The Iliad, Books 2-3

Summary, Book 2:

Zeus may have gone to bed, but he can't sleep.  Tossing and turning, he tries to come up with a way to help the Trojans and hence "give honor to Achilles."  Finally, he sends a dream to Agamemnon.  In the dream a vision in the form of "wise" Nestor (more on that later) comes to Agamemnon and tells him that if he launches a major attack on the Trojans right now, he will win.  When he wakes up, he rounds up his troops for this attack.  But, inexplicably, he decides to test their resolve by announcing that he wants to return to Greece and end the war.

Weary from years of battle, the Achaeans take him up on the offer!  Hera gets wind of this and is not pleased; she sends Athena to inspire Odysseus, who in turn "inspires" the Achaeans to stay and see the war through.  I put "inspires" in quotes, because what he really does is insult their honor, shaming them into staying.  And it works, for all but one guy: Thersites.  

Thersites is made out to be a sniveling wimp, but I sympathize with him as the sole voice of reason.  We are told Nestor is wise, but he actually encourages people to take seriously something that Agamemnon was told in a dream!  Thersites, on the other hand, is making sense.  He points out that Agamemnon has lots of loot and women.  Does he really need more?  He calls him out for humiliating their best warrior (Achilles), and implores the Achaeans to leave Agamemnon there and just go home.

Do the Achaeans go with him?  Not so much... they "despise [him] in their hearts" and Odysseus berates him and beats him with his scepter until he bleeds and cries, while the Achaeans ("though discontent") watch and laugh.  So, that's what being reasonable gets you.

After some more chest-pounding, some prayer, and some hand-wringing over the fate of poor Helen, we get to a litany of soldiers as Agamemnon sorts them into clans.  Zeus then sends Iris as a messanger to the Trojans, alerting them to the forthcoming assault, and we hear a litany of their soldiers as they are made ready for war.  Honestly, it's a snoozefest.

Summary, Book 3:
Book 3 starts with the Trojans marching out.  Paris, who really started this whole thing by snatching Helen from her husband, Menelaus, darts out and demands hand to hand combat with any of the Achaean warriors.  Menelaus obligingly steps forward, and Paris sort of slinks back into the ranks.  Um... did he not consider that Menelaus might volunteer to fight the guy who stole his wife?  Does he realize how cowardly this makes him look?

His brother, Hector, realizes it and really lets him have it.
"And can you now
not face Menelaus? If so, you’d learn
the kind of man he is whose wife you took.
You’d get no help then from your lyre, long hair,
good looks—Aphrodite’s gifts—once face down,
lying in the dirt. Trojans must be timid men.                              
If not, for all the evil things you’ve done
by now you’d wear a garment made of stones."

Ah, brotherly love.  Anyway, Paris agrees with Hector and changes his mind.  He and Menelaus will fight.

Now this part confuses me.  First of all, we finally get to meet Helen!  Iris appears to her in a vision, but for some reason she is disguised as Laodice, Helen's "sister-in-law" (in that she is Paris's sister.)  Okay, I assume we are to consider Helen and Paris married even though she was married to Menelaus?  Anyway, Iris as Laodice tells Helen that Paris and Menelaus will be fighting and the winner will be her husband.  Helen feels a longing for Menelaus.  Crying, she goes to Priam, Paris's father, to watch the fight.  Priam asks Helen a few questions about the identifies of the various Achaeans he sees.  And Helen appears to have a good relationship with Priam, all things considered.

As the fight is about to begin, Priam leaves.  He does not want to be there if his son dies in battle.  When it starts, it is not looking good for Paris.  He is about to be killed by Menelaus when Aphrodite intervenes, snatching him up in a "heavy mist" and putting him in his "sweetly scented" bedroom.  She also convinces Helen to come in.

Helen is not in a cheery mood.  Helen calls him a coward and flat out tells him she wishes he had died.  Far from getting upset, this is apparently a turn-on for Paris, who says he has never been so attracted to her.  Ha!  Charming.  She joins him in bed.  And we can all imagine where that's going.

Meanwhile, on the battlefield, the Achaeans have declared victory for Menelaus since, let's face it, he was about to win before Aphrodite appeared.  We end with this, from Agamemnon:

“Listen to me, Trojans, Dardanians, allies—

victory clearly falls to war-loving Menelaus.

So give back Argive Helen and her property,

compensate us with a suitable amount,

something future ages will all talk about.”

So, there you have it.

Reading Notes

I am still finding the names confusing, but writing them down has really helped.  It also sort of helps to have a mental picture of what is happening, which is not always easy. 

I can see why people study this work, as the characters are fascinating.  Unfortunately, I don't really like any of them.  I wonder if that is the point.  Is Homer's goal to show a bunch of incredibly flawed figures?  If so, why the constant references to people being "god-like?"  I don't see where calling Paris, Agamemnon, Helen, etc. god- or goddess-like is any real compliment, given that the Greek gods are actually pretty terrible.  They are decadent, capricious, cruel, and wanton.  Is that the point?

