Author’s note: Below the fold is my first formal writing assignment for my graduate seminar on ancient Greek and Roman literature/philosophy. All references to the Iliad are to the Caroline Alexander translation of Homer’s great epic.

Homer’s epic song the Iliad is not only full of brave warrior-statesmen like Achilles, Diomedes, and Hector, celebrated heroes who fight to the death in man-to-man combat; it was also presumably used to educate and inspire the youth of ancient Greece. But what lessons were they supposed to learn? What is the main “takeaway” of Homer’s timeless Trojan War story?

The standard interpretation is that Homer’s great poem is about the avoidance of aidōs and pursuit of kleos.[1] In brief, in the bygone world of Homer’s epic tale, aidōs is that deep feeling of shame that restrains men from doing wrong, while kleos refers to glory, renown, or immortal fame. For ancient Greek and Trojan heroes like Achilles, the two Ajaxes, Hector, etc., to flee from battle is shameful; instead, they prefer to win glory by performing courageous deeds in combat. When, for example, King Agamemnon commands his troops to fight the Trojans in Book 5 of The Iliad, he says:

O friends, be men and take hold of your courageous spirit
and fear shame before each other in the mighty combat;
when men fear shame, more are safe than are slain,
but when men flee, neither glory nor any victory is seen.

5.529-532

Or when Andromache implores her husband Hector to stop fighting, the Trojan war hero replies:

I would dread what they [my fellow Trojans] would think …,
if like a coward a I should shirk away from fighting.
My spirit does not allow me [to flee], for I have learned to be brave
always and to fight among the front ranks of Trojans,
winning great glory for my father and me.

6.441-446

I, however, disagree with this interpretation of Homer’s epic, for there is ample evidence in the Iliad to suggest that Homer was a Hellenic humanist who composed his war poem not to praise these “Homeric” values—i.e. the fear of shame and pursuit of glory—but to condemn them. Although humanism is often associated with such great poets of the Italian Renaissance as Petrarch and Dante, Homer too presents a “humanist” or poetic critique of war.

First off, why does Homer depict so many graphic scenes of mortal combat in the Iliad?[2] Is this grotesque catalogue of gruesome casualties—including such painful and agonizing battlefield deaths inflicted by nine-feet long, 60-pound spears[3] in the testicles (13.677), in the eyeball (14.570), and in the mouth (16.403), just to name a few—not meant to disgust and horrify Homer’s young and impressionable readers, to show them (and us) what war really looks like at a “micro” level? Likewise, at the “macro” level Homer compares the Achaean army en masse to a crowded colony of swirling honey bees:

[A]s when there goes a swarm of densely buzzing bees
streaming ever anew from a hollowed rock,
in clusters like grapes, zipping toward spring flowers
in a throng on the wing, hither and thither–
so the many troops of men from the ships and shelters
marched before the broad seashore …

2: 87–92

Is this surprising juxtaposition of Greek warriors to honey-bees meant to illustrate the overall power and ferociousness of the Achaean soldiers on the shores of Ilion or to belittle or poke fun at them? That either possible interpretation is equally plausible is itself evidence in support of Homer’s humanism.

But if Homer were really an anti-war humanist, why does the poet paint such a negative picture of Thersites, “the only common man who takes any part in the Iliad”[4] as well as the only soldier who urges his fellow comrades-in-arms to stop the fighting and return to their homes (2.225-242)? Alas, Homer not only describes Thersites as “the most repellant man” in the Greek army, “a dragger of feet, lame in one leg” with “humped-over shoulders” and a pointy head (2.217-219); to add insult to injury Homer doesn’t even bother to mention the name of Thersites’ father!

How can we solve this puzzle? Two solutions are possible. One is that Homer is being ironic. On the one hand, it is true that Thersites fails to show his commanding officer—the great Agamemnon, king of Argos—any deference when he confronts him and that his willingness to call it quits appears to be motivated by pure envy—i.e. he is jealous of all the war prizes that Agamemnon has already accumulated—and not by more noble sentiments. But at the same time, the only soldier among the Achaeans who is brave enough to openly question the wisdom of continuing the futile war is lowly Thersites, a common soldier no less. The other explanation resides in the nature of the Iliad itself. Homer is not just writing a chronicle of war; he is producing a great work of art, and he is too great a poet-artist to tell us point blank whether war is good or bad; he leaves it to us, his readers, to come to our own conclusions.

That said, perhaps the best piece of evidence in support of my “Homer as humanist” thesis is Book 24 of the Iliad. Homer concludes his great war epic with a funeral—not just any funeral, but that of Hector, the most lethal of the enemy warriors to have fought against the Greeks. As such, to answer the question with which I began this essay, is not the main moral lesson of the Iliad that our foes are no different from us, even in times of war?

[1] See, e.g., E. R. Dodds (1951), Greeks and the Irrational, especially chapter 2.

[2] For a complete listing of every Greek and Trojan soldier killed in action and the way in which they were killed, see Ian Johnston, “Deaths in the Iliad,” online (1997), https://archive.ph/8cLTc.

[3] For a description of Greek Bronze Age spears, see Adam Schwartz (2013), Men of Bronze: Hoplite Warfare in Ancient Greece, especially chapter 8.

[4] M. M. Willcock, A Companion to the Iliad (1976), p. 20.