Iliad
Re-cap of Book I
• Apollo is mad that Agamemnon (son of Atreus)
has stolen Chryseis (daughter of Apollo’s priest,
Chryses)
• Chryses comes to the camp and says that the
Achaians can still conquer Troy, but will have to
return his daughter (in exchange for a good
ransom) in order to appease Apollo
• Agamemnon initially refuses
• Chryses prays to Apollo; Apollo gets really mad;
starts shooting up ships with his arrows
• Nine days of this
Re-cap, cont’d
• Achilles gets everyone together
• Kalchas (Thestor’s son) explains that Agamemnon has
angered Apollo
• Agamemnon is mad, but agrees to give back Chryseis. He
demands another concubine is given to him in her place,
though
• Achilles opposes this, so Agamemnon takes Achilles’ lover,
Briseis
• Achilles is very sad and withdraws from the fighting, and
prays to his mother (Thetis) that she will ask Zeus to make
sure that the Achaians don’t win the fight without him
• Zeus reluctantly agrees (he owes Thetis a favour)
Epic Poetry
• General definition: stories that enchant; often
feature both humans and gods; memorialize
events and legends
• “Epic” = Western imposition on the natural
heterogeneity of long narrative forms from
varying cultures
• From the Greek “epos” = word, tale
• Or “epopoiia” = verse composition
Epic, continued
• Has existed as a genre since the time of
Aristotle
• Epic is not wholly definitive; rather, is openended and varies from culture to culture
(diction, especially, as well as narrative
patterns)
• No one final definition of “epic”
Lauri Honko’s definition of ‘epic’:
• “epics are great narratives about exemplars,
originally performed by specialized singers as
superstories which excel in length, power of
expression and significance of content over
other narratives and function as a source of
identity representations in the traditional
community or group receiving the epic”
Epic, continued
• Often feature heroic action/achievement
• Tend to idealize characters (sometimes as a
way of bolstering national character or group
identity) (e.g., Iliad about Achaean
achievement in battle; Odyssey memorializes
an arduous homeward journey)
• The actions of the characters (the heroes)
trace a culture’s self-concept in hyperbole
(exaggeration) and metaphor
Book I
• We enter the story after nine years’ of fighting
between the Greeks and the Trojans
• Literary device known as In Media Res
In Media Res
• Latin(into the middle of things)
• The story begins either at the mid-point or at
the conclusion, rather than at the beginning
• Setting, character, and conflict are presented
through flashback and tell-all (expository)
conversations
• Stylistic convention associated with epic
poetry in general, the Iliad in particular
Purpose of disturbing chronology?
• More dramatic
• Helps compress time for the sake of brevity
• E.g.  the 10 years of the war is compacted
first into 40 days, then 10 days, then 3 days
• Helps pinpoint the real climax, the fulcrum of
the story
Themes
• Anger (example?)
• Pride (example?)
• Human failing versus supernatural
omnipotence
Metre
Dactylic Hexameter
• This metric form defines epic poetry
• Homeric line (in original Greek) has six poetic “feet”
• First five feet are dactyls (one long + two short
syllables); last foot has two syllables (either long +
short or long + long)
• Looks like: –uu/-uu/-uu/-uu/-uu/-x
Dactyl = finger or toe
Sounds like ….
• “Dum-diddy”
• Dactylic hexameter:
–uu/-uu/-uu/-uu/-uu/-x
Dum-diddy/dum-diddy/dum-diddy/dum-diddy/dum-diddy/dum-dum
• Virtually impossible to recreate in English
Stichic v. Stanzaic
• Epics are stichic  each line has the same
metrical form, and the poem is not broken up
into stanzas
• (In opposition to stanzaic, where each stanza
is the same, but not necessarily each line)
Repetition in the Iliad
– Of both single lines and longer passages
– Relates to the cadences of oral speech (poem
originally intended to be performed, recited)
– Poem might have only been written down after
being repeated orally
– Agamemnon called “King of Men” 37 times in I, O;
Achilles called “Swift-footed” 31 times in I, O
(what purpose? Maybe helped people remember
who characters were using specific adjectival
phrases)
Metaphor
• One thing stands in for another
• For example: “my love is the ocean, deep and
wide”
Simile
• Compares one thing to another using “like” or
“as”
• For example: “my love is like a red , red rose”
• “I’m as happy as a clam”
Metaphor/Simile in Epics
• No direct, detailed description in Greek lit. –
all done through simile and metaphor
• Homer’s similes are distinctive; often align
chaos of the present with nature scenes
Examples:
• Apollo descends on the Greeks “like night”
(I.47)
• Hector goes on his way “like a snowy
mountain” (13.754)
Next time:
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Book I of the Odyssey
Odysseus still not home from the Trojan War
Many ‘suitors’ trying to woo his wife, Penelope
Odysseus’ son, Telemachus, tries to find out what
has happened to his father
• Odysseus has been held captive for seven years
by Calypso
• Start the Aeneid