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The two great Ancient Greek epics « The Iliad » and « The Odyssey « are attributed to the poet Homer, who is thought to have lived in the 8th century BCE.
Both Homeric epics are related to the Trojan War, which is believed to have taken place in the 13th century BCE, in the Bronze Age.
Since the 8th century BCE, the success and the influence of Homer’s epics has been enormous. They have inspired countless poets in Ancient Greece, but also in Ancient Rome and therefore they have influenced the whole Western literature and created the epic genre.
Many stories about Homer’s life were told in the antiquity, the most popular was that Homer was a blind barb from Ionia which was part at that time of the Hellenistic world and now is in Modern Turkey.
The question of the author of the two monumental epics is still debated under the title of « The Homeric Question« :
Who was Homer ?
A man ?
A genius ?
A group of poets ?
Are the two epics a creative work from Homer, is it a collection of poems which were transmitted orally through the generations ?
As no one has any evidence to prove right any of these different theories, let’s quote Plato, one of the greatest philosopher of Ancient Greece who referred to Homer in the 4th century BCE as « The one who taught the Greeks « .
It all started at the wedding of the sea-nymph Thetis to the Hero Peleus . The goddess of discord Eris was outraged for not having been invited and malignantly threw an apple on the table where Hera, Aphrodite and Athena were sitting. The Apple thrown had a label: “ to the most beautiful goddess”…
As it could be expected, the three goddesses were soon into a terrible row and Zeus thought that he could end this bitter conflict by requesting a naive outsider to be the judge. He therefore asked Paris, the young prince of Troy.
Of course for Paris and for the whole innocent people of Troy it would be the start of the end.
Aphrodite corrupted the young prince Paris by promising him the love of Helen “ the face that launched a thousand ships “ , the most beautiful mortal, famous in the whole Hellenistic world for her beauty. Both ignoring the fact that the stunning Helen was already married to no less than the powerful king of Sparta, Menelaus.
Despite the chilling reality, the unconscious Troy chose Aphrodite as the most beautiful goddess, thus provoking the resentment of both Hera and Athena.
Helen, the stunning queen of Sparta, after drinking a love potion made by Aphrodite, felt passionately in love with the young prince Paris. They escaped together to Troy.
This scandalous outrage made to the king of Sparta provoked the fury of the whole Greece. All the cities states were linked either by family ties or by diplomatic agreements.
A coalition « The Achaeans « was rapidly set up under the leadership of the king of Mycenae Agamemnon, the brother of Helen‘s husband Menelaus. Some were very reluctant to join such as the king of Ithaca Odysseus but also the most famous hero of the Trojan war : the young, glorious Achilles.
Odysseus, who was initially reluctant to join the Achaean armies , had to tricked the non-less reluctant Achilles to join the Greek armies.
After Agamemnon infuriated the goddess Artemis, Odysseus had to trick the wife of Agamemnon. He was obeying Agamemnon’s orders to take his daughter to a supposedly mariage with the glorious Achilles, while in fact Iphigenia was to be sacrificed to atone for her father’s offence so the Greek armies would have the winds to sail to Troy.
Only Achilles tried to save Iphigenia. It was Artemis who finally rescued secretly Iphigenia.
Homer’s “The Iliad” followed by “The Odyssey” are believed to be the first works of European literature, and many would say, the greatest.
Both are supposed to have been written sometime around the 7th century BCE and still to this day, generations after generations, we still feel passionate about these great heroes and warriors.
The Iliad tells part of the saga of the Trojan war that took place in the 13th century BCE, in the far away Bronze-age.
The Iliad takes its name from “Ilios”, an ancient Greek word for “Troy”, situated in what is Turkey today. The Epic is composed as one continuous poem, divided into 24 books corresponding to the 24 letters of the Greek alphabet. It is a massive literary work with a total of 15 000 lines of verses.
The Trojan War has a central place in Greek mythology because of all the meddling of the different gods and goddesses who each tried to help their champions and to win victory. The Greek gods played with dice about the Trojan War.
