Hey, welcome back. Today we're going to be talking about the epic poem The Iliad and looking at book one. Let's start by talking about the major characters in this book. The most important character in book one of The Iliad is Achilles, and in fact, it's the action surrounding this character that leads to the overall plot of the poem.
Achilles is set up as a character about whom we have mixed feelings. He's a tragic character in that we find find out about him very quickly that he's going to die young. And so from the very beginning, he evokes a kind of pity.
However, he's also seen as violent and intensely emotional, both of which have serious consequences in this book. And so although we feel sorry for him and the tragedy looming in his near future, we also see how he brings problems on his own head as well as on the heads of all of his friends. The second important character in Book One is Agamemnon. Agamemnon is the great general and leader of the Achaean army. And although he is a powerful warrior and a commanding leader, he's portrayed in this book as a colossal jerk.
He is arrogant and selfish, and because he is so self-absorbed and so determined to get what he wants, he not only hurts his friends and followers, but feels absolutely no remorse for his power plays and his grasping nature. His arrogance leads to a significant conflict with Achilles, which again triggers most of the action in this book. In book one, we also meet Nestor, the old warrior, who's been around and had lots of opportunity to advise people in the past.
His experience and his age give him wisdom and give him the opportunity to try to make peace. among the warring generals. We also meet Calchas, the seer.
Calchas is the mouthpiece of the gods. He's able to speak on behalf of Apollo, but he's a little bit of a coward. And when he realizes that he has to accuse Agamemnon, he begs Achilles to protect him. It's no fun angering a powerful leader.
We also meet several gods and goddesses in this book. There is Queen Hera, who very much sides with the Greeks. And when she she sees them fighting amongst themselves, sends Athena down to put a stop to it.
Athena is the other goddess who really sides with the Greeks, and she's happy to step into the action. In this case, she helps Achilles check his anger and keeps him from starting an actual fight. We also see Apollo, who does not like being disrespected by those humans.
And when his priest is mistreated by Agamemnon, he rains down a plague on the Greeks. We also meet Thetis, who is Achilles'mother. She is a goddess, a goddess of the sea, but in this book she's also portrayed as a grieving mother. She knows her son is going to die, and so she has all of this conflicting emotion, which ties in nicely with some of the major themes of the book. Finally, we have the king of the gods, Zeus.
And although Zeus is usually depicted in this book as trying to create balance within the war, in this section he gets called upon to do a favor, leading to... the Trojans winning for a while. He knows that picking sides in this war will lead him into conflict with some of the gods, and he's not very enthusiastic about that.
Okay, now let's look at the content of book one. After a short introduction that is packed with all kinds of cool poetic features, which we'll talk about in a few minutes, the book begins by setting up certain conflicts between Agamemnon and Achilles, as well as between Apollo and the Greeks. The Achaeans have been at war with Troy for nine years. They sailed over and parked their boats on the beach, and they have been camped there, fighting against the city of Troy, but unable to get inside her walls. During that time, they have had several...
several successful raids, though, and they've sacked various villages around Troy, taking trophies and spoils. The conflict begins because in one of those raids, Agamemnon took a young slave girl named Chryseis. Her father, Chryseis, just so happens to be a priest of the god Apollo, and he comes with gifts and begs Agamemnon to give back his daughter. Most of the Achaeans think that's a great idea.
They say, respect the priest, accept the shine. But Agamemnon, being very proud and haughty and selfish, says, No, I'm keeping the girl. You get out of here. Never again, old man, let me catch sight of you by the hollow ships.
Not loitering now, not slinking back tomorrow. The staff and wreath of the god will never save you then. The girl? I won't give up the girl.
Long before that, old age will overtake her in my house, in Argos, far from her fatherland, slaving back and forth at the loom, forced to share her. I will not let you go. my bed. Now go, don't tempt my wrath, and you may depart alive.
We very quickly get an unfavorable opinion of Agamemnon. He is a selfish jerk. His treatment of Chryseis, as well as of Chryseis, is deplorable.
And although Chryseis is driven away, he prays to Apollo and asks Apollo to help him. Which Apollo does. In a powerful description, the god Apollo strides forward, pulls out his bow, and begins to shoot arrows of plague on the Greeks.
After nine days of the people dying, Achilles calls the generals together and says, hey, we've got to figure out what's going on here, or we're doomed. And so they call Calchas up to seek information from the gods. Calchas knows what's going on, he knows it's Agamemnon's fault, but he's hesitant to say so, because Agamemnon is a scary dude.
When Achilles promises to back him up, Calchas confesses that he knows it's Agamemnon's fault, for stealing Chryseis, and for refusing to get her back, and for mistreating the priest of Apollo. And just as one would expect, Agamemnon does not take the news well. Seer of misery, never a word that works to my advantage.
