GOD TIER

GOD TIER
>Hector, Odysseus

GOOD TIER
>Patroclus, Priam, Nestor

BAD TIER
>Pâris, Menelaus, Achilles

SHIT TIER
>Agamemnon

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chs.harvard.edu/CHS/article/display/4643
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quite right

God tier
Bizancio by Stephen Lawhead

Shit tier
your favorite book

Pretty accurate boss.

Aeneas is good tier.

>no mention of Diomedes
neck yon self

Not canon.

>Diomedes
Good tier
>Athen
Top waifu tier
Oh no.
He didn't actually read the Iliad.

Ajax is up there

>He didn't actually read the Iliad.
Well, I actually read a middle school light version...

I would argue that Achilles is one of the better and more complex characters in the book. Not "shit tier" by any means. a big chunk of the story is about his journey towards accepting his mortality and the events prompting it. His eventual acceptance of his role in the universe in book 24 in fascinating, especially considering the other Greek mythology surrounding his birth (Zeus commanded Thetis to marry a mortal because her son was prophesied to overthrow him.)

GOD TIER
>Zeus

>no Diomedes
>no Ajax
>no Sarpedon
Shit list

HURRRR

red bull me on these gods, I'm too lazy to read the wikipedia page on greek mythology

>Patroclus not in god tier

He was a better fighter than Hector desu, would have beat him if the gods weren't protecting Hector

achilles is great fuck you my man

>forgetting Diomedes

Paris is a beautiful city, go fuck yourself.

>implying Nestor isn't god tier

I don't know if this is a popular theory or one completely unique to me but I think the Iliad as being a sort of cultural instructional text.

Achilles is the old ideal, ramboing around the place.

Certainly manly ideals you want to keep but not really compatible with anything approaching strategy. So Achilles dies but Odysseus is in a sense born.

There is always a weird thing Homer always adds about stuff Odysseus does in the Iliad akin to "honestly guys, he's not gay". He's not the best fighter, but he's pretty fucking good. He's not the fastest, but he's pretty fucking fast. He's not the best wrestler, but... well you get the picture. He has a slightly unnecessary level of prowess and its not very convincing. The Odysseus of the Odyssey is much more of an alpha male than the guy from the goat farming island who rocks up in the Iliad.

The point about Odysseus is that blessed by wisdom, he's smart and cunning in a way that in an Achilles-style world might seem a bit wussy. But if you want to get into Phalanxes and stuff later on as technology allows, you can't just run at people screaming hoping to decapitate more of them before they do the same to you.

Obviously the Romans thought Ulysses was a bit of a girl and it wasn't only for We Wuz Trojans reasons, but they needed Roman citizens to toughen up, they'd cracked the whole fighting like an army rather than a mob thing already.

i think odysseus is more ideal than achilles because good ol' ody is actually achievable

well aside from being great great grandson nephew of some random obscure god like what all heroes have

I'd say Agamemnon and Hector are a pretty similar kind of character desu. They both only rely on their human, individual capacity, althought Aga does so from the attacker's point of view and Hector does from the defender's. This leads to Agamemnon being the representation of an impious, almost solipsistic power and Hector being a reckless and lawful guardian of his land.
This.
Patroclus isn't a real character. You niggas read like genre fiction fags.

Yep, Ulysses is only a man. The kind of goods that can be achieved through picaresque are human; glory isn't.

>Agamemnon
>shit tier

Get the fuck outta here, Thersites

TAKE THAT BACK ABOUT ACHILLEUS YOU FUCKING DOG

Agree. I'd throw Ajax in good tier as well.

What are you trying to say?

I agreed with you. You can't imagine Achilles hiding under sheeps and shit, not even going to the trojan camp in the night. He's the son of a goddess. He isn't neither human neither godlike tho, and that's why he can't stick up to human laws and human "common sense". You could argue how much of his motivation was human anger, how much was striving for glory and how much was fidelity to Patroclus, but he's the only character who accepts his own death and sacrifice not because of some human duty such as the defense of a city or loyalty for Agamemnon and Menelaus, but because of his own preference. Every other character in the Iliad bows down to either human duties either to individual utilitarian judgements, such as the return of Ulysses to Ithaca, which exclude the option of self-sacrifice.

all the characters are great and serve as an important part in the iliad in my opinion

it's one big seinfeld episode

>BAD TIER
>>Pâris
Fuck, no! Paris is a faggot, but he's damn based. Caused a war and he's there basking in his beauty and kissing the mirror. Fucking nonchalant

I am a god damn book pleb, but what makes this book so great?

