On How to Read the Iliad (Safely)

by

Nicki Leone

On the afternoon I slipped disc one of Homer’s Iliad in the car’s CD player in preparation for a long (long, loooong) drive, I thought I knew what to expect. At least, I thought I knew the story. Several hours later I was pulling over to the side of the road, my grip on the wheel white-knuckled, and the flashing blue lights in my rearview mirror letting me know that I’d gotten carried away by the battle fury to the point where I’d hit 85 mph on the speedometer without realizing it.

The Homer-almost-got-me-a-speeding-ticket story is a good one that I still trot out at parties on occasion because it makes people laugh. But there is no question that my re-introduction to the Iliad was, well, dramatic. I had been expecting something like the myth of the Fall of Troy in pretty verse. But what I heard was nothing of the sort, and I realized with a shock that although I knew all about what happened to Troy, I really knew nothing at all about the Iliad.

What I knew of the story of Troy came from a jumbled collection of old children’s books and collections of Greek myths; Edith Hamilton’s Mythology, Bulfinch’s Mythology, Nathaniel Hawthorne’s Tanglewood Tales, D’Aulaire’s Book of Greek Myths, and even a series of now lost schoolbooks featuring a Doctor Who-like character with a time machine that would take children back to important events in history. Troy was one of the places they visited. So here is what I thought the Iliad was about:

Once upon a time the gods had a banquet to which they neglected to invite one particularly nasty goddess named Strife. She, in retaliation, took a golden apple with the words “for the fairest” and rolled it at the feet of the other goddesses at the banquet. Naturally, they each felt the apple was meant for them, but eventually it came down between three: Hera, Athena and Aphrodite. None of the other gods would choose among the three, so it was decided to have a mortal man, Paris, a prince of Troy, be the judge. Each of the goddesses promised Paris great gifts if he would choose her. Hera promised to make him powerful. Athena promised to make him wise. Aphrodite promised to give him the most beautiful woman in the world to be his wife. Paris—who must have been the most shallow and short-sighted man ever to have been born—gave the apple to Aphrodite. She in turn gave him Helen.

Unfortunately, Helen was already married, so it wasn’t long after her abduction that her husband and a whole army of Greek chieftains came in hot pursuit and besieged the city of Troy to get her back. There are some other stories about the Greek muster—how Odysseus tried to get out of going by pretending to be mad and sowing his fields with salt, how the mother of Achilles, knowing her son was fated to be killed in battle, tried to hide him from the heralds by dressing him up as a girl (it didn’t work), how Agamemnon, having committed some minor offense against one of the gods, was forced to sacrifice his daughter Iphegenia in order to appease the deity and bring the winds that would allow his ships to sail. (He would have cause to regret this when he finally made it back home, but that’s another myth entirely.)

But the Greeks at last arrive and surround the city, which is protected by high, unbreachable walls. The siege lasts for ten years, with neither side making any headway. In the tenth year the Trojan champion Hector battles the Greek champion Achilles and is killed. Achilles—who is said to be invincible because his mother dipped him in a magic stream, is then killed as he rides in victory around the walls, felled by an arrow shot from the ramparts that pierced his heel—the one spot where he was vulnerable. The Greeks, still unable to breach the walls, come up with a strategy (it was Odysseus’ idea) of building a giant wooden horse and leaving it as a gift for the Trojans, and then pretending to sail away. The Trojans, thinking the war is over and the Greeks have gone, wheel the giant horse into the city and celebrate victory. But in the middle of the night Greek soldiers who were hidden in the horse sneak out, open the gates, and the Greek army which had been hiding out of sight, pours into the city and burns it to the ground.

As it turns out, with the exception of the fight between Hector and Achilles, none of that is in the Iliad. Not the abduction of Helen. Not the mustering of the fleet, not even the sacking of the city. This “epic of epics,” is a poem about a stagnant two-week period with only sporadic fighting that, in the words of Caroline Alexander in The War That Killed Achilles, “. . . commemorates a war that established no boundaries, won no territory, and furthered no cause.”

I realized, as I was saying “sorry, sorry,” to the policeman and hoping that he’d let me off with a warning, that knowing the story of Troy was not at all the same as knowing the Iliad. The former is a myth, a folktale. The latter is literature. And from that moment on I found myself irresistibly attracted to books—not about Troy, but about Homer and his epic. I was a wandering stranger in a land of epic poetry, dazzled and overwhelmed, and in desperate need of guidance.

