The Iliad: The ultimate story about war

Why The Iliad is about what it is to be a man

NH: I’ve thought for a long time now and argued that the poem is all about what it means to be a man and different kinds of masculinity, and models of those different kinds of masculinity are available throughout the poem, kind of every moment in a man’s life – it’s like the seven ages of man doesn’t come close. The rage of Achilles; the toxicity of Agamemnon; the caring, the healing of Patroclus; the devotion of Hector; the wit and cleverness of Odysseus; the ageing, fearful patriarch of Priam. Do you think that’s part of why the poem still resonates so strongly – it does have a huge amount to tell us actually about masculinity?

EW: I think it has a lot to tell us about masculinity, and as you say about the varieties of masculinity and the varieties of ways that masculinity can be tied up with all these kinds of vulnerability. I mean, the desire to be ‘the best man’ when there were so many ways to be a man, and there were so many different social compulsions on men.

There’s a famous line about teaching Achilles to be ‘both an artful speaker and a skilful warrior’, and to be a man in this poem, you have to be the best at least two completely different kinds of characteristics, and then you also have to be the best like Agamemnon at gathering the most forces, gathering the most wealth, and you have to be the best at droning on in the council meetings like Nestor – there are so many different categories of it.

And yet there’s also so much awareness that being a man is tied up with a kind of pride and sense of self that can isolate you, and being the best means being out ahead of all the others. And this question, which is at the heart of the poem, about can there be a community of men? If masculinity is all about being better than every other man, then how can men be together without killing each other? The poem’s exploring that possibility of whether men could ever be in a community that didn’t involve slicing each other’s eyeballs out.

And we get some little glimpse of what that might look like in the funeral games, where the men are still skilful in totally different areas. One man is good at chariot racing and another man is good at the foot race, but there are enough prizes to go around so they don’t end up killing each other when they don’t win.

So much of the poem is focused on that – in the Greek, the terms which I really struggled with are cognate with the word ‘man’ but suggest an excess of masculinity, and the poem is exploring, ‘can you be too much of a man?’ Is that what kills Hector, that he’s so much of a man that he’s always going out ahead of others, and is that what drives the rage of Achilles, being so much of a man that he’s got an almost more-than-human desire to cause damage and to replicate his honour to an infinite degree?

It’s also so smart, this poem, about the intertwining of mockery and fear of shame with honour culture. They’re always intertwined. The battlefield is a place where you win honour, but it’s also a place where people hurl insults at each other – I mean, even gentle Patroclus who we like to think of as the kind one, he’s so vicious on the battlefield, and also so great at coming up with the best trash-talking. What it is to be the best in the battlefield is not just throwing the spears, but also coming up with the most biting insults – ‘you might be good at gymnastics, but I’ve just speared you’.

Emily Wilson’s translation of The Iliad and Divine Might by Natalie Haynes are both out now.

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