Void House Book Club: The Iliad

I often see praise for the first line of Samuel Butler’s translation of the Iliad: “Sing, O Goddess, the anger of Achilles.” I have to admit, it sounds pretty badass. However, it loses an obscure element I find interesting. In Greek epic poetry, the first word of the text is often the theme which encapsulates the whole work — for example, the Odyssey is all about humanity, and its first word is “man.” I took inspiration from this for my own navel-gazing creative writing project, in which the first word is “I.”

The first word of the Iliad is “μῆνις,” or “menis,” which translates to “rage.” I don’t know whether rage is more prominent in the Iliad than humanity is in the Odyssey — you could make an argument that every character and plot point in the Odyssey represents some element of humanity — but it is certainly more blatant. At least in the Butler translation, Homer repeats words like “wrath” and “anger” over and over again. Yes, there’s a lot of rage in the major conflict and each subplot, but rage even recurs in more inconsequential moments. It’s hard to overstate just how much text the Iliad dedicates to fight scenes. There are several battles in the book, and each one has multiple fight scenes, all described in great detail. Few of these actually advance the plot. I suspect they were included to add prestige to the orators, who had to memorize the poems before reciting them to crowds. When the story is full of meticulous details like every combatant’s name and every swing of the sword, it’s that much more impressive, and it serves the double purpose of reinforcing the theme.

Like I said, though, that’s the superficial stuff. Rage really comes through in the core plot, the conflict between the legendary warrior Achilles and King Agamemnon spurred by Agamemnon’s theft of Achilles’ concubine. This angers Achilles so much that he refuses to participate further in the Trojan War, and it therefore comes to a standstill. Obviously, the implication is that Achilles is such a powerful soldier that Greek victory hinges on his involvement, which calls into question why Agamemnon is so stupid to risk upsetting him, but that’s a digression. Although Homer characterizes Achilles as strong, he leaves out the one thing most people know him for. Achilles is not invulnerable in The Iliad, and his eponymous heel never makes an appearance. Another story element which we never see is the Trojan Horse. I always took it for granted that, because this story takes place at the end of the war and because the sequel is all about Odysseus, there was a sort of “passing of the torch” moment where Odysseus demonstrates his genius, wins the Trojan War, and goes on to greater adventures, while Achilles tragically dies after getting shot in the heel. None of that happens. Instead, the argument gets resolved when Agamemnon sees that he can’t win without Achilles, so he reverses his decision, and Achilles dominates the competition. Thrilling stuff.

This is the Iliad’s biggest problem. I’m careful to say problem and not flaw because I don’t believe Homer made an error in composition. The Iliad just does not align with our modern sensibilities of what a narrative ought to be. I earnestly believe that we would recognize the Odyssey as a great work of literature if it were published today, but I don’t feel that way about the Iliad. Like many classic works, the fact we recognize it as great is a part of what makes it great. If we hadn’t built up thousands of years of reverence, and if it hadn’t embedded itself within our culture, The Iliad wouldn’t be quite as notable.

Maybe I should clarify what I mean by this. Part of the reason we find contemporary stories compelling is that the characters in them experience arcs. They start in some position, and they end up in some different position after having changed or learned something, and we see them at various points in the story transitioning from one to the other. The Iliad doesn’t really have this. Homer included the beginning and end of the arc, but no middle. Achilles starts out as an enemy of Agamemnon, then gets persuaded to rejoin Agamemnon, but nothing happens in between these two moments which informs his change. Achilles is basically the same person at the end of the story as he was in the beginning, and the only reason he changes his mind is that the situation changed. It calls into question what the point of the story is — an astute reader can pretty much figure out what’s going to happen right from the beginning. My other grievance is that The Iliad is just really, really repetitive. It has twenty-four chapters, and I would say at least half of them are detailed descriptions of battles and fight scenes and very long lists of names and families who participated in them. When I read the first chapter of this, I was quite impressed by how Homer’s vivid imagery (in Butler’s translation) captured the intensity and chaos of a war, and how the tension between each character’s rage and honor influenced their behavior. But then it just keeps going. It’s chapter after chapter after chapter of characters we really don’t know at all just stabbing each other and shooting each other with arrows, and I’m not sure who would find that interesting.

I want to repeat myself here to be very clear: the problems I’m talking about arise from modern interpretations of the text and not flaws in Homer’s judgment. I don’t think the fact that I found the Iliad at times tedious proves it is a badly written work, but rather that its authorial intent differs from my interests as a reader. I mentioned earlier that The Iliad was initially shared only orally, and that it was so long and elaborate because that made it more impressive that the orator managed to memorize the full story. That’s not something we would really care about today, but at the time it surely mattered a lot. Another element to consider is that many people considered this story at least partially historical. If your goal is to teach people about something which actually happened, you might be less concerned with the entertainment value of the story. It’s a lot easier to understand why people liked the Iliad when you imagine a bard telling it as entertainment in a pub, where people come and go at random parts of the story instead of plowing through it all at once. A little perspective completely transforms the plot.

Beyond that, there are elements of the Iliad which surprised me because of how complex they felt for a story that was millenia old. The usage of subplots struck me in particular. Two stories run parallel to the conflict between Achilles and Agamemnon: the Trojan War itself, and the conflict among the gods over who should or should not earn their favor. Both of these reinforce the rage theme and add intrigue to the story in ways unexpected for an author from antiquity. That the antagonist Hector is not merely a force of evil but a fully realized character with a background and feelings is quite an achievement.

The Iliad is perhaps more interesting as a periscope into the normative thought of ancient Greeks than it is as a story. Homer makes a handful of presumptions which are odd to us but reveal how life in his time must have been. The philosophy textbook The Great Conversation uses The Iliad as an example of the earliest ideas from which philosophy emerged, arguing that it demonstrated how we used to believe that there were multiple gods who behaved much like humans, who varied in their power and domains, and who were deeply invested in the lives of humans for some reason. Another example is the role of women in the story; they’re hardly there, but when they are, they’re usually property. Both major conflicts in the story start because men want to own women. The Trojan War starts when Hector steals the Spartan king Menelaus’ wife Helen, and the conflict with Achilles starts because Agamemnon seizes Achilles’ slave Briseis (who is such a non-character that I had to google her name). The women have no will of their own, because they are merely prizes to be won. That The Iliad pays little attention to this fact makes it clear how ancient Greeks perceived femininity. Like many great works, scholars can (and do) study and commentate on The Iliad endlessly. It was definitely more fun to me to extrapolate historical perspectives from The Iliad than it was to actually read it.

I can’t say that The Iliad was the most pleasant read ever, but I was truthfully impressed by its craftsmanship, and it is certainly one of the stronger books I’ve read so far this year. I understand why academics consider it an indispensable classic. I do not necessarily understand people who find it exciting and fun the same way that The Odyssey is. This is one of those books that I really wish I had taken a class on instead of merely read. Perhaps when I return to it, I will.