
The Bible was meant to be my last review for my first classics club challenge, but despite reading it in 2020 and having a beautiful notebook full of notes, it’s still sitting staring at me because I just don’t know what to do with it. So instead its place is being taken by our latest buddy read, The Iliad, and deservedly so because it was brilliant..
‘Sing, goddess, the anger of Achilles, Peleus’ son,
the accursed anger which brought the Achaeans countless agonies. . . ‘
First a brief summery of the plot and an apology for the length of this post, it’s an indulgence!. The poem is set sometime towards the end of the Trojan War and begins with a priest of Apollo coming to King Agamemnon to plead for the return of his daughter Chryseis, who Agamemnon has taken as a slave. When Agamemnon refuses, Apollo is outraged and sends a plague that devastates the Greek camp. Eventually Agamemnon agrees to let the girl go but demands recompense for his loss – namely, Briseis, the slave of Achilles; who’s anger is so great that he simply decides that he will not fight. He returns to his quarters with his soul mate Patroclus and stays there. Leaving the Greeks without their greatest weapon.
The Trojan’s storm the Greek’s gates and wall and in the face of imminent defeat Agamemnon agrees to return Briseis, but no! Achilles has been so affronted that he still refuses to fight. Wily Odysseus is sent with all his skills of diplomacy but nothing. Seeing the dead and injured piling up Patroclus makes a plan to save the day and it’s agreed that he will go out in Achilles chariot, wearing Achilles armour – it would be enough for the Trojans to think that Achilles is back in the game for them to retreat. But the plan fails and it’s the death of Patroclus at the hands of Hector that gets Achilles back in the fight. Determined to avenge him by killing Hector, his behaviour is so extreme that even his men turn from him unable to bear his treatment of Hector’s body as he lashes it to his chariot and drags it around the burial-mound of Patroclus. The poem ends with Achilles and Priam, Hector’s father, sharing a meal and agreeing for Hector’s body to be returned for burial.
It’s a story about the destructive power of beauty, of politics, war, gods and mortals, revenge, jealousy, failure of leadership, love and death. It’s bloody and gory but also funny and human and exciting. And what I loved the most was the storytelling.
Continue reading “The Iliad”