The Iliad, by Homer: Summary and Analysis

Homer's Iliad is one of the most famous books about the Trojan War, yet it barely speaks of the war itself. It tells of the anger of a single warrior, Achilles, and asks a question that every adult has faced in an argument: what should we do with anger that is justified? The summary below follows the poem's own narrative sequence, and the central thesis arrives at the end, once all the pieces are on the table.

What the Iliad does not tell

To understand the Iliad, it helps to know first what it leaves out. It does not narrate the entire Trojan War, nor the abduction of Helen, nor the wooden horse offered by the Greeks, nor the death of Achilles or the heel of Achilles. The poem covers only the final weeks of the last year of the war. Praise for this choice is ancient: Aristotle, in the Poetics, says that Homer seems divine compared to other poets precisely because he did not attempt to narrate the war in its entirety.

And what he does narrate is announced in the very first word. The opening verse is mênin áeide: "Sing, goddess, of the wrath." The first word is mênis, wrath. The poem does not begin with Troy or with war: it begins with rage. Nor does it concern just any hero, but the wrath of one specific warrior, Achilles.

The plague, the insult, and the withdrawal of Achilles

When the poem begins, the war has already lasted nine years, and the Greeks' first problem does not come from Troy: it comes from within their own camp. Agamemnon, commander of the Greeks, keeps the daughter of a priest of Apollo as a prize of war. The father comes to ransom her with rich gifts, the entire camp considers it fair to return her, and Agamemnon drives the old man away with insults. Apollo responds with a plague, and many warriors die.

Achilles convenes an assembly, and the seer reveals the cause. Agamemnon then agrees to return the priest's daughter, but seizes Achilles' prize for himself, a young woman named Briseis. Notice that he does not need her: he wants to show who is in charge, and in doing so humiliates the greatest of the Greek warriors before everyone.

Achilles draws his sword, and then a curious detail occurs: the goddess Athena appears to him alone, catches him by his hair, and he sheathes the blade. He obeys the goddess, not the king. But his anger does not fade. Achilles withdraws from the war and begs his mother, the goddess Thetis, to intercede so that the Greeks will suffer defeat. Zeus grants the request with a nod of his head, and Olympus trembles.

Here lies the first knot of the thesis. Achilles' anger is justified, because Agamemnon committed an act of sheer arrogance and humiliated him without cause. But what Achilles demands in return is that his own army be defeated. A just grievance demands an unjust punishment.

Hector and Andromache: the tenderest scene belongs to the Trojans

Then enters the greatest warrior of Troy, Hector, son of Priam and brother of Paris, the one who abducted Helen. In the midst of battle he returns to the city and meets his wife, Andromache, who pleads with him not to go back to combat: Achilles has already killed her father and her seven brothers, and Hector is all she has left. Hector knows that Troy is doomed to fall. What frightens him most is not his own death, but knowing that his wife will become a slave to the Greeks.

He stretches out his arms to his son, who takes fright at the horsehair crest on the helmet and shrinks back toward the nurse. The parents smile, Hector takes off his helmet, embraces the boy, and prays to the gods that one day people will say the son was far braver than the father. Then he returns to battle (Book VI). Notice what Homer has done: the poem is Greek, sung for Greeks, yet the tenderest scene in the entire epic is dedicated to the Trojans. It is this impartiality that the critic Otto Maria Carpeaux points to when he observes that Homer is Greek, but takes no sides.

The embassy and the two destinies of Achilles

Without Achilles, the Greeks begin to lose. Agamemnon then does what he has not done in the entire poem: he sends an apology and offers everything, gold, jewels, horses, kingdoms, and Briseis herself, untouched. Three chieftains carry the offer, and Achilles refuses it all. He declares, in Book IX, that his life is worth more than all the treasures Troy ever possessed.

He reveals why. Thetis told him that two fates await him: either he remains before Troy, fights, and dies with glory, or he returns home, lives in peace, and is forgotten. He announces that he will sail away the following morning. That word, glory, is the Greek kléos: to be spoken of, to be remembered, to have one's story told. Glory, here, is not glamour: it is endurance.

Compare the two scenes. Hector returns to the war knowing that Troy will fall; Achilles, knowing he will die if he stays, hesitates. It is the same question, what a life is worth, with two different answers. If you wish to trace this thread in detail, the article What a Life Is Worth: The Choice of Achilles explores it.

Patroclus: the fire consumes the one Achilles loved most

From the stern of his ship, Achilles watches the Greeks being driven back and sends his closest friend, Patroclus, to inquire about a wounded soldier. Homer, as he so often does, suspends the scene and foretells the end: in Book XI, he remarks that this mundane request was the beginning of Patroclus's doom. Patroclus returns in tears and implores Achilles to rejoin the fighting. Achilles refuses to go, but lends his armor so that the Trojans will mistake his friend for him and retreat.

