The Iliad of Homer, Honor, Glory, Madness and Futility of War

Today we will learn and reflect on the Iliad, the moral lessons it
teaches us, and why it so deeply affected Greek and Western
culture.
You may ask, how can we benefit pondering the Iliad?
We cannot truly understand the culture of the ancient Greeks,
and Greek philosophy, culture and history, nor can we truly
understand and properly interpret the stories of the patriarchs in
the Old Testament, until we realized that these cultures were, by
necessity, warrior cultures that were far less secure and far more
brutal than the secure and peaceful existence we take for granted
in the modern world.

At the end of our talk, we will discuss the sources used for this video,
and the paintings in our thumbnail, and the additional lessons we learn
from these sources, and my blogs that also cover this topic. Please, we
welcome interesting questions in the comments, sometimes these
generate short videos of their own. Let us learn and reflect together!

YouTube Video:
The Iliad, the Glory, the Honor, the Futility, the
Madness, and the Senselessness of War
https://youtu.be/7lI2ZQ50wRc
NOTE: YouTube video corrections may not be reflected
on the slides, and the blog may differ somewhat in
content.
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Before the time of the Iliad, there was a dispute at a banquet on Mount Olympus
about who was the most beautiful goddess, and Zeus asked Paris, a prince of Troy
to choose the most beautiful from Hera, Athena, and Aphrodite, because Zeus
did not want to get involved in this losing debate.
Escorted by Hermes, the three goddesses bathed in the spring of Mount Ida and
approached Paris as he herded his cattle. Having been given permission by Zeus
to set any conditions he saw fit, Paris required that the goddesses undress before
him. Still, Paris could not decide, as all three were ideally beautiful, so the
goddesses attempted to bribe him to choose among them. Hera offered
ownership of all of Europe and Asia. Athena offered skill in battle, wisdom and
the abilities of the greatest warriors. Aphrodite offered the love of the most
beautiful woman on Earth: Helen of Sparta. Paris chose Aphrodite and therefore
Helen.

El Juicio de Paris by Enrique Simonet, c. 1904.

Helen was already married to King
Menelaus of Sparta, so Paris had to
raid Menelaus's house to steal Helen
from him. Some who sung this story
said that Helen fell in love with Paris
and left willingly.
This Dante the painter and Dante
Alighieri, the poet who penned the
Inferno, are different people.
Dante Gabriel Rossetti -
Helen of Troy,
painted 1863

We have two paintings of the abduction of Helen, and there are several more on
Wikimedia. In one the paintings the goddess Aphrodite herself cheers on the
kidnapping. Both paintings capture the helplessness felt by many women in an
ancient warrior culture regarding their fate, especially when they are abducted.
The myth goes that since Helen was so beautiful, she had many suitors from all
over Greece, and before Menelaus was chosen, all the suitors swore and oath to
defend Helen's marriage, so when Paris kidnapped her, all the Greek kings sailed
to Troy to rescue Helen from the Trojans.

The Abduction of Helen (1530–39) by Francesco Primaticcio, with Aphrodite directing

Abduction of Helen, ceiling fresco, Venetian, mid-18th century

In our first video we discussed the background of the Iliad and how it influenced
ancient Greek culture, and what happened in the Trojan War, since the Iliad only
captures a scene in the latter part of the war.

The Iliad begins describing how the Achaeans during their raids captured as
concubines the maidens Chryseis and Bryseis, and how Chryses, the brave father
of Chryseis, marched unarmed into the Greek camp to ransom his daughter. In
our second video we discussed how this respect of the warrior for the bravery
shown by those who visit the enemy camp is common among warrior cultures,
including our American Indian culture and the barbarians as well, and is shown in
another scene later in the Iliad.

King Agamemnon, who was given Chryseis as a concubine as war booty, shows no
respect towards the courage shown by her father Chryses, priest of Apollo.
Apollo sends a plague upon the Achaeans, and after many die Agamemnon is
forced to ransom Chryseis to her father Chryses.
He commits a second act of hubris, and instead seizes Briseis, the concubine of
Achilles. Enraged, not only does Achilles vow to withdraw from fighting, but he
prays to his mother Thetis to persuade Zeus to let the Trojans prevail on the
battlefield.
The seizing of concubines was common in ancient warfare, and piracy, and is
even mentioned numerous times in the Old Testament, so in our third video we
explore this fascinating topic.

