COMMENTARY ON THE ILIAD: BOOKS SIXTEEN TO TWENTY-TWO
(all quotations from the Iliad are from the translation of Richmond Lattimore, ©University of Chicago Press, 1951)

     Like book nine, book sixteen marks a crucial turning point in the Iliad.  While Achilleus still refuses to return to battle, his friend, Patroklos, persuades him to let him fight in his place.  Leading Achilleus’ men, the Myrmidons, Patroklos beats back the Trojans and kills Sarpedon, the son of Zeus.  Ignoring Achilleus’ warnings, Patroklos presses forward only to be killed by Hektor with the help of Apollo and a minor Trojan warrior.  Patroklos’ death arouses Achilleus to put aside his quarrel with Agamemnon (book 19), and it kindles his anger in a furious rampage on the battlefield (books 20-21) that culminates in the killing of Hektor and brutal abuse of his corpse (book 22).

THE SETTING
     After Achilleus rejected Agamemnon’s offer of gifts (book 9), battle resumed between the Greeks and the Trojans (book 11).  One by one, several great warriors of the Greeks - Agamemnon, Diomedes and Odysseus - were wounded and forced to leave the battlefield (book 11).  Meanwhile, Hektor drove the Trojans to storm the fortifications of the Greek camp and he sought to set their ships on fire.
     From his camp, Achilleus watched the battle unfold.  Although he had rejected Agamemnon’s offer of gifts, he was evidently waiting to be asked again to join the battle.  As he saw the tide turn against the Greeks, he told Patroklos:
“‘now I think the Achaians will come to my knees and stay there
in supplication, for a need past endurance has come to them. (11.608-09)’”
He sent Patroklos to Nestor to find out which of the Greeks he had seen wounded and brought out of the battle.  Nestor, in turn, urged Patroklos to try to persuade Achilleus to return to battle and rescue the Greeks.  In addition, he proposed the fateful plan (11.793-802): if Achilleus was holding back because of some prophecy, he might at least allow Patroklos to wear his armor and lead his men into battle.

ACHILLEUS’ DILEMMA
     At the beginning of book sixteen, Patroklos presents Nestor’s plan to Achilleus.  The book opens with the same simile (16.3-4) that was used to describe Agamemnon’s tears at the beginning of book nine (9.14-15).  This is a reminder of that important episode in which Achilleus rejected Agamemnon’s offer of gifts, and it highlights the contradictions in Achilleus’ position.  Achilleus is still angry over the taking of Briseis (16.52-59), and he finds himself trapped by the pledge he made when he spurned Agamemnon’s offer:
“‘...I have said
I would not give over my anger until that time came
when the fighting with all its clamour came up to my own ships. (16.61-64)’”
Nonetheless, when he agrees to Patroklos’ plan, he wants to be sure that he will win honor and gifts from Patroklos’ efforts:
“‘But obey to the end this word I put upon your attention
so that you can win, for me, great honour and glory
in the sight of all the Danaans, so they will bring back to me
the lovely girl, and give me shining gifts in addition.
When you have driven them from the ships, come back...
you must not set your mind on fighting the Trojans, whose delight
is in battle, without me.  So you will diminish my honour. (16.83-87, 89-90)’”
Ironically, he seems to be using Patroklos to win honor for himself in much the same way that he complained Agamemnon had used him.
     Still more perplexing is the irrationality of Achilleus’ position.  He says that he seeks the return of Briseis and additional gifts, but, when Agamemnon had offered this to him, he refused it.  It is as if book nine had never occurred.  In fact, one explanation of the apparent contradiction is that the Iliad may be an expansion of an earlier and simpler tale that lacked Agamemnon’s offer of gifts and Achilleus’ refusal.  Such a story would have been a more commonplace conflict over honor and prizes, but book nine added a deeper dimension to Achilleus’ struggle.  There, he revealed that he had a choice of two fates: a long life without honor, or a short life with glory.  For a moment at least, Achilleus questioned whether glory and honor could be adequate compensation for his fated death at Troy.  Instead, he toyed with the idea of returning home to enjoy a long life without honor.  By the end of book nine, he seems to have put that aside: he will stay at Troy and, eventually, he will fight and slay Hektor.  At the beginning of book sixteen, he says he wants prizes and the return of his honor, but his earlier remarks about his two fates suggest that he aspires to something more.  A long life, however, is not enough: Achilleus seeks nothing less than the immortal life that his mother and the other gods enjoy.
