The Iliad

Characters · The Iliad

The cast — who they are, and what they carry.

1. 01

   Achilles

   Protagonist

   The greatest warrior in the Greek army and the soul of the Iliad. Son of the goddess Thetis and the mortal Peleus, Achilles exists between two worlds — too powerful to be ordinary, too human to be immortal. When Agamemnon takes Briseis from him in Book 1, his wounded pride pulls him out of the war entirely and the Greeks begin to fall apart without him. But it is grief, not pride, that finally breaks him open. When Patroclus dies in Book 16, Achilles stops being a sulking hero and becomes something rawer and more frightening. He returns to battle in Book 18 not for glory but for revenge, tears through the Trojan army, kills Hector, and still finds no peace. By Book 24, weeping with Priam over shared loss, he arrives at something like wisdom, though it comes at a cost that cannot be undone.

2. 02

   Hector

   defender

   Troy’s greatest warrior and its truest hero. Where Achilles burns with personal glory, Hector fights because he has no other choice — Troy is his home and everyone he loves is inside its walls. His goodbye to his wife Andromache and their infant son in Book 6 is the emotional heart of the entire poem, a quiet devastating scene in the middle of all that war and noise. He knows he is probably going to die. He goes back anyway. His death at Achilles’ hands in Book 22 is one of the most heartbreaking moments in literature, made worse by the fact that Homer has given you every reason to love him and no comfort in losing him.

3. 03

   Agamemnon

   Commander

   The commander of the Greek forces and the man whose arrogance in Book 1 sets everything in motion. He takes Briseis from Achilles not because he particularly wants her but because he needs to remind everyone who is in charge, and that single act of insecure authority nearly loses him the entire war. He is not entirely unsympathetic — leading a coalition of proud difficult kings is genuinely thankless work — but Homer makes clear that power exercised without wisdom has consequences, and those consequences are paid for in other people’s lives.

4. 04

   Patroclus

   Catalyst

   Achilles’ closest companion and the poem’s most quietly significant character. He is gentler than Achilles, more compassionate, more willing to feel the suffering of others. In Book 16 he begs Achilles to let him fight, unable to watch the Greeks suffer any longer. He puts on Achilles’ armour, rallies the troops, pushes too far, and is killed by Hector. His death is the pivot on which the entire poem turns. Everything that happens in the second half of the Iliad flows directly from the moment Patroclus falls.

5. 05

   Priam

   Mourner

   The aged king of Troy and one of the poem’s most quietly powerful figures. He watches the war from the city walls knowing he is too old to fight and too powerless to stop it. His walk into the Greek camp in Book 24, alone at night, to kneel before the man who killed his son and ask for Hector’s body back, is one of the bravest acts in the entire poem. Not the bravery of battle but the bravery of a father choosing love over dignity, grief over pride.

6. 06

   Helen

   Prisoner

   The woman the war is nominally being fought over and perhaps the most complicated figure in the poem. Homer refuses to make her simply a prize or a villain. She is trapped between a war fought in her name, a husband she left, and a life in Troy she did not entirely choose. In Book 3 she watches the battle from the walls with guilt and grief written all over her, and that image of a woman watching men die over her, unable to stop any of it, says more about the cost of war than almost anything else in the poem.

7. 07

   Thetis

   Mother

   Achilles’ goddess mother and one of the most tender presences in the poem. She cannot save her son from his fate and she knows it. Every time she appears, in Book 1 when she holds him as he weeps, in Book 18 when she brings him new armour knowing it is armour he will die in, there is a grief in her that Homer lets sit quietly without ever overstating it. She is immortal and completely powerless over the one thing that matters to her.

8. 08

   Zeus

   Arbiter

   The king of the gods and the closest thing the Iliad has to a director of fate. He does not take sides out of justice but out of obligation and occasional preference. In Book 8 he literally tips the scales of battle to favour the Trojans, honouring his promise to Thetis. He is powerful enough to override every other god and wise enough to know that even he cannot change what fate has already written. His authority is absolute and ultimately hollow, which is perhaps Homer’s most quietly devastating observation about power.

9. 09

   Odysseus

   Strategist

   The cleverest man in the Greek army and the one Agamemnon turns to when brute force fails. He appears most memorably in Book 9 as part of the embassy sent to convince Achilles to return, delivering a carefully constructed argument that reveals exactly how politically intelligent he is. He is not the greatest fighter on the battlefield but he is almost certainly the most useful man in the camp.

