The story of the siege of Troy is one of heroism and tragedy. There are so many unforgettable characters here - both gods and heroes - that it is like watching an old black and white movie with those incredible crowds like in Ben Hur. You can see the vast encampment of Greeks around Troy, you can smell the cooking fires and hear the laughter in the camp - the jeers at the wall and the frustration on both sides as the siege goes on and on. The epic battles near the end the claim the lives of some of mythologies greatest heroes - Achilles and Hector - are beyond description. The Rouse translation is a bit dry but still does a great job of bringing this classic tale to life. I would love to hear from commenters on alternate translations, but this one which is a bit of a classic is the only one I have tried.

طوری که خدایان رو توصیف میکرد، جالب بود، خوشم میاد:
زئوس که تندر در دستان اوست و سپر دارد;
هرا که بازوان سفید و مرمری دارد
آکلیس که پاهای چابک و زیبا دارد
آتنا که چشمانی آسمانگون دارد...
ایلیاد داستان کاملی از بازیچه و اسباب بازی خدایان بودن آدمهاست. آدمهایی که به محضر خدایانشون دعا میکردن، قربانی میدادن، دلاوری و رشادتها میکردن...ولی همه ش برای هیچی...درواقع جنگ بین مردم یونان و تروا، جنگ بین خدایان بود. زئوس و آرس و آفرودیت یه طرف، هرا و آتنا طرف دیگه...و این وسط، پهلوانها قربانی میشدن...آکلیس، هکتور، منلائوس، پاتروکلس و آژاکس و ...
از خوندنش لذت بردم. انگار واقعا توی جنگ با اونا بودم و حتی صدای جنگ رو هم میشنیدم...توصیفاتش عالی بود، به خصوص صحنه کشته شدن پاتروکلس، چقدر عجیب توصیف کرده بود: احساس میکردم دارم این صحنه از فیلم رو با دور کند نگاه میکنم...وقتی فوبوس جوشن و زوبینشو ازش گرفت...وقتی اوفوب آدمیزاد از پشت بهش نیزه زد و وقتی هکتور با شمشیرش پهلوشو درید...رجز خوندن ها و تهدید ها و حرفهای قبل از مرگشون خیلی قشنگ بود...
چقدر کتاب با فیلمش فرق میکنه...چقدر قشنگ و حماسی نوشته...دوستت دارم شاعر نابینای یونان
به زودی میام به سرزمینت

The Iliad; "a poem about Ilium (Troy)" is one of two major ancient Greek epic poems attributed to Homer. As with the Odyssey, the poem is divided into 24 books and was written in dactylic hexameter. It contains 15,693 lines in its most widely accepted version. Set towards the end of the Trojan War, a ten-year siege of the city of Troy by a coalition of Mycenaean Greek states, the poem depicts significant events in the siege's final weeks. In particular, the fierce quarrel between King Agamemnon and the celebrated warrior, Achilles.

There are two human beings in the poem who are godlike, Achilles and Helen. Helen, the "cause" of the war, is a sort of human Aphrodite. She is irresistible. Every king in Greece was ready to fight for her hand in marriage, but she chose Menelaus, King of Sparta. When Paris, the Prince of Troy, came to visit, she ran off with him [or was abducted by him, depending on how one interprets the story], leaving husband and daughter, without a thought of the consequences for others. When she left with Paris she acted like a god, with no thought of anything but the fulfilment of her own desire. However, at the beginning of the Iliad, she has already recognised her flaws. She feels responsible for the human misery she sees all around her, something the gods never do. The gods feel no responsibility for the human victims of their private wars.

At the beginning of the Iliad Helen has already broken out of the prison of self-absorption, but this is the point at which Achilles enters it. The Iliad shows the origin, course and consequences of his rage, his imprisonment in a godlike, lonely, heroic fury from which all the rest of the world is excluded, and also his return to human stature. The road to this final release is long and grim, strewn with the corpses of many a Greek and Trojan, and it leads finally to his own death.

