The Iliad

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Centred around just before the end of the fabled, the legendary Trojan War, the Iliad covers the stories of famous heroes of mythology like Achilles, greatest of the Greek warriors, Agamemnon, the king of Mycenae and leader of the Greeks, but also the rival of Achilles. Trojans like Hector, prince of Troy, Priam the king, Hecuba the queen, not to mention Paris, another prince whose golden apple judgement sparked the Trojan War, and his lover, Queen Helen, Helen of Sparta or Helen of Troy, the face that launched a thousand ships.
Beautifully written, the Iliad features several famous episodes from the Trojan War. How Achilles refused to fight for the Greeks

and sulked in his tent after Agamemnon took his slave girl Briseis for his own, before the death of Achilles' greatest friend Patroclus sends Achilles back into battle, berserk, something that climaxes with his great duel against Hector outside the walls of Troy. The Iliad is a complex tale of wrath and resistance, of friendship and honour, of fate and prophecy, of gods and heroes.
And today on The Ancients, we're going to explore it. I'm Tristan Hughes, your host.
Now, the Iliad is a massive topic for us to cover in one episode. We're going to tackle it as best we can, and we wouldn't have time to explore it book by book, from book one to 24.
We're going to do it thematically. We're going to explore everything varying from the origins of the Iliad some 3,000 years ago, to the main characters of the epic and how complex their stories are, and much more.
Now my guest today is Professor Edith Hall from Durham University. A leading academic on ancient Greek literature and philosophy including the Iliad, Edith has a new book coming out about the Iliad and how apocalyptic some of its language is.
I really do hope you enjoy. Edith, it is great to have you back on the podcast.
And I'm thrilled to be back here again. And last time we did the massive topic of Atlantis, we've got you on for another big one today.
The story of the Iliad. First of all, Edith, what exactly is the Iliad? The Iliad is one of the oldest Greek epics.
It is probably the oldest, depending on how old Hesiods are. It's older than the Odyssey slightly.
It was probably put together in the form we've got it in the middle of the 8th century BCE, but it had been in development since at least the 14th century. and it is over 16,000 lines long and they're long lines.
They're a particular meter called the dactylic hexameter, which has six beats and is quite a long line. It's much longer than, say, the iambic pentameter we're used to in Shakespeare.
It tells the story of a 40-day period towards the end of the 10-year Trojan War. 16,000 lines of epic poetry and has its origins more than 3,000 years ago.
It is such an extraordinary epic poem to have survived so long and still be so important for the mindset of so many people today. It's quite remarkable, just the cultural longevity.
One of the reasons for that, though, was that once it was actually written down, this is what happened in the middle of the 8th century, it became the absolutely standard fare of ancient education for then more than a thousand years. So we know, for example, that young Athenian aristocratic boys were expected to know it off by heart, the whole thing, off by heart.
I mean, it's just incredible, but they were expected to know it off by heart if they had a good education. And that means so throughout the Roman Empire all the way through.
This meant it survived in numerous manuscripts in Byzantium when it was lost to the West for about 1,000 years between about 400 CE and pretty much when the Turks invaded Constantinople in the middle of the 15th century. But thank heavens, enough manuscripts before that happened and they destroyed half the libraries, enough manuscripts had been got out to Italy to mean that they rolled off the printing presses pretty early on in the history of printing.

So by around 1550, there were hundreds of printed copies and people were very energetically beginning to translate it, not just into Latin, because then the lingua franca was Latin, but quite early into modern languages. As soon as that happened, everybody started doing operas and paintings and plays and parodies.
It became once again an absolute staple of certainly upper-class education. So that's why it's as big as it is.
Actually, until quite recently, it wasn't as big as the Odyssey. If you actually think quantitatively, in terms of world culture, there were far more versions of the Odyssey.
The Odyssey was exported all over the planet by the Jesuits and things like that. The Iliad did not make so much of an impact, but it just had a quite astonishing revival in the 21st century and I think is now absolutely as familiar as the Odyssey for the first time since antiquity.
Edith, you mentioned how young Athenians would have to learn the Iliad off by heart. Does that reflect how important epic poems like the Iliad were to ancient Greek culture? Yes, it's an entire encyclopedia of their civilisation and values.
I think they were written down because of Greek colonisation. So not many people really did know them completely off by heart.
If you were going off to found, as they were in the archaic age, the 8th, 7th, 6th century, to found colonies on the far northern coast of the Black Sea, or in Marseille, or in Egypt, all over the Mediterranean Black Sea periphery, then you needed to take your canonical poems with you. I think that that was the spur for getting written down.
So you could take your huge papyrus rolls of the Iliad, the Odyssey, and Hesiod, because they told you everything that you really needed to know. They told you how to do a sacrifice.
They told you how to fight the enemy. They told you how to arm yourself.
They told you how to be a heroic male who was going around intrepidly bonking enemies on foreign shores on the head. They were the cultural encyclopedia.
And at Athens, we know that every year at the Panathenae, it's the big all-Athenian festival in the summer from the 6th century, they were recited all the way through. The Iliad was recited all the way through by teams of bards every summer.
It actually takes about three days to do that. But it's so interesting, Edith, how, as you mentioned, with that kind of Greek colonisation period, when you get lots of ancient Greek settlers and communities emerging and trading posts emerging at their height from what is Afghanistan today all the way to eastern Spain, that the one thing in common to show that there is that kind of Greek culture there could be that no matter where you were, someone would know the Iliad, would be able to recite it or have a copy of it.
And it was almost a symbol that, yes, we've gone really far away from maybe the heart of ancient Greece and Athens and places, but we still remember the values in these stories. You take with you this cultural heritage.
And the Iliad, of course, because it's about a united effort by Greeks, even though the word Greek doesn't occur in it yet, it numerates all these mainland Greek cities and some of the islands that sent forces to Troy. So for an awful lot of Greeks, wherever they went in the world, they could trace their ancestry.
They believed their own ancestors had been on the Greek side at Troy. So it's an extraordinarily long genealogy that you're taking with you wherever you went.
Before we explore the story, main characters, and some really interesting themes from the Iliad, Edith, I feel we must mention the author of the Iliad, Homer, but there always seems to be a bit of debate around this character as well. Do we think that the Iliad was the work of one man called Homer? I don't.

