Possibly the most ambitious movie project ever (if only because of its monolithic subject matter), Troy opened last night worldwide and audiences held their collective breaths. Homer’s “Iliad” is widely regarded as the greatest epic poem ever written, and to somehow compress its 24 books into one 3-hour long movie is quite a feat.
I’ve been struggling through Alexander Pope’s translation of the Iliad, and I must admit it’s not the sort of fare most folks are used to. Luckily I found some resources online for those of us who aren’t English majors, and I thought I’d share them with all of you. @##@
You can find the complete English version of the Iliad here, whereas the synopsis I’ve cut and pasted below may be found in its original form here. A slightly more detailed outline from the Reed University can be perused here.
Book 1. The Wrath of Achilleus
Homer explains the opening situation of the epic. A plague has descended upon the Greek forces who have been camped for 10 years on the shores of Troy, besieging the city. The Greek seer concludes that the god Apollo is angry because Agamemnon took the daughter of one of his priests as a war-prize. Angry, Agamemnon gives the girl up but takes Achilles’ prize concubine, Briseis, in compensation.
Achilleus complains about this humiliation to his mother Thetis, a minor sea
goddess, who persuades Zeus to allow the Trojans to win until Achilleus’s honor is satisfied.
In the movie, the passage of time is compressed to about 2 weeks, from the
landing of Achilleus to the burning of Troy. Also, the role of the gods is little more than a conversation topic, whereas in Homer’s masterpiece, they took on very hands-on roles.
Book 2. Epic Catalogs
As a ruse to rouse his men to action, Agamemnon tells the Greeks they may return home, expecting them to protest. Instead, they express their eagerness to return home. Odysseus intervenes to recall the Greeks’ sense of honor. As they assemble for battle, Homer provides an epic catalog of the leaders and their ships. The goddess Iris disguises herself as King Priam and persuades the Trojans to prepare for battle, providing Homer with the occasion to list the Trojan leaders and allies as well.
Book 3. The First Day of Battle
The conflict began because of Paris’s seduction of Helen, the wife of the Greek King Menelaus, so Paris agrees to single combat to settle the issue of the war. Everyone is relieved, but, when Paris starts to lose, his divine mother, Aphrodite spirits him away. Everyone, including Helen, is angry with Paris and the goddess, but Helen cannot defy Aphrodite and ends up in bed with Paris once again.
Wolfgang Petersen’s decision to remove the gods altogether from his version of the Iliad starts to cause problems here. In the movie, Paris crawls away from Menelaus and literally hugs his older brother’s leg. This is an awful, awful way to rewrite this important sequence, primarily because it’s pathetic, and I thought it was unbelievable that no one was angry at him when he was returned to safety.
Book 4. Olympian Quarrels
The Gods and Goddesses quarrel among themselves about the war and stir things up among the mortals. Athene convinces the Trojan, Pandaros, to break the truce, and battle is joined once again. Warriors fall on both sides.
Book 5. The Gods Intervene
Athene helps the Greek hero, Diomedes. Aineias [Aeneas], the chief Trojan warrior during this encounter, is wounded, and his goddess mother Aphrodite comes to protect him. Diomedes wounds Aphrodite as she tries to carry Aineias from the battlefield. Apollo takes her place and protects Aineias by spiriting him away while leaving his replica on the battlefield. Hektor joins the battle with Ares at his side. Athene gives Diomedes permission to attack Ares, who is wounded with a spear. Ares complain to Zeus.
Notice that neither Diomedes or Glaucus (see next book) appear in the film. “Troy” is basically about Achilles and Hektor, and there’s no room for anyone else. (Well, Glaucus does, briefly.)
Book 6. Human Relationships
The Greek hero Diomedes and the Trojan hero Glaucus, discovering that their fathers were friends, exchange armor rather than fighting one another. Hektor returns to the city to make sacrifices to propitiate Athene. He finds Paris lounging with Helen and reproaches him for leaving the battle. He finds Andromache, his wife with their infant son Astyanax looking out from the city wall. Andromache pleads with him not to return to the battle, but he insists that he must do so. The baby is frightened by his father’s plumed war helmet, so Hektor removes it to take him in his arms, and mother and father laugh together.