Achilles plays no part in the events described in Books 2 through 8; he sits by his ships on the shore, waiting for the fulfilment of his mother's promise. And by the end of Book 8, the supplication of Thetis and the will of Zeus have begun to produce results. The Greeks are in retreat, penned up in their hastily fortified camp at nightfall, awaiting the Trojan assault, which will come with daybreak. And Agamemnon yields to Nestor's advice to send an embassy to Achilles, urging him to return to the battle line. It is a magnificent offer, but there is one thing missing: Agamemnon offers no apology, no admission that he was in the wrong. Therefore, Achilles rejects this embassy and any other that may be sent. He vows to sail home the next day, with all his men.

Due to a string of events [mainly the death of his beloved fellow warrior Patroclus at the hands of Hector, Prince of Troy], Achilles decides to join the war after all. When he does go into battle, the Trojans turn and run for the gates; only Hector remains outside. And the two champions come face-to-face at last. The contrast between the raw, self-absorbed fury of Achilles and the civilised responsibility and restraint of Hector is maintained to the end. It is of his people, the Trojans, that Hector is thinking as he throws his spear at Achilles: “How much lighter the war would be for Trojans then / if you, their greatest scourge, were dead and gone!”

But it is Hector who dies, and as Achilles exults over his fallen enemy, his words bring home again the fact that he is fighting for himself alone; this is the satisfaction of a personal hatred. He taunts Hector with the fate of his body. And in answer to Hector's plea and offer of ransom for his corpse, he reveals the extreme inhuman hatred and fury he has reached: “Beg no more, you fawning dog – begging me by my parents! / Would to god my rage, my fury would drive me now / to hack your flesh away and eat you raw –” This is how the gods hate. His words recall those of Zeus to Hera in Book 4: “Only if you could breach / their gates and their long walls and devour Priam”.

Achilles lashes Hector's body to his chariot, and, in full view of the Trojans on the walls, drags it to his tent, where he organises a magnificent funeral for Patroclus. All through the funeral games he acts with a tact, diplomacy and generosity that seem to signal the end of his desperate isolation, his godlike self-absorption; we almost forget that Hector's corpse is still lying in the dust, tied to his chariot, and that Achilles refuses the will of Zeus, refuses to surrender Hector's body to his father Priam.

Only when Priam himself visits Achilles in his tent and kisses his hand does Achilles break out at last from the prison of self-absorbed, godlike passion. Achilles takes Priam's hands and begins to weep. But not for Priam but for his own aged father, to whose memory Priam had appealed and who will soon, like Priam, lose a son.

Achilles goes to collect the ransom, and when he orders Hector's body to be washed and anointed, he gives orders to have it done out of Priam's sight: “He feared that, overwhelmed by the sight of Hector, / wild with grief, Priam might let his anger flare / and Achilles might fly into fresh rage himself, / cut the old man down …” He knows himself. This is a new Achilles, who can feel pity for others. For the first time he shows self-knowledge and acts to prevent the calamity his violent temper might bring about. It is as near to self-criticism as he ever gets, but it marks the point at which he ceases to be godlike Achilles and becomes a human being in the full sense of the word.

The tragic course of Achilles' rage, his final recognition of human values – this is the guiding theme of the poem, and it is developed against a background of violence and death. But the grim progress of the war is interrupted by scenes which remind us that the brutality of war is not the whole of it. Except for Achilles, whose worship of violence falters only in the final moment of pity for Priam, the yearning for peace and its creative possibilities is never far below the surface of the warriors' minds. This is most poignantly expressed by the scenes that take place in Troy, especially the farewell scene between Hector and Andromache. (<3) But it is not enough. The Iliad remains a terrifying poem. Achilles, just before his death, is redeemed as a human being, but there is no consolation for the death of Hector. We are left with a sense of waste, which is not adequately balanced even by the greatness of the heroic figures and the action; the scale descends towards loss. The Iliad remains not only the greatest epic poem in literature but also the most tragic.

The death of Hector seals the fate of Troy; it will fall to the Achaeans, to become the pattern for all time of the death of a city. The images of that night assault – the blazing palaces, the blood running in the streets, old Priam butchered at the altar, Cassandra raped in the temple, Hector's baby son thrown from the battlements, his wife Andromache dragged off to slavery – all this, foreshadowed in the Iliad, will be stamped indelibly on the consciousness of the Greeks throughout their history, immortalised in lyric poetry, in tragedy, on temple pediments and painted vases, to reinforce the stern lesson of Homer's presentation of war: that no civilisation, no matter how rich, no matter how refined, can long survive once it loses the power to meet force with equal or superior force.

Foolish me. I thought I was going to look at the different editions of The Iliad and choose the one most readable but did not reckon with the overwhelming beauty of the language and story. The truth is, it does not matter which edition you choose, so long as you read at least one. It is inevitable that you will find yourself drawn to the question of the most beautiful and complete rendition but you may (wisely) concede defeat at the beauty of each.

The Homeric epics are said to be the greatest stories, martial stories, ever sung or written of all time, so if for some reason they did not resonate for you in high school, you may want to revisit what your teachers were talking about. When they describe the death of a man in the full bloom of his strength looking like an flower in a rainstorm, head and neck aslant, unable to withstand the beating rain, we understand. I listened to the audio of Stephen Mitchell’s streamlined translation, and it was utterly ravishing and compelling.

The Iliad is one episode among many in Homer’s epics, and it may have been assumed that listeners of the original spoken performance would be familiar with all the players in this war. It is argued by some, including British scholar M.L. West, that The Iliad has had pieces added to it over the years. Stephen Mitchell follows West’s scholarship and strips out the extra passages, a notion expanded upon in a review of Mitchell’s translation by classicist Daniel Mendelsohn in The New Yorker (2011). Mitchell’s translation may be the most readable, the most listenable one in English. It is also the shortest. Mitchell also shortens the lines in English so that they have speed and momentum for an impressive delivery.

The recent (2017) Peter Green translation, begun when Green was nearly 90 years old, is similarly easy to read; Green tells us that he began in a relaxed attitude for diversion and completed the whole within a year. Colin Burrow reviewed Green's translation in the June 18th 2015 edition of the London Review of Books. Neither the writing or the reading of this version is anguished or tortured, and Burrow points out that Green was a historian but didn't allow that to obfuscate or weigh down the poetry.

The Green & Mitchell versions both retain a long recitation of those who prepared their ships to sail with Agamemnōn to Troy to bring back Helen, the wife of Menelaös. One imagines ancient listeners shouting when their region is named, much along the lines of the cheering section of a field game, when each player’s name is called. And later, as the blow-by-blow of the battle proceeded, one imagines each region cheering when mention of their leader is declaimed, though some died horrible deaths.

This is another reason to read this ancient work: We live and die not unlike one another, we who lived so far apart in time, and perhaps the ardor young men of today have for the sword and for fame will be doused by the utterly desolate manner of death recounted here, one in particular that I cannot forget: a spear through the buttock and into the bladder meant a painful and ugly death. However, it is true that Achilles chose fame over life, knowing that his exploits in Troy would mean his physical death but his fame amongst men would be sung for “thousands of years.”

One wonders how the ballad was delivered—in pieces or over a period of days—perhaps in sections by different singers? Caroline Alexander, after a lifetime of her own research into the Homeric epics argues in The War That Killed Achilles: The True Story of Homer's Iliad and the Trojan War that the work certainly required days to recite, and may have been performed in episodes. The length of the piece suggests the piece was once short enough to be memorized, leaving room for invention and modification as befits the oral tradition.

I wonder now which European language has the most translations, and do they sometimes dare to attempt translations from ancient Greek to, say, French, and then to English? It seems we have enough scholars understanding ancient Greek to give us satisfactory versions without resorting to piggybacked translations. An attempt was made by John Farrell in the Oct 30, 2012 edition of the Los Angeles Review of Books to untangle the English translations and sort them for clarity and poetry. Those of us who love this work will read them all, especially the fascinating introductions to each in which the scholars themselves wax eloquent about what they loved about it. Mitchell's introduction is especially accessible and impelling: I could hardly wait to get to the story.

