Episode 9: Glittering Bronze Men

Homer’s Iliad, Books 1-8

Hello, and welcome to Literature and History, Episode 9: Glittering Bronze Men.

μῆνιν ἄειδε θεὰ Πηληϊάδεω Ἀχιλῆος
οὐλομένην, ἣ μυρί’ Ἀχαιοῖς ἄλγε’ ἔθηκε,
πολλὰς δ’ ἰφθίμους ψυχὰς Ἄϊδι προί̈αψεν
ἡρώων, αὐτοὺς δὲ ἑλώρια τεῦχε κύνεσσιν
οἰωνοῖσί τε πᾶσι, Διὸς δ’ ἐτελείετο βουλή,
ἐξ οὗ δὴ τὰ πρῶτα διαστήτην ἐρίσαντε
Ἀτρεί̈δης τε ἄναξ ἀνδρῶν καὶ δῖος Ἀχιλλεύς.
τίς τ’ ἄρ σφωε θεῶν ἔριδι ξυνέηκε μάχεσθαι;¹

Rage – Goddess, sing the rage of Peleus’ son Achilles,
murderous, doomed, that cost the Achaeans countless losses,
hurling down to the House of Death so many sturdy souls,
great fighters’ souls, but made their bodies carrion,
feasts for the dogs and birds,
and the will of Zeus was moving toward its end.
Begin, Muse, when the two first broke and clashed,
Agamemnon lord of men and brilliant Achilles. (I.1-8)²

Those were the opening lines of Homer’s Iliad, in Homeric Greek, read by Lantern Jack of the Ancient Greece Declassified podcast, and then in English, from the Robert Fagles translation, published by Penguin in 1990. This is the first of three episodes we’ll do on Homer’s Iliad, the great Ancient Greek epic about the Trojan War, which scholars think was finished in its current form some time in the late 700s BCE. In this episode, I’ll tell you the story that unfolds throughout the first eight books of the poem, and then we’ll talk about the larger cycle of epics that the Iliad once belonged to, and then we’ll discuss the long lost world of Late Bronze Age warrior culture – the world that ultimately lies behind the story of the Iliad.

There are books that I’ve read that I remember more than others. Something about certain books causes them to stick in my head, their details lingering there for years afterward. There are books on my shelves that I’ve read but don’t remember much about, and others from which I can recollect all the characters’ names, their doings, and the motivations behind those doings. I can always remember The Merchant of Venice, for instance, though I’ve read it only once. But Measure for Measure, though I’ve read it several times and taught it, seems to just go in one ear and out the other. The elaborate plot and wide cast of characters of the Victorian novel Middlemarch has hung indelibly in my head since I first read it, while Dombey and Son, a book of similar vintage and dimensions, has come and gone.

I don’t know precisely what causes this, and whether or not I remember something well is certainly no valuation of its quality. I think our remembering something has more to do with what’s going on in our lives at the time when we first encounter it, and how that book relates to us, than its intrinsic qualities. And I remember what was going on in my life when I first read Homer’s Iliad.

I was a senior. It was autumn. While I was an undergraduate, I’d occasionally go to the campus bookstore, after buying books for my own courses, and look through the aisles to see all the books that were assigned for other classes. I’d already have bought my own, but the thought of all those classes that I wasn’t taking was tantalizing, and I’d walk up and down the rows and see what else was happening on campus. It was actually a pretty good way to get a sense of the overall shape of literary history – this course on medieval literature had these eight core books, that class on gothic fiction had these seven novels, and so on. In this fashion, wandering widely one day, I stepped into the classics section, and saw a black Penguin Classics edition with a bronze sculpture of a Greek hoplite warrior on the cover, looking muscular and fearsome. I had found a book that, after I read it, would stick in my mind like glue forever after. I had found the Robert Fagles translation of Homer’s Iliad.

By that time – three years gone by as a literature major – I knew a little about the book. I hadn’t taken a course on classics myself, and my area of emphasis was nineteenth-century realism. But I wasn’t a complete dufus. I knew that the Iliad was important. So I bought a copy, peeled off the “USED” sticker, and put the book in my backpack. I resolved that during my last year of college, even though I was taking a full load of courses, it was time to fill in some glaring gaps in my knowledge. Anybody getting a degree as a lit major, I thought, ought to know the A-list classics. Over lunch, as I leafed through my new book, I saw that it was divided into twenty-four sections, and resolved that I’d read one section per night, after I’d finished assigned reading for other classes. I thought I’d have it done in a month or so.

Instead, the first night, I read seven books. The next night, I read nine books. And the night after, drinking cup after cup of the knockoff brand black tea that got me through college, I finished it. I was up until dawn almost three nights in a row – its hundreds of pages had held my attention like almost nothing I’d ever read – to that point, anyway. A week later, I’d finished Homer’s sequel to the Iliad, the Odyssey. When he first read a good translation of the Iliad, the English poet John Keats reported a similar experience to mine. He wrote “I felt like some watcher of the skies / When a new planet swims into his [view].” Years later, the book continues to fascinate me. Revisiting it now, after a doctoral program, and after spending time with so many other texts written around the same centuries, the Iliad seems like a meteor, so much more advanced in characterization, consistency, complexity of plot, and the spellbinding beauty of its language than anything else that preceded it that it almost seems to have dropped to earth from another galaxy, alien and celestial in its nearly absolute perfection.

I wanted to tell you that, before we get to the story. This epic is very special to me, and I will do my best to tell you about what makes it such a superb milestone in the history of literature. When we get to the very end of the Iliad and Odyssey, six episodes from now, I’ll tell you why I think Homer as a whole struck me with so much power when I first read his epics. [music]

The Iliad‘s Structure, Dating, and Exposition

Before any analysis of the Homeric epics, their sources, and what they meant in Ancient Greek culture, I want to begin telling you the story of the Iliad. The Iliad has a huge cast of characters, some human, and some divine, a jungle of shifting alliances between heroes and gods, and even more challengingly, it begins in the ninth year of a siege, when a long, complex chain of events has already uncoiled. I’m going to tell you the story the way it’s written. But, in the event that you’re hearing it here for the first time, and you don’t know your Greeks from your Trojans, I’m first going to introduce you to the main characters, and the general situation, because Homer expects you to already be familiar with them.

Let’s start with the most basic facts. The Iliad is an Ancient Greek epic poem. It’s around 15,600 lines, and 155,000 words, and at 300 words a page, it’s about 520 pages in length. A pivotal time in its coming together was the second half of the 700s BCE – a date commonly tossed around is about 725, and I’ll explain why in a couple of episodes. The Iliad is about events that took place a little after 1200 BCE, specifically, what we call the Trojan War. This war may or may not have taken place historically – we’ll talk about that later, as well. Just remember that the Iliad was composed around five hundred years after the events it chronicles, and that the events of, say, the 1180s BCE were happenings of legend to those who lived in Homer’s time – say – the 720s BCE. So, ancient Greek epic, set down in the late 700s BCE, about a fabled war that had taken place centuries earlier.

Now, if you’re familiar with the Iliad, be patient with me for a minute here, because I want every single person listening – even those who are totally unfamiliar with the poem – to be able to hit the ground running when we begin the actual story. Homer is the bedrock of Ancient Mediterranean literature, and as this podcast moves forward through later Greek and Roman literature and far beyond, we will run into the Iliad again and again – in Aeschylus’ Oresteian trilogy, from the 400s BCE, Virgil’s Aeneid, four centuries afterward, and Ovid’s Metamorphoses, and on and on and on. Knowing Homer is the key to understanding a great deal of ancient literature, and the characters we meet today will show up in dozens of later episodes of this show on texts written long after the Homeric epics were, so let’s start very simply.

Let’s picture, in our minds, a T-chart, with a column on the left, and a column on the right. Got that T-chart in your mind? At the top of the left hand column is the word Greece. At the top of the right hand column is the word Troy. Greece on the left. Troy on the right. Greece and Troy are the two most important things to understand about the Iliad, because the Iliad is about a long, bloody war between Greece and Troy. Homer’s Greeks were from the Greek mainland and Peloponnese on the west side of the Aegean Sea. And Homer’s Troy was on the eastern side of the Aegean, in the northwestern part of modern day Turkey. Just like the two columns in our T-chart – Greece on the left, to the west, and Troy on the right, to the east. That’s the war. There is no right or wrong side to Homer. Both Greece and Troy have heroes and scoundrels.

The Trojan War took place outside of the walls of Troy, on plains, beaches, and riverbanks. The setting is actually easy – a few square miles at the far west of present day Turkey. In the war, the Greeks were the aggressors. The Trojans were the defenders. There are two anecdotes about the Trojan War that many people tend to remember, and conveniently, they are the two events that bookend the Trojan War. The event that caused the Trojan War to begin was a Trojan prince’s abduction a Greek queen. She was said to be the most beautiful woman in the world, and – people forget this part – but the Trojan prince also took a lot of treasure along with her. The Greek queen’s husband swore retaliation, a thousand ships launched eastward over the Aegean, and the siege at Troy began. So, again, the Trojan War all started when a Trojan kidnapped a Greek queen, and the Greeks came to the east, to Troy, get her back. And they came expecting a fight.

