The Iliad (meaning a song about Ilium) and the Odyssey
are Greek epic poems, conventionally attributed to a
singularly talented poet named Homer, who lived in the east Greek
region of Ionia in the 8th century B.C.E. Most
scholars today, however, question the idea that one singer-poet
composed either or both poems, at least not as we would imagine a poet
composing today. Further, a growing number of scholars contest
the 8th century date of composition. There were multiple
Trojan War story traditions developing at that time; homeric epic is
not the earliest nor did it emerge as especially influential or
important until the 6th century B.C.E. That much said,
in classical antiquity the songs that became our Iliad and Odyssey
did eventually achieve a unique and honorific status, which
lived on in western European culture and literature.
People today know the Iliad as a book, usually
printed as lines of poetry and translated from the ancient Greek into
English or another modern language. They experience it in the
silence and solitude of reading. The first lines plunge most
contemporary readers into the middle of an unfamiliar story populated
by dozens of equally unfamiliar characters. The modern-day
encounter with the Iliad however, is unlike that of most Greeks
in the ancient world, especially before the time of Alexander the Great
at the end of the 4th century B.C.E. Outside of a
lettered elite in the historical period, most ancient Greeks would have
read Homer rarely if at all. Instead, from childhood, they would
have heard Trojan War poetry,
including precursors to our Iliad, sung by poet-singers in
feasting halls and during regional athletic festivals or musical
competitions. The basic plot and the cast of characters were not only
common knowledge, they were woven into the fabric of Greek social and
cultural life.
In early Greek settlements and cities, largely isolated by
their location on islands or in the mountainous terrain of the southern
Balkan peninsula, a rich variety of local versions grew up around the
basic plot of the Trojan War story. The names of Trojan War heroes were
figured into the genealogies of local elites and memorialized on civic
ritual occasions. The visual world was richly imbued with images of the
Trojan War. In their cities and in regional sanctuaries, ancient
Greeks could have looked up at Trojan War scenes sculpted into temple
pediments. They poured wine from ceramic vessels depicting the war's
events, sometimes even identifying characters by name. Further,
those fortunate enough to boast a hero's grave in their locale believed
they enjoyed his special beneficence and they responded with rituals of
worship at his tomb.
In the 7th and 6th centuries B.C.E. the
development of regional sanctuaries, such as Olympia and Delphi,
occasioned a new direction in Trojan War epic song; the development is
commonly referred to as panhellenism ('all Greek'). Regional festivals
brought together Greek singers and audiences from different cities and
districts who nonethless shared a language and many social, cultural,
and mythic traditions. The need for singers to perform for
audiences gathered from many regions gave rise to a Trojan War epic
tradition marked less by local allusions and heroes than by those with
wide recognition and appeal. The result was a broadly diffuse and
increasingly invariable tradition, which became over time our Iliad
and Odyssey. Although the panhellenic homeric epics
eventually dominated in literature, local traditions lived on, as is
evinced in both poetry and art.
In sum, for generations of ancient Greeks, the encounter with
the Iliad was aural and iconographic, public, variant, resonant
with vibrant local traditions and, in time, also panhellenic.
How those living oral traditions evolved into the paperback you hold in
your hand has been the subject of much debate; so much so that is is
usually referred to as the Homeric Question. Before we take up that
very important question, however, we turn to the Trojan War story told
in the Iliad.
|
The Iliad day-by-day
The Iliad begins, famously, in medias res, announcing
the theme of the song as the rage of Achilles resulting from a quarrel
with Agamemnon, a quarrel that occurred in the 10th and
final year of the Trojan War. It concludes not with the end of
the war but the end of Achilles' rage and a return to normalcy,
symbolized by the funeral rites for Hektor. Although the action takes
place over a period of only 45 days, the poem uses allusion to earlier
events and foreshadowing of later ones to encompass the entire duration
of the war.