In my head, the pattern is that the story got gradually elaborated. It's in 24 books now, but it's got slightly more than that identifiable individual stories that rather than being three days recitation, you could sing of a particular battle during the war, or you could sing the funeral of Patroclus, or you could sing the row between Achilles and Agamemnon, or you could sing the moment that Achilles meets his mother, Thetis.
You can cut it down into individual lays, and I think that's how it was probably performed. It got elaborated and elaborated.
I think we're probably talking not tens, but hundreds of individual bards. They're called rhapsodes, stitches of song, who performed it all over through the dark ages of Greece.
For whatever reason, as I said, I think it's got a lot to do with colonisation. Somebody put it all together in the mid-18th century.
Now, that might have been an individual genius because the structure is wonderful. There's real artistry in how it's been all put together, if you like.
The final stitcher, whether he was called Omyros or not, I don't know. It's a very peculiar name.
It means a hostage. About 10 different places in ancient Greece claimed to be the homeland of Homer.
I don't think we've got any sense of who this individual was, but I wouldn't be surprised to learn that there wasn't a master hand in pushing it all together because it's very aesthetically satisfying. The story, the poem, the epic poem, that is the Iliad, you mentioned there, so it's divided into 24 books, is it? Are they almost like different scenes in the story? It narrates a 40-day period and it's syncopated, so we're not talking a convenient day, a book sort of thing.
Sometimes you have a 10-day gap. They go out to gather wood on the mountains for nine days for the funeral at the end of Patroclus in book 23.
Priam sends his guys out to the mountains for several days. Sometimes there's a battle that rages across the middle of the poem, which takes up three or four books, just one battle.
So it doesn't neatly fit into temporal units. It does neatly fit into thematic and dramatically unified individual episodes.
And you say that it's 40 days. So 40 days might seem like quite a long time, but in regards to the Trojan War that it's set, is this actually quite a small amount of time within the larger war? So the war is sort of 10 years, and I think we're meant to feel this is in about eighth or ninth year.
Once Achilles kills Hector, which is of course the climax, the final showdown, like the shootout in a Clint Eastwood movie that you've been waiting, that's in book 22 of 24. Just as in the Odyssey, when Odysseus finally kills all the suitors, it's in book 22 of 24.
So you've got that sort of whole buildup that is coming. But it allows 40 days is an interesting unit apart from the number 40 which often gets is important a lot of storytelling you know it's like nights in the wilderness and that kind of thing but it allows a real psychological build-up because achilles is called the wrath of achilles really the first wordath, sing me, Muse of Achilles, right? It's the 40 days that he was incredibly angry.
He's first angry with Agamemnon. He's angry with Agamemnon for almost all of that.
But then he gets even angrier with Hector because Hector's killed his best friend or lover, however we like to see it, Patroclus. So he actually transfers his anger in Book 90 from Agamemnon to Hector.
But once he's killed Hector, we know that his own death is not far off, but that is set up for us in his conversations with his mother, the sea goddess Thetis. So it's a kind of dot, dot, dot ending.
And also the very last word, the very last line is, thus ended the funeral of horse taming of Hector. It's horse taming is the last word, which immediately makes you think of the wooden horse, that the Trojans will not be horse tamers for long.
So it very much makes you think of the imminent ending of the war and also the death of Achilles. I mean, that's a brilliant structure.
So it's not a corny American movie where we've got to be told exactly what happened to everybody. It's left on this ambiguous but very dark funeral note.
And once again, to say, to the average Joe Bloggs, when you might think about the Trojan War, yes, you think about the Trojan horse. But actually, in Homer's Iliad, the Trojan horse isn't, that story isn't in there.
It's in a different story, which is interesting. And I would also like, you mentioned some of those interesting characters there that we're going to explore.
Achilles, absolutely. Hector, Patroclus, Agamemnon.
But before we get to them, Edith, as this is set for a particular 40-day period near the end of the Trojan War, are there any mentions in the Iliad kind of reminding people of what happened before then? Either why they're there, why they're on the plains of Troy, or what's happened in those years previously? Is there any attempt to explain, well, what came before this in the last episode kind of thing? Yes, but very slight and very late. We don't mention the judgment of Paris, which is what started it all, because he so offended Hera and Athena when he chose Aphrodite.
