MONDAY !

Office Hours

Clst 181SK Ancient Greece and the Origins of Western Culture

Mondays @ 4:30-5:30 on Floor 20 or by appointment: william.johnson@duke.edu

THURSDAY

Th Sept 18 Origins of Literary Culture in the East!Two or three students will cooperate on a coherent presentation of the story of how literary culture developed in the east!General reflections on literary culture and society, past and present

Classic of Poetry (Shi jing)

Clst 181SK Ancient Greece and the Origins of Western Culture

DUE BY MIDNIGHT TUESDAY

Clst 181SK Ancient Greece and the Origins of Western Culture

First Midterm Exam !

“Take home exam” !

Exam Study Guide

Homer’s Iliad

Book 16

The principal new characters are: !

•Myrmidons: the troops of Achilles

The Glory of Patroklos

Homer’s Iliad Book 16

The Glory of Patroklos

Achilles and Patroklos

1. Opening scene and similes 2. Complexity of Achilles: his motivations

(concern for the embattled Greeks; sympathy for Patroclus' grief for the Greeks; longing to return to battle and achieve kleos; desire for the gifts which are the basis of his timê, and the sign of Agamemnon's yielding; need to stand by his vow to not return until the Trojans attack his own ships; fear for the safety of Patroclus)

3. Patroklos: atê, hybris 4. Patroklos and the narrator: O Patroklos 5. Patroklos and Hektor

!The basic structural pattern: ! withdrawal, destruction, return & reconciliation !1-9 = quarrel, opening phase of battle, embassy !10-17 = Trojan advance in Achilles' absence, culminating in the death of Patroclus !18-22 = return of Achilles, death of Hector !23-24 = reconciliation of the warrior society, Achilles' reconciliation with Priam !

Narrative technique in the Iliad

!The basic scenes: ! battle field, inside Troy, pastoral and natural world of similes !“battlescape” - remarkably austere, with very few physical features !inside Troy - domestic, in actuality (bedrooms) and symbolically (looking out over the warriors from the walls) !similes - a world of fishermen, shepherds, farmers, snakes, eagles, lions, fawns !

Narrative technique in the Iliad

Narrative technique in the Iliad

!!Example: Achilles: !(1) Achilles to Thetis (though I am shortlived) (Book 1) (2) Thetis to Zeus (most shortlived of all) (1) (3) embassy, the fateful choice: "Achilles' choice" (6) (4) horse tells him he will die by "a god and a man" (19), (5) in struggle with river (21) he declares the god will be Apollo, (6) dying Hector (22) names the man as Paris, god as Apollo. (7) Ghost of Patroklos (23) reminds him of this.

Foreshadowing in the Iliad

Narrative technique in the Iliad

!Just as the similes and the scenes within Troy, the scenes with the gods take us away from the

physical scene of the grim battle, so do these foreshadowings take us away from the time limitations of the battle scene: we do, in effect, see the sons of Priam slain, Achilles killed by

Paris and Apollo, Troy sacked and burning, Andromache enslaved, Astyanax's brains dashed out, Priam murdered at the altar.

!Brilliant narrative technique: the story has the focus of a tale happening over a limited time period and in one place (tight, causal structure), but manages nonetheless to weave in the

background and consequence of these central actions as well. !

"Suspense" here is that of Greek tragedy: awaiting the known outcome rather than a surprise result, a sense of increasingly inevitability to what is going to happen.

!As in tragedy, we are encouraged, then, to reflect on the chain of circumstances that lead to

this inevitable result. !

Foreshadowing in the Iliad

Homer’s Iliad

Clst 181SK Ancient Greece and the Origins of Western Culture

Books 21, 22

Homer’s Iliad

Clst 181SK Ancient Greece and the Origins of Western Culture

Background: Book 19Agamemnon gives the gifts, which Achilles does not reject, but he does refuse to eat.

Athena feeds Achilles ambrosia, the food of the gods. Achilles’ immortal horse speaks.

Background: Book 18Hephaistos makes for Achilles divine armor (!)

Homer’s Iliad

Clst 181SK Ancient Greece and the Origins of Western Culture

Book 21 !

The Fight with the River and the Battle of the Gods

Homer’s Iliad

Clst 181SK Ancient Greece and the Origins of Western Culture

Book 21 !

The Fight with the River and the Battle of the Gods

The principal new characters are: !

Skamandros/Xanthos, the river god

Homer’s IliadBook 21 !

