The Iliad
by Homer
Note: The Iliad was the first book I summarized, and at the time I thought I might try a YouTube series. I ultimately decided not to because I didn't want to soundproof my office.
Instead of a chapter-by-chapter summary, I will instead share the original script for the video.
Today we're reading the Iliad, the immortalized classic written by a Greek guy with the very un-Greek name of Homer. It's a long book where a lot happens; but actually, very little happens; but I'm going to jump right into it anyway because unlike the Iliad I'm actually considerate of your time. Now let's learn something.
We're going way back to ancient Greece: a land of powerful gods, philosophy, olympics, bronzeworking, sailing, public nudity, owning women and slaves, and lots and lots of war.
Except we're not going to Greece; Troy is actually somewhere over here, but hey, close enough I guess. I mean I'm not going to split hairs here; Troy technically fell under the umbrella of "Greece" at the time, or so I guess (I didn't look it up), but I'm still going to refer to the Greek army as Greeks because Homer calls them Achaeans and I don't want to say that fifty times.
So we open on the Greek army, who have been besieging the Trojan city of Ilion for ten years now. Now, I'm not wrong in thinking that that's a stupidly long time to siege a city, right? Like, imagine spending ten years—TEN YEARS!—of your life camped out on some beach in hostile territory, you know, you're raising oxen in your boats for food; you don't have anything better to do, you're just hanging around with a bunch of other disgruntled men for ten years waiting for some battle to happen so you can finally get speared in the stomach and bleed out and die a long, agonizing death.
And I need to point out the entire stupid reason for this war is because a Greek king named Menelaus, right, he had a wife, most beautiful woman in the world, and her name was Helen of Troy, although she's not actually from Troy so it's kind of a stupid name. Thankfully a Trojan prince called Paris comes and takes Helen of Troy home with him to save her the embarrassment of poor nomenclature. Oh and also he gets to marry her. Well this pisses off Menelaus, so he decides an entire city needs to die to rectify this situation, and he rounds up some loyal men who are willing to camp on a beach for ten years and support this show of toxic masculinity.
Leading these troops is Agamemnon, brother of Menelaus, and he kicks off the events of the Iliad when he's visited by a priest of Apollo. See, the priest's daughter is one of the many, MANY, just, so many women who Agamemnon captured in raids on the way to Troy; that's a thing they did by the way, and it's not great and the ancient Greeks were actually garbage people if you want to get into it. But anyway, the priest wants his daughter back, and all of the Greek champions council Agamemnon and say "yes, you absolutely need to do this thing, do you want to piss Apollo off". But Agamemnon's like, "okay, but hear me out: she's pretty and I want to keep her". So the priest hits up Apollo, who decides "hmm, I think we can settle this dispute peacefully. And by peacefully I mean here Greeks, have a plague."
Anyway the Greeks suffer plague for a couple days until our awe-inspiring, near-immortal hero Achilles gets tired of the bellyaching, takes his gorgeous oiled-up pecs over to Agamemnon, and tells him, "look, all this is your fault, just give the girl back, you dumbass". So Agamemnon takes the hint and gives the girl back; but he also figures that it's not right for him to own one fewer woman than he did previously, so he says "so uh, Achilles? Who was that one woman you captured a little bit ago that you liked far better than all your others? Yeah, I'm just gonna add her to my collection instead."
So now Achilles gets pissy and decides he's going to take all of his god-tier Myrmidon troops back home and let Agamemnon fight this stupid war himself; except he doesn't, he just kind of sulks in his boat for a while. Because if he goes home now, he won't win any glory in battle, which is apparently still preferable to going home and living a nice long life as a comfortable nobleman. I'm not even joking about this, Achilles knows it's fated that this war will kill him, and he'll be fine if he goes home, but he's like "yeah, but this way my name will live on for doing cool fighting stuff." Anyway instead of doing cool fighting stuff he sits in the boat and pouts for the next two-thirds of this book. Meanwhile his mother-who-just-so-happens-to-be-a-water-goddess goes to see Zeus, calling in some favor from that time that the mightiest of all gods needed help from some random sea nymph that one time I guess, with the goal of helping Achilles win glory in battle before his untimely and frankly unnecessary demise. Zeus agrees to this, devising a cunning plan to help the Trojans trounce the Greeks so thoroughly that Agamemnon will have no choice but to beg Achilles to get involved.
