Interrogating the Iliad: Fame and Glory
- Argo Crew
- 2 days ago
- 3 min read
To an ancient Greek warrior, being forgotten was worse than dying.
For most, there was no afterlife worth looking forward to in ancient Greek belief. The underworld was a grey, joyless place, and even the greatest heroes could end up wandering there as faded shadows of themselves. So if death wasn't going to reward you, what was the point of being brave?
The answer, for the warriors of the Iliad, was kleos, a Greek word usually translated as "glory" or "fame," but that really means something closer to "what people will keep saying about you after you're gone." Kleos was a kind of immortality, not of the body, but of the name. In a world built on oral storytelling, where poems were memorised and performed generation after generation, that kind of immortality wasn't just symbolic, it was real. It meant your name would actually keep being spoken, sung, and remembered.
Nowhere is this idea clearer than in Book 9 of the Iliad, when Achilles explains to the Greek envoys why he's considering giving up the war entirely. His mother, the goddess Thetis, told him he has two possible futures:
Thetis tells me that there are two ways in which I may meet my end. If I stay here and fight, I shall not return alive but my name will live for ever: whereas if I go home my name will die, but it will be long ere death shall take me. (Homer, Iliad 9.410–416)
Achilles isn't choosing between life and death exactly, he's choosing between two kinds of death: one where his body dies young but his name survives forever, and one where his body lives a long life but his name disappears completely. For most people today, that would seem anachronistic, but to Achilles and the culture that shaped him dying without kleos was its own kind of death, maybe the worse one.
Kleos wasn't just handed out though. It had to be earned, usually through risk. That idea comes through powerfully in Book 12, when the Lycian warrior Sarpedon turns to his friend Glaucus in the middle of battle and explains, essentially, why they're both about to charge a heavily defended wall.
Glaucus, why in Lycia do we receive especial honour as regards our place at table? Why are the choicest portions served us and our cups kept brimming, and why do men look up to us as though we were gods? ... My good friend, if, when we were once out of this fight, we could escape old age and death thenceforward and for ever, I should neither press forward myself nor bid you do so, but death in ten thousand shapes hangs ever over our heads, and no man can elude him; therefore let us go forward and either win glory for ourselves, or yield it to another. (Homer, Iliad 12.310–328)
Sarpedon's logic is that he and Glaucus get treated like gods back home: the best seats, the best food, the best land. That status isn't a gift though, but a kind of contract where in exchange for their privileges, they're expected to fight at the front, where the danger is worst. Since nobody escapes death anyway (not even kings, not even heroes), the only real choice left is how you die: gloriously, or forgotten.
Striving for kleos actually worked, at least for the characters in this poem. Achilles, Hector, Sarpedon, and Agamemnon have all been dead (fictionally and historically) for thousands of years, and we're still saying their names. Their glory outlived not just their own bodies, but the entire civilization that first told their stories.
That's exactly what the warriors of the Iliad were gambling on when they walked toward the front lines instead of staying home. It's worth asking whether that trade, a short life for a permanent name, still makes sense to us today or whether it only made sense in a world with no better alternative.
Until next time,
λεῖος πλόος!
Written by Eleanor Russell
Education and Programs Officer
Hellenic Museum
Homer. The Iliad. Translated by Samuel Butler. London: Longmans, Green, and Co., 1898.
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