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Iliad Passage The Iliad is a poem sung about the wrath of a hero, and it is filled with the names of noble warriors. Without the honor and glory of Hektor and Achilles, there would be no story, but this is not simply a book about 2 men - nor even only about men with names. For between the moments of aristae for those named heroes, the poetry tells of us the battles as they truly were: war. It was a war full of heroes, indeed, but also a war full of nameless men dying on the ends of spears. And so lines 430 thru 438 of Book 12 are important ones, because they are the lines that underscore the entire poem and explain perfectly the many facets of the Trojan War. "Everywhere the battlements and the bastions were awash with men's blood shed from both sides, Achaian and Trojan. But even so, they could not drive panic among the Achaians, but held evenly as the scales which a careful widow holds, taking it by the balance beam, and weighs her wool evenly at either end, working to win a pitiful wage for her children: so the battles fought by both sides were pulled fast and even until that time when Zeus gave the greater glory to Hektor, Priam's son, who was first to break in to the wall of the Achaian's." In the first part, the blood spilt everywhere is not of any one hero, but of those many men on both sides who died without their names remembered. But the reference to the widow in the second part obliquely reminds the reader that the nameless men had stories, too. When a hero cut down five faceless men, he also sent five families into poverty. A hero's widow still had glory through her dead husband (as Hektor reminds Andromache), but a poor man's widow was forced into a situation where she had to provide for herself and her family in a world where women were not meant to support themselves or their families. It is a pitiful thought, indeed. The second part serves another purpose, too: the reference to the widow is not merely a reminder of the effect of war on families, it is also an metaphor for the evenness of the war. It is perfectly balanced, so perfectly balanced that it has been going on for nine years, and now the Achaians think they are ahead, but now the Trojans think they will win. Hektor knows the will of the Gods in the end, as does the reader, but the armies themselves are too evenly matched to easily call the outcome. The will of the Gods themselves is, however, another important aspect of The Iliad, and it is explained quite well in the third part of the passage. It acknowledges the equality of the two forces, but then qualifies it with the statement that the equality will only last so long as Zeus (and the occasionally other gods in other cases) wants it to stay that way. If Zeus feels like changing it up to give someone special honor, why, he will! The fickleness of the Gods is known to everyone, and Asios laments the "deceitfulness" of Zeus when he cannot defeat the Lapithai at the gate in lines 164 thru 172 of Book 12 - but even though he fought for the same side as Hektor, Zeus didn't wasn't ready to step in and change things yet, and so, "He spoke, but by such talk did not persuade the heart of Zeus whose desire it was to extend the glory to Hektor." The passage finishes when Zeus does decide the time has come to honor Hektor, for it is there that the focus of the poem is restored once again from everyman fighting the battle and everyman's wife and family to the shining armor of the heroes. In nine lines, every part of the Iliad is covered: the shining hero; the Gods meddling and fickleness; the equality of the armies without the Gods; and the nameless, faceless fighters who died leaving no legacy but another wife and child in poverty. Read some more of Ailia's essays Homepage | The Famous Ones | Major Goddesses | Minor Goddesses | Humans | Nymphs | Monstresses & Monstrosities | The Myths Pages | Amazons | Men | Terms | Gallery | Dreambook | References & Links Contact me at ailiathena@yahoo.com Written May 18, 2002 at Oberlin College Last Updated April 19, 2005