I've never been fond of excessive violence, especially in films.  Saving Private Ryan didn't bother me because it showed what war was like in WWII.  It wasn't glorifying violence by any stretch.  Violence wasn't the entertainment, it was the horror in war.  On the contrary, films like John Wick or Hostel have the violence take front and center.  The films have no important message, theme, or revelation.  The story is centered around delivering shock and violence as the entertainment device.  To be fair, movie lovers should watch what they want.  If excessive violence tickles their jollies, then by all means.  I simply think there is a line.  If violence naturally arises out of the story organically, then fine, but watching blood and gore to warm your belly at night is a bit sadistic.    
 
Yes, the Iliad is an extremely violent story.  It's about as violent as a story can be.  I give it a pass on my personal 'tasteful-violence-in-story' gauge, because the Iliad is about so much more than violence.  The gruesome death and gore, is, exactly what war was like when men hacked each other to pieces in hand-to-hand combat.  It wasn't pretty and it wasn't nice.  No doubt heroic tales were spun from great victories and heroes rising to the challenges against foes, but there was always much more at stake.  They didn't go to war for entertainment - they went for resources, they went for influence, and they went for survival.  Great warriors, friends, and family members died terrible deaths.  There was always the grief and anguish and tragedy that partnered the glory, the spoils, and the victory.  There was always a price for war. 

I was introduced to the war in the Iliad in high school my senior year in an English class.  Not that I finished the book.  At 18 years of age I was too busy with more important endeavors like drinking malt liquor with friends, chasing girls, and playing competitive sports - serious scholarship would have to wait.  There is no shame in postponing either, socializing is vital for personal growth; although I think an ongoing and permanent substitution of Netflix for the written word is probably a less than optimal long-term solution for character development.  Certainly, the golden age of television has continued on after The Sopranos and The Wire and other great shows.  For today a multitude of outlets await our credit cards with thousands of hours of high quality documentaries, fiction adaptations, original television shows, and much more, (although I do believe cinema has been in more of a lull).  Even so, the great written works provide us with a different view conjured from our imagination, our introspection, and our personal realizations.  We can internalize the story.  It leaves an imprint on our psyche that doesn't quite pass us by like the image flashes of the screen.  It's the difference between being shown a trick, and being part of the trick.  The great books bring us in to be part of the performance - we are active participants in the story.  If we meet the words halfway and with attention, then the truths are revealed for us to keep.  I was excited to finally revisit the Iliad after many years.  Meeting the story halfway revealed some truths that I wasn't ready to appreciate at 18, but I am today.

The Iliad takes places about a year before the Odyssey begins, although it's difficult to say with certainty.  Whereas the latter tale is more of a playful lyre meandering through harmonies and melodies then climaxing with a sort of cacophonous crescendo, the Iliad is a resounding bass war drum that plays throughout.  It may turn quiet and loud during ebbs and flows of story, but it never falters.  THOOM! THOOM! THOOM! as the rhythm of your heart might sound as you charge the enemy front lines in battle.  The Iliad is THE war epic.  Sit tight young-ins and protect your sensitive parts, it's about to get savage.
 
We begin our tale immersed in the Trojan War, precipitated after the abduction of Helen (apparently the most beautiful woman in the world), by the Paris, the prince of Troy.  Helen is married to Menelaus of Sparta (an Achaean) who takes up arms against the Trojans, along with many of his allies, to rescue his wife Helen.  There is little plot, beyond this, for the remainder of the story.  The Trojans and the Achaeans trade blows and insults, advances and retreats, engage in single combats, bury their fallen brothers, and plot strategies.  The end goal is group victory, and individual honor.  
 
A critical passage in the story sees Paris and Menelaus fight in a kind of trial-by-combat - a single combat to end the war.  The greatest Trojan warrior, Hector, pleads armies on both sides, "Hear me - Trojans, Achaeans geared for combat!  Hear the challenge of Paris, the man who caused our long hard campaign.  He urges all the Trojans, all the Argives too, to lay their fine armor down on the fertile earth while Paris himself and the warrior Menelaus take the field between you and fight it out for Helen and all her wealth in single combat.  And the one who proves the better man and wins, he'll take those treasures fairly, lead the woman home.  The rest will seal in blood their binding pacts of friendship."            
 
