US popular culture is pretty milquetoast when it comes to celebrating violence and death and destruction. I mean, yeah, American Sniper glorified a guy who shot 255 people to death from a distance where they couldn't even see him, many of them women and children. But they're afraid to even show death, and constantly seek to airbrush out the cruelty and filth of war, with the objective of making it palatable to the public. The military (which negotiates extensive veto powers over Hollywood films that use US military locations and equipment) has learned only too well from Vietnam that civilians do not approve of the reality of war, and in the US the civilians are still in charge to a significant degree, for now.

Even movies like Hannibal, Psycho, and Schindler's List usually turn the camera the other way before blood starts splashing around, the stinking, grossly distorted, dismembered things that just stopped being human never even appear in the background. In fact, I bet American culture abhors violence so much that I'll get downvoted for telling the truth about violent death in my previous sentence instead of euphemizing it.

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Contrast Iliad 6.37–71, in Murray's meticulous but annoyingly archaized 01924 translation:

But Adrastus did Menelaus, good at the warcry, take alive; for his two horses, coursing in terror over the plain, became entangled in a tamarisk bough, and breaking the curved car at the end of the pole, themselves went on toward the city whither the rest were fleeing in rout; but their master rolled from out the car beside the wheel headlong in the dust upon his face. And to his side came Menelaus, son of Atreus, bearing his far-shadowing spear.

Then Adrastus clasped him by the knees and besought him: “Take me alive, thou son of Atreus, and accept a worthy ransom; treasures full many lie stored in the palace of my wealthy father, bronze and gold and iron wrought with toil; thereof would my father grant thee ransom past counting, should he hear that I am alive at the ships of the Achaeans.”

So spake he, and sought to persuade the other's heart in his breast, and lo, Menelaus was about to give him to his squire to lead to the swift ships of the Achaeans, but Agamemnon came running to meet him, and spake a word of reproof, saying: “Soft-hearted Menelaus, why carest thou thus for the men? Hath then so great kindness been done thee in thy house by Trojans? Of them let not one escape sheer destruction and the might of our hands, nay, not the man-child whom his mother bears in her womb; let not even him escape, but let all perish together out of Ilios, unmourned and unmarked.”

So spake the warrior, and turned his brother's mind, for he counselled aright; so Menelaus with his hand thrust from him the warrior Adrastus, and lord Agamemnon smote him on the flank, and he fell backward; and the son of Atreus planted his heel on his chest, and drew forth the ashen spear. Then Nestor shouted aloud, and called to the Argives: “My friends, Danaan warriors, squires of Ares, let no man now abide behind in eager desire for spoil, that he may come to the ships bearing the greatest store; nay, let us slay the men; thereafter in peace shall ye strip the armour from the corpses that lie dead over the plain.”

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In the original:

Ἄδρηστον δ᾽ ἄρ᾽ ἔπειτα βοὴν ἀγαθὸς Μενέλαος

ζωὸν ἕλ᾽: ἵππω γάρ οἱ ἀτυζομένω πεδίοιο

ὄζῳ ἔνι βλαφθέντε μυρικίνῳ ἀγκύλον ἅρμα

ἄξαντ᾽ ἐν πρώτῳ ῥυμῷ αὐτὼ μὲν ἐβήτην

πρὸς πόλιν, ᾗ περ οἱ ἄλλοι ἀτυζόμενοι φοβέοντο,

αὐτὸς δ᾽ ἐκ δίφροιο παρὰ τροχὸν ἐξεκυλίσθη

πρηνὴς ἐν κονίῃσιν ἐπὶ στόμα: πὰρ δέ οἱ ἔστη

Ἀτρεΐδης Μενέλαος ἔχων δολιχόσκιον ἔγχος.

Ἄδρηστος δ᾽ ἄρ᾽ ἔπειτα λαβὼν ἐλίσσετο γούνων:

‘ζώγρει Ἀτρέος υἱέ, σὺ δ᾽ ἄξια δέξαι ἄποινα:

πολλὰ δ᾽ ἐν ἀφνειοῦ πατρὸς κειμήλια κεῖται

χαλκός τε χρυσός τε πολύκμητός τε σίδηρος,

τῶν κέν τοι χαρίσαιτο πατὴρ ἀπερείσι᾽ ἄποινα

εἴ κεν ἐμὲ ζωὸν πεπύθοιτ᾽ ἐπὶ νηυσὶν Ἀχαιῶν.

ὣς φάτο, τῷ δ᾽ ἄρα θυμὸν ἐνὶ στήθεσσιν ἔπειθε:

καὶ δή μιν τάχ᾽ ἔμελλε θοὰς ἐπὶ νῆας Ἀχαιῶν

δώσειν ᾧ θεράποντι καταξέμεν: ἀλλ᾽ Ἀγαμέμνων

ἀντίος ἦλθε θέων, καὶ ὁμοκλήσας ἔπος ηὔδα:

ὦ πέπον ὦ Μενέλαε, τί ἢ δὲ σὺ κήδεαι οὕτως

ἀνδρῶν; ἦ σοὶ ἄριστα πεποίηται κατὰ οἶκον

πρὸς Τρώων; τῶν μή τις ὑπεκφύγοι αἰπὺν ὄλεθρον

χεῖράς θ᾽ ἡμετέρας, μηδ᾽ ὅν τινα γαστέρι μήτηρ

κοῦρον ἐόντα φέροι, μηδ᾽ ὃς φύγοι, ἀλλ᾽ ἅμα πάντες

Ἰλίου ἐξαπολοίατ᾽ ἀκήδεστοι καὶ ἄφαντοι.