10. 10

    Diomedes

    Warrior

    The most fearless fighter in the Greek army after Achilles, and Book 5 belongs entirely to him. He tears through the Trojan lines with such violence that he wounds not just enemy soldiers but two gods, Aphrodite and Ares, which is either extraordinary courage or extraordinary recklessness depending on how you look at it. He is everything a Greek hero is supposed to be, uncomplicated by the pride and grief that makes Achilles so difficult.

11. 11

    Menelaus

    Wronged Husband

    The king of Sparta and the man the entire war is technically being fought for, since it was his wife Helen who was taken to Troy. He is a decent fighter and a genuinely wronged man but he exists somewhat awkwardly in the shadow of greater warriors. His duel with Paris in Book 3, which should have ended the war cleanly, is interrupted by the gods before it can resolve anything, which is perhaps Homer’s quiet comment on how little the war was ever really about him.

12. 12

    Paris

    Instigator

    The Trojan prince whose decision to take Helen from Sparta started the entire war, and he spends most of the poem being quietly embarrassing about it. He is beautiful, charming, beloved by Aphrodite, and a genuinely good archer, but he has none of his brother Hector’s courage or moral weight. His duel with Menelaus in Book 3, which he loses so badly that Aphrodite has to physically remove him from the battlefield, tells you everything you need to know about the gap between the man who started this war and the men dying in it.

13. 13

    Andromache

    wife

    Hector’s wife and one of the most heartbreaking figures in the poem. She appears most powerfully in Book 6 in her farewell scene with Hector, where she begs him not to return to battle knowing he will anyway. She is not a warrior or a goddess but she understands the war’s cost more clearly than almost anyone because she is the one who will be left behind. When Hector dies in Book 22 she is on the walls of Troy and sees it happen, and her grief is one of the poem’s most devastating final images.

14. 14

    Hecuba

    Queen

    Priam’s wife and the mother of Hector, Paris, and many of Troy’s other defenders. She appears in Book 22 on the walls of Troy begging Hector not to face Achilles alone, and her helplessness in that moment, a queen and a mother watching her greatest son walk toward his death, is quietly unbearable. She represents everything Troy stands to lose and has no power to prevent any of it.

15. 15

    Hera

    Schemer

    The queen of the gods and Troy’s most powerful divine enemy, motivated entirely by a beauty contest she lost to Aphrodite years before the war began. She schemes constantly against the Trojans and against Zeus himself, and her most audacious moment comes in Book 14 where she seduces her own husband specifically to distract him from interfering in the battle. She is calculating, determined, and completely uninterested in fairness.

16. 16

    Athena

    Manipulator

    The goddess of wisdom and warfare and one of the most active divine presences in the poem. She favours the Greeks and intervenes repeatedly and directly, at one point physically stopping Achilles from drawing his sword on Agamemnon in Book 1 and at another actively deceiving Hector in Book 22 to ensure Achilles can kill him. She is not cruel exactly but she is ruthlessly purposeful, and her interventions are a constant reminder that the humans in this poem are never entirely in control of their own fates.

17. 17

    Apollo

    Protector

    Troy’s greatest divine ally and the god who sets the entire poem in motion in Book 1 by sending a plague on the Greek army after Agamemnon dishonours his priest. He protects Hector throughout the poem and shields Troy from total collapse until fate makes it impossible. His relationship with Troy feels genuinely invested rather than merely political, which makes him one of the more sympathetic gods in the poem.

18. 18

    Aphrodite

    Instigator

    The goddess of love and the divine force most responsible for the war existing in the first place, since it was her promise of Helen that won Paris’s vote in the original beauty contest. She spends the poem protecting Paris with an almost embarrassing devotion, rescuing him from his disastrous duel in Book 3 by wrapping him in a cloud and carrying him back to his bedroom. She is wounded by Diomedes in Book 5, which is both shocking and faintly comic, and retreats from the battlefield in tears.

19. 19

    Hermes

    Messenger

    The messenger of the gods and the divine figure who guides Priam safely through the Greek camp in Book 24 on his desperate mission to reclaim Hector’s body. He is gentle, helpful, and quietly compassionate in a way that most of the other gods are not, and his role in that final book gives him an outsized emotional significance relative to how little he appears elsewhere in the poem.