The event that closed the Trojan War is similarly famous. You may well know what happens at the end – it involves a horse. But why spoil the fun for listeners who are hearing this for the first time? Let’s bracket what happens at the end of the story, and talk about some of the main characters – especially those who you’re going to meet at the outset of Book 1 momentarily.

While there are a lot of characters in the Iliad, many of the most important Greeks have a Trojan counterpart. These pairings are fairly easy to remember. For instance, each side has a king. Each side has a champion. And each side has a number of gods that favor it. The king of the Greeks, a major figure in the Iliad, and in Ancient Greek literature, was called Agamemnon. We’ll be seeing a lot of Agamemnon. He’s not only an important character in the Iliad, but also in a cycle of three plays by a later Greek writer, whom we’ll get to soon. So let’s talk about Agamemnon, king of the Greeks. [music]

Agamemnon and Achilles

Agamemnon was a large man, and a formidable warrior. He was the embodiment of what the Greeks called hubris, or overweening pride. Agamemnon was above all other qualities selfish, greedy, and stubborn. If you were a Mycenaean Greek king, it was of course perfectly acceptable to commit the occasional political murder, start wars, and make sex slaves of your conquered foes. Yet Agamemnon’s problem, as the Iliad opens, is that his arrogance, greed, and political power have begun to anger the gods, and alienate his strategic allies. He was the leader of a confederated body of Greek city states, and power, as the Iliad opens, has gone to his head. Most importantly, by far, is that Agamemnon’s arrogance has caused him to feud with a man with whom you don’t ever, ever, under any circumstances, want to have a feud.

This man is Achilles, the champion of the Greeks, and ultimately the center of Homer’s Iliad. Achilles is the greatest warrior in the world. He is the bulletproof, ironclad, bunker buster of the Greek army. With him, they’re going to win. Without Achilles – well – it’s a toss up. The Iliad begins with an argument between these two men – King Agamemnon, and the Greek champion Achilles. Their argument is over a woman. Just as the entire Trojan War began with a feud over a beautiful woman, a massive schism in the Greek forces nine years into the war takes place because of another feud over another beautiful woman.

You’re almost ready for Book 1 of the Iliad. You know it’s about a war between the Greeks of the west, and the Trojans to the east, and you know it’s going to start with the arrogant Greek king Agamemnon angering and alienating his greatest asset, the also-Greek champion Achilles. In the T-chart that we made earlier, we’ve filled out a couple of lines on the left side. There are the Greeks, their king is Agamemnon, and their champion is Achilles. We’ll get to the Trojan side when Homer does. There are just a couple of more characters that need to be introduced before we begin – some Gods.

Just as Greeks and Trojans can be divided neatly into the two columns of our T-chart, their gods can, for the most part, as well. What you need to know at the outset of Book 1 is that Hera, the wife of Zeus and the goddess of women and marriage, favors the Greeks. Additionally, Athena, Zeus’ daughter, the bright-eyed goddess of wisdom, law and justice, also favors the Greeks. So, Hera and Athena support the Greeks. We already have four names, then, on the Greek side – Agamemnon the king, Achilles the champion, and the two powerful goddesses Hera and Athena.

It’s time to put a name down on the Trojan side over to the right, and the east. This name is Apollo, the archer god. Apollo has many principles associated with him in Greek mythology. In the Iliad, the most important ones are truth, prophecy, and the plague. As we open the first pages of Book 1, the Trojan-favoring Apollo is furious with the Greeks. Apollo has sent a plague amidst them, leading to crippling death and suffering in the Greek army. And the Greeks are trying to deal with it.

Now you know the basic situation of the Iliad, and you’re ready for what’s going to happen in Book 1. As for the rest of the characters, I’ll introduce them as we go along. I’ll be quoting occasionally from various translations, but unless otherwise noted I’m quoting from the Robert Fagles translation, published by Penguin in 1990, and the book titles come from this edition, as well. The text for this episode is at literatureandhistory.com, along with footnotes and citations for every source, and quizzes as usual. Well, everybody, take a deep breath – especially if you haven’t heard this story before. It’s time to open to the first page of Homer’s Iliad. [music]

The Iliad, Book 1: The Rage of Achilles

The armies had been fighting for nine years. The plains beneath the walls of Troy, the beach where the Greeks had landed and set up camp, and the surrounding rivers had all seen war and carnage. Gains and losses had befallen both sides. The gods had slowly become more and more embroiled in the fighting. Though they slept in the same halls on Mount Olympus, they dealt with humans in secret, filling one hero with great powers of combat, and then another, and then still another, their ceaseless meddling doing little to draw the war to its conclusion.

Sometimes their support, or opposition, seemed wholly arbitrary. On other occasions, a Greek or Trojan would do something to offend a god, and one of the two armies would suffer a retaliation. Such was the case in the ninth year of the war. The Greek king Agamemnon had taken as a concubine the daughter of a Priest of Apollo. The king’s unwholesome act was an affront to the God, and Apollo set a plague loose on the Greeks. But Agamemnon would not give the beautiful young girl back to her father. Even when the Priest of Apollo remonstrated and begged Agamemnon, and even when the Priest of Apollo begged Agamemnon’s champion Achilles, even when the king’s brother begged him to give the girl up, the Greek king Agamemnon refused. Agamemnon said, “The girl – I won’t give up the girl. Long before that, / old age will overtake her in my house. . .far from her fatherland, slaving back and forth at the loom, forced to share my bed!” (I.33-6). And so Apollo’s ravages plagued the army. While Apollo’s priest fled the court of Agamemnon, Apollo himself came to kill the Greeks.

Homer’s description of Apollo descending down to the plains around Troy is the first of many tableaus of powerful gods thundering into the Trojan War to intervene. Homer writes,

Down [Apollo] strode from Olympus’ peaks, storming at heart
with his bow and hooded quiver slung across his shoulders.
The arrows clanged at his back as the god quaked with rage,
the god himself on the march and down he came like night.
Over against the ships he dropped to a knee, let fly a shaft
and a terrifying clash rang out from the great silver bow. (I.51-6)

This was only the beginning. Apollo’s divine arrows fell on the Greeks for nine days. After nine days, their situation was becoming irrecoverable.

Things grew so dire, and so much death descended into the ranks of the Greeks, that the Greek champion Achilles felt that he had to intervene. The champion Achilles spoke to the men, Agamemnon included. It was time, Achilles said, to consult a holy man, and to make sacrifices to the angry god Apollo. A seer was consulted, and the seer said that Apollo was wrathful because his priest’s daughter had been dishonored. The only way to appease the god would be to return the poor girl to her father and sacrifice a hundred bulls.

Hearing this, King Agamemnon became “furious, his dark heart filled to the brim, / blazing with anger now, his eyes like searing fire” (I.121-2). King Agamemnon explained that giving up the girl was no small thing for him. He said, “I refused that glittering price for the young girl. . . Indeed, I prefer her by far, the girl herself, / I want her in my own house! I rank her higher / than. . .my wedded wife” (I.130-3). But, Agamemnon said, he would return the girl. And he would sacrifice the bulls. There was just one thing – he wanted treasure from his fellow Greeks – enough to make up for the loss of his treasured concubine.

Achilles disagreed. The Greeks didn’t exactly have mountains of treasure. They lived in a hardscrabble siege camp, and what loot they’d taken was already divided among the men. This was no time, said the champion Achilles, to be demanding tribute of them.

The Greek king Agamemnon did not like this answer. Agamemnon told the champion Achilles that he was king, and would take what he wanted from anyone, at any time, regardless of who they were. He named the chief lieutenants in his army whom he would rob if he wished, and belittlingly told Achilles to go and tend to the sacrifice to Apollo.

Achilles, not mincing his words, told Agamemnon he was disgusted with the king. Achilles himself had no quarrel with the Trojans, he said. This was Agamemnon’s war, and Agamemnon’s brother’s. The Trojans had never harmed him, Achilles said. “How could they? / Look at the endless miles that lie between us. . .shadowy mountain ranges, seas that surge and thunder. / No, you colossal, shameless – we all followed you, / to please you, to fight for you, to win your honor. . .What do you care? Nothing” (I.183-4,189).

If there was a way to reason with Agamemnon, this was not it. Agamemnon said that indeed Achilles was nothing to him. And far worse, he would take Achilles’ beloved concubine-turned-wife, a girl named Briseis, to be his own. This would make up for Agamemnon’s own abnegation of the priest of Apollo’s daughter. Hearing this, Achilles considered drawing his sword and killing the king on the spot. Achilles’ heart thundered. He reached down, gripped his weapon, and drew. But at that moment, he felt a hand suddenly in his hair, and he turned and saw the goddess Athena. Her eyes were clear and gray.

It was no time to kill a king, she said. It would make for an ignominious episode in Achilles’ history. Besides, the goddess told him, great prizes lay before him, if he would only restrain himself. Athena could not be denied. The champion Achilles conceded. He sheathed his sword. But as soon as the gray eyed goddess vanished, the champion Achilles turned back to his king Agamemnon, and assaulted him with words.

Agamemnon, Achilles said, was a drunk. He had no courage, and never joined ranks with the common soldier. He was a monarch who consumed this subjects and took from them. And for all of this, Achilles said, he would no longer fight for him. A day would come, Achilles said, when Agamemnon would desperately need the champion’s help. The champion of the Trojans, a great tower of a man whom we’ll soon meet, still stalked the halls and ramparts of Troy, and Agamemnon’s forces would have no counterpart if Achilles left them.

