The Iliad

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/atlantis Presented 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 Sounds The 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: https://insights.historyhit.com/history-hit-podcast-always-on Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy https://acast.com/privacy for more information.

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:00Tristan Hughes?

  Ever wondered why the Romans were defeated in the Teutoburg Forest? What secrets lie buried in prehistoric Ireland? Or what made Alexander truly great? With a subscription to History Hit, you can explore our ancient past alongside the world's leading historians and archaeologists. You'll also unlock hundreds of hours of original documentaries with a brand new release every single week, covering everything from the ancient world to World War II. Just visit historyhit.com/subscribe. This episode is sponsored by Smart Travel, a new podcast from NerdWallet. Now, you know that one friend who always finds the best travel deals, picks the right cards, and somehow ends up in first class for the price of coach?

• 0:44Tristan Hughes?

  Smart Travel is like that friend, but in podcast form. They cover all the things travel finance, so you can stop stressing and actually start enjoying your trips. I'm lucky enough to travel a fair bit. You might have heard me talking about being on tour with the Ancients in Australia and New Zealand quite recently. Well, Smart Travel podcast from NerdWallet was a great help. They dig into which airport lounges are really worth it, and which are just an airport gate with better snacks and worse lighting, and what actually happens when an airline loses your luggage for 12 days, and how to get real money back instead of a free drink and an apology.

• 1:24Tristan Hughes?

  Plus, the tip I really needed: how to book flights without it turning into a part-time job. Travel smarter and spend less with help from NerdWallet. Follow Smart Travel wherever you get your podcasts.

• 1:54Tristan Hughes?

  It's one of the greatest epics in history, a 24-book story regarded as one of the most influential pieces of literature ever written: The Iliad.

• 2:05Tristan Hughes?

  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 judgment 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.

• 2:47Tristan Hughes?

  How Achilles refused to fight for the Greeks and sulked in his tent after Agamemnon took his slave Galbrosaeus 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

• 3:30Tristan Hughes?

  to explore it book by book, from book one to twenty-four. We're going to do it systematically. We're going to explore everything varying from the origins of The Iliad some three thousand 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.

• 4:07Tristan Hughes?

  Edith, it is great to have you back on the podcast.

• 4:10Speaker 01

  And I'm thrilled to be back here again.

• 4:13Tristan Hughes?

  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?

• 4:24Speaker 01

  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. And it is over 16,000 lines long and they're long lines. They're a particular meter called the ductilic hexameter, which has six beats. And it's quite a long line. It's much longer than, say, the iambic pentameter we're used to in Shakespeare.

• 5:06Speaker 01

  And it tells the story of a 40 day period towards the end of the 10 year Trojan War.

• 5:13Tristan Hughes?

  16,000 lines

• 5:15Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 5:16Tristan Hughes?

  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.

• 5:29Speaker 01

  It's quite remarkable. It just, it's sort of cultural longevity. I mean, one of the reasons for that, though, was that it was, 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, you know, it's just incredible, but they were expected to know it off by heart if they had a good education. And it's that main so throughout the Roman Empire all the way through. This meant it survived in numerous manuscripts in Byzantium.

• 6:10Speaker 01

  When it was lost to the West for about a thousand years, between about four hundred 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.

• 6:54Speaker 01

  And that as soon as that happened, everybody started doing operas and paintings and plays and parodies. And 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, you know, 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 it's now absolutely as familiar as the Odyssey for the first time since antiquity.

• 7:36Tristan Hughes?

  Ed, if 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?

• 7:48Speaker 01

  Yes, it's the, 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 eighth, seventh, sixth century. To found colonies on the far northern coast of the Black Sea or in Marseille or in Egypt. 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

• 8:32Speaker 01

  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 their head. They were the cultural encyclopedia. And at Athens, we know that every year at the Panathenaia, it's the big all Athenian festival in the summer from the sixth century. You know, they were recited all the way through. The Iliad was recited all the way through by teams of baths every summer. It actually takes about three days to do that.

• 9:08Tristan Hughes?

  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 like the heart of ancient Greece and Athens and places, but we still remember the values in these stories.

