by Homer
The Story of the Iliad
The Iliad is one of the stories of ‘Ilium’ – Troy. It is the story of the tragic consequences of Achilles’ ‘baneful wrath’. The story is set in the ninth year of the war fought by the Greeks against the Trojans for harbouring Paris and the runaway wife Helen. The King of Mycenae, Agamemnon, and his brother Menelaus, the wronged husband, lead a coalition of forces under their various chiefs from all round Greece against Hector, son of King Priam of Troy. Hector too leads allies – from Greek-speaking Asia Minor, and from North of the Troad (the Dardanelles) – including the sympathetically portrayed Sarpedon.
The main story, of the consequences of Agamemnon’s insult to the best Greek fighter, Achilles, and Achilles’ withdrawal, starts Book 1. The story broadens to include Mount Olympus where the gods feast unconcerned, to the women and old men in Troy, to the heroes and casualties of the battlefield. The main story comes back in Book 9, when Agamemnon, realising that he cannot manage without Achilles, sends a delegation to soothe Achilles’ hurt pride. The rest of the tragedy comes from Achilles’ refusal to be soothed. In Book 13, Patroclus begs Achilles to let him appear in Achilles’ armour to give heart to the Greeks; he throws caution to the wind, and Book 16 has his and Sarpedon’s tragic deaths. The rest of the epic concerns Achilles’ incapacity to deal with the death of his beloved friend Patroclus – with his insane vengeful rage as he tries to find appropriate compensation for the death. Even human sacrifice and the killing of Patroclus’ killer Hector are insufficient: he carries on violating Hector’s dead body. In Book 23 he has to accept that the only thing he can do for Patroclus is to bury him with fine funeral games, games over which he presides, negotiating and rewarding rival claims to excellence. The Iliad finishes with the frail Priam’s visit to ‘man-slaying’ Achilles to beg back the body of Hector. They join in tears of common grief, in a shared sense of tragic pity, as Priam weeps over the hands that killed his son and Achilles over the reminder of his own father, soon to weep over his son now doomed to die at Troy.
Book 1
The trouble starts with a girl. The Greek commander Agamemnon is reluctant to give his prize, the beautiful Chryseis, back to her father, Phoebus Apollo’s priest. When Apollo forces his hand by sending a plague on the Greek camp, and he is compelled to give the girl back, he angrily demands compensation from his chiefs. He takes Achilles’ girl, Briseis, against all propriety. This rouses Achilles’ ‘baneful wrath’, the theme of the poem, not just because he cares for the ‘bride of his spear’. Achilles is incensed by the injustice of losing his prize, given to him as a mark of his exertion and risk-taking in a battle fought to get back someone else’s wife – Helen. Achilles is checked by Athene from killing Agamemnon but neither she nor the old and wise Nestor can persuade him to heal the rift. All he sees is that to continue to fight would be to continue to bring honour to the man who insulted him. Achilles withdraws to his tent; Agamemnon says he can do very well without him, but of course he cannot. Achilles is the best fighter among the Greeks and his stature is demonstrated by how badly the war goes without him.
There is a parallel falling out among the powers that be on Mount Olympus, where Hera, Queen of the Gods, accuses Zeus of dallying with Achilles’ mother Thetis. (Thetis has come to him to beg for the gods’ help in demonstrating the Greeks’ need for Achilles and, in ritual supplication, has thrown her arms round Zeus’ knees.) There is a pettishness and bluster similar to Agamemnon’s about Zeus’ assertion of authority when he is in the wrong. But when he blusters, the mountain shakes – the King of the Gods may not have moral authority but he has tremendous power.
The insult to Achilles’ honour brings death and tragedy to Greeks and Trojans alike – it is literally a deadly insult. The insult to the Queen is quickly resolved by the clowning of their crippled son Hephaestus. Since the gods are immortal, nothing has lasting or grave consequences for them.
