Reading the Iliad

      Reading the Iliad

      The Iliad is Western civilization's first piece of literature, and it remains one of its most troubling.  Each generation must face the work's challenges in turn: its unabashed, unflinching brutality, the meandering narrative with its mysterious themes, and its alien characters upon a misty, indistinct landscape.  Yet, the poem has never ceased to reel men in with its visceral humanity and dizzying synthesis of divine glamour and naked objectivity.  I am among its victims, struck dumb by its force and puzzled by its motives.  But, after a number of close readings and some consideration of relevant literary criticism, I feel up to the task of registering some of my conclusions and unfinished thoughts alike.

The Rage of Achilles

      The author famously reveals the work's subject in the first word, μῆνιν, rage, the rage of Achilles.  But his rage, whipped onward by the favor of the gods, is something more than human.  It would be very easy for a reader to characterize the son of Peleus as "angry", "hurt", or even "childish", and many have indeed waved him away with such simplifications - his characterization in the 2004 film "Troy" is such a case - but these descriptors find no subject here.  The rage of Achilles is divine - "godlike" - and it is solitary; Achilles is the most solitary man in the world.  

      He is the least relatable man in the epic, an avatar of martial violence and as aloof as a god in his rage; Agamemnon describes him as "the most violent man alive".  While the armies clash on the field of battle, he sits by the ships and smolders.  While encamped Achilles dreams of battle, wanting nothing more than to return to his element and sow black death, but denies his mortal drives.  The best among men, Diomedes, Odysseus, and Hektor, feel the pull of duty and honor among peers - or at least the fear of consequences; The gods, unchanging and unthreatened in Olympus, however, are not constrained by such concerns.  They intervene without concern in the lives of men, separated always by a gulf of immortality and timelessness.  Achilles, in his rage, also sits free from the affairs of his allies and enemies; he has already given up the hope for nostos - homecoming - and fumes at being denied the full weight of his heroic death-drive.  His rage is something greater than the limited emotional effect of Agamemnon's insult.  To understand Achilles as "god-like", the topics of violence and heroism must be confronted head-on.  

"The Rage of Achilles" Giovanni Battista Tiepolo

Violence

       It is the poem's violence, described with the anatomical precision of a physician, that strikes the modern reader.  

With that he hurled and Athena drove the shaft and it split the archer's nose between the eyes - it cracked his glistening teeth, the tough bronze cut off his tongue at the roots, smashed his jaw and the point came ripping out beneath his chin. (5.321-5)

      Some have asked whether or not Homer celebrates violence or condones war - but such inquiries cannot be answered with any satisfaction, since Homer rejects their premises.  He does not justify the killing with any moral obligation to necessity or an appeal to a greater good, but shows it to us as it is.  This constitutes the enormous intellectual chasm of some 2700 years.  In Homer's world, early Archaic Greece, war and peace did not occupy distinct areas of activity; war was interwoven with the daily activities of society.  War was as much a normal function of economics and trade as farming, and the taking of slaves may have inspired pity, but it it never bred an abolitionist.

      The impression that the modern inhabitant of an advanced country has of war is that it is an unusual state, contrasting in every regard with the habitual rhythms of peacetime, that which is "normal".  Devastation is condemned and regretted, only made palatable if it can be justified with appeals to necessity or harm-reduction.  It takes place in a defined zone, often "over there", within the confines of a militarized zone.  Those who fight are supposed to be there, trained and in uniform.  The families back home expect regular communications, scheduled grants of leave, and mental health screenings for their "well-greaved" citizen warriors.  Perhaps the only way that a modern reader knows how to engage with the unjustified brutalities of Homer's heroes is to ask what the ultimate effect is, and whether or not he is hiding a sense of moral indignation.  But no comfort will come from seeking that which is not there.  

      If the sympathetic description of deaths on both sides of the Trojan War offer what seems like a glimpse of humanity at the tale's core, this is no mistake; the other side of the bourgeois morality of war is that the enemy is dehumanized for the sake of the ally.  Naturally, when there is a justified cause for which to engage in the awful business of organized violence, the side of right must be celebrated at the expense of wrong.  There are no "bad guys" in the Iliad, so our narrator is free to pity the fate of every soul who is sent to an early death.  And death is often pitiful in the Iliad; as in actual warfare, there is rarely dignity in the crush of the front lines.  See the fate of Chersidamas: 

Odysseus caught him up under the bulging shield with a jabbing spear that split him crotch to navel - the man writhed in the dust, hands clutching the earth (11. 501-3)

      Historically, Homer presents us also with a view of battle free from abstraction.  He wrote in a the world before generals or written works on tactics and strategy, his captains are nothing more than tribal front-fighters inspiring their men through speeches and personal bravery.  Historians have struggled to find a clear description of the mode of fighting in Homer's world, and part of the difficulty lies in the fact that war was not yet theorized in 700 BC.  We see what the combatant sees: chaos.

