The Achaeans are continually beaten down until finally, a nighttime mission conducted by Odysseus and Diomedes allows them to uncover Trojan war plans. There are many outstanding duels between figures such as Paris and Menelaus as well as Ajax and Hector. With Zeus on the side of the Trojans and Achilles refusing to fight, the Achaeans begin to suffer grave losses in the war. He enlists the services of Zeus, king of the gods, to slant the battling against the Achaeans so that they will lose the war. Achilles is insulted and furious and refuses to fight against the Trojans anymore. He then demands that Achilles give him Briseis. Many Achaeans die from this plague, Agamemnon reluctantly sends Chryseis home. Her father is a priest of the god Apollo, so Chryseis prays to Apollo who hears her and send a plague to the Achaean camp. Chryseis’s father puts out a ransom for his daughter to come home, but Agamemnon refuses. He keeps Chryseis and gives Briseis to Achilles. When, after nine years of fighting with the Trojans, the Greeks (Achaeans) capture two young maidens, the Achaean leader Agamemnon takes them as war prizes. The Iliad and The Odyssey are two of the greatest examples of the epic poem genre to this day for this reason. This gives the poem a historical context as well that not only helps people understand the oral tradition of storytelling and the values of these ancient people but the social and political context in which they operated. To live like a god would live meant that a human had high moral superiority.įurthermore, although the Trojan year was believed to be fictious for a long time, there is now archeological evidence that Troy really existed and possibly did fall to the Greeks. Because of this, many humans lived up to values that were godly in nature-heroic qualities such as super-human strength, bravery, honesty, etc. Many philosophers believed that the Bronze Age was a time of moral and artistic superiority in which humans worked in tandem with the gods and were punished for going against the gods.
What is The Iliad About? Set in the Bronze Age, The Iliad provides a historical look at how society in this time view morality and heroism. Major Symbols: The shield of Achilles The Greek shipsĬlimax: Achilles returns to the war and the Trojans suffer a great defeat, ensuring the fall of Troy. Plot: Past tense, told by an omniscient third person narrator. Achilles then refuses to fight in the Greek army, which causes them to suffer losses to the Trojans. Apollo hears her prayers and sends a plague to the Greek military camp.Ĭonflict: Agamemnon demands Achilles’s war prize (the maiden Briseis), which hurts Achilles’s pride greatly. Chryseis’s father offers a ransom for his daughter, but Agamemnon refuses to return her. The Greek army captures Chryseis and Briseis, two beautiful maidens from an ally town to Troy. Homer’s name can be translated from a word that means blind, but the vivid imagery of the Iliad and the Odyssey suggest that the author of the poems must have had sight at some point in his life.Major Thematic Elements: The glory of war heroes military victories valued above personal life the fleeting nature of human existenceĮxposition: It is nine years after the beginning of the Trojan War. The language of the Iliad and the Odyssey suggest that Homer came from the western coast of the modern nation of Turkey. Modern scholars believe the Iliad and the Odyssey are based on oral legends, but the epics are often attributed to a storyteller named Homer. As the Trojans slept, Greek soldiers emerged from their hiding place inside the wooden horse, opened the city gates, and began to burn the sleeping city.
After a great victory celebration of their defeat of the Greek army, the people of Troy slept for the night. The joyous Trojans opened the city gates and pulled in the giant statue. The Greek navy pretended to sail away, but they only sailed out to a hidden location. The Greeks left a huge wooden horse as a peace offering to the Trojans.
The war began after a Trojan prince named Paris kidnapped Helen.Īccording to the Odyssey, the Trojan War ended when the Greeks pretended to give up their quest for Helen. The Trojan War was fought over Helen, who according to legend was the beautiful daughter of Zeus and the wife of the king of the Greek polis of Sparta. The two oldest surviving examples of Greek literature are the Iliadand the Odyssey, epic poems that describe the Trojan War, a conflict between the Greeks and the city of Troy that the epics say was fought almost 1200 years before the Common Era.
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