A story of war, honour, and destiny, The Iliad is one of the greatest epics in history. Written by Homer and featuring legendary figures like Achilles, Hector, and Agamemnon, it captures the drama and devastation of the final days of the Trojan War.In this episode of The Ancients, Tristan Hughes is joined by Professor Edith Hall to explore the origins, themes, and lasting influence of The Iliad. Together, they dive into the poem’s portrayal of fate and prophecy, its vivid depictions of gods and warriors, and the explosive conflict between Achilles and Hector. Edith also reveals how The Iliad’s language carries an apocalyptic tone - offering insight into how the poem was understood in the ancient world and why it still resonates today.Hear Professor Edith Hall on our Atlantis episode: https://shows.acast.com/the-ancients/episodes/atlantisPresented by Tristan Hughes. Audio editor is Aidan Lonergan, the producer is Joseph Knight. The senior producer is Anne-Marie Luff.All music courtesy of Epidemic SoundsThe Ancients is a History Hit podcast.Sign up to History Hit for hundreds of hours of original documentaries, with a new release every week and ad-free podcasts. Sign up at https://www.historyhit.com/subscribe. You can take part in our listener survey here: https://insights.historyhit.com/history-hit-podcast-always-on
Chapter 1: What is The Iliad about?
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 Hesiod's 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. It is over 16,000 lines long, and they're long lines.
They're a particular metre 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. I mean, 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 1,000 years.
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Chapter 2: Why is The Iliad considered a foundational epic?
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 history. but they were expected to know top by heart if they had a good education. And that remained 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 a thousand 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.
And as soon as that happened, everybody started doing operas and paintings and plays and parodies. And it became once again an absolute staple language. of certainly upper-class education. 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 civilization and values. I think they were written down because of Greek colonization. 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 Marseilles or in Egypt or
you know, 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 them 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.
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Chapter 3: How did The Iliad survive through history?
So it was 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 40 days is an interesting unit, apart from the number 40, which often is important. A lot of storytelling, you know, it's like knights in the wilderness and that kind of thing. But it allows a real psychological build-up because Achilles is called the Roth of Achilles, really. The first word is Roth.
Roth, sing me, muse of Achilles, right? It's the 40 days that he was incredibly angry. Yeah. 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. 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. Also, the very last line is, thus ended the funeral of Hector. 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.
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, that story isn't in there. It's in a different story, which is interesting. 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.
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Chapter 4: What themes are explored in The Iliad?
None of that is in the poem, though. I just wanted 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 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 daughter of 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 we're going to do. And there's a meeting. And Achilles has been terribly insulted by Agamemnon. Agamemnon agrees grudgingly to give this young woman back to her father, Chrysaia. But he says, hmm, what's the next prettiest girl in camp? Oh, I know. It's the one that Achilles has got, Briseis. I'll have her, right? I'm kingier than you. There's actually this adjective.
We have a word for being kingy. And there's a superlative, basileutatos. 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. 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 best 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 around and got lots and lots and lots of gold and 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.
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Chapter 5: What is the significance of Achilles' character?
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's and stuff. Usually in Clint Eastwood movies, you don't have, with the final shootout, you've got proper bad guys being done in, right? They're very simple morally. The Iliad is anything but bad.
Although these Achaeans are ancestors of the Greek audiences, they're not as nice as the Trojans, and that is really cleverly done. It makes it very morally balanced. 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? 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.
You want to say, why didn't you have that conversation 24 books ago?
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 it 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?
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Chapter 6: How does Patroclus influence Achilles' story?
It's very apocalyptic in its imagination. 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 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 discovered relics of the bronze armor 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 and 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.
The deforestation 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. 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 armor 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, 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.
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?
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Chapter 7: What role does Hector play in the narrative?
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 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 homers 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 a 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. It really helps us and you'll be doing us a big favour.
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Chapter 8: What is the relationship between fate and free will in The Iliad?
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