The Iliad
My preferred way of engaging with books is reconstruction. These notes were created during my reading process to aid my own understanding and not written for the purpose of instruction. With that said, I’ve decided to share these unedited notes on the off chance they are helpful to other readers.
In the Iliad, the word “glory” is used in ways that lack immediacy. That is to say the formal use of language always shows or implies a distance between the person pursuing glory and glory itself. It suggests that glory has a mirage-like quality, existing only at a distance, evaporating as soon as one comes close. This essay will first explore this mirage-like quality of glory by examining the ways in which the word “glory” is used in the Iliad. Then, through a close reading of Achilles’ victory over Hektor, I will further expand upon the consequences of glory having this mirage-like quality.
Glory animates the Iliad. The Greek urge to defend their honor and claim glory in response to the abduction of Helen is responsible for the very existence of this epic. More specifically in the narrative, the urge for glory is a fundamental, if not the fundamental, motivator for named heroes. It is also the central figure behind Achille’s decision, the consequences of which can be felt throughout the epic:
“Either,
if I stay here and fight beside the city of the Trojans,
my return home is gone, but my glory shall be everlasting;
but if I return home to the beloved land of my fathers,
the excellence of my glory is gone, but there will be a long life
left for me, and my end in death will not come to me quickly.”
(9.411 - 416)
Curiously, the motif of glory is always used in a peculiar fashion. For how motivating glory seems to be as a desirable object or goal, we would expect the descriptions of glory to be immediate and visceral for the subjects who pursue it: ecstatic joy at its gain, deadening despair at its lost. But instead, the Homeric depiction of glory, as seen through the formal use of language, lacks this immediacy and always implies a distance between the subject chasing glory and the object of glory itself. Glory is commonly used in the relative clause to embellish a specific environment: “the fighting where men win glory” (12.325). It is used in the conditional to justify motivations; here, Diomedes describes the motivations behind stealing the horses of his opponents: “If we might only take these we should win ourselves excellent glory” (5.273). It often appears in descriptions of the future and hypothetical situations, like when Apollo, in human form, urges Hektor to fight Patroclus: “You might be able to kill him. Apollo might give you such / glory” (16.725 – 726) .Glory is also frequently used in addressing another: “Tell me, honored Odysseus, great glory of the Achaians” (9.673). Even when glory is depicted in the present, it is commonly described as a gift from gods with the immediate experience of the subject nowhere to be found. This occurs in Menelaus’ speech: “Yet Hektor holds still the awful strength of a fire, nor falters in raging with the bronze spear, since Zeus is giving him / glory” (17.566 - 567). In Richmond Lattimore’s translation of the Iliad, the word “glory” makes 124 appearances but only twice does it appear in an immediate and visceral fashion. One of those instances is Ares “rejoicing in the glory of his strength”, perhaps hinting that this experience of glory is exclusive to deities (5.907). The other instance, the only time a mortal is shown to come close to glory, is in the beginning, when Agamemnon “stood armored in shining / bronze, glorying, conspicuous among the great fighters” (2.579 - 580). But even here, glory is used in the verb form implying a transience that anticipates the plot as the Greeks are soon to receive numerous setbacks. Contrasted with the noun form of glory that Ares experiences, Agamemnon’s glory appears fleeting and therefore illegitimate. A constitutive quality of glory is its immortality, thus using glory in its verb form—as a process with an end—in some sense undermines the legitimacy of the experience. Even if we were to overlook this, when contrasted against the countless times when glory is depicted in a distant manner, Agamemnon’s experience appears to be an exception that emphasizes the rule. Glory exists in the relative clause, the conditional, the future, the hypothetical, in second-person address, as a gift to a passive subject, but rarely as an immediate experience. Glory appears to be like a mirage of a nourishing pond in a scorched dessert: real and motivating only at a distance, evaporating as soon as one approaches.
This mirage-like quality of glory that we have extrapolated from the formal features of the language corresponds to the narrative of Achilles. Achilles initially asks the Gods, through his mother, to provide the Greeks with setbacks so he can have the glory and honor he rightfully deserves from his companions. But when this wish is granted he shows disillusionment: “ My mother, all these things the Olympian brought to / accomplishment. But what pleasure is this to me, since my dear companion has perished, Patroklos, whom I loved beyond all other companions, / as well as my own life” (18.79 - 83).
