The Iliad, or the Poem of Fate

There are times when we want to be free of responsibility and just blame everything on something else. And there are times when no one can explain why a certain accident happened to a certain person. These cases are all, very often, turned to fate.

The concept of fate has been around for a long time, since like 5000 years ago, when the Iliad is believed to be written (well, it first appears in the Iliad). So of course, fate appears in the Iliad frequently. But the problem is, is it fate that controls the world, or is it the gods? There have been many twists, but in the end, it is fate that determines everything about the world in the Iliad and therefore, the Iliad is the poem of fate.

So what is fate? Fate is often defined as ‘a power that is believed to control what happens in the future,’ or ‘the things that will happen to a person of thing, the future that someone or something will have.’1 In other words, fate is destiny, a fixed future. This fixed future plays a big role in the plot of the Iliad. The fall of Troy, the death of Hector, Achilles, and Patroclus- in other words, pretty much of the whole big plot- is already determined by fate.

The mortals trust the seers and prophets, those who are believed to deliver fate. When the Greeks are dying off one by one due to the plague that Apollo sent,

Calchas rose among them,

Thestor’s son, the clearest by far of all the seers

who scan the flight of the birds.

He knew all the things that are,

all things that are past and all that are to come(2)

It says that seers know everything about the present, past, and the future. The future, being able to be predicted and known about, can be interpreted as fate. Here, it’s clear that seers are believed to be those who deliver fate. But later in the book, where the scene before the Greeks set off for Troy is shown, Calchas says that:

Zeus who rules the world has shown us an awesome sign

…

As the snake devoured the sparrow with her brood,

Eight and the mother made the ninth, she’d borne them all,

so we will fight in Troy that many years and then,

then in the tenth we’ll take her broad streets.(3)

With this prophecy, Calchas “led the Argive ships to Troy with the second sight that god Apollo gave him”(4) according to the “will of Zeus.”(5)

The thing here is, seers are those who are believed to deliver fate, but then it is later said in the poem that the seer delivered the will of Zeus. This means the mortals see the will of Zeus and fate as the same thing. It is true that Zeus has big power over the mortal world and makes most of the decisions for the mortal world. However, Zeus and fate are two totally different things. When Zeus considers the outcomes of the war,

Father Zeus held out his sacred golden scales:

in them he placed two fates of death that lays men low-

one for the Trojan horsemen, one for Argives armed in bronze-

…

down went Achaea’s day of doom, Achaea’s fate

settling down on the earth that feeds us all

as the fate of Troy went lifting towards the sky.(6)

Zeus would not have consulted his scales if he determined fate. Therefore, fate is decided by another power that is not Zeus. It also doesn’t seem to be any of the other gods that are those who determine fate, as Zeus did not ask any of the other gods about the fate of the Greeks and Trojans -which he could have easily done if one of them actually did determine fate.

However, nothing forces the gods to act in accordance with fate. When Odysseus is about to kill Zeus’ son Sarpedon in Book 5:

But no, it was not the gallant Odysseus’ fate

To finish Zeus’ rugged son with his sharp bronze,

So Pallas swung his fury against the Lycian front.(7)

This scene may seem like fate choosing the hero’s action. However, if you look carefully, it is not the fate of Odysseus that directly stepped into his action, but the god Athena. Look at it this way. If Odysseus was not destined to kill the son of Zeus, Sarpedon, was it destined that he would be stopped by Athena in this exact way? Here, and like in many other places, it seems like Athena rather chose to act in accordance with fate, not forced. The lines say that Athena stopped Odysseus because that was the way his destiny went, not that she stopped Odysseus because it was her destiny.

So fate can be seen as a sort of guideline for the gods. Some other force determines fate, but the gods do not actually have to exactly act according to it. Then why is the Iliad the poem of fate? It is because consequently, everything goes in accordance with fate. Yes, the gods sure have power over fate and can act as they want, but they all do act according to fate in the end. In Book 16 when Patroclus is about to kill Sarpedon, Zeus is tempted to change the destiny of his son, but hesitates about interfering. However, he decides to comply with fate when Hera says this:

…

Do as you please, Zeus…

but none of the deathless gods will ever praise you.

…

Then surely some other god will want to sweep

his own son clear of the heavy fighting too.(8)

We can know from this that though the gods do not have to follow and act based on fate, but to maintain order in both the mortal and immortal world, they should act according to the guidelines of fate.

In the Iliad, the gods fight each other based on their opinions, but they do not forget their jobs- looking over the mortal world. To do this job, they ultimately have to work based on fate. Therefore, the whole plot of the poem goes as already determined by fate. Because the gods all control and influence the mortal world based on the fixed future in this poem, the Iliad is a poem of fate.

(1) The online Merriam-Webster Dictionary

(2) Homer. Iliad. Translated by Robert Fagles. Penguin Books: 1990. Page 79.

(3) Ibid. Page 110.

(4) Ibid. Page 79.

(5) Ibid. Page 110.

(6) Ibid. Page 233-234.

(7) Ibid. Page 186.

(8) Ibid. Page 427.

#essay #stellakim