We know virtually nothing about Homer and whether he also created the other poem in his name, The Odyssey, which recounts the return journey of Odysseus from the Trojan War to the island of Ithaca. But such is its quality and depth that it had a special place in antiquity and probably survived for that reason. The Iliad is only one poetic work focused on the war of Troy many others have not survived. Ominously, for Troy, the gods on the Greek side, notably Hera, queen of the gods, Athena, goddess of wisdom and war, and Poseidon, god of the land and sea, represent a much more powerful force than the divine supporters of Troy of whom Apollo, the archer god and god of afar, is the main figure. In the Iliad, the Trojan war is a cosmic conflict, not just one played out at the human level between Greeks and non-Greeks. The Olympians are divided over the fate of Troy just as the mortals are. When he gets into a dispute with Agamemnon, the leading Greek prince in the war, and loses his captive princess Briseis to him, he refuses to fight and remains in his camp.Īll of this takes place under the watchful gaze of the Olympian gods, who are both actors and audience in the Iliad. Achilles is young and brash, a brilliant fighter, but not a great diplomat. He comes from the north of Greece and is therefore something of an outsider because most of the main Greek princes in the poem come from the south. The central figure in the Iliad is Achilles, the son of Peleus, a mortal aristocrat, and Thetis, a sea-goddess. There is no doubt that Homer and other early poets could rely on a very extensive knowledge of the Trojan War among their audiences. However, Homer and other early epic poets confined their narratives to particular periods in the war, such as its origins, key martial encounters, the fall of the city, or the returns of the soldiers to Greece. This sometimes surprises modern readers who expect the whole story of Troy (as, for instance, in Wolfgang Petersen’s 2004 film Troy). The epic poem deals with a very short period in the tenth year of the Trojan War.
This story had a central place in Greek mythology. In fact the Iliad takes its name from “Ilios”, an ancient Greek word for “Troy” situated in what is Turkey today. It tells part of the saga of the city of Troy and the war that took place there. Homer’s Iliad is usually thought of as the first work of European literature-and many would say it is the greatest.
Credit: Achilleion at Corfu/ wikimedia commons CC BY-SA 3.0 Homer’s Iliad: The Story of the Trojan War.
0 kommentar(er)
