-
Welcome to
(http://www.seniorlearn.org/bookclubs/classicsbookclub/Thanksgivingclassicsbookclub.jpg)
The Classics Book Club, a forum for reading in translation those timeless classics written by ancient authors you always meant to get around to but never have. We've done the Iliad, and the Odyssey.....but what of the Aeneid? Aeschylus? Euripides? Plutarch?
Cleopatra is all the rage currently, with two new books and a claim her palace in Alexandria has just been found, she's hot. Why? Do what Shakespeare did and read the original sources, a world of incredible fascination and insights awaits.
We'll begin discussing and nominating the contenders January 1, we'll vote January 15 for one week and we'll begin discussing part of the book (which you'll determine first) February 15.
Bring all your background materials, we'll desperately need them, and join us on an unforgettable enriching adventure! Dust off those old moldy books you always intended to read and join our merry band of adventurers in our new venture: The Classics Book Club, coming January 1!
Everyone is welcome!
Discussion Leaders: Joan K (joankraft13@yahoo.com) & ginny (gvinesc@gmail.com )
-
Welcome! Pull up a chair in front of the fire, and help us decide on our first selection in our newest book club for the new year. As you can see in the heading we're all about those timeless ancient classics we've all heard of, we've all intended (vaguely) to read and meant to get around to, but somehow they remain impressively on our shelves. Let's dust them off! Most in fact are free on the internet or for free download in an e-reader. They have influenced the Western world in uncountable ways, let's join the rest of history and read them, too.
Starting in January 1, we'll begin nominating (and even better) discussing potential candidates, which will it be? And WHY?
The Aeneid? Aeschylus? Euripides? Cicero? We last read the Odyssey here in 1996, I led it, it was our first Great Book in the series. 1996 was a long time ago and there are some great new translations out, let's throw IT into the pile, too. We've done the Iliad fairly recently so we should leave it off.
We'll vote January 15-22 and then select what section we want to start with and begin February 15. Bring your translations, we hope they are ALL different: you'll be amazed how different they really are. We long to compare them! If you can read the original of whatever we pick, please add your insights, and as always in our book discussions, we want your research, your background info, and your true reactions. Don't hold anything back!
Give yourself the gift of reading the classics which shaped our world this winter! Join Joan K and me on our voyage to the past January 1.
Let us know if you will join us in this great adventure!
-
Χαίρετε
Oh goodie - a new Classics site.
May I nominate the works of Aristophanes, esp "Lysistrata", and Suetonius "The Twelve Caesars"?
-
What a great idea! I haven't read a Latin author since I was 18 - I will look on my shelves and see what I have, I am looking forward to this. And good point about Shakespeare - did he not get a lot of his material from Plutarch, or have I just made that up?
Rosemary
-
It's definitely a great idea. I'm eager to go.
-
I suggest Daphnis and Chloe a very lyrical and totally delightful novel by Longus which I am presently (boast, boast) reading in Greek.
Goethe said, "The book is so beautiful that amid the bad circumstances in which we live we cannot retain the impression we receive from it, but are astonished anew every time we read it..............it would be well to read it every year, to be instructed by it again and again, and to receive anew the impression of its great beauty."
Well when I first read that I thought ...hyperbole.....(or, actually, what a bunch of bs).......but......he's right.
-
Yahooie! Welcome, Roshannarose, Rosemarykaye, and PatH! It's holiday gift to see you all here already!! I know Joan K is on the way in, too, this is quite exciting!
Yes you sure can, Roshansarose, we won't officially start taking nominations until January 1, and when that day comes, we hope you'll tell us (1) something about each book, and (2) more importantly, what about that book commends itself to YOU? Why would you like to read it or see us read it?
I love discussions of the contenders, sometimes after people get through making a case for a particular book, if it does not win the first time, I find myself reading it anyway. This is very exciting.
Oh and do translate Χαίρετε? Is it hello? I can see you'll be invaluable if we read a Greek author, yahoo!! When delivering Mobile Meals for years I learned a little Greek from the gentleman who ran the restaurant which cooked the meals, hahaha I got good at Yasou, and how are you and some short replies. I could not master thank you, or was it excuse me, but that was the pitiful extent of it, it was SO fun, but I must have had a pretty good accent because when I'd call him on the phone he'd pause and launch into fluent Greek.
Rosemarykaye, I think that's true of a lot of us, not having read the ancients in translation since a young age, when we had to. This is going to be great because everything means more to me now than it did when I was 18. AND you can understand things more, I think. I could be wrong, we're about to find out. hahahaa It's just a different focus, based on life experiences, do you all agree or not?
Yes Shakespeare (and I'm no Shakespeare scholar, we need one to jump in here) apparently drew heavily from Plutarch for his Julius Caesar, Antony and Cleopatra, and Coriolanus, for 3. I'm a total Plutarch freak anyway, but I keep leaning back to the Odyssey which we've not done in 15 years in 2011, what a story! AND anxiously looking at the Aeneid which we've never done here at all. The Aeneid scares me, I'll be honest, but we've had more requests for it than any other.... but...er.....let's see what YOU all think.
Wasn't it Shakespeare who said "little Latin and less Greek?" I'm ashamedly Week on the Greeks, tho Plutarch is a Greek, and I hope to, when we're through, have learned a lot I can use. At least I will know when a reference is made to "Frogs," what those in the know are talking about! (I hope?) That's such a good feeling!!
Welcome, ALL!
