Similarly, The Iliad recognizes, and repeatedly reminds its readers, that the creations of mortals have a mortality of their own. The glory of men does not live on in their constructions, institutions, or cities. The prophecy of Calchas, as well as Hector’s tender words with Andromache and the debates of the gods, constantly remind the reader that Troy’s lofty ramparts will fall. But the Greek fortifications will not last much longer. Though the Greeks erect their bulwarks only partway into the epic, Apollo and Poseidon plan their destruction as early as Book 12. The poem thus emphasizes the ephemeral nature of human beings and their world, suggesting that mortals should try to live their lives as honorably as possible, so that they will be remembered well. For if mortals’ physical bodies and material creations cannot survive them, perhaps their words and deeds can. Certainly the existence of Homer’s poem would attest to this notion. The worlds of both humans and gods are thus split from the beginning, and for the first two-thirds of the poem, Homer describes the war as an ongoing seesaw in which the tactical advantage constantly oscillates between the armies according to the gods’ whims. Achaeans and Trojans both suffer great losses. While employed on the wild legend of Odysseus, he met with a ballad, recording the quarrel of Achilles and Agamemnon. His noble mind seized the hint that there presented itself, and the Achilleis(32) grew under his hand. Unity of design, however, caused him to publish the poem under the same pseudonyme as his former work: and the disjointed lays of the ancient bards were joined together, like those relating to the Cid, into a chronicle history, named the Iliad. Melesigenes knew that the poem was destined to be a lasting one, and so it has proved; but, first, the poems were destined to undergo many vicissitudes and corruptions, by the people who took to singing them in the streets, assemblies, and agoras. However, Solon first, and then Peisistratus, and afterwards Aristoteles and others, revised the poems, and restored the works of Melesigenes Homeros to their original integrity in a great measure."(33) Fate plays a crucial role in The Iliad. Not only does the poet use fate as a narrative means to foreshadow future events, but he also uses it as a thematic means to underline the significance of heroism. One of the defining features of heroism in The Iliad relates to the way heroes accept their destiny without flinching. Hector explains this point to his wife, Andromache, when she expresses her concern that he will die in battle. “And fate?” he responds rhetorically, “No one alive has ever escaped it.” Yet despite Hector’s insistence on the inescapability of fate, the poem also shows that destiny isn’t always written in stone. For example, Achilles has two fates, which means that he must choose his destiny. Whereas his mother, Thetis, begs him to choose a long life devoid of heroic glory, Achilles ultimately selects a hero’s death. Furthermore, gods have the power to challenge fate. Before Patroclus slays Sarpedon, a fierce Trojan warrior who happens to be one of Zeus’s favored sons, the father of the gods contemplates saving him to prevent his fated death. Ultimately, though, Hera warns Zeus against following through with his desire since challenging Sarpedon’s fate would set a dangerous precedent. His celebrity continued to increase, and many persons advised him to visit Greece, whither his reputation had now extended. Having, it is said, made some additions to his poems calculated to please the vanity of the Athenians, of whose city he had hitherto made no mention,(14) he sent out for Samos. Here being recognized by a Samian, who had met with him in Chios, he was handsomely received, and invited to join in celebrating the Apaturian festival. He recited some verses, which gave great satisfaction, and by singing the Eiresione at the New Moon festivals, he earned a subsistence, visiting the houses of the rich, with whose children he was very popular.

