Iliad
This is the article about the famous epic Greek poem. For other uses of Iliad, see Iliad (disambiguation).The
Iliad (
Ancient Greek ,
Ilias) is, together with the
Odyssey, one of the two
ancient Greek epic poems, attributed to
Homer, a supposedly blind
Ionian poet. Scholars dispute whether Homer existed and whether he was a single person, but it is clear that the poems spring from a long tradition of
oral poetry. Their influence on subsequent Greek, Roman and European culture has been enormous.
The epics are considered by most modern scholars to be the oldest literature in the Greek language, though some believe that the works of the poet
Hesiod were composed earlier, a belief that was also held by some classical Greeks. For most of the twentieth century, the
Iliad and the
Odyssey were dated to the
8th century BC, but many scholars (including
Martin West and
Richard Seaford) now prefer a date in the
7th or even the
6th century BC.
The poem concerns events during the last (ie. 10th) year in the siege of the city of
Ilion, or
Troy (See
Trojan War). The word
Iliad means "pertaining to
Ilion" (
Latin Ilium), the name of the city proper, as opposed to
Troy (
Greek: Τροία,
Troía;
Latin:
Troia) the state centered around
Ilium, over which
Priam reigned. The names are often used interchangeably.
The
Iliad begins with these lines:::Transliterated::M"nin aeide thea, P"l"iadeō Akhil"os:oulomen"n, h" muri' Akhaiois alge' eth"ken,Translated::Sing, goddess, the rage of Achilles the son of Peleus,:the destructive rage that sent countless pains on the Achaeans...
The first word of the
Iliad is
m"nin, "rage" or "wrath." This word announces the major theme of the
Iliad: the wrath of
Achilles. When
Agamemnon, the commander of the Greek forces at Troy, dishonors Achilles by taking
Briseis, a slave woman given to him as a prize of war, Achilles becomes enraged, and withdraws from the fighting. Without Achilles' prowess in battle, the Greeks are nearly defeated by the Trojans. Achilles reenters the fighting when his close friend
Patroclus is killed by the Trojan
Hector. Achilles slaughters many Trojans, and kills Hector.
Priam, the father of Hector, ransoms his son's body, and the
Iliad ends with the funeral of Hector.
Of the many themes in the
Iliad, perhaps the most important is the idea of what a hero is. Achilles is forced to make a choice between living a long life or dying young on the battlefield. For the Greeks of Homer's day, the latter would have been a better choice because death in battle leads to honor and glory which were the most important values of the day " more important than even right and wrong. One of the remarkable things about the
Iliad is the way that Achilles, especially in Book 9, both embraces concepts of honor and glory and also rejects them. It should be noted that, despite the fact that he is the
antagonist in the story,
Hector probably best displays the qualities of an ancient Mediterranean hero.
Many Greek myths exist in multiple versions, so Homer had some freedom to choose among them to suit his story. See
Greek mythology for more detail.
Background to the Iliad: the Trojan War
The action of the
Iliad covers only a few weeks of the tenth and final year of the
Trojan War. Neither the background and early years of the war (
Paris' abduction of
Helen from
King Menelaus), nor its end (the death of
Achilles and the fall of Troy), are directly narrated in the
Iliad. Many of these events were narrated in other epic poems collectively known as the
Cyclic epics or the epic cycle; these poems only survive in fragments. See
Trojan War for a summary of the events of the war.
The story of the Iliad
Overview
Apollo has sent a plague against the Greeks, who had captured Chryseis, the daughter of the priest
Chryses, and given her as a prize to
Agamemnon. Agamemnon is compelled to restore Chryseis to her father. Out of pride, Agamemnon takes
Briseis, whom the Athenians had given to
Achilles as a spoil of war. Achilles, the greatest warrior of the age, follows the advice of his mother,
Thetis, and withdraws from battle in revenge and the allied
Achaean (Greek) armies nearly lose the war.
In counterpoint to Achilles' pride and arrogance stands the Trojan prince
Hector, son of King
Priam, with a wife and child, who fights to defend his city and his family. The death of
Patroclus, Achilles' dearest friend or lover, at the hands of Hector, brings Achilles back to the war for
revenge, and he slays Hector. Later Hector's father, King Priam, comes to Achilles alone (however he was aided by
Hermes) to ransom his son's body back, and Achilles is moved to pity; the funeral of Hector ends the poem.
