» Homer’s Illiad

Homer’s Illiad

April 8th, 2020 Andrew Cross

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Herodotus thought that Homer lived 400 years before his time, which would place Homer in the 9th century BC. Aristarchus of Alexandria believed that Homer lived 140 years after the Trojan War which would place Homer in the 11th century BC or perhaps even earlier, depending on the date assigned to that war. Most scholars place Homer later, in the 8th or 7th centuries BC since the Greeks were not thought to have gained literacy until then. There is reason to question such a late date for the development of the Greek alphabet but this leads to a larger discussion that need not detain us here.

Although we are treating Homer’s Illiad as a product of the Iron Age, I think it is worth considering the ways in which the Illiad reflects an intimate knowledge of the Bronze Age.

Geography: Homer describes the Black Sea as a gulf of the Mediterranean and he makes no mention of Italy. This is consistent with the more limited knowledge of geography Greeks would have had in the Bronze Age. By the 8th century the Greeks had made a thorough exploration of the Black and Tyrrhenian Sea and the western Mediterranean. (Ruijgh 2004)
Place Names: The cities mentioned in the Iliad may readily be identified with the powerful, well fortified, Mycenaean and Trojan cities of mainland Greece and Anatolia that were destroyed at the end of the Bronze Age. Many of the cities no longer existed in the Iron Age, and yet Homer was able to compile a complete list of cities that participated in the Trojan War.
Armament: The men are armed with bronze. Iron is considered another precious metal, comparable to gold. The soldiers wear boar tusk helmets. Several contingents carry tall square shield like those depicted on Mycenaean vases.
Vocabulary: The language is archaic. Reading Homer was, for 5th century Greeks, as difficult as reading Shakespeare or Milton is for us.

Was Homer the recipient of an epic transmitted orally over many centuries? This argument was first put forward by Milman Parry and was popularized in Albert Lord’s book, The Singer of Tales, published in 1960. Parry and Lord argued that the stories told by Homer were passed down to him in an unbroken chain by illiterate bards with prodigious memories, a view that has gained wide acceptance today. However, the poem does not seem like it is the product of numerous bards, each contributing something to the ‘ur’ text, the original epic. The poetry of Homer is unparalleled in the Greek world. It bears the stamp of a singular genius. Of course, it is possible that Homer was simply reworking older epics, but it is difficult to conceive of how Homer could exhibit such an intimate knowledge of the time and places of which he wrote if he were separated from those events by so much time. In short, Homer’s Illiad raises many questions.

Helen “the Beautiful”

The Illiad is very different from Homer’s other great epic, the Odyssey. The Odyssey is a love story that ends happily with Odysseus returning to his faithful wife Penelope. The Illiad is a tale of savage passion and war that often ends tragically. Life is brutal and short.

The war begins when Helen, the wife of Menelaus, king of Sparta, catches the eye of Paris, a Trojan prince. Paris persuades Helen to run away with him to Troy. This sparks a war between Sparta and Troy that would ultimately engulf the entire region. And yet, even after ten years of war, the Trojans cannot despise her.

And catching sight of Helen moving along the ramparts, they murmured one to another, gentle, winged words: “Who on earth could blame them? Ah, no wonder the men of Troy and Argives under arms have surrendered years of agony all for her, for such a woman. Beauty, terrible beauty! A deathless goddess – so she strikes our eyes!

But still, ravishing as she is, let her go home in the long ships and not be left behind… for us and our children down the years an irresistible sorrow. (3:185-195)

Helen seems to be a completely selfish person, a goddess incapable of self-reflection, who runs away with Paris without thought of her husband or child. But as the war drags on, Helen begins to awaken to the terrible carnage her decisions have wrought.

If only death had pleased me then, grim death,
that day I followed your son to Troy, forsaking
my marriage bed, my kinsmen and my child… (3.209-11)

…dear to me, bitch that I am, vicious, scheming-
horror to freeze the heart! Oh how I wish
that first day my mother brought me into the light
some black whirlwind had rushed me out to the mountains
or into the surf where the roaring breakers crash and drag
and the waves had swept me off before all this had happened!” (6.408-13 as cited in Fagles Introduction to the Illiad, pg 46)

Hector “the Honorable”

When Hector realizes that he is going to die, that the gods have turned against him, he resolves to go into battle and die a man.

