An unintelligible multitude,
A million eyes, a million boots in line,
Without expression, waiting for a sign.
– W.H. Auden from “The Shield of Achilles”
When I was in college studying literature I took a course on Shakespeare with Professor David Brumble. He is a brilliant professor who inspired me throughout my time at the University of Pittsburgh. One day while I was in his office visiting with him, he gave me a personal copy of The Iliad by Homer translated by the great Robert Fagles. Soon after that time I went back home for the summer. One night say around 9 pm or so, I sat down on my bed and cracked open the fat, little book and started to read The Iliad for the first time. It wasn’t until around 6 or 7 in the morning the next day that I was able to put the book down! I read the great epic literally all night long and loved every page turning minute of it. Homer is truly an awe-inspiring figure, and I was enamored by his every word. On top of that it has always been such a privilege and honor to have first read it from a professor I so greatly admired and appreciated.
Interestingly we don’t know very much about Homer. His life is enshrouded in mystery and lost within the centuries gone by. But what we do know indicates that the world he lived in was a savage, cruel, and dangerous world. Scholars believe he lived somewhere between the 12th and 8th century BC. In fact to further elucidate just how dire it was in Greece at this time, scholars and historians refer to this time period as both the “Greek Dark Ages” as well as the “Homeric Age.” This dark age came about due to to the collapse of the Bronze Age civilization, which basically brought all the major cities in Greece into ruin. It is within this larger social and cultural context that we can better appreciate and understand more palpably the underlying drives, motivations, and even valor in the Homeric classics. Homer is known for two great epic poems – The Iliad and The Odyssey. In the former poem the great warrior Achilles is one of the major characters, in the latter poem Odysseus is the protagonist. Although both men are Greek and are fighting on the same side as allies, they are actually quite different men and likewise exhibit mastery with different traits, qualities, and skills. In this post I’d like to focus my efforts on The Iliad. Perhaps in a future post I’ll discuss The Odyssey as well, but in both cases Homer appears to be arguing in the defense of his characters, attempting to prove just how vital and necessary their attributes and abilities really are in establishing peace, justice, and order among men.
As a quick and dirty synopsis of The Iliad, Achilles is the absolute greatest of all soldiers in both Greece and Troy. His mother is a sea nymph, his father a mortal man, and the great Gods love him, particularly Poseidon and Athena. The Iliad takes place on the battlefield at Troy during the Trojan War. In the beginning of the story Achilles is not fighting and is steeped in a feud with the Greek king Agamemnon. Many things occur and eventually Achilles finally joins the fight but only out of sheer rage and fury to avenge the death of his dear friend Patroclus who died bravely in battle. Once on the battlefield, Achilles reigns supreme and utterly destroys his enemies, which brings the great epic poem to a close. Here is just a brief sampling of some of the incredible language and story-telling by Homer as he describes Achilles first entering into battle.
armored in battle-power down he [Achilles] flung on the Trojans, loosed barbaric cries, and his first kill was Iphition, Otrynreus’ hardy son and a chief of large contingents, born of a river nymph to Otrynteus, scourge of towns, below Tmolus’ snows in the wealthy realm of Hyde. As the Trojan charged head-on Achilles speared him square in the brows-his whole skull split in half and down he crashed. Achilles exulting over him: “Here you lie, Otrynteus’ son-most terrible man alive! Here’s your deathbedl Far from your birthplace, Gyge Lake where your father’s fine estate lies next to the Hyllus stocked with fish and next to the whirling Hermus!”
