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762 BCE · Homer
The Iliad
A ten year war, one man’s rage, and the gods watching it all burn.
762 BCEHomer
Homer
The Iliad
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Quotes
Quotes · The Iliad
Passages worth saving.
“Sing, O goddess, the anger of Achilles”
The opening line of the entire poem and one of the most famous first lines in literary history. Homer invokes the Muse immediately and uses the word menis for anger, a term reserved for divine wrath, telling you everything about what this epic is really about before anything else has happened.p. Book 1, Line 1 “Let me not then die ingloriously and without a struggle, but let me first do some great thing that shall be told among men hereafter.”
Hector’s final words to himself before turning to face Achilles. After running from him in fear, this quiet private resolution is how Hector reclaims his dignity — not a battle cry but a man choosing the terms of his own ending.p. Book 22 “There is nothing alive more agonized than man of all that breathe and crawl across the earth.”
Zeus speaks this while watching the battle below, and the fact that it comes from the most powerful being in the poem makes it land with enormous weight. Even the king of gods looks at human life and sees mostly pain.p. Book 17, Line 446 “Patroclus, why are you weeping like a girl?”
Achilles to Patroclus, and the tenderness underneath the teasing is unmistakable. It is one of the few moments Achilles’ guard drops completely, which makes what follows later in Book 16 all the more devastating.p. Book 16, Lines 7 “My fate is to die here, far from my dear father and mother.”
Achilles says this mid-battle, essentially eulogising himself while still fighting. He knows he is going to die at Troy and states it plainly, without self-pity, capturing the strange doubleness of a man who is simultaneously the most powerful and most doomed figure in the poem.p. Book 21, Lines 110 “I have endured what no one on earth has ever done before — I have raised to my lips the hand of the man who killed my son.”
Priam to Achilles in the tent, naming the full weight of what he has just done without flinching. It is the poem’s most extraordinary moment of human recognition across the divide of war, and Achilles weeps when he hears it.p. Book 24, Lines 505