As a potential guide for the inexperienced reader, Homer’s The Iliad and The Odyssey: A Biography by Alberto Manguel seems on the surface to be an excellent and not too intimidating choice. It is part of a series called “Books that Changed the World” (Adam Smith’s The Wealth of Nations and Darwin’s On the Origin of Species are also in the series) and it is clear that its purview is one of broad brush strokes, of introductions, rather than comprehensive, in-depth study.

And really, to write a book on why the Iliad and the Odyssey have “changed the world” the editors could hardly have made a better choice for an author than Alberto Manguel. Famous for his many books about books, including A History of Reading, The Library at Night, and Into the Looking Glass, Manguel is the kind of guy who can’t write two sentences without it becoming indisputably clear that he has read far, far more books than you ever will, but he somehow manages not to make you feel inadequate about it. His books are a literature enthusiast’s exercise in self-indulgence. He just loves to talk story. In fact, I bet he was offered the job because someone asked him “how western literature had been influenced by Homer” during some dinner function and he was able to rattle on for twenty minutes without once consulting his iPhone for a Google reference.

Because that is what Homer’s The Iliad and The Odyssey: A Biography is—not a biography of the birth or creation of either the Iliad or the Odyssey, but an account of the many ripples the books have caused once they were dropped into the pond of literature. Since, as Manguel quotes from Raymond Queneau, “Every great work of literature is either the Iliad or the Odyssey,” the book touches very briefly on many subjects and many shores. From St. Jerome’s conflicted adoration of Cicero and Virgil to the translation centers of the early Arab Caliphs. From the philosophical quarrels of French courtiers to the rarified arguments of German poets. Homer as history. Homer as symbolism of the unconscious. Homer as possibly being a woman (a very short section, that).

It is a bird's eye view of the cultural impact of the epics, and one that I found both tantalizing and torturous. The author seems to constantly drift away from his subjects just at the point where I would start to get interested: following his thread from Odysseus and the Cyclops to Jack and the Beanstalk, for example, which is a connection I would never have thought to make on my own. Or relating the debate between the “Anciens” (who thought classical literature should be imitated) and the “Modernes” (who didn’t) in seventeenth-century France which reached absolutely absurd levels of animosity among intellectuals and artists. Is there anything funnier than a set of furious philosophers arguing about the best way to split a hair? But no sooner does he introduce a new topic than Manguel slips away to talk about something else. I had a ridiculous impulse to grab the author by the shoulders and make him walk a straight line instead of wandering all over the place like the little boy in the cartoon. As a result, I have a long list of references that touch on the Iliad or the Odyssey and which I would very much like to know more about, if only I can find a writer who can stay on topic. One of the blurbs on the back of the book says “Alberto Manguel is to reading what Casanova was to sex.” I find myself hoping that Casanova was a little more focused and in the moment, so to speak, and resisting the urge to make jokes about finishing quickly.

The one thing Manguel does not do in his overview of the epics is consider the works of Homer themselves, in detail, as literature. The only section in the book focused on the actual epics is the first chapter, called “Summaries of the Books.” It is a strange way to introduce books that have supposedly changed the world, since there is absolutely nothing in the way the summaries are given that would convince anybody that either the Iliad or the Odyssey is worth reading, much less world-changing:

Book II

Agamemnon has a dream which tells him that he will take Troy. He tests the dream by suggesting to his army that they abandon the siege and return home. The plan backfires when the soldiers agree wholeheartedly. The commoner Thersites causes a disruption by rallying against the Greek leaders, but Ulysses restores order. The episode ends with a catalogue of the Greek and Trojan forces.

This is why no one should ever count on the Cliff Notes to grasp what is going on in a story. What that summary does not say, but the audience knows, for example, that the dream Agamemnon has received is false, sent by Zeus at the pleading of Achilles’ mother Thetis in retaliation for her son’s ill-treatment at Agamemnon’s hands. It is the beginning of what will be a desperate time for the Greeks, who fight without Achilles, their champion, since he has quarreled with their leader and won’t leave his tent. Caroline Alexander notes in The War That Killed Achilles that this strange “test” of Agamemnon’s—which his men utterly fail, they are more than ready to go home—is “entirely consistent with the Iliad’s carefully drawn depictions of Agamemnon in action.” The man may be a king, but as a military leader he is incompetent.