Anyway, if you think this is goofy so far, BUCKLE IN because that was the sanest part of the story.
So Zeus tells Agamemnon in a dream that it's finally time to march the troops in, as though THAT is what Agamemnon has been waiting for for ten stupid years, I don't know. And Agamemnon has this bright idea for attacking the Trojans, right, he's going to tell the soldiers to retreat and go home, so they will prove their loyalty by saying NO, we want to fight!
Well what actually happens is the soldiers pretty much scramble to get to the boats because they're damn sick of sitting on a beach and getting plague, and the only reason they stay and rally is because Odysseus beats the ugliest soldier with a stick. I don't know how this works but I guess I'm just not a brilliant military tactician like Odysseus; I mean this is the guy who will eventually think up the Trojan Horse and thus single-handedly ruin the good name of a brand of condoms. That doesn't happen in this book though, don't get too excited, I told you the Iliad was going to waste your time.
Speaking of which this is the part of the book that spends twenty pages naming the Greek captains and where they came from and who their fathers were and what clubs they joined in high school and what they ate for breakfast and how many boats they bothered showing up with. If you're following along with the book at home, one, why, but also two, skip this part.
Eventually the Greek army meets the Trojan army outside of Ilion, but figuring it's likely that his prior actions are gonna get a lot of Trojans killed, Paris offers to settle the score with Menelaus with a duel, and whoever wins gets Helen, and nobody else has to fight. Menelaus is cool with this, because Menelaus is a beefy soldier-king and Paris is a wimpy weak boy if this painting is any indication; and Menelaus straight-up wins, but Aphrodite has a soft spot for Paris because he said she was prettier than Hera one time (yes, this is 100% the reason), so instead of letting him die she teleports him out of the battlefield to go sleep with Helen instead. Frankly I'd be feeling a bit too much mood whiplash here to even think about carrying through with that plan, but that's probably why I don't have the most romantic city on earth named after me.
Anyway that's how the Goddess of Love ironically made fighting break out, because you can't just jump into a WWE title match and toss one of the guys a metal chair and not expect some kind of pandemonium to ensue. The fighting is gory and I kid you not it is equally as cinematic as anything Hollywood can churn out these days, except for the part where every time some no-name dies (a term I use loosely because it turns out literally everybody is named), we have a brief flashback on his life story to humanize the poor dead bastard and really make us think about the true cost of war. This is a masterful, thought-provoking addition to the story that is also unfortunately a little tone-deaf because, let's be honest, we're just here for the cool fighting stuff.
Though actually the cool fighting stuff gets old pretty quick, except for the growing discomfort of realizing that Homer has spent far too much time thinking just how many ways a spear can be inserted into a human body. Fortunately for us, we are provided comedic relief in the form of the Greek gods and goddesses. Like, these are the figures this culture is meant to worship and revere; but they come across as so goofy and nonsensical on such a repeated basis throughout this work that I cannot take them seriously.
Case in point: Ares is on the field, doing battle against the Greeks even though he's supposed to be on their side, because he just loves war so much, being the god of war and all, he doesn't care who he's fighting. Athena is NOT on board with this, being the Greeks' number one fan, so she pops down to see Diomedes. Now, Diomedes is, like, the biggest damn hero on the field; at this point Athena's already helped him spear Aphrodite in the hand after the goddess of love pulled her whisk-off-the-battlefield-at-the-last-second trick again on another of the Trojans. Well, now, Athena spurs on Diomedes and personally drives his chariot as the two run down Ares, and Diomedes guts him with his spear.
And the first thing Ares does—and I will remind you this is the god of war—is he flies right up to Zeus and tattles on Athena for injuring him. And that's not even the best part. Because Zeus is like "okay, well, this is kind of on you because you shouldn't have been raging against the Greeks, but I guess I can't blame you too much because you inherited your rage from Hera." ZEUS SAYS THIS! Zeus, the god who is best-known for hurling lightning bolts at the earth when he's upset tells Ares he gets his anger issues from his mother. I need to reiterate that there is fight choreography rivaling the film 300 happening RIGHT NOW but the family drama is far and away more entertaining.
