• Someone accidentally bought the children's Iliad
• Prof. Bailly seriously considered ordering Shanower's Age of Bronze series, a graphic-novel retelling of the epic cycle, as required reading for the class. It is great. Woodford's Trojan War won out, however, because it is much less expensive, more complete (Shanower's series is not complete) and contains more variants plus ancient Greek visual material.

• Who is on whose side?
• Agamemnon leads the "Greek" army (the "Greeks" are called Danaans, Achaeans, as well as Argives): other kings/rulers on the Greek side are Agamemnon's brother Menelaus, Achilles (their best all-round warrior), Ajax (there are two Ajaxes, actually), Diomedes, and Odysseus (that's enough for now: there are many many)
• Priam is king of Troy/Ilium: he is old. On the Trojan side are Hector and Paris/Alexander (and many many more)
• Apollo and his priest Chryses are currently against the Greeks because Chryses' daughter Chryseis was taken by Agamemnon.
• Generally speaking, the gods take sides and occasionally intervene in the battle, which makes it quite different than many battles you may have seen depicted.
  

• Why was Achilles angry?
• Because Agamemnon took his war booty, a woman named Bryseis: Agamemnon did that because he had to give back his own war booty, a woman named Chryseis, and the top king should not lack the honor of having proper war booty. Achilles seems to have had some feelings for Bryseis, but also his honor was insulted.
  
• What happened between Achilles and Agamemnon?

• Are kings kings by divine right in Homeric society?
• The best evidence we have for why kings are kings is Iliad and Odyssey themselves.
• Some of the kings claim descent from gods, which is different from but related to "divine right": how is it different?
  

• Is it gods against humans?
  
• No: it's Danaans/Argives against Trojans
  
• Which gods are on whose side?
• The list is long and would just be a list to you now: build it up slowly. For now, know that Apollo is aiding his priest Chrsyses to punish the Greeks for a particular affront, the taking of Chryses' daughter. Zeus is not taking sides, but rather enforcing fate.
  
• Why are gods interacting with humans? What allows that?
• No explanation is given: no theories are developed. This work was composed long long before prose was invented, long before any such speculation was written down, perhaps before it made sense to even think of it.
• It's just a given that the gods interact with humans. Never questioned, and has been so since humans have existed.
  
• What is "the will of Zeus"?
• could be interpreted as "what sort of thing is Zeus' will?" Is it inexorable, another name for fate, or just one very powerful (but not all-powerful) god's desire?
• Sometimes Zeus' will is fate: in other words, sometimes the Iliad describes him that way. At other times, he's just the most powerful god among many other powerful gods, taking sides, causing quarrels, finishing quarrels, etc., and so his will is one among others.
  
• In the opening of the epic, it seems to me, from having read the whole thing before, that the will of Zeus looks like fate here at the beginning, but once he talks with Achilles' mother Thetis, it will be what he personally decided to do, so it's Zeus the very powerful god's personal will here, but that only becomes clear at the end of Book 1.
  
• or "What did Zeus will/want?"
• He wanted to do a favor to Thetis and so he will make/let the Achaians lose for a while until they rue the day that Achilles' honor was taken away.
  
• also, why would Zeus oppose those who worship him?
• Good question, but it reveals a way of thinking that was probably foreign to the Greeks: they worship gods so that the gods help them and don't harm them, but the gods themselves are not bound by their worshippers: they often seem capricious/whimsical and do what they please for their own reasons in spite of being worshipped. Sure, worship might predispose a god to favor you or at least not blast you, and you formulate your prayer as a contract "I do this for you so that you will do that for me," but gods just don't always work that way, and if you get some little thing wrong in the prayer or offering, it won't work anyway.
• So, in other words, Zeus (or another god) would oppose his/her worshippers for whatever reason and there would be no consequences for that god.
  

