The Iliad of Homer

by Richmond Lattimore

  Pity turns out to be a key component in the total vision of this surprising epic. Achilleus’ rage persists even after he kills his friend’s slayer, leading him to mistreat Hektor’s corpse, dragging it behind his chariot as he races around the ramparts each day, a taunt to the Trojans and a horrific continuation of revenge. Pity becomes the concluding note of the poem. In what are among the most humane lines of the Iliad, Achilleus after a tense conversation, seeing the aged Priam sitting before him, thinks back to his own father and weeps (24.509–12). This moment of shared grief brings him to surrender the corpse of his enemy. It is appropriate that the poem concludes with the funeral of Achilleus’ victim, for Hektor of all warriors evokes the most pity. The audience has listened, in book 6, to the tender scene of his parting from his wife Andromache, as he goes off to certain death; they have heard of his proud delight in their infant son (knowing, despite the poet’s reticence, that the child will not survive the fall of Troy). And from the concluding lament by Helen—ironically, the woman who unwittingly caused the whole war—we finally learn of Hektor’s gentleness of manner in his role as her only friend in the city.

  Even the gods feel pity. Poseidon, emerging from the sea to view the ongoing battle on the plain of Troy, empathizes with the Greeks whom he sees being overcome by their enemies (13.15). Moved by pity, the gods as a group discuss how they might steal away Hektor’s corpse when they see Achilleus mistreat it (24.23). While the Iliad yields center stage to humans, much of the power of its vision in fact comes from its depiction of the gods as beings that feel, and act, like humans. As the ancient literary critic Longinus (first century AD) remarked: “Homer seems to me, in recording the wounds of the gods, their conflicts, deeds of vengeance, tears, and bindings, all sorts of mixed passions, to have as much as possible made the men of the Iliad gods, and the gods men” (On the Sublime 9.7).

  Through the poet’s attention to the working of the divine in human lives, the Iliad gains depth and resonance in two major ways. First of all, the divine dimension sheds glory on the humans at Troy. That the gods are so intensely concerned with warriors and their fates elevates the mortals to a special plane. At a deeper emotional level, we hear throughout the Iliad of humans actually descended from Zeus or Ares or Poseidon. Achilleus himself is a grandson of Aiakos, who in turn was a son of Zeus. His elemental opponent, the river god Xanthos (also called Skamandros) is also a son of Zeus, making their encounter in book 21 something like a family fight. Although the Greek gods father many children, the Iliad persuades its audience that Zeus and his kin feel concern and anxiety for their individual off spring. When his son Sarpedon, a Trojan ally, is about to be killed by Patroklos, Zeus actually ponders whether he might save him (but abandons the idea when Hera objects: 16.433). In sum, mortals are separated from gods by only a few facts—chiefly, that they will grow old and eventually die. Ageless and immortal, fed on nectar and ambrosia, with clear ikhôr in their veins instead of blood, the gods live at ease in cloudless calm on the snowy height of Mount Olympos. They are more massive—when Athene mounts Diomedes’ chariot in book 5, the axle groans with her weight—and they can choose to appear in whatever guise they like. But they are not alien: when they do communicate with humans in the Iliad, it is in human form (even if they may depart in the form of birds, like Poseidon at 13.62, or perch in trees, like Athene and Apollo at 7.59).

  The second poetic consequence of the Homeric understanding of the gods stems from this closeness. The symbiotic bond of gods and mortals is always teetering between adoration and antagonism. Like the high-strung heroes of the poem, hypersensitive to their honor, the gods need humans to worship and acknowledge them (e.g., Poseidon, at 7.446). Because the gods are inquisitive, meddlesome, proud of their favorite humans, and dangerously quick to anger, mortals must offer sacrifice, making sure to fill heavenly nostrils with the savor of roasting meat or pouring out wine and prayers. At the same time, humans who get too close to the gods risk being struck down. The career of Achilleus is a prime illustration. Young, well-made, a warrior but also a singer (he is the only hero seen doing this), Achilleus looks and acts like Apollo. It is no accident that Apollo, as Hektor predicts in his own death speech (22.359) will ultimately be the god who slays Achilleus, just as he did his companion Patroklos. The epic through its formulaic style (see also the “Style” section below) draws attention to the dangers of heroes antagonizing gods. Patroklos rushes at Apollo on the field of battle four times “like a divinity” (daimoni isos)—and pays with his life. Zeus and his siblings have overthrown their own Titan parents, according to Greek myth; they themselves take care never to be subverted by mortals, even by half-divine heroes.

