Between Fate and Free Will, Which One Do You Think Is More Responsible for the Tragedies in the Iliad?

 Although the relationship between fate and free will in the Iliad remains unclear throughout the length of the epic, it is noticeable that human action remains a vital tool to seal whatever is foretold in fate, especially in case of tragic events. For thousands of years, people have struggled to determine the roles and proportions of free will and fate in human lives. In The Iliad, Homer writes of a continuous struggle between the mortal Greeks and Trojans, along with constant conflict among the gods. Fate is viewed differently by soldiers in war and the gods. The major question here is, is every action predetermined, or is there room for free will? Although the gods do uphold fate, as determined by the boundaries of every person's life, the rest is open to human free will. Heroic culture, the tendency to possess women, and arrogance are some determiners of human action that eventually lead to the ultimate tragedy of the Iliad.

The war hero culture and its relation to masculinity as well as fame make a number of tragic decisions in the Iliad. For instance, the fate of Achilles is foretold by prophecy, although the gods help bring it to pass. Thetis tells Achilles that he has the choice to either return home and live a long life without glory or die a glorious death fighting at Troy. He controls his fate up until he makes his choice. Achilles decides to fight, knowing that he is sealing his fate when he returns to battle. Questioning whether or not something comes from destiny or fate, or whether it comes from your own actions can have outcomes that coincide together. An example is in The Iliad Achilles does not want to fight, and his friend, Patroclus decides to wear Achilles's armor, along with pretending to be Achilles by choice. Patroclus then meets his fate of dying, being killed by Hector. If Patroclus did not decide to wear the armor of Achilles, he may not have died. Again, the death of Patroclus is what inspired Achilles to want to fight. Distraught and revengeful, Achilles returned to war and killed Hector. In her essay “Character as Fate in Ancient Literature, Mary Gould says, “Achilles could have quit when Patroclus was killed. He could simply have gone in the direction opposite of outrage and returned home.” This shows how the choice of Achilles going to fight and kill Hector was free will. Life events feed off of each other. The choice of fighting and killing ended in the fate of dying. The fate of dying causes a choice of more fighting and that choice causes more fate of dying.

Possessing women as property and objects is another such reason which brings tragedy to both the parties of the war. The soldiers of the poem often use the idea of fate to justify their type of actions, as they try to reason that the current battle might be their fated time to die. As Hector puts it to encourage his followers into the deathly battle: “And fate? No one alive has ever escaped it, / neither brave man nor coward, I tell you— / it’s born with us the day that we are born.” Yet, it is only because the royal family of Troy is not ready to give up that Helen is the only reason for the death toll in the Trojan camp. Similarly, seizing the daughter of Chriseis, a priest of Apollo’s temple, was the reason for a plague in the Achaean camp, and, yet, the army considered it as a curse and fate. As stated by Professor E. Joy in her sample student essay “Fate is Simply Free Will Driven by Ego, “Of the ladder, it can logically be assumed that had Agamemnon not taken the woman or other wised angered Apollo, there would not have been a plague and most if not all the men who died would have lived longer.”

Arrogance is another vital tool in causing destruction in the Iliad which was attempted to be passed over to fate. While humans are given their skills and qualities, some characters use the idea of fate as a scapegoat to justify their unacceptable actions. For example, after the Greeks have suffered enormous losses and it becomes clear that Agamemnon erred in offending Achilles, in place of apologizing for his unnecessary rage, Agamemnon says, "Zeus and Fate. . . stalking through the night, / they are the ones who drove that savage madness in my heart, / . . . on my own authority, true, but what could I do? / A god impels all things to their fulfillment." Regardless of how much the gods influence individuals, there is no evidence for Agamemnon's complete lack of control. Within the constraints of fate's control lie multiple opportunities for personal choice. Human free will may be very much restricted, but it does not disappear entirely. So, the arrogance of Agamemnon and Achilles in taking away a girl, and leaving the war, is completely personal choices that caused enormous loss of lives.

To conclude, it is undeniable that gods interrupted the natural flow of action in the Trojan War but they are not the sole cause of the tragedies that befell both parties of the war necessarily. Rather, it is human free will to uphold the war culture as a model for attaining fame and proving the masculinity of the soldiers which led to the ten-year-long war. Besides, owning a girl without any of her opinions to either stay or return to her former family is another conflict of interest in a chosen few aristocrats in the epic that results in casualties of commoners. Finally, the biggest force beyond the individual and national tragedies in the epic is the arrogance of many characters who would later back it up with fate.