Surely, by all convention, the Iliad will end here, with the triumphant return of its vindicated hero. But the Iliad is not a conventional epic, and at the very moment of its hero's greatest military triumph, Homer diverts his focus from Achilles to the epic's two most important casualties, Patroklos and Hektor: it is to the consequences of their deaths, especially to the victor, that all action of the Iliad has been inexorably leading. Caroline Alexander
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For the Iliad to end with the return of Achilles would be a cliché. The hero is always victorious in the end, and that is part of how epic poetry works. However, the Iliad has been leading us to Hektor's death since the very beginning. Homer's genius is that he makes us feel Hektor's loss even though he never shows us his body or the funeral pyre where it will eventually burn. The Iliad ends with its hero still alive, but with his wounds untreated and his mind clouded by grief.

Source: The War That Killed Achilles: The True Story Of Homers Iliad And The Trojan War

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