We all know that the ancients had a different moral system. So when I recently picked up The Iliad to read in full for the first time, I certainly wasn’t expecting democratic values, feminism, or modern conceptions of human rights.
But the one thing that did surprise me was how the motivations of the regular soldiers were implicitly understood. For those who don’t know (spoiler alert!), The Iliad covers a period of several weeks of the Trojan War. The conflict began when Paris Alexander, a Trojan, kidnapped Helen from Menelaus, who is the younger brother of Agamemnon, king of Mycenae. Agamemnon leads a coalition of the Greeks that sails to Troy in order to get Menelaus’ wife back. That’s the entire cause of the war.
There’s no mystery about why the particular men already mentioned are fighting. But to me the mystery is why regular Greeks decided to fight so that one nobleman could have his wife returned. The behavior of the Trojans is even more puzzling, as, while Menelaus has suffered a grave insult, it is generally acknowledged that Paris is in the wrong.
In Book 7, during a Trojan assembly, Antenor argues that Troy should return Helen and her property to end the war. Paris refuses — he’ll give back everything else, but not Helen. Priam, the king of Troy and Paris’ father, does not force the issue but refers to his son as “the man who is the cause of this whole conflict.”
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I think if you are going to discuss the Iliad's value system in terms of the relationship between leaders and masses, one scene you really need to take into account is the speech of Sarpedon in Book 12, placed almost exactly at the center of the epic. In that speech Sarpedon explicitly describes the honor given to the chiefs as a reciprocal system: a reward to them by the people for their willingness to lead - and potentially die - in battle.
I don't see how that is compatible with your reading: yes, it too can be read as a justification for elite rule, but it is not a justification for UNCONDITIONAL elite rule, no matter how the elites perform, which is what you were arguing for. Your mistake - I think - is to note (correctly) that the elites in the Iliad are not judged on their wisdom or success, but you fail to see what they ARE judged on, which is their risk-taking courage.
I would recommend Simone Weil’s essay, “The Iliad, or the Poem of Force”, as my preferred interpretation of the epic. Reading it as aristocracy-justifying propaganda does not really make sense to me largely for the reasons set out in Weil’s essay.