July 17, 2026
Thanks to Alissa Simon, HMU Tutor, for today’s post.
Recently, I’ve been talking a lot about fate. For example, in The Iliad, everyone knows the fate of Achilles – even Achilles. In fact, Achilles’ death is so unimportant to the telling of the tale, that it’s not even included in the book. This confirms that the end of the story is less important than the arc of the journey.
In truth, though, I have long struggled with The Iliad. To my mind, Achilles and Agamemnon demonstrate such poor leadership skills that my younger self wondered why they’re players on the main stage at all. In addition, I dislike blood and gore and warfare and, unfortunately for me, The Iliad is full of blood and gore and warfare. For example, Achilles’ relentless brutality leaves me breathless, speechless, and hopeless. I now understand that this is as it should be. It is part of the arc of Achilles. He is greater in every way than the average warrior. His strength is better. His weapons are fashioned by Hephaestus himself. And, his wrath is more than human. Achilles is a hero due to his awesome abilities, but still I cannot admire him.
Recently, I re-read The Iliad with colleagues and attended a few lectures led by translator and classicist Emily Wilson (hosted by The Academy of American Poets). Together, they have helped me come to terms with my own shortcomings as a reader of The Iliad. Perhaps I have not given Achilles his due.
First of all, I must accept that Achilles is a hero in the Greek sense of the word. He is not a comic book hero who saves little children from destructive forces. Instead, he is a strong warrior. And in order to be a hero to the Greek world, he displayed amazing skills on the battlefield. His glory depends upon might, power, prowess, confidence, arrogance, etc. All of these traits – even the ones that I find distasteful – make him a hero in the Greek world. I must also ask whether or not it is possible for me to admire Achilles since I know nothing of a battlefield. I have no reference points for his day to day experiences. Not only do we live millenniums apart, we live worlds apart too.
Secondly, while readers know that Achilles will eventually join the fight, the book does an excellent job of tension-building. His stubborn refusal to engage in battle lasts for nearly two thirds of the book. During this time, many of his friends are killed, wealthy and respected warriors come to assuage his anger, and his best friend enters the fight. But he remains in camp by the boats. During this time, Achilles revisits his fate. This is crucial for the reader.
Achilles knows that he will die, but has the choice to die young and heroic, or old and forgotten. Thetis, his divine mother, laments Achilles’ options: to be the most honored warrior but die young, or to go back home and live a long life with no glory. After the death of Patroclos, his best friend, Achilles anger pulls him into the fight. Thus, Achilles has chosen his own fate.
According to Emily Wilson, the first word of The Iliad translates as something like divine wrath or divine anger. Her translation reads: “Goddess, sing of the cataclysmic wrath/ of great Achilles, son of Peleus,/ which caused the Greeks immeasurable pain/ and sent so many noble souls of heroes/ to Hades.” Divine anger strikes me as something larger, more aggressive, and more dangerous than human anger. Divine anger leads me into thoughts of absolute injustice and despair. Divine anger incorporates complete darkness and irreversible loss. All of this is true in The Iliad.
Previously, I thought that the anger within Achilles was divine. I felt the entire book to be about Achilles’ more than mortal anger. Born from a god, his anger might surpass human boundaries. But now I believe that there’s more to it than that. The very first line also asks the goddess to sing of human battles. Why? What interest do the gods have in mortal fights? A few lines later, the narrator continues: “Which god set/ the pair apart and prompted them to fight?” In other words, not only is Achilles part divine, but the gods haven’t merely been watching…they’ve been meddling. So, the emotions which drive this conflict are supra human, not superhuman. Gods don’t experience the emotions…they watch them. Achilles’ anger isn’t stronger because he’s divine. Instead, the situation is all the more dire because this is a battle for honor, glory, and nobility. “Cataclysmic wrath” enters the human world when we encounter an event beyond reckoning, as Achilles has. As they all have.
It turns out that I have been ungrateful to Achilles (and to Homer) because of the ways in which “cataclysmic wrath” challenges my world view. I am now learning – much like Priam – to find grace in the darkest of places.
Next week, we’ll continue with The Iliad, and hopefully proceed past the first page.
Photo credit: Achilles and Agamemnon, scene from Book I of the Iliad, Roman mosaic from the Casa di Apollo (VI, 7, 23), Pompeii. This work is in the public domain.