Vaunting over the dark that swept his quarry’s eyes and the running-rims of Argive war-cars cut him to shreds at the onset’s breaking edge. And next Achilles lunged at Dernoleon, son of Antenor, a tough defensive fighter-he stabbed his temple and cleft his helmet’s cheekpiece. None of the bronze plate could hold it-boring through the metal and skull the bronze spearpoint pounded, Demoleon’s brains splattered all inside his casque, the Trojan beaten down in his fury. Hippodamas next, he leapt from his chariot fleeing before Achilles. Achilles’ spearshaft rammed him through the back and he gasped his life away, bellowing like some bull that chokes and grunts when the young boys drag him round the lord of Helice’s shrine and the earthquake god delights to see them dragging-so he bellowed now and the man’s proud spirit left his bones behind. Achilles rushed with his spear at noble Polydorus son of Priam. His father would not let him fight, ever, he was the youngest-born of all his sons-Priam loved him most, the fastest runner of all but now the young fool, mad to display his speed, went dashing along the front to meet his death. Just as he shot past the matchless runner Achilles speared him square in the back where his war-belt clasped, golden buckles clinching both halves of his breastplate-straight on through went the point and out the navel, down on his knees he dropped-screaming shrill as the world went black before him-clutched his bowels to his body, hunched and sank.
As you can see Achilles is a great fighter, unstoppable in his power and might. Not only this but the writing is energetic, vivid, and gory like in the depiction of “Demoleoan’s brains splattered” and then with the metaphor comparing a man being speared in the back to “bellowing like some bull that chokes and grunts.” What language and rich metaphor! The characters and images throughout The Iliad are masculine, violent, and fierce in all that they feel and do. Even when they are sad or in love, it is always powerful, arresting, almost hyperbolic even. Homer’s characters are extreme, they are larger than life, even god-like. His view of the human condition praises the power and fullness of man. Everything Homer describes, he does so with grandeur and awe. When he writes battle scenes, we are fully immersed in battle, embracing, perhaps even relishing in, all the gore and violence. No matter what Homer writes about, the language has a joy or pleasure interwoven into the rhythm and pace of the lines. To me this is one reason why I think reading Homer should begin at a much earlier age than when we commonly read his works today. For example in my case, I first read Homer in college. This to me is an atrocity of the literary sort. What boy sitting in middle school or high school doesn’t want to read about brains splattering over bronze armor and Greek Gods fighting alongside incredible warriors on the hot and sandy battlefields of Troy! I mean really this stuff is as great, if not greater if you ask me, as the video games boys play today. And not to mention it is some of the greatest writing the world has ever seen that interweaves profound, archetypal stories amidst violence and adventure. But that is perhaps a slight side-note and tangent on my part – a little educational rant of mine if you will. I have others believe you me!
So back to where I was with Homer. I am fascinated by the role of violence in Homer’s writings. In particular, I am struck by how fully and completely the violence is depicted, accepted, and even praised throughout The Iliad. When considering that Homer lived in the Greek Dark ages, it is important to note that democracy and representative republics were not even thought of yet. This means the world was ruled not by great orators, philosophers, and lawyers but by strong men. The stronger the man, the more likely he would be king. When civilization crumbles, as it did after the Bronze Age, a new world order emerges where the rules of engagement become less codified, terror can reign supreme, and the worst horrors of man can actually happen. I think that for these reasons, we find in Homer a fundamentally different view of violence than we are accustomed to today. When the threat of the strongest warrior is always imminent, violence and the ability to savagely destroy your enemy is an absolute necessity for survival, even for the most noble and virtuous of men.
