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The Illiad is a poem which takes place in the tenth year of a war between the Trojans and the Achain's. Most of the poem talks about the battles taking place within that specific time period of war. Does Homer portray these events as a glorification or condemnation of war? Well, he does sort of both. It can be considered the greatest of ironies. It is at one time both glorious an heinous.
On the one hand, war brings out ones great courage and utter glory on the field of battle, and on the other hand, it also brigs out the extreme brutality and grave inhumanity on the battlefields of ancient Greece. These two opposing aspects of war and combat are seen throughout the poem. Homer repeatedly tells us in graphic and striking detail the savageness and cruelty of death in combat. We see through his descriptions and illustrations exactly what death in battle truly entails: the desolation, the devastation, the barbarity, and the terrible suffering.
There is no honour whatsoever in military combat here. Idomeneus stabbed Erymas in the mouth with the pitiless bronze, so that the brazen spread smashed its way clean through below the brain in an upward stroke, and the white bones splintered, and the teeth were shaken out with the stroke and both eyes filled up with blood, and gaping he blew a spray of blood through the nostrils and through his mouth, and death in a dark mist closed round about him. (16. 345 - 350) Now Dekalion was struck in the arm, at a place in the elbow where the tendons come together. There through the arm Achilleus transfixed him with the bronze spearhead, and he, arm hanging heavy, waited and looked his death in the face. Achilleus struck him with the swords edge at his neck, and swept the helped head far away, and the marrow gushed from the neck bone, and he went down to the ground at full length. (20. 477 - 484) In the Illiad, Homer also reveals to us another feature of the inhumanity and barbarity of war.
Each soldier is introduced to us before he is about to be killed. Each has a name, a family lineage, a wife, a child, and some far-off homeland. Its as if Homer is telling us that every human being is both important and significant in his own right. There is no anonymity of ones death in combat. Each combatant, however small or modest in rank, truly matters. You cannot help but feel some sort of emotional and psychological disgust upon reading such passages.
Homer constantly reminds us that someone who just moments ago was a glorious and splendid human being is now just a dead corpse, food for the scavenging birds and animals. In the Greek mind, death is the ultimate and absolute end and nothing good can ever come after it. Everything a man might have or could have achieved in life is utterly meaningless. The only thing which possesses any value now is the shell of his bronze armour. Homer is forever willing to portray to us the reality of death in battle. The final and brutal end to ones existence.
Contrast this with the idea that war and combat can also bring out the greatest and finest of human behavior. In the passion and intensity of battle, he is able to achieve his highest of potentials. He is a radiant and noble being, willing to stand up and maintain himself in the face of his death and demise, and is ever ready and quite eager to meet out his fate and destiny whatever they may possibly be. The onrush of battle brings out the ardent individuality of these men who define their very existence by their craft in the art of warfare. Each Achains and Trojan warrior comes before us in the midst of battle and announces their extreme confidence, bravery and might. They all rally together into the alluring and seductive drive of combat.
Their fervour beckons the exhilarating strength and majestic splendour of the peril of conflict, that contradictory association of intrigue, enchantment, and uncertainty. War and combat bring out the most aesthetic and artistic abilities of man. Battle increase mans zest for vitality, his delight and splendour on this earth, his affection and admiration towards his fellow man, sometimes even for his adversary. And they, the god-supported kings, about Agamemnon ran marshalling the men, and among them grey-eyed Athene holding the dear treasured aegis, ageless, immortal, from whose edges float a hundred all golden tassels, each one carefully woven, and each worth a hundred oxen. With this fluttering she swept through the host of the Achain's urging them to go forward. She kindled the strength in each mans heart to take the battle without respite and keep on fighting.
And now battle became sweeter to them than to go back in their hollow ships to the beloved land of their fathers. As obliterating fire lights up a forest along the crests of a mountain, and the flare shows far off, so as they marched, from the magnificent bronze the gleam went dazzling all about through the upper air to the heaven. (2. 445 - 449) Then tall Hector of the shinning helm answered her: All these things are in my mind also lady; yet I would feel deep shame before the Trojans, and the Trojan women with trailing garments, if I like a coward were to shrink aside from the fighting; and the spirit will not let me, since I have learned to be valiant and to fight always amongst the foremost ranks of the Trojans, winning for my own self great glory, and for my father. (6. 440 - 446) Thus in the Illiad, Homer conveys to us the inherent and intrinsic contradiction of warfare. It elevates and dignifies men and then demolishes and devastates them. It excites all of the feeling and emotion in man and then proceeds to smother his existence entirely. It portrays the greatest of human virtues and destroys those men who personify these virtues. Just as the battle begins, however, we see a change in the composure of these great warriors from respectable and honourable men into ones who are savages and beasts.
The belligerents attack each other like animals of prey. Our noble, marvellously tempered, valiant gladiators have instantly developed into raging, reeling, and ruinous creatures. Ultimately, we view the consequences of their attempt which started just a short time before with the portrayal of the brave fighters preparing themselves for battle. Out of the magnificent, distinguished commanders resolved to ascertain their exclusive eminence in hand-to-hand encounters with their adversaries, we have arrived at the illustration of the uniform anonymity of doom.
We accumulate an amass of unidentifiable Trojan and Achains carcasses, food for the scavenging birds and animals. They saturate the earth with blood and gore and cause the grief of so many relatives on both sides of the conflict. The conflict stresses character, determination, and personal achievement, and then corrupts and obliterates what it deems attainable. Homer does not place one against the other in these opposing aspects of warfare. The tragic butchery of so many innocent people on the field of battle does not weaken the significance of the fearless human being, nor does the importance of soldierly triumph attempt to condone the horrendous carnage.
Warfare itself is indifferent and apathetic. It is neither good nor bad. It is one of the most puzzling enigmas and the greatest of all paradoxes.
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