The Iliad Character Map

The cast of the Iliad is mostly a casualty list. Of the 341 named figures on this map, well over a hundred exist for a single sentence: a name, a father, and the spear that ends them. A character list treats those men the same as Hector, and cannot show you the one thing the poem is built from, which is who killed whom. This map charts the whole text from the public-domain Lang, Leaf and Myers translation — 341 figures and 625 relationships, 184 of them hostile, each carrying a short quote from the poem so you can check it rather than take our word for it.

Read the hostile lines as a ledger and the poem rearranges itself. The map records 115 named killings: 109 named dead, 71 of them Trojans and their allies, 31 Achaians. The killers with the longest lists are not the ones the title promises. Diomedes has 12 named kills on the map, Agamemnon 11, Hector 9, Telamonian Aias 7, Odysseus 6 — and Achilles three, because Homer keeps him out of the fighting until Book XX and the parse recorded those last books thinly. The two deaths that turn the poem are here as lines from Hector to Patroklos and from Achilles to Hector, but the passage on each is Zeus foretelling the death in Book VIII, not the deed itself.

Search a name to jump to it. Solid lines are kinship, dashed lines are unions and allegiances, dotted lines are social ties, and selecting a figure dims everyone they are not connected to. The spellings are the translators’: Achaians rather than Greeks, Aias not Ajax, Aineias not Aeneas, Patroklos, Athene, Menelaos. The map groups 149 Trojans and allies, 113 Achaians, 33 gods, and about 46 figures who belong to none of the three — Bellerophon, Meleagros, the men of Nestor’s youth — because the poem tells their stories inside its own.

Two honest notes. The counts surprise people: Hector, not Achilles, is the most-mentioned figure in the Iliad (380 to 330) and the most-connected (52 lines), and Priam has 20 children on the map. And the map was made by software reading the poem, so it can be wrong. It has folded the hunter Skamandrios, whom Menelaos kills in Book V, into Hector’s infant son, whom “Hector called Skamandrios, but all the folk Astyanax” — so it wrongly says Menelaos killed Astyanax. It has split the lesser Aias across two small figures and folded part of him into the greater. And Achilles’ slaughter in Books XX and XXI, Iphition and Polydoros and Lykaon, is not on the map; a re-parse is queued. Every line carries its quote so you can catch that kind of thing.

Who’s who in The Iliad

The short version, for the reader who just needs the thread back. Every name here is on the map, with the passage that puts them there.

Hector

Son of Priam, and the most-mentioned figure in the poem — 380 mentions to Achilles’ 330 — with 52 connections, more than anyone else. Nine named kills on the map plus Patroklos. His duel with Telamonian Aias ends in a draw and an exchange of gifts; his death is the line from Achilles.

Achilles

“Sing, goddess, the wrath of Achilles Peleus’ son.” Twenty-two aliases on the map — Peleides, son of Peleus, fleet of foot — and only three named kills, because the poem holds him back until Book XX and the parse recorded those books thinly. Priam “kissed his hands, terrible, man-slaying, that slew many of Priam’s sons.”

Patroklos

Achilles’ comrade, reared by Peleus after a boyhood killing over dice — the map carries that too. In Achilles’ armor he kills Pyraichmes, Sarpedon and Kebriones. Euphorbos wounds him first, Apollo strikes him from behind, Hector finishes him: three hostile lines, in that order.

Agamemnon

King of men, 44 connections — second only to Hector — and 11 named kills, the second-longest list on the map. Seizes Briseis from Achilles, which is the quarrel; sends the embassy; ends the poem awarding prizes at Patroklos’ games alongside the man he insulted.

Diomedes

Twelve named kills, the most of anyone on the map: Pandaros, two sons of Priam in one chariot, Hector’s charioteer Eniopeus. Wounds Aphrodite and Ares on the same day. Exchanges armor with Glaukos instead of fighting him, and with Odysseus takes the spy Dolon.

Priam

King of Troy, 34 connections, 20 of his children on the map — Hector, Paris, Helenos, Deiphobos, Kassandra, Lykaon, Polydoros, Troilos among them. The last book is his: Hermes guides him through the Achaian camp to ransom Hector’s body from the man who killed him.

Zeus

Nineteen aliases — Kronion, cloud-gatherer, lord of counsel. Parent lines to Sarpedon, Herakles and Minos among mortals, and to Athene, Ares, Hephaistos, Aphrodite, Artemis and Hermes. Married to Hera and at odds with her on the same two lines; lulled by Sleep so her plan can run.

Odysseus

Seventeen aliases — of many devices, of many counsels — six named kills, and the poem’s enforcer: he beats Thersites for reviling Agamemnon, leads the embassy to Achilles, and with Diomedes hunts down Dolon in the night raid.

The two Aiantes

Telamonian Aias — 110 mentions, 28 connections, seven named kills, the draw with Hector, half-brother of the archer Teukros — and “the fleet son of Oileus,” “Aias the less.” The Latin name is Ajax. The map has split the lesser Aias into two small figures and folded some of his lines into the greater; that is a parse defect, named here.

Sarpedon & Glaukos

The Lykian allies. Sarpedon is the son of Zeus and of Laodameia, Bellerophon’s daughter — both parent lines are on the map. He kills Tlepolemos and Alkmaon and dies to Patroklos; Apollo carries the body home with “the twin brethren Sleep and Death.” Glaukos, son of Hippolochos, is the man who trades armor with Diomedes.

Andromache & Astyanax

Hector’s wife, daughter of Eëtion, whom Achilles slew along with her seven brothers — both facts are lines on the map. Her son is Astyanax to the city and Skamandrios to his father. The map has confused him with a different Skamandrios, a hunter Menelaos kills in Book V; the infant does not die in the poem.

Paris, Helen & Menelaos

The triangle the war is about, drawn as three lines: Paris (the map also calls him Alexandros) is Helen’s husband, Menelaos is Helen’s husband, and Menelaos’ line to Paris is the grievance. Helen, married to his brother, has one line to Hector, as kin — “My brother, even mine that am a dog.” Menelaos kills Euphorbos over Patroklos’ body and wounds Helenos; Paris kills with the bow.

Questions people ask about The Iliad