• 9:42Speaker 01

  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.

• 10:14Tristan Hughes?

  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?

• 10:32Speaker 01

  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 like lays, and I think that's how it was probably performed. It got elaborated, elaborated. I think we're probably talking not tens but hundreds of individual bars. They're called rhapsodes,

• 11:16Speaker 01

  stitches of song, who performed it all over the, through the Dark Ages of Greece. And 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 Omeros or not, I don't know. It's a very peculiar name. It means a hostage. And about 10 different places

• 11:56Speaker 01

  in ancient Greece claimed to be the homeland of Homer. So 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.

• 12:14Tristan Hughes?

  And so the timeline, well, 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?

• 12:25Speaker 01

  It narrates a 40 day period, so, and it's syncopated, so we're not talking a convenient day, a book, sort of thing. Sometimes you have a sort of 10 day gap. They go out to gather wood on the mountains for nine days, or the funeral at the end of Patroclus in book 23, and Priam sends his guys out to the mountains for several days. Sometimes there's a whole, a battle that rages across the middle of the poem, which, which takes up three or four books, just one battle. So it doesn't neatly fit into temporal units. It does neatly fit into sort of thematic and dramatically unified individual episodes.

• 13:06Tristan Hughes?

  And you say that it's 40 days, so 40 days might seem like quite a long time, but in regards the Trojan War that it set, is this actually quite a small amount of time within the larger war?

• 13:18Speaker 01

  So the war's 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 build up 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 knights in the wilderness

• 13:58Speaker 01

  and that kind of thing. But it allows a real psychological build up, because Achilles, it's called the wrath of Achilles, really. The first word is wrath, wrath, sing me mews of Achilles, right? It's the 40 days that he was incredibly angry.

• 14:15Speaker 01

  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 god Aesthetis. So it's a kind of dot, dot, dot ending. And also, the very last word is, the very last line is thus

• 14:53Speaker 01

  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.

• 15:25Tristan Hughes?

  And once again, to say, I mean, to the average Joe Blogs, 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.

• 15:36Speaker 01

  No.

• 15:37Tristan Hughes?

  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?

• 16:08Speaker 01

  Yes, but very slight and very late. We don't mention the judgment of Paris, which is what started it all, because he's so offended Hera and Athena when he chose Aphrodite.

• 16:21Tristan Hughes?

  With the golden apple, yeah.

• 16:22Speaker 01

  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. Paris, we do have Helen in the story. I mean, she's a very important character. And we're very aware, you know, Paris and Helen have sex in book three. So 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 Ephigenia. All those preparations, we do hear about a couple of omens.

• 17:06Speaker 01

  But it's, it's, 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.

• 17:43Tristan Hughes?

  Absolutely. Well, we'll get to that very quickly as we will explore the figure, interesting figure of Achilles first of all. And just side note, the sacrifice of Ephigenia is Agamemnon's daughter, isn't it? And he sacrifices her in to get the favorable winds.

• 17:55Speaker 01

  Fleets are be calmed 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 Ephigenia. That sets up, you know, 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.

• 18:17Tristan Hughes?

  None of that is in the poem. No, 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.

• 18:34Speaker 01

  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.

• 18:55Speaker 01

  He's kept in his tent nursing his grievance for almost all of the poem. And in fact, we're on his side. The reason, 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 that ridiculous king Agamemnon has decided it's okay to kidnap priestess of the local, 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.

• 19:38Speaker 01

  And Achilles is, has been terribly insulted by Agamemnon. And Agamemnon agrees grudgingly to give this young woman back to her father, Criseus. But he says, hmm, what's the next prettiest girl in camp? Oh, I know, it's the one that Achilles has got, Briseus. I'll have her, right? No, I'm, I'm kingy as a new, there's actually this adjective. We have a word for being kingy.

• 20:06Speaker 01

  And there's a superlative, basilutatos, and I am the kingiest here.

• 20:10Tristan Hughes?

  Oh yeah, the most king, the superlative of king, look at that.

