Julia S. wonders if the Trojan War would have even happened
without the gods’ involvement.
-A good thing to think about. It seems like every little
event leading up to the war had some godly involvement (the
wedding of Peleus and Thetis, the intervention of Apollo,
etc.) However, sources like Herodotus’ Histories posit an
incitement of the Trojan War without any godly involvement;
that Paris stole Helen away because he had seen previous
kidnappings across the Mediterranean, wanted a Greek wife,
and thought he could get away with it.
Bailly adds that in Archaic times, before the time of
Herodotus and other thinkers of that time (starting roughly
in the late 6th c.), the gods were omni-present in Greek
literature, but after that time, Herodotus and
'Pre-Socratics' started trying to explain the world without
gods as explanatory factors. Why? Hard to say, but it
is absolutely a key move in Greek intellectual history.
Sofia Sharp asks: how did we know about the library of
Alexandria? Also, if Bailly or Madeline or Annaliese were to
be children of gods, which one would we be?
-We know about it from ancient sources by people who
studied or worked there, like Apollonius of Rhodes. We don’t
know exactly how much has been lost in time since the
Library; however, there may have been some kind of decline
in the Library before its destruction, and various other
disasters.
-I see you’ve read your Percy Jackson! When I read the
series I liked Athena a lot because of her intelligence.
However, becoming a classics student has kind of ruined that
for me since many of the gods are… well… morally bankrupt,
to put it nicely.
Sylvia W. asks when the study of epics began and what
prompted it?
-When you think of the sheer age of the Iliad, it isn’t
shocking to realize how long people have had it before it
came into our hands. The Iliad has been studied through the
Hellenistic and Byzantine periods. It had its own little
comeback in the Renaissance when interest in antiquity
resurged during the Renaissance (~15th c.) A reason for this
could have been the fact that it was translated into Latin
and other languages spoken at the time. It’s amazing how the
Iliad and other epics have been so important for so long.
Nick Sanborn asks: who is the coolest mythological Greek
hero?
-I’m a Diomedes fan myself. His aristeia beginning in Book
5 is pretty epic (no pun intended.) Who do you think is the
coolest?
Emma O. asks: why were goddesses regarded (more or less)
better than how mortal female characters are?
-Excellent question. The truth is that there’s no single
answer. Women, mortal women I mean, were simply lesser in
ancient society: sexually, domestically, publicly, etc.
Being a female classics student myself, the sexism of the
ancient world is certainly hard to have to face all the
time, but it’s something true about their society. I
personally suspect that goddesses were held more highly
because they actually had the power to act. We know the
queen goddess Hera is known as a spiteful, jealous
wife-goddess to Zeus. However, mortals (read: mortal men)
still respected her because she had the godly power to
unbalance their lives if they didn’t. This is unfortunately
not a trait of mortal women at that time. There are many
studies about gender and sexuality in the ancient world (one
of our UVM professors, Penny Evans, teaches plenty in this
area) if you’re interested, or please come talk to me about
it and I can recommend some thinking points or literature!
Bailly would add that up until the time of your
grandmother, women were pretty much subordinate to men in
many of the same ways: my mother could not have a checkbook
in her own name as a young woman, and she had to sign things
at work as "FK Bailly" because no other branch of where she
worked had a woman in her position: she answered the phone
as "FK's secretary"! Unfathomable today, thank goodness, but
a world that is persistently and pervasively sexist is very
close to our world, both temporally and geographically. It's
a bit trying, but it's also fascinating, to study such
things, because our progress on this front is very recent,
and perhaps too fragile, and not enough.
Madeline B. wonders what’s the worst translation in my
opinion.
-I haven’t read any that I consider the ‘worst’, the work
of a translator is always super varied and depends on
whether they want to stick to the meter (dactylic
hexameter), how far they want to push the Greek to fit a
certain meaning, etc. However, I do remember once reading a
1911 edition of the Iliad on the Project Gutenberg site. It
was well done, but is a little challenging to read all of
that archaic language!
Bailly answers to a few more questions/comments
Luke
P:
I joined the class late and as such, I missed the first quiz.
Is there
any way that I can make that up?
There
are no quiz makeups, but in this case, the first quiz or two,
if you joined late, those quizzes won't count at all: I'll
just ignore them. That does put pressure on your other quizzes
to be good.
