Homer's Iliad: The Real Story: A commentary with translations

By John D. Martin

For the nearly three millennia since its creation, the Iliad's Real Story has gone undiscovered. Homer, a blind poet as antiquity believed him to be, created a powerful war story which must have enthralled his listening audiences. But this story concealed another one, far grander in design, and immensely more clever in execution, which can be discovered only by careful examination of the written text. Living in an age where literacy was minimal, Homer created this story for the gods, and undoubtedly never expected any mortal to understand it.
Homer's imaginative fantasy radically undermines traditional Trojan War mythology, and exposes the speciousness of war's glory, the folly of the warriors who (supposedly) fight for it, and the amorality of the gods who help them do so. Homer's great war poem, great indeed, war poem indeed, is in its depths antiwar. In piecing together the Iliad's web of secret plans, deeply hidden motives, and subtle lies and deceptions, and in the process identifying and discarding post-Homeric corruptions to the text, we will find an Iliad which is not a prelude to Achilles' glorious early death and the Fall of Troy, but the opposite. In a concealed ending, towards which the entire story has been leading, Homer's own words will tell us how Achilles, as supplicated by Priam, chooses a long life without renown, and goes home. The Greek army, unwilling to fight without its greatest warrior, leaves also, sparing peaceful, holy Troy, Zeus’ favorite city and best hope for mankind.
Homer tells this story with a brilliance that is almost unimaginable, until one actually encounters it. The Real Iliad is an immense intellectual challenge and an inexhaustible source of surprises. Far from a formalistically "heroic" epic, as has long been thought, it is an imaginative expression of the full creative powers of Western antiquity's greatest author.

• Language: English
• Publisher: AuthorHouse
• Release date: May 24, 2021
• ISBN: 9781665522502

John D. Martin

John D. Martin holds a PhD in economics and three other degrees from the University of Chicago. He first read Homer in Greek as a UC undergraduate in 1961. The present study is the product of nine years of work, unceasing and without break, and was completed at the beginning of the tenth. [e-mail].

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Published by AuthorHouse     04/10/2024

ISBN: 978-1-6655-2247-2 (sc)

ISBN: 978-1-6655-2250-2 (e)

Library of Congress Control Number: 2021907520

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Contents

I. AUTHORS’ INTRODUCTIONS

i. The Iliad Mystery and the Standard Reading

ii. Three Ancient Misconceptions

iii. The Real Story

iv. Prologue (Book 1.1-7)

II. PRELUDE TO BATTLE (2)

Chapter 1 The Quarrel (Book 1.8-611)

Chapter 2 Armies Prepare (Book 2)

III. THE BATTLE FOR TROY (5-2-5-2-5)

a. Day 1 -- Greek Victories (5)

Chapter 3 First Duel: Menelaus/Paris (Book 3)

Chapter 4 Battle Begins (Book 4)

Chapter 5 Athena’s Preeminence (Book 5)

Chapter 6 Hector At Troy (Book 6)

Chapter 7 Second Duel: Aias/Hector (Book 7)

b. Day 2 -- Trojan Victories (2)

Chapter 8 Zeus Helps The Trojans (Book 8)

Chapter 9 Embassy To Achilles (Book 9)

Chapter 10 The Night Expedition (Book 10)

c. Day 3 -- Trojan Victories (5)

Chapter 11 Hector’s Day Begins (Book 11)

Chapter 12 Battle For The Wall (Book 12)

Chapter 13 Zeus Looks Away (Book 13)

Chapter 14 The Secrets of the Gods (Book 14)

Chapter 15 Hector’s Day of Recompense (Book 15)

d. Day 3 -- Greek Victory, and Stalemate (2)

Chapter 16 Patroclus (Book 16)

Chapter 17 The Day of the Dead (Book 17)

e. Day 4 -- Achilles’ Revenge (5)

Chapter 18 Achilles Rises (Book 18)

Chapter 19 Achilles Prepares For Battle (Book 19)

Chapter 20 Renown Without Glory (Book 20)

Chapter 21 The Battles of the Gods (Book 21)

Chapter 22 Third Duel: Achilles/Hector (Book 22)

IV. ACHILLES’ CHOICE (2)

Chapter 23 Funeral of Patroclus (Book 23)

Chapter 24 The Peace of Achilles (Book 24)

V. CONCLUSION

Chapter 25 Homecoming and the Future of Troy (The Real Book 24)

Chapter 26 The Real Homer

VI. GENERAL APPENDICES

A. The Plans of Zeus

B. Corrupt Lines

C. Hector’s Six Steps

D. Warrior Rules

E. Supplication

F. Fate

G. Silence -- How are Prizes Awarded?

H. Standard Reading vs. Real Story -- Overview

I. Iliad and Aethiopis

Chapter Inserts

iii.a. Hephaestus’ Trap

iii.g. The Demodocus Segment

iv.e. Master of Warriors Agamemnon

iv.e. Godlike Achilles

1.b. Zeus’ Plan 1 -- Mutiny

1.b. Hero

1.b. Iphigenia

1.c. Achilles’ Six Versions

1.c. Honor

1.c. Agamemnon vs. Achilles

1.d. In Medias Res: Again

1.d. The Real Athena -- 1

1.e. The Hector Mystique

1.f. Nestor

1.i. Themis’ Prophecy

1.j. The Plan of Achilles

1.j. Thetis -- Raising Achilles

1.m. The Affair

1.n. Zeus and Achilles

1.p. The Beginning of Evil, kakou archē (11.604)

2.b. Zeus’ Plan 2 -- Greek Defeat

2.c. The Atreid Curse

2.c. Must Troy Fall?