Just a side note, Andromache in the movie is played by Saffron Burrows, the female lead of Deep Blue Sea, and who has the prettiest cleft chin in the whole wide world.
Book 7. Hektor and Aias
Apollo and Athene decide to take pity on both sides by encouraging single combat rather than full battle. Hektor issues the Trojan challenge. Aias [Ajax] faces Hektor, but they fight for hours without result. Paris refuses to give up Helen, despite Antenor’s wise advice. Now that the Trojans have come out from behind their city walls, the Greeks concentrate on protecting themselves, constructing a wall and a moat to protect their camp and ships.
The Hektor vs. Ajax battle lasts all of 2 minutes in the film, and Ajax gets three or four lines before that.
Book 8. Trojans Hold The Field
Zeus commands the gods to stay out of the battle. Hektor routs the Greeks, but nightfall prevents the Trojans from climbing the Greek walls and burning the ships.
So in the poem, both the Trojans and the Greeks have created walls around their territories. (Given that the Greeks had been there for a long, long time, they would definitely have fortified their positions. Obviously, this is not the case in the movie.)
Book 9. The Embassy to Achilleus
Agamemnon considers abandoning the fight. Pressured by Nestor and other Greek warriors, he finally agrees to return Briseis to Achilleus and give him other great gifts, in the hope that the greatest Greek warrior will rejoin his comrades. Odysseus, Phinix, and Aias act as Agamemnon’s ambassadors, but fail to convince Achilleus to return. His mother Thetis has prophesied that he must choose between quick but glorious death in battle or a long life. Now, having retired from the life of action, he questions the heroic code of sacrificing mortal life in exchange for glory.
Book 10. Death of a Spy
Sent to spy on the Trojans, Odysseus and Diomedes capture a Trojan spy, Dolon, and learn about Trojan allies from Thrace who are on the way. They kill Dolon and a number of the Thracians.
Book 11. Another Battle
Agamemnon leads the Greeks during the next day’s battle, during which neither Greeks nor Trojans prevail. Nestor carries off one of the wounded. Achilleus sends his close friend Patroklos to find out who has been injured; Nestor asks Patroklos to wear Achilleus’s armor and lead the Greeks into battle to fool the Trojans into believing that the great Achilleus has returned.
Book 12. Trojans Break Through
The fight centers around the Greek walls and moat. Finally Hektor smashes one of the gates, and the Trojans pour through.
Book 13. Greeks Bounce Back.
In disobedience to Zeus, Poseidon encourages the Greeks. After a number of individual clashes, Hektor prepares to withdraw the Trojan forces.
Book 14. Heavenly Seduction
Poseidon stops Agamemnon from retreating to the ships, while Hera (with the aid of a magic girdle borrowed from Aphrodite) seduces Zeus and lulls him to sleep. The Greeks drive the Trojans back after Hektor is slightly wounded.
Book 15. Threat to the Greek Ships
Angry with Hera when he wakes, Zeus sends Apollo to heal Hektor, who returns and burns some Greek ships.
Book 16. The Death of Patroklos
Achilleus agrees to allow his beloved friend Patroklos to wear his armor and lead the Greeks into battle. At first the Trojans fall back, but then they recognize that they have been deceived. Hektor kills Patroklos, after Patroklos predicts that Hektor will die at the hand of Achilleus.
The key difference is that it was actually Achilleus’ fault that Patroklos was killed, because he gave him his blessing. Also, Patroklos’ disguise isn’t quite as convincing here.
Book 17. Recovery of the Body
The Greeks battle fiercely to recover Patroklos’s body. Hektor dons Achilleus’s armor. Menelaus tells Achilleus his beloved friend is dead.
