(22. 304-5)
Hector loses, and yet he still wins immortal fame. He wins it because of the quality of his life and of his
death. The Iliad is not so much concerned with what people do, as with the way they do it, above all the
way they face suffering and death.
Achilles is the greatest warrior, the greatest looter and killer of all. But what makes him great is not that,
but the uniquely penetrating way in which he thinks matters through. He sees and expresses the human
condition without evasion or periphrasis. We feel this quality when he refuses compromise in Books 1
and 9, and when he shows no mercy to Lycaon in 21 (34ff.) nor to Hector in 22.
For as I detest the doorways of death, I detest that man, who
holds one thing in the depths of his heart, and speaks forth another.(9.312-13)
But it is this same quality that leads to his treatment of Priam in Book 24, when, as Alfred Heubeck has
put it, 'the image of the great man replaces that of the great hero.' Achilles sees, and brings the old father
Priam to see, that it is the human lot to be bereaved, to endure-and as tokens of this to eat, drink, make
love, and sleep. These things transcend the barriers which break men up into individuals and nations.
So Homer wins immortal glory in rather the same way as his finest characters, by going beyond the mere
narrative achievements of killing and derring-do. He sets mighty deeds in a context of defeat as well as
victory, woman as well as man, peace as well as war, doubt as well as confidence, feeling as well as
action.
The Odyssey
Whether the Iliad and the Odyssey are by one and the same poet is one of the great unanswered questions
of literary history. We should concentrate, without attempting here any answer, on the ways in which the
two poems complement each other, helping to define each other's qualities. The obvious analogy-and one
which is indeed directly related-is the complementary natures of tragedy and comedy. In the Iliad noble
heroes move inexorably, by -way of a combination of choice and of forces beyond their control, towards
destruction and dissolution. We are left with mourning, honour, endurance, and pity. In the Odyssey a
somewhat dubiously heroic hero wins his way through various fantastical hazards by means of trickery
and ingenuity. The Odyssey is not exclusive; it has room for travel, for rustics and servants, for low life,
and for dastardly villains. Its overall movement is away from war and from barbarity towards prosperity
and peace, centred on the wife and a happy domestic scene. We are left with celebration and poetic
justice, with loyalty and perseverance and intelligence rewarded. The beggar has turned out to be
Odysseus in disguise, home at last. The tragedy-comedy dichotomy should not, however, be pushed too
far. The Iliad has its humour especially, but by no means exclusively, at the funeral games in Book 23.
The Odyssey contributes much to the future of tragedy: one only has to think of the recognition scenes, of
the scenes of foreboding, and the tense planning of revenge.