Classics and the Western Canon discussion

This topic is for general background information about the Trojan War, the characters and gods, Greek values and social norms, and the like. I know this will be a bit of a challenge at times, but please try to avoid talking about specific events from the text until we have reached the relevant book.

Can someone give a summary of "where we're at" when the book starts? It begins 9 years into a war and it seems like we are already supposed to know how the war started, who the characters are, and what they're fighting over. I've heard enough about the Iliad to know they're fighting over Helen-- but I always thought the story of the Iliad centered around her, not that she's the long-forgotten cause of a war that's nearly a decade old. Was there a prequel I missed or do we get this backstory in a flashback coming up later? Thanks.

Actually there was a "prequel" of sorts called the Cypria, but it [like so many other important works, including most of the Epic Cycle] has been lost.

more information @ Wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cypria

Though if I'm not mistaken, most of that is in fact covered later in the Iliad, no?

Millicent, it's all most marvelously complicated and wonderfully webbed.

According to Vandiver (Great Courses), Homer's audience would have been familiar with why the war came about and how it ended...at least the main facts.

I posted on Book 1 a little regarding Helen.

You should also be aware that Agamemnon is the elder brother of Menelaos (Helen's husband).

Abusing hospitality is a terrible, terrible offront. (Also, when your wife either runs off or is kidnapped, it makes the king look weak. Also, Paris and Helen took very large amounts of treasure with them when they left the palace of Menelaos. He wants his wife AND treasure back.)

So Agamemnon gathers most of the "kings" at Aulis so that they can sail to Troy and restore the honor of Menelaos.

Some of the "kings" might not really have wanted to go...however, according to the background myth, they had to. Because of Helen. Almost all of them had wanted to marry Helen themselves. When Helen was to marry, they all had to swear an oath that they would support the man she chose.

Now, an interesting wrinkle...well, I'll put that in the Book 1 or Book 2 threads.

Hope that helps a little.

Oh.
Achilles is the greatest Greek warrior. There wasn't any doubt about that. All the Greeks knew it.

Millicent wrote: "Can someone give a summary of "where we're at" when the book starts? It begins 9 years into a war and it seems like we are already supposed to know how the war started, who the characters are, and..."

A bit of supplement Adelle's excellent comments.

Yes, the poem begins "in media res," which is to say in the middle of things.

(One minor(?) problem is that Greek mythology morphed over time, so we're not entirely clear what myth/theology/legends Homer knew and what the later Greeks knew.)

Paris is one of the many sons of Priam, king of Troy. Paris visited the home of Menelaus, king of Sparta, in Greece. Paris either abducted or seduced Helen, myths differ on which, and took her back to Troy with him. (There is a background myth to this you may have heard of, the Judgment of Paris, but scholars differ on whether Homer knew this myth at the time he composed the Iliad or whether it was a later myth developed to explain why the goddesses lined up for and against Paris and Troy as they do in the Iliad, Aphrodite for Paris (to whom she had given Helen) and the losers, Hera and Athena, against Paris and Troy because he had slighted them.)

An interesting side note: the golden apple which led to the Judgment of Paris was thrown at the feast for the wedding of Pelus, who is Achilles's father.

At any rate, Paris did take Helen back to Troy, which as Adelle notes was a major, massive violation of the principle of hospitality. Zeus was the enforcer of the duty of hospitality, which a) shows how important a principle it was to the Greeks and b) shows why Zeus is generally on the side of the Greeks, since it was the Trojans who violated his sacred edict.

There's another myth, which again it's not clear whether Homer knew or not, that all the Greek kings wanted to marry Helen for her beauty, and they all promised that whomever she chose, if that king ever needed their help to protect her, they would go to his aid. Again it's not clear (to me, at least) whether this was another myth to explain why so many of the Greeks went in on this war, since it was not their custom to unite their forces that way.

However, most of the Greek city-states did agree help Menelaus get Helen back, and his brother Agamemnon was selected to lead the army. They sailed for Troy nine years before the Iliad starts (with another legend I won't get into about the sacrifice of his daughter Iphigenia to propitiate the goddess Artemis and assure favorable winds). At the time the Iliad starts they have been fighting for nine years.