  It would be a mistake, however, to depict the gods’ world in the Iliad as a swirling chaos of divine powers. Most of the gods (Hades excepted) dwell together in an organized household on the peaks of Olympos (conceived as being simultaneously a real mountain and an unreachable ethereal space). Ruling from on high is the father-god Zeus, who backs up his commands with a white-hot thunderbolt. Hades and Poseidon, his brothers, have their realms of underworld and sea. Others fall into line as sons or daughters of Zeus. There is a nice economy in such a polytheistic system—one god balances another, and humans cover their bets by praying to many. The Trojan War intrudes on divine harmony, however, as gods take sides, some with the Trojans, others the Greeks. Aphrodite, goddess of sex and desire, is the distant cause of the conflict, inasmuch as it was she who gifted Paris with the ability to seduce Helen (in return for his naming her fairest among goddesses). She is also the mother of the Trojan ally Aeneas (the ultimate ancestor of the Romans), and therefore is devoted to the Trojan cause. Apollo, god of divination and harmony, the initiator of young men, is also connected with Troy, for reasons more obscure, perhaps related to the historical existence of important Apollo shrines in Asia Minor. His twin sister Artemis joins him, even egging him on to fight, until she has her ears boxed and is driven off by Hera (21.481). Finally supporting Troy is Ares, the god of all-out war and battle madness.

  Allied with the Greeks are the powerful goddesses Hera and Athene, the wife and daughter of Zeus, respectively. Athene is goddess of crafts, including warcraft (as opposed to mere murderous strength), and Hera is connected with marriage and sovereignty. The two are naturally opposed to Troy, since Paris passed them over in favor of Aphrodite in the divine beauty contest. Poseidon’s enmity seems to originate a generation earlier, when he helped build Troy’s wall for the king Laomedon, who then failed to pay as promised. Another elemental god, the divine blacksmith Hephaistos, forges new armor for Achilleus at the request of Thetis, and later scorches the river Xanthos in order to rescue the hero from its flood.

  The Greeks worshiped multiple gods, as can be seen in the excavated remains of ancient temples, cult sites, and altars, with their great number of dedicated votive objects, from humble figurines to precious gold-clad statues. The vividness and variety of the divine depictions, however, were seen by at least some in antiquity not as an age-old tradition but rather as the invention of specific poets. The fifth-century BC historian Herodotus attributed to Homer and his contemporary Hesiod such basic information as the genesis and forms of the gods, as well as the titles, honors, and skills by which they were known (Histories 2.53). This is to say, poetry supplemented or even guided the Greek religious imagination, much more than did the activity of priests. In the absence of dogma or a sacred book, ancient Greek religious thought was more open to innovation and creative re-shaping, giving it a flexibility that seems strange to modern monotheists in highly organized, global faiths. The closeness of gods and humans within the Iliad and Odyssey can have occurred precisely because the composers of epic were always free to elaborate their own thoughts concerning both the divine and mortal worlds, and drew them alike.

