Divine Intervention of The Iliad
The Iliad is an epic novel about the war between the Greeks and Trojans that has many instances of the Greek Gods impacting the war in favor of one side or the other. While it seems like they have all-powerful powers like immortals should, many of the arguments they get in amongst themselves demonstrate their humanity. I believe Homer’s intent in this epic is to portray a theme of role-reversal, where the warriors are more like the gods and the gods are more like the warriors. This is evident in a most conspicuous way between Zeus and Hera when they recite sexual innuendos to each other and Zeus openly admits to adultery, also when Hera designs cunning plans to aid the Greeks in battle without Zeus’ consent.
Hera and Zeus are two of the most powerful Gods from Ancient Greece, but Homer’s image of them in this epic was completely bewildering to me because of the unconventional expression and actions that occur between them. There were many times Hera used conniving ploys to help the Greeks without the permission of her husband, Zeus. Hera seducing her husband with Sleep’s utilities was a scene in which her actions would make the previous assertion more concrete. The scheme by Hera that had the most profound effect on the plot was when she motivated Achilles to fight and defeat the Trojans. When Zeus became aware of this he said, “So you have had your way, my ox-eyed lady. You have roused Achilles, swift of foot. Truly, the long-haired Greeks must be from your wound (Iliad, 366).” This scene is monumental because Zeus was trying his hardest to keep the war balanced, but the sly actions of Hera will now favor the Trojans presently, and more importantly, ultimately...
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...to engage the enemy (Iliad, 204)”. This quote exemplifies how Zeus favors the Trojans, and thus how the Achaeans realize that in fighting the Trojans they pit themselves against the king of the gods, Zeus. The favoritism of Zeus allows Hector and the Trojan army to dismantle the Greek forces and consequently make significant progress in the war, until Hector’s helmet is hit by a spear and causes concern, almost causing a retreat.
The imbalanced relationship of Zeus and Hera result in a Greek victory because of Hera’s ploys for Trojan failure. The corruption among the Gods, particularly Aphrodite, causes many mortals to be influenced either positively or negatively while fighting. Homer’s vision when creating this epic work was to praise the warriors over the Gods so he would change the common conception of the immortals in ancient Greece.
Much of what we know today of Greek culture was passed on through history via The Iliad by Homer. The Greeks, one of the earliest recorded civilizations that our species is aware of, had a large influence on the Roman Empire and by extension most of the civilizations of our known history. Through history and different cultures, there are various stories of heroes and heroism, and it seems that the definition of heroism has changed frequently since classical antiquity. “Goddess, sing the rage of Peleus’s son Achilles, murderous, doomed, that cost the Achaeans countless losses.”(The Iliad I.1-2) So opens The Iliad, a story of the Trojan War and the flawed hero, Achilles. Achilles, an example of the Greeks ideal hero, is not without his flaws. His anger while understandable during the earlier parts of the poem begins to appear irrational during book IX. The Greeks, who aspired to embody the qualities they valued in their heroes, treated the story of The Iliad with great reverence.
This opinion is made fact among the mortals when Nestor reminds Diomedes that, “no man can beat back the purpose of Zeus, not even one very strong, since Zeus is by far the greater,” (8.143-44). With their tremendous power, a god may even find it baffling that they are also affected by the troubles of men. In The Iliad, the immortals can be viewed in two ways: 1) Immortals manipulate mortals on a whim. 2) The immortals are the embodiment of ideals. In the first view, the gods treat mortals as a sort of entertainment just to pass time in their immortal lives. With this mindset, the gods may be surprised when they too are affected by their actions. A manipulator is so used to changing the lives of others that they are often clueless on how to react to a direct change. In the second view, if the gods were just manifestations of human desires, then they would not react well with change, otherwise their identities would change as well. The gods are so accustomed to having power that they forget that they too are subject to the
It is the underlying theme in works of Greek literature. Mortals became tools of the gods when convenient. The affairs of men were not always at the will of the gods however, in certain instances, the agenda of the gods permitted involvement in the human domain. By mating with mortals, the Olympian gods could produce children who be loyal to themselves and would be stronger and better than ordinary mortals. Hemitheoi, or demi-gods, were the fourth generation of humankind; the heroes of myth, the ones who fought at Troy or killed immortal beasts in order to save another (Zaidman 25). Homer’s epic the Iliad describes the last two weeks of the ten-year battle between the Trojans and the Greeks that has become known historically as the Trojan War. While the poem primarily focuses on the conflict between Achilles and Agamemnon, the use of several Greek gods displaced the purity of the war involvements change the pace of the battle. The story of the Trojan War begins with the story of the apple of discord, the Golden Apple. Hera, Athena, and Aphrodite each believed that they deserved this apple, by virtue of being the most beautiful. Since the goddess could not decide among themselves and Zeus was not willing to suffer the wrath of the females in his family, the goddess appealed to Paris, Prince of Troy. When asked to judge