During the course of the war, the Greeks have gone off on various raiding forays to other cities, some at least and maybe all of which had supported Troy in some way or another, during the course of which they had taken various booty as prizes, including slaves. This is how they had obtained the two slave women who feature at the beginning of the Iliad, Chryseis and Briseis, who had been awarded respectively to Agamemnon and Achilles as recognition of their prowess in those battles/raids/lootings/whatever term you want to use.

That's a brief summary, I hope helpful, of where we are when the Iliad starts.

Everyman wrote: "...slave women ..."


?? Before? Or only after they were captured?

Mmm, I'm supposing that the daughter of the priest, a priest able to offer a ransom for his daughter, wouldn't be a slave. So I'm thinking they [Cryseis; Briseis] were slaves after they were captured. Slaves can be brought home or sold. Slaves are part of the "prize" of winning. Even before Homer, the Linear B tablets in Mycenaea included lists of "captives" and "To-ro-ja" [Women of Troy}. Supposedly in Linear B they were described as something like "taken as booty" [from The Trojan War by Barry Strauss (28)... and another source not right in front of me}

Perhaps they didn't enslave him simply because he was a priest. Agamemnon might be willing to risk the wrath of Apollo; the men in the field might not.

Ah, but consider: Taking his daughter is not an insult to Apollo; taking the daughter is merely a personal heartbreak for the priest of Apollo; and what does the god care?

Over on Book 1, Post 4, you had written as point "e": "obeying the gods is a virture." I haven't seen that in the first two Books. {What brought you to the conclusion? You must have seen something.}

What I see is a quid pro quo. Over and over. Perhaps this relates to the Greeks as a trading people? Even in the Republic you'll remember Polemarchus saying, "That it is right to give every man his due."

The Iliad to me seems to be full of trades. Cryses, "the old priest, prayed to the son of sleek-haired Leto, lord Apollo, 'Hear me, Apollo! God of the silver bow ... If I ever roofed a shrine to please your heart [...] [then] now bring my prayer to pass". (line about 45 Fagles).

(line 77: Achilles: "If only the god would share the smoky savor of lambs and full grown goats, [then] Apollo might be willing, still, somehow, to save us from this plague"

(line 254: "If a man obeys the gods, [then] they're quick to hear his prayers.")

(The premise of the Thetis-Zeus conversation: line about 600: "If I ever served you well.... [then] bring this prayer to pass: honor my son Achilles!")

{I be wondering now if the gold belongs to the priest; or out of love for his daughter he appropriated the treasure belonging to the god; or whether he was so important to the city---a city bearing a name strikingly similar to his own (Cryse)--for either political reasons or religious reasons that the city people donated on his behalf. Eh?}

Lily wrote: "Everyman wrote: "...slave women ..."


?? Before? Or only after they were captured?"

My assumption is that both were free women before their cities were sacked by the Greeks and they were made part of the booty. Certainly I don't think that Chryseis would have been a slave or her father wouldn't have acted as he did (or would have done so when she was first enslaved). I'm not sure that we're told about Briseis, but I think a free woman would have been a more valuable prize, and therefore more suitable for Achilles, than an existing slave.

What I find interesting is that Briseis and Achilles apparently had some fondness for each other. Briseis was taken "against her will," (Johnston 345), and Achilles wept when she was taken, perhaps in rage, but I got the impression more because of his caring for Briseis. So she was, it seems, not just a slave as we think of slavery in the Americas or Caribbean, but that there was some affection there. Indeed, while we're on the issue of slave relations, Agamemnon taunts Chryses saying

"I’ll not release the girl to you, no, not before
she’s grown old with me in Argos, far from home,
working the loom, sharing my bed" (Johnston 1.30) and later says
"But I have a great desire to take her home.
In fact, I want her more than Clytaemnestra,
the wife I married. Chryseis is just as good
in her shape, physique, intelligence, or work." (Johnston 1.120)

So while we call them slaves, really they seem more to have been members of the household, not much worse off, if at all, than wives or ordinary servants.

Adelle wrote: "What I see [between men and gods] is a quid pro quo. Over and over. ...The Iliad to me seems to be full of trades. "

Nice point. I'm not sure that the key is obedience to the gods, since it doesn't seem very often that the gods give direct orders to humans (Zeus and the duty of hospitality is one such area, perhaps), but that the gods are jealous and need to be propitiated with honors and sacrifices.