  Of course, the poems do not celebrate just any mortals: the major epic characters are heroes. Both poet and audience know that men of their own time cannot compare with those of the heroic age
of the Trojan War, who were mighty in war, and physically stronger. Heroes were celebrated for aretê, “excellence,” or “virtue.” Relying on this, they strove to be “best” (aristos—root of “aristocracy”), and their bids for martial success, as stylized in the Iliad (e.g., Diomedes’ extended killing spree in book 5), are called aristeiai, “displays of excellence.” Various members of the audiences for epic would have traced their own ancestry back to heroes—either those associated with the Trojan War, or some of the nearly nine hundred other mortal figures who were locally important and celebrated in antiquity for heroic skills ranging from wrestling prowess to skill at sacrifice. More surprising for the modern audience, ancient Greeks worshiped these figures, bringing them offerings of animals and food, in something resembling ancestor cult or the medieval devotion to saints. The tombs of heroes were considered sites of power, and heroes could be invoked to favor the worshiper, protect his family and city-state, and even heal illnesses. While almost any warrior in the Iliad can be designated hêrôs, the ideology of heroism extended far beyond the fictional inventions of poets.

  The idea of the hêrôs who has a status between man and god appears to be a uniquely Greek invention. Herakles, whose exploits took him over the known world, conspicuously combined a warrior’s courage with aberrant, even berserk, behavior (sometimes excused as “madness” sent by his nemesis Hera). He died, but paradoxically lived forever after he was taken up onto Mount Olympos following his self-willed incineration on Mount Oita. His story may be taken as a paradigm for others—the hero fights, rules, often sins, dies, and then gains postmortem fame (a form of immortality) along with semidivine power. Even the parricide Oedipus was associated with heroic honors in several places; the tragedy Oedipus at Colonus by Sophocles (produced posthumously in 401 BC) tells of the struggle between Athens and Thebes over claims to the Theban hero’s prized burial site. Most striking to modern sensibilities is the idea that heroes are not necessarily morally upright. An Achilleus or Odysseus can bring about the deaths of many, intentionally, without remorse, and still be considered a model of toughness, skill, or endurance.

  With consummate artistry, the epic composer differentiates the heroic mortals in the Iliad by noting their different ways of speaking, of doing battle, and of interacting with other warriors, women, and the gods. A conspicuous and sophisticated set piece, the conversation on the walls of Troy (book 3), enables the poet to mention the variety of major male characters, while tacitly contrasting the views of them that we get from persons of different gender, age, and ethnicity (Helen and her interlocutor Priam): there is the kingly Agamemnon (or so he appears to Priam), Helen’s former brother-in-law; Odysseus, broad and sturdy in appearance like a ram among ewes, whom Helen remembers for his cunning; the huge battle tower Aias; and godlike Idomeneus, leader of the Cretans. We do not glimpse Menelaos in this scene, although his laconic speaking style is recalled by one of the attendant Trojans, in contrast to Odysseus’ rhetorical brilliance. A series of episodes introduces the audience to other main figures. Characterization through likeness and contrast subtly operates over the course of the poem. Achilleus, short-tempered and ardent, is unlike the more temperate, family-oriented Hektor, but bears a resemblance to the brash Diomedes. Agamemnon comes across as harsher and unfeeling, especially in contrast to the brother whom he overshadows, the milder Menelaos. Odysseus comes close to him in status, but is clearly far more strategically intelligent. In another pairing of brothers, Paris invites comparison with Hektor, emerging as a less important, even frivolous, figure, although more directly responsible for the war. The pair of Trojan allies Glaukos and Sarpedon evokes the dynamic relation between Patroklos and Achilleus, as also that between Hektor and his more cautious brother Poulydamas. Nestor, the aged adviser on the Greek side, finds a parallel in Priam among the Trojans. In short, the technique is kaleidoscopic, offering intriguing patterns and family resemblances that shift and deepen the further one works into the poem.

  On a slightly smaller scale, the same approach produces a vivid, varied set of female characters. At first, the male focus seems to slight women: Chryseis, the captive girl about whom the initial quarrel erupts in the Greek camp, never speaks for herself. In this she resembles the anonymous women of Lesbos—famous only for skills at craft—whom Agamemnon promises to Achilleus in his later attempt to woo him back to war (9.270). But in the unfolding of the poem, women are far from being mute objects of exchange. Another captive, Briseis, whom we first hear about as a counterpart to Chryseis, turns out to make one of the most impassioned laments at the death of Patroklos (19.282), giving voice to a social category that another poet might have treated as marginal or forgettable. The acknowledged existence of strong, independent goddess figures makes an interesting background for the poem’s depiction of mortal equivalents. Hekabē, the mother of Hektor, echoes something of Hera’s nagging tone when she chastises her husband Priam (24.201). On the other hand, Andromache, wife of Hektor, is shown possessing a combination of strength and tender vulnerability that is never on view among divine females. She is clearly the summit of feminine virtue in the poem.