We'll leave the gods to their antics at this point, because it's time to talk about Hector. Hector is the leader of the Trojan army, and as we'll find out before too long, he seems to be the only Trojan commander that can actually accomplish anything. The Greeks must recognize this too, because Hector comes out of the city as the sun begins to set and demands they send out their best fighter to duel with him, and the Greek commanders just don't know what to do. I mean, the fate of this duel could very well set the tone of the battle to come, so if you asked me, I think I might be sending out the guy who's already injured two gods today. But instead, the Greeks are like, eeeeeh, dunno, you reckon we draw lots for it?
So the lucky(?) winner is a champion named Ajax (and as a quick note, this is Ajax the Greater, there are actually two guys named Ajax fighting for the Greeks, because why not have two guys with the same name in this book of completely indistinguishable characters. Anyway for this video I'm just combining these guys into one dude, because later on, when I tell you that Ajax falls face-first in poop, I don't want you worrying about which Ajax that is).
Well, turns out Ajax is a lucky pick, because from the first strike, he clearly has the upper hand on Hector, which is not really a good start for the man I hyped up about twenty seconds ago. But Hector does hold out long enough for both armies to send in messengers to try and stop the high-stakes duel that literally everybody is watching because, you know, it's starting to get dark out. Ajax, being an honorable man, yields the decision to Hector, who pulls himself up out of the fetal position and says, yeah, I think we can go ahead and call that a draw.
The armies battle again the next day, but I'm going to gloss over a lot of it, partly because A) Zeus at this point prohibits the gods from directly interfering (lame), but mostly because B) the war scenes really get quite repetitive. You get a lot of "Guy A says a rousing speech and spurs his troops forward, and exchanges words with Guy B, and Guy B gets stabbed and Guy A pushes back the battle lines, which inspires Guy C to say a rousing speech…" No joke, some parts of the book, you get a rousing speech every three to five pages. Kinda loses a lot of the impact if you have to re-inspire your men every minute or so.
But one of the more humorous aspects of this is that some translations keep the poetic style of the original work, so the language can be flowery, and has to keep up a certain cadence. And usually this is fine, but occasionally it lends itself to certain instances, like when Diomedes shouts "Odysseus! Son of Laertes, who is descended from Zeus! Tell me, why are you fleeing with your shield on your back? This is an act of the unimaginable cowardice! Anyway, you'd better get your act together because Hector is GOING TO KILL NESTOR IF YOU DON'T GET OVER THERE FAST". Like, c'mon, urgency here people, you're in a damn war. But also it couldn't have been that urgent I guess because Odysseus doesn't hear him so Diomedes goes to do it himself anyway.
Oh yeah, that's the thing though: Hector steps up his game and becomes a huge problem for the Greeks, to the point where, in a single day, he manages to push the Greeks all the way back to the makeshift barricades defending their ships. Agamemnon starts to sweat here, seeing as he's in charge and he's very obviously blowing it, so he councils the champions who tell him "just tell Achilles you were being an ass and make reparations, and he'll surely come around." So Agamemnon sends over some of the champions as messengers to tell Achilles that, yes, he was being an ass, and if Achilles comes back to battle he'll get all sorts of riches and rewards at the end of the war. This is maybe not the most compelling argument to give the one man who knows for certain he ain't coming out of this war alive, so Achilles says, "look, I'm not letting Agamemnon out-emo me right now, so he can just go ahead and get all his troops killed, and if the Trojans start setting fire to the ships then MAYBE I'll think about helping out." Then he drops the mic and storms out.
Agamemnon understandably starts getting a little desperate at this point, so he pulls his champions together again, and says "okay, so what we should do instead, is we should spy on the Trojans and figure out their plans." You know, espionage as a last resort, big-brain strategies over here. He asks who is willing to go on such a dangerous mission, and Diomedes speaks up and says "I, the man who has killed the most officers and injured two gods, will do this, but I think our best strategist Odysseus should come with me." And Agamemnon reasons, yes, two of our most valuable and easily-recognizable champions should handle this risky undercover mission, and hands them beanies to put on so the Trojans can't recognize them.
Anyway, this utter tragedy of a plan actually works, and our two icons of heroism valiantly slaughter a bunch of Trojan reinforcements in their sleep. Mission accomplished.
