Project Terms

Brief definitions for the terms used in the markup of our project!

• The Iliad: The Iliad is an epic poem attributed to the blind poet Homer written in Ancient Greek between the 7th and 8th century BCE. The poem would have been initially sung following a dactylic hexameter (which usually gets lost in translation). The epic consists of 24 books. For the purposes of our project, we looked specifically at books 23 and 24. See our “Key Characters” page to learn about the key characters and a bit about epithets.
• Action: When doing our markup, we looked at the actions committed by the characters. Ex: the mourning of the dead, conversations, or prayer.
• Intention: Did the person have positive or negative intentions when committing the action? Ex: wailing in mourning has a positive intention since it shows respect to the dead, killing an enemy has a negative intention
• Setting: Was the action committed in public (on the battlefield, in the camp) or in private (inside a tent, alone, with one other person)?
• Internal Emotion: Emotions that are not displayed externally
• External Emotion: Emotions that are displayed externally Ex: Mourning
• Wrath: Divine anger, often associated with violent action. Only felt by the Gods and by Achilles
• Anger: Not always associated with violence. Can be experienced by Gods and mortals alike
• Lament: Grief and mourning, extreme feeling of sadness. Often an external emotion
• Fear: An emotion that can be felt internally or displayed externally
• Relief: An emotion that can be felt internally or displayed externally
• Wonder: An emotion that comes about when a character is surprised by an action they did not expect Ex: Priam experiencing a moment of kindness from Achilles
• Appropriate: Using our own judgment, we decided whether the emotion felt during an action was appropriate to the situation or not
• Direction: Who is the recipient (if anyone) of emotion if it is external?
• Relationship: We categorized relationships between characters in the following ways:
• Romantic: Connections between lovers. For the sake of our project, we assumed Achilles and Patroclus to be lovers
• Enemies: Interaction between people on opposite sides of the war, such as King Priam and Achilles
• Familial: Connections between family members, such as Priam and Hector
• Neutral: Relationships that do not have strong established connections are considered to be neutral