The Iliad is surely the earlier of the two poems. Beginning with the immortal hexameter line: “Sing, Goddess, the wrath of Achilles, Pelias’s son,” it deals with events that are thought to have occurred three or four hundred years before it was composed, perhaps around 1200 BCE. According to Homer’s version of the events, Paris, the second son of King Priam of Troy, eloped with Helen, the wife of Menelaus, king of Sparta. Helen was apparently willing to leave her husband and her daughter Hermione for this handsome stranger, and Paris took her back to Troy where, after a suitable period, they married. They lived there as man and wife for twenty years, Helen in particular enjoying the luxurious life her new husband provided for her in what was then perhaps the wealthiest city in the Mediterranean world. Troy was the capital of an empire that encompassed much of what we now call the Middle East, and Priam seems to have been a benevolent ruler who was loved and admired by his subjects. Mainland Greece at this time was probably primitive by comparison with the civilized world that Paris had described to Helen when he wooed her away from her old home and carried her off to a new one.
But Menelaus never forgot her, and after many lonely years he prevailed upon his brother, Agamemnon, king of Mycenae, to gather an army to retrieve her. This first expeditionary force was beset by bad luck; among other things, the Argives, or Achaeans, didn’t know where Troy actually was located. Agamemnon returned with little to show for his efforts except some treasure stolen from small cities along the way, and slaves—males to row his ships, and females to perform their usual services.
Menelaus continued to urge his brother to “make things right,” as Homer writes, and another, much larger army was raised about ten years after Helen’s abduction. The siege of Troy began and continued for another ten weary years, with neither the Argives nor the Trojans able to claim victory. Victory for the Trojans would mean the destruction of the entire invading army, with perhaps only a handful of refugees able to return to their far-off homes. An Achaean victory would result in the destruction of the city of Troy and the devastation of its hinterland.
In the tenth year of the siege, the Trojan general, Prince Hector, was killed by Achilles, the chief Argive warrior, and shortly thereafter Troy fell, was burned to the ground, its male inhabitants put to the sword, and its women and children sold as slaves.
Things like that happened fairly frequently in the twelfth century BCE, and it is not entirely clear why the Greeks commemorated this tale with religious intensity, as they did no other expedition, successful or not. The Homeric poems were said to have been divinely inspired, and the story they told was interpreted as revealing the true story of the gods in their relation to men.
Later epics—for example, The Song of Roland or The Saga of Burnt Njal—are primitive, in the sense that they present scenes of heroic warfare unalloyed with profound or subtle emotions. They are about raw courage, raw revenge, and other strong feelings. Homer, in The Iliad, deals with these feelings, too, but the poem is not primitive. An astonishing thing about it is, although Homer obviously knew nothing about the amenities and comforts of our life today, he knew most of what we know about the human heart. Maybe even more.
Hector and Achilles are an extraordinary pair. There is a sense in which both are the hero of The Iliad, another sense in which neither is. Both Achilles and Hector have their moments of “stardom,” as we might call it, in the poem. Achilles is far and away the best of the Greeks, but he is deeply insulted by Agamemnon, who humiliates him in front of the entire army. He retires from the fray to sulk in his tent, surrounded by his followers—his Myrmidons. In his absence, Hector tears through the Achaean army, killing many famous fighters, and finally reaches the Greek ships, which he tries to set afire. Without their ships, the Achaeans will never be able to return home. Win or lose, they will be stranded in Asia. The burning of the ships is therefore a major crisis. Hector is beaten back not by Achilles, who should have been there, but by the giant Ajax, whose slowness of wit then and thereafter deprives him of the honor that should have been his due.
But Hector has overreached himself. He is so certain of victory he ensures his own death and the destruction of his family and his city. In a mad rage he kills Patroclus, the best friend of Achilles, and Achilles, wracked by this unbearable loss, finally returns to the battle. His revenge is terrible. He is like a great scythe slicing through the Trojan ranks. Finally the field is left alone to the two antagonists, Hector and Achilles. The Achaeans fall back to the water’s edge; the Trojans retreat within their walls. There is an awful silence on the plain, the only sound the crunch of Achilles’ feet and the rasping gasp in Hector’s throat as, in heavy armor, he runs for his life. He doesn’t make it.
Achilles, still enraged, insults the body, dragging it naked behind his chariot, round and round his Myrmidon encampment. Finally, old King Priam, who has lost both his general and his dearest son, determines that he must retrieve the body. Alone he goes, out into the silence, with a wagon drawn by mules, piled high with a ransom of gold, rich robes, jewels, and ornaments. It is night and Priam, aided by the gods, drives the wagon through the Greek encampment, seeking the tent where Achilles sits, still mourning the death of his friend. The old man enters, kneels down, and “kisses the hands that had slain so many of his sons.” Achilles, shaken, moved beyond grief, accepts the gifts and returns the body. Priam, the old king, loads the corpse of his son on the wagon and drives the mules back to the city, where the funeral takes place.
On the twelfth day, when the funeral ends, the war will begin anew. The poem ends here. It does not tell what happens. Everyone knew, and still knows, that Troy will be taken, burned, destroyed, wiped from the face of the Earth, that Helen will run back to the arms of Menelaus and be forgiven, and that many Achaean leaders will be lost or killed on the way home. Agamemnon, the chief Argive general and the king of Lacedaemon, will reach home but be slain there by his wife, Clytemnestra, as he struggles to emerge from a richly embroidered shirt he discovers has no sleeves or neck hole. Before he dies she tells him she has made it as a homecoming gift.
The Greeks thought the siege and defeat of Troy was the most terrible thing to ever happen, and the most wonderful. The gods were involved in it as much as the men and women and children. It was a conflict on every level the Greeks could understand, and yet they also understood—or Homer did—that nobody won. They recognized that the deaths of the three great men—Achilles, Hector, and Patroclus—were all tragic and would define the meaning of tragedy for millennia. Perhaps most astounding of all about The Iliad is that its author, writing at the very beginning of recorded history, already knew everything there is to know about the deep folly of war.
People who have never read The Iliad but who know of it are often unwilling to open it in the belief that it is unrelievedly sad, a seemingly endless series of bloody battles. In a sense this is true, but in another sense it is not. Homer never fails to tell us what is going to happen, but even so, when it happens, it is a surprise. You hope against hope and are exhilarated by your love and admiration for the three main characters. The deaths leave your heart broken, but the epic is inspiring nevertheless.