  As such, she makes for a final, fascinating contrast with Helen. The woman whose elopement or abduction began the conflict at Troy, Helen remains the most intriguing female figure in the Iliad. The story with which she is connected is an old one paralleled in many cultures, as catalogued by Stith Thompson in The Motif-Index of Folk-Literature5 (R151.1: “Husband rescues stolen wife”). Helen’s mother was commonly said to be the Spartan woman queen Leda, impregnated by Zeus in the form of a swan, or—less commonly and more grimly—to be Nemesis, the goddess of divine retribution (cf. the mostly lost epic poem Cypria). We see Helen as the wife of Paris, but know she has been the consort of Menelaos: the doubleness tied to her character is persistent. Her earlier experiences before reaching Troy are rarely alluded to—for example, her flight from Sparta with Paris (3.444) and visit to Sidon (6.292)—thereby allowing the audience to judge her mostly by her own words, rather than pigeonholing her either as a wanton or a victim. Deftly sketched interactions over books 3 and 6 with the disguised Aphrodite, Priam, Paris, and Hektor show Helen, by turns, sarcastic, defiant, regretful, complaisant, ashamed, wistful, and resigned. She is a shimmering figure, impossible to pin down. It is appropriate that another tale, possibly as old as Hesiod (fr. 358 MW), elaborated by the choral poet Stesichorus in the sixth century BC and later exploited by Euripides in his Helen, said that Helen never went to Troy: that was only a phantom image of her, an eidôlon, fought over by multitudes while the real woman stayed safe in Egypt.

  Other evidence from the lore of mainland Greece connects Helen to the yearly worship of a fertility power, associated especially with trees. Again it is appropriate if, in the deep past, Helen had been a goddess. She retains the aura of being unattainable. And this quality is not just a feature of the folktale kernel behind the entire Trojan saga. Instead, in the stylized form of the Homeric vision, it becomes a statement for the human condition. You can’t always (or ever) entirely get what you want. Helen, essence of desire, cannot be had without disastrous consequences. Or in the more succinct version of the poet Alcman, in a song made for girls’ choruses in Sparta (Helen’s own city) in the seventh century BC: “Let no man fly to heaven, or attempt to marry Aphrodite.”

  THE WORLDS OF THE ILIAD

  The vision that the Iliad offers need not be directly related to the historical circumstances in which the epic was composed. Its most pervasive message—that the all-important pursuit of glory is a hotly contested, zero-sum game—could have arisen in any culture with limited resources and an aristocratic warrior class. But what precise world—or amalgamation of worlds—does the Iliad depict? And when is it likely the poem was composed? Even if we had the answer to the second question, we could not readily assume that the society and institutions depicted in the epic mirrored those of the composer’s era. It is well known that other epic poems, for which we have independent historical tes
timony, stylize, distort, or change completely the events and conditions they supposedly represent. The Old French Song of Roland, for example, accurately records that Charlemagne, king of the Franks, made an expedition into Spain in 778, some three hundred years before the poem was composed, but it completely changes the facts when it comes to the major episode: the king’s retreating troops were massacred not by pagan Saracens but by a renegade Basque contingent (as Christian as the Franks). Similar distortions crop up in many other epic traditions, including Serbo-Croatian, Spanish, African, and Germanic.

  We can try to winnow out actual historical elements of the Iliad, in contrast to how the poem envisions the heroic world (which may or may not have had a real basis) by observing continuities with later institutions and attested cultural practices in Greece, especially Athens of the Classical period. If features of the poem seem to have a plausible relationship with later, independently attested phenomena, there is a chance they are grounded in reality, even though we still cannot date them to a particular era before recorded Greek history.