Iliad1

In the Iliad, the warriors’ fates are predetermined by the gods. I will argue that the warriors do not have free will, and that they cannot shape their own destiny. A person’s destiny is affected by the choices made using free will and conscience. There are many times in the Iliad the gods get involved in human situations therefore taking away their human freedom. During Agamemnon and Achilles’ disagreement in book 1, Achilles is angered and begins to extend his sword. Achilles is angry because Agamemnon threatened to take away Achilles wife. Just as Achilles begins to pull his sword Athena comes down and stops him. “Down from the vaulting heavens swept Athena, the white-armed goddess Hera sped her down…. Rearing behind him Pallas seized his fiery hair- only Achilles saw her…”(Iliad, 1, 229-233) Athena stops Achilles from striking Agamemnon by grabbing Achilles hair and pulling him back. Athena only appears to Achilles, nobody else can see her. Athena stopped Achilles because Hera loves them both and did not want them fighting. Since Athena chose to interfere, Achilles has to choose the wisest option, which would be not to fight.
When Paris chooses Aphrodite as the fairest of them all, Aphrodite allows Paris to steal Menelaus’ wife, Helen. When Menelaus and Paris decide to battle over Helen, Paris is picked up and moved away from the battlefield and to his bedroom by Aphrodite. “Aphrodite snatched Paris away, easy work of a god, wrapped him in swirls of mist and set him down in his bedroom filled with scent.”(Iliad, 3, 439-441) Although Menelaus is the winner of the fight, Paris still ends up winning Helen. Even though Paris should have died during this battle, Aphrodite saves him. Since Hector stole Achilles’ armor after Patroclus’ death, Achilles had no armor for the war. Achilles asked his mother the goddess Thetis, to ask the crippled Smith to make a new set of armor for Achilles. When Achilles receives the armor he loves it and knows that a god made it because of its beauty.
“And once he’d thrilled his heart with looking hard at the armor’s well-wrought beauty, he turned to his mother, winged words flying: ‘Mother—armor sent by the god—you’re right, only immortal gods could forge such work, no man on earth could ever bring it off!...” (Iliad, 19, 22-27)
Achilles shield is shown as an important symbol because it is described in detail more than once. It is as if the shield is depicting an image of the Trojan War. It is another example of the gods interfering to help Achilles. The warriors cannot shape their own destinies because the gods interfere in order to bring about specific outcomes. The gods always seem to be watching out for the warriors they like and helping them in tough situations. Although I’m arguing that the warriors do not get to choose their destiny, at one point in the saga Achilles does get to choose his destiny. This is when he has to choose whether he wants to live a short life and be known or whether he wants to live a long life and not be remembered. He chooses the short life, which was his predetermined destiny. The warriors in the Iliad do not determine their own fates, but rather act out the fates given to them by the gods. The gods intervene throughout the story in order to influence the fates of the warriors. The Greek gods limit the humans, by limiting their free will and ability to choose their own destiny.