Iliad Scholarship

• Graziozi

  • Achilles behaves more like a god than a human
• Achilles’ rage is transformed
• Haynes

  • Men lose their lives, women lose everything else
• Knox

  • Homer pretends not to know about Elysium, making death the ultimate sacrifice for humans
• Allan (war)

  • Homer sees and understands the reality of war: it is both horrible and glorious
  • Mortals have something that gives their lives meaning, gods don’t
• Jenkyns (Shame culture)

  • Underlying shame is what motivates the Greek warriors
• Jones

  • Greek gods are like blind forces…they act on impulse & are driven by pride & lust
• Jenkins (Gods)

  • Homer uses the Gods for literary & emotional effect
• Konstan

  • Achilles’ love for Patroclus is anti-social
  • Their friendship occupies the extreme end of friendship
• Schein (Hector & Achilles)

  • Hector is presented as quintessentially social & human while Achilles is inhumanly isolated & daemonic in his greatness
• Edith Hall

  • It is a woman’s role to express the pain
• Graziozi (Trojans vs Greeks)

  • Trojans are weaker due to their proximity to their women
• Barker

  • The most important theme of the Iliad is Achilles growing recognition of his mortality
• Haynes

  • Homer uses Andromache to embody what is at stake when a city loses a war
• Hauser

  • Achilles is reborn as a warrior
• Hauser

  • Helen becomes the anti-woman, what every man is afraid of
• Jenkyns

  • Thetis knows the depth of emotion unlike the other gods
• Fitton

  • Shield is a microcosm for human existence
• Hauser

  • Perhaps Helen wants a reaction, and manipulates those around her into giving her sympathy
• Jenkyns

  • Helen gives an unusually large amount of speech for a woman
• Hauser

  • The Gods have laughed at the suffering
• Jones

  • It is not Patroclus‘ fighting abiliy that will be his undoing, it will be his desire to go too far