Stay tuned for Book 4!

The Iliad, Book 1

Summary:  

In case you were not already aware of the story of the Iliad, the opening "invocation to the Muse" really puts it out there:  

Sing, Goddess, sing of the rage of Achilles, son of Peleus—
that murderous anger which condemned Achaeans
to countless agonies and threw many warrior souls
deep into Hades, leaving their dead bodies
carrion food for dogs and birds—

all in fulfilment of the will of Zeus.

So we pretty much know what's going to happen. But the first book sets up the conflict between Achilles (commander of the Myrmidons) and Agamemnon (the King of Mycenae and the head of the Achaean army.  The Achaeans have ransacked a Trojan village and the soldiers have been given spoils of war, including beautiful women.  Two women, Briseis and Chryseis, were given to Achilles and Agamemnon respectively.  Chryseis's father, Chryses, begs for her return but is denied.  Being a priest, he prays to Apollo for assistance, and the Sun God willingly obliges, sending a plague to the Achaean army.

After nine days of this, Hera inspires Achilles to request a conference to figure out what is causing the plague and how to stop it.  At this meeting, Calchas (a powerful soothsayer) reveals the cause of the curse.  Agamemnon is furious, but he agrees to return Chryseis on one condition: that he get to take Briseis from Achilles.

Achilles is incensed and insulted by this demand.  I get the feeling we are supposed to be siding with Achilles here, whose honor has been wounded.  But honestly, I can't side with either of them when they are trading women like livestock.  The two exchange threats and Achilles makes a move as if to kill Agamemnon, but he is stopped by Athena.  Hera has sent Athena to stop him, as she likes both Achilles and Agamemnon and does not want them to die.

Athena's intervention momentarily calms things, and we hear from Nestor, an elderly and wise advisor to the army.  First, he puts the two combatants in their place with this:

You are both younger men than I.

And I’ve been colleague of better men than you,                                                          
men who never showed me any disrespect,
men whose like I have not seen again,
and never will...

Then he offers this wise advice:

Agamemnon, you’re an excellent man,
but do not take Briseis from Achilles.
Let that pass. Achaea’s sons gave her to him first.
And you, Peleus’ son, don’t seek to fight the king,
not as your enemy. The sceptre-bearing king,
whose powerful authority comes from Zeus,
never shares honours equally. Achilles,                                                                         
you may be stronger, since your mother was divine,                                                      
but he’s more powerful, for he rules more men.
But you, son of Atreus, check your anger.
Set aside, I urge you, your rage against Achilles,
who provides, in the middle of war’s evils,
a powerful defence for all Achaeans.

Nestor succeeds in preventing the fight.  But he does not succeed in getting Agamemnon to forget about taking Briseis.  Agamemnon takes Chryseis back to her father and the plague ends.  He sends his heralds to get Briseis, and she goes "against her will."  The implication here is that she wanted to stay with Achilles, which is (I suppose) a point in his favor, but it's all pretty grim.  When the heralds leave, Achilles is crying.  Not because of any feeling for Briseis, of course, but because his pride is so wounded.

Sitting at the shore, he cries out to his mother, Thetis.  This is the afore-mentioned "divine mother" from Nestor's speech.  Thetis is a sea nymph, and she lives with her father, the old man of the sea, at the bottom of the ocean.  She comes to console her son, mourning that a) he is to die young and b) that his short life is so filled with pain.  She agrees to go request Zeus's help in getting revenge on Agamemnon by giving the Trojans an edge against the Achaeans.  Apparently she has some pull with the chief God, as she once saved his life during an attempted uprising by the other gods.  She does so, and Zeus somewhat reluctantly agrees.  Apparently he anticipates being hassled by Hera, who already suspects him of favoring the Trojans.  

And he's right!  As soon as Zeus goes in for a feast, Hera begins pestering him about Thetis and her request, which she correctly surmises will hurt the Achaeans.  Things are about to get super ugly between Zeus and Hera, but Hera's son, Hephaestus, intervenes and smooths things over.  The gods go on to enjoy a delightful feast, which ends with Zeus and Hera in bed together.  So all is well-ish with the gods.  In the meanwhile, Achilles has refused to fight with Agamemnon and the Achaeans, "[b]ut he pined away at heart, remaining idle by his ships, yearning for the hue and cry and clash of battle."

Notes on reading:

After reading only a few verses of the book, I decided to keep a little "character log" in which I jot down a character's name, affiliations and some notes.  It has already been helpful to me in keeping track of people, especially given the unfamiliar names.

Apart from keeping the names straight, I'm surprised by how easy it is to follow the story thus far.  I thought the language would be confusing, but it's really not too bad.