Both armies lay down their arms and dismount their chariots to watch Paris and Menelaus man-dance with weapons.  With luck, someone will die and they can all go home to their families.  Of course, it would not come to be.  After flinging spears at each other with no critical strikes, Menelaus draws his sword, then shatters it on Paris's helmet.  Now, without a weapon, Menelaus drags Paris by the horsehair crest on his helmet top, cinching the leather strap around his neck, strangling him.  Paris is soon to die if not for Aphrodite who swoops in and cuts the strap, releasing her beloved Paris from the constriction around his neck.  Menelaus springs forth with a spear ready to finish Paris only to see Aphrodite shroud him in mist and carry him safely off to his quarters.
 
This isn't the only time we see the gods intervene in the Trojan War.  After Diomedes, the Achaean king of Argos, stabs the goddess Aphrodite in the wrist in the midst of battle, Apollo beckons Ares to intervene:  "Ares, Ares, destroyer of men, reeking blood, stormer of ramparts, can't you go and drag that man from the fighting?  That daredevil Diomedes, he'd fight Father Zeus!  He's just assaulted Love, he stabbed her wrist - like something superhuman he even charged at me!"  Ares, the god of war, with inspiration from Apollo, charges the lines alongside Hector cutting down Achaeans with fury. 
 
More gods and goddesses enter the fray as Hera pleads with Athena, "What disaster!  Daughter of storming Zeus, tireless one, Athena - how hollow our vow to Menelaus that he would sack the mighty walls of Troy before he sailed for home - if we let murderous Ares rampage on this way.  Up now, set our minds on our own fighting-fury!"  Together, they go to Olympus to discuss their plan with Zeus, and to seek his blessing, "Father Zeus, look - aren't you incensed at Ares and all his brutal work?  Killing so many brave Achaeans for no good reason, not a shred of decency, just to wound my heart!  While there they sit at their royal ease, exulting, the goddess of love and Apollo lord of the silver bow:  they loosed this maniac Ares - he has no sense of justice."  Zeus gives them approval, and soon they are beckoning the Argives to stand and fight.  Athena boards a chariot with Diomedes (who dared to challenge the gods), and charges at Ares "...the blood-smeared Ares was tearing off his gear but Athena donned the dark helmet of Death so not even stark Ares could see her now."  And then, "But Athena, her eyes afire, grabbed the flying shaft, flicked it over the car and off it flew for nothing - and after Diomedes yelled his war cry, lunging out with his own bronze spear and Pallas [Athena] rammed it home, deep in Ares' bowels where the belt cinched him tight.  There Diomedes aimed and stabbed, he gouged him down his glistening flesh and wrenched the spear back out and the brazen god of war let loose a shriek, roaring, thundering loud as nine, ten thousand combat soldiers shriek with Ares' fury when massive armies clash.  A shudder swept all ranks, Trojans and Argives both, terror-struck by the shriek the god let loose, Ares whose lust for slaughter never dies."  
 
Of course, like Aphrodite earlier, Ares simply flies to Olympus with his wounds - mortal wounds for any mortal - then whines and begs Zeus for pain-killing drugs and healing, (which he promptly receives).  Following his healing treatment we find Ares once again in good spirits, "And Hebe washed him clean, dressed him in robes to warm his heart, and flanking the son of Cronus [Zeus] down he sat, Ares exultant in the glory of it all."  Soon enough, Ares will return to what he knows best - war and slaughter. 
 
For Athena and Hera, their motivations reside elsewhere.  Hera is the champion of marriage and Athena is the strategic war goddess, known for her cunning, her wisdom, and law and justice.  The Trojan War is more than two sides siding with and fighting for their royal rulers.  It's the epic battle between chaos and order writ large, occupied by gods as polar coordinates on a kind of grid graph, if you will.  Aphrodite, the goddess of beauty, love, and pleasure sides with the Trojan prince Paris, whom abducted Helen for her beauty.  Contrast this with Hera, the goddess of marriage and family who sides with the Achaean Menelaus, the man married to Helen.  Likewise, we see Ares side with the Trojans, the side that started the conflict by way of Helen's abduction.  With the normal order out of balance and tempers high, Ares can thrive.  His goal is carnage and blood - even when he's stabbed in the bowels and must flee to Olympus in childish agony, he's "exultant in the glory of it all" after healing from his wound.  Contrast this with Athena, who sides with the Achaeans.  Athena brings with her the spirit of law of order to the pandemonium.  How can she stand aside while the maniac Ares gets high-as-a-kite on blood-lust?  She must restore the balance and assist the army on the side of returning Helen to Menelaus, and order to the land.  
 