With the golden apple, yeah. Yeah, which meant that he was then allowed to run away with Helen, because he chose the most beautiful woman in the world.
The judgment of Paris is not mentioned until Book 24 and then only very briefly, right at the end. We do have Helen in the story.
She's a very important character. We're very aware Paris and Helen have sex in Book 3.
That thorn in the side of the Greeks, that their beautiful Helen is actually at it inside Troy, is there. But this poem is not very much interested.
In the past, for example, we don't hear about the sacrifice of Ophigenia, all those preparations. We do hear about a couple of omens, but it's pretty much in the now, and we don't get any real predictions of the future except just once we're told that the plains of Troy would be completely flattened and obliterated as if nothing had ever been there, which is pretty horrific.
We hear what the gods and the rivers are going to do after the war to obliterate Troy, but you're very much in the moment. You're in this terrible psychological warfare going on between these, all of them, arrogant, aggressive narcissists, basically, on the Greek side anyway.
And that's something we could talk about, is how much more pleasant the Trojans are. Absolutely.
Well, we'll get to that very quickly as we will explore the interesting figure of Achilles, first of all. And just a side note, the sacrifice of Iphigenia is Agamemnon's daughter, isn't it? He sacrifices her to get the favourable winds.
Yes, because his fleets are becalmed by Artemis for reasons... I mean, none of this is in the Iliad, and it's explained differently.
So in order to get the winds to sail for Troy, he had to sacrifice his daughter Iphigenia. That sets up up the audience of the Iliad knows that when Agamemnon gets home, he's for it.
His wife's going to kill him. But none of that is in the poem.
None of that is in the poem, though. I just want to clarify, as you mentioned that earlier.
Right. Okay.
Let's explore Achilles. He really does feel like the main character, doesn't he? What is his story in the Iliad? It feels like, as you say, it's this kind of unhinged vengeance fury arc that he has.
Well, he does. And the scenes of his, when he goes berserk, literally berserk, he's a berserker on the battlefield and loses it in the bloodlust, are very, very exciting.
But those are actually delayed all the way through until we get to the last four, five books. He's kept in his tent, nursing his grievance for almost all of the poem.
And in fact, we're on his side. One of the reasons this poem is so good is it throws us, when you start, it throws us straight into a crisis in the Achaean camp.
They're called Achaeans, not Greeks, in the Achaean camp because there's all dying of plague because their ridiculous king, Agamemnon, has decided it's okay to kidnap the local priest of Apollo because he fancies her. And Apollo's not having this, so he's killing them all off.
And there's a crisis, what are we going to do? And there's a meeting, and Achilles has been terribly insulted by Agamemnon. And Agamemnon agrees grudgingly to give this young woman back to her father, Criseus.
But he says, what's the next prettiest girl in camp? Oh, I know. It's the one that Achilles has got, Briseis.
I'll have her. I'm kingier than you.
There's actually this adjective. We have a word for being kingy.
And there's a superlative, Basiliu Tatos. I am the kingiest here.
Oh yeah, the most king, the superlative of king. Look at that.
I'm the kingiest. Well, it's an adjective.
I'm the most kingly. I'm the kingiest.
I'm going to have Briseis. And Achilles, quite understandably, says, you what? And what you have is a row which sets up this really political theme because Agamemnon is by heredity the most powerful king, only because he's the son of the son of the son.
By far the better warrior is Achilles. He is by far the best warrior on the Achaean side, and he's the best warrior in the poem, and he's the best warrior in the world.
And he has gone round and got lots and lots and lots of golden booty from all the little towns they've already conquered in northwest Turkey, as it is now. How do you treat your best lieutenant who has helped you to wage war incredibly successfully and lucratively? You insult him.
You take his girlfriend? So Achilles lays it all out. He says, you may be kingier than me, but I'm much more soldiery than you.
But it's absolutely thrilling because we're still having debates about whether we should abolish the House of Lords hereditary peers. These are still issues, whether you should be able to rise on merit or whether it's all about what sort of class and family you're born into.