Always misery warms your heart, your prophecies. Never a word of prophets said or brought to pass. Now again you divine God's will for the armies, brood it about as fact why the deadly archer multiplies our pains.
Because I, I refuse that glittering price for the young girl Chryseis. Indeed, I prefer her by far, the girl herself. I want her mine, in my own house. I rank her higher than Clytemnestra, my wedded wife.
She's nothing less in build or breeding, in mind or works of hand, but I am willing to give her back even so, if that is best for all. What I really want is to keep my people safe, not see them dying. But fetch me another prize, and straight off too, else I alone of the Argives go without my honor. That would be a disgrace. You are all witness.
Look, my prize is snatched away. So not only does he say a lot of slights about his own wife, which is going to come back and haunt him. Later on in mythology, we find out that his wife kills him when he gets home.
But then he acts like he's so great, like he's gonna give back this girl for the good of everyone, but you better give me another girl just as good right now. I want my own prize so I don't have to go without. He's selfish and brutish and awful. Achilles steps up and says, hey, Agamemnon, um, that's really unfair. After all, all of the treasure has already been passed out to everybody.
If you start snatching other people's prizes and treasures, we're gonna have problems. That would be dishonorable. And then Achilles offers, hey, why don't you just wait until we take Troy, and then you can have first pick of everything.
But Agamemnon will not be dissuaded. And he says, if you're not going to give me one, I'm just going to take yours, Achilles. Achilles accuses Agamemnon of being incredibly selfish, of always letting his heroes do all the work for him while he gets the best rewards.
After all, Achilles doesn't really have a reason to be out here fighting. He's only fighting for Agamemnon's sake. Remember, it's Agamemnon's brother Menelaus who had his wife stolen, which led to this whole war. All the rest of these Greek heroes are just along for the ride. They made a promise to defend Menelaus, okay.
But they don't really have any beef with the Trojans. Achilles says, My honors never equal yours. Whenever we sack some wealthy Trojan stronghold, my arms bear the brunt of the raw, savage fighting, true.
But when it comes to dividing up the plunder, the lion's share is yours. And back I go to my ships, clutching some scrap, some pittance that I love, when I have fought to exhaustion. And at this point, Achilles says, If you're going to keep being such an abusive leader, I'm going to quit. So Achilles is the greatest fighter among the Greeks.
He is their most powerful asset. And he is fed up with Agamemnon's selfishness. And so he's ready to bow out and quit.
And as we look at this scene, we can see what a crummy leader Agamemnon is being. How abusive he is being with his power. And I think that most of us can side with Achilles here.
Achilles has been very reasonable, very logical. He's tried to talk through the situation. He's tried to make Agamemnon see reason. Whereas Agamemnon has been blustering and angry and abusive.
And at this point, Achilles is saying, I'm not going to continue working under these conditions. And most of us can say, okay, that seems reasonable. Agamemnon doubles down and says, fine, I'm taking your girl, Bryseus, away from you. And at that moment, Achilles almost snaps. He reaches for his sword, ready to attack Agamemnon head on.
But just in that moment, Hera and Athena step in to try to stop him. Hera sends Athena down to tap on Achilles'shoulder, freeze the moment, and say, you guys can't fight each other. We don't want either of you dead. And Achilles puts his sword away. Again, Achilles was angry enough to kill Agamemnon, but he resists the anger with a little help from the gods.
And yet, even if he did have Athena's help, it shows restraint on Achilles'part. Agamemnon is the one who looks bad here. So although the book sets up this story about Achilles'rage, we've seen Achilles keep himself in check so far.
And so Achilles swears that he will not fight for the Achaeans anymore. And he also says, you all are going to regret driving me away when Hector starts tearing you all apart. And he throws down his scepter.
Nestor stands up and tries to create peace between the two of them. He's kind of depicted as a bit of an old windbag here. Yes, he's got all this good advice, but he was always like, in my day, people used to listen to the elders.
And he gives a big speech about how the leaders should not fight each other. The only one who wins in this situation are the Trojans. And Agamemnon's like, yes, we should be peaceful, but he's the one who needs to back down. And Achilles is like, yeah, but think about how worthless I'd be if I followed an abusive leader like you. And so they both growl at each other and then walk away.
Agamemnon keeps his word and sends Chryseus home, and the plague stops. But he also goes and get Briseis out of Achilles'tent. And Briseis is led away, weeping from Achilles. Achilles is so emotional and enraged in this moment that he begins to weep and cry and pray to his mother, the sea god Thetis.
Mother, you gave me life, short as that life will be, so at least Olympian Zeus, thundering up on high, should give me honor. But now he gives me nothing. And he gives me nothing.
flung kingdoms. The man disgraces me, seizes and keeps my prize. He tears her away himself.
