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Gods and supernatural in the iliad
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The gods and religion in the iliad
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Greed and Folly in the Iliad In the Iliad by Homer human folly is rampant, beginning with Agamemnon the Greek king and commander, who thoughtlessly insults Achilles, fails to apologize and then abruptly decides to test the courage of his army. After announcing the end of the fighting the king is surprised that the troops are eager to flock back to the ships. The muster of the Greek cause seems lost. Until Thersites steps forth. Thersites is a mysterious character that not even Homer knows. Thersites is the single speaker in the Iliad that is not identified by place of origin or rank. He is reputedly the most unattractive man in Troy. Thersites is described by his sheer repulsiveness. So it is doubly shocking when this shunned man publicly …show more content…
The first way is that they act as an external strength in events involving humans, such as when Apollo sends a plague down on the Achaean army. Secondly, the gods also act as an internal force; for example Athena, the goddess in control of wisdom, holds Achilles back from attacking Agamemnon with a sword and convinces him to cut him with words and insults instead. Both of these obstructions were the gods’ direct influence on the mortal world. While the gods provide an important function in helping determine human matters of life, death peace and violence they also provide a sense of comic relief in the Iliad. Their squabbles, double dealings and inane arguments seem incredibly petty compared to the mass slaughter that is sweeping the mortal realm. I believe that Homer used the strife between Zeus and Hera as a divine [parallel to the enraged argument of Achilles and …show more content…
Patroclus, best friend of Achilles, is an excellent example of greed leading to destruction, a common theme in the Iliad. Achilles was unwilling to lead his men, the Myrmidons, to battle. He wanted to punish Agamemnon for taking his war prize Briesis. However, Patroclus was more than willing to lead Achilles men into battle. Wearing Achilles armor made him appear to be the fierce warrior and this ruse was used in hopes of scaring the Trojans into retreat. Achilles ordered Patroclus to return to the ships after the battle but drunk with power Patroclus decided to push forward after his victory in pursuit of Hector. Apollo tried to intervene and thrice he warned Patroclus to back down but with Achilles brave men behind him Patroclus continued to pursue Hector. Patroclus unknowingly attacked Apollo after Apollo attempted one more time to stop Patroclus from almost interfering with Achilles fate. Patroclus, who was so engrossed in battle and reaching Hector, did not even realize it was a god he attacked even as Apollo landed the killing blow from
“Greed is a bottomless pit which exhausts the person in an endless effort to satisfy the need without ever reaching satisfaction.” -Erich Fromm
The Ancient Greeks admired their heroes and tried to learn from both their achievements and their mistakes. They believed that most great leaders and warriors followed a predictable behavior cycle, which often ended tragically. In Homer’s epic poem, The Iliad, Achilles is a great warrior who traces the stages of the behavior cycle twice, from arete to hubris to ate and then to nemesis. Achilles is a highly skilled warrior and a great leader who becomes a narcissist and an arrogant person, which leads to selfish and childish behavior resulting in the death of his best friend. Following Patroclus’ death, Achilles repeats the behavior cycle by regaining his courage and motivation, and goes back to battle against Hector. The pride he feels in killing Hector and his overpowering hatred for him, leads Achilles to another bad decision: disrespecting the body of his enemy. This foolish choice leads directly to Achilles death. Although The Iliad is mainly known as a story about the Trojan War, it is understood as a story about Achilles and his struggle to be a hero.
Throughout the Iliad, Homer portraits the extent to which honor plays a role in the lives of Greeks and the manner in which they are willing to sacrifice in order to reach their goals. The Iliad is set during the Trojan War, a particularly long and bloody war, fought not over boundary disagreements, and not over political conflicts, and not to protect the nation. Rather, it was a war fought to defend the personal honor. The possession of women was important to a man’s standing and honor. Paris’ theft of Helen struck a huge blow to the honor of Menelaus and becomes the initial cause of the Trojan War. Consequently, Menelaus, the Spartan ruler, called upon his brother Agamemnon to gather the Greek forces to launch the war against Paris demanding the return of Helen and reinstating the honor for the king. The war lasted for ten years and cost innumerable Greeks’ lives and brought incurable pain upon their families. To Greek heroes, honor is more important than their life as much as that life would be meaningless without it, and they even willingly sacrifice their lives in order...
