The Iliad

I came to The Iliad late, after years of thinking I knew it from summaries. Achilles sulks, Hector dies, horse, done. That version misses almost everything the poem cares about. The version I read for this summary is the Robert Fagles translation published by Viking Press in 1990, 704 pages in print, and it took me three weeks of slow evenings. Fagles keeps the lines muscular and fast, and once I settled into the rhythm I stopped noticing the page count. What surprised me was how human it is. For a poem about gods shoving mortals around, it spends huge stretches on men arguing in tents, eating, crying, and being afraid to die.

A quick frame helps before the plot. The story is old, passed down by singers long before anyone wrote it down, and it covers only a few weeks in the tenth year of the war between the Greeks, also called Achaeans, and the city of Troy. It does not start at the beginning of the war and it does not end with the fall of Troy. It starts with a quarrel and ends with a funeral. Everything in between is what that quarrel costs.

The quarrel and the plague

The poem opens with Achilles, the best fighter on the Greek side, furious at Agamemnon, the commander who holds the whole army together by rank rather than respect. The cause is women taken as prizes, and Homer does not soften how ugly that system is. Agamemnon has Chryseis, daughter of a priest of Apollo. When her father comes to ransom her, Agamemnon refuses and insults him. The priest prays, Apollo sends plague into the Greek camp, mules and dogs die first, then men, pyres burning day after day.

Achilles calls an assembly and pushes to return the girl. Agamemnon agrees but takes Briseis, Achilles prize, as compensation. In front of everyone. That public humiliation is the engine for the next fifteen books. Achilles says he will not fight. He goes to his tent by the ships, sits out, and asks his mother Thetis to get Zeus to punish the Greeks so they learn what he is worth. Thetis does. Zeus nods. The whole war tilts.

I found these opening scenes harder to like than I expected, and that is the point. Agamemnon is pompous and thin skinned. Achilles is proud to the point of cruelty. He would rather watch his friends die than accept an apology that comes late. Fagles does not excuse him. He shows a man who knows his two fates, a short life with glory or a long life forgotten, and who chooses glory and then resents the price when his friends start paying it.

Meanwhile Olympus is a mess. Hera nags Zeus. Athena grabs Achilles by the hair to stop him killing Agamemnon on the spot. Hephaestus limps around trying to make everyone laugh. The gods in this translation feel like a loud family at dinner, taking sides, cheating, sulking. Zeus tries to stay neutral after promising Thetis, but Hera, Athena, and Hera's allies back the Greeks while Apollo, Aphrodite, Ares, and later Zeus himself lean toward Troy at different moments. Their interference explains why battles swing so wildly, but Homer keeps the human pain in focus. When a spear goes through a jaw, you hear about the man's wife waiting at home.

Duels, truces, and Diomedes day

After Achilles withdraws, the Greeks realize how much they relied on him. There are attempts to fill the gap. Paris, the Trojan prince whose theft of Helen started the war, duels Menelaus, Helen's husband. It should settle things. Aphrodite yanks Paris out of danger when he starts losing, which infuriates both armies. A truce is sworn, then broken when a Trojan archer wounds Menelaus. Trust collapses.

Then comes a long stretch of fighting where other men get their moment. Diomedes especially. With Athena guiding him, he wounds Aphrodite and Ares, drives Hector back, and almost turns the war single handed for an afternoon. Odysseus, Ajax, Agamemnon himself all have strong runs. Hector, Troy's best defender and the son of King Priam, keeps rallying his men, but without Achilles on the field the Greeks still hold.

My favorite quiet scene in this part is Hector going back inside Troy to find Paris. Helen is there, bitter and sharp tongued, telling Paris he is a coward for sitting out. Hector does not linger. He finds his wife Andromache and their baby son Astyanax on the walls. Andromache begs him not to go back out, reminds him she has already lost her father and brothers to Achilles in earlier raids. Hector tells her he has to, that shame and duty will not let him hide. He reaches for the baby, the baby cries at the bronze helmet with its horsehair crest, Hector laughs, takes it off, kisses him. Then he puts it back on and walks out. No speech about honor in the abstract. Just a father who knows he will probably not see his son grow up.

There is also the embassy to Achilles. Agamemnon, scared after Trojan gains, sends Odysseus, Ajax, and Phoenix, the old man who raised Achilles, to offer gifts, the return of Briseis, money, towns, his daughter in marriage. Achilles refuses. He says the gifts come too late and that Agamemnon only respects him when he needs him. Phoenix cries. Ajax calls him stubborn. Achilles says he will only fight if the fire reaches his own ships. It is a terrible decision and Homer lets you sit with it. You can see both sides. Achilles was insulted in public. Agamemnon is offering payment instead of respect. Neither man will bend.

If you find this middle section slow, you are not alone. I did too in places. The catalog of ships, the lists of who killed whom with what spear through what organ, it piles up. Fagles keeps it moving, but there are pages where one minor fighter after another steps forward, boasts, and dies. The criticism I would make is that Homer repeats the pattern, arming scenes, prayer, throw, miss, hit, gloat, a lot. Yet the repetition builds dread. Troy keeps pushing closer to the ships while Achilles stays in his tent playing music.

Patroclus begs to go out

By the middle of the poem the Trojans, led by Hector and helped by Zeus, push the Greeks back to their ships and set fire to one of them. The Greeks panic. Nestor, the old counselor, corners Patroclus, Achilles closest companion, and lays it on thick. Your friend is letting men die over pride, Nestor says. If Achilles will not go, you go in his armor. Scare the Trojans into thinking he returned.

Patroclus begs Achilles. Achilles gives in halfway. You can wear my armor, he says, drive them from the ships, then come back. Do not chase them to Troy. Patroclus agrees, but battle fever takes him.