So it's burningly political and we're all on Achilles' side.

So Homer, let's just call all these poets, for shorthand Homer, makes sure that although he

behaves appallingly, we really get why he's so angry with his boss. We've all had

Thank you. makes sure that although he behaves appallingly, we really get why he's so angry with his boss.

We've all had, everybody has all had a boss at some point who is less able than they are.

And it is incredibly aggravating having to take orders from them and being exploited and mistreated by them.

We've all been in that situation. Or we felt like that about a parent being arbitrary, right? There is no human in the world who has not been in Achilles' psychological situation.
So that is the genius of it, that even though his behaviour becomes utterly reprehensible, we're on his side for most of the poem. Does it add to the kind of complexity of Achilles' character? It almost feels like there's a dilemma that, yes, he has been mistreated.
His personal honour, perhaps in his eyes, has been attacked through Agamemnon's actions. But at the same time, he also has other friends amongst the Greeks.
He's been fighting alongside the Achaeans in the camp for years by this point. And yet the person overall in charge, the commander in chief, has sliced him in this way.
Is there a dilemma as to what he will do, whether he will fight or whether he will not fight? Is that a big part of the story? Absolutely. And I'm absolutely willing him to stay in his tent and not help the overlord.
The Achaean camp is a pretty dire, violent, aggressive, shouty place. You know, there's lots of rows, lots of aggression.
The one scene of real peace in the Achaean camp is Achilles' beautiful tent. He's got these soldiers who would give their lives for him, the Myrmidons.
He has absolute loyalty from his men because unlike Agamemnon, he will always lead from the front. He'll take every risk they do.
He'll do anything for them. And the Myrmidons, he withdraws from the war as well.
So they spend their time. Achilles plays the liar.
He becomes a poet who sings songs. Patroclus, his boyfriend, has got pet dogs.

And they retire to their tent and actually have this rather idyllic thing.

It's ambiguous about homoeroticism.

They are madly in love with each other, Achilles and Patroclus,

but actually they both sleep with women in this tent.

So they're having this idyllic time,

sort of sex and music and all the rest of it,

while all the other akin's are not doing very well on the battlefield because they haven't got Achilles.

