Human Will In The Iliad

Homer depicts the actions and feelings of the people in a way that they were not simple-minded “proxies”, but the endless killing and wounding during numerous wars is perceived as random happening that is imposed from the outside. The relationship of the divine and the human will in Homer's “Iliad” presume that the author focuses on human will and understands divine providence from the context of the narrative. Everything is predetermined, but every hero freely takes decisions and implements intentions in full compliance with its inner “I”. Homer stated the divine would when this or that god helps a person in accordance with its interests and actions. Nevertheless, sometimes even Zeus does not know what to do in a given situation. Then, he uses “the scales of fate”, because he
However, the author gives a hero possibility to act contrary to the divine will. The individual could resist and struggle against fate. In the “Iliad” the fate of the character is faced with doom. Doom is a set of events that come to a person from the outside and do not depend on a human will. For example, Merops, king of Percote, was one of the most glorious predictors of human destiny in “Iliad” and did not allow his sons to participate in the war, but the fatality has inevitably led them to the final perish (Homer 201). That is because every hero has a destiny that depends on the goddess of inevitability, Ananke, and her three daughters, Moira, who accompany human life from birth to death. One of the sisters - Lachesis - determines destiny from the moment of conception, the other - Clotho - spins the thread of life. The third Sister - Atropos – cuts vital thread and defined death (Graziosi and Haubold 91). If everything is predetermined, then the activity and independence of a person could be minimized to a passive expectation of predestined events. However, heroes do not always choose a similar path of