• 20:13Speaker 01

  I'm the king here, well, it's an adjective, I'm the most kingly, I'm the kingiest. I'm gonna have Briseus. 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 best warrior is Achilles. He is by far the best warrior in, in, 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 gold and booty from all the little towns they've already conquered in northwest Turkey, as it is now.

• 20:59Speaker 01

  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." Okay? But it's absolutely thrilling because we're still having debates about whether we should abolish the house of lords' hereditary peers. Now, these are still issues, whether you should be able to rise on merit, or whether you just, 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.

• 21:38Speaker 01

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

• 22:01Speaker 01

  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.

• 22:29Tristan Hughes?

  Does it add to the kind of complexity of Achilles' character? It always feels like there's a dilemma that, yes, he has been mistreated, that it's like his personal honour perhaps in his eyes has been attacked through Agamemnon's actions. But at the same time, you know, he is 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?

• 23:02Speaker 01

  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, chowty 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. You know, 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

• 23:42Speaker 01

  time, Achilles plays the liar. He becomes a poet who sings songs. Patroclus, his boyfriend, has got pet dogs. And they retire to their tents 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 Achaeans are not doing very well on the battlefield because they haven't got Achilles.

• 24:29Speaker 02

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• 25:27Tristan Hughes?

  And how central then is Patroclus to Achilles' whole story and his story arc in the Iliad?

• 25:34Speaker 01

  Well, he's crucial. And again, the art history of Homer, Patroclus most unusually has the attribute of gentleness. And we're told everybody loved him because he was so gentle. This seems paradoxical in an Iliadic warrior, but for example, Briseus loves him. She's Asiatic. She loves this friend, which 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

• 26:16Speaker 01

  translations, basically a rape victim, you know, 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, was brought up alongside Achilles. So they're brought up as brothers, but because they're not actually blood brothers by blood,

• 26:58Speaker 01

  a very, very intense relationship forms between them. In other ancient Greek sources, it's unashamedly homoerotic.

• 27:09Speaker 01

  Homer doesn't have homoerotic relationships in the Iliad. That's just not the cognitive contract with the audience. But certainly, the most intense emotional bond in the poem is between Achilles and Patroclus. And very interestingly, a psychoanalyst called Jonathan Shay wrote a very famous book called Achilles in Vietnam in the 1990s. He worked with a lot of veterans. And 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.

• 27:50Tristan Hughes?

  It's so interesting, isn't it? And Patroclus, before we move on to Hector, obviously, kind of another big figure in the story.

• 27:58Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 27:58Tristan Hughes?

  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 that vengeful arc emerging.

• 28:09Speaker 01

  Yes, because Patroclus, when the Achaeans are really not doing well at all, persuades Achilles. 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 it's that his rage with Hector overshadows that. So he no longer thinks the Agamemnon insult, you know, that pales into its significance besides his bereavement. That's the moment when he says he's got to go back in to fight, but he hasn't got any arms.

• 28:55Speaker 01

  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. Doesn't really matter to him anymore. And the rage against Hector is, is, is of course expressed in, in the most violent terms. Achilles actually hu- sacrifices human captives from Troy, some youths, twelve youths from Troy, kills them over the pyre of Patroclus, such is his, his, his rage. And there is no human sacrifice in the Iliad, and it's one of the very few times where the or- authorial voice said, he did a bad thing.

• 29:36Tristan Hughes?

  Before looking at Hector in this story, Edith, but keeping on that kind of rage part of Achilles's 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, he has a fight with a river?

• 29:55Speaker 01

  Absolutely. Indeed. When he goes in, 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 arrystia, which means showing off your, your excellence at fighting. Right? So Diomedes gets one, he's, he's another very good Achaean warrior in book, in book five, where you kill serially, you know, like ten goals, one after another in a football match. You kill the enemy in a fit of bloodlust that go on for, for several hours. And I think the ancient audiences, I use the, the goal analogy mindfully, because I

• 30:38Speaker 01

  think it was very exciting to listen to them, that yes, another Trojan bites the dust, and yes, another one, you know? 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 the, you know, lots of stuff. And I, 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, and what gives, 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 dammed with corpses.

