The God In The Iliad

The Gods Role in The Iliad

The gods in The Iliad are very greedy, self-centered, vain, malicious, and two-faced. Homer does a very good job of showing us this throughout the entire epic poem, and he does it in such a way so that anyone who reads this can understand. All of the gods that get involved in this war have their own self-serving motives behind all of their interference.

Right in the very beginning of the epic poem, one of Apollo's priests prays to him to send a plague onto the Achaeans because they will not give him back his daughter. Apollo decides to go ahead and do what the priest asks because the priest is loyal and if he does do this then the priest will sacrifice many things in Apollo's name. The Achaeans gave the daughter back and sacrificed many bulls in Apollo's name while Apollo heard, "those young Achaean warriors singing out his power, / and Apollo listened, his great heart warm with joy" (I. ll. 565-566). It shows really that he did not do this just because the priest asked him to, but because he is greedy and wants more sacrifices and followers so that he can become more powerful among the gods. He also gets his sister Artemis to join the fighting on the Trojans side just because he has much influence over what she does.

We then have Achilles praying to his mother, Thetis, to have her speak to Zeus and get him to punish the Achaeans for this stupidity done by the commander, Agamemnon. Thetis of course agrees to talk to Zeus because Achilles is her son and she wants him to be safe and get what he wants. Thetis talks to Zeus and he gives his approval that it will be done. Thetis does this as well because she knows the prophecy that if Achilles fights in this war then he will die because she says that Achilles is , "Doomed to a short life, you(Achilles) have so little time" (I. l. 496). She does not want her son to die so she tells Achilles to, "...stay here by the fast ships, rage on at the Achaeans, / just keep clear of every foray in the fighting" (I. ll. 504-505). This is very much self-centered because she does not want to see her son die. Thetis is greedy as well because she knows that there are other sons of gods and goddesses fighting in this war and that some of them will most likely die, but she only cares about her own son.

Now Hera is the worst goddess of them all. She only chooses to be on the Achaeans side because Paris, a Trojan, did not pick her to be the most beautiful out of the goddesses. She is so vain and full of herself that she pretty much seals the fate of Troy being destroyed just because someone said she was not the most beautiful. She sees that Zeus is helping the Trojans so she decides to trick her own husband, Zeus. She gets a belt from Aphrodite that makes anyone fall madly in love with the wearer. She then seduces Zeus and gets Sleep to put him to sleep. Once Zeus is sleeping, Hera sends Sleep to Poseidon to tell him that Zeus is in, "...a deep, soothing sleep as soon as Hera / seduced great Zeus to lose himself in love" (XIV. ll. 427-418). This shows the true treachery of Hera because she really did not want to love Zeus, but it got him distracted long enough for the Achaeans to hurt the Trojans really bad. Hera embodies all of the bad traits, vain, self-centered, backstabbing, and very greedy. If she were a human today, she would definitely be friends with Paris Hilton.

The goddess that Paris did choose as the most beautiful was Aphrodite, the goddess of love. So she, of course, helps the Trojans out. She ends up getting a small injury during a battle and flees to Mount Olympus and convinces her husband, Ares, with her "charms" to go fight for her. He does do and ends up getting wounded and flees to Mount Olympus as well. Ares then says to Zeus, "We everlasting gods...Ah what chilling blows / we suffer- thanks to our own conflicting wills- / whenever we show these mortal men some kindness" (V. ll. 1008-1010). Ares shows here that he knows the gods have their motives in this war by saying they have their own conflicting wills. He also gets injured by an Achaean that he himself was trying to kill. He says he was showing kindness to the humans when all he did was go down there and kill people, this shows how self-centered and malicious Ares really is.

Poseidon is a