Note, for example, that Apollo didn't simply come down and say to Agamemnon, in person or in a dream, "return Chryseis or else"; he just starts shooting his arrows of death and we have to get Calchas to figure out why and tell the Greeks what's happening and how to stop it. And while it's not in the Iliad, Artemis didn't simply order Agamemnon to sacrifice Iphigenia in order to get the winds to blow, they had to interpret auguries to figure out what to do.

We know that the gods can come down and talk to humans if they want to. Thetis does in Book 1. But it seems that for the most part they don't give orders, but act and make the humans figure out from soothsayers or auguries what to do. So, if the gods don't generally give orders, is "obeying the gods" really what's at issue? Or as you say, isn't it more trading with the gods, I'll give you sacrifices or whatever, you give me good winds or success in war or whatever I want.

Adelle wrote: "The Iliad to me seems to be full of trades. Cryses, "the old priest, prayed to the son of sleek-haired Leto, lord Apollo, 'Hear me, Apollo! God of the silver bow ... If I ever roofed a shrine to please your heart [...] [then] now bring my prayer to pass". (line about 45 Fagles). "

This is also a grammatical convention. One of the first constructions taught in an ancient Greek class is the conditional sentence because they're so common. That doesn't negate your point at all, but it's something to consider. (Maybe trading is so integral to Greek thought that it comes out in the language?)

Everyman wrote: "So while we call them slaves, really they seem more to have been members of the household, not much worse off, if at all, than wives or ordinary servants.

..."

Yes....except....you know...they have to have sexual relations with men who probably killed their brothers or friends and maybe burned down their homes... Just saying.

Adelle wrote: "Yes....except....you know...they have to have sexual relations with men who probably killed their brothers or friends and maybe burned down their homes... Just saying. "

Good point, nicely (i.e. gently to insensitive male) stated.

Warning on the Butler translation. I like this translation's approach, and it's easily available on line, BUT it makes frequent use of the Roman names for gods and characters, which can be quite confusing, especially for first time readers not familiar with Greek and Roman mythology trying to understand the posts here which use the Greek names.

For example, he uses Jove instead of Zeus, Juno instead of Hera, Venus instead of Aphrodite, and when you get to Book 3, who the heck is Alexandrus? Oh, yeah, that's Paris.

If you can get past the Roman names (which he probably used because in his age Roman mythology was what was mostly studied and the Greek names would have been much less familiar to his readers) it's a quite decent translation, BUT you need a cheat sheet to match his names up with those we will be using in the discussion.

Everyman wrote: "
nicely stated. ."

whew!

Everyman wrote: "Warning on the Butler translation. I like this translation's approach, and it's easily available on line, BUT it makes frequent use of the Roman names for gods and characters..."

I noticed that, too, in the Pope translation. My library mistakenly sent me the audio version of Pope instead of the one I had asked for. I went ahead and started listening to it. Actually a pleasing experience, although the characters all sound quite British.

A comment on citation, especially as we get into the later books: I suggest that we use a book.line format, so rather than just saying line 230, we say, if it's from Book 1, 1.230, or form Book 6, 6.230. Then as we get later into the discussions and perhaps mix in references from earlier books we can keep things straighter.

Everyman wrote: "So while we call them slaves, really they seem more to have been members of the household, not much worse off, if at all, than wives or ordinary servants. ..."

LOL! Did you have your tongue in your cheek as you wrote those words!

Lily wrote: "Everyman wrote: "So while we call them slaves, really they seem more to have been members of the household, not much worse off, if at all, than wives or ordinary servants. ..."

LOL! Did you have y..."

Well, no but Adelle has already chided me for it. :)

Thomas wrote: "This is also a grammatical convention. One of the first constructions taught in an ancient Greek class is the conditional sentence because they're so common. That doesn't negate your point at all, but it's something to consider. (Maybe trading is so integral to Greek thought that it comes out in the language?) ..."

Love that possible insight! I am fascinated by the assumptions humans embed in language itself.

Everyman wrote: "Lily wrote: "Everyman wrote: "So while we call them slaves, really they seem more to have been members of the household, not much worse off, if at all, than wives or ordinary servants. ..."

LOL! D..." Well, no but Adelle has already chided me for it. :)

Thus we see the need for powerful goddesses.

Thomas wrote: "Maybe trading is so integral to Greek thought that it comes out in the language?)



There may be something to that line of reasoning. I read the the Linear B writing from the ancient Mycenaean area contained nothing but financial information...number of slaves owned, taxes paid, etc.

