War

The Theme in the Work

The poem announces its subject in Book I, and the subject is not the Trojan War: it is the wrath of Achilles and what it cost his own companions. The war has already lasted nine years when the book begins, and the poem shows it from within, as something men try to close and that keeps opening again.

In Book III, the armies halt so that Paris and Menelaus can settle everything in a duel over Helen, and Aphrodite snatches Paris from the combat when Menelaus had him caught by the helmet. In Book IV, Zeus and Hera trade cities like coin, Athena leads Pandarus to shoot Menelaus, and the sworn truce breaks. In Book VII, the duel of Hector and Ajax ends without a winner, because night falls, and the truce for the dead serves the Achaeans to raise their wall.

The war of men is also fought within the will of the gods. In Book V, Diomedes wounds Aphrodite and Ares with Athena's leave, and the war enters the house of Zeus. In Book VIII, Zeus forbids the other gods to help either side and weighs, at midday, the death lots of the two armies. In Book XII, the Trojans break through the wall; in Book XIII and Book XV, they reach the ships, and Poseidon secretly works against Zeus. In Book XIV, Hera puts Zeus to sleep, and the fighting turns for a time. In Book XVI and Book XVII, the war concentrates on one man and then on a corpse.

Night shows what the war allows. In Book X, Diomedes and Odysseus go out to spy on the Trojans, kill Dolon in the middle of his plea and kill the sleeping Thracians, and the narrator tells it all without comment. In Book VI, the war appears from the other side: Hector returns to the city, Andromache tells him that his impetuosity will destroy him, and he replies that he knows Troy will fall and that even so he returns to the battle.

In Book XX, the gods come down to the field but sit apart, and they intervene only to save someone. In Book XXI, Achilles fills the river with corpses, the river rises in revolt and the gods quarrel among themselves, while Zeus laughs. In Book XXIV, the poem closes without the fall of Troy: Achilles grants eleven days of truce so that Hector may be mourned and burned, and the last line is the funeral.

The war of the Iliad is a system in which each agent has his own motive and no one controls the whole. Zeus wants to honor Achilles at the expense of the Greeks, Hera wants Troy ruined, Athena carries out orders, Pandarus acts for glory and gifts, and each attempt to end the war, the duel of Book III, Antenor's proposal to return Helen in Book VII, the truce for the dead, runs into someone who reopens it or refuses it: Aphrodite, Pandarus, Paris, Diomedes. Whoever sees it from within does not celebrate it: the narrator says of Book IV that many Trojans and Achaeans lay face down in the dust, side by side, and the poem ends with the rite for a dead man, not with the victory of a living one. The opposite reading also holds: in the final books Achilles no longer spares anyone, and the eleven-day truce that closes the poem has a set limit, so that the funeral is a pause, not an end.

Where It Appears

• Book I: Achilles' wrath, announced in the proem, is born of a quarrel between chiefs, and the price of the compensation he demands is the lives of his own companions.
• Book III: Trojans and Achaeans halt their armies so that Paris and Menelaus can settle the war in a duel over Helen, but Aphrodite snatches Paris from the fight and the agreement comes to nothing.
• Book IV: Zeus and Hera trade cities like coin, Athena leads Pandarus to shoot Menelaus, and the sworn truce breaks as Eris grows between the two armies.
• Book V: Diomedes, with the strength Athena gives him, wounds Aphrodite and then Ares, and the war of men enters the house of the gods for the first time.
• Book VII: The duel of Hector and Ajax ends without a winner when night falls, and the truce that follows serves to burn the dead and raise the wall.
• Book VIII: Zeus forbids the other gods to help either side and, at midday, weighs the death lots of the two armies, and the Achaeans' pan goes down.
• Book X: On a night without combat, Diomedes and Odysseus kill the spy Dolon and the sleeping Thracians, and the war shows what darkness allows.
• Book XII: Hector breaks the gate of the Achaeans' wall with a stone that Zeus makes light, and the Trojans enter the camp the Greeks had built, without hecatombs.
• Book XIV: Hera puts Zeus to sleep with Aphrodite's girdle, and Poseidon turns the fight in favor of the Achaeans while the god sleeps.
• Book XVI: Patroclus puts on Achilles' armor, pushes the fire away from the ships, and drives the Trojans to the wall of Troy, until Apollo and Hector kill him.
• Book XVII: Menelaus, the two Ajaxes, and Hector fight over a corpse, Patroclus's, which some want to save and others want to give to the dogs of Troy.
• Book XX: The gods come down to the field but sit apart, and intervene only to save Aeneas and Hector from Achilles' hands, since Achilles wants only Hector.
• Book XXI: Achilles fills the river Xanthus with corpses, the river rises in revolt, and the gods quarrel among themselves while Zeus laughs from high Olympus.
• Book XXIV: The poem ends without the fall of Troy, after Achilles grants Priam eleven days of truce so that Hector may be mourned and burned.

Passages

The poet announces that the subject is a wrath, not the war.

With the truce broken, Eris grows until her head touches the sky.

At the end of the duel without a winner, night forces the two to stop.

At midday, Zeus weighs the death lots of the two armies.

The fighting at the wall stays even, like the scale held by an honest wool-worker.

Zeus wants to see a ship burn before the tide turns.

Achilles runs across the field like fire in dry woodland.

The last line of the poem speaks of Hector's funeral.