Homer’s Iliad – Summary, Themes, and Bucket List Book Adventure Review (Book 1)

Homer’s Iliad – Summary, Themes, and Bucket List Book Adventure Review (Book 1)

By a.d. elliott | Take the Back Roads - Art and Other Odd Adventures

Dear Henry,

I’ve finished the first book of the Bucket List Book Adventure, Homer’s Iliad. Let me tell you all about it.

Long before Homer wrote, a powerful city stood on the northwest coast of Anatolia (today’s Türkiye), across the Aegean from Greece. For centuries, “Troy” lived half in legend, until the 1800s, when excavations, driven by Frank Calvert’s research and Heinrich Schliemann’s funding, revealed multiple ancient cities built one atop another. Whatever we call it, the place was old by the Late Bronze Age and likely fell around the 1200s BC.

The Mycenaeans dominated mainland Greece from approximately 1600 to 1200 BC, eventually replacing the earlier Minoan culture. After their world unraveled, new peoples and iron technology reshaped the Aegean.

Homer’s Iliad was composed centuries later (often dated near the 8th century BC) from a deep oral tradition. It assumes you already know the wider saga—how the Trojan War began with a quarrel over a golden apple and the abduction of Helen, and how kings like Agamemnon and Menelaus gathered the Greek coalition to sail for Troy.

The Iliad covers just 51 days in the final year of the war. It opens when Agamemnon refuses to return the captive Chryseis to her father, a priest of Apollo. A plague ravages the Greeks until he relents—then he seizes Briseis from Achilles, igniting a feud that removes the great warrior from battle. Achilles prays to his mother, Thetis, and the gods begin to tilt the scales.

Duels, truces, and broken truces follow. Paris challenges Menelaus and must be whisked away by Aphrodite. The Trojans press their advantage. At last, Patroclus, in Achilles’ armor, leads the Myrmidons to save the ships. He drives too far and is killed by Hector, fully aware it is Patroclus beneath the borrowed bronze.

Devastated, Achilles returns to battle in armor forged by Hephaestus. He kills Hector, then desecrates the body in a storm of grief and rage. Only when King Priam comes in the night to beg for his son does Achilles relent. The poem ends not with Troy’s fall, but with Hector’s funeral, leaving the horse, the sack, and the homecomings to other epics.

It is a brutal poem, with more than two hundred deaths, each described in vivid detail. Yet it is also a mirror of Bronze Age ideals: honor, glory, reputation, and the terrible costs they demand. Achilles is magnificent and frightening; Hector is noble and doomed; Agamemnon is often petty; Paris is shamefully light. The gods behave like a troublesome, powerful family, choosing sides for reasons as human as pride and jealousy.

For me, the most haunting thread is how women bear the war’s weight: Briseis, Andromache, and countless captives treated as prizes and bargaining chips. Reading the Iliad through that lens makes its fame feel both earned and uncomfortable. It is the oldest surviving epic of our tradition, and a stark reminder of what people once called “glory.”

xoxo
a.d. elliott

P.S. Companion reads I enjoyed: The Firebrand (Marion Zimmer Bradley) and The Song of Achilles (Madeline Miller).

*Note* The Bucket List Book Adventure continues on Rite of Fancy — my literary corner of the Take the Back Roads journey.  Come read more reflections on philosophy, faith, and the books that shape the road.

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About the Author
a.d. elliott is a wanderer, photographer, and storyteller traveling through life

She shares her journeys at Take the Back Roads, explores new reads at Rite of Fancy, and highlights U.S. military biographies at Everyday Patriot.

You can also browse her online photography gallery at shop.takethebackroads.com.

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