Above it all sits Zeus, the god of gods with his divine scales.  Zeus is the grand arbiter in the fates of men and armies.  The other gods and goddesses intervene sometimes with his blessing, other times in disguise or in secret, but Zeus holds the keys in the long game.  It's unclear, exactly, what kind of output he desires in the Trojan War - and he is subject to reasonable persuasion - but there is an overarching sense that he has a master plan for the future of the people.  It's a position of divine fate that he holds.  When Hector and Achilles finally meet in battle, we see a concrete example of his power, but also part of his ambiguity, "...then Father Zeus held out his sacred golden scales: in them he placed two fates of death that lays men low - one for Achilles, one for Hector breaker of horses - and gripping the beam mid-haft the Father raised it high and down went Hector's day of doom, dragging him down to the strong House of Death - and god Apollo left him."  So yes, Zeus decides; but it is through the sacred golden scales.  What are the sacred golden scales?  Surely, a metaphysical tone is imbued here, something even beyond the whims of the gods, perhaps.   
 
Weaved into the story, and to me, more than anything, is the notion of honor among men.  As in the Odyssey, the Iliad is preoccupied with living, fighting, and dying with honor - protecting and elevating the name of the house in the face of fate influenced by the gods and goddesses.  How will Hector confront his fate?  We already have a glimpse earlier in the story when he clashes with his comrade Polydamas.  As word spreads amongst the Trojans that Achilles is plotting against them, Polydamas suggests that the army remain inside the city walls of Troy, to which Hector c0unters, "I for one, I'll never run from grim assault, I'll stand up to the man [Achilles] - see if he bears off glory or I bear it off myself! The god of war is impartial: he hands out death to the man who hands out death."  When Achilles and Hector finally meet in battle, Hector's fate is already sealed by way of Zeus and his golden scales.  The rage of Achilles, however, shows little mercy.  As Hector gasps for dying breath after Achilles thrusts a spear through his neck, a simple request is made.  Hector asks that his body be given back to his people for a proper burial.  Instead, after Hector dies, Achilles and his men desecrate Hector's body.  Following this, Achilles ties Hector's body to the back of a chariot and drags his mangled corpse across the battlefield in view of Trojan royalty.  Achilles, what a guy.  Of course, his excessive celebration, (or hubris if you will), later leads to his own death by courtesy of a poison arrow to the heel, shot by the one-and-only prince Paris of Troy.  (As a side note, Achilles is half-god and the only way he can die is through his heel, the singular part of his body not dipped in the magical water of immortality by his mother Thetis - hence the phrase referring to a person's weakness as their "Achilles' heel").
 
After some intervention by the gods and goddesses and following a meeting between Achilles and Priam, the king of Troy, Hector's body is returned to Troy to the consolation of the Trojans, particularly his mother Hecuba.  The story ends not with the gods and goddesses, and not with the rage of Achilles or the rescue of Helen, nor with any other Achaean heroes like Odysseus, Menelaus, or Agamemnon.  Instead we end with the Trojan, Hector, breaker of horses, "At last, when young Dawn with her rose-red fingers shone once more, the people massed around illustrious Hector's pyre...And once they'd gathered, crowding the meeting grounds, they first put out the fires with glistening wine, wherever the flames still burned in all their fury...And once they'd heaped the mound they turned back home to Troy, and gathering once again they shared a splendid funeral feast in Hector's honor, held in the house of Priam, king by will of Zeus.  And so the Trojans buried Hector breaker of horses."  This is the end of the Iliad.  It concludes with a famous, honorable warrior receiving a proper burial.  
 
In the end, the Iliad isn't only about the gods and goddesses, although they certainly play a central role.  Beyond our main characters on the side of the Achaeans and the Trojans, it's also about Apisaon, son of Phausias, killed by Eurypylus; it's about Helenus, son of Oenops, killed by Hector; it's about Pisander, son of Antimachus, killed by Agamemnon; and it's about Hector, son of Priam, supreme commander of the Trojans, killed by Achilles.  It's a war between men and there's a price to pay for the soldiers and their families.  From Achilles's grief at the death of Patroclus, his brother-in-arms, to the agony of Hecuba at the death of her son Hector, the suffering, brutality, and deep sorrow of war in the Iliad isn't concealed or glossed over.  The pain is felt as much as the story's heroism and violence is real.  The excessive violence and scheming by the gods may be entertainment enough for some, but the real glory of the Iliad is the men high and low: the leaders, the scouts, the shield bearers, and the foot soldiers, whom willfully charge into battle, mortality in the balance, in the great eternal war between justice and slaughter, marriage and passion, rage and temperance, and cowardice and honor.  
 
 
 
Summary:  Balanced and brutal, personal and universal, the epic Iliad captures the spirit of war and loss with powerful elucidation.  
 
Rating:  8.5

-E.B.
2018-05-30