THE ILIAD

By Homer

The Iliad (meaning a song about Ilium) and the Odyssey are Greek epic poems, conventionally attributed
to a singularly talented poet named Homer, who lived in the east Greek region of Ionia in the 8th century
B.C.E. Most scholars today, however, question the idea that one singer-poet composed either or both
poems, at least not as we would imagine a poet composing today. Further, a growing number of scholars
contest the 8th century date of composition. There were multiple Trojan War story traditions developing
at that time; homeric epic is not the earliest nor did it emerge as especially influential or important until
the 6th century B.C.E. That much said, in classical antiquity the songs that became our Iliad and Odyssey
did eventually achieve a unique and honorific status, which lived on in western European culture and
literature.

People today know the Iliad as a book, usually printed as lines of poetry and translated from the ancient
Greek into English or another modern language. They experience it in the silence and solitude of
reading. The first lines plunge most contemporary readers into the middle of an unfamiliar story
populated by dozens of equally unfamiliar characters. The modern-day encounter with the Iliad however,
is unlike that of most Greeks in the ancient world, especially before the time of Alexander the Great at
the end of the 4th century B.C.E. Outside of a lettered elite in the historical period, most ancient Greeks
would have read Homer rarely if at all. Instead, from childhood, they would have heard Trojan War
poetry, including precursors to our Iliad, sung by poet-singers in feasting halls and during regional
athletic festivals or musical competitions. The basic plot and the cast of characters were not only
common knowledge, they were woven into the fabric of Greek social and cultural life.

In early Greek settlements and cities, largely isolated by their location on islands or in the mountainous
terrain of the southern Balkan peninsula, a rich variety of local versions grew up around the basic plot of
the Trojan War story. The names of Trojan War heroes were figured into the genealogies of local elites
and memorialized on civic ritual occasions. The visual world was richly imbued with images of the Trojan
War. In their cities and in regional sanctuaries, ancient Greeks could have looked up at Trojan War scenes
sculpted into temple pediments. They poured wine from ceramic vessels depicting the war's events,
sometimes even identifying characters by name. Further, those fortunate enough to boast a hero's grave
in their locale believed they enjoyed his special beneficence and they responded with rituals of worship
at his tomb.

In the 7th and 6th centuries B.C.E. the development of regional sanctuaries, such as Olympia and Delphi,
occasioned a new direction in Trojan War epic song; the development is commonly referred to as
panhellenism ('all Greek'). Regional festivals brought together Greek singers and audiences from
different cities and districts who nonethless shared a language and many social, cultural, and mythic
traditions. The need for singers to perform for audiences gathered from many regions gave rise to a
Trojan War epic tradition marked less by local allusions and heroes than by those with wide recognition
and appeal. The result was a broadly diffuse and increasingly invariable tradition, which became over
time our Iliad and Odyssey. Although the panhellenic homeric epics eventually dominated in literature,
local traditions lived on, as is evinced in both poetry and art.

In sum, for generations of ancient Greeks, the encounter with the Iliad was aural and iconographic,
public, variant, resonant with vibrant local traditions and, in time, also panhellenic. How those living oral
traditions evolved into the paperback you hold in your hand has been the subject of much debate; so
much so that is is usually referred to as the Homeric Question. Before we take up that very important
question, however, we turn to the Trojan War story told in the Iliad.

The Iliad day-by-day

The Iliad begins, famously, in medias res, announcing the theme of the song as the rage of Achilles
resulting from a quarrel with Agamemnon, a quarrel that occurred in the 10th and final year of the
Trojan War. It concludes not with the end of the war but the end of Achilles' rage and a return to
normalcy, symbolized by the funeral rites for Hektor. Although the action takes place over a period of
only 45 days, the poem uses allusion to earlier events and foreshadowing of later ones to encompass the
entire duration of the war.

Day 1
Book 1: The Iliad opens with the narrator's appeal to the Muse ('Goddess') to sing the wrath of Achilles
and its dire consequences for thousands of Achaeans (one of the Homeric terms for the invading forces,
which the poem never refers to as 'Greeks'). The Muse, now implicitly the narrator, begins the song with
a quarrel that erupts between Agamemnon and Achilles after Chryses, a priest of Apollo, had come to
the Greek camp to ransom his captive daughter Chryseis. When Agamemnon dismissed the priest out of
hand, Chryses appealed to Apollo, who avenged the insult by sending a plague into the camp.

On the 10th day of the plague, day 1 of the poem's action, Achilles convenes an assembly to discern why
Apollo is angry and what must be done to appease him. The seer Kalchas pronounces Agamemnon the
cause of the plague and prescribes returning the girl as the only remedy. Angry over the loss of his war-
prize and the prestige she represents, the commander agrees to give her up only if the Achaean kings
replace her with one of their captive women. Achilles denounces Agamemnon's military leadership as a
charade rooted in greed and his demand for a replacement prize as outrageous, considering that the
armies had come to Troy to help him and to pile up booty for themselves. Moreover, all the plunder had
already been distributed; it would not be right to take it back. Not one to brook a public challenge,
Agamemnon tells Achilles that he can go home now, but without his war-prize Briseis, whom
Agamemnon claims for his own. Achilles draws his sword with intent to take the other man's life, but is
restrained by Athene, who promises that waiting will pay off in prizes worth three times what
Agamemnon is taking away. When Achilles finally concedes, Chryseis is returned to her father, Briseis is
taken from Achilles' shelter, and the offended hero goes to the seashore to call upon his mother Thetis
for help. He persuades her to ask Zeus to help the Trojans drive the Achaeans back among their ships
until they recognize the madness of dishonoring the best of the Achaeans.

Day 14

True to her word, after Zeus's return to Olympos twelve days later, Thetis goes to him with Achilles'
request and gains his consent. When Hera takes Zeus to task for plotting with the sea-nymph against the
Trojans, a quarrel ensues. Distracted, however, by Hephaestos's antics, Hera, Zeus, and the rest of the
gods end the day with laughter, feasting, music, and finally, sleep.

Book 2: That night, Zeus sends a deceitful dream to Agamemnon, projecting victory for the Greeks on the
next day if he will marshal them for battle.
Day 15: First day of battle

Books 2-7: In the morning Agamemnon summons the kings who form his council and tells them about
the dream. He declares his purpose to test the morale of the troops in a public assembly by reporting
that the war is a lost cause instead of revealing the hopeful message of the dream. If the leader of the
Greek forces was hoping to rally the troops to the war effort by using reverse psychology, he was sorely
disappointed. Upon his announcement in the assembly the men make for the ships and must be forcibly
reassembled by Odysseus. Urged by members of his council, who now share the blame in the event of
failureâ to stay the course, Agamemnon relents and sends the Achaians to eat and prepare for battle.
The poet invokes the Muse again and embarks on a lengthy catalog, first of the Greek leaders and
contingents and then of the Trojan and allied leaders.

The two armies take the field, but instead of engaging they consent to a duel between Paris and
Menelaos to determine the outcome of the war. The narrative shifts to Troy, where Helen, summoned to
a vantage point on the wall, points out the Achaean leaders to Priam and the elders of the city. Back on
the battlefield, Menelaos is decisively winning the single combat when Aphrodite sweeps Paris safely
back to his bedroom, where he is joined by Helen. While they make love, Menelaos claims victory in the
duel by default, and a truce is called.

The scene shifts again, this time to Olympos, where the gods conspire to restart the war, in which all now
have a stake, by inciting the Trojan archer Pandaros to break the truce. His arrow grazes Menelaos and
the two armies join battle. The narrative first follows the exploits (known as an aristeia) of Diomedes on
the battlefield. When Aphrodite tries to sweep Aineias out of his path, Diomedes wounds her, sending
her crying to her mother. Hektor, with Ares at his side, gains temporary advantage, but Athene takes
charge of Diomedes' chariot and urges him to attack the war-god himself. Ares complains to Zeus and the
gods retire from the battlefield. When the tide of battle again turns in favor of the Greeks, Hektor slips
back into the city to instruct the women to appeal to Athene, their patron goddess, for help. While there
he finds and seems to say his farewells to his wife Andromache and their young son Astyanax.

Hektor returns to the plain of Troy to find the battle still raging. On the prompting of Helenos, he calls for
another duel to decide the war, this time between him and a champion of the Greeks' choosing.
Telamonian Ajax, known as the bulwark of the Achaeans and famous for defensiive war craft, is chosen
by lot and the duel commences. Nightfall brings it to an indeterminate end. Returning to their respective
dwellings, the Achaeans are counseled to dig a trench and construct an associated palisade to protect
the ships, while the Trojans debate returning Helen to her husband.
Day 16 (truce)

Early in the morning, the Trojans propose a truce, to which the Greeks agree, so that each side may bury
their dead.

Day 17 (truce)

The Greeks take advantage of the ceasefire to dig a trench and build a palisade between their ships,
drawn up on the shore, and the plain of Troy. Angered that they had built the wall without first offering
sacrifice, Poseidon protested that its memory would outlast that of the wall he and Apollo had built
around the city. Zeus assures his brother that when the Achaeans depart Troy he may wipe out every
trace of the makeshift fortifications.

Day 18 Second Day of Battle

Books 8-10: Zeus orders the gods to stay out of the battle and himself watches the action from the
vantage point of Mt. Ida. The scale he uses to weigh the fates of the two armies indicates that the
Trojans will win the day. Following a Trojan advance the Greeks enjoy a brief resurgence, but Hektor is
unstoppable and the Greeks are soon driven back behind the wall. Nightfall finds the Achaeans dispirited
and the Trojans camped on the plain, eager to force their way among the Greek ships at morning's light.

Agamemnon summons the Greek generals to private council and, now with utter seriousness, advises
abandoning Troy that night in order to escape with their lives. Diomedes rashly advocates staying the
course. Nestor, however, gently urges Agamemnon to placate Achilles with gifts and conciliatory words,
knowing that Diomedes' plan is doomed to fail apart from the fighting power of the offended king. In a
thinly veiled effort to obligate and subordinate Achilles, Agamemnon sends Odysseus, Ajax, and Phoinix
to his shelter with a rich offer of ransom. The embassy attempts to effect his return by recasting
Agamemnon's ransom as a generous gift, by enticing Achilles with the possibility of killing Hektor and
winning glory, and by exploiting their bonds of friendship and filial duty, but to no avail. Asserting that he
must choose between a long but inglorious life in his native Phthia and death at Troy, which would bring
him undying fame, Achilles declares his intent to set sail for home the next day. That his only choice,
however, is to die at Troy is evinced when he concludes that he will not leave but will also not take up
arms until the Trojans threaten to set his own vessels ablaze. The embassy reports disingenuously that
Achilles will leave for home the next day and he advises others to do the same. Dismayed, the council
nonetheless approves Diomedes' flawed plan to carry on the war without their best combatant.
Odysseus and Diomedes, clad in animal skins, set out on a noctural spying mission in hopes of
discovering the designs of the Trojans, whose campfires flicker ominously on the plain.

Day 19 Third day of battle

Books 11-18: Agamemnon leads the armies out and himself kills a number of Trojans, allowing the Greek
forces to gain the upper hand temporarily. When he is wounded and carried in a chariot back to the
ships, Hektor recognizes it as a sign that Zeus will now favor the Trojans. Diomedes and Odysseus also
retreat from the battlefield wounded, while Ajax holds the Trojans at bay. The three injured leaders are
shortly followed by Machaon the physician, who is struck by an arrow and carried back to the camp in
Nestor's chariot. Achilles, watching the wounded come in, suggests to Patroklos that perhaps now the
Achaeans' situation is dire enough that they will come to him on bended knee. He sends his friend off to
Nestor's shelter to inquire about the injured man (and perhaps to give the old king opportunity to
counsel the leaders to do what is right by Achilles).

With Hektor pressing ever nearer to the palisade, Patroklos chafes to ask his question of Nestor and
hurry back to Achilles. But the old man indulges in a long speech, urging his young guest to persuade
Achilles either to join battle or, failing that, to send Patroklos out in Achilles' armor at the head of the
Myrmidons to frighten the Trojans and buy the Greeks some breathing space. Patroklos is further
delayed in returning to Achilles' shclter when he comes across a wounded companion, Eurypylos, and
stops to tend him. Meanwhile Ajax manages to defend the wall surrounding the ship until Hektor comes
close enough to smash one of the gates with a stone, allowing the Trojans to pour through the breach. At
this moment, Zeus is temporarily distracted, perhaps by Hera's seduction, as we will see, and Poseidon
takes advantage of his inattention to join the battle and rally the Greeks. The three wounded leaders,
Agamemnon, Diomedes, and Odysseus also make an appearance and urge on their troops fighting
among the ships. With renewed vigor, the Achaeans turn the Trojans in flight back across the ditch. Ajax
hurls a huge stone at Hektor and sends him reeling; his companions manage to haul him to safety where
he lies on the ground in a daze. And all the while Zeus is oblivious, having fallen into a deep sleep after
being seduced by his wife.

The king of the gods awakens to find that his plan to help the Trojans, and thus fulfil his promise to
Thetis, has been derailed: Hektor is on the ground vomiting blood and the Greeks are streaming out
through the walls in hot pursuit. Zeus quickly orders the gods helping the Achaeans to leave the
battlefield and sends Apollo to revive Hektor and help the Trojans recover the ground lost while he was
sleeping. With Apollo's help, the palisade is breached a second time so that the Trojans are able to cross
it in waves. The Achaeans fall back and the fighting rages among the ships; Hektor reaches for one of the
prows and prepares to torch it.

Patroklos, hearing the noise of battle coming nearer, leaves Eurypolos and carries Nestor's message to
Achilles. Achilles consents to let his friend lead the Myrmidons out in his armor on the condition that
Patroklos not pursue the Trojans all the way to the city wall. The ruse works for a time, and Patroklos
slaughters Trojans until he is stopped by Apollo, who knocks off his helmet, and Hektor, who deals him a
death blow. A tug-of-war ensues over the corpse, by now stripped of its marvelous armor. When Achilles
hears of his friend's death, he steps to the wall and utters a terrifying war cry, a flame emerging from his
head; this frightens the Trojans so that the Achaeans recover Patroklos' body. Achilles mourns, lying in
the dust, but also steels himself to return to battle with one goal: to kill Hektor. Soon afterward, he will
meet his own end. Hektor now wears Achilles' arms, so Thetis asks Hephaistos to make a new set for her
son.

