•

one of the most impressive aspects of the Iliad is the way Homer comprehends the mental state of the warrior

•

how the warrior is affected and changed over time by constant exposure to danger

•

and by seeing his comrades die

•

how war dehumanizes

•

and why people fight even if they don't believe in the justice of the cause

•

or in their actually being any cause

•

so it is important to remember that when the Iliad begins, the Trojan war is in its tenth and final year

•

yet even one year would be sufficient to

•

cause morale to crack

•

cause soldiers to commit atrocities which they would ever otherwise be capable of doing

•

by the time we enter the picture, the war has already taken a toll

•

the play opens with plague

•

caused by Apollo because of the fact that Agamemnon has taken as prisoner the daughter as one of Apollo's priests

•

given the insanitary conditions in which the Achaeans were living, a plague was bound to break out

•

the cause of the plague is over-determined, both divinely caused and rationally caused

•

back in archaic Greece they probably didn't know what the scientific cause of plague was

•

war is not only about bravery

•

fear affects the soldier no matter what

•

Homer observes it closely

•

the skin of the coward changes color one way and another, and the heart inside him has no control to keep him steady, and he shifts his weight from one foot to another, his heart pounds violently as he thinks of the death spirits and his teeth chatter together

•

we hear of Phobos, the sun of Ares the god of war, who frightens even the patient-hearted warrior

•

a comradeship is of very high value

•

in a modern army Patroclus [Πάτροκλος] would be awarded high honors, because he sacrifices his life for his comrades

•

Achilles likens him, however, to a little girl when Patroclus felt for his comrades who put themselves in harm's way

•

Iliad starts with an assembly, an argument between Achilles and Agamemnon

•

Thersites, a Greek soldier who verbally criticizes Agamemnon

•

ugly and somewhat deformed

•

treated as a comic character

•

the only common soldier to have a speaking role in the Iliad

•

put down both verbally and physically by Odysseus

•

no clearly statement of aristocratic principle

•

after 10 years of indecisive war, mutiny is imminent

•

challenged by both Achilles, his most valiant warrior, and by Thersites, his most expendable commoner

•

Achilles withdraws from Book 2 through Book 8

•

comes to realization that it is senseless to risk your life in battle

•

Patroclus asks Achilles if he can borrow his Achilles armor

•

Achilles warns him to not go to far

•

Patroclus then dies

•

Achilles is rough, but becomes rougher after Patroclus dies

•

goes on killing spree which is the most shocking description of killing in the entire poem

•

Jonathan Shay

•

Homer shows us the emotional state of a soldier who has just lost his dear comrade

•

in effect he goes berzerk

•

a Norse world that describe soldiers which fight in a kind of trance

•

derived from ber (bear) and zerk (pelt)

•

supposedly what these soldiers wore when they went into battle

•

berzerking soldiers shed their helmets and flak jackets

•

this is what Achilles does when he first hears of Patrolus' death

•

he says to his mother Thetis, do not hold me back from the fight, you will not persuade me

•

but Thetis persuades him otherwise

•

Apollo says of him: Achilles has destroyed pity

•

for a man who must lose someone who is even closer, a brother of the same womb, or a son

•

Achilles has destroyed pity

•

a very powerful, terrifying judgement, and we know this happens in war

•

and when the killing spree is over, Thetis returns to Achilles and asks that he returns Hector's body to Priam which he does

•

what happens to Achilles after the war we never learn since that is where the poem ends

•

we never see Achilles again after he has returned the body

•

Jonathan Shay notes that 40% of Vietnam combat veterans continued in engaging in violent acts after they returned from the war

•

if a soldier survives the berserk state, it imparts emotional deadness and vulnerability to explosive rage to his psychological and a permanent hyper-arousal to his physiology

•

Homer provides us with an extraordinary analyses of the damage to the psyche which war-induced explosive rage afflicts on the mind and physiology of the soldier

•

helps us to hear what many veterans have been desperately trying to tell us about going berserk