Mount Olympus must have been at that time a tensed place because of the deep divisions between the gods themselves. Hera, Athena and Poseidon sided with the Achaeans ( the Greeks) while Aphrodite, Apollo and Artemis took the Trojan side. Zeus tried to be neutral.
The epic poem The Iliad focuses only on a few weeks in the final year of the decade-long war. It refers to the earlier events such as the reasons for the war, the crossing….Then the epic narrative mentions prophecies such as Achilles’ imminent death and the fall of Troy. But the narrative ends before these events take place.
“The Iliad “ begins with Achilles’ withdrawal from the raging battle after being dishonoured by Agamemnon taking a captive woman away from him.
This act of authority from the commander of the Achaean forces revolted so profoundly Achilles that he even begged his mother, the goddess to help the Trojan win the war.
And the battle under the influence of Zeus did turned in favour of the Trojans, the Greek warriors felt that the gods were letting them down because Agamemnon has angered Achilles.
Agamemnon weeped and declared the war a failure. He proposed to return to Greece in disgrace
The wise Nestor demanded to Agamemnon to reconcile with Achilles, the most popular hero for all the Achaeans, the one who was celebrated as “the one dear to Zeus « .
Agamemnon, understanding the seriousness of the situation and the possibility of the departure of most of the warlords accepted to compromise and to reconcile with Achilles.
Who to send for the peace negotiations with Achilles but the cunning Odysseus ? Still, Agamemnon who was unsure about the loyalty of Odysseus, let him go with two other kings : Ajax and Phoenix.
They found Achilles playing the lyre in his tent with his dear friend Patroclus while his army is getting ready to retreat and go back home.
Achilles, still resenting the sting of Agamemnon’s insult refused categorically the offer of Agamemnon to give him back the captive lady Briseis and to join the Achaean armies.
Achilles, refusing the peace offering of Agamemnon despite the warnings of his friend Patroclus, proclaimed his intention to return to his homeland of Phthia, where he could live a long, prosaic life instead of the short, glorious one that he was fated to live if he stayed.
The Greek envoys returned unsuccessful, and the whole army again sank into despair, conscious that without Achilles, they were doomed to failure or death.
The Trojans, led by the chivalrous Hector, the eldest son of the king of Troy, Priam , decided to push the Achaean armies back to the sea. They started destroying the Greek ships leaving no other option to their ennemies than their total destruction.
The situation was absolutely tragic for the Greeks.
Patroclus, desperate to avoid the collapse of the Greek armies and unable to convince Achilles to change his mind, tried to save the situation by wearing Achilles ‘armour and leading Achilles soldiers.
At first he succeeded to push back the Trojans. But Patroclus was killed by Hector in the battlefield. And this time it was the perfect leader Hector who was blinded by Hubris : he disrespected the dead body of his enemy by taking the armour of Achilles that Patroclus had been wearing.
Achilles was at first devastated by the death of his « twin brother « , then he became infuriated by the death of his dearest friend,. Thetis, his adoring mother, tried to comfort him but understanding that Achilles would not listen to anyone , she asked Hephaistos to make a new armour for him, trying her best to protect him. She forecasted that her beloved son was going to fight with death, with Thanatos himself.
Back to the battlefield, Achilles alone in his fury to find Hector and to avenge Patroclus decimated so many Trojans to the point that the river god Scamander became outraged with the amount of blood polluting his river. The excesses have to be punished.
But Scamander was stopped by Hera and Hephaestus. Zeus himself sent the gods to stop Achilles so that he would not change the fate decided by the gods and would not destroy Troy by his own hands alone before the time decided by the gods.
Achilles finally found Hector who could only but run away as there was no human way to stop the fury of Achilles. The pursuit went round the fortifications of Troy for 3 times until Athena tricked Hector under the disguise of his favourite brother Deiphobus who asked him to face Achilles.
But no one, no mortal and perhaps no god could stop Achilles. The god Apollo tried to protect the valorous Hector by hiding him with fog. Nothing could stop Achilles .
He quickly killed Hector. And even worse for the Trojans, Achilles disrespected their most respected champion by dragging his body behind his charriot around the mourning walled city .
