Iliad

The Iliad is one of the two great Greek epics attributed to the poet Homer. In twenty-four books of dactylic hexameter it tells of a few weeks in the tenth year of the Trojan War, beginning with the quarrel between Achilles and Agamemnon and ending with the burial of Hector. It opens with the word mênis, “wrath,” and names the subject at once: the destructive anger of Achilles (Iliad 1.1–7).

The Setting of the Trojan War

The Siege of Troy

The poem is set at Troy, also called Ilium, which a coalition of Greek forces under Agamemnon has besieged for nine years; Agamemnon says himself that nine years of great Zeus have passed and the ships’ timbers have rotted (Iliad 2.134–138). The cause of the war lies outside the poem: Paris carried off Helen, the wife of Menelaus, and the Greeks came to win her back. The gods who favour Troy’s enemies, Hera, Poseidon and Athena, are said at the end of the poem to hate Troy because of Paris’ folly when the goddesses came to his farmstead, the Judgment of Paris (Iliad 24.25–30).

The Greek and Trojan Heroes

The second book contains the Catalogue of Ships, which names the Greek leaders and their contingents, followed by a catalogue of the Trojans and their allies, introduced by an invocation of the Muses (Iliad 2.484–877). On the Greek side the poem is dominated by Achilles, Agamemnon, Menelaus, Odysseus, Ajax and Diomedes. The Trojans are led by Hector, with Priam, Aeneas and Paris. In the third book Paris and Menelaus fight a duel, with Helen watching from the wall of Troy; Menelaus is winning when Aphrodite whisks Paris away to his bedroom (Iliad 3). The truce that accompanies the duel is soon broken.

The Wrath of Achilles

Conflict with Agamemnon

The wrath begins when Agamemnon refuses to return Chryseis, the daughter of Apollo’s priest Chryses. Apollo sends a plague against the Greek army, Agamemnon agrees to give her up, and then takes Achilles’ prize Briseis in exchange; heralds lead her away from Achilles’ hut (Iliad 1.8–12, 1.318–347). Achilles withdraws from the fighting, and his mother Thetis asks Zeus to give the Trojans success until the Greeks honour her son. In the ninth book an embassy of Odysseus, Phoenix and Ajax offers him gifts and Briseis back, but he refuses; he tells them that his mother has told him he can either stay and fight at Troy and die with undying fame or go home and live long without glory (Iliad 9.410–416).

Patroclus’ Death and Achilles’ Return

With the Greeks hard pressed, Patroclus asks Achilles to let him lead the Myrmidons into battle in Achilles’ armour, and Achilles agrees (Iliad 16). Patroclus drives the Trojans back to their walls, but he is not killed by Hector alone. Apollo strikes him from behind and knocks the helmet from his head, the Trojan Euphorbus wounds him with a spear in the back, and Hector then stabs him in the belly (Iliad 16.791–822). Hearing of his friend’s death, Achilles is consumed with grief. Thetis tells him that his own death will follow soon after Hector’s (Iliad 18.95–96). Agamemnon gives up his quarrel and returns Briseis in the nineteenth book, and Achilles goes back to battle.

The Duel Between Achilles and Hector

The Fall of Troy’s Champion

The Trojans flee into the city, and only Hector waits outside the gate. Achilles chases him three times around the city (Iliad 22.165). Zeus holds out his golden scales with the fates of both men; Hector’s sinks, and Apollo, who had helped him until then, leaves him (Iliad 22.209–213). Hector dies at Achilles’ hands, after warning him that Paris and Apollo will destroy Achilles at the Scaean Gates (Iliad 22.359–360). Achilles then pierces the tendons of Hector’s feet, ties them to his chariot and drags the body, head trailing in the dust, to the ships (Iliad 22.395–404). Achilles also holds funeral games for Patroclus in the twenty-third book.

