History Literature / TheIliad

* FatalFamilyPhoto: Obviously, photos, fatal or otherwise, don't exist in the context of ''The Iliad'', but it's notable that the only family shown are Hector's obviously beloved wife and child, which adds to the pathos at his death.
** In a meta-variation, any character whose genealogy is explained in great detail is definitely about to bite the dust.

* {{Hypocrite}}: What did the war start over? Paris taking Menelaus's woman. So why does Menelaus's brother think he can take Achilles's woman?

* CharacterFilibuster: Goes with the territory for epic poetry, but often characters have [[TalkingIsAFreeAction huge monologues even in the middle of battles]].
** [[LampshadeHanging Lampshaded]] when both Odysseus and Menelaus basically ask, "Why am I talking to myself like this?" during their speeches.

** [[TheScrappy Except]] [[TheLoad Paris]]... though he does get to kill Achilles.
** BadassAngster: Achilles. When he's not in UnstoppableRage or PsychopathicManchild mode, he's {{Wangst}}ing in his tent, asking [[MommasBoy mommy]] to punish the others for being mean to him.
** BadassNormal: Many, but the god fighting Diomedes is the standout.
*** Uh... how? He's not of godly birth himself but when he performs his most heroic deeds he does so with Athena's aid and guidance. If anyone even can be considered this in the ancient world it would probably be Telamonian Ajax because his pride in not being aided by the gods is his greatest strength and fault.
**** It's true that Diomedes, like Odysseus, receives help from Athene, but A) it's not always the case and B) it in no way diminishes his heroism. He's repeatedly shown to be the most fanatically brave of the Greeks, rallying to save Nestor in Book 9, when everyone else (including Aias), has fled. He also twice drives Hektor from the field and at one point appears on the verge of taking Troy, single handedly and against the will of Zeus. Only the timely intervention of top-tier diety Apollo can check his advance.
*** He also gets bonus points for throwing a spear at freaking ARES and causing him to flee the battle
*** Plus some myths say that he had the most wartime experience, even more than Nestor. And Diomedes was only in his 20s when he fought in the Trojan War!
** RetiredBadass: Nestor.

* LivingMacGuffin: Helen of [[strike:Sparta]] Troy.

* AntiHero or VillainProtagonist: Achilles performs many acts of douchebaggery throughout the poem and is one of the biggest jerks in ancient literature. This makes for a good foil between him and Hector who can be seen as much more heroic than his Greek opponent (though admittedly, Hector is often victorious in tremendous part due to machinations of the gods and could be seen as unduly arrogant due to this. And then there's his plan to display Patroclus' body from the battlements).

** Additonally, there were several ways to save Troy. Various prophecies stated that is so and so was alive on the Trojan side or so and so did not fight on the Greek side Troy would never fall. Needless to say the Greeks took care of all of those.

* BoringInvincibleHero: Achilles

* FiveManBand: The Achean leaders.

* LadyOfWar: Athena herself helps out the Greek side. [[ActionGirl Also beats up Ares at one point]].

* NietzscheWannabe: ''Achilles'', making this form of StrawNihilist OlderThanFeudalism. He gets an absolutely epic rant about how life and the heroic code are meaningless, and they're all going to die and be forgotten anyway. He goes so far as to wish everyone but himself and Patroclus dead in the hope that then, their glory might actually endure.

* OffWithHisHead: A couple of people get beheaded. At least once, it's done with a ''stone''.

* PsychopathicManchild: All the characters have they're moments actually, but Achilles really takes the cake (outside of the JerkassGods that is).

* RetCon: Common scholarly consensus is that Aphrodite and Apollo didn't even ''exist'' in the Greek pantheon at the time the ''Iliad'' takes place (the Greek Bronze Age), despite being relatively major characters in it. Admittedly, [[HistoricalFiction Homer composed it hundreds of years after the fact and had no way of knowing this]].
* RevengeMyopia: Hector gets the bad end of this. His country is at war with the Greeks (who are the invaders) and he kills Patroclus in battle. Achilles, Patroclus's best friend, kills Hector in revenge and desecrates his corpse. Today, Hector is the one usually portrayed sympathetically.

** Patroclos calls Achilles out on his [[AchillesInHisTent moping]] over his wounded honor instead of fighting the Trojans.

* HeroicBastard: A few of the heroes, including [[TheArcher Tuecer]], are mentioned to be illegitimate of birth.

* BigBrotherComplex: Agamemnon to Menelaus. Seriously, ''[[BerserkButton don't hurt his little brother]]''.

* AchillesInHisTent [[hottip:*:but not AchillesHeel; the "invulnerable except for his heel" superpower comes from Statius's fanfic some 9 centuries after Homer]]
* TheCassandra
* LauncherOfAThousandShips/[[WorldsMostBeautifulWoman World's Most Beautiful Woman]] [[invoked]]

''The Iliad'' (Greek: ''Ιλιάς'') is an epic poem from TheTrojanCycle describing a few months in the ninth year of TheTrojanWar, a siege of the great city of Troy by an alliance of [[strike:Greek]] Greek city-states. It is considered one of the cornerstones of Western literature.

* SadlyMythtaken: It seems that a good many people do not understand that the Trojan Horse, the death of Achilles, the theft of the Palladium, the fall of Troy, and good many other stories set around the Trojan War do ''not'' occur in the ''Iliad'' proper. At most, they are mentioned in the ''[[Literature/TheOdyssey Odyssey]]''. We've lost the other epics from TheTrojanCycle that actually dealt with these episodes. Some colorful additions (like Achilles' AchillesHeel) come from sources ''much'' later.

* TheThreeFacesOfAdam: Achilles (Hunter), Agamemnon (Lord), Nestor (Prophet); Paris (Hunter), Hector (Lord), Priam (Prophet).

* AchillesHeel
* AchillesInHisTent

* AchillesHeel: The TropeNamer.
** Although see SadlyMythtaken below -- Achilles's heel never comes into the ''Iliad'', and Achilles is once wounded elsewhere. His death doesn't occur until the ''[[TheTrojanCycle Aethiopis]]'', one of the lost epics.

* HoYay: Hey, they're Greeks.

* SadlyMythtaken: It seems that a good many people do not understand that the Trojan Horse, the death of Achilles, the theft of the Palladium, the fall of Troy, and good many other stories set around the Trojan War do ''not'' occur in the ''Iliad'' proper. At most, they are mentioned in the ''[[Literature/TheOdyssey Odyssey]]''. We've lost the other epics from TheTrojanCycle that actually dealt with these episodes.

The main plot concerns Achilles, the invaders' strongest soldier. Achilles, according to prophecy, has a choice: either die an untimely death that ensures his legend lives forever, or retire to a [[IJustWantToBeNormal life of normality]] and obscurity. After a falling-out with King Agamemnon, Achilles [[AchillesInHisTent withdraws from the war]], tempted by the second option. In his absence, the fortunes of battle begin to swing the Trojan way. Achilles eventually, of course, chooses glory... ''[[RoaringRampageOfRevenge after]]'' [[ItsPersonal the death of his ]][[HoYay friend ]][[ItsPersonal Patroclus]].

''The Iliad'' (Greek: ''Ιλιάς'') is an epic poem from TheTrojanCycle describing a few months in the ninth year of TheTrojanWar, a siege of the great city of Troy by an alliance of [[strike:Greek]] Achaean city-states. It is considered one of the cornerstones of Western literature.

* WordOfDante: Many of the elements now centrally linked to the Trojan War story -- Paris killing Achilles, the Trojan Horse -- were invented by later authors writing in the same tradition... notably Books II and III in the ''[[Literature/TheAeneid Aeneid]]'' and a passage in the ''[[Literature/TheMetamorphoses Metamorphoses]]''.
** Achilles' death by Paris is prophesied several times in the ''Iliad''. The Trojan Horse first appears in ''The Odyssey''.
** The events that happened after the ''Iliad'' are not completely Vergil and Ovid-sourced. Some versions crop up in Athenian tragedies and others in epics probably written a century or so before that. The Trojan Horse in particular is found in the ''Little Iliad'' and the ''Sack of Troy,'' written centuries before either Vergil or Ovid. WordOfDante still works, though; in antiquity several of the poems had a tendency to be ascribed to Homer and material from them included in adaptations.
*** Many scholars theorize that there were many other Homer poems (assuming there even ''was'' a Homer...) which are no longer extant, presumably including other Trojan War accounts.

* WordOfDante: Many of the elements now centrally linked to the Trojan War story -- Paris killing Achilles, the Trojan Horse -- were invented by later authors writing in the same tradition... notably Books II and III in the ''[[Literature/TheAeneid Aeneid]]'' and a passage in the ''[[TheMetamorphoses Metamorphoses]]''.

''The Iliad'' (Greek: ''Ιλιάς'') is an epic poem from TheTrojanCycle describing a few months in the ninth year of TheTrojanWar, a siege of the great city of Troy by an alliance of [[strike:Greek]] Achaean city-states.

* BondOneLiner: After spearing Cebriones and causing him to backflip out of his chariot, Patroclus remarks that he'd make a good oyster diver. Of course, this being ''Literature/TheIliad'', it's [[CharacterFilibuster a bit longer than one line.]]
* BookEnds: ''Literature/TheIliad'' begins and ends with an initially refused ransom that is eventually accepted.

** In books five and six of ''Literature/TheIliad'', Diomedes goes on a god-stabbing rampage. First he slashes Aphrodite's arm when she tries to rescue Aeneas. Apollo picks up the baton and is forced to repel three attacks by Diomedes before using his divine don't-mess-with-the-gods voice to tell him to back off. The wounded Aphrodite meanwhile runs and tattles to her lover, Ares, the god of slaughter; he promptly arrives to lay down the law. Instead, he gets ImpaledWithExtremePrejudice by Diomedes's spear, causing him to howl like thousands of men in pain (literally) and run to his daddy. Diomedes becomes the only mortal to injure two gods in a single day, though this could not have been done without massive help from Athena. Some scholars believes that this whole episode pre-dates ''The Iliad'', and Homer lumped it into his own epic.

* FatalFamilyPhoto: Obviously, photos, fatal or otherwise, don't exist in the context of ''Literature/TheIliad'', but it's notable that the only family shown are Hector's obviously beloved wife and child, which adds to the pathos at his death.

* FinalSpeech: Sarpedon and Patroclus get these in ''Literature/TheIliad.''

* ForegoneConclusion: Homer's audience would have been very familiar with the myths behind the story, and known how it all ended. In ''The Iliad'', the fact that the Trojans are doomed to lose is known even by Hector himself.

* GreyAndGrayMorality: Very much so in ''Literature/TheIliad.'' While largely centering on the Greek point of view, the Trojans are also described largely as noble, especially Hector.

* LudicrousGibs: Sometimes the deaths in ''Literature/TheIliad'' are... messy.

* RedShirtArmy: Hundreds die in ''Literature/TheIliad'', but only about four have any emotional import.

* RetCon: Common scholarly consensus is that Aphrodite and Apollo didn't even ''exist'' in the Greek pantheon at the time ''Literature/TheIliad'' takes place (the Greek Bronze Age), despite being relatively major characters in it. Admittedly, [[HistoricalFiction Homer composed it hundreds of years after the fact and had no way of knowing this]].

** Also a good number of people seem believe that the "Iliad" is a myth when instead it's an epic poem (there is a difference).

* TalkingIsAFreeAction: Several characters give speeches in the middle of battle, both to the other men and the enemy. Patroclus both lampshades and plays this straight in ''Literature/TheIliad'', when he points in the middle of battle that words are good for debate and not in war, and that in the time you'll give a nice speech a whole bunch of people will have probably died.

** Achilles' death by Paris is prophesied several times in the ''The Iliad''. The Trojan Horse first appears in ''The Odyssey''.
** The events that happened after the Iliad are not completely Vergil and Ovid-sourced. Some versions crop up in Athenian tragedies and others in epics probably written a century or so before that. The Trojan Horse in particular is found in the ''Little Iliad'' and the ''Sack of Troy,'' written centuries before either Vergil or Ovid. WordOfDante still works, though; in antiquity several of the poems had a tendency to be ascribed to Homer and material from them included in adaptations.

* NietzscheWannabe: ''Achilles'', making this form of StrawNihilist OlderThanDirt. He gets an absolutely epic rant about how life and the heroic code are meaningless, and they're all going to die and be forgotten anyway. He goes so far as to wish everyone but himself and Patroclus dead in the hope that then, their glory might actually endure.

* ViewersAreGoldfish: This was a common aspect of oral tradition at the time.

* CombatByChampion: Menelaus vs. Paris, Hector vs. Ajax. And Hector vs. Achilles, of course.

* BuryYourGays: [[{{YMMV}} Depending on how you interpret]] the relationship between Achilles and Patroclus.

* HeroAntagonist: Hector is in many ways far more noble than Achilles. At least one scholar sees the portrayal of Hector - who conforms to a tee to the ideals of Homer's time and not to those of the era in which the Iliad is set - as a reason why Hector should be regarded a later addition, a kind of [[MarySue Marty Stu]] who supplanted Paris as the leading Trojan hero.

* BoringInvincibleHero: Achilles.

* IPulledAWeirdAl: Apollo, while in the guise of one of Hector's friends, tries to rile him up by accusing him of being "in fight a [[TheChick Paris]]".