The True Tragedy of the Iliad

 

Many think that the Iliad is the story about the Trojan War. Indeed, this conception is not entirely incorrect as the Iliad get its name from the Greek word Ilias meaning “the story of Troy” (Lombardo xix). However, as the opening lines of the text suggests, the Iliad is more so a story about “rage” (1.1) than it is a story of war. More specifically, the Iliad is the story about “Achilles’ rage” (1.2). Achilles’ rage is present throughout the majority of the poem and leads to his withdrawal from battle which costs a great many Greeks their lives. In the start of the book one, Achilles swears that he will not rejoin the fighting even “when Hector the, man-killer, swats [the Greeks] down like flies” (1.257). As sworn, Achilles withdraws from the war in book one and does not even consider rejoining the war until book eighteen. Agamemnon, the chief warlord of the Greeks at Troy caused this immense rage when he took Achilles’ war prize, a girl named Briseis. A modern audience would be able to somewhat relate to Achilles’ rage if Achilles was in love Briseis. But, Achilles himself quickly points out that this is not a matter of love but of honor; he himself states he is withdrawing from the war “because [Agamemnon] you failed to honor the best Greek of all” (1.259). Lombardo, as several other classicists have agreed, further supports the fact that Agamemnon’s taking of Briseis has nothing to do with love, but with humiliation, “For Achilles, Agamemnon’s decision means public humiliation” (xviii). The magnitude of this public humiliation is so great that Achilles becomes so wrathful that he refuses to fight for more than half of the Iliad. Such public humiliation and the rage it induces in Achilles is difficult for the modern westerner to grasp. This is because our western values are based off of a ‘guilt culture’ while the Ancient Greek principles were based off of a ‘shame culture’ (Class Notes Sept. 18). According to the Oxford Dictionary, a guilt culture “internalizes a moral code” (qtd. in Bellitti) and therefore, “the conformity to a moral code occurs through an individual’s own will and has less to do with the public approval of society” (Bellitti). Thus, our western culture is based on the way in which we perceive ourselves, and, hence, makes it difficult for us to relate Achilles extreme anger due to public humiliation. But, a shame culture puts a “high emphasis on preserving honor” and on “not being publicly disgraced” (Oxford Dictionary qtd. in Bellitti). Thus, to Achilles the cultural value that matters the most is amassing public honor. If we were to imagine how angry we would be if we broke our own most cardinal moral code, we can relate to Achilles anger after being humiliated in front of the entire army. In the end, Achilles’s extreme rage highlights the fact that for the heroes of the Iliad that which matters the most was the way in which they were viewed by society. Little else mattered, and that is the greatest tragedy of the Iliad.

 

 

Bellitti, Anthony. “Greek Civilization: From Shame to Guilt.” Helicon. Yale University. Fall   

2013. Web. 17 Oct. 2014.