Analysis in The Iliad | SparkNotes Achilles Character Analysis in The Iliad | SparkNotes

No doubt the common soldiers of that age had, like the common sailors of some fifty years ago, some one qualified to 'discourse in excellent music' among them. Many of these, like those of the negroes in the United States, were extemporaneous, and allusive to events passing around them. But what was passing around them? The grand events of a spirit-stirring war; occurrences likely to impress themselves, as the mystical legends of former times had done, upon their memory; besides which, a retentive memory was deemed a virtue of the first water, and was cultivated accordingly in those ancient times. Ballads at first, and down to the beginning of the war with Troy, were merely recitations, with an intonation. Then followed a species of recitative, probably with an intoned burden. Tune next followed, as it aided the memory considerably. Just as the poet uses an elevated style, so do the various characters who speak in the poem. The human heroes frequently deliver speeches either to boast of their accomplishments or urge their fellows on in battle. But no matter the subject of their speech they use an elevated style in keeping with the seriousness of the situation and their own dignity. The same is true for the gods, who generally speak and act as the humans do. Meanwhile, a surrogate conflict is being waged between the gods on behalf of the Trojans and Achaeans. Athena, Hera, and Poseidon support the Achaean forces, while Apollo, Aphrodite, and Ares support the Trojans. As the battle rages on, the gods give strength and inspiration to their respective champions. Eventually Zeus, planning to shape the conflict by himself so that he may fulfill his promise to Thetis, bans intervention in the war by the other gods. Zeus helps engineer the Trojan advance against the Achaeans.The time of two-and-twenty days is taken up in this book: nine during the plague, one in the council and quarrel of the princes, and twelve for Jupiter's stay with the Ćthiopians, at whose return Thetis prefers her petition. The scene lies in the Grecian camp, then changes to Chrysa, and lastly to Olympus. In addition to the many translations that have appeared through the centuries, numerous poets and novelists have offered creative retellings of The Iliad. Among the most important poetic reimaginings is Christopher Logue’s long-term project in which he sought to compose a poetic “account” that would retell the events of Homer’s poem in a modernist style. Logue used numerous translations of The Iliad as references while composing a version that emphasized a loose, Imagist style that did away with many of the formal conventions typically associated with Homeric verse. Logue’s poem initially met criticism from classicists when the first installments of the work appeared in 1981, but the project eventually achieved recognition, with Logue receiving the prestigious Whitbread Poetry Award in 2005 for the installment titled Cold Calls. Though not completed before his death in 2011, Logue’s project includes accounts of Books 1–9 and 16–19, all of which were originally published separately and later collected in one volume titled War Music. In his poetical compositions Homer displays great gratitude towards Mentor of Ithaca, in the Odyssey, whose name he has inserted in his poem as the companion of Ulysses,(13) in return for the care taken of him when afflicted with blindness. He also testifies his gratitude to Phemius, who had given him both sustenance and instruction."

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To be sure, The Iliad doesn’t ignore the realities of war. Men die gruesome deaths; women become slaves and concubines, estranged from their tearful fathers and mothers; a plague breaks out in the Achaean camp and decimates the army. In the face of these horrors, even the mightiest warriors occasionally experience fear, and the poet tells us that both armies regret that the war ever began. Though Achilles points out that all men, whether brave or cowardly, meet the same death in the end, the poem never asks the reader to question the legitimacy of the ongoing struggle. Homer never implies that the fight constitutes a waste of time or human life. Rather, he portrays each side as having a justifiable reason to fight and depicts warfare as a respectable and even glorious manner of settling the dispute. This said, he ceased. The king of men replies: "Thy years are awful, and thy words are wise. But that imperious, that unconquer'd soul, No laws can limit, no respect control. Before his pride must his superiors fall; His word the law, and he the lord of all? Him must our hosts, our chiefs, ourself obey? What king can bear a rival in his sway? Grant that the gods his matchless force have given; Has foul reproach a privilege from heaven?" And this difficulty attaches itself more closely to an age in which progress has gained a strong ascendency over prejudice, and in which persons and things are, day by day, finding their real level, in lieu of their conventional value. The same principles which have swept away traditional abuses, and which are making rapid havoc among the revenues of sinecurists, and stripping the thin, tawdry veil from attractive superstitions, are working as actively in literature as in society. The credulity of one writer, or the partiality of another, finds as powerful a touchstone and as wholesome a chastisement in the healthy scepticism of a temperate class of antagonists, as the dreams of conservatism, or the impostures of pluralist sinecures