You think that you must therefore excel others in counsel; but you cannot thus claim preeminence in all things. Heaven has made one man an excellent soldier; of another it has made a dancer or a singer and player on the lyre; while yet in another Jove has implanted a wise understanding of which men reap fruit to the saving of many, and he himself knows more about it than any one ....
-- Iliad XIII, translated by Samuel Butler
When we think of the Trojan War and the Fall of Troy, we tend to think only of Homer's Iliad, and rightly so -- except the details with which we are most familiar do not appear in Homer's account of the Trojan War.
The basics of The Iliad include:
When:
The Iliad takes place in the 10th year of the war between the allied forces we call the Greeks and the Trojans. It covers about 50 days of warfare.What:
As the Iliad states at the beginning, it is the story of the wrath of Achilles.Achilles isn't a randomly selected great hero, though. If nothing else, Achilles bears an hereditary responsibility for the Trojan War. It was to his parents' wedding that the trouble-making goddess of Discord was not invited.
See Tale of Troy
Why:
Agamemnon has angered Apollo who responds with a plague. To relieve the suffering Agamemnon must return Apollo's priest's daughter, Chryseis. The king refuses unless he gets something of equal value in return. He decides to take Achilles' war-prize, Briseis; thereby angering and dishonoring the hero Achilles.Summary
Events in the Iliad- Wrath of Achilles.
- Agamemnon's dream.
- Truce; Paris and Menelaus fight for [%20URL%20=%20www.geocities.com/~webwinds/thalassa/helen.htm%20]%20Helen. Menelaus wins but Paris doesn't return Helen, truce is broken.
- Hector goes to fight
- Patroclus persuades Achilles to let his yrmidons fight under Patroclus' leadership.
- Patroclus is killed and stripped of his armor.
- To retaliate, Achilles joins the fray to kill Hector whom he drags on the ground behind his chariot.
- Eventually Achilles lets Priam take back his son's body for burial.
Despite the burned Alexandrian library and the Middle Ages' loss of classical scholarship, it would have been hard for us NOT to know the stories. About a third of all surviving Greek literary papyri are Homeric. Every Greco-Roman schoolboy learned his Homer and knew the story of the Trojan War. His auxiliary sources included drama and other poetry, from the now lost writing about the Trojan War cycle to the Aeneid and Metamorphoses. One of the "cyclic" poems starts where The Iliad leaves off and the Amazons, led by Penthesilia, come in. This poem, known as Aethiopis, is believed to be the foundation for The Fall of Troy, by the 4th C. A.D. poet, Quintus, referred to as Smyrnaeus. Other poems that may have provided source material are Iliupersis, by Arctinus (c 776 B.C.), and the Little Iliad, by Lesches (c. 700 B.C.).
Next page Tale of Troy Page 1, 2
Books
- The Iliad, translated by Robert Fitzgerald.
- The Iliad, translated by Richmond Lattimore.
- Black Ships Before Troy, by Rosemary Sutcliff, rated for ages 9-12.
- The Children's Homer. YA PB, by Padraic Colum.
- Homer's The Iliad (Barron Book Notes).
- The Iliad. Six audio cassettes with Derek Jacobi, plus booklet.
- Iliad Volume I. Loeb.
- Iliad Volume II. Loeb
