The tragic course of Achilles' rage, his final recognition of human values--this is the guiding theme of the poem, and it is developed against a background of violence and death. But the grim progress of the war is interrupted by scenes which remind us that the brutality of war, though an integral part of human life, is not the whole of it. Except for Achilles, whose worship of violence falters only in the final moment of pity for Priam, the yearning for peace and its creative possibilities is never far below the surface of the warriors' minds. This is most poignantly expressed by the scenes that take place in Troy, especially the farewell scene between Hector and Andromache, but the warriors' dream of peace is projected over and over again in the elaborate similes, those comparisons with which Homer varies the grim details of the bloodletting, and which achieve the paradoxical effect of making the particulars of destructive violence familiar by drawing for illustration on the peaceful, ordinary activities of everyday life. Dead men and armor are trampled under the wheels of Achilles' chariot as white barley is crushed under the hoofs of oxen on a threshing floor (20.559-67); hostile forces advancing against each other are like two lines of reapers in the wheat or barley field of a rich man, cutting their way forward (11.76-82); the two fronts in tense deadlock at the Achaean wall hold even like the scales held by a widow, working for a pitiful wage, as she weighs out her wool (12.502-5); the combatants fighting for possession of Sarpedon's corpse swarm over it like flies over the brimming milk buckets in spring (16.745-47); Menelaus bestrides the body of Patroclus as a lowing cow stands protectively over its first-born calf (17.3-6); Ajax is forced back step by step like a stubborn donkey driven out of a cornfield by boys who beat him with sticks (11.653-62). These vivid pictures of normal life, drawn with consummate skill and inserted in a relentless series of gruesome killings, have a special poignancy; they are one of the features of Homer's evocation of battle which make it unique: an exquisite balance between the celebration of war's tragic, heroic values and those creative values of civilized life that war destroys.
These two poles of the human condition, war and peace, with their corresponding aspects of human nature, the destructive and creative, are implicit in every situation and statement of the poem, and they are put before us, in something approaching abstract form, on the shield which the god Hephaestus has made for Achilles. Its emblem is an image of human life as a whole. Here are two cities, one at peace and one at war. In one a marriage is celebrated and a quarrel settled by process of law; the other is besieged by a hostile army and fights for its existence. Scenes of violence--peaceful shepherds slaughtered in an ambush, Death dragging away a corpse by its foot--are balanced by scenes of plowing, harvesting, work in the vineyard and on the pasture, a green on which youths and maidens dance. War has its place on the shield, but it is the lesser one; most of the surface is covered with scenes of peaceful life--the pride of the tilled land, wide and triple-plowed, the laborers reaping with sharp sickles in their hands, a great vineyard heavy with grape clusters, young girls and young men carrying the sweet fruit away in baskets, a large meadow in a lovely valley for the sheep flocks, and, above all, the dance, that formal symbol of the precise and ordered relations of people in peaceful society.
Here young boys and girls, beauties courted
with costly gifts of oxen, danced and danced,
linking their arms, gripping each other's wrists.
And the girls wore robes of linen light and flowing,
the boys wore finespun tunics rubbed with a gloss of oil,
the girls were crowned with a bloom of fresh garlands,
the boys swung golden daggers hung on silver belts.
And now they would run in rings on their skilled feet,
nimbly, quick as a crouching potter spins his wheel,
palming it smoothly, giving it practice twirls
to see it run, and now they would run in rows,
in rows crisscrossing rows--rapturous dancing.
A breathless crowd stood round them struck with joy
and through them a pair of tumblers dashed and sprang,
whirling in leaping handsprings, leading out the dance. (18.693-707)
And all around the outermost rim of the shield the god who made it set the great stream of the Ocean River, the river that is at once the frontier of the known and imagined worlds and the barrier between the quick and the dead.
The imbalance of these scenes on the shield of Achilles shows us the total background of the carnage of the war; it provides a frame which gives the rage of Achilles and the death of Hector a true perspective. But it is not enough. The Iliad remains a terrifying poem. Achilles, just before his death, is redeemed as a human being, but there is no consolation for the death of Hector. We are left with a sense of waste, which is not adequately balanced even by the greatness of the heroic figures and the action; the scale descends toward loss. The Iliad remains not only the greatest epic poem in literature but also the most tragic.
Homer's Achilles is clearly the model for the tragic hero of the Sophoclean stage; his stubborn, passionate devotion to an ideal image of self is the same force that drives Antigone, Oedipus, Ajax and Philoctetes to the fulfillment of their destinies. Homer's Achilles is also, for archaic Greek society, the essence of the aristocratic ideal, the paragon of male beauty, courage and patrician manners--"the splendor running in the blood," says Pindar, in a passage describing Achilles' education in the cave of the centaur Chiron. And this, too, strikes a tragic note, for Pindar sang his praise of aristocratic values in the century which saw them go down to extinction, replaced by the new spirit of Athenian democracy. But it seems at first surprising that one of the most famous citizens of that democracy, a man whose life and thought would seem to place him at the extreme opposite pole from the Homeric hero, who was so far removed from Achilles' blind instinctive reactions that he could declare the unexamined life unlivable, that Socrates, on trial for his life, should invoke the name of Achilles. Explaining to his judges why he feels no shame or regret for a course of action that has brought him face-to-face with a death sentence, and rejecting all thought of a compromise that might save his life (and which his fellow citizens would have been glad to offer), he cites as his example Achilles, the Achilles who, told by his mother that his own death would come soon after Hector's, replied: "Then let me die at once--" rather than "sit by the ships ... / a useless, dead weight on the good green earth" (18.113-23).
And yet, on consideration, it is not so surprising. Like Achilles, he was defying the community, hewing to a solitary line, in loyalty to a private ideal of conduct, of honor. In the last analysis, the bloodstained warrior and the gentle philosopher live and die in the same heroic, and tragic, pattern.
THE SPELLING AND PRONUNCIATION OF HOMERIC NAMES
Though the English spelling of ancient Greek names faces modem poet-translators with some difficult problems, it was not a problem at all for Shakespeare, Milton, Pope and Tennyson. Except in the case of names that had through constant use been fully Anglicized--Helen, Priam, Hector, Troy, Trojans--the poets used the Latin equivalents of the Greek names that they found in the texts of Virgil and Ovid, whose poems they read in school. These are the forms we too are familiar with, from our reading of English poets through the centuries: Hecuba, Achilles, Ajax, Achaeans, Patroclus.
Recent poet-translators have tried to get closer to the original Greek and have transliterated the Greek names directly, not through the medium of their Latin adaptations. One translator, for example, presents his readers with Hekabe, Akhilleus, Hektor, Aias, Akhaians and Pa troklos. Another shares most of these spellings but, perhaps finding the combination kh unsuited to English, strikes a compromise--Achilleus, Achaians. All translators compromise when it comes to such fully naturalized forms as Helen, Trojans and Argives (Helene, Troes and Argeioi in the Greek), and they also retreat from strict transliteration in cases like Rhodes (Rhodos) and Thrace (Threike).
This is an area in which no one can claim perfect con
sistency: we too offer a compromise. Its basis, however, is a return to the traditional practice of generations of English poets--the use of Latinate spellings except for those names that have become, in their purely English forms, familiar in our mouths as household words.
Rigid adherence to this rule would of course make unacceptable demands: it would impose, for example, Minerva instead of Athena, Ulysses for Odysseus, and Jupiter or Jove for Zeus. We have preferred the Greek names, but transliterated them on Latin principles: Here, for example, is Hera in this translation; Athene is Athena. Elsewhere we have replaced the letter k with c and substituted the ending us for the Greek os in the names of persons (Patroklos becomes Patroclus). When, however, a personal name ends in ros preceded by a consonant, we have used the Latin ending er: Meleager for Meleagros, Teucer for Teukros. The Greek diphthongs oi and ai are represented by the Latin diphthongs oe and ae (Boeotia for Boiotia, Achaean for Akhaian) and the Greek diphthong ou by the Latin u (Lycurgus for Lykourgos).