Book summaries
* Book 1: Nine years into the war,
Achilles and
Agamemnon quarrel over a slave girl,
Achilles withdraws from the war in anger
* Book 2:
Odysseus motivates the
Greeks to keep fighting;
Catalogue of Ships, Catalogue of Trojans and Allies
* Book 3:
Paris challenges
Menelaus to single combat
* Book 4: The truce is broken and battle begin
* Book 5:
Diomedes has an aristea and wounds
Aphrodite and
Ares* Book 6:
Glaucus and
Diomedes greet during a truce,
Hector returns to Troy
* Book 7:
Hector battles
Ajax* Book 8: The gods withdraw from the battle
* Book 9:
Agamemnon retreats: his overtures to
Achilles are spurned
* Book 10:
Diomedes and
Odysseus go on a spy mission
* Book 11:
Paris wounds
Diomedes, and
Achilles sends
Patroclus on a mission
* Book 12: The
Greeks retreat to their camp and are besieged by the
Trojans* Book 13:
Poseidon motivates the
Greeks* Book 14:
Hera helps
Poseidon assist the
Greeks* Book 15:
Zeus stops
Poseidon from interfering
* Book 16:
Patroclus borrows
Achilles' armour, enters battle, kills
Sarpedon and then is killed by
Hector* Book 17: The armies fight over the body and armour of
Patroclus* Book 18:
Achilles learns of the death of
Patroclus and receives a new suit of armour. The
Shield of Achilles is described at length
* Book 19:
Achilles reconciles with
Agamemnon and enters battle
* Book 20: The gods join the battle;
Achilles tries to kill
Aeneas* Book 21:
Achilles fights with the river
Scamander and encounters
Hector in front of the
Trojan gates
* Book 22:
Achilles kills
Hector and drags his body back to the
Greek camp
* Book 23: Funeral games for
Patroclus* Book 24:
Achilles lets
Priam have
Hector's body back, and he is burned on a pyre
After the Iliad: the end of the war and the returns home
Although certain events subsequent to the funeral of Hector are foreshadowed in the
Iliad, and there is a general sense that the Trojans are doomed, a detailed account of the fall of Troy is not set out by Homer. The following account comes from later Greek and Roman poetry and drama.
Achilles fights and kills the
Amazon queen
Penthesilea and the Aethiopean king
Memnon. Very soon he is killed on the battlefield by
Paris with a poisoned arrow to his vulnerable heel. (See
Achilles' Heel). After his death,
Ajax and
Odysseus feud over who should keep his armour. They submit their disagreement to an impromptu court and Odysseus is awarded the armour. Ajax subsequently goes mad and slaughters his livestock, believing they are the Trojan commanders. He then kills himself in shame.
The
Amazons come to join the battle.
Philoctetes, a crippled Greek who had been abandoned by the others along the journey, was recruited by the god Heracles because it was prophesied the war could not be won without his bow.
Odysseus devises a plan to take the city. He has his men build a large, hollow
wooden horse, and then he and twenty others hide inside. The Greek ships withdraw out of sight of Troy, apparently admitting defeat, and leave behind the horse, purportedly as an offering to Poseidon for good winds on the return trip. The Trojans take this inside the great walls of Troy, and then feast and celebrate their victory and the war's end. At night, Odysseus and the soldiers creep out of the horse and open the gates to the other Greeks who have sailed back under cover of night. The city is sacked, and in some accounts burned for seven years.
Priam is killed. According to one tradition,
Hector's wife
Andromache throws their son
Astyanax and herself from the ramparts to save them from
slavery. According to another, Astyanax was killed by
Neoptolemus, son of Achilles, to ensure that Hector's son could not seek vengeance for his father's death against Achilles' son. Andromache became Neoptolemus' concubine, later to marry
Helenus, Hector's brother. A Roman tradition held that
Aeneas escaped with his family and several hundred people, who after years of migration eventually founded
Rome. (This tradition is best known from
Virgil's Aeneid).
Odysseus' long journey home is narrated in Homer's
Odyssey.
Menelaus and
Helen returned to
Sparta to rule. Agamemnon took home as a slave the priestess
Cassandra, who was gifted with prophecy but cursed never to be believed. When he returned home he was murdered by his wife
Clytemnestra and her lover,
Aegisthus. They in turn were killed by
Agamemnon's son,
Orestes, and his daughter,
Elektra.
The
Iliad contains a sometimes confusingly great number of characters. The latter half of the second book (often called the
Catalogue of Ships) is devoted entirely to listing the various commanders. Many of the battle scenes in the
Iliad feature bit characters who are quickly slain. See
Trojan War for a detailed list of participating armies and warriors.
