The Iliad

Ilus was the legendary founder of Troy, whose name gave the city its alternate name, Ilium. His tomb is mentioned at seminal moments in the narrative. In Book 8, for example, Paris steadies himself to take a shot at Diomedes by leaning on Ilus’s tomb: “the archer leaning firmly against a pillar / raised on the man-made tomb of Dardan’s son, / Ilus an old lord of the realm in ancient days” (308). Diomedes is in the process of stripping off the armor of a Trojan he had just killed, but Paris’s shot hits its mark. Diomedes is wounded and must withdraw from battle. Later, in Book 10, the Trojans hold a council at the tomb.

An ancestor’s tomb seems to function as a lodestone for the community. It rallies them and gives them strength, reminding them that they belong to something larger than themselves. They connect to each other and their history through the common reference point of the hero. The references to Ilus’s tomb allude to the importance of ancestors in the ancient Greek imagination and possibly to the practice of hero cult worship in ancient Greece.