Homer's Iliad: Anti-Indoctrination

Reading Homer’s Iliad is anti-indoctrination.  Is Homer praising war and heroism or questioning their value?  Is Homer advocating for the gods or calling faith in Zeus and his family into question?  Is Achilles or Hector the true heroic model?  Both? Neither?

Aside from the urgent questioning, we are given urgent empathy as well.  The Trojans, the putative enemies, are not the Other, but they are brothers and mothers, fathers and sisters.  All are mortal, and wrath is understandable, but not entirely justifiable in action and effect.

Read Homer’s Iliad and be mortal in the best sense.

Rough Duty in Virgil's Roman Epic: A Great Read

Odysseus: "A Spark Alive"

But this seemed best to him, as he thought it over.

He made his way to a grove above the water

on open ground, and crept under twin bushes

grown from the same spot--olive and wild olive--

a thicket proof against the stinging wind

or Sun's blaze, fine soever the needling sunlight;

nor could a downpour wet it through, so dense

those plants were interwoven. Here Odysseus

tunnelled, and raked together with his hands

a wide bed--for a fall of leaves was there,

enough to save two men or maybe three

on a winter night, a night of bitter cold.

Odysseus' heart laughed when he saw his leaf-bed,

and down he lay, heaping more leaves above him.

A man in a distant field, no hearthfires near,

will hide a fresh brand in his bed of embers

to keep a spark alive for the next day;

so in the leaves Odysseus hid himself,

while over him Athena showered sleep

that his distress should end, and soon, soon.

In quiet sleep she sealed his cherished eyes.

--Homer's Odyssey,

the very end of Book V: Sweet Nymph and Open Sea

in the frankly wonderful translation by Robert Fitzgerald.

A favorite passage of mine.