ὣς εἰπὼν ἔτρεψεν ἀδελφειοῦ φρένας ἥρως

αἴσιμα παρειπών: ὃ δ᾽ ἀπὸ ἕθεν ὤσατο χειρὶ

ἥρω᾽ Ἄδρηστον: τὸν δὲ κρείων Ἀγαμέμνων

οὖτα κατὰ λαπάρην: ὃ δ᾽ ἀνετράπετ᾽, Ἀτρεΐδης δὲ

λὰξ ἐν στήθεσι βὰς ἐξέσπασε μείλινον ἔγχος.

Νέστωρ δ᾽ Ἀργείοισιν ἐκέκλετο μακρὸν ἀΰσας:

ὦ φίλοι ἥρωες Δαναοὶ θεράποντες Ἄρηος

μή τις νῦν ἐνάρων ἐπιβαλλόμενος μετόπισθε

μιμνέτω ὥς κε πλεῖστα φέρων ἐπὶ νῆας ἵκηται,

ἀλλ᾽ ἄνδρας κτείνωμεν: ἔπειτα δὲ καὶ τὰ ἕκηλοι

νεκροὺς ἂμ πεδίον συλήσετε τεθνηῶτας.

https://www.perseus.tufts.edu/hopper/text?doc=Perseus%3Atext...

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In Pope's more poetic but considerably less literal rendering:

Unbless’d Adrastus next at mercy lies

Beneath the Spartan spear, a living prize.

Scared with the din and tumult of the fight,

His headlong steeds, precipitate in flight,

Rush’d on a tamarisk’s strong trunk, and broke

The shatter’d chariot from the crooked yoke;

Wide o’er the field, resistless as the wind,

For Troy they fly, and leave their lord behind.

Prone on his face he sinks beside the wheel:

Atrides o’er him shakes his vengeful steel;

The fallen chief in suppliant posture press’d

The victor’s knees, and thus his prayer address’d:

“O spare my youth, and for the life I owe

Large gifts of price my father shall bestow.

When fame shall tell, that, not in battle slain,

Thy hollow ships his captive son detain:

Rich heaps of brass shall in thy tent be told,

And steel well-temper’d, and persuasive gold.”

He said: compassion touch’d the hero’s heart

He stood, suspended with the lifted dart:

As pity pleaded for his vanquish’d prize,

Stern Agamemnon swift to vengeance flies,

And, furious, thus: “Oh impotent of mind!

Shall these, shall these Atrides’ mercy find?

Well hast thou known proud Troy’s perfidious land,

And well her natives merit at thy hand!

Not one of all the race, nor sex, nor age,

Shall save a Trojan from our boundless rage:

Ilion shall perish whole, and bury all;

Her babes, her infants at the breast, shall fall;

A dreadful lesson of exampled fate,

To warn the nations, and to curb the great!”

The monarch spoke; the words, with warmth address’d,

To rigid justice steel’d his brother’s breast.

Fierce from his knees the hapless chief he thrust;

The monarch’s javelin stretch’d him in the dust,

Then pressing with his foot his panting heart,

Forth from the slain he tugg’d the reeking dart.

Old Nestor saw, and roused the warrior’s rage;

“Thus, heroes! thus the vigorous combat wage;

No son of Mars descend, for servile gains,

To touch the booty, while a foe remains.

Behold yon glittering host, your future spoil!

First gain the conquest, then reward the toil.”

Even Pope in 01899, anxious to flatter Victorian prejudices, is euphemizing and softpedaling this shit pretty hard here. "γαστέρι μήτηρ κοῦρον" means "boy in mother's belly" ("γαστέρι", like "gastroenterologist"), not "Her babes, her infants at the breast." "ἀλλ᾽ ἄνδρας κτείνωμεν" means "kill the other men", not "Behold yon glittering host". "ἕκηλοι νεκροὺς ἂμ πεδίον συλήσετε τεθνηῶτας" means "at ease among the corpses strip the dying", not "first gain the conquest, then reward the toil". Like, literally Nestor doesn't mention conquests, toil, or rewards here at all. (And obviously he doesn't mention Mars, who Pope has substituted for Ares.) "Ἀγαμέμνων οὖτα κατὰ λαπάρην" means "Agamemnon struck soft flesh", not "The monarch’s javelin stretch’d him in the dust", though Pope adds "Forth from the slain he tugg’d the reeking dart," while the Greek original doesn't say Adrestos was slain or anything about the smell of the spear of Agamemnon Atreides, just "λὰξ ἐν στήθεσι βὰς ἐξέσπασε μείλινον ἔγχος," which means "stepping on chest pulled the [ash-wood?] spear back out".

https://www.gutenberg.org/files/6130/6130-h/6130-h.htm#toc36