In the early part of the Iliad, we see the Achaean army facing the Trojan army in
from of the gates of Troy, while the citizens of Troy watch the battlefield from the
upper ramparts of the city walls.
Hector, angry that his brother’s abduction of Helen brought upon Troy this long
war and many deaths, bravely strides to the Achaean lines to propose a combat
between Menelaus and Paris to decide the battle, since Menelaus was the
husband of Helen who he abducted.

When the battle lines are forming, but before the battle
commences,
“Hector raked his brother with insults, stinging taunts:
‘Paris, appalling Paris! Our prince of beauty,
mad for women, you lure them all to ruin!
Would to god you had never been born & died unwed.
That is all I would ask. Better that way by far
than to have you strutting here, an outrage,
a mockery in the eyes of all our enemies.”
Hector bravely approaches the Achaean lines and
proposed that a duel between Paris and Menelaus
determine the outcome of the battle. The Achaeans
agree, but before the duel begins, they need to offer a
sacrifice to the gods.
The Love of Helen and Paris by Jacques-
Louis David (1788, Louvre, Paris)

Old King Priam sitting on the walls of Troy overlooking the
battlefield spies Helen, but amazingly shows no anger, even
though she was the cause of this long war and much bloodshed.
Old King Priam calls to her,
“Come over here, dear child. Sit in front of me,
so you can see your husband of long ago,
your kinsmen and your people.
I don’t blame you. I hold the gods to blame.
They are the ones who brought this war upon me.”
Then he asks her to point out the Greek warriors she spies on the
field.
“And Helen the radiance of women answered Priam,
‘I revere you so, dear father, dread you too,
if only death had please me then, grim death,
that day I followed your son to Troy, forsaking
my marriage bed, my kinsmen and my child,
my favorite then, now full-grown,
and the lovely comradeship of women my own age.
Death never came, so now I can only waste away in tears.’ “
Leighton, Helen of Troy, 1865

This is a common theme in these ancient warrior cultures, women just did not
have much choice as to whom they would marry, and often they were captured
in battle and expected to be the good wife to the soldier who captured them.
We in our very different modern culture tend to judge Helen much more harshly
than does Homer, although Homer is not enthusiastic in his tolerance for her
behavior and attitudes.

For many pages the tragically radiant Helen relates to Priam
the many characters in the noble world she left behind in
Greece.
They spy Odysseus, broad shouldered, raging behind the
lines like a ram,
And she talk about Menelaus, and the clear speaking, noble
Agamemnon,
they spy the giant Ajax, his massive shoulders towering over
his men.
Helen points out many more Greeks to Priam, but two she
cannot find,
her blood brothers who had long been dead lying in the
“life-giving earth of the dear land of their fathers,” as she had
been gone so long from her home.
Helen and Menelaus, before her kidnapping,
Johann Tischbein, painted 1816

Back on the battlefield, the duel between Paris and Menelaus commences.
We find that Paris is more a lover than a fighter, and our Romeo Paris has
been subdued on the battlefield, he is about to be done in when the gods
behave badly. Aphrodite, goddess of love and lust, decides to save her
beloved Romeo, Paris. There is no objection from Paris as Aphrodite
swoops down to scoop up her Romeo in her protective arms, placing him
in a corner of his palace in the dark warm bed he shared with Helen in
sunnier times.
How difficult it becomes to stop a war when it gains a life of its own!
The wily Aphrodite changes her form to that of an old woman to lure Helen
into her bed while the battle rages below. Helen is not fooled. Helen
knows this is not a hag. Helen knows this is Aphrodite in disguise. Helen is
pissed. Helen lets Aphrodite know she is pissed.

.
Aphrodite presents Helen to Paris,
Gavin Hamilton, painted 1770’s
Helen protests to Aphrodite,
“Maddening one, my goddess, oh what now?
Lusting to lure me to my ruin yet again?
Where will you drive me next?
Off and away to other grand, luxurious country?
Have you a favorite mortal man there too? But why now?
Because Menelaus has beaten your handsome Paris,
and hateful as I am, he longs to take me home?
Is that why you beckon here beside me now
with all the immortal cunning in your heart?
Well, goddess, go to him yourself, you hover beside him!
Abandon the god’s high road and be a mortal!
Never set foot on Mount Olympus, never!
Suffer for Paris, protect Paris, for eternity,
until he makes you his wedded wife, that or his slave.
No, I will never go back again. I would be wrong,
disgraceful to share that coward’s bed once more.”