This conventional Latinate spelling of the names has a traditional pronunciation system, one that corresponds with neither the Greek nor the Latin sounds. Perhaps "system" is not the best word for it, since it is full of inconsistencies. But it is the pronunciation English poets have used for centuries, the sounds they heard mentally as they composed and that they confidently expected their readers to hear in their turn. Since there seems to be no similar convention for the English pronunciation of modem transliterated Greek--is the h sounded in Akhilleus? is Diomedes pronounced dee-oh-may'-days or dee-oh-mee'-deez?--we have thought it best to work with pronunciation that Keats and Shelley would have recognized.
As in Achilles (a-kil'-eez), ch is pronounced like k throughout. The consonants c and g are hard (as in cake and gun) before a--Lycaon (leye-kay'-on), Agamemnon (a-ga-mem'-non); before o--Corinth (kor'-inth), Gorgon (gor'-gon); before u--Curetes (koo-ree'-teez), Guneus (goon'- yoos); and before other consonants--Patroclus (pa-tro'-klus), Glaucus (glaw'-kus). They are soft (as in cinder and George) before e--Celadon (se'-la-don), Agenor (a-jee'-nor); before i--Cicones (si-koh'-neez), Phrygia (fri'-ja); and before y--Cythera (si-thee'-ra), Gyrtone (jur-toh'-nee). The final combinations cia and gia produce sha--Lycia (li'-sha)--and ja--Phrygia (fri'-ja)--respectively.
There are however cases in which the pronunciation of the consonants does not conform to these rules. One of the names of the Greeks, for example--Argives--is pronounced with a hard g (ar'-geyevz not ar'- jeyevz), by analogy with the town of Argos. And the combination cae is pronounced with a soft c, since the diphthong ae is sounded as ee--Caesar (see'-zar) is a familiar example.
The vowels vary in pronunciation, sometimes but not always according to the length of the Latin (or Greek) syllable, and the reader will have to find guidance in the rhythm of the English line or consult the Pronouncing Glossary at the back of the volume. Final e is always sounded long: Hebe (hee'-bee); final es is pronounced eez, as in Achilles. In other positions, the letter e may represent the sound heard in sneeze or that heard in pet. The letter i may sound as in bit or bite: Achilles (a-kil' -eez) or Atrides (a-treye'-deez). The two sounds are also found for y--Cythera (si-thee'-ra) or Lycaon (leye-kay'-on)--while o is pronounced as in Olympus (o-lim'-pus) or Dodona (doh-doh'-na). In this spelling system, u except in the ending us and in combination with other vowels (see below) is always long, since it represents the Greek diphthong ou. But it may be pronounced either you as in dew--Bucolion (bew-kol'-i-on)-or oo as in glue--Guneus (goon'-yoos).
The diphthongs oe and ae are both pronounced ee--Achaeans (a-kee'- unz), Phoebus (fee'-bus). The combination aer does not produce a diphthong: Laertes (lay-ur'-teez); in other cases where these letters are sounded separately, a dieresis is used: Danae (da'-nay-ee). The diphthong au is pronounced aw--Glaucus (glaw'-kus)--but in name endings, Menelaus, for example, it is not a diphthong, and the vowels are pronounced separately (me-ne-lay'-us). Since his name is familiar to the English reader, we have thought it unnecessary to use the dieresis in similar cases. The ending in ous is similar: Pirithous (peye-ri'-tho-us). The ending in eus is sounded like yoos--Odysseus (o-dis'-yoos), except in the case of the name of three rivers--Alpheus (al-fee'-us), Peneus (pee-nee'- us) and Spercheus (spur-kee'-us)--and that of the builder of the Trojan horse, Epeus (e-pee'-us) and the king of Lemnos, Euneus (yoo-nee'-us).
