“The Dogs of War” by Phin Upham
Homer may consider himself simply a bard but he was really the vehicle upon which the heroes immortality was carried. His tales keep Odysseus, Achilles, and Diomedes alive. His voice invested, and still invests, their deeds an immortality that few besides the gods possessed. Achilles contemplates the value of a short glorious life versus the value of a long uneventful one, and it is clear that the Greek society valued the former. The gods often serve to underline the inner qualities of the warriors rather than to actively interfere with the battle. “Do you not see what a man I am, how huge, how splendid…?” (21. 108) roars Achilles in the heat of battle over a near vanquished enemy. In book five Menelaos “strode out among the champions” (5. 562). Men are made more, and less, than human when in the face of battle. They are made mighty and horrible, courageous and bloody, godlike and bestial, manly and like a force of nature.
The end, the goal, of the war is lost and overshadowed by its means. The slight Paris committed against the Greeks is not the true reason for this ten year battle. Homer tells of war with subtly and depth, it is at once a glutted, bloated excess of death and blood, of huge funeral piers, and of lost families and it is also a shining arena of excellence, a path to a kind of immortality and honor. War in the Iliad, with its complexity, honor, excess, and death is at once foreign to us, and at the same time terrifyingly close to home.
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