Throughout the text, major characters seem to be at constant battle with their different emotions. This inner conflict is mirrored by the everyday conflicts between the gods. Just as Zeus and Hera are constantly at odds with one another, so are the different sides of Achilles: his cultural responsibility, pride, honor, and revenge. No one is completely at peace with his or her conflicting emotions in The Iliad – and therefore, neither are the gods, who represent these emotions. Hector is a prime example of a human who finds himself torn between two forces: his love for his growing family, and his duty as a prince of Troy. He admits to Andromache that he worries about his own mortality, but emphasizes that “I would die of shame to face the men of Troy…if I would shrink from battle now, a coward.” (Homer 6: 523, 525). Hector’s deeply ingrained sense of honor and loyalty to home is clearly established in the beginning of the text. Therefore, when Zeus later grants Hector “power to kill and kill till you cut your way to the benched ships” (Homer 11: 241-242), it is not too much of a stretch to attribute Hector’s dodged perseverance to his upbringing and rigid sense of duty, rather than to the
Achilles says that if he was to fight or stay home his destiny would be the same as any man. He would die as all mortals must (Homer 103). Even if Helen is the prize of this war he does not find meaning in fighting for her. Gray also mentions this occurrence where Achilles questions the reasoning for the war and says that she is not a prominent reason for him to risk his life (2). Homer’s acknowledgement of the ignorance of the warriors who fight for women is shown throughout the Iliad. Even though Helen’s abduction was the reason to start the war, Browa notices that although they fight for her not one person in the Iliad gives a crucial reason that justifies the fighting (5). Homer intentionally left out this detail because it supports his idea that men have no reason for fighting for women except the fact that a woman is a trophy. This underlying motif is spread within the Iliad, from the reason to begin the Trojan War, Helen, to the removal of Agamemnon’s and Achilles’s prizes of war, the daughter of Chryses (Wilson 173) and Brisies (Dué 114). Homer continuously shows that women cause conflict, but he believes that the greatest heroes and warriors can learn from these
“Then the screaming and shouts of triumph rose up together, of men killing and men killed, and the ground ran blood.” From first examination the Iliad seems to be an epic founded on an idealized form of glory, the kind that young boys think about when they want to join the army. A place full of heroism and manliness where glory can be achieved with a few strokes of a sword and then you go home and everything is just lovely. Many people view the Iliad this way, based on it’s many vivid battle descriptions and apparent lack of remorse for the deaths that occur. This, however, is not how war is presented in the Iliad. Homer presents a very practical outlook on war countering the attainment of the glory with the reality of its price and the destruction it causes. He successfully does this by showing the value of the lives of each person that dies and, in a sense, mourning their passing, describing the terror and ugliness of war, and, through the characters of Achilleus and Hector, displaying the high price of glory.
Homer is credited for writing epics that generate source materials for the modern world. The Iliad and the Odyssey by Homer are captivating stories with fascinating heroic characters. The Homer stories share with classical mythology typical recurrent motifs. The two Homer epic poems focus on the Trojan War, and its result. The epic poems contain the Greek mythology featuring the Greek gods, goddesses, mythological creatures, and the Greek heroes, and heroines. In addition, the principal motifs typical of classical mythological hero stories are; the dominance of fate, evil fighting against the gods, and death. In both the classic mythology, and he modern fiction hero stories, the heroes always have a helper in their expedition, but ultimately, they have to stand alone, face the darkness, and conquer it in order to become victorious.
Homer's two central heroes, Odysseus and Achilles, are in many ways differing manifestations of the same themes. While Achilles' character is almost utterly consistent in his rage, pride, and near divinity, Odysseus' character is difficult to pin down to a single moral; though perhaps more human than Achilles, he remains more difficult to understand. Nevertheless, both heroes are defined not by their appearances, nor by the impressions they leave upon the minds of those around them, nor even so much by the words they speak, but almost entirely by their actions. Action is what drives the plot of both the Iliad and the Odyssey, and action is what holds the characters together. In this respect, the theme of humanity is revealed in both Odysseus and Achilles: man is a combination of his will, his actions, and his relationship to the divine. This blend allows Homer to divulge all that is human in his characters, and all that is a vehicle for the idyllic aspects of ancient Greek society. Accordingly, the apparent inconsistencies in the characterization of Odysseus can be accounted for by his spiritual distance from the god-like Achilles; Achilles is more coherent because he is the son of a god. This is not to say that Achilles is not at times petty or unimaginative, but that his standards of action are merely more continuous through time. Nevertheless, both of Homer's heroes embody important and admirable facets of ancient Greek culture, though they fracture in the ways they are represented.
