Sing, O muse, of the rage of Achilles, son of Peleus, that brought countless ills upon the Achaeans. Many a brave soul it sent hurrying to Hades; many a hero did it leave prey to dogs and vultures ...
So begins
The Iliad, the oldest tale in western literature, attributed to Homer, the first author whose name is still remembered. There are older stories, perhaps including parts of the Bible, but they are anonymous, and their canonical form was not established until later.
The Iliad starts in the ninth year of the Trojan War, when a quarrel among the Greek leaders ends with
Achilles sulking in his tent. His
best friend (and in some versions,
cousin), Patroclus, dresses in his armour, and goes out to fight in his place, but is killed by Hector. Furious, Achilles charges into battle, kills Hector and
desecrates his corpse, then stages an elaborate funeral for Patroclus, which ends with a sports contest. The epic ends with King Priam visiting Achilles in his tent to ask for the return of Hector's body to give his son proper funeral rites. Moved, Achilles apologizes to Priam and complies to the old king's request.
Along the way, there are many epic fights, and
flashbacks to the causes of the war.
The sequel,
The Odyssey, also begins at the end of the story. Ten years after the Trojan War ended, Odysseus's son Telemachus sails round Greece asking the surviving heroes about his father, who has still not returned home. He's eventually told that Odysseus has been held captive by the nymph Calypso.
The story then switches to Odysseus, who escapes from Calypso on a raft, only to be shipwrecked naked on the island of the Phaeacians, where he is found by the local princess, Nausicaa (
no, not THAT one). Odysseus stays with her parents for a few days, listens to a bard singing about the Trojan Horse, then reveals his identity and tell the Phaeaians all his adventures to date.
Odysseus had tricked a Cyclops, spent a year with the sorceress Circe, who had fallen in love with him, and got advice from a dead prophet before his crew committed sacrilege. The gods punished Odysseus by killing his entire crew and shipwrecking him on Calypso's isle, where the eternally young and supernaturally beautiful nymph forced him to spend seven years as her lover, and offered him immortality. Odysseus preferred his human wife, Penelope, so escaped on the raft.
After this long flashback, taking up about a third of the entire story, Odysseus returns home, where he finds that his wife is being bothered by
One Hundred And Eight suitors. Odysseus and Athena, both in disguise, skulk around the palace, plotting. The next day, Odysseus kills all the suitors, twelve housemaids who slept with them (and talked too much about the kingdom's secrets), and a goatherd who insulted him, then reveals his true identity to his wife. All ends more or less happily. Well, after Athena faces down half of Ithaca when they try to kill Odysseus, Telemachus, and Laertes in revenge.
And no, not
that Homer.
This author's works include examples of:
- Achilles Heel: Trope Namer, or at least trope originator since it wasn't actually called that by Homer.
- Achilles In His Tent
- Because Destiny Says So: The prophecy that the newborn Paris would grow up to bring doom to Troy. Thus, the Trojan war and everything connected with it happen because of destiny.
- Break The Haughty: Achilles
- Chekhovs Gunman: Bizarre aversion with Aeneas. He fights with Achilles, but the Gods decide to spare him, and declare that he will be the ruler of all Trojans yet to come... and then Homer never goes anywhere with it. Other, minor Greek traditions had him sailing to Italy after the sack of Troy, prompting Virgil's account of him being the psuedo-founder of Rome.
- Dead Sidekick: Patroclus for Achilles
- Did You Just Punch Out Cthulhu: In books five and six of The Iliad, Diomedes goes on a god-stabbing rampage with the help of Athena. First he slashes Aphrodite's arm when she tries to rescue Aeneas. After she runs and tattles to her brother, Ares, the god of slaughter arrives to lay down the law. Instead, he gets Impaled With Extreme Prejudice by Diomedes's spear, causing him to squeal like a girl and run away. Diomedes becomes the only mortal to injure two gods in a single day. Some scholars believes that this whole episode pre-dates The Iliad, and Homer lumped it into his own epic.
- Dressing As The Enemy
- Genius Bruiser: Odysseus. The Greeks wouldn't take no for an answer from him because of his famed intelligence.
- Hello Nurse: Helen of Troy.
- Heroic BSOD: Achilles is so depressed after Patroclus' death, Patroclus' ghost has to come back to tell him to stop moping and burn his corpse, already!
- How We Got Here
- Ho Yay: Hey, they're Greeks.
- Its All My Fault: Achilles after Patroclus' death — he's right.
- Its Personal
- The Last Temptation
- The Load: Paris may be the Ur Example. Even the other Trojans think he's a philandering, cowardly jerk who's responsible for the war. His prefered weapon is a "cowardly" bow, is humiliated in his only proper fight, and relies on the Goddess of Love to get him out of trouble. In one translation, he gets called a "desperate, womanizing pretty boy" by his Bad Ass older brother Hector, and a "sissy, curly-haired pimp of a bowman" by Diomedes. Of course, in part of the myth not covered in the Iliad, he gets one over Achilles by hitting his heel with his poisoned arrows.
- Minor Injury Overreaction: When Diomedes slashes and stabs Aphrodite and Ares, respectively, it's the first time either of them have been injured, and they apparently aren't accustomed to pain. They both scream in agony and flee back to Olympus. Most of the mortal heroes, on the other hand, take a number of wounds and continue slaughtering each other for years.
- My Girl Is Not A Slut: Penelope.
- Narrative Poem: Not quite the Ur Example...
- No Matter How Much I Beg: Odysseus with the Sirens.
- Roaring Rampage Of Revenge: Achilles loses it when Patroclus bites the dust. Odysseus slaughters every suitor in his home once he returns.
- Sadly Mythtaken: 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 Odyssey.
- Smite Me Oh Mighty Smiter
- Straight Arrow: Paris and Odysseus
- Tragic Hero: So many
- Tricksters
- Trojan Horse
- Unreliable Narrator: Odysseus is hinted to be one of these, talking about stuff that he couldn't possibly know.
- Unstoppable Rage
- Values Dissonance: It is difficult for many modern readers to not instinctively side with the Trojans as a whole and Hector in particular; the mindset of Achilles was valid back then but is now somewhat alien, while the values that Hector embodies are still widely held.
- The Vamp: Circe and Calypso to Odysseus.
- What Happened To The Mouse: Aeneas. Just as Achilles is about to kill him, the Gods save his life and declare that after the war, he shall be the leader of all future Trojans. He is never mentioned again; neither in the Iliad or the Odyssey. 800 years later, Virgil turned this into a Brick Joke.
- You Cant Fight Fate: What we would call an Overused Running Gag.
- You Cant Go Home Again
- You Have Waited Long Enough: Penelope
