Author: Homer

notes

The Iliad is a song of humanity, whereas The Odyssey is a song of divine. Micro versus macro, grand battle versus hubris and cutting, masculinity versus humanity
The limited setting allows characters and their relationships to shine. This is a grand tale of battle and seeing how fate unfolds.
The morale of leaders is important as is the dynamic among them
The story shows the humanity of Hector. Though the Greeks are the “heroes”, ultimately the fight is man against man. No side is despicable, yet one must fall. Such as the way of nature, the tension and balance between opposites that in reality are one and the same.
Siblings standing for different values, one having more life experience than the other – thus are Zeus and Poseidon
Stories of men as their life lashes before their eyes. Small and insignificant in the grand scheme of the war, but a reminder of humanity. Grief, aching, the wheel of life continues to turn. I found the battles repetitive, but then I realized that perhaps in the written form there are meant to be experienced at a fast pace. I wish I could hear it performed orally.
I still find it so funny that Aias spins Hektor like a top with one blow in Book Fourteen
Achilles is so petty and bears such a deep grudge. It’s insane.
God’s having human conflict demonstrates that they are the same as us, just on a different plane, instead of absolutely righteous beings. Humans are mere ponds in their whims.

The Wrath of Achilles lecture

Pindar victory odes (c. 518–438 BCE)
- Choral, celebrate athletic accomplishments of aristocrats and tyrants
- Olympian, Pythian, Nemean, Isthmian odes and games
- Myths that mirror athlete’s life or athletic accomplishments
Achilles from the same island as victors
Pankratia is about the same as today’s MMA

Zeus, Poseidon, Thetis love triangle
Prophecy that Thetis would bear a child stronger than his father
- Potential continuation of succession myth
Thetis shapeshifter
- Peleus must capture her to marry

Quarrel over sex slaves as the center of conflict
Achilles’s wrath toward Agamemnon and Hektor
- Dominant theme: anger, mênis, divine wrath reserved for the gods
Cannot forgive sleight to honor
Calling validity of war into question
Taking Briseis parallels Helen’s abduction

Second surge of anger following Patroclus’s death
Through Thetis, gets armor from Hephestaus
18.478 most famous passage in Western literature
- Symbolism of shield
Hector
- Wife: Andromache
- Son: Astynax
- Son of Priam and Hecuba
- Most valuable defender of Troy
- Pious, respectful, honorable, responsible
  - Contrasts with Achilles, the epitome of wrath that will swear no oaths to him and even defiles his corpse
- Hermes escorts Priam to Achilles’s tent to ask for his body back
22.123–130 comparison of Hector and Achilles as whispering young lovers
- Idea of intimacy
- Lovers and close-quarters fighting
- Closeness of bodies
- Intimacy of killing or being killed — intimacy of life, of death