Battle descriptions in the Iliad are something of a corner stone in war literature and open up a

recurring, paramount structure still present in less propagandized accounts of modern conflict:
clashes of the individual and the individual as the army. The obvious examples are Achilles,
Hector, Diomedes, Patroclus, and the Ajaxes, but the same concept can be applied to practically
any named character in the work: combat is depicted as a litany of individual endeavors, a series
of one-on-one scraps depicting singular heroism and violence. The rapid succession of carnage is
maddening—some might say exhilarating—and the individualized battle orders can even, at
times, give the impression of teamwork and group action:

“Each one killed his man.

Paris took Menesthius, one who had lived in Arne,
a son of King Areithous lord of the war-dub
and his lady Phylomedusa with large lovely eyes.
Hector slashed Bioneus' throat with a sharp spear,
ripped him under the helmet's hammered bronze rim-“

(Book 7, Lines 8-13)

Men fight together, but they fight their own battles.

Occasionally the violence will be pinned to the vaguest of maneuvers or group efforts: “Athena
merged in the Trojan columns like a fighter” (Book 4, Line 100), but by-and-large the battle
descriptions are similar to this spurt of bloodshed with Paris and Hector. It’s name after name
with personal blows, individual relationships and terms of respect, even the dialogue of
combatants. This is not Thucydides. It’s certainly not Caesar. In terms of martial voice and
authority this is more similar to our modern depictions of battle from relatively modern combat
veterans. “I did such-and-such and I was next to my buddy Whoever and I had this terrible
feeling of something when this other guy got killed.” Beyond the oft mentioned battle-order
section of the epic cataloguing the wide variety of Argive warriors and their leaders, the Iliad
rarely speaks on a strategical level. It can be argued that it doesn’t even speak on a tactical level.
The war in the Iliad is painfully personal, and this plays perfectly into the central theme of the
work: wrath. Visceral. War in Ilium is the result of an incredible personal slight against
Menelaus, but regardless of their degree of involvement, combatants act on their own personal
pains. Honor, revenge, perceived slights and deaths are both impetus and goals of our heroes’
martial behavior. Their emotions play a greater role on the battlefield than any dramatic route or
any pushing of the Argives back to their ships.

Patroclus death turns the tide of battle. Achilles anger turns the tide of war. Hector’s death turns
the tide of a civilization. The evolution of history and the telling of battles has shifted in
academic writing and popular depiction away from the individual emotions of the weak or the
slighted and towards the feats of the unit or the detached guidance of a great man. But to those
who fight at the lowest, most brutal levels, war can still be as personal as it was in Troy. The
heights of human passion and depravity and hinge on personal and familial ties or emotions, just
as they do for Achilles and Hector.

L. Dwyer