Well regardless, the next day of fighting doesn't start out well for the Greeks, and we start to see the battle take its toll. For example, our friend Diomedes is looting the corpse of some rando he killed when he gets shot in the foot with an arrow. And from nowhere Paris of all people jumps out, and is like "Ha, look at that! I hit you! Wow, man. I tell you what, that would have been amazing if I'd have killed you though." And that's it! Diomedes tirades about the bow being a coward's weapon while he waits for Odysseus to come and cover him so he can remove the arrow, and nobody thinks "huh, could just shoot him again right now, you know?"
I mean, after he gloats, Paris just disappears from the scene entirely! It's not like he leaves, he's just not written anymore! What is he doing? Why doesn't he take another shot, or try to hit Odysseus when he's stationary? Does he have something more important to go do? Like, this feels like the most plot-contrived thing, because I didn't even know he was fighting, you know, I thought he was still holed up in the city; and then in a couple more paragraphs he'll pop in for two seconds to almost-but-not kill another Greek, and then he disappears from battle again for the rest of the book!
And that's another point: at this part of the story, the Trojans are able to push forward even further because many of the Greek champions are removed from battle. By injury, I mean, always by injury. Homer must be, like, the reverse George R.R. Martin, because we're halfway through the book now and I don't think anybody's died who wasn't introduced within the two pages preceeding their death. This is especially egregious from the Greek perspective, because there's bare minimum a dozen Greek champions we've followed through three days of active warfare, and they're always despairing about how the Trojans keep winning these battles, you'd think one of them would sustain some injury that seems life-threatening for more than thirty seconds, but, nah. And we aren't given a good sense of troop positioning or numbers, either, so the only reason we know the Greeks keep getting their butts kicked is because they keep repeating "boy, Zeus just doesn't favor us today."
And if that weren't enough! You have Zeus, who's watching the battle unfold, you know, the Trojans are about to break through the Greek lines and be in a position to start burning down their ships, and his carefully-laid plans are about to come to fruition, and he figures, "well, this looks like it's going to wrap up soon, and since I told the other gods who all love the Greeks and who have interfered many times already not to interfere anymore, I'm just going to change the channel over to Peaceful Farm Land."
Like, I can't imagine how deus ex machina is a Latin phrase, because Homer pulls this kind of crap all the time! "Hmm, I need the Greeks to fight back really hard here, but I've kind of written myself into a corner with a battle they'll surely lose. What can I do here. Oh yes, the mightiest, strongest god, wisest of them all, makes a completely uncharacteristic decision and Poseidon saves the day. Yes! Well done. Homer, you're brilliant." Right? Like, this is bad writing, isn't it? Did we find what was just ancient Greece's version of poorly-written fanfiction, and we only hold it up as a masterpiece of literature now because it was somehow one of the few texts that actually survived this long?
Anyway. So yes, it is in fact Poseidon who uses this opportunity to pop in and give the Greeks some tactical help, and eventually Hera sees what he's doing and tries to help out by distracting Zeus so he doesn't happen to flip the channel back during a commercial. Of course, by "distract" I really mean "seduce", which is sadly about the only reason Hera has to be intimate anymore in this entirely dysfunctional marriage; because although Zeus does make sure to tell Hera how into her he is—after she's made herself up—he also makes the classic mistake of including "way more than that time I was into Semele, or that time I was into Alkmene, or Leto, or Demeter, or Danae, or the wife of Ixion, or the wife of Phoinix..." I'm just saying Hera, a halfway-decent divorce lawyer could probably get you most of Olympus.
So with Poseidon on side, the Greeks can push back the Trojans, which should be exciting but it's really not because today's battle is going into a fifth chapter now and the B team that's been introduced to fill in for the injured Greek champions just doesn't merit the same level of investment. Eventually Zeus does find out what happened, gets angry, and tells Apollo to go down there and help the Trojans because if this war goes into extra innings Zeus isn't going to make his bedtime.
The Trojans counter-push and are in position to start setting Greek boats on fire, which is about the worst-case scenario for the Greeks. So at this point Achilles' boy-toy Patroclus pleads with Achilles to go out and help, and still Achilles says "nah bro", so Patroclus puts on Achilles' armor and takes the Myrmidons onto the field, and they wreck face. So much so that Patroclus gets carried away and does the one thing that Achilles very clearly told him not to do, which was to follow the Trojans away from the ships. Nice work there Patroclus; you just doomed yourself to the most underwhelming death in this book. Yeah, Apollo raises a cloud or something around Patroclus? So he gets confused, and Apollo makes some of his armor fall off, and some nobody sticks a spear in him before Hector can finish the job. I mean, I don't even have anything funny to say about this, just, you know, this is the first hero Homer's brought himself to kill off and it doesn't even seem like a fair death.