-
Dana!! Welcome, welcome!! Another Greek scholar, whoopee! Reading in Greek, you go, girl, boast away, that's wonderful and that's some kind of recommendation:
Goethe said, "The book is so beautiful that amid the bad circumstances in which we live we cannot retain the impression we receive from it, but are astonished anew every time we read it..............it would be well to read it every year, to be instructed by it again and again, and to receive anew the impression of its great beauty."
OK that's a perfect example of the wonders to await us! That one would never have been on my list except for this discussion, but that description sure makes me wonder what I have missed, thank you so much and welcome!
This is very exciting, isn't it?
(http://seniorlearn.org/latin/graphics/Graphics/holly.gif) Welcome, All!~
-
Wow~! The Classics Book Club - I love it already ...
- thanks Ginny such a great idea. When you think of it there is such a wealth of classic literature. I love the Greek tragedians Aeschylus, Euripides and Sophocles - but I wasn't around when you did Iliad and Odyssey so Homer is high on the list and Tacitus and Cicero and Pliny and ... and... and... are also begging for attention. What a tin of worms you've opened -
Whatever we decide upon I'll be here to read along.
Ginny~ This is the most perfect gift. Thank you.
-
Gum!! Welcome, welcome, thank you and yes won't this be the grandest thing for the new year? I am quite excited about it. And...and...and, that's my feeling too!
AND why not?
So glad you're here!
(http://seniorlearn.org/latin/graphics/Graphics/holly.gif)Welcome, All!~
-
Here I am, late as usual
I have always wanted to read the classics without any teachers hanging around grading me. And to be able to talk about them with friends. I read some of the Greek dramatists and Homer when I was younger, but never had anyone I could talk to about them until the winderful discussion we had of the Iliad a few years ago. It remains one of the highlightws of my years at Seniornet.
I feel very strongly about the literature of the people who came before us. These books are our heritage. OURS! Left for us for 2000 years. WE decide what to do with them: love them, or use them to wrap the garbage. Pass them on to our children, or throw them away. But how can we decide if we don't READ them? So I'm going to pull up a comfy chair, have some hot cocoa, and decide what these Greeks and Romans were all about. Will we let them into our homes or not? Are they like us or not? I can't wait to find out.
-
On second thought, what would the Romans have drunk while sitting around discussing books? Not hot cocoa, thats for sure.
-
Ginny - as for being afraid of the Aeneid - I had to translate Book VI (I think it was that one) for A-level Latin, and there were some parts that we (there were only 3 of us in the class) simply could not do. I vividly remember memorising chunks of the Loeb translation, and thank goodness I did, as one of the passages I never could do turned up in the exam - I churned out "And deep inside the vaulted halls ring with women's wails" without a single clue as to which word related to which Latin one. Thankfully I passed.
Rosemary
-
Joan, I loved what you wrote and thought about it all day, what, indeed, good DOES it do us if we don't read them? That's a powerful post, and I loved this, too: But how can we decide if we don't READ them? So I'm going to pull up a comfy chair, have some hot cocoa, and decide what these Greeks and Romans were all about. Will we let them into our homes or not? Are they like us or not? I can't wait to find out.
Rosemarykaye, what a hoot, you and the Loeb! "And deep inside the vaulted halls ring with women's wails," I sure am glad you got the right passage! hahaha
Someday I hope somebody will explain to me what "A Levels" and "O Levels" are because I really don't know and you come across them all the time in reading, but nobody will explain them or what they mean?
Is an A Level better than an O? Is O for Ordinary or Outstanding? And passing will ....?
I was thinking today how exciting this discussion is, we've got you from Scotland, TWO Australians, two on the East Coast and one on the West Coast, and we've just started! I can't help thinking what a rich experience this seems to be shaping up as, with such diversity of geographic locations alone.
(http://seniorlearn.org/latin/graphics/Graphics/holly.gif) Welcome, welcome, All!
-
I"m so happy to find this discussion!! It's just what I've been wishing for and never thought could happen! There is just no other way that I would
be able to find such a group with which to discuss and enjoy the classic literature.
What a gift!
Dana spoke so highly of Daphnis and Chloe that I shot over the field to our library and found it in a George Braziller edition with magnificent illustrations by Chagall. The translation is by George Moore. The book is huge, huge because of the many color plates which makes it a lot to tote around but the large clear print is certainly welcome. The library clerk said that it hadn't been checked out in a long time so I think that I'd better keep taking it out myself lest it be cruelly discarded - you know how that works! I've already started it and I will be reading this even if it doesn't make the cut for discussion!
Thanks so much for initiating this and for pointing me in this direction!!!
I had been thinking of nominating the "Aeneid" since I have it (also the audiobook read by Simon Callow). Been saving those for a discussion someday. Another thing I'm interested in is Seneca and his letters
-
I loved reading everyone's messages today. I lived in a Greek dictionary for four years, but I have forgotten so much through lack of use. I need a gorgeous Greek for pillow talk ;)
ginny - I am just wandering over to my bookcase and have my Liddell and Scott "Greek-English Lexicon", classical Greek that is, at hand. It nestles in my hands, so happy to be looked into after languishing for at least a year on my bookshelf, neglected. Χαίρετε is a very formal greeting for any time of day, which makes it so much easier to remember, rather than having to look at your watch to see if it Καλημέρα (Good morning), Καλησπέρα (used after midday) or Καληνύχτα (the final good night). There are several other greetings according to formality, informality etc.. Καλλί is an ancient Greek root meaning beautiful (note the double lamda). Modern Greek has changed this to καλη meaning beautiful as well. The accent changes place according to the number of syllables in the word. Every Greek word has an accent with just a few exceptions. You have to learn them as well. The masculine adjective καλός means good or fair (not blonde) in both MG and AG. Phew! In AG χαίρ- is the root word for το Greet, in MG Χαίρ is the same with the -ετε ending an indicator of the formal "you". Yes, it is a verb. Greek puts I, you,he/she/it at the end of the root word. Put them together and you have Χαίρετε = I greet you. I have attempted to simplify that explanation for you, but it isn't easy to simplify anything in Greek ??? btw the way χαίρετε is pronounced hairete with the first letter pronounced similarly to the ch in loch. ete needs to be pronounced very clearly as et-e, not "eat".