Book 2
Agamemnon is shown up in Book 1 as forgetful of the responsibilities of command and of his duty to keep together and reward the forces he has summoned to avenge, as Achilles pointed out, a domestic wrong. He is exposed further in Book 2. Having received a ‘pernicious’ dream from Zeus that, after nine years of vain effort, he is about to capture Troy, he decides to test the army by reporting that the dream advised flight. The army delightedly takes up the proposition that they return to their homes and families and it needs all the guile and oratory of Odysseus to dissuade them from setting sail.
This book gives the background to the main story of the Iliad – the baneful wrath of Achilles and the sorrows and heroic deaths it caused. There is, unusually, a sense of the ordinary men, those ‘without a name’, who have become caught up in their chiefs’ feud. Their concerns are voiced by the base Thersites but also by Agamemnon and Odysseus. There is a strong evocation of the past nine years of fruitless effort, of wear and tear on men and equipment,
‘ . . . now our vessels rotten grow.
Our tackling fails; our wives, young sons, sit in their doors and long
For our arrival . . . ’
In the Catalogue of Forces there are also glimpses of other Iliads, other stories that would have been part of the Trojan War cycle of poems, and of other poets. The poet’s shaping of the narrative is also clearly visible in this book – in Zeus’s sending of a false dream and Agamemnon’s false reporting of it. This play of ironies is framed by a narratorial comment –
O fool, he thought to take in that next day old Priam’s town,
Not knowing what affairs Jove had in purpose . . .
The poet does know both what Zeus purposes and the outcome of the war. From his perspective he can criticise those with more limited vision. The poet is the servant of the Muses who ‘are present here, are wise, and all things know’ and who provide a true report of all the forces at Troy. The poet is the ‘servant of Fame’ – of report – in several senses: he is dependent on the tradition passed down through generations of poets, shaping, adding and refining the stories. He is also the servant of fame in being the one channel of immortality available for the heroes on both sides of the Trojan War – immortality of fame in epic song.
There is another invocation: ‘But now the man that overshined them all, Sing, muse’. Achilles’ claim to be best is borne out in the muse’s reckoning – ‘Great Ajax for strength passed all the peers of war While vex’d Achilles was away, but he surpass’d him far.’ The scene shifts to Hector at Troy, surrounded by the auxiliary leaders ‘of special excellence’, finishing with Sarpedon and Glaucus who are the major and most sympathetic characters on the Trojan side. At the very end of the list comes Amphimachus, never again mentioned, who is given a brief biography that both serves as his epitaph and his pathetic, momentary fame. He came to the battlefield dressed in the gold that marked him out to be a target and so doomed him:
The fool Amphimachus, to field, brought gold to be his wrack,
Proud-girl-like that doth ever bear her dower on her back;
Which wise Achilles mark’d, slew him, and took his gold, in strife
At Xanthus’ flood; so little Death did fear his golden life.
We suddenly remember what Achilles excels at.
Book 3
As Book 1 gave a character sketch of the main characters in the Greek camp – Achilles caring for his honour above all, Agamemnon weak and egotistical, Nestor old, respected, drawing on the past – so Book 3 introduces the telling characteristics of those on the Trojan side. Book 3 introduces the cause of the war – the beautiful Paris, who seduced Helen away from her Spartan home. He is set against his brother Hector, the brave leader of the Trojans. Hector is ever vigilant about his own honour and that of his allies – part of his job as war leader is to sting the heroic consciousness of his leaders, spurring them on. Paris, however, is one person untouched by others’ sense of him, by others’ heroic values, by his brother’s repr
oaches. He is unwilling to face up to Menelaus, the wronged husband, though it was his abduction of Helen (his reward for awarding Aphrodite the goddesses’ beauty prize) that started the Trojan War. Menelaus spies Paris lounging and makes for him like ‘a serpent . . . her blue neck, swoln with poison raised, and her sting out’. Paris is scared, but unrepentant. He:
Shrunk in his beauties. Which beheld by Hector, he let go
This bitter check on him: ‘Accurs’d! Made but in beauty’s scorn,
Impostor, woman’s man! O heav’n, that thou hadst ne’er been born
. . . O wretch! Not dare to stay
Weak Menelaus! But ’twas well . . .