So now I meet my doom. Well let me die –
but not without struggle, not without glory, no,
in some great clash of arms that even men to come
will hear of down the years! (22:359-363)

This was the Homeric ideal, ‘Ever to be the noblest and superior to others’ was Homeric ideal – Il. 6, 208 xi, 784′ etc Glory could not be won on the backs of others

‘a man has no truer glory than that which he wins with his own feet and hands’

Achilles “the Warrior”

The Iliad is a story about the wrath of Achilles. From the beginning, his mother, the goddess Thetis, told him that may either die gloriously in battle, or stay home and enjoy a long life with the comfort family and home. In the end, he chose to go to battle.

But Achilles sits on the sidelines for some of the most parts of the battle because his is angry that Agamemnon, the king of the Achaeans, had taken from him his share of the spoils, including Briseis, a captive girl whom Achilles loves. Agamemnon had behaved as a king might, and Achilles does not respond well to what might be considered a king’s prerogatives. He goes back to his ship, which is at the far end of the line of ships, and sulks. In the meantime, the Trojans press the Achaeans back on their ships. The fighting grows so desperate that the Achaeans fear annihilation. Only then does Agamemnon begin to make concessions in order to bring Achilles back into the war. He offers gifts, the girl Briseis, and even his own daughter as a wife, but the wrath of Achilles is not satisfied.

I loathe his gifts…
I wouldn’t give you a splinter for that man!
Not if he gave me ten times as much, twenty times over, all
he possesses now, and all that could pour in from the world’s end-
not all the wealth that’s freighted into Orchomenos, even into Thebes,
Egyptian Thebes where the houses overflow with the greatest troves of treasure…
no, not if his gifts outnumbered all the grains of sand
and sut in the earth-no, not even then could Agamemnon
bring my fighting spirit round until he pays me back,
pays full measure for all his heartbreaking outrage! (9.462-73)

Achilles wants an apology and Agamemnon is not willing to give one! Not really… When Agamemnon finally summons the will to speak to Achilles directly, he makes the incredible assertion that any wrongdoing he may have committed was due to the working of Zeus or Fate:

“But I am not to blame!
Zeus and Fate and the Fury stalking through the night,
they are the ones who drove that savage madness in my heart,
that day in assembly when I seized Achilles’ prize-
on my own authority, true, but what could I do?
A god impels all thing to their fulfillment:
Ruin, eldest daughter of Zeus, she blinds us all,
that fatal madness – she with those delicate feet of hers,
never touching the eath, gliding over the heads of men
to trap us all. She entangles one man, now another.

Achilles finally relents, but only after his friend Patroclus is killed in battled by Hector. Now Achilles is ready to fight. He does not even wish to take time to eat before going to battle.

You talk of food?
I have not taste for food – what I really crave
is slaughter and blood and the choking groans of men!

Achilles kills Hector in hand to hand combat. He then strips Hector’s body of armour and drags his body back to camp behind his chariot. This was the ultimate desecration. Hector’s father, Priam, king of Troy, sneaks into the camp of the Achaeans in the middle of the night and appears before an astonished Achilles to beg for the body of his son. Until now, we’ve seen nothing except the unquenchable wrath of Achilles. And even now, Achilles is immune to Priam’s tears. But then Priam reminds Achilles of his own father. And Achilles begins to weep. Even Achilles can show empathy.

Ajax “the Commander”

Achilles is a force of nature. He fights alone. In contrast, Ajax is an able commander who knows how to rally the troops with words that prick or encourage. When the Achaeans are pressed back against the hulls of their ships, and are nearly routed Ajax rouses their spirits, reminding them that this was their moment of glory.

“Quick, better to live or die, once and for all,
than die by inches, slowly crushed to death –
helpless against the hulls in the bloody press –
by far inferior men!” (Graves 15.592-596)

“Be men, my friends! Discipline fill your hears!
Dread what comrades say of you here in bloody combat!
When men dread that, more men come through alive-
when soldiers break and run, good-bye glory,
good-bye all defenses!”

