Among the books I have returned to again and again throughout my life, seeking solace, wisdom, joy or self-understanding, Homer’s “Iliad” ranks very high. As with all enduring works of art, it yields some new, unsuspected insight into human nature with every reading. That is due, perhaps, to changing circumstances in the world or in my own life, the way a mountain, immutable in itself, appears to change every time we view it from a new angle.
I reread the “Iliad” most recently in January, not long after the change of administration in Washington. What I found at this particular juncture in American politics was that the principals of the quarrelsome and dysfunctional Greek leadership had become an oddly familiar cast of characters. And as I read, I couldn’t help but wonder: If Donald Trump were a character in the “Iliad,” who would he be?
A very brief reminder of the main plot points. The Greeks have been besieging Troy for the past nine years as a result of the kidnapping of Helen by a Trojan prince. Following a successful coastal raid, the Greek king Agamemnon chooses as his personal war 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, but in return he demands that Prince Achilles, the most fearsome warrior in the Greek army, relinquish his own sex slave, the princess Briseis, to him. Achilles retires to his tent in an epic, sulking rage and refuses to fight until Agamemnon apologizes and returns Briseis. It is only 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 friend by slaying Hector. Even then, it is not until the Trojan king appears in the Greek camp and begs him to return Hector’s body that Achilles finally learns the healing powers of empathy.
So who is the Trump 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 vengeance, just as Trump’s presidential ambitions began with his public humiliation at the 2011 White House Correspondents’ Dinner by Barack Obama. In that context, the obvious first candidate as Iron Age Trump would have to be the Greek king Menelaus, the aggrieved husband of Helen and the instigator of the war. But while Menelaus is not exactly a minor character in the poem, he can hardly be described as a prime mover of the main action. It should be recalled, too, that although the “Iliad” ends before the fall of Troy, Menelaus is said by later Greek sources to have forgiven Helen and to have lived in happy, monogamous reconciliation with her thereafter, which would hardly accord with anything we know about Trump.
The next and far more likely candidate is Achilles, perhaps 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 dog. He is childish, prone to tantrums and devoid of compassion. He will destroy anything and anyone, friend and foe alike, who gets between him and what he wants. He leaves his allies in the lurch when they are most in need of him. Like all the Greek leaders who enslave the women of their defeated enemies, he is a sexual predator. He cannot be swayed by arguments appealing to his generosity, his sense of fair play or his humanity. Sound familiar?
However, by the end of the “Iliad,” Achilles appears to have finally become self-aware, to learn something important about himself and to change, perhaps even to soften; it is impossible to imagine Trump pulling that off.
That’s 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 Book 24. The only way he can get anything done is by throwing his weight around and intimidating where persuasion would be the wiser course. When he wins he gloats; when he loses he rants. He is immune to shame, and his only loyalty is to himself. He malingers in camp while others do his fighting for him. He blames anyone but himself when his plans go awry. He lets others do his dirty work but always claims the biggest reward, even if that means stiffing those who have put themselves on the line for him. As Pat Barker describes him in her novel “The Silence of the Girls,” Agamemnon is “a man who’d learnt nothing and forgotten nothing, a coward without dignity, honour or respect.” Achilles calls him “a king who devours his own people.” He may be king, but even those who do his bidding hold him in utter contempt.
There are other potential candidates in the Greek army, including the bloodthirsty and cocksure Diomedes, who battles the gods themselves, or the whiny, insufferable Thersites. As to the Trojans, Homer generally paints them in a kinder palette, with greater family feeling and fewer moral lapses, although the craven Paris, who skulks in bed while others fight and relies on divine intervention to get him out of jams that would prove fatal to most of the rest of us, is a nasty piece of work.
Ultimately, however, it’s hard to see Trump as anyone other than Agamemnon. After all, it is this king who leads his countrymen on an apocalyptic, self-defeating, grievance-fueled crusade against a foe who is, by all measures, more humane, wiser and more civilized than he is. And while the Greeks may have won the war, in the end it caused a great deal of unnecessary pain, suffering and hardship to all involved and did no good even to those on whose behalf it was ostensibly fought.
Jesse Browner is a novelist, essayist, translator and the author of the forthcoming novel “Sing to Me.”
The post Contributor: If Trump were one of the rogues from Homer’s ‘Iliad,’ which would he be? appeared first on Los Angeles Times.
