Some notes on Iliad (I)

In the name of glory and sorrow

There are two choices for Achilles: homecoming or glory. It’s like Hamlet’s dilemma of to be and not to be, or Salinger’s mature and immature. In the hero’s time, property means honor or glory, but there is something beyond property, “the glory of ancestors”.

In Iliad, when Agamemnon gave Achilles the offer of properties, he declined the offer and refused going to the fighting, but when his dear and near comrade Patrokleēs died, he made the final decision to go to the fighting for glory. This is because, according to Harvard professor Gregory Nagy, the name of Patrokleēs means ‘the one who has the glory of the ancestors’, and Achilles is hinted to die for this glory, the way to become hero and semi-God. In a parallel embedding story, Meleagros fought because of the sorrow of Kleopatra, which also means ‘the one who has the glory of the ancestors’.

If Achilles loves Penthesileia because they share the names with the meaning of sorrow for the people, does it mean that they share the sorrow as empathy?  And the sorrow is caused by their common fate that they will die in the fighting for the glory of men (women)? At the moment Achilles killed Penthesileia, he saw in her eyes his own fate not long after. But does Achilles have the same feeling (love) when he killed Hector, since Hector's death in fighting also made him get the glory of men? Why does death in the fighting cause sorrow, isn't the glory of men a happy ending for warriors? 

The killing of Hector by Achilles makes Hector a hero (the kleos of andron) but causes the sorrows (akhos) of Andromache, and all the man try to become martyr or hero in the war, no matter what sorrow they will bring to the families. Is this the fate of human being that nobody can change? Ironically, even Achilles has the sorrow of himself to die in the war when chasing the kleos of andron in the meantime. The "kleos of andron" causes the sorrow of family in the one hand, and makes the hero on the other. Achilles may just lament about the inescapable human fate.

Another interesting thing I learned from this lesson is the concept of “fear” and “pity”, which are the basic components of Greek tragedy. “Fear” means you when see someone in suffer you want to walk away, whereas “pity” means when you see someone in suffer, you want to approach for the grief.