Among the many books I’ve returned to repeatedly all through my life, looking for solace, knowledge, pleasure or self-understanding, Homer’s “Iliad” ranks very excessive. As with all enduring artworks, it yields some new, unsuspected perception into human nature with each studying. That’s due, maybe, to altering circumstances on this planet or in my very own life, the best way a mountain, immutable in itself, seems to vary each time we view it from a unique approach.
I reread the “Iliad” most not too long ago in January, not lengthy after the change of administration in Washington. What I discovered at this specific juncture in American politics was that the principals of the quarrelsome and dysfunctional Greek management had turn out to be an oddly acquainted solid of characters. And as I learn, I couldn’t assist however surprise: If Donald Trump had been a personality within the “Iliad,” who would he be?
A really transient reminder of the primary plot factors. The Greeks have been besieging Troy for the previous 9 years because of the kidnapping of Helen by a Trojan prince. Following a profitable coastal raid, the Greek king Agamemnon chooses as his private battle prize the maiden Chryseis, daughter of a priest of Apollo, who punishes him by inflicting a plague upon the Greeks. Agamemnon appeases the god by agreeing to return Chryseis to her father, however in return he calls for that Prince Achilles, probably the most fearsome warrior within the Greek military, relinquish his personal intercourse slave, the princess Briseis, to him. Achilles retires to his tent in an epic, sulking rage and refuses to struggle till Agamemnon apologizes and returns Briseis. It is just when his soulmate, Patroclus, is killed in battle by the Trojan crown prince Hector that Achilles is persuaded to return to the fray to avenge his buddy by slaying Hector. Even then, it’s not till the Trojan king seems within the Greek camp and begs him to return Hector’s physique that Achilles lastly learns the therapeutic powers of empathy.
So who’s the Trump of the Aegean? If you will play this sport, the very first thing to recollect is that the Trojan Warfare was ignited by a monumental case of injured dignity and the perceived want for vengeance, simply as Trump’s presidential ambitions started together with his public humiliation on the 2011 White Home Correspondents’ Dinner by Barack Obama. In that context, the plain first candidate as Iron Age Trump must be the Greek king Menelaus, the aggrieved husband of Helen and the instigator of the battle. However whereas Menelaus will not be precisely a minor character within the poem, he can hardly be described as a main mover of the primary motion. It ought to be recalled, too, that though the “Iliad” ends earlier than the autumn of Troy, Menelaus is alleged by later Greek sources to have forgiven Helen and to have lived in comfortable, monogamous reconciliation together with her thereafter, which might hardly accord with something we find out about Trump.
The subsequent and way more possible candidate is Achilles, maybe probably the most unlikable protagonist of the epic poem. Achilles is a petulant, thin-skinned, vengeful and narcissistic bully who clings to a grudge with the tenacity of a rabid canine. He’s infantile, liable to tantrums and devoid of compassion. He’ll destroy something and anybody, buddy and foe alike, who will get between him and what he desires. He leaves his allies within the lurch when they’re most in want of him. Like all of the Greek leaders who enslave the ladies of their defeated enemies, he’s a sexual predator. He can’t be swayed by arguments interesting to his generosity, his sense of honest play or his humanity. Sound acquainted?
Nonetheless, by the top of the “Iliad,” Achilles seems to have lastly turn out to be self-aware, to be taught one thing essential about himself and to vary, maybe even to melt; it’s not possible to think about Trump pulling that off.
That’s why my cash is on King Agamemnon. He by no means modifications and he by no means learns. He’s a brute in Ebook 1 and stays a brute in Ebook 24. The one approach he can get something completed is by throwing his weight round and intimidating the place persuasion can be the wiser course. When he wins he gloats; when he loses he rants. He’s proof against disgrace, and his solely loyalty is to himself. He malingers in camp whereas others do his preventing for him. He blames anybody however himself when his plans go awry. He lets others do his soiled work however all the time claims the largest reward, even when meaning stiffing those that have put themselves on the road for him. As Pat Barker describes him in her novel “The Silence of the Ladies,” Agamemnon is “a person who’d learnt nothing and forgotten nothing, a coward with out dignity, honour or respect.” Achilles calls him “a king who devours his personal individuals.” He could also be king, however even those that do his bidding maintain him in utter contempt.
There are different potential candidates within the Greek military, together with the bloodthirsty and cocksure Diomedes, who battles the gods themselves, or the whiny, unbearable Thersites. As to the Trojans, Homer usually paints them in a kinder palette, with higher household feeling and fewer ethical lapses, though the craven Paris, who skulks in mattress whereas others struggle and depends on divine intervention to get him out of jams that may show deadly to many of the remainder of us, is a nasty piece of labor.
In the end, nevertheless, it’s exhausting to see Trump as anybody apart from Agamemnon. In spite of everything, it’s this king who leads his countrymen on an apocalyptic, self-defeating, grievance-fueled campaign in opposition to a foe who’s, by all measures, extra humane, wiser and extra civilized than he’s. And whereas the Greeks might have received the battle, ultimately it brought about quite a lot of pointless ache, struggling and hardship to all concerned and did no good even to these on whose behalf it was ostensibly fought.
Jesse Browner is a novelist, essayist, translator and the creator of the forthcoming novel “Sing to Me.”
