Discuss how the Greeks and Trojans are portrayed in The Iliad vs. Inferno. Note that Dante and Virgil are sympathetic to the Trojans, whereas Homer...

Homer, being Greek, wrote the The Iliadfrom a viewpoint mainly favoring the Greeks. Yes, he created some admirable Trojans, such as King Priam and Prince Hector, but it was Greek culture to admire their enemies.  Dante, however, being Italian and more familiar with the Roman poet Virgil’s Aeneid, seems to be more pro-Trojan, reflecting the views of his Italian readers.  He does, however, present a variety of classical characters as immoral, since he peoples...

Homer, being Greek, wrote the The Iliad from a viewpoint mainly favoring the Greeks. Yes, he created some admirable Trojans, such as King Priam and Prince Hector, but it was Greek culture to admire their enemies.  Dante, however, being Italian and more familiar with the Roman poet Virgil’s Aeneid, seems to be more pro-Trojan, reflecting the views of his Italian readers.  He does, however, present a variety of classical characters as immoral, since he peoples his version of Hell with both Trojans and Greeks (albeit heavier on the Greek count).

For example, Dante places both Helen and Paris in circle two, to be punished by battering winds for their lustful affair.  Yet Dante writes that his guide, Virgil, merely comments that the Trojan prince, Paris, is there, while he takes the time to comment on Greek-born Helen’s sin: “See Helen for whom / so many bad years revolved.” Technically, they were equally guilty in their shared lust, yet the Greek takes the brunt of Dante’s criticism.  The mighty Achilles is also punished in the circle of the lustful. Dante is somewhat mocking of this Greek, suggested in Virgil’s remark that Achilles’s “last battle was with love,” referring to the legend that Achilles abandoned the Greek army to marry a Trojan princess.

Another Greek, Ulysses, is punished in Canto 26, the eighth bolgia of the eighth circle, reserved for fraudulent evil counselors. Ulysses is trapped in torturous flames with his Greek cohort, Diomed, for their deceitful trickery against the Trojans, including the famed Trojan horse, which led to the destruction of Troy.  But the legends of Ulysses’s immoral behavior are not enough for Dante.  He creates an additional story of Ulysses convincing some of his men to take yet another journey after they finally are allowed to return to Ithaca.  In Dante’s story, Ulysses uses his gift of intelligent speaking to trick his men into sailing past the forbidden boundary set by the gods, where they are punished with death as their ship is pulled into the sea. It is interesting to note, however, that Ulysses is one of the few characters whom Dante gives a sense of remorse for his sinfulness, rather than the self-righteous attitude of the many other souls in Inferno.

Dante’s Inferno is a vivid, haunting reflection of our human fears concerning the afterlife.  As we read, are we not secretly glad that it is these “fictitious” characters suffering, and not ourselves?  Or rather, do we see ourselves in the characters?  We view Virgil as Dante described him, a virtuous, unbaptized poet “of much worth,” whose poetry so improved the world that he would be given special privileges in Hell. And while the Greeks might have admired the cunning Ulysses and the mighty warrior Achilles, Dante has forever pointed out their failings to the world, immortalized one last time in an epic poem, not celebrated for their greatness, but suffering eternally for their immorality.