2.d. Silence: Odysseus’ Lost Opportunity

2.f. In Medias Res: Homeric Chronologies

3.b. Visualizing Hector

3.d. Who Sent Paris to Seduce Helen?

3.d. Odysseus’ Speech to the Trojans -- 1

3.f. Silence: The Sword of Paris

3.g. Mortal Character and the Gods

4.b. Hera

4.c. Trojan Guilt

4.d. The Betrothal of Helen

4.d. The Aias Enigma

4.e. Does Agamemnon Know that Troy is Doomed?

4.f Through their own recklessness

5.d. Cowardly Aeneas

5.e. Sarpedon

5.f. The Real Athena -- 2

5.g. Athena: Goddess of War?

6.g. Dionysian Andromache

6.g. General Andromache?

6.g. Heroic Hector

7.b. David and Goliath

7.d. Why Did Zeus Build the Wall?

9.a. As many men, so many opinions3

9.c. Agamemnon’s Plan and its Failure

9.f. Odyssean Intrusion

9.g. The Two Sides of Achilles’ Speech

9.g. Why Achilles Cannot Say What He Wants

9.i. Achilles’ Replies

9.l. How Old is Achilles?

11.b. Odysseus’ Speech to the Trojans – 2

11.b. Iris’ Error

12.b. Hector’s Disregard for Omens

12.c. Noblesse Oblige

16.e. Sarpedon’s Moira/Aisa

16.e. Single Combat -- Great Glory?

17.d. Zeus’ Plan 3 -- Hector Retires

18.e. Herakles

18.g. Hector’s Master Stroke

18.g. Hector Calls It Off

19.c. Hera Deceives Zeus: The Birth of Herakles

19.c. 180 Lines

19.d. Kind and Mighty

19.d. Why Did Achilles Choose Briseïs?

20.d. Achilles: Renown without Glory

22.f. Divine Support

22.g. Manliness and Youth

22.g. The Foreshadowed Death of Achilles

22.i. Homer’s Women

23.b. The Afterlife of the Unburied

24.c. The Judgment

24.d. Winged Words

Those oft are stratagems which errors seem,

Nor is it Homer nods, but we that dream.

Alexander Pope, An Essay on Criticism, Part 1

GENERAL REFERENCES

HOMERIC TEXT AND TRANSLATIONS

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Kahane, A. and Mueller, M. ed. The Chicago Homer, accessed on homer.library.northwestern.edu/.

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Lattimore, Richard, tr. (2011), The Iliad of Homer, introduction by Richard Martin.

Lattimore, Richard, tr. (1965), The Odyssey of Homer.

Mitchell, Stephen, tr. (2011), Homer, The Iliad.

Murray, A.T., tr. (1999), Homer, Iliad, v. I-II, revised by William F. Wyatt.

Murray, A.T., tr. (1995), Homer, Odyssey, v. I-II, revised by George E. Dimmock.

ANTIQUITIES

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Apollonius Rhodius, Argonautica, tr. William H. Race (2008).

Aristotle, Poetics, tr. Stephen Halliwell (1995).

Dictys of Crete, Chronicle of the Trojan War, tr. R.M. Frazier (Jr.) (1966). https://www.theoi.com/Text/DictysCretensis1.html

Herodotus, The Histories, tr. A.D. Godley (1920).

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Hesiod, Theogony, Works and Days, tr. M.L. West (1988).

Longinus, On the Sublime, tr. W. Fyfe, revised by D. Russell, (1995).

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Willcock, M. M. Ad Hoc Invention in the Iliad. Harvard Studies in Classical Philology 81 (1977): 41-53.

Wyatt, William F. The Embassy and the Duals in Iliad 9. The American Journal of Philology 106, no. 4 (1985): 399-408.

Yasumura, N. Challenges to Zeus in Early Greek Poetry (2011).

I

AUTHORS’ INTRODUCTIONS

i. The Iliad Mystery and the Standard Reading

ii. Three Ancient Misconceptions

iii. The Real Story

iv. Prologue

i

The Iliad Mystery and the Standard Reading

a. Who created the Iliad?

Nearly three millennia after its creation, the poem known as Homer’s Iliad powerfully engages audiences, and is one of the most studied, written about, and admired works in Western literature.¹ Yet, since antiquity, it has given rise to numerous questions concerning its meaning and, more recently, its authorship -- author in the broadest sense, its originator(s) or creator(s) -- and the artistic process that created it, that have never been satisfactorily answered.

Is the great war poem the work of one author, as the ancients believed,² and as many modern critics (unitarians) still hold? (And, if so, did the Iliad and Odyssey have the same author? See iii.a.)

Or, as the analytical school held, did it grow over time, by accretion, through the work of multiple authors? Or was it created in performance before audiences -- orally improvised poetry, which in some ways it resembles -- made up as its one or many singers went along, carried in their memories, and transcribed, perhaps in the author’s lifetime, perhaps as late as several centuries afterwards?³

Which approach, unitarian, analytical, oral poetry, best enables modern readers to deal with the many perplexing questions which the Iliad, intentionally or not, lays before its audience?

This study will show that the ancient view of a single author turns out to be the most accurate. Other suppositions have served as a refuge for scholars only because the Real Story (one of immense complexity and unity), Homer’s method of telling it, and his purpose in doing so, until now have completely escaped us.

