I've been reading
The Iliad this week, not so much in preparation for today's opening of Troy, as perhaps inspired by it. I should say re-reading - at least at this point. I first dipped into
The Iliad some 30 years ago, when the Fitzgerald translation was published. I don't recall how far I read before I ran out of steam. Oh, I had no problem getting through
The Odyssey - it's an adventure story, "Tom Terrific in the World of Yesterday." But
The Iliad is a bit harder going, even in the Fitzgerald translation, which was lauded at the time for its readability. (And its desire to present Greek names in a form closer to the original, so Hecuba, Meneleus and Achilles become Hekabe, Meneláos and Akhilleus. No, I don't know how it's pronounced either.) A few years back, I picked up the new (at the time) translations of both Homeric epics by Robert Fagles, because I'd heard good things about them and because my old volumes are packed away in a box somewhere and I have no idea where they are. The Fagles translations maintain the verse form (as do the Fitzgerald) while being eminently readable. The language is vigorous, but still quite commonplace, which is appropriate, given the original audience. More on that later. This time, I got about halfway through
The Iliad before drifting away, mostly because I had other things I was reading and Homer requires you take your time. So now I am rereading
The Iliad, but come to about Book 12, I'll be reading it for the first time.
[A side note. When you search for Iliad on Amazon, you receive more than 7000 hits. Most of those are books, which include not only
The Iliad and
The Odyssey but Cliffs Notes and other reference sources to both. Thanks to the "Search Inside the Book" feature, you also receive hits for every volume that even mentions
The Iliad, from
Why We Love: The Nature and Chemistry of Romantic Love to
The Business Style Handbook: An A-to-Z Guide for Writing on the Job with Tips from Communications Experts at the Fortune 500. Thanks, Jeff. If you're interested, you can also pick up Hans Peter's CD,
Music for The Iliad, which you can listen to at The Old Spaghetti Factory in Oakland ("Legend has it that Homer lived on Spaghetti with Browned Butter & Mizithra Cheese while composing
The Iliad) while wearing your Iliad Sunglasses from Serengeti (Henna with Tortoise Frames or Gunmetal with Shiny Black Frames, only 200 bucks). There's no Old Spaghetti Factory in Chicago, but there is one in Henderson, Nevada.]
[A second side note. In rereading this article, I see that I assume that my gentle readers are familiar with
The Iliad, and proceed thusly. (As Harry Ruby would say.) For those of you who are not, Ian Johnston's Iliad website provides a great overview of the
Trojan War, which is the theme of the work. For our purposes, all you need to know is that the Trojan War started when Paris, a prince of Troy, ran off with Helen, the wife of Menelaus, the king of Argos, one of the city-states of Greece. Agamemnon, Menelaus' brother, is the leader of the Greek forces. Odysseus, who you may know as Ulysses, is another Greek warlord, and the hero of
The Odyssey, which is why it's called that. Not
The Ulyssey. Hector, Paris' big brother, is the greatest warrior in Troy; Achilles is the greatest warrior in Greece. Eventually they square off.]
The first thing that strikes you about
The Iliad (assuming you are me) is how bloody it is. Bloody without being bloodthirsty, which is to say while it is very matter of fact about its horrific scenes of carnage, it does not revel in them. Classic literature has a (somewhat undeserved) reputation for being somewhat reserved. In Greek theater, all death and slaughter take place offstage. They are reported onstage, sometimes in fairly graphic detail, but there is a clear sense of what is appropriate for the stage. Thus, when Oedipus puts his eyes out, or when Orestes kills his mother, the audience only hears about it after the fact. Contrast this with
King Lear, for instance, in which Gloucester's "vile jelly" is dug out in full view of the audience.
