The World of the Iliad

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The World of the Iliad

• Western Literature I

Presentation by
Ralph Monday
Knowledge is the antidote to fear. Ralph Waldo
Emerson
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Reading the Iliad

• The Iliad is an epic poem, composed around
  800-725 B.C. and written down sometime between
  725 and 675 B.C.
• The ancient Greek word epos, from which our word
  "epic" comes, means "word, utterance, poetic
  utterance," and the Iliad is precisely that.

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Epic Poetry

• Epic poetry is narrative, usually telling the
  story of a great culture hero and his exploits.
• The Iliad tells the story of Achilles, and how
  his anger affected the fighting in the great war
  of Troy.

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Epics Two Types

• There are two types of epics, literary and folk.
• Folk epics are composed anonymously or
  traditionally, and attributed to shadowy ancient
  authors (like Homer).
• Literary epics are written by one person (like
  Virgil). Folk epics originate in oral cultures
  (those without writing), while literary epics
  come from literate cultures.

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The Iliad and Death

• The Iliad narrates the consequences of the anger
  or rage of Achilles. The Greek word menin
  ("wrath" or "rage") is the first word in the
  epic. Because of his anger, Achilles withdraws
  from the war and causes his comrades the Achaeans
  to suffer "countless losses" (1.2) or deaths.
  Death is central to the poem.

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Eos (goddess of dawn) mourns her dead son,the
warrior Memnon. Attic vase, C. 530 BCE.
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• The overwhelming fact of life for the heroes of
  the Iliad is their mortality, which stands in
  contrast to the immortality of the gods.
• We see the central hero of the poem, Achilles,
  move toward disillusionment and death to reach a
  new clarity about human existence in the wider
  context of the eventual destruction of Troy and
  in an environment consisting almost entirely of
  war and death.

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• This environment offers scope for various kinds
  and degrees of heroic achievement, but only at
  the cost of self-destruction and the destruction
  of others, who live in the same environment and
  share the same values.

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Heroic Values

• This is a culture of shame.
• Achieving kudos (glory) and timé (honor) are
  central the heroic code of the warrior
  aristocracy.
• The opposite of glory (kudos) is shame or
  disgrace (aischros).

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Achieving Honor

• Those who are the best fighters should receive
  the largest share or portion of the spoils of
  war.
• The more gifts, the more stuff a hero
  accumulates, the more honor he has.
• Somewhat paradoxically, one can also gain honor
  by being big and liberal and noble enough to give
  gifts to others.

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Achieving Glory

• In contrast to honor, glory occurs mostly after
  death, when poets can sing of a hero's immortal
  deeds.
• In the world of the Iliad, the honors and gifts
  showered upon a hero come to an end with death,
  but his glory lives on forever in the stories
  that poets sing.

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• By achieving imperishable glory, a hero ensures
  that his name and fame will live on after he has
  gone on to the rather meaningless afterlife in
  the underworld.

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• The opposite of glory (kudos) is shame or
  disgrace (aischros). Glorious actions were
  praised, while shameful actions were blamed. A
  shameful act was not necessarily considered
  immoral or wrong, but "ugly" (the other meaning
  of aischros). In this sense, the opposite of
  shame (aischros) is not glory (kudos), but
  "beauty" (kalos).

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• The heroes' code of honor stressed achievement of
  an exterior amoral ideal rather than an interior
  moral good. When heroes commit disgraceful acts,
  they do not feel guilt, the inner consciousness
  of moral wrong, but shame, the loss of face that
  comes from looking ugly in front of public
  opinion.

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• One reason Achilles seems selfish to us is that
  he is operating in a shame culture, while we are
  very much a part of a guilt culture.

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• The Iliad explores the limits and contradictions
  of the honor-glory system of meaning. One
  limit--death--is omnipresent.
• One of the tragic aspects of this system is that
  the hero can win honor and glory only through the
  death and destruction of others.

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Images of the Trojan War Myth
Leda and the Swan
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Judgment of Paris
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Helen and Aphrodite
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Images of the Trojan War
Agamemnon taking Briseis
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Achilles tending the wounded Patroclus
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Achilles receiving Armor from Thetis
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Achilles Dragging the Body of Hector
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The Ransom of Hectors Body
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Source

• Guide to Reading the Iliad. http//faculty.gvsu.ed
  u/websterm/Read_Iliad.htm.