The gods are used by Homer to add twists on an otherwise standard plot of war. I shall concentrate on Zeus. however, and reflect on his actions and their outcomes in the Trojan War. and more importantly, the story of The Iliad. Zeus, very untypical of a Greek.
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
In polytheistic Greek cultures such as that of the world of The Iliad, the gods affect the lives of mortals based primarily on the gods’ whims. Each people have their own contingent of gods who support them, but also other gods who dislike them and whom they do not worship. This conflict between the influences of one god’s favor and another’s menace on the Achaeans is portrayed in the death of Patroclus, Achilles’ brother-in-arms. Hera and Poseidon help enormously to keep the Trojans from burning the Achaeans’ ship. Patroclus, no longer able to sit by idly as his comrades die, ...
Every culture and religion has their own gods and believes. We can compare these beliefs with The Illiad and the Bible. We can notice those differences in the character and functionality of the gods. Also with the way humans are connected with them. In The Illiad gods were daily presence in the warrior’s life. The gods had already their destiny planned. For example, when Patroclus died. It was his destiny to die, in his last breath he told Hector: “Hector! Now is your time to glory to the skies … now the victory is yours” Book 16 (Lines 986-987). This is an example of how the gods control the life of the warriors, we can see all the power they have in them. One of the main themes of the book was pride and honor. Those things can be achieved
If one holds the contemporary view of the Christian God then it may be difficult to comprehend the actions and motivation of the Greek deities. The Christian God does not tend to take such an active role in the affairs of people's lives, where, on the other hand, "the Greeks regarded direct involvement by the gods as a daily, uncontrollable part of life"(Guthrie 17). Needless to say, divine intervention was a major variable in the equation of Homer's Iliad.
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...
...h Agamemnon and wishes that ‘strife could die from the lives of gods and men’… Not to avenge Patroclus by killing Hector would be a renunciation of all that he stands for and has lived by”. Even though “sorrow fell on Achilles like a cloud” (216), he went back out to the battlefield and killed Hector. It took a great deal of bravery for Achilles to face the man who killed his best friend but Achilles, being the hero that he was, got back into battle and killed him because he couldn’t let Patroclus’ death go unavenged.
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.
In the Iliad, Patroclus stepped up and took over Achilles position in battle; he died for Achilles and revealed the true hero in himself. Patroclus, “lost in his own great innocence … condemned to beg for his own death and brutal doom” (16.54,55). He had such courage and bravery to take upon this high responsibility. Achilles even directs Patroclus to “take this command to heart—obey it to the end” so that Patroclus could win glory for him. (16.96). Achilles decides if he sends out Patroclus then he will receive glory for his acts. Patroclus showed a tremendous amount of bravery and boldness in the battle Achilles was supposed to fight in. That battle led to his heroic death. . Patroclus was like Achilles and had a superhuman nature to him
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...
One view of the gods’ intervention in the mortal conflict was that they were just setting events back onto the course of fate. For example, when Patroclus was killed outside of Troy, Apollo felt no guilt for his actions. It had already been decided by fate that Patroclus would not defeat the Trojans. As a god, Apollo was just setting fate on a straight line again. After this event, Achilles blames Hector and the Trojans, not even considering Apollo, who was the one who was mostly responsible for the death. Apollo’s part in the matter was merely accepted as a natural disaster would be accepted today in our
Although the gods are immortal, The Iliad gave them human emotions. They felt human traits such as love, humor, empathy and disdain. They held grudges and played cruel jokes on each other, but also exhibited care for those who asked for their aid. For instance, Glacaus was overcome with grief when Sarpedon was killed, however; he prayed to the god, Apollo, to be healed so he could avenge his fallen comrade. Apollo “eased his pain, staunched the black blood from the wound, and gave him new strength” (167). After the death of Hector at the hands of Achilles, the goddess, Iris, was sent by the great god, Jove, to Hector’s father, Priam. Iris prompted Priam to collect the body (148). Mercury was sent as a guide to Priam to ensure Priam had reached Achilles’ tent unharmed (188). Homer ensured the supernatural was felt throughout the story and ...