Dana - more power to you for reading the Greek. It is easier to read than explain.
-
Thanks Dana for reminding me of Daphnis and Chloe. Haven't read that one for about half a century. I haven't a copy but will rectify that pretty soon.
I woke this morning thinking about how much some of this great literature has impacted on western culture - this one piece - Daphnis & Chloe - has had an immense impact and influence on great thinkers and writers over centuries, - it's been retold many times and is still being reworked today - and it's been rendered into all sorts of other art forms - paintings, sculptures, ballet, opera ...
This board is going to be HOT
-
yes , I do hope the translation comes across. Struggling away with the Greek makes me appreciate and dwell on every word practically so I wonder sometimes if that gives it all more significance. i haven't read it in Englsh and sort of am afraid to in case it spoils it, it is so simple and pure somehow, and I like the way the animals have feelings too. The description of Chloe falling in love is gorgeous. i'll be translating it for a long time though, as I'm only half way thru book 1.
I have read several versions of The Iliad (translations) but never The Odyssey, so that's a personall to do--anone interested?
-
Aeneid (Fagles and Fitzgerald translations) has been sitting on my shelf for a long time!! Greek and Roman tragedies and comedies (particularly like Euripedies)
I mourn our loss of Greek instruction. Still have all my Athenaze on my computer in the hopes I will get back to it!
(http://i142.photobucket.com/albums/r105/kidsal_photo/BOOKSLADY.jpg)
Am ready to read!!!
-
Joan R! Welcome, welcome! I love this:
I'm so happy to find this discussion!! It's just what I've been wishing for and never thought could happen! There is just no other way that I would
be able to find such a group with which to discuss and enjoy the classic literature.
What a gift
The response here certainly seems like one to me! I am so glad to see you here, too!
hahaha, Sally!! Welcome, maybe we should adopt that image as US, with our To Be Read lists. :)
That certainly depicts me and those classics I've Always Intended to Read. hahaha Welcome!
Dana, that's the thing about translations, they are ALL so different. I was looking back over about 5 different Aeneid translations today and marveling at how many translators there have been and how different they are. All learned men, some of them unbelievably learned, and yet so many different takes on the same words, it's amazing.
And I've been wondering, and we'll have to decide once we discuss and vote in January on our February 15 first selection, whether or not we WANT to all read the same translation or a million different ones. Perhaps if we don't have some common ground it might be confusing? On the other hand, we sure want to hear the alternatives, maybe from online, free? So we can compare versions.
I really think it might make an exciting experiment to compare as many as we can, because we can say, well from this paragraph I got that he was afraid, and somebody else could bring their version and say but no, that's not the slant I got here, and we can decide as readers (hopefully somebody will have an annotated version) which captures it for us. I'm still trying to get over what Stanley Lombardo did with the Iliad.
We'll need to decide how important one common ground is. It may be very important, let's discuss that in January too. Lots to look forward to!
Roshannarose, I have to tell you after reading that I wanted to go get a copy of Athanaze and teach myself. :) Barbara always said one could do it. I miss our Greek instruction, too, Sally.
Gum, I love that post, it so captures the whole idea here. Gosh this IS exciting, isn't it?
(http://seniorlearn.org/latin/graphics/Graphics/holly.gif) Welcome, All!
-
If you have mastered Latin; have lots of time; an active brain; patience to burn; and a lovely warm hearth - I hereby recommend these two books for Leaning Greek. When and if you buy Greek books, it can be a bit confusing. It may be entitled Classical or Ancient Greek or just Greek for the ancient language; the Bible was written in Koine, First Testament or Bible Greek; but Modern Greek is usually just entitled Modern Greek or Demotic. The ones I have recommended below are Ancient Greek books.
"Reading Greek" Text published by Cambridge and put together by Joint Association of Classical Teachers Greek Course ISBN 0-521-21976-0.
and the accompanying
Reading, Grammar and Vocabulary Exercises text - "Reading Greek" same details as above, but ISBN 0-521-21977-9.
Also the Liddell and Scott Lexicon.
Good Luck
Καλή Τύχη
-
I absolutely do not want to miss this discussion group. I am so excited.
-
Frybabe! Welcome, welcome! So glad to see you here! What a super group assembling, what fun! Tell us how your exams are going? (Talk about going back and learning something new, you're doing something I would fail the first day in: Accounting!) How's it going? How much longer will you have to go to complete your courses of studies?
Roshanarose, thank you for those recommendations! Unfortunately I don't meet half of the criteria you've posted, hahaa; however, I do have curiosity and enthusiasm, and it sounds like something to look forward to this summer. Every now and then we have teachers of Greek enroll in our Latin programs. One of these days we'll see if they would like to oversee a Learn Greek Workshop or something.