And indeed, before we get to any scenes of real violence, we are lulled by the catalog of Book 2, in which all the Greek leaders are listed, along with their places or origin and, in many cases, their family background. For example, we learn that Odysseus
... led his Cephallenian companies,
gallant-hearted fighters, the island men of Ithaca,
of Mount Neriton's leafy ridges shimmering in the wind,
and men who lived in Crocylia and rugged Aegilips,
men who held Zacynthus and men who dwelled near Samos
and mainland men who grazed their flocks across the channel.
The mastermind like Zeus, Odysseus led these fighters on,
In his command sailed twelve ships, prows flashing crimson.
And so it goes for nearly 300 lines. Even here, though, you get a sense of the language that Fagles employs. There's nothing about the diction or syntax to get in the way of the modern reader. And while not specifically poetic, the rhythm is sufficient to draw the reader on. His rhythm is much more leisurely than mine, which is why you just skimmed over the excerpt. Admit it!
Let's skip forward 2000 years. (Actually closer to 2400, but who's counting?) You probably know the line, "Was this the face that launched a thousand ships?" It is generally taught as a perfect example of iambic pentameter: five feet of two syllables each, with the stress on the second syllable. (da DUM da DUM da DUM da DUM da DUM) The line refers, of course, to Helen of Troy and was written by ... who? Not William Shakespeare, but his contemporary, Christopher Marlowe (Rupert Everett in the movie), in his play
Doctor Faustus. Now, look back at the selection quoted above. As you will note, it ends with the number of ships Odysseus led. As does each similar stanza. I always assumed that the 1000 ships line was poetic license at best, some Elizabethan boys' school tradition at worst. Being the geek that I am, I went back and added up all the ships Homer says went with Menelaus to Troy. 1186. Yeah, I know. Mostly in group of 40, though as high as 100. Making Odysseus' 12 seem like a pittance, but Ithaca is an island, after all.
Soon enough, descriptions of heroes give way to descriptions of battle, and this is where the bloodletting begins. As I said, I found much of it disturbing. I doubt that
Troy, violent as it may be, will come close to the gore in
Iliad. To begin with, nearly 250 deaths are described in some detail. Ian Johnston, of Malaspina University-College in Nanaimo, British Columbia, provides a
listing on his Iliad website. It is quite the inventory. Spear in the chest, spear in the gut, spear in the head. Sword in the neck, arm cut off, rock in the skull. Lovely. Homer is more descriptive, but he accomplishes an extraordinary amount without using many words. This, for example, is how Diomedes slays Pandarus with his spear. I've taken it out of verse form to make it seem less foreign.
"He hurled the shaft and it split the archer's nose between the eyes - it cracked his glistening teeth, the tough bronze cut off his tongue at the roots, smashed his jaw and the point came ripping out beneath his chin."
I doubt we'll see that on the big screen. Here's Diomedes wounding Aeneas:
"Diomedes hefted a boulder in his hands ... flung it and struck Aeneas' thigh where the hipbone turns inside the pelvis, the joint they call the cup - it smashed the socket, snapped both tendons too, and the jagged rock tore back the skin in shreds."
And one more Diomedes, just for good luck.
"One he stabbed with a bronze lance above the nipple, the other his heavy sword hacked at the collarbone, cleaving the whole shoulder clear of neck and back."
You'd think Diomedes was the only Greek fighting. Well, in Book 5 he practically is. Every now and then, one of the warriors goes on a rampage, and all hell breaks loose. Hector gets pretty busy in Book 5, at one point killing 6 Greeks in a row, but it's Diomedes' turn, and he wipes out a dozen Trojans, at one point spearing Aphrodite in the wrist and later gutting Ares (Mars), the god of war himself. Neither wound is fatal, of course, but Ares lets out a roar of anger and pain, "thundering loud as nine, ten thousand combat soldiers," which stops the show for a while. This is pretty impressive. But Achilles, when he finally gets his act together, wipes out 25 Trojans over the course of two books. The poem is known as The Wrath of Achilles, after all.
But everybody kills somebody sometime. And it's all just nasty.
