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Homers Vision Of The Duality Of Warfare
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Homer's Vision of the Duality of Warfare
The Illiad is a poem which takes place in the tenth year of a war between the Trojans and the Achains. Most of the poem talks about the battles taking place within that specific time period of war. Does Homer portray these events as a glorification or condemnation of war? Well, he does sort of both. It can be cosidered the greatest of ironies. It is at one time both glorious an heinous. On the one hand, war brings out one's great courage and utter glory on the field of battle, and on the other hand, it also brigs out the extreme brutality and grave inhumanity on the battlefields of ancient Greece. These two opposing aspects of war and combat are seen throughout the poem. Homer repeatedly tells us in graphic and striking detail the savageness and cruelty of death in combat. We see through his descriptions and illustrations exactly what death in battle truly entails: the desolation, the devastation, the barbarity, and the terrible suffering. There is no honour whatsoever in military combat here. "Idomeneus stabbed Erymas in the mouth with the pitiless bronze, so that the brazen sperhead smashed its way clean through below the brain in an upward stroke, and the white bones splintered, and the teeth were shaken out with the stroke and both eyes filled up with blood, and gaping he blew a spray of blood through the nostrils and through his mouth, and death in a dark mist closed round about him. (16.345-350)" "Now Dekalion was struck in th...
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