While keeping one eye on Everyman's admonishment to not reveal events that we haven't yet covered in our reading of the Iliad, I would bring up bits and pieces of an interesting article I read ("Homeric Honor and Cultural Values" J. Frank Papovich)...and wonder how much I can quote without abusing copyright laws.

"...we should make every effort to ... understand not only the texts ... but also the cultural context that gave rise to such texts. This endeavor is especially important in teaching the Homeric texts, which, as oral narratives, are far more indebted to the traditions of their culture than are most literary narratives.

Yet the need to inform oursleves of the cultural context of the Homeric poems is often unrecognized. We are lulled into a false confidence by our perspective on the ancient Greeks and their traditions.

So much of their culture stands as a source of our own that we often assume that these Greeks must have judged peopel and reacted to events as we do.

We need, however, to set aside our familiar perceptual patterns and the misleading assumptions they generate. For if we fail to understand the original intentions in the Greek text, we may fail, in large part, to understand the text at all" [my emphasis]

COMPETIION VS.COOPERATION--

(Added): Consider, for example, the word arete, which has the various meanings of 'goodness, excellence, prowess, success, prosperity, strength.

When we translate arete as 'good' ... the word applies to the thing approved. Yet the qualities that determine 'goodness' in things of the same kind may not be the same in Greek as in English.

For example, the quality that most often characterized a man with arete was his success alone, with the means of his success counting for little or nothing.

But in our culture, these means may indeed be more important in determing a person's goodness than the simple fact of success.

...[ competitive evaluations] are made on the basis of success or failure, with success ranked highest. Intentions are of no importance. We would not commend a general by saying he was a good commander but never won any battles. Success in war is paramount;

...[ in cooperative arrangement such as contracts or alliances], justice and fairness are of primary importance and intentions are appropriate. We might well want to know if a general is a good ally....

As students will discover in studying the conflict between Achilleus and Agamemnon...the competitive values were more highly regarded then the copperative.

For Homeric socieity, the balance between existence and annihilation was precarious. Cooperative virtues were valued, but in times of crisis, which were frequent, the preeminence of the competitive qualities and of the success they imparted became unmistakable. With such a scale of values, disputes between chiefs where were sufficiently angry to refuse arbitration could not be settled by referring to the 'higher' virtues of cooperation, even in joint miliatry expeditions.

Further, since there was no authority higher than the individual chief and since concession to informal arbitration might have been regarded as a sign of weakness or failure, the seeds of dispute were inherent in the system...Indeed, the main plots of the Homeric peims reflect what occurs when such competion progresses from an abstract value to concrete action.

WAR A BRUTAL NECESSITY

The social oranization and value system of the Homeric poems are based firmly on the oikos, or the noble household, which was the highest form of political and economic as well as social organization.

The oikos were spread across the countryside with no other governing institutions to promote their growth and well-being or to prevent their complete annihilation.

Some sense of community undenialy existed in Homeric socieity, but in a crisis, or whenever the aims of the oikos diverged from those of the wider community, the claims of the oikos were always primary.

Command of each oikos was the responsibility of the local warrior-chieftain who was both denoted and commended [based on his excellence].

{Societies came to value and even need war as a means of maintaining privileded status}.

Adelle wrote: "...I read the the Linear B writing from the ancient Mycenaean area contained nothing but financial information...number of slaves owned, taxes paid, etc..."

I, too, have read similar about Linear B. You got me wondering, though, what we know about language development. I have long known that (ancient) Hebrew has a much more constricted vocabulary than later languages, like Greek, so words like "wind" may today get translated as "spirit" in languages that embody those distinctions. Today, we recognize that English is especially willing to assimilate new words and new forms. Are there generalities that are "known" about the evolution of languages, i.e., did early vocabularies focus on concrete entities in the external world or were they equally inclusive of abstract ideas and relationship concepts? Or, is it simply that by the time of ancient Greek, Western languages are sufficiently rich in vocabulary, it isn't possible to trace any such evolution?

Lily,

I can't answer your question. I'd just make the distinction between language and writing. Early writing may have focused on inventories, but early writing was the skill of a small professional class of scribes. Language was developing without records on the streets.

Bill wrote: "...Language was developing without records on the streets."

Point well taken!

I picked up a copy of the translation by Herbert Jordan. Interesting concept: he attempts to translate Homer line-for-line, so that each line of his poetic translation matches one line of the Greek. I've only skimmed a few pages of the translation so far, and I'm on the fence on it for now.