What follows is one of the most painful sequences I have read. Patroclus in Achilles armor routs the Trojans. He kills Sarpedon, a son of Zeus, and Zeus actually considers saving him and decides against it because even gods must let death happen. Patroclus keeps pushing toward Troy, forgetting his promise. Apollo strips his armor, a Trojan boy stabs him in the back, Hector finishes him and takes the armor as trophy. Patroclus dying asks Hector to return his body for burial, Hector refuses and mocks him.

When news reaches Achilles, he collapses. He pours dust over his head, lies in the dirt, refuses food. His mother finds him wailing. He says he will kill Hector even though he knows his own death will follow soon after. Thetis goes to Hephaestus to get new armor, including the famous shield with cities, weddings, lawsuits, farming, dancing worked into the metal. The description of that shield goes on for pages. I skimmed a little, then went back. It is Homer saying, look at all the normal life this war is burning.

Achilles and Agamemnon reconcile in public. Agamemnon returns Briseis and swears he never touched her, offers more gifts. Achilles barely cares. He wants to fight immediately, hungry and sleepless. Odysseus has to talk him into letting the men eat first. Even here Achilles is not noble. He is grief sick and looking for someone to kill.

Hector and Achilles

The fight between Hector and Achilles takes up the end of the poem's battle arc, and Homer stages it as horror, not sport. Achilles chases Hector around the walls of Troy three times while the Trojans watch from above. Priam and Hecuba, Hector's parents, beg him to come inside. He stays because he knows running will shame him and because Apollo, who had been disguising himself to help, finally leaves him. Athena tricks Hector by appearing as his brother Deiphobus, promising to stand with him. When Hector turns to get a spear from his brother, no one is there. He understands he is dead.

They fight. Achilles drives a spear through Hector's throat. Hector begs for his body to be returned to his parents, Achilles says he wishes he could eat him raw. That line stopped me cold. This is not a hero winning. This is a man eaten by loss. Achilles ties Hector's ankles to his chariot and drags him through the dust in front of Troy while Andromache, watching from the wall, faints.

The cruelty does not stop. For days Achilles drags the body around Patroclus tomb each morning. The gods have to intervene to keep the corpse from being destroyed. Apollo complains. Zeus orders Thetis to tell her son to stop. Even in grief, Achilles has gone too far, and the poem knows it.

Before the final meeting with Priam, there are funeral games for Patroclus. Races, boxing, wrestling, archery. Men who were trying to kill each other a week earlier now argue about prizes and laugh. Achilles gives away prizes generously, even to men who lost. It is the first time he looks like himself again, a leader who understands people. I liked this section more than I expected because it shows what peace could look like if these men were not trapped.

There is also a detail Fagles brings out well. Achilles keeps seeing Patroclus in dreams, asking for burial so his spirit can rest. The Greeks build a huge pyre, cut their hair, sacrifice animals, and Achilles cuts a lock of his own hair he had been saving for his safe return home. He will not return home. He knows it now. That hair on the fire is his youth going up in smoke.

Priam begs for his son

The last book is the reason I now tell friends to finish it even if the battle lists bored them. Zeus sends Iris to Priam, the old king of Troy, and tells him to go alone to Achilles with ransom. Priam loads a wagon with cloth, gold, tripods, and drives through the night with Hermes guiding him past Greek guards. He walks into Achilles tent, kneels, kisses the hands that killed his son, and asks for the body.

That kiss is the whole book in one gesture. Achilles is stunned. He lifts the old man up. They weep together, Achilles for Patroclus and his father Peleus, Priam for Hector. Then Achilles calls for the body to be washed and prepared, shares a meal with Priam, promises no fighting for twelve days so Troy can mourn and bury Hector properly. When Priam sleeps in the courtyard before leaving, Hermes wakes him and hurries him out before anyone can take him prisoner. It is tender and tense at once.

The poem ends not with victory but with lament. Hector's body comes back to Troy. Andromache, Hecuba, and Helen each speak over him. Helen's speech surprised me most. She says Hector was the only Trojan who was kind to her, that everyone else hated her for bringing war, and that she wishes she had died before Paris brought her across the sea. After all the blame placed on her, Homer gives her grief and guilt and a clear voice. Then they burn Hector, gather his bones, raise a mound, and share a feast. The last line is simple. They buried Hector, tamer of horses.

My fair criticism after finishing the 704 pages is this. The Iliad demands patience with gods who change the rules and with heroes who repeat mistakes. Achilles disappears for long stretches. Agamemnon never really grows. Some translations make this drier than it needs to be, though Fagles mostly avoids that by keeping speech plain and angry. The long similes, lions, bees, snow, fire, can feel like interruptions if you are reading fast. If you slow down, they are the point. Homer keeps comparing war to weather and animals to remind you that men are small inside something huge.

What stayed with me was not the duels but the meals and funerals. Men stopping to eat after killing. Priam and Achilles sharing bread after murder. Hector laughing when his helmet scares his son. For a war poem, The Iliad spends an enormous amount of time on care, washing bodies, feeding guests, holding funerals right. That care is what Achilles forgets when Patroclus dies and remembers when Priam kneels. I started thinking Achilles was the hero and ended thinking the poem's hero is the moment when enemies recognize each other as fathers and sons.

If you pick up this Viking Press Fagles edition, give yourself permission to read it in chunks. I did a book or two a night. Keep a list of names at first, Greeks and Trojans blur, but after a while you will know them by voice. Ajax is blunt. Odysseus is smooth. Hector is tired. Achilles is bright and breaking. And when Priam walks into that tent, you will be glad you stayed for all 704 pages.