Before one can understand the interactions between the Gods and mortals, one first has to understand the nature of the Gods. In Homer, the Olympian Gods are anthropomorphic; that is to say they have human characteristics. The Gods have both a human shape as well as human emotions and needs. It is very evident that the Gods behave much like the mortals they lord over. Another facet to the Olympians Gods is that they represent a facet of nature, such as fire, water, death, weather, love, anger, nature, and death. The duel nature of the Gods creates a paradox in which the Gods are both anthropomorphic, as well as abstract representations of nature. In Homer, the Gods alternate between each of these parts, and on occasion become one. It can be best said that while the Gods are anthropomorphic, they are also a personification of nature. There are numerous examples of this in both the Iliad and the Odyssey. In book 21 of the Iliad Achilles has to fight the river god Xanthus, but he is saved by the fire god Hephaestus. Hephaestus is portrayed both a fire God as well as the fire itself. Xanthus, who na...
To begin with, the ancient Greeks explained the creation of the universe, in particular the Earth and its elements, by a system of anthropomorphism in which their gods are human-like and are representatives of these elements. For example, Zeus is the god of heaven while Hades is the underworld lord (Hesiod, p.145). Unlike the Christians’ god who is “flawless”, the ancient Greeks’ divinities are portrayed as humans and are far from perfect. Their gods behave like ordinary people except they are immortal and have supernatural powers. Like any human being, the Greeks’ gods have love, jealousy, sadness, etc. For instance, in Euripides’ Bacchae, Zeus falls in love with Semele, which makes Hera becomes jealous and tries to kill Semele and Dionysus (Euripides, p.209). The Greeks even have a physically imperfect god, Hephaestus. This is to say that the gods’ attitude toward mortals is affected by how people treat them as the Greeks’ gods have emotions like humans.
Homer’s The Iliad: Book XX features a battle between the Trojans and Achaians, shortly after Patroklus’ death (Lattimore Book XVI), where the gods must intervene in order to restrain Achilleus’ destructive nature that becomes amplified due to the grief and wrath as a result of the loss of his cousin/lover. The divine foresaw an early fall of Troy caused by the intensified destructive nature of Achilleus, therefore they interfered in the battle to protect a bigger ideal of fate, a fate of a nation, by manipulating smaller ideals of fate, the fates of people’s lives(Lattimore 405). At the beginning of the battle, after the gods descended from Olympus, they decide to sit and just watch how their mortal teams will fend for themselves until Apollo takes form as Lykoan and coerce Aeneias to challenge Achilleus, thus establishing the first act of divine intervention (Lattimore 406-407). When Achilleus is inches away from killing Aeneias, Poseidon takes sympathy upon him and whisks him off to safety (Lattimore 407-411). The last interference occurs during the confrontation between Hektor and Achilleus, where Achilleus is about to murder him and Apollo saves Hektor (Lattimore 416). Hektor’s rescue in this battle is an important event in the Iliad because Achilleus’ and Hektor’s fates are interrelated, further meaning that if Hektor die...
Homer clearly and precisely depicts the religion and the ethics of the Achian and Trojan societies in The Iliad. During the time of the Trojan war, religion played an important role in the societies. Sacrifice, prayer, and rituals were all equally significant, and the superiority of the gods and the fates above humans was a standard of society. The gods were sacred deities to whom one had to bestow honor and respect. Within the society, honor, glory, and fame were desperately sought by warriors striving to achieve enduring notoriety. One's word represented a considerable commitment to be acted upon. Religion and ethics are prominently displayed in the characters throughout The Iliad due to their importance in Greek and Trojan society.
As the reader goes through the many books in the Iliad, he or she may notice the battle of immortal versus immortal on Mount Olympus. The gods are introduced in this book as major characters that have taken a side on either Team Trojans or Team Achaeans. Aphrodite, Apollo, and Ares are the main gods on Team Trojans, while Hera and Athena fight for Team Achaeans. Zeus is supposedly neutral, but in book one Thetis approaches Zeus saying, “honor my son Achilles!-doomed to live the shortest life of any man on earth […] grant the Trojans victory […] till the Achaean armies pay my dea...
In Iliad, Hera, enters into a conspiracy with Poseidon, Aphrodite, and Morpheus to aid the Greeks by putting Zeus to sleepÉ thus
Greek mythology has systematically included the intervention of gods and goddesses in matters of the mortal world, and Homer’s The Iliad is no different. The story is littered with divine intervention, with both positive and negative outcomes for the humans involved.