I have read reviews of people who prefer Lattimore, Fagles, Fitzgerald, or Lombardo translations and all I can say is I’m not the one to quibble about great works. Daniel Mendelsohn "graded" four translations in the article discussing Mitchell's translation. It must be a curse and a blessing both (for one's self and one’s family both) to understand ancient Greek and to feel the desire to translate Homer. All the questions any editor/translator must address, e.g., spelling, which edition is ‘original,’ more poetry or prose, whether to render the translation literally or by sense…how exhausting the decisions, but how exciting, too.

In the end, whichever edition gives you the greatest access for your first attempt to breach the ramparts of this ancient work is the one to choose for a first read. The other editions will naturally come later, once you have the sense of the story, a few names nailed down, and have that deepening curiosity about the poetry and the beauty.

One last observation is that the men in this epic were mere playthings of the gods, gods that could be cruel, petty, jealous, and vengeful. These gods were helpful to individual men or women insofar as it helped their cause vis à vis other gods. There was striving among men, but most of the time human successes or failures had less to do with who they were than with who they knew. Was it ever thus.

“Zeus set an evil lot upon us all,
to make us topics of a singer’s tale
for people in the future still unborn.”
…
The warriors met, bronze breastplates close together.
Hides clashed, spears struck, and human wills collided.
Shield bosses smashed together and created
great rattling clangs and cracks and thunderous noise.
Despair and triumph swelled among the killers
and those they killed. The earth ran red with blood.
…
“A man who fights his hardest in the war
gets just the same as one who stays behind.
Cowards and heroes have the same reward.
Do everything or nothing—death still comes.”
…
“Who are you? Where do you come from?
And do you dare to challenge me in battle?
When sons encounter me, their parents weep.”
…
“The gods have called me to my death.”

The Iliad tells a very small part of the ten-year Trojan War. Paris’s abduction of Helen, the face that launched a thousand ships? That happened nine years before the story told here. The infamous Trojan Horse the Greeks used to trick their way inside the walls and finally sack the city? That happens sometime after the end of this book. Instead, The Iliad tells a roughly week-long story that could be considered the beginning of the end of the Trojan War. It begins with the Greeks’ leader Agamemnon offending mighty, divine-born Achilles, who then refuses to help the Greeks fight until noble Hector, the Trojans’ greatest fighter and Paris’s brother, kills Achilles’ best friend Patroclus. And it ends with the legendary fight between Hector and Achilles, and the funeral held for the loser.

At times, The Iliad can be a bit tedious. There’s one section that is just a long catalog of the Greeks’ ships and crews. And there are a lot of combat sections that can get repetitive as one guy with a name, lineage and short backstory kills another guy with a name, lineage and short backstory. But most of the time The Iliad is highly entertaining and often quite moving. So much Greek mythology is woven through this book as the immortal, deathless Gods settle old scores with each other by granting or removing favors from the Greeks and Trojans at critical moments. And dozens of characters, both Gods and humans, are richly drawn—recognizable and believable in their rage and grief—despite the extraordinary circumstances they find themselves in.

The Iliad is not an easy read, at least it was not for me, so I turned it into a multimedia experience: listening along to the audiobook while reading the main text on my iPad and pausing to review the notes on the text on my iPhone. But I absolutely recommend the new translation by Emily Wilson, and the audiobook performed by the incomparable Audra McDonald. First, Professor Wilson spent seven years translating the original Greek into a very readable iambic pentameter. Second, the book comes with an introduction that introduces the themes, etc. that the reader should be looking for once they start reading. Finally, there is a lengthy notes section that provides additional detail on names, places, and phrases found throughout the text. Altogether, her translation feels like a class on The Iliad, containing everything you would want or need to get the most from your reading. Recommended.

