the fury of war or of disaster descends like a miasmic cloud. To use Homer’s own phrase, “war gives little breathing-room”.

Thus, we end the Epic just as we began it - in stalemate, with one crucial difference - both sides’ best men are dead. The two men who could have effected a reconciliation , who had a vision beyond war, are dead.

n  Homer’s Propheciesn

It is made very clear in The Iliad that Achilles will die under Trojan roofs and that Hector will find his doom under the shadow of the Achaean ships - or, both are to die in enemy territory.

Though Iliad leaves us with full focus on Hector’s death and funeral, there is another death that was always presaged but left off from the story - That of Achilles’ own. Why?

Achilles' death is left to the audience to imagine, over and over again, in every context as required. The saga of Hector & Achilles, of the doomed-to-die heroes, leaves one death to the imagination and thus effects a very neat prophetic function.

Once Hector committed his folly, once Patroclus rushed to his death, and once Achilles is unleashed, the rest is fixed fate, there is no stopping it. So Homer begins and ends in truce, but with destruction round the corner - as if the cycle was meant to be repeated again and again, stretching backwards and forwards in time - Troy I, Troy II, … to Troy VI, Troy VII, … where does it end?

Homer knows that the threshold is crossed, the end is nigh - even Troy’s destruction is not required to be part of the epic - with Hector’s death, the death of Ilium is nigh too and so is Achilles’ own death and past the myths, the death of the Greek civilization, and maybe of all civilization?

The epic leaves us with the real doomsday just over the horizon, horribly presaged by it, in true prophetic fashion.

n  The Pity of Warn

The pity of war is The Iliad’s dominant theme, but it uses themes such as love, ego, honor, fear and friendship to illuminate the motive forces behind war. In another ancient epic, Gilgamesh, the death of a friend prompts a quest which ends in wisdom and an affirmation of life; in The Iliad, the death of the fabled friend leads to a renunciation of wisdom and a quest for death itself! In Gilgamesh, the hero learns the follies of life and rebuilds civilization; in The Iliad, Achilles comes into the epic already armed with this knowledge and moves towards seeking death, choosing to be the destroyer instead of the creator.

The Iliad is n  an epic of unlearning.n It mocks optimistic pretensions. In The Iliad, the participants learn nothing from their ordeal, all the learning is left to the audience.