What amazing verses, it is like a discussion between Adam and God in
reverse, except where Adam is arguing from weakness, blaming the
woman that God gave to him, here Helen is chiding Aphrodite for
behaving so badly, telling the goddess that he is your handsome Paris,
no longer mine.
Aphrodite can browbeat Helen into Paris’ bed, but it is clear she has lost
all respect for Paris, and without her respect her love is lost. Professor
Vandiver comments that this dialogue demonstrates the futility of
continuing a war over a Helen who no longer loves Paris anyway.
Hector wonders, where is Paris? Why has he quit he duel? I suppose in
the Iliad the Homeric heroes are just not impressed with goddesses
flying down to rescue their favorites. Hector goes in the gates of Troy to
look for his brother Paris.

Hector leaves the battlefield so search the palace for
his younger brother Paris.
“And there in the bedroom Hector came on Paris,
polishing, fondling his splendid battle gear,
his shield and breastplate, turning over and over
his long curved bow. And there was Helen of Argos.
Seeing Paris, Hector rakes his brother with insults,
What on earth are you doing? Oh how wrong it is,
your people dying around the city, the steep walls,
dying in arms, and all for you the battle cries.”
Hector Censuring Helen and Paris,
by F. Hendrickx, Dutch, c. 1820

His brother Paris babbles for a few paragraphs,
Helen bemoans her adulterous fate with her cowardly husband,
Paris promises to beat him to the Trojan gates to join in the battle.
But we hear most touching part of the Iliad,
when Hector meets his wife and child to say goodbye to them.
Hector is doomed, his wife begs Hector not to return to the battle.

Hector reached down to pick up his son,
“but the boy recoiled, screaming at the sight of his own father,
terrified by the flashing bronze, the horsehair crest,
the great ridge of the helmet nodding, bristling terror,
so it struck his eyes. And his loving father laughed,
his mother laughed as well, and glorious Hector,
quickly lifting the helmet from his head,
set it down on the ground, fiery in the sunlight,
and raising his son he kissed him, tossed him in his arms,
lifting a prayer to Zeus and the other deathless gods:
‘Zeus, all you immortals! Grant this boy, my son,
may be like me, and rule all Troy in power
and one day let them say, ‘He is a better man than his father!’ “
The Farewell of Hector to Andromaque and
Astyanax, Carl Deckler, painted 1900’s

But that day would never come,
for all the audience listening raptly to the beats of the Iliad,
knew that after his death Troy would fall, that Troy would be sacked,
and his precious mother Andromache would be enslaved by the Greeks,
and the Greeks would hurl Hector’s little boy Scamandrius,
over the walls of Troy, his head to be dashed on the rocks below.
The Iliad has many stories within stories. In the stylized battles often the enemies will
pause to make speeches and converse before they fight, in one account the Greek
warrior Diomedes spies out his guest friend the Trojan warrior Glaucon. Guest friends
were the diplomats of the ancient world, when an embassy arrived in town from
another city they stayed at the house of their guest friend. They said to each other,
there are plenty of other Trojans to kill, there are plenty of other Greeks to kill, let us
remain friends, better yet, let us exchange armor so everyone knows were are friends.

The Burning of Troy, Abraham Bloemaert, painted 1793

“But the son of Cronus, Zeus, stole Glaucus’ wits away.
He traded his gold armor for bronze with Diomedes,
the worth of a hundred oxen for just nine.”

Professor Vandiver notes that this story is an allegory of the futility of the Trojan War.
After struggling in the war, the men in the Greek camp pressure King Agamemnon
send a delegation of three Greek warriors, including Odysseus, to persuade Achilles
to return to battle.

