The Iliad deals with only a small portion of the Trojan War; in fact, it covers only a few months

during the tenth year of that war. The ancient Greek

audience, however, would have been familiar with all the events leading up to this tenth year, and during the course of the Iliad, Homer makes many
references to various past events.

The story of the Iliad has its actual beginning in the creation of the great wall at Troy. The Trojans enlisted the aid of the sea god, Poseidon, to help build
the wall. However, after the wall was constructed, Poseidon demanded his just compensation, but the Trojans reneged. Consequently, Troy was without
divine protection and, in fact, Poseidon became its enemy.

At the time of the Trojan war, Troy was ruled by King Priam, who was married to Hekuba. According to legend, Priam and Hekuba had forty-nine
children, including the warrior Hektor, the prophetess Cassandra, and the young lover, Paris (also known as Alexandros). Deiphobus is also one of the
children of Priam and Hekuba.

When Hekuba was pregnant with Paris, she had a dream that Paris would be the cause of the destruction of Troy. An oracle and a seer confirmed that
this son would indeed be the cause of the total destruction of the noble city of Troy. Therefore, for the sake of the city, Hekuba agreed to abandon her
newborn infant to die by exposure on Mount Ida, but Paris was saved by shepherds and grew up as a shepherd, ignorant of his royal birth.

The Iliad begins: The Judgement of Paris

On the Greek side, the story of the Iliad begins with the wedding of Peleus, a mortal, and Thetis, a goddess. These two become the parents of Achilles.
At their wedding, Eris, the goddess of strife, throws down a golden apple with the message, "For the Fairest." Hera, Athena, and Aphrodite all try to claim
the prize, and no god, including Zeus, is willing to resolve the dispute.

After a long conference on Mount Ida, Paris, the poor but royal shepherd is chosen to be the judge of the dispute between the three goddesses. They all
offer bribes to Paris. Hera offers him rule over all of Asia. Athena offers victory in battle and supreme wisdom. But Aphrodite, knowing her man, offers
the most beautiful woman in the world, Helen, wife of Menelaos, the ruler of Sparta. Paris proclaims Aphrodite the fairest of all and anticipates his prize.

The initiation of strife, in the form of Eris and her apple, at the wedding of Peleus and Thetis, introduces an idea that runs throughout the Iliad. Strife,
metaphorically embodied in a goddess in the legend, is the motivating factor in most of the major events in the epic. Strife provokes the war. Strife with
Agamemnon over a slave girl causes Achilles to withdraw from battle. Strife between various groups and individuals sharpens the action of the poem.
Finally, the resolution of strife provides an ending for the poem. Eris is rarely mentioned in the Iliad, but her presence is almost palpable.

Before going to the court of Menelaos to secure Helen, Paris establishes his legitimacy as a son of King Priam of Troy. Only then does Paris travel to
Sparta, where for ten days he is treated royally as the guest of Menelaos and Helen. After ten days, Menelaos has to travel to Crete to conduct
business. In Menelaos' absence, Paris abducts Helen and returns with her to Troy. Various accounts of this event make Helen either a willing
accomplice to Paris' scheme or a resisting victim of kidnapping. In the Iliad, Helen's constant references to herself as a bitch and prostitute leave little
doubt that Homer sees her as a culpable accomplice in the abduction.

Word of Helen's abduction reaches Menelaos in Crete. He immediately goes to his brother, Agamemnon, the great ruler of Mycenae. At first the two
brothers try diplomacy with Troy to secure the return of Helen. When that fails, they determine to enlist the aid of many other rulers of small Greek
kingdoms. Nestor of Pylos, an old friend of the family, accompanies Menelaos as he goes to each state seeking support. The Greek army that Menelaos
and Nestor help assemble represents the Greek or Mycenaean notion of reciprocity. Actions were performed with the expectation of a reciprocal action.
According to some accounts, the various Greek rulers had all courted Helen and felt an obligation to Menelaos. But, even so, they go on the raid with an
understanding that they will receive a share of the booty that will come from the destruction of Troy and other nearby states. In fact, the opening dispute
between Agamemnon and Achilles is over what they each see as inequity in the distribution of their war prizes.

