Violence is most commonly thought of as force that causes physical harm, but it is not always a physical force. Hurt caused by violence can not only be physical, but it can also be emotional and psychological. In The Iliad by Homer all of these types of violence are evident. In the first book Achilles and Agamemnon are fighting with each other because of a girl. Agamemnon has a priest’s daughter and the priest wants her back, but Agamemnon will not give her up. The priest prays to Apollo and asks him to fire arrows on Agamemnon’s army. Apollo listens and for nine days the gods shoot arrows at the army. Calchas tells the army that they must give the priest’s daughter back in order to win back the favor of the god’s. Achilles convinces Agamemnon …show more content…
After Agamemnon sets his sights on Achilles’ girl they get into a huge linguistic fight. “No, you colossal, shameless-we all followed you, to please you, to fight for you, to win your honor back from the Trojans- Menelaus and you, you dog-face! What do you care? Nothing. You don’t look right or left. And now you threaten me of my prize in person- the one I fought for long and hard, and sons of Achaea handed her to me.” Achilles feels that Agamemnon has no right to take his prize. He has done so much for Agamemnon and has gotten little to nothing in return, except for this girl. He knows that in the end he will have to give her up and that anger causes him to start a fight with Agamemnon. For the better part of this chapter Agamemnon and Achilles are calling each other names such as dog face, and arguing over who really deserves the girl as their prize. While it seems like a petty argument, it is actually a form of violence. In some cases all it takes is a few words to tear someone down completely. Violence like this is very common in today’s world, and is more prominent that physical violence. Linguistic violence can get into someone’s heads and completely rip them apart. Words can cause people to self-destruct. Without a doubt this what the purpose of Achilles and Agamemnon in The Iliad Book One. They wanted to get into each other’s head and it worked, …show more content…
In this book the soldiers are really fighting a war that they cannot control. They are relying on their strength and strategy to get them through, but what they really should be doing is making sure that the gods are on their side. “But you- exalt him, Olympian Zeus: your urgings rule the world! Come, grant the Trojans victory after victory till the Achaean armies pay my dear son back, building higher the honor he deserves!” Zeus single handedly had the power to change the outcome of the war and he did. He agreed to help Achilles get revenge on Agamemnon. This is one kind of violence that no one in this story could escape from because no one could stop the will of the gods. Cosmic violence also has to do with the environment. The culture of a society has so much to do with the people that exist in it. This means that the violence is almost chemical because people are born and raised with it. It becomes a part of them. In this story all of the men live to fight in wars and show their bravery which contributes to the violence that is shown in the first chapter. Violence is practically inescapable. Could the world exist without violence? Stories such as this one tend to show that the world cannot exist without violence because that is what people are raised to take part
Throughout the Iliad the warriors' dream of peace is projected over and over again in elaborate similes developed against a background of violence and death. Homer is able to balance the celebration of war's tragic, heroic values with scenes of battle and those creative values of civilized life that war destroys. The shield of Achilles symbolically represents the two poles of human condition, war and peace, with their corresponding aspects of human nature, the destructive and creative, which are implicit in every situation and statement of the poem and are put before us in something approaching abstract form; its emblem is an image of human life as a whole.
Throughout history, people evaluated themselves and others based on moral judgements. The basis of those evaluations changed over time. In the Homeric period, from approximately 1200-800 BCE, people practiced “warrior ethics.” Warrior ethics were based on teleology, meaning all things had a purpose/function in society. The concept of good/bad was directly related to how well the function was performed. For example, a warrior was considered good when he was an excellent warrior and bad if he performed poorly. In Homeric times, excellence was considered god-like.
The first line of the Iliad describes a human emotion that leads to doom and destruction in Homer's poetic tale of the Trojan War. Achilles' rage is a major catalyst in the action in the Iliad. It is his rage that makes him both withdraw from and, later, rejoin the war with a fury. Why is Achilles enraged? Is his rage ignited solely by his human adversaries or do the gods destine him to the experience? Achilles' rage has many facets. His rage is a personal choice and, at times, is created by the gods.
Throughout the Iliad, Homer portraits the extent to which honor plays a role in the lives of Greeks and the manner in which they are willing to sacrifice in order to reach their goals. The Iliad is set during the Trojan War, a particularly long and bloody war, fought not over boundary disagreements, and not over political conflicts, and not to protect the nation. Rather, it was a war fought to defend the personal honor. The possession of women was important to a man’s standing and honor. Paris’ theft of Helen struck a huge blow to the honor of Menelaus and becomes the initial cause of the Trojan War. Consequently, Menelaus, the Spartan ruler, called upon his brother Agamemnon to gather the Greek forces to launch the war against Paris demanding the return of Helen and reinstating the honor for the king. The war lasted for ten years and cost innumerable Greeks’ lives and brought incurable pain upon their families. To Greek heroes, honor is more important than their life as much as that life would be meaningless without it, and they even willingly sacrifice their lives in order...
