'The Iliad' by Homer (Pt. 3)

Now, we are well aware of what went on during the era in which the war took place and we have asked ourselves the Homeric questions regarding the writing of the text. We want to explore whether the characters have any historical groundings. We know for a fact that Troy most probably existed exactly where we have now found it and we know about the Greek empire during the Late Bronze Age, but we do not know about the characters and their sources. In understanding this, we may understand the way in which the epic serves as not only a poem, but also as a historical source or a historical bias in order to influence an entire culture of people for the next 500 plus years.

There is not a lot of evidence that we can unfold regarding the characters of The Iliad, in most cases we have no solid evidence for the character of Agamemnon. We do not know whether he was real or whether it was this King who led an attack on the Trojans. But, let's have a look at another character who seems to crop up in some other ancient texts about the Trojan War; Paris.

Paris, who's real name is Alexandros, crops up not only as a character in The Iliad as a part of the Trojan War, but also in other Ancient texts that were found in Egypt. It is already known to archaeologists and historians alike that Bronze Age Greece and Egypt were more than well aware of each other's existence despite their limited usage of transportation in order to meet in person. We are saying "Bronze Age Greece" and not "Bronze Age Troy" as we are not fully aware of the material era Troy was in.

In ancient Egypt, texts were found regarding a war. The war was not named, but the king of the city of Troy was written as "Alexandros" and not King Priam as it is in The Iliad. Now, we have two possible conclusions for this that we could come to:

1. That this "Alexandros" refers to Paris and we should take this as Paris being the King of the City of Troy when the Trojan War broke out. This would mean that Hector was not the heir apparent to Troy, but that depended on whether Paris had a child and on which brother, Hector or Paris, was older. There are many things that can be disputed about this conclusion and it is quite impossible to believe.
2. That "Alexandros" is a fairly common name in Bronze Age Greece and the chance of there being a Greek war against Troy with a King named Alexandros being on the throne at the time is actually fairly likely. The problem with this is the time at which the war is said to have taken place. It falls around the time of the Trojan War, but would offer difficulties to the timeline that we are already familiar with. These have been addressed in the previous conclusion.

Let's take a look at another character for which, we are pretty sure he is a part of mythology; Achilles. The name "Achilles" coming from the ancient Greek set of terms that includes the common word "distressed"—Achilles was hailed as a God in ancient Greek culture for many centuries and is known as "the hero of grief." Another form of his name gives the translation from Indo-European as "sharp foot," which shows where the Iliad's name for Achilles "swift foot" comes from, thus suggesting that the poem may not have been composed entirely in ancient Greece at all.

The question of whether Achilles was a real person or not has been going on for centuries. We had the 1700s in which the Iliad was concluded to be entirely fiction and then, in the 1870s, the famous Schliemann opened up Turkey's grounds and found the city of Troy in a great excavation. The supernatural elements of Homer's Iliad suggest that demigods may have had special "powers" but they still had very human elements so, the supernatural elements may have been added to make them seem like better humans rather than not humans. This is first and foremost a good argument for the idea that Achilles may have been a real person.

Then there was the famous painting by Giovanni Paolo Panini in the early 1700s which confirmed the great early neoclassical and mythical hopes of the Renaissance eras across Europe, the main question being: Where is Achilles' Tomb? The painting "Alexander the Great at the Tomb of Achilles" puts a real person from history (Alexander) at the tomb of someone that many people believe to be fictional. The fact that Schliemann found the City of Troy's grounds means that there have been many possibilities opened for the historicity of Achilles and his final resting place. Be that as it may, there has been absolutely no solid historical evidence for the existence of Achilles.

Now, we are going to have a look at the characterisation of these figures in the text. We are going to note how they are seen at the start and develop in the early days of the text alongside the other elements of the narrative. Particularly, we're looking at how they use language in their ability to give more than one meaning and thus creating this layered narrative for the space in which the characters can exist. I will be using Richard Lattimore's translation for this study and Books 1-4 for the quotations.

In the first book, we have Thetis talking to her son Achilles just after he has been enraged and returned to his ship in a refusal to fight.

“If only you could sit by your ships untroubled, not weeping,

since indeed your lifetime is to be short, of no length.”

Thetis, the sea-nymph, knows of her son's fate to die in war. Achilles also knows this, as we see later on, but Thetis knows that he will make the choice to stay and fight rather than return home. She does not give the other option that Achilles mentions later on, to return home but have little glory and live a long time. She simply tells him "your lifetime will be short," suggesting that she knows he will choose the option of staying, fighting and dying young. The question is whether the Gods already know the events of the war before they happen since the only way Achilles will return to the war is if Patroclus dies if not the Achaeans being pushed back to their ships.

Let us now have a look at the second book in which we have the very famous sparrow and snake prophecy.

"As this snake has eaten the sparrow herself with her children, eight of them, and the mother was the ninth, who bore them, so for years as many as this shall we fight in this place and in the tenth year we shall take the city of the wide ways."

What we have here is a prophecy suggesting that the Trojans will beat the Achaeans until the tenth year, in which they will run out of their protection and then, the Achaeans will take the city of Troy. This is a prophecy by mortals but, is it true? If we were to look at the language of the quotation, it tells us that the events of this book will show the Greeks prosperous in the war. We know from reading the text that this is not necessarily true. If we look at the specific language of the quotation we can tell that it is referring to the taking of the city; this doesn't happen until the sack of Troy so, not in the tenth year. But then, why is it so convincing to us as a prophecy? If we look at the word "take", it is not referring to winning the city in battle, but rather destroying the city. This is not literal; this is instead referencing the destruction of Troy's line of inheritance. To kill the lineage is to destroy the city—and yes, this means that it is quite possibly referring to the death of Hector towards the end of the book. In this case, therefore, the prophecy is true.

