Thesis: In this lecture, I will argue that the moral codes that undergird a given character's actions in the Iliad are based on a complex -- and potentially conflictual -- moral model where individual relationships (to gods, to friends, to loved ones) are in tension with the goals of the larger social group. I will show how the moral codes at play in the poem are best in evidence at moments when one character tries to persuade another character to act in a given way. Through an analysis of such moments of persuasion, we will create a list of the various conditions that these characters claim lead to or should inspire "right" or moral action. By way of a reading of book 9, we will see how the dialogue between Achilleus, Odysseus, Phoinix and Aias reveals several arguments for how one (Achilleus) should act "morally" within the social group as well as arguments for how one (Achilleus) should act "morally" without regard for the social group.

2. Achilleus: "...but for your sake, o great shamelessness, we followed, to do you favour, you with the dog's eyes, to win your honour and Menelaos' from the Trojans. You forget all this or else you care nothing. And now my prize you threaten in person to strip from me, for whom I laboured much, the gift of the sons of the Achaians. Never, when the Achaians sack some well-founded citadel of the Trojans, do I have a prize that is equal to your prize. Always the greater part of the painful fighting is the work of my hands; but when the time comes to distribute the booty yours is far the greater reward, and I with some small thing yet dear to me go back to my ships when I am weary with fighting." (emphasis added, I.157-168)

3. Nestor: "Oh, for shame. Great sorrow settles on the land of the Achaia. Surely he would groan aloud, Peleus, the aged horseman, the great man of counsel among the Myrmidons, and their speaker....Now if he were to hear how all cringe away before Hektor, many a time he would lift up his very hands to the immortals, and the life breath from his limbs would go down into the house of Hades." (7.124-131)

4. Nestor: "Even though you are the stronger man, and the mother who bore you was immortal, yet is this man greater who is lord over more than you rule." (1.279-281)

5. Diomedes: "See now, you are my guest friend from far in the time of our fathers....Let us avoid each other's spears, even in the close fighting. There are plenty of Trojans and famed companions in battle for me to kill, whom the god sends me, or those I run down with my swift feet, many Achaians for you to slaughter, if you can do it." (6.215, 226-229)

6. "The hero abroad found in a xenos an effective substitute for kinsmen, a protector, representative and ally, supplying in case of need shelter, protection, men, and arms; the community was not sufficiently organized to interfere with this sort of cooperation. The relationship being largely personal, ritualized friendship was, together with marriage, the Homeric forerunner of political and military alliances." (Oxford Classical Dictionary, 612)

7. "So [Adrestos] spoke, and moved the spirit inside Menelaos. And now he was on the point of handing him to a henchman to lead back to the fast Achaian ships; but Agamemnon came on the run to join him and spoke his word of argument..." (6.51-54)

8. "The gods of the Iliad are driven by honor and shame just as much as the mortals. Important, too, is Poseidon's phraseology when talking about the allocation of the different 'provinces', timai. A province is more than just a sphere of influence: it is the physical embodiment of a god's prestige." (Zanker, 29)

9. Hera: "Alas, daughter of Zeus of the aegis: I can no longer let us fight in the face of Zeus for the sake of mortals. Let one of them perish then, let another live, as their fortune wills; let him, as is his right and as his heart pleases, work out whatever decrees he will on Danaans and Trojans." (8.427-431)

10. Ares: "We who are gods forever have to endure the most horrible hurts, by each other's hatred, as we try to give favour to mortals." (5.873-874)

11. Odysseus (all quotes from book 9):

• "It will be an affliction to you hereafter, there will be no remedy found to heal the evil thing when it has been done." (250)

• "You have no lack of your equal portion either within the shelter of Atreus' son, Agamemnon, nor here now in your own." (226)

• "But if the son of Atreus is too much hated in your heart, himself and his gifts, at least take pity on all the other Achaians who are afflicted along the host, and will honour you as a god."(301)

12. Achilleus (all quotes from book 9):

• "Fate is the same for the man who holds back, the same if he fights hard. We are all held in a single honour, the brave with the weaklings." (318-319)

• "Since any who is a good man, and careful, loves her who is his own and cares for her, even as I now loved this one from my heart, though it was my spear that won her." (341-343).

• "...wrapped as [Agamemnon] is forever in shamelessness" (372) & "Let him of his own will be damned, since Zeus of the counsels has taken his wits away from him." (375).

• "Either, if I stay here and fight beside the city of the Trojans, my return home is gone, but my glory is everlasting; but if I return home to the beloved land of my fathers, the excellence of my glory is gone, but there will be a long life left for me, and my end in death will not come to me quickly." (410-416)

13. Phoinix (all quotes from book 9):

• "...how then shall I, dear child, be left in this place behind you all alone? Peleus the aged horseman sent me forth with you on that day when he sent you from Phthia to Agamemnon." (437-439)

• "It is not yours to have a pitiless heart. The very immortals can be moved..." (496-497)

14. Achilleus (all quotes from book 9):

• "...such honour is a thing I need not. I think I am honoured already in Zeus' ordinance which will hold me here beside my curved ships as long as life's wind stays in my breast." (607-610).

• "Be king equally with me; take half my honour." (616)

15. Aias (all quotes from book 9):

• "[Achilleus] is hard, and does not remember that friends' affection wherein we honoured him by the ships, far beyond all others. Pitiless." (630-631)

• "And yet a man takes from his brother's slayer the blood price, or the price for a child who was killed, and the guilty one, when he has largely repaid, stays still in the country..." (631-634)

• "Respect your own house; see, we are under the same roof with you, from the multitude of the Danaans, we who desire beyond all others to have your honour and love, out of all the Achaians." (640-642)

16. Achilleus (all quotes from book 9): .

• "...all that you have said seems spoken after my own mind." (645)

• "Yet still the heart in me swells up in anger, when I remember the disgrace that he wrought upon me before the Argives, the son of Atreus, as if I were some dishonoured vagabond." (645-647)

17. Anger (menis) in the Iliad is not "...a hostile emotion arising in one individual against some other individual, as we may spontaneously understand it. It is the name of a feeling not separate from the actions it entails, of a cosmic sanction, of a social force whose activation brings drastic consequences on the whole community." (Muellner, 8)

18. Achilleus: "Now I am making an end of my anger. It does not become me unrelentingly to rage on." (19.67-8) & "…the strong-greaved Achaians were pleasured to hear him and how the great-hearted son of Peleus unsaid his anger."

20. Odysseus: "And you, son of Atreus, after this be more righteous to another man. For there is no fault when even one who is a king appeases a man, when the king was the first one to be angry." (19. 181-183)

21. Achilleus: "…you must not further make my spirit move in my sorrows, for fear, old sir, I might not let you alone in my shelter, suppliant as you are; and be guilty before the god’s orders." (24.567-570)