What’s with the armor?

In the Iliad, there is a lot of war and death. Like, a ton. And they like to list the deaths, with all of the gory details, praising the great hero who killed the soldier (the author doesn’t list all of the deaths, of course; that would take another hundred pages or so, considering the amount of soldiers and captains who die). While this is not common in today’s literature, the trend doesn’t seem so out of the ordinary for this book. There is something that interests me, other than the listing of deaths, in this a pattern, however. I noticed that basically all of the listed deaths had something in common: in each of them, the soldier who killed the man proceeded to strip the man of his armor after he died. Weird, huh? I’m sure there is a reason for this, but I don’t know what that reason may be. Surely not for the comfort of the man, because after all he is dead. Maybe because the armor was worth something monetarily? Or because taking the armor off the man showed he had been killed? Another possibility could be that the Greek people had some presumption involving the release of a human soul after the death of the body. Whatever the reason, I found it an interesting practice, one that I definitely will go into depth on and research.

Oh Aphrodite…

We often risk our own safety and well being to save something we love or care about. Most of us have done it at least once or twice, but the god Aphrodite took it to a whole new level. As the fierce battle raged below, only the war enthusiastic gods came to earth and fought amongst the mortals: most of the others wisely stayed out of it. Even though they couldn’t be killed, the Grecian gods could be injured very badly.

As Aphrodite watched the battle play out from above, she saw one of her favorite mortals, Aeneas, suffering at the hand of Diomedes. She already had a record for loving and wanting to save mortal men, whisking them out of battle and harm’s way right before they were killed. As you might know, Aphrodite wasn’t a “goddess triumphant in human warfare” like Athena or Enýo, she was the Greek goddess of love, quite fragile in fact. She thought it was her duty to save her precious Aeneas, so she swept down and enveloped him in a mist so that Diomedes couldn’t hurt him. Yet Diomedes knew how fragile the goddess was and how little battle experience she had, so he attacked her and cut her wrist. She couldn’t die from the wound, but it still hurt like crazy. Aphrodite, after making sure Aeneas was safe, borrowed some fancy gold chariots from the god Ares and flew her pitying self to her mother to heal the wound. After returning to the other gods, she was made fun of for trying to meddle with war. They said that it was not her business and to stay out of it lest she get hurt again, and the war gods taunted her with rude words. So she decided to go back to her forte, love. Hopefully, Aphrodite learned her lesson about meddling with war and handsome mortal men, and wouldn’t dive into battle again.

Indecisive much?

The gods in the bloody, war-filled story of the Iliad seem to always be changing their minds. One second, they want war, and the spur on the soldiers to fight; the next, they want peace, separating the armies and sparing lives and what not. But then it’s war again. They do seem to favor war over peace, and never too long of a period goes by without some gory bloodshed. As well as never being able to make up their minds about war and peace, the gods are never of one mindset: Zeus, Athena, Hera, Aphrodite, and all of the other gods always have opposing views about the current activities. They are constantly going on and sending others on errands, just as another god is doing something contradicting the first god. It would save a lot of time, blood, and lives if the gods would just agree on one thing.

The multitudes of the battle

Before an enormous battle, a list of all of the captains and their armies was put together to demonstrate its sheer size. This list takes up eleven whole pages, and there are around 44 captains listed, along with their huge armies. Only in a few of the armies are estimated numbers given, and few the numbers listed were around forty boats, eighty boats, whole islands, and the like. What is really crazy is that all of these armies and the huge numbers belong to the Acheans, and only them. Every one of those captains: lords and commanders of the Acheans. All of these people belonged to the region of Achea, whose total density is 3,272 km² (1,263 sq mi). And all of these armies came from the region of southwest Greece.

Grecian similes

The army advanced from far off, and “Just as a fire burns through a boundless forest on the mountain crests, and from far off can the glare be seen: just so did the gleam from the polished bronze of their armor flash through the whole sky, up to the very heavens.” As the army advanced, the earth “rumbled beneath the feet of the men and hooves of the horses.” They were as countless as “the leaves and flowers in their seasons. And just as great hordes of flies swarm around the sheepfold in the spring.” The troops poured forth, as “the great flocks of the Asian wetlands- wild geese or cranes or long-throated swans- by the streams of Cäýester wheel this way and that way, glorying in their wings, and with loud cries keep settling, and with the whole marshland resounds.” Obviously this army was quite impressive and intimidating; from these similes we can imagine just how large it was. All of these accurate similes are referring to the Argives, as they stood, ready for battle, against the Trojans. It’s really interesting the similes and comparisons that are being used here, compared to the ones used in different time periods.

The weapon of words

I start head first into the fast-paced rhyme of the Iliad, and immediately there is quarrel. In fact, it started off with an army and a ransom. Multiple sides are present, all wanting something different, each willing to fight and risk their lives for it. The bloodshed quickly begins, anger and fury driving the weapons and those behind them. In a blind rage the men clash and the gods take sides. But the goddess Athena, wanting to put an end to the violence, comes to the leader Achilles. “I have come to hold back your blind rage,” she says, “Enough: abandon this quarrel, put up your sword. Attack him with words instead.” So Achilles, following Athena’s wisdom, puts his sword back in its sheath and starts pommeling his enemy with a torrent of acidic insults and caustic words. The result is eminent, and the words burn under the enemy’s skin. Not only do these words convince the enemy (at least for a while) to surrender to Achilles’s will, but they save many lives that would have otherwise been lost to a sword.