Some of the Greek leaders were anxious to sack Troy; but two, Odysseus and Achilles, were warned by the oracles of their fates if they participated in
the war. Odysseus was warned that his journey home would last twenty years, and thus he feigned madness; but his ruse was quickly discovered and
he finally agreed to go to war. The Greeks knew that they could never capture Troy without the help of Achilles, who was the greatest warrior in the
world. He was practically invulnerable as a fighter, because at birth his mother dipped him in the River Styx, rendering him immortal everywhere except
in the heel, where she held him. (Later, Paris discovers this vulnerability and shoots a poisoned arrow into Achilles' heel — thus, we have the term
"Achilles' heel," meaning one's vulnerability.) Achilles was warned that if he went to war he would gain great glory, but he would die young. His mother
then disguised him in women's clothing, but the sly Odysseus discovered the trick and Achilles finally consented to go.

After a few months, the Greek army gathers at Aulis in Euboea. According to some accounts, they immediately launch an attack on Teuthrania, an ally of
Troy, are defeated, and are driven back. Much of the army disperses. During this same period, the prophet Kalchas predicts that ten years will pass
before the walls of Troy will fall. The Greeks, or Achaians as they called themselves, do not try a mass attack on Troy again for about eight years. They
have not, as many imagine, spent nine years beneath the walls of Troy, as when the Iliadopens. Some scholars consider this first expedition story to be
a variant account of the more common story, but many others think that the expedition against Troy was actually made up of two widely separated
expeditions.

The story of the second (or possibly first) assembly at Aulis is the more famous account. At this assembly of the Achaian forces, they are unable to sail
because of onshore winds. This time Kalchas reports that Artemis, Goddess of the Hunt, is offended because Agamemnon killed a deer sacred to her.
The only way the Achaians can leave is by Agamemnon's sacrifice of his daughter, Iphigeneia, to Artemis. Agamemnon tricks Iphigeneia by telling her
that she is to wed Achilles. When she arrives for her wedding, she is gagged so that she cannot pronounce a dying curse, and sacrificed to Artemis. The
winds shift, and the Achaians (Greeks) sail for Troy.

The Achaians land at a protected shore near Troy. They build a wall of earth, stone, and timber to protect their ships. This wall is the focus of the Trojan
attack in Books XII and XIII. After the construction of the wall, the Achaians begin their siege of Troy. Some of their forces raid nearby states. Achilles
attacks cities to the south while Telamonian Aias (Ajax) takes Teuthrania.
A year later, the tenth year since the original prediction by Kalchas, all of the Achaians assemble near Troy to begin what they hope will be the final
assault. Here is where the Iliad begins as a feud develops between Achilles and Agamemnon. The poem recounts the events of this feud as they take
place over several days. The epic ends with the death and burial of the Trojan warrior, Hektor.

After the Iliad: The fall of Troy

The events after the Iliad that lead to the fall of Troy are not a part of the poem. After the burial of Hektor, the Trojans call on outside forces for help, and
the Greeks lose many warriors. In one battle, Achilles encounters Paris, who shoots an arrow that, guided by Apollo, strikes Achilles in the right heel, the
only place where he is vulnerable. Aias (Ajax) and Odysseus are able, with great difficulty, to rescue Achilles' body, and immediately there arises a
dispute over who should receive Achilles' splendid armor. When it is awarded to Odysseus, Aias (Ajax) becomes so furious that he threatens to kill some
of the Greek leaders. When he realizes the lack of honor in his threats, he commits suicide.

With the death of their two greatest and most valiant warriors, Aias and Achilles, the Greeks become anxious about ever taking Troy. After consulting
various seers and oracles, they are instructed to secure the bow and arrows of Heracles, which are in the hands of Prince Philoctetes, a Greek who was
abandoned earlier because of a loathsome wound that would not heal. Odysseus and Diomedes are sent to Philoctetes, and they convince him to return
with the bow and arrows. In his first encounter in battle, he is able to kill Paris. This death, however, does not affect the course of the war.

