Homer
The poem "Iliad", told by Homer of an Ancient Greek war is a story within a story. There are many lessons to be learned deep within the artificially entertaining poem. Although it may seem as an ordinary story of pride and senseless death, Iliad gives its readers or listeners an intense look at Greek culture and lifestyle of the early centuries. A life style based on gaining power and respect, or as they liked to refer to it "Time". Iliad also gives a look into the relationship the early Greeks had with the mythical "Gods" we are all familiar with through the world famous Greek myths. The story of Iliad has a basic plot of a long lasting war getting the best of the soldiers that have fighting it for many years. In the begging of the story, the war had already been going on for nine years between the Achaeans and Trojans. Agamemnon, who is the chief commander of the Achaean army, takes as a war prize the daughter of a high priest of the Trojans and Achilles, the best soldier of the Achaean army takes another girl for himself. We then see the first interference of a God, Apollo, who the high priest
Agamemnon's demand for Achilles to hand over his war prize caused a great embarrassment to Achilles and almost cost Agamemnon his life. Achilles knew that he could have killed him on the spot and gained a lot of justified time, but he was advised by Athena, a God, not to take any action and that he will later gain much more from not killing Agamemnon. This is only the first book of the poem and we already see two major interferences by the Gods. It is hard for an average person of the 21st century to comprehend the ancient Greek idea a God. To us today a God is a being of ultimate power and knowledge who lets us make free choices and control our own destiny. The ancient Greek idea of a God was a powerful being, with human like features and emotions, jealousy, greed, guilt, happiness, sadness, these are the main things that supposedly separate today's human being from the Judo-Christian idea of a God. A God is not supposed to take sides, or decide who wins a battle simply because he feels like it. It almost seems like the Greeks created this idea of a God, so they can deny responsibility for the b
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Approximate Word count = 744
Approximate Pages = 3 (250 words per page double spaced)
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