108 Fun Facts About Iliad

Which Spartan queen, carried off to Troy by Paris, is the woman the armies fight over in the Iliad?

Helen first appears in the Iliad weaving a tapestry of the very battles being fought for her; even Troy's old men, watching her walk past, say they can see why men endure a war for her.

The Iliad is divided into how many books?

24 books, a division probably made centuries after the poem took shape and often credited to scholars at Alexandria; the Odyssey was split into the same number.

What is the Iliad's opening word in Greek, which announces the theme of the whole poem?

Menis (wrath) is the first word: Achilles' anger at Agamemnon keeps him out of the fighting, and the opening lines say it sent the souls of countless Greek heroes down to Hades.

Which famous episode is told in the Odyssey and by Virgil but appears nowhere in the Iliad?

The Trojan Horse is recalled only briefly in the Odyssey and told in full by Virgil; the Iliad stops at Hector's funeral, with Troy still standing.

Which god sends a plague on the Greek camp at the start of the Iliad?

Apollo's arrows hit the mules and dogs first, then the men, and funeral pyres burn for nine days before Achilles calls the assembly that ends in his quarrel with Agamemnon.

Whose daughter does Agamemnon refuse to return in the Iliad, triggering the plague on the Greek camp?

Chryses, a priest, arrives with a rich ransom and is sent away with threats; once the plague forces Agamemnon's hand, Odysseus sails the girl home to her father.

Which sea-nymph begs Zeus to let the Trojans win until the Greeks honour her son Achilles?

Thetis has a claim on Zeus: when the other Olympians once tried to bind him in chains, she freed him by fetching the hundred-handed giant Briareus up to Olympus.

Which Greek, called the ugliest man at Troy, does Odysseus beat with a sceptre for railing against Agamemnon?

Thersites complains that Agamemnon's tents are full of bronze and captive women while the men do the fighting; yet when the blow raises a bloody welt on his back, the whole army laughs at him.

The long list of Greek contingents in Book 2 of the Iliad is known by what name?

The Catalogue of Ships opens with the poet begging the Muses for help: he could not name the whole host, he says, even with ten tongues and a heart of bronze.

In Book 3 of the Iliad, Paris agrees to settle the war by duelling whom?

Menelaus has Paris by the helmet and is dragging him away when Aphrodite snaps the chin-strap, hides Paris in a mist and sets him down in his own bedroom.

Which Trojan archer breaks the truce by shooting Helen's husband at Athena's prompting?

Pandarus is talked into the shot by Athena in disguise, and it is Athena who then flicks his arrow aside, as a mother brushes a fly from her sleeping child, so that it only wounds.

In Book 5 of the Iliad, Diomedes wounds Aphrodite and which other god?

Ares, the god of war himself, takes Diomedes' spear in the belly, bellows as loud as nine or ten thousand men and flees to Olympus to complain to Zeus.

In the Iliad, Diomedes and the Lycian Glaucus call off their duel after discovering what?

Their grandfathers were guest-friends, a tie the two men treat as binding on them; they swap armour on the spot, and Glaucus hands over gold worth a hundred oxen for bronze worth nine.

What is the name of Hector's baby son, to whom he says farewell in Book 6 of the Iliad?

Astyanax shrinks back crying from his father's horsehair-crested helmet, so Hector laughs, lays it on the ground and kisses him.

Which Greek hero duels Hector to a draw in Book 7 of the Iliad until nightfall separates them?

The two exchange gifts afterwards - Hector's sword and Ajax's belt - both later linked to their deaths.

Which three men make up the embassy sent to persuade Achilles to return in Book 9 of the Iliad?

Odysseus, Ajax and Phoenix find Achilles singing to a lyre; he turns them down, saying he must choose between a long, obscure life and a short one whose fame never dies.

In the night raid of Book 10 of the Iliad, Odysseus and Diomedes kill which Trojan scout?

Dolon had volunteered to spy on the Greek ships for the promise of Achilles' horses; caught in his wolf-skin, he tells all he knows and is beheaded in mid-plea.

Which god defies Zeus's ban and secretly rallies the Greeks in Book 13 of the Iliad?

Poseidon comes up out of the sea and takes the form and voice of the seer Calchas to put heart into the two Ajaxes, since he dare not help openly.

Which cautious Trojan, born the same night as Hector, twice urges him to pull back and is ignored?

Polydamas reads an eagle dropping a snake as a warning and is brushed aside; later, waiting alone for Achilles, Hector admits he should have taken his friend's advice to retreat.

Whose son, a leading Trojan ally, is killed by Patroclus in Book 16 of the Iliad?

Zeus's son Sarpedon dies after his father thinks of snatching him to safety and is talked out of it; Zeus sheds a rain of blood, then has Sleep and Death carry the body home to Lycia.

Which Trojan spears the dazed Patroclus in the back just before Hector delivers the killing blow?

Euphorbos strikes from behind, then runs back into the crowd rather than face even an unarmed Patroclus; the philosopher Pythagoras later claimed to have been him in a former life.

In the Iliad, who brings Achilles the news that Patroclus is dead?

Antilochus, the young son of Nestor, delivers it in tears and then holds Achilles' hands, afraid he will turn a blade on his own throat.

Homer's long description of Achilles' shield in the Iliad is the most famous early example of which literary device?

Ekphrasis is the vivid description of a work of art; W. H. Auden answered Homer's in 1952 with a shield that shows barbed wire and an execution in place of dancing and sacrifice.

What does Homer set around the outermost rim of the shield of Achilles in the Iliad?

The river Ocean rings a shield that is mostly peace, not war: one city is under siege, but the other scenes show a wedding, a lawsuit, ploughing, a grape harvest and a dance.

In the Iliad, what does Achilles' horse Xanthos do as his master sets out to avenge Patroclus?

Speaks, prophesying his death: Hera lends Xanthos a human voice to warn Achilles that he will soon fall to a god and a mortal, and then the Furies strike the horse dumb again.

Which river god fights Achilles in the Iliad after he chokes the water with Trojan corpses?

Scamander comes so close to drowning Achilles that the hero cries out he would rather have died by Hector's hand than be swept off like a swineherd's boy in a winter flood.

In the Iliad, Athena tricks Hector into ending his flight around the walls by taking the form of whom?

His brother Deiphobus seems to have come out to stand beside him; but when Hector's spear glances off Achilles' shield and he calls for another, nobody is there.

How does Achilles dishonour Hector's body after killing him in the Iliad?

Drags it behind his chariot, with oxhide straps threaded through the ankles; Andromache, who has just ordered a hot bath for her husband's return, sees it from the wall and faints.

Which god guides Priam unseen through the Greek camp to Achilles' tent in the Iliad?

Hermes meets the old king disguised as one of Achilles' own young soldiers, takes the reins of his chariot, puts the sentries into a deep sleep and draws back the bolts of the gate.

In the Iliad, what does Priam kiss when he begs Achilles for Hector's body?

His hands, the hands that slew so many of his sons: Priam then asks Achilles to think of his own ageing father, and the two enemies end up weeping together.

In the Iliad, what does the ghost of Patroclus ask of Achilles besides a quick burial?

Their bones in one urn, the golden two-handled jar Achilles had from his mother; he reaches out to hold his friend once more, and the ghost slips away like smoke.

How much of the Trojan War does the Iliad cover?

A few weeks in year ten: the poem runs only from Achilles' quarrel with Agamemnon to Hector's funeral, leaving the war's beginning and its end to other poems.

The Iliad is composed in what metre?

Dactylic hexameter has six feet to the line; 'dactyl' is Greek for finger, because the foot's one long and two short syllables were likened to a finger's three joints.

Homeric Greek, the literary blend in which the Iliad is composed, is based mainly on which dialect?

Ionic was the Greek of Ionia, on the coast of Asia Minor, which is one reason Homer is thought to have come from there; Smyrna and Chios both claimed him as their own.

What were the professional reciters called who performed the Iliad at Greek festivals such as the Panathenaia?

Rhapsodes comes from Greek words for sewing and song; they are shown with a cloak and staff, and Plato's Ion has one insist that knowing Homer makes him as good as a general.

The oldest complete manuscript of the Iliad, copied in the tenth century, is kept in which city's Marciana Library?

Venice was given it by Cardinal Bessarion, a Greek-born scholar who donated his library to the city in 1468; its margins are crowded with ancient scholars' notes on Homer.

The first printed edition of the Iliad in Greek, issued in the 1480s, appeared in which city?

Florence had the Athenian scholar Demetrios Chalkokondyles, summoned there by Lorenzo de' Medici to teach Greek; he saw Homer through the press in 1488 and later moved on to Milan.

Whose 1920s study of stock epithets showed the Iliad grew from oral composition?

He and Albert Lord tested the theory on living Serbian oral poets in Yugoslavia.

Which English playwright began publishing his Iliad in 1598, part of the first complete English translation of Homer?

George Chapman brought out the first books in 1598 and finished the poem in 1611, in long 'fourteener' lines; two centuries later it moved a young Romantic poet to write a sonnet about first opening it.

Which Romantic poet's sonnet compares first reading an English translation of Homer to sighting the Pacific?

John Keats sat up until daylight reading the translation aloud with a friend, who found the sonnet on his breakfast table that morning; it credits the first sight of the Pacific to Cortez, not Balboa.

Whose Iliad in rhyming couplets did the scholar Richard Bentley reportedly call 'a pretty poem' but refuse to call Homer?

Alexander Pope had the last laugh: sold by subscription a volume a year, his Iliad earned enough for him to move to a villa at Twickenham, where he built his famous grotto.

Which American classicist and poet published his verse translation of the Iliad in 1951?

Richmond Lattimore said his aim was to carry the meaning of the Greek 'in a speed and rhythm analogous to' those he found in Homer; he gave the Odyssey the same treatment in 1965.

Who published the first full-length English translation of the Iliad by a woman, in 2015?

Caroline Alexander was better known for bestsellers on Shackleton's Endurance expedition and the mutiny on the Bounty before she turned Homer's Greek into English.

Madeline Miller's novel The Song of Achilles won which literary award in 2012?

The Orange Prize for Fiction went to a debut Miller spent ten years on: five years in, she threw away a finished manuscript and started again from scratch.

Simone Weil's 1939 essay called the Iliad 'the poem of' what?

Force, in Weil's definition, is whatever turns a person subjected to it into a thing; her Iliad shows it harming the victors who wield it as surely as the victims it crushes.

In the Iliad, Glaucus tells Diomedes the story of which Chimera-slaying hero before the two call off their duel?

Bellerophon had arrived in Lycia carrying a folded tablet that, unknown to him, asked the king to have him killed; the Chimera was the first of the tasks meant to do it.

Which goddess seduces Zeus and lulls him to sleep in the Iliad so the Greeks can rally behind his back?

Hera prepares by borrowing Aphrodite's embroidered love-charm and by bribing the god Sleep with the promise of one of the Graces for a wife.

In the Iliad, who drives Achilles' chariot when he finally returns to battle?

Automedon had driven Patroclus into his last battle; when Patroclus fell, Hector went after the charioteer too, but Achilles' immortal horses carried him clear.

Which god drives a raging river back from Achilles in the Iliad with a wall of flame?

Hephaestus burns the trees and the corpses on the banks and sets the water itself boiling, until the river swears never again to lift a hand to save the Trojans.

Which Trojan hero, rescued by Aphrodite from Diomedes in the Iliad, is spared by fate to survive the war?

Aeneas is saved a second time by a god who usually backs the other side, yet declares that Aeneas and his children's children are fated to rule the Trojans.

The Iliad looks back to a heroic world that collapsed at the end of which era?

The Late Bronze Age palaces of Mycenaean Greece fell around 1200 BC and their script went out of use, so for centuries the memory of that world was kept only in sung poetry.

Which Shakespeare play is set during the Trojan War and borrows part of its plot from the Iliad?