in the Church. History and tradition, whether of ancient or comparatively recent times, are subjected to very different handling from that which the indulgence or credulity of former ages could allow. Mere statements are jealously watched, and the motives of the writer form as important an ingredient in the analysis of his history, as the facts he records. Probability is a powerful and troublesome test; and it is by this troublesome standard that a large portion of historical evidence is sifted. Consistency is no less pertinacious and exacting in its demands. In brief, to write a history, we must know more than mere facts. Human nature, viewed under an induction of extended experience, is the best help to the criticism of human history. Historical characters can only be estimated by the standard which human experience, whether actual or traditionary, has furnished. To form correct views of individuals we must regard them as forming parts of a great whole--we must measure them by their relation to the mass of beings by whom they are surrounded, and, in contemplating the incidents in their lives or condition which tradition has handed down to us, we must rather consider the general bearing of the whole narrative, than the respective probability of its details. The Epic Cycle: Along with the Iliad and the Odyssey, there were several other ancient Greek poems that concentrated on the events of the Trojan War, filling out the events not mentioned in the Homeric epics. Titles included the Cypria, the Aethiopis, and the Little Iliad. It is often suggested that these works were written after the two Homeric epics, and most of them are much shorter than Homer’s masterpieces. Altogether they formed a narrative of the war, known as the Epic Cycle. However, all of the texts of the Epic Cycle have been lost, with just fragments remaining.But poverty still drove him on, and he went by way of Larissa, as being the most convenient road. Here, the Cumans say, he composed an epitaph on Gordius, king of Phrygia, which has however, and with greater probability, been attributed to Cleobulus of Lindus.(5) But even Peisistratus has not been suffered to remain in possession of the credit, and we cannot help feeling the force of the following observations-- If, however, not even such faint and indistinct traces of Athenian compilation are discoverable in the language of the poems, the total absence of Athenian national feeling is perhaps no less worthy of observation. In later, and it may fairly be suspected in earlier times, the Athenians were more than ordinarily jealous of the fame of their ancestors. But, amid all the traditions of the glories of early Greece embodied in the Iliad, the Athenians play a most subordinate and insignificant part. Even the few passages which relate to their ancestors, Mr. Knight suspects to be interpolations. It is possible, indeed, that in its leading outline, the Iliad may be true to historic fact, that in the great maritime expedition of western Greece against the rival and half-kindred empire of the Laomedontiadae, the chieftain of Thessaly, from his valour and the number of his forces, may have been the most important ally of the Peloponnesian sovereign; the preeminent value of the ancient poetry on the Trojan war may thus have forced the national feeling of the Athenians to yield to their taste. The songs which spoke of their own great ancestor were, no doubt, of far inferior sublimity and popularity, or, at first sight, a Theseid would have been much more likely to have emanated from an Athenian synod of compilers of ancient song, than an Achilleid or an Olysseid. Could France have given birth to a Tasso, Tancred would have been the hero of the Jerusalem. If, however, the Homeric ballads, as they are sometimes called, which related the wrath of Achilles, with all its direful consequences, were so far superior to the rest of the poetic cycle, as to admit no rivalry,--it is still surprising, that throughout the whole poem the _callida junctura_ should never betray the workmanship of an Athenian hand, and that the national spirit of a race, who have at a later period not inaptly been compared to our self admiring neighbours, the French, should submit with lofty self denial to the almost total exclusion of their own ancestors--or, at least, to the questionable dignity of only having produced a leader tolerably skilled in the military tactics of his age."(27) At the end of the seventeenth century, doubts had begun to awaken on the subject, and we find Bentley remarking that "Homer wrote a sequel of songs and rhapsodies, to be sung by himself, for small comings and good cheer, at festivals and other days of merriment. These loose songs were not collected together, in the form of an epic poem, till about Peisistratus' time, about five hundred years after."(23)

