The Iliad: “two possible destinies carrying me toward death”

Painting by Jean Joseph Taillason: Akhilleus displaying Hektor’s body at the feet of Patroklos. 

1/ One thing I didn’t know about the Iliad was that a large part of the poem was about Akhilleus (or Achilles) not fighting: the conflict between him and Agamemnon begins in Book 1, and he doesn’t return to battle till Book 19 (out of 24). In a sense, the entire Iliad is about Akhilleus’s wrath: first at Agamemnon, then at Hektor and the Trojans (for killing his friend Patroklos). 

2/ A while ago, a woman tweeted that the Iliad was essentially about mortality—I’m paraphrasing—and the thread was swarmed with lots of men angrily saying that it’s about war and honour and glory, and women couldn’t possibly get it (?). Now that I’ve read the whole poem (after nearly 3 weeks), it’s hard to see how anyone could say it’s about glory—of course glory is a big thing in ancient Greek culture and the Iliad is not an anti-war poem—but what is glorious about the Akhaians’ destruction of Troy? What is glorious about Paris taking someone else’s wife and refusing to yield her up? What is glorious about all these brutal killings? What is glorious about Akhilleus throwing away his own humanity and degrading Hektor’s body after killing him? Homer has no illusions about what “heroic men” do in war. 

To name one thing that the Iliad is about would be reductive, but I do think that mortality—the impermanence of life, the inevitability of death—is one of the central themes of the poem. Over and over and over again, Homer depicts the deaths in the Trojan War and makes us think of youthful lives cut short, and families torn apart.  

“It was young Iphidamas, 

Antenor’s brawny and athletic son, 

who had been reared in Thrace, that fertile country, 

billowy grassland, nourisher of flocks. 

Kisses, father of Theano, his mother, 

brought up the child, and when he reached the stage 

of promising manhood tried to hold him there, 

betrothing to him a daughter. But he left 

his bridal chamber for the Akhaian war 

when the word came. […]

The Lord of the Great Plains now took hold and drew 

the weapon toward him, raging, lionlike, 

wrenching it from the Trojan’s hands; then struck him 

with a sword-cut across the neck and killed him. 

Down he dropped into the sleep of bronze. 

Sad that he fought for the townsmen of his bride 

and died abroad before he could enjoy her, 

lavish though he had been for her: he gave 

one hundred beeves, and promised a thousand head 

of sheep and goats, for myriads grazed his land.” 

(Book 11) 

(translated by Robert Fitzgerald) 

Throughout the Iliad, Homer emphasises that each of these deaths is an individual, with a family and people who love them and would grieve their loss. 

When the emissaries come to Akhilleus to make peace and ask him to return to battle, he says: 

“Why must Argives 

fight the Trojans? Why did he raise an army 

and lead it here? For Helen, was it not?”

(Book 9) 

He does not care to fight. 

“Now I think 

No riches can compare with being alive 

[…] 

My mother, Thetis of the silvery feet, 

tells me of two possible destinies 

carrying me toward death: two ways: 

if on the one hand I remain to fight 

around Troy town, I lose all hope of home 

but gain unfading glory; on the other, 

if I sail back to my own land my glory 

fails-but a long life lies ahead for me…” 

(ibid.) 

It is one of the greatest scenes in the Iliad. Akhilleus does not care to fight not only because he has been humiliated by Agamemnon, but also because of the pointlessness of it all. When he returns to battle, it is not a choice of “unfading glory”—it is his sense of duty and revenge after the killing of Patroklos. And once he accepts his fate and re-enters the war, he becomes utterly ruthless. No mercy. No human feelings. And he becomes a terrifying killing machine until Book 24, when he meets Priam and thinks of his own father and regains his humanity. 

Akhilleus is one of the greatest characters in literature. 

3/ Another central theme of the Iliad, as in the Odyssey, is the caprices of the gods. Reminiscent of those lines from King Lear: 

“As flies to wanton boys, are we to the gods 

They kill us for their sport.” 

4/ The killings became increasingly heavy and tiresome after a while; the greatest—most haunting—battle would be the one between Akhilleus and Hektor (after that scene, I could see why Shakespeare didn’t like Achilles). 

My favourite scenes in the Iliad are generally not battle scenes: I love the confrontation between Agamemnon and Akhilleus; the scene of Hektor with his wife and baby; the scene of Akhilleus and the emissaries (one of whom is Odysseus); the grief of Akhilleus after Patroklos’s death; the mourning for Hektor; the meeting between Akhilleus and Hektor’s father Priam, etc. 

It is such a vast, moving work of art.