Suggestions
Use up and down arrows to review and enter to select.Please wait while we process your payment
If you don't see it, please check your spam folder. Sometimes it can end up there.
If you don't see it, please check your spam folder. Sometimes it can end up there.
Please wait while we process your payment
By signing up you agree to our terms and privacy policy.
Don’t have an account? Subscribe now
Create Your Account
Sign up for your FREE 7-day trial
Already have an account? Log in
Your Email
Choose Your Plan
Save over 50% with a SparkNotes PLUS Annual Plan!
Purchasing SparkNotes PLUS for a group?
Get Annual Plans at a discount when you buy 2 or more!
Price
$24.99 $18.74 /subscription + tax
Subtotal $37.48 + tax
Save 25% on 2-49 accounts
Save 30% on 50-99 accounts
Want 100 or more? Contact us for a customized plan.
Your Plan
Payment Details
Payment Summary
SparkNotes Plus
You'll be billed after your free trial ends.
7-Day Free Trial
Not Applicable
Renews June 14, 2023 June 7, 2023
Discounts (applied to next billing)
DUE NOW
US $0.00
SNPLUSROCKS20 | 20% Discount
This is not a valid promo code.
Discount Code (one code per order)
SparkNotes Plus subscription is $4.99/month or $24.99/year as selected above. The free trial period is the first 7 days of your subscription. TO CANCEL YOUR SUBSCRIPTION AND AVOID BEING CHARGED, YOU MUST CANCEL BEFORE THE END OF THE FREE TRIAL PERIOD. You may cancel your subscription on your Subscription and Billing page or contact Customer Support at custserv@bn.com. Your subscription will continue automatically once the free trial period is over. Free trial is available to new customers only.
Choose Your Plan
For the next 7 days, you'll have access to awesome PLUS stuff like AP English test prep, No Fear Shakespeare translations and audio, a note-taking tool, personalized dashboard, & much more!
You’ve successfully purchased a group discount. Your group members can use the joining link below to redeem their group membership. You'll also receive an email with the link.
Members will be prompted to log in or create an account to redeem their group membership.
Thanks for creating a SparkNotes account! Continue to start your free trial.
Please wait while we process your payment
Your PLUS subscription has expired
Please wait while we process your payment
Please wait while we process your payment
Foreshadowing plays an unusually important role in The Iliad, a poem so thoroughly interwoven with prophecies, omens, and references to human characters’ fates that few major events transpire without the reader expecting them. Humans and gods alike talk frequently about destiny, and heroes make decisions with full knowledge of what fate has in store for them. As such, the future has a constant presence in the poem. The function of foreshadowing in The Iliad relates in part to the poem’s status as a fictionalized account of historical events. The Trojan War was presumed to have really taken place, and the war ended with a Trojan defeat. The reader knows that Troy will eventually fall, and the poet builds this historical reality into the poem itself. For example, in Book 2, Odysseus reminds the Achaean soldiers of a prophecy made by the seer named Calchas. Odysseus describes Calchas’s interpretation of an ominous sign:
As the snake devoured the sparrow with her brood,
eight and the mother made the ninth, she’d borne them all,
so we will fight in Troy that many years and then,
then in the tenth we’ll take her broad streets.
Even though The Iliad itself doesn’t narrate the end of the Trojan War, the reader with sufficient knowledge of Greek history understands that Calchas has interpreted the sign correctly and that the war will come to an end soon after Hector’s death, which concludes the poem.
Several references to Patroclus’s fate prepare the reader for the moment in Book 16 when he falls to the ground, fatally pierced by Hector’s spear. The first nod to Patroclus’s destiny appears in Book 11 when Achilles calls out to his friend, planning to ask him to go to the Achaean camp and see how things are going:
He called at once to his friend-in-arms Patroclus,
shouting down from the decks. Hearing Achilles,
forth he came from his shelter,
striding up like the deathless god of war
but from that moment on his doom was sealed.
Although not yet clear, Patroclus has sealed his own devastating fate because, as the poet will go on to narrate, while he’s in the Achaean camp, the young man will decide to join the battle with or without Achilles, which in turn will lead to his death. The poet references Patroclus joining the battle again in Book 15. This time, Homer explicitly assents that when “Apollo drive[s] Prince Hector back to battle,” the event “will launch his comrade Patroclus into action / and glorious Hector will cut him down with a spear.” Thus, when the event predicted here eventually occurs nearly 1,800 lines later, the reader is not surprised but rather senses that Patroclus’s destiny has been fully realized.
In Book 1 Achilles feuds with Agamemnon over possession of the young woman Briseis, and Agamemnon’s refusal to back down results in Achilles removing himself from the battle. Although he initially threatens to sail home with his fellow Myrmidons, Achilles stick arounds to observe the war from his out-of-the-way encampment but pledges in Book 9 not to rejoin the fight until the war reaches his camp. However, even before Achilles makes this pledge, the paternal old warrior Phoenix recounts a story that foreshadows Achilles’s return to battle. Phoenix tells of Meleager, the great Aetolian warrior prince. When the Aetolians were at war with the Curetes, Meleager fought heroically but left the fight prematurely to stay in bed with his beautiful wife, Cleopatra. Eventually, Cleopatra got him to rejoin the fight by “recounting all the griefs / that fall to people whose city’s seized and plundered”:
How his spirit leapt when he heard those horrors—
and buckling his gleaming armor round his body,
out he rushed to war.
Like Meleager, Achilles will rush out to fight when the horrors of war strike close to home, and he’ll do so sooner than he anticipates. Instead of waiting for Hector to kill his way to the Myrmidon camp, Achilles will rejoin the fight when Hector kills his closest friend, Patroclus.
Please wait while we process your payment