Achilles anger was a predominant theme in the Iliad. It led to Patrokolos, death, Hektor’s death and a great many other Trojan deaths. Achilles was a very powerful Greek warrior, he had many faults but one of his most prominent was his uncontrollable anger. Multiple times throughout the Iliad his anger had for reaching effects on the war and people around him. These effects were not usually favorable to anyone. There are three main occurrences that led Achilles’ anger down devastating paths. The first was when Agamemnon took Achilles’ girlfriend. When this happened, Achilles felt robbed because Brisies, his girlfriend, represented his might and the glory of his conquests. In the Greek culture, glory and honor were highly esteemed. This is why
Agamemnon demands, the "Argives will give me a prize, a match for my desires, equal to what I have lost, well and good. But if they give me nothing I will take a prize myself (1.159-62)." When Achilles confronts Agamemnon about this, Agamemnon responds, "You are nothing to me--you and your overweening anger! ...
In the Iliad, revenge is the cause of many problems. There are main concepts that lead to having revenge in which it is pride, rage and emotional charged. Pride can lead to revenge by disbelieving in someone’s own dignity. Rage can also result into having revenge by making a person become full of anger to the point that they can not hold it back any more. Emotional charged can result to revenge by someone who is very emotional and starts to have a negative aspect to what has happened. In the Iliad, revenge causes problems where justice is the solution to those problems, as seen through Achilles and Hector.
The question "was Achilles' anger justified" brings up issues that seem to have little or no relevance to the war. In time of war I would expect the leaders to prioritize the groups interest for the sake of unity and cooperation rather than being entrenched in achieving their own personal goals. But my expectations are those of a modern day literature student, I'm inclined to think that the Greeks who first read this epic valued different things than myself. Another relevant question might be "were Achilles' actions justified". Anger can be easily justified, but the actions that anger might lead you to take are not as easily justified. Again I am not an ancient Greek and my opinions are irrelevant unless I open my mind to different viewpoints. Therefore I am striving to look into this issue through ancient Greek eyes where the principle of sacrificing ones own interests was apparently not valued, but maintaining ones honor, on the other hand, was greatly valued. In the following paragraphs I will attempt to answer these two aforementioned questions.
“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.
In Homer’s Iliad, the reader can see there are many situations that show Achilles has symptoms of Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder, known as PTSD. The Iliad is a story of the Trojan War, which was started by Agamemnon of Mycenae to attack Troy. Agamemnon was forced to give up a girl that he had taken in a raid, and then takes Briseis from Achilles as a trade for the girl. Then, Achilles becomes angry and wants to kill Agamemnon, but removes himself from the war. In The Iliad, Achilles emerges as the victim of war, as well as its brutal perpetrator through his violence and the events preceding it. Achilles experiences a combination of events which typically trigger PTSD, including betrayal, witnessing the deaths of comrades, and surviving the
Revenge in The Iliad it the main theme and drives men to do things that they would not normally do. The main example of this is Achilles wanting revenge on Agamemnon. The first book of the Iliad explains that Achilles wants revenge because Agamemnon is forced to return Chryseis, his war bride, to her father, and he decides to take Achilles war bride from him. According to “Some Thoughts about the Origins of ‘Greek Ethics’”, by Nicholas D. Smith, “Agamemnon’s unjust affront to Achilles leads to and extraordinarily deadly retaliation, the ultimate outcome of which is that multitudes of these men’s innocent allies are killed unnecessarily”(smith 10). This is out of character for Achilles, who would normally be the first man into battle, not sitting one out. By “rejecting even the most earnest and impressive entreaties Agamemnon offers, and increasingly making decisions which are rationally indefensible”, he shows how much his wanting of revenge has turned him into a madman (smith 10). His only desire is to get revenge for his loss. It takes the death of Patroclus, his dear friend, to bring him back to the war, which he has left.
Agamemnon tries to use Achilles rage and fury to get him to give up and retreat back to the army he left. Even though Achilles felt rage and sorrow, he keeps to his word. He wants to obey Athena’s orders of to not fight back. Although he is sad, he will not let Agamemnon’s threat get to his
The Iliad may be seen as an account of the circumstances that irrevocably alter the life of one man: Achilles, one of the greatest warriors. Throughout the course of the poem Achilles goes through many ordeals that change his character immensely. Starting with his quarrel with Agamemnon and withdrawal from battle, to the death of Patroklos, and with the slaying of Hektor. Achilles emotions and actions decide the fate of many warriors on both sides. Achilles struggles with anger, honor, pride, loyalty and love make the poem more that just a gruesome war story.
Homer's Iliad is commonly understood as an epic about the Trojan War, but its meaning goes deeper than that. The Iliad is not only a story of the evolution of Achilleus' persona, but at times it is an anti-war epic as well. The final book proposes many questions to the reader. Why not end with the killing of Hektor? Most stories of war conclude with the triumphant victory of good over evil, but in the Iliad, the final thoughts are inclined to the mourning of the defeated Hektor, which accentuates the fact that good has not triumphed over evil, but simply Achilleus triumphed over Hektor. Ending with the mourning of Hektor also brings to center stage for the first time the human side of war and the harsh aftermath of it. We see that war not only brings great glory, but also much suffering and anguish. Homer puts his anti-war views on display.
In the Greek society, Achilles has the role of the aggressive soldier. From the very first lines of the epic, we are introduced to Achilles’ murderous rage: