These notes summarize the interpretation of the text that I presented in class. As I indicated in class, there are other interpretations of many of these issues. In talking about the view expressed in the text on some matter, I will refer to the Homeric view or the view found in the Homeric world.

I.        Fate and the gods

A.     Two conceptions of fate

1.       A common notion of fate for us is that of a fixed plan that we can do nothing to change

a)      Some versions of Christianity, which believe in divine predestination, hold such a view

b)      This does not seem to be the view in the Iliad

(1)    Zeus acts, or can act, to change the fate of the heroes

(a)    He seems ready to change the fate of Sarpedon

(i)      Although he does not do so for fear that other gods will also change fate

(b)    He helps Achilles carry out his plan

(2)    The death of Achilles is not fated, in this first sense: he has the choice to reenter the battle and die sooner or not do so and die later.

2.       In the Iliad, however, a second view of fate can be found

a)      To say something is fated is to say that the outcome of our lives or of our most important aims and projects is out of our hands

b)      But much that we do is shaped by

(1)    Our character, which we do not wholly control

(2)    The actions of others, and of the gods, which we cannot always predict or influence

(a)    Life is too complicated to predict all the contingencies outcomes of our actions. We cannot tell what others or the gods will do

(3)    The gods may or may not respond to our prayers. Whether they do so or not does not wholly depend on whether we obey them or follow their requests or, especially, even if we are good or not

(a)    The gods have their own reasons for acting beyond rewarding or punishing us. These reasons flow from their interaction with each other and their own desires and aims.

(b)    We thus have only a limited ability to sway them.

c)      Fate refers, then, to the unpredictable and largely controllable concatenation of events or unintended outcomes of human (and divine) interaction

d)      Gods can know the outcomes. They can see into the future because they can see what we will chose (and how others will try to change our choices.) But there is no overarching plan for everything that occurs.

(1)    The gods are limited in power precisely because there are so many gods.

(a)    Each god or goddess has to watch out for the others.

(b)    Each god or goddess is limited in what he or she can do because the others may object to their actions and harm them in return.

(2)    Even Zeus’s power is limited

(3)    So there is no divine plan and no justice for the undeserved evil that happens to us when we are alive.

B.     Gods and their role in The Iliad

1.       At key points of action the gods intervene.

a)      They encourage a heroes to act one way or another by offering bribes or inducements or threatening punishments

b)      They take part in battle, helping or harming one side or another.

(1)    They typically do this by determining the outcome of actions, e.g. those in battle, that might come out one way or another.

(2)    The gods sometimes determine whether someone’s armor falls off at an inopportune moment or if someone’s spear misses its target by an inch

2.       At each point, there could be a secular explanation of the action

a)      Heroes typically have a good reason to do what they do, without the god’s interaction

b)      Surprising or unpredictable events could just be called inexplicable accidents

3.       It seems that the gods are invoked by the Greeks as an explanation for the unpredictability of the world, of two sorts

a)      We are unpredictable. Sometimes it seems as if what we do is determined by our fixed character

b)      The Homeric text may be suggesting, however, that we often have deeply divided aims

(1)    What we actually do may not have an explanation in reason but in something that is not under our conscience control, e.g., some kind of chance event

(a)    For example:

(i)      Achilles deciding not to try to kill Agamemnon

(ii)    Achilles staying in or out of battle

(2)    What happens to us, whether things go right for us, depends upon chance occurrences

(a)    In the physical world: our helmet may fall off or the axel of our chariot may break

(b)    We may or may not be successful in doing something that we sometimes can, but sometimes cannot do

(i)      For example, some things we do part of the time but not other times, e.g. shooting baskets

(c)    And when we can’t find an explanation of why things came out one way or another beyond chance or other things not under out control, we blame the gods

II.     The problem of mortality and the Warrior Ethic

A.     The problem of human mortality

1.       In the Homeric world, there is no after-life. Death is the end of the existence of individual human beings. Our souls depart this life to Hades which is not a place of reward or punishment. It hardly seems like a place at all but, rather a convenient way to talk about a our final destination and state, in which our souls no longer think or perceive.

2.       Death is thus accepted as a final end, one that is thus to be avoided.

a)      We might ask why this is so. Why, of all creatures, do some, or perhaps all of us, find death threatening.

b)      One answer, of course, is that only human beings seem to be aware of death. Perhaps only human beings are self-conscious, that is, recognize ourselves as having a continuous life from the moment of our birth to that of our death. Still, this recognition is, in itself, might be consistent with a variety of attitudes to our lives and death. 

c)      We might, for example, seek to have the best time we can while we live and not worry about our deaths.

(1)    And, if we find the thought of death discomfiting,  we might try to avoid thinking about it, buy busying ourselves in everyday activities, our work, families, and entertainments.

d)      In the Homeric world, it is impossible to avoid the thought of death, especially for the heroes who fight the battles for the political communities.

(1)    There is a constant struggle for military and political advantage between one political community and another.

(a)    This is testified to by the long war between the Greeks and the Trojans, which is nine years old at the start of the Iliad.

(2)    And there is no religious teaching that tells the Homeric heroes that they survive their death.

(3)    So it may be that any human being who finds some joy and life, and takes the thought of extinction seriously, will find it threatening, if only because of the power urge we have to protect ourselves from harm.  

e)      A common response to mortality is to seek somehow to overcome the problem it poses for us. Three different ways of doing so are suggested in the text. 

(1)    It is this urge to survive death that may give rise to a desire to find some significance and purpose in life beyond mere survival or pleasure.

(a)    We find significance and purposes in life in large part by contributing to something that lives on after us.

(b)    And doing that requires us to live up to the ideal or standards that defines what it is that we have accomplished and that survives us.

B.     Three responses to mortality

1.       The community

a)      The first way of surviving death is to seek to overcome by leaving something behind, the community to which we are attached. On this view, we survive our deaths if our community does, and thus our fundamental responsibility is to that community.

(1)    We can contribute to our community by keeping it alive, that is, by helping it survive.

(2)    But to survive as that community, it must live on as in some recognizable form the community that it is.

(a)    Communities change all the time, as they adopt new ideals and ways of life.

(b)    But for our community to survive us, the changes it goes through must be a product of the community in which we lived. That is our descendants must recognize their own way of as owing something to us or as being shaped by what we have done and how we have lived.

b)      This path is suggested in Glaucus’ speech in Book 6:148

(1)    “Human generations are like leaves in their seasons…”

2.       The warrior ethic

a)      A second way of surviving death is by gaining the kind of honor, distinction, and fame that outlives us.

(1)    This requires us to live up to an ideal that is demanding and difficult.

(2)    In living up to that ideal, we distinguish ourselves from others and define the purpose of our lives.

b)      The warrior ethic demands sacrifice on the part of heroes.

(1)    They spend much of their time in battle

(2)    They risk their lives.

(3)    They often die young

c)       The rewards they receive are both

(1)    Honor

(a)    Recognition from their peers

(b)    And, for those with the greatest achievements, recognition and honor that will transcend both their own lives and maybe even their own community.

(c)    Honor is also valued as a means of gaining material goods:

(i)      Directly as a source of honor

(ii)    Indirectly in that honor and respect strengthens the political position of heroes vis a vis their retainers and each other.

(2)    Material: power, wealth, and women

(a)    Material goods are valued for their own sake

(b)    But they are also granted as forms of honor, as in the spoils of war

3.       Sexual love

a)      This path is suggested in the brief passage after Aphrodite spirits Paris away from Menelaeus, and he and  Helen make love

(1)    Helen does so despite her distaste and disregard for both Paris and herself

(a)    For Paris because he does not live up to the warrior ideal: He is a love not a fighter.

(b)    For herself because she left her family and husband out of her attraction to Paris and because her action is the cause of all the suffering that has befallen both Greece and Troy.

(2)    That Paris seeks to make love to Helen after leaving the battle suggests that it is both a way of relieving the struggle he has faced, both with Menelaeus and his own distaste for fighting and risking death.

b)      How is sexual love is a way of relieving the fear of death.

(1)    Here we are talking about the pursuit of sexual love not as a kind of relief from sexual tension, or a pleasant diversion, or  form of recreation from other, more important but difficult activities.

(2)    Rather it is sexuality as the prime focus of our lives.

(a)    The human capacity for sexual activity and pleasure rests not just on physical desire but on the emotional power of sexuality

(i)      Unlike most other animals, we can have sex all the time

(a)    We have sex not just for the sake of relief from sexual frustration.

(b)    Or at those moments when women are fertile

(ii)    We can seek various ways of heightening sexual pleasure 

(b)    In the text

(i)      Paris tells Hector, he has the gifts of Aphrodite, not the gifts to do battle.

(ii)    The lives of both Helen and Paris are shaped by their sexual desire.

(3)    Sexual love seeks not just pleasure but ecstasy and release from the very thing that leads, our moral bodies. It is, then, a way of overcoming the regret or anger we feel at the mortality to which our bodies doom us.

(4)    Intense sexual pleasure brings us both a heightened state of awareness and also a sense of connection to or union with the world around us. (See Freud on this)

(a)    Orgasm is a moment of release at which we almost lose our sense of self and become fully one with our bodies and the world around us. We can be so caught up in sexual passion that we almost lose self-consciousness. In that way, intense sexual pleasure is almost an anticipation of death.

C.     Tensions between sexual love and the other ideals

1.       The survival of the community depends upon stability of the family.

a)      In the Homeric context family stability means

(1)    Wives are faithful to their husbands

(a)    Power and wealth is inherited by children

(b)    Heroes (and other men) want their goods to go to their own children

(c)    Infidelity on the part of women calls into the legitimacy of children

(d)    Questions about who are the legitimate heirs of a man can lead to familial and political disputes

(2)    Mothers care for their children

(a)    Men are out fighting most of the time

(3)    Why are their no similar demands for men?

(a)    There is no question about who is the mother of children, so this is not motive to create a norm of sexual fidelity for men.

(b)    Because the lives of men are so distanced from the restricted, domestic lives of women, the same rules don’t need to apply to both men and women

(i)      Women, other than wives, are prizes for the warriors who risk so much for the community

(4)    The importance of the family is seen in the brutishness of Agamemnon, who is presented as a brute for his saying that he care for Briseis more than his wife Clytemnestra.

b)      Sexual love can lead to the formation of families, but can also threaten them

(1)    As the actions of Paris and Helen shows: sexual love can undermine devotion to ones family and community

(a)    Helen leaves her family

(b)    Paris brings his community into danger

D.     Tensions between the warrior ethic and the community

1.       This is a central theme of the work

2.       Heroes serve their community by living up the warrior ethic. And, at the same time, they can serve their own desire for glory.

a)      Most of the time, the immortal glory of a warrior depends upon the survival of his community

3.       Yet heroes can be so caught up in their search for honor and glory that they act in ways that harm their own community.

a)      This can happen when they engage in warfare that serves to bring them honor but threatens their community

(1)    When they fight for honor when they shouldn’t

(a)    Perhaps Troy should have sent Helen back

(2)    When they fight in ways that risks horrible defeat for their community

(a)    This is often the result of the hubris that follows some success

(i)      For example, Hector doesn’t follow the advice of his brother to return within walls because he thinks he can defeat Achilles out on the plane

(ii)    Patroclus tries to breach the walls of Troy even though Achilles warns him against doing so

b)      Or when they challenge the gods so as to keep their honor and reputation

(1)    As when Agamemnon refuses, at first, to accept the ransom Chryse’s father brings for her. As a result the Greeks suffer the blows of Apollo on his troops.

c)      Or when their demands for honor from each other splits and weakens their community.

(1)    Agamemnon’s dishonoring of Achilles costs the Greeks terribly.

d)      They can also seek honor that transcends the community. For those who achieve the most can gain immortal recognition and honor even if their political community collapse.

(1)    Hector is shown to recognize the likelihood of his defeat and that of Troy and the terrible results for this family

(a)    Yet he cannot fight in a defensive way, one that might maximize the chances of survival for the Trojans

(b)    Because fighting in that way would not bring him the honor he craves.

III.   The rage of Achilles

A.     The source of his rage I: dishonor and the lack of compensation

1.       Initially it is directed against Agamemnon

a)      Who takes his prize, Briseis, when Agamemnon has to return Chryse to her father

b)      Who is more honored and higher ranked than Achilles, due to his royal birth, even though Agamemnon is not the fighter Achilles is

(1)    In response

(a)    Agamemnon points out, that Achilles prowess as a rests on the luck of birth as well, to a goddess mother, Thetis

(b)    He also points out that Achilles no more than Agamemnon seeks honor and that this his why he loves to fight

c)      Thus Achilles promises not to return to the battle until his own ships are in danger.

(1)    And he asks his mother to seek the support of Zeus for his plan: Achilles will return to battle to get great honor when the Greeks are near defeat

2.       Later, he rejects Agamemnon’s offer of compensation, for two, partly contradictory reasons

a)      On the one hand, Achilles claims that Agamemnon’s offer is insufficient. Why he thinks this is not entirely clear.

(1)    In part this may be because Agamemnon did not come in his own name.

