Sunday, November 24, 2024
Casualties
Robin Lane Fox, Homer and His Iliad (New York: Basic Books, 2023), pp. 262-263:
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Traces of a pro-Greek bias in the poem exist, but they are occasional and very slight. Few readers or listeners realize what a close count shows, that in the Iliad’s individual combats 189 named Trojans die, but only 43 Greeks. The warriors who abase themselves on the battlefield and supplicate their victors are all Trojans, but when they beg a Greek to spare them, they never succeed. Trojans are also recipients of most of the deadly wounds which Homer describes in grisly detail.
