Get The Iliad straight once, then move.

The Iliad begins with a declaration that the subject is the rage of Achilles, and the poem delivers on that immediately. Agamemnon, king of Mycenae and leader of the Greek forces besieging Troy, is forced to return a captive woman named Chryseis to her father, a priest of Apollo, after Apollo sends a plague on the Greek camp. To compensate himself, Agamemnon takes Briseis, Achilles' own war prize, as a replacement. Achilles is furious. He sees this as a public stripping of the honor he has earned through his fighting. He stops short of killing Agamemnon only because the goddess Athena intervenes. Instead, Achilles withdraws from battle entirely and asks his mother Thetis, a sea goddess, to persuade Zeus to let the Trojans gain the upper hand until the Greeks are desperate enough to acknowledge how much they need him.

Zeus agrees, and the Greeks begin to suffer. The Trojan forces, led by Hector, push the Greeks back across the plain and toward their beached ships. The poem moves through a series of major battles. Diomedes has a spectacular day of fighting, even wounding gods on the battlefield. Ajax holds the line in brutal close combat. Odysseus and other leaders try to negotiate with Achilles, offering him enormous gifts and the return of Briseis, but Achilles refuses. His pride is not satisfied by material compensation. He wants his honor acknowledged, and he will not settle for less.

As the Trojans press closer to the ships, Achilles' companion Patroclus becomes increasingly distressed watching his fellow Greeks die. He begs Achilles to let him enter the fight wearing Achilles' distinctive armor, so the Trojans will think Achilles has returned and pull back. Achilles agrees but tells Patroclus not to push too far toward Troy's walls. Patroclus succeeds at first, driving the Trojans back, but he gets carried away in the fighting and pushes forward. Apollo strikes him, staggering him, and Hector delivers the killing blow. Hector strips Achilles' armor from Patroclus' body.

The news of Patroclus' death breaks Achilles. His grief is total and physical. He collapses, covers himself in ash, and cries out so loudly that Thetis hears him from the sea. His rage shifts completely. He no longer cares about the quarrel with Agamemnon. He wants Hector dead. Thetis arranges for the god Hephaestus to forge Achilles new armor, including a massive new shield decorated with scenes of human life. Achilles reconciles with Agamemnon, returns to battle, and tears through the Trojan forces. He kills so many men that the river Scamander floods its banks trying to wash away the bodies.

Hector waits outside Troy's walls to face Achilles, despite his family's desperate pleas to come inside. When Achilles appears, Hector runs. They circle the walls three times before Hector stops and turns to fight. Athena tricks Hector into thinking he has an ally beside him, and when that ally disappears, Hector realizes he has been set up to die. He fights anyway. Achilles kills him with a spear through the throat. He then ties Hector's body to his chariot and drags it around the walls of Troy and back to the Greek camp, repeating this daily as an act of desecration.

The gods are disturbed by Achilles' treatment of the body. Zeus sends word that Hector must be ransomed. Thetis tells Achilles to accept. Meanwhile, Zeus sends the god Hermes to guide Hector's father, the elderly King Priam, safely through the Greek lines at night. Priam arrives alone in Achilles' tent and kneels before the man who killed his son. He asks Achilles to think of his own father, Peleus, who will also grieve a son lost to war. Achilles is moved. The two men weep together. Achilles agrees to return Hector's body and grants a truce for the funeral.