Troilus and Cressida ends with Achilles having his Myrmidons cut Hector down, then ordering them to shout that Achilles has slain him.

Who played Hector opposite Brad Pitt's Achilles in the 2004 film Troy?

Eric Bana's Hector fights Pitt's Achilles in the film's climactic duel; in an irony no poet planned, Pitt injured his own Achilles tendon during the shoot and delayed filming for weeks.

Which poet began War Music, his free 'account' of the Iliad, for BBC radio in 1959?

Christopher Logue had no ancient Greek: he worked from earlier English translations and a word-for-word crib from the scholar who proposed the project.

Emily Wilson's 2023 translation of the Iliad uses which verse form?

Unrhymed iambic pentameter is the default rhythm of long narrative poems in English, close to ordinary speech; Wilson had already used the same line for her Odyssey in 2017.

Which psychiatrist's 1994 book Achilles in Vietnam linked the Iliad to combat trauma?

Jonathan Shay was working at a veterans' clinic in Boston when, in his words, the veterans 'simply kidnapped' him; he heard in their stories the experience of war that Homer describes.

Pat Barker's 2018 novel The Silence of the Girls retells the Iliad from whose perspective?

Briseis is the captive whose seizure starts the quarrel, yet in Homer she speaks only to mourn Patroclus; Barker makes her the narrator and continued her story in The Women of Troy.

Which name does Homer use most often in the Iliad for the Greek army besieging Troy?

Achaeans is the commonest of Homer's three names for them, ahead of Argives and Danaans; 'Hellenes', the Greeks' later name for themselves, turns up just once in the poem.

Which Hollywood star played Achilles in Troy, the 2004 blockbuster loosely based on Homer's Iliad?

Brad Pitt played Achilles opposite Eric Bana's Hector, and years later admitted he was disappointed with the film.

The mound of Hisarlik, long identified as the site of Homer's Troy, lies in which modern country?

Turkey holds the ruins, where archaeologists count nine layers, each one a city built on the remains of the last.

Later legend, not Homer's Iliad, made which part of Achilles's body his only vulnerable spot?

His heel became the weak spot only in later tellings: the Roman poet Statius, writing in the first century AD, has the earliest surviving version of the story.

Most ancient biographies of Homer, the poet credited with the Iliad, gave him which physical trait?

Blindness is how most ancient lives pictured Homer, and one tradition adds that he failed to solve a riddle set by fishermen.

Which conqueror took an annotated Iliad on campaign and saw himself as a new Achilles?

Alexander the Great was given the copy by his tutor Aristotle, and when he reached Troy he honoured the tomb of Achilles.

Homer's famous epithet for the sea, used in the Iliad, likens it to which drink?

Wine was Homer's comparison for the sea, and the British statesman William Gladstone combed the poems in 1858 and found no blue in them at all.

Homer's best-known epithet for Achilles, repeated across the Iliad, praises which physical quality?

His swift feet earn Achilles the tag 'swift-footed' even when he is sitting in his tent, because a Homeric epithet marks a fixed quality, not the moment.

What does Patroclus borrow in Book 16 of the Iliad so the Trojans will mistake him for Achilles?

His armour does the trick and the Trojans fall back, but Patroclus ignores a warning to return once the camp is safe and chases them to the city.

Which German businessman began digging at Hisarlik in 1870, sure that Homer's Troy lay beneath?

Heinrich Schliemann struck gold there in 1873 and named the hoard after King Priam, though it lay in a layer hundreds of years too early for the Trojan War.

Whom does the poet call on to sing the story in the very first line of Homer's Iliad?

The Muse is asked to sing the tale through the poet, an opening move that Virgil and Dante later borrowed for long poems of their own.

Homer's Iliad covers only a few weeks in which year of the long Greek siege of Troy?

The tenth year is the setting, and the core of the poem, Books 2 to 23, spans just four days and two nights of the war.

Helen, who left for Troy with Paris, had been queen of which Greek city-state?

Sparta was the home she left, and in Book 3 of the Iliad Helen yearns for her former husband, her city and her parents.