Nestor implores King Agamemnon,
“You, my illustrious King, infuriated Achilles –
you went and took from his tents the girl Briseis,
and not with any applause from us, far from it,
I for one, I urged you against it, strenuously.
But you, you gave way to your overbearing anger,
disgraced a great man the gods themselves esteem,
you seized his gift of honor and keep her still.
But even so, late as it is, let us contrive
to all this to rights, to bring him around
with gifts of friendship and warm, winning words.”
Agamemnon starts his speech,
“Since I was blinded, lost in my own inhuman rage,
now at last, I am bent on setting things to rights:
I’ll give a priceless ransom paid for friendship.”
“All this I would extend to him if he will end his anger.
Let him submit to me! Only the god of death
is so relentless, Death submits to no one,
so mortals hate him most of all the gods.
Let Achilles bow down to me! I am the greater king,
I am the elder-born, I claim to be the better man.”
Johann Heinrich Tischbein, Achilles' Dispute
with Agamemnon, painted 1776

Agamemnon is totally clueless, Agamemnon just doesn’t get it.
He still insists on a pissing contest between him and Achilles,
He thinks he can bribe his way to friendship with Achilles,
He insists that Achilles should submit to him,
Like a powerful warrior like Achilles is going to submit to anyone.

Achilles objects,
“What will be our lasting thanks in the long run
for warring with our enemies, on and on, no end?
One and the same lot for the man who hangs back
and the man who battles hard.
The same honor waits for the coward and the brave.
They both go down to Death,
the fighter who shirks,
And the one who fights to exhaustion.”
Jean-Auguste-Dominique Ingres - Achilles
Receiving the Ambassadors of Agamemnon, 1801

We encourage you to enjoy the speeches by the three envoys,
they reveal much about the warrior culture of the Iliad.
Therefore, the prizes and bribes that Agamemnon offers mean
little to him, besides, what he grants to Achilles he can once
again take away.

Further along in his speech Achilles proclaims about his
concubine Briseis,
“I loved that woman with all my heart,
though I won her like a trophy with my spear,
but now that he has torn my honor from my hands,
robbed me, lied to me, don’t let him try me now.
I know him too well, he will never win me over!”
Some verses truly shocking to ancient Greeks follow,
“Mother tells me,
the immortal goddess Thetis with her glistening feet,
that two fates bear me on to the day of death.
If I hold out here and I lay siege to Troy,
my journey home is gone, but my glory never dies.
If I voyage back to the fatherland I love, my pride, my glory dies,
true, but the life that is left me will be long,
the stroke of death will not come on me quickly.”
Thetis and Achilles,
Pierce Francis Connelly, 1874

The Trojans fight their way to very walls of the Greek camps,
which was really a fortified fortress with palisades of sturdy timbers,
surrounded by a deep ditch dug to furnish earth for protection.
The mighty “Hector grabbed a boulder, bore it up and on . .
no two men, the best in the whole realm,
could easily prize it up from earth on onto a wagon,
weak as men are now, but he quickly raised and shook it . . .
As a shepherd lifts a ram’s fleece with ease,”
Iliad and Odyssey monument
Hector hurls this massive boulder at the
gates,
splintering the gates, so the Trojans can
storm the walls of the Greek camp.
Trojans and Greeks battle hand to hand,
from Book 13 to Book 15, they battle for
the camp, they battle for the ships,
Hector is warned by a seer to fall back, but
the seer is ignored.

The goddess Hera, mother of Aphrodite, wife of Zeus,
seeks to distract Zeus, seeks to seduce Zeus, seeks for sleep to overcome
Zeus, so the god Poseidon can shift the tides of battle to the Greek,
as the Greeks battle the Trojans are burning their ships.

With the assistance of Aphrodite, goddess of love, and
the goddess sleep,
The Iliad has Zeus babbling, “Let’s lose ourselves in love!
Never has such a lust for goddess or mortal woman
flooded my pounding heart and overwhelmed me so.
Not even then, when I made love to Ixion’s wife
who bore me Pirithous, rival to all the gods in wisdom,
not when I loved Acrisus’s daughter Danae, marvelous
ankles,”
and his storming of Europa and Semela and Alcmena
queen of Thebes, and Demeter, queen of the lustrous
braids, and Leto ripe for glory,
As Professor Vandiver wryly notes, Hera must consider
herself so fortunate, Zeus thinks this procession of
conquests is meant to impress her.
Zeus and Hera, or Jupiter and Juno on Mount Ida,
James Barry, painted 1790’s

