The Iliad is generally known as the story detailing a portion of the Trojan war. Everyone knows the story of the arrow shot into the heel of the otherwise invincible Achilles. What comes to the minds of most is the bloodshed, glory, and general concepts associated with large scale warfare.
This excerpt from Book I of the Iliad, however, paints a different story than the condensed version typically portrayed to the Cliffnotes reader. For those more aware of ancient Greek culture as well as the social function of the Iliad at the time, it becomes apparent that these selected words reveal the truer message of the Iliad–more than the violence most people remember.
Note the high concentration of personal pronouns, as well as names of gods and high profile characters. This is more than your ordinary utilization of names. A great deal of the story revolves around individual possession and rank. While the story itself details large scale warfare, the heart of the Iliad’s message revolves around individual conduct, and the expected code of behavior. It is understandable why gods and heroes, the paragons of these qualities, would comprise the second most recurring words in these categories.
While the language is not that of the original text, the message remains the same. Words like “with,” “my,” “that,” “son,” and “have,” show that the Iliad was not the story of the battle, but of the individual–detailing not war, but the relations between men. 