There was only one Homer, and his Iliad was sublime in artistry, but also in difficulty. That is because, although he told his story to mortal audiences, he didn’t create it merely for us, but also for the gods. He left the work in written form, and it remains today a complicated puzzle. That must be what its author intended; Homer undoubtedly believed that no mortal would ever understand his Iliad.

b. The Standard Reading (SR) ⁴

There is, of course, no single accepted Iliad interpretation, but rather an almost unnumberable assortment of observations and opinions. But, generally, modern unitarian criticism addresses a work thought to be more or less like the one outlined here (as related in Schein The Mortal Hero, Griffin Homer on Life and Death, and G.S. Kirk, gen. ed., The Iliad: a Commentary).

The Iliad recounts a single, prolonged episode in the Trojan War. Traditionally, the war marks the end of the Heroic Age, when many mortals had gods as close ancestors. This was the age of Herakles, and of the two or three generations which fought the Theban and Trojan Wars. The Trojan War’s origins lie in the mythical Judgment of Paris.⁵ At the marriage of the mortal Peleus and the divine sea-nymph Thetis (the parents of Achilles), Strife (Eris), whom Zeus had not invited, threw a golden apple into the gathering, inscribed to the Fairest. Zeus then arranged a divine contest, in which a Trojan prince, Paris, had to choose the fairest among three goddesses: Hera, Athena, and Aphrodite. Hera offered kingship over all, Athena, victory in war, and Aphrodite, the hand of Helen of Sparta. Paris chose Aphrodite, and earned undying enmity for Troy from Hera and Athena.⁶ Zeus’ contest, leading to Paris’ elopement with Helen, queen of Sparta and wife of Menelaus, caused the Trojan War, by which the Greeks attempted to recover Helen.

The Iliad focuses on a single aspect of the Greeks’ ten-year war at Troy. After nine years of fighting, the war takes a new turn due to the wrath of the great warrior Achilles, who is fated to die at Troy. (In this study, the term Fate is used only in presenting the Standard Reading; see General Appendix F.) The wrath is caused by an intolerable affront to Achilles’ honor as a warrior. When Agamemnon, the leader of the Greek army attacking Troy, needs to pacify the god Apollo by returning a captive woman to her father, he takes one of Achilles’ prizes, a woman called Briseïs (daughter of Brises), in her place. (Agamemnon is able to do so because the goddess Athena orders Achilles not to kill him, and Achilles obeys her.) Achilles becomes so angry that he withdraws from the battle, through his goddess mother Thetis asks Zeus to help the Trojans, after Greek defeats rejects Agamemnon’s offer of restitution, and then, when the army is in danger of being destroyed, sends his attendant and beloved companion Patroclus to fight in his place.

This tragic error ⁷ makes Achilles’ own death inevitable: the Trojan prince Hector slays Patroclus, and Achilles seeks revenge by killing Hector, even though he knows that he must die soon after Hector does. Achilles returns to the battle, routs the Trojans and kills Hector. Achilles mistreats Hector’s corpse, but then, on Zeus’ orders, returns it to the supplicant Priam, king of Troy and father of Hector. Achilles’ harsh and pitiless character softens as he feels pity for Priam, as well as for his own aged father, and generously gives the Trojans a truce so that Hector can be buried. We then leave Achilles, and the story ends with the funeral of Hector, with Achilles’ death at Troy prophesied, and the Fall of Troy, without Hector to defend the city, inevitable. At that point, the Muse whom Homer invoked (1.1) stops singing.

The Trojan prince Hector is also viewed tragically, but far more sympathetically. Strongly contrasted with self-centered Achilles, Hector is seen as a loving, devoted husband and father, the oldest son and heir apparent of Priam, king of Troy. In the service of duty, honor, and renown for himself and his father, Hector fights for Troy even though he knows that Troy is doomed. An idealized warrior/hero, his filial piety and heroic sense of shame impel him to risk his life in battle. Ultimately, despite his parents’ entreaties, ashamed to retreat to safety behind Troy’s walls, he fights a duel with Achilles which he has little hope of winning, and dies.

And Thetis, Achilles’ goddess mother, always loving and concerned, grieves incessantly as she tries to help her son, even as brutal, bullying Agamemnon dishonors and devalues him. The fated fall of Troy is a just punishment for the crime of Paris (replicated by the Trojans’ oathbreaking at the Menelaus/Paris duel), and is brought about through the will of Zeus and the pro-Greek deities Hera, Athena (the genius of Greek victory, goddess of Greek success⁸), and Poseidon.

The ancients believed that Zeus used the Trojan War to kill off the race of heroes (1.3-5) and end the Heroic Age. Modern critics are less committed to this reading (see iv.f). Generally, the SR views Troy as a doomed city, and Achilles as a man fated to die an early death. Fate rules over mortal lives, and the Iliad explores how brave fighting men deal with deaths which they cannot avoid, and seek immortal glory to console them in the miserable afterlife which they, like all mortals, sooner or later must endure.

c. A desperate attempt

But the Standard Reading is not, even in broad outline, the story that Homer is telling. Homer’s Real Story is an incomparably greater and more engaging one, and that much more present in the text, and more artfully told.

The Standard Reading is a desperate attempt to make sense of a baffling work (for a sampling of the Iliad’s more puzzling aspects, see next section), and it falls apart at the lightest touch. It tells us that Agamemnon’s taking of Briseïs is a terrible offense to Achilles’ honor as a warrior. The extreme nature of Achilles’ response, trying to regain his lost honor by asking Zeus to help the Trojans, shows that the warrior’s honor is a fundamental motivator in the Iliad.

