Glorious but dead: Was it worth it?
Is the Iliad glorifying war and combat, or is it showing us that it destroys even the greatest of people, however you want to define “greatness”?
Editor’s note: Josh Cannon’s new book, Fatal Second Helen: A Modern Veteran’s Iliad, has just been published by Blue Ear Books.
I reread Homer’s Iliad, an Ancient Greek mythological epic about the Trojan War, very closely in order to write a book about it. I had read it several times before, had even taught it in college courses at the University of Chicago and the University of Pittsburgh. But I had never gone hunting for a meaning. I had said to myself, “This is just a story. The author is just telling me what happened.”
But giving the Iliad the intense, close reading I thought necessary for my book revealed a meaning to me. I certainly can’t, and won’t, be confident that this is clearly what Homer was intending. Homer didn’t even come up with all of the Iliad; he was the last in a long line of storytellers who had added to the story and passed it down orally to the next generation for hundreds of years. We kind of assume he must have added some parts of the Iliad as he was writing it down for the first time, but we can never know how much. How can hundreds of years’ worth of storytellers have a unified meaning in this messy, patchwork quilt of a story?
And yet, I did find a meaning. A surface-level read of the Iliad has you focus on the Greek hero Achilles and how awesome he is at fighting. He is the manliest man in the company of very manly men. He is a one-man army of the Rambo type, but even better. Other heroes are also awesome and exciting; my favorite is Diomedes, who wounds two gods while fighting. Two other major characters (the book has many) are also excellent at fighting and get additional scenes and details that set them apart from the others. These are Hector and Patroclus, and this is where the deeper reading comes in. Hector is an excellent fighter – he is the Trojan version of Achilles, though still not at Achilles’ level. Patroclus is a Greek and Achilles’ best friend. We get to see him fight only once, and he does pretty well, but he gets killed in the end.
While it is easy to define these two men by their fighting, it is their non-fighting scenes that add an important layer to the story. Both men are good people. The Iliad is full of brash bullies, selfish leaders, and warriors with little respect for human life. Hector is not this. When he is not fighting, he is seen comforting his wife and baby son. He is being a good older brother to his youngest sibling. He is worried about defending his homeland from invaders. Patroclus, likewise, goes around the Greek camp checking on the wounded. He begs Achilles to return to the fight so that their fellow Greeks will stop dying. He goes into battle himself to give the Greeks some breathing room when the Trojans are pressing the attack.
Both of these men behave selflessly, a very rare characteristic in the Iliad. Both are presented with the most human qualities. Both are killed violently.
Patroclus dies first, at Hector’s hands. He was just supposed to help the Greeks, but he got carried away and pursued the high of glorious battle. His death provokes lots of crying in the Greek camp and, in addition to tears, a murderous, vengeful rage in Achilles. This rage has Achilles kill Hector. Hector, at least, tried to make a smart choice and ran away from Achilles. It is only when Athena tricks him that he stands to fight. His death brings the city of Troy to its knees in grief.
The death and burial of these two good men take up the final third of the Iliad. No one is happy after their passing. Everyone is sad and damaged. The Trojans are doomed. The Greeks are not, but the best person among them is gone and their best fighter, Achilles, is now set on a course that will see him die as well, and he knows it.
We meet Achilles again in the Odyssey, the Iliad’s sequel, when Odysseus goes to the underworld. Achilles knew that if he did what he was best at, it would get him killed. While alive, he accepted this. He wanted undying glory, everlasting fame, and was content to sell his life for it. As a ghost in the Odyssey, he makes this haunting statement:
…I would prefer to be a workman,
hired by a poor man on a peasant farm,
than rule as king of all the dead.
He is filled with regret. His life, one that was aimed directly at fame and glory, ended early, shortly after his best friend died. He does not tell Odysseus that it was all worth it. He tells him that it was a terrible choice. Obviously, we don’t see this scene in the Iliad, but I think we can get a sense of its message.
The Iliad makes us respect two characters, shows us how all the other characters respected them too, then kills them. It kills them because they chose to fight in a world where they had few other options if they wanted to have any sense of value. The one guy who embraced this philosophy harder than anyone else, Achilles, ended up miserable and dead too.
Is the Iliad glorifying war and combat, or is it showing us that it destroys even the greatest of people, however you want to define “greatness”? My interpretation is the latter.
