It can be cosidered the greatest of ironies. It is at one time both glorious an heinous. On the one hand, war brings out one's great courage and utter glory on the field of battle, and on the other hand, it also brigs out the extreme brutality and grave inhumanity on the battlefields of ancient Greece. These two opposing aspects of war and combat are seen throughout the poem. Homer repeatedly tells us in graphic and striking detail the savageness and cruelty of death in combat. We see through his descriptions and illustrations exactly what death in battle truly entails: the desolation, the devastation, the barbarity, and the terrible suffering. There is no honour whatsoever in military combat here. "Idomeneus stabbed Erymas in the mouth with the pitiless bronze, so that the brazen sperhead smashed its way clean through below the brain in an upward stroke, and the white bones splintered, and the teeth were shaken out with the stroke an

d both eyes filled up with blood, and gaping he blew a spray of blood through the nostrils and through his mouth, and death in a dark mist closed round about him. (16.345-350)" "Now Dekalion was struck in the arm, at a place in the elbow where the tendons come together. There through the arm Achilleus transfixed him with the bronze spearhead, and he, arm hanging heavy, waited and looked his death in the face. Achilleus struck him with the sword's edge at his neck, and swept the helmed head far away, and the marrow gushed from the neckbone, and he went down to the ground at full length. (20.477-484)" In the Illiad, Homer also reveals to us another feature of the inhumanity and barbarity of war. Each soldier is introduced to us before he is about to be killed. Each has a name, a family lineage, a wife, a child, and some far-off homeland. It's as if Homer is telling us that every human being is both important and significant in his own right. There is no anonimity of one's death in combat. Each combatant, however small or modest in rank, truly matters. You cannot help but feel some sort of emotional and psychological disgust upon reading such passages. Homer constantly reminds us that someone who just moments ago was a glorious and splendid human being is now just a dead corpse, food for the scavenging birds and animals. In the Greek mind, death is the ultimate and absolute end and nothing good can ever come after it. Everything a man might have or could have achieved in life is utterly meaningless. The only thing which possesses any value now is the shell of his bronze armour. Homer is forever willing to portray to us the reality of death in battle. The final and brutal end to one's existence.

Contrast this with the idea that war and combat can also bring out the greatest and finest of human behavior. In the passion and intensity

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Approximate Word count = 1243
Approximate Pages = 5 (250 words per page double spaced)