Seeing that the argument had become so heated, a Greek wise man named Nestor intervened. Nestor was old – as old as two full generations, and Nestor’s advice was always valued. He asked them to temper their anger toward one another. To Achilles, he said that there was no honor in breaking with powerful Agamemnon. The king of the Greeks, said wise old Nestor, was the more powerful of the two because he commanded more men, and Achilles had to accept this. To king Agamemnon, Nestor said that seizing Achilles’ beloved concubine Briseis was the wrong thing to do.

Agamemnon did not hesitate before refusing. He would not back down. King Agamemnon growled that Achilles’ insubordination was intolerable. And for Achilles’ part, he stormed back to his ship, but not before daring the king to ever try and make a move against him.

Thereafter, as good as his word, Agamemnon returned the priest’s daughter to her father, and he seized Achilles’ beloved concubine. Slowly, Achilles’ concubine Briseis followed the greedy monarch, looking reluctantly behind. The champion Achilles was devastated. He cried and stormed off to the ocean. There, Achilles called to his mother, a sea nymph, to come and counsel him. Achilles’ mother’s name was Thetis. [music]

Achilles, Thetis, and Zeus

Achilles told his mother Thetis everything that had just happened with Agamemnon and Briseis. He reminded her that Zeus owed her a favor, and asked if she’d please help him. Thetis said her son seemed doomed to a short, afflicted life – that she had given birth to doom itself. Still, Achilles was her son, and she would do what she could. She promised she’d speak with Zeus on Achilles’ behalf.

Meanwhile, the priest’s daughter was returned to her father. The Greeks offered a prayer of honor and humility to Apollo. Sacrifices were made, and Apollo looked on with approval. Normalcy returned to the Greek army. Only one person was the loser. This was the slighted champion Achilles. Twelve days passed, and Achilles “raged on, grimly camped by his fast fleet. . .Now he no longer haunted the meeting grounds / where men win glory, now he no longer went to war / but day after day he ground his heart out, waiting there, / yearning, always yearning for battle cries and combat” (I.581,583-6).

Just one more scene closes Book 1 of the Iliad. Achilles’ mother Thetis went to Zeus as she’d promised. Her request was simple. Thetis wanted the Trojans to gain ground and massacre the Greeks. She wanted the Greeks to suffer loss after loss, until they had no choice but to beg Achilles to return. Then her son would receive the honor that he’d deserved all along, and the Greeks would see that the real power behind their army was their greatest fighter, and not their arrogant king.

Zeus grumbled. He knitted his shaggy eyebrows and his great gray mane shook. Hera, his wife, backed the Greeks. Hera would not take well to being schemed against. Still, Zeus said, he’d do what he could. Zeus assented, and Thetis left.

And in the halls of Olympus, almost immediately after Thetis left, Zeus’ wife Hera appeared. She’d seen it all, and said she knew Thetis had convinced Zeus to back the Trojans. Zeus was unmoved by his wife’s accusations. He told his wife Hera that she must sit down, and be quiet, and that if Hera spoke up against him, neither she nor all Olympus could protect her from his wrath. Afterwards Hera’s son counseled her, telling her she must not go to war with Zeus, or all Olympus would suffer. Following this counsel, Hera calmed, and dinner in Olympus proceeded as usual – a sumptuous banquet accompanied by the lyre of Apollo. The gods fell asleep in their beds, and for a moment, everything seemed at peace. [music]

The Iliad, Book 2: The Great Gathering of Armies

Zeus’ plan to hurt the Greeks was simple. The Greeks, Zeus thought, would receive some bad advice, and attack Troy at a poor time. Zeus sent a dream with false visions of victory to Agamemnon, and upon having the dream, Agamemnon quickly rose. He adorned himself in fresh linens and put on his war cape, buckled on his sandals and silver sword, and hefted his scepter. Thus clad, Agamemnon went to the Greek ships.

He made it clear that he had something consequential to say. He knew that Zeus was a cruel deity, and that Zeus would keep them there until Troy fell. It was time to make a decision. Word spread amidst the Greeks, and they burst into motion to come and listen to their king. In an early example of what we call an epic simile, Homer describes the Greeks hurrying to hear their king’s words, once again in the Robert Fagles translation:

Rank and file
streamed behind and rushed like swarms of bees
pouring out of a rocky hollow, burst on endless burst,
bunched in clusters seething over the first spring blooms,
dark hordes swirling into the air, this way, that way –
so the many armed platoons from the ships and tents
came marching on, close-file, along the deep wide beach. (II.102-8)

We’ll talk about epic similes – the signature feature of Homer’s style – in a later episode. Following the assembly of the Greek armies, King Agamemnon’s men were ready for a renewed effort to take the walls of Troy. But Agamemnon announced the opposite. They could all go home, across the ocean, to their families, he said. It was time for the war to end. Stunned silence was quickly replaced by activity. Many men rushed to their ships. Others stayed, flummoxed. If they left, what good had the past nine years of bloodshed accomplished? One man, the most brilliant tactician of the Greek army, wily in his intelligence and strong in battle, too, stood there, perplexed. His name was Odysseus. Athena cautioned Odysseus that it was not yet time to return home, and Odysseus suddenly understood. King Agamemnon, Odysseus realized, was testing them. Paranoid due to his recent strife with Achilles, the King Agamemnon wanted his men’s allegiance to be undoubted. Odysseus sprinted all around the churning ranks of the Greeks, warning commanders and kings that the whole thing was merely a test.

Even as the news spread that the king was trying to test their loyalty, a number of Greeks still wanted to go home. They were bleeding, and in a foreign land, and their king took most of the loot and women. What did they gain from being there? One man in particular spoke up with a vehement criticism of the king, but he was silenced by loyal Odysseus.

The army waited for an explanation. Why had Odysseus spoken up? And with characteristic eloquence, the most brilliant man in the Greek army replied. They had all made a vow, Odysseus reminded them. He knew that things had been hard. No one deserved any chastisement for missing home. But even so, he said, “what a humiliation it would be / to hold out so long, then sail home empty-handed” (II.348-9). Odysseus told them of an omen that had been seen around the time of their departure nine years before, an omen that promised there would be victory in the tenth year of the war. The omen, Odysseus said, was true. The men responded with enthusiastic cheers, and a similar speech by wise old Nestor riled the Greek armies up further.

Agamemnon saw all of this and approved. Indeed, Agamemnon said, it was time to end the war. Seeing his men steeled for battle, Agamemnon told his forces, in the HarperCollins Caroline Alexander translation,

Now go to your dinner, so that we may assemble our battle.
Let each man sharpen his spear, let him get his shield at the ready,
let him feed well his swift-footed horses.
And when he has inspected his chariot, let each man turn his attention to war.
Daylong we shall be measured in hateful warfare.
There will be no interlude in it, not even a little,
Until night descending separates the raging men;
around a man’s chest the strap of his body shield
will be wet with sweat, his hand will grow weary around his spear,
and the horse will be wet with sweat that draws his burnished chariot.
That man I find away from battle, seeking
to linger round the curved ships – for him
there will be no surety of escaping the dogs and birds. (II.381-93)³

And so the armies of the Greeks amassed into one, their bronze armor looking like a spreading wildfire under the Aegean sun, moving as flocks of birds coming together. They were as numerous as spears of springtime grass, or as flies over buckets of fresh shepherds’ milk. Agamemnon loomed over the shimmering mass of men and weaponry.

The Iliad begins here a passage called the “Catalogue of Ships” – over three hundred lines devoted to explaining the separate Greek armies, their captains, and what everyone looked like. Fans of mullets will be happy to note what is perhaps the first historical description of a mullet in lines 632-3 of Book 2 of the Iliad – a people called the Abantes seem to have this hairstyle. “The sprinting Abantes followed,” Homer writes, “their forelocks cropped, hair grown long at the back” (II.632-3). That definitely sounds like a mullet to me. I have written a song about the Abantes, which is at the end of this episode – but let’s, obviously, stick with the Iliad for now.

Continuing the story following the Catalog of Ships, The Greeks marshaled their forces in view of the Trojan walls, and the Trojans looked at the awesome spectacle of men and weaponry on the plains below. And at this point in the story, we finally get to meet some Trojans. We know that the Greeks, down by their siege camp, were a volatile swarm of marauders with a champion currently on strike, held together by the iron grip of a greedy king. Who were they fighting? Who were these Trojan adversaries, dug in for nearly a decade behind their city walls? Homer takes us straight away to perhaps the most important Trojan character in the epic. Down in the city of Troy, in a meeting with other warriors near the gates, stood the next major character of the story, the eldest son of the King of Troy, and the champion of the Trojans.

The Trojan champion’s name was Hector. He was a fighter, second only in the world to Achilles. But unlike the aggressors Agamemnon, Odysseus, and Achilles, the Trojan champion Hector wasn’t involved in the war because he wanted to gain lands, or loot, or distinguish himself in battle. Hector was fighting for his family. He had a wife and baby, and many brothers and sisters. He loved his father the king. He did not, like Achilles, want to win fame for massacring his foes. Hector just wanted a truce. But after nine years of deepening rancor, the truce was beginning to seem elusive.