Your harp’s sweet touch, curl’d locks, fine shape, and gifts so exquisite,
Giv’n thee by Venus, would have done your fine dames little good,
When blood and dust had ruffled them . . .
. . . thou well deserv’st
A coat of tombstone, not of steel, in which for form thou serv’st.’
To this thus Paris spake (for form that might inhabit heav’n):
‘Hector, because thy sharp reproof is out of justice giv’n,
I take it well . . .
Yet I, less practis’d than thyself in these extremes of war,
May well be pardon’d, though less bold; in these your worth exceeds,
In others, mine. Nor is my mind of less force to the deeds
Requir’d in war, because my form more flows in gifts of peace.
Reproach not therefore the kind gifts of golden Cyprides.’ [Venus]
Helen is equally beautiful, as even the old men of Troy, chattering in the sun like grasshoppers, are moved to admit:
Those wise and almost wither’d men found this heat in their years
That they were forc’d (though whispering) to say: ‘What man can blame
The Greeks and Trojans to endure for so admired a dame,
So many miseries, and so long? In her sweet countenance shine
Looks like the goddesses . . .’
Unlike Paris, however, she does have a pronounced sense of responsibility for coming to Troy. She looks down from the walls of Troy to see her fate decided, picking out for King Priam those Greek fighters who are left after nearly ten years, and is stricken with anguish.
Menelaus challenges Paris to a duel to the death – a simple settlement of the war. Menelaus prays to Zeus protector of marriage and guest bonds; he wounds Paris but not seriously, his sword breaks and he takes Paris by the throat; Aphrodite breaks his grip and wafts Paris from the battlefield to Helen’s bedroom. The proper, dignified solution has been frustrated by the gods. In extraordinary and outspoken human defiance, Helen refuses to be a pawn, refuses to go to Paris’s bed and suggests to Aphrodite that she herself go instead. But the gods cannot be defied . . .
Book 4
Book 4 opens on Mount Olympus with Zeus asking, over a cup of nectar, whether the gods should plant ‘war and combat’ or ‘impartial friendship’ between the two sides. With Hera and Athene, the losers, still feuding with the winner of the judgment of Paris, Aphrodite, the vote is for continued war. The chilling deal is that Zeus will allow Troy to be destroyed provided he can destroy Hera’s favourite cities next time he has a mind to.
On the ground, the mêlée continues, once the gods tempt an all-too-vain Pandarus into breaking the truce. The history and the craftsmanship of the bow he uses is described in loving detail, a haven of pastoral calm before the fateful arrow hits. The skin wound it inflicts on Menelaus is likened to the delicate staining of precious ivory – from a visual similarity a glowing miniature is painted of a very different world.
The rest of the book follows Agamemnon, seen in a more sympathetic light as he cares for his brother and puts heart into his troops. Battle is joined, like rivers in spate. Men die, after a short biography – like Simoisius, whose parents’ marriage and his birth are celebrated:
Sweet was that birth of his
To his kind parents, and his growth did all their care employ;
And yet those rites of piety, that should have been his joy
To pay their honour’d years again, in as affectionate sort,
He could not graciously perform, his sweet life was so short.
In dying he is likened to a poplar lying with curly leaves by the fen, felled by a wheelwright. He is given his moment in the history, his death is graced by a telling image before he becomes, like all the others, a victim to be despoiled, a victory to be vaunted.
Book 5
Book 5 is the book of Diomedes’ preeminence – his time for glory both on the battlefield and in the epic. Pallas Athene (‘the Maid’) grants him the vision to recognise immortals fighting on the battlefield so he can avoid them or, in the case of the gods of war and love (Ares, Aphrodite), take them on. Others, without it, attribute to some god or fate the chance happenings of battle: Pandarus, sure of his aim, attributes his failure to hit Menelaus to
‘Some great immortal, that conveys his shoulders in a cloud,
Goes by and puts by every dart at his bold breast bestow’d.’