However, there are a few interesting comments in the Introduction. For one example:

"There used to be two movie critics on television whose most damning comment used to be 'We have seen all this before.' In the world of Homeric poetry, this was the highest praise. Of the characters, the stories, the formulas, the audience could say 'we have seen or heard all this before.' They knew and treasured them as they knew and treasured the rising sun in the East and the evening breeze blowing off the sea. The patterns were beautiful and meaningful, not because they were new and unexpected, but precisely because they continued or repeated, even renewed, what the audience already knew. Their power came -- and still comes -- not from surprise or shock, but from the anticipation of pleasure and paid known before and soon to be expected again."

That's beautiful, Everyman. It immediately reminded me of something from Chesterton:

"Because children have abounding vitality, because they are in spirit fierce and free, therefore they want things repeated and unchanged. They always say, "Do it again"; and the grown-up person does it again until he is nearly dead. For grown-up people are not strong enough to exult in monotony. But perhaps God is strong enough to exult in monotony. It is possible that God says every morning, "Do it again" to the sun; and every evening, "Do it again" to the moon. It may not be automatic necessity that makes all daisies alike; it may be that God makes every daisy separately, but has never got tired of making them. It may be that He has the eternal appetite of infancy; for we have sinned and grown old, and our Father is younger than we.”

Laurele wrote: "That's beautiful, Everyman. It immediately reminded me of something from Chesterton:

"Because children have abounding vitality, because they are in spirit fierce and free, therefore they want thin..."

Love that. And with four young grandchildren I can totally attest to the "do it again."

I love that "grown-up people are not strong enough to exult in monotony."

Another interesting point that Jordan makes in his Translator's Introduction is that by translating line-by-line he (and Lattimore) keep the poem to the same length as Homer did, whereas translators who aren't so succinct make the poem much longer than Homer did, in some cases by thousands of lines.

Johnston's Book 1, for example, is 687 lines vs. the 612 of Homer; that's 12% longer.

Fagles is even more loquacious; his book 1 is 735 lines; that's 20% longer than Homer.

Jordon contends that such increases "dilute the immediacy of the original, one of its distinctive characteristics." Whether you agree with this or not, it's an interesting point. But since Jordon chooses a shorter line (iambic pentameter, five syllables to the line) than Lattimore (iambic hexameter, six syllables to the line) or Homer (dactylic hexameter, eighteen syllables to the line), he often leaves out the repetitive epithets which are also characteristic of Homer, and his lines can sound choppy.

But I will say that Jordon reads more briskly than most other verse translations. He has his good points, as do most other translations.

Nothing to read but bank statements?

That would be too sad.

Was listening to the introduction to the tape of the Fitzgerald translation, and it mentions that the Hittites had written records of a Greek king named Agamemnon around the 12th century, when the Trojan war was, according to Greek sources, fought. So it appears that at least he was a real historical figure. I do wonder how many of the other named figures were actual known real people and how many of the names Homer took from common names of the time (or of his time).

Everyman wrote: "Was listening to the introduction to the tape of the Fitzgerald translation, and it mentions that the Hittites had written records of a Greek king named Agamemnon around the 12th century, when the ..."

My guess is that all the major characters--kings and countries, were real. And that as archeology continues to did things up we will see more and more how myth has its roots in reality.

At Post 35, Book 6, Erika wrote: I wondered about the importance of the guest/host (xenia? or philoxenia?) relationship. Obviously, the whole war was started by Paris' violation of the guest/host relationship. So it makes me think that the Diomedes/Glaukos encounter is more than an interesting anecdote.

Background information (I'm mostly paraphrasing)
FROM Homeric Honor and Cultural Values---J. Frank Papovich

No one then, in that society, could totally depend on himself alone. So the people who would in effect make you family, friend you, were tremendously important "constituting a tightly bound support system, [they] were distinguished from the rest of the world by the word philos [kinsman-friend]."

It was especially important to have someone who would back you when you were traveling...in places where you would be a stranger without natural family...therefore, the serious importance of "a type of philos relation denoted by the word xeinos, usually rendered guest-friend. Thus the stranger who had a xeinos had an effective substitute for a kinsman, a substitute who would defend his guest-friend as he would any other member of his oikos [family]"

Such reciprocal relationships were handed down from father to son. Come to find out, the grandfathers of Dimedes and Glaukos had had such a relationship. Which meant that their grandsons had the same obligation.