*The
Achaeans (Αχαιοί) - the word "Hellenes", which would today be translated as "Greeks", is not used by Homer
**
Achilles (Αχιλλεύς) the leader of the
Myrmidons (Μυρμιδόνες) and the principal Greek champion whose
anger is the over-arching theme of the story
**
Agamemnon, (Αγαμέμνων), King of
Mycenae, supreme commander of the
Achaean armies whose actions provoke the feud with Achilles; brother of King
Menelaus**
Patroclus, (Πάτροκλος) beloved companion to Achilles
**
Nestor, (Νέστωρ),
Menelaus, (Μενέλαος),
Diomedes, ("ιομήδης),
Idomeneus, (Ιδομενεύς), and
Telamonian Ajax, (Αίας ο Τελαμώνιος), kings of the principal city-states of
Greece who are leaders of their own armies, under the overall command of Agamemnon
**
Odysseus,(Οδυσσεύς) another warrior-king, famed for his cunning, who is the main character of his own epic, the
Odyssey**
Calchas, (Κάλχας) a powerful Greek
prophet and
omen reader, who guided the Greeks through the war with his predictions.
*The Trojans and their allies
**
Hector, (Έκτωρ) firstborn son of King Priam, leader of the Trojan and allied armies and
heir apparent to the throne of
Troy**
Priam, (Πρίαμος) king of the Trojans, too old to take part in the fighting
**
Paris, (Πάρης) Trojan prince and Hector's brother, also called Alexander; his abduction of
Helen is the
casus belli. He was supposed to be killed as a baby because his sister
Cassandra saw the destruction of Troy because of him. Raised by a shepherd.
**
Aeneas, (Αινείας) cousin of Hector, and his principal lieutenant
**
Glaucus and
Sarpedon, leaders of the
Lycian forces allied to the Trojan cause
*Female characters
**
Helen, (Ελένη) former Queen of Sparta and wife of
Menelaus, now espoused to
Paris**
Andromache, (Ανδρομάχη)
Hector's wife and mother of their infant son,
Astyanax (Αστυάναξ)
**
Hecuba, (Εκάβη) Queen of Troy, wife of
Priam, mother of
Hector,
Cassandra,
Paris etc
**
Briseis, a woman captured in the sack of Lyrnessos, a small town in the territory of Troy, and awarded to Achilles as a prize; Agamemnon takes her from Achilles in Book 1 and Achilles withdraws from battle as a result
The Olympian deities, principally
Zeus,
Hera,
Apollo,
Aphrodite,
Ares,
Athena,
Hermes and
Poseidon, appear in the
Iliad as advisers to and manipulators of the human characters. All except Zeus become personally involved in the fighting at one point or another (See
Theomachy).
The poem is written in
dactylic hexameter. The
Iliad comprises 15,693 lines of verse. Later Greeks divided it into twenty-four books, and this convention has lasted to the present day with little change.
The
Iliad and the
Odyssey were considered by Greeks of the classical age and after as the most important works in
Ancient Greek literature, and were the basis of Greek
pedagogy in antiquity. As the center of the
rhapsode's repertoire, their recitation was a central part of Greek religious festivals. The book would be spoken or sung all night (modern readings last around 20 hours), with audiences coming and going for parts they particularly enjoyed.
Throughout much of their reception, the
Iliad and
Odyssey were assumed to be literary poems. However in the late 19th century and the early 20th century, scholars began to question this assumption.
Milman Parry, a classical scholar, was intrigued by peculiar features of Homeric style: in particular the stock epithets and the often extensive repetition of words, phrase and even whole chunks of text. He argued that these features were artifacts of oral composition. The poet employs stock phrases because of the ease with which they could be applied to a hexameter line. Taking this theory, Parry travelled in Yugoslavia, studying the local oral poetry. In his research he observed oral poets employing stock phrases and repetition to assist with the challenge of composing a poem orally and improvisationally.
The precise nature of the relationship between Achilles and Patroclus has been the subject of some dispute in both the classical period and modern times. In the
Iliad, it is clear that the two heroes have a deep and extremely meaningful friendship, but the evidence of a romantic or sexual element is equivocal. Commentators from the classical period to today have tended to interpret the relationship through the lens of their own cultures. Thus, in fifth-century Athens the relationship was commonly interpreted as
pederastic, since pederasty was an accepted part of Athenian society. Contemporary readers are more likely to interpret the two heroes either as non-sexual "war buddies" or as a similarly-aged
homosexual couple.
Subjects from the Trojan War were a favourite among ancient Greek dramatists.