There was no worse fate or worse death for the Ancient Greeks.
Hector ‘s father, Priam, the grieving king of Troy, helped by the god Hermes, came to Achilles to beg him to return to him the corpse of his beloved son so he could buried him decently.
«I have gone through what no other mortal on earth has gone through. I put my lips to the hands of the man who has killed my children”.
Seeing the tears of Priam, feeling his sorrow, Achilles could relate to the same grief. He accepted a ten days of truce so that the Trojans could buried Hector while the Achaean and himself could bury Patroclus.
The Iliad ends there with a description of Hector’s funeral, with the doom of Troy and the prediction of the death of Achilles, the perfect Greek hero.
The Tragic Death of Achilles
As predicted by Hector in his last breath, the hero’s death was brought about by Paris, the the naive and arrogant prince that started the whole conflict.
Paris shot an arrow straight into the only point of vulnerability of the Semi god : his heel. The arrow of Paris was guided by the god Apollo, who had taken side for the Trojans.
The heel of Achilles with which his mother hold him when she plunged him into the Styx river to make him immortal, except of course for the heel that was not dipped
***
The expression « Achilles’ heel » comes from the Greek mythology and depicts a point of weakness which can bring the doom of someone otherwise powerful.
« The Achilles’ tendon » is also named after the semi-god.
The epic war between the kingdom of Troy and the Greek alliance, the Achaeans, contains many fascinating stories, however the most famous is most likely the story of the Trojan Horse.
The war which happened around the 13th century BCE, was in fact a ten-year siege of the city by a coalition of Greek forces led by King Agamemnon of Mycenae.
After 10 years of war, of numerous adventures and struggles, the Greek army grew tired of the conflict. The cunning Odysseus , the king of Ithaca, suggested as a last attempt that the Greek army use a subterfuge to breach the walls and conquered victory.
In the span of three days, the Greek army constructed a giant wooden horse, burned their tents, and sailed just out of sight, leaving one of them Sinon, a very persuasive smooth talker behind in order to convince the Trojans that the Greeks had indeed sailed back home.
The Greeks had engraved an inscription on the horse, saying it was an offering to Athena, and Sinon, the sweet talker was able to convince the Trojans that the offering done to Athena was genuine.
He lied about the goddess Athena being outraged at the late theft of her statue by Odysseus inside Troy. He talked about Athena’s threat to punish the Greeks and that the Greeks figured out that the only way to calm the powerful goddess was to show their respect by building a gigantic wooden horse before leaving, defeated, to their homeland.
Some of the Trojans such as Cassandra and Laocoon, the priestess and the priest in Apollo’s temple, warned their people that it could be a trick .
Laocoon said famously “ Timéo Danaos et dona ferentes “ according to the Roman author Virgil in his book Aeneid between 29 and 19 BCE . It has been translated in English as the proverbial expression «Beware of Greeks bearing gifts». Its literal meaning is «I fear the Danaans ( the Greeks) even when they bear gifts “.
Cassandra was the daughter of Priam, the king of Troy. She became a priestess in the temple of Apollo, who subjugated by her beauty gave her the gift to predict the future.
But Cassandra refused herself to Apollo who was furious. As he could not take back from her the gift of prophecy he had just given to her, he cursed her and made sure that whatever she would say would be disbelieved by every one.
Since the fall of Troy, her name describes the curse of rightful warning being ignored : “to be a Cassandra “.
Despite their rightful warnings, the Trojans were too eager to believe that they had won the war, too eager to end this decade long war. So the wooden horse was taken inside the city gates as it was the sacrifice for Athena and no one in his right mind would willingly outraged the mighty goddess. The people of Troy began celebrating.
In the middle of the night, Odysseus and the other Greeks who had stayed hidden in a secret compartment inside the wooden horse came out inside the city, lighting the beacons at the top of the walls to signal for the Greek fleet to return. While the drunken Trojan soldiers were heavily sleeping, Odysseus and his companions were able to open all the gates of Troy to the Greeks who massacred everyone, showing no pity.
Thanks to this cunning trick the Greek army was able to finally win the Trojan war and bring back Helen, Queen of Sparta.
