Classics and the Western Canon discussion

I'm going to try not posting a long introductory commentary post this time, but addressing any points I find interesting in separate, one-topic posts.

So, this is for Book 21. Have at it!

We have talked a bit about the gods as personifications and also as actual physical entities (Dawn as the actual dawn, for example). But in Xanthus/Scamander (it seems he is known by both names) we see him very much not just as a god of the river but as the river itself. But rivers were also apparently able to father children, since Achilles says that Asteropaeus was
"descended from some river. You claim
your family stems from a broad flowing stream," 21.185

It's an interesting dual concept of divinity which I admit that I haven't totally be able to get my mind around.

As Achilles runs from the river, in my head it looked so much like Indiana Jones running from the rolling boulder.

I think what is important about the river is that Achilles desecrates it with the bodies of the enemies. Xanthus complains to him, asks him to do his killing on the plain, away from the river, but Achilles refuses. The reason he refuses sounds to me the same as his refusal to spare the life of Lycaon in the previous scene -- the death of Patroklos has made him numb to supplication. It seems to go back to Book 19, where he is indifferent to Agamemnon's gifts, wants neither food nor drink, and only wants to fight. Here he says to Lycaon,

Do not harangue me or hope to be ransomed.
Before Patroclus' fateful hour arrived,
I was often mercifully disposed
to Trojans and would take them alive for sale,
but now there is sure death for all that a god
may send my way beneath Ilium's walls...
a better man that you has died, Patroclus,
and do you not see my own splendor, my size?
My father is noble, my mother a goddess,
but dogged fate and death await me too. 21.100

Thomas wrote: "I think what is important about the river is that Achilles desecrates it with the bodies of the enemies. Xanthus complains to him, asks him to do his killing on the plain, away from the river, but ..."

I think this is a key point. We talked before about how Achilles seemed to be abandoning the core values that underlay the Greek warrior culture. Now he is abandoning another core principle of Greek culture, the importance of supplication. By right, he should have spared Lycaon's life, taken him captive, and kept him as a slave, sold him, or accepted ransom for him. And beyond that, he is denying the direct personal request of a god -- how un-Greek is that? But the power of his emotions, first of wrath and now of grief, are overcoming virtually every key Greek value of his life. In a way, it seems the clearest evidence that he accepts the inevitability of his impending death, for how could he keep living as a noble Greek having rejected virtually every core value (except hospitality, and we'll have to see whether that one goes, too) of his society.

Patrice wrote: "Isn't it odd that he's had this epiphany that his uncontrolled anger caused him grief and now, again, his anger is uncontrolled? I guess it's just his nature ? He's always ruled by passion?
"

The problem isn't the passion, it's the uncontrolled passion. Every great athlete -- and Achilles was certainly a great athlete at the top of his "game" -- needs to have a high level of passion, but to stay just withing the bounds of control. His problem is that he falls over that edge, and as you say that becomes his tragedy.

Everyman wrote: "We talked before about how Achilles seemed to be abandoning the core values that underlay the Greek warrior culture. Now he is abandoning another core principle of Greek culture, the importance of supplication..."

Yet, Agamemnon, too, early in the Books, was determined to kill the Trojans rather than take any captive. Right? (No book nearby or I would quote lines.)

Adelle wrote: "Yet, Agamemnon, too, early in the Books, was determined to kill the Trojans rather than take any captive. Right? "

I don't remember that. Does anybody else?

He certainly cared about booty when he took Briseis, didn't he?

Everyman wrote: "Adelle wrote: "Yet, Agamemnon, too, early in the Books, was determined to kill the Trojans rather than take any captive. Right? "

I don't remember that. Does anybody else?

He certainly cared ab..."

I also recall this, but it may take me some time to find it.

Hard-hearted Agamemnon. Book 6, about line 60. The pleas of Adrestus "were moving the heart in Menelaus" when Agamemnon rushed up to put the kebosh on pity, "so soft, brother, why?...No baby boy still in his mother's belly, not even he escapes.....no tears...no markers for their graves."

Yet Homer labeled this rough justice, fitting, too"

I couldn't remember the line, only the harshness, the seeming too hard heartedness.

Patrice wrote: "I've been listening to the cd more than reading the book lately so I'm not sure which book this is in, but I've heard it twice now. That Achilles is descended from Zeus? Has anyone else noticed this? He says that Peleus was the grandson (I think) of Zeus. How then is Achilles mortal? He was asserting his superiority through this lineage. Did I hear correctly?"

The offspring of a god and a mortal is a mortal. (I think there may be one or two exceptions to this, but I forget who.) That happens all the time. The fact that his father was also descended eventually from a god doesn't help; his father was pure mortal, so he was mortal even though the son of a goddess and a mortal.

Patrice wrote: "Also, I really loved how when the Scamander was about to drown Achilles, he couldn't believe that this was to be his fate. I've felt similar things myself. I remember being dragged down by big waves while swimming in the ocean, and thinking "how ridiculous! This is how my life will end? While swimming?""

And even more in his case, since he thinks he knows that he is to be killed by a Trojan.

What amazed me in Book 21, which we haven't discussed yet, is the physical fighting among the gods. Psychologically, in some ways they are even worse than humans!