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Listen to Our Skin on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. and how central then is patroclus to achilles's whole story and his story arc in the iliad well he's crucial and again the artistry of homer patroclus most unusually has the attribute of gentleness and we we're told everybody loved him because he was so gentle.
This is paradoxical in an Iliadic warrior. But for example, Briseis loves him.
She's Asiatic. She loves this friend when she's given back to Achilles.
And we learn that she says she really loved him because he was kind to her. He was actually kind to a captive slave girl.
And because he said he would help her to get Achilles to marry her, which would move her up from being bride of the spear, as they used to call it in 19th century translations, basically a rape victim, war rape. If she actually got married, she should secure her future.
So you've got this person who's given real moral attributes, which are most rare in this poem, that he's even kind to slave women. And he is a little older than Achilles.
He's a sort of an adoptive brother. He was brought up.
He'd fled to Achilles' household because he'd accidentally killed someone. Well, not quite accidentally, actually, but he'd made a big mistake as a young man.
He'd fled. He was brought up alongside Achilles.
So they're brought up as brothers, but because they're not actually brothers by blood, a very, very intense relationship forms between them. In other ancient Greek sources, it's unashamedly homoerotic.
Homer doesn't have homoerotic relationships in the Iliad. It's just not the cognitive contract with the audience.
But certainly the most intense emotional bond in the poem is between Achilles and Patroclus. Very interestingly, a psychoanalyst called Jonathan Shea wrote a very famous book called Achilles in Vietnam in the 1990s.
He worked with a lot of veterans. That sort of intense bond happened in Vietnam between squaddies, American marines and so on, who were out there, especially where there was an unpopular commander.
It's so interesting, isn't it? And Patroclus, before we move on to Hector, obviously kind of another big figure in the story, his story is absolutely crucial in that kind of transition from Achilles always being in his tent to coming out later in the play and and and that that vengeful arc emerging yes because Patroclus when the Achaeans are really not doing well at all persuades Achilles that Achilles isn't going to fight but he says just let me go and fight wear your armour. You don't have to, but I'm going to go in.
And Achilles doesn't want to let him, but he does go in. And of course he gets killed.
And it's the death of Patroclus that makes Achilles really relinquish, not relinquish his rage with Agamemnon, but his rage with Hector overshadows that. So he no longer thinks the Agamemnon insult, that pales into insignificance besides his bereavement.
That's the moment when he says he's got to go back to fight, but he hasn't got any arms. So his mother has to go to Hephaestus for the new arms for Achilles.
And he goes back into battle, very hastily makes up with Agamemnon. It doesn't really matter to him anymore.
And the rage against Hector is, of course, expressed in the most violent terms. Achilles actually sacrifices human captives from Troy, some youths, 12 youths from Troy.
kills them over the pyre of Patroclus, such as his rage. And there is no human sacrifice in Iliad.
It's one of the very few times where the authorial voice said, he did a bad thing. Before looking at Hector in this story, Edith, but keeping on that kind of rage part of Achilles' story, there was this other part which I found really interesting that I know you've done some work on, which isn't Achilles going into battle and fighting mortal humans, but is there a part where he has a fight with a river? Absolutely.
Indeed, when he finally goes into battle, he has what's, there's a special word for it, it's a certain kind of scene in the Iliad, and other characters get them, called an aristire, which means showing off your excellence at fighting. So Diomedes gets one.
He's another very good Achaean warrior in Book 5, where you kill serially, like 10 goals, one after another in a football match. You kill the enemy in a fit of bloodlust that could go on for several hours.
And I think the ancient audiences, I use the goal analogy mindfully because I think it was very exciting to listen to them, that yes, another Trojan bites the dust, and yes, another one. And they're all killed in slightly different ways, so the spear goes through their belly, or the spear goes through their larynx, or the spear goes through their eye, or lots of stuff.
And I suspect that the ancient audiences were cheering with everyone. Achilles kills so many that the River Scamander, which is the great river that comes down from Mount Ida to the sea and provides water for Troy, gets all blocked up with corpses.
They all jump in the river to try to escape. He kills them in the river.
The river is completely damned with corpses. So at that point, the river assumes anthropomorphic form.
That means he takes on the form of a human and is so angry with Achilles for polluting his lovely waters. And also Achilles pulls all the trees down that line the riverbank.
He destroys the beauty of the whole riverscape. So Scamander fights Achilles in the most terrifying way because he's bigger and he's a god and he would have defeated Achilles.
He, in fact, even calls on another river, one of his tributaries, to come and help him. But Hera, Hera at that point sends in fire, who fights the river instead.
But not already, the river has flooded the entire Trojan plain. So you've actually got, it's like a dam bursting.
I was writing about this in my latest book, this particular scene, when there was that terrible, terrible, terrible, I think it was 2023, the dams burst in Libya, I don't know if you remember, and killed tens of thousands of people. And it was caused by human technological failure.
This was not an earthquake. This was a human dam that burst, right? And that's what it's like with the River Scamander.
A human pollutes his waters. Human blocks it up.
This is Achilles. And the river retaliates and causes far, far more destruction.
So I see this as an environmental parable. It is such an interesting part of Achilles' story that is sometimes overlooked compared to his great fight with Hector.
But I'm glad you mentioned it there. And I know because also it's something that you've done a lot of work around, Edith.
And hopefully we'll revisit that theme as we go on. If we now go on to Hector, because I feel he is another important character we've got to talk about if we're doing the Iliad.
Oh, gosh, yes. And he's a worthy opponent for Achilles.
How does he compare to Achilles in terms of heroism? Because we've talked about the Greek perspective in the Achaean camp. What's been going on in Troy and how Hector fits into this? He's more heroic for many reasons.
One is that he's 100% mortal. Achilles has got this advantage that he's bionic.
He's half divine, right? His mother is Thetis. He's got supernatural powers on the battlefield.
The only reason I'll ever die is because of his ankle. And of course, that's not in this poem.
But he could have been fully immortal. He's very nearly fully immortal.
Hector is 100% ordinary guy. He's the Prince of Troy.
He loves his dad very much, Priam.

His dad, Priam, is too old to run military ops.

So while Priam is still administrative king, Hector is his commander-in-chief and shares the monarchical duties.

He's a lovely husband.