But the SR regards Athena both as a goddess of war and a mainstay of the Greeks, and Athena tells Achilles, But come, cease from strife, and do not draw [your] sword; but now surely with words indeed reproach him, exactly as it will be. For thus I will speak, and truly it will be a thing completed: three times as many shining gifts will be yours because of this outrage (1.210-4). ⁹ Certainly, Athena never anticipates that Achilles will cease from strife by asking Zeus to help the Trojans.

Warlike Athena doesn’t regard Agamemnon’s outrage as a grave, nearly irreparable, offense to honor, and therefore the SR shouldn’t either.¹⁰ Caught up in this paradox, the SR has no sensible way to explain Achilles’ subsequent actions, and its entire analysis of the Iliad as the story of Achilles’ wrath, arising from an intolerable offense to the all-important honor of a warrior, falls to the ground.

The SR sees the Iliad as the story of Achilles, whose anger causes him to make a tragic error: he sends beloved companion Patroclus into battle in his place. Achilles’ great sorrow over Patroclus’ death leads Achilles to take revenge on Hector. This completes the tragedy, because Hector’s death will lead inevitably to Achilles’ own. And how do we know this? Goddess Thetis tells Achilles that "You will be dying early, from what you say; for immediately (autika) to you therefore after Hector is death/doom at hand (or, sure to come, certain, LSJ)" (18.95f).¹¹ But it isn’t. Achilles kills Hector on the next day. But then, having been warned by Poseidon and Athena (21.296), he stops fighting and returns to the ships, spends 11 days abusing Hector’s corpse, and is last seen comfortably bedded down with Briseïs, sleeping an untroubled sleep (24.673-6), and hardly the picture of a man about to die an angry (see General Appendix I) death, when battle resumes after the 11 day truce that Achilles has given Priam.

Thetis is lying to Achilles; and if she chooses to lie about it, then perhaps his death is not inevitable after all. Thetis lies to Achilles throughout the work because she wants him to stay at Troy and win imperishable renown (9.413), and to think that he has no choice but to do so. Here, she tries to motivate Achilles to attack Troy and die immediately after he kills Hector, and not to consider alternatives, such as going home.

And Achilles remains a long way from fatalistically, or humbly, accepting death. Three times, in the Iliad’s later books, he tries to put off dying: in his whine to Zeus (21.273), in refraining from battle after the death of Hector, apparently obsessed with Hector’s corpse (24.1), and in granting Priam a lengthy truce (24.668). In his last conversation, with Priam, death does not seem to weigh on his mind. His young son Neoptolemus (19.326),¹² his feelings of loving concern for his aged father (24.54), his new-found relationship with dead Patroclus (23.94, 24.592), his admiration for Priam, whose regal manner appears worthy of emulation (24.630), and his newly consummated love for Briseïs (24.676), the woman he chose as his prize (19.60, Why Did Achilles Choose Briseïs?, 19.d) -- do these serve merely to make his inevitable death all the more tragic? If death at Troy is not inevitable, they give Achilles a lot to live for.

In words which the SR completely discounts, Achilles reveals that he has a choice between two deaths: after a short life leading to imperishable renown, or a long one without renown (9.410-5). As the work ends, which one has he chosen?

d. Paradoxes, ancient and modern

A fuller list of problems that beset modern criticism might begin as follows. The analytical scholar Walter Leaf listed three he thought were most important.

[1] After Zeus agrees, in Book 1, to honor Achilles and help the Trojans, his promise is entirely forgotten about until Book 8, Battle Day 2. [2] Achilles refuses Agamemnon’s gifts in Book 9, but then hopes to receive the gifts, and Agamemnon’s favor, at 11.609 and 16.71. Hence the seemingly climactic Book 9 must be a late (and inorganic) addition to the epic. [3] ...the whole balance of the story is disturbed by the fact Diomedes’ exploits in Book 5, especially his wounding two gods, are greater than any of Achilles’.¹³

Many other puzzles must be added. [4] Why, as the ancients asked, is the work even called Iliad, the story of Ilios (Troy), or perhaps of the Trojan War, when its announced subject is the wrath of Achilles (1.1), and it might better have been named after its protagonist, Achillead, similar to Odyssey (IC I, 52)? [5] But how can the subject be the wrath of Achilles (1.1), when Achilles renounces his wrath at Agamemnon long before the end, at 16.60 and 19.67? [6] Why did Agamemnon, standing alone against the entire army, disrespect Apollo’s priest (1.22), and then refuse to believe that he was responsible for the plague, of which his own action was clearly the cause (1.101)? [7] Even if we sympathize with Achilles’ withdrawal from battle after Agamemnon takes his prize, can we possibly admire his treachery (asking Zeus to help the enemy) and, later, his savage slaughter of that same enemy, and its culmination, Achilles’ personally cutting the throats of twelve POWs (23.175)? [8] Why didn’t Athena quiesce the Quarrel between Achilles and Agamemnon by ordering Achilles not to kill Agamemnon, and also by telling Agamemnon not to take Briseïs? [9] Why does Hera hate Troy (4.31), yet never mention Paris, the Trojan prince who eloped with Helen and thereby caused the Trojan War? [10] How do the Greeks build an immense wall and trench to defend their ships in a single day (7.433, 7.464), and why do they wait till the tenth year of the war to do so? Why does Poseidon tell Zeus that Poseidon and Apollo built Troy’s wall (7.451), but tell Apollo that Poseidon built it alone, with Apollo otherwise occupied (21.446)? How is it that Apollo can kick in the wall, like a sandcastle (15.361), yet it takes concerted action by the gods, and nine days of floods and rain to destroy it when the war is over (12.13-33)?¹⁴ [11] Why, after enthusiastically welcoming Agamemnon’s messengers (9.194), does Achilles angrily reject Agamemnon’s munificent offer of restitution for taking Achilles’ prize (9.306-429)?¹⁵ [12] Why does Achilles claim he can choose between two deaths, with a short life or a long one (9.410-15), when his mother continually asserts that he will die at Troy (1.418, 18.95, 24.131)? [13] When his prayer to Zeus (1.409) has been answered, and the Greeks have been driven back to their ships, why does Achilles still refuse to fight, and make the life of his beloved companion Patroclus a hostage to his wrath by sending him to fight in Achilles’ place (16.64)?

