Homer’s Iliad and the Origins of Remembrance Day: Abridged Version

The Iliad is the story of the Trojan War, and The Odyssey is about Odysseus’s 10-year journey back to Ithaca from that war.  Both are meant to evoke a sense of things ‘epic’, ‘tragic’, and even ‘fantastic’ (if we are to consider, as well, the gods of Olympus who rule over mere mortals). 

Today we have almost forgotten how important knowledge and an understanding of the ancient classics was to higher society before the First World War.  In a learned study, The Greek Heritage in Victorian Britain (1981), the historian Frank M. Turner remarks: “Indeed, in 1865 the major commentator on Homer as well as a major translator of the poet, the chief critic and historian of Greek literature, the most significant political historians of Greece, and the authors of the then most extensive commentaries on Greek philosophy either were or had been members of the House of Lords or the House of Commons.”

It is also commonplace to us today that the Armistice in the First World War was announced on the 11^th hour of the 11^th day of the 11^th month of 1918.  But why the 11^th?  Was this just a matter of convenient symmetry?  In my view, there is far more than what meets the eye here.  First, we must gain an appreciation for the significance of the number 12 in Western culture.

The Iliad is filled with references to the number 12.  And, indeed, we know there are 12 Greek gods, as well as 12 Norse gods.  There are 12 hours of the day, and 12 hours of the night; 12 months in a year; Jesus had 12 disciples; and there are twelve days of Christmas.  Of course, a “ruler” (in my day) had 12 inches.  In other words, the number 12 was at the numerical “base” of Western culture after which the cycle of 12 is thought to be repeated.

Looking closely at the last chapter in The Iliad we see that Achilles, in the battle for Troy, has taken revenge for the death of his friend Patroclus and killed Hector.  Hector’s father, Priam, ruler of Troy, grieves for his son and wants the return of his body.  Following the intervention of Zeus, Priam offers a grand ransom for his son.  Priam then makes his way to Achilles’s camp in secret - and together they both find sorrow in each other’s company, as Achilles, too, thinks of his own father.  Priam asks that he and his fellow Trojans be allowed to mourn Hector for 11 days: “On the 12^th we will fight, if we really have to”.  Achilles agrees to this.

Thus, as the First World War wore on, and, by August 1918, as the Germans began to crumble, the number 11 – as inspired by The Iliad – came to be considered by  aesthetes and political figures as an appropriate occasion for mourning.   Hence the Armistice on November 11.  There are other striking parallels between the First World War and The Iliad: notably a long trench (built by the Greeks to defend themselves from the Trojans) and the poppy, symbolic of a man’s head weighed down by death.  Most of this has been forgotten today, as we are no longer schooled in the ancient Greek language as was the aristocracy in 19^th century Europe.