The Iliad of Homer (PDF)

The story covered by “The Iliad” begins nearly ten years into the seige of Troy by the Greek forces, led by Agamemnon, King of Mycenae. The Greeks are quarrelling about whether or not to return Chryseis, a Trojan captive of King Agamemnon, to her father, Chryses, a priest of Apollo. When Agamemnon refuses and threatens to ransom the girl to her father, the offended Apollo plagues them with a pestilence.
The Greeks, at the behest of the warrior-hero Achilles, force Agamemnon to return Chryseis in order to appease Apollo and end the pestilence. But, when Agamemnon eventually reluctantly agrees to give her back, he takes in her stead Briseis, Achilles’s own war-prize concubine. Feeling dishonoured, Achilles wrathfully withdraws both himself and his Myrmidon warriors from the Trojan War.
Testing the resolve of the Greeks, Agamemnon feigns a homeward order, but Odysseus encourages the Greeks to pursue the fight. During a brief truce in the hostilities, Paris and Menelaus meet in single combat over Helen, while she and old King Priam of Troy watch from the city walls and, despite the goddess Aphrodite’s intervention on behalf of the over-matched Paris, Menelaus is the victor. The goddess Athena, however, who favours the Greeks, soon provokes a Trojan truce-breaking and battle begins anew.
The Greek hero Diomedes, strengthened by Athena, drives the Trojans before him but, in his arrogance and blood-lust, strikes and injures Aphrodite. Despite the misgivings of his wife, Andromache, the Trojan hero, Hector, son of King Priam, challenges the Greek warrior-hero Ajax to single combat, and is almost overcome in battle. Throughout all, in the background, the various gods and goddesses (particularly Hera, Athena, Apollo and Poseidon) continue to argue among themselves and to manipulate and intervene in the struggle, despite Zeus’ specific orders to the contrary.