Let us now have a look at the third book in which we have Paris fighting Menelaus one-on-one and how Paris loses and doesn't pay his part of the bargain—Helen. This is the reaction he got from the rest of his own army when he lost:

"These would not have hidden him for love, if any had seen him, since he was hated among them all as dark death is hated."

Paris is Hector's brother but is not loved as much as Hector because he seems to be a constant coward—he's always hiding and his brother has to come and fetch him out of his hiding place. When the reaction takes place, he doesn't happen to be there because a God has intervened and carried him off. It states, "If any had seen him" which states that the reaction only took place after he was carried away, nobody has seen him since. The exaggeration of the hate also exaggerates the lack of love in the first part of the quotation, giving us a feel of the exact emotions of the Trojans towards Paris.

Now, we're going to look at a quotation from Book Four in which we have a very realistic description of the fighting and the warfare that is actually going on. This makes it seem more in touch with the history of the book as well—just have a look at the language used here to do with armory:

"Throwing first, he struck the horn of the horse-haired helmet, and the bronze spear-point fixed in his forehead and drove inward through the bone; and a mist of darkness clouded both eyes and he fell as a tower falls in the strong encounter."

What we have here is a not just a poetic account of the war, but also a poetic account of the way in which the war took a toll on the Greek army who were, in most aspects, away from home and without many of their familiarities. The anger, frustration and rage that will build up along the way in the text could be a direct reaction to being away from home for so long and fighting for a city most of them did not care about to do with a woman most of the army had not even met.

As we've already established in this seminar, the poem is written entirely in dactylic hexameter, which makes the poem sound more like normal speech when recited. Not only would this make it easier to remember, but it would also make it easier to add emotion to. The addition of emotion when performing, helped by the natural speech patterns of the chosen metrical structure would result in emphasis paid to certain sections that would mean more emotionally to the audience listening to it. These were the Greeks. This is possibly why we have such an emphasis on to Greek rage in the poem. The Greek audience understand the pain and frustration of the army who have spent now, ten years, hundreds of miles from their homeland.

The language of the Iliad is now a little bit easier to fathom since we have particular emphasis on the Greeks and what they were doing in the final year of the war. Even though the poem translates to "The Song of Ilium," Ilium being another name for the city of Troy, we actually don't see much of the Trojans in the poem at all. This could possibly be due to the audiences wanting to know about the activities of their own people.

We're now going to have a look at exactly how this plays out in two other texts that are based on the events of the Trojan War. We're going to explore the question of difference between the presentation of character and development of character between the following texts and the Iliad. It is important to note the difference here and how one is a Roman text and the other, a Greek text.

The first text we're going to explore is The Aeneid and specifically Book 2.

First of all, we're going to cover a short summary of what takes place in this particular section of the book. Aeneas begins to cover the story of Troy's downfall and reflect on the past. Aeneas tells us about the wooden horse and how the Greeks parked their fleet on a nearby island instead of going home. There is a clear sense of Aeneas blaming a lot of the "manipulative tricks" used by the Greeks on the planning of Ulysses, the Roman translation of Odysseus. There is a clear bias against Odysseus in the narrative.

In The Iliad we hear phrases such as "resourceful Odysseus" and "great Odysseus." This shows that the character development and these particular character phrases were used and created for a mainly Greek audience. The fact that this is changed so much from the original to the Aeneid Book 2 means that the audience must have changed quite a bit. Actually, The Aeneid's audience would've been Roman and therefore, decedents of Troy. They would not want to hear that Odysseus was "resourceful." Instead the words that are used to describe Ulysses include: "manipulative" and "deceitful" among others.

There is a clear bias according to who the audience mainly consists of but therefore, there cannot be a correct answer and, we still do not know exactly what Odysseus/Ulysses was like after all.

Now, the text we are going to briefly look at is Iphigenia in Aulis by Euripides.

This is an ancient Greek play that centers on the sacrifice of Iphigenia, Agamemnon's daughter to the goddess Artemis for the good of his troops. The way in which the conflict between Agamemnon and various members of the group, including Achilles, is presented almost mimics the one seen at the beginning of The Iliad - this is not only done for the sake of familiarity and repetitive tropes though. The fact that this is repeated means that Agamemnon has not yet learnt from his mistakes and, as the ancient Greek audience would be well aware of the "doomed family" from which Agamemnon comes, the audience would be constantly on edge—thus creating a great amount of dramatic tension for which Euripides is so well known. This would work only if the ancient Greek audience would've at least read the first four books of the Iliad.

Agamemnon's character development is the most important and, being the King of the Greeks means that he's ever more important. The way he's presented in both the Iliad and this particular Greek drama are very similar with one very clearly drawing on the other for the sake of familiarity. This shows that the audiences for both this play and the Iliad were relatively the same with The Iliad having to be known in order for the audience to understand the repeated tropes and allusions to the first used in the second.

As we can see, all is biased in these texts when it comes to the production of the characters. The dramatic mechanisms of Euripides' play are to keep the audience compelling in watching the events by giving the most powerful character some horrific flaws. Whereas, the backstory of the Aeneid is fixed to make the Greeks look like the villainous ones even though it was Paris who kidnapped the Greek Queen of Sparta, Helen.