War is a common thread that links Homer's Iliad to Virgil's Aeneid. However, the way the war is treated in the two epics is different. This can be attributed to many factors, including the time elapsed between the composition of the plays, the fact that the plays were written by different authors, and the fact that the plays were written in different locations. We can use these coins to get a sense of what the society that produced them thought about war and how views of war changed over time in the ancient world. The Iliad is a war poem. The entire narrative takes place on or near a battlefield with men who have been waging a seemingly endless war for over nine years, and depicts many battles large and small. At the beginning, Homer invokes the muse saying “begin, Muse, when the first two broke and clashed, Agamemnon, lord of men and brilliant Achilles. » (Homer, Iliad 1.7-8) This is the first of many battles throughout the poem. The conflict between Agamemnon and Achilles could be considered the most important even in the poem. He keeps Greece's greatest hero away from the battlefield for most of the poem. An interesting situation arises because of this. Achilles, the great hero, refuses to fight. Glory on the battlefield is the measure of any high-born Greek man, and Achilles refusing to fight would be considered an act of shameful cowardice. However, Achilles' pride would be damaged if he fought for Agamemnon. This conflict between pride and duty would be a difficult issue for a Greek to resolve, as both were important in Greek society. As mentioned before, glory on the battlefield is very important to Greek society. This is reflected in the Iliad. The fight is e...... middle of paper ...... launched the individual in Rome. A Greek soldier may be loyal to his polis, but that is the only lasting state he has. There was no “Greece”, so, apart from a few occasions, no centralized state to be loyal to. Although the Iliad does indeed depict a united Greek nation, the rift between Achilles and Agamemnon shows why they struggled to unify as a nation. On the other hand, the Aeneid shows that the father of the Romans, Aeneas, succeeded because he knew his duty. He did the things he did because he knew he would found a people who would eventually become the most powerful people on the planet. It was not only the glory that Aeneas won in battle in the poem that was important, but the glory of the people who would be born from him that was important. Personal glory is eclipsed by collective glory. This is the difference between the two people and the two poems.