RAGE: The Iliad was a poem of rage!

MONDAY, AUGUST 3, 2026

But also, the rage of Senator Paul: Now that's we've all seen the film adaptation of the Odyssey, let's go all the way back to the start.

More specifically, let's return to the first few lines of the Iliad, the war poem which preceded the poem that's known as the Odyssey. 

The Iliad was a war poem, but it was mainly a poem of rage. Or so said Professor Knox, in his Introduction to the 1990 translation by Robert Fagles:

THE ILIAD

'Iliad" is a word that means "a poem about Ilium" (i.e., Troy). and Homer's great epic poem has been known as "The Iliad" ever since the Greek historian Herodotus so referred to it in the fifth century B.C. But the title is not an adequate description of the contents of the poem, which are best summed up in its opening line: "the rage of Peleus' son Achilles."

The incident that provoked Achilles' rage took place in the tenth and final year of the Achaean attack on Troy, and though Homer does work into his narrative scenes that recall earlier stages of the war...the rage of Achilles—its cause, its course and its disastrous consequences—is the theme of the poem, the mainspring of the plot.

The rage of Achilles is the soul of the beast—and sure enough, the Iliad begins right there. These are the opening lines of the Fagles translation:

BOOK ONE
The Rage of Achilles

Rage—Goddess. sing the rage of Peleus' son Achilles,
murderous, doomed, that cost the Achaeans countless losses,
hurling down to the House of Death so many sturdy souls,
great fighters' souls, but made their bodies carrion,
feasts for the dogs and birds.
and the will of Zeus was moving toward its end.   

Achilles' rage produced many lost lives. Just for the record, Agamemnon, lord of men, is also in a state of rage as European literature begins:

[continuing directly]
Begin, Muse, when the two first broke and clashed,

Agamemnon lord of men and brilliant Achilles.
What god drove them to fight with such a fury?

"Apollo the son of Zeus and Leto" drove the pair to fight with such fury, the poem now reveals. "Incensed at the king / he swept a fatal plague through the army—men were dying / and all because Agamemnon spurned Apollo's priest."  

In the short run, Agamemnon's rage subsides. For reasons which remain instructive today, the rage of Achilles did not—and, after a period of sulking in his tents, his rage was redirected at the very existence of Troy.

As the Iliad begins, the rage of the two Achaeans (Greeks) leads them to fight each other with a fury. And even though the fall of Troy has not yet occurred as the Iliad ends, Professor Knox describes the furious conduct of the Achaeans when the sacred city finally succumbs.

Brilliant Achilles has slaughtered Hector, the prince of Troy. Building on ten years of tribal rage, that slaughter leads to this:

Introduction, Professor Knox

[...]

The death of Hector seals the fate of Troy; it will fall to the Achaeans, to become the pattern for all time of the death of a city.

The images of that night assault—the blazing palaces, the blood running in the streets, old Priam butchered at the altar, Cassandra raped in the temple, Hector's baby son thrown from the battlements, his wife Andromache dragged off to slavery—all this, foreshadowed in the Iliad, will be stamped indelibly on the consciousness of the Greeks throughout their history...to reinforce the stern lesson of Homer's presentation of the war: that no civilization, no matter how rich. no matter how refined, can long survive once it loses the power to meet force with equal or superior force.

The rage produced the unspeakable. 

Hector's baby son, thrown from the battlements? His sister Cassandra, assaulted unspeakably in the temple? In fact, the murderous fury which follows from rage persists within this pair of ancient texts until the closing lines of the Odyssey, which we'll visit before the week is done.

European literature begins with the murderous conduct produced by fury, by rage. Last Wednesday, furious senators from Red America's MAGA world directed remarkable acts of fury at Dr. Anthony Fauci, who remains a highly respected figure within the world of Blue America. 

Did Dr. Fauci do something wrong during the Covid years? Did he make such unwise policy assessments? Is it even possible that he engaged in dishonest behavior?  

Everything is always possible, but nothing can ever be resolved when inane spear-chuckers from a furious tribe agree to perform their tribal rage for the benefit of tribal followers. 

Last Wednesday, an astounding number of Republican senators behaved in murderous ways as they mocked and berated Dr. Fauci during a Senate hearing. It doesn't help when the leader of the pack continues to lead with a blindingly obvious groaner, as described by Jessica McDonald in this lengthy piece for FactCheck.org:

Paul Distorts Fauci’s Diary Entry About COVID-19 and Wet Market 

[...]  

In the hearing, and in multiple statements before and after, Paul has focused on a Jan. 26, 2020, diary entry in which Fauci stated that “the first infection was in early December and was not connected to the market. … Now we know the market was not the source, it was the amplifier.”

Paul has zeroed in on these statements to falsely suggest that Fauci was saying then that the coronavirus didn’t have a natural origin and to argue that he wasn’t being transparent with the public. 

[...]

This is not the “gotcha” that Paul makes it out to be. Citing this one passage...falsely implies that if the pandemic didn’t originate in the one market, that it couldn’t have had a natural origin...   

Duh! As McDonald notes, Senator Paul just keeps pimping a classic 5-star groaner. In fairness to Paul, other Republican senators behaved in ways which were even more clownlike still.  

(Who is Jessica McDonald? She's "a science journalist who joined FactCheck.org in 2018. She trained as a scientist, receiving her Ph.D. in immunology from Yale University in 2013.")

Let's return to the dawn of the West! The Achaeans were laying siege to Troy in a rage-filled clash of civilizations. 

(Their motive remains instructive today. They were prepared to fight and die for ten years in response to a perceived sexual insult. They wanted Helen back.) 

They wanted Helen back! In the meantime, Achilles and Agamemon fought with a fury over Briseis, a young woman who had been stolen from a neighboring village for sexual purposes. Early in the Iliad, we seem to learn that Odysseus has a kidnapped young woman of his own.

(Is the Iliad ever taught this way? Even now, we'll semi-guess that the answer is still no.)

Senator Paul bristled with rage. Three or four of his MAGA colleagues behaved like absolute fools.   

Somewhat similarly, the Achaeans displayed a vicious tribal rage when sacred Troy finally fell. The headline of this lengthy report in the Washington Post describes the frequently-stated goal of their present-day successors:

The intense pressure facing Fauci, as GOP lawmakers push for his jailing

Dr. Fauci is 85. The modern Achaeans, filled with rage, would like to see him in jail.

Yesterday, it was the rage of Robert Kennedy Jr. which spilled out onto the nation's TV screens.  

Is something wrong with this furious man? For many years, the answer has seemed to perhaps be yes—but at times of tribal rage, such people can be valuable.   

The Iliad was a poem of rage. In the end, the rage of Achilles produced the fall of Troy. 

Vicious, grisly behavior ensued. Absent some sort of new politics, will our civilization, imperfect as it always has been, perhaps go down the drain too?   

Tomorrow: Ed Luce of the Financial Times, speaking on today's Morning Joe:

"I can describe this guy as a nutcase. He's a nutcase. Let's be frank."