The Iliad

>Hector dies like a woman begging for funeral rites after fleeing from Achilles around Ilium 3 times
>Achilles totally dishonors his body and hosts badass funeral games for his bro Patroklus
>Hector's dad has to beg Achilles for his body who only gives it up because the gods order it

I think we all know who the winner is here.

you either haven't read the Iliad or you haven't understood it, I'm not sure which is worse.

I'm OP, I haven't finished it yet. I'm talking shit because it's fun
However, as far as I can gather, Achilles fights to get as much glory and keep his honor before his fate gets to him

Adulthood is realizing Aeneas makes more sense

He refuses to fight because he was wronged, and then decides to fight because his best friend was killed. Far better than slave morality that teaches you to turn the other cheek.

>Pretty much nobody wants to be there except for Menelaos, Agamemnon, and Paris
When Idaios approaches the Acheans to offer peace at any terms, Agamemnon refuses everything and the Greeks all cheer
They wanted to be there just to kill more people

The Achaens fought under the morality of the heroic code, which was that you risked your life in exchange for honour / glory, basically respect, which was represented by material wealth.

Achilles was risking his life more than others, yet was receiving far less reward than others. He was pissed because Agamemnon wasn't following the equation correctly so to speak.

When they send the envoy asking him to fight again, despite receiving massive reward above what he should have received, he still refuses to fight on principle. Agamemnon doesn't properly reward people for risking their lives, so why should he risk his life? With nothing to gain, he has no reason to fight. He lost faith in him and saw Agamemnon as untrustworthy.

This was Achilles position. He had plenty of moral backing in his mind, as he judged that the fault lay with Agamemnon not with himself.

>the guys fighting to reclaim someone's wife are the cunts
Lmao

As for the Glory-hounding, A: the Trojans, who are culturally Hellenic, are doing it too and B: Glory was the cornerstone of Homer's mythic early Greece. The central point of the Epic (originally titled 'Menis Akhilleus' or literally Achilles' Rage) is that mortal men have a choice between comfortable long lives in obscurity, or short heroic lives of infamy.

The whole thing with Hektor's family was meant to illustrate the stakes for the ENTIRE fighting force on both sides, and its brought up multiple times in every soldier's death passage, or again when Achilles mentions Neoptolemus. Its also meant to make you further hate bitch boy Paris.

I love it when Hektor casually mentions that he wished the ground would break open under Paris and that he'd fall and die. The mental image always makes me smile.

who was the best, and why was it Diomedes?

>Diomedes
>Not Ajax Telamon

Because he had the choice of running or being surrounded and he decided to fight the whole army solo.

Diomedes & Odysseus were bro tier. Someone needs to do a semi-comedic story about them fucking up Trojans singlehandedly. Matter of fact, a Trojan War version of Inglorious Basterds would be pretty top.

Why does everyone bitch about the Shield passage, or the Catalog of Ships? Both of those passages are pretty damn interesting.
The only passage that actively put me to sleep was Nestor's "BACK IN MY DAY WE HAD TWO STICKS AND ROCK FOR THE WHOLE PLATOON" autism rant.

Nestor made me think of Cato the elder, even though Cato wasn't around for another 1000 years

Was rage considered the proper response to someone dishonoring you? The word pops up everywhere in the book

Achilles' rage was due to the death of Patroclus, his reaction to Agamemnon's transgression was nothing more than civil disobedience. Try to read the book before you make asinine comments.

Spoken like a true cuck.

Nestor's Ring Composition was indeed way more annoying than those.

>his reaction to Agamemnon's transgression was nothing more than civil disobedience
Achilles was about to murder Agamemnon in front of everybody for his comments before Athene stepped in and calmed him down. What are you talking about?

Yeah and he didn't. Athena's appearance is little more than a writers' fiat to add to the moment - Achilles spends the rest of the time until Patroclus' death simply ignoring the battle. Exactly what point are you making?

>Yeah and he didn't. Athena's appearance is little more than a writers' fiat to add to the moment
It's supposed to show that Achilles is hot tempered and needs supernatural assistance to not kill his nominal allies you retard

This thread convinced me to not read Illiad.

The first sentence of the Iliad is about Achilles' rage over Agamemnon's actions. Have you read the book?

If you read the book as a complete fucking autist, maybe. Achilles had fought alongside the Akhaians valiantly since the beginning of the War, and was widely considered most chiefly among the Princes under Agamemnon, with even Odysseus admitting his superiority. Plus, there are several other fragmented stories telling of Achilles' valor, and also his amicability as in the case of the Game with Ajax he's portrayed playing in some fragmented sources.

I mean for fuck's sake his defining character arc centers on him mourning the loss of a close friend, he's not Sasgay le derp n edgy anime ninja you sperglord

Adulthood is realizing Odysseus is the best, especially when he gets super shneeky in book X and raids the Trojans like a ninja in the night.
also,
Odyssey>Iliad

Benis Akhillaeus

I'm not saying he wasn't valorous you absolute retard. He was filled with anger over Agamemnon's perceived slight. That's not deniable and that's what I'm arguing

No, the first sentence is of Homer invoking the Muses to sing about Achilles' Rage. It's basically the title sequence. It then goes into the exposition of the Trojan War and how Agamemnon came to insult Achilles, which caused him momentary anger.