It was hard for me to not to remember, as I was barreling down the Interstate listening to Achilles wreak havoc and ignoring highway patrol speed traps, that I was a modern reader and the Iliad was a thousand-year-old epic. After I talked my way out of the ticket, (“You were listening to what?” said the cop), I began to wonder if I was being fair to the story, or if I was imposing my twenty-first century expectations onto a work that never intended anything of the sort. I am a person who values, for example, the worth of an individual over the cause, who believes in free will and not in destiny, and whose concept of war is not idealized or about honor, or justice, but ultimately pointless and tragic in reality. I found all that in the Iliad—a story about a battle that focuses as much on the lamentable fate of the losers as on the doubtful triumph of the winners. I found character development and psychological complexity. Compassion for the victims of war, condemnation for the hubris it brings. In an epic the length and scope of the Iliad, every reader will come away impacted by different things. What rang in my ears was Achilles, saying angrily to Agamemnon that he had no quarrel with the Trojans; they had not stolen his wife, or plundered his lands. Or Hector, bitterly telling his brother Paris that he wished the other man had died, rather than bring Troy to this war that no one wanted. Or again, Hector and his wife at the city gates, she being brave through her tears while he plays with his baby boy and tosses him to make him laugh one last time before he goes back into the battle. Or the old retainer of Achilles, remembering how as a baby the warrior would spit up his wine and demand to be held. Or King Priam facing his son’s killer, each weeping for what they have lost, each forgiving the other for the hurts they have caused.

It was such a human story, this Iliad. An epic of people, in the midst of war.

That is what Caroline Alexander thinks as well. To her, the Iliad is first and foremost a story of war. Unlike Alberto Manguel, who looks outward from the Iliad to its influences in western literature, Alexander’s The War That Killed Achilles stays focused on the epic, and illuminates it from within. It is a remarkable work that goes book by book, scene by scene, and sometimes even verse by verse through the story, without ever becoming academic or tedious in its analysis.

In Alexander’s eyes, then, the Iliad is not a story about gods and men fighting over a beautiful woman. It is an account of a military engagement, where the leaders are sometimes incompetent and greedy (Agamemnon) or frail and indecisive (Priam). Where the cause is something that no one on either side really believes is worth fighting for, much less dying for. And it is a war where the heroes on the battlefield never wanted to be there in the first place. Hector, “breaker of horses,” is a herdsman first, and warrior only by necessity. And Achilles never swore any oath to defend Helen, or holds any grudge against Troy. He wants to go home to care for his aged father.

Despite the reluctance on all sides, however, hubris and greed drive the war forward and tragedy for both sides is inevitable. For a Greek epic about a great Greek victory, Alexander notes, the Iliad is remarkably even-handed in the way it portrays both the victors and the losers. The Greeks aren’t always noble or heroic. The Trojans are neither cowardly nor evil. The war they are both caught up in isn’t a cause to be won, but a disaster to be endured. Even the name of the story—Iliad—is a reference to Troy, or Ilium, not anything Greek.

Alexander spends some time in her analysis tracing the traditions of the heroic epic and pointing out the ways in which the Iliad often turns tradition on its head. She notes, for example, that Achilles—the hero of this particular story—is an unheroic example of a traditional hero. He is on the brink of leaving for home when the epic begins, and in fact spends most of the Iliad “sulking” in his tent, nursing his wounded feelings. It takes his best friend dying in battle in his name to get Achilles out on the battlefield. And Alexander points out that for a story about a great battle that embroiled both men and gods, the Iliad is distinctly free of “magic.” There is no suggestion, for example, of Achilles being invincible except for his vulnerable heel. The son of a mortal man and an immortal goddess, he is never once regarded as magically protected or invincible. In fact, the most common epithet used to describe him, after “fleet-footed,” is “short-lived.” And with the exception of one brief moment of a talking horse, the supposed intervention of the gods in the battle is always done in subtle, not miraculous ways. They cause arrows to deflect and bridles to snap. They come in the guise of friends and brothers of the warriors and whisper suggestions in the ears of the unsuspecting men.