The Greeks are then given a series of tasks that they must accomplish to secure victory: They must bring the bones of Pelops back to Greece from Asia,
bring Achilles' son into the war, and steal the sacred image of Athena from the Trojan sanctuary. These tasks are accomplished, but none of them
changes the course of the war. Then Odysseus conceives a plan whereby the Greeks can get inside the walls of Troy: A great horse of wood is
constructed with a hollow belly that can hold many warriors. In the darkness of night, the horse is brought to the Trojan plain. Odysseus and some of his
men are hidden inside the horse. The rest of the Achaians burn their camps and sail off behind a nearby island.

The next morning, the Trojans find the Greeks gone and the huge, mysterious horse sitting before Troy. They also discover a Greek named Sinon,
whom they take captive. Odysseus provided Sinon with plausible stories about the Greek departure, the wooden horse, and his own presence there to
tell the Trojans. Sinon tells Priam and the others that Athena deserted the Greeks because of the theft of her image from her temple. Without her help,
they were lost and so they departed. But to get home safely, they had to have a human sacrifice. Sinon was chosen, but he escaped and hid. The horse
was left to placate the angry goddess, and the Greeks hoped the Trojans would desecrate it, earning Athena's hatred. These lies convince Priam and
many other Trojans, so they pull the gigantic horse inside the gates to honor Athena.

That night, the soldiers creep out of the horse, kill the sentries, and open the gates to let the Achaian army in. The Achaians set fires throughout the city,
massacre the inhabitants, and loot the city. The Trojan resistance is ineffectual. King Priam is killed, and by morning all but a few Trojans are dead. Only
Aeneas, with his old father, his young son, and a small band of Trojans, escape. Hektor's young son, Astyanax, is thrown from the walls of the city. The
women who are left are given to the Greek leaders as war prizes, to be used as slaves or as concubines. Troy is devastated. Hera and Athena have
their revenge upon Paris and upon his city.

The Iliad (meaning a song about Ilium) and the Odyssey are Greek epic poems, conventionally attributed to a singularly talented poet named Homer, who
lived in the east Greek region of Ionia in the 8 th century B.C.E. Most scholars today, however, question the idea that one singer-poet composed either or
both poems, at least not as we would imagine a poet composing today. Further, a growing number of scholars contest the 8th century date of composition.
There were multiple Trojan War story traditions developing at that time; homeric epic is not the earliest nor did it emerge as especially influential or
important until the 6th century B.C.E. That much said, in classical antiquity the songs that became our Iliad and Odyssey did eventually achieve a unique
and honorific status, which lived on in western European culture and literature.

People today know the Iliad as a book, usually printed as lines of poetry and translated from the ancient Greek into English or another modern
language. They experience it in the silence and solitude of reading. The first lines plunge most contemporary readers into the middle of an unfamiliar story
populated by dozens of equally unfamiliar characters. The modern-day encounter with the Iliad however, is unlike that of most Greeks in the ancient
world, especially before the time of Alexander the Great at the end of the 4 th century B.C.E. Outside of a lettered elite in the historical period, most ancient
Greeks would have read Homer rarely if at all. Instead, from childhood, they would have heard Trojan War poetry, including precursors to our Iliad, sung
by poet-singers in feasting halls and during regional athletic festivals or musical competitions. The basic plot and the cast of characters were not only
common knowledge, they were woven into the fabric of Greek social and cultural life.

In early Greek settlements and cities, largely isolated by their location on islands or in the mountainous terrain of the southern Balkan peninsula, a rich
variety of local versions grew up around the basic plot of the Trojan War story. The names of Trojan War heroes were figured into the genealogies of local
elites and memorialized on civic ritual occasions. The visual world was richly imbued with images of the Trojan War. In their cities and in regional
sanctuaries, ancient Greeks could have looked up at Trojan War scenes sculpted into temple pediments. They poured wine from ceramic vessels depicting
the war's events, sometimes even identifying characters by name. Further, those fortunate enough to boast a hero's grave in their locale believed they
enjoyed his special beneficence and they responded with rituals of worship at his tomb.

In the 7th and 6th centuries B.C.E. the development of regional sanctuaries, such as Olympia and Delphi, occasioned a new direction in Trojan War epic
song; the development is commonly referred to as panhellenism ('all Greek'). Regional festivals brought together Greek singers and audiences from
different cities and districts who nonethless shared a language and many social, cultural, and mythic traditions. The need for singers to perform for
audiences gathered from many regions gave rise to a Trojan War epic tradition marked less by local allusions and heroes than by those with wide
recognition and appeal. The result was a broadly diffuse and increasingly invariable tradition, which became over time our Iliad and Odyssey. Although
the panhellenic homeric epics eventually dominated in literature, local traditions lived on, as is evinced in both poetry and art.

In sum, for generations of ancient Greeks, the encounter with the Iliad was aural and iconographic, public, variant, resonant with vibrant local traditions
and, in time, also panhellenic. How those living oral traditions evolved into the paperback you hold in your hand has been the subject of much debate; so
much so that is is usually referred to as the Homeric Question. Before we take up that very important question, however, we turn to the Trojan War story
told in the Iliad.
The Iliad day-by-day

The Iliad begins, famously, in medias res, announcing the theme of the song as the rage of Achilles resulting from a quarrel with Agamemnon, a quarrel
that occurred in the 10th and final year of the Trojan War. It concludes not with the end of the war but the end of Achilles' rage and a return to normalcy,
symbolized by the funeral rites for Hektor. Although the action takes place over a period of only 45 days, the poem uses allusion to earlier events and
foreshadowing of later ones to encompass the entire duration of the war.

Day 1

Book 1: The Iliad opens with the narrator's appeal to the Muse ('Goddess') to sing the wrath of Achilles and its dire consequences for thousands of Achaeans
(one of the Homeric terms for the invading forces, which the poem never refers to as 'Greeks'). The Muse, now implicitly the narrator, begins the song with
a quarrel that erupts between Agamemnon and Achilles after Chryses, a priest of Apollo, had come to the Greek camp to ransom his captive daughter
Chryseis. When Agamemnon dismissed the priest out of hand, Chryses appealed to Apollo, who avenged the insult by sending a plague into the camp.

On the 10th day of the plague, day 1 of the poem's action, Achilles convenes an assembly to discern why Apollo is angry and what must be done to appease
him. The seer Kalchas pronounces Agamemnon the cause of the plague and prescribes returning the girl as the only remedy. Angry over the loss of his war-
prize and the prestige she represents, the commander agrees to give her up only if the Achaean kings replace her with one of their captive women. Achilles
denounces Agamemnon's military leadership as a charade rooted in greed and his demand for a replacement prize as outrageous, considering that the
armies had come to Troy to help him and to pile up booty for themselves. Moreover, all the plunder had already been distributed; it would not be right to
take it back. Not one to brook a public challenge, Agamemnon tells Achilles that he can go home now, but without his war-prize Briseis, whom Agamemnon
claims for his own. Achilles draws his sword with intent to take the other man's life, but is restrained by Athene, who promises that waiting will pay off in
prizes worth three times what Agamemnon is taking away. When Achilles finally concedes, Chryseis is returned to her father, Briseis is taken from
Achilles' shelter, and the offended hero goes to the seashore to call upon his mother Thetis for help. He persuades her to ask Zeus to help the Trojans drive
the Achaeans back among their ships until they recognize the madness of dishonoring the best of the Achaeans.

Day 14

True to her word, after Zeus's return to Olympos twelve days later, Thetis goes to him with Achilles' request and gains his consent. When Hera takes Zeus
to task for plotting with the sea-nymph against the Trojans, a quarrel ensues. Distracted, however, by Hephaestos's antics, Hera, Zeus, and the rest of the
gods end the day with laughter, feasting, music, and finally, sleep.

Book 2: That night, Zeus sends a deceitful dream to Agamemnon, projecting victory for the Greeks on the next day if he will marshal them for battle.

Day 15: First day of battle

Books 2-7: In the morning Agamemnon summons the kings who form his council and tells them about the dream. He declares his purpose to test the morale
of the troops in a public assembly by reporting that the war is a lost cause instead of revealing the hopeful message of the dream. If the leader of the Greek
forces was hoping to rally the troops to the war effort by using reverse psychology, he was sorely disappointed. Upon his announcement in the assembly the
men make for the ships and must be forcibly reassembled by Odysseus. Urged by members of his council, who now share the blame in the event of failureâ
to stay the course, Agamemnon relents and sends the Achaians to eat and prepare for battle. The poet invokes the Muse again and embarks on a lengthy
catalog, first of the Greek leaders and contingents and then of the Trojan and allied leaders.

The two armies take the field, but instead of engaging they consent to a duel between Paris and Menelaos to determine the outcome of the war. The
narrative shifts to Troy, where Helen, summoned to a vantage point on the wall, points out the Achaean leaders to Priam and the elders of the city. Back on
the battlefield, Menelaos is decisively winning the single combat when Aphrodite sweeps Paris safely back to his bedroom, where he is joined by Helen.
While they make love, Menelaos claims victory in the duel by default, and a truce is called.

The scene shifts again, this time to Olympos, where the gods conspire to restart the war, in which all now have a stake, by inciting the Trojan archer
Pandaros to break the truce. His arrow grazes Menelaos and the two armies join battle. The narrative first follows the exploits (known as an aristeia) of
Diomedes on the battlefield. When Aphrodite tries to sweep Aineias out of his path, Diomedes wounds her, sending her crying to her mother. Hektor, with
Ares at his side, gains temporary advantage, but Athene takes charge of Diomedes' chariot and urges him to attack the war-god himself. Ares complains to
Zeus and the gods retire from the battlefield. When the tide of battle again turns in favor of the Greeks, Hektor slips back into the city to instruct the
women to appeal to Athene, their patron goddess, for help. While there he finds and seems to say his farewells to his wife Andromache and their young son
Astyanax.

Hektor returns to the plain of Troy to find the battle still raging. On the prompting of Helenos, he calls for another duel to decide the war, this time
between him and a champion of the Greeks' choosing. Telamonian Ajax, known as the bulwark of the Achaeans and famous for defensiive war craft, is
chosen by lot and the duel commences. Nightfall brings it to an indeterminate end. Returning to their respective dwellings, the Achaeans are counseled to
dig a trench and construct an associated palisade to protect the ships, while the Trojans debate returning Helen to her husband.

Day 16 (truce)

Early in the morning, the Trojans propose a truce, to which the Greeks agree, so that each side may bury their dead.

Day 17 (truce)
The Greeks take advantage of the ceasefire to dig a trench and build a palisade between their ships, drawn up on the shore, and the plain of Troy. Angered
that they had built the wall without first offering sacrifice, Poseidon protested that its memory would outlast that of the wall he and Apollo had built around
the city. Zeus assures his brother that when the Achaeans depart Troy he may wipe out every trace of the makeshift fortifications.

Day 18 Second Day of Battle

Books 8-10: Zeus orders the gods to stay out of the battle and himself watches the action from the vantage point of Mt. Ida. The scale he uses to weigh the
fates of the two armies indicates that the Trojans will win the day. Following a Trojan advance the Greeks enjoy a brief resurgence, but Hektor is
unstoppable and the Greeks are soon driven back behind the wall. Nightfall finds the Achaeans dispirited and the Trojans camped on the plain, eager to
force their way among the Greek ships at morning's light.

Agamemnon summons the Greek generals to private council and, now with utter seriousness, advises abandoning Troy that night in order to escape with
their lives. Diomedes rashly advocates staying the course. Nestor, however, gently urges Agamemnon to placate Achilles with gifts and conciliatory words,
knowing that Diomedes' plan is doomed to fail apart from the fighting power of the offended king. In a thinly veiled effort to obligate and subordinate
Achilles, Agamemnon sends Odysseus, Ajax, and Phoinix to his shelter with a rich offer of ransom. The embassy attempts to effect his return by recasting
Agamemnon's ransom as a generous gift, by enticing Achilles with the possibility of killing Hektor and winning glory, and by exploiting their bonds of
friendship and filial duty, but to no avail. Asserting that he must choose between a long but inglorious life in his native Phthia and death at Troy, which
would bring him undying fame, Achilles declares his intent to set sail for home the next day. That his only choice, however, is to die at Troy is evinced when
he concludes that he will not leave but will also not take up arms until the Trojans threaten to set his own vessels ablaze. The embassy reports
disingenuously that Achilles will leave for home the next day and he advises others to do the same. Dismayed, the council nonetheless approves Diomedes'
flawed plan to carry on the war without their best combatant. Odysseus and Diomedes, clad in animal skins, set out on a noctural spying mission in hopes
of discovering the designs of the Trojans, whose campfires flicker ominously on the plain.

Day 19 Third day of battle

Books 11-18: Agamemnon leads the armies out and himself kills a number of Trojans, allowing the Greek forces to gain the upper hand temporarily. When
he is wounded and carried in a chariot back to the ships, Hektor recognizes it as a sign that Zeus will now favor the Trojans. Diomedes and Odysseus also
retreat from the battlefield wounded, while Ajax holds the Trojans at bay. The three injured leaders are shortly followed by Machaon the physician, who is
struck by an arrow and carried back to the camp in Nestor's chariot. Achilles, watching the wounded come in, suggests to Patroklos that perhaps now the
Achaeans' situation is dire enough that they will come to him on bended knee. He sends his friend off to Nestor's shelter to inquire about the injured man
(and perhaps to give the old king opportunity to counsel the leaders to do what is right by Achilles).

With Hektor pressing ever nearer to the palisade, Patroklos chafes to ask his question of Nestor and hurry back to Achilles. But the old man indulges in a
long speech, urging his young guest to persuade Achilles either to join battle or, failing that, to send Patroklos out in Achilles' armor at the head of the
Myrmidons to frighten the Trojans and buy the Greeks some breathing space. Patroklos is further delayed in returning to Achilles' shclter when he comes
across a wounded companion, Eurypylos, and stops to tend him. Meanwhile Ajax manages to defend the wall surrounding the ship until Hektor comes close
enough to smash one of the gates with a stone, allowing the Trojans to pour through the breach. At this moment, Zeus is temporarily distracted, perhaps
by Hera's seduction, as we will see, and Poseidon takes advantage of his inattention to join the battle and rally the Greeks. The three wounded leaders,
Agamemnon, Diomedes, and Odysseus also make an appearance and urge on their troops fighting among the ships. With renewed vigor, the Achaeans turn
the Trojans in flight back across the ditch. Ajax hurls a huge stone at Hektor and sends him reeling; his companions manage to haul him to safety where he
lies on the ground in a daze. And all the while Zeus is oblivious, having fallen into a deep sleep after being seduced by his wife.

The king of the gods awakens to find that his plan to help the Trojans, and thus fulfil his promise to Thetis, has been derailed: Hektor is on the ground
vomiting blood and the Greeks are streaming out through the walls in hot pursuit. Zeus quickly orders the gods helping the Achaeans to leave the
battlefield and sends Apollo to revive Hektor and help the Trojans recover the ground lost while he was sleeping. With Apollo's help, the palisade is
breached a second time so that the Trojans are able to cross it in waves. The Achaeans fall back and the fighting rages among the ships; Hektor reaches for
one of the prows and prepares to torch it.

Patroklos, hearing the noise of battle coming nearer, leaves Eurypolos and carries Nestor's message to Achilles. Achilles consents to let his friend lead the
Myrmidons out in his armor on the condition that Patroklos not pursue the Trojans all the way to the city wall. The ruse works for a time, and Patroklos
slaughters Trojans until he is stopped by Apollo, who knocks off his helmet, and Hektor, who deals him a death blow. A tug-of-war ensues over the corpse,
by now stripped of its marvelous armor. When Achilles hears of his friend's death, he steps to the wall and utters a terrifying war cry, a flame emerging
from his head; this frightens the Trojans so that the Achaeans recover Patroklos' body. Achilles mourns, lying in the dust, but also steels himself to return
to battle with one goal: to kill Hektor. Soon afterward, he will meet his own end. Hektor now wears Achilles' arms, so Thetis asks Hephaistos to make a
new set for her son.

