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The poem's initial word, μῆνιν (mēnin; acc. μῆνις, mēnis, "wrath," "rage," "fury"), establishes the Iliad ' s principal theme: the "Wrath of Achilles". [24] His personal rage and wounded soldier's pride propel the story: the Achaeans' faltering in battle, the slayings of Patroclus and Hector, and the fall of Troy.
An analysis of the structure and vocabulary of the Iliad and Odyssey shows that the poems contain many regular and repeated phrases; indeed, even entire verses are repeated. Thus according to the theory, the Iliad and Odyssey may have been products of oral-formulaic composition , composed on the spot by the poet using a collection of memorized ...
Unlike the Iliad and the Odyssey, the cyclic epics survive only in fragments and summaries from Late Antiquity and the Byzantine period. The Epic Cycle was the distillation in literary form of an oral tradition that had developed during the Greek Dark Age , which was based in part on localised hero cults .
Argos, loyal hunting dog of Odysseus.; Laertes, father of Odysseus.; Penelope, Odysseus' faithful wife.She uses her quick wits to put off her many suitors and remain loyal to her errant husband.
In Homer's Iliad, the Myrmidons are the soldiers commanded by Achilles. [3] Their eponymous ancestor was Myrmidon, a king of Phthiotis, who was a son of Zeus and "wide-ruling" Eurymedousa, a princess of Phthiotis. In one account, Zeus seduced Eurymedousa in the form of an ant. [4]
Hooker claims that without the death of Patroclus, an event that weighed heavily upon him, Achilles's following act of compliance to fight would have disrupted the balance of the Iliad. [32] Hooker describes the necessity of Patroclus sharing a deep affection with Achilles within the Iliad. According to his theory, this affection allows an even ...
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In The World of Odysseus, Finley presents a picture of the society represented by the Iliad and the Odyssey, avoiding the question as "beside the point that the narrative is a collection of fictions from beginning to end". [14]: 9 Finley was in a minority when his World of Odysseus first appeared in 1954. With the understanding that war was the ...