Aeschylus' trilogy
Agamemnon,
The Libation Bearers, and
The Eumenides follow the story of Agamemnon following his return from the war.
William Shakespeare's play
Troilus and Cressida, is based on the
Iliad.
A loose film adaptation of the
Iliad,
Troy, was released in
2004, starring
Brad Pitt as Achilles,
Orlando Bloom as Paris,
Eric Bana as Hector,
Sean Bean as
Odysseus and
Brian Cox as
Agamemnon. It was directed by German-born
Wolfgang Petersen. The movie only loosely resembles the Homeric version as it was presented as if it were history instead of mythology. The supernatural elements of the story were deliberately expunged, except for one scene that included Achilles' sea nymph mother,
Thetis (although her supernatural nature is never specifically stated).
Though the film received mixed reviews, it was a commercial success, particularly in international sales. It grossed $133 million in the United States and $497 million worldwide, placing it in the top 50 movies of all time.
A number of comic series have re-told the legend of the Trojan War. The most inclusive may be
Age of Bronze, a comprehensive retelling by writer/artist
Eric Shanower that incorporates a broad spectrum of literary traditions and archiological findings. Started in 1999, it is projected to number seven volumes.
An epic science fiction adaptation/tribute by acclaimed author
Dan Simmons titled
Ilium was released in 2003. The novel received a
Locus Award for best science fiction novel of 2003.
The 1954
Broadway musical The Golden Apple by librettist
John Treville Latouche and composer
Jerome Moross was freely adapted from
The Illiad and The Odyssey, re-setting the action to
America's
Washington in the years after The
Spanish-American War, with events inspired by
The Illiad in Act One and events inspired by the Odyssey in Act Two.
The
Iliad has been translated into
English for centuries.
George Chapman did a translation in the
16th century which
John Keats praised in his sonnet,
On First Looking into Chapman's Homer and
Alexander Pope did another one in rhymed
pentameter. In his lectures
On Translating Homer Matthew Arnold commented on the problems of translating the
Iliad and on the major translations available in 1861.
There are four widely read modern English translations.
Richmond Lattimore provides a translation that attempts to reproduce, line for line, the rhythm of the original poem.
Robert Fagles emphasizes contemporary English phrasing while maintaining faithfulness to the Greek. The translations of
Stanley Lombardo and
Robert Fitzgerald are known for their attention to Homer's imagery.
*
George Chapman, 1598 - verse
*
John Ogilby, 1660
*
Thomas Hobbes, 1676 - verse:
full text*
John Ozell,
William Broome, and
William Oldisworth, 1712
*
Alexander Pope, 1713 - verse:
full text*
James Macpherson, 1773
*
William Cowper, 1791
*
Lord Derby, 1864 - verse:
full text*
William Cullen Bryant, 1870
*
Walter Leaf,
Andrew Lang, and
Ernest Myers, 1873 - prose:
full text*
Samuel Butler, 1898 - prose:
full text *
Alexander Falconer, 1933
*
Sir William Marris, 1934 - verse
*
E. V. Rieu, 1950 - prose
*
Alston Hurd Chase and
William G. Perry, 1950 - prose
*
Richmond Lattimore, 1951 - verse
*
Ennis Rees, 1963 - verse
*
W. H. D. Rouse, 1966 - prose
*
Martin Hammond, 1987
*
Robert Fagles, 1990
*
Stanley Lombardo, 1997
*
Ian Johnston, 2002 - verse:
full textInterlinear translations
*
John Jackson**Homer: Iliad Books 1-12, & 13-24, ed. by Monro, 3rd Ed.: © Oxford Univ. Press 1902, parsing and English definitions by John Jackson © 2005
Free eBook for Palm Handheld*
*
*
*HandHeldClassics
The Iliad, Interlinear Greek/English*
The Iliad: A Study Guide*
Classical images illustrating the Iliad. Repertory of outstanding painted vases, wall paintings and other ancient iconography of the War of Troy.
*
Iliad via RSS*
Iliad in Ancient Greek from the Perseus Project*
Free ebook of The Iliad translated by Samuel Butler' at
Project Gutenberg*
Free ebook of The Iliad translated by Andrew Lang' at
Project Gutenberg*
Free ebook of The Iliad translated by Alexander Pope' at
Project Gutenberg*
Free ebook of The Iliad translated by Edward, Earl of Derby' at
Project Gutenberg*
Free ebook of The Iliad translated by William Cowper' at
Project Gutenberg*
The Iliad'' translated by
Thomas Hobbes