While Zeus sleeps for five pages of
Iliad, it is the turn of Ajax to pick
up and hurl a boulder back at
Hector, stunning him,
“the blow sent Hector whirling like
a whipping-top,
reeling round and round, as a huge
oak goes down,” so falls Hector.
Woken, angered, bested, Zeus
threatens Hera, who flees.
With Zeus awake, the Trojans once
again set fire to the ships of the
Greeks.
Odysseus and Ajax

Patroclus urges Achilles that if he will not don his armor,
The Achilles will “send me into battle, quickly! . . .
Give me your own fine armor to buckle on my back,
so the Trojans may mistake me for you, Achilles,
and hold off from their attack, and Achaea’s fighting sons
will get a second wind, exhausted as they are.”
“Patroclus armed himself in Achilles’ gleaming bronze” armor,
his massive shield, his sword, his helmet crested with horsehair,
but not his spear, so massive that only Achilles could wield it,
and also borrowed Achilles’ two immortal stallions,
Roan Beauty and Dapple,
yoked in the chariot next to purebred mortal stallion Bold Dancer.

Achilles warns Patroclus to only drive the Trojans from the beach, but
Patroclus, like any noble Greek hero, pursues the Trojans to the gates of
Troy, where he is finally killed by Hector, who strips him of Achilles’
armor. In this painting the armies fight over the body of Patroclus so his
corpse can be returned to the tent of Achilles.

The Greeks and the Troyens claiming the Body of Patrocles, Antoine Wiertz, painted 1844

“Standing clear of the fray Achilles immortal horses wept
from the time they first sensed their driver’s death,”
“And Zeus pitied them, watching their tears fall,”
Zeus would only give the Trojans glory until the setting of the sun.

At his death, the “warlord Nestor’s son drew near to Achilles,
streaming warm tears, to give the dreaded message,
‘Patroclus has fallen. There are fighting over his corpse.
He’s stripped, naked, Hector with that flashing helmet,
Hector has your arms!’ So the captain reported.

A black cloud of grief came shrouding over Achilles. . .
Achilles suddenly loosed a terrible, wrenching cry
and his noble mother heard him, seated near her father,
the Old Man of the Sea in the salt green depths.”

Vulcan, or Hephaestus, hands Thetis
the shield for Achilles, painted 1536
by Maerten van Heemskerck
Achilles mourns, Achilles grieves, Achilles regrets.
“But Thetis answer, warning through the tears,
‘You’re doomed to a short life, my son, from all you say!
For hard on the heels of Hectors death your death
must come at once.’
‘Then let me die at once,’
Achilles burst out, despairing, ‘since it was not my fate
to save my dearest comrade from his death! . . .
No, no, here I sit by the ships,
a useless, dead weight on the good green earth,
I, no man my equal among the bronze-armed Achaeans,
not in battle, only in wars of words that others win.
If only strife could die from the lives of gods and men
and anger that drives the sanest man to flare in outrage, . .
just like the anger Agamemnon king of men has roused
with me now. Enough,
Let bygones be bygones. Done is done.
But now I’ll go and meet that murderer head-on,
that Hector who destroyed the dearest life I know.’ “

We encourage you to read the account of the Iliad,
How Iliad with the help of Athena frightened the Trojans by appearing
on the gates of the Greek camp with his hair ablaze with rage.
Since his armor had been stripped by Hector, his mother Thetis asked
the god Hephaestus to forge him new armor.
Homer’s description of the decorations on the shield Hephaestus,
decorations that are animated depictions of daily life in Greece, are like
a story within a story, a little Iliad imbedded in the larger Iliad.

Thetis receiving armour for
Achilles from Hephaestus,
Peter Paul Rubens 1577-1640

Achilles chides his immoral horses, “ ‘Don’t
leave Achilles there on the battlefield as you left
Patroclus – DEAD!’
. . . The white-armed goddess Hera gave his
horse voice:
‘Yes! We will save your life, this time too,
master, mighty Achilles!
But the day of death already hovers near,
and we are not to blame but a great god IS and
also the strong force of fate.’
“But Achilles is not impressed.
‘Why, Roan Beauty, why prophesy my doom?
Don’t waste your breath.
I know, well I know, I am destined to die here,
far from father and mother.”