Day 1
Book 1: The Iliad opens with the narrator's
appeal to the Muse ('Goddess') to sing the wrath of Achilles and its
dire consequences for thousands of Achaeans (one of the Homeric terms
for the invading forces, which the poem never refers to as
'Greeks'). The Muse, now implicitly the narrator, begins the song
with a quarrel that erupts between Agamemnon and Achilles after
Chryses, a priest of Apollo, had come to the Greek camp to ransom his
captive daughter Chryseis. When Agamemnon dismissed the priest out of
hand, Chryses appealed to Apollo, who avenged the insult by sending a
plague into the camp.
On the 10th day of the plague, day 1 of the poem's
action, Achilles convenes an assembly to discern why Apollo is angry
and what must be done to appease him. The seer Kalchas pronounces
Agamemnon the cause of the plague and prescribes returning the girl as
the only remedy. Angry over the loss of his war-prize and the prestige
she represents, the commander agrees to give her up only if the Achaean
kings replace her with one of their captive women. Achilles
denounces Agamemnon's military leadership as a charade rooted in greed
and his demand for a replacement prize as outrageous, considering that
the armies had come to Troy to help him and to pile up booty for
themselves. Moreover, all the plunder had already been
distributed; it would not be right to take it back. Not one to
brook a public challenge, Agamemnon tells Achilles that he can go home
now, but without his war-prize Briseis, whom Agamemnon claims for his
own. Achilles draws his sword with intent to take the other man's
life, but is restrained by Athene, who promises that waiting will pay
off in prizes worth three times what Agamemnon is taking away.
When Achilles finally concedes, Chryseis is returned to her father,
Briseis is taken from Achilles' shelter, and the offended hero goes to
the seashore to call upon his mother Thetis for help. He
persuades her to ask Zeus to help the Trojans drive the Achaeans back
among their ships until they recognize the madness of dishonoring the
best of the Achaeans.
Day 14
True to her word, after Zeus's return to Olympos twelve days
later, Thetis goes to him with Achilles' request and gains his
consent. When Hera takes Zeus to task for plotting with the
sea-nymph against the Trojans, a quarrel ensues.
Distracted, however, by Hephaestos's antics, Hera, Zeus, and the rest
of the gods end the day with laughter, feasting, music, and finally,
sleep.
Book 2: That night, Zeus sends a deceitful dream to
Agamemnon, projecting victory for the Greeks on the next day if he will
marshal them for battle.
Day 15: First day of battle
Books 2-7: In the morning Agamemnon summons the kings
who form his council and tells them about the dream. He declares
his purpose to test the morale of the troops in a public assembly by
reporting that the war is a lost cause instead of revealing the hopeful
message of the dream. If the leader of the Greek forces was
hoping to rally the troops to the war effort by using reverse
psychology, he was sorely disappointed. Upon his announcement in
the assembly the men make for the ships and must be forcibly
reassembled by Odysseus. Urged by members of his council,
who now share the blame in the event of failureâ to stay the
course, Agamemnon relents and sends the Achaians to eat and prepare for
battle. The poet invokes the Muse again and embarks on a lengthy
catalog, first of the Greek leaders and contingents and then of the
Trojan and allied leaders.
The two armies take the field, but instead of engaging they
consent to a duel between Paris and Menelaos to determine the outcome
of the war. The narrative shifts to Troy, where Helen, summoned
to a vantage point on the wall, points out the Achaean leaders to Priam
and the elders of the city. Back on the battlefield, Menelaos is
decisively winning the single combat when Aphrodite sweeps Paris safely
back to his bedroom, where he is joined by Helen. While they make love,
Menelaos claims victory in the duel by default, and a truce is called.
The scene shifts again, this time to Olympos, where the gods
conspire to restart the war, in which all now have a stake, by inciting
the Trojan archer Pandaros to break the truce. His arrow
grazes Menelaos and the two armies join battle. The narrative
first follows the exploits (known as an aristeia) of Diomedes
on the battlefield. When Aphrodite tries to sweep Aineias out of
his path, Diomedes wounds her, sending her crying to her mother.
