Latest Read: The Iliad

I'm reading the Iliad.  I'd only read excerpts before, and that was a long time ago. I won't post every thought I've had on it, but I have two big takeaways from the first 11 chapters:

First and foremost, the Iliad was basically an ancient TV series with an ensemble cast.  It arose from an oral performance tradition, and consists of 24 chapters of roughly equal length.  (No, not exactly equal, but within a factor of 2 of each other.)  Some chapters are very much about the bigger story, the constant back-and-forth between the Trojans and Achaeans, with the Gods wrapped up in the drama and the central characters (e.g. Hector, Achilles, Paris, Agamemnon, Diomedes, Odysseus, Menelaeus, Nestor) making decisions that will shift the fortunes of war.  Other chapters are more episodic, from that part of the TV season where the writers want to focus on a few characters in side plots.  So you get chapter 10 ("Marauding through the night"), which focuses on an inept Trojan spy who folds as soon as he is caught, spills all of his info, and then gets a dishonorable death in spite of an earlier promise to not kill him.  Or chapter 11 ("Agamemnon's day of glory"), which is largely about a D&D party rescuing their healer after he's been wounded in battle.

Of course, the writers on a TV series can only do so many of these "side plot" episodes before the audience will expect a return to the main story.  So chapter 11 concludes with Patroclus realizing that the Achaeans desperately need help.  It's pretty clear that he'll rejoin the fight soon.  And all of this will lead up to heart-breaking deaths of main characters, and then an epic conclusion as the sun sets on doomed Troy.

In another parallel with TV, the Odyssey is basically a spinoff series about a supporting character who had his own die-hard fans. I can only assume that these parallels arise from ancient poets needing to keep an audience fixated over the long haul, coming back for more as they sang and chanted for their supper, just as modern TV writers need to keep an audience's attention in order to get paid.

Second, having noted analogies between the Iliad and modern popular entertainment, I was pretty astounded by some lines spoken by Achilles in chapter 9 (lines 383-391):

No, what lasting thanks in the long run
for warring with our enemies, on and on, no end?
One and the same lot for the man who hangs back
and the man who battles hard. The same honor waits
for the coward and the brave. They both go down to Death,
the fighter who shirks, the one who works to exhaustion.
And what's laid up for me, what pittance? Nothing—
and after suffering hardships, year in, year out,
staking my life on the mortal risks of war.

Compare with these lines from Ecclesiastes, in which the author questions the point of wisdom and labor, when the wise man will suffer the same death as the fool, and the wise man who works can take nothing with him, but must leave it behind to a man who may be a fool:

And I saw that wisdom has as much profit over folly as light has over darkness. 

   Wise people have eyes in their heads, but fools walk in darkness.

Yet I knew that the same lot befalls both. So I said in my heart, if the fool’s lot is to befall me also, why should I be wise? Where is the profit? And in my heart I decided that this too is vanity. The wise person will have no more abiding remembrance than the fool; for in days to come both will have been forgotten. How is it that the wise person dies like the fool! Therefore I detested life, since for me the work that is done under the sun is bad; for all is vanity and a chase after wind.

 And I detested all the fruits of my toil under the sun, because I must leave them to the one who is to come after me. And who knows whether that one will be wise or a fool? Yet that one will take control of all the fruits of my toil and wisdom under the sun. This also is vanity.

(Ecclesiastes 2:13-19)

Or these, in which he asks what the point of bravery is:

Again I saw under the sun that the race is not won by the swift, nor the battle by the valiant, nor a livelihood by the wise, nor riches by the shrewd, nor favor by the experts; for a time of misfortune comes to all alike. (Ecclesiastes 9:11)

Now, the Iliad was hardly the only ancient work in which a man questioned the point of valor, but it was an influential work in the Hellenistic world, and I understand that the author of Ecclesiastes had at least some exposure to that world.  So I'm left to wonder if these parallels with Achilles' speech were deliberate literary devices.  I understand that the extent of Hellenistic influences on Ecclesiastes are very much debated by people who know the original texts and background far better than I do, so I will merely note the common, resonant themes, but offer no further speculation on the extent (if any) of Homeric influence on Ecclesiastes.