[14] Were Achilles and Patroclus lovers? The ages have wondered, and have never found a conclusive answer. [15] Why doesn’t Priam send Helen home, and end a war whose only purpose, from a Trojan standpoint, can be so that Paris and Helen can cohabit?¹⁶ [16] Most of all, what about the ending, unsatisfying despite its divine aura, when Achilles returns Hector’s body to Priam? Achilles feels pity; that is nice. But Homer has pictured an immense clash of armies, and of wills both mortal and divine; was it all done just to bring us to this anticlimax? And, when so many men have died and, we expect, will die, why all the fuss about a corpse?

To these plot anomalies must be added numerous anomalies of expression.

[17] "Why [does the Poet] command [Sing, goddess… (1.1)], rather than prayerfully request the goddess to sing?" (IC I, 52). [18] Why does Agamemnon boast that he will go in person to take Achilles’ prize (1.137, 1.184), and then send heralds to do the job (1.319)? [19] Why does Athena stop Achilles from killing Agamemnon by appearing behind him and pulling his hair, instead of simply standing in front of him (1.197)? [20] What does Achilles mean by asking her why she has come "again (aute)", implying that she is unwelcome, when there is no account of any previous appearance (1.202)? [21] Why does Zeus tell Thetis that he wants to avoid Hera’s notice (1.522), and then oblige Thetis with a nod of assent so powerful that it shakes Olympus, which Hera cannot fail to notice (1.528)? [22] Why doesn’t Paris, following the traditional story of the Judgment, answer Hector’s rebuke by saying that Helen was Aphrodite’s gift to him (3.368)? Why does Zeus appear to have forgotten about the Judgment (4.31)? [23] Why, in their duel, does Menelaus refrain from killing Paris and, when Paris gets a chance to escape, deliberately direct attention away from him (3.361)? [24] Why, after losing the duel to Menelaus, does Paris feel his greatest-ever moment of lust for Helen (3.441)? [25] Why does Hector announce that he will go home to visit, not his wife and child, but his servants, wife, and family (365f)? Why, having learned her whereabouts from a servant, does he try to avoid his wife at the Scaean gate, apparently so that he might return to the field of battle without talking to her (6.392)? [26] The Hector Paradox: Why does Hector tell his wife Andromache that Troy is doomed (6.447), and in the next moment pray that his son may one day be king (6.475)? [27] Why does Achilles seem to accuse Odysseus of deceiving him, when, as far as Achilles knows, Odysseus has said nothing untrue (9.312)?¹⁷ [28] What are we supposed to think when swift-footed Achilles, at the climax of the duel with Hector which is supposed to be the apex of his glory, leans on his spear to catch his breath (22.224), throws his spear weakly enough for Hector to avoid it (22.273), and needs Athena’s considerable help to defeat his foe (although Aias and Diomedes needed no help)? Does this glorify Achilles, as modern critics have steadfastly maintained, or denigrate him? [29] Why does Zeus say that Troy is his best loved city because of its piety (4.44); and why does Hera regard Zeus as pro-Trojan (1.520)? Aren’t the Greeks supposed to win? Aren’t they going to win? How can Zeus’ sympathies be on the wrong side? [30] If Zeus believes that "there is nothing more wretched than [a] warrior (andros)" (17.447), why did he cause the Trojan War (1.5) and all the suffering that it led to? [31] Why did Zeus send Rumor to the Greek army, encouraging it to leave, when it is presently beyond destiny (2.155) for the army to do so? [32] And why does Agamemnon tell Achilles, "always is strife dear to you, and wars, and fighting" (1.177) () when the cause of Achilles challenge is obvious: Agamemnon’s refusal to appropriately reward those who are fighting his war for him?

Why are the two most important foundational elements in Trojan War mythology ignored? [33] Why, except in an obviously corrupt passage (24.25-30), is the Judgment of Paris never referenced? Why is the gods’ sole reference to Paris at 4.9, and even that not by name? [34] Why does the text never mention the storied betrothal of Helen, and the oaths which her suitors swore, to Helen’s step-father Tyndareus, to preserve the marriage by coming to Menelaus’ aid, if necessary? Why is Tyndareus himself never named?

This list of paradoxes is far from exhaustive; for the sake of exposition, this study identifies over 100. Such problems appear to be a deliberately constructed aspect of Homer’s style.¹⁸ We need not puzzle much if a poet, lacking a word processor, creates minor inconsistencies in such a lengthy work. But what conceivable process of literary creation, without strategic intent, could by its inexactness turn their great, climactic duel into a display of Hector’s fearfulness (22.136) and Achilles’ physical weakness due to exhaustion (22.224, 22.273)?