This is one of the really big contrasts that were Achilles and Agamemnon are raping all these slave girls by compulsion and coercion. Hector's got this wife who adores him.
He's not adulterous. He's got a baby son who adores him.
All his people adore him. He's nice to his mother.
He's even nice to Helen. And he is fighting a defensive war.
And how many of us these days, most of us do not glorify aggressive militarism, but can absolutely identify with somebody who's risking his life to defend his people, his wife and his baby? This is the acceptable face of violence for most of us, is defensive. He's got all these moral cards stacked in his favour and he is impetuous.
That is his main failing that he doesn't deliberate properly before engaging in military strategies. But he also, there's a crucial moment before the final showdown where he could go back into Troy.
He could. He's been fighting for days.
He could go back in and he stands on the battlefield and says, it's a very metaphysical moment. Shall I go back in and feel shame before the women of Troy with their trailing robes that I'm not out there fighting for them? Shall I go inside and survive and be safe but feel shame? or shall i just die and do a big thing and this is big thing is the actual translation of the greek megati rexum having done a big thing and i will at least get immortal fame go down nobly and that's what he decides to do and of course the god's gods help Achilles.
Hector doesn't have a chance, but I cry in book 22 when Hector dies. It was a few years ago that I remember studying this part of the Iliad, but there's that extraordinary scene of him, as you mentioned, his loving wife Andromache, and they have that whole conversation together.
And is she the one who's begging him not to go out again? But Hector's like, is it my duty? I have to go back out or something? It's extraordinary. It's book six.
He's on the wall. She meets him on the wall with the baby and begs him not to go.
And then she tries to give him military advice about sticking near the wall where it's safer and this, that, and the next thing. And he will not.
He will not heed her. And in fact, of course, Troy would fall anyway.
I mean, he's right in a way, but it is absolutely heartbreaking. And even more heartbreaking is when she gets the news in Book 22 when he is killed.
She's actually inside weaving and she hears the noise and runs out, tears off her veil and faints and collapses. And then we next see her in the final book leading the women of Troy's lament over her lovely husband.
So it's very carefully done. And this is why it's so much better than most movies of, as I talk about Clint Eastwood and stuff.
Usually in Clint Eastwood movies you don't have, with the final shootout, you've got proper bad guys being done in. They're very simple morally.
The Iliad is anything but. Although these Achaeans are ancestors of the Greek audiences, they're not as nice as the Trojans.
And that is really cleverly done. So it makes it very morally balanced.
And Hector's father comes into his own in the last book because Achilles has been abusing the corpse of Hector famously, dragging it, tying him by the ankles to the back of his chariot and driving it round and round Troy. He stopped doing that because the gods intervened.
But Priam has to go very bravely, an old man, into the enemy camp and asks Achilles to hand over the body. And do you know what he does? And they have this incredible redemptive moment where they look admiringly at each other.
They both lost so much.

Achilles has lost Patroclus. Priam has lost Hector.
And these two warring kings just get each other. And you want to say, why didn't you have that conversation 24 books ago? Our Skin Tells a Story

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Listen to Our Skin on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. So that's the end of the story, is it, Edith? Because I was going to say, book 22, that's the climax, that's the fight where Hector dies, but it's 24 books.

And you've gone from feeling sad for Achilles at the beginning to now feeling being more on the Trojan side with the death of Hector. And I guess it's that wrapping up very quickly.
It's the prime getting the body back so he can have the important burial rites. Yes, which is so important.
Yeah, of the actually ordinary human who has sacrificed everything to try and save the people we've come to be very fond of in the course of the poem. It's also very interesting, I'll just say this briefly, that you have on the one hand Agamemnon as a leader, militaristic leader, as compared to Priam, that old man, and yet Priam has such an important role by the end, doesn't he? And his wife, and Hecuba.
Well, actually, that leads me nicely onto the next thing is that we talked about Andromache and you've mentioned as well Briseis. But do we have many women appearing in the Iliad and do they play a major role in the story? Well, we've got goddesses a lot.
Thetis is Achilles' mother who will do anything for him and is a very emotionally sophisticated figure who intervenes with Zeus for him, intervenes with Hephaestus. We've got Hera and Athena and Artemis.
We have the goddesses. But the gods are really amoral and childish compared with the humans.
That's both men and women. But the women are fascinating.
So the big women are Briseis and Briseis, but they don't get very much to say. Briseis has this one wonderful speech, Lament for Patroclus, when she says how kind he was to her.
We have Andromache, who is very proud and very tender, admirable wife and mother, exactly the sort of person whose civilisation shouldn't be destroyed.

We have Hecuba, equally madly loves Hector, so her son. And of course, we have Helen.
Helen appears in book three and regrets bitterly. She tells us how much she regrets what she's done.
She, I think, fancies Hector rather than Paris. She has a bit of a flirt with Hector in book six.
And he doesn't blame her. He's kind even to Helen.
He sees this is a man's game and that she's just a born in man's game. And she also sings a lament for Hector.
There's four women who sing laments in book 24, and that is Andromache, Hecuba, Helen, and Cassandra. We meet Cassandra in book 24, who, of course, by having Cassandra in, we know that somebody there knows everything that's going to happen.
It's very clever. But I mean, so we've got in the final book, we have Hector's mother, wife, sister, and sister-in-law, right? So it's the full complement, and they all love him.
I don't want to say nice, but it's a very kind of poignant end to Hector's story, having got the body back. You mentioned also there that other part of the story that I'd like to ask about before we move on, Edith, which is, of course, the role of the gods.
So is the role of the gods, are they portrayed all as being very selfish in their outlook? Are half of them siding with the Trojans, half of them with the Greeks? How are the gods portrayed in the Iliad? The main way that they're there is to show how much greater humans are as moral agents.

Precisely because the gods can't die, they're deprived of any real tragic dimension.

All these humans are facing mortality and the real cost of having to act.

The gods are basically unaccountable and can be irresponsible.

They can get injured.

They get injured.

There's some fighting between them. The worst one of all, and I'm quite fond of him because he's so awful, he's Ares.
Oh, God. Because all the other gods are on one side or another for historic reasons.
There are reasons why, to do with their alliances, to do with the judgment of Paris, to do with who of them have got children on the battlefield or grandchildren, except for Zeus,

who's kind of up there and a bit kind of weirdly disengaged.

