Why The Iliad Still Matters

The founding text of Western Civilization

With the exception of the Bible, no literary text is more foundational to Western Civilization than Homer’s Iliad. It first emerged 3,000 years ago in the form of oral storytelling, yet the story proved so prescient and glorious that it cemented itself into the heart and soul of Ancient Greece, becoming the very fodder that built the civilization we’ve known and inherited today.

But why was this story so beloved and influential?

At first, the answer isn’t obvious. On the surface, The Iliad is a mere war story. Homer’s poetry is a maelstrom of violence, a tale of how thousands were slaughtered at the hands of a bloodthirsty demigod’s wrath. His name was Achilles — the hero of the Greeks — who was whipped into a hellbent frenzy. In the end, this wrath would raze the ancient world’s most illustrious city to the ground, leaving behind a sea carcasses and bloodshed, and leave us a legendary poem that would be sung of for millennia.

Here’s the story of the fabled wrath of Achilles, and how The Iliad helped mold the heart and soul of Western Civilization to this very day…