Recuerdo cuando leí la primera vez la Ilíada, era un libro de apenas cientos de hojas, muy entretenido que lo leí en un par de días. Pero luego supe que el libro en verdad era más extenso y fue la primera vez que compré una obra literaria con mi propio dinero, recuerdo que me costó muy caro para mí pues era un colegial, pero cuando lo tuve en manos bien supe que valió la pena.
Me introdujo directamente en el mundo de la mitología griega pues su relato aunque extenso no me fue para nada aburrido, claro está me encanta los asuntos militares y no me aburrí en ningún momento, todo ello aderezado con los mitos que se cuentan y que son una fuente importantísima en la mitología griega por la gran cantidad de información que proporciona.
Es increíble la cantidad de personajes tanto principales como secundarios que puede manejar Homero en sus relatos, y así la Iliada es un conjunto de guerras, amores, desamores, traiciones, cobardías, pasiones, ambiciones todo ello entre una pugna de dioses y hombres no sólo en el sentido mismo de la guerra sino también en el de la humanidad y la gloria.

*3.5 stars*

I read the Iliad. And well, I suppose it what I was expected. It’s very slow and meandering with just event after event. There’s no real effort made to create a connection for the reader to be connected at all with either the plot with the characters. It’s really quite told in a distant way and as someone who is used to reading modern books which is really about being connected with the characters and the plot.

My first attempt to read the book I think was last year, but I didn’t get very far as it’s not the easiest read. However, after reading  The Song of Achilles, which I loved not too long ago, I thought I would pick this up again, now that the context is much clearer. Didn’t love it as much as The Song of Achilles, even though that novel is a retelling of this one but it mean I was able to follow this one along just fine even though there are so many names to keep track of and I was able to get through all of it.

Now, while I am reading a translated version of the text as unfortunately, I am not familiar with Ancient Greek, it is interesting to still look at some of the way this is worded. I found it oddly amusing that there was generally always some sort of description whenever a name of a character was mentioned. Instead of just saying Achilles, it was always something like, the son of Peleus, Achilles, or godlike Achilles. While it was almost funny at first seeing all the characters being introduced like this, it did start to get incredibly repetitive and annoying and in terms of modern writing, it is so unnecessary to provide an, albeit short description every time no matter how minor a character pops up.

This book, which is set during the last few stages of the Trojan War features a lot of battle sequences and as a huge reader of modern fantasy, the way that action is written as changed drastically. I honestly prefer the way action is written now, where a lot of the time it is quick tense sequences, largely from the character’s perspective and at how the reader really gets to feel the adrenaline pumping through them. Here, everything just sort of casually moves along and some elements are described in excruciating detail. It was certainly interesting to see at how many soldier’s names are listed but the truth was, was that I didn’t really care less. Even though there are these massive grand action sequences on an epic scale featuring literal gods, they weren’t written in a way that was actually exciting.

Now, I’m sure there are lots of elitists out there who would be like but but you don’t understand you uneducated swine. And sure, maybe I don’t. Maybe this is a genius piece of art and I simply cannot fathom at how brilliant it is. Or, maybe it’s something a white dude came up with almost 3,000 years ago and it’s time to move on to newer, more refreshing stories.

Naturally, Homer, or at least, the person we tend to think of as Homer wasn’t actually born hundreds of years later after the supposed Trojan War. I find it fascinating at how people, just over time, find it difficult to tell the difference between myth and truth and at how it is almost easier to accept that gods walked amongst us once and at how the truth happens to be bent when stories are passed down orally.

I perfectly understand at how important this story is in western literature, yet, as I found it to be overly slow and slightly repetitive, that from a modern standpoint, it failed to wow me. I get the value of this, yet if someone was to write like this now, where there is no character development, where the book is very repetitive and where the plot trudges very slowly along, it would be nowhere near as popular. A part of why this is still such a famous text is undoubtedly the fact that it was written so long ago.

