The Time of the Story
The Iliad does not tell the whole Trojan War. When Book I begins, the war has already lasted nine years, and the omen at Aulis that Odysseus recalls in Book II had marked the year of the fall: a serpent devoured eight sparrow chicks and the mother, the ninth, and the seer Calchas read that the Greeks would fight as many years as the birds devoured and, in the tenth, would take the city. The poem covers a stretch of that tenth year, from Apollo's punishment in the camp to Hector's funeral, and leaves out the outcome: the death of Achilles at the Scaean Gates, which Hector foretells in Book XXII, and the fall of Troy, which Andromache and Priam foresee in Book XXIV, are announced and not narrated.
Why There Is War
The stated motive is Helen. Paris carried her off from Sparta, and in Book III Menelaus asks Zeus to let him punish the man who wronged the host who offered him friendship, so that men to come will tremble to repeat the deed. In Book II, Nestor says that no one should return before avenging the efforts and the groans for Helen. Achilles, in Book I, does not count the war as his own: he did not come to Troy because of the Trojans' fault, he came to give honor to Menelaus and Agamemnon, and in Book IX he asks whether it is not for Helen's sake that they fight. The gods have their own reasons: in Book XXIV, Hera, Poseidon, and Athena keep hating Troy since Paris insulted the goddesses and preferred the one who offered him desire, and in Book XXI Poseidon recalls that he served King Laomedon by building the city's wall, while Apollo tended cattle, and that the king refused them their wages. Already in Book V, Tlepolemus tells how Heracles took Ilion with six ships because of the horses of Laomedon.
The Gods and the War
The gods do not stand above the war: they take sides, quarrel, and wound one another. In Book I, Zeus assents to Thetis's request to honor Achilles, and that nod, which he never revokes, moves the rest of the poem; in Book VIII, Zeus forbids the other gods to help either side, and in Book XX he lets each one choose. Hera, Athena, Poseidon, Hermes, and Hephaestus side with the Achaeans; Ares, Apollo, Artemis, Leto, the river Xanthus, and Aphrodite with the Trojans. The gods speak of mortals from a distance, like leaves that burn and wither, in Book XXI, and they rush to protect those they love. The poem treats the three brothers, Zeus, Poseidon, and Hades, as partners in a division: in Book XV, Poseidon recalls that each received his portion of honor and that the sky, the sea, and the darkness were allotted by lot.
Honor, Prize, and Hospitality
The war prize is the public sign of a man's worth. Chryseis and Briseis are two such prizes, and it is over one of them that the quarrel of Book I begins. The king holds the scepter, and the poem recalls, in Book IX, that the scepter gives honor, not courage. Hospitality is a bond that passes from father to son and can stop a fight: in Book VI, Diomedes and Glaucus discover that their grandfathers were guest-friends and exchange armor. Supplication is the gesture of the helpless, who embrace the knees or touch the chin of the one who can grant the plea, and ransom is the price offered for a life or a body; both come back from Book I, with Chryses, to Book XXIV, with Priam. The funeral completes the picture: fire and weeping make a corpse into a dead man, and leaving the body to dogs and birds is the worst fate one can inflict, as Book XXII and Book XXIII show, where the games honor Patroclus.
Those Who Came Before
The heroes speak of their ancestors before they fight, and the poem treats that past as common knowledge. Agamemnon recalls to Diomedes the mission of Tydeus to Thebes, in Book IV, and Athena recalls it again in Book V. In Book VI, Glaucus recites the genealogy that runs from Sisyphus to Bellerophon, and in Book XX Aeneas does the same from Dardanus. The scepter of Agamemnon has its own lineage, from Hephaestus to Zeus, to Hermes, to Pelops, to Atreus, to Thyestes, in Book II, and the armor of Achilles came from the gods to Peleus on the day of his wedding to Thetis. The narrator compares the past with the present: Diomedes hurls a stone that two men of today could not carry, in Book V, and Hector lifts another that two of the best men of the land could not raise, in Book XII.
The Voice of the Poem
The poem opens with wrath and calls on a goddess to sing it, in Book I. Before the Catalogue of Ships, in Book II, the poet invokes the Muses, who are present and know everything, while men only hear the fame and know nothing. The narrator uses epithets that accompany the names, such as the horse-tamer who closes the last line, in Book XXIV, and knows more than the characters do: he warns that Achilles' summons of Patroclus is the beginning of his ruin, in Book XI, and that the request for the armor is a request for his own death, in Book XVI. He also speaks to the characters, as he does to Apollo, in Book XV, when the god undoes the Greeks' wall as a child undoes the toys he made of sand.