"Meriones caught him quickly, running him down hard, and speared him low in the right buttock - the point pounding under the pelvis, jabbed and pierced the bladder - he dropped to his knees, screaming, death swirling round him."
"Thoas speared him as he swerved and sprang away, the lancehead piercing his chest above the nipple plunged deep in his lung, and Thoas, running up, wrenched the heavy spear from the man's chest, drew his blade, ripped him across the belly."
Sometimes it's brief:
"the spearhead punched his back between the shoulders, gouging his flesh and jutting out through his ribs"
but generally it's horrible:
"Antilochus thrust first, speared the horsehair helmet right at the ridge, and the bronze spearpoint lodged in the man's forehead, smashing through his skull and the dark came swirling down across his eyes."
"Odysseus speared him straight through one temple, and out the other punched the sharp bronze point and the dark came swirling down across his eyes."
You may have noted some repetition in the last two examples (three if you count Meriones), and this is another thing that strikes you about the poem, especially in a good translation.
The Iliad and
The Odyssey were not written down, as I assume you know, until centuries after their creation. They are both part of an oral tradition. This is evident in the ways in which the poem acknowledges its audience. Many of the characters have epithets connected with them. Menelaus, for example, is red-haired Menelaus or Menelaus of the war cry or Atreus' fighting son. Odysseus is the great tactician, Achilles is the runner, the Greeks are long-haired, the Argives are breakers of horses. And many more. One function of these epithets was to support the metrical base of the line: the bard could choose the appropriate description based on the needs of the rhythm. But they also served as a connection for the audience. Think "Hey Now." Or "D'oh!"
Throughout the poem, certain speeches and descriptions are repeated in the exact same words. Early on, for example, Agamemnon has a dream. When he repeats his dream, it is in the same words that were used to describe it. These set passages were probably repeated with the bard by the audience, like an 8th century BC
Rocky Horror. The audience may well have joined in with, "And the dark came swirling down between his eyes," which is why there are so many of them. Plus, it makes a 500 page poem easier to fake.
Homer's audience is apparent, too, from the similes and metaphors he employs. Unlike a modern audience for the poem, which comprises scholars and students and people of some education, the contemporary audience was composed of common people: herders and farmers and fishermen. So when Homer uses a metaphor, it comes from their experiences. Often, they come from the natural world. This is how he describe the Greek army marching on Troy:
When the south wind showers mist on the mountaintops,
no friend to shepherds, better than night to thieves -
you can see no farther than you can fling a stone -
so dust came clouding, swirling up from the feet of armies
marching at top speed, trampling through the plain.
When Menelaus sees Paris, he is "thrilled
like a lion lighting on some handsome carcass,
lucky to find an antlered stag or a wild goat
just as hunger strikes - he rips it, bolts it down,
even with running dogs and lusty hunters rushing him."
This is a mountain cat, not some Siegfried and Roy creature. The shepherds would be familiar with driving off such animals. Paris, who has been strutting in front of the troops, is less happy to see Menelaus.
Backing into his friendly ranks, he cringed from death
as one who trips on a snake in a hilltop hollow
recoils, suddenly, trembling grips his knees
and pallor takes his cheeks and back he shrinks.
This description would quite possibly be followed by laughter. Audience members may have stumbled upon serpents - or other deadly things - unawares, and they know the experience Homer describes.
Priam, the king of Troy, and the city elders, "were eloquent speakers still, clear as cicadas settled on treetops, lifting their voices through the forest, rising softly, falling, fading away." Priam describes Odysseus as looking "like a thick-fleeced bellweather ram making his way through a big mass of sheep-flocks, shining silver-gray." And Paris says of Hector,
The heart inside you is always hard,
like an ax that goes through wood when a shipwright
cuts out ship timbers with every ounce of skill
and the blade's weight drives the man's stroke.