At present, Iliad scholars have given us a Standard Reading which provides convincing answers to few, if any, of these provoking questions. By failing to see that the Iliad’s many apparent anomalies arise from a work much deeper than the one they have tried to explain to us, their commentary has raised a great barrier to modern readers. The barrier is even greater to readers of English translations, as translators have tended to fatally denature, or deliberately misrender, Homer’s often unexpected, generally anti-heroic language. Their obvious purpose is to make the text consistent with the translators’ own mythologically traditional, banally heroic or noble, conception of the story.¹⁹ No reader could ever find the Real Story in currently available English translations; and, if it had relied on these in place of the original Greek, the present study would have been impossible.

Paradox, the surprising, the unexpected, that which doesn’t seem to fit -- these are distinguishing characteristics of the Iliad, and they require that the successful reader continually interrogate the text. The smoothly flowing translation of the full Alexandrine text (see iii.e), one that leaves us at ease and disinclined to question, in the interest of readability substitutes the translator’s own poem for Homer’s.²⁰

e. Why we can now understand the Iliad

Created at a time when writing was rare in Greek society, there can be little doubt that the Iliad’s original audiences did not read the work; they heard it.²¹ And, undoubtedly, they thought they were hearing, with many references before and after, a single, greatly embellished episode from the traditional mythology of the Trojan War.

But the written text of the Iliad tells another story, one that differs radically from the one that the ages, both listeners and readers, have thought Homer was telling. It is a tale brilliantly conceived, and richly told, and, from Homer’s day onwards, this has been apparent to no one. In all the surviving commentary from antiquity, there is no hint, for instance, that anyone ever imagined five secret Plans of Zeus, a secret Plan of Achilles, or of an ending which spares Troy. The Real Story (RS), so called in this study, was not lost; there is no reason to think that it was ever glimpsed. We can be fairly sure that Homer, a blind man, far from home in a world of strangers (see ch. 26), reciting a work that at times seemed to verge on blasphemy (see iii.g), explained himself to no one, and the Real Ending, which at times he would have recited (see ch. 25), was never written down.

Homer’s listening audiences were enthralled, but baffled. We know this because Homer told us so, in his literary introduction to the Iliad: the story Hephaestus’ Trap, Odyssey 8.266 (see iii.a). Part of what that story tells us is that even if Homer recited the Real Ending, people still didn’t understand.

Homer’s audience had, of course, an irreplaceable resource in the Poet’s own person. If Homer acted his characters, then his listeners knew many things which we must guess at. In the Quarrel with Achilles, was Agamemnon overbearing, reflecting the power of the master of warriors (andrōn) (1.7)? Or was he fearful, overawed by the violent aspect of godlike Achilles, "of all warriors (andrōn) most terrifying" (1.146)? Replying to Hector’s scathing rebukes, were Paris’ responses (3.59, 6.333) humble, acknowledging Hector’s preeminence or, asserting the royal favor which Paris enjoyed, smoothly condescending? Did Hector speak in tones of tenderness to Andromache, or coldly; and what tones did she use with him? When Thetis held Zeus in supplication, growing into him (1.513), was her voice also caressing? Can a blind Poet wink? If not, did the Poet smile?

But, merely hearing the Iliad’s roughly 15000 lines recited in a series of performances, while they could have enjoyed Homer’s smoothly flowing narrative, great drama, and powerfully poetic expression, yet Homer’s audiences could not possibly have grasped his intricate and untraditional story, with its seemingly endless interconnections and almost unfathomable subtleties of narration and style.

The Iliad is neither a series of inspired fragments by multiple authors, nor is it one or more bardic poets’ story, created in performance, and told imperfectly due to the limitations of its medium. It is the work of a poet endowed with transcendent genius, and in it that genius is employed in a manner quite hostile to the audience’s understanding. An immense poetic talent, and a singularly able memory, inspire nearly every line, and place before us a magnificent, exquisitely crafted puzzle.

Technology has given present-day readers a memory capability to rival Homer’s, through a written text which we can access and search electronically. Modern scholarship has given us thousands of scholarly articles and books, useful for background, for the literary questions they raise, and for the insights they offer. We can now solve Homer’s puzzle, after all the ages have completely failed to do so.

Homer’s secret is not hidden in a few lines. It is omnipresent, and, in the process of finding it, we will come to understand many lines, speeches, and even scenes, that modern critics can only puzzle over and (without advertising the fact) either address formalistically, dismiss as merely dramatic, or substantially ignore. And we will find that many obviously important lines will acquire new and stronger meanings when we become more attentive to their precise wording and context.²²

But this raises a new question. Even before today’s computer-assisted readers, people through the ages accessed the Iliad through a written text, and still never found the story which resides in nearly every line. Why not?

To find the Real Story, we need to feel sure, from Homer’s forceful narrative style and evident mastery of poetic language, that the great poem cannot be a series of thoughtless concatenations, incidental mistakes, and empty formalisms, but must, in some degree, be hiding its own greatness. And, in view of Homer’s great originality, we must be able to accept surprises. Just when we think, Homer couldn’t have meant that -- well, it is likely that that is precisely what Homer meant. The work of discovery is a lengthy and arduous one, and, until the picture in the puzzle begins to appear, it must be fueled largely by the confident belief that only a solitary genius could have created such a revered and enduring work. …the poem can be understood only by painstaking study of the text itself, and by means of the hypothesis that that text is the work of a poetical genius who consciously employed all the materials ready at his hand for a meaningful and artistic purpose (Cherniss 1940, 112).

