Essay on the Iliad

Essay on the Iliad

Myths and truths of the Iliad: the things that are hidden in war

The Iliad he is one of the texts oldest in the West, and that says much more about our culture than meets the eye. This epic from Ancient Greece and attributed to the Aeda Homer (s. VIII a. C.), the same composer of the Odyssey, chronicles the events of the last year of the Trojan War: a legendary conflict in which the citizens of the Anatolian city of Troy, located in the Asia Minor, and a gigantic alliance of Greek city-states, including mighty Athens, Salamis, Argos, Mycenae, Arcadia, Aetolia, Crete, Rhodes, and Lacedaemon.

This war, which in theory lasted about ten years, for centuries occupied a central place in the imagination of West, and it was common to attribute to its events the explanation of many political, religious and social questions of the Antiquity.

The Greek historian Herodotus (484-425 BC. C.) located in it the origin of the legendary enmity between the Greeks and the Persians, while the Romans, pushed by the imagination of Virgilio (70-19 BC. C.), thought of themselves as heirs (and avengers) of the defeated side, that of the Trojans. All this despite the fact that, for sure, it is difficult to know with certainty if it really happened and even less if it really happened as it is told.

If we consult the ancient Greek sources, there will be no doubt that it was an event considered true, and much more than that, for fundamental in the way of understanding the history of the citizens of the helix.

Herodotus himself considered that it would have taken place around 1250 BC. C., while Eratosthenes, that famous Greek philosopher who calculated the roundness of the Earth, dated it between 1194 and 1184 BC. C., and if we go to the Chronicle of Paros, that Greek chronology that covers from 1581 a. C. until 264 BC C., we will end up concluding that the Trojan War took place between 1219 and 1209 BC. C.

This is even more complicated if we think that the existence of Homer himself is also a matter of debate. There are many hypothesis regarding his Biography: that he was a blind slave, that he was a descendant of a prisoners of war, that he was born in Chios, Colophon, or in Athens, or in Argos, or in Rhodes, or in Cumas, or in Pylos, or in many others cities. His own name invites speculation: Homers could be a variant of ionic Homaros, which translates "hostage" or "guarantee", so perhaps it was not a name but an appellation of some kind.

The truth is that at a time when formal writing did not exist, Homer (or those to whom today we attribute that name) dedicated himself to collecting an oral tradition of stories and songs, to compose his two epic poems (or at least the only ones that survived the passage of time) and a set of hymns on the origin of the gods and heroes, which today we know as the Homeric hymns.

Putting aside the historical truth

The historical truth, in any case, whether of the poet or of the events narrated in the Iliad, it is not as important as how they were counted. Wars, after all, have existed since humanity exists and they have always been cruel, tragic, bloody, and have very often changed the destiny of populations whole. But in the case of Iliad, the conflict is mainly due to the actions of a woman: Helen, daughter of Zeus and the most beautiful woman in Greece, known to history as Helen of Troy.

Helena, like the Judeo-Christian Eve, has borne the blame for the misfortune of men throughout the centuries. The myth tells that Helena, born next to hers, her brothers Castor and Pollux from the loves of Zeus with Leda, the daughter of the king of Aetolia, had been recognized and desired for her beauty since ages early. So much so that when she was old enough to marry, there were many of her suitors from different Greek kingdoms, among which the young woman chose Menelaus, king of Mycenaean Sparta. But she wanted fate that some time later a Trojan prince visited them in Sparta: Paris Alexander, the favorite of Aphrodite, goddess of passion, and that the young man, madly in love with Helena, decided to take her with him to all coast.

The versions disagree, precisely, on Helena's feelings. In some versions, the woman was also the victim of the crush and willingly escaped with Paris, while in others she was kidnapped and kidnapped by the young Trojan.

In any case, Helen and Paris fled to Troy, and afterwards Menelaus and his brother Agamemnon, but the Trojans refused to return her (or, again, she herself refused to return). Faced with such an insult, the Greek leaders summoned their allies for a military campaign to besiege Troy, retrieve Helen, and capture enough treasures for redress.

Naturally, it is possible that Helen of Troy was nothing more than a symbol of human greed and lust for power. After all, wars between cities and kingdoms on the shores of the Mediterranean were a constant in antiquity, and the Romans themselves later undertook the fight against Greece, seeking commercial and cultural domination of the region. Thus, the fall of Troy at the hands of the Greeks will be a recurring motif in the description of war in ancient times.

References:

• "Essay" in Wikipedia.
• "Iliad" in Wikipedia.
• "The Iliad, the war of all of us" by Guillermo Altares in The country (Spain).
• "Iliad" in World History Encyclopedia.
• "Iliad (epic poem by Homer)" in The Encyclopaedia Britannica.

What is an essay?

The test it's a literary genre whose text is characterized by being written in prose and by addressing a specific topic freely, making use of the arguments and the author's appreciations, as well as the literary and poetic resources that make it possible to embellish the work and enhance its aesthetic features. It is considered a genre born in the European Renaissance, fruit, above all, from the pen of the French writer Michel de Montaigne (1533-1592), and that over the centuries it has become the most used format to express ideas in a structured, didactic and formal.

Follow with: