Reading Homer: An Amateur’s Account of the Iliad

Homer is disgusting. Homer is fantastic. Homer is horrible. Homer is sublime. Homer narrates horrendously blood chilling violence. Homer evokes beautifully appealing landscapes. Homer…

…to begin with, is marvellously contradictory!

Ok, before you start raising cudgels over the Homer question, let me clarify that I’m not talking of Homer. Here, for convenience’s sake, I’m going to refer to Homer and his (their?) creation (compilation?) Iliad as one and the same thing, inadvisable though it is…

There’s something magically inexplicable about Homer. Oh yes, how uncritical! But that’s true- at least for me! I find it difficult to ‘interpret’ Homer, and to a lesser extent all other Greek literature, in the standard ways taught us in English Hons.- in fact, I find it not just difficult but also demeaning to analyse Homer in any way. To analyse is to see through the text, to break the skilful illusion which the author weaves, spider-life, around it. Sometimes, I think it reduces Homer’s unparalleled majesty when you break him down into different ideologies and schools. I know why we do it, and why it’s necessary, but still…

The first thing which strikes one is the sheer size. By conservative estimates, there must’ve been around 99,000 men on the Achaian side, a 100 men to each of the 990 ships. Imagine! Imagine the colossal amount that would’ve been sent on their maintenance- there is a point in the tale when ships laden with good wine sail in from Lemnos to Ilium, all for the two sons of Atreus. Innumerable oxen and goats are routinely sacrificed, and then consumed- and daily at that. This is Greece (or from Greece), a sparsely wooded land of scanty precipitation and unfertile soil…clearly, Homer’s Heroic Greece was vastly different from, say, Classical Athens- a land much more rich and rewarding…

Then, as the Primal Parent of sorts of Western literature, Homer has everything, from predominant tragedy to occasional comedy and momentary romance. Yet, what impresses one the most is the terrifying violence narrated by him. So much so that one feels like throwing up, or throwing it out of sight as soon as possible. Nothing more ghastly, gory and sickening than Homer when it comes to the “dance of war”.

Consider this. A spear hits a warrior in the arse and come out from his navel. One hits another in the base of the neck and come out from his left eye, taking along his eyeball as the trophy: a fountain of blood spurts out from the now empty socket. Another is brought down to die an excruciating death as the merciless spear mines its way to come out of the crotch…

One could go on paraphrasing a seemingly endless number of gruesome incidents from that bloody catalogue of death, but I think this much is enough. The point has been adequately stressed…

On the other hand, His also fantastically beautiful. The picture he paints of Greece is magically alluring. A peaceful land, of wooded mountains, gurgling streams, gleaming lakes and white, shining cities. A land of mountain shepherds and country farmers, busy tending their sheep and bees; simple folk, unambitious, content, happy, at peace with the world. A world of merry dances and festivals, of good natured revelry and light fun…it is difficult, almost impossible, to associate this world and its denizens with high and noble personages, great heroes and god-ordained kings. Perseus, Agamemnon, and Oedipus seem to have little in common with these rustic folk!

Then there the entire ‘heroic’ discourse. A good warrior is one who establishes his arête by killing as many people as possible, without remorse or pity. When angry, Achilleus is as uncontrollable as a ferocious mountain stream: he comes down like doom for the village in the plain and breaks through the banks, sweeping aside many houses- a lifetime of hark work destroyed in the deluge (yes, yes! I am getting the epic simile thing!). Odysseus is, at his best, a malicious trickster, a dishonest, unconscionable manipulator of men and women- wily, sly and worst than the worst of foxes…take him for his word and you will suffer. Fielding’s acute observations on the skulls of military men very much apply to our Homeric Heroes- all action, no deliberation…

Opposed to this rashness of youth is the wisdom of grey-bearded Nestor, a second generation hero. Nestor is always there to guide his proud and generally rowdy “god-ordained” kings, to put them back on track and organise them, to ensure that the Achaians present as a unified front, not as the loosely knit clans as they are, each to his own…

Nestor brings us to another remarkable thing: the Heroic age. The entire heroic age seems to be condensed in just three generations! You have Tantalus and his notorious feast; then Pelops, his two sons Atreus and Thyestes followed by Atreus’ kids, Agamemnon and Menelaus and then kaput! The so-called invasion, the fall of Mycenae, the beginning of the Dark Age…these three generations (Tantalus was no hero!) touch about three Hesiodic ages: the end of the Bronze age, the whole of the Heroic one and the early beginnings of the last, ‘current’ Iron Age. Greek compression at its confusing best!

Finally, Homer’s Gods. The twelve Olympians, with “cloud-bearing” Zeus as their head, exercised great power over mortals without any accountability whatsoever. Well, all Gods do that, you might say. Right, all Gods do that, but not all of them are as fickle, as impulsive, as querulous, as licentious, in fact (which cannot be, because this is mythology!) as unbalanced (big, important word this!) as our motley gang of Olympians- and big daddy Zeus, as the head, is the worst. He’ll do what he wants and is quite blatant about his power- he routinely reminds his rowdy Gods and Goddesses (quite a paradox, eh!) of his power over them, to fling them down to Tartarus and to cage them therein forever more. His will is law, unchallengeable, immutable. If he wants a woman, he will have her by any means, even though she be his sister (and, at one time, mother Rhea). Incest is allowed amongst the Gods; it’s alright to rape your wife, sister, mother…

Yes, it’s so very tragic. That buggers like these should be Gods and not noble men and women like Penelope and Orestes is such a tragedy. Well said noble Pindar: “One is the race of Gods and of men; from one mother we both draw our breath. Yet, our powers are poles apart; for we are nothing, but for them the brazen Heaven endures for ever, their secure abode”…if only, if only we had been them and they us, we who are so much the better in our conduct, if only…yes, quite a tragedy, one which, as Kitto says, runs throughout much of Greek Literature, the tragedy of being men, strong and dignified, yet weak, mortal…

Homer’s Greece is very much a land of flux, not so much in economic and political flux as in a slow process of societal transformation, from semi-civilised barbarism to the balanced Classicism of Pericles. It is this spirit of flux, and so, imperfection, which Homer’s heroes embody. A tragedy, but much much more than that- Homer stands eternal, forever…