THE ILIAD: FOR DUMMIES ☀️ MASTERPOST
just kidding you're not a dummy, you're some hot stuff right there! i will be going through the entire iliad and giving you a general overview, some interesting plot points, additional context, and some other analysis tools to better help you understand the epic!
This post will serve as a table of contents (at the end) to my Iliad posts and a general overview that I will be constantly updating! I am using the Richmond Lattimore translation of the Iliad, alongside my companion book by Malcom M. Wilcock
Before we get into analyzing the actual Iliad, we need to get into some essential questions and context about the book
WHAT IS THE ILIAD:
The Iliad was written by Homer (this is actually debated but we can get into that later) around 750 and 550 B.C.E.
At its core, the story is about heros and humans. It's an Iron Age poem about an event, the Trojan War, that was supposed to have taken place in the Bronze age. The Iliad is considered to be a poem comprised of multiple books, 24 to be exact
This story is only a few days of the tenth and final year of the Greek siege against the city of Troy- this means it relies on the audience already knowing most of the basic details about the Trojan war and the gods themselves (don't sorry, I will provide this for you as we go along)
WHO IS HOMER:
The age old question: who the fuck is Homer?
Literally nothing is known about this dude except that he wrote (or was credited with writing) the Odyssey and the Iliad
People have referenced his writings for EONS. Archilochus, Alcman, Tyrtaeus, Callinus, and even Sappho have referenced the poems of Homer in their own works. These also were popular in fine art in the late 7th century B.C.E.
There is a general consensus that Homer was from Ionia- a territory in western Anatolia or modern day Turkey that was populated by Greeks who spoke the Ionian dialect, aka the birthplace of Greek philosophy. Want more info on Ionia? Click Here!
His descendants were called the Homerids/Homeridae
There is scholarly debate on if he even wrote both the Iliad and the Odyssey, or if he only wrote one, etc etc etc. This is due to some very specific differences in the structure of the words used (like the use of short vowels, and the seemingly unimportant semivowel of the digamma being missing from the epics...yeah it's a lot)
The poems were reproduced ORALLY. This means that the poems were passed down by word of mouth, which if I were to sit and listen to this entire book via a guy singing at me...idk man I think I would leave
All of this to say, we really don't know who Homer is. There's a lot more information about what he could have looked like, if he really did write the Iliad, and a million other things, but I've already talked your ear off and we haven't even gotten into the book yet. If you want more information about Homer, check out my sources at the end of the post!
WAS THE CITY OF TROY REAL:
Yeah. There were nine layers exposed at the site of where Troy was expected to be, and nearly fifty sublayers at the mound of Hisarlik
Troy was a vassal state: meaning it had an obligation to a superior state, which happened to be the Hittite Empire
Troy had a lot more allies than original fighters in the city, meaning they had many language barriers- making the army harder to control than the unified Greek enemy.
THE STYLE OF THE ILIAD:
Cause - Effect - Solution
The poem is concluded with a mirror image of its beginning: an old man ventures to the camp of his enemy in order to ransom his child
The poem foreshadows the death of Achilles in MULTIPLE passages! He knows he is destined to die young if he fights at Troy, and the demise of his lover (don't fight me on this) Patroclus gives us an even more extended foreshadowing of the grief that is to come
When Achilles dies, Thetis (his mom) takes his body from the pyre and takes him to a place called the White Island. It's not clear whether he is immortalized BUT the reference to Achilles funeral in the Odyssey states that Achilles is cremated and his bones are placed in a golden urn along those of Patroclus, and the urn is entombed under a prominent mound (tsoa fans...you're welcome)
This isn't really necessary knowledge but moreso something I think is cool: the backstory from the Iliad of an abducted bride also appears in the Sanskirt epic Ramayana (circa 4th century B.C.E.)
okay now here is the ACTUAL important stuff
Humanity is the center of the universe in the Iliad. Humans motivations and concerns generate action in the poem, while the gods are often reduced to the role of enablers or spectators
The style of the poem collaborates with the vision that the speciousness of this epic means that every thought and gesture, spear cast and threat, intimate conversation and lament CAN be recorded. It gives a consciousness behind the demands of the iliad that these interactions MUST be recorded, this attention to detail is another way of showing centrality and the worth of the human experience (Greek OR Trojan)
The Iliad is ultimately a poem about death, the chief elements that distinguish the mortals from gods are: Death shadows every action, and death is neither abhorred nor celebrated. Instead it crystalizes by means of this one theme, death in battle, the essence of what it means to be human (Life is a struggle each person will always lose, the question is how one acts with that knowledge)
Modern readers and analysis blogs will state that one's inner spirit is somehow the "real" self, however the Iliad assumes the opposite: The psykhai (soul, spirits) of dying heroes fly off to Hades while their autous ("selves") are left behind in the form of dead bodies
Glory is INCREDIBLY important in the iliad, why? If mortals could live forever (like gods) then glory would be useless. It's a commodity to be exchanged, and because of this it has an economic and symbolic reality
Companionship is incredibly important
Pity is also very important, it's the concluding note of the poem. Even the gods feel pity
THE GODS AND THE ILIAD:
The Iliad gains depth by the divine dimension shedding glory on the humans at Troy. The gods are so intensely concerned with warriors and their fates which elevates the mortals to a special plane
Mortals are only separated from gods because they grow old and die
The symbiotic bond of gods and mortals is always see-sawing between adoration and antagonism
Humans who get too close to the gods risk being struck down, case in point, Achilles. He's young, well-made, he's a warrior but also a singer/musician (the only hero to be seen doing such a thing), he looks and acts like Apollo. THEREFORE...it's no coincidence that Apollo is ultimately the god who slays Achilles, just as he did Patroclus
Poetry supplemented or even guided ancient Greek religious interpretation much more than the activity of priests due to the lack of any official religious text. This gave ancient Hellenism a very fluid nature
This was a long post, and it's only the first of many! I will continuously update this with more sources about the Iliad and answer any FAQs that come up! I love classic literature, and as a STEM student I need to entertain my passion somehow lol. There is a table of contents at the top of the post, as well as right here. This will be updated for each book of the Iliad I write about, as well as any supplemental posts I make about certain topics and themes as I go along. I am putting a LOT of work into this series of posts, so let me know your thoughts or anything you'd like me to change/add/etc! Happy reading!
TABLE OF CONTENTS:
(This is empty because this is the only post...more posts coming soon)
Sources/Citations/Additional Material
Homer- Britannica
Homerids- Britannica
Who Is Homer- The British Museum (fuck the British Museum)
Ionia Information- World Encyclopedia
The Hittites- Britannica
Ramayana Overview- British Library
Overview of Greek Mythology- Theoi
The Iliad- Overview via Britannica
Thetis- World Encyclopedia
