![]() Because war prizes were correlated with honor, Agamemnon's decision dishonors Achilles in front of the assembled Achaean forces. Under pressure, Agamemnon agrees to return Chryseis to her father, but decides to take Achilles' captive, Briseis, as compensation. After nine days of plague, Achilles, the leader of the Myrmidon forces and aristos achaion ("best of the Greeks"), calls an assembly to deal with the problem. Chryses prays for Apollo's help, and Apollo sends a plague to afflict the Achaean army. ![]() Although most of the Achaean kings are in favor of the offer, Agamemnon refuses. Agamemnon, king of Mycenae, acts as commander for these united armies.Ĭhryses, a Trojan priest of Apollo, offers the Achaeans wealth for the return of his daughter Chryseis, held captive by Agamemnon. The Achaean forces consist of armies from many different Greek kingdoms, led by their respective kings or princes. The events begin in medias res towards the end of the Trojan War, fought between the Trojans and the besieging Achaeans. ( 1) The story begins with an invocation to the Muse. The first verses of the Iliad Exposition (Books 1–4) In terms of formal style, the poem's repetitions, use of similes and epithets, are often explored by scholars. Their characterisation in the poem humanised them for Ancient Greek audiences, giving a concrete sense of their cultural and religious tradition. The Olympian gods also play a major role in the poem, aiding their favoured warriors on the battlefield and intervening in personal disputes. It contains detailed descriptions of ancient war instruments and battle tactics, and fewer female characters. The poem is frequently described as a masculine or heroic epic, especially compared with the Odyssey. Given widespread illiteracy, audiences were more likely to have heard the poem than read it it was performed by professional reciters of Homer known as rhapsodes.Ĭritical themes in the poem include kleos (glory), pride, fate and wrath. Homer's authorship was infrequently questioned in antiquity, but contemporary scholarship predominantly assumes that the Iliad and the Odyssey were composed independently and that the stories formed as part of a long oral tradition. The Iliad, and the Odyssey, were likely written down in Homeric Greek, a literary amalgam of Ionic Greek and other dialects, probably around the late 8th or early 7th century BC. The Iliad is often regarded as the first substantial piece of European literature. In particular, it depicts a fierce quarrel between King Agamemnon and a celebrated warrior, Achilles. Set towards the end of the Trojan War, a ten-year siege of the city of Troy by a coalition of Mycenaean Greek states, the poem depicts significant events in the siege's final weeks. It contains 15,693 lines in its most widely accepted version. As with the Odyssey, the poem is divided into 24 books and was written in dactylic hexameter. It is one of the oldest extant works of literature still widely read by modern audiences. Homer’s name can be translated from a word that means blind, but the vivid imagery of the Iliad and the Odyssey suggest that the author of the poems must have had sight at some point in his life.The Iliad ( / ˈ ɪ l i ə d/ Ancient Greek: Ἰλιάς, romanized: Iliás, Attic Greek: "a poem about Ilium (Troy)") is one of two major ancient Greek epic poems attributed to Homer. The language of the Iliad and the Odyssey suggest that Homer came from the western coast of the modern nation of Turkey. Modern scholars believe the Iliad and the Odyssey are based on oral legends, but the epics are often attributed to a storyteller named Homer. As the Trojans slept, Greek soldiers emerged from their hiding place inside the wooden horse, opened the city gates, and began to burn the sleeping city. After a great victory celebration of their defeat of the Greek army, the people of Troy slept for the night. The joyous Trojans opened the city gates and pulled in the giant statue. The Greek navy pretended to sail away, but they only sailed out to a hidden location. The Greeks left a huge wooden horse as a peace offering to the Trojans. The war began after a Trojan prince named Paris kidnapped Helen.Īccording to the Odyssey, the Trojan War ended when the Greeks pretended to give up their quest for Helen. The Trojan War was fought over Helen, who according to legend was the beautiful daughter of Zeus and the wife of the king of the Greek polis of Sparta. The two oldest surviving examples of Greek literature are the Iliadand the Odyssey, epic poems that describe the Trojan War, a conflict between the Greeks and the city of Troy that the epics say was fought almost 1200 years before the Common Era.
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