Do we believe in coincidence or predestination? Is everything happenstance or is it a case that there are no accidents (Freud) and that “God does not play dice with the universe” (Einstein)?
Is that universe sending us a message by releasing a new translation of Homer’s “The Iliad” by University of Pennsylvania classics professor Emily Wilson just as Hamas savagely attacked Israel and Israel responded with a ferocious declaration of war? It would seem so, for the ancient Greek epic has much to tell us about issues that speak to our time, not the least of which are overweening male pride and rage, power as a zero sum game and stupefyingly bad leadership.
A quick refresher for those who did not run out to by the book (W.W. Norton & Co., 761 pages, $39.95) as I did. Composed by a poet or group of bards between the late-eighth and late-sixth centuries B.C., “The Iliad” is not the story of the Trojan War but of a critical incident that takes place in the 10th and final year of the Greeks’ siege of Troy.
Agamemnon, the Greek high king and commander, has taken as his war prize Chryseis, a woman under the protection of the god Apollo, who has sent a plague among the Greeks in retaliation. Seeking to end the misery, Achilles — son of the sea nymph Thetis, the Greeks’ best warrior and a king in his own right — calls an assembly of the Greek commanders to pressure Agamemnon to return Chryseis to her father and end the impiety and suffering. Agamemnon does so, but takes Achilles’ war prize, Briseis, in compensation.
Engraged at the dishonor, Achilles declares that he and his men, the Myrmidons, will not fight and proceeds to sulk in his tent — although this being an ancient Greek tragedy, he does so beautifully, strumming a silvery lyre Not even a delegation that includes the wily Odysseus can move him. Seeking to rouse the dispirited Greeks, who cannot win without Achilles, his beloved kinsman Patrocles dons his armor and is promptly killed by the noble but naive Trojan Prince Hector, who has mistaken him for Achilles.
Wild with grief, Achilles chokes the rivers with the blood and bodies of Troy’s young men, then kills Hector in combat, dragging his naked corpse around the city for all to see. But Achilles is not unreachable. Hector’s father, King Priam, steals into the Greek camp and, in one of literature’s most poignant scenes, begs for the body of his son so he can give him a proper burial. Recognizing at last the commonality of all men — that we live and we die — Achilles relinquishes the body and, as the book ends, the Trojans bury Hector, lover of horses.
So what does the ancient Middle East war of “The Iliad” have to say about the current modern one? First, it depicts war and the struggle for power as a zero-sum game instigated by narcissistic men whose only interest is serving themselves and crushing any opposition. The Greeks haven’t come merely to reclaim Helen — wife of Agamemnon’s brother Menelaus, who either was abducted or ran off with the Trojan Prince Paris, depending on which version of the backstory you read. They plan to plunder and level the city.— killing its men and raping and enslaving its women. Agamemnon doesn’t just quarrel with Achilles. He takes his woman to be strong on him.
Achilles doesn’t merely kill Hector. He desecrates his body. The moment I heard that Hamas was dragging around the naked body of an Israeli woman, I flashed on that scene in “The Iliad.” Hamas, of course, the so-called governing body of the Palestinians in Gaza that has failed to deliver any quality of life for the people, is the aggressor here, responsible for more than 3,400 deaths, including those of 27 Americans; thousands of injuries; the kidnapping of 150 Israelis; and a siege by the Israelis that will starve their homeland. But we must also ask ourselves: Was Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu — a “my way or the highway” Agamemnon type of guy if there ever was one— too busy building West Bank and Golan Heights settlements that encroach on the Palestinians and trying to control the Israeli courts in the wake of his own corruption trial to read the Hamas tea leaves?
And what of Israel’s great ally, the United States, where the Republican Party initially met the moment, in many cases, with opportunism (Republican National Committee chair Ronna McDaniel seeking to capitalize on the tragedy as a way to attack Democratic President Joe Biden); score-settling stupidity (former President Donald J. Trump throwing Netanyahu under the bus, praising Lebanese terrorist group Hezbollah and referring to Hamas as “hummus”); and utter chaos (the House of Representatives, which remains Speaker-less in the wake of the war and another looming debt-ceiling crisis, content to put personal pride before public service, just like Agamemnon and Achilles).
In “The Iliad,” the lust for absolute power and the dearth of leadership from the front, which means putting yourself last, results in death and destruction for Greeks and Trojans alike. Troy will be razed, but Achilles will die there as well, while Agamemnon meets death at home and Odysseus wanders for 10 years.
“Killing begets killing,” Wilson writes in the introduction to her new translation, “death begets death, and every loss of life generates further loss of life.”
Gaza and Hamas will probably go the way of Troy, as retaliatory strikes continue and a vise-like siege and ground invasion take shape. But Netanyahu, too, will have his day of reckoning, while Israel looks over its shoulder at the next Hamas or Hezbollah or ISIS. Middle East conflict and terrorism — born of colonial greed in ancient times that was revisited after World Wars I and II — are a many-headed Hydra. Cut one off and two grow back. I doubt Israel and the Palestinians will ever see a just and lasting peace.