Annaliese’s responses to a few daily comments

Violet W. asks: any tips to help remember the places we’re expected to know for the midterm?
Study your map assignment when it is returned to you; scan through the Iliad and seek out more places to add to the map that perhaps you did not have on there before. Add facts and details about these places; for example, which heroes are from that city-state, who else is known from there, what is the city-state famous for, etc. Your map assignment could become a great study guide! Flashcards help too (one side with a hero’s name, one side with their hometown?) Also, utilize your resources like SparkNotes and Wikipedia (but please always check your online resources against your book!)

Bailly: I'll put up a list of items you should definitely know for the midterm soon.

Madeline B. asks: can I write/present/do my project on Song of Achilles? Also, favorite hero? (Any Greek hero not limited to Iliad + Odyssey)  
A couple of the projects are open-ended in the sense that you could base them upon pretty much any reasonable mythological content. You could absolutely make a poster, do a presentation, or come up with another creative medium (as long as you propose it first) on Song of Achilles. Dr. Bailly mentioned Madeline Miller’s other novel Circe when brainstorming potential content! 
Favorite Hero?
Hmmm, tough question. Heracles is fun to read about, especially his Twelve Labors. In all honestly, I tend to go for the anti-heroes. More specifically, my favorite characters are women who seek vengeance, typically against the typecast ‘heroes’, so they aren’t seen as heroes in their books. Medea is one, and so is Clytaemnestra, wife of Agamemnon (she’s my personal favorite. When we get to Agamemnon later in the semester, I would love to hear what people think of her.)

Kate F. wonders where the story of “Achilles’ Heel” comes from, since it is not mentioned in the
Iliad.
Excellent question. The Achilles’ heel could be our most widely-known cultural reference to a Greek hero. So why isn’t it mentioned in one of the greatest works of Greek epic which predominately features Achilles? One story says that when Achilles was young, Thetis dipped Achilles into the River Styx in order to make him invulnerable. However, because she held him by the heel, his heel was the one vulnerable spot on his body; the one place he could be mortally wounded. You’ll notice that the death of Achilles does not feature in the Iliad either. There are many stories as to how Achilles died, one of them claiming that Paris shot him in the heel with an arrow. Some stories don’t even reference his supposed invulnerability or claim he was shot in the chest, etc. There are many complicated versions of his death.These stories probably came from non-surviving or fragmentary sequels of the Iliad
or stories of Achilles’ life (Little Iliad, Cypria, etc.) There is one unfinished work by Statius called the Achilleid in which Thetis dipping Achilles in the River Styx is mentioned.
It is important to remember there are so many different versions of every hero’s mythology, and cannot be contained in a single story like the Iliad (though it’d be so much easier for all of us who study them if it were!)

Julia S. had a similar interest as to why Achilles’ death was not featured in the Iliad, and neither was the Trojan Horse! Maybe you two could discuss this and it could lead to a group project…?

Graham B. asks: is there a side we are supposed to root for in this war? What about in ancient times, did people of the past root for a particular side?
Consider the audience of the Iliad; who would the bards have been reciting this story to? I would argue the audience was Greeks, and potentially their guests. As we’ve mentioned in class, the Greeks could be considered a very honor-based and possibly ‘nationalist’ society, whatever way they saw their territory of Magna Graecia. I would think that hearing the magnificent tales of heroes they saw as their forefathers would certainly inspire feelings of Grecian pride, and they might have felt compelled to be loyal to their ‘side’, the Greeks, whether historical or not.
This is a good question. I see why either side could be favorable. The war constantly see-saws between the two sides, especially at the gods’ interference. Homer also paints a somewhat sympathetic picture of the Trojans, even in a Greek work: I would argue that Hector and his family are incredibly sympathetic characters, and Hector was one of the most honorable of all the Trojan War heroes.
As for our modern eyes, do you think we are supposed to root for one side? If so, which
one, and why?

Brian C. asks: what type of person was Ovid?
This is a lot to unpack, but I’ll try to give you a good answer without rambling! Ovid was born to an upper-class family, important in Rome. He worked as a rhetorician, then in some public posts before coming into poetry. He wrote a lot of erotic poetry like Amores (Loves) and a three-book poetry ‘manual’ on how to seduce women (Ars Amatoria, or The Art of Love). If you take any Latin you’ll probably translate from one of these two works eventually, perhaps to your chagrin. He also wrote the Heroides which we saw on the manuscript video for Tuesday’s class, and the Metamorphoses, a famous collection of transformation myths in Greek and Roman pantheons. Ovid was eventually exiled by Emperor Augustus. We do not know the reason for his exile, nor does Ovid himself ever allude to it directly. We think it may have something to do with his sometimes-raunchy love poetry, published in a time when adultery was prohibited by Julian marriage laws.

What type of person do you think Ovid to be? I hope my answer hasn’t biased you too
much. Feel free to email me if you’re interested in learning more.


Emma O. asks why Priam stayed in Achilles’ tent after he tried to get Hector’s body back.
Interesting question. I would think that this is due to the important Greek value of the guest-host relationship. Priam is coming to Achilles under the guise of supplication, not to make war, even though he is his enemy. The violation of this guest-friendship by either party could lead to serious consequences, even though Hermes comes to Priam the next morning and tells him to hightail out of there! 


Paige M. asks: when the different parts of the body “talk” to you, do the parts have different meanings or significance? Ex: Does the spleen mean one thing and the liver mean another?
Cool question, Paige! I think nowadays, the spleen doesn’t mean as much to our current society since it’s not really associated with a concept, like how to us, brain=knowledge and heart=love.  However, this was totally different for the Ancient Greeks! The Greeks did view the spleen in a similar idiomatic way that we view the heart. One of the Greeks’ primary medical theories was the humor theory. Hippocrates suggested that humors are the vital bodily fluids: blood, phlegm, yellow bile, and black bile. Gross, right?
Anyways, these humors were associated with body parts (spleen=black bile, phlegm=brain) and it was thought that a lack of any of these humors was the cause of illness. (Germs clearly weren’t really known about at this time)