Still, many have undertaken this study, and all have failed. Their job has been made immensely more difficult by an eventuality which Homer could not have foreseen. Homer’s poem worked well enough for the living poet, but not for his immediate successors. He could recite this strange work and have audiences accept it, despite their puzzlement (see iii.a). His successors could not. Sometime soon after Homer’s death, someone who controlled the manuscript added lines in order to bring the poem closer to what audiences expected (see General Appendix B). The most important of these refer to Zeus’ purpose in starting the Trojan War (1.5), the destruction of the Greeks’ wall after the Fall of Troy (12.6-40), and the Judgment of Paris (24.25-30). Others soften Homer’s sometimes painful characterizations, most especially of Hector (8.191-7) and Andromache (6.422-9). Overall, these corruptions tend to destroy much of the story’s great originality, which is precisely what they were meant to do. If we give them equal standing with the rest of the text, they make it impossible to form any consistent view of what the story is, or what the author’s intentions were. Instead, we must proceed, boldly, to divide the received text into the lines that tell the Real Story, and those (relatively few) that contradict it, which must have been added later (more at iii.e). This is not merely a process of cutting away troublesome passages. The textual corruptions are the first non-Homeric critical responses to the Iliad. (The first were Homer’s own, in the Odyssey.) If someone after Homer added lines at a particular point, it must have been because audiences were dissatisfied with what Homer left them, and, before we cut, we must be able to understand why this was so.

To date, no scholar, ancient or modern, has seen into the text well enough to employ this approach. And, even if we possessed a correct, original text of Homer’s work, our inquiries might be futile if we did not make use of the help that Homer offered us in the Odyssean introduction to the Iliad, which displays the two great secrets of the work’s construction: the Hephaestian Traps, and the Iliad Paradox (see ch. iii).

And, finally, we must allow ourselves to realize what others have not dared to: that despite the grandeur of traditional Trojan War mythology, from Helen’s betrothal to the Trojan Horse and beyond, this is not the story that Homer is telling. From imagination, he has created a new story of Troy, drawing to some extent on traditional mythology, and added to it mythological episodes, such as the Binding of Zeus, which are the Poet’s own. Why did he do this? The Trojan War myths glorify war. This makes them inimical to anti-war Homer, who, to his purpose, reconstituted virtually the entire story of Troy.

Homer’s text is recoverable, but precisely what story Homer’s original audiences thought they were hearing,²³ or what story Homer expected them to hear (since grasping his real meaning was impossible), is not. This study therefore contrasts the modern Standard Reading (of the Alexandrine text which we now use) with the Real Story (from the Alexandrine text as, here, corrected), as it must have existed in the mind of the creator.

Why is the work titled Iliad? We hear a complete story, Homer’s story, of the Trojan War, beginning with Helen’s betrothal and pointing to the Returns of the (defeated) Greeks and the Trojan succession after Priam. It is a story worthy of the gods, and one which, in Homer’s time, only its author, and gods if gods there were, could decipher and understand.²⁴ In that story, and there alone, even if no listener could grasp the extent of it, the author’s genius was fully exercised. His highest purpose was grander than this (see iii.g); but isn’t this alone sufficient to explain why he created it?

INTRODUCTION i NOTES

¹ A search on Iliad in JSTOR, in English, gets more than 36,000 hits as of 01/01/2021. Modern English translations currently in print include those by Pope, Butler, Murray, Graves, Lattimore, Fitzgerald, Lombardo, Fagles, Alexander, Derby, Mitchell, Verity, and Green, all available through Amazon. There have been at least 85 English translations in print since 1581 (Johnston 2010).

² "In the classical age of Greece, no one questioned the unity of the Iliad or the Odyssey, or doubted that both were the work of one poet: Homer" (Goold 1977, 2). Later in antiquity, some maintained that the Iliad and Odyssey had different authors. Antiquity universally believed that the Iliad had a single author, as documented in the various Lives of Homer (see ch. 26). There is no historical evidence whatsoever for the oral poetry hypothesis, such as who the various bards were, when and where they worked, and how their work came to be collected and written down.

³ See West 2011, HE Oral Traditions. The analytical school has lost favor (see also HE Analysts). It has also become fashionable to mention, as separate from the other approaches, neoanalysis, the consideration of pre-existing stories and traditions which Homer might have made use of.

⁴ This study does not pretend to be a work of professional scholarship, and references are meant to be helpful, but not definitive. Widely held views from the SR are sometimes stated without citation.

⁵ Briefly told in Proclus’ summary of a lost work, the Cypria arg. 1-2 (West 2003a). See also Apollodorus The Library, 3.13.3; HE Judgment of Paris, and others. Many scholars recognize that the Iliad deemphasizes the Judgment, and blame the war’s continuation on Hera’s innate ferocity and hostility to Troy (Davies 1981). But they still accept it as the means by which Zeus started the war, and Paris won Helen.

⁶ Nonetheless, since Aphrodite isn’t a fighter, it is not she, but Apollo, who is Troy’s principal defender in battle. Apollo played no part in the Judgment.

⁷ As in Aristotle’s characterization of tragedy, he ...falls into adversity not through evil and depravity, but through some kind of error Aristotle Poetics, 1453a 10. "Accordingly, with the Iliad and the Odyssey a single tragedy, or at most two, can be made from each..." Aristotle Poetics, 1459b 2-4.

⁸ Whitman 1958, 231; Willcock 1970, 7. Athena ought to be called goddess of major screwups, throughout.

