thehistoryofwesternthought
Category: Troy
Posted on November 23, 2015 November 23, 2015 by alexandereschmid
Conversations with Students X: The Sacking of Troy and Beginning of an Odyssey
In transitioning from Homer's Iliad, his story of war, high emotion, and the toll that such emotion takes on mortal lives, to the far-blown fame and person of Odysseus in Homer's Odyssey, we first took a moment to look at the summaries that still remain of "The Epic Cycle", and then we moved forward through the first book of Homer's Odyssey (Lattimore's translation). Thus begins our second seminar series.
We discussed all that happened between the Iliad and Odyssey, with the sage help of Proclus who preserved summaries of the six lost epics of the Epic Cycle (found here or here) These lost epics: The Cypria by Stasinus of Cyprus (staged as immediately preceding Homer's Iliad), The Aethiopis of Artinus of Miletus immediately afterward, The Little Iliad of Lesches of Mitylene, The Sacking of Troy also by Arctinus of Miletus, The Returns of Agias of Trozen, and eventually, after Homer's Odyssey, The Telegony comprise the story called "The Epic Cycle". Together they form the events which lead up to the Trojan War, the Trojan War, and the after-math of the war for the Achaians. Traditionally, they would have filled in many, many gaps left by the Iliad and Odyssey as a pair, but sadly, over time, and lack of reproduction, each of the other six epics was lost to time. This was not, however, the deepest tragedy, says Aristotle in his praise of Homer's unity of plot and criticism of The Cypria and The Little Iliad in his Poetics (1459a-b)
"So in this respect, too, compared with all other poets Homer may seem, as we have already said, divinely inspired, in that even with the Trojan war, which has a beginning and an end, he did not endeavor to dramatize it as a whole, since it would have been either too long to be taken in all at once or, if he had moderated the length, he would have complicated it by the variety of incident. As it is, he takes one part of the story only and uses many incidents from other parts, such as the Catalogue of Ships and other incidents with which he diversifies his poetry. The others, on the contrary, all write about a single hero or about a single period or about a single action with a great many parts, the authors, [1459b] [1] for example, of the Cypria and the Little Iliad. The result is that out of an Iliad or an Odyssey only one tragedy can be made, or two at most, whereas several have been made out of the Cypria, and out of the Little Iliad more than eight, e.g. The Award of Arms, Philoctetes, Neoptolemus, Eurypylus, The Begging, The Laconian Women, The Sack of Troy, and Sailing of the Fleet, and Sinon, too, and The Trojan Women."
For though we have lost the other six epics, apparently they were not of the same caliber as are the two epics we have remaining to us. So, confident that two masterpieces will do and summaries filling in our knowledge where it is lacking will suffice, let us move forward to consider the fates of several heroes we knew well during the interim between Homer's Iliad and Odyssey.
The students were shocked by the men who died during and after the war, and some felt emotion even for the basest Achaians. Achilleus, Paris, both the Aiantes, Antilochos, Priam, Astyanax, Deiphobos (many Trojans during the sacking, of course), Phoinix, Thersites, and even Agamemnon, but the deaths which are most shocking are each of the Aiantes, Agamemnon, and some students even showed sadness for poor hunched-backed Thersites. So we know, Achilleus died either by the hand of Paris and Apollo or Apollo alone. Not a surprise to the students given the several prophecies of Achilleus' death the Iliad. That Paris should get the winning shot was a true moment of humility for all students, though the fact that Apollo helped him along helped to alleviate the sort of "Evil David vs. Good Goliath" effect.
