The new time is Wednesday 10-10:50 am in the Vending Room, Illini Union
(And always by appointment)
Monday, September 14, 2009
Thursday, September 10, 2009
Homeric Warriors and Battles: Trying to Resolve Old Problems
Kurt Raaflaub is a professor of Classics at Brown University. His article, titled "Homeric Warriors and Battles: Trying to Resolve Old Problems," gives more insight on how to interpret what we are reading in the Iliad. Specifically whether to take these scenes at face value and as accurate historical depictions or, instead, to view them as a collective memory of "a distant era of greatness" which has been fantastically exaggerated, in it's current form, by the poets of the Archaic Period.
Recall that the Iliad and Odyssey were both written in the Archaic Period (800-490), sometime around 750 BCE, but the events described in these two poems supposedly took place in the Bronze Age (3,000 - 1150 BCE). So that means we're talking a minimum gap of 300 years up to 1200 years. So listening to a poet recite the story of the Iliad would be similar to listening to your great grandfather recite stories about relatives who fought in the Revolutionary War of the United States. However, we have actual artifacts from the Revolutionary War to confirm or discredit these types of memories/stories and we really don't have much from the Early/Middle Bronze Age at all. What we do have does not necessarily confirm these stories, though one Archaeologist, Heinrich Schliemann, claims to have found the burial of Agamemnon, which we will read more about later.
Enjoy the rest of his article below if you're interested. It's about 14 pages long, including extensive footnotes, and is well written so it should be a quick read.
Iliad Books 5, 21
BOOK FIVE & SIX: Diomedes' Aristeia
Diomedes & Athena
What power does she give him?
Who does he attack?
Diomedes & Glaukos
XENIA!
Story of Bellerophon
Diomedes & Aphrodite
Aphrodite is carrying Aeneas (from Virgil's Aeneid), he has a crushed hip
Aphrodite is "scratched" by Diomedes, drops Aeneas & runs away to Olympus
Diomedes & Ares
Diomedes & Apollo
"Take care, give back, son of Tydeus,and strive no longer to make yourself like the gods in mind, since never the same is the breed of gods, who are immortal, and men who walk groundling"
Other sections of note
Andromache & Hektor (End of Book 6)
Book 21:
Lykaon & Achilles... 35
River Skamander (a.k.a. Xanthos River)
a. Gets mad at Achilles because of the number of corpses in the river.
b. Tries to drown Achilles
c. Achilles says WTF
d. Hephaistos sends an "inhuman fire" to fight the river
-- Fire vs. Water battle = ELEVATED POETRY
Arguments & fighting between Gods
Agenor (Trojan) fights Achilles
Apollo saves Agenor in a "mist". Achilles chases them
Status in the Iliad
Agamemnon - King of Mycenae (i.e. most powerful Greek)
Menelaos - King of Lacedaemonia (i.e. Sparta)
Achilles - King of the Myrmidons
Odysseus - King of Ithaca
Aias (Ajax) - from Salamis
Diomedes - from Argos
Tuesday, September 8, 2009
Were the Delphic Oracle Priestesses High?
At this point we have discussed the Oracle at Delphi at least in some detail. So, I thought you might enjoy the following article from the National Geographic regarding hallucinogenic fumes recently discovered in the area...
Thursday, September 3, 2009
Reminder!
Quiz today in section!
The quiz will cover the lecture syllabus AND the section syllabus. If you have not already read over the documents, make sure to do so ASAP.
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