The story is told at length in Book II of the Aeneid and is mentioned in the Odyssey.
The term Trojan horse has come to refer to a subversion introduced by the enemy.
« Tell me, Muse,
of that man of many resources,
who wandered far and wide,
after sacking the holy citadel of Troy.
Many the men whose cities he saw,
whose ways he learned.
Many the sorrows he suffered at sea,
while trying to bring himself and his friends back alive.
Yet despite his wishes he failed to save them, because of their own un-wisdom, foolishly eating the cattle of Helios, the Sun, so the god denied them their return.
Tell us of these things, beginning where you will, Goddess.»
In the first lines of The Odyssey Homer asked Mnemosyne, the goddess of memory to tell the story.
The Odyssey is the second book, after The Iliad, attributed also to the poet Homer. It is believed that to have been written in the 8th century BCE.
This long epic poem of 12 000 verses composed by 24 songs describes the adventures of the King of Ithaca, the clever Odysseus ( for the Romans Hercules) on his sail back to his kingdom of Ithaca after the Greek victory and the fall of Troy.
In the first act ( songs 1-4) : Homer retraces the quest of Odysseus’ son Telemachus.
Telemachus is searching for news of his father who has not been heard from since he left for war nearly 20 years earlier. Telemachus is looking for his father and go questioning the the wise king Nestor and the King Menelaus, now reunited with Helen.
Meanwhile on the Island of Ithaca, Penelope, Odysseus’ wife and Telemachus’ mother is keeping at bay a whole crowd of atrocious suitors who are getting more and more impatient to marry her in order to grab the throne.
Penelope has previously asked all her courtiers to wait for her to finish a delicate tapestry. As soon as her embroidery would be achieved, she has promised that her mourning will end and that she will select a new husband. No one has yet realised that the brilliant Queen is destroying her patient work every night in order to gain time.
Act 2 : the adventures of Odysseus on his way back from Troy to Ithaca.
The Lotus Eating Men
Odysseus and his twelve ships were driven off course by storms. Then they landed on an island where the men would eat Lotus : “the Lotus eating that put them in a happy but lethargic attitude.” Unfortunately Odysseus crew tasted this terribly addictive plant so Odysseus had to drag them back to the ships by force.
The blinding of Polyphemus by Nobody
Then the ships accosted a peaceful island with fresh water and sheep. With some members of his crew, Odysseus went exploring the island and found a grotto which seemed to be occupied with furniture and food. They decided to wait for its owner.
But when the owner came back. It was too late !They turned all paralysed with fear when he finally showed up : he was a ferocious giant cyclop, ravenous of human flesh as soon he smelled them.
The Cyclop Polyphemus locked the opening of the grotto with a huge rock. There was no way to escape and he immediately devoured two men alive for his dinner. The next morning he ate two more raw men, this time for breakfast. Odysseus, thanks the gods, had taken wine with him so he tried to negotiate with the Cyclop and more importantly he tried to make him drunk. The Cyclop asked his name and the smart Odysseus answered”Nobody “. Polyphemus, now completely drunk, went to sleep and the prisoners were able to blinded him with a wooden stake.
As the door was locked, the other Cyclops alerted by his screams of pain could not entered and asked him nervously who had hurt him . Polyphemus could only answer the truth : “Nobody “.
“Nobody had blinded him”.
How extraordinarily smart is that?
How manipulative was Odysseus to devise such a clever scheme ?
Polyphemus had to let his sheep go out to graze. As he was now blinded, he stroke them each before letting them go. But the clever Odysseus and his men were hiding on the underbellies of the sheep and were all able to escape.
The Hubris of Odysseus : The Revenge of Poseidon
But here the clever, smart and cunning Odysseus was caught by his own “Hubris “: when he was finally out of harm from Polyphemus he shouted to him his true identity , omitting the fact that Polyphemus was the son of the mighty god of the seas Poseidon.
Polyphemus immediately begged his father to doom Odysseus’ journey back to Ithaca and what should have taken a couple of months would take almost 10 years, the death of all Odysseus men and the wreckage of all his ships.
