Glory in the Iliad

“Then the screaming and shouts of triumph rose up together, of men killing and men killed, and the ground ran blood.” From first examination the Iliad seems to be an epic founded on an idealized form of glory, the kind that young boys think about when they want to join the army. A place full of heroism and manliness where glory can be achieved with a few strokes of a sword and then you go home and everything is just lovely. Many people view the Iliad this way, based on it’s many vivid battle descriptions and apparent lack of remorse for the deaths that occur. This, however, is not how war is presented in the Iliad. Homer presents a very practical outlook on war countering the attainment of the glory with the reality of its price and the destruction it causes. He successfully does this by showing the value of the lives of each person that dies and, in a sense, mourning their passing, describing the terror and ugliness of war, and, through the characters of Achilleus and Hector, displaying the high price of glory.

The Iliad is full to the brim of epithets describing the many major and minor characters. These short descriptive titles contain themes that range from a person’s strengths to his family history. Many of the characters who receive these are only mentioned once, when they die. It lends a sense of sadness to these passings, which would have been insignificant if nothing had been known about them. In Book 4 this can be seen in the killing of a Trojan, the son of Anthemonian Simoeisios, by Aias. The scene of his death is described quite vividly as incredibly grotesque, but not until after Homer describes his family and how “he could not again render again the care of his dear parents, for he was shortlived.” Even...

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...fated to either go home and be forgotten, or to fight and die, winning great glory to be remembered forever.

The price that heroes pay for the glory they obtain is something readily forgotten if one does not read The Iliad in the context of the times. In the time of the Iliad, glory and honor was even more important than it was now. One can get easily get lost in the descriptive nature of the epic poem, which gives reason to a belief that the Iliad is simply a glorification of combat, however, this is not the case. The Iliad is based on much deeper principles than combat, it glorifies the search for honor and the sacrifices that great men will take to achieve this honor. If Achilleus had not rejoined his comrades, taking pity on them, he would never be remembered even if he still had great prowess in battle, because he did not use it to help help his friends.