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Summary The Iliad - major and minor characters
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A summary of the most important characters within the Iliad, including both major and minor characters, what books they featured in and the role they play
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Characters in the IliadAchilles
- Books – 1, 9, 16, 18, 19, 22, 23, 24
- Proem (first few lines of an epic – poet sets out main themes and often calls on one of the muses)
begins with his anger – dominates the first book
- Presented as a figure of authority and sympathetic – calls the assembly about the plague and return of
Chryses
- Feels affronted for having his prize taken – especially from an inferior and cowardly man who is
insulting him
Timē at centre of argument – Achilles is aware of his mortality and knows he does not have much
time to gain kleos
- Achilles’ menis – causes him to refuse to fight and ask his mother to call upon Zeus
Wants Zeus to condemn his own side to destruction
Ends up being responsible for the death of Patroclus
- Achilles’ mother Thetis is immortal – element in Achilles which reaches beyond man
- Begged by Odysseus in b9 to rejoin the fighting – refuses
- Acknowledges that the Greeks need help in b16 but feels bound by his declaration to not fight until
the trojans burn the ships
Allows Patroclus to fight in his armour
Has his own heroic status in mind and warns Patroclus not to do more than drive the trojans away
from the ships
- Comes back to fight in b18 after the death of Patroclus & renounces the anger he held towards
Agamemnon
- Anger he held towards Agamemnon is turned into savage rage at his determination to avenge
Patroclus and kill hector
- He cannot fight until he gets his new armour – his presence and war cry are enough to throw the
trojans into chaos and allows the Greeks to retrieve the body of Patroclus
- His mind is dominated with anger – even after Briseis’ is returned
- B22 – meets hector and is pitiless
Seems to have lost all his humanity – tells hector he would like to eat his raw flesh
Defiles hector’s body after killing him
Revenge killing does not lesson his grief about the death of Patroclus
- Realises he will never return home to see his own father when he puts Patroclus on the pyre
In a sense it is his funeral too
- Has lost his obsessive grief at the funeral games – seen as a good leader
- Only regains his own humanity when Thetis tells him to return the body of hector – moved by the
sight of Priam and thinks of his own father
Agamemnon
- Books – 1, 3, 4, 6, 9, 10, 19, 23
- Leader of the Greeks – has the largest number of ships
- Treatment of Chryses in b1 is harsh – callously tells the priest his daughter will serve Agamemnon’s
bed and shows no respect for Chryses’ age or status
- Calchas (the seer) is afraid of Agamemnon
- Furious when challenged
- Arrogant and pitiless
- B9 – admits his despair and is about to leave troy like a coward
- Generous reparation to Achilles in b9 – one of his conditions is that Achilles should acknowledge him
as leader
- B19 – final reconciliation but cannot admit guilt & passes on responsibility for is actions to the gods
and says they tricked him
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