Guest-friendships furnished Homeric society "with what little stability it possessed, could not be canceled by something so fleeting as a ten-year war between 'countries.' Diomedes is more closely bound to Glaukos than he is to those Achaians who are not philos or xeinos to him."

Thank you Adelle! Very helpful! (I read the Wikipedia entry on this, but yours reference seems more concise.)

This is rather cool! SPOILER ALERT if you don't know the main events of the Iliad
(view spoiler)[
From Homer and the Heroic Tradition Cedric H. Whitman. (I only browsed. Too academic.)

Apparently The Iliad is full of "nested" patterns ... within the separate books and within the book as viewed in totality.

Here's the the scheme of days in geometric structure:

(1) 1 day ... Book I
(2) 9 days ... Book I (the plague)(fires burning corpses)
(3) 1 day ... Book I Cryses returned (a journey)
(4) 12 days ...Book I (waiting for the gods to return)

(5) 1 day ... Fight
(6) 1 day ... Burial
(7) 1 day ... Wall

(8) 1 day ... Interrupted Battle

EMBASSY

(8) 1 day ... Great Battle

(7) 1 day ... Fight
(6) 1 day ... Burial
(5) 1 day ... Games

(4) 12 days ... Book XXIV
(3) 1 day ..... Book XXIV (Priam to Achilles)(a journey)
(2) 9 days ... Book XXIV (gathering wood for fire)
(1) 1 day .... Book XXIV (burial)


another:

From Book I:
(1) Chryses, plague, funeral pyres
(2) Meeting of chiefs and the Quarrel
(3) Thetis with Achilles, consoling, message to Zeus
(4) Thetis with Zeus
(5) the gods assemble and dispute

From Book XXIV (which is reverse order from Book I)
(5) The dispute amongst the gods
(4) Thetis with Zeus
(3) Thetis with Achilles, consoling, message from Zeus
(2) Meeting of Achilles and Priam and Reconciliation
(1) funeral of Hector

Other examples descried. (hide spoiler)]

Adelle wrote: "At Post 35, Book 6, Erika wrote: I wondered about the importance of the guest/host (xenia? or philoxenia?) relationship. Obviously, the whole war was started by Paris' violation of the guest/host ..."

Nice summary. The importance of the guest-host relationship was also emphasized by the fact that Zeus was the god in charge of it, so it held the highest religious obligation.

Am listening to the Teaching Company course on the history of Asia Minor, and just listened to a lecture on the background, as far as we know it historically, of the Trojan war.

The Hittite empire controlled most of Anatolia (modern Turkey) at that period, but there are records (they were great keepers of diplomatic records) of their relationships with with their coastal allies, including Troy. They do record that there were numerous attacks from the Greeks against the coastal cities -- apparently the Bronze age Greeks, or we should say pre-Hellenes (as Homer shows, there was no unified name for them at the time, and the term Greek is a Roman term for them and apparently not a complimentary one) were engaged in both sea trading and piracy against other seagoing nations, which they apparently saw as a perfectly legitimate occupation (the Vikings of the Agean?). Many of their slaves were taken from Anatolia to bring the more advanced trades that the Anatolians had mastered more than the Danaans had, such as weaving and metalwork back to their cities. So Agamemnon's saying that Chriseis would work his loom was quite in order.

Anyhow, there is no specific mention of a major Trojan war, so it may be that in the scope of things from the Hittite point of view this was just a minor skirmish not worth much ink, or in their case much clay. They did make records of many other battles, so while the absence of a record of a Trojan war isn't obviously dispositive, it may be suggestive that they didn't consider it that big a deal.

Another interesting point is that Nestor is also a real person of the late Bronze period. There are records of him in Linear B tablets found on the Greek mainland (I forget the name of the city), but no specific record that he was at Troy. But he was a real person.

Another point: the importance of the Iliad and Odyssey to early civilizations is demonstrated by the fact that of the Papyria (sp? plural of papyrus?) found in Egyptian libraries, fully a quarter to a third are copies of or parts of the Iliad or Odyssey.

Everyman wrote: "Am listening to the Teaching Company course on the history of Asia Minor,..."

cool information

Yes, indeed. Fascinating! Thanks Everyman!

