Fate In Ancient Greece And The Iliad

“There are those who say fate is something beyond our command. That destiny is not our own, but I know better. Our fate lives within us, you just have to be brave enough to see it.” Princess Merida states this in Brave. She goes on a journey to seal her fate, similar to Odysseus. In Homer’s The Odyssey, Merida’s statement is proven false. In The Odyssey, the omnipotent power of the gods is absolute over the mortals. The will of the gods controls suffering, actions, and ultimate fate.

A scene of physical violence in Homer’s, The Iliad, contributes to the overall theme of fate versus free will. The Iliad is a very brutal and gruesome poem involving a war and a horrendous amount of death. Close to the beginning of the epic, the gods decide that Athena should see to it that the Trojan’s be the first to break their truce with the Achaeans This leads to the Achaeans and Trojans going into battle and slaughtering one another. The battle is so intense that a man went to collect armor off of an enemy that he had just finished killing, and dies himself in the process. Antilochus slaughters the Trojan captain, Echepolus, and when he dies, Abantes tries to steal the corpse. In the following quote it shows how Agenor prohibits Abantes from stealing the armor off the dead. “Just as he dragged that corpse the brave Agenor spied his ribs, bared by his shield as he bent low-- Agenor stabbed with a bronze spear and loosed his limbs, his life spirit left him …” (Homer 160 lines 540-543). This brutality starts when a god stirs up anger in the Achaeans by forcing the Trojans to

Fate and free will played major parts in creating the characters and stories in many of the Greek mythologies and tragedies. The Greeks believes that the Gods and the Oracle's could predict a person's fate before or after birth, and that no one, even the Gods could intervene in that person's fate. They also believed that a person's or God could not create their own fate. This belief stems from the three fates: sisters, The Moirai or Fates were three sister deities, incarnations of destiny and life. Because of these three old women, fate could not be avoided or altered. As such with these stories, in the Iliad fate leads Achilles down his path of glory and his early demise, and cause Oedipus to sleep with his own mother and kill his father. Free will is the power of acting without constraint and fate; acting by one's own decisions. Even though Achilleus and Oedipus have fate, they both also have free will. For instance, Achilles has a double fate: if he goes home, he will live long without glory or if he stays at Troy, he will have lots of glory, but a short life. As such, in Sophocles Oedipus the King, when Oedipus was born he was fated to kill his father and lay with his mother, thought his ability of free will caused his fate to come true.

Portions of modern society believe fate to be concrete and unchanging. However, in ancient times, it was believed to be influenced and guided by the actions of the gods. Similarly, in The Iliad by Homer, the actions of the gods influence the life, death, and fate of each and every individual. Gods such as Zeus, Athena and Apollo take great influence in human affairs in The Iliad. These actions cause life, death, sorrow, and triumph to befall various individuals of the story. Achilles’ fate results, solely, from these actions the gods undertake. In particular, the gods influence on Achilles’ fate shows when the gods keep Achilles from killing Agamemnon, staying out of the war, and holding onto his rage.

The third example of fate is when King Agamemnon takes a beautiful woman named Chryseis. Chryseis father Chryses was a priest who favored the god Apollo. He prayed to Apollo, he wanted the Greeks to suffer until his daughter was returned. Apollo answered Chryses’s prayer and he shot one of the greeks with an arrow. That arrow was laced with a plague. It spread through the Greek camp and brought death to many soldiers. On the tenth day King Agamemnon was informed on what apollo had done. He only agreed to give Chryseis back if Achilles gives him his prize as compensation. Achilles didn’t agree but that night King agamemnon sent Chryseis on a ship back home (pg18). The plague was lifted but this is not the end to the Greeks suffering. This is

In ancient Greek literature, fate is defined as the course a person’s life will take that is predetermined and can’t be changed by mortals or even the gods, and destiny is the outcomes that will ultimately be produced by one’s actions, social status, character, etc. Homer’s The Odyssey and Euripides’ Medea portrays their protagonists on a quest to reach their fate, but they first must take their destiny into their own hands in order to achieve this goal. The texts suggest that humans use their personal traits and values as weapons to gain control of one’s destiny instead of letting the gods or social norms dictate their lives. Both of the texts start out in a similar fashion with the

It is consistently difficult to understand in old world literature, from Homeric epics to Virgil's work, The Aeneid, what the relation of fate is to the Pantheon of gods. There seems to be an ongoing debate within the texts discussing whether "fate" is the supreme ruling force in the universe and the controlling element of the lives of men, or whether fate is the will of the king of gods, Jupiter. In, The Aeneid, several situations and instances of the use of fate are presented to the reader. The direction and destination of Aeneas's course are preordained, and his various sufferings and glories in battle and at sea over the course of the epic merely postpone his unchangeable destiny.

Fate, as described in the Oxford English Dictionary, is “The principle, power, or agency by which, according to certain philosophical and popular systems of belief, all events, or some events in particular, are unalterably predetermined from eternity.” To the western world, fate is perceived as “a sentence or doom of the gods” (Oxford). They often sought prophecies of the gods, especially from Apollo, the god of knowledge. The Greeks would seek prophecies usually when they had doubts about something, or if they were afraid or in despair. When the gods made a prophecy, the Greeks put all their faith in it and believed that it would happen. When their prophecies did come true, was it really fate that

Throughout Virgil’s The Aeneid, many of the characters view fate and destiny as basic parts of life. The gods recognize that even with all of their power they are no match for fate. When pondering ways to destroy the Trojans, Juno, queen of the gods, states: “The fates bar my way, yet Minerva could burn the fleet to ash” (1.48). Even though

The concept of fate and the influence of gods on mortals’ lives are prominent aspects of Greek mythology. While the gods of Olympus are commonly presented as the primary manipulators of human lives, the Fates are the true creators of destiny. Gods may be able to affect human lives in monumental ways, but predetermined destiny and the Fates’ intentions ultimately reign. The gods have respect for this authority, as well, as they’re aware that a limit on their ability to intervene is necessary to maintain the order of the universe. This leaves one to question the amount of knowledge that the gods themselves have of fate, and whether they have their own free will to refrain from intervening or if they truly must submit to the authority of the Fates and their plans. The gods do have some knowledge of the Fates’ plan, but they are also wise enough to avoid too much interference and therefore don’t necessarily need to be commanded; they sometimes help guide mortals by sending them messages and symbols—and sometimes even influencing them for their own advantage—but ultimate fate cannot be avoided.

Sophocles’ play “Oedipus Tyrannus” is about how Athenians view their gods and their fate. Athenians believed that their fate was not left up to man, but that is provided solely on the whims their gods. The interesting aspect of this story is not that one believes that fate is real but that fate can be changed by not following the predictions of the oracle (seer/mediator for the god. If fate does take place for whatever reason than one took the wrong step in changing it.

The destiny in Gilgamesh and The Iliad stories are believed to be a power that controls what happens in the future. The story of Gilgamesh and the Iliad destinies are moderately the same in significance of the conflicts and the ways of life both of the stories focused on a significant deaths. The Iliad and Gilgamesh is a remarkable reminder of the way life is in the present, but also how it is a little different. Both stories are similar in goals and destinies and how it affect the main characters. Most people believes that destiny or fate is pre-set and it is changed only by decisions we make that may be selfish and vindicated. Hopefully by the end of the essay the readers will get a better understand of stories similarities and differences.

Playwright Lucius Annaeus Seneca said that “Fate leads the willing, and drags along the reluctant,” (Beautiful Quotes) and perhaps nowhere is this idea better illustrated than in Virgil’s epic poem The Aeneid. Fate drives the course of events throughout the twelve books of The Aeneid, pushing both the mortal and divine, to the unwavering destinies laid before them, and destroying those who attempt to defy, or even hinder, the course of destiny. Today, fate is regarded as a benign force which can be easily combated with free will. However, As Virgil conveys in his epic, fate was once considered to be so unyielding that not even the gods themselves could intervene to prevent its coming to

Fate can be very complicated in life. Fate is determined by not only God, but the decisions people make. Fate can be either good or bad, as it is the end result of prior events. Often in literature we see fate as being grouped with death. Sophocles once said that “the greatest griefs are those we cause ourselves”. When people guide themselves or others to their downfall it is one of the most powerful control of fates. This can be proven in the literature works of Antigone by Sophocles and A Streetcar Named Desire by Tennessee Williams. Where the characters are tragic heroes and what makes them tragic heroes is that they accept defeat for their beliefs.

Odysseus describes Hades as the place “where senseless/dead men dwell, mere imitations of perished mortals” (Homer, Odyssey 11.475-6). Furthermore, Achilles states that he would sooner prefer to be a slave than king of the dead (Homer, Odyssey 11.489-91). As Diane Thompson highlights, this depiction of the afterlife is one that the Greeks would understandably dread. This further affirms the Trojan War as a tragedy for all those who perished, as even for Achilles, an admirable hero. Thomas Finan argues that in the Iliad, death is the ultimate enemy, and Achilles’ rage is its opponent. Evidently, Achilles in the Odyssey demonstrates that this is a struggle that not even Achilles and his emotions can surmount. Thompson mentions that the Odyssey’s depiction of an unhappy afterlife indicates a strong value seen in life itself for the Homeric Greeks. Considering this detail, the death of characters in the Iliad are made all the more