A Tale of gods and men

A tale of gods and men

The Iliad is a sophisticated piece of storytelling. It relates the tale of the war in Ilium (Troy) from the perspective of one character in particular—Achilles. Parts of the story of the war are told in flashback, or in prophecies of the future. Woven into this plot
are subplots and insights into the lives of the protagonists.
How much of this complexity can be credited to Homer, and how much is a result of refinement
and embroidering over previous generations, is impossible to tell. The result is a work that combines history, legend, and mythology, while offering the essential ingredients of good storytelling— adventure and human drama— that make it a compelling read.
The Iliad is massive, both in
its length and its narrative scope (it is, after all, where we get the idea of things being on an “epic” scale), consisting of over 15,000 lines of verse, divided into 24 books. Rather than simply telling the tale chronologically, Homer grabs the reader’s attention by using a device common to many epics. This is to drop the reader straight into the thick of the action,
or in media res (“the middle of the thing”) as described by the Roman poet, Horace. Homer’s account starts in the final year of the conflict, which has already been ❯❯raging for nine years. Homer digresses to explain some of the background to the events he is describing, but he assumes much prior knowledge about the causes of the conflict, which contemporary readers would have known well.

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