      The Hero

      The modern reader cannot help but notice that Homer's heroes are remarkably unheroic.  Achilles thinks only of his own fate, Odysseus and Menelaus feel no remorse at killing helpless men and prisoners, and even civilized Hektor pokes fun at the death pangs of his enemies.  The modern hero is worthy of praise due to the morality of his character or actions.  The flawed hero is a popular trope that allows an internally flawed character to redeem himself through the pureness of his actions.  The Greek hero, however, is not bound to, or defined by, morality.  

      The Greek hero is defined by his deeds as such, and by death.  Death in the Iliad is not dressed up in any religious sentimentality, it is simple oblivion.  When a character is killed, they are "cut down", "slaughtered", or their "life breath [leaves their] bones", but there is never a promise of heaven, no comfort in the end of war's labors.  Achilles proves the greatest hero because he gives up longevity and the sureness of life in order to embrace the abyss of death.  Immortality of the spirit after death, which has always been the comfort of those who follow the Judeo-Christian tradition, is absent for the Greeks.  The only path to immortality, bar being made into a god (not a likely end), is through the hero's sacrifice.  The ancient hero cults sang odes to their subjects so that they might live forever through their accomplisment.  Machiavelli (The Prince) recognized this tendency in the religion of antiquity and asked if perhaps it provided an ideological impetus to the accomplishment of great deeds.

      Sloterdijk (2009) wrote that "the early heroes are celebrated soley as doers of deeds and achievers of acts."  The heroes' refusal to be made subject to the tyranny of nature (death included), was a symbol of the achievement of civilization, which is the gradual tearing away of man from animal.   A hero's deeds were the proof of history before there was history. 

      Achilles' rage functions as the propulsion to action, the kinetic element in the doing of deeds.  Rage creates a singularity of the corporeal hero and the immortal deed, removing the considerations, second thoughts, and mortal trembling that mark the human element in other characters.  So, its function reveals why it is worthy of the muse's song: it is the primeval stuff of action, a cable between the plans of the gods and the events of humanity.  

Jackal-headed Anubis

      The support of the gods can also be read in the same light.  "The Greeks made their gods in their own image.  That had not entered the mind of man before.  Until then, gods had no semblance of reality.  They were unlike all living things. (Hamilton, 1942)"  The gods of the Eastern civilization were the cold, animal forces of nature, but, with the Greeks they ceased to be the representation of natural forces.  The gods thought, changed their minds, quarreled, and lusted.  Man was at the center of the Greek universe.  Bernard Knox (1990), wrote that in the epics, divine favor is "not a randomly bestowed benefit, but an advantage that expressed and reinforces a mortal's inherent qualities  and his or her ability to command the help of other mortals."  The hero was the medium through which the gods worked, even so they did not represent dead nature, but the vibrancy of humanity.

      Still, the gods were immortal, and the death of bystanders did not bother them as they sought their goals.  Neither does Achilles, in his rage, feels a connection to the world of men.  He has accepted death and becomes like a god of war after taking to the field once more.  He does not even shirk from human sacrifice.  When one of Priam's sons begs for his life, the answer is

 Fool, don't talk to me of ransom.  No more speeches.  Before Patroclus met his day of destiny, true, it warmed my heart a bit to spare some Trojans: droves I took alive and auctioned off as slaves.  But now not a single Trojan flees his death, not one of the gods hand over to me before your gates, none of all the Trojans, sons of Priam least of all! (21. 111-18)

Nearly all of the other heroes in the poem, no matter how great, feel the very human pangs of fear in the face of possible death.  Achilles despairs only at the assault of a god (21.308).  When Hektor seeks to reach an agreement with the rampaging hero, calling for the victor to return the body of the vanquished for a proper funeral, Achilles snarls "there are no binding oaths between men and lions. (22. 310)"  The tunnel-vision of heroic rage is never more pronounced than at this moment.

      It is only when confronted with the bravery of Priam, begging for the body of his son, that Achilles can regain his humanity.  He remembers his own father.  Hector, the scourge of the Achaean forces and Troy's last line of defense, is dead and his place in the songs of the hero cult is secured.  The godlike rage is spent and the emotions of a mortal wash over him.  Mortals can be killed.  

I have not touched upon the historicity of Homer because I do not believe that it affects the content of the entry.  But for an excellent, brief, exploration of the arguments and evidence can be found in Bernard Knox's excellent Introduction to the Pengiun Classics edition of Fagles' translation (1991).  A deeper exploration of the historicity of Homer can be found in Finley's The World of Odysseus.

While the Fagles translation is classic and very good, some might find Stanley Lombardo's 1997 edition to be an interesting, energetic take.