     Patroklos’ appeal at the beginning of book sixteen hints at that deeper struggle fueling Achilleus anger.  Patroklos stresses Achilleus’ inhumanity:
“‘Pitiless: the rider Peleus was never your father
nor Thetis was your mother, but it was the grey sea that bore you
and the towering rocks, so sheer the heart in you is turned from us. (16.33-35)’”
Achilleus is so pitiless that Patroklos can only describe him as inhuman: born from the sea and the rocks.  This signals what will be a key theme in the last part of the poem: Achilleus must learn to be human, and the most important part of that must be his acceptance of the mortality that defines human beings.
THE DEATH OF SARPEDON
     Achilleus was not alone in being the son of an immortal.  Sarpedon, the son of Zeus, had also imagined immortality, but he realized that this was impossible (12.310-328).  The poignant scene of his death - before his father, Zeus, who was powerless to save him - is a reminder that this fleeting dream of immortality is beyond man’s reach, and it anticipates the issues that Achilleus must deal with.
     Patroklos drives the Trojans back and, in a dramatic confrontation, he kills Sarpedon, son of Zeus.  The scene is an important one in several respects.  Within the narrative, it provides Patroklos, an important Greek warrior, with a glorious act before he is killed by Hektor.  More importantly, the scene casts light on the role of Zeus, Sarpedon’s father and the most powerful of the gods.  As the two men face off on the battlefield, Zeus recognizes that his son is destined to be killed by Patroklos (16.433-434), something he had prophesied - or willed - earlier (15.59-71).  For a moment, he considers whether to rescue him and return him to his country alive.  His wife, Hera, a partisan of the Greeks, objects strenuously:
“‘Do you wish to bring back a man who is mortal, one long since
doomed by his destiny, from ill-sounding death and release him?
Do it, then; but not all the rest of us gods shall approve you.
And put away in your thoughts this other thing I tell you;
if you bring Sarpedon back to his home, still living,
think how then some other one of the gods might also
wish to carry his own son out of the strong encounter...(16.441-47).’”
Reluctantly and with great sadness, Zeus allows his son to die with the small consolation that his body may be spirited from the battlefield to his homeland for a burial and memorial.
     Zeus puts aside his personal interest in saving his son for the larger purpose of not disrupting “destiny” or setting the gods against one another.  The scene reveals him exercising a degree of responsibility to ensure that events follow their appointed course, and that chaos does not ensue.  Whether that destiny is “just” or “moral” is not an issue, but there is at least some notion that the most powerful of gods should act to maintain the order that the destined course of events represents.  Later, when Achilleus is about to unleash his fury on the battlefield, Zeus urges the other gods and goddesses to join the fray.  He fears that Achilleus is so powerful that he will rout the Trojans and that “against destiny he may storm their fortress (20.30)”.  Once again, Zeus acts to preserve destiny.  Not surprisingly, in a traditional story whose main lines cannot be altered, what must happen, happens, but it happens through the actions of gods and mortals.
     Most important of all, Zeus’ relationship with his mortal son, Sarpedon, parallels that of Thetis and Achilleus.  As powerful as Zeus is, he must accept that his mortal son will die, and, in his sorrow, he “wept tears of blood” (16.459).  This highlights the enormous gulf between mortals and immortals.  Thetis does a great deal for her son: she wins Zeus’ support early in the poem, and, later, she gets him armor from the god, Hephaistos.  Still, as she acknowledges to Achilleus (18.95-96) and to the god Hephaistos, she cannot save him from his fated death:
“‘...I shall never again receive him
won home again to his country and into the house of Peleus.
Yet while I see him live and he looks on the sunlight, he has
sorrows, and though I go to him I can do nothing to help him. (18.440-43)’”
Sarpedon’s fate is a reminder of Achilleus’ fate, and, in this closest of relationships between divine parents and mortal offspring, the audience clearly sees what separates humans from the divine: mortality.  Zeus and Thetis can only grieve for an experience that they will never share.
THE DEATH OF PATROKLOS
     After slaying Sarpedon, Patroklos presses forward towards Troy (16.684-91), ignoring Achilleus’ earlier advice to drive the Trojans from the ships and return.  The god, Apollo, confronts Patroklos and warns him that neither he nor Achilleus is destined to conquer Troy (16.707-09).  With Apollo’s encouragement, Hektor charges towards Patroklos.  Patroklos kills Hektor’s charioteer, Kebriones, and the two sides battle over the body.  In the aftermath, Apollo attacks Patroklos, strikes his helmet from his head, splinters his spear, and knocks his shield away.  Left defenseless, Patroklos is struck in the back by a Trojan warrior, Euphorbos, who runs away immediately.  Only now is Hektor able to slay Patroklos, but, as Patroklos dies, he predicts Hektor’s destiny: to fall at the hands of Achilleus.
     The death of Patroklos is a messy affair, and, as he says with his dying words, Hektor was merely his “third slayer” (16.850).  For the Greek audience of the epic, the poet is doing his best to enhance Patroklos’ glory by portraying him as a warrior who is only brought down when the gods have stacked the odds against him.  The complexity of the scene, though, and the involvement of a god raise the broader question of who bears responsibility for the death of Patroklos.  That, in turn, provides another instance of the delicate balance between human and divine responsibility in all of the events surrounding the Trojan War.
     There are many figures, besides his killers, who share responsibility for Patroklos’ death.  Nestor first suggested that Patroklos enter the battle on Achilleus’ behalf, and, of course, Patroklos was placed at risk by Achilleus’ persistent refusal to return to battle, even though he sought the glory that Patroklos’ fighting would bring.  Patroklos himself ignored Achilleus’ advice.  Achilleus had told Patroklos not to go too far, because he wanted the Greeks to restore his own honor.  He was also concerned for Patroklos’ safety, for he anticipated that he might be struck down by Apollo or one of the other gods who supported the Trojans (16.91-95).  Homer recalls Achilleus’ command, even as Patroklos drives towards Troy and his death, but he adds words that appear to shift the responsibility to Zeus:
“Besotted: had he only kept the command of Peleiades [the son of Peleus: Achilleus]
he might have got clear away from the evil spirit of black death.
But always the mind of Zeus is a stronger thing than a man’s mind.
He terrifies even the warlike man, he takes away victory
lightly, when he himself has driven a man into battle
as now he drove on the fury in the heart of Patroklos. (16.686-91)”
For his part, Zeus had prophesied - or even ordained - the death of Patroklos and its consequences on several occasions (8.473-76, 15.58-68), and, in the heat of the battle, he “pondered hard over many ways for the death of Patroklos...(16.647)”.
     The similes offer some clues to an understanding of Patroklos’ death.  As Patroklos leads the Myrmidons against the Trojans, they are compared with a swarm of wasps:
“The Myrmidons came streaming out like wasps at the wayside
when little boys have got into the habit of making them angry
by always teasing them as they live in their house by the roadside;
silly boys, they do something that hurts many people;
and if some man who travels on the road happens to pass them
and stirs them unintentionally, they in heart of fury
come swarming out each one from his place to fight for their children. (16.259-65)”
The wasps are stirred to anger - and an innocent traveller is hurt - by the folly of the silly boys.  Further on, the battling Greeks are compared with wolves:
“They as wolves make havoc among lambs or young goats in their fury,
catching them out of the flocks, when the sheep separate in the mountains
through the thoughtlessness of the shepherd, and the wolves seeing them
suddenly snatch them away, and they have no heart for fighting. (16.352-55)”
The comparison of the warriors to wild beasts is a common one, but, here, the simile places particular emphasis on how the lambs were made vulnerable by the “thoughtlessness” of the shepherd.  Finally, as Patroklos drives Achilleus’ immortal horses across the moat surrounding the Greek camp, another simile describes a flood and, unusually, refers to Zeus’ anger:
“As underneath the hurricane all the black earth is burdened
on an autumn day, when Zeus sends down the most violent waters
in deep rage against mortals after they stir him to anger
because in violent assembly they pass decrees that are crooked,
and drive righteousness from among them and care nothing for what the gods think,
and all the rivers of these men swell current to full spate
and in the ravines of their water-courses rip all the hillsides
and dash whirling in huge noise down to the blue sea, out of
the mountains headlong, so that the works of men are diminished;
so huge rose the noise from the horses of Troy in their running. (16.384-93)”
The explicit point of the simile is simply to compare the noise of the rushing waters to that of the Trojan horses in flight.  Like many similes, though, it repays closer reading.  Here, it is Zeus who sends the storm, but he is provoked by the actions of mortals who “pass decrees that are crooked, and drive righteousness from among them and care nothing for what the gods think”.  
     The first two similes, of course, may have most relevance for Hektor whose reckless boldness has set in motion the chain of events that will bring Achilleus back to the battle and doom him and his city.  Together, though, the set of similes emphasizes man’s folly and links divine action with the misconduct of mortals.  It is a reminder that, in Patroklos’ death and in so many of the important events of the poem, human decisions were crucial and divine action was often the result - not the cause - of human deeds. 
PATROKLOS’ DEATH AND ACHILLEUS’ DEATH
          Patroklos’ death is a crucial turning point in the poem.  It rouses Achilleus, leads him to return to battle, and redirects his intensified rage against the Trojans.  It anticipates and eventually leads to his own death.  When Achilleus learns of Patroklos’ death, his grief and rage are tremendous.  His mother, Thetis, consoles him, but he is determined to fight and avenge Patroklos’ death by killing Hektor.  Thetis reminds him that it is prophesied that, if he kills Hektor, he is doomed to die shortly afterwards:
“‘Then I must lose you soon, my child, by what you are saying,
since it is decreed your death must come soon after Hektor’s. (18.95-96)’”
Achilleus, himself, seems to recognize and accept this in his lament over Patroklos’ body:
“‘Thus it is destiny for us both to stain the same soil
here in Troy; since I shall never come home, and my father,
Peleus the aged rider, will not welcome me in his great house,
nor Thetis my mother, but in this place the earth will receive me.
But seeing that it is I, Patroklos, who follow you underground,
I will not bury you till I bring to this place the armour
and the head of Hektor... (18.329-35)’”
Other prophecies from unlikely sources, ranging from Achilleus’ immortal horses (19.408-17) to the dying Hektor (22.358-60), all drive home the point that Achilleus is now fated to die at Troy.
     Patroklos’ death not only leads to Achilleus’ death, it foreshadows it as well.  Patroklos dies fighting in Achilleus’ place, wearing Achilleus’ armor, and leading Achilleus’ men.  The enormous scale of the grief that surrounds Patroklos’ death suggests the mourning that would take place when Achilleus himself is killed.  Thetis, Achilleus’ mother, leads the chorus of sea goddesses in a ritual lament for Patroklos (18.35-64) and looks ahead to her own son’s death.  Later, the elaborate funeral games for Patroklos anticipate the funeral of Achilleus, as the hero chooses a “place for a huge grave mound, for himself and Patroklos (23.126)” and is described as escorting his friend to Hades, the realm of the dead (23.137).  The same urn will hold both men’s ashes (23.91-92), and Achilleus even gives instructions to the other Greek warriors for the completion of the funeral mound that will one day be his own memorial (23.245-48).
     By foreshadowing Achilleus’ death, Homer is able to allude to one of the great episodes in the larger story of the Trojan War, even though the Iliad does not describe it directly.  This is similar to the way he enlarged the scope of the poem in the opening books by including material, like the Catalog of the Ships or the duel between Paris and Menelaos, that might properly have formed part of a poem about the beginning of the war.  The allusions to Achilleus’ death, however, have special significance because they highlight the issue of his mortality.  In the last books of the poem, Achilleus’ anger, more intense than ever, is re-directed against Hektor to avenge Patroklos’ death.  This is more than a drive for vengeance, for it is fueled by his struggle with his own destiny, the very destiny he embraces by returning to the battlefield.
ACHILLEUS’ ANGER: STRIVING FOR IMMORTALITY
     After Thetis brings her son the new armor made by the god Hephaistos (19.8-11), Achilleus calls an assembly and tells the assembled warriors that he is “making an end” of his anger (19.67).  In fact, he has put aside his quarrel with Agamemnon, and seems almost indifferent to him.  He is not concerned to get the gifts or to get Briseis back; he even wishes she had been killed (19.59-60).  Nor is he provoked by Agamemnon’s speech in which he explains away his responsibility for the initial quarrel by comparing himself to Zeus through the story of Delusion (19.83-138).
     There can be no doubt, however, that Achilleus is still angry: he wants to fight, and the sooner the better.  His anger is fueled as he looks upon the shield that Hephaistos has made (19.16); it is as if its images of the world focus Achilleus’ rage, for Achilleus is unable to accept the world as it is.  Odysseus urges Achilleus to take the gifts, to end the quarrel formally, and to eat before battle (19.155-83).  Most important, he is trying to tell Achilleus that human beings must accept that it is their lot to die:
“‘No, but we must harden our hearts and bury the man who
dies, when we have wept over him on the day, and all those
who are left about from the hateful work of war must remember
food and drink, so that afterwards all the more strongly
we may fight on forever relentless against our enemies. (19.228-32)’”
     These scenes in which Achilleus refuses to eat - and is fed by the gods - help to characterize Achilleus and his anger as inhuman.  Homer presents the conflict raging in Achilleus’ head in stark terms.  Here is a hero who, more than any other, might aspire to be immortal: he has a divine mother, is consoled by the sea goddesses, wears divine armor, is fed by the gods, and has immortal horses.  Yet, all of this only serves to remind him of his mortality.  His mother prophesies his death and is unable to avert it; his armor will not be able to prevent his death; and, in the most unusual scene of all, even his immortal horses prophesy his death (19.408-17) as he readies them for battle.
     This tension between Achilleus’ desire to be immortal - like the gods - and his fate to die at Troy culminates in his rampage on the battlefield.  Significantly, this battle will take place before all of the gods and goddesses whom Zeus summons to Mt. Olympus (20.4-12) and urges to take part in the battle, lest Achilleus storm Troy against destiny (20.23-30).  Achilleus’ first encounter is with Aineias, the son of the goddess, Aphrodite.  This, too, emphasizes Achilleus’ own status as the son of a goddess, and the two men boast of their ancestry.  Aineias is saved by the gods, because, as Poseidon says,
“‘...It is destined that he shall be the survivor,
that the generation of Dardanos [an ancestor of the Trojans] shall not die, without seed
obliterated, since Dardanos was dearest to Kronides [Zeus, the son of Kronos]
of all his sons that have been born to him from mortal women (20.302-05)’”
This small incident would become the basis for the story - later told by the Roman poet, Virgil, in the Aeneid - that Aineias escaped from Troy, fled to the west, and, eventually, founded a city that would be the forerunner of Rome.  In the Iliad, what is important is that Aineias’ destiny to survive highlights, by contrast, Achilleus’ fate to die at Troy.
     Achilleus’ inhuman rage is let loose in his brutal rampage on the battlefield at the end of book 20 and at the beginning of book 21.  He is compared with the forces of nature, “as inhuman fire...(20.490)”, and described as “something more than mortal” (20.493, 21.18).  Even in the context of the vivid descriptions of blood and gore that fill the Iliad, these scenes stand out for their graphic accounts of combat and bloodletting:
“Great Achilleus struck him with the spear as he came in fury,
in the middle of the head, and all the head broke into two pieces...
...and the running-rims of Achaian chariots cut him to pieces (20.386-87, 394).”
“...Next from close in he thrust at Moulios
with the pike at the ear, so the bronze spearhead pushed through and came out
at the other ear.  Now he hit Echeklos the son of Agenor
with the hilted sword, hewing against his head in the middle
so all the sword was smoking with blood...(20.472-76)”
What’s more, Achilleus spurns any appeals for mercy or offers of ransom for warriors taken alive (20.463-69).
     The most callously brutal scene of all takes place as Achilleus leapt into the Xanthos river "like some immortal" (21.18).  The battle in the river was an episode famous enough to have been remembered in the Catalog of the Ships (2.860-61, 874-75).  First, Achilleus takes twelve young Trojans alive to be offered as human sacrifices at the funeral of Patroklos (21.26-33, 23.174-77); then, he meets Lykaon, a man whom he had earlier captured and sold as a slave...
     Lykaon had been ransomed out of slavery by his family, and, now, he has just escaped from the river, naked and defenseless (21.49-52).  Achilleus marvels over his return, and Lykaon reaches for Achilleus’ knees - the gesture of a suppliant who begs to be spared - to appeal to be taken alive for ransom.  Achilleus is unmoved and his reply - described as the “voice without pity”(21.98) - is cold and uncompromising:
“‘Poor fool, no longer speak to me of ransom, nor argue it.
In the time before Patroklos came to the day of his destiny
then it was the way of my heart’s choice to be sparing
of the Trojans, and many I took alive and disposed of them.
Now there is not one who can escape death, if the gods send
him against my hands in front of Ilion, not one
of all the Trojans and beyond others the children of Priam.
So, friend, you die also.  Why all this clamour about it?
Patroklos also is dead, who was better by far than you are.
Do you not see what a man I am, how huge, how splendid
and born of a great father, and the mother who bore me immortal?
Yet even I have also my death and my strong destiny,
and there shall be a dawn or an afternoon or a noontime
when some man in the fighting will take the life from me also
either with a spearcast or an arrow flown from the bowstring. (21.99-113)’”
     At the simplest level, Achilleus is enraged by the death of his friend, Patroklos.  Driven, perhaps, by a sense of shame at his own responsibility for Patroklos’ death, he is determined to exact revenge upon Hektor and the Trojans.  Nonetheless, by closely linking Patroklos’ death with Achilleus’ own, Homer portrays a hero whose anger over the death of his friend is fueled by his inability to accept his own death which is repeatedly foreshadowed.  At first, that might seem like a contradiction.  Over and over again, Achilleus asserts that he is aware of his fate and that he is choosing a course of action that will make it inevitable.  He will avenge himself on Hektor, though he knows he is going to die.  But Homer reminds us again and again of Achilleus’ mortality in contexts that show precisely why Achilleus, of all persons, should have the most difficulty in accepting it.  His divine mother and his immortal horses, for example, only remind him of his fate.  It is as if everything which might fuel his desire for immortality ends up telling him that he is only a man, doomed to die.
     This paradox emerges from Achilleus’ dramatic battle with the river as well.  The rivers of Troy have been roused to anger because he has clogged their channels with corpses (21.214-21), and, in a surreal scene, Achilleus battles with these forces of nature as an almost supernatural figure.  This famous episode, alluded to it in the Catalog of the Ships, takes on new meaning here.  Even as Achilleus battles “like something more than mortal” (21.227), the rivers rise up against him and threaten to drown him.  Suddenly, Achilleus must not only confront the danger of death, but he must recognize that he might die the most inglorious of deaths, swept away like a small boy by a flood:
“‘I wish now Hektor had killed me, the greatest man grown in this place.
A brave man would have been the slayer, as the slain was a brave man.
But now this is a dismal death I am doomed to be caught in,
trapped in a big river as if I were a boy and a swineherd
swept away by a torrent when he tries to cross in a rainstorm. (21.279-83)’”
He is rescued - for the moment - by the gods, but this climactic scene sums up the tension of these final books: every time Achilleus’ superhuman strength or divine pedigree teases him into thinking he might be more than mortal, he is forced to confront his own destiny.
MORTALS AND IMMORTALS
     Achilleus’ reluctance to accept his mortality, the trait that - for Homer -  defines humans, might suggest a dim view of humanity.  Achilleus, after all, sees it as a weakness, and the gods and goddesses certainly see human beings as insignificant because of their short lives.  After the death of Patroklos, for example, Zeus saw Achilleus’ immortal horses, gifts to Peleus from the gods, mourning for the dead warrior.  He lamented their sorrow:
“‘...Poor wretches,
why then did we ever give you to the lord Peleus,
a mortal man, and you yourselves are immortal and ageless?
Only so that among unhappy men you also might be grieved?
Since among all creatures that breathe on earth and crawl on it
there is not anywhere a thing more dismal than man is. (17.442-47)’”
When the gods and goddesses square off after Achilleus’ battle with the river, Apollo refuses to fight Poseidon over insignificant humans, and he compares human beings to the leaves that bud in the spring and fall in the autumn:
“‘Shaker of the earth, you would have me be as one without prudence
if I am to fight even you for the sake of insignificant
mortals, who are as leaves are, and now flourish and grow warm
with life, and feed on what the ground gives, but then again
fade away and are dead... (21.462-66)’”
     But is this Homer’s view of humanity?  Is it that of his audience - or ours?  The battle of the gods seems not only comic, but trivial, after the deadly seriousness of Achilleus’ rampage on the battlefield.  The gods are immortal, and they’ll carry on forever - there’s no denying that - but they can hardly understand the deadly seriousness of battle.  It may be that the poem comes to teach its audience - and perhaps Achilleus - that being mortal is not simply a weakness.  It is precisely the limits of a lifespan that, uniquely, give human beings that chance to do some great thing before they die, and to find the strength to deal with losses of a kind the gods can never really know.  However much we may think that the gods cause many of the events in the poem, can anyone deny that this is a poem about mortal men and women and not about gods?
THE DEATH OF HEKTOR AND THE END OF TROY
     It is even harder to take the family squabbles of the Olympian gods seriously once Homer has described Hektor taking his last stand and falling before the eyes of his parents outside the walls of Troy.  Hektor’s parents make an anguished appeal that he return to the safety of the city, and the immediacy of their words contrasts with the reactions of Zeus or Thetis to the destiny of their mortal children.  Hektor, himself, debates several courses of action.  He is forced to acknowledge that his own recklessness may have brought ruin to his people (22.104), and, as a result, he must stand and fight.  When Hektor panics and flees from Achilleus, Homer suddenly offers a nostalgic flashback to the days of peace.  Describing the landscape of the battle, he says,
“...Beside these
in this place, and close to them, are the washing-hollows
of stone, and magnificent, where the wives of the Trojans and their lovely
daughters washed the clothes to shining, in the old days
when there was peace, before the coming of the sons of the Achaians. (22.152-56)”
The long description, the implied comparison of Hektor and Achilleus to the hot and cold springs (22.147-52), the complex simile of the games (22.158-64), and the account of all of the gods watching the combat (22.166) serve to dramatize the confrontation and underscore how much is at stake.  It is, as the poet says, no game for “they ran for the life of Hektor” (22.161).
     To add to the drama, Homer links the death of Hektor with the fall of Troy itself.  This, too, permits the poet to allude to the climax of the Trojan War, even though the capture of the city does not form part of the Iliad.  As Achilleus drives the Trojans into the city, a simile provides an image of a burning city that foreshadows the sack of Troy:
“...Meanwhile Achilleus
was destroying alike the Trojans themselves and their single-foot horses;
and as when smoke ascending goes up into the wide sky
from a burning city, with the anger of the gods let loose upon it
which inflicted labour upon them all, and sorrow on many,
so Achilleus inflicted labour and sorrow upon the Trojans. (21.520-25).
When Priam appeals to Hektor to return to the safety of the city, he imagines the destruction of Troy in extraordinarily graphic terms, ending with the horrible image of his own dogs feeding on his corpse (22.58-76).  Finally, the lament of the Trojans over Hektor’s death is described as “most like what would have happened, if all lowering Ilion had been burning top to bottom in fire (22. 410-11).”  It is no accident, perhaps, that the poem ends with the burial of Hektor and the Trojan women lamenting his death, for this serves as a reminder of the end of Troy itself.

ILIAD COMMENTARY: BOOKS 23-24
ILIAD: PLOT SUMMARY
RETURN TO CLASS NOTES: SEPTEMBER 11/12/13, SEPTEMBER 18/19
SCHEDULE OF READINGS (Monday/Wednesday)
SCHEDULE OF READINGS (Tuesday night)
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