Both sides fight over Patroclus' body for an entire chapter before it's finally returned to Achilles, who goes full-on grief-mode for basically the entire chapter after that. Eventually we get an apology from Agamemnon though, kinda, because he says, "Okay, I know I pissed off Achilles and didn't listen to literally all of you when you told me not to piss off Achilles and now so many of our friends are dead, but the gods made me do it so it's not my fault."
Then—as though he's aware that was the weakest apology of all time—Agamemnon tries to cheer Achilles out of his Heroic Blue Screen of Death by making good on all the rewards he offered him earlier, including, finally, the return of the woman he took. ...Although Odysseus does need to remind Agamemnon that he really should make an oath to Achilles, promising that he did not, in fact, have sex with the woman he took specifically to have sex with. Agamemnon makes the oath, and everybody else goes, "yep, we buy that, anyway let's have dinner." I don't know, I mean he did say that if he was lying then the gods should "give him afflictions" even though I just told you that their afflicting him with delusion was his excuse for taking her in the first place, but I still have to ask, WHY DO WE RESPECT THIS CULTURE THIS IS NOT OKAY BEHAVIOR.
Anyway. We're now 80% of the way through the Iliad, and it pleases me to say that Achilles FINALLY rides into battle. And we find out that Achilles is good at killing Trojans. Like, really good at killing Trojans. He's so good at killing Trojans that the river he's killing Trojans in has to tell Achilles to go kill Trojans in the plains because the river is getting clogged up with corpses. Achilles kills SO MANY Trojans that eventually even Homer gets bored of this and temporarily switches over to a scene where some of the gods supporting each side get together and insult each other but otherwise make zero contributions to the battle or plot. Seriously, it's exactly like that bit at the end of Talladega Nights where Ricky Bobby and Jean Girard's cars are flipping down the track for so long that the announcers cut over to an Applebee's commercial for a few moments before returning to the crash still in progress. Turns out Homer did it first.
But there is one Trojan who Achilles wants to kill most of all, and that Trojan is Hector, who is waiting for Achilles in the plains in front of the city. For context, this was Hector's decision; even though it was made perfectly clear to him from multiple people on multiple occasions that nobody would think any less of him if he fought Achilles from the city walls where he'd have a huge defensive advantage, Hector's like, no, that's the coward's way, I will meet him in the field, come what may, even though I'm basically carrying this entire army and single-handedly preventing the total ruin of this city.
Achilles finally reaches Hector, who realizes "I've made a huge mistake"; and he tries to get back through the gates, but because Achilles is so hot on his tail that they'd never get the gates closed without him getting inside, Hector comically tries to lose Achilles by running around the entire city—which he does three times before figuring that probably-dying sounds like a less stressful option. Though to be absolutely fair, running around a city even once would be enough to make me want to die, so, point to Hector.
Well at long last, we are on the verge of the duel. Hector, to his credit, at least tries to be respectful here, offering Achilles a deal promising that whoever loses will be returned to his army rather than taken as a trophy; but Achilles says "look, if there's one thing you should have picked up on in the last twenty-some chapters, it's that I don't make deals with people who've pissed me off."
So here's what happens in the duel, which I'm going to report to you in detail with the guarantee that it is 100% free of bias. Ready?
Achilles throws the first spear, but Hector is swifter and dodges it. Hector then tosses his spear, which hits Achilles' shield dead-center and likely would have pierced the thing if Achilles' mother hadn't ordered a rush job on a new shield from Hephaestus the night before (I mean, it was a god-crafted shield that was such a work to behold that it took five pages to describe the scenes engraved upon it, of course it was going to hold up to a single pointy boy). After his first spear fails to do damage, Hector reaches for the next one, only to realize that he doesn't have any backup spears because Athena of all gods stole them and gave them all to Achilles when Hector wasn't looking. So Hector resorts to pulling out his short sword and charging Achilles, who ends the fight by stabbing Hector in the neck with a spear, because you don't need to be a tactical genius like Odysseus to know that the person with the longer stabby thing is probably going to win the duel.