• Why do some characters (and places and peoples) have more than one name?
• Best explanation: just because they do: it's a brute fact we have to deal with.
• Other answers that might be true and might apply in certain cases: two originally separate figures might have been interpreted as the same at some point long ago, and the identification stuck: or if we are talking about a god, the god may have been worshipped in different places for different reasons, and so have different names in those places, but still be the same god or maybe have been later identified as the same god: or maybe the person was given one name at birth, but acquired a different name later (think of Paris/Alexander, who was abandoned and then raised by a shepherd: we don't know that that was the case, but it may have been). So there are different reasons for different cases, and often we just don't know the explanation.
  
• Also, I have many names: I am Prof. Bailly, Papa, Jacques, Jackbaby, Boots, Jab, Mr. Bailly, You, etc. Depends on context. It's actually quite common. Just annoying to us in this case, because the names are not ones we are used to and we are trying to keep the figures straight in our heads. To make up another illustrative example, think of someone like me who knows little about sports and hears the sportscasters repeatedly refer to "Number 27" and "Zorgunthol" and "Shroomalood" and "Shroom Dude": I never quite realize that Zorgunthol Shroomalood is Number 27 on the Pangalactic Gargleblaster-swigging team, just one person. Perfectly normal.
  
• Interesting epithets: what is an epithet?
• An epithet is a sort of byname, such as Pepin the Fat or Theobald the Unready or Sir Robin the Not-so-brave (or Alexander the Great or Good King John). In epics, characters have one or more fixed epithets. By "fixed" is meant that the epithet regularly or even invariably occurs with their name: in Homer, Dawn is almost always "Rosy-fingered dawn," and the sea is often "the wine-dark sea": even if Achilles had a broken leg and was lounging at home on a couch, he would be called "swift-footed Achilles."
  
• What does it mean for social norms and status that Achilles is "son of Peleus" and Agamemnon is "son of Atreus"?
• It means that he has lineage, identifiable and identified in the past as "noble" and therefore still noble. Bloodlines are important for and determine and define nobility.
• It also means that the father is the one who counts for identification purposes.
  

• Who is the narrator?
• Never named.
• Never speaks in propria persona (with his/her own voice)
• We know from outside the poems that he was a bard in a long line of bards who compose the poem somewhat anew each time as they deliver it. We also see bards in the poems, and they deliver performances that resemble the Iliad itself!
  
• You can call him "Homer," but remember that the actual bard and the voice created in the poem are possibly very different just as an author and the author's narrator can be very different.
  
• Who is the author?
• Iliad and Odyssey are oral epics.
  
• There is no real single author behind any oral epic
• There may be a single particularly fantastic bard whose version prevails, or whose manner of speech and delivery prevails: in this case, people couldn't imagine the works not having a single author and that person, about whom we know nothing, was given the name or had the name "Homer." But the idea that there was such an important individual bard is pure speculation, by the Ancient Greeks, driven by the fact that the Greeks obviously thought there was a person named Homer who "authored" the poems and by much later people's unwillingness to even entertain the notion that there was not some individual genius behind these creations.
  
• Why was this story written down?
• It was first written down probably in the 8th century: it is the earliest use of the Greek alphabet that we know of. An interesting situation: in many other cultures, the first writing is just short bits, fragments, inscriptions, economic things, nothing long or involved, often not literary. In Greece, it's two epics!
  
• So why write it down? Perhaps because the particular bard or bards who started writing it realized that writing could help them remember or could help them organize, or could help them teach.
• Why was it kept around and not just left on the scrap heap later? Because it was considered a great cultural good, worth preserving: it was considered historical and true: it was a repository of all sorts of things, such as truth, cultural norms, history, customs, etc.
  
• What does it "mean"?
• Ooh. Meaning. Hard to say. Think of Beethoven's ninth: it has meaning, quite obviously. But tell me in words what it is? No can do. It's ineffable. "Meaning" in literature is an interesting concept, and probably a good one. It's certainly useful to consider. It can't be avoided, but I can't explain it in a way that will satisfy my own rational mind.
  