>All of these people spouting their plebian opinions, completely missing the point of the whole story

>Rage—Goddess, sing the rage of Peleus’ son Achilles, murderous, doomed, that cost the Achaeans countless losses
He's literally stating that Achilles is in a rage

Right, but that's not what "The Rage of Achilles" principally refers to. Humans do in fact get angry, this happens to literally every character in the book to varying degrees. The 'Menis Akhilleus' clearly refers to his inconsolable hatred-fueled killing spree in the last few books - the thing that encapsulates his character arc as well as the central action of the story.

He's literally not stating that. He's evoking a muse to allow him to tell the story OF Achilles' Rage

>it's referring to his rage over patroclus's death
>even though it hasn't happened yet and he's in a murderous rage right now

>that cost the achaeans countless losses
Clearly refers to the rage at the beginning where the Achaeans are losing, not the rage wherein he basically singlehandedly slaughters all of Troy.

The ending of the book is literally written a third of the way in

And the beginning of the book is written as explicitly showing Achilles in a rage

Achilles doesn't start enraged, hell the narrative begins BEFORE Agamemnon takes Briseis. The first Book is all about the Trojan emissary asking Agamemnon to return the girl he claimed, the Akhaians counseling him to do it, them getting plagued because he doesn't do it, and then him doing it but taking Achilles' girl.

That's more like pouting. The story of his rage refers to his rage over the death of his friend, Patroklus.

>pouting that almost leads to murder
What's it like to be autistic?

Inability to understand simple social cues or human emotion (like anger) is a legitimate sign of Asperger's. I have bad news, user

It can be hard to be autistic, but I'll try to help you user

>it can be hard to be autistic
I'm sure you know from experience, especially as you don't seem to be able to differentiate between two people.

A few of my coworkers are autistic, so I've dealt with their struggles.
>differentiate between two people on an anonymous tagnut silk-weaving forum
If you can do this then you're probably incredibly autistic

>if you do this thing that autistic people cannot do, you must be autistic
>literally moving the goalposts to the other end of the field

The idea that the title of Homer's epic about Achilles' Rage refers to the less-than-a-page long passage at the start of the story instead of the several-books long central character arc is still pants-on-head retarded, user.

>it can't refer to both
You are a special kind of retard
I never said it didn't claim that it didn't refer to his rage at the end, but that it also referred to his rage at the beginning of the story

>Why did Homer portray them under such a bad light?
He wasn't weighed down by 3000 years of ideology

>>it can't refer to both
It just trivializes the work by means of pure dilettante logic.

I mean, imagine some arguing that 'All Quiet on the Western Front' referred to the period of peace behind the front lines that takes up the first several pages of the story. Semantically it's not wrong, but it robs the title and spirit of the work of its weight.

It's not 'robbing the spirit of the work' of anything you autist, it's literally just another example of Achilles's rage

>The part where Diomedes gets a STR buff

Welcome to Veeky Forums.

Hello presentism.

ITT : People argue the most important work of western literature has a correct single interpretation

I'm half way through the book and Hera and Aphene make me angry.

A scene where Hera incites Poseidon to go save the greeks when Zeus told everyone not to made me piss blood.

Metamorphoses does have a single interpretation?

>when Aeneas fights Turnus
I died inside

You are fucking retarded. Do you always fuck up this badly in conversations?

Athene turns me on for some strange reason. that part where she comes down and taunts Diomedes for being a pussy and says his father was a far better man is sultry af.

Athene is truly the best girl
>tfw The Illiad started because of a best girl competition

This is why we really shouldn't recommend the Iliad to new readers.

>because some people are fucking stupid let's stop having standards
hmmmm

>shows up to a conversation 6 hours late
>calls someone else retarded
user...

Odysseus pretending to be retarded was rather amusing.

See everyone, this is what happens when you don't know any of the context of what you're reading.

Hey retard, why were the Greeks at Troy in the first place? I wonder if it had anything to to with some faggot Trojan insulting and offending his Greek host, thereby spitting in the face of one of Ancient Greece's most rigid traditions of honor and hospitality.

Read the intro once you're done reading babby's first greek book, so that someone smarter than you can spoonfeed you the information you clearly need, and stop shitting up the board.

They aren't cunts. The conflict between them and the Trojans mirrors the conflict between the divine glory and horrifying tragedy of war, on both sides. Why do you think Homer insists on giving almost all minor characters a mini-backstory? He manages to make you feel the thrill of the fight and the sadness of it at the same time, sometimes even in the same line. This is also one of the reasons I don't think women will ever be able to be as emotionally invested in the book as men can.

Another theme of the book is what it means to be human, which according to the book is somewhere between beast and divine. It's unfortunate for any man to be as the gods, and similarly unfortunate for him to be like the beasts. He must be somewhere in between. That's the part of the point of Achilles' story, in addition to the idea of living a short, but memorable life, or a long but forgettable one.

At least that's my interpretation, and I've just gotten into literature.

I always took the rage of Achilles to begin at the start, and then sort of devolve into his paradox of whether or not to accept or flee his destiny to die in battle and be remembers forever. He knows that's the only way things can end if he stays, but his anger at Agamemnon also leads to the death of his best friend, which enraged him to just slaughter endlessly for revenge.

The ending kind of explicitly states he lets Priam take Hector's body because he knows that's how his own father will feel about his own death. So, I kind of see it a story of a man angry and running from his destiny, which leads to even more problems (death of his friend and prolonged war) and he suffers more for it.