Among the books to which I have returned again and again throughout my life, seeking comfort, wisdom, joy or self -understanding, “iliad” of Homer is very high. As with all lasting works of art, it gives an unforgettable new overview of human nature with each reading. This is due, perhaps, to changing circumstances in the world or in my own life, the way in which a mountain, unchanging in itself, seems to change each time we see it from a new angle.
I reread the “iliad” more recently in January, shortly after the change of administration in Washington. What I found at this particular stage of American policy is that the directors of the Greek quarrelsome and dysfunctional leaders had become a distribution of strangely familiar characters. And as I read, I couldn't help but ask myself: if Donald Trump was a character in “the Iliad”, who would he be?
A very brief reminder of the main points of the plot. The Greeks besieged Troy for nine years following the kidnapping of Helen by a prince of Troy. After a successful coastal raid, the Greek king Agamemnon chooses as his personal war the first Chryseis, daughter of a priest of Apollo, who punished him by inflicting a plague on the Greeks. Agamemnon soothes the god by agreeing to return Chryseis to his father, but in return, he demands that Prince Achille, the most formidable warrior in the Greek army, abandons his own sex slave, Princess Briseis, for him. Achilles withdrew in his tent in an epic and sulky rage and refuses to fight until Agamemnon apologizes and returns Briseis. It is only when his soul mate, patroclus, is killed in combat by the crown prince of Troy Hector that Achille is convinced to return to the fray to avenge his friend by killing Hector. Even then, it is only when the King of Troy appears in the Greek camp and begs him to return the body of Hector that Achilles finally learns the healing powers of empathy.
So who is the asset of the Aegean? If you are going to play this game, the first thing to remember is that the Trojan War was ignited by a monumental case of injured dignity and the perceived need for revenge, just as Trump's presidential ambitions began with his public humiliation during the dinner of the correspondents of the White House in 2011 by Barack Obama. In this context, the first obvious candidate as the Trump iron age should be the Greek king Ménélas, the injured husband of Helen and the instigator of the war. But while Ménélas is not exactly a minor character in the poem, it can hardly be described as a main engine of the main action. It should also be recalled that although “the iliad” ends before the fall of Troy, Ménéaire is said that subsequent Greek sources have forgiven Helen and having lived in a happy and monogamous reconciliation with her thereafter, which would hardly be suitable for everything we know about Trump.
The following and much more likely candidate is Achilles, perhaps the most unmanageable protagonist of the epic poem. Achille is a petulant tyrant, with slim, avenging and narcissistic skin that clings to a grudge with the tenacity of a rabid dog. He is childish, subject to anger attacks and devoid of compassion. He will destroy anything and anyone, friend and enemy, who puts himself between him and what he wants. He leaves his allies in the rhythm when they need him most. Like all Greek leaders who enslave women from their defeated enemies, he is a sex predator. He cannot be influenced by arguments using his generosity, his sense of fair play or his humanity. Does that seem familiar?
However, at the end of “the Iliad”, Achilles seems to have finally become self-aware, to learn something important about himself and change, perhaps even to soften; It is impossible to imagine that Trump is withdrawing this.
This is why my money is on King Agamemnon. He never changes and he never learns. He is a brute in Book 1 and remains a brute in the book 24. The only way to do anything is to throw his weight and intimidate where persuasion would be the wiser course. When he wins, he rejoices; When he loses, he is unleashed. He is safe from shame, and his only loyalty is for himself. He muses in the camp while others are fighting for him. He blames someone except himself when his plans are bad. It allows others to do their dirty work but always claims the greatest reward, even if it means stiffening those who have put themselves into play for him. As Pat Barker describes him in his novel “The Silence of the Girls”, Agamemnon is “a man who had learned nothing and had forgotten nothing, a coward without dignity, honor or respect”. Achilles calls him “a king who devours his own people”. He is perhaps king, but even those who make his auctions hold him in absolute contempt.
There are other potential candidates in the Greek army, including bloodthirsty diomèdes and cocksure, which fights the gods themselves, or Thersites Pleurnichards and Pleurnichards. As for Trojan horses, Homer generally paints them in a Kinder palette, with a greater feeling of family and less moral failures, although frightening Paris, which hides in bed while others fight and rely on a divine intervention to bring it out of the jams which would prove fatal to most of the others, is an unpleasant work.
In the end, however, it is difficult to see Trump as someone else other than Agamemnon. After all, it is this king who leads his compatriots on an apocalyptic crusade, self-deficit and fueled by the grievances against an enemy who is, by all measures, more human, wiser and more civilized than him. And while the Greeks may have won the war, it ultimately caused a lot of pain, suffering and unnecessary difficulties to all those involved and has not even done any good to those who in the name of which, it was fought.
Jesse Browner is a novelist, essayist, translator and author of the next novel “Sing to Me”.