Latin and Greek in Translation is something offered by most universities to expose people to the great works of literature they may not have time or the ability to read in the original, and since we can all read English with no difficulty, I am totally excited about this opportunity AND the people assembled here already, to whom Joan K and I hope to add a million more. JoanK, and Pat H, (they are our Gemini) don't I remember your own father was a famous translator (of Latin?)
Welcome, Everybody! You don't need to be able to read a word of Greek or Latin, to enjoy reading in English the greatest works the world has known. Or are they? YOU will decide, from your own perspective; maybe they haven't held up?
On January 1 we'll begin discussing likely nominees and yes we'll definitely put the Odyssey back in the pot, it makes the X Men or whoever they are look pale by comparison!
(http://www.seniorlearn.org/latin/graphics/snowball-tumble.GIF) If you are looking in and thinking, well I'd like to but looks daunting, don't be intimidated and let these 2000+ year old stories sit one more year on your shelf! Be like James T. Kirk and boldly go where nobody you know has gone in a long time: join us!
Everyone is welcome!
-
I can't believe so many of us are ready "to boldly go". (At least, you can't split an infinitive in Latin. Can you in Greek?) This is going to be great.
GINNY: " JoanK, and Pat H, (they are our Gemini) don't I remember your own father was a famous translator (of Latin?)"
No, he had only schoolboy latin. He was a mathematician who was interested in the history of mathematics. Unfoertunately, the European early mathematicians by custom wrote in Latin. He, with the help of a priest translated a paper of the mathematician Descarte (the "I think, therefopre I am" guy) into English, and published it with a commentary.
My father was ill at the time, and I often served as his "legs". Thus my one encounter with Greek. Descarte used one greek word, and my father didn't know the meaning of it. So he sent me down to the Library of Congress (we lived in Washington) to see if I could find out. I know no Greek, and looking something up in a dictionary is very hard when you don't even know the alphabet. So I got the librarians there involved. It turned out to be a word that Descarte probably made up from the same word as Gymnastics comes from to mean mathematical exercises.
-
Ginny - when i was at school in London in the 1970s, you sat O-levels at the end of 5th year at secondary school, ie around the time you were 16. It stood for "ordinary level" and in our rather bluestocking school most girls took at least 7 or 8. I took 9 in 5th year and one early in 4th year (it was in fact "Greek Literature in Translation"!), and so did many other people. A-levels (or "advanced levels") were taken two years later, at the end of second year, or upper, 6th. Most people took 3, though people doing maths often did 4, with 2 of them being in different types of sums (what a thought). I took French, English and Latin.
O-levels have now been renamed GCSEs (I think it stands for General Certificate of Secondary Education).
In Scotland, of course, it's all different! Pupils take Scottish Standard Grades at the end of 4th year (ie around the age of 15) - these are broadly equivalent to O-levels/GCSEs. They then take Scottish Highers at the end of 5th year - ie they only get one year to cram it all in. Highers are set at a lower level than English A-levels and academic students would generally take 5, although many take fewer. Scottish Advanced Highers are taken at the end of 6th year (students in Scotland spend only one year in 6th year, so they leave school younger than they would in England). Advanced Highers are by no means compulsory, and many Scottish universities will base their offers on Highers results - this means that the better students tend to have a firm offer by the end of 5th year, and there is a lot of pointless (IMHO) messing about in 6th year as they pass the time waiting to go to university.
i hope that explains it a bit. Just to make it more complicated, some of the private schools in Scotland (generally the poshest, often the boarding schools - eg Merchiston, Glenalmond, Strathallan) do not use the Scottish exam system, but instead do GCSEs and A-levels, partly because they think the courses are better, and partly, I imagine, because they think their pupils will have a better chance of getting into the more prestigious English universities with A-levels. Then you have some who now offer the International Baccalaureate instead of either system!
Rosemary
-
I had a friend who had come to America from England who, although very bright, had failed her "O-levels". She came here, went to college, and got a graduate degree.
She was very bitter -- she said there aren't enough university places in England for all who want to go, so kids are "weeded out" early (eleven). Here in the States, it's much easier to go to college, but the quality of the education varies a lot, and a college education means less.
In many US universities, beginning math classes are used to weed out students. My husband taught them when he was a graduate student, and was ordered to fail a high percentage of the students.
-
Ginny - Thanks for telling people that they did not have to know Greek or Latin to join this fine board. Sorry if I frightened anyone :o
JoanK - I have never come across a split infinitive in Greek - this could have to do with the way "to" and verbs and nouns are written in Greek. For example, in Greek the word "to" is actually attached to the noun it is describing (the accusative) or subject. It looks a bit like this : tothe harbour. The to = σε,the = το and (the harbour is a neuter noun so the article has to agree with it), and the harbour is λιμάνι. So when written in full "to the harbour" translated into Greek is "στο λιμάνι". Τhis construction does not have the flexibility that English has, so I am kind of guessing that an adverb could not be put between the preposition and the article. Add the verb, eg I am going to the harbour in Greek it would be Πάω στο λιμανι. Having said that English is more flexible in its ability to split an infinitive, Greek has very flexible word order. The accusative can appear anywhere in the sentence as it is always marked with a preposition attached, in other words the morphology of the sentence is changed, or may be recognised by context.
When I was studying Ancient Greek the split infinitive was never mentioned. The above examples are from Modern Greek. I will keep an eye out for that split infinitive.
JoanK - Do you have any easy questions ask about Greek?
If anyone would like to correct me, please do so. I don't regard myself as a fully fledged Greek scholar by any means. I haven't been asked this question before in class (thankfully)!