Anyways, it was ok I suppose and now I can say I’ve read the Iliad. Was it worth it? I mean sure. Didn’t blow me away or anything, but I also didn’t except it to. 5.5/10

Oh my favourite sins!!! To be enjoyed on this thirteenth stop on the world tour - Ancient Greece.

Pride, wrath, revenge, honour, anger, stubbornness, and the relentless pursuit of glory in war. All constant themes in this godly work of art. A giant in Greek Mythology. A poetic masterpiece which is complex, busy with lots of characters and an abundance of Olympian gods. Fascinating, timeless and unforgettable but not an easy read.

I wish I had reviewed this when I read in my teens because now I have so many images of Achilles - not just the great warrior but also the tempestuous and sulking little devil that the book does not shy away from portraying. In fact, much of this book is told years into the Trojan wars and opens with a quarrel between Achilles and Agamemnon which results in Achilles refusing to fight because of the dishonour Agamemnon shows Achilles by stealing his female slave. And so this deadly game or war, revenge and power ensues between the Trojans, Achaeans, Greek heroes, and Olympian gods all making their mark on this richly observed story/ poem.

The contrast of courage and petty quarrels not just among the human characters but Greek gods is fascinating. So too are the themes which makes this historical account captivating and compelling.

I also loved the book ‘Song of Achilles’ because I felt it was more aligned to the way Achilles is portrayed in The Iliad. Watching the films - although blockbusters they are not how Homer depicted the great warrior Achilles who was flawed, stubborn and driven more by rage than common sense.

The Iliad is one of those books you should read in your lifetime. Going in though, remember it’s not what you see in the movies. This is Homer’s story and how he wants you to enjoy this godly world and Greek Mythology.

Its is everything you would expect from Greek literature - dramatic, tragic and heroic.

Listening to the Iliad I realized just how much I vacillate. If I lived then would I have been a Greek or a Trojan? I can see both sides: obviously Helen was abducted, but Menalaeus saw her as a prize, not as a wife, and, therefore, was probably not his only one. Greece was known to invade and vanquish territories surrounding them. This just gave them an excuse. Troy defended themselves valiantly. Their army was not the same size as Greece, but they had a mighty walk that could not be breeched without trickery.
This debate then leads me to think about who was the mightiest warrior. Obviously the choices narrow to Achilles and Hector, but what made Achilles so powerful was his mother's intervention, his staff from Chiron, his five-layered god blessed armor. Hector was mighty because he was a true determined hero.
I see a reflection of Greece's ancient domination in Russia's dominance in Eastern Europe during WWII. It was a constant taking of territory and turning the people to a new way of life, destroying whatever is in the way or defies control.
Lessons can still be learned from the Iliad. Lessons of honor, trust, loyalty, respect, determination
For an alternative perspective check out The Song of Achilles by Madeline Miller or Helen by Margaret George.

12/15/18 audiobook #252 reread

So, what do you expect me to say about this?

The first thing that strikes my mind is to think how very lucky we are to have something of the sort. That this poem, which lived unwritten for centuries, would find its place in writing and survived all kinds of historical obstacles. And it has had a life. Many weighty characters have read it and have had it as the book to carry with them and from which they drew all sorts of inspiration. Julius Caesar visited Troy and thought of moving the capital of the Empire over there. After all, he claimed to descend from one of the Trojans, from Aeneas’s son Ascanius, or rather, Iulus (from which the Gens Julia). Charles V also had the book with him in his campaign in Tunis. And so on.

I have read the Lattimore translation, together with the Companion. This was my second read and what drew me to visit it again was my wanting to read the Aneid, which, shamefully, I have not read yet. I thought I wanted to trace Aeneas too, but for different reasons to those of Julius Caesar. Another character I paid attention was Idomeneo, and that was because of Mozart’s opera, one of his earliest, and a very beautiful one.

