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The Iliad as heroic poetry
disrespect and mockery the world levels at what it regards as failure, the
hero prays for vengeance and curses his enemies as he welcomes the death
that is the predictable end of his intransigence.' 12
Excessive force is another area of moral ambiguity, though it is not
easy to decide what is normal and what is excessive in a heroic milieu.
Heroic poetry respects the hero's enemies unless it is infected by religious
prejudice. The dramatic principle that the hero's antagonist must be worthy
of him ensures the latter a fair deal up to the moment of his demise. At
that point a competing dramatic principle takes over, the hero's triumph
must by some means seize the imagination of the tale's audience. An
awesome deed may be the answer. The actions of Kriemhild in hacking
Hagen to death at the end of the Nibelungenlied or of Akhilleus in dragging
Hektor (alive, some have thought, in an older tale) behind his chariot
would lose their point as expressions of the lust for vengeance if they were
not excessive. Bhima - the name means 'terrible' - in Indian epic represents
an extreme of violence, to such a degree that his allies have often to restrain
him. 'Drawing his sharp sword with its excellent blade, and treading upon
the throat of the writhing man, he cut open his breast as he lay on the
ground, and drank his warm blood. Then, having quaffed and quaffed
again, he looked up and spoke these words in his excessive fury: "Better than
mother's milk ...'" (trans. Smith, in Hatto, Traditions i 57). No one in the
Iliad indulges his taste for blood so literally, but the thought is not far away,
cf. 4.35, 22.347, and the story of Thebes told how Tudeus devoured the
brains of Melanippos.
There is no need to argue the artificiality and obvious hyperbole of
this moral picture. There is nothing strange about the ability of literature
to create a fictitious society to achieve its ends. No conscious effort is
required; the development insensibly proceeds to a point where contact
with underlying reality has become slight. Quidquid delirant reges, plectuntur
Achivi - the behaviour of the heroes before Troy would tear apart society if
there were not means, largely ignored in the Iliad, of restraining it. The
behaviour of Akhilleus is indeed absurd, but it is the absurdity of excess and
obsession and therefore not so absurd that we cannot comprehend it.
(iv) The Greek tradition and the Iliad
The Iliad is an epic with a wide vision but a sharp focus. It is concerned with
the twin concepts, honour (Ti|if|) and glory (KAEOS or K08OS), that are the
12 B. M. W. Knox, The Heroic Temper: Studies in Sophoclean Tragedy (Berkeley and Los
Angeles 1964) 44.
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