The Iliad: “whiter than snow and swift as the seawind”

Illustration by John Michael Rysbrack. 

1/ I’m writing about similes again, as Homer has some of the most vivid and interesting similes I’ve come across. 

Most of the time, the armies are compared to animals—wild animals especially: 

“Now the Lord of the Great Plains, Agamemnon, 

hit one with a spear-cast in the chest 

above the nipple; the other, Antiphos, 

he struck with his long sword beside the ear, 

toppling him from his car. […] 

A lion, discovering a forest bed, 

and picking up in his great fangs the fawns 

of a swift doe, will shake and break their backs 

and rend their tender lives away with ease, 

while she is powerless to help, though near, 

but feels a dreadful trembling come upon her; 

bolting the spot, she leaps through underbrush 

at full stretch, drenched in sweat, before the onset 

of the strong beast of prey. Just so, not one 

among the Trojans could prevent those two 

from being destroyed: the rest, too, turned and ran…” 

(Book 11) 

(translated by Robert Fitzgerald) 

You don’t often see such a long, elaborate simile, do you? 

“At last they reached the West Gate and the oak 

and halted there, awaiting one another, 

as those behind in mid-plain struggled on 

like cows a lion terrifies at dusk 

into a stampede. One cow at a time 

will see breathtaking death: damped on her neck 

with powerful fangs, the lion crunches her 

to make his kill, then gulps her blood and guts.” 

(ibid.) 

Homer’s similes are not just vivid, strongly visual; they’re full of energy.

“At this he led the way, and Aias followed, 

godlike, formidable, and before long 

they found Odysseus: Trojans had closed round him 

as tawny jackals from the hills will ring 

an antlered deer, gone heavy with his wound. 

After the hunter’s arrow strikes, the deer 

goes running clean away: he runs as long 

as warm blood flows and knees can drive him on. 

Then when at last the feathered arrow downs him, 

carrion jackals in a shady grove 

devour him. But now some power brings down 

a ravenous lion, and the shrinking jackals 

go off cowering: he must have their prey.

Just so around Odysseus, man of war 

with versatile wits, the Trojans closed…” 

(ibid.) 

Even more interesting is when Homer compares the troops to something in nature, like fire and wind:  

“As a fire catches 

in parching brushwood without trees, and wind 

this way and that in a whirl carries the blaze 

to burn off crackling thickets to the root, 

so under Agamemnon’s whirling charge 

the routed Trojans fell…” 

(ibid.)

Or: 

“A lashing gale 

out of the west will rift high snowy clouds 

the south wind piled, as big seas rise and roll 

with foam and spindrift from the whistling wind: 

so were Akhaian masses rent by Hektor.” 

(ibid.) 

The quote in the headline comes from Book 10. 

Sometimes Homer’s similes feel ironic, like when he compares the destructive act of war to the productive activity of farming: 

“Imagine at each end of a rich man’s field 

a line of reapers formed, who cut a swath 

in barley or wheat, and spiky clumps of grain 

are brought low by the scything: even so 

those armies moved to cut each other down, 

and neither Trojans nor Akhaians thought 

of ruinous retreat…” 

(Book 11) 

Or when he compares pain in war to the pain of giving birth: 

“Comparable to the throes 

a writhing woman suffers in hard labor 

sent by the goddesses of Travail, Hera’s 

daughters, Twisters, mistresses of pangs, 

the anguish throbbed in Agamemnon now.” 

(ibid.) 

Homer’s similes are dazzling. I think so far the writers I’ve read who have the most striking metaphors/ similes are Shakespeare, Dickens, Flaubert, Proust, Flannery O’Connor, and Homer. Roughly speaking, Shakespeare seems to prefer metaphors and Homer seems to prefer similes. 

On a side note, I can’t help noticing that some parts of the Iliad are packed with similes—all the examples above are from the same chapter (confusingly called book)—but some parts hardly have any. 

2/ I like this simile for Hektor: 

“As from night clouds a baleful summer star 

will blaze into the clear, then fade in cloud, 

so Hektor shone in front or became hidden 

when he harangued the rear ranks—his whole form 

in bronze aflash like lightning of Father Zeus.” 