-
JoanK - It is even worse now in the UK as they are about to triple the Fees for University. Shame, shame, shame Conservative government!
JoanK it would be good if you could remember Descartes' word that your father made you chase up.
-
Oh my - this sounds great - a book we can get our teeth into - wonderful - I may not have as much time in Spring but January and early February look good - will Greek Dramas be considered? - I am thinking of Antigone that sits on my shelf now for years...
Found this site on the Top 200 College/University Rankings in the World (http://www.4icu.org/top200/) Some rankings on the list surprised me - like the Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México come in third in the world with Stanford first and MIT second -
-
Barbara: The Antigone is just about my favourite of the greek tragedies. She and her sister Ismene are such absolute opposites -always reminds me of my sister and myself - we love each other to pieces but have almost nothing in common except our parents. Weird how these ancient texts speak to us isn't it.
-
Weird how these ancient texts speak to us isn't it. Oh I think that's one of the main points! I hope we will find that to be the case this time, or will we?
Barbara, welcome, welcome! So glad to see you here, I know you will bring a wealth of information to the table as you always do!
Roshanarose, not at all, I think it's fascinating!!!
Rosemarykaye, thank you for explaining the O and A Levels, I can see it's intricate but I am so glad to finally understand what they ARE. So these would be in aid of those going to college? Like our SAT's? And if one did not intend to go on to university then would one take them? I assume you have a choice of those subjects or is there some sort of criteria for taking, say, Greek Literature in Translation?
OK A-levels (or "advanced levels") were taken two years later, at the end of second year, or upper, 6th. Ok "upper, 6th," would that be the 12th year of school? In other words an 18 year old? I'm trying to figure out the years here. What year is the 5th year and 4th year chronologically? (I think we can see why nobody has ever ventured to explain this to me) :)
Children start school here at 6 years of age, that's the First Grade and they go thru the 12th grade in the public school systems (which are for everybody) and they graduate high school (either 9th grade -12th or 10th -12th grade) usually at 18, some younger, some older.
I'm trying to figure out the ages involved in 4th year, etc. Thank you for explaining this!
-
"JoanK it would be good if you could remember Descartes' word that your father made you chase up."
Sorry, it's gone (this was 30 years ago) just that it was close to the root of the word gymnasium.
Why this paper had never beeen translated is a funny story, and shows that scholarly research isn't always the ivory tower thing we might expect:
Descarte had gone to Sweden in his last years and died there. His papers were boxed up and sent to Paris by ship, to be stored in a museum there. But the ship sank in the River Seine.
Decarte's patron, horrified, had the boxes resued from the river and his maid hung the papers up on clotheslines to dry. Then they were repacked and stored.
But the patron died, and with him the knowledge of where these papers were. Decades later another mathematician (I think it was Poincare, but my senior memory is working here) heard of their existance, searched and found them.
He copied them: they were waterstained and almost unreadable, and Decarte's handwriting was terrible, but he did his best.
Then the originals were lost again, leaving only the partial copy, in Poincare's handwriting which was as bad as Descarte's, full of places where P couldn't make head or tail of the original.
My father had to decipher that, try to fill in where the original had been unreadable, and deal with Decarte's Latin, which was as bad as his handwriting. One wrong ending changes the whole meaning of a sentance: in ordinary life, the mistake may be obvious. In mathematics, it can send other mathematicians scurrying in the wrong direction, or rubbing their heads. "Why did he say that? He's Decarte after all --he couldn't just be wrong." I think it helped that Dad wasn't a Latin scholar. "Oh, he makes the same kind of stupid Latin mistakes that I do."
-
If you want to see what the handwriting was like, here's a link:
http://i239.photobucket.com/albums/ff125/PatriciaFHighet/Descartesp2_0001forexp.jpg (http://i239.photobucket.com/albums/ff125/PatriciaFHighet/Descartesp2_0001forexp.jpg)
Turns out it was Leibniz, not Poincare.
-
DUH! Of course it was.
I can't get the link to work. Might be my squirrelly computer.
-
I had a lecturer once who said that cuneiform was really where a bird had walked while the tablets were wet. PatH - and that's exactly what that writing looked like in your link.
-
One wrong ending changes the whole meaning of a sentance
Right JoanK. I recently submitted an instructional paper with the last sentence saying, "Your masterpiece is not ready to display." It should have read, "Your masterpiece is now ready to display." My professor was not amused, and neither was I when I got my grade.
-
Joan, I'm guessing that the word was "Progymnasmata", which is in the title:
(http://i239.photobucket.com/albums/ff125/PatriciaFHighet/Progymnasmata.jpg)
Here's Dad's transcript, parts not showing in my photo in parentheses.
Progymnasmata de Solidorum Elementis (excerpta ex Manuscripto Cartesii)
Angulus solidus rectus est qui octavum sphaerae partem (complectitur, etiamsi non , etc etc. It's work just matching it up when you have the transcript. The "s" is weird.
-
That's about the best I can do for you, Roshanarose.
And as you can see, some people will do anything to avoid starting in on their Christmas cards.
-
Inspired by your Cartesian story, I finished doing my Xmas cards today.
On the trail of Προγήμασμάτα. Stay tuned.
-
Great story PatH and JoanK. Thanks for putting up the photos. My DH enjoyed it too - he's maths mad. I read something by Descartes aeons ago - I remember taking it to the beach several times - I don't suppose I read much of it there.
-
Welcome to
(http://www.seniorlearn.org/bookclubs/classicsbookclub/Thanksgivingclassicsbookclub.jpg)
The Classics Book Club, a forum for reading in translation those timeless classics written by ancient authors you always meant to get around to but never have. We've done the Iliad, and the Odyssey.....but what of the Aeneid? Aeschylus? Euripides? Plutarch?
Cleopatra is all the rage currently, with two new books and a claim her palace in Alexandria has just been found, she's hot. Why? Do what Shakespeare did and read the original sources, a world of incredible fascination and insights awaits.
We'll begin discussing and nominating the contenders January 1, we'll vote January 15 for one week and we'll begin discussing part of the book (which you'll determine first) February 15.
Bring all your background materials, we'll desperately need them, and join us on an unforgettable enriching adventure! Dust off those old moldy books you always intended to read and join our merry band of adventurers in our new venture: The Classics Book Club, coming January 1!
Everyone is welcome!
Discussion Leaders: Joan K (joankraft13@yahoo.com) & ginny (gvinesc@gmail.com )
-
Gosh, that IS a story, so much better than I remembered, and what handwriting!!!! I thought mine was bad. :) You'd need a course in handwriting analysis just to read it, but the story there would make a great book, where is Dan Brown when you need him? hahahaa Thank you PatH and JoanK! Our own classical mystery here, love it.
I thought when I looked at it, it would be like trying to decipher hieroglyphics and that reminded me of the new Schiff on Cleopatra, in which, I hate to say it, I AM learning a lot.
Her statements are fiercely attributed but without footnotes for the most part (which is good since just about every word is attributed), but then the ones that are not, her own ? conclusions, are thrown in too. This makes for slow and quizzical reading.
For instance: Greek was not favored among the early Roman Republic. Of Cleopatra's Latin, nothing is known, it's thought she and Julius Caesar spoke Greek, as they were educated in a similar manner.
(page 34ff): "A generation earlier, a good Roman had avoided Greek wherever possible, going to far even as to feign ignorance.. 'The better one gets to know Greek,' went the wisdom, 'the more a scoundrel one becomes.' It was the tongue of high art and low morals, the dialect of sex manuals, a language 'with fingers of its own,.' The Greeks covered all bases, noted a later scholar, 'including some I should not care to explain in class.' Caesar's generation, which perfected its education in Greece or or under Greek -speaking tutors, handled both languages with equal finesse.... " (this is all attributed in footnotes by a dizzying amount of names, and now we have)..."with Greek--by far the richer, the more nuanced, the more subtle, sweet, and obliging tongue--forever supplying the mot juste." From the time of Cleopatra's birth, an educated Roman was a master of both."
Ok here the bolded part is not attributed. Whose opinion is it? Hers? She actually throws in a parallel of French in the US.
You can't help but learn something you did not know from it; however, you need something to take notes with, too. I even see the B.L. Ullman referenced as a source, who wrote the text book we use in some of our Latin classes.
It's pretty impressive, actually, for the sheer amount of scholarship quoted. I bet it took her a long time to write.
(http://www.seniorlearn.org/latin/graphics/snowball-tumble.GIF) HO ho ho, everyone is welcome, grab a seat and hang ON! The ancients are HOT HOT HOT!
-
Ginny - No doubt you know that the name Cleopatra is actually Greek. She was the last of the Ptolemy line. Ptolemy was Greek and one of the generals that Alexander the Great left in Alexandria after his death. Cleopatra, I am guessing, would have been learned in Egyptian, Latin and most certainly Greek.
-
Well I can say now (but could not have before this book), that she was well versed in 9 languages, but among them Latin is not listed, Schiff says "Plutarch is silent" on this issue, nor is her grasp of it known. She did apply herself to Egyptian, however. "She was allegedly the first and only Ptolemy to bother to learn the language of the 7 million people over whom she ruled." (page 34)
Her lineage is exhaustively chronicled as well: interesting trivia bits: she was not the first Cleopatra, nor was she the 7th as noted. Actually I am somewhat astounded, thus far, in what I DO know, thanks only to this book. Our Cambridge Latin series II does take up a lot about Alexandria, too.
My goodness such inbreeding among the Ptolemies. I must see Alexandria! I am going to REALLY recommend this book, if for no other reason (and this is probably why it's getting so much buzz: the exhaustive references, the good writing, and the fact that you seem to know something when you've only read a few pages hhahaa). It truly IS pretty amazing what you seem to know after spending a little time with it.
(http://www.seniorlearn.org/latin/graphics/snowball-tumble.GIF)
-
Reflecting on the deaths of Richard Holbrook and Mark Madoff,NYT columnists David Brooks and Gail Collins talk about a modern-day Greek drama.
A Modern-Day Greek Drama (http://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/12/15/a-modern-day-greek-drama/)
-
Well, I am convinced!
I just ordered "Cleopatra" from Amazon! I will be surrounded by good things to read since I received "The Classic Tradition" last week for my birthday and had acquired vol.1 of the Mark Twain bio. the week before. "The Classic Tradition" is a wonderful book - you could spend many hours with it just looking various things up and the sections of illustrations are lovely. On top of all that, I have the Chagall iluustrated "Daphnis and Chloe" right in front of me covering up a huge section of the desk! Needless to say, I haven't written one single Christmas card nor baked a cookie - SO, off to get out the cards!!!!!!
But thanks for persuading me to order "Cleopatra"!
I read the Brooks-Collins talk, Pedln - very good - thanks for the link.
-
Hi, and a big Thanks to Ginny and JoanK for setting up this new Book Adventure!