• Is this the audience's first time hearing the story or a repeat?
• Not at all the first time.
  
• Every adult one of them will have heard it so often they can anticipate everything that will happen, or gasp when the bard departs from the version they know.
• No movies, no books, no theater, no "fiction" existed at the time, just people who sing stories, or dancing to poetry: this WAS mass entertainment, and it was true and historical in the audience's minds. And the audience drank up the repetition of it all similar to the way that people in churches love to repeat the same readings, festivals, and stories every year.
  

• Is the anger and the way the epic starts a "hook" to grab the audience?
• if it works that way for you, then it is. You are participating in literature, whether you notice it or not.
  
• larger question: what rhetorical devices are present here? how do we know how they work or are intended to work on various audiences, from the "original audience" to us?
• we can't ask the Greeks, and none of them wrote about it until hundreds of years later. So how can we come up with a "true" answer?
  
• One good principle of literary interpretation: the measure of the worth of an interpretation of literature is whether the end result of the interpretation makes you understand, appreciate, or value the work in some way that you think is good. In other words, if it is interesting and works for you, it is a good interpretation. See remarks about "meaning" above.
• It still works for us, so we can ask, "How does it work for us" and we can also ask "How did it work at various points in history?"
  
• What's with starting where it starts?
  
• "in medias res": famously, Homer starts "in the middle of things." That is a narrative technique.
  
• Interesting use of "sing" in the opening line: "sing the wrath": by singing, the wrath is brought into existence
  
• also, remember, the bard who performed these lines did sing and had a kithara (a stringed instrument)

• Why so many variants in Greek mythology?
• Because there was no writing and no central control of the narrative: each artist was free to reinterpret, and we all know that artists often live for innovation.
• Even with writing, variation continued, because artists love innovation, and critics only consider it art if it somehow innovates (at least that's my explanation).
  
• Which variant(s) should one follow and believe?
• Hmm. depends on what you mean by "should." "Should" reflects what one values: because I value X, I therefore should do Y.
  
• We should follow all the authentically ancient ones, because they are authentic and part of literary history, and that is of interest: people always want to know about it. Some variants are more important, however, because they are found in more important works, but "importance" is relative to the task we are undertaking. By any measure, Iliad and Odyssey are utterly foundational for ancient Greeks and far beyond, and so their versions are important for that reason, but if you are interested in, for example, the interface between Greece and Cypress, other variants are much more or equally important.
  

• Is there any American literature that compares to the Iliad? How/why?
• Short answer, not really, not precisely, not exactly. Perhaps the Bible (it isn't "American" in origin, but most Americans consider it theirs in a strong way, as part of their roots).
• Why the Bible? Because the situations are parallel for Homer and the Bible: there have been many times and places in US history when people had the Bible memorized by heart and could quote you chapter and verse, or identify any particular bit you quoted with its chapter and verse. Because those people thought of the Bible as not only the source of their religion, but as a historical document, as a cultural touchstone by which to measure everything else. Because parts of the Bible are "myth-like" or have no clearly identifiable archaeological evidence for its historicity (Egyptian exile, for instance).
  
• NOTE: The Greeks did not consider Homer sacred scripture at all as far as we know, BUT they did consider it a touchstone for their whole culture, reaching far beyond mere literary matters. Children learned Homer as their education! Greeks could quote Homer extensively and certainly recognize quotations easily.
• Very interesting that their foundational texts are SECULAR in a way, even though they have gods in them. They are secular because the texts form no part of religious practice that we know of.
  
• But it depends greatly on what might count as comparable: are we talking about the breadth and scope, the epicness? are we talking about the role the literature played in its contemporary society? or any of several other important issues...
• Maybe the Fredoniad, an epic poem about the War of 1812.
  

• In last class, many cited the fact that the characters are called "noble" and "valiant" and other positive heroic, morally good things.
• We need to examine what that meant within the world of these epics vs. what it might mean to us.