Remember that Zeus had decided to back the Trojans that day, because Thetis, Achilles’ mother, had convinced the Zeus to help her humiliate Agamemnon, who had stolen Achilles’ wife. Hector learned of Zeus’ favor when a messenger goddess spoke to him through his brother. The Greeks, Hector was told, could be fractured. They were plentiful, but they were also disparate. This was their weakness. The Trojan champion did not hesitate. He gathered his forces. Out on the Trojan plain, the Greek armies were startled when the city’s gates burst open and Trojan warriors flooded out, grim and resolved to meet their enemies in the open. The second book of the Iliad closes with a long catalog of all of the Trojan forces, their helmets and armaments flashing in the sun. And in the third book, we learn about why the war was started in the first place. [music]

The Iliad, Book 3: Helen Reviews the Champions

The nine year long Trojan War was fought over an act of adultery. We’ve already met Agamemnon and Achilles, Zeus and Hera, and the Trojan champion Hector. Now it’s time to meet three more characters that you may already know about, three characters that form the love triangle at the center of the Trojan War. The first of these is Helen. She had once been the queen of Sparta. Her beauty was legendary. When we meet Helen in the Iliad, though, she is no proud aristocrat, but self conscious, conscientious, and melancholy about the decision that she made that started the Trojan War. To repeat, Helen is not depicted as a villain or a harlot, but a deeply human character haunted by the past – Homer’s overall sympathetic portrayal of Helen led to her showing up in later positive characterizations, as in Aeschylus’ Libation Bearers, Euripides’ Helen, and the work of the Sophist philosopher Gorgias.

Anyway, to return to Helen and the love triangle at the Trojan War’s center, Helen had once again originally been the queen of Sparta, and she was married to the second figure in this love triangle. His name was Menelaus. He was Agamemnon’s brother. Being the king of the Spartans, Menelaus was a warrior. Having his wife taken from him was a deep dishonor, and so, for the purposes of getting Helen back, maintaining his martial reputation, and helping his more powerful brother unify the Greeks into an army, Menelaus had mustered the thousand ships that had launched to attack Troy and win back Helen.

Helen didn’t leave her Spartan husband Menelaus simply because she was bored with him. She was in love. And she was in love with the third member of this fateful love triangle, a Trojan prince. This Trojan prince’s name was Paris. Paris was almost as beautiful as Helen. His hair was long and flowing. He was magnificent to look at, but he was impulsive, overall having more passion than fiber and strength. Paris lacked follow through, and grit, and the skills of a great warrior. While Paris is also a three dimensional character, conscious of the implications of his past decisions, he is perhaps a bit more of a blue blooded aristocrat than Helen, with just a hair more sense of princely entitlement.

Paris was the Trojan champion Hector’s younger brother, and the two form quite a contrast in the opening of Book 3, where we’ll now pick up. As the Trojan forces burst out of the gates to face down the approaching Greeks, mighty Hector and handsome Paris were in the front ranks. Paris, filled with a sudden martial spirit, rushed forward, adorned in the skin of a leopard. His powerful reflex bow gleamed on his back, his sword shone on his hip, and he carried a pair of sharp spears. Paris screamed challenges at the Greek army, demanding that their best warrior face him in single combat.

From the ranks of the Greeks came Menelaus, Helen’s former husband. The Spartan king was no pushover. He was thrilled at the possibility of a duel, after all these years. Menelaus jumped off of his chariot and strode out of the army, gripping his weapons. It was time to punish the pretty boy Trojan adulterer for his transgressions.

Seeing Menelaus, Paris’ sudden spurt of courage left him. Paris wheeled and skittered back to the relative safety of his army. Hector, seeing his brother return, was disgusted. Hector castigated the younger man. Paris was useless. He could play the lyre and he had nice hair. He certainly looked the part of a warrior. But in war, he was worthless. Paris, Hector said, was an embarrassment to the Trojan kingdom.

The younger prince could not take the humiliation. He agreed that Hector’s criticism was fair. He knew that Hector was a hard, tempered man, and that he was something else. But, knowing that he was at full fault for almost a decade of suffering, Paris said he’d do what needed to be done. Mustering his courage, the Trojan prince Paris told Menelaus, “Now, though, if you really want me to fight to the finish here, / have all the Trojans and [Greeks] take their seats / and pit me against Menelaus. . .right between the lines – / we’ll fight it out for Helen. . .The rest will seal in blood their binding pacts of friendship” (III.81-5,89).

The Trojan champion Hector nodded. This was the right thing for his ne’er-do-well brother to do. Hector went out into the gulf of space that separated the armies and made the announcement. Menelaus instantly agreed to the duel. While vengeance for his slighted manhood was certainly a motivation, Menelaus felt almost as guilty as Paris that the private affairs of his household had led to such widespread violence. Let them settle it, he said, man to man. They would get the aging Trojan king to seal the truce agreement before the battle. Every warrior on the scarred battlefield rejoiced at the news. The lovers’ quarrel would end. Everyone stood to win. Everyone except for Helen.

Helen would either lose the man that she loved and return to Greece a hated woman, or see her former husband killed and live with guilt forever after. A divine messenger summoned her to ascend the walls of Troy. There, she joined her king, another character, and perhaps the last major character we you have yet to meet.⁴

Old Priam was the king of Troy, and the father of Hector, Paris, and many, many, many other children. The Trojan King Priam was a different figure from his Greek counterpart Agamemnon. Priam was older, and, maybe, wiser. He did not desire greater political power, nor a transoceanic confederation of Greek forces. Priam was the king of Troy, as his father had been, and as he hoped his son would be. In some ways, Priam was a vestige of an earlier time – of proud, geographically partitioned, independent kingdoms that flourished in a era before leagues of states and international armies. Priam’s Troy was a stationary, cosmopolitan seaport town. Troy’s enemies, on the other hand, were mobile, and their political center was an association of states and roving armies, rather than a single city.

The old Trojan king Priam was good friends with beautiful Helen. Together, they looked out onto the Greek army, and Priam asked Helen about who all the most striking figures were. Helen identified her former kinsmen, Agamemnon, Odysseus, and a giant Greek warrior named Ajax. Seeing the greatest men of a nation that she’d abandoned, she was filled with intense sadness. She said, “[I]f only death had pleased me then, grim death, / that day I followed your son to Troy, forsaking / my marriage bed, my kinsmen and my child. . .Death never came, so now I can only waste away in tears. . .There was a world. . .or was it all a dream?” (III.209-11,14,19). Priam did his best to comfort Helen, but soon, emissaries told Priam the news that the war would be decided in single combat.

The old Trojan king Priam went down, out of the city, and sacrifices were made to the gods to honor the pact. It was a bittersweet duty for Priam, because he didn’t think his flighty son Paris had a chance against the seasoned warrior Menelaus. Priam left the field, and the two warriors armed themselves. The fight was short and ferocious. After an initial bout of thrown spears, they fought in close combat. As the Trojan king Priam had feared, handsome young Paris didn’t stand a chance. He would have died there on the field, but he was rescued by his patron goddess – the goddess of love, Aphrodite. Aphrodite, just as Menelaus was about to finish Paris off, wrapped Paris in mist and carried him to his bedroom. This, by the way, is one of the many moments in Greco-Roman epics at which the intervention of gods, due to jealousy or favoritism, overrun human attempts to make peace. Throughout Homer, Virgil, and other epic poets, Aphrodite and Hera in particular have a tendency to cause massive collateral damage as a result of their meddling. The Iliad, after all, would have ended with the duel between Paris and Menelaus, but Aphrodite, fond of Paris due to a decision he’d made some ten years before – and we’ll talk about that in a later episode – Aphrodite, in Book 3 of the Iliad, saves her handsome lover boy’s life at the cost of enormous human suffering.

To return to the story, the goddess Aphrodite then came to Helen, and told Helen that Paris awaited her in their chambers, handsomer than ever. Helen was revolted. Paris had lost the battle. There was no honor left to them any more. When Helen met Paris in their bedchamber, she told Paris he should get back down onto the field and finish off the fight. But Paris wasn’t in the mood for fighting. He’d take Menelaus on the next day, he said. As for the present, he hungered for Helen. He led her to the bed, and they made love. When your patron deity is Aphrodite, you’re a lover and not a Hector or an Achilles.

Needless to say, all was not well down on the plains of Troy. Menelaus was incensed. He had obviously won, but he’d been deprived of the right of slaying his adversary. The Greeks fumed. Their combatant had won. It was time for the Trojans to admit their defeat, and everyone to go home. Wasn’t it? [music]

The Iliad, Book Four: The Truce Erupts in War

Up in the meeting halls of Mount Olympus, Zeus and the other gods discussed what would happen next. They all concurred that Menelaus had won, and Zeus reprimanded Aphrodite for intervening. Yet Zeus didn’t know what to do, and so wondered aloud. He said, “So now we plan how the war will work out, do we rouse the pain and grisly fighting once again / or hand down pacts of peace between both armies?” (IV.16-8). Hera wanted the war to continue, and the Greeks to win. Zeus honored Troy. After a compromise, it was decided that Athena would descend and compel the Trojans to break the truce.

