The Iliad Goes Gymming

“…for those whose spirits have bent under the yoke of war, the relation between death and the future is different than for other men…. Once the experience of war makes vivible the possibility of death that lies locked up in each moent, our thoughts cannot travel from one day to the next without meeting death’s face.”

-       Simone Weil,  Essay “The Iliad – or the poem of force” in War and the Iliad, by Simone Vwil and Rachel Bespaloff.

Lady on the treadmill next to me: I see you’re reading the Iliad. Achilles is such a superhero isn’t he?

Me: You mean, like he won the war, or that he was half god?

Woman: He killed the Trojans, right? Greece won?

Me: Wow, spoiler alert! Achilles won?

WISIMH: There apparently isn’t anything you don’t know about the Iliad. Your argument is sound. You know, because it made a sound when you said it. I agree with you in a very broad way. I couldn’t agree more broadly. 

Achilles isn’t the hero of the Iliad, you shallow pretentious obviously retired sixth grade teacher with dementia. Achilles is a beautiful mindless personification of ‘roid rage; a tool of vengeful capricious gods entertained by bloody wars. Hector is the hero. First of all, he was all man, not a watered-down god. He had a loving wife and son, a bunch of deadbeat brothers, a father to defend, a city to save from invaders. Achilles' problems included a dead boyfriend, a briefly misplaced whore, a helicopter mother and suit of shiny armor. While they both knew they were fated to die, they both faced it and they both died. Achilles mad with the lust of power, Hector reduced to a doomed lamb about to be slaughtered by a berserker. Hector died with honor. Achilled killed with disrespect.

Demented Retired Teacher on Adjacent Treadmill: Then again, the victors write the history books, right? Homer was Greek.

Me:  Heh. Nailed it.

WISIMH: Like a dustapan of hair to the wall without the dustpan. The Iliad – more myth than history - is universally recognized by scholars to be the most even-handed war story ever told. Both enemies are treated the same – neither glorified nor vilified - either by the writer or by each other. That’s one of about a million reasons you should read this book once a year. No to mention Christopher Logue’s War Music and All Day Permanent Red profound transliterations of the battle scenes that every REMF should read every year.

WISIMH:  Holy crap! I have hyperlinks inside my head? Does that make me a cyborg?

DRTAT: What’s your favorite part?

Me: The last sentence: "And thus they buried Hector, tamer of horses." It wipes out the heroics and erases the majesty of force in one gentle stroke of humanity, and describes the hero on the scale of his contribution to the world of man.  

WISIMH:  I suppose your favorite part is the horse. Which is not in the Iliad. Also, the Iliad ends just before Troy falls, so it doesn’t say Greece won. However, Achilles dies too, in the actual Iliad and thus before Greece wins. Loser.