Why I Like the Iliad

Glorious, epic, vast and complex are some of the words commonly used to describe Homer’s iliad but honestly, despite all the gods flying around in chariots, the near invincible heroes and the giant, battles on sprawling battle fields, the iliad is not a big story. Infact if you put it into perspective historically and geographically iys a very VERY small story but that isn’t what I mean. I mean that what makes it truly amazing is not that it tells of one immense mythological  tale, but rather, is a collage of very small very human stories.

While its incredibly frustrating to keep track of the 600+ names in the iliad, I love that homer names each and every character, giving them a name and identity even if just to identify them as they’re killed. He seems determined not to drown all those very human soldiers of his in one large death toll statistic. If someone dies in the Iliad, homer doesn’t let them die a nameless soldier, lost to the sweeping devastation of war. He makes sure you know the soldiers name or sometimes even where he’s from and what his ancestry is. It’s a valiant attempt at humanizing those that participate in larger-than-life events like the Trojan war that are romanticised and blown so out of proportion that its easy to forget that huge conflicts and great battles usually boil down to small actions by individuals and little interactions and fights between individual soldiers. In the Iliad, war is one man killing/maiming/hurting another. He doesn’t describe large trends or movements. Just individuals and their actions. Homer destroys the idea of a war being between large entities. When you say “India fought Britain” you’re talking about entities/concepts. Not people. Homer admirably avoids this and I love that.

There’s also the matter of little incidents and anecdotes within the battles and the framework of the larger story itself. Like the one where Diomedes, charging through battle leaving a trail of dead Trojans everywhere he goes, meets a Trojan (Glaukas) who’s grandfather happened to be a friend of Diomedes’ own. He insists they part friends, exchange gifts and avoid killing each other. For most of the book, Achilles is sitting out the battle and Hector appears to be commanding forces away from where homer wants our attention. So although it is the story of a few chosen famous “Heroes”, we see more of characters like Teucer of the arrows, poor Sarpedon, pushed about by the Gods’ whims and fancies. Or Glaukas, so ashamed at being wounded that he jumps off a wall or Pandarus who breaks the temporary truce between the Trojans and Greeks.

 As you plod through the Iliad,  Trojan war looks less like an intimidating old epic and more like a collage of very human stories and that B, is why I think its awesome.

Sorry this is basically the same sentence over again for 500 words.