Aias the Greater's death was more of a disappointment to the students. During the Iliad, he was a brave and supreme hero. He went on the Embassy to Achilleus, was clear in his purpose, and twice almost killed Hektor. He, unlike Achilleus, Menelaos, Eurypylos, Machaon, Agamemnon, and Odysseus, was one of the few major champions who remained uninjured throughout the fighting. He was glorious and bold, and the fact that through his pride and folly that he took his own life in suicide was a bitter disappointment to the students. Naturally, they learned that it was because according to his code, he was disgraced, and by his code he died: he lost the speech-contest to Odysseus for the "arms of Achilleus" and proceeded to attempt to kill Odysseus, Menelaos, and Agamemnon, but he was thwarted by Athene "mazing" his vision so that he only killed cattle. Feeling disgraced and abandoned by the gods, Aias felt that his final dignity would be to deny his former friends the glory of ending his life, and thus was the fate of Aias the Greater.*
Aias the Lesser met with considerably less pity. In an attempt at raping the cursed prophetess daughter of Kassandra in the temple of Athene, Lokrian Aias defamed and damaged an image of Athene therefore earning her ire for himself and the rest of the Achaians. The students did not care for how quickly Athene turned on the Achaians, but in matters of sacrifice and honor to the gods, the students have learned that the gods come first to the gods. Aias, then, when accosted by a great storm sent by Athene is nearly drowned with his ship and men, but after Poseidon saved him, Aias lost his mind, and recklessly declared his supremacy to the gods. Poseidon then used his trident to break the rock onto which Aias was clinging and send him to a watery doom. The students almost universally said, "that was so stupid."
Agamemnon will later receive an article essentially all his own, but for now it is enough to mention that the students remembered his betraying of Klytaimnestra by deceiving her into sending Iphigeneia to be sacrificed at Aulis under the pretence of marriage to Achilleus. Many students said that this was justice, but further conversation will be reserved until later.
Moving from the time between and the many, many questions which we will return to (like do the students feel OK with the fact that Troy was taken by cunning, not strength), we then considered the importance and difference between the proems (first few lines) of each of the poems and how their themes, tones, and manners of presentation may be different.
Homer's Iliad (1.1-1.7)
SING, goddess, the anger of Peleus' son Achilleus
and its devastation, which put pains thousandfold upon the Achaians,
hurled in their multitudes to the house of Hades strong souls
of heroes, but gave their bodies to be the delicate feasting
of dogs, of all birds, and the will of Zeus was accomplished
since that time when first there stood in division of conflict
Atreus' son the lord of men and brilliant Achilleus.
Homer's Odyssey (1.1-1.10)
Tell me, Muse, of the man of many ways, who was driven
far journeys, after he had sacked Troy's sacred citadel.
Many were they whose cities he saw, whose minds he learned of,
many the pains he suffered in his spirit on the wide sea,
struggling for his own life and the homecoming of his companions.
Even so he could not save his companions, hard though
he strove to; they were destroyed by their own wild recklessness,
fools, who devoured the oxen of Helios, the Sun God,
and he took away the day of their homecoming. From some point
here, goddess, daughter of Zeus, speak, and begin our story.
We immediately notice some distinct differences between the two proems. The Iliad sings of the emotion of a semi-divine man and his feud with a "leader of men" and the many men on their side of battle who will die because of this. The Iliad is also sung (aeide). The Odyssey is the telling (ennepe) of the many struggles of a suffering man who fails to save his companions due to their own recklessness. The distinction between the Iliad being sung and the Odyssey told (though of course both would be sung in dactylic hexameter by rhapsodes) is one the students made a strong attempt at. Emotion, they say, is a higher theme, or at the least, song is more appropriate to conveying of emotion–it is more emotional the students say, and "gut-wrenching" does seem a word more aptly ascribed to painful dirges. (Viz. (or rather Aud.) Adele's Hello).
Another important difference is that the focus of the book will shift from the interplay between the will of the gods and man to how man inevitably adds to his own suffering and destruction. In fact, this theme of wild "recklessness" (atasthalia) is repeated in the words of no smaller a figure than Zeus, king of the gods, not twenty lines later:
"Oh, for shame, how the mortals put the blame upon us gods, for they say evils come from us, but it is they, rather, who by their own recklessness (atasthalia) win sorrow beyond what is given…" (1.32-35)
So, though the students gave a detailed list of times when the gods seemed to add to the suffering of mortals, the most provocative of which is likely during Book III of the Iliad when Hera and Zeus agree to let Ilion be destroyed and Athene convinces Pandaros to break the truce between the Trojans and the Achaians, we will remain sensitive to the statement that mortals create their own suffering and that their own lack of resiliency, perseverance, discernment, or fidelity lead to their destruction during the Odyssey.
