American Achilles in the War on Terror

University students use her work, and it draws leisure readers as well. Beginning with her translation of the Odyssey in 2018 and continuing with the Iliad earlier this year, Wilson has presented as fresh and vivid material that is, admittedly, old and foreign.

For years, the English translations of poets Robert Fagles and Robert Fitzgerald were responsible for passing Homer’s stories into the dreams and imaginations of modern Americans. So successful were the two Roberts that many readers reserved no space on their bookshelves for another scholar’s reading. Wilson’s new translation is worthy, though, and less for her words or ‘blank verse’ than her feel: for the players and their motivations certainly, but more so for their experience of the phenomenon of battle. Her work plumbs how it feels to fight and kill, what warriors seek to achieve through combat, and what a family stands to lose when a husband dons the helmet and marches off to war. Heroism nearly, but not quite, redeems the carnage.

Those who have seen war or studied it know how combat produces a cycle of loss and compensation, and fate deals out the portions of life in unfair and unexpected ways. This is one of the themes of the Iliad – how even the greatest warriors in Western civilization fail to reclaim what they lose. “Attempts to repair one loss lead only to more losses,” Wilson writes in her introduction. “Loss can never be recouped.”

The arc of history demonstrates the activity of warfare is always changing; weapons, technology, and troop formations are constantly in flux. But the condition of war, how people experience combat, remains largely unchanged. Rather than discuss the new text in isolation, I asked Professor Wilson to apply her knowledge of the Homeric poems and her own ideas to my observations of people participating in the drama of modern war. What follows is part one of our two-part conversation.

One evening in 2009, Alphonso told a story over beers at Pusser’s in Annapolis. There had been a Taliban ambush on a Marine logistics convoy. Someone he knew was involved. “I hope they jump me,” he said. “I want my share.” What comes to mind, hearing this vignette?

This makes me think of Iliad Book 10. This ambush episode is very unusual in the poem, because most of the fighting in The Iliad takes place during the daylight hours, where warriors confront each other face-to-face. This is fighting at night. Odysseus and Diomedes volunteer to set an ambush of Trojan forces. The sequence shows the importance not just of cleverness and strategy, but also about the kinds of extra glory people can get in special missions. If something unexpected happens and you react just right in the moment, then you get a special kind of glory, as compared to what can be gained in the main campaign. I love Book 10 because it shakes up your ideas about the kinds of terrain where war takes place. The poem as a whole is interested in all different types of warfare, different types of landscape and how the norms of military encounters change in different arenas. Diomedes and Odysseus promise not to harm the Trojan spy, Dolon, then mercilessly kill him and hang up the bloody spoils, the weapons stripped from his body, to honor the goddess Athena, who loves spoils.

Speaking of Alphonso’s “share” … I’m thinking of what Aristotle said about the “banquet of life.” Would Homer have contemplated this idea when he composed the Iliad?

Absolutely. Many of the words that are often translated as fortune or fate literally suggest portion or share—these Greek words literally mean a “part,” as if a portion or share of life. It’s as if there is a whole side of beef that is a quantity of human life and each of us gets a particular portion of it, both how long we get to be alive and also our portion of honor and glory. I think the whole story of Achilles in the Iliad focuses on his disappointment about his tiny portion of life, as the son of a goddess who knows for sure that he will die if he stays to fight at Troy. He wants a portion of honor that compensates him for his small portion of life. The public humiliation he suffers from Agamemnon, when the Greek king takes from Achilles the concubine Briseis, means Achilles has been dishonored, so his already small portion of life is no longer balanced by a large share of glory.

In 2010, Major Aaron Cunningham intoned to his students at the Infantry Officer Course about their reputations. “Your reputation begins right now,” he said. The thought planted among young Marine lieutenants that one’s reputation (as an officer, a Marine) has incalculable value in the military, much more so than in business or private life. Can you trace that idea back to the Iliad?

Well, that is certainly a theme that runs all through the poem. The Greek term most closely analogous to “reputation” is kleos, which suggests what other people hear about you. For warriors, that goal of achieving undying kleos is definitional, and gives mortal heroes the chance to live on after death. You can be known for your physical characteristics, but also in the stories of who you are and how you have performed. Stories people tell can add up to kleos or they can lead you to shame. Great warriors in the Iliad, like Hector and Achilles, are deeply concerned with preserving their kleos, which entails being known as the greatest warrior among their people. Even when his family members and other Greek leaders are telling him to stop fighting and pull back, Hector has to keep going because he wants to secure the greatest kleos, both for his lifetime and after his death.