Homer's Iliad

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In this lesson from a PROFESSOR that begins here we are going to unravel various basic information about one of the great works of world literature, The Iliad. Written, or attributed at least to Homer, tells the epic story of the Achilles fury during the last year of war between Greece and Troy, also known as Ilium, hence the name of the work.

To this day, a work like this, with almost 3000 years behind it since it was written or compiled, its origin is not without controversy. Not everyone attributes the work to the pen of Homer, since many consider that he could be a created or invented character, or perhaps the person who collected the stories of the greek oral tradition prior to the 8th century BC. C. Others affirm that, as it has been verified, Troy existed, and Homer could write it in contemporary form to the real war between this city of the north of present Turkey and the Greek polis.

Be that as it may, here we will reveal relevant information that interests you. A complete compendium on The IliadSo take a pencil and paper and take good notes.

Index

1. Summary of The Iliad
2. The Iliad Characters
3. The author of the Iliad
4. Brief analysis of The Iliad

Contrary to what many think, and as we are going to see in this summary of The Iliad, the play does not narrate the entire war between Troy and Greece, caused by the flight of Helen with Paris, Trojan prince, which awakens the fury of Menelaus, who asks his brother Agamemnon for help to march in front of the city of King Priam to recover his his wife.

Actually, the play begins by narrating the wrath of Achilles, one of the Greek heroes who refuses to fight because Agamemnon has decided to stay with Briseis, the favorite slave of the most famous warrior in the polis, who only seeks recognition and legend.

By not fighting Achilles, the Trojan troops are winning the war and driving the Greeks to the beach, leaving them less and less ground. Under these circumstances, Patroclus, a close friend of the Greek hero, decides to use the armor and weapons of Achilles to launch himself into the battle, since he suffers when he sees how his people lose the war and his precious companion does nothing to solve the situation.

Unfortunately, Patroclus, skilled in war, confronts Hector, one of the sons of King Priam, and the best of them in battle, who in the end, ends up killing him thinking that he was facing Achilles. The Greek warrior, hearing of Patroclus's misfortune, goes into a rage and decides to return to the fight. Furthermore, the fact that the Trojans did not give him the body of his friend to bury in peace makes him even more angry.

In this situation, Achilles ends up locating Hector, with whom he has a hard battle, but ends up killing the Trojan hero. So, in revenge, he ties the deceased body of his rival to his car and drags it along the beach of Ilión as a sign of humiliation.

Meanwhile, Priam, devastated by the death of his beloved son, decides one night to sneak up to the Achilles tent in the Greek camp to ask him to give him the body of his son so that he can bury it worthily.

Achilles, before the words of love and desolation of King Priam, grants him such an honor so that he can bury the body of his son with dignity and with the honors he deserves as a royal Trojan hero.

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From what you see in the summary, you can already see who the characters of The Iliad, at least, its protagonists and the main secondary ones. However, we are going to see them one by one in order of importance:

• Achilles: He is the protagonist of the story. Son of Peleo and Tethys, he is named Pelida because of his origin, or that of the swift feet. He is very strong, he has never been defeated, he is angry and supposedly immortal for having been bathed in the Éstige river, although he missed to wet a heel, which will be his only weak point. The only end of it is fame.
• Hector: Trojan hero and son of King Priam. He is the best warrior in his city, and is represented as a man faithful to his city and the people he defends.
• Paris: He is Hector's younger brother and the trigger for the war by falling in love with Helena and kidnapping her despite being married to Menelaus, King of Sparta. It is somewhat cowardly and quite delusional.
• Helena: Menelao's wife, of exalted beauty, so much so that even the goddess Aphrodite was jealous of her, which makes her fall madly in love with Paris through the act of her deity.
• Menelaus: husband of Helena, king of Sparta, brother of Agamemnon and aggrieved husband who seeks to restore his love and dignity by recovering his wife.
• Agamemnon: king of Mycenae and chief of the Greeks. She is selfish and with an excessive ego that confronts her time and time again with Achilles, her best warrior. He is an ambitious and greedy man.
• Odysseus: will be the protagonist of The odyssey, where the return of him to Greece after the war is narrated. Also known as Ulysses, he is a wise man, a great negotiator and a good warrior. Although it is not observed in The Iliad, from him the idea of Troy Horse that ends the war and his army by defeating Ilión.
• Patroclus: close friend of Achilles, almost a little brother, therefore, his protégé. He decides to dress up with the weapons of Achilles, hence he is mistaken for Hector, who kills him and unleashes the wrath of the Greek hero.
• Priam: King of Troy, wise man and father of Paris and Hector, he defends his people against any circumstance.

During the narration, other characters appear, such as the case of Greek heroes such as Ajax the Great and Ajax the Minor, like many gods who side with one side or the other, such as Artemis, Hades, Hermes or Poseidon. Others such as Aeneas, a Trojan warrior that the Roman would use, also have some relevance. Virgil to devise a mythical origin of Rome in his work The Aeneid, or the slave Briseida, favorite of Achilles.

In this other lesson from a TEACHER we reveal a list of the characters of the Iliad both main and secondary.

Even if Homer is known as the author of The Iliad, not even the scholars themselves agree on it. Despite being a very influential figure in Ancient Greece whose fame has survived to this day, the information about his life is very ambiguous.

Supposedly, Homer must have been born in the 8th century BC. C., perhaps in the city Chios, although this award is disputed by others such as Athens, Colophon or Ithaca. However, other sources affirm that its origin must have originated in Asia Minor, present-day Turkey.

Homer is known as the author of The odyssey Y The Iliad, very influential works in their day and today. Both are epics with pedagogical purposes that were used to extract didactic lessons. Hence, it is thought that they were rather stories of the Greek oral tradition, rather than written by a single man.

Be that as it may, whether Homer is the author or not, they are works that allow us to know well what life was like in Greece almost 3,000 years ago, when sacrifices were performed on a regular basis, we observed how the elderly and corpses were respected enemies and honored gods who they believed continually meddled in the things of the humans.

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We end the lesson with a brief analysis of The Iliad in which we will ignore the plot, the characters and the author, since we have already talked about them at length:

• Is a epicepic written in formal verse and elevated language with hexameter meter.
• The central theme is altercation between Agamemnon and Achilles, which provokes the anger of the latter, so he refuses to intervene in the war causing the foreseeable defeat of Greece.
• The secondary theme is the death of Patroclus, which provokes the ire of his great friend Achilles, who kills Hector in revenge.
• The historical context is set in a possibly real war between Troy and the Greek polis that must have taken place on 9th century BC C. for the control of the trade routes of Asia Minor.
• Among the values ​​that we see in this work, with clear didactic vocation, we find the ambition and cowardice of Paris, the bravery of Hector, the greed of Agamemnon, the Diomedes 'optimism, Achilles' disloyalty and lust for glory, Priam's goodness, or Odysseus.
• Within the style and language, we find abundance of epithets to name the characters, such as Pelida or the one with light feet to name Achilles, or the horse tamer for Héctor.
• As for a final comment, the enormous influence of the gods on humansSince Greek science and knowledge did not understand certain facts, the deities were accused as the cause. The work combines excessive descriptions with moments of great tension using ornate language and is conceived to be recited aloud, so it is interpreted that it belongs to the oral tradition rather than to the work of a single author and Writer.

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