Athena assumed the form of a Trojan warrior and told a powerful archer that he would win glory – but only if this Trojan archer shot an arrow at Menelaus. The archer “Squeezing the nock and string together, drawing / the gut back to his nipple, iron head to the handgrip / till he flexed the great weapon back in a half-circle curve – / the bow sprang! the string sang out, arrow shot away / razor-sharp and raging to whip through [Greek] ranks” (IV.142-6). The arrow struck Menelaus and wounded him, and the Greek warriors gasped at the sight of his sudden blood.

Agamemnon confirmed that it was only a flesh wound and summoned a healer. Menelaus was treated, and the Trojans attacked in full force, knowing that the Greeks would consider the truce broken. The Greek king prepared for a savage battle. Individual Greek armies formed ranks and tightened their armor. Agamemnon went from army to army, making sure no one would break ranks. He intended to win that day. As the Greeks advanced in their burnished armor, they were eerily silent, so as to hear the commands of their captains. The Trojans, on the other hand, filled the air with their war cries.

Here’s Homer’s description of the opening moment of the first major battle in the epic. This is from the Stanley Lombardo translation, published by Hackett in 1997.

When the two sides closed with each other
They slammed together shields and spears,
Rawhide ovals pressed close, bronze thoraxes
Grinding against each other amid the groans
And exultations of men being slain
And of those slaying, as the earth ran with blood.
  Swollen winter torrents flow together
  Where two valleys meet. The heavy water
  From both streams joins in a gorge,
  And far off in the mountains
  A shepherd hears a single, distant roar.
Equally indistinguishable the shrieking
Of these warriors laboring in union. (IV.482-94)⁵

Sometimes the battle involved individual duels. Far more often, “the savage work went on, [Greeks] and Trojans / mauling each other there like wolves, leaping, / hurtling into one another, man throttling man” (IV.544-6). Captains and warriors alike died grisly deaths, their wounds described with anatomical precision. It was chaos, and corpses on both sides lay tangled in the dust. Then, something momentous happened. [music]

The Iliad, Book Five: Diomedes Fights the Gods

Diomedes was one of the best fighters in the Greek army. He, Achilles, and a giant called Ajax were the nuclear weapons of king Agamemnon. In the midst of the combat, Athena, who championed the Greeks, filled Greek Diomedes with great power. “She set the man ablaze, his shield and helmet flaming / with tireless fire like the star that flames at harvest, / bathed in the Ocean, rising up to outshine all other stars” (V.4-6).

As Diomedes became filled with Athena’s power, killing raged on everywhere. Spears pierced heads and torsos. Armor ripped and helmets rang as they clashed to the ground. Limbs were severed from sockets, gore soaked the battlefield, and the swirling, hateful dark of death gripped fallen fighters. Then, the Greek Diomedes, pulsing and crackling with divine power, joined in the fray, panicking the Trojans. A great Trojan archer shot him in the shoulder, and Diomedes had a comrade pull the arrow out. He wouldn’t be stopped by such a small thing, he said. Athena came to him and promised that he’d be able to tell the difference between men and gods, if gods joined in the battle.

Diomedes rushed into the fight and began killing Trojans in pairs and trios. His power was so obvious that two Trojan captains began to suspect that he was filled with the power of a god. The two Trojan captains, the Trojan archer who’d shot him earlier, and a swordsman, squared off against Diomedes. The Trojan archer hurled a spear at him, and looked with triumph as he landed a square hit. But he’d missed. Then Greek Diomedes threw his own spear, and Athena guided it, and it struck the Trojan archer in the face, breaking his teeth, severing his tongue, and tearing out underneath his chin. The other Trojan captain moved to protect the remains of his fallen comrade. Diomedes wasn’t finished with the Trojans. He hurled a boulder and it smashed into the hip of the Trojan swordsman, breaking the man’s hip joint and sending him tumbling down, blackness filling his vision.

This man’s name was Aeneas. He’s a fairly minor character in the Iliad – a respectable Trojan fighter, certainly. But he’s the main hero of a later epic, the Roman story named after him, the Aeneid. Aeneas’ mother was Aphrodite, and just as Aphrodite had spirited the fallen Paris away a little while ago, Aphrodite rescued Aeneas from Diomedes. It should be noted Aeneas’ first appearance in world literature isn’t especially impressive. Aeneas shows up, notices a guy on the opposing side needs to be taken down, and gets his archer friend to help. Only his archer friend takes a spear to the face, and Aeneas himself suffers from a broken pelvis. It sounds more like he belongs in a nursing home than a later epic of world literature. But anyway, we’ll see Aeneas again. On with the show.

The powerful Greek warrior Diomedes understood what had happened with the Trojan Aeneas. Diomedes had been granted the power, after all, to see gods and goddesses, and seeing one such figure on the field, Diomedes went after Aphrodite herself. When he found her, he drove a spear through her arm, and Apollo had to finish bearing Aeneas away to safety. Diomedes made his reasons for attacking the goddess utterly clear. He said “Daughter of Zeus, give up the war, your lust for carnage! / So, it’s not enough that you lure defenseless women / to their ruin? Haunting the fighting, are you? / Now I think you’ll cringe at. . .war” (V.391-5). Bleeding the blood of a goddess, Aphrodite shrieked in pain, until another goddess led her away to safety.

This was a big deal. Mortals had hurt gods before, but it didn’t happen very often. Back in the halls of Olympus, Aphrodite complained that the horrible, overweening Diomedes had really hurt her. She was healed, but Athena mocked her. Aphrodite was the goddess of love, Athena said – Aphrodite had no place in war.

Still, the Greek Diomedes needed to be chastened for the assault. Apollo, who favored the Trojans, finished ferrying the fallen Aeneas to safety, healed his wounds, and made a double out of him – a man who looked the same and wore the same armor, and battle burst out around this figure. And then Apollo called to his brother Ares, the god of war. Apollo said, “Ares, Ares, destroyer of men, reeking blood, stormer of ramparts, / can’t you go and drag that man [Diomedes] from the fighting? / That daredevil. . .He’s just assaulted [Aphrodite]” (V.523-7). Ares was willing. You don’t have to twist the God of war’s arm to convince him to get out there and start impaling people.

Ares rallied the Trojans. The fighting, as difficult as it is to imagine, intensified ever further. Menelaus, Odysseus, Agamemnon, Hector, and the newly reinstated Aeneas all played pivotal roles, striking down foes and struggling frantically to stay alive. Ares joined with Hector to beat back the Greek forces, and the Greeks grimly attempted to hold their ground. Seeing their favored fighters faltering under the press of the Trojans, Hera and Athena joined ranks with the Greeks. Gods and men fought on both sides.

Athena prepared to face Ares. Homer describes Athena preparing for war in the Fagles translation:

[O]ver her brows Athena placed her golden helmet
fronted with four knobs and forked with twin horns. . .
Then onto the flaming chariot [Athena] set her feet
and seized her spear – weighted, heavy. . .she lashed her team
and. . .the stallions flew, holding nothing back,
careening between the earth and the starry skies as far
as a man’s glance can pierce the horizon’s misting haze. (V.851-2,4-5,83-6)

Athena and Hera joined Diomedes in the front ranks of the Greeks, “massed like a pride of lions tearing raw flesh / or ramping boars whose fury never lags” (V.900-1). Hera herself whipped the Greeks into a fighting frenzy, telling them that even without Achilles they were indestructible. And Athena went to Diomedes and told him that he must fight Ares himself.

Diomedes squared his chariot off against Ares’ chariot. Athena joined Diomedes’ chariot, and “The big, oaken axle groaned beneath the weight, bearing a great man and a terrifying goddess” (V.969-70). Diomedes charged the god of war, and Athena deflected Ares’ spear, so that Diomedes was able to stab his own spear deep into Ares’ bowels. At this, “the brazen god of war let loose a shriek, roaring, / thundering loud as nine, ten thousand combat soldiers. . .A shudder swept all ranks” (V.992-5). The god of war rose and left the battlefield in a spiral of smoke.

Now, a little background here. There is a convention in epic poetry called the aristeia. During an aristeia, a character becomes, for a moment, nearly invincible, often leading a martial assault or doing something that seems superhuman. In Book 5, Diomedes has a famous aristeia, besting enemy warriors and even the gods themselves with the aid of Athena. But gods aren’t always behind an epic character’s aristeia. Later in this same episode, we’ll see Hector’s aristeia, when the Trojan captain begins pushing the Greeks back to their ships, and in future episodes, Agamemnon’s, and those of other characters, until finally, as you might expect, Achilles has his own towering aristeia. I think we still see the aristeia at work in modern action movies, in which a hero or heroine is perhaps initially beleaguered and defeated, only, after some remarkable revelation or other turnabout, he or she begins fighting back with electrifying fury and effectiveness. The convention of the aristeia is one of the reasons why epics are so exciting to read – mysterious forces, sometimes gods, sometimes intrinsic personal qualities, suddenly manifest themselves in human actions, and heroes abruptly become larger than life. Let’s get back to the story.