In conclusion, as an extra treat, I will include here major themes we will consider, and which will be present all through Homer's Odyssey and our seminars on it:
(1) Father and son relationships and their complexity;
(2) Concealed (kalupto) or veiled truths and the art of misdirection;
(3) Perseverance and the "hero's" journey;
(4) Homecoming (nostos) and what makes a home (so important);
(5) The Xenia or guest/host relationship and its importance;
(6) Detainment, both mental and physical, and its hateful nature.
And bonus number two is a list of Relevant Quotes to the first Seminar which may well earn their own post soon:
1.347-349 Telemachos blames Zeus for all mortals' troubles.
"They [the suitors] all would find death was quick, and marriage a painful matter." (1.266)
"You should not go on clinging to childhood. You are no longer an age to do that." (1.296-297)
"The gods have not made yours a birth that will go nameless…" (1.222)
"Nobody really knows his own father." (my bold; 1.216)
"Your words to me are kind…what any father would say to his son." (1.307-308)
"Do not detain me any longer, eager as I am for my journey." (1.315)
"The daughter of Ikarios, circumspect Penelope, heard and heeded the magical song from her upper chamber, and descended the high staircase that was built in her palace, not all alone, since two handmaidens went to attend her. When she, shining among women, came near the suitors, she stood by the pillar that supported the roof with its joinery, holding her shining veil in front of her face, to shield it, and a devoted attendant was stationed on either side of her." (1.328-335)
"But if she continues to torment the sons of the Achaians, since she is so dowered with the wisdom bestowed by Athene, to be expert in beautiful work, to have good character and cleverness, such as we are not told of, even of the ancient queens, the fair-tressed Achaian women of times before us, Tyro and Alkmene and Mykene, wearer of garlands; for none of these knew thoughts so wise as Penelope knew;" (2.115-122)
*Greater detail will be given to Telamonian Aias during our seminar on The Ajax of Sophocles.
Conversations with Students IX: It Ends where it Begins
This is the final seminar on Homer's Iliad for the students this year! It has been a struggle and battle through the text, but in the end, the students share an experience of the heights and depths of war, the pain and trouble unbridled emotion can cause, and just what a completed whole looks like. In addition to considering Book 24 and its nekyia-like properties, the students considered the Iliad as a whole as well.
First, we considered the fact that Hermes is sent to guide Priam to Achilleus, and what it is that Hermes, as psychopomp, represents (24.330-466), and is it not symbolically true that by killing Hektor Achilleus has sealed his own fate and is a "dead-man" walking? And also by killing Hektor, greatest hero of Troy, has Achilleus not also sealed the fate of Priam and the Trojans as well in line with Zeus' prophecy from Book 15 (15.61-71) that Troy must fall? Hermes, then, acting as psychopomp or "guide of souls" is leading one dead-shade to another in service of the corpse of Hektor in Achilleus' own personal Hades. They cross a river together, pass guardians whom Hermes puts to sleep, and open an impossible to open (for Priam anyway) gate–very similar to entering the underworld. And when they reach Achilleus' structure–Achilleus, who multiple times has been called pitiless, like the death-god himself (9.630–633;16.33-35)–Achileus now appears as king of his own dark underworld full of sadness and misery, and he holds court with Priam just to cry alongside him (24.507-515) and to finally, in some small way, regain some measure of his humanity through returning Hektor for a ransom in just the way that he refused to accept Agamemnon's ransom to return to the fighting in Book 10.
We then consider even deeper the connection between Priam and Achilleus, and more so the connection between mortals and their eventual deaths: possibly the most major theme of all Homer's Iliad. We have seen both in Book 6 and Book 21 mortals compared to leaves which soon fall from trees, both by a mortal, Glaukos (6.145-150), and an immortal, Apollo (21.463-465), but here we see the deepest and longest exposition of just what it means to be a mortal man from a man fated soon to die himself, Achilleus.
