War In The Iliad Essay

War in The Iliad

The Iliad celebrates war and the men who wage it: Man-killing Hector, lord of men Agamemnon, and swift footed Achilles, whose rage is cited in the poem’s famous opening line. However, the same invocation also mentions the “countless losses” suffered as a result of the Trojan War (1.2). While much of The Iliad celebrates military victory, the poem also honestly depicts the costs of war, which significantly undermines the idea that war is a wholly glorious endeavor. War causes losses in everyone.

In the very first battle sequence, we see the Achaean Antilochus kill a man, sending his bronze spear “smashing through his skull” (4.533). Homer doesn’t merely say that the spear kills the victim: He emphasizes that it literally shatters

In this, Homer presents us with a culture where the pursuit of military glory directly conflicts with devotion to one’s family, and in pursuing the former, Hector must abandon his family. But family members are not the only losses the soldiers must endure: They also experience great anguish when they lose their fellow warriors on the battlefield. When Achilles learns of Patroclus’s death, for example, he is stricken with grief, yelling at the gods as he claws at the ground and tears at his hair. Achilles’ intense feelings of grief soon give way to rage, and Homer describes how the hero loses “the will to live, to take [his] stand in the world of men” until he can vanquish Hector (18.105–106). Achilles goes on to slaughter Hector in one of the poem’s most violent passages. Patroclus’s death upsets Achilles’ concept of the world order. Now he fights not for glory or out of envy, but because he simply cannot live until he kills his Hector. Grief and rage have become inextricably linked for Achilles, and war is no longer a noble or glorious endeavor but simply the symptom of loss. The tension between the glory of