After Diomedes speared Ares’ nether regions, Ares complained to his father in Olympus. Mortals, Ares told Zeus, were wounding gods. And Athena, Ares said, was a spoiled goddess, and Zeus never punished her for anything. Zeus did not pity Ares. So the god of war had suffered a war wound. Yeah. It was fitting. Zeus had him healed, and Ares was done fighting for the present. Hera and Athena also returned to Olympus. They’d removed Ares, the Trojans’ source of power. The men themselves, the Greeks and Trojans, would have to battle it out for the rest of the day. [music]

The Iliad, Book Six: Hector Returns to Troy

With the gods removed from battle, the fighting raged on. A seer told the Trojan champion Hector to run into the city and arrange a sacrifice to Athena, and after a rousing speech to his men, Hector rushed back to Troy. Out on the plains, a lengthy exchange took place between the raging Diomedes and a Trojan fighter named Glaucus. The two prepared to face one another. Diomedes asked about his opponent’s lineage, and Diomedes was treated to a lengthy record of who Glaucus was, and where Glaucus came from. Diomedes was startled to learn that their families had previously been united in bonds of friendship. It would not due to spear one another on the plains of Troy. The warriors shook hands and resolved to steer clear of one another in battle.

Within the city of Troy, Hector met with his mother in the ornate halls of the palace, and the two made arrangements for the great sacrifice to Athena. A priestess offered ardent prayers to Athena, but Athena would not listen. This did not bode well for the Trojans. Nor did Hector’s visit to his brother. Splattered with filth and gore, Hector strode into the halls of Paris, still gripping a bronze lance from the battlefield. Paris was in his bedroom, polishing and tinkering with his ornate armor. Nearby, Helen and her handmaidens worked on an embroidery project. Having just waded out of battle, Hector was revolted, and he told his brother so.

Handsome Paris said he was just – uh – just getting ready to get back out onto the battlefield. Yeah. With sudden fervor, Helen expressed loathing at her husband’s cowardice. Paris, Helen said, “has no steadiness in his spirit, / not now, he never will” (VI.17-8). She told her brother-in-law that “You are the one hit hardest by the fighting, Hector, / you more than all – and all for me, whore that I am, / and this blind mad Paris. Oh the two of us! / Zeus planted a killing doom within us both” (VI.421-4). Helen asked Hector to sit with her, but Hector refused. There was a war to be fought, and he wanted to see his wife and son.

Hector found them in the great gate tower of Troy, looking with terror at the continued assaults of the Greeks. Hector’s wife’s name was Andromache, and she held Hector’s son, Astyanax, “only a baby. . .the darling of his eyes / and radiant as a star” (VI.474-5). Hector’s wife Andromache said she worried intensely for him, and pointed out a place where the Trojan defenses were weak, recommending that Hector make sure his forces pay special attention to it. Then Hector’s stoic courage faltered, and he told his wife that his greatest fear was not the fall of Troy or Priam, but the thought that she, who was dearest to him, would become a slave once the city was conquered. He reached down to touch his baby, but the boy drew back, terrified at the sight of Hector’s bronze helmet with its horsehair crest. Homer’s description of this little domestic scene is one of the most famous and beautiful passages in the Iliad – let’s hear Caroline Alexander’s translation of it.

So speaking, shining Hector reached out for his son;
but the child turned away, back to the breast of his fair-belted nurse,
crying, frightened at the sight of his own father,
struck with terror seeing the bronze helmet and crest of horsehair,
nodding dreadfully, as he thought, from the topmost of the helmet.
They burst out laughing, his dear father and lady mother.
At once shining Hector lifted the helmet from his head,
And placed it, gleaming, on the earth;
Then he rocked his beloved son in his arms and kissed him,
and prayed aloud to Zeus and to the other gods. (VI.466-75)

It’s a famous scene for its realistic detail, but also because of its portrait of Trojan family life. Agamemnon and Achilles might be down on the Trojan plain, growling at one another over loot and concubines, but within the walls of Troy, citizens are fighting for their families and their freedom, rather than conquest and vendetta. Anyway, Hector bid his beloved wife and child goodbye, and his household watched him go with great sadness. As Hector went to rejoin the war on the plain, his brother Paris, armor freshly polished, galloped up to join him, and the two men went out through the gates once again. [music]

The Iliad, Book 7: Ajax Duels with Hector

As soon as they were out of the gates of Troy, Hector and Paris rushed into battle, each killing their opponents. Athena and Apollo, supporting the Greeks and Trojans, respectively, resolved that there had been enough war that day. They decided that a duel of champions would end the combat for the moment. Athena possessed a Trojan to tell Hector the decision. The Trojan champion understood that it was the will of the gods, and had all of his men hang back. He went out into the space that had opened up between the armies and issued his challenge. Hector said he’d fight any Greek warrior. If he won, Hector announced, he’d take his opponent’s armor and riches, and let the Greek’s body be returned to his army for proper burial. If he lost, the opposite would happen.

The Greeks were silent. This was not pretty boy Paris, after all. This was Hector. And Hector was the greatest fighter in the world, except for Achilles, who hadn’t punched in his timecard that day. Finally, Menelaus, brother of king Agamemnon and wronged ex-husband of Helen, said he would fight. As Menelaus armed himself, however, Agamemnon advised his brother to stand down. Hector, he said, would make mincemeat out of Menelaus.

And so the Greeks were silent again as Hector stalked the battlefield expectantly, his helmet flashing in the sun. Finally wise old Nestor, a decorated Greek veteran, goaded the fearful Greek army. Old Nestor taunted them, telling them that someone must have the guts to stand up and face Hector. And indeed Nine men stood up all at once, and drew lots, and then it was decided. The giant Ajax, the strongest man in the Greek forces, would fight Hector. Ajax put on his armor and waded out of the Greek army, “giant Ajax marched, that bulwark of the [Greeks] – / a grim smile curling below his dark shaggy brows, / under his legs’ power taking immense strides, / shaking his spear high, its long shadow trailing” (VII.242-45).

Hector saw his opponent’s fine armor and massive size and felt his heart pounding in his chest. Did he actually stand a chance against this juggernaut? Ajax looked down at his enemy and told Hector to go ahead and attack, if he thought that he could. Hector’s courage steeled. He said, “Ajax. . .don’t toy with me like a puny, weak-kneed boy. . .War – I know it well, and the butchery of men. . .I know how to stand and fight to the finish” (VI.272-80).

The men launched their spears and then came together in close quarters combat, as fearsome as lions or boars. They fought with swords, and then stones, until finally emissaries of both armies parted them. Night was falling, they said. Each man was clearly a fine warrior. Each man had distinguished himself. It was best to stop the fighting for the day. Hector and giant Ajax exchanged gifts to seal the bonds of their respect for one another.⁶

That night, after their meals, the Greeks and Trojans discussed what was next. The Greeks agreed that they needed to collect their dead at dawn and burn the bodies. As for the Trojans, they considered returning Helen and her treasures to the Greeks to end the war. They had dishonorably broken the morning’s truce, after all. Paris said he would surrender the treasures, but not Helen herself.

The next morning, the Greeks unsurprisingly rejected this peace offering. The armies did, however, concur to break the fighting for a day to gather their dead. Homer’s description of the solemn affair of the armistice is haunting.

Just as the sun began to strike the plowlands,
rising out of the deep calm flow of the Ocean River
to climb the vaulting sky, the opposing armies met.
And hard as it was to recognize each man, each body,
with clear water they washed the clotted blood away
and lifted them onto wagons, weeping warm tears. (VII.488-93)

The day of peace passed slowly, and the dead were given proper treatment. In the evening, a shipment of wine came to the Greeks, and, pouring libations to the gods, the warriors on both sides went to sleep. [music]

The Iliad, Book 8: The Tide of Battle Turns

The next day proved to be a day of great glory for the long beleaguered Trojans, and a day of horror for the Greeks. Zeus told Hera and Athena to stay out of the battle. He would control events that day, and he honored the Trojans. Immediately after the morning meal, fighting broke out. Trojans surged out of their gate and fighters locked into combat with one another, “Screams of men and cries of triumph breaking in one breath, / fighters killing, fighters killed, and the ground streamed with blood” (VIII.76-7).

And then something terrifying happened. Zeus sent his thunder against the Greek army. Panic fell over almost all of the Greeks, and their lines faltered. They withered back in the direction of their ships. Diomedes and wise old Nestor attempted to turn the forces back, but Zeus sent lightning directly at the feet of Diomedes’ horses.

Hector knew that this was his to change the course of a war that he had slowly been losing, year after year. He screamed at the Greeks: “I’ll never yield, you’ll never mount our towers, / never drag our women back to your ships of war – / I’ll pack you off to the god of darkness first” (VIII.187-9). The Trojans charged forward, and Hector saw that the Greeks had built earthen ramparts near their ships to protect the fleet. The Trojan champion scoffed at them, urging his horses into full gallop.

The Greeks fled to their own defenses. King Agamemnon lamented that Zeus was unjustified in turning against him. Agamemnon had always made his sacrifices, and always paid his respect to the father of the gods. The Greeks rallied around their weeping king and mounted a strong resistance. As the Trojans charged, a famous Greek, protected by the unbreakable shield of Ajax, whipped arrows out into their ranks, trying to kill Hector. But that day, the Greeks’ efforts were in vain. Hector’s forces slammed the Greeks back against their earthworks.

Hera and Athena looked on in consternation and, against Zeus’ prohibition, rushed to the defenses of the Greeks. Zeus saw them, and he told them to leave the battle. He had not changed his mind. The goddesses could not resist Zeus’ mandate. They resolved that they’d merely “offer the [Greeks] tactics that may save them – / so they won’t all fall beneath your blazing wrath” (VIII.539-40).