He's just got to make sure fate takes its course.

But he's sad because he says the Trojans were the most pious people

who always sacrificed a lot to him.

But Ares is wonderful because he can't remember what side he's on.

He's not on any side. So Athena is the goddess of tactical warfare and planned warfare.
He's the god of just mindless thuggery. So in book five, he's on the battlefield and he starts just jumping around, killing anybody.
Doesn't matter which side they're on. Wow.
There's even a word that says that he's our low proselos which means he jumps once to one side and then to the other side and athena says what is the problem with you you you know fighting's okay if you've got a motive or a reason that you can explain but there's just violence for the sake of it and you know i've seen seen like scenes like that in glaswegian pubs late at night i have and i think you could probably see them on some football terraces where people just don't care what side they're hitting and it's also is it just the main gods or are there demi gods as well or do you know as you mentioned there so there are some people who who are half man half god who are fighting with the achaeans or the trojans i mean there's all this different mix of hybrid gods and gods and mortals there. And river gods.
And river gods. Yeah.
No, there's a whole panoply and they've got different status. And there are arguments about status.
So the last guy that Achilles kills before he fights the river is called Asteripaeus. And he's come very recently to Troy.

And he's the son of a Thracian river.

So we have this god off where it's like,

is somebody who's the son of a big river more important than someone who's the

son of a sea goddess?

It's like the status game.

It's a parody in a way of status in human life. Like, am I kingier than you? That extends into how much divine blood.
Am I godier than you? Yeah. Am I godier than you? It's absolutely wonderful.
But the gods' counterpoint is they they at the end of the day you always have this amazing formulae like they just went back to feast and inextinguishable laughter arose amongst the gods i mean they're up there just laughing while humans are fighting dying and losing their nearest and dearest as we we move on to themes, I feel we've covered

many of the big points and big characters of the Iliad story there, Edith. I must also ask, because we've just talked about gods fighting alongside these mythical heroes in the Iliad.
Historical basis though, do we think that there could have been at least some historical basis for a big Achaean Bronze Age fleet crossing over to Troy

and there being an actual siege of Troy. Oh, definitely.
Without a doubt. In terms of the general pattern, we know this.
Linear B is a script that was used by people of the era of Agamemnon and Achilles. right the greeks subsequently lost that script and lost it for several hundred years until the