Day 20 Fourth Day of Battle

Books 19-22: Achilles receives his new armor and summons the Achaeans to assembly in preparation for
combat. He announces the end of his anger, regretting the day he had captured the woman Briseis who
became the object of such a ruinous quarrel, and urges the men to marshal for battle at once. He is
delayed, however, first by Agamemnon who denies personal responsibility for the quarrel and extends
the same offer of ransom as he had the night before, and by Odysseus, who insists on taking a common
meal before going into combat. Achilles brushes aside both symbols of reconciliation with Agamemnon,
vowing to neither eat nor drink until he avenges Patroklos' death. While the men eat, Athene fortifies
him with nectar and ambrosia; he then arms himself for war.

Zeus assembles the gods on Olympos and gives them leave to rejoin the fighting, in part to keep Achilles
from storming the city walls contrary to his destiny. Achilles nearly kills Aineias, who is fated to survive
the war, but Poseidon sweeps him out of danger. He captures 12 Trojans and sends them to the camp to
die on Patroklos' funeral pyre. Lykaon, whom he had sold into slavery before, he now hews down as the
Trojan warrior begs for his life. Achilles' savage slaughter of enemy warriors intensifies until he literally
chokes the River Skamandros with their corpses and the river rises up against him, enraged. Up to now
the gods have left Achilles on his own, but when he calls out for help against this elemental force of
nature, Hera sends Hephaistos to overcome the flooding river with fire. The gods return to comic
skirmishes among themselves while the berserk mortal hero cuts down the Trojans, who are now
retreating in panic. Apollo distracts Achilles momentarily, allowing the last of the Trojans to escape to
safety behind the city walls, except Hektor who alone remains outside. Gripped by fear, Hektor takes
flight and Achilles chases him in a grim life or death race around the circuit of the city. When Athene
appears near Hektor in the form of his brother, he takes courage, thinking he is not alone, and turns to
face his dread opponent. He asks for an agreement that whoever is victor will return the corpse of his
victim to the family for burial, but Achilles disavows any such settlement. As Priam and Hekabe look on in
horror, Achilles rushes upon Hektor and drives the spear though the soft part of his neck, the only spot
left vulnerable by his own glorious armor. Refusing the offer of ransom gasped out by the dying man, the
raging hero counters that if he could he would hack Hektor's flesh away and eat it raw; as it is, he will
leave that messy work to dogs and birds. With that, Achilles lashes the dead man's feet to his chariot and
drags him back to the Achaean camp.

Book 23: That night, after the Greeks share a funeral meal, the ghost of Patroklos visits Achilles in a
dream and requests a swift burial.

Day 21

The Greeks burn Patroklos on a funeral pyre, together with offerings and the 12 captured Trojans.

Day 22

Patroklos' bones are gathered and buried under a mound of earth. Achilles announces funeral gamesâ
including a chariot race, boxing, wrestling, and a footraceâ where he presides, distributes the prizes, and
settles quarrels but does not participate.

Days 23-33

Book 24: Achilles is still mourning his friend and daily for 12 days drags Hektor's corpse around the
funeral mound.

Day 34
The gods meet in council and debate stealing the corpse in order to put an end to Achilles' senseless
abuse and allow Hektor's family to perform funeral rites. Zeus, however, arranges for a settlement that
Achilles had earlier disavowed: he sends instructions to Priam to take ransom to Achilles for the release
of his son's body and instructions to Achilles to accept the ransom. That night with Hermes as guide, the
king of Troy makes his way into the Achaean camp and slips unnoticed into Achilles' shelter. He takes
hold of the powerful man by the knees, a gesture of supplication, and kisses his hands. Achilles is moved
to pity by the reminder of his own elderly father. The two men weep together for their respective losses
and Achilles agrees to accept the fabrics and other precious objects Priam has brought as ransom and to
send the old man back to Troy with his sonâÄôs body. A meal is shared and Achilles agrees to restrain the
Greeks for the 12 days needed to complete the funeral rites.

Days 35-43

Before dawn, Priam is roused early to return to Troy, carrying his dead son on the cart previously loaded
down with treasure. Hektor is lamented first by his wife Andromache, then by his mother Hekabe, and
finally by Helen. For nine days the Trojans gather wood for the funeral pyre.

Day 44

Hektor is burned on the funeral pyre.

Day 45

The Trojans gather Hektor's bones for burial, with which the Iliad ends.