"Such is the way the gods spun life for unfortunate mortals, that we live in unhappiness, but the gods themselves have no sorrows. There are two urns that stand on the door-sill of Zeus. They are unlike for the gifts they bestow: an urn of evils, an urn of blessings. If Zeus who delights in thunder mingles these and bestows them on man, he shifts, and moves now in evil, again in good fortune. But when Zeus bestows from the urn of sorrows, he makes a failure of man, and evil hunger drives him over the shining earth, and he wanders respected neither of gods nor mortals. Such were the shining gifts given by the gods to Peleus for his birth, who outshone all men beside for his riches and pride of possession, and was lord over the Myrmidons. Thereto the gods bestowed an immortal wife on him, who was mortal. But even on him piled evil also. there was not any generation of strong sons born to him in his great house but a single all-untimely child he had, and I give him no care as he grows old, since far from the land of my fathers I sit here in Troy, and bring nothing but sorrow to you and your children. And you, old sir, we are told you prospered once; for as much as Lesbos, Makar's hold, confines to the north above it and Phrygia from the north confines, and enormous Hellespont, of these, old sir, you were lord once in your wealth and your children. But now the Uranian gods brought us, an affliction upon you, forever there is fighting about your city, and men killed. But bear up, nor mourn endlessly in your heart, for there is not anything to be gained from grief for your son; you will never bring him back; sooner you must go through yet another sorrow." (24.525-551)
This speech comes just on the heels of Priam and Achilleus' share moment of grief and sorrow, Priam for Hektor, and Achilleus alternating between grief for Patroklos and for his own aging father. Rather than focus on the duplex nature of human existence, to be both part divine and heroic, but to be subject to nature and fate and die, the students, in all their youth, focused more on the fact that Achilleus here, in his somewhat callous philosophy, shows some measure of learning from his experience–and in having learned of the suffering he has caused, not only to Priam but to his own father (Achilleus' name is derived from the root achos: "the grief", interestingly enough) he sees himself and his actions for their effect on others. And in this show of empathy, he shows his ultimate return to his senses and to the consequences and "ups and downs" of human existence.
We then briefly considered why we are given Andromache, Hekabe, and Helen's mourning speeches over Hektor's body in succession and especially why Helen is given the last word (24.710-776). Perhaps for purposes of parallelism: just as she is the cause of the war, so is she the cause of the death of Hektor in a remote way. And just as she, in her own way, began the war, so does the Iliad end by recognizing her and her mighty influence, conscious or not, on the events which have trespassed during Homer's Iliad. It is also directly in line with the theme that semi-divine characters, Achilleus too as written above, must feel suffering for their actions, due to their humanity, regardless of their divine heritage. Just as Achilleus must grieve for his dead friend and for the suffering he has caused his father, so must Helen grieve for the death of the only man who has been kind to her beyond Paris, and the fact that his death is in no small way connected to her presence in Troy.
We finally considered the Iliad as a whole, and the importance of the text ending with the confrontation and shared tears between Achilleus and Priam (24.507-516) and the mourning for Hektor by Andromache, Hekabe, and Helen (24.710-776). In observing Achilleus both cry and not only begin eating again (24.621-626), but argue for eating to grieving Priam (24.602-620) (what a change from Book 21!), we see the "end of Achilleus' rage" which was first sung of in the proem (1.1-7) come to an end. We recall in Books 19 through 21 Achilleus' rapid loss of his humanity: his refusal of mortal food (19.200-214; 19.305-309), his likening to the consuming and devastating effects of fire (19.15-18; 19.375-380), and his fundamental lack of human empathy or sympathy in his callous murdering of Polydoros (20.407-418) and Lykaon (21.35-135)–not to mention his manic likening of himself to Zeus after he fells Asteropaios and leaves his body to be eaten by "eels and fishes"(21.184-199) [more info on these inhuman characteristics is written of here].
But why is it exactly that the story ends with the death of Hektor and the mourning and misery over Hektor's death regardless of when Achilleus strikes down Hektor or better when Troy falls? This end diverts attention both from the glorious nature of war and the eventual glorious sack of Troy and squarely focuses our attention on the bitter consequences of human conflict. Rather than revel in the divine satisfaction of heroic deeds and impossible ends being achieved, the eventual fate of all men, hero and cowards alike, is expressed with great pathos. Very different in tone is this from Vergil's patriotic epic from 7 centures later: the Aeneid, which will end in a blaze of fiery glory–Aeneas taking his throne and fate into his own hands through the vanquishing of Turnus in mighty battle (Virgil. Aeneid. Mandelbaum tr. 12.1265-1271). And he (Aeneas or Vergil) thus glorifies Rome's ancient and violent heritage. Homer's Iliad does not end with the prizes of war, but with its devastating personal consequences.
