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The gods
The gods play an important role in the Iliad. Both the Troians and the Achaians offer sacrifices to the gods, which sometimes helps, sometimes not. It is the gods, who decide whose turn it is to win the fights of the day. The different gods have their own favourites, who they support mostly for their own reasons, which is often to irritate other gods. The gods argue a lot of with each other and they don't appear to be very respectable characters. Zeus, the most powerful of the gods, keeps the lead and lets the war continue until Achilles gets his glory.
Achilles and Hector
The leading characters of the two troops achieve glorious victories in their fights against the enemy. Still, I wouldn't call them heroes. They both know the death is waiting for them in the near future, maybe that makes them both indifferent and cruel.
The Iliad is very much a story about Achilles. In the beginning Achilles is hurt by Agamemnon who steals a woman from Achilles. Then a song after a song, the Achaians fight without Achilles and his people and the situation is getting worse and worse for them all the time. Achilles is angry sitting on his ship and the reader waits him to come to help. It is only after the death of his dear friend Patroklos, when Achilles takes part into the fights again. With the help of Zeus and driven by his grief over Patroklos's death, Achilles is invicible. But not even the victory over Hector and disgracing his death body console Achilles in his sorrow. At the end Achilles show some humanity, when he gives the body of Hector to his father Priamos for a proper burial. Again this happens according to the will of Zeus.
War
The Iliad tells about the war. The war has been going on for a while already at the beginning of the epic and the end promises that the cease-fire won't last long. The equipment and weapons of the fighters are described in detail, also much text is devoted to horses. The fights must have been rather chaotic, a turmoil of men and horses, when the troops run against each other. Anyhow, many fighting scenes are duels, where the heroes of the sides fight against each other. The fights start with a discussion between the duellers, often about their heroic ancestors. The bloodiness of the deaths is hidden by the beauty of the language, so it takes a while after the reader understands all the dreadful details.
Iliad and Kalevala
After reading Kalevala just before Iliad, it is not avoidable to compare the two epics. They do resemble each other in a way, but they do differ much more than I thought before reading the Iliad. Some of the characters are very much alike. The language in both of the epics is very beautiful and powerful. Maybe Lönnrot has been thinking about the war expedition of the Iliad, when he has written about how the Kalevala people robbed the Sampo. At least the justification of the Sampo robbery is as hard to understand as the reasons for the war between the Achaians and the Troians. But whereas the Iliad is mainly about the war, Kalevala describes the nature and human life from a much wider perspective. Eventhough it can't be denied, that the Iliad is a great epic, I feel a little bit disappointed to the view of life it presents. There is not much you can do yourself as your future is in the hands of gods. But you cannot trust even to the gods, as their deeds depend on the current, ever-changeable, situation at the
Olympos. And there is war - between the people and between the gods.
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