Achilles prays to Zeus for two things: that Patroclus save the Greek ships and return unharmed. Zeus grants only the first. Patroclus rescues the fleet, but exceeds his bounds and storms toward the walls of Troy. The one who disarms him first is a god, Apollo, who strikes him from behind, knocks off his helmet, and shatters his spear. Only then does a Trojan wound him, and only afterward does Hector deliver the final blow. Patroclus goes into battle clad as Achilles and dies in his stead. The story of this death has its own article: Who Killed Patroclus?.

Renouncing anger: wrath changes targets

When the news arrives, Achilles collapses to the ground, covers himself in ash, and tears at his hair. His mother rises from the sea to console him and gives warning: if he kills Hector, he will die shortly after. He accepts immediately. Notice the transformation: after the embassy, he refused gold, lands, and Briseis out of love for life; now he surrenders his life without a second thought. It is not for glory, it is for revenge.

He makes peace with Agamemnon and, in Book XIX, declares that he renounces his anger. Yet the anger has not ended: it has merely shifted targets. Mênis transforms into hýbris, unrestrained excess. What follows is the most terrifying Achilles of the epic, described like a wildfire sweeping through the woods. He slaughters so many that the river Xanthus itself, choked with corpses, rises in protest (Book XXI).

Hector flees: the three circuits

The Trojans take refuge within the city; Hector alone remains outside to face Achilles, despite the desperate pleas of his father and mother. And then he runs. He circles the city walls three times fleeing his foe, a scene many mistake for cowardice. Homer makes no secret of his fear, but places a poignant detail along the path of the chase: Hector runs past the washing springs where the women once washed clothes in times of peace. The most violent sequence of the book cuts across the setting of ordinary daily life. This is the detail examined in the article Hector Flees from Achilles: The Detail of the Three Laps.

Hector proposes a pact: let the victor return the fallen man's body for proper funeral rites. Achilles refuses: between men and lions there can be no pacts (Book XXII). Hector falls, begging that his body not be fed to the dogs, and Achilles denies the plea. He ties the corpse to his chariot and drags it before the eyes of Hector's parents. Andromache, at home, prepares a hot bath, waiting for her husband's return. For twelve days, every morning, Achilles drags the corpse around Patroclus's tomb. He has conquered, but he cannot stop. The one who condemns him is not a fellow Greek, but a god: Apollo declares, in Book XXIV, that all pity has perished in the son of Peleus, meaning Achilles.

Priam in the tent: the fire begins to die down

The gods command the old king to do the impossible. King Priam sets out by night, carries treasures for ransom, enters the enemy's tent, kneels down, and kisses the hands of the man who slaughtered his son. He asks only to embrace his boy one last time. In Book XXIV he says he is doing what no mortal has ever done on earth: kissing the hands of the man who killed his sons.

Achilles weeps, and weeps in a manner very different from his mourning for Patroclus. He sees in the old man his own father, Peleus, who will never see his son again, because the fate Achilles chose binds him to Troy. The two weep for different reasons: Priam for his son, Achilles for his father and his fallen friend. It is there that the fire that could never be quenched begins to subside. Achilles surrenders the body and grants an eleven-day truce for the funeral rites. The epic does not end with the fall of Troy. It ends with a funeral, in the closing line of Book XXIV (24.804): the funeral of Hector, tamer of horses. The poem that opens with the wrath of a warrior concludes with the burial of his enemy. This resolution is the subject of Why Achilles Weeps Before Priam and How the Iliad Ends.

The thesis: justified anger destroys as well

Bring together what we have traced: the righteous indignation of a man who begs the gods for an unjust punishment; the question of what a life is worth, answered in two divergent ways; an anger that shifts targets and becomes destructive excess; and a tent where the tears of two men who have lost everything finally extinguish the flame. What remains is the part that speaks to us.

The Iliad does not teach us to avoid anger, for Achilles had legitimate grounds, and the poem acknowledges them. It shows instead that justified anger, righteous indignation, wounds even those who do not deserve it, because an unchecked passion consumes everything in its path. Victory did not extinguish the wrath of Achilles. The grief of another did. Hence the practical conclusion of this lecture: in your next conflict, the primary question may not be deciding who is right, but asking what the person on the other side is suffering. Aristotle already noted, in the Rhetoric (Book II), that anger brings a certain pleasure, sweet as honey: when we are in the wrong, our anger fades because we know our guilt; when we are in the right, it lingers. This is the anger the poem investigates, and the wrath of Achilles is its most thorough study.

Continue reading: Which Portuguese Translation of the Iliad to Read · The Wrath of Achilles: Why the Iliad Begins with Anger · The Odyssey, by Homer: summary and analysis · Caravaggio and Bernini, the birth of Baroque
Source lecture: Ilíada, de Homero