I read em' a few times over.

>No neoptolemus

I would say mid tier

>Reading the Aeneid
>Latins send to Diomedes for backup
>Get hyped for Diomedes vs Aeneas
>Diomedes writes back to refuse and say that Aeneas is a pretty cool guy.
I haven't felt disappointment like this since four years of heavy antidepressant use rendered me temporarily unable to achieve orgasm.

virgilmurder.org/images/pdf/diomeng.pdf

>virgilmurder.org/images/pdf/diomeng.pdf

Thanks, interesting read.

There are lots of reasons and it's really up to the reader to determine why it's so great. For me, the Iliad covers the widest range of emotion out of anything I've read, and for almost all of those emotions it covers them the deepest.

>diomedes not god tier

t. Only read the Iliad pleb

>read Philoctetes
bump Odysseus down, add Neoptolemus to God tier

>Read Helen
Bump Menelaus up

>Read Ajax
Add Teucer to God or Good tier. Aias is complicated, probably God tier desu

Also bump Achilles and Agamemnon up

Thinking about it. Every character is honorable and flawed in a way. Odysseus is a master of council, but also uses his ability for trickery and selfishness, a demagogue, and Aias tried to kill the other generals from jealousy, but had so much remorse he committed suicide. That's what makes them such great characters. All are in between good and bad tier imo

I hope you aren't making the mistake of thinking that the characters in Greek mythology that have been treated by different writers are the same person, if you take my meaning.

Odysseus and Diomedes killing Trojans in their sleep? Not cool.

Hector marching out of the gates of troy to confront Achilles, knowing he would die? Nice.

I get you bud, but their place throughout all Greek culture is more complicated than that. I was just stating that rating them based only on the Iliad isn't the only way. Plus the main actions of Odysseus and Aias in Philoctetes and Ajax were part of the greater Greek canon.

For real. Plus Achilles made basically the same decision in order to avenge Patroclos. Pretty nice

Oh yes, but their personalities weren't necessarily the same in Sophocles' plays as they were in the Iliad. An even more obvious example is Homer telling about Agamemnon's return home and subsequent execution compared to Aeschylus' treatment of it. Almost the same story, potentially very different characters.

But I know what you're saying. I just wanted to make it clear, anyway. I think a lot of people muddle up the characters from the Iliad/Odyssey and subsequent works featuring them, not knowing that they don't exist in the same place at all.

Achilles to me represents the flawed ideal of Greek martial culture. The Iliad is, sure, a story about the Trojan War, but I would argue it is moreso a study of the ambivalence inherent in war. Excellence in war is valued. As is rhetoric and skill in sport. Achilles delivers the best speeches in the Iliad, contrary to those who would say Odysseus. He is the greatest of the Achaean warriors, and fulfills the Greek ideal for the man of action/man of words.

But--what does this lead to? So much of Achilles' virtuous deeds are driven by that first word: Rage, Wrath, or Anger. This is what brings Achilles his long-waited aristeia; or, moment of supreme perfection and glory. Again--at what cost?

Achilles is both something to be revered as a perfection and revered as a horrible beast. He makes a similes in one of his best speeches in Book 22 before killing Hector and denying him his wish for his body to be returned to Troy; he promises to defile his dead corpse before it even dies.

>Achilles glared at him and answered, "Fool, prate not to me about covenants. There can be no covenants between men and lions, wolves and lambs can never be of one mind, but hate each other out and out an through. Therefore there can be no understanding between you and me, nor may there be any covenants between us, till one or other shall fall

Achilles is a beast, as he self-corresponds to lions and wolves, not men and lambs. Achilles denies humanity itself in grief. Recall how he blackens his face and tears his hair out in grief for Patroclus. He is the epitome of the PTSD-ridden soldier, torn by the terrors of war and its effects.