Gustav Jaeger, Balaam and the Angel, painted 1836
This reminds us of a talking beast story in the
Old Testament in Numbers 22 when Balaam is
going where the Lord does not want him to go.
Then the Lord opened the mouth of the
donkey, and it said to Balaam, “What have I
done to you, that you have struck me these
three times?”
Balaam said to the donkey, “Because you
have made a fool of me! I wish I had a sword
in my hand! I would kill you right now!”
But the donkey said to Balaam,
“Am I not your donkey, which you have
ridden all your life to this day? Have I been in
the habit of treating you this way?”
And Balaam said, “No.” An angel blocks his
path, his ass sees the angel and refuses to
pass, but Balaam does not see the angel and
beats the donkey.

Rembrandt, Balaam and his ass,
painted 1626
Numbers 22:
“Then the LORD opened the eyes of Balaam, and he
saw the angel of the LORD standing in the road, with
his drawn sword in his hand; and he bowed down,
falling on his face. The angel of the LORD said to
him, “Why have you struck your donkey these
three times? I have come out as an adversary,
because your way is perverse before me. The
donkey saw me, and turned away from me these
three times. If it had not turned away from me,
surely just now I would have killed you and let it
live.” Then Balaam said to the angel of the LORD, “I
have sinned, for I did not know that you were
standing in the road to oppose me. Now therefore,
if it is displeasing to you, I will return home.”

Agamemnon returns his beautiful Briseis and gives him prizes, but Achilles now
only thinks of war, he swears he will not eat or drink or wash until he has avenged
the death of Patroclus by killing Hector.
Professor Vandiver describes the rage of Achilles as being both superhuman and
subhuman as he dons his armor and goes into battle.
She quips, “Achilles is portrayed as if he were already dead. Achilles rejects the
human condition.” Before you could not get Achilles off his lyre, now Achilles is a
one-man Greek army. Achilles kills relentlessly, Achilles kills showing no mercy,
Achilles kills with cruelty, Achilles does all of the killing in the remainder of the
Iliad. His killing rage is so consuming the gods have to nourish him with heavenly
ambrosia lest he die from exhaustion. He even angers the river goddess by the
large number of Trojan corpses he tosses into her waters, and he even has to
battle the river goddess.

Coypel, Charles-Antoine - Fury of Achilles – painted 1737

Hector screws up his courage to face Achilles, to face Achilles for one-on-one
combat, but he hesitates, loses his nerve and runs. Achilles chases him around the
walls of Troy three times. Hector is shown throughout the Iliad as begin a man of
compassion, a man of honor, always doing his duty, but in these last chapters of
the Iliad he faces the rage of Achilles, totally without human compassion, and
Hector is at a disadvantage. They run past three times the waters where the
women of Troy washed their laundry in more peaceful times.
Hector regains his composure, regains his honor, regains his composure, and turns
to face Achilles, who runs him down. But even this does not calm the rage of
Achilles. He now spends many pages dragging the body of Hector round the walls
of Troy, dragging the body of Hector for his wife and children all the people of Troy
to see, dragging the body for all the gods of Olympus to witness, and the gods do
not like this sight. This is not right. This is not human. The gods rub ambrosia into
the body of Hector so it does not decay, so the corpse of Hector is not torn to
shreds as it is drug around the walls of Troy.

Protected by Ares, Achilles Overwhelms Hector
Painted 1815, Antonio Raffaele Calliano

Achilles dragging the dead body of Hector in front of the gates of Troy, Franz Matsch, painted 1892

Achilles dragging the dead body of Hector in front of the gates of Troy, Franz Matsch, painted 1892
But Patroclus feels like he has been neglected,
“Hovering at his head the phantom rose and spoke:
‘Sleeping, Achilles? You’ve forgotten me, my friend.
You never neglected me in life, only now in death.
Bury me, quickly,
let me pass through the gates of Hades.’ “

His rage subsiding, Achilles is able to mourn the death of Patroclus with
Briseis. Achilles can now enjoy the company of his beauty Briseis, and
eat and drink and sleep like normal humans. Achilles is also ready to
bury Patroclus, and the Iliad dedicates a chapter to the funeral games of
Patroclus that is hosted by Achilles, where all the Greeks compete in
athletic games.
The funeral games of Patroclus were another little Iliad imbedded in the
greater Iliad, so we encourage you to read this in the Iliad for yourself.
Some of the scenes in the games also tell us of the moral reawakening
of our hero Achilles.
Achilles calms down, instead of dragging the body of Hector around the
walls of Troy, he now drags the body of Hector around the grave of
Patroclus.