Agamemnon, who commands the whole Greek army in Homer's Iliad, is king of which city?

Mycenae later yielded a gold death mask that its finder named after Agamemnon, although it is 300 to 400 years older than any Trojan War.

What name does Homer give the fiercely loyal soldiers whom Achilles leads to Troy in the Iliad?

The Myrmidons were said to have begun as ants that Zeus turned into men, a tale spun from the Greek word for an ants' nest.

What does Achilles stage in Book 23 of the Iliad to honour his dead companion Patroclus?

Funeral games fill a whole day near the end of the poem, with Achilles giving out the prizes, and Virgil later had his own hero hold similar games for his dead father.

What does King Priam do on entering Achilles's tent to plead for the body of his son Hector?

Kisses his hands is what the old king does, the very hands that had killed so many of his sons, and the two enemies end up weeping together.

What does Hector take off in Book 6 of the Iliad because it has frightened his baby son?

His plumed helmet, with its nodding horsehair crest, makes the boy shrink back crying; his parents laugh, and Hector lays it on the ground to kiss him.

Which goddess, lover of the Trojan prince Tithonus, does Homer often describe as 'rosy-fingered'?

Eos, the dawn, won immortality for her Trojan lover but not eternal youth, so in the myth he simply went on ageing for ever.

What is Achilles doing when the Greek envoys reach his tent in Book 9 of Homer's Iliad?

Playing a lyre he had taken as plunder, Achilles is singing of the famous deeds of heroes while Patroclus sits opposite in silence.

In Book 22 of the Iliad, what does Zeus hold up to settle Hector's fate as Achilles chases him?

Golden scales tip against Hector: Zeus sets a doom in each pan, Hector's sinks toward Hades, and the god who had been protecting him leaves at once.

When Diomedes wounds Aphrodite in Book 5 of the Iliad, what flows from the goddess instead of blood?

Ichor is what Homer's gods have for blood because, the poet explains, they do not eat mortal food, which is also why they never die.

From which mountain near Troy does Zeus watch the fighting for much of Homer's Iliad?

Mount Ida gives Zeus a ringside seat from its peak Gargarus, and it is where myth has him snatch the Trojan boy Ganymede to be cupbearer to the gods.

Which name does Homer use most often in the Iliad for the army besieging Troy?

Achaeans far outnumbers Homer's two other names for the same army, Argives and Danaans, and often comes with the tag 'long-haired'.

Which Latin phrase, coined by the poet Horace, names the narrative technique that opens the Iliad?

In medias res, 'into the middle of things', was Horace's praise for poets who skip the backstory; its opposite, ab ovo, means starting from the egg.

Which Greek word names the undying glory that Achilles chooses over a long life in Homer's Iliad?

Kleos is the fame that outlives a hero, and in Book 9 Achilles says his mother told him the price: stay and win it, or sail home to a long, forgotten life.

What is Helen doing when she first appears in Homer's Iliad, in her room at Troy in Book 3?

Weaving at a loom, Helen is working the very battles being fought for her sake into a great purple cloth when she is called out to watch.

What does Achilles cut off and give to the dead Patroclus at the pyre in Book 23 of the Iliad?

A lock of hair that his father had vowed to a river god at home for his safe return goes to Patroclus instead: Achilles accepts he will never go back.

What do critics call the long comparisons, often to hunting lions, that run through Homer's Iliad?

An epic simile can run for many lines, and Homer's often lift the listener off the battlefield for a moment into a world of peace and plenty.

After Homer's Iliad was written down and divided into books, each book was labelled with what?

A Greek letter labels each book, and most scholars credit the division not to Homer but to the Hellenistic scholars of Alexandria.

What does Homer's Iliad call the entrance to Troy where Hector parts from his wife in Book 6?

The Scaean Gates open onto the battlefield, and the dying Hector foretells that Achilles himself will be killed in front of them.

In Book 22 of the Iliad, where on Hector's body does Achilles land the blow that kills him?

His neck is the one place left unprotected, and because the point misses his windpipe, Hector is able to speak and beg for his body to be sent home.