• 31:21Speaker 01

  So at that point, the river assumes anthropomorphic form, that means he takes on the form of, of, 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.

• 32:00Speaker 01

  But 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 gotten 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 that burst, right? And that's what it's like with the rivers Scamander.

• 32:43Speaker 01

  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.

• 32:56Tristan Hughes?

  It is such an interesting part of Achilles' story that is sometimes overlooked compared to his his great fight with Hector. But I'm glad we mentioned it there. And I know because also it is 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.

• 33:17Speaker 01

  Oh, gosh, yes. And he's a worthy opponent for Achilles.

• 33:21Tristan Hughes?

  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?

• 33:30Speaker 01

  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 he's half divine, right? His his mother is Thetis. He he's got supernatural powers on 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, you know, he he 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,

• 34:10Speaker 01

  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 raping all these slave girls by compulsion and coercion. Hector's got this, you know, wife 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.

• 34:55Speaker 01

  You know, this is the acceptable face of violence for most of us is defensive. So 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?

• 35:38Speaker 01

  Shall I go inside and survive, 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, megeti 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, to God's help, Achilles, Hector doesn't have a chance. But I cry in book twenty-two when Hector dies.

• 36:08Tristan Hughes?

  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?

• 36:25Speaker 01

  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 twenty-two when he is killed. She's actually inside weaving, and she hears the noise and runs out, tears off a veil, and faints and collapses. And then we next

• 37:05Speaker 01

  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 know, you've got proper bad guys being done in, right? 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

• 37:45Speaker 01

  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.

• 38:28Speaker 01

  And these two warring kings just get each other. And you want to say, why didn't you have that conversation 24 books ago?

• 38:45Speaker 02

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• 39:43Tristan Hughes?

  So that's the end of the story, is it, Edith? Because I was going to say, book 22, you said 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 is that wrapping up very quickly? It's the Prime getting the body back?

• 40:03Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 40:03Tristan Hughes?

  So he can have the important burial rites?

• 40:05Speaker 01

  The funeral.

• 40:06Tristan Hughes?

  Yes, which is so important.

• 40:07Speaker 01

  Yeah, of the actually ordinary human who has sacrificed everything to try and save.

• 40:13Speaker 01

  The people we've come to be very fond of in the course of the poem.

• 40:17Tristan Hughes?

  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 I said, compared to Priam, that old man, and yet Priam has such an important role by the end, doesn't he?

• 40:28Speaker 01

  And his wife, and Hecuba.

• 40:30Tristan Hughes?

  Well, actually, that leads me nicely on to the next thing, is that we talked about Andromache and you've mentioned as well Briseus, but do we have many women appearing in the Iliad and do they play a major role in the story?

• 40:42Speaker 01

  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, you know, with Hephaestus. We've got Hera and Athena and Artemis, we have, 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 Criseus and Briseus. But they don't get very much to say. Briseus has this one wonderful speech, lament for Patroclus, when she says how not kind he was to her.

• 41:23Speaker 01

  We have Andromache, who is very proud and very tender, admirable wife and mother. Exactly the sort of person whose civilization shouldn't be destroyed. We have Hecuba, equally madly loves Hector, so her son. And of course, we have Helen.

• 41:42Speaker 01

  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, he's kind even to Helen. He's, 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, in book 24, and that is Andromache, Hecuba, Helen and Cassandra.

• 42:18Speaker 01

  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.

• 42:40Tristan Hughes?

  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, is it very self, 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?

• 43:05Speaker 01

  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, there's, there's some fighting between them. The worst one of all, and I'm quite fond of him because he's so awful, is 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

• 43:45Speaker 01

  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 like

• 44:27Tristan Hughes?

  Doesn't matter which side they're on. Wow.

• 44:29Speaker 01

  There's even a word that me, it says that he's Arlo Procellos, 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, you, you know, fighting's okay if you've got a motive or a reason that you can explain. But this is just violence for the sake of it. And you know, I've seen 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.

• 44:58Tristan Hughes?

