The Story of the Iliad
E. T. Owen
Owen's book provides a discussion of each book in the Iliad separately. Here are some points he makes for key books of the specification:
Book I
The first verse announces the title and subject of the poem and also makes a claim. By calling upon the goddess (i.e. the Muse) to sing the wrath the poet is saying in effect "This is the true story of the Wrath of Achilles." The Muse is, as it were, the personification of all past poetry...
As the first word menin ("Wrath"), besides focusing our thoughts, coloured the imagination at once with the appropriate hue, the impression is immediately deepened by the vague images of death which follow. The verses give a far view ... of dreadful things to come...
Book III
Task: explain what Owen means about the past, present and future here.
The single combat between Paris and Menelaus is here the episode that explains the past, advances the present, and motivates the future.
Book IV
The bow of Pandarus:
So here, as he wishes to hold the attention by the description of the bow, he must make it as alive, as arresting as he can. Our attention must be held even while our expectation is being delayed.
Diomedes:
[Homer] shows us in Diomedes the perfect Homeric knight, to supply a background against which we view and measure the conduct of Achilles when he takes to the field ... and the whole matter of the epipolesis (i.e. the inspection of the troops) is designed as a setting for Agamemnon's rebuke of him. The poet is preparing for his aristeia ... motivating his special effort to distinguish himself...
Book VI
Task: why might the two events discussed by Owen have been intended as a contrast? Think of as many ways as possible.
For this little incident [i.e. the execution of Adrastus by Menelaus] throws into relief ... the scene of friendship between Diomedes and Glaukus...
Hector in Troy
By thus drawing Hector in his relations with those who love and admire him the most, the poet has deliberately chosen to make him a sympathetic figure, a figure of splendid nobility and of deep pathos.
Book IX
While we may find it difficult to sympathise with the mood of Achilles, we should at least recognise that the wrong as he sees it is much greater and deeper than it appears to us ... A man's glory is the measure of what he has made of life, the goodness that Achilles, and men like Achilles, wrung from the essential evil of human life. For this Achilles has bartered his proper span. When, therefore, his geras ['status'], the symbol, the concrete embodiment of the glory he has won, is taken for him, he feels he has suffered the ultimate injustice.
Book X
Homer plainly regarded the whole affair as great fun and poor Dolon, I am afraid, as a comic figure; and the cold brutality of his slaying and the massacre of the Thracians are described as if it were all a great lark.
Book XVI
Patroclus has forgotten the injunction of Achilles. He in his turn is in the power of Ate and is rushing blindly to his death.
The poet has piled up point after point in his description of the circumstances of Patroclus' death, so that even the least imaginative reader must burn with indignation at the way it is accomplished. That is what Homer wants, for he is motivating the terrific fury and grief of Achilles. We can sympathise much better with the extravagance of his feelings because we too have resented the manner of his slaying.
Book XVII
That is the real reason why Patroclus was sent out in Achilles' armour - to lose it and so necessitate the preparation of the new armour. Therefore it is essential for the poet to describe the taking of the armour from Patroclus' body; that must be made an event. And also his body must be rescued; for if the Trojans possessed it, Achilles would not afterwards be able to hold back Hector's body.
Task: do you think this book only serves this purpose, and to delay the response of Achilles? Or are the events of the book memorable?
Book XVIII
Homer has not shrunk from the endeavour to express the extreme of grief, and the passage stands out as one of the poetical highlights of the poem ... Real grief is sheer pain, and in its manifestation an ugly, disfiguring thing ... While Achilles falls, the poetry lifts...
[Homer] shows us the life of man outside the story of the poem, but he puts it on the shield of Achilles, which is well within the story.
Book XIX
The delay does more than delay; it transmits to us the impatience of Achilles ... he is indifferent to this tedious business of reconciliation.
The price Achilles has paid for [Briseis'] restoration is the life of his friend. The poet does not point this out to us; he makes us feel it by bringing the two - Briseis and the dead Patroclus - into relation with each other ... For, just as the taking of Briseis was the exciting cause of all previous events, the death of Patroclus is the exciting cause of all that is to come.
Book XXII
But while we are intended to condemn, and utterly condemn, Achilles' conduct here, it is not intended that he should lose all hold of our sympathy here. He still remains an object of awed admiration. Every sensitive reader, watching his deed horrified, must feel the pity of it, and in that pity there is understanding. For we have been prepared to expect and dread such conduct as this and should even be disappointed with less. It was a grand idea not to let us see Achilles in action until he was moved by so profound a passion.
[Hector] is standing outside the Scan Gate, and it was at the Scan Gate that he parted from Andromache ... And it is the very situation she feared...
Now, what of the intervention of Athena? ... The answer, I think, is very simple if we allow ourselves to be affected by it as we are affected. The effect it has on me is to increase enormously my sympathy with Hector at the moment of his slaying...
Bk. XXII shows us the wrath of Achilles at its blackest. That is one of the reasons why Hector has been made sympathetic from the beginning; the poet had Achilles in mind when he composed the parting scene of Hector and Andromache ... For the heart of the Iliad is the tragedy of Achilles. So he gives us without flinching and without qualification the full horror of hatred working in a soul capable of the extremes of passion.
Books XXIII & XXIV
Owen notes that many scholars consider that these books were:
- not part of the original Iliad;
- not needed for the poetical completeness;
- do not stand well together in tone (XXIII being light-hearted at times, XXIV being laden with pathos)
Owen agrees with 1) but considers the Iliad better for their addition and they
together form a perfect close to the story of the poem.
Patroclus killed Sarpedon, and there was a struggle for the possession of the body; it was stripped of its armour and seemed abandoned to the enemy; but the gods stooped down in pity and carried the body to his native Lycia for burial. Then Hector killed Patroclus, and there was a greater struggle for the body; it too was stripped of its armour, but, at last, with the intervention of the gods again, brought home and is now given honoured burial. Achilles kills Hector, and the body is stripped of its armour. It is lying at the mercy of its enemies, as Sarpedon's did for a little, and Patroclus' for a longer time, and then - what do we wait for? No one who has been reading these books in order can fail to be expecting the coming of Bk. XXIV...
As for the finale, Owen makes the following observations:
"It was no accident," says Shepherd, "but a masterstroke of composition that made the Iliad begin with the wrong done by King Agamemnon to a suppliant father and end with the right done by Achilles to the helpless Priam."
Individual and unique as he is, Achilles typifies humanity in its greatness and in its sorrow and feebleness. He is the extreme case of the case of every man ... The glory and the brevity of human life - that is the double theme that keeps sounding through the entire Iliad ... Thus this arresting figure conveys immediately into the imagination the sense of doom and salvation of humankind, as one age of the world saw them.
Task: Look at the following past questions. How might you use Owen's work in each of them?
‘The actions of Homer’s characters tell us more about them than their words.’ Evaluate whether or not you think this is true of characterisation in the Iliad. [30]
‘The portrayal of fighting becomes tedious in the Iliad.’ Assess how far you agree with this statement. [30]
‘Achilles is only motivated by revenge in the Iliad.’ Explain how far you agree with this statement. Justify your response with close reference to the Iliad. [30]
‘Hero in name, human by nature.’ Explain whether you think Hector behaves in a more human way than heroic way in the Iliad. Justify your response. [30]
Task: here is a quizlet set, with shortened versions of Owen's points on each book for you to learn: