“Then shouts and cries of triumph arose together, men killing and men slain, and the ground flowed with blood. » At first glance, the Iliad seems to be an epic based on an idealized form of glory, the one that young boys think of when they want to join the army. A place full of heroism and virility where glory can be achieved with a few strokes of the sword and then you go home and everything is just lovely. Many people view the Iliad this way, based on its many descriptions of living battles and its apparent lack of remorse for the deaths that occur. However, this is not how war is presented in the Iliad. Homer presents a very practical view of war, contrasting the acquisition of glory with the reality of its cost and the destruction it causes. He achieves this by showing the value of the life of each person who dies and, in a sense, mourning their passing, by describing the terror and ugliness of war and, through the characters of Achilleus and Hector, displaying the high price of glory. The Iliad is full of epithets describing the many major and minor characters. These short, descriptive titles contain themes that range from a person's strengths to their family history. Most characters who receive them are only mentioned once, upon their death. This gives these deaths a feeling of sadness, which would have been insignificant if nothing had been known about them. In Book 4, this can be seen in the killing of a Trojan, the son of Anthemonian Simoeisios, by Aias. The scene of his death is described quite vividly as incredibly grotesque, but only after Homer describes his family and how "he could no longer care for his dear parents, for his life was short-lived." Even... middle of paper... destined to either return home and be forgotten, or fight and die, winning great glory to be remembered forever. The price that heroes pay for the glory they obtain is something that is easily forgotten if we do not read The Iliad in the context of the times. At the time of the Iliad, glory and honor were even more important than today. One can easily get lost in the descriptive nature of the epic poem, which gives rise to the belief that the Iliad is only a glorification of combat, but this is not the case. The Iliad is based on principles much deeper than combat, it glorifies the search for honor and the sacrifices that great men will make to achieve this honor. If Achilleus had not joined his comrades in taking pity on them, he would never be remembered even though he still possessed great combat prowess, because he did not use it to help his friends..