The prophet Calchas then tells the Greeks that they must
capture the Trojan prophet Helenus in order to win. They do so,
and Helenus tells them that Troy can only be defeated by the bow
and arrows of Hercules. Hercules gave these weapons to Philoctetes,
who set out for Troy with the Greeks, who abandoned him along the
way. Odysseus and a few others set out to apologize and get him
back. Philoctetes returns and promptly kills Paris. The Greeks learn
that the Trojans have a sacred image of Athena, the Palladium, that
protects them. Odysseus and Diomedes sneak behind enemy lines and steal
it. Yet Troy still has the protection of its gigantic walls, which prevent
the Greeks from entering. Finally, Odysseus comes up with a plan
to build a giant wooden horse and roll it up to the gates, pretending
they have surrendered and gone home. One man, Sinon, stays behind,
acting as if he is a traitor to the Greeks. He says that although
the Greeks retreated, they left the horse as an offering to Athena.
He says the Greeks assumed the Trojans would not take it inside
the city because of its size, which would thus offend Athena and
bring misfortune on the city. Trojans, feeling like they are getting
the last laugh, triumphantly bring the horse into the city.
The horse is hollow, however, and Greek chieftains are
hiding inside. At night, they creep out and open the city gates.
The Greek army, hiding nearby, sweeps into the city and massacres
the Trojans. Achilles’ son kills Priam. Of the major Trojans, only
Aeneas escapes, his father on his shoulders and his son holding
his hand. All the men are killed, the women and children separated
and enslaved. In the war’s final act, the Greeks take Hector’s infant
son, Astyanax, from his mother, Andromache, and throw him off the
high Trojan walls. With this death, the legacy of Hector and Troy
itself are finished.
Analysis: Chapters I–II
The Trojan War is the most famous of all Greek conflicts,
and the Iliad perhaps the most famous literary
work from ancient Greece. As we might expect, this story touches
on all the major themes of the myths: hospitality, love, obedience
to the gods and to the moral code, and the immutability of fate.
The importance of hospitality is evident in Paris’s weakness and
wickedness in abusing Menelaus’s hospitality. The importance of
the patriotic moral code is stressed by the catastrophic rift between
Agamemnon and Achilles. Likewise, the power of love is shown in
its ability to heal Achilles’ grief over Patroclus. Morality and
obedience to the gods are present throughout, from Agamemnon’s sacrifice
of Iphigenia to Achilles’ return of Hector’s body. As in the other
myths, the gods reward obedience and goodness and punish disobedience
and wickedness. In the war, even the gods bow before fate, as Thetis
accepts Achilles’ inevitable death and Zeus accepts the inevitable
Greek victory.
Above all, the epic of the Trojan War depicts the dark
complexity of Greek mythology. The strength of so many of the myths
is their depth of character and complex morality. They are not simple
fairy tales of good battling evil; they show conflicted characters,
ambiguity, and the harshness of the world. Clear villains are conspicuously absent
in the Iliad: there is no wicked king to provide
a foil for a good, shining one. Achilles and Hector, the two main
adversaries in the war, are both shown to be heroic.
Thus, rather than having a standard protagonist-antagonist conflict,
the Iliad dwells on the brutality and senseless
death of war, the cruelty that abounds in the world, and the struggles
the heroes have with themselves. Hector is heroic because he remorsefully
refuses to stay with his family and instead chooses to face the
battle he knows is his destiny.
Worse, the divine sphere provides no relief from the
hopelessly bloody and cruel universe depicted in the Iliad. Though
the gods do uphold a standard of morality, they are not omnipotent,
beneficent, or kind. They fight among each other, trick and deceive
each other, and reveal themselves as cowardly; even the normally
irreproachable Artemis demands a horrific human sacrifice. Thus,
the gods represent a higher standard of justice and honor, as when
they refuse to allow Hector’s body to remain unburied, yet show
the same bloodthirstiness and blind bias as the warriors on the
battlefield.
As the pain and suffering in the world of the Iliad does
not follow a clear dichotomy between good and evil, the source of
conflict is complex and personal. The heroes struggle with hardships
they find all around them, as well as—in Ajax’s case—the evil they
find within themselves. In this regard, it is interesting that the
key turning point of the story is Achilles’ return to battle. This
is a moment of profound introspection for Achilles, who suffers
the death of a best friend he could have saved. Achilles sees that
Patroclus has died because he rushed to help his countrymen—something
that Achilles, out of wounded pride, would not do. The main struggle Achilles
faces, then, is not against a villainous foe but against his own
shortcomings and their consequences. Unlike fairy tales that inevitably
end with the death of the antagonist and the triumph of the hero,
the Iliad ends with death of the Trojan hero Hector,
a celebration of Hector’s courage, and a sober final statement on
the tragedy and conflict at the heart of human existence.