Regarding oaths. I started viewing the oaths in the Iliad in a different light...I started viewing the "as real" after I read this:

from Santified Violence in Homeric Society

No spoilers. But long. But interesting.

(view spoiler)[ Kitts goes into great deal regarding the formulaic steps in Homeric oaths and provides a quite thorough examination of the oaths made in Book 3 (and also in Book 19, although I won’t be including any of that information).

“An audience,” Kitts writes, “may recognize ritual significance as a deep theme, corresponding to a ritual or metaphoric domain lying beneath the array of precise ritual figures and events. Given the epic and ancient nature of our evidence, that deep theme may have resonated with the lived ritual traditions of ancient audiences in a way and to a degree that eludes contemporary grasp (my emphasis).

(1) The participants stop all other activity, come to order, and attend to the ritual:

The Trojans and the Achians are in the very heat of battle when Hektor goes up the Trojan phalanxes holding his sword by the middle, a signal all the Trojans recognize and that convinces them to be seated right then and there…..Agamemnon halts [the Achaeans].

The poet and his characters appear to take for granted that the ritual assembly is staged inclusively to promote cooperation. This is in keeping with a ritual feature noted by a number of anthropologists…This is a special occasions and former enmities are to be forgotten……

After the ritual takes place, there is another collective indicator, when each of the Achaeans and Trojans pray that Zeus will let one man perish into Hades (the guilty party)... and let friendship and trusty oaths be to everyone else…..

The collective hope of philotes is dampened … by references to the unreliability and fluttery hearts of Priam’s children when it comes to conventions such as oaths, and it must have been proverbial knowledge among Greek audiences that the Trojans would violate the oath, just as Paris had violated guestfriendship. Thus the references to Trojan unreliability would have been somewhat ominous.

(2) The animal victims are led into the scene by heralds, wine libations are prepared, and hands are ritually cleansed:

‘The illustrious heralds led up the trusty oath-victims of the gods, mixed wine in bowls, and they poured water over the hands of the kings’ (3. about 268).

Heralds, of course, mark ceremonious occasions with their pronouncements and actions, and here seem to function in positions that join diplomatic and religious authority, assisting the king in his roles as chief diplomat and as priest before the gods….

…..ritual killing of an animal victim as an dramatic act intended to symbolize and impress upon participants the dire consequences of failing to abide by the terms of the oath

(I REALLY APPRECIATED THIS PART:)…..the animal’s death serves to exemplify the fate awaiting perjurers…..The pouring of the wine is stated explicitly to mirror the pouring of the brains of the perjurers and their families….the poetic focus on the victims’ gasping and dying in Book 3 certainly provides a punishing nuance to the scene, and highlights the analogical explanation for killing an animal in oath-sacrifice…..

The mixing of wine in Book 3 is explained by Kirk as signifying the mixing of wine from both sides into one bowl, symbolizing unity. Unlike wine for human consumption, wine-libations technically remain ‘unmixed’ with water…..As Bruitt Zaidman and Schmitt Pantel see it, the ritual wastage of wine poured into the ground serves to establish a connection between the world of men and the world of infernal powers, who are every ready to break into the world of men to chastise perjurers….

(3) The king draws his sacrificial knife. Agamemnon “drew with hands his machaira, which alwas hung the the great sheath of his sword.” (the machaira is never used on the battlefield or commensal sacrifices…only in oath-sacrifices and in healing…apparently through cognates etc. (Thomas?) the word is linked to healing…so perhaps a sacred oath ceremony is also meant to achieve some sort of healing. (140).




(4) He cuts hair from the victim[s] with the machaira. [A knife never mentioned in the Iliad in other sacrifices.] “the distribution of the victim’s hairs in Book 3 usually is considered to establish a collective identity among the swearing parties and a collective responsibility for upholding the terms represented in the oath-sacrifice”
(140)

. ..with all parties committed not only to upholding the oath but also to helping to punish whosoever should violate it” (140).


(5) The kings prays, holding up his hands to Zeus. From Chryses, Nestor, the women of Troy, etc., there is a good deal of formal holding up of the hands. Achilles, BTW, does not hold his hands up to Zeus. Nor does Odysseus.

(6) He invokes a series of divine witnesses, concluding with the Erinyes, either by function or by name. One theory is that divine witnesses are required because there aren’t any legal institutions to punish those who break their oaths. “The oath-prayer is a ritual gravity at its most profound, a dramatic actualization of a primordial articulation understood he have resounding effects of the universe” (147).

As was noted when we were discussing Book 3, neither side asked for any personal favors when they swore the oath.


(7) He gives the terms of oath.

(8) There is a curse on oath-violators, either just before or just after the oath-sacrifice. As in, just as this wine pours into the ground, so will your blood pour into the ground if you break your oath. The audience would be very aware of the seriousness and the consequences that MUST follow. Troy MUST fall. Troy can only fall once Hektor is dead. Hektor MUST die. Since the Trojans broke the oath, the gods will require it.


(9) He cuts the throat of the victim[s] with the machaira.
We see the blood of the victim. Very graphic point that the same thing, blood pouring into the ground, death, is waiting for oath-breakers “with the pitiless bronze.” It also, says Kitts, shows that for both the sacrificial animal and the oath-breaker the outcome is “observable, often visceral, and irreversible” (155).

This was a nice touch: the gasping of the sacrificial animals in Book 3…can be compared with the gasping of some of the battlefield victims in later books. “It is intriguing that the victims who die gasping and panting like sacrificial lambs are on the Trojan side, given the Trojan culpability as perjurers of the oath in Book 3” (156).

(10)The fate of the victim is observed.
(hide spoiler)]


Sanctified Violence in Homeric Society: Oath-Making Rituals in the Iliad

Adelle wrote: "Regarding oaths...."

Thx, Adelle!

So since were now past Book 12, I browsed further into The Trojan War by Barry Strauss. His thoughts: not a spoiler; rather interesting, I thought: (view spoiler)[ "The Trojans should have fought what has been called 'the war of the flea,' harassing the Greeks by taking a nip here, a bite there. They were right to stay on the strategic defensive...but they ought to have used their strength, which was an intimate knowlede of the terrain, to exploit the Greeks' weakness...." (139).

Strauss writes, "But low-intensity warfare requires tremendous patience, and waiting could not have been easy for the Trojans after all they had endured. Their wealth dwindling after years of feeding the allies at their own expense and showering the allied leaders tih gifts.

The mansions of Troy had been emptied of the gold and bronze that once filled them. The people were tired of being shut up inside their walls. And the Greeks were stripping the hinterland of its livestock and luxuries, its field hands and finery, just as they were preventin new wealth from flowing in from the ships of the Trojan Harbor.

Hunger was a by-product of invasion. Describing the situation in the city of Ur besieged by the Elamites around 2100 B.C.;, a poet said that 'hunger contorts [people's] faces, it twists their muscles.'

Troy was not cut off from the world, but Greek raiders probably took a toll on the food supply. Like the chief magistrate of the Bronze Age city of yblos when his town came under attack, a Trojan might have bewailed the lack of grain and the loss of livestock. the mayor of Byblos claimed that his citizens had to sell their furniture abroad and sell their children into slavery in order to obtain food when under seige" (142).

Hector's words:

My early youth was bred to martial pains,
My soul impels me to the embattled plains!
Let me be foremost to defend the throne,
And guard my father's glories, and my own.

(hide spoiler)]


The Trojan War: A New History

A lot, I think, Patrice. Remembered, distorted, retold....

Laurele wrote: "A lot, I think, Patrice. Remembered, distorted, retold...."

Sometimes I think there is "less" today -- that many stories have become embedded in cultures rather than are being told across ideologies. (I'm probably just being cynical tonight -- I certainly could only bring anecdotal evidence to bear, and even that, probably not very well. But, I do think that in an interconnected, global world, survival will require that we "hear" each other, listening to each others stories.)

I read parts of this the first time I read The Iliad with Laurel on another board a number of years ago now. As I recall, it was excellent. I am sure it has informed my on-going thinking about the epic:

Leonard Muellner The Anger of Achilles: Menis in Greek Epic

http://www.questia.com/PM.qst?a=o&...#

Thank you for linking that, Lily. When I finish the Iliad, I'll see if I can't get a copy to read at the college library. Much obliged.

Adelle wrote: "Thank you for linking that, Lily. When I finish the Iliad, I'll see if I can't get a copy to read at the college library. Much obliged."

As I recall, I believe I actually had my son borrow a copy for me from our alma mater. I find this site wonderful for locating texts such as that one:

http://www.worldcat.org/

Hope you enjoy it, Adelle.