I'll try to join in if I am able, but I'll certainly read these posts with interest!
I'm in the middle of the new Cleopatra book, and I hope this is not our choice. There are flaws in this best seller.
Stacey Schiff is not my idea of a true historian, with all her digressions to
... sunset of a ... color or Cleopatra dressed in ...
In other words, she sometimes strays into writing historical fiction, not history. I do think the book is fun to read!
I cannot help thinking that she was striving for a best seller. Well, she did it, but we ought to read Plutarch (is that possible, Ginny?) rather than read what she said Plutarch wrote.
Sorry for going on and on ... caveat emptor on Schiff's Cleopatra.
-
Welcome, Mippy! Oh sure we can read anything and anybody, we'll start taking nominations and discussing potential reads January 1, and anything and anybody is eligible. Whatever we read most of us including me will be reading in translation, but WHOSE translation is the key. Perhaps some of us will be able to study the original and bring that to the table, I hope we can have 20 different translators per whatever we read.
Golly that makes three of us reading (or about to read Joan :)) Cleopatra. Don't you find it amazing, Mippy, how much you seem to know about her (but are they all valid conclusions or not?) after reading it? I think we'd have to compare Plutarch's (Dryden translation?) and Goldsworth's Cleopatra first. And there are others, too.
It does make you think, Mippy, about historians (which Schiff is not, she's a biographer) but if you look at the back references, say, on even something like page 34, you'll see she is actually pretty much doing the work of an historian, summarizing in every sentence what others have said. Juvenal, Quintilian, Plutarch, the names roll on and on, she would have to footnote almost every word (and I'm glad she hasn't). She's done the research for us, but she DOES add her own take on things. The business about Greek by far the most...is apparently hers. At least it's unattributed. For comparison we need to try to penetrate Goldsworthy who hasn't her way with words.
But this brings up the issue of translators and their interpretations. I finally found this comparison I did a couple of years ago when we were contemplating the Aeneid, and I think it's still valid, on how different writers have seen the Aeneid for instance.
You'd think the Aeneid would be pretty straightforward, wouldn't you? It's Latin and arma virumque cano seems pretty clear, but just LOOK at the different takes on the beginning of it:
AENEID 1-12:
arma virumque cano, Troiae qui primus ab oris
Italiam fato profugus Laviniaque venit
litora, multum ille et terris iactatus et alto
vi superum, saevae memorem Iunonis ob iram,
multa quoque et bello passus, dum conderet urbem
inferretque deos Latio; genus unde
Albanique patres atque altae moenia Romae.
Musa, mihi causas memora, quo numine laeso
quidve dolens regina deum tot volvere
insignem pietate virum, tot adire labores
impulerit. tantaene animis caelestibus irae?
Here's what it looked like to the Romans:
(If an ancient Greek or Roman could read eight pages an hour, he knew those eight pages intimately, perfectly. There was no skim-reading, no tricks of speed-reading. They were free to hear and enjoy their poetry):
ARMAVIRUMQUECANOTROIAEQUIPRIMUSABORIS
ITALIAMFATOPROFUGUSLAVINIAQUEVENIT
LITORA,MULTUMILLEETTERRISIACTATUSETALTO
VISUPERUMSAEVAEMEMOREMIUNONISOBIRAM
MULTAQUOQUEETBELLOPASSUSDUMCONDERETURBEM
INFERRETQUEDEOSLATIOGENUSUNDE
ALBANIQUEPATRESATQUEALTAEMOENIAROMAE
MUSAMIHICAUSASMEMORAQUONUMINELAESO
QUIDVEDOLENSREGINADEUMTOTVOLVERE
INSIGNEMPIETATEVIRUMTOTADIRELABORES
IMPULERITTANTAENEANIMISCAELESTIBUSIRAE
A person's translation is unique, like his signature. A translator brings to his translation who he is, his background and his way of seeing things. Even a literal translation in chunks may differ among readers.
Here is John Dryden's translation:
Arms, and the man I sing, who, forc'd by fate,
And haughty Juno's unrelenting hate,
Expell'd and exil'd, left the Trojan shore.
Long labors, both by sea and land, he bore,
And in the doubtful war, before he won
The Latian realm, and built the destin'd town;
His banish'd gods restor'd to rites divine,
And settled sure succession in his line,
From whence the race of Alban fathers come,
And the long glories of majestic Rome.
O Muse! the causes and the crimes relate;
What goddess was provok'd, and whence her hate;
For what offense the Queen of Heav'n began
To persecute so brave, so just a man;
Involv'd his anxious life in endless cares,
Expos'd to wants, and hurried into wars!
Can heav'nly minds such high resentment show,
Or exercise their spite in human woe?
Robert Fitzgerald:
(http://seniorlearn.org/latin/aeneas/aeneidfitzgerald.jpg)
Robert Fagles:
(http://seniorlearn.org/latin/aeneas/aeneidknoxfagles.jpg)
Stanley Lombardo:
(http://seniorlearn.org/latin/aeneas/aeneidlombardo.jpg)
Theodore C. Williams:
Arms and the man I sing, who first made way,
predestined exile, from the Trojan shore
to Italy, the blest Lavinian strand.
Smitten of storms he was on land and sea
by violence of Heaven, to satisfy
stern Juno's sleepless wrath; and much in war
he suffered, seeking at the last to found
the city, and bring o'er his fathers' gods
to safe abode in Latium; whence arose
the Latin race, old Alba's reverend lords,
and from her hills wide-walled, imperial Rome.
