Well, Troy Was On Again Last Night…
Normally I love watching this movie. While I can’t help but notice all of the film’s glaring inaccuracies, I also can’t help but love it. It helps if you think of it as something entirely made up rather than any attempt at following the actual events of the battle of Troy.
But last night I had a difficult time, since for the past few days I’ve been avidly reading “The War that Killed Achilles” by Caroline Alexander. It’s a great book – short, readable and interesting – all that I require from a book. In it, the events of the Iliad are summarized, from beginning to end (the most pivotal moments in the story, obviously, not the whole thing) and are explained, given historical context.
I find it interesting that the Iliad was not, in fact, a story of the glories of war, but of its horror and pointlessness. This was something that I’d forgotten since I last read it, which was, as I’m ashamed to say, about five years ago. I don’t get around to reading that thing as often as I should. Alexander’s book helped me to recall the events of the story and see them in a whole new way. She dissects the endless battle scenes, pointing out that Homer gives us back story only on those who die – revealing to us a brief summary of the lives that are cut short on the field of battle. We pity these men who will never return to their homes or see their families. And those who are most often depicted in horrible death are not the Greeks, but the Trojans, the enemy. Homer makes them pitiable, describing their deaths in gruesome detail. Troy should not have been a summer blockbuster of an epic, it should have been Saving Private Ryan or Band of Brothers, showing all of the gruesomeness and horror of battle.
When I read the Iliad in my junior year of high school I saw Achilles as a man who sulked in his ship and refused to aid his fellow men because of some petty grievance with the king. But his refusal is not only due to his having the last straw with the poor leadership of Agamemnon, whose behavior toward the men who fight his war has been less than kingly, but a realization that he would rather live than die. Achilles goes to his mother, Thetis, the sea goddess, and she tells him that he has one of two choices:
“Either, if I stay here and fight beside the city of the Trojans, my return home is gone, but my glory shall be everlasting; but if I return home to the beloved land of my fathers, the excellence of my glory is gone; but there will be a long life left for me, and my death will not come to me quickly. And this would be my counsel to others also, to sail home again.”
Achilles does not want to fight – he wishes to return home to his father, Peleus, in Phthia and have a family and to grow old. And so he returns to his ship, refusing all attempts to bribe him into rejoining the effort. In a scene which I had completely forgotten over the years, Achilles relates to Odysseus and the two other men sent to persuade him that life is more precious than the glory one receives upon losing it in battle:
“Not worth the value of my life are all the possessions they fable were won for Ilion… of possessions cattle and fat sheep are things to be had for the lifting, and tripods can be won, and the tawny high heads of horses, but a man’s life cannot come back again, it cannot be lifted nor captured again by force once it has crossed the teeth’s barrier.”
When I was 16, this must have gone right over my head, but reading those lines now gives me chills. How could anyone look at Achilles and think that he only cares for glory and personal gain? He doesn’t care for either of those things and it is only the death of his dear friend, Patroclus, that moves him to join the battle once more – for vengeance.
Caroline Alexander’s book is remarkable for many reasons, but one thing I especially enjoyed was her relating events in the Iliad to stories of modern warfare. Because war is a timeless tale – the way we fight it may change, but there are aspects of it that remain the same. The bond between those who fight side-by-side is one of them. In the chapter “Man Down” which covers the events surrounding Patroclus’ death, Alexander conjures powerful imagery of a grieving soldier, returned from Iraq, walking the corridor of Walter Reed Army Medical Center, “in the bloodied combat boots of a friend he watched bleed to death.” Most of us will never understand the bond between soldiers who fight together in battle, but it has been a subject of many stories and poems throughout the centuries. When his closest friend dies at the hands of Hector, the prince of Troy, Achilles completely loses himself. He is so beyond himself with grief and rage that he rejoins the battle, a changed man. No longer will he show any pity to those who beg for it, as he says to Lykaon, one of King Priam’s many sons:
“In the time before Patroklos came to the day of his destiny then it was the way of my heart’s choice to be sparing of the Trojans… now there is not one who can escape death… not one of all the Trojans and beyond others the children of Priam. So, friend, you die also.”
“Troy” could have been an amazing film. Don’t get me wrong, I enjoy the sets and the costumes and I always choke up when Hector dies, but what a movie this could have been. No amount of glory or wealth is worth a man’s life. The only thing worth dying for is one’s friends. The death of his beloved companion turns Achilles into a merciless killer, hell-bent on destroying every Trojan in his path to kill Hector. Which he does. His hatred is so strong that Achilles even refuses to bury the prince who had threatened to put Patroclus’ head on a pike. But only upon hearing a plea from King Priam, in person, for his son’s burial does Achilles agree to release him. This is another strong scene from the book that the film actually does good by.
“Honour then the gods, Achilles, and take pity upon me remembering your father, yet I am still more pitiful; I have gone through what no other mortal on earth has gone through; I put my lips to the hand of the man who has killed my children.”
I enjoyed this scene in the film, especially Achilles’ line: “You are a far better king than the one who leads this army.” That is the whole reason that Achilles refused to fight in the first place. And I don’t think that Agamemnon would personally plea for the body of his son – he would sacrifice the lives of his own men to take it by force. But Priam uses words and appeals to Achilles’ remaining compassion. He even agrees to give the king twelve days of truce in order to perform the burial rites for his fallen son. Alexander compares this to the Christmas Truce in the first year of World War I, a spontaneous cease-fire during which soldiers on both sides sang carols, lit candles, and even met together in No-Man’s-Land. This meeting of enemies brings back Achilles’ argument against fighting in the war:
“I for my part did not come here for the sake of the Trojan spearmen to fight against them, since to me they have done nothing… indeed there is much that lies between us, the shadowy mountains and the echoing sea.”
The Iliad is a story of the horror of war – the pointless destruction of men who fight for someone else’s cause. Men who otherwise would not be enemies, who fight on behalf of those who lead them, but not for themselves. Many of these men find other reasons to fight – for wealth or glory – but not Achilles. He knows that his life is not worth any of these things – only to avenge his fallen companion.
I’ll end this now, as it’s getting quite long, but reading this book, “The War that Killed Achilles” really made me see the Iliad in a new light and, unfortunately, made me realize what a truly great film Troy could have been, but sadly wasn’t. I still love it though.