Up in arms as they were to shield themselves, they took his word to heart
and round the ships they raised a wall of bronze. (15.517-522)

They closed ranks, they packed like a stone wall,
a granite cliff that towers against the churning surf,
standing up to the screaming winds, their sudden assaults
and the breaking waves they spawn that crash against its base-
so the Danaans stood the Trojan onslaught, rock-solid
and never flinched in fear. (15.716-720)

Sarpedon “the Honorable”

Shall i pluck him up, now, while he’s still alive
and set him down in the rich green land of Lycia,
far from the war at Troy and all its tears? (16:518-520)

But once his soul and life force have left him,
send Death to carry him home, send soothing Sleep,
all the way till they reach the broad land of Lycia.
There his brothers and countrymen will bury the prince
with full royal rites, with mounded tomb and pillar.
These are the solemn honors owed the dead.” (16.538-543)

Patroclus to Meriones
“Trurst me, my friend, you’ll never force the Trojans
back from this corpse with a few stinging taunts-
Earth will bury many a man beofre that. Come-
the proof of battle is action, proof of words, debate.
No time for speeches now, it’s time to fight. (16. 728-733)

So that now the duty’s ours-
we are the ones to head our Lycian front,
brace and fling ourselves in the blaze of war,
so a comrade strapped in combat gear may say,
‘Not without fame, the men who rule in Lycia,
these kings of ours who eat fat cuts of lamb
and drink sweet wine, the finest stock we have.
But they owe it all to their own fighting strength-
our great men of war, they lead our way in battle!’
Ah my friend, if you and I could escape this fray
and live forever, never a trace of age, immortal,
I would never fight on the front lines again
or command you to the field where men win fame.
But now, as it is, the fates of death await us,
thousands poised to strike, and not a man alive
can flee them or escape-so in we go for attack!
Give our enemy glory or win it for ourselves!” (Fagles 12.365-381)

Homer and the West

The French traveler and political commentator, Tocqueville, in one of his most prophetic passages, describes what America would look like in future ages, when men would willingly relinquish their freedoms in exchange for the comforts proffered by a vast nanny state. I think it is worth quoting at length, for one can hardly find a more stark contrast between the society that Tocqueville describes and that which Homer celebrates in epic ryhme.

I think, then, that the species of oppression by which democratic nations are menaced is unlike anything that ever before existed in the world; our contemporaries will find no prototype of it in their memories. I seek in vain for an expression that will accurately convey the whole of the idea I have formed of it; the old words despotism and tyranny are inappropriate; the thing itself is new, and since I cannot name, I must attempt to define it.

I seek to trace the novel features under which despotism may appear in the world. The first thing that strikes the observation is an innumerable multitude of men, all equal and all alike incessantly endeavoring in to procure the petty and paltry pleasures with which they glut their lives. Each of them living apart, is as a stranger to the fate of all the rest; his children and his private friends constitute to him the whole of mankind. As for the rest of his fellow citizens, he is close to them, but he does not see them; he touches them, but he does not feel them; he exists only in himself and for himself alone; and if his kindred still remain to him, he may be said at any rate to have lost his country.

Above this race of men stands an immense and tutelary power, which takes upon itself alone to secure their gratifications and to watch over their fate. That power is absolute, minute, regular, provident, and mild. It would be like the authority of a parent if, like that authority, its object was to prepare men for manhood; but it seeks, on the contrary, to keep them in perpetual childhood; it is well content that the people should rejoice, provided that they think of nothing but rejoicing. For their happiness such a government willingly labors, but it chooses to be the sole agent and the only arbiter of their necessities, facilitates their pleasure, manages their principal concerns, directs their industry, regulates the descent of property, and subdivides their inheritances; what remains but to spare them all the care of thinking and all the trouble of living?

Thus it every day renders the exercise of the free agency of man less useful and less frequent; it circumscribes the will within a narrower range and gradually robs a man of all the uses of himself. The principle of equality has prepared men for these things; it has predisposed them to endure them and often to look on them as benefits. (Tocqueville, Democracy in America, as cited in Kirk, The Conservative Mind, 208-109)