The Iliad as Propaganda Justifying Aristocratic Rule

A theory of Homeric values and cultural stability

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.”

You might answer that the story is not a reliable guide to history, which one might suspect based on the fact that it includes transcriptions of discussions of the gods, who regularly join mortals on the battlefield. But regardless, this is the story that the Greeks told themselves. So even if the war didn’t happen in the way portrayed by Homer – whoever he was, if he even existed – the poem was understood to accurately tell a plausible tale about human motivations.

This question of what’s in it for regular soldiers is far from neglected. In the main subplot of the story, Achilles, the Greeks’ best warrior, is missing in action for most of the poem. This is because Agamemnon took from Achilles a woman he won through armed conflict named Briseis. Just as with Paris and the Trojans, nobody on the Greek side agrees with what Agamemnon did, but still they fight on his behalf.

There is only one character of lower social status who stands up to the aristocrats who are always asking other men to die so they can cuck one another. When elite warriors lose heart and seem like they are ready to run, Odysseus gives each a speech in which he says to continue fighting. But when a common soldier tries to do the same, Odysseus strikes him and tells him to “be quiet, pay attention to your betters.” Then Thersites enters the scene (I use the Emily Wilson translation).

So masterfully he controlled the army. They left the ships and huts again and rushed
back to the meeting place—just as when waves
of loud-reverberating water crash
onto the long shore, and the deep sea rumbles.
The men sat down, submissive on their benches.
Only foul-mouthed Thersites argued back.
This man knew how to blather on for hours
with pointless and irrelevant complaints
against the rulers—anything he thought
might raise a laugh among the other Greeks.
He was the ugliest man who marched on Troy.
One of his legs was weak, the other twisted.
His shoulders hunched across his chest. His head
was pointy and his sprouts of hair were sparse.
Achilles and Odysseus especially
loathed him, because he always scolded them.
But now his piercing voice shot sharp reproofs
at glorious Agamemnon, and the Greeks
blamed him inside their hearts. They were enraged.
Thersites yelled and cursed at Agamemnon.

“You, son of Atreus! What do you need?
What is your grievance? You already have
huts full of bronze and full of handpicked women
whom we Greek warriors assigned to you.
You get first choice whenever we take towns.
Do you need yet more gold? Some Trojan horse-lord
will bring it out of Troy to free his son,
captured by me or by some other Greek
and brought to you. Or do you need a woman,
a young one to have sex with and to keep
all for yourself? It is not right for you,
a leader, to involve the Greeks in ruin.
Sweethearts, you are a terrible disgrace—
Greek girls, not men. Now let us sail back home
with all the ships and leave this man behind!
Let him consume his winnings here at Troy,
so he can see if we helped him or not.
Just now he brought dishonor to Achilles
who is a better man than him by far.
He took his trophy from him and has kept it.
No anger lurks inside Achilles’ heart.
He lets things go. If he were more persistent,
this would have been the last time, Agamemnon,
you would have treated anyone so badly.”

So spoke Thersites as he criticized
the shepherd of the people, Agamemnon.
Quickly Odysseus stepped in and scowled,
and scolded him.

“You blabbermouth, Thersites!
You are quite marvelous at public speaking.
But now shut up! You must not pick a quarrel
alone against the rulers of the army.
You are the very worst, in my opinion,
of all the mortal men who came to Troy
with Agamemnon, son of Atreus.
Your mouth should never speak the names of rulers.
You must not level insults at your betters,
or look around for chances to get home.
We do not know yet how these things will go—
whether the sons of Greece will get home safe,
or have a bitter journey. You sit there
and criticize the son of Atreus,
Lord Agamemnon, shepherd of the people,
because the Greeks have given him so much.
You keep complaining, but I tell you this,
and swear that it will surely come to pass,
if I find out that you continue acting
as stupidly as you are doing now,
I hope my head stops resting on my shoulders,
and let Odysseus no more be called
the father of Telemachus, unless
I grab you, rip your cloak and tunic off,
expose your private parts, and beat you up,
humiliating you with blows. I shall
force you to leave the meeting place and go
back to the swift ships, weeping and ashamed.”