Look, I'm not faulting Hector here, he couldn't have known the deck was stacked so far against him. I guess my complaint is the same I had when Patroclus got ganked: if one side has deities and the other doesn't, it's not a fair fight, is it? And if it's so clearly one-sided, where is the dramatic tension supposed to be?
I mean it could be argued that the gods shouldn't be interpreted as actual characters and are more meant to be personifications to provide context for some of the events and decisions seen in the book, but I'm having a hard time hand-waving away things like Aphrodite's tendency to whisk soldiers off the battlefield as, like, the wind or something, I don't know. Look, I just wanted to sip brandy and read about some dudes heroically murdering each other, and now I'm ranting about the authorial intent of the Greek pantheon's inclusion in ancient literature, what is this book doing to me.
*pause*
Yeah. Anyway, Hector's dead now and that's great, so we can finally put the Iliad to rest. Hmmwhat now? Only nine-tenths of the way done? Are you sure? Well I already said the wooden horse doesn't happen in this book, what the heck else is there to talk ab—ooh, right, Achilles still needs to die! Hector even reminded us of that as he was bleeding out! Okay, that'll be a good, dramatic note to end on, let's do this.
Wait, how did Hector know that? Ah, you know what, nevermind.
And that brings us back to Patroclus. You remember a little earlier before the duel where Achilles spent the better part of a chapter mourning over Patroclus? Yeah, that was just for finding out he was dead. Now we have to prepare for a funeral, though I couldn't remotely tell you what the heck that means to the ancient Greeks because I mostly skimmed through this part, and it still took me fifteen stupid minutes. To reiterate: I spent an entire quarter of an hour skimming through funeral arrangements.
Homer! Just—why?! Why do we need all this? Why now? Like, we're almost done with this nonsense, and we still know Achilles is going to eat it by the end because the gods have spoiled the ending for us multiple times, you're just dragging this out for a character that didn't even do anything substantial until two-thirds the way in! Are you trying to get across that Achilles is devastated? You already did that! That was the inciting act that brought him into conflict, and even then you still had pages about how he and everybody were mourning, and then he did Hector dirty by steadfastly refusing to treat their duel with the civilities that Hector proposed! We geeeet iiiit! I complained earlier about the book being too chicken to kill off any of the Greek heroes, but if we're going to have to read through a dozen-page sobfest every time one of them gets got then no thanks, I'm happy how it is.
Ugh. I can't even imagine what it's going to look like when Achilles gets killed. Wait wait, is that what the Odyssey's about? Are you going to be tuning in to the next video and I'm gonna tell you "anyway the executor reads Achilles' will, and all the Greek champions inherit his treasures except for Agamemnon, who gets nothing because he was an ass?" I think that might legitimately be the sequel, I'll have to check.
Anyway.
*sigh*
Sorry, can you give me a minute? I need another drink for this next part.
Right. So the funeral is over. The body is gone to flame. Achilles has concluded his mourning. And so he says, without even so much as missing a beat, "Well, now that the pyre has burnt out, take Patroclus' bones and put them in a jar. Anyway, I'm putting up these prizes, who wants to race chariots?"
And they race chariots.
We're at the end of the book, we're just going to slap in a chariot race out of nowhere? In the middle of a war? Are you kidding me?
I read this part two months ago I'm still angry at it! Why is this okay?! We spend the previous seven chapters quagmired in pure emotional gravity, and we're going to cap it off with a chariot race that doesn't freakin' mean anything?!
I mean, do you know how pissed off we would be, if at the end of Return of the Jedi, Luke takes the mask off of Vader to lay eyes on his father for the first time, the only true connection these two will ever have, and then George Lucas flashes back to the entire podrace scene from Phantom Menace? You can't just do that! People would riot, are you insane?!
*sip*
Damn, are you kidding me, that chariot race is a literary travesty. Ugh. And like, it's even well-written, it feels epic and it has good pacing and the characters still get to be heroic, but there are absolutely zero stakes; and maybe you could get away with that earlier in the book, but here of all places? ...No! Good lord. I just, I can't with this.