Hektor, with Ares at his side, gains temporary advantage, but Athene
takes charge of Diomedes' chariot and urges him to attack the war-god
himself. Ares complains to Zeus and the gods retire from the
battlefield. When the tide of battle again turns in favor of the
Greeks, Hektor slips back into the city to instruct the women to appeal
to Athene, their patron goddess, for help. While there he finds
and seems to say his farewells to his wife Andromache and their young
son Astyanax.
Hektor returns to the plain of Troy to find the battle still
raging. On the prompting of Helenos, he calls for another
duel to decide the war, this time between him and a champion of the
Greeks' choosing. Telamonian Ajax, known as the bulwark of the
Achaeans and famous for defensiive war craft, is chosen
by lot and the duel commences. Nightfall brings it to an
indeterminate end. Returning to their respective dwellings,
the Achaeans are counseled to dig a trench and construct an associated
palisade to protect the ships, while the Trojans debate returning Helen
to her husband.
Day 16 (truce)
Early in the morning, the Trojans propose a truce, to which
the Greeks agree, so that each side may bury their dead.
Day 17 (truce)
The Greeks take advantage of the ceasefire to dig a trench
and build a palisade between their ships, drawn up on the shore, and
the plain of Troy. Angered that they had built the wall without
first offering sacrifice, Poseidon protested that its memory would
outlast that of the wall he and Apollo had built around the city.
Zeus assures his brother that when the Achaeans depart Troy he may wipe
out every trace of the makeshift fortifications.
Day 18 Second Day of Battle
Books 8-10: Zeus orders the gods to stay out of the
battle and himself watches the action from the vantage point of Mt.
Ida. The scale he uses to weigh the fates of the two armies
indicates that the Trojans will win the day. Following a
Trojan advance the Greeks enjoy a brief resurgence, but Hektor is
unstoppable and the Greeks are soon driven back behind the wall.
Nightfall finds the Achaeans dispirited and the Trojans camped on the
plain, eager to force their way among the Greek ships at morning's
light.
Agamemnon summons the Greek generals to private council and,
now with utter seriousness, advises abandoning Troy that night in order
to escape with their lives. Diomedes rashly advocates
staying the course. Nestor, however, gently urges Agamemnon to
placate Achilles with gifts and conciliatory words, knowing that
Diomedes' plan is doomed to fail apart from the fighting power of the
offended king. In a thinly veiled effort to obligate and
subordinate Achilles, Agamemnon sends Odysseus, Ajax, and Phoinix to
his shelter with a rich offer of ransom. The embassy attempts to
effect his return by recasting Agamemnon's ransom as a generous gift,
by enticing Achilles with the possibility of killing Hektor and winning
glory, and by exploiting their bonds of friendship and filial duty, but
to no avail. Asserting that he must choose between a long
but inglorious life in his native Phthia and death at Troy, which would
bring him undying fame, Achilles declares his intent to set sail for
home the next day. That his only choice, however, is to die
at Troy is evinced when he concludes that he will not leave but will
also not take up arms until the Trojans threaten to set his own vessels
ablaze. The embassy reports disingenuously that Achilles will
leave for home the next day and he advises others to do the
same. Dismayed, the council nonetheless approves Diomedes'
flawed plan to carry on the war without their best
combatant. Odysseus and Diomedes, clad in animal skins, set
out on a noctural spying mission in hopes of discovering the designs of
the Trojans, whose campfires flicker ominously on the plain.