writing that came in from the Venetians with which they wrote down the poems in the 8th century. But we know from remains of that script from places in the Peloponnese and Crete that there were raiding parties going out from Greece to get women and booty and stuff from the eastern Aegean and what's now Anatolia, the west coast of Turkey.
This is historically a tested fact. That is more historically tested than the actual site of Troy.
We are not sure whether people have identified there is a Bronze Age palace of the right kind of date at a place called Hisalic, which since the mid-19th century, everybody said is probably Troy. And I think it probably is.
But whether actually a man called Agamemnon went and led any of these parties is irrelevant. There was a thalasocracy, that means a sea power, in the Bronze Age of these Mycenaean Greeks who wrote in Linear B, and they were engaged in trading and aggressive activities for trading, raiding, I think, in precisely those areas, especially around the Hellespont, which was always a strategic hotspot.
I'd like to move on to themes now, Edith, and one theme in particular that I'd love to ask about first of all, because I know we could talk about there are so many other major themes linked to the Iliad, whether that be fate and prophecy, friendship, honour. But what I find really interesting, having read some of your work before recording is also this talk about the world that they lived in the natural world around them but also natural disasters that occurred too is this also quite an interesting theme in the iliad it's it's very apocalyptic in its imagination so strangely a lot of this happens in similes, but you have countless similes that the soldiers descended on the other side like a wildfire sweeping over a mountain, or they rise up like a wave that crashes and destroys everything in its path.
Earthquake sort of stuff. One mention is of terrible hunger, famine.
There's only one, and that's in the last book. But I think that there are echoes or memories.
No, they're memories. They're poetically encoded memories of the collapse of the Bronze Age civilizations with their tsunamis and fires and famines and displacements.
I think that we're talking a post-apocalyptic poem. The Greeks of the 8th century could see around them ruins of these great Mycenaean palaces.
They've probably even seen bits of Linear B. We know from tomb findings that they've discovered relics of the bronze armour, because they're now living in the Iron Age, but they've discovered these bronze relics and so on.
So they're construing, as we might, what it was like to be in the age of King Arthur from a handful of medieval artifacts and scraps of poetry, that kind of thing. So I think the apocalyptic tone is partly memory, but I've argued in this new book, which I'm going to plug, called Epic of the Earth, reading Homer's Iliad in the fight for a dying world, I also think they betray at some level that they knew that they were chopping down too many trees.
And they certainly were.forestation of the periphery of the mediterranean began in the bronze age for three reasons one was you actually just needed a lot of wood to build all those thousand ships at right and all the watch fires and all the palisades the second was that they cleared land at a disastrous rate for pasturage all those cattle we're facing that now with how much land you need for cattle compared with growing lentils or whatever. And the third reason, and perhaps the most important one, was smelting.
The amount of wood you need to make even one piece of bronze armour in terms of the furnaces and the fires is unbelievable. So the Iliad is the expression of an age when the Greeks were pushing ever further afield and cutting down ever more forests.
Whenever they ran out, they would just move further east, further south, further north, cut down more forests to feed this. And they believed they were infinite, but they had no knowledge that there were limits to Earth.
It doesn't excuse it, but I think that the Iliad at a subconscious level is letting us know they knew this was a problem. So it's almost a sense that, I mean, with all this exploiting of resources, not knowing that there was a finite limit at that time, and then with the hindsight several hundred years later, post-Bronze Age collapse, is there a sense in the Iliad that the Trojan War and all the conflict, I mean, it was almost catalyzing a natural disaster? Yes, I think so.
I think you have to read it a bit against the grain and you have to, as I say, go for what literary critics call its political unconscious. But it's absolutely there.
the amount of the trees of ida that must have been cut down to keep that war going oh mount ida and that's that's the big mountain nearby in in anatolia yep and it's got this incredibly precious fir tree there's only a few left and it's the only grows in that area of the world and it's called the subspecies Ab Abies is the fir or pine, but it's called the subspecies Trojan horse by botanists because they assume it was. And the fight for the survival of that forest, which is now only at the very top of the mountain, is on now.
So we're still living the aftermath of the rapacious attitude to natural resources that is expressed in this hyper-consumption that's described with glory in the Iliad. I do find it so interesting.
I love how you mentioned all those similes as well and how all those different... Having done an interview on the Bronze Age Collapse, a couple in the past, how Dr Eric Klein explained how it probably is a combination of famineine, earthquakes, tsunamis and all those things, and forest fires and everything, how they can all combine to be like a perfect storm.
So interesting that you have those similes of those natural events as well. Edith, lastly, this has been brilliant, but also bringing it down to the modern day.
I know this also relates to your new book too. How useful then can the Iliad be when looking at the modern 21st century and important world issues today? Well, I think it can actually help us because we'll see that these problems have been going on for 3,000 years and more.
I think the Anthropocene started with the invention of bronze, of metallurgy. Before metallurgy, you couldn't really do colonial warfare.
You can't do siege warfare by blowing darts out of fennel sticks, throwing ceramics. You can't do it.
You had to have metal. And metal required all that unbelievable amount of wood.
It also required obscene working conditions for slaves, including children, in mines. It's kind of the turning point.
I think the Iliad is the poem of the moment our decline started. So although it's glorious and wonderful, and I want everybody to read it, I think we can read it in a new tragic way that might inspire us to go out and fight for our planet.
I want us to use the warfare in the Iliad to fight for our planet. And that's why I've written this book and I've dedicated it to my children and all the rest of Generation Z with apologies for the state of the planet.
Because I am ashamed that I'm 65 years old and I'm handing on, you know, I haven't done more. I really am.
Edith, well, it's a wonderful book and it's a very, very noble cause. Last but certainly not least, the book is called? Epic of the Earth.
Reading Homer's Iliad in the fight for a dying world. It's going to be published next month by Yale University Press and it's a trade book, so it is not all that expensive.
Fantastic. Well, Edith, thank you so much for taking the time to come back on the podcast today.
Thank you very much. Well, there you go.
There was Professor Edith Hall giving you an overview of some of the key themes, really interesting themes of the epic, that is, the Iliad. I hope you enjoyed today's episode.
If you'd like more of Professor Edith Hall on the Ancients, well, you're in luck because Edith also featured for one of our most popular episodes ever, released at the beginning of this year, all about Atlantis and exploring the ancient Greek story of Atlantis preserved in Plato, and what Plato's dialogues actually say about this legendary city that was ultimately engulfed by the waves. Go and check out that episode if you want to listen to more Edith Hall on the Ancients.
Thank you once again for listening to this episode of the Ancients. Please follow this show on Spotify or wherever you get your podcasts.
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the meantime, then be sure to follow me on Instagram at ancientstristan. That's enough from me, and I'll see you in the next episode.
Our skin tells a story.

Join me, Holly Fry, and a slate of incredible guests as we are all inspired by their journeys with psoriasis. Along with these uplifting and candid personal histories, we take a step back into the bizarre and occasionally poisonous history of our skin and how we take care of it.

Whether you're looking for inspiration on your own skincare journey or are curious about the sometimes strange history of how we treat our skin, you'll find genuine, empathetic,

transformative conversations here on Our Skin. Listen to Our Skin on the iHeartRadio app,

Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.