The Iliad (by Homer; 8th Century)
The Iliad began in the tenth year of the Trojan War.
1) Nine years after the start of the Trojan War, the Greek (Achaean) army sacked Chryse, a town allied
with Troy.
2) During the battle, the Achaeans captured a pair of beautiful maidens, Chryseis and Briseis.
3) Agamemnon, the leader of the Achaeans forces, took Chryseis as his prize, and Achilles, the Achaeans’
greatest warrior, claimed Briseis.
4) Chryseis’s father, Chryses, who served as a priest of the god Apollo, offered an enormous ransom in
return for his daughter, but Agamemnon refused to give Chryseis back.
5) Chryses then prayed to Apollo, who sent a plague upon the Achaean camp.
6) After many Achaeans died, Agamemnon consulted the prophet Calchas to determine the cause of the
plague.
7) When he learned that Chryseis was the cause, he reluctantly gave her up but then demanded Briseis
from Achilles as compensation.
8) Furious at this insult, Achilles returned to his tent in the army camp, and refused to fight in the war any
longer.
9) He vengefully yearned to see the Achaeans destroyed, and asked his mother, the sea-nymph Thetis, to
enlist the services of Zeus, king of the gods, toward this end.
10) The Trojan and Achaean sides declared a ceasefire with each other, but now the Trojans breached the
treaty, and Zeus came to their aid.
11) With Zeus supporting the Trojans and Achilles refusing to fight, the Achaeans suffered great losses.
12) Several days of fierce conflict ensued, including duels between Paris and Menelaus, and between
Hector and Ajax.
13) The Achaeans made no progress; even the heroism of the great Achaean warrior Diomedes proved
fruitless.
14) The Trojans pushed the Achaeans back, forcing them to take refuge behind the ramparts that protected
their ships.
15) The Achaeans began to nurture some hope for the future when nighttime reconnaissance mission
(military) by Diomedes and Odysseus yielded information about the Trojans’ plans, but the next day
brought disaster.
16) Several Achaean commanders became wounded, and the Trojans broke through the Achaean ramparts.
17) They advanced all the way up to the boundary of the Achaean camp, and set fire to one of the ships.
18) Defeat seemed imminent because without the ships, the army would be stranded at Troy and almost
certainly destroyed.
19) Concerned for his comrades but still too proud to help them himself, Achilles agreed to a plan
proposed by Nestor that would allow his beloved friend, Patroclus, to take his place in battle, wearing his
armor.
20) Patroclus was a fine warrior, and his presence on the battlefield helped the Achaeans push the Trojans
away from the ships and back to the city walls.
21) But the counterattack soon faltered.
22) Apollo knocked Patroclus’s armor to the ground, and Hector slew him.
23) Fighting then broke out as both sides tried to lay claim to the body and armor.
24) Hector ended up with the armor, but the Achaeans, thanks to a courageous effort by Menelaus and
others, managed to bring the body back to their camp.
25) When Achilles discovered that Hector had killed Patroclus, he was filled with such grief and rage that
he agreed to reconcile with Agamemnon and rejoin the battle.
26) Thetis went to Mount Olympus and persuaded the god Hephaestus to forge Achilles a new suit of
armor, which she presented to him the next morning.
27) Achilles then rode out to battle at the head of the Achaean army.
28) Meanwhile, Hector, not expecting Achilles to rejoin the battle, had ordered his men to camp outside
the walls of Troy.
29) But when the Trojan army glimpsed Achilles, it flew in terror back behind the city walls.
30) Achilles cut down every Trojan he saw.
31) Strengthened by his rage, he even fought the god of the river Xanthus, who was angered that Achilles
had caused so many corpses to fall into his streams.
32) Finally, Achilles confronted Hector outside the walls of Troy.
33) Ashamed at the poor advice that he had given his comrades, Hector refused to flee inside the city with
them.
34) Achilles chased him around the city’s periphery three times, but the goddess Athena finally tricked
Hector into turning around and fighting Achilles.
35) In a dramatic duel, Achilles killed Hector.
36) He then lashed the body to the back of his chariot and dragged it across the battlefield to the Achaean
camp.
37) Upon Achilles’ arrival, the triumphant Achaeans celebrated Patroclus’s funeral with a long series of
athletic games in his honor.
38) Each day for the next nine days, Achilles dragged Hector’s body in circles around Patroclus’s
funeral brier.
39) At last, the gods agreed that Hector deserved a proper burial.
40) Zeus sent the god Hermes to escort King Priam, Hector’s father and the ruler of Troy, into the
Achaean camp.
41) Priam tearfully pleaded with Achilles to take pity on a father bereft of his son and to return Hector’s
body.
42) He invoked the memory of Achilles’ own father, Peleus.
43) Deeply moved, Achilles finally relented and returned Hector’s corpse to the Trojans.
44) Both sides agreed to a temporary truce, and Hector received a hero’s funeral.
Perhaps most obviously, the Iliad is a poem about the struggle of two characters, Agamemnon and
Achilles. Though both on the same side, the two men come to hate each other, and their conflict nearly led
to Greek defeat.