Which twin gods carry a slain Lycian king home from Troy on Zeus's orders in Book 16 of the Iliad?

Sleep and Death, the twins Hypnos and Thanatos, bear the washed and anointed body back to Lycia so that his people can bury him with honour.

Which American translator published a verse Iliad in 1990 and followed it with an Odyssey in 1996?

Robert Fagles won the Academy of American Poets' Landon translation award for that Iliad in 1991, and went on to translate Virgil as well.

Which poet's 1952 poem 'The Shield of Achilles' replaces Homer's scenes with a bleak modern world?

W. H. Auden made it the title poem of a 1955 collection that won America's National Book Award for Poetry the following year.

Which Greek term names a warrior's finest hour, like the rampage of Diomedes in Book 5 of the Iliad?

Aristeia literally means a moment of excellence: one warrior dominates the field and cuts down a string of opponents, sometimes at the cost of his own life.

Which tyrant of Athens did ancient writers credit with having Homer's poems collected and organised?

Pisistratus, who died around 527 BC, was said to have had the poems put in order at Athens, a story scholars call the Peisistratean recension.

Which lost Epic Cycle poem told how the Trojan War began, before the Iliad takes up the story?

The Cypria told of the Judgement of Paris and filled eleven books, yet only about fifty of its lines survive, quoted by other writers.

Which newly arrived Thracian king is killed in his sleep during the night raid in Book 10 of the Iliad?

Rhesus had only just arrived with the finest horses on the plain, and the two raiders who killed him drove the team back to the Greek camp.

Idomeneus, a front-rank Greek commander in Homer's Iliad, is the king of which large island?

Crete is his by descent from the legendary King Minos, and Mozart's 1781 opera Idomeneo tells the story of his return home from the war.

Which sea nymph rises from the waves in Book 1 of the Iliad to comfort her weeping son Achilles?

Thetis then goes to Zeus, clasps his knees and persuades him to let the Trojans win until the Greeks honour her son again.

Who is having a hot bath prepared for her husband Hector in the Iliad when she hears he is dead?

Andromache had already lost her father and seven brothers to Achilles, so with Hector gone she has no family left but her infant son.

Which queen in the Iliad bares her breast from Troy's ramparts, begging her son Hector not to fight?

Hecuba later tells Priam she could sink her teeth into Achilles's liver, so fierce is her grief for the son he killed.

Which aged king of Pylos keeps telling the Greeks in the Iliad about the better men of his youth?

Nestor has seen two generations pass and rules over a third, and Agamemnon says Troy would soon fall if he had ten advisers like him.

Which mortal king, the husband of a sea goddess, is the father of Achilles in Homer's Iliad?

Peleus is the absent father Priam invokes in the final book: asked to think of his own old father waiting at home, Achilles breaks down and weeps.

Which Greek seer reveals in Book 1 of the Iliad why a plague is ravaging the army?

Calchas first makes Achilles swear to protect him, knowing that the truth he is about to tell will enrage Agamemnon.

Which daughter of Priam, elsewhere a famed prophetess, first sees Hector's body return in the Iliad?

Cassandra spots the wagon from the citadel before anyone else, and her cry brings the whole city out to mourn Hector.

Which wind-footed goddess carries most of Zeus's messages to gods and mortals in Homer's Iliad?

Iris, goddess of the rainbow, even takes the shape of a Trojan princess in Book 3 to fetch Helen out to watch the armies.

Which herald in Homer's Iliad, as loud as fifty men, gave English an adjective for a booming voice?

Stentor is named only once, in Book 5, when a goddess takes his shape and his huge voice to shame the Greeks back into the fight.

Which goddess runs weeping to Zeus in Book 21 of the Iliad after his wife boxes her ears?

Artemis is beaten about the head with her own bow and flees in tears, leaving her scattered arrows for her mother Leto to gather up.

Homer's Troy stood near the mouth of which strait, known to the ancient Greeks as the Hellespont?

The Dardanelles let Troy control the traffic entering the strait, and the name is said to go back to Dardanus, a mythical son of Zeus.