Themes in the Iliad

Mycenaean Greece

Mycenae

• Heinrch Schleiman• 1870 – 76• Excavations at Troy• Discovered Mycenae

• Until 1870, all scholars assumed that the stories were false.• The civilization is called Mycenaean because of Schleiman’s

discovery

Mycenean Greece

• Proto-Greek, Indo-Europeans• Fully developed by 1600• Warrior (charioteer) elite• Mycenae, Pylos, Sparta, Athens

• By 1100 BC they have disapeared.

Citadel of Mycenae

Do the Math:

• Athens in the Bronze Age +/- 8,000 people• dozens of towns and villages surrounding it.• average size 1600 people• 400 families each earning $40,000 per year• Each pays 20%, or $8,000 to an overlord

• Overlord makes $3,200,000 per year.• 30 overlords each paying 20% ($640,000)

• King Makes;• $19,200,000 from his vassals• $16,000,000 from the capital

• The population is only about 56,000

Greek Trade Routes

• “Classical tragedy portrays the suffering and destruction of the individual caught in the mystery of the divine” (Burkert, 1985)

• Are the Greek Myth Cycles attempts to explain the destruction of the Heroic Age peoples?

Methods and Approach

• We can assume:• That these stories had profound emotional importance to the Greek

people.• That the basis of the stories were actual events.

• We must not assume:• That we can judge another people at another time by our standards of

right and wrong• That we know better• That they knew less• That people, human beings, are or were, at the most basic level, human.

Truth and Fiction• Herodotus:

• Attempted to present rational explanations• Plato:

• Homer and Hesiod lied to the people (Republic 377d).• Aristotle:

• “Poetry, therefore, is a more philosophical and a higher thing than history: for poetry tends to express the universal, history the particular” (Poetics 1451a. 35 – b. 5).

• Pausanias:• “All through the ages, many events that have occurred in the past, and even

some that occur today, have been generally discredited because of the lies built up on a foundation of fact. Those who like to listen to the miraculous are themselves apt to add to the marvel, and so they ruin truth by mixing it with falsehood” (viii.2.6-7).

Culpability• Guilt of Paris

• Violation of the Guest-Host relationship• Or application of the Law of Nature: The strong take what they can, the

weak yield what they must.• Or A victim of the machinations of the gods.

• Guilt of Agamemnon• Did his sense of devotion to his oath outweigh his duty to his daughter,• or, did his greed outweigh his duty to his daughter?• Was his treatment of Achilles an abuse of power?• Does the sack of Troy constitute excessive vengeance?

The Guilt of Helen

• A matter of debate amongst ancient philosophers and rhetoricians.• Was Helen an innocent victim, or a wanton adulteress.

• See iii.413 and xxiv.30

• Herodotus says that she would not have been abducted if she didn’t want to be…

• Gorgias, Helen• If Helen was taken by force, then she is a victim• If Helen was taken by persuasion, and persuasion can be very forceful,

then she is still a victim.• If Helen went for love, and Love is a god, then how could she have

resisted?

Achilles

• “My enemies at home forced me to prove my valour at the expense of my homeland” (Alcibiades)

• Kleos: “…that heady mix of glory, success, and renown” (Green 2006, 38).

• Is it a question of honour?• If so, then were is the dividing line between honour and duty?• Are we bound by duty to relinquish our honour?• Or does a violation of honour release us from duty?

• We can revisit this question when we meet Gyges.

• Is it a question of Love?• If we justify Achilles on the basis of love, must we not also justify Paris?

Hubris Ate and Nemesis• [76] Then Agamemnon spoke, rising in his place, and not going into

the middle of the assembly. "Danaan heroes," said he, "servants of Ares, it is well to listen when a man stands up to speak, and it is not seemly to interrupt him, or it will go hard even with a practised speaker. Who can either hear or speak in an uproar? Even the finest orator will be disconcerted by it. I will expound to the son of Peleus, and do you other Achaeans heed me and mark me well. Often have the Achaeans spoken to me of this matter and upbraided me, but it was not I that did it: [87] Zeus, and Moira, and Erinys that walks in darkness struck me mad when we were assembled on the day that I took from Achilles the meed that had been awarded to him. [90] What could I do? All things are in the hand of heaven, and Até, eldest of Zeus's daughters, shuts men's eyes to their destruction. She walks delicately, not on the solid earth, but hovers over the heads of men to make them stumble or to ensnare them. (19.76 – 94)

Power

• Is this a story about power?• Just as Zeus exerts his power over the other gods at his will, so do the

gods exert their power over kings and princes, so does Agamemnon exert his power over Achilles, so does Achilles exert his power over lesser warriors…

• So don’t complain about the powerful, we are all part of a chain of power and domination.

• Does it explain power to the powerless?