Most in this thread may be reading the Iliad as fitting into the dichotomy of pro-war or anti-war, but it is neither; its reluctance to fit into either label makes it, for me, one of the very, very great pieces of literature. It both glorifies and resents war, and since it manifests itself the most in Achilles, he is probably its greatest character.

Rambled a lot, much check out an essay called Between Lions and Men: Images of the Hero in the Iliad for more. Also, Simone Weil's Iliad; or, the Poem of Force.

Excellent post, I believe I have the same interpretation as you do, which is always nice to see. It isn't necessarily pro- or anti-war, and it does defy that dichotomy like you said; it's easier labeled as a work that glorifies martial prowess and glory, but also doesn't shy away from asking what the cost of that glory is, which are brutal deaths of loved ones, future slavery, pain, and so on. Even though most people think the Odyssey is very simple, it too is similar to the Iliad, in that both are ever elusive, refusing to be caught in any kind of definite meaning with the most important questions they ask.

You are correct, Virgil really wrote badly of Odysseus. I feel like the death of Achilles is the death of the "heroic era" of Hellenic culture. I imagine some contemporaries who listened to Homer's epic would say something along the lines of "I wish our warriors were brave and powerful like Achilles, but alas those days are long over. The warrior of today is more underhanded than Odysseus, exploiting his enemy rather than facing him head on."

I agree, and I actually never really got the impression of a pro/anti war theme from the epic at all. I always thought of it more as the cost of doing war and how much of a zero sum game it is.

The Iliad isn't, can't be, for or against war. Ares is a god, and the gods are immortal. There's no way to avoid them.

Reminder that it was a fake Helen who was at Troy and the real Helen was in Egypt the whole time.
chs.harvard.edu/CHS/article/display/4643

Actually existed tier:

>Alexander the Great

The problem with Achilles is that he's the ultimate solider but not the ultimate leader. Alexander was both, and in that regard superior to Achilles, on whom he modeled much of his life.

the constant reiteration of war's potential glory is what leads some to get a pro-war sentiment from it. alexander the great, for example, carried the lliad on campaign for i believe its insights into war, courage, and manhood. achilles has a choice in the iliad: to go home and live a long, though forgotten life, or to die a short, glorious death. he chooses the latter. while the latter choice is the more desirable, it is lamentably so. i think homer might say it is sad that war is so alluring and necessary; that glory as the ultimate good isn't the best thing, though it is ingrained in our nature to think so.

lebron james might be said to be ultimately useless in his ability to do one thing (basketball) exceptionally well. and it could also be said that the very idea of basketball and the excellence therein is useless. yet, lebron james is glorified as the greatest; revered as godlike in his athleticism; he is both unnecessary and revered, just like great men in war.

homer's time is a time of martial life. do not make the mistake of inflicting your own liberal views of mankind onto those of others. yes, homer acknowledges the absurdity of human life ("like the generations of leaves" simile), but achilles himself sings of the heroic deeds of great men, and wishes for himself to be a great man as well.

as fun as it is to say that all human action is ultimately futile, we revere napoleon. we revere alexander, lebron, julius caesar, etc. and the very fact that we can recognize these names might point to the value glory has, despite its cost. war and excellence therein, might not be a zero sum game; at the very least, it is not for homer and his world.

Tom Brady is far more akin to Achilles than LeBeta. Endless passion and desire to win.

>completely missing the point of Achilles
He repents his deeds against Hector. That's the culmination of his heroic tale, his anger abates, and he goes from wanting to cannibalize the Trojans, to understanding he and they are essentially the same. This encapsulates the nature of war, view the enemy as increasingly otherly and then, only at the end, understand and commiserate with them.

To this end, Achilles isn't some monster or a lion, he is THE most human character in the entire story. Consider the significance of him knowing his moira, he knows his fate as all know ours, that we are doomed to die (that this is to mirror human life in general is obvious given the structure of the story, the end and the beginning are both irrelevant, already known) , but how do we act in the interim? Achilles is the only character who has a real sense of agency in the story, he has human conflict, and atop that human resolution.

i agree with you in that it is to some extent a repentance when achilles and priam meet, yet i disagree that true commiseration happens. this moment of connection between the two brings closure to the narrative of the iliad, but it is important to see the poem for what it is: part of a larger narrative of the trojan war. we know that troy will fall. we know that atrocities will befall the people. we know that everybody will die. recall andromache's cry that she will be enslaved, her son and her husband will die, just as soon as troy, doomed to fall, comes into the hands of the achaeans.

this meeting and brief interlude of compassion between achilles and priam is all-too fleeting. achilles will kill again. war has, is, and will occur whether we like it or not. read the news; demonizing of the other is not gone, and neither has it gone when achilles sees priam as his own father. the enduring absurdity of it all denies hope of commiseration.

i like that statue.

God tier: Achilles
High tier: Ajax, Hector, Odysseus
Low tier: Menelaus, Patroclus, Aeneas
Shit tier: Paris, Agamemnon, Diomedes

It's good to see that Veeky Forums is learning about Achilles, in Iliad threads I usually need to go on a rant explaining to someone complaining about his behaviour how Achilles is the greatest tragic hero in all of literature.

>i disagree that true commiseration happens
Homer literally describes how Achilles literally looks at Priam and sees his own father at home in Thessaly who is now fated to mourn over the slain body of his warrior son.

>Thus spoke Priam, and the heart of Achilles yearned as he bethought him of his father. He took the old man's hand and moved him gently away. The two wept bitterly - Priam, as he lay at Achilles' feet, weeping for Hektor, and Achilles now for his father and now for Patroklos, till the house was filled with their lamentation.

One of the most bitersweet moments in all of western literature

>read the Lattimore they said
>mightily in his might

>This encapsulates the nature of war, view the enemy as increasingly otherly and then, only at the end, understand and commiserate with them.

i was responding to this. i mentioned what you wrote above, and only wanted to point out that hector is still dead; troy will fall; priam will die; andromache and her son will die or be enslaved; and those horrors of war which you say are redeemed are not. it IS bittersweet, but the bitter overpowers the sweet.

the last line, which i think goes like:
>and so they buried hector, breaker of horses
defies the idea of a redemptive achilles you put forward. hector is dead, and cannot tame and train horses, and with him, neither can any of the trojans. i think breaker of horses is a general trojan epithet as well, but i'd have to look it up.

cheers: the iliad is maybe my favourite work of literature to discuss.

>>read Philoctetes
>bump Odysseus down, add Neoptolemus to God tier
No you fucking idiot, one of the key points Sophocles is making in Philoctetes is that the titular character is obstructing the public good because of a private jealousy, i.e. being an idiot in the literal sense of the word. By attempting to gain the bow by trickery Odysseus is carrying out the will of the gods and should be praised.

>Tfw Thersites made LITERALLY the exact same points Achilles did
Fucking aristocrats, I tell ya

God God Tier
>Athena
>Hephaestus
Good Tier
>Hera
>Zeus
Okay Tier
>Hermes
>Thetis
>Apollo
Bad Tier
>Poseidon
>Aphrodite
>Artemis
Did it for the Pussy Tier
>Sleep
Little Baby Bitch Tier
>Ares

Why does everyone love Athena?

Time and place, dude.

>tfw when Odysseus also LITERALLY made the same points as Achilles AND Thersites in the heat of battle despite Odysseus being the one who beat Thersites for saying that point into the beginning

The difference is Thersites is ugly.

The difference is Thersites is a prole.

they're the same thing

youtube.com/watch?v=s_7QB3dDuew

GOD TIER
>Hector, Odysseus

GOOD TIER
>Patroclus, Priam, Nestor, Diomedes, Ajax

BAD TIER
>Pâris, Menelaus, Achilles, Neoptolemus

SHIT TIER
>Agamemnon

NOBODY CARES TIER
>Aeneas, the Dioscuri

That interpretation is beyond stupid; it's repulsively retarded. If this is bait then I'm biting hard, good job.

Interestingly he regrets his choice in the Odyssey. He says something to the contrary, when he says that a long and anonymous life would have been preferable than being the most honoured of the dead.

