The Iliad: Funny Moments

The Iliad: Funny Moments

The year was 850-750 BCE. No phones or underwear in sight. Pants were for the uncivilized only. Unibrows were attractive. And then, one day, Homer decides to write the first Greek Mythology Fanfiction ever, called "Troy Story".

Here is a list of moments from the Iliad which I personally consider to be quite hilarious:

1. Early on in Book 2, before the enormous list of Greek fighters and ships:

Agamemnon tries to motivate/test the army by claiming that he's given up and they're going home. This backfires, as a stampede for the ships ensues.

In response, Athena comes down and gives Odysseus a pep talk. He promptly and unceremoniously takes Agamemnon's scepter out of his hands and runs around brow-beating and occasionally actually beating men who were turning from the fight. It all comes to a head when he takes the scepter and beats the crap out of the Argives' resident disfigured hunchback who was doing nothing but making jokes at the Argive leaders' expense. In fact, the narrative itself stops and mentions that the scene was so hilarious, the soldiers in-story were laughing raucously.

Within Agamemnon's speech, his roundabout method of explaining how badly the Greeks outnumber the Trojans: let's say they have a truce, and each side takes a census, and each group of ten Greek soldiers gets one (male) resident of Troy to pour their wine. "There would be many tens of men lacking a pourer of wine."

2. At one point early in the story Paris steps out among the Trojan soldiers, described as looking like a god, and dares any Greek soldier to come up and face him in battle. Menelaus steps forward to answer the call—and Paris promptly flees back behind his soldiers.

3.Menelaus beating Paris up with his bare hands, while the latter still has his sword. The dramatic way in which it's written makes it a tad more serious, until you remember that Menelaus is choking Paris with the strap of his own hat.

4. Throughout the book, the Greeks continuously throw spears at Hector, but Apollo just deflects them into his charioteer instead, before Hector just picks up another random guy off the battlefield. This happens numerous times throughout the book that it's almost a running gag.

5. The Greeks send an embassy to beg Achilles to come join the fighting again. At first he receives them in friendship, but when he's heard them out, he has Patroclus start passive-aggressively preparing a bed for the only member of the embassy he's invited to spend the night, to signal to the others it's time for them to leave. Thus proving that "it was so nice to see you, but wow, look at the time, we should be getting to bed!" is a tactic Older Than Dirt.

6. When Hera seduces Zeus to distract him, he describes how attractive she is by comparing her with some of the other women he's slept with. It takes about 20 lines in the original Greek.

7. During the battle between the men and gods, Artemis squares up with Hera after her brother decides against fighting Poseidon. You'd think Artemis, the epic huntress and receiver of human sacrifice she is, armed with a powerful bow and fitting the Action Girl trope to a tee would utterly wreck the seemingly frilly, stuck up, less capable Hera. Hera instead chastises Artemis for being a brat biting off way more than she can chew, gives her a verbal tongue lashing before snatching Artemis's bow away before she can get a shot off to give her a lashing with that. Artemis gets wailed on so badly she literally is sent running away crying home to her daddy Zeus.

8. One tangent mentions Hades making a grand entrance at Pylos, only to be immediately shot with one of Heracles' arrows, forcing him to abandon the fight and flee to Olympus to heal. Later, Poseidon makes an earthquake so strong Hades jumps out of his chair in fear that the Underworld will be exposed due to the quake.

9. Early on in the epic, King Priam calls to Helen to explain to him who is leading the Greek army - Agamemnon, Odysseus, Menelaus, etc - because Priam doesn't know who they are. The Greeks have been at war with his kingdom for nine years before this point. One would imagine who had such a role would be at the forefront of his thoughts or that he would at least bother to remember their names, especially since a Pre-Iliad episode had Odysseus and Menelaus before him arguing that Helen be returned.

10. After a long discussion of their ancestries, Glaucus and Diomedes shake hands and exchange armor as a pledge of Sacred Hospitality. The narrator notes that Glaucus got ripped off, because his armor was worth over ten times as much.

11. A wounded Sarpedon thinks he's about to die and begins giving Hector a Bury Me Not on the Lone Prairie speech. Hector, who he'd been arguing with several verses back, runs right past him without answering.

12. The standard heroic epithets being used at incongruous times. Godlike Paris hiding from Menelaus, godlike and enduring Odysseus running away while Diomedes yells at him to come back, Menelaus being called "beloved of Ares" while Ares is trying to get him killed, glorious Ajax the Lesser taking a spill face-first into ox dung...

13. Menelaus is shot and wounded. Agamemnon immediately begins mourning his brother and gets through a whole speech before Menelaus can get a word in edgewise to explain that he's still alive.