So he wept and prayed, and his noble mother heard him. So Achilles begins to cry and complain to his mother. And up to this point, I think we've been able to side with Achilles pretty well. He has a lot of self-pity in this moment. He knows that he's going to die, and he's going to die young.
But at least he could have honor while he lives, right? So why am I being so dishonored, he says. And when his mother arrives, he tells her the whole story.
And she also grieves, knowing that his actions will ultimately lead to his death. She says, oh my son, my sorrow, why did I ever bear you? All I bore was doom.
Would to God you could linger by your ships without a grief in the world, without a torment, doomed to a short life. You have so little time, and not only short now, but filled with heartbreak too, more than all other men alive, doomed twice over. So there's this sense of grief Thetis has for Achilles.
He's not dead yet, but he's going to die. We see a lot of grieving parents throughout this book, and so she sort of sets that tone from the beginning. But Achilles asks her, please, Go to Zeus and call in a favor for me. Please let the Greeks be beaten really badly while I sit out. And I think this is the moment when Achilles sort of oversteps.
We can all agree that quitting when your leader is abusive seems fairly reasonable. But if you're going to quit, and then if your team keeps winning after you quit, it makes you look bad. Achilles doesn't want that to happen, and so he wants to be able to sit out And he wants his team to get completely trashed. So they all come crying to him and say, please come back.
And he can sit there and be like, yeah, you needed me, didn't you? Why didn't you think of that before? And it brings him all kinds of glory.
Although Thetis is afraid that this will ultimately lead to his death, she agrees to do so because she wants her son to have honor. So she flies up to Zeus and kneels before him. Now, there was an event a long time ago where she saved Zeus from being chained up by the rest of the gods.
And so he really owes her a favor. So when she asked this request, although Zeus doesn't want to do it, he's already promised her a favor and he has to commit. So Zeus agrees, although he knows it's going to bring trouble between him and Hera as well as the other gods.
He's gonna let the Trojans win for a while so that Achilles can be brought a lot of honor and glory. Hera gets wind of this and she gets very upset and she goes before Zeus and begins to complain. She does not want those Trojans to win. They didn't pick her in the beauty contest and so she wants them all to die.
And when she starts trying to get on to Zeus for maybe agreeing to let the Trojans win, he yells at her and tells her to leave him alone. What are going to be the repercussions of all of these actions? We will see through the rest of the book.
Let's look at a few of the key features of this book. First of all, there's the introduction to book one. Rage, goddess, sing the rage of Peleus'son Achilles, murderous, doomed, that cost the Achaeans countless losses, hurling down to the house of death so many sturdy souls, great fighters'souls that made their bodies carrion, feasts for the dogs and birds, and the will of Zeus was moving towards its end. Begin, muse, when the two first broke and clashed.
Agamemnon, Lord of Men, and brilliant Achilles. This introduction establishes many of the themes of the story, as well as a lot of the major ideas. First of all, it has the key poetic feature of the evocation of the muse.
Much epic poetry begins with calling out to the muse for inspiration. And here, the poet calls on the muse to help him tell the story of Achilles'rage. It also begins with the poetic feature of being in media res, which is a Latin expression meaning In the middle of things.
Epic poetry begins in media res. And here we don't begin at the beginning of the Trojan War, but rather nine years in, which helps to establish this feeling that war just goes on and on and on, and there's no real escape from it. We begin with a conflict between generals, and then have to go back and fill in some of the details about why this is happening. There's also a lot of major themes established by this introduction. First of all, we establish the idea that we'll have conflicting feelings about many of the characters, particularly the character Achilles.
We see him as murderous, but also doomed. He is a violent man, but he is also to be pitied because of this tragedy surrounding him. And then as soon as we establish those conflicting feelings, we hear that Achilles is going to lead to the destruction, not of the other side, but of his own men that cost the Achaeans countless losses.
And so we see the idea of consequences of our actions, especially actions that are driven by strong emotion. It's the rage of Achilles that's going to lead to the death of so many of his friends. Next, we also have a lot of description of the tragedy of war.
This book is a war story, but it never lets us forget that war is full of pain and loss and horror and ugliness. Although there are heroes in this story, the violence is never portrayed as a good thing. It is always punctuated by the idea that it makes the world more painful and more ugly. Finally, we get the idea that the gods are going to be meddling in everything. Although the human beings make decisions and their decisions have consequences, there's also the constant feeling that the gods are meddling in our affairs, which ties in with the idea of fate.
How much of our lives can we control? And how much is controlled by circumstances beyond us? That's a key question throughout this book.
And there are characters who are going to fight against their fates, as well as characters who, in spite of all the things they attempt to do, are still broken on the wheel of fate. We'll look at more features next time in Book 2. Thanks for watching. You can click to subscribe or to watch another video, and I'll see you next time. Bye-bye.