They compete in more games after that, though mercifully these are done in a more rapid-fire format. There's a footrace, an archery contest, a wrestling match, things like that; though my favorite game is the one where Achilles says "okay, I'm staking these prizes, who's competing?" and Agamemnon stands up, and some random nobody stands up, and Achilles goes "well, since Agamemnon is our general and also the king's brother, he gets first prize". I liked it because it was shortest.
Also in the footrace Ajax trips and falls face-first in ox poop. Hahaha remember how we were just mourning the death of our friend.
So the games conclude, and we cut over to Priam, king of Troy and father of Hector, who bargains with Achilles to ransom Hector's body, and Achilles says no, Hector is a bastard and I hate him, and Hermes steps in and says "actually Zeus demands that this happen", and then Achilles says actually I'm not really that mad about it, and Hector is returned to Troy where everybody cries, the end.
…
Wait. That's it?
Hang on hang on. Homer's been foreshadowing the death of Achilles repeatedly and in no uncertain terms throughout, and it doesn't even happen in this book? Really?! What, were you saving that one for the sequel? And let me see if I've got this straight: the Iliad is the best-known book chronicling events from the Trojan War, and the war's two most well-known tales—the slaying of Achilles and the Trojan Horse—neither of them are in here? Why the heck does the Iliad even exist? All we got from it was a bunch of rallying cries, godly antics, and the most pointless chariot race imaginable. So I guess, the overarching narrative is supposed to be the fall of Hector, and maybe the entire story was written as a showcase for the glory of Achilles and the Greeks? But for the supposed gold standard of Greek idealism and valor, Achilles does not come across as a figure to be idolized. Yeah, he's really good at killing Trojans, but his pettiness rivals that of the gods, you know, between refusing to aid his friends in spite of being slighted by Agamemnon, refusing to treat his duel with Hector as an honorable fight between two soldiers, and refusing to ransom Hector's body to Priam.
Heck, I mean, up until that last one, you could have rationalized this as Achilles' failing to properly internalize the guilt he feels at the loss of Patroclus, which he understands perfectly well to be at least partly his fault, but his outright refusal to ransom Hector comes after the chariot race, so there's no longer any justification for his anger. Right? The funeral provides closure, and the games act as a means of lifting his spirits. By the time Priam enters Achilles' tent preparing to negotiate, Achilles should practically be giving Hector away, because if he doesn't then he's not really any better a person than Agamemnon was, is he?
I guess that's the reason the ending of the Iliad feels so lackluster to me; no real progress has been made in any capacity. The war isn't any closer to resolving, and there isn't any personal growth for the protagonists either because gods forbid we have one character who has a distinct personality or set of values from all the other characters, I mean how the heck do you think Homer could cram in so many.
So at the end of our multiple days of warring over the most insignificant slight imaginable, we don't even have anything to show for it but an abundance of fresh corpses that used to be our friends.
...Oooh. Nope, okay, look Homer, maybe I'm just fishing for any sort of meaning here, but if this was all some elaborate set-up to circle me around to the conclusion that "hey maybe sometimes war is bad", then 10 out of 10, I take back every bad thing I ever said about you. Except maybe that stuff about the chariot races. I mean, look, maybe the message is a little trite to us now, but hell, humanity is still full of garbage people, so I guess it takes more than 3000 years hitting them over the head with a hammer to make the lesson sink in.
Anyway, look, I'm led to believe there's a lot more nuance with the Iliad and how it weaves into Greek mythology; you know, these characters were kind of like the Marvel superheroes of the ancient Greeks, and a lot of different people put them into a lot of different stories; I took a cheap shot at fanfiction earlier, but that must have been what everything was like back then. But even still, Homer probably had an expectation that his audience was coming into the Iliad with some familiarity of the rest of the canon, and that just isn't the case anymore; like, sure, I had a unit on Greek mythology in seventh grade, so I know the gods and goddesses and all the basics, but nowadays you'd need a degree in this stuff to know which names are noteworthy and why you should care what their lineage is. Because apparently it's important; half of these characters are, like, third-generation descendants of gods, which is maybe why the gods can get so invested in what happens to them, although really most are just descended from Zeus because that boy ain't got no chill.
Next time: Yeah, I'm barrelling straight through and doing the Odyssey, where we're following the return journey of the coolest character from the Iliad: Diomedes.
Nah, it's Odysseus.