The students then shared the answer why this is: Homer's Iliad is not simply the story of the Trojan War, nor or the greatness of heroes, but rather it is the story of Achilleus' rage and the devastating consequences which it releases. "Sing, goddess, the anger of Peleus' son Achilleus and its devastation, which put pains thousandfold upon the Achaians…" (1.1-3) This is a story about a man and the consequences of his emotion, unrestrained, and the suffering which ensues from it. It is only appropriate then that in the final Book of the story that his rage be spent and that he, and the man to whom he has caused the most suffering, Priam, share a moment of desolate and disconsolate sorrow together. For the story is not one that glorifies war and heroes, simply, but one which seeks to teach the full consequences of unrestrained human emotion in the service of a nearly divine but all too-human man. The story begins with rage and ends with sorrow. And in this way, so does the Iliad itself reflect the images on the shield of Achilleus, wrought by Hephaistos: the city at War and the city of Peace offering the extremes of life and all that lies between.
Posted on August 26, 2015 November 5, 2015 by alexandereschmid
Conversations with Students: Causes of the Trojan War
In this series, "Conversations with Students", we will list out the major questions from the daily seminar, and then we will report frequent and also exceptional answers from the conversation, with added depth as the medium provides.
The basic background comes from the story of the "Apple of Eris" which was conveyed to us by Pseudo-Hyginus in his Fabulae, Lucian, and Apollodorus in his Library. The basic story is as follows: The mortal hero Peleus (father of Achilleus) and Thetis, his immortal Nereid wife, were to have a grand wedding where all the gods and goddesses were to be invited. Eris, however, the goddess of discord and chaos, was noticeably excepted because of her naturally destructive nature. Being of a divine and therefore easily offended nature, Eris concocted a plan to throw one of the golden apples of the Hesperides into the wedding with the Greek superlative, Kallisti, on it, or, "to the fairest/most beautiful". All the goddesses contended for this beautiful and vaunted apple, but in the end three were chosen as finalists: Aphrodite, Athene, and Hera.
Naturally, the three goddesses chose the king of the gods and principle of divine order as the natural judge of this high honor, but intelligently, Zeus recused himself due to his marriage to Hera, and his paternal relationship to both Aphrodite and Athene. There is, however, and perhaps even more perfidious, a theory that Zeus did this knowing all along that a war would ensue regardless of Paris' choice, because he wished to cull the population of man and the heroes of the generation of Achilleus. In any case, the young shepherd son of Priam, Paris, was chosen to choose the fairest goddess. Poor boy.
At first, perhaps having some intuition into the nature of judging the gods as a mortal, Paris attempted to split the apple into three equal parts for the goddesses. Being goddesses, however, of course they did not accept this "cop-out" decision, and each attempted, knowing the nature of the others, to bribe the young mortal man. Athene offered Paris victory in any battle or war–a fine gift from the war-goddess always accompanied by Nike, goddess of victory. Hera offered the young man the power to rule on high. But it was Aphrodite's offer of "the most beautiful woman in the world" which tantalized Paris most. He, not being as sharp as he was passionate, wrongly assumed that he would be receiving Aphrodite as bride. She however reminded him after his choice that she was a goddess, and no mere mortal woman, so a certain married Helen of Sparta, wife of Menelaos would have to do.* From there, it is all mythological-history: Paris visits Sparta and Menelaos' court; Menelaos leaves to attend the funeral of Catreus, his maternal grandfather in Crete, and Paris absconds with Helen.
With that brief summary of the story so far presented, we will continue on to the questions of the seminar.
We talked first about the causes of the Trojan War and who was at fault: was it Eris, goddess of Discord's, fault for throwing the apple marked kallisti in the first place? Or was it perhaps Peleus and Thetis' fault for not inviting Eris. Surely she would have caused some sort of disturbance, but likely not one so large. Was the blame in fact on Zeus for delegating the task of choosing the which goddess received the kallisti apple to a mere mortal, Paris, or was it Paris for not choosing Athene or Hera in the first place?
