The Iliad and America’s hidden code
Homer’s poem is the best lens in moral modernity and the truest war story ever told
“Beware the toils of war… / The mesh of the huge dragnet sweeping up the world.” [5.559–60]
The Iliad is a book of immense balance — the beauty and brutality of violence, the inevitable death and glory given by the gods, the liberty and lockstep of fate, literary musicality, repetition and contrast, humanism hewed with lurid slaughter— and, in this, it provides a vital scope of the values by which our ancestors lived, an essential image of the ancient world. It should be seen not as a historical document, but as the Bible before Christ — atavistic art that aids us in understanding our worst and best instincts. This, this gorgeous, gruesome poem, is where we come from.
In modern America, we pay lip service to certain Christian values — humility, peace, forgiveness, et cetera; but brimming underneath, our true beliefs are that of ancient Greece. We worship beauty, celebrity, athleticism, avarice, easy entertainment, raw talent, and military prowess — all of the concepts Christ ignored. Throughout history, Homer has held up a gleaming mirror to these dichotomies, our common mores, both the real ones and the ones we pretend to possess. Reframed too are works like Nietzsche’s masterpiece: On the Genealogy of Morals, in which he espouses a reversal of all values during the A.D.-B.C. switch.
The epic also elicits an important question about our relationship with deities. The Achaeans and the Trojans face divine intervention every day during the war, and these are the parts of the poem many would call fantastical. But if we let our mythology dictate our decisions and describe our phenomena, then, in some sense, is it not “real?” Would having a relationship with a real God be that much different than one with a fictional God in whose power you place true belief? The Iliad confirms that, even in ancient times, belief begets power. Take a look at our God: the Almighty American Dollar and the supposed success it breeds. It’s backed by nothing, bare paper, and yet we all believe in its meaning, devote our whole being to collecting more of it — guaranteeing our inferiority, ensuring its real-world consequence.
For these reasons, and for its exquisite poeticism, I submit to you that The Iliad is the truest war story ever told. But it’s also terrifying. There’s a realization you have, as Achilles forces bronze through the flesh of his infinite victims, that sometimes, heroes die. Hector, who is a personification of all that I call good, is gored like a pig. He was a family man; he fought not for glory but for his home in Troy, for his people. He was a pragmatist who cared little for augurs or soothsayers or gods: “Fight for your country, that is the best, the only omen!” And what does he get for his trouble, for his disabuse of raw power and violence? A heavy spear through the neck, his lifeless body tied to a chariot and dragged through the dust, his wife raped and sold into slavery, and his baby son thrown from the ramparts of Troy. All of this from Achilles — callous, child-like Achilles — who cares little for life, even his own.
“Come, friend, you too must die.” — Achilles [21.119]
The winging words of the poem have been judged as apocryphal by many, but the veracity of the facts isn’t vital — rather it’s Homer’s capacity to tap into our collective soul. Art has always been truth through the lens of a lie, and the first fiction — our glorious Illiad — persists in whispering the haunted truth of humanity to us. Unlike its heroes, it refuses to die. But in all aspects of the natural world, victory is force — cold, uncaring force. History is proof of this. And that’s why the Iliad is the most terrifying of tragedies: it forces you to come to terms with the truth that egalitarianism, elegance, nobility, kindness, and mercy matter not at all in the face of military might. All we worked so hard to build can be razed by nothing more than a sharp blade. But the brilliant scholar Bernard Knox explains this better than I ever could: “…No civilization, no matter how rich, no matter how refined, can long survive once it loses the power to meet force with equal or superior force.” It’s why Christ’s sacrifice is so alluring; it gives us hope that there is a universal power greater than violence, and many need this hope so that they can carry on in a cruel, unforgiving reality. It’s why the atheists who put true believers down for this seem so hideous and heartless. It’s why America’s bad faith is so appalling. Knox, through Homer’s song, hits on the ultimate tragedy of human nature, of the hypocrisy inherent in American morality — that we may know kindness and peace but never truly achieve it.
