The Iliad - Scholarship

“By this view, this [the battlefield] is a very firmly man’s world, and women don’t have much of a play in it” - Dr Emily Hauser

“These are stories that begin because of women” - Dr Emily Hauser

Book 6 - “women’s world is entered into” - Dr Emily Hauser

“We see the world of peacetime, the world that could have been, as opposed to the world of the men.” - Dr Emily Hauser

"Women are central to the Iliad” - Haynes

“Polyvalent, ambiguous representation of the gods” - Dr Emily Hauser (Jars in Book 24)

“a theme central to the Iliad: the unbridgeable chasm between mortal and immortal” - Janko

“we are told right at the opening of the Iliad that all the events we are about to hear or read of came about through the ‘Dios boule’ or ‘Will of Zeus’.” - Hugo Shakeshaft

“it is Zeus’ view of things that Homer encourages us to see” - Hugo Shakeshaft

“Homer has done his best to make the men in the Iliad gods and the gods men” - Longinus (CLASSICAL SCHOLARSHIP)

"the gods are a chief source of comedy" - Redfield

“the closer heroes come to gods, the clearer the disparity between them becomes.” - Hugo Shakeshaft

“It is noteworthy that the goddesses join in the councils of the gods as equals with the males” - Mark W. Edwards

“the intensely human interrelationships of the divine first family enables the poet to present a picture of the less serious side of human life” - Mark W. Edwards

“The Iliad portrays a world governed by ineluctable fate and powerful gods prone to manipulating human affairs.” - Hugo Shakeshaft

“the fraught relation between fate and free will applies to even the most powerful god.” - Hugo Shakeshaft

“The lives of mortals are appropriated by some abstract power of fate - moira - that can cause even Zeus deep personal anguish.” - Hugo Shakeshaft

If he interferes with fate - “he could destabilize the order of divine and human existence vouchsafed by fate.” - Hugo Shakeshaft

“this twofold idea of fate serves a poetic purpose, amplifying the emotional tensions and tragic pathos of his narrative.” (idea that Pat could’ve avoided death) - Hugo Shakeshaft

“Victory is less a matter of valor than of blind destiny” - Simone Weil

“the idea of destiny before which executioner and victim stand equally innocent” - Simone Weil

“Almost always, fate and the gods decide the changing lot of the battle.” - Simone Weil

“both ineluctable fate and unpredictable divine intervention reinforces the sense of man as a plaything at the mercy of mightier powers.” - Janko

"fate is purely a literary device, with the gods and mortals both being 100% responsible for their actions" - Jones

“The gods and Fate are as much in the power of the poet as are the characters” - Mark W. Edwards

“The phrase unites the opposites of grief and joy” - (In reference to Andromache in Book 6, “laughing through her tears”) - R. Seaford

“The ambivalence of tears is rare in Homer too.” - R. Seaford

“If tears characterize first and foremost the great heroic figures, it is because their suffering is active, energetic, and virile.” - Helene Monscare

“the masculine ideology of the Iliad anchors suffering at the very heart of heroism.” - Helene Monscare

“The storms of masculine pain contrast with the slow material loss that consumes the lives of weeping women” - Helene Monscare

"By the end of the Iliad, Achilles only cares for revenge and not for honour" - Leaf

“Achilles seems to undercut the entire basis of his society and the warrior culture in his speech to Odysseus” - Vandiver

“heroism is but a theatrical gesture and smirched with boastfulness.” - Simone Weil

“kleos was the primary medium for communicating the concept of the hero” - Gregory Nagy

“the immortalizing power of kleos as epic ‘glory’.” - Gregory Nagy

“heroes are not on time: as we will see, they are unseasonal.” - Gregory Nagy

“He portrays the character of his heroes by presenting them to us in action, so that we see what they do and hear what they say, thus allowing us to make up our own minds about them.” - Martin Thorpe

“the masculine ideology of the Iliad anchors suffering at the very heart of heroism.” - Helene Monscare

“Those tears and his sympathy for the plight of Priam bring Achilles’ anger to its end.” - Martin Thorpe

“That desire [to punish Agamemnon] was born of Achilles’ ‘wrath’” - Hugo Shakeshaft

“Achilles’ anger is thus the cause of Patroclus’ death” - Hugo Shakeshaft

“The progress of the war in the Iliad is simply a continual game of seesaw… he forgets to treat victory as a transitory thing.” - Simone Weil

“Perhaps all men, by the very act of being born, are destined to suffer violence.” - Simone Weil

“In these, warriors are likened either to fire, flood, wind, fierce beasts, and whatever blind cause of disaster or to frightened animals, trees, water, sand, whatever is affected by the violence of outside forces.” - Simone Weil

“brief, celestial moments in which man possesses his soul… Justice and love” - Simone Weil