Allen Mandelbaum:
(http://seniorlearn.org/latin/aeneas/aeneidmandelbaum.jpg)
Here's a list of translators of the Aeneid. Like the Odyssey, Vergil's (or Virgil's) Aeneid has been translated many times into English, from the era of the English Renaissance until today. The translators have been the following (with form as V = verse, BV = blank verse, P = prose, along with the date of the translation; asterisk indicates particularly important translation):
Thomas May;
Gavin Douglas (V, 1553)
Robert Singleton (V, 1855)
H. Rushton Fairclough* (P, 1916, 1932)
Thomas Phaer and Thomas Twyne (V, 1573)
John Miller (BV, 1863)
John Jackson (1921)
John Vicars (V, 1632)
John Rose (1867)
Frank Richards (1928)
John Ogilby (1649)
John Conington* (V, 1867)
Rolfe Humphries* (BV, 1951)
John Dryden* (V, 1693-1700)
Christopher Cranch (BV, 1872, 1886)
C. Day Lewis* (BV, 1952)
Richard Lauderdale (1700)
W. Lucas Collins (1874)
Kevin Guinagh* (P, 1953)
Nicholas Brady (BV, 1716)
Henry Pierce (P, 1879, 1883)
W.F. Jackson Knight* (P, 1956, 1958)
Joseph Trapp (BV, 1720, 1731)
Thomas Burt (BV, 1883)
Patric Dickinson* (BV, 1961)
Christopher Pitt (1731, 1753)
John Wilstach (V, 1884)
L.R. Lind* (BV, 1962)
Joseph Davidson (P, 1743)
J[ohn] W[illiam] Mackail* (1885)
James H. Mantinband (1964)
Robert Andrews (1766)
William Thornhill (BV, 1886)
Frank Copley* (BV, 1965, 1975)
Alexander Strahan (BV, 1767)\A. Hamilton Bryce (1894)
Allen Mandelbaum* (BV, 1971)
William Melmoth (1790)
John Conington and J.A. Symonds* (V, 18uu)
Robert Fitzgerald* (BV, 1983)
James Beresford (BV, 1794)
John Long (1900)
C.H. Sisson* (BV, 1986)
Caleb Alexander (P, 1796)
Charles Billson* (BV, 1906)
David West* (P, 1991)
Charles Symmons (1817)
Michael Oakley* (1907)
Edward McCrorie* (BV, 1995)
Levi Hart and V.R. Osborn (P, 1833)
James Rhoades (V, 1907, 1921)
Richard S. Caldwell (BV, 2004)
J.M. King (1847) Edward Taylor (1907)
G.B. Cobbold (P, 2005)
Joseph Owgan (P, 1853)
Theodore Williams (V, 1908)
Stanley Lombardo (BV, 2005)
George Wheeler (P, 1853)
Arthur S. Way * (V, 1916)
Robert Fagles (BV, 2006)
In a perfect world in a perfect discussion of any ancient work in translation, we'd have, say, for the Aeneid all these copies, and we could say, well I have the ship sailed and somebody else could say no, it says in my copy the ship stalled and whoever might be able to read the original might say no it says XXX which means XXX and in that we could see the translator's art before deciding which we think expressed it best.
I mean the possibilities are endless really.
Welcome, Everybody!! Grab a seat by the fire, dust off that old copy on your shelves, it may be an old translation we're dying to hear, and join us!
(http://www.seniorlearn.org/latin/graphics/snowball-tumble.GIF)
-
After reading reviews about Schiff's Cleopatra and Goldsworthy's Antony and Cleopatra, I think I would rather read Goldsworthy. I have one or two of his other books.
-
I wonder if they are that different? We can't know unless we read them.
Maybe we should read all three, Plutarch, Schiff and Goldsworthy, (I have his Antony and Cleopatra), and compare. I'm pretty sure Goldsworthy and Schiff include other authors, I know Schiff does. Plutarch is often not the same as others.
-
Wow! so many translations of Aeneid - it's amazing. I knew there were plenty but so many? - it boggles the mind to think of comparing them all.
I can see I'm going to have to hunt around for these Cleopatra titles. I have a copy of Ernle Bradford's Cleopatra from the 1970s which is a rather lovely presentation - lots of glossy colour photos etc. It's a quite readable biography - aimed at the general reader. Bradford saw Cleo as an intellectual and a brilliant linguist as well as an astute politician. It's years since I looked inside the covers but now I've taken it off the shelf again... h'mmm
Ginny, much and all as I love this new discussion there is no way I am going to grab a seat by any fire ... today it was around 95 F here and temperatures are rising. I'm hoping the 25th won't be 105+ but it often is. Son has managed to get halfway home without being stranded by the floods -they're idling away a day or two in South Australia's Barossa Valley -grape country and wine making area - before crossing the desert and should be home by 22nd or 23rd - Can't wait!
-
PEDLIN: interesting article. The two characteristics of the ancient greeks were ones I had noticed in my (slight) readings of them:
First that --"Being ambitions was selfish, but yearning for immortal glory was noble." This was so striking to me in the Iliad, where it motivated so much of what happened. And Homer carefully gave to each man his moment of glory.
How different is it today? Do we know people who yearn for immortal glory? Presumably our leaders and movie idols do. Do we see this as noble? Where is the line?
-
"The suicide of Mark Madoff is like a Greek tragedy where the pain would course through families, and the sons would pay for the sins of their fathers."
Medea kills her (and his) children to get back at Jason. Does this make any sense to us today? Not only in Greek tragedies