Diomedes is preeminent, more than human, until warned by Apollo that he has gone too far: the god
. . . exceeding wrathful grew,
And asked him: ‘What! Not yield to gods? Thy equals learn to know:
The race of gods is far above men creeping here below.’
Far above, perhaps, but not more dignified – Ares lets out an unmartial bellow when stabbed by Diomedes.
Diomedes thinks it ignoble to shrink from fighting Aeneas and Pandarus; rather he sees them, and especially their horses, as an opportunity to win the two assets that establish the status of the hero – ‘exquisite prize’ and ‘exceeding renown’. Diomedes sometimes seems a very straightforward hero!
The gods, in disguise, play at Trojans and Greeks; when they get tired or hurt they can go home to have everything made better. Aphrodite’s mother strokes her grazed hand and soothes her by promising that Diomedes shall be punished for his ‘insolence’ in wounding her, a goddess, by being childless:
‘Diomed . . .
Not knowing he that fights with heav’n hath never long to live,
And for this deed, he never shall have a child about his knee
To call him father . . . ’
This said, with both her hands she cleans’d the tender back and palm
Of all the sacred blood they lost; and, never using balm,
The pain ceas’d, and the wound was cured . . .
Not for gods the pain, suffering, heroism or bravery of risking death, the sacrifice of leaving, as Sarpedon has done, everything that makes life worth living:
‘For far hence Asian Lycia lies, where gulfy Xanthus flows
And where my lov’d wife, infant son, and treasure nothing scant,
I left behind me . . . ’
Responding to a call to arms, Sarpedon is doomed never to see them again.
Book 6
The battle continues, with no sign of Zeus’s plan, agreed with Thetis in Book 1, to give the Trojans dominance – a dominance that would make clear to the Greeks how much they need Achilles back. The battle is a matter of individual duels, preceded by the ritual exchange of names and lineage. In battle, as in any contest, the glory of the victor rests in part on the stature and credentials of his opponent. It is the name and lineage which give each individual an identity, to combat the gods’ perspective, voiced by Apollo in Book 21, that men are no more worth quarrelling over than leaves that flourish for a time and are then replaced by others. Diomedes is here asked
‘Why dost thou so explore,’
Said Glaucus, ‘of what race I am? When like the race of leaves
The race of man is, that deserves no question, nor receives<
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My being any other breath. The wind in autumn strows
The earth with old leaves, then the spring the woods with new endows,
And so death scatters men on earth, so life puts out again . . . ’
But in his narrative of the history that marks Glaucus out as an individual, he unexpectedly establishes common ground with his foe, Diomedes. The meeting ends not in death but with an exchange of armour in token of a historic bond of hospitality between them. (The observance of this bond leads to Glaucus being tricked out of his gold armour!)
Hector goes back to Troy to organise prayers to Athene. The move to the non-combatants’ world – old men, women and children – in Troy emphasises both the bulwark that Hector is and the price paid by the dependants of those who lose the heroic duels that are going on outside. The non-combatants at that moment include Paris, who says he has been debating the merits of heroic battle, but will now join in and fight. Hector wards off the words of his mother and Helen, his dependants, as distractions and presses on to find his wife Andromache. In the most moving scene of the Iliad, he laments the fate that she will suffer, made worse because of her and her captor’s knowledge that she was the wife of the worthiest of the Trojans. His heroic stature will, after his death, be a matter of suffering not pride to those he leaves behind. Their baby cries in fear, not at the terrible future but at Hector’s helmet – the horse-hair crest he thinks grows from his father’s head. Hector tenderly reassures him and swings him through the air, and Andomache smiles through her tears. Hector prays for his son’s glorious future (a heartfelt wish that will be unfulfilled – the conquering Greeks will dash his brains out to crush the seed of Hector). He pities her, reminding her that no man escapes his fate:
