Iliad with My Son

Daily Note — February 18, 2026 Learning the Iliad with Volcker — Book 1, Lines 1–100

I am finally reading the Iliad properly.

My son has read through a graphic novel version of it many times, so today I did something simple: I read aloud and he annotated. It worked better than any commentary I could have found.

Here is what I understood from the first hundred lines.

• We discussed rage as the opening theme.

• The Greeks are camped outside Troy. Apollo — god of the sun, archery, music, and healing — is called upon by Chryses, a priest whose daughter Agamemnon has taken and refused to return. Chryses prays. Apollo answers. He comes down from Olympus with his quiver, and the arrows clatter on his back "like the night." He kneels, shoots, and a plague sweeps the Greek camp for nine days.

• Achilles calls assembly on the tenth day. A soothsayer named Calchas — who "knew all the past and present and the future" — reveals the cause. Not a failure of sacrifice or vow. Just one thing: Agamemnon took a priest's daughter and wouldn't let her go. The plague will not lift until she is returned.

• That is where Agamemnon and Achilles quarrel. Not on the battlefield. In their own camp. An angry king, a proud soldier, and one bad decision that refuses to be undone.

Volcker told me the quarrel deepens from here. I believe him.

There is something I want him to understand about this text: greatness in Homer is never quiet. It is always tested by pressure, pride, and the choices men make when their ego is threatened. That is as true today as it was three thousand years ago.

We will continue.