Day 19 Third day of battle
Books 11-18: Agamemnon leads the armies out and
himself kills a number of Trojans, allowing the Greek forces to gain
the upper hand temporarily. When he is wounded and carried in a
chariot back to the ships, Hektor recognizes it as a sign that Zeus
will now favor the Trojans. Diomedes and Odysseus also
retreat from the battlefield wounded, while Ajax holds the Trojans at
bay. The three injured leaders are shortly followed by Machaon
the physician, who is struck by an arrow and carried back to the camp
in Nestor's chariot. Achilles, watching the wounded come
in, suggests to Patroklos that perhaps now the Achaeans' situation is
dire enough that they will come to him on bended knee. He
sends his friend off to Nestor's shelter to inquire about the injured
man (and perhaps to give the old king opportunity to counsel the
leaders to do what is right by Achilles).
With Hektor pressing ever nearer to the palisade, Patroklos
chafes to ask his question of Nestor and hurry back to Achilles.
But the old man indulges in a long speech, urging his young guest to
persuade Achilles either to join battle or, failing that, to send
Patroklos out in Achilles' armor at the head of the Myrmidons to
frighten the Trojans and buy the Greeks some breathing
space. Patroklos is further delayed in returning to
Achilles' shclter when he comes across a wounded companion, Eurypylos,
and stops to tend him. Meanwhile Ajax manages to defend the wall
surrounding the ship until Hektor comes close enough to smash one of
the gates with a stone, allowing the Trojans to pour through the
breach. At this moment, Zeus is temporarily distracted,
perhaps by Hera's seduction, as we will see, and Poseidon takes
advantage of his inattention to join the battle and rally the
Greeks. The three wounded leaders, Agamemnon, Diomedes, and
Odysseus also make an appearance and urge on their troops fighting
among the ships. With renewed vigor, the Achaeans turn the
Trojans in flight back across the ditch. Ajax hurls a huge
stone at Hektor and sends him reeling; his companions manage to haul
him to safety where he lies on the ground in a daze. And
all the while Zeus is oblivious, having fallen into a deep sleep after
being seduced by his wife.
The king of the gods awakens to find that his plan to help
the Trojans, and thus fulfil his promise to Thetis, has been derailed:
Hektor is on the ground vomiting blood and the Greeks are streaming out
through the walls in hot pursuit. Zeus quickly orders the
gods helping the Achaeans to leave the battlefield and sends Apollo to
revive Hektor and help the Trojans recover the ground lost while he was
sleeping. With Apollo's help, the palisade is breached a second
time so that the Trojans are able to cross it in waves. The
Achaeans fall back and the fighting rages among the ships; Hektor
reaches for one of the prows and prepares to torch it.
Patroklos, hearing the noise of battle coming nearer, leaves
Eurypolos and carries Nestor's message to Achilles. Achilles
consents to let his friend lead the Myrmidons out in his armor on the
condition that Patroklos not pursue the Trojans all the way to the city
wall. The ruse works for a time, and Patroklos slaughters
Trojans until he is stopped by Apollo, who knocks off his helmet, and
Hektor, who deals him a death blow. A tug-of-war ensues over the
corpse, by now stripped of its marvelous armor. When Achilles
hears of his friend's death, he steps to the wall and utters a
terrifying war cry, a flame emerging from his head; this frightens the
Trojans so that the Achaeans recover Patroklos' body. Achilles
mourns, lying in the dust, but also steels himself to return to battle
with one goal: to kill Hektor. Soon afterward, he will meet his
own end. Hektor now wears Achilles' arms, so Thetis asks
Hephaistos to make a new set for her son.
Day 20 Fourth Day of Battle
Books 19-22: Achilles receives his new armor and
summons the Achaeans to assembly in preparation for combat. He
announces the end of his anger, regretting the day he had captured the
woman Briseis who became the object of such a ruinous quarrel, and
urges the men to marshal for battle at once. He is delayed,
however, first by Agamemnon who denies personal responsibility for the
quarrel and extends the same offer of ransom as he had the night
before, and by Odysseus, who insists on taking a common meal before
going into combat. Achilles brushes aside both symbols of
reconciliation with Agamemnon, vowing to neither eat nor drink until he
avenges Patroklos' death. While the men eat, Athene
fortifies him with nectar and ambrosia; he then arms himself for war.