I will also note that I specifically chose a version that uses the Greek names of the gods, as opposed to the Roman names.  Perhaps it does not make a difference, but it just feels wrong to be reading the Iliad and seeing Athena referred to as "Minerva" in the text.  I'm clearly not a classical scholar, but the translation I am reading, which can be found here, seems great.

So that's book one!  Sorry if my analysis is a bit juvenile.  This is my first foray into the classics.

-Lily

An Introduction

Welcome!  As you probably guessed, my name is Lily and I am starting a challenging and rewarding journey through history's finest texts  While I had the extraordinary good fortune to attend and graduate from an Ivy League university, I took the path of least resistance at the time and did what I needed to get a degree.  I spent a few years wishing I had that time back, and the opportunity to learn.  And then it hit me: throughout history, people have learned through independent study of important books.  With websites, an e-reader and online courses at my disposal, there was no excuse for me not to do the same.

And so, my journey begins.  There are many great books lists to choose from, but I am going to start out with a very modified version of the St. John's College Reading List.  I will probably not follow it precisely, as I have read some of the works on the list, but it will be my starting point.  The purpose of this blog is to keep me motivated and to force me to work through the texts in a more purposeful way.  I will be writing about my thoughts on the readings as I go along, and I encourage feedback and dialogue!  The life of an autodidact can be isolating.

My goal list:

1)       The Iliad

2)     The Odyssey

3)     Agamemnon

4)     Libation Bearers

5)     Herodotus’ Histories (Selections)

6)     Plato’s Gorgias

7)      Plato’s Meno

8)     Sophocles’ Antigone

9)     Oedipus Rex

10)  Plato’s Republic

11)   Aristophanes’ Clouds

12)  Plato’s Apology, Crito

13)  Plato’s Phaedo

14)  Thucydides’ Peloponnesian War

15)  Plato’s Theaetetus

16)  Plato’s Sophist

17)   Aeschylus’ Prometheus Bound

18)  Plato’s Phaedrus

19)  Plato’s Symposium

20) Aristotle’s Ethics

21)  Aristotle’s Politics

22) Sophocles’ Ajax

23) Lucretius’ On the Nature of Things

24) Aristotle’s Physics

25) Euripides’ Bacchae

26) Sophocles’ Oedipus at Colonus

27)  Aristotle’s Metaphysics

28) Aristophanes’ Frogs

29) Aristotle’s Poetics

30) Sophocles’ Philoctetes

31)  Livy’s Early History of Rome

32) Plutarch’s Lives (Selections)

33) Virgil’s Aeneid

34) Tacitus Annals

35) Epictetus’ Discourses

36) Aristotle On The Soul

37)  Plotinus’ Enneads

38) Augustine’s Confessions

39) Maimonides’ Guide of the Perplexed

40)Thomas Aquinas Summa Theologiae

41)  Dante’s Divine Comedy

42) Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales

43) Thomas More’s Utopia

44)Nietsche’s Beyond Good and Evil

45) Shakespeare’s Love’s Labours Lost

46)Machiavelli’s The Prince

47) Shakespeare’s Midsummer Night’s Dream

48)Shakespeare’s Merchant of Venice

49)Shakespeare’s Taming of the Shrew

50) Shakespeare’s Winter Tale

51)  Shakespeare’s Richard III

52) Shakespeare’s Twelfth Night

53) Shakespeare’s Sonnets

54) Montaigne’s Essays

55) Teresa of Avila

56) Shakespeare’s Richard II

57)  Shakespeare’s Henry IV

58) Descartes’ Discourse on Method

59) Shakespeare’s Othello

60)Shakespeare’s King Lear

61)  Shakespeare’s Tempest

62) Shakespeare’s The Merry Wives of Windsor

63) Don Quixote

64)Confucius’ Analects

65) Tale of Genji

66)Common Sense

67) Paradise Lost

68)Northanger Abbey

69)Jane Eyre

70) Moby Dick

71)   Walden

72)  Hobbes’ Leviathan

73)  Locke’s Second Treatise on Government

74) Gulliver’s Travel

75)  Heart of Darkness

76) One Hundred Years of Solitude

77)  Hume’s Treatise on Human Nature

78) A Critique of Pure Reason

79) Kierkegaard’s Fear and Trembling

80)Adam Smith’s Wealth of Nations

81)  Huckleberry Finn

82) Great Expectations

83) A Doll’s House

84)Brothers Kamarazov

85) Oliver Twist

86)Anna Karenina

87) Waiting for Godot

88)War and Peace

89)Hegel’s Phenomenology of Spirit

90)Poe’s Collected Works and Stories

91)  Tocqueville’s Democracy in America

92) A Vindication of the Rights of Women

93) The Feminine Mystique

94)Dubois’ The Souls of Black Folk

95) The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie

96)Animal Farm

97) 1984

98)The Communist Manifesto

99)Autobiography of Malcom X

100)  Mrs. Dalloway

I will be starting with Homer's Iliad.  Stay tuned for my thoughts on the first few books!

-Lily