Madeline
B:
I have an accommodation to not present in front of the class.
What can I
do to still get credit for the skit?
I
believe very strongly that every student should be helped to
succeed, and I have great respect for SAS. So, what can we
do? Well, you could perhaps write/direct a skit instead of
performing. Or you could contribute costumes or props. There
may be other ways. Because this is a documented
accommodation, I will of course accommodate it: it is more
than mere "discomfort" or "nerves." My experience shows that
many of you who may be nervous will actually enjoy it and do
very well. We'll talk more about this.
Jackson
asks if WIkipedia is the best way to learn more about gods,
etc.
It's
not the best way, but it is an efficient and rather painless
way. On most of these things, Wikipedia is now a mature site
that has been vetted and gone thru multiple revisions and is
reliable.
One
of the best things about Wikipedia is that it almost always
has a way to trace back to where the information is from.
Doing that is the best way: try to find the source. But time
is limited, and you can't do that for everything, so yes,
use wikipedia to help with your reading.
Ewan C asks why the Catalog of Ships was included in the Iliad?
Honestly, no idea. I can speculate, as we did in class: it
could be a virtuoso piece that really impressed people. All
those names and numbers. Or it could be that there were
different versions of it for different places and it made
great sense to the people in the audience who wanted to hear
about "their ancestors." But in the end, I don't really know.
It sure is impressive. And it sure is interesting how it
doesn't match up with the rest of the work. Makes you wonder
whether, if you find other things that don't match up in your
mind, that is evidence of different traditions/songs being
crammed together. People who think that way are called
"analysts": they try to detect the seams of the epics and take
them apart and speculate on how they came together, etc.
Stephen M asks what the causes are for why gods' kids turn out
so powerful.
Sitting in my armchair, making things up, I'd say it's to
reinforce the powers that be, because they try to claim that
their ancestry goes back to heroes and gods. If you look at
the 'ancestry' claims of the privileged families of Ancient
Greece, you will find they try to derive themselves from gods
and heroes. So it's to reinforce the patriarchy, from my
armchair view of the world. What do you think? and perhaps
more importantly, what would be evidence for an answer and how
would we decide if we came up with several answers?
Caleb W says that Thersites is depicted as a fool, but his
words are close to what some moderns might well think.
YES. Thersites is my only real hero in the Iliad.
He's an underdog, but speaks truth even when it's risky. I
like him. A lot. But he seems out of time: he seems like he
would belong in a democracy, the sort of democracy that came
about in the 5th century in Athens! Hmmm. I have always
admired him but been puzzled by him.
Coralyn B asks what a papyrus is? Plural is papyri.
It's a kind of reed plant from the Nile that can be made
into a paper-like product that is also called papyrus. So it's
a plant and the 'paper' that is made from it. It was the
primary writing material of ancient times, but it rots, and so
it is only preserved where there is little or no moisture: the
middle east and Egypt.
BTW, the word 'paper' derives from Greek and Latin words for
papyrus! But 'paper' is different from papyrus: paper is made
by musing up cellulose and making a flat thin sheet of it and
drying it, whereas papyrus is made by cutting thing strips of
that reed and laying them across each other and drying it. So
paper is more uniform and has no "grain" to it, whereas
papyrus has a definite grain direction.
There are thousands of papyri in museums around the world,
many of which have never been read!
Emma M wonders why Helen constantly blames herself and puts
herself down, whereas the men blame her.
There's a lot to say here. Humans are, unfortunately, not
always able to be fully independent agents. Women were not
able to be fully independent agents in the past in the US or
in most parts of the world, and many still are not. Men suffer
that a lot less, but some still do. We live in a wonderful
place that is making some progress on these fronts, but that
is basically the norm for humans: they have a pecking order
and they enforce it and even the ones who are subordinate
often buy into it.
But the particular case of women in Homeric times is
interesting and has particular aspects. One important aspect
is intersectionality: it was different to be a rich woman of
the noble class v. a poor but still free woman versus a slave
woman. It is also different to be a foreign woman, as Helen
is.
It seems to me that the most common speech of women in Homer
is the lament, lamenting their condition somehow.
When we get to Euripides we will meet some powerful women
characters, but even there we will have issues.