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Although upset by the loss of a favorite prize, what bothers Achilles most is the way Agamemnon’s action upsets the norms of Greek warrior culture. Agamemnon has leveraged his power as a king to take something away from Achilles without actually earning it. Not only does this strike Achilles as a personal betrayal but it also indicates a crisis in the principles that guide warrior ethics: honor and glory. Agamemnon has not acted honorably, nor has he won glory by demonstrating bravery in battle. Even so, he walks away with the best prize simply because he’s in a position of power. What Agamemnon’s action teaches Achilles is that his own glory as a warrior is not simply a matter of personal integrity and performance; it is subject to external forces over which he has no control. Scandalized, Achilles sees no reason to continue fighting under the Agamemnon’s command. War is a matter of life and death, and if it can’t offer the kinds of rewards he’s accustomed to, then there’s no point in risking the one life he has. As Achilles puts it in Book 9: “I say no wealth is worth my life!” Nor yet the rage his boiling breast forsook, Which thus redoubling on Atrides broke: "O monster! mix'd of insolence and fear, Thou dog in forehead, but in heart a deer! When wert thou known in ambush'd fights to dare, Or nobly face the horrid front of war? 'Tis ours, the chance of fighting fields to try; Thine to look on, and bid the valiant die: So much 'tis safer through the camp to go, And rob a subject, than despoil a foe. Scourge of thy people, violent and base! Sent in Jove's anger on a slavish race; Who, lost to sense of generous freedom past, Are tamed to wrongs;--or this had been thy last. Now by this sacred sceptre hear me swear, Which never more shall leaves or blossoms bear, Which sever'd from the trunk (as I from thee) On the bare mountains left its parent tree; This sceptre, form'd by temper'd steel to prove An ensign of the delegates of Jove, From whom the power of laws and justice springs (Tremendous oath! inviolate to kings); By this I swear:--when bleeding Greece again Shall call Achilles, she shall call in vain. When, flush'd with slaughter, Hector comes to spread The purpled shore with mountains of the dead, Then shall thou mourn the affront thy madness gave, Forced to deplore when impotent to save: Then rage in bitterness of soul to know This act has made the bravest Greek thy foe." In Book Nine, Achilles tells Odysseus and Ajax that he plans to leave his tent and go home where he claims he will live a long and happy life. Were he to follow through with this plan, Achilles would be giving up his anger as well as any association with Agamemnon and the Achaean army. However, despite his intention to go home, he remains with his anger in his tent. I will conclude this sketch of the Homeric theories, with an attempt, made by an ingenious friend, to unite them into something like consistency. It is as follows:--A theme in The Iliad closely related to the glory of war is the predominance of military glory over family. The text clearly admires the reciprocal bonds of deference and obligation that bind Homeric families together, but it respects much more highly the pursuit of kleos, the “glory” or “renown” that one wins in the eyes of others by performing great deeds. Homer constantly forces his characters to choose between their loved ones and the quest for kleos, and the most heroic characters invariably choose the latter. Andromache pleads with Hector not to risk orphaning his son, but Hector knows that fighting among the front ranks represents the only means of “winning my father great glory.” Paris, on the other hand, chooses to spend time with Helen rather than fight in the war; accordingly, both the text and the other characters treat him with derision. Achilles debates returning home to live in ease with his aging father, but he remains at Troy to win glory by killing Hector and avenging Patroclus. The gravity of the decisions that Hector and Achilles make is emphasized by the fact that each knows his fate ahead of time. The characters prize so highly the martial values of honor, noble bravery, and glory that they willingly sacrifice the chance to live a long life with those they love. Homer appeared. The history of this poet and his works is lost in doubtful obscurity, as is the history of many of the first minds who have done honour to humanity, because they rose amidst darkness. The majestic stream of his song, blessing and fertilizing, flows like the Nile, through many lands and nations; and, like the sources of the Nile, its fountains will ever remain concealed." The following passage betrays the same tendency to connect the personages of the poems with the history of the poet, which has already been mentioned:--

The Iliad: Style | SparkNotes The Iliad: Style | SparkNotes

Read about the related theme of the incompatibility of military heroism and love in William Shakespeare’s Othello. The Impermanence of Human Life and Its Creations To this the king: "Fly, mighty warrior! fly; Thy aid we need not, and thy threats defy. There want not chiefs in such a cause to fight, And Jove himself shall guard a monarch's right. Of all the kings (the god's distinguish'd care) To power superior none such hatred bear: Strife and debate thy restless soul employ, And wars and horrors are thy savage joy, If thou hast strength, 'twas Heaven that strength bestow'd; For know, vain man! thy valour is from God. Haste, launch thy vessels, fly with speed away; Rule thy own realms with arbitrary sway; I heed thee not, but prize at equal rate Thy short-lived friendship, and thy groundless hate. Go, threat thy earth-born Myrmidons:--but here(56) 'Tis mine to threaten, prince, and thine to fear. Know, if the god the beauteous dame demand, My bark shall waft her to her native land; But then prepare, imperious prince! prepare, Fierce as thou art, to yield thy captive fair: Even in thy tent I'll seize the blooming prize, Thy loved Briseis with the radiant eyes. Hence shalt thou prove my might, and curse the hour Thou stood'st a rival of imperial power; And hence, to all our hosts it shall be known, That kings are subject to the gods alone."Symbols are objects, characters, figures, and colors used to represent abstract ideas or concepts. The Achaean Ships