I agree but where is Ajax?

see

I would put a mid tier just for Patroclus. Other than that, you rock

While we are on the topic of ancient Greek names, I would love to know how you folks pronounce them. I always find it silly how English speakers say stuff like "Soos" or "le-o-NAI-duhs"

Veeky Forumserati, I come to you in the hope that you might deliver me from my ignorance. I'm trying to recall a particular tale in Greek mythology (maybe Roman? I want to say Greek) wherein a man is given two conflicting commands by the gods. Something about killing his father, perhaps. He acts on one of them and is condemned for violating the other, and if memory serves he wanders the land seeking justice before ultimately accepting responsibility for his infuriatingly absurd and inescapable fate, which so impresses the gods that they forgive him.

Grecian urn unrelated, was about to make a new thread with it until I saw this one.

oresteia?

Yes, that's the one. Thank you.

Aeneas is struggle tier

>No Ajax
>No Telamonian Ajax
>No Diomedes
>No Aeneas
>No Sarpedon
>No Achilles' Horses
>No Faggots Achilles kills
>No Dead other sons of Priam

0/10 list
Would watch movie again

>defies the idea of a redemptive achilles you put forward

It doesn't defy anything. Achilles killed Hector and then redeems himself by giving the body to Priam, having his sympathies enlarged after his cry, and then stops being beast-like.

>hector is dead, and cannot tame and train horses, and with him, neither can any of the trojans. i think breaker of horses is a general trojan epithet as well, but i'd have to look it up.

Hector means "stay" or "hold", is described as being the breaker of horses, and a Horse is responsible for the falling of Troy.

Have you guys noticed how Iliad & Odyssey threads always produce the best and most civilized discussion on Veeky Forums in general, by the way?

Also, post your favorite lines from any translation (or the Greek if you're learned):

"Very like leaves
upon this earth are the generations of men—
old leaves, cast on the ground by wind, young leaves
the greening forest bears when spring comes in.
So mortals pass; one generation flowers
even as another dies away."

"These two fought and gave no quarter in close combat, yet they parted friends."

>god tier
None of them are god tier you plebeian. Hercules is god tier.

The fucking memey state of our discourse...

Incoherent. What's the criteria?
If it's arete, makes no sense, since Hector got owned.
If it's moral in the modern sense, makes no sense, since Odysseus was a scum bag.
If it's AESTHETIC, makes no sense, since Achilles was QT3.14

XD

How about drama? Agamemnon then becomes top tier. Cunning? Achilles drops to the bottom. I think the solution would be heroes of Troy top trumps. Ultimately Odysseus always triumphs, because he both won the war, survived it & reclaimed his throne.

As the idea of competition is at the heart of Greek culture, this is actually a worthy discussion. Nevermind Alexander, read your Thucydides for the real life struggle of heroes.

>Ultimately Odysseus always triumphs, because he both won the war, survived it & reclaimed his throne.

So did Menelaus

He didn't actually 'win' the war though. Odysseus broke the stalemate with his cunning. Single handedly. Menelaus was a typical inactive Spartan cuck trailing his brother. The dude dragged his bed into the sea & wept like a bitch. Odysseus strung his bow & murdered every wanna be cuck in his house Virginia tech style.

The stalemate was broken after Achilles killed Hector.

Not that user, but I think you're missing the rest of the cycle. You know Achilles then dies right? Stalemate restored.

I also agree Odysseus is pic related.

Ajax gets stoned to death by his own men. Aeneas runs off.
Literally who.

>saying Ajax without specifying which one
Pleb

>gets stoned to death.

You should KNOW which one.

There's no reason to suggest that the stalemate is restored after Achilles dies, because Achilles was never fated to conquer Troy, he only killed Hector who was responsible for the defense of Troy. After Hector dies it's only a matter of time before the city falls.

Killing Hector, in the eyes of the Iliad, dooms Troy by killing its only steadfast champion.
That Hector wasn't obviously in the way of Odysseus's Horse gambit (if the Iliad even knows of that) isn't something it cares about. That Achilles was the man who moved Troy into check but didn't live to see the victory is the point.
The problem is, there are so many traditions about the war that trying to be narratively satisfying while reconciling and including all of them is a doomed game.
The Iliad's narrative itself may be largely a reflection of the story of the deaths of Antilochus, Memnon, and finally Achilles. Or the other way around. Or they may be confusions of the same initial story: chs.harvard.edu/CHS/article/display/6526

Loads of analyses over here, boys.
chs.harvard.edu/CHS/article/display/1166?menuId=139