Hector’s forces continued to pummel their foes until nightfall, and then, the fighting finally broke off. The Trojans, it suddenly seemed, charged with the might of Zeus, would tear an unexpected victory from their Greek adversaries, after all. The next day would determine everything. That night the Trojans camped in the open, no longer hidden behind their city walls. Book 8 closes with the magnificent image of the Trojans, emboldened by the day’s victory amidst the starlight of the Trojan plains. Here’s Stanley Lombardo’s translation of the end of Book 8.

Thus Hector, and the Trojans cheered.
They unyoked their sweating horses
And tethered them with thongs to their chariots.
They brought cattle and sheep from the city,
Got bread and mellow wine from their houses,
And gathered firewood. . .
[T]he Trojans had great notions that night,
Sitting on the bridge of war by their watchfires.
  [Like] Stars: crowds of them in the sky, sharp
  In the moonglow when the wind falls
  And all the cliffs and hills and peaks
  Stand out and the air shears down
  From heaven, and all the stars are visible
  And the watching shepherd smiles.
So the bonfires between the Greek ships
And the banks of the [river], burning
On the plain before [Troy]. . .And fifty men
Warmed their hands by the flames of each fire.
And the horses champed white barley,
Standing by their chariots, waiting for Dawn
To take her seat on brocaded cushions. (VIII.552-7,563-77)

Would the war end the next day? We’ll continue with the plot of the Iliad in the next episode. For a moment, let’s take a break and talk about what we’ve heard so far. [music]

The Iliad and Bronze Age Warrior Culture

We’ve moved through the first third of the Iliad, via summary and quotes from various translations. Over the next couple of episodes, I’ll tell you the main theories on who wrote the Homeric epics, and Ancient Greece’s reaction to them. But for this first episode, I’m going to talk about war. The Iliad is about war. I hope I’ve been able to show you how the poem makes war seem a massive, all-encompassing spectacle, both in Homer’s descriptions of the armies on the move, bronze armor blazing in the Mediterranean sun, and in the specific descriptions of violence and gore that fill many of the books. Long portions of Books 4, 5, and 8 are heaped with three to five line descriptions of how this fighter killed this other fighter, where the weapon pierced or smashed, and how the vanquished man screamed and writhed. This guy you’ve never heard of killed this guy you’d never heard of by stabbing him in the larynx. Then, this guy you’ve never heard of killed this other guy you’d never heard of by spearing him in the liver. Then, this guy you’ve never heard of killed this other guy you’ve never heard of by setting his face on fire. Well, that last one I made up, but anyway these descriptions of the violence between specific combatants are darkly captivating in the variety of ways that they display battle prowess and suffering. But at other times, the sheer repetitiousness of it can make the Iliad seem a little sillyad. In any case, because The Iliad is so centrally concerned with war, I thought I’d talk about war in ancient art and literature, and how the Iliad reflects a general change in the way ancient peoples thought about war.

Let’s picture a riverside Neolithic settlement – a place older than the cities of Ur and Uruk that we talked about a number of episodes ago, a place – and this is the important part – before the Bronze Age. It’s 10,000 BCE. There aren’t any cities in the world. There aren’t any militaries. There aren’t any schools of military tactics, or fortifications beyond rock piles and stacks of deadfall. Combat is not yet departmentalized, and no treatises on war exist. Weaponry and armor aren’t standardized. When tribes fight one another, it’s a free-for-all jumble. Stone weapons falter. Flint knives are brittle. Altogether combat is vicious but unpredictable. It’s precisely the kind of environment which would tempt you to ascribe combat victory not to the power of your fighters, with their rickety weaponry and minimal armor, but instead to tribal gods. Out of the ragtag bloodbath of combat, one side happens to emerge victorious. Their stronger god is clearly the reason for their triumph. It’s as good an explanation as any.

Stone Age warfare was as brutal as all warfare, but it was haphazard and unsystematic. Contrast a mob of club-wielding stone aged fighters with, say, an army under Julius Caesar or Trajan. Compared to their Neolithic ancestors, the Romans are disciplined, tightly organized, consistently armed, and likely experienced. Warfare, even before the Romans got it down to a science, had already undergone a long and complex evolution. Homer’s Iliad is a snapshot of one moment of this evolution taking place.

What I’m about to tell you draws heavily from Paul Kriwaczek’s book Babylon: Mesopotamia and the Birth of Civilization and an article called “The Warrior’s Beauty: The Masculine Body and Self-Identity in Bronze Age Europe” by Paul Treherne.⁷ I highly recommend both and links to them, and other sources, are at literatureandhistory.com.

Archaeological excavations of Bronze Age dig sites have shown a gradual change in the way men thought about themselves. With increasing frequency during the Bronze Age, men were being buried with beautification tools like tweezers, razors, and combs. These goods suggest that slowly, over the course of the centuries before the historical events of the Iliad supposedly took place, men were paying more attention to the way they looked, adorning themselves with ornaments more often, and trying to distinguish themselves as individuals by means of their accoutrements.

Their most important possessons were their weapons and armor. Bronze Age metallurgy was no simple thing. The production of the bronze weapons that appear on almost every page of the Iliad required a smith with extensive experience, along with tinstone, copper ore, and a setup to work these materials into shape. And though they required extensive production time, imported materials, and new trade routes to circulate these materials, Bronze Age weapons changed warfare forever. The Iliad is obsessed with armaments. A ritual takes place, again and again, after one warrior defeats another warrior. The victor strips the gear off of the vanquished, somehow, in the whirlwind of battle, unbuckling straps, removing chest plates, greaves, loosening and peeling off helmets, while combat never stops, with all the manic intensity of a first person shooter game. Kill, take gear, kill, take gear, kill, take gear, and so on. The hypnotizing slideshow of glittering bronze being buckled on, smashed, looted, and reappropriated reveals, maybe more than anything, the period of history that produced the Homeric poems.

Historically, the bronze sword became the ultimate weapon for close combat. As metallurgy and craftsmanship advanced to a point at which spears, helmets, shields, and armor were all being fashioned out of bronze, a warrior’s gear became more dependable, and more standardized – a thing with its own unique beauty and aesthetic. Combat itself, with standard, durable weaponry, could be a specialty discipline, as warriors developed and passed down techniques for blocking, countering, slashing, jabbing, and so on.

The increasing availability of horses also plays a role in the Iliad’s depiction of war. Horses begin to appear on Mesopotamian cylinder seals between 2300 and 2200 BCE – a thousand years before the conventional date of the Trojan War. By the time of Achilles and Hector, horses grazed the pasturelands of mainland Greece and western Turkey, and they had been fully integrated into war, weather as pullers of chariots, and cavalry mounts.

So when all of your neighbors are acquiring bronze weaponry and horses, you have one of two choices. You can either keep fashioning stone and wood clubs and mauls, and hope that your tribal god will help you carry the day in battle. Or you can adopt the latest technology and take good care of your horses. Needless to say, in the Bronze Age, people who made the latter decision won out. The Iliad, with its thousands of mentions of weapons, armor, chariots, belts, swords, and spears, is the product of a historical moment when advanced military technology, and the power of the men who wielded it, were international obsessions. The Iliad also reveals a culture that believed each individual’s unique abilities in combat really did make a profound difference in the outcome of a battle.

The battles in the Iliad are brutal, but not brutish. Specific warriors deliberately single out and slay other specific warriors. Long, articulate speeches often preface duels. And always, the spectacle of men and armaments is at the forefront. The Iliad never shies away from accounts of masculine beauty, or describing a man as having the strength of a god, or the height of a god, or the speed of a god, and so on. It’s a war where there are no drab, everyday soldiers. Everyone is larger than life, bristling with weapons, burning bright in their prime. As a war story the epic is far different than the realistic war novels of Stephen Crane and Eric Remarque that would be published thousands of years later. In terms of aestheticizing brutality, the Iliad is perhaps only matched by the Prophetic Books of the Old Testament in terms of sheer influence.

So what kind of a value system would produce such a relentlessly violent poem? Well, I already told you about the bronze weaponry and the increasing proliferation of horses, so you already know that the Greeks of the 1170s were fascinated with these new phenomena. But even so, you have to wonder about the ideology of a civilization that produced the Homeric epics, in all their bloodletting.

The first answer is that the Iliad is the product of several different turbulent periods of Greek history. In the past couple of shows we’ve talked about the Bronze Age Collapse – the perfect storm of climatological shifts, migrations, and invasions that caused the fall of the Egyptian New kingdom and most of the civilizations of Mesopotamia. Greece, too, suffered under this collapse, its burgeoning city states withering into subsistence communities as the 1100s fell into the 1000s and 900s. A series of mass population migrations caused intercontinental instability on the scale of the fall of the western empire of Rome in the 470s, and the second Black Plague in Europe in the 1340s. And from this turbulence comes the ethos of the Iliad. Homer’s universe, governed by petty, unreliable gods, is the backdrop for the heroic actions of individual actors, like Achilles, Diomedes, and Hector. Homer’s characters, in other words, are products of turbulent centuries. While the poem is believed to have coalesced in the late 700s BCE, portions of it are thought to have been oral traditions that date as far back as the 1400s and 1500s BCE, and the Iliad is colored by the cultural clashes and instability that saw Greece go from Mycenaean palace culture, to the meltdown of the Bronze Age collapse, to the Greek Dark Age, and finally the beginnings of the Greek archaic age, which produced Hesiod as well as Homer.

