I say readers and not listeners, because it seems to me that both epics were dictated to someone who then wrote them down. The quality is simply too good for them to have been written based on the oral tradition, but they're too long for a recitation. I think that both are patchworks of plot (the Iliad to a much greater extent) and events which made up a series of oral recitations rather than a single whole.
But the Iliad is the story of Achilleus' removal from society, and specifically from Greek society. The relative uniformity of the Greek force to the Trojans is clearly seen when, in Book Three (all translations Lattimore), the Trojans come on "with clamour and shouting, like wildfowl, as when the clamour of cranes goes high to the heavens, when the cranes escape the winter time and the rains unceasing". I didn't mean to quote so much, but it's a singularly beautiful passage. Again, in Book Ten, we hear of "far-assembled companions" to the Trojans, and here far-off places innumerated. While the Argives have any number of separate sets of ships and origins, they are united in a way the Trojans are not. They have a king.
Unfortunately for them, they have Agamemnon, a greedy, easily depressed, moderately intelligent fellow whose actions send Achilleus to sulk in his tent. Achilleus, best of the Greeks, will not suffer to have his prize taken away in front of the multitude. So he withdraws to his tent, to plot vengeance on Agamemnon.
And what might have been a more sympathetic character is given a bit more nastiness when he summons his immortal mother Thetis to petition Zeus to slaughter the Argives. It's an evil action, and one that is impossible to justify. Indeed, when I read the Iliad as a freshman, during the seminar we had on it there was heated debate as to whether or not it took place. It does, but those who liked Achilleus had forgotten, unintentionally.
Achilleus still has connections with individual Greeks, but refuses any position in the larger community, the odd polis they've created on the beach of Troy. When Odysseus, Aias, and Phoinix visit, he greets them and treats them politely, but only as his friends--not as envoys of the Argives. Phoinix even must stay, in memory of earlier friendship. But no place can Achilleus take in the Argive community. By right he ought to have the pride of place, as the best. But the Argives already have a king, and Achilleus will not bow to him.
Even with the death of Patroklos and the return of Achilleus to the field, Achilleus is fighting almost as a free agent. He is after his own goal, the death of Hektor, rather than the triumph of the Argives. With Hektor dead, he retires to the funerary rites. But this is the beginning of his return to society. He invites all the Greeks, giving great prizes at the games to honor Patroklos, and even makes overtures to Agamemnon: "The son of Atreus rose, wide-powerful Agamemnon, and Meriones rose up, the henchman of Idomeneus. But now among them spoke swift-footed Achilleus: 'Son of Atreus, for we know how much you surpass all others, by how much you are greatest in strength among the spear-throwers, therefore take this prize...." But Achilleus still weeps for Patroklos, and drags the body of Hektor, breaker of horses, round in the dust behind his chariot.
It is only when Priam comes that Achilleus makes contact with the humanity he had left behind. They take each others' hands, these enemies, and Priam weeps for Hektor, and Achilleus for Patroklos and his own, aged father Peleus. But Achilleus is finally near the end of his mourning: "great Achilleus had taken full satisfaction in sorrow and the passion for it had gone from his body and mind". Satisfaction not in a pleased way, but as one is satisfied, after starving, by food. It is unhealthy not to eat, as it is unhealthy to eat too much. And so Achilleus returns to the Argive community, ready to fight, even as he knows that he will die, for something greater.
Odysseus is another story, and for now, another post.