Briseis mourns the
death of Patroculus,
best friend of Achilles.
Julien-Michel Gué,
Painted 1815

Games in honor of Patroclus during his funeral, Antoine Charles Horace Vernet, painted 1790

Achilles gives Nestor the
prize for wisdom at the
funeral games held in
honor of Patroklos,
Joseph-Désiré Court,
painted 1820

Achilles does not truly come to terms with the death of his friend Patroclus
until Zeus persuades King Priam to venture alone into camp to claim the
body of Hector, a meeting we compared with other camp meeting stories
where braves risked death to ransom their loves ones in our video on the
Warrior Cultures of Iliad and the American Indians.

This is the turning point of the Iliad.
We feel the deep empathy Achilles feels for his
enemy breaks his rage.
This deep empathy finally helps Achilles accept
the death of his friend Patroclus.
“These words stirred within Achilles a deep
desire to grieve for his own father.
Taking the old man’s hand he gently moved him
back. And overwhelmed by memory both men
gave way to grief. Priam wept freely for man-
killing Hector, throbbing, crouching
before Achille’s feet as Achilles wept himself,
now for his father, now for Patroclus again,
and their sobbing rose and fell throughout the
house.”
Priam with Achilles, Chartran, 1876

The Iliad ends as the Trojans bury Hector within the city of
Troy. The Iliad ends with the foreboding of their doom by the
Andromache, grieving wife of Hector.
The Iliad ends with the foreboding of their doom by the
Andromache, grieving wife of Hector.

And the Iliad ends with the poignant eulogy of
Helen, over whom this war was fought,
“Hector, dearest to me of all my husband’s brothers,
my husband, Paris, magnificent as a god,
he was the one who brought me here to Troy,
Oh, how I wish I had died before that day!
But this, now, is the twentieth year for me
since I sailed here and forsook my own native land,
yet never once did I hear from you a taunt, an insult.
But if someone else in the royal halls would curse
me, . . .
why, you would restrain them with words,
Hector, you would win them to my side,
you with your gentle temper, all your gentle words.”
Andromache mourns Hector,
Jacqeus-Louis David,
painted 1783

These are words we should all heed. Like Helen in her
final eulogy, we should seek to guard the reputations of
our neighbors as if it were our, calling to mind the prayer
of St Ephrem:
Grant me to see my own sins and not to judge my brother.

This echoes the prayer of St Ephrem,
O Lord and Master of my life,
grant me not a spirit of sloth,
meddling, love of power, and idle talk.
But give to me, your servant,
a spirit of sober-mindedness,
humility, patience, and love.
Yes, O Lord and King,
grant me to see my own faults
and not to judge my brother,
since you are blessed to the ages of ages.

Pyrrhus and Andromache
before Hector's Tomb, by
Johan Ludwig Lund,
painted 1800’s
So the last line of
Iliad ends,
“And so the Trojans
buried Hector,
breaker of horses.”

SOURCES used for our video include Professor Elizabeth
Vandiver’s Great Courses lectures on the Iliad and Robert
Fagles’ translation of the Iliad.
We hope you will read the many parts of the Iliad we skipped
over, the delegation to Achilles to persuade him to return to
battle, the haunting and changing images on the shield of
Achilles that was forged by the gods, the funeral games of
Patroclus, and the many other smaller stories we skipped over.

Some additional material included in Professor Vandiver’s lectures is a poem by a
World War I soldier that imagined the fiery visage of Achilles, lit by Aphrodite at
dusk, above the trenches near the beaches where the Greek ships were moored,
and how this frightened the enemy. She also discusses in greater depth the
embassy of the three Greek soldiers to coax Achilles into battle, and the moral
lessons we can draw from this camp meeting that went badly, and the funeral
games, among others.

PLEASE click on the link for our blogs on the Iliad and the Odyssey,
And please click on the links for our other YouTube videos on the
Iliad, and other interesting videos that will broaden your knowledge
and improve your soul.

To find the source of any direct
quotes in this blog, please type in
the phrase to the search box in
my blog to see the referenced
footnote.
YouTube Description has links for:
• Script PDF file
• Blog
• Amazon Bookstore
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The Iliad of Homer, Honor, Glory, Madness and Futility of War

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