Ajax : The Iliad And Ajax

In early fifth century BC Greece, the Greeks consistently suffered from the threat of being conquered by the Persian Empire. Between the years 500-479 BC, the Greeks and the Persians fought two wars. Although the Persian power vastly surpassed the Greeks, the Greeks unexpectedly triumphed. In this Goliath versus David scenario, the Greeks as the underdog, defeated the Persians due to their heroic action, divine support, and Greek unity. The threat of the Persian Empire's expansion into Greece and the imminent possibility that they would lose their freedom and become subservient to the Persians, so horrified the Greeks that they united together and risked their lives in order to preserve the one thing they all shared in common, their

The Peloponnesian War pitted the Athenians against the Spartans. The Peloponnesians’ were an alliance of city-states controlled by Sparta. These two powerful city-states became locked in a struggle for dominance of the eastern Mediterranean area. The roots of the conflict and in particular this expedition is highly complex. As Thucydides says in his history of the war, the underlying cause was Spartan fear of Athens' expansive power. But, the triggering event was Athens' aggressive behavior towards Corinth, an ally of Sparta.

Often through great literature, there is an epic hero. In the Odyssey, Homer tells the journey of one man’s journey home from the Trojan War. The protagonist of the epic poem Odysseus is often regarded as a great hero. However, Odysseus is not quite the glorious soldier that people often see him as. Odysseus shows that he is an antihero through his pride, disloyalty, and bloodthirstiness.

In 431 B.C., even before the Peloponnesian War, Athens’ strength compared to other Greek polises was evident. Athens had islands, a powerful, a well-trained navy, and one, if not the best, general at the time: Pericles. Pericles says in his speech that, “war is inevitable,” but in fact the war was preventable (72). Even with all of the military strengths and assets that Athenians had afforded to them, they chose to be merciful to the Peloponnesians who were in no shape to go to war. They did not have the experience, money, manpower, or means to participate in a lengthy war and Pericles makes the citizens aware of this (70). Pericles is both modest and humble for choosing to point out these facts which in turn helps the Athenians see the potential

In the Iliad, at the start of the Trojan War, Ajax, son of Oileus, is recognized as the best of the Greeks with a spear and the fastest runner, second only to Achilles himself. He also possesses skills in interpreting divine phenomenon. After observing the “light-feet” of charging soldiers and a falcon pursuing its prey, he concluded that the gods are with them and convinced greater Ajax to proceed offensively (Homer p. 245). These attributes give him an unwavering sense of confidence in matters on and off the battlefield. It is this same confidence that creates discontent for him among some of his contemporaries and the gods.

As you have read war is a very different type of world everything is turned around and it confuses people. The author of the book The Things They Carried and the writer of the quote "It has been said of war that it is a world where the past has a strong grip on the present, where machines seemed sometimes to have more will power than me, where nice boys (girls) were attracted to them, where bodies ruptured and burned and stand, where the evil thing trying to kill you could look disconnecting human and where except in your imagination it was impossible to be heroic." relates to each of his stories. Wrote about war so people could have a better understanding of

Around the twelfth to thirteenth century B.C. God intervention caused one of the bloodiest wars in history, the Trojan War. The main characters in this war and the story that comes with it (The Iliad) are Achilles the best fighter on the Greek side and Hector the Trojans best warrior. Hector and Achilles were heroes in the story but they were different types of heroes. Achilles is known as the epic hero because he had supernatural help and characteristics but Hector was the modern hero the regular human hero because he was just human and had no supernatural power or help.

What a society considers fighting, and dying, for says a lot about that society. Homer’s The Iliad, and Thucydides’ The History of the Peloponnesian War are both centered on some of the largest wars that their authors knew about. In the case of The Iliad, this war started when Paris offended the honor of the Spartan king, Menelaus, by taking Helen, the king’s wife. This is just an example of the culture of the times because, right from the start, the Greeks of Homer fight for their honor. Thucydides lived during the Peloponnesian War, hundreds of years after Homer. During those hundreds of years, war itself had fundamentally changed. In The History of the Peloponnesian War, honor was still important, but the war’s main purpose was much more tangible. The main cause of the Peloponnesian War was Athens’ desire for more land, more tribute states, and, most importantly, more power. Both of the works deal largely with why the people in them think the wars are worth fighting. In the case of The Iliad, the battles, both for the states and the people fighting, are fought for honor, while in The History of the Peloponnesian War, Athens fights for the power of her empire.