Aeolus, the God of the Winds
After their escape, Odysseus met on another island Aeolus, god of the winds. He gave to Odysseus, a most precious gift, a leather bag containing all the winds, except the west wind, in order to ensure him a safe and swift return home.
Just as Ithaca came into sight, some greedy sailors opened the bag while Odysseus slept, thinking it contained a treasure. All of the winds flew out and the resulting storm drove the ships back all the way they had come. Aeolus, furious to see them back, understood immediately what had happened and refused any further help.
The men then re-embarked and accosted the Laestrygonians island, populated by cannibals. Trying desperately to escape, all Odysseus’ ships except his own, were destroyed.
Under the charm of Circe, the mighty sorceress
With only but one boat, Odysseus and his crew reached the island of Aeaea, the home of the witch-goddess Circe, the daughter of the god of the sun Helios. Odysseus sent some men to explore the island.
The small group soon discovered a wonderful palace and the gorgeous Circe on its doorstep proposing a fresh drink.
But of course, it was too good to be true and after drinking this delicious but toxic drink all the men forgot who they were and were transformed into dirty, filthy and disgusting pigs.
Thankfully for Odysseus, one of the men, more cautious, had stayed away and observed the terrible fate of his friends. He went immediately back to Odysseus to warn him.
Odysseus was not only brave but he was definitely a trustworthy leader. He would not leave a man behind and fled.
He went immediately to rescue his crew. On the way he met a young man who is none the less than the god Hermes who not only warned Odysseus about Circe but gave him an antidote against Circe magic, an herb called moly, which unfortunately has never been categorically identified.
So Odysseus was able to force Circe to put an end to her evil spell against his men, who were transformed back into their usual selves.
But by doing so, Odysseus himself felt under the spell of Circe and became passionately in love with her.
For an entire year, Odysseus and his men stayed blissfully with Circe and her priestesses .
But even a year full of pleasures can become boring. That is exactly what happened to Odysseus and his men : they got bored, missed their beloved and decided to go back home.
The Songs of the Sirens
But they had to sail by the kingdom of the sirens, and Circe had warned Odysseus about their enchanting songs that forced the sailors to steer toward the rocks provoking ship wreckage and the drowning of the sailors.
Homer described the sirens not as wonderful sea creatures but as birds.
Odysseus was so intrigued by their song that, while he ordered to all his crew to block their ears with beeswax, he requested them to tie him tightly to the mast as he wanted to hear their enchanting song without succumbing to it.
It was a success. They all survived.
Scylla and Charybdis
Immediately after, they had to face at the same time the 2 deadly perils : Scylla and Charybdis, hence since then the expression
“ to choose between Scylla and Charybdis “.
They had to pass a narrow strait, where on one side was waiting Scylla, a six headed monster and on the other side was a deadly whirlpool. The two perils were so close to each other that if you tried to avoid one you would get dangerously too close of the other.
For the cunning and logical Odysseus, the best solution was to get close to Scylla. It was wiser to sacrifice some men than to have your whole ship and everyone aboard destroyed. So six men aboard were snatched by Scylla.
They arrived on the island of Thrinacia and while Odysseus isolated himself to pray and pay his respects to the gods, his unruly crew committed the sacrilege of hunting the sacred cattle of the Sun- god Helios.
To punish this outrage, no one was allowed to mess with a god’s property, Zeus threw his thunderbolts and Odysseus ship sank.
Everyone but Odysseus drowned and he was washed ashore on the island of Ogygia where he was made prisoner by the beautiful and loving Nymph Calypso.
The Nymph Calypso
He spent 5 years with Calypso and they had a son Nausithous.
Despite the blissful life, full of pleasures , Odysseus refused Calypso’s fantastic proposal of immortality and eternal youth and stayed determined to go back to Ithaca.
Calypso had to accept to release Odysseus after the intervention of Hermes , Athena and finally Zeus. Helped by a sad Calypso, Odysseus built a raft on which he set off for Ithaca one more time.
Poseidon, however, once more spitefully intervened and caused a fearful storm to smash the raft to pieces. Odysseus then washed up battered and naked on the island of Scheria, home of the Phaeacians, was rescued by Nausikaa, the daughter of the King.