All other vowel combinations are pronounced not as diphthongs but as separate vowels. The sequence ei is pronounced ee'-i: Briseis (breye-see'-is); double o as oh-o: Deicoon (dee-i'-koh-on). Similarly, oi is treated not as a diphthong but as two separate sounds--Oileus (oh-eel'-yoos), except in the case of Troilus, a name that has been fixed in this Latin spelling since Chaucer and is pronounced troy'-lus.
Obviously we cannot claim complete consistency even within the limits we have imposed on the system. We have occasionally retreated in dismay before some cases where a Latinate form seemed grotesque. Ajax, for example, is a form familiar in English, but there are two men with his name, and when Homer speaks of them in the plural we have used the (Latinized) Greek plural form Aeantes in preference to Ajaxes or the Latin Aiaces. Where no Latin form exists, as in the case of Poseidon, we have used the transliterated Greek, and here again English usage escapes the trammels of our rules, for Poseidon is traditionally pronounced po-seye'-don (not po-see'-i-don), and the same applies to the Pleiades (pleye'-a-deez). But we can claim to have reduced the unsightly dieresis to a minor factor and to have given the reader who comes to Homer for the first time a guide to pronunciation that will stand him or her in good stead when reading other poets who mention Greek names. We have also provided a Pronouncing Glossary of all the proper names in the text, which indicates stress and English vowel length.
BOOK ONE
The Rage of Achilles
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, but made their bodies carrion,
feasts for the dogs and birds,
and the will of Zeus was moving toward its end.
Begin, Muse, when the two first broke and clashed,
Agamemnon lord of men and brilliant Achilles.
What god drove them to fight with such a fury?
Apollo the son of Zeus and Leto. Incensed at the king
he swept a fatal plague through the army--men were dying
and all because Agamemnon spurned Apollo's priest.
Yes, Chryses approached the Achaeans' fast ships
to win his daughter back, bringing a priceless ransom
and bearing high in hand, wound on a golden staff,
the wreaths of the god, the distant deadly Archer.
He begged the whole Achaean army but most of all
the two supreme commanders, Atreus' two sons,
"Agamemnon, Menelaus--all Argives geared for war!
May the gods who hold the halls of Olympus give you
Priam's city to plunder, then safe passage home.
Just set my daughter free, my dear one ... here,
accept these gifts, this ransom. Honor the god
who strikes from worlds away--the son of Zeus, Apollo!"
And all ranks of Achaeans cried out their assent:
"Respect the priest, accept the shining ransom!"
But it brought no joy to the heart of Agamemnon.
The king dismissed the priest with a brutal order
ringing in his ears: "Never again, old man,
let me catch sight of you by the hollow ships!
Not loitering now, not slinking back tomorrow.
The staff and the wreaths of 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 my bed!
Now go,<
br />
don't tempt my wrath--and you may depart alive."
The old man was terrified. He obeyed the order,
turning, trailing away in silence down the shore
where the battle lines of breakers crash and drag.
And moving off to a safe distance, over and over
the old priest prayed to the son of sleek-haired Leto,
lord Apollo, "Hear me, Apollo! God of the silver bow
who strides the walls of Chryse and Cilia sacrosanct--
lord in power of Tenedos--Smintheus, god of the plague!
If I ever roofed a shrine to please your heart,
ever burned the long rich bones of bulls and goats
on your holy altar, now, now bring my prayer to pass.
Pay the Danaans back--your arrows for my tears!"
His prayer went up and Phoebus Apollo heard him.
Down he strode from Olympus' peaks, storming at heart
with his bow and hooded quiver slung across his shoulders.
The arrows clanged at his back as the god quaked with rage,
the god himself on the march and down he came like night.
Over against the ships he dropped to a knee, let fly a shaft
and a terrifying clash rang out from the great silver bow.
First he went for the mules and circling dogs but then,
launching a piercing shaft at the men themselves,
he cut them down in droves--
and the corpse-fires burned on, night and day, no end in sight.
Nine days the arrows of god swept through the army.
On the tenth Achilles called all ranks to muster--