Priam’s Plea and the Return of Hector’s Body

Achilles keeps dishonouring the body until the twelfth dawn after Hector’s death, when Apollo protests among the gods and Zeus intervenes (Iliad 24.31–32); Zeus sends Thetis to Achilles and Iris to Priam, and Hermes guides the old king secretly to Achilles’ hut (Iliad 24). Priam kisses the hands that killed his sons (Iliad 24.478–479) and asks for Hector’s body, and Achilles, reminded of his own father, accepts the ransom. The Trojans mourn Hector for nine days, bury him on the tenth, and the last line of the poem says that this is how they performed the funeral of Hector, tamer of horses (Iliad 24.664–667, 24.785–787, 24.804).

The Role of the Gods

Divine Intervention

The gods are present throughout the poem and take sides. Apollo sends the plague; Hera and Athena support the Greeks; Aphrodite and Ares fight for Troy; Poseidon helps the Greeks until Zeus forbids it. Iris carries messages between them and the mortals, as in Iliad 3.121–128, where she calls Helen to the wall. Zeus is the highest authority and tries to hold the others to his plan (Iliad 8).

Fate and Free Will

Fate appears in the poem as the “portion” assigned to each man. Zeus weighs the fates of the Greeks and the Trojans on his scales in the eighth book, and the Greeks’ fate sinks to the earth (Iliad 8.69–74). The same image decides Hector’s death in the twenty-second book. Achilles knows he has a choice between a long life and undying fame, and chooses fame.

Themes and Analysis

Honor and Glory (Kleos)

Glory, kleos, is the reward that warriors fight for, and Achilles’ choice between going home and winning “imperishable glory” shows what it costs (Iliad 9.412–416). His anger begins as a dispute over honour, since the seizure of Briseis takes away the prize the army had given him.

The Horrors of War

The battle scenes name the dead one by one and describe their wounds. The poem shows grief on both sides: Hector’s parting from Andromache and their son in the sixth book, and Priam’s visit to Achilles in the twenty-fourth.

Misconceptions and Lesser-Known Facts

The Iliad’s Scope

The poem does not tell the whole Trojan War. It begins in the tenth year and ends with Hector’s funeral, so the death of Achilles, the Trojan Horse and the fall of Troy happen after it. The wooden horse built by Epeius with Athena’s help is sung of in Homer’s Odyssey (Odyssey 8.492–495), and Virgil tells of it at length in the Aeneid. The Iliad does foretell Achilles’ death, as Hector does at Iliad 22.359–360, but does not narrate it.

Achilles’ Heel

The Iliad does not say that Achilles was invulnerable except in the heel; Hector’s dying words say only that Paris and Apollo will kill him at the Scaean Gates (Iliad 22.359–360). The story of the heel appears in later writers, not in Homer.

Legacy of The Iliad

Influence on Literature and Culture

Herodotus believed that Homer and Hesiod were the poets who gave the Greeks the descent of the gods, their names, their spheres and their forms (Herodotus 2.53). The Odyssey, the other poem attributed to Homer, follows Odysseus’ homecoming from the same war.

Preservation of Oral Tradition

The Iliad uses fixed repeated phrases, such as “Hector, tamer of horses,” which closes the poem (Iliad 24.804). The poet begins by asking the goddess to sing the wrath of Achilles (Iliad 1.1), and asks the Muses for help again before the Catalogue of Ships, saying that he and his hearers know only what they have been told while the Muses see everything (Iliad 2.484–487).

The Iliad Sources

The primary source is the poem itself, attributed to Homer: Iliad 1.1–12, 1.318–347, 2.134–138, 2.484–877, books 3, 8, 9, 16, 18, 19, 22, 23 and 24 (including 24.25–30, 24.664–667, 24.785–787, 24.804). For the Trojan horse see Homer, Odyssey 8.492–495, and for Homer’s place in Greek religion, Herodotus 2.53.

See Also: Trojan War, Achilles, Hector, Paris, Helen of Troy, Odyssey