As for blame: women are often portrayed as lustful and
irrational. Helen is at times powerless (due to Aphrodite) to
control herself, but she also realizes that, so she is
interesting.
Lots more to say about this.
Noah G asks how important the names of minor characters are.
Practically speaking, there are probably at most 50
characters, including gods, that I would be likely to ask you
about on a quiz or a test, and we have not met most of them
yet. So they are not important practically speaking.
But that they exist and why is important and interesting.
This epic sprawls over many towns and peoples, and the people
who live in those areas in later times all will have been
interested to hear about 'their' heroes and characters. ALso,
part of what makes this "epic" in the modern sense of 'epic'
is that it involves many people and many nations.
Jeremy B asks if we have to know the names of every leader and
how many ships they brought?
Of course not.
But if anyone wants to memorize it and put on a performance
for the class, I'd count that for a lot! It would be... epic?
Kyle P asks about the epithets of warriors that have to do
with horses.
Horses seem to be used to pull chariots, not for riding or
cavalry, and chariots seem to be used as taxis. I'm sure that
chariots have a better use in war, but I suspect "homer," i.e.
the bards of later ages, didn't really understand how horses
were used by the warriors in Mycenaean times.
Also horses are important in Indo-European culture, and
Greek (and Luwian, the most likely language of Troy) are both
Indo-European languages (so is English, BTW), and this may be
a linguistic and cultural relic from previous times.
In Greece of historic times, I think horses were basically
used to pull chariots and do work.
Some of Homer's horses talk and think!!!!
Carter C asks how Athena gives a human godly sight and why
Aphrodite was the only one allowed to be attacked.
I don't know how to answer that. I have no insight as to any
probably mechanism. That's interesting. It just happens. How?
Great question. Any ideas?
You could write a short story that offers and explanation
and builds on the Iliad! Care to try? I'd love to read
it.
As for why Aphrodite was the only one allowed to be
attacked: it's a CPD (convenient plot device)? Can anyone
think of a really good explanation?
Wasn't Ares hurt too?
Halina V asks if there's a length or rubric for the writing
assignment.
We'll talk about it again later, but it's 4 pages, and there
will be a rubric. Basically, find a type-scene (a scene that
fits into a pattern of several similar scenes) and identify
other scenes that are of the same type, and talk about the
specific elements of your scene: for instance, are they
shorter, longer, in the same order, different, the same, as
the other scenes of that type. Do they serve the same purpose
in the narrative? Do they occur in the same context?
Dena K asks how much history we are missing out on due to lost
texts?
A lot. We have a few dozen out of the hundreds of tragedies
that were produced. We are missing a lot more than we have.
Many brilliant philosophers are known to us only by
reputation.
But I don't think there were any other epics that were as
extensive or as good as Iliad and Odyssey: why? because the
Greek talk about Iliad and Odyssey all over the place, but
don't talk as if there were other equal epics beside them.
Perhaps in some earlier, prehistoric time, there were many
such epics: that seems likely. But at that time, perhaps the
Iliad and the Odyssey were not as worked up and polished and
great as they are in the form in which we have them. This is
all a matter for speculation, careful, evidence-based
speculation, but still speculative.
Zach S asks when and why gods get involved and whether having
more gods on your side assured victory.
All I know is what I read in these epics, nothing more, and
you are reading them too. I don't see a great deal of
discussion of these things, so we're left to speculate and
make lists of passages and analyze them. We know, for
instance, that Athena and Hera were insulted when Paris did
not choose them to get the apple, and that Aphrodite was
pleased. We know that Apollo grants Chryses a favor because
Chryses is his priest.
Elizabeth asks about Athena: which side is she on?
She is on the Greek side, that of the
Achaeans/Danaans/Argives. She helps Achilles, Odysseus, and
Menelaus. She also wants to get at Aphrodite. Whenever Zeus
allows, she immediately runs down to Troy to help the Greeks.
Dylan Gooley asks what I think of the novels of Mary Renault.
Great! I read them as a kid and loved them. They may be
dated now, but they really got me as a kid. Kind of like Percy
Jackson nowadays.
Leah L asks what form Dream takes when Zeus sends her to
Agamemnon.
The form of Nestor, the wise old warrior who is a generation
or two older than the rest.
Brian C was interested to see that injured gods go back to
Olympus.