The Iliad, though, is pretty different from Hesiod’s Works and Days and the Theogony, which we covered in the previous two shows. Notwithstanding his salty individualism and intellectual originality, Hesiod is a believer in tradition, custom, ritual, and social order. Both of his major poems reflect these ideas. Hesiod’s ethics come not from the Greek Dark Age, but the later Archaic Age, a period when interconnections between city states were again bringing stability and prosperity to Greece’s many communities. Hesiod’s work prizes not anarchic heroism, but instead ethical self conduct, agricultural ritual, and a logically ordered pantheon. We catch haunting glimpses of this alternate, peaceful world in Homer – largely through Homer’s famous similes, which again we’ll talk about in a later episode. But from the beginning, Homer’s world lacks the order and the cosmic justice of Hesiod’s, replacing these with breathtaking displays of divine force and of human beings, placed under unimaginable pressure.

Even though we’re only a third of the way through the Iliad, I still think we can answer a compelling question, which is as follows. What is it that the “Glittering Bronze Men,” the title of this episode taken from a later book of the Iliad – what is it that the “Glittering Bronze Men” believed in, that brought them all together in combat? Why did some of them haul their gear across the ocean? Why didn’t they, after nine years of senseless violence, just sheathe their swords and make peace? There are several different answers to this question, and I want to talk about one of them now.

The Iliad and Arête

One answer as to why these “Glittering Bronze Men” didn’t just call the war off can be answered with a single word – arête. Arête is a Greek word, and if scholars have to translate it into a single English word, we usually say, “excellence.” But arête doesn’t just mean “excellence.” What it really means is using one’s particular abilities to the fullest extent possible. A cyclist might exercise her arête in making a two thousand meter climb, a programmer with programming, a physician with her knowledge of medicine – all with their various excellences. In the Iliad, you’ve already seen diverse displays of arête. Achilles and Ajax are warriors. Odysseus is smart and diplomatic. The old Greek Nestor is wise and eloquent. Hector is a man of his family, who fights for them. Agamemnon, as unpleasant a character as he is, is also an unwavering leader. Even Paris, who has the gifts of love and not war, makes full use of the virtues that he does possess.

Different Homeric characters are compelling and powerful in different ways. Different people have different skills, and we all shine brightest when we put our best skills to use, just as cormorants dive into water, and cheetahs race at freeway speeds, and broad trees face down hurricanes. I don’t think there was ever a time in human history when we didn’t understand this.

But in literary history, The Iliad’s special emphasis on personal excellence, or arête, was a driving force behind the strikingly three dimensional, memorable personalities that drive the plot along. If you listened to Episode 3 of this podcast, you remember the Sumerian hero Gilgamesh slowly changing from a marauding tyrant in the beginning of the poem to a more self-conscious, fragile, bittersweet hero at the end. We’re only a third of the way into the Iliad, and we already have a dozen characters of similar complexity. The Homeric epics were produced in an era that placed increasing value on the distinctive heroic actions of diverse individuals, and their central cast is made up of an unforgettably distinct set of men and women.

We don’t have to look any further than the main character in Book 1 of the Iliad for ample proof that the Iliad’s richness in characterization. Achilles is capable of murderous rage, as we learn in the first line of the poem – he’s ready to slay Agamemnon for stealing the woman that he loves. But Achilles is also articulate. He has a clear sense of economic discrepancy between greedy Agamemnon and the workaday soldier of the Greek army. When his wife is taken from him, Achilles cries and complains to his mother. And the depth of his characterization continues as we move forward – in Book 9, we’ll see him happily having his friends over for dinner, comparing himself to a “mother bird,” and offering a discourse on the importance of loving one’s wife. Achilles is not, put simply, just a killing machine. Nor is Hector simply a beefcake defending his city.

An early scene – one that you’ve already heard – that shows the humanism and rich characterization at the core of the Iliad occurs at the end of Book 6. Hector is talking with his wife. For the duration of the poem, Hector is a loving husband, a beloved son, an unimaginably forgiving and good brother, and the cornerstone of the Trojan defense. He holds his baby up high, happy to be with his family. His relationship with his wife is obviously close and mutually respectful. And he hands the baby, his beloved son and hope for the future, back to his wife. And then page later, in Book 7, Hector on the Trojan battlefield, facing off against the giant Greek warrior Ajax. In other words, he goes from the intimate safety of his family and then out to the terror of war, and we go with him. This depiction of Hector, as both a man of close kin and a man of war, a person who has vulnerabilities, and must suppress them on the battlefield, is an example of the magic of the Iliad. In Hector, we have a man with distinct arête, or excellence, a three dimensional character amidst many more, a “Glittering Bronze Man” who is nonetheless a distinct individual, separated from his comrades.

Achilles is no mere killer, nor is Hector just a courageous bulwark. Nor is Helen just a strumpet. Nor is Paris just an unrepentant playboy. Nor is Odysseus, who has a vindictive and sociopathic side, merely a heroic adventurer. Nor is Menelaus, whom we meet as an older and wiser man in the Odyssey, just a jealous husband. In short, the main cast of the Homeric epics are what in English 101 we call “three dimensional characters,” or “dynamic characters” – figures with complex attributes that change over time, rather than stock personalities playing predictable roles. And because of the complexity and depth of the principle characters of the Homeric epics, action unfolds in them as a complex web of often oppositional imperatives in which anything, seemingly, can happen at any time. With a few figures in the Old Testament – Saul, perhaps, and Esther, particularly with the apocryphal additions, and most importantly Moses – with a tiny handful figures from the Old Testament, we see characters with multidimensional psychology – men and women who have interior lives, and question themselves, and learn from their experiences. But largely, the literature of the Bronze and early Iron Ages – especially sacred literature – puts stock characters onto the stage – figures either pious or wicked, prideful or humble, courageous or cowardly, virgin or seductress, loyal wife or impenitent adulteress. If we’re accustomed to these cardboard cutouts – pious Hezekiah and wicked Manasseh, brave Marduk, mild Ea, righteous Atrahasis, sexy Shamhat, wise Thoth, naughty Pandora, hip-gyrating Zeus, and to a lesser extent valiant Gilgamesh, when we open up Book 1 of the Iliad we are astonished to see so many complex personalities arranged together onstage, a complex opera exploring the extremities of human experience, vastly more sophisticated than anything that survives in the literary record up to its time.

Moving on to Books 9-16

There’s so much more to talk about with the Iliad – Homer’s pantheon, the epic similes, the authorship of the poems, and the language – we’ll get to all of that – but before we go today I want to briefly introduce you to something that’s extremely important to understanding Homer as a whole from the get go. And that is that the Iliad and the Odyssey were once part of a much longer series of works that generally get called the Epic Cycle – the Iliad was Book 2, and the Odyssey was Book 7. The other volumes of this cycle have been almost entirely lost. We’ll come back to the Epic Cycle from time to time in Literature and History, and I don’t want to throw too much at you in this initial episode on Homer, but at any rate it’s easy enough to understand that the Iliad and Odyssey were the second, and second-to-last books in an much longer poetic cycle, at the center of which was the Trojan War. We have just been talking about the complexity of Homer’s characterization – that he doesn’t use types or stock characters for his principle cast, but instead a set of rich, multidimensional, and often unpredictable figures. Perhaps part of the reason for this is that these characters had lives beyond the pages of the Iliad and Odyssey, and the author of these poems didn’t have to build a troupe of characters from the ground up.

Well, folks, in the next program, we’re going to move into the heart of this ancient war story, reading Books 9-16. Many of the poem’s most famous scenes lie in these books, from Achilles having his buddies over for dinner, to Odysseus and Diomedes going on a bloody nighttime raid, to Hera waylaying Zeus for a bit of hanky-panky, to the Greeks nearly biting the dust altogether, to, finally, two thirds of the way through the poem, something happening that convinces Achilles that he needs to stop languishing in his tent and help his fellow Greeks win the war. We’ll learn more about the eight-book-long Epic Cycle I mentioned a minute ago – specially, about the Cypria, a poem that once came before the Iliad. And we’ll also learn more about Homer’s gods, and how over the past 2,500 years, not everyone has been convinced that Aphrodite, Hera, Zeus and company behave in especially godlike ways. Thanks for listening to Literature and History. As usual, I have a quiz available on this episode at literatureandhistory.com – take a minute to review the central cast of the Homeric epics if you’re new to the subject – I think seeing in these names in print should be a useful tool for retention. I also have a song coming up if you want to hear it – and if not, I’ll see you next time.

Still listening? So, if you remember, Book 2 of the Iliad contained what is perhaps history’s first ever mention of a mullet. One of the groups of Greek warriors headed to the Trojan war had this hairstyle. As the poem reads, “The sprinting Abantes followed, forelocks cropped, hair long in the back.” I got to thinking. What kind of a theme song would these guys sing, as they ran into battle? Well, it would need to be an 80s tune – sort of late eighties, wraparound shades, tight acid-washed jeans, sleeveless T-shirts, reverb on snare drums. We’re talking about mullets after all. So this one’s called “History’s First Mullets.” It’s the theme song of the Abantes, the first known proponents of the mullet, may they and their glorious hairstyle, and its hidden history, be known to all.



References

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