Punctuating her interpretation with fascinating notes about specific linguistic references or archaeological asides (an analysis of various death-in-battle scenes show that Homer, apparently, knew where the major organs were but not what they were for) Alexander’s The War That Killed Achilles places the epic squarely within a literary and folk tradition of hero stories and while marking the many almost revolutionary ways it departs from both. Heroes who aren’t heroic. Gods who are capricious and unjust. Enemies who are noble. Kings who are cowards. Considered in this light, the Iliad becomes a compellingly modern story about war. And readers can see Alexander’s point when she draws parallels between, for example, Achilles’ angry outburst to Agamemnon:

I for my part did not come here for the sake of the Trojan
spearmen to fight against them, since to me they have done nothing.
Never yet have they driven away my cattle or my horses

and the words of Muhammad Ali, refusing to fight in Vietnam:

I ain’t got no quarrel with the Viet Cong. . . . No Viet Cong ever called me nigger.

How “fair” this perspective is to the original intent of the epic is impossible to say. If there ever was a real “Homer” or if his epic is simply the surviving result of generations of poetic consolidation will never be known. But perhaps it doesn’t matter. As Manguel points out, each of us brings to Homer layers of previous readings, translations and interpretations. “When we think, upon closing Homer, ‘Ah, now I’ve made the Iliad—or the Odyssey—mine!’ what we mean is that we’ve made ours a story that many others have long annotated, recast, interpreted, adapted, and that, with their testimonies echoing more or less loudly in our ears, we’ve tried to impose our tastes and prejudices upon a cacophony of one-man bands.” So it is, no doubt, with Caroline Alexander’s interpretation. But hers is a very convincing one, underscored by a solid grasp of the epic tradition, the subtleties of Greek culture and the bonds of family, friendship, and tribe, as well as a good grounding in the historical, archaeological and linguistic evidence of the epic and its lost sisters in the cycle (somewhere, at some point, someone wrote about that giant wooden horse and the sack of Troy).

Manguel tells us that what makes the Iliad remarkable is how it continues to move us, retaining its power in the face of even “the most unfaithful of translations.” Written in a language we can’t translate with assurance and that we don’t know how to pronounce, it still has the power to arrest its readers in every era. It certainly arrested me. In fact, it damn near got me arrested. Manguel’s is an entertaining account of why everyone thinks the Iliad is a great book. But it is Alexander’s The War That Killed Achilles that explains why I became so involved in the story it nearly got me a speeding ticket.

Books mentioned in this column:
Homer’s The Iliad and The Odyssey: A Biography by Alberto Manguel (Atlantic Monthly Press, 2007)
The War That Killed Achilles: The True Story of Homer’s Iliad and the Trojan War by Caroline Alexander (Viking, 2009)
The Iliad by Homer, translated by Robert Fagles (Penguin, 1998)
The Odyssey by Homer, translated by Robert Fagles (Penguin, 2003)
Mythology by Edith Hamilton (Little Brown and Company, 1942)
Bulfinch’s Mythology by Thomas Bulfinch (Modern Library, 1998)
Tanglewood Tales by Nathaniel Hawthorne (Dodo Press, 2007)
D’Aulaire’s Book of Greek Myths by Ingri D’Aulaire (Doubleday, 1962)
A History of Reading by Alberto Manguel (Penguin, 1997)
The Library at Night by Alberto Manguel (Yale, 2008)
Into the Looking Glass by Alberto Manguel (Mariner Books, 2000)

Nicki Leone showed her proclivities early when as a young child she asked her parents if she could exchange the jewelry a well-meaning relative had given her for Christmas for a dictionary instead. She supported her college career with a part-time job in a bookstore, or perhaps it would be more accurate to say that her college career and attending scholarships and financial aid loans supported her predilection for working as a bookseller. She has been in the book business for over twenty years. Currently she works for the Southern Independent Booksellers Alliance, developing marketing and outreach programs for independent bookstores. Nicki has been a book reviewer for several magazines, her local public radio station and local television stations. She was one of the founders of The Cape Fear Crime Festival, currently serves as President of the Board of Trustees of the North Carolina Writers Network, and as Managing Editor of BiblioBuffet. Plus, she blogs at Will Read for Food. She manages all this by the grace of a very patient partner and the loving support of varying numbers of dogs and cats. Contact Nicki.