Restored to full health and vigour, the hero was given one of the magical Phaiacian ships which needed no captain to steer.
Back to Ithaca
Odysseus’ protectress, the goddess Athena , decided to grab the opportunity of an absence of Poseidon from Olympus and convinced Zeus to let Odysseus returned to his home.
With this magical vessel, Odysseus finally made it back to Ithaca. However, just as the Cyclop Polyphemos had promised, all was not well in the king’s palace where the patient Queen Penelope was literally besieged by an army of horrific suitors who all wanted to marry her in order to sit on Odysseus throne.
Odysseus was helped there by Athena who made him disguised as an old beggar so he could understand what is really going on in his own palace with more than a hundred of conniving suitors who wanted to marry his wife to grab his throne.
One has to admit that after 10 years of peregrinations, every one was convinced that he was dead.
A Man’s Best Friend
Under his disguise, no one recognised Odysseus except his dog. Since then dogs have won the title of being the best friend a man could have. The dog who must have been a puppy when his master left for the Trojan War was now an old dog. Still he recognised immediately his master, came to him and then succumbed as if he had been waiting for the return of his master to allow himself to die.
Odysseus, still disguised as an old beggar started being bullied by the suitors in his own home. His faithful wife Penelope didn’t recognise him but his old nanny Eurycleia did because of an old scar but as Odysseus requested, she kept silent.
Penelope challenged the suitors that if one of them could string the huge bow that had belonged to her previous husband and then shoot an arrow through twelve axe-heads, she would marry him.
Not one suitor had the strength to string the bow, let alone shoot with it. Then out of nowhere the old beggar shot and won with ease. When Odysseus revealed his identity all the suitors panicked as none was a match to the already legendary warrior.
There was to be no escape for the interlopers, though, because Telemachos had closed all the doors and removed the weapons mounted on the walls. Odysseus then casually picked off the suitors one by one with his fearsome bow and so reclaimed his rightful kingdom.
The Odyssey ends .
Homer demonstrated clearly that there was no achievement , no success to celebrate without determination.
To fight all the obstacles that life, fate or the gods throw at you is the man’s sole honour.
If continued : A Greek Tragedy
Now that “The Odyssey”had ended with Odysseus back on his throne, reunited with his family, was the royal couple going to live happily ever after according to the legend ?
The Greek epic is never a fairytale.
There was evidently to be a tragic final twist :
Telegonos, the own son of Odysseus and Circe as a young warrior would landed on Ithaca and in the battle that followed unknowingly killed his own father.
The ancient Greeks did invent the tragedy after all.
There has been in the past terrible debate as to whether the mythical Troy actually had ever existed.
Troy is the setting for Homer’s Iliad and is the starting point of his second epic The Odyssey.
But for most of the scholars until the mid 19th century , Troy was merely a mythical city that most probably had never existed.
You can only imagine the thrill for all when in 1865-1868 Franck Calvert and then Heinrich Schliemann excavated several cities built in succession since the Bronze Age.
Troy is now 5 km from the Turkish coast but was once next to the sea, exactly as described by Homer. The site was situated in a bay created by the mouth of the river Skamanda and occupied a strategically important position between the Hittites, the Persians and the Greeks.
THE WELL- WALLED CITY
Homer describes Troy as ‘well-founded’, ‘strong-built’ and ‘well-walled’; there are also several references to fine battlements, towers and ‘high’ and ‘steep’ walls. The walls must have been unusually strong in order to withstand a ten-year siege and in fact, Troy fell only through the trickery of the Trojan Horse ruse.
It was said that the walls of Troy had been built by none the less than the gods Poseidon and Apollo who after a problem were punished by Zeus to serve the Trojan king Laomedon for a whole year.
The archaeological excavations have continued throughout the 20th century CE to the present day and they have revealed nine different cities.
Now it is now almost universally accepted that the archaeological excavations have revealed the city of Homer’s Iliad.
The archaeological site of Troy is listed by UNESCO as a World Heritage Site.
