I returned to The Iliad after a two-week absence and found this chapter waiting for me. Here, the focus of the story shifts radically from the kings and generals of the earlier chapters to the soldiers fighting in the fields. Dozens of new characters are introduced, most of whom are brought into the narrative at the moment they are slain. And I was reminded of the scene in Fight Club where a man dies a pointless death and only then is called by his name. Because when they are alive, members of Project Mayhem have no names. Only in death do they have names. His name is Robert Paulson. Or Coeranus or Chromius or Alastor or Alcander or Halius or Prytanis or Noemon or….
This chapter’s descriptions of the agonies of the ancient battlefield are stomach-turning to this day. And Homer here reminds me of a peacenik carrying a sign reading “War is the real enemy.” Only after slaughter after meaningless slaughter do the gods realize that Ares, the god of war whose bloodlust is never sated, is the true enemy of both gods and humans. Significantly, it takes two goddesses, Hera and Athena, to make almighty Zeus see this.
This was a numbing chapter, not an enjoyable one. After the tenth or twentieth soldier is gaudily impaled by a bronze spear thrust into some vulnerable part of his anatomy, the chapter becomes less a tale of individual heroic death and more a grim accounting of the slaughter. Homer wants us to see it and be revolted.
Speak Your Mind