In describing amassing battalions, Homer says:
Think how a goatherd off on a mountain lookout
spots a storm cloud moving down the sea
bearing down beneath the rush of the west wind
and miles away he sees it building black as pitch,
blacker, whipping the whitecaps, full hurricane fury -
the herdsman shudders to see it, drives his flocks to a cave.
He puts his audience not in the place of the glorious storm, but of the goatherd who has to deal with the consequences. Later, he compares the clashing armies to two rivers raging into a valley during the spring thaw, and includes the line, "and miles away in the hills a shepherd hears the thunder." He recognizes that the events he describes are awesome, in the true meaning of the word: they inspire awe. He is not creating his work for kings (or scholars), but for hard working men and women who live a difficult life. Many may know parts - possibly large parts - of the poem by heart; many have their favorite characters. They are like Civil War buffs.
The poem has its gentle side as well. When one young soldier falls, he is "like a lithe black poplar shot up tall and strong in the spreading marshy flats, the trunk trimmed but its head a shock of branches." It's easy to imagine a tall, scrawny kid with a bushy head of hair. Homer goes on, "A chariot-maker fells it with a shining iron ax as timber to bend for handsome chariot wheels and there it lies, seasoning by the river." There is perhaps some point to this death, but all we are left with is a boy who did not survive to "season" in life. At another point, Athena protects Menelaus from an arrow, "flicking it off your skin as quick as a mother flicks a fly from her baby sleeping softly." Odd to hear the lord of the war cry compared to an infant, but perhaps that's what we are to the gods.
For all its slaughter, Homer puts a very human face on war. This is something which is particularly resonant. The Greeks are the purported heroes of the piece, but Homer does not discount the valor of the Trojans. In battle scenes, it is sometimes difficult to tell who is fighting on which side. And rarely is one soldier more valiant than another. Though Homer has little use for Paris, Hector is easily as noble as any of the Greeks, as is Priam. In Book 2, after discussing the catalog of Greek leaders, he does the same for the Trojans.
He employs one technique which is particularly effective, and particularly disturbing. In battle sequences, he will describe an attack, and then provide the background of the characters, and then describe their death. For example, when Diomedes goes on his rampage, he kills a set of brothers, "men grown tall as their father shrank away with wasting age ... He ripped the dear life out of both and left their father tears and wrenching grief. Now he'd never welcome his two sons home from war, alive in the flesh, and distant kin would carve apart their birthright." Let me remind you that Diomedes is a Greek warrior, so his victims are, supposedly, the enemy. Imagine, if you will, seeing not only the photos out of Abu Ghraib, but snapshots of each of the prisoners - and the prison guards - taken with their families five years ago. This is what Homer does. It is the nature of war to be dehumanizing, and the events described in
The Iliad are in the distant past even in Homer's time, which allows him some leeway. But still, it is an act of great valor.
The Iliad covers only a brief period of the Trojan War: a few weeks in the 9th year. If you're planing to see
Troy, possible spoilers ahead. The poem ends with the death of Hector. It does not include the Trojan Horse, it doesn't include the fall of Troy. It ends before the death of Achilles. Contemporary audiences would know these stories; modern audiences may or may not. No one comes out of this well. There are scenes in the poem of Hector with his wife and infant child. Knowing that the son gets thrown from the city walls adds poignancy to these scenes. Most folks know that Odysseus has bad times ahead in the sequel. They may not know that it also takes Menelaus some time to get home - about seven years. Agamemnon gets the worst of it: he gets home in a timely fashion, but is killed by his wife and her lover, his cousin. Some families. They also kill Cassandra, Priam's daughter, who's just in the wrong place at the wrong time. It all works out okay, though, because Agamemnon's son, prompted by his sister, kills his mother and his second cousin and then gets off on an insanity plea. Really.
Finally, Aeneas, the only surviving son of Priam, eventually ends up in Italy, where he founds Rome. Sort of. At least according to Virgil in
The Aeneid. Having conquered Greece, the Romans could therefore say it was all some kind of karmic retribution. But that's a story for another day.