As the narrative progresses and Achilles comes closer and closer to his goal of immortal glory, he becomes more and more disillusioned. Hektor warns Achilles of his own immanent death and, having been fatally wounded by Achilles, dies. The first words to come out of Achilles’ mouth immediately after this act that would make his name immortal was simply: “Die: and I will take my own death at whatever time / Zeus and the rest of the immortals choose to accomplish it” (22.365 - 366). Neither in this sentence nor the ones around around this passage does Achilles pound his chest in victory, he is not described to have experienced joy or even pride, he shows no signs that this act really granted him anything worthwhile. At the summit of glory, the first sentence he utters is about death. The mirage-like nature of glory is exposed to Achilles: at the moment he is closest to glory, its reality is nowhere to be found. Another theme arises in this sentence: objectification. Achilles treats himself not so much as a human agent but a passive object. He shows a disconcern for “whatever time” his death may come and gives up all agency in sustaining his life, content with when “the immortals choose to accomplish it” (22.366). He does not say “my death” which is visceral, immediate, appalling, and human but rather my “own” death. What lies underneath this seeming redundancy is a distance between “me” and “death”. Death, which should be an intimate and private experience, is alienated and distanced from the self and turned into an object, an object of legend to be more precise, in his pursuit of glory. It is as if Achilles’ choice of glory and death over anonymity and life was immediate: the very act of choosing to pursue glory rendered him “dead” in some fundamental way. He was already “dead” before his physical death in the sense that he could no longer relate to his own experience as a human, but only through the lens of glory where his experiences and very self was nothing but an object of legend. The promises of glory are so enticing and vivid as to render any momentary human experience as bland and monotonous.
This self-objectification becomes more apparent in the following lines when Achilles announces to his companions: “We have won ourselves enormous fame; we have killed the great Hektor” (22.393). Notice the peculiar wording, he did not say “we have won enormous” but rather “we have won ourselves enormous fame” or more accurately “we have won for ourselves enormous fame”. The recipient of fame and glory cannot be the intimate, visceral “we” but only the distant, constructed “ourselves”, the “ourselves” that lives on in legend. In Achilles’ speech, we see here another instance of alienating, objectifying and externalizing an important part of the human experience: in the previous example, it was the process of death; in the current one, it is the very ego that is objectified. This self-objectification occurs precisely because of the mirage-like nature of glory, because it exists only in distance and never in immediate experience. If only an external vessel is adequate to sustain the mirage of glory, then one has to alienate one’s very identity by viewing life not through immediate experience but the lens of distant legend. One must learn how to objectify oneself into merely a character of narration, and externalize it from the living, feeling, loving, hurting human. Only by alienating, objectifying, and externalizing the very nature of one’s being, will one cultivate fertile ground from which the seeds of glory can bear fruit. Thus, the pursuit of glory can still be motivating even when the mirage begins to fall apart, because the pursuer has already learned to ignore the immediate and visceral human experience in favor of this constructed narration that takes upon itself a reality of its own.
Of course, objectification during the pursuit of glory is not limited to the self but also to others. In his mind, Achilles saw Hektor as only an instrument towards revenge and glory before literally turning Hektor, in reality, into an object by depriving him of his life and agency. This is most apparent when Achilles strung his corpse behind his chariot, and the body was described as being “tumbled in the dust” completely lifeless.
There is no better summary of the pursuit of glory than this passage that describes Achilles on the battlefield:
“As inhuman fire sweeps on in fury through the deep angles
of a drywood mountain and sets ablaze the depth of the timber
and the blustering wind lashes the flame along, so Achilleus
swept everywhere with his spear like something more than a mortal
harrying them as they died, and the black earth ran blood.
Or as when a man yokes male broad-foreheaded oxen
to crush white barley on a strong-laid threshing floor, and rapidly
the barley is stripped beneath the feet of the bellowing oxen,
so before great-hearted Achilleus the single-foot horses
trampled alike dead men and shields, and the axle under
the chariot was all splashed with blood and the rails which encircled
the chariot, struck by flying drops from the feet of the horses,
from the running rims of the wheels. The son of Peleus was straining
to win glory, his invincible hands spattered with bloody filth.”
(20.490 – 503)
The first metaphor compares Achilles to an “inhuman fire” (20.490). Within this symbolism lies the aforementioned self-objectification: on the battlefield, he is no longer a human but a death-bringing object. The second metaphor compares Achilles’ victims to “white barley on a strong-laid threshing floor” corresponding to his other-objectification (20.496). The last sentence begins with the intended end goal “to win glory”, before contrasting it starkly against the reality “splattered with bloody filth” (20.501 - 503).
The Iliad, read in the manner suggested by this essay, undermines the very project of glory that at first appears so central to its core. It is not that glory cannot be achieved, just as it is not impossible to travel to the location where the mirage lies – and certainly Achilles did achieve immortality in some sense. It is instead saying that the allure and desirable reality of glory only exists from afar, and the pursuit would ask of the pursuer to objectify themselves and the world to such a degree that no sane person would ever take the bargain.