Chapters read: 1-16
Pages read: up to 441
The Iliad by Homer is millennia old. In
the time that this epic poem was written, the belief that everything in the
world had an immutable fate was widespread. The influence that this belief has
on The Iliad is clear; fate is one of
the major governing forces of events in this novel.
Even the gods bow down
to the supremacy of fate. For example, when Zeus realizes that Hera has helped
the Achaeans while he slept, Zeus is angry for Hera’s deceit but not for the
outcome of her actions because, as Zeus says, “back the fighting goes, no
stopping it, ever, all the way till Achaean armies seize the beetling heights
of Troy through Athena’s grand design” (Homer 389-390). It seems that the gods,
however, might be the ones who create fate in the first place. Even so, they enforce
their own rules on the mortal world with rigid governance.
It is also possible that
some instances of fate are not in the gods’ hands. At some point during the
war, “Zeus held out his sacred golden scales: in them he placed two fates of
death that lays men low—one for Trojan horsemen, one for Argives armed in
bronze… and down went Achaea’s day of doom, Achaea’s fate settling down on the
earth that feeds us all as the fate of Troy went lifting towards the sky”
(Homer 233-234). This suggests that Zeus’s will does not control fate, but
rather it enforces a fate that is intricately embedded in events of the mortal
and immortal world.
Fate may not be as
immutable as thought in some cases. This argument brings into question the idea
of free will, or the ability for characters to make decisions entirely on their
own, outside the influence of fate, so that their decisions may go against and
even alter whatever fate was said to exist. The Trojan Sarpedon, a son of Zeus,
proclaimed to his men “But now, as it is, the fates of death await us,
thousands posed to strike, and not a man alive can flee them or escape—so in we
go for attack! Give our enemy glory or win it for ourselves!” (Homer 335-336).
Here Sarpedon succumbs to the fate of death that awaits him, but does not
believe any outside forces can determine who leaves the battle with glory and
honor. The free will of the Trojans, in their minds, allows their own actions
to dictate how much honor they have when their time of death comes. In other
words, fate does not provide a detailed map of everyone’s lives.
As powerful as fate is,
its influence appears to fluctuate in The
Iliad. Not even the poet Homer understands fate completely. Nor do the gods
or any of the mortals in the epic poem. Instead, the assumption is that fate
will always play a role, but this does not stop the characters from trying to
effect their own preferred outcomes.
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