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I understand more fully why Uncle Gilbert [Chesterton] said that if the world were ever to return to paganism and perish, then the last man left alive would do well to quote the Iliad and die. The last words of everyone from Patroclos to Hector are fists shaken in defiance of the pagan gods . . . yet they somehow manage to be pious fists.
It is this ambivalence which marks the greatest theme of the Iliad, which is the relationship between man and the gods.
In most cases, men make the proper offerings to the gods and the gods favour them for it. Many times in the text does a god look down from Mount Olympus, see a devotee in danger, and go down to rescue him simply because that devotee never neglected that god's altars. Yet there are also times--tragic, unforeseen times--when the deepest pietas goes unrewarded, for the ancient gods are willful, fickle figures.
So they are often blamed for everything by their more or less justified devotees. Priam doesn't accuse Helen or any other human for bringing the war on Troy: he accuses the gods. Agamemnon refuses to accept responsibility for the great losses his side suffered after he took Briseis from Achilles, nor does he blame the disgruntled warrior: it is only the gods who are at fault.
As ridiculous as all that finger-pointing is, both Trojans and Greeks have a point. The gods meddle so much in men's affairs, even stooping to cheating and lying, that men can no longer be wholly responsible for anything. To the gods go all the blame, but also all the glory. It is a delicious moment, therefore, when Diomedes is able to wound both Aphrodite and Ares. Even though his supernatural strength is just another gift from Athena, the whole episode is steeped with more pious defiance of the deities.
*****
Christian tradition has retained the same concept, though it has changed the imagery: we no longer wage war with God; we wrestle with Him. (Never mind, as Antony points out, that Jacob actually wrestled an Angel sent by God . . .) I personally dislike the modification. To wage war, one needs an army; but one can wrestle with an Angel all by one's lonesome self: that makes the former image the more Catholic one.
Having said that, let me humbly modify Uncle Gilbert's other insight that the Iliad is great because all of life is a battle: life is not just any battle, but the battle we wage against God. The wound Diomedes' spear made in Aphrodite's hand is uncomfortably reminiscent of the wounds our nails have made in our Lord's hands.
Two thousand years of Christianity have not diluted any of the this theme's power. The questions Homer asked in the Iliad, we are still asking today.
What is there to life besides enduring until death? Why do good men die and bad men live? Why does God show favour to some and not to others? How can we say we have free will when all the good we do is the work of grace acting within us? How can we still not blame God for all the evil in the world, when all He has to do to dispel it is to will it gone?
The only advantage we have over Homer and the ancients is that there is one answer which we at least know; there is one secret which has been revealed to us, even if we barely understand it. To us has been disclosed the mystery of the motivation of God.
*****
The key to any character is his motivation, for what he does is based on what he wants. What Achilles is after is obvious--and it is the same story with Agamemnon, Hector, Patroclus, Priam and the other characters . . . save one. Of the epic's central movers and shakers, one figure is inscrutable and seemingly determined to stay that way.
Zeus, king of the gods, makes it very clear that he loves the Trojans, particularly Hector. From what the other Olympians say, we know that he also cares greatly for Aeneas. Yet he grants Thetis' petition that Achilles be granted immortal glory, though he knows fully well that it will mean the deaths of many Trojans, Hector foremost among them. Then why does he not just refuse, which he has every right to do? What outcomes does he know in advance which sway his decisions? Will there ever come a time when he, at long last, achieves his ends, and shall finally sit back and let men have some real freedom to steer their own courses?
We Christians may say that our God sat back after the Resurrection and Ascension, letting the Apostles take over from there. As soon as we do, however, we come face to face with the blinding light of St. Paul's conversion and the direct intervention of God. So He still does turn the tide of human affairs. That being the case, however, we return to the mystery of why He prevents some evil, but allows the rest. Why do some seem to have an inordinate amount of grace and a charmed life, while others are plagued by trouble after trouble? Pietas is still demanded of us, but to what end?
*****
Aside from their pettiness and plotting, what really bothers me about the gods in the Iliad is the shallowness of their affections. Whenever they give a hapless human a reprieve from death, it is always because he has been a faithful devotee; yet they have nothing else good to say about him other than that he made the sacrifices that he ought to have made. Our God is a little more interesting than that . . .
It is easy to imagine Jesus choosing St. Matthew because He was delighted by the neat, meticulous way the accountant kept track of his tax records. Perhaps He became especially fond of St. John and St. James because He heard the siblings lightly bickering about which one was the better fisherman. Maybe it was the way St. Philip and He both seemed to favour a particular fig tree that made the former seem like a good man to have around.
Given the way most of His disciples ran away after He was arrested (which He would naturally have foreseen), He obviously didn't select them based on strength of character alone. That means still have no idea what truly separates the called from the chosen.
All we can truly be sure of is that He is not a fickle deity who plays favourites, but a God Who loves equally, yet very differently. When was the last time one of the Olympians disguised himself as a mortal just to hang around with some cool people? When was the last time one of the Olympians thought that even people who didn't make regular offerings and weren't descended from gods were cool?
You can't really shake your fist at Jesus in rage, though you may shake your head in befuddlement.
*****
If the heroes of the classics were punished for their hubris, then our God was punished for His humility. Our cosmos is not one which pits helpless men against self-seeking gods, but one in which God let Himself become helpless in the hands of self-seeking men.
Life is still a raging battle, the outcome of which we do not know, much less the purpose. The only thing different for us is that this time we know that we are fighting with God, not against Him--and that He was willing to take a bullet--nay, worse than a bullet--for our side. For us, the big mystery is no longer why we have such strange, undeserved fates, but why God allotted Himself the strangest, most undeserved fate of all.
He has shifted our focus from the garden blocked by a sword-wielding cherubim to the garden in which He Himself rolled back the stone. Our Fall may have doomed us, but His Redemption has saved us anew.
Accordingly, we no longer strive like the heroes of the Iliad to defy death by achieving immortal glory while we yet live. That has already been done for us; the battle that we still wage, we have already won. As we keep our faith in the only One over Whom death has no more power, we hope through all our lives that He shall keep His promises. Yet the prize is now greater than glory: it is love.
- Enbrethiliel of "Sancta Sanctis". In a word: wow.
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