(ibid.) 

3/ One thing readers may notice about the Iliad is that the deaths are all different. 

Another thing is that the comparisons are also varied: look at all the times Homer compares a warrior to a lion—the lion image appears over and over again throughout the poem—but each simile is different. 

“… A hungry lion 

that falls on heavy game—an antlered deer 

or a wild goat—will rend and feast upon it 

even though hunters and their hounds assail him.” 

(Book 3) 

This is different: 

“… Think of a lion that some shepherd wounds 

but lightly as he leaps into a fold: 

the man who roused his might cannot repel him 

but dives into his shelter, while his flocks, 

abandoned, are all driven wild; in heaps 

huddled they are to lie, torn carcasses, 

before the escaping lion at one bound 

surmounts the palisade. So lion-like, 

Diomedes plunged on Trojans.”

(Book 5)

This is different: 

“Imagine two young lions, reared 

by a mother lioness in undergrowth 

of a deep mountain forest—twins who prey 

on herds and flocks, despoiling farms, till one day 

they too are torn to pieces, both at once, 

by sharp spears in the hands of men.” 

(ibid.) 

The lion similes earlier in this blog post are also different. You get the idea. Except for something like “wine-dark sea”, which becomes a formulaic phrase similar to the epithets (“Odysseus, raider of cities”, “grey-eyed Athena”, “red-haired Menalaos”, etc.), Homer (generally) doesn’t repeat his comparisons. Even when he does repeat an image—comparing the ferocity of an attack to a lion on cattle, for example—he adds detail and makes the simile so elaborate that each one feels fresh and original.  

“But even so, and even now, the Trojans 

led by great Hektor could not yet have breached 

the wall and gate with massive bar, had not 

Lord Zeus impelled Sarpedon, his own son, 

against the Argives like a lion on cattle. 

Circular was the shield he held before him, 

hammered out of pure bronze: aye, the smith 

had hammered it, and riveted the plates 

to thick bull’s hide on golden rods rigged out 

to the full circumference. Now gripping this, 

hefting a pair of spears, he joined the battle, 

formidable as some hill-bred lion, ravenous 

for meat after long abstinence. His valor 

summons him to attempt homesteads and flocks

and though he find herdsmen on hand with dogs 

and spears to guard the sheep, he will not turn 

without a fling at the stockade. One thing 

or the other: a mighty leap and a fresh kill, 

or he will fall at the spearmen’s feet, brought down 

by a javelin thrown hard.” 

(Book 12) 

The Iliad is unrelenting in its depiction of the brutality of war, but it’s not at all a dry or boring read—just look at the similes. 

4/ Another image that recurs often throughout the Iliad is the boar: 

“He stirred them, 

rallying each man’s courage. As a hunter 

would send his hounds against a lion or boar 

so Hektor sent his Trojans headlong in 

against the Akhaians: Hektor, Priam’s son, 

hard as the wargod—now in pride and zeal 

this hunter led his fighters on. He fell 

on the battle line like a high screaming squall 

that blows down on the purple open sea! 

And who were the adversaries that he killed

when Zeus accorded him this rush of glory?” 

(Book 11)

That comes from the Robert Fitzgerald translation that I’m reading. Out of curiosity, I looked at the translation by George Chapman and this is how he translated the same passage: 

“Thus as a dog-giv’n hunter sets upon a brace of boars

His white-tooth’d hounds, puffs, shouts, breathes terms, and on his emprise pours

All his wild art to make them pinch: so Hector urg’d his host

To charge the Greeks, and he himself most bold and active most:

He brake into the heat of fight, as when a tempest raves,

Stoops from the clouds, and all on heaps doth cuff the purple waves.

Who then was first, and last, he kill’d, when Jove did grace his deed?”

As translation, it seems quite loose; as poetry, it sounds good. George Chapman’s Iliad came out in instalments in 1598 and this is the translation Shakespeare would have read—imagine Shakespeare’s excitement when he read Homer!