With that, Odysseus began to use
his staff to thrash Thersites on his shoulders
till he hunched over, sobbing. On his back
a bloody weal puffed up beneath the rod
of gold. He sat down, frightened and in pain
and helplessly he wiped away his tears.
The men were troubled but they smiled and laughed,
and told each other,

“This is something special!
Odysseus has often done great things.
He forms good plans and marshals troops for war.
But now he has performed his greatest service
for all of us—he silenced that rude windbag!
Thersites will not come back here again,
led by his strong proud heart to criticize
the rulers with insulting words.”

To my modern ears, Thersites seems to have the better argument. Here he’s not even questioning the entire Trojan War, but only why Agamemnon’s desire for a captive female should trump the war effort. This is what we today would call the definition of loyal opposition.

Nineteenth-century British portrayal of Thersites in a publication of The Iliad

For his efforts, Thersites is described by Homer as an ugly cripple and is beaten by Odysseus. Reinforcing the idea that he is a pathetic and contemptible man, Thersites cowers and sobs in pain. Far from being offended about what has been done to their comrade, the other soldiers are glad to see him put in his place. Even the name Thersites translates into something like “boldness” or “impudence.”

The lack of pressure on Paris to give back Helen, or Agamemnon to return Briseis, is what is particularly striking. Putting aside common soldiers, even fellow elites seem helpless to change their minds. Agamemnon is at least the leader of the Greeks, but Paris is simply one nobleman among many, and the Trojans let him be the cause of the entire war, as even his father admits.

While people often talk of ancient virtue, this isn’t virtue in any sense we would recognize today. Men are not fighting for their own honor, but dying for their superiors. And The Iliad doesn’t even promise them immortality in the form of being mentioned in a poem or having their names carved into a monument. Only the nobles are remembered in The Iliad for carrying out heroic deeds. Thersites is in fact the only common soldier who speaks for any significant length of time.

We see elites offering more earthly carrots and sticks in a speech by Nestor, a wise elder statesman, in Book 2. Telling the Greeks that Zeus is at their side, the old man proclaims that “no man ought to hurry off back home before he shares a Trojan woman’s bed to pay for Helen’s sufferings and struggles.” And if anyone finds this unconvincing and wants to run back to his ship, “he can meet his fated end and die right here in front of everyone.” The threat is implicit, but nonetheless clear.

Here perhaps are the real motivations: rape and plunder as the carrot, execution as the stick. Yet you would think that elites would be better served by a grand narrative of the war other than the idea that they need to avenge a slight against Menelaus. Rather than gaining individual glory, the Greek soldier simply gets to stand over a Trojan woman at some point and say “This is for Helen!” There’s nothing like nationalism in the modern sense, where the most insignificant member of a community can take pride in the accomplishments of the collective. The Greeks and Trojans speak (roughly) the same language – which we can tell by their ability to communicate clearly on the battlefield – and share the same cultural assumptions and gods. Troy was eventually destroyed, but this doesn’t seem like something that the average Greek had any reason to feel particularly good about in the subsequent centuries.

How to explain this? Thinkers going back to at least Xenophanes and Plato have seen the bad behavior of gods and leaders in Homer as threatening to social stability. I would turn this argument on its head and say that the story has the opposite effect when we consider elite prerogatives and how dissent from below is treated.

The cuckolding aspects of The Iliad may be related to how the epic in its finished form was composed. Imagine you are a local ruler in some Greek village. You want to teach obedience to your population. Is there anything better than a story where elites act selfishly and capriciously, but still should be obeyed anyway? Every other ruler looks good compared to Agamemnon. A story where people follow elites because they’re all wise, selfless, and noble might raise the uncomfortable question of why contemporary leaders do not live up to the same standards. For this reason, when The Iliad portrays figures like Paris and Agamemnon in a negative light, it reinforces the idea that obedience should be unconditional. Note also that Agamemnon eventually admits he was in the wrong and blames the gods for clouding his judgment, which gives leaders who have behaved foolishly an out if they ever need to change course after making a mistake.

The story of Thersites can be understood in a similar way, as a kind of extreme case providing support for the dominant value system. If Thersites were wrong on the substance, then he could be dismissed for that reason. But the fact that he is right and gets beaten for it shows that there’s never a good reason for commoners to step out of line. Only ugly, cowardly cripples dare to criticize their superiors.