  And it's also, is it just the main gods or are there demi gods as well? Or 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, there's all this different mix of hybrid gods and gods and mortals there.

• 45:11Speaker 01

  And, and, and river gods and

• 45:13Tristan Hughes?

  And river gods.

• 45:14Speaker 01

  Yeah, no, it, it, it's a whole panoply and they've got different statuses. And there are arguments about statuses. So the last guy that Achilles kills before he fights the river is called Asteriphas. And he's come very recently to Troy and he's, he, he, he's the son of, of, of a Thracian river. So we have this god off where, where it's like, is, is somebody who's the son of a big river more important than someone who's the son of a sea goddess? It's, it's, it's, it's like the status game is a parody in a way of status in, in human life, like,

• 45:55Speaker 01

  am I kingier than you? That, that, that extends into how much divine blood.

• 46:02Tristan Hughes?

  Am I godier than you? Wow.

• 46:03Speaker 01

  Yeah. Am I, yeah. Am I godier than you? Yeah. It, it's, uh, it's absolutely wonderful. But the gods counterpoint is crucial because they, they, at the end of the day, you always have this amazing formula 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.

• 46:28Tristan Hughes?

  As 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 in the Iliad. Historical basis, though, do we think that there could have been at least some historical basis for a big Akian Bronze Age fleet crossing over to Troy and there being an actual siege of Troy?

• 46:57Speaker 01

  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 the eighth 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 East and Aegean and the Turk, the what's now Anatolia, the west coast of of Turkey.

• 47:41Speaker 01

  This is historically attested fact. That is more historically attested 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 Hysaric, 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 is irrelevant. There was a phalanocracy, 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, trading for trading raiding, I think.

• 48:27Speaker 01

  In precisely those areas, especially around the Hellespont, which was always a strategic hotspot.

• 48:34Tristan Hughes?

  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 one 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?

• 49:05Speaker 01

  It's, it's very apocalyptic in its imagination. So strangely, a lot of this happens in similes. But you have countless similes that, that, that soldiers descended on the, 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, in the last book. But I think that there are echoes or memory, no, they're memories, that, that they're poetically encoded memories of the collapse of the Bronze Age civilizations with their tsunamis and fires and famines and displacements.

• 49:50Speaker 01

  I think that we're talking a post-apocalyptic poem. The Greeks of the eighth century could see around them ruins of these great Mycenaean palaces. They'd probably even seen bits of Linear B. They, we know from tomb findings that they'd discovered relics of, of the art, 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, they're construing, as we might, what it was like to be in, in the age of King Arthur from a handful of medieval artefacts and scraps of poetry. That kind of thing. So.

• 50:31Speaker 01

  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. 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. At right. And all the watchfires 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.

• 51:17Speaker 01

  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, that 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.

• 51:58Tristan Hughes?

  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?

• 52:18Speaker 01

  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 it. 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.

• 52:37Tristan Hughes?

  Oh, Mount Ida, and that's the big mountain nearby in Anatolia, yeah.

• 52:40Speaker 01

  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, Abiase 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. This is expressed in this hyper consumption that's described with glory in the Iliad.

• 53:18Tristan Hughes?

  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. E. Klein kind of explained how it probably is a combination, you know, famine, earthquakes, tsunamis and all those things, you know, 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. And 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?

• 53:55Speaker 01

  Well, I think it can actually help us because we will 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 children, 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

• 54:40Speaker 01

  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.

• 55:08Tristan Hughes?

  Edith, well, it's a wonderful book and it's a very, very noble cause. Last but certainly not least, the book is called?

• 55:14Speaker 01

  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.

• 55:25Tristan Hughes?

  Fantastic. Well, Edith, thank you so much for taking the time to come back on the podcast today.

• 55:30Speaker 01

  Thank you very much.

• 55:34Tristan Hughes?

  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.

• 56:17Tristan Hughes?

  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. Now, don't forget, you can also listen to us and all of History Hits podcasts ad free and watch hundreds of TV documentaries when you subscribe at historyhit.com/subscribe. Lastly, if you want more ancient history videos and clips in 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.

• 56:52Speaker 03

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