We then considered which goddess and which bribe should have been accepted: Athene's war-victories, Hera's political power, or Aphrodite's most beautiful woman in the world. At first, the students mostly thought that Athene's gift was best, but slowly they started to see the consequences of each decision with each goddess. For instance, with the capacity to win all battles, they then started to consider what their day to day lives would be like–battling over and over. Watching friends, family members, and enemies die over and over again. Their every day would be filled with suffering and misery of all those around them, and they themselves might be turned cruel by the endeavor.
Hera's gift is potentially not much better: to gain political power one must take that power from another, and as Paris is not the eldest son of his father Priam, he would supplant both Hektor and his father, and it is highly unlikely that he would attain his power without many deaths–and that after attaining it in such a way that he would not maintain it similarly. His life would be one conspiracy after another to maintain and garner power, never trusting another.
And of course Paris' decision to go with Aphrodite led to him being awarded the chance to woo and win Helen away from her powerful husband, Menelaos of Sparta, and from this the Trojan War erupted which would eventually destroy his people. Choosing who the fairest (kallisti) goddess is is a rough deal indeed.
The final source of conversation was focusing on Agamemnon's choice to sacrifice Iphigeneia at Aulis after Artemis turned the winds against the fleet there. On the one hand, why would Agamemnon sacrifice his daughter in order to save his sister-in-law? But the situation is more complex, because he is not only choosing to save his sister-in-law, but to honor his relation to his brother and increase his own personal honor. And to use an argument from Herodotus' Histories and Sophocles' Antigone many of the students decided that as Menelaos is the sole brother of Agamemnon, and their father Atreus is dead, and that Agamemnon both has two more daughters and the capacity for more–that his primary duty was to his brother, not his daughter, though she, and not his brother, was under his protection and tutelage.
On the other hand, with so many former suitors of Helen, had Agamemnon not allowed his daughter to be sacrificed, it is most likely that the men trapped at Aulis would still have been honor-bound to fight for Helen at Troy and that Artemis would stay un-appeased without blood spilled from the House of Atreus. Therefore, had Iphigeneia not been sacrificed, it is very possible that Agamemnon himself may have ended up on the chopping block. So, whether Agamemnon was acting to honor his brother, add to his own honor, or to save his own skin was subject to dispute.
Last but not least, we turned to the first book of Homer's Iliad and considered the conditions under which Agamemnon took Achilleus' concubine Briseis from him. It is true that Achilleus, out of turn, called an assembly of Achaians together and then rudely insisted that not even Agamemnon would lay a hand on the prophet Kalchas if he should give forth bad news (to Agamemnon that he must return his concubine Chryseis). So Agamemnon was likely already slightly irritated with the actions of his most powerful but also most overbearing warrior. Oh, and they had been fighting together for nine years during which time they had sacked 23 cities. So, tensions were riding fairly high. Agamemnon, fresh with the knowledge that he had to return his concubine Chryseis to her father, Chryses, was understandably annoyed and took it out on the person annoying him most: Achilleus. The question, however, was: was this an intelligent and strategic decision by Agamemnon as a leader? Clearly, he had to assert his authority in some way over the openly disrespectful Achilleus, but in taking his concubine, Achilleus retreats from the war and in fact–through his mother–turns the will of Zeus against the Achaians. So, in a way, the question of the rectitude of Agamemnon's actions is self-answering.
This has been the first of weekly conversations with students. This year we will feature seminars on Homer's Iliad, Odyssey, Vergil's Aeneid, Sophocles' Ajax and Philoctetes and more!
*Even though Herodotus suggests that Paris perhaps wished to steal Helen to make up for some injury done to Troy by the Achaians in a past generation, this theory is given little light in our discussion.
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Achilleus and Patroklos
Ancient Epics
Apple of Eris
Click-Bait
Creation Myths
Epic Poetry
Flood Myths
Genealogy of Morals
Graduate Institute
Greek Epic
Hero with a Thousand Faces
Individuation
Intertexts
Kallisti
Karl Kerenyi
Living Myth
Myth and Society
Nisus and Euryalus
Okeanos
Patroklos
Perennialism
Roman Epic
Telemachy
Thebaid
Tristia
von Franz
Women in Drama
Zeus and Ganymede