(2)    In part it may be that Achilles still hopes to follow through on his plan of winning glory by rescuing the Greeks once he returns to battle. While the Greeks are down at this point, Achilles may expect them to be in even worse shape, soon

(a)    It may be that it is this reason that leads Phoenix to tell Achilles the story of Meleager, who waited so long to fight for his side that there were no rewards left available to him

(3)    In part it may be that there is nothing that can satisfy Achilles. For nothing can undo what was done to him.

(a)    It is in answer to this argument that Big Ajax points out that men have to learn to live with inadequate compensation for injustice done them. Payment in return for murder is not sufficient. Yet, for the sake of the community, people accept it.

b)      On the other hand, Achilles seems to be calling the whole warrior ethic into question. He says that no honor is worth dieing young.

(1)    Achilles is capable of raising this question because

(a)    He has isolated himself from the Greeks and is now looking at the warrior ethic from the outside.

(b)    He also has a source of honor independent of success in battle, that is, his position as a son of a god.

(2)    As we shall see below, largely because his mother is a goddess, Achilles has difficulty accepting his mortality. This enables leads him to raise questions about the warrior ethic that other heroes cannot raise.

3.       Achilles seems ambivalent between these two contradictory views

a)      He stays out of battle

b)      But he does not leave the scene and return to his homeland.

4.       Both of Achilles arguments are, in my view, criticized in the text

a)      Both of them deny the importance of community. They both place the pursuit of individual interest, either honor or a long life, above the good of the community.

B.     The source of his rage II: death and injustice

1.       Even before the death of Patroclus, we have the sense that Achilles is troubled by more than Agamemnon’s taking of Briseis.

a)      His doubts about the warrior ethic point to his distress at the thought of his own death.

b)      His rejection of Agamemnon’s offer (and Ajax’s criticism of it) suggests that he is demanding the kind of compensation for injustice that is unavailable to human beings

2.       After the death of Patroclus, for which Achilles blames himself, these two themes become more prominent.

a)      Achilles inconsolable grief and his rage against Hector leads him to abuse Hector’s body in a way that would have been considered disrespectful to Hector, his family, and the gods that protect the Trojans

b)      In his treatment of Hector’s body, Achilles points to the inability of Hector’s death to make up or compensate him for Patroclus’s death.

c)      Achilles continues to rage against both death and injustice.

C.     The resolution of his rage: what Achilles learns

1.       Achilles and Priam

a)      Priam’s request for Hector’s body brings Achilles to an important realization: Human life is not such that he can expect justice and a way around death.

b)      Achilles admires Priam for

(1)    His responsibility in acting to seek the return of Hector’s body

(a)    Priam’s effort to have Hector’s body returned  meets the demands of the warrior ethic and his position as king and father.

(b)    Unlike Achilles irresponsibility in letting the Greeks, and particularly Patroclus, die while he sat out the battle

(2)    His endurance in the face of the pain of the death of his son

(a)    His is not raging like Achilles

(3)    His courage in coming to Achilles

c)      Priam’s pain makes Achilles think of, have sympathy for, and feel his connection to Peleus, his father.

(1)    Peleus will never see Achilles again and will suffer at the death of Achilles just as Priam suffers at the death of Hector

(2)    For most of the text, Achilles relies on his mother and avoids mention of his father.

(a)    Peleus, for Achilles, represents (and is the cause) of what he wants to escape, his mortality

2.       Achilles comes to recognize that

a)      Human life cannot be all good

(1)    Zeus gives out mixed lives and all bad lives but not all goods lives

(a)    If only because all of our lives end in death

b)      There is never complete justice in human because there is no compensation for some  evils, especially for the death of loved ones and friends

c)      The highest kind of human life, Achilles comes to see, is not one that seeks to escape the limits of human life

(1)    As Achilles did by

(a)    Railing against death

(b)    Seeking compensation for Agamemnon’s treatment of him and the death of Patroclus

(2)    Or by gaining the greatest honor, which can puts what one cares about into danger

(3)    Rather it is in bearing the evils of this life well, by living up to one’s responsibilities to others, and by acting with courage.

3.       There is also some suggestion in the text that death is not just an evil

a)      The gods lives are silly and undignified.

(1)    Nothing seems to matter to them because none of the gods can be injured or killed

(2)    The gods can’t love the way human beings can, perhaps because they are immortal and everything that happens to them will happen again

(a)    For example, Zeus does not love Sarpedon to save him

(b)    Zeus and Hera fall into fighting on suspicions of infidelity

b)      Thus the gods are often comic relief in the text

c)      This suggests that our lives are capable of deeper, richer, more profound emotion than that of the gods

d)      And we are capable of a kind of dignity in our endurance, courage and responsibility that the gods cannot match.