Zeus assembles the gods on Olympos and gives them leave to
rejoin the fighting, in part to keep Achilles from storming the city
walls contrary to his destiny. Achilles nearly kills Aineias, who
is fated to survive the war, but Poseidon sweeps him out of
danger. He captures 12 Trojans and sends them to the camp
to die on Patroklos' funeral pyre. Lykaon, whom he had sold
into slavery before, he now hews down as the Trojan warrior begs for
his life. Achilles' savage slaughter of enemy warriors
intensifies until he literally chokes the River Skamandros with their
corpses and the river rises up against him, enraged. Up to
now the gods have left Achilles on his own, but when he calls out for
help against this elemental force of nature, Hera sends Hephaistos to
overcome the flooding river with fire. The gods return to
comic skirmishes among themselves while the berserk mortal hero cuts
down the Trojans, who are now retreating in panic. Apollo
distracts Achilles momentarily, allowing the last of the Trojans to
escape to safety behind the city walls, except Hektor who alone remains
outside. Gripped by fear, Hektor takes flight and Achilles
chases him in a grim life or death race around the circuit of the city.
When Athene appears near Hektor in the form of his brother, he
takes courage, thinking he is not alone, and turns to face his dread
opponent. He asks for an agreement that whoever is victor
will return the corpse of his victim to the family for burial, but
Achilles disavows any such settlement. As Priam and Hekabe
look on in horror, Achilles rushes upon Hektor and drives the spear
though the soft part of his neck, the only spot left vulnerable by his
own glorious armor. Refusing the offer of ransom gasped out
by the dying man, the raging hero counters that if he could he would
hack Hektor's flesh away and eat it raw; as it is, he will leave that
messy work to dogs and birds. With that, Achilles lashes
the dead man's feet to his chariot and drags him back to the Achaean
camp.
Book 23: That night, after the Greeks share a funeral
meal, the ghost of Patroklos visits Achilles in a dream and requests a
swift burial.
Day 21
The Greeks burn Patroklos on a funeral pyre, together with
offerings and the 12 captured Trojans.
Day 22
Patroklos' bones are gathered and buried under a mound of
earth. Achilles announces funeral gamesâ including a
chariot race, boxing, wrestling, and a footraceâ where he
presides, distributes the prizes, and settles quarrels but does not
participate.
Days 23-33
Book 24: Achilles is still mourning his friend and
daily for 12 days drags Hektor's corpse around the funeral mound.
Day 34
The gods meet in council and debate stealing the corpse in
order to put an end to Achilles' senseless abuse and allow Hektor's
family to perform funeral rites. Zeus, however, arranges
for a settlement that Achilles had earlier disavowed: he sends
instructions to Priam to take ransom to Achilles for the release of his
son's body and instructions to Achilles to accept the
ransom. That night with Hermes as guide, the king of Troy
makes his way into the Achaean camp and slips unnoticed into Achilles'
shelter. He takes hold of the powerful man by the knees, a
gesture of supplication, and kisses his hands. Achilles is
moved to pity by the reminder of his own elderly father. The two
men weep together for their respective losses and Achilles agrees to
accept the fabrics and other precious objects Priam has brought as
ransom and to send the old man back to Troy with his
sonâÄôs body. A meal is shared and Achilles
agrees to restrain the Greeks for the 12 days needed to complete the
funeral rites.
Days 35-43
Before dawn, Priam is roused early to return to Troy,
carrying his dead son on the cart previously loaded down with treasure.
Hektor is lamented first by his wife Andromache, then by his
mother Hekabe, and finally by Helen. For nine days the
Trojans gather wood for the funeral pyre.
Day 44
Hektor is burned on the funeral pyre.
Day 45
The Trojans gather Hektor's bones for burial, with which the Iliad
ends.
|