Iliad Book Twenty-two

This is a translation of the twenty-second book of Homer’s Iliad, continuing the sequence of books already available.


In this book the long delayed encounter between the two leading warriors in the two armies take place, but is not the titanic struggle that one might have expected. Hektor’s nerve fails and he flees from Akhilleus. It is only after yet another intervention by the gods that he is finally tricked into facing Akhilleus. 

He inevitably loses the ensuing confrontation and in his dying speech, the sort of archetype operatic farewell to life, we are again reminded of the proper observances of funeral rites. However Akhilleus with something less than nobility allows the body to be desecrated and even takes part in such abhorrent behaviour. The book ends with Hektor’s wife lamenting as she sees the body of her husband treated so shamefully, as shocking then as it is now, three thousand years later. 

Plus ça change.