Even if I was already aware that the Iliad is but a short episode of the lengthy war, it struck me more clearly this time, that this is really the Song of Achilles. If Troy was supposedly brought about by Paris stealing Helen, the Iliad is the story of Agamemnon stealing Briseis and the anger and stubbornness of the warrior from Phtia. Hektor comes across as the hero most palatable to a modern audience. He fights because he must. He does not exhibit the warmongering drives of his companions in the epic. And it made me feel that I want to reread Racine’s Andromaque soon, one of my favourites from the French dramatist, and which I saw years ago on the stage of the Comédie française.

There are funny scenes too. There is something of a slapstick character in Book 21 when the river Skamandros pursues Achilles, and the great hero then blames his mother

“.. It is not so much any other Uranian god who has done this
But my own mother who beguiled me with falsehoods…

Modern versions of the epic feel uncomfortable with the Olympian pantheon and tend to prune the narrative of the battalion of deities. This is most unfortunate; I found the rivalries and tricks and deceptions of these frenzied beings most engaging.

"E assim foi o funeral de Heitor, domador de cavalos."

Páginas e páginas de cabeças e membros decepados, de tripas pelo chão, onde "a terra corria negra de sangue." Mortos, mortos, mortos sem fim... Ainda assim, serei eu demasiado romântica (e ignorante) ao dizer que a Ilíada é uma história de amor(es)?
O amor entre Paris (Príncipe de Tróia) e Helena. O rapto da mulher de Menelau é a origem do ataque a Tróia pelos gregos, comandados pelo irmão, Agamémnon.
O amor entre Aquiles e Pátroclo. É com a morte deste que o belo herói esquece a ofensa de Agamémnon e renuncia à sua decisão de não lutar mais, iniciando, assim, a queda dos troianos.
O amor de Heitor pela família e pela sua Ília. Por elas, sacrifica a sua "amada vida"; domina o medo que tem de Aquiles e luta até ao fim.
O amor de Príamo pelo filho Heitor. Para recuperar o seu corpo beija as mãos do seu assassino.
O amor de Febo Apolo por Heitor. Com que carinho ele cuida do seu cadáver que todas as noites é arrastado, à volta do corpo de Pátroclo, pelo enlouquecido Aquiles.
O amor de Zeus pelos troianos (entre os quais tem filhos: Sarpédon e Helena) que o obriga a guerrear com outros deuses.

Aquiles é o herói da Ilíada. Porque é invencível na batalha [morre (não na Ilíada) pela seta de Paris, encaminhada por Apolo, por vingança dos deuses]. Mas Aquiles é um mercenário; não luta por um ideal, mas sim pelos despojos de guerra; e por vaidade, para que o seu nome se imortalize.
O verdadeiro herói da Ilíada será Heitor. Mata e morre por dever, por amor. Ele está sempre presente até ao final do poema, que termina com o seu funeral.

Nesta obra, a vida das mulheres tem pouco valor. Pedem aos deuses que protejam os seus entes queridos; choram-nos quando morrem; são usadas como prémios para os vencedores. Mas será que as dos homens valem mais? Para juntar à pira de Pátroclo, Aquiles degolou, sem luta, doze nobres troianos (e dois cães).

A Ilíada é um poema de guerra. Mais de metade das suas páginas são descrições de homens a serem chacinados. No entanto, em momento algum me aborreceu. E tantas vezes o meu rosto se encharcou de lágrimas! Porquê? Se não tem aquelas frases profundas, elaboradas, e com que nos identificamos, tentando-nos a copiá-las e guardá-las. Mas tem humanidade. É um relato da natureza humana - com as suas paixões, ambições, orgulho, crueldade, vaidade, solidariedade, e tantos bons e maus sentimentos - que faz desta obra um poema imortal e infinitamente mágico e belo.


(Jacques-Louis David - The Loves of Paris and Helen)


(Nikolai Ge - Achilles And The Body Of Patroclus)


(Karl Friedrich Deckler - The Farewell of Hector to Andromaque and Astyanax)


(Briton Riviere - Dead Hector)


(Alexander Ivanov - Priam Asking Achilles For Hector's Body)