⁹ <> marks a paraphrase of what was said; <<>> something that someone might have said, but chose not to; <<<>>> fills in a speech that Homer did not quote.

¹⁰ Neither does the intelligent and formidable Aias, son of Telamon, the Greeks’ leading warrior after Achilles (9.628).

¹¹ The first word autika, immediately (Mistranslation: soon, Lattimore) controls the line. Without it, the meaning is If Hector dies, then you will also. With it, the meaning is shown by Achilles’ echo, Immediately let me die… (18.97).

¹² Not the near-grown Neoptolemus the Odyssey (Od. 11.505); the Iliad chronology is different, and Neoptolemus must still be a child (see How Old is Achilles?, 9.l and 2.f).

¹³ [1] Leaf 1900, 331; [2-3] Leaf 1900 xxi.

¹⁴ The wall has confounded critics since antiquity; see Porter 2011.

¹⁵ Edwards 1987, ch. 24, esp. 237: The views are too numerous and too varied to summarize. Edwards himself gives the SR’s best explanation, see 9.410-5, comment on SR.

¹⁶ Herodotus’ question; see ii.a.

¹⁷ See ii.b.

¹⁸ Goold 1977, 5.

¹⁹ Murray/Wyatt, henceforth Murray, is the most accurate, and this study takes his translation, with Lattimore’s second, as representative of the SR. Some words, for example, are consistently mistranslated, even by these two: aidōs/aideomai (sometimes shame, but usually regard, respect, fear), anēr (usually warrior, not simply man), daimonios (possessed by a god, not husband, wife, Excellency, etc.), dios (godlike, divine, not brilliant, noble), and glaukōpis (grey-eyed, not "shining-eyed"). With certain crucial lines, the problem is a sharp one (especially 6.446 and 24.556). This study points out, and corrects, over 100 significant mistranslations in Murray; in others, such as Fagles, the number would be much higher.

²⁰ Notably, Lattimore’s, despite the shrewd accuracy it often displays, and its many other virtues.

²¹ HE, Text and Transmission.

²² A good example is Achilles’ speech to Lycaon; see 21.b.

²³ We can, however, in some instances make a pretty good guess. See Trojan Horse (iii.b) and Corrupt Lines, iii.e and GA B.

²⁴ Similar to a Private Conversation; see iii.b. The gods admire a mortal work at 11.45f; see also 7.a.

ii

Three Ancient Misconceptions

Before beginning a systematic explication of the Real Story, let us enter it by looking through the eyes of some of the great thinkers of Western antiquity.

a. Herodotus and Hector

The Greek author Herodotus (c. 484-425 BCE), today viewed as Western civilization’s first historian, found Homer’s account unsatisfactory. Having discussed the matter with priests in Egypt, he believed that the fabled Helen, while a war was being fought over her at Troy, was actually elsewhere. The Trojans, in this version, told the Greeks that they didn’t have Helen, but the Greeks didn’t believe them. Herodotus wrote:

... I reason thus: had Helen been in Troy, then with or without the will of Alexandrus [Paris] she would have been given back to the Greeks. Alexandrus was not even heir to the throne, in which case matters might have been in his hands since Priam was old, but Hector, who was an older and a better man than Alexandrus, was going to receive the royal power at Priam’s death, and ought not have acquiesced in his brother’s wrongdoing, especially when that brother was the cause of great calamity to Hector himself and all the rest of the Trojans... For surely Priam was not so mad, or those nearest to him, as to consent to risk their persons and their children and their city so that Alexandrus might cohabit with Helen (Herodotus, Hist., II.120).

Herodotus must be taking his facts from Homer (assuming that Homer’s account is meant to be factual), because the Iliad is the only significant source of information on Hector.¹ But Herodotus got the facts wrong, and missed the real story. Perhaps, instead of visiting Egypt, he should have stayed home, and done his homework.²

Two questions: [1] Why didn’t Hector send Helen home? [2] Why didn’t Priam himself send Helen home?

[1] Well, what precisely is Hector’s condition at Troy? Priam does not in any way support him. He ignores Hector when the army assembles before battle (2.786), and again at the Menelaus/Paris duel. When Priam implores Hector not to fight Achilles (22.38), he says that he doesn’t want to lose another son, not that Troy mustn’t lose her future king. Priam cannot bear to watch Paris fight (3.306), but watches Hector die; which does he love more? The Trojan people must regard Hector as their savior, since they believe that Hector alone was protecting Ilios (6.403); they nickname his son Astyanax (Master of the City), apparently hoping that Hector will be their next king.

But there is never any explicit reference to the succession by the narrator, or by a resident of Troy. The entire story revolves around the fact that Paris is Priam’s choice.³ Priam keeps very quiet about this; the Trojans would be far less willing to fight if they knew they were fighting to make the unpopular Paris their future king.

Herodotus supposes that Hector was the older. The Iliad never tells age exactly.⁴ Hector’s and Andromache’s son is a babe in arms; the two have probably been married only a few years. Paris and Helen have been together no less than ten.

If Paris were heir to the throne, Herodotus believes that things would have been in his hands. And so, as the story begins, they are. Paris, not Hector, initially stands forth as the Trojan champion, and then proposes to resolve the war by dueling Menelaus. At the fearful and disorderly assembly outside Priam’s doors (7.346), Hector (who has just survived the duel with Aias, and ought to be celebrating with Priam) is absent; Paris is with Priam, and Paris answers the protests by offering the Iliad’s last peace proposal