ABSTRACT
The true hero, the real subject, the core of the Iliad, is might. Might is that which makes a thing of anybody who comes under its sway. When exercised to the full, it makes a thing of man in the most literal sense, for it makes him a corpse. The might which kills outright is an elementary and coarse form of might. The progress of the war in the Iliad is no more than this play of the scales. At the end of the first day of combat recounted in the Iliad, the victorious Greeks could doubdess have obtained the object of their efforts, that is, Helen and her wealth; at least if one supposes, as Homer does, that the Greek army was right to believe that Helen was in Troy. The Egyptian priests, however, who ought to have known, affirmed later to Herodotus that she was in Egypt.