While Ancient Greek tragedies are purely fictional, their themes are based on prevalent issues in society at the time. Historians often attribute the Second Peloponnesian War to the arrogance of Athens--to the Athenian belief that they were invulnerable. In early fifth-century B.C., otherwise known as the Golden Age, Athens was the leading city-state

One of the main components that defined the ancient world is war. During the era of expansion and conquest, wars were waged across lands near and far. By means of defense, revolts arose at this time of numerous battles as well as the formation of alliances. As a whole, war is a struggle for power. For instance, two great ancient civilizations, Greece and Persia, fought in a series of conflicts known as the Greco-Persian Wars. Herodotus, the historian who first wrote about the Persian Wars, once said, “Great things are won by great dangers.” All war is dangerous, yet the advancements made afterward help form civilizations and promote future prosperity. The Greco-Persian Wars were significant for world history because they paved the way for

The individualistic nature of Greek society is further reflected in their war strategies. The Greek city-states would fight individually unless another city-state could find sufficient benefit in joining the war.

Ancient Greece, Sparta especially, and Ancient Rome were best known for their military tactics and strategies. In the Greek city-state Sparta, military went as far as making every male citizen a hoplite, warriors of Ancient Greece, and go through a mandatory training program, agoge, or put through public humiliation (Park and Love). It is impossible to say that both Rome and Sparta neglected the idea of implementing warfare into their daily lives.

Let’s compare the warfare of both periods, in the dark ages the Trojan war took place, the reason we know that this possibly happened is from the epics that Homer wrote such as the Iliad. In the Iliad, you have “Achilles’ Anger” which followed a Greek hero Achilles. He was a “role model” to all Greek soldiers at the time so we can only assume many soldiers shared the inclinations towards war (spoils, glory, honor), soldier’s perspective on the king (unjustly laying claim to larger amounts of spoils of war), and camaraderie among soldiers (Achilles’ reaction to the death of his friend). This is a very personal point-of-view on the soldiers that fought that war. We can only assume that much of the wars fought were chaos, and fought one on one with small major fights throughout. Then we have the “The Melian Dialogue,” which was written during the classical period of Greece about Athenian and the Melians. In short, the Athenians were encroaching on the island of Melos, a colony of Lacedaemon that would not submit to Athens like other island states. The Melians refuse to give up their freedom for the sake of survival, Athenians lay siege on the island and eventually forced surrender. Then Athenians killed all the grown men, sold off the women and children to slavery, and colonized the island with 500

“Rage—Goddess, sing the rage of Peleus’ Son Achilles, / murderous, doomed, that cost the Achaeans countless losses. . .” (Iliad, 77) The Iliad is an ancient Greek epic poem that is set during the Trojan War. It tells fo the battles and events that occurred during the weeks of a sort of argument existing between King Agamemnon and the warrior Achilles. From the very first line of Homer’s Iliad the idea of violence is presented to us through the idea of Achilles’ rage. Violence is defined simply as behavior intended to hurt, damage, or kill someone. There are hundreds of translations of Homer’s famous text, however, no matter how the story is translated, and the methods used to do so, violence and anger remain a very important central theme.

Written by the Greek historian Thucydides, History of the Peloponnesian War is one that tells the story of the war (431-404 BC) which divided the Greek world between Athens and its allies and Lacedaemon. The Melian Dialogue presents two sides and two perspectives that of the Melians neutrality and that of the Athenians’ might. By Thucydides juxtaposing the Athenian’s position to that of the Melians, there is a clear conclusion of which side actions are tactically and morally acceptable. One would argue that the Athenians are immoral for violently plundering the Melian territory because they had the power to do so. However, given the circumstance of trying to defend their empire due to the imbalance of forces, the Athenian actions are not