But violence is not the only element that Homer praises and glorifies. Honor, loyalty, and fierce devotion to friends, to sacred customs, and to one’s word are all crucial values in the Homeric landscape. Achilles is not only the most powerful warrior, he is also one of the most noble and principled men as well. In fact The Iliad opens with a feud, a divine dispute, between the Greek commander Agamemnon and a priest of the God Apollo. Agamemnon has taken as his slave a young maiden who also happened to be the daughter of a priest to Apollo. In his lust and greed Agamemnon refuses to release her back to the priest. This enrages Apollo and causes the God to kill many Greek warriors, which in turn causes the great Achilles to question the ruling power of Agamemnon. In this way Homer, at the outset of the poem, is illustrating how important justice, order, and divine obedience are in order to succeed in battle and in the greater organization of men. In an earlier post, I discussed the nature of history according to Tolstoy in War and Peace – you can find that post here. In that I discuss briefly how history tends to bend towards the good, the more virtuous of men, and that in the final analysis the most noble, free, and just people are the victors in battles and disputes, and that according to Tolstoy the most insignificant and ordinary decisions each of us make everyday all day long contribute to that larger, grander, more just victory. Here in Homer’s epic poems we again see a similar assessment of how victory, honor, and glory are achieved. You must be good. You must be obedient and devoted to the Gods. You must be just and noble and true. Always the Gods are watching us and the decisions we make, the actions we take, and how we assess each situation and dilemma that is presented to us. It is Achilles who is demanding the Greek King Agamemnon stand down, swallow his pride, and be more virtuous, for if he does not the entire Greek army may be destroyed by Apollo. Whatever stable society exists for Achilles and the Greeks at large, it is always tenuously positioned upon the wise and careful judgement of not just all the men, but in particular of their leaders, those very same leaders who are oftentimes the most powerful, violent, and fierce men in all the realm. In this way, Homer’s epic poems are a sort of manual on how to be a truly great leader and how to not just live in a more righteous and just world, but also how to actually create such a world as well. Perhaps ironically Homer, through crafting some of the most eloquent, profound, and yes violent stories ever recorded in human history, was also seeking to contribute to a more civilized, ordered, and stable world.
In his own act of nobility and virtue as a poet and storyteller, Homer ends The Iliad not by praising the Greeks or by bragging on the superiority of Achilles. Instead he ends the poem with Achilles calling a cease-fire so that the Trojans may pay respects to their dead. The final lines of the poem describe in detail the sacred burial rites the Trojans, the fierce enemies of the Greeks, perform on Hector, their king who has been freshly killed by Achilles.
At last, when young Dawn with her rose-red fingers shone once more, the people massed around illustrious Hector’s pyre And once they’d gathered, crowding the meeting grounds, they first put out the fires with glistening wine, wherever the flames still burned in all their fury. Then they collected the white bones of Hector- all his brothers, his friends-in-arms, mourning, and warm tears came streaming down their cheeks. They placed the bones they found in a golden chest. shrouding them round and round in soft purple cloths. They quickly lowered the chest in a deep, hollow grave and over it piled a cope of huge stones closely set, then hastily heaped a barrow, posted lookouts all around for fear the Achaean combat troops would launch their attack before the time agreed. And once they’d heaped the mound they turned back home to Troy, and gathering once again they shared a splendid funeral feast in Hector’s honor, held in the house of Priam, king by will of Zeus. And so the Trojans buried Hector breaker of horses.
The final lines of The Iliad are humble, devout, and deferential to the Greek’s blood adversaries, the Trojans. Homer is bridging the chasms created by war and violence, revenge and rage between bitter enemies. He is imparting empathy, through poetry and beautiful language, to all the great warriors who fought and suffered in the Trojan War whether they be Greek or Trojan. Homer uses poetry, the power of the word and of story, to inculcate into the minds, hearts, and devotions of the men around him, just how to live great and noble lives, and how to re-create a civilization from the ruin and rubble of not just the Trojan War, but also after the destruction of the late Bronze Age in which he himself lived. And frankly when considering just how influential Homer and his poems have been both throughout Ancient Greece all the way through to today, it is clear to see just how impactful, significant, and successful his endeavors really were. Homer with his divine cosmology, his noble values, and all the glory in battle, assisted for centuries in lifting Ancient Greece out of the dark ages that had descended upon it, and provided an anchor, a reminder, and incredible depictions of exactly what it meant and what it looked like to be great, to live a great life, and to unify men into a great society. Truly we are indebted to this wise, ancient, and mysterious poet from thousands of years ago. He helped to spark the birth of Athens which in turn created democracy, which our founding fathers centuries later revived and merged with the ideals of the Roman Republic, which was also likewise inspired and influenced by Homer, to form the greatest government in the history of the world. And so in what appears to be one of society’s greatest ironies, it is through Homer’s praise of violence coupled with his demand for nobility and virtue by all men, that we today are able to live in a world full of peace and prosperity the likes of which mankind has literally never known.