Iliad Study Guide
"She plies her course yet, nor her winged speed / The falcon could for pace exceed."
"Are those your lines, Mr. Mowett?"
"No, no, alas; they are Homer's. Lord, what a fellow he was! . . . I read him in a translation, a book a young lady gave me for a keepsake in Gibraltar, by a cove named Chapman, a very splendid cove . . . . Do you know him?"
"Not I," said Stephen. "Though I did look into Mr. Pope's version once, and Madame Dacier's. I hope your Mr. Chapman is better."
"Oh, it is magnificent--a great booming, sometimes, like a heavy sea, the Iliad being in fourteeners; and I am sure it is very like the Greek. I must show it to you. But then I dare say you have read him in the original."
"I had no choice. When I was a boy it was Homer and Virgil, Homer and Virgil entirely and many a stripe and many a tear between. But I came to love him for all that, and I quite agree with you--he is the very prince of poets. The Odyssey is a fine tale, sure, though I never could cordially like Ulysses: he lied excessively, it seems to me . . . . But the Iliad, of God love his soul, never was such a book as the Iliad!" Mowett cried that the Doctor was in the right of it, and began to recite a particularly valued piece: soon losing himself, however. But Stephen scarcely heard; his mind glowed with the recollection and he exclaimed, "And the truly heroic sale, that makes us all look so mean and pallid; and the infinite art from the beginning to the noble end with Achilles and Priam talking quietly together in the night, both doomed and both known to be doomed--the noble end and its full close . . . . The book is full of death, but oh so living."
Patrick O'Brian
The Far Side of the World (Norton, 1984), pp. 126-127.
Online Resources
Images of the Trojan War
Online information on the Trojan War
Age of Bronze Links
Institute for Mediterranean Studies (information on current Troy excavations)
Map of Greece and western Asia minor
Lewis Stiles's Study Questions for Homer's Iliad
Alexander Pope's translation of the Iliad
John Keats's "On First Looking into Chapman's Homer"
W. B. Yeats's "Leda and the Swan"
Perseus Project (classics resources)
Listen to Iliad 1 read in Greek by Stanley Lombardo.
Listen to the opening lines set to music by Ioannidis Nikolaos.
Longwood's Raymond Cormier on NPR's With Good Reason: Are the Classics Relevant?
Discussion Questions
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Books 1-8
- What is an "epic"?
- What kind of leader is Agamemnon? What kind of warrior is Achilles? What kind of army is the Achaean army?
- How does the poem begin? Why do you think Homer begins with these events, rather than the beginning of the Trojan War?
- What is the role of the gods in the Iliad? To what extent are the events of the narrative the result of independent decisions made by the heroes, and to what extent are they influenced by the intervention of the gods?
- What is the role of women in the poem? How are they represented? How do they interact with men?
- What kind of warrior is Hector? Is he fighting for the same things as Achilles and Agamemnon?
- Does Homer make distinctions between the Achaeans and the Trojans? Does he take sides in the conflict?
Book 9
- If the Iliad is about "the rage of Achilles," how does Book 9 amplify or contribute to this theme? Has Achilles changed?
- What is your reaction to Agamemnon's offer to Achilles? Would you accept it? Can you think of anything that is missing?
- Why are Odysseus, Phoenix, and Ajax chosen to deliver Agamemnon's offer to Achilles? Do you think it's strange that Agamemnon doesn't join the embassy?
- Analyze Book 9 as a rhetorical situation. What does each of the speakers say to Achilles, and how does he say it? Do you find their arguments persuasive? Do you feel that Achilles' resistance is justified? Is there any change at all in Achilles' position at the end of Book 9?
- In what ways does Book 9 reveal Achilles to be a hero that is not only extreme in his passion for violence and warfare, but insightful and philosophical in his efforts to understand himself and the situation he is in?
Books 16-17
- Why does Achilles allow Patroclus to go into battle wearing his armor?
- Who are the Myrmidons, and how does Homer describe them?
- Who is Sarpedon? Why doesn't Zeus save his life?
- What happens to Patroclus after he kills Sarpedon?
- Why does Homer refer to Patroclus in the second person in Book 16?
Books 18-19
- Think carefully about how the death of Patroclus affects Achilles. How does the death of Patroclus affect the relationship between Achilles and Agamemnon?
- What images does Hephaestus forge on the shield of Achilles? What is the significance of these images?
- What is the significance of Achilles' refusal to eat?
- How does Achilles react to the armor? How do the Myrmidons react to it?
- What is your impression of Briseis as she is returned to Achilles? How does Achilles respond to her return?
Books 20-21
- Compare Achilles' aristeia to that of Diomedes (Book 5).
- Read the episode in which Achilles kills Lycaeon carefully. What do you learn about Achilles and how he looks at the world here?
Books 22-24
- How, specifically, does the Iliad comment on human suffering? Can you identify different episodes or passages that reflect on suffering in ways that are similar or different?
- What are the main differences between Achilles and Hector in Book 22?
- What is the purpose of Homer's digression on Trojan women doing their laundry in the middle of Achilles' pursuit of Hector?
- Do you feel that the extensive aid the gods give to Achilles when he kills Hector diminishes his victory in any way?
- How do you feel about Achilles and Hector after Hector is killed? How do you feel about what the Achaeans do to Hector's body?
- After Hector dies, Achilles has successfully avenged the death of Patroclus--why is he still angry?
- Why does Achilles give Hector's body back? Read Priam's supplication to Achilles carefully. How does this encounter affect both characters?
- What statements does the poem make about war?
- Griffin, Jasper. Homer on Life and Death. Oxford UP, 1980.