Book
The War That Killed Achilles
First published 2009
Caroline Alexander examines the Iliad as a poem about the human cost of war rather than as a simple celebration of heroic combat. Beginning with Achilles’ quarrel with Agamemnon, she follows the poem’s treatment of command, honour, anger and responsibility through the deaths of warriors on both sides, the killing of Patroclus and Hector, and the final encounter between Achilles and Priam. The argument places grief and destruction at the centre of Homer’s account of the Trojan War.
Alongside close readings of the poem, Alexander discusses the Bronze Age world behind the epic, the oral tradition through which the story developed and the long history of interpreting Achilles as an ideal warrior. The result connects literary analysis with military and cultural history, showing how the Iliad repeatedly questions the values that sustain the conflict even while portraying its fighters with extraordinary force and sympathy.
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