Book 20

Abstract

Abstract Book 20 marks Achilles’s official reentry into battle against the Trojans, and with that reentry Zeus allows the gods themselves to participate in the war. The central episode of the book is Achilles’s confrontation with Aeneas. The main theme of Iliad 20 is divine intervention, as it relates to Zeus’s plan for the Trojan War and the divine genealogy of heroes. Because book 20 marks Achilles’s reentry into battle, significant thematic attention is given to the act of killing and the anatomy of death. The main poetic features of Iliad 20 discussed here include the role of destiny and counterfactuals, interformularity, and speech acts of blame.