I’m not imagining a scenario where a ruler decrees that a story like The Iliad be invented. Rather, we can imagine bards starting to compose a narrative based on a real historical event, which was the destruction of Troy around 1200 BC. But they can’t tell a story that would teach values that threaten elites’ ability to hold on to power, since free speech in the modern sense doesn’t exist. The storytellers would also be seeking elite patronage. So over the years, the narrative gets shaped and adjusted to become more congenial to those who hold power. Maybe some clever poet originally inserted the story of Thersites in order to subtly critique the values of the Greeks, but when the story was told in earshot of elites with armed men under their control, they made this commoner ugly and had him beaten for his impudence.

Eventually, the story reaches something close to an optimization of pro-aristocratic propaganda, so the narrative solidifies and becomes part of tradition.

The Iliad does legitimize opposition to leaders from other elites. Here we may solve the mystery of why nobody is willing to suggest trying to force Paris to give Helen back to end the war. Elite prerogatives are treated as absolutely inviolable, even by other elites, and even if they are in the wrong and their selfishness threatens to destroy the community. Note that Achilles resists Agamemnon not by fighting him, but by simply refusing to participate in his war. He has a right to not engage in the conflict, despite being the most valuable warrior they have. Those of sufficient rank can try to convince Paris to give back Helen or Agamemnon to make peace with Achilles, but they can only rely on the power of persuasion. Commoners don’t even get that; all they can do is obey.

Achilles is at one point about to kill Agamemnon when they have their initial dispute. He begins to draw out his blade, but then is talked out of it by Athena, who promises him “three times as many gifts one day” if he just taunts Agamemnon and tells him what will happen instead of striking him dead. The gods therefore seem to frown on elites killing one another, even if they are fine with slaughter on the battlefield, and often encourage it. And an elite figure may think about killing his leader in anger, but after consulting with a goddess and reflecting on the matter, he simply gives him what he wants in the knowledge that divine providence will make sure that everything works out in the end.

Did regular people actually internalize the values of The Iliad during the long history of Greek civilization? It’s difficult to say since practically all writing comes down to us from literate elites. At the very least, we can say that this is the value system that elites were comfortable teaching.

The Iliad isn’t similar to standard authoritarian propaganda today, in which leaders are treated as unusually wise and virtuous. Such material exists to legitimize the rule of particular individuals. The Iliad has a different purpose: to justify the rule of elites as representing the natural order of the world, which in effect means that defending the virtue of past leaders is unnecessary, if not downright counterproductive.

Most scholars have discussed The Iliad as reflecting the values of its time. Yet in societies based on elite rule, slavery, and the domination of patriarchs, any story that becomes a cultural lodestar needs to not be offensive to those with power. I really doubt large numbers of men went to their deaths around 1200 BC thinking about how much sex one of their leaders was going to have with Helen. For most soldiers, their own personal ability to plunder and their fear of their commanders were probably more important motivations. But over time, I suspect that this story was shaped according to selection pressures that cut out anything that may have felt threatening to those with power, while at the same time presenting enough intra-elite conflict to entertain audiences.

Perhaps this optimization process can explain why Greek civilization flourished. The value system reflected in and propagandized by The Iliad seems conducive to social stability. At the same time, by defending elite prerogatives rather than preaching worship of an individual ruler, as the Persians and Egyptians did, the story contributed to the maintenance of a civilization that was more democratic than anything that had come before, allowing it to benefit from relatively open debate and more opportunities for a wider range of talented men to contribute to society.

This is all pretty speculative. It seems doubtful that I would come up with a brand new theory about The Iliad, but I’ve looked around a bit and haven’t found anyone making a similar argument. Maybe Plato set the tone so that those who came after him would read the story as subversive. Admittedly, I haven’t thoroughly researched the centuries of commentary and scholarship on the topic. So if you’re aware of a tradition that reads The Iliad in the same way, or historical evidence that would make my theory about its composition more or less plausible, let me know.

Thanks for reading. One thing I’ve learned is that when you have a book coming out, you can never assume that even regular readers are aware of it.

For that reason, over the next few months I’m not going to miss any opportunity to inform my audience that I have a new book called Kakistocracy: Why Populism Ends in Disaster coming out in July – details here. If you enjoy articles like this, appreciate me as a truly independent writer, and would like to support my work, the best way to do so is to preorder the book, which you can do at the links here to Amazon or Barnes & Noble. All preorders count toward opening day sales, and will help determine how much attention it receives.

I will be reading the audiobook, in case that makes it more appealing.

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