Sarpedon’s famous speech to Glaucus in Book 12 affirming the heroic code of fighting for “glory” because no one escapes death. Is there anything we can still admire in the heroic code?  The spirit of competition and striving for excellence and self-transcendence. The need for a “moral equivalent of war.” Hera seduces Zeus in Book 14 to distract him, but the Trojans eventually breach the ramparts and try to set fire to the ships, which are defended single-handedly by giant Ajax.

Book 9 is a crucial moment in the Iliad. Consisting of nothing but talk, it is nevertheless the turning point towards inevitable fatality, as Achilles refuses to return to battle. The speeches in which he refuses are fascinating but difficult, because he seems to be doubting the value of the heroic code by which he has lived his entire life. With no help forthcoming from their greatest warrior, the Achaeans try to figure out their options. While it is still night, Odysseus and Diomedes go on a spying expedition to the Trojan camp. They encounter the unlucky Trojan counter-spy Dolon and kill him. In book 11, the Achaeans suffer yet another setback as three of their main warriors, Agamemnon, Diomedes, and Odysseus, are taken out of the battle with minor injuries.

Zeus begins fulfilling his promise to Thetis to make the Achaeans lose. Giant Ajax helps prevent a complete rout, fighting a battle with Hector. Anachronisms in the text show the changing methods of warfare between the time of the Trojan War and Homer’s own time. Zeus warns the other deities not to interfere: the famous simile of the golden chain. Three times he curbs the attempt of Diomedes, who is experiencing his moment of aristeia, or self-transcending excellence, to take Troy directly. Night falls at the end of Book 8. The late-night emergency assembly of Book 9, in which Agamemnon promises a catalogue of gifts if Achilles will return to the battle.

The difficulty, perhaps the impossibility, of judging Paris and Helen, in Book 6 and elsewhere. Are they selfish and manipulative, self-deluding—or genuinely compelled by the will of the gods and fate? They seem as contradictory and enigmatic as people often do in real life. In Book 7, Big Ajax (contrasted with Little Ajax), a major figure in the Iliad, fights a duel with Hector, but inconclusively. Paris refuses to give Helen back to the Achaeans.

Zeus procrastinates fulfilling his promise to make the Greeks temporarily lose, and due to the leadership of Diomedes the Trojans are driven back against their own walls and are in danger of losing the war. Diomedes, the quiet team player, a contrast to the difficult Achilles. Hector comes inside the walls of Troy, and, as he is leaving meets his wife Andromache and their small son. Andromache begs Hector to stay, but Hector shows himself trapped by the demands of the heroic code. And the audience knows that adherence to the code will eventually kill him and doom his family and the whole city.

Hand to hand combat between Paris and Menelaus to settle the issue of who gets Helen. Paris, the beautiful lover who wears a leopard skin, is badly outmatched but rescued by Aphrodite, who orders Helen to join him in the bedroom and threatens her when Helen tries to refuse. The mystery of Helen’s character, complex, ambiguous. Another complex question: the role of the gods in the Iliad. Sometimes they can be taken non-literally as symbols of inner psychological forces and conflicts.

The society of the Iliad as an example of what some social scientists have called a “shame culture,” in which men are driven by the need for status in a peer group. Failing to achieve it, they are “shamed.” We are ostensibly a “guilt culture,” driven by individual conscience rather than outward social pressure, but in fact there are many similar tendencies in our culture. The rage of Achilles spreads all the way to Mt. Olympus and results in a quarrel between Zeus and Hera, defused buy Hephaestus, the smith of the gods and a fascinating anomalous deity.

The explosively dramatic opening of the Iliad, starting with its first word, “Rage!” Two men fighting over a woman, who is a “war prize.” And yet, according to what scholars call the heroic code of honor, neither man can back down, for fear of public shame, for fear of looking weak. Being “reasonable” is not permitted by their culture’s value system, and that is the tragedy.

What is still relevant about the Iliad today: the rich, complex characterization and the theme of anger, revenge, and justice. The many mysteries: Was there a “Homer”? Was there a Trojan War? The real Troy, excavated by Heinrich Schliemann. The plot background: Helen of Troy.

Diomedes’ speech admitting that the Trojan War had been wrong. The tragedy of Camilla, the great woman warrior. The suicide of Queen Amata. Jupiter forbids Juno and Turnus’s sister Juturna from interfering further. The final showdown between Turnus and Aeneas.  Turnus, wounded, begs for mercy—but Aeneas sees the belt of young Pallas, worn by Turnus as a war prize, and in the last four lines of the epic kills Turnus in a fit of blind rage.