Day 20 Fourth Day of Battle

Books 19-22: Achilles receives his new armor and summons the Achaeans to assembly in preparation for combat. He announces the end of his anger,
regretting the day he had captured the woman Briseis who became the object of such a ruinous quarrel, and urges the men to marshal for battle at
once. He is delayed, however, first by Agamemnon who denies personal responsibility for the quarrel and extends the same offer of ransom as he had the
night before, and by Odysseus, who insists on taking a common meal before going into combat. Achilles brushes aside both symbols of reconciliation with
Agamemnon, vowing to neither eat nor drink until he avenges Patroklos' death. While the men eat, Athene fortifies him with nectar and ambrosia; he then
arms himself for war.

Zeus assembles the gods on Olympos and gives them leave to rejoin the fighting, in part to keep Achilles from storming the city walls contrary to his
destiny. Achilles nearly kills Aineias, who is fated to survive the war, but Poseidon sweeps him out of danger. He captures 12 Trojans and sends them to
the camp to die on Patroklos' funeral pyre. Lykaon, whom he had sold into slavery before, he now hews down as the Trojan warrior begs for his
life. Achilles' savage slaughter of enemy warriors intensifies until he literally chokes the River Skamandros with their corpses and the river rises up against
him, enraged. Up to now the gods have left Achilles on his own, but when he calls out for help against this elemental force of nature, Hera sends Hephaistos
to overcome the flooding river with fire. The gods return to comic skirmishes among themselves while the berserk mortal hero cuts down the Trojans, who
are now retreating in panic. Apollo distracts Achilles momentarily, allowing the last of the Trojans to escape to safety behind the city walls, except Hektor
who alone remains outside. Gripped by fear, Hektor takes flight and Achilles chases him in a grim life or death race around the circuit of the city. When
Athene appears near Hektor in the form of his brother, he takes courage, thinking he is not alone, and turns to face his dread opponent. He asks for an
agreement that whoever is victor will return the corpse of his victim to the family for burial, but Achilles disavows any such settlement. As Priam and
Hekabe look on in horror, Achilles rushes upon Hektor and drives the spear though the soft part of his neck, the only spot left vulnerable by his own
glorious armor. Refusing the offer of ransom gasped out by the dying man, the raging hero counters that if he could he would hack Hektor's flesh away
and eat it raw; as it is, he will leave that messy work to dogs and birds. With that, Achilles lashes the dead man's feet to his chariot and drags him back to
the Achaean camp.

Book 23: That night, after the Greeks share a funeral meal, the ghost of Patroklos visits Achilles in a dream and requests a swift burial.

Day 21

The Greeks burn Patroklos on a funeral pyre, together with offerings and the 12 captured Trojans.

Day 22

Patroklos' bones are gathered and buried under a mound of earth. Achilles announces funeral gamesâ including a chariot race, boxing, wrestling, and a
footraceâ where he presides, distributes the prizes, and settles quarrels but does not participate.

Days 23-33

Book 24: Achilles is still mourning his friend and daily for 12 days drags Hektor's corpse around the funeral mound.

Day 34

The gods meet in council and debate stealing the corpse in order to put an end to Achilles' senseless abuse and allow Hektor's family to perform funeral
rites. Zeus, however, arranges for a settlement that Achilles had earlier disavowed: he sends instructions to Priam to take ransom to Achilles for the release
of his son's body and instructions to Achilles to accept the ransom. That night with Hermes as guide, the king of Troy makes his way into the Achaean
camp and slips unnoticed into Achilles' shelter. He takes hold of the powerful man by the knees, a gesture of supplication, and kisses his hands. Achilles is
moved to pity by the reminder of his own elderly father. The two men weep together for their respective losses and Achilles agrees to accept the fabrics and
other precious objects Priam has brought as ransom and to send the old man back to Troy with his sonâÄôs body. A meal is shared and Achilles agrees to
restrain the Greeks for the 12 days needed to complete the funeral rites.

Days 35-43

Before dawn, Priam is roused early to return to Troy, carrying his dead son on the cart previously loaded down with treasure. Hektor is lamented first by
his wife Andromache, then by his mother Hekabe, and finally by Helen. For nine days the Trojans gather wood for the funeral pyre.

Day 44

Hektor is burned on the funeral pyre.

Day 45

The Trojans gather Hektor's bones for burial, with which the Iliad ends.