Fight with the River, Battle of the Gods

Gods and Men in the Iliad

Gods are very much like the artistocratic human society they watch over and alternately plague or help: the sociology and psychology of the gods parallel those of the heroes in many specific ways: !• they guard individual honor (timê) jealously, and feud with each other • and their honor is bound up with gifts, both the gifts of their divine province, but also

gifts from mortals: Zeus is sad to have Hector die because of his many sacrifices and other gifts (22.158ff)

• the gods are all peers, all lords, but they accept Zeus as the "first among equals" • like the heroes, the gods get angry, exact retribution, even fight in battle

Homer’s IliadBook 21 !

Fight with the River, Battle of the Gods

Gods and Men in the Iliad

But the gods are very unlike the heroes in important ways: !• their behavior seems amoral: "beyond good and evil", Nietzsche, Birth of Tragedy • life seems a game, men pawns in that game • they are angry, or sad, or hurt, but the passion is lacking: compare Zeus' grief for

Sarpedon with Achilles for Patroclus or Priam's for Hector! • Zeus accepts the mortal condition as a lamentable fact of humanness, an otherness

he perceives as an immortal: to be human is to die: but that is not, for an immortal, an unhuman, material: it is a human problem that gods somewhat aloofly watch.

Homer’s IliadBook 21 !

Fight with the River, Battle of the Gods

Gods and Men in the IliadBut to be human, to die, is core to humanness: for one who is himself mortal, to watch the spear enter and burst out the back of the skull is painful, is to suffer pain and to die vicariously: we can feel the real agony of our comrade. And it is this projection into to the pain of another, this caring for the death of a comrade -- that we see and feel over and over again in the Iliad -- that strike to the core of an important part of humanness. !Contrast between blood (food and wine!) and ichor (ambrosia and nectar!): consequence: the gods inhabit a world that is comic, light, fantastic, ultimately rather unserious, certainly without a sense of high ethical purpose. !In contrast: Agony is solely a human condition. Men learn by suffering. And it is this agony of death that makes the world of men matter, that makes it serious, that makes higher ideals such as loyalty, honor, duty worth consideration as important values.

Homer’s Iliad

Clst 181SK Ancient Greece and the Origins of Western Culture

Book 22 !

The Killing of Hektor/Hector

Homer’s Iliad Book 22 !

The Killing of Hector

Achilles as he returns from battle is alone, isolated: no Greeks alongside, no diversion from him as the sole Greek fighter: he is removed from mankind !Introduction of the fantastic, the surreal: talking horses (book 19), gods into the combat (20), battle with the river Skamandros (21) !Achilles is increasingly inhuman, "godlike" in the worst sense: • he has a "heart like iron", he is as "relentless as Hades": note that Achilles does not

relent after Patroclus' death because he loses his anger towards Agamemnon, but because he has a greater rage!

• he does not eat. • to Odysseus' request that Ach. "show some human kindness", Achilles replies, "I, by

god, I'd drive our Argives into battle now, starving, famished .... I have no taste for food-- what I really crave is slaughter and blood and the choking groans of men!"

• the gods give Ach. ambrosia to keep up his strength-- but only gods eat ambrosia!

Achilles

Homer’s Iliad Book 22 !

The Killing of Hector

Achilles is inhuman, both greater than and lesser than human

• kills suppliants, esp. Lykaon at lines 39ff: disarmed, no shield, holding his knees • attacks a god: the battle with the river Skamandros • no man can hope to stand up to him, as he “blazes like a star” with his divine armor

and divine pedigree

Achilles

Homer’s Iliad Book 22 !

The Killing of Hector

Book 22 is almost entirely from Hector's point of view, except where we see the battle from the point of view of Hektor's grieving parents, or the now involved and rather sad gods: note that Achilles is the "other", the objective force of power and rage, entirely lacking humanness. We now see almost nothing from Achilles’ point of view. !Priam, Hekabe, Andromache !Hector’s monologue at 22.118ff. Feminine and sexual suggestiveness: "like a woman": Hector is human, with human emotions (interesting how women encapsulate this trait, for our society too). !

Hector

Homer’s Iliad Book 22 !

The Killing of Hector

!When Hector has doubts, when he gets up his courage, when he flees before Achilles' onslaught, when he stands and fights, thinking that his brother Deiphobus stands beside him, when he realizes that the capricious gods have tricked him, and when he meets his death: we feel his tragedy, his humanness, and by extension we feel the sadness, the human violation, of the sack of Troy that Hector's death both foreshadows and symbolizes. !Meanwhile, Achilles has dismissed the world and covenants of man and human society. When Hector begs him not to defile his body, and to take the ransom, Achilles replies: 252ff “Don’t talk to me of covenants….” And, finally, at lines 332ff: “Don’t beg me, you dog ….” !The Death of Hector: cf. the death of Patroklos

Hector