Interrogating the Iliad: Fate versus Free Will

In the Iliad, even the king of the gods can't overrule the scales of fate.

Papyrus Oxyrhynchus 551 - Princeton University Library, AM 4405 - Homer, Iliad XIV:227–253,256–263. Image via Wikimedia Commons.

Ancient Greek religion had a concept called moira, usually translated as "fate" or "portion." It was the idea that every person is allotted a fixed share of life, and no amount of courage, cleverness, or divine favour can add to it once it's set. That idea runs through the entire Iliad, but Homer doesn't treat it as a simple, settled question. Characters throughout the poem seem to know their fate is fixed, and yet they still make choices, still argue with it, and still act as though those choices matter. Whether that's a contradiction or the whole point is something readers have been arguing about for centuries.

In Book 6, Hector says goodbye to his wife, Andromache, before returning to battle. She begs him to stay behind the city walls, afraid she's about to lose him. His answer is calm in a way that's almost unsettling:

No one can hurry me down to Hades before my time, but if a man's hour is come, be he brave or be he coward, there is no escape for him when he has once been born. (Homer, Iliad 6.486–489)

For Hector, this belief doesn't make him reckless, and it doesn't make him give up. Instead, it seems to free him from fear. If nothing he does can move his death earlier or later, then there's no reason to hide from danger, and no reason to feel guilty about walking toward it.

Andromache Mourning Hector (The Sorrow of Andromache) by Jacques-Louis David, 1783, Pushkin Museum. Image via Wikimedia Commons.

If fate only applied to mortals, it might just be a grim fact of human life, but the Iliad makes clear that even the gods are bound by it. In Book 22, as Achilles chases Hector around the walls of Troy, Zeus actually considers stepping in to save him. He openly says he pities Hector and is tempted to let him live. When the moment of decision comes, Zeus doesn't get the final word:

The father of all balanced his golden scales and placed a doom in each of them, one for Achilles and the other for Hector. As he held the scales by the middle, the doom of Hector fell down deep into the house of Hades, and then Phoebus Apollo left him. (Homer, Iliad 22.209–213)

Zeus, the most powerful being in the entire poem, personally likes Hector and still can't save him. It's one of the clearest signals in the whole Iliad that fate sits above even divine will. The gods can delay outcomes, nudge events, and interfere at the edges, but they can't rewrite the final result.

Yet the poem doesn't present fate as airtight everywhere. Remember Achilles' choice from Book 9, where his mother tells him he has two possible futures: a short glorious life at Troy, or a long forgettable one back home. If fate is supposed to be a single fixed outcome, here Achilles seems to actually be choosing between two different fates, which suggests that at least for him the "fixed" ending has some flexibility built in, or that the real freedom lies not in escaping fate but in deciding how to meet it.

Hector's dying words point in a similar direction. As he lies dying at Achilles' hands, he warns his killer:

Look to it that I bring not heaven's anger upon you on the day when Paris and Phoebus Apollo, valiant though you be, shall slay you at the Scaean gates. (Homer, Iliad 22.358–360)

Hector is dying, and still finds a way to predict Achilles' own death with total confidence. Achilles' fate is fixed too, and everyone in the poem, mortal and immortal, seems to already know it. So why does anyone in the Iliad bother making decisions at all, if the ending is already written?

Homer never quite answers that question. The heroes of the Iliad know their deaths are coming, sometimes down to the exact circumstances, and they still choose how to face them: with courage, with denial, with fury, or with calm acceptance, the way Hector does at the Scaean gates.

The Death of Achilles. Peter Paul Rubens, c. 1635. Image via Wikimedia Commons.

Perhaps that's the real freedom the poem is interested in, not whether you can escape your fate, but what kind of person you decide to be while you're walking toward it.

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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