Book 18. The Shield of Achilleus
Achilleus weeps profoundly and once again calls upon his mother for help. Thetis promises to provide him with new armor by the morning. Achilleus shows himself on the field, and the Trojans retreat in fear. Achilleus vows not to bury Patroklos until he has killed Hektor.
Thetis goes to Hephaistos to ask him to make new armor for Achilleus. The smith of the gods forges the armor and the famous shield.
Book 19. The End of the Quarrel
Achilleus grudgingly makes up his quarrel with Agamemnon and prepares to lead the Greeks in battle. Agamemnon blames destiny and delusion for the quarrel.
Book 20. The Gods Intervene Once More
Now that Achilleus has rejoined the fray, Zeus gives the gods permission to help their favorites. The Greeks are supported by Hera, Athene, Poseidon, Hermes, and Hephaestos; the Trojans, by Apollo, Artemis, Ares, and Aphrodite. Achilleus comes close to killing Aineias but Poseidon, recalling that Aieneias is destined to lead the Trojans after the fall of the city, changes sides and intervenes.
Achilleus and Hektor are urged toward direct combat, but Apollo tells Hektor to wait. Achilleus kills many Trojans.
Aieneias, in case you’re wondering, is that random kid Paris gives the sword of the city to at the very end of the film. He was supposed to have a slightly larger role than that.
Book 21. The Gods in Battle
Achilleus continues his killing spree. The gods quarrel and hurt one another. The Trojans retreat behind the walls.
Book 22. The Death of Hektor
Stricken with fear, Hektor reproaches himself for not having retreated at the first appearance of Achilleus and flees, running along the city walls. Athene disguises herself as Hektor’s brother Deiphobos and persuades him to face Achilles. Too late he realizes he has been deceived. Achilleus kills Hektor and then ties his body behind his chariot and drags it away.
Not exactly the valiant hero portrayed by Eric Bana, is it.
Book 23. The Funeral Games
Achilleus buries Patroklos; Homer describes the traditional funeral games enacted when a hero dies.
Book 24. The End of Wrath
Still enraged about Patroklos’s death, Achilleus drags Hektor’s body around the tomb and around the walls of the city of Troy, but the gods preserve Hektor’s body, despite this abuse. Zeus insists that Hektor give the body back and helps Hektor’s father Priam steal into the Greek camp to plead with Achilleus. The young warrior and the old man weep together, and Achilleus allows Priam to take the body away. Achilleus calls a halt to fighting while the Trojans hold rites for Hektor. The anger of Achilleus is stilled.
And that’s how the Iliad ends. The sequence with the famous Trojan horse is actually described in Virgil’s Aeneid (the 2nd book).
Here’s a brief epilogue from the definitive Iliad translation by Alexander Pope:
Achilles fell before Troy, by the hand of Paris, by the shot of an arrow in his heel, as Hector had prophesied at his death, lib. xxii.
The unfortunate Priam was killed by Pyrrhus, the son of Achilles.
Ajax, after the death of Achilles, had a contest with Ulysses for the armour of Vulcan, but being defeated in his aim, he slew himself through indignation.
Helen, after the death of Paris, married Deiphobus his brother, and at the taking of Troy betrayed him, in order to reconcile herself to Menelaus her first husband, who received her again into favour.
Agamemnon at his return was barbarously murdered by AEgysthus, at the instigation of Clytemnestra his wife, who in his absence had dishonoured his bed with AEgysthus.
Diomed, after the fall of Troy, was expelled his own country, and scarce escaped with his life from his adulterous wife AEgiale; but at last was received by Daunus in Apulia, and shared his kingdom; it is uncertain how he died.
Nestor lived in peace with his children, in Pylos, his native country.
Ulysses also, after innumerable troubles by sea and land, at last returned in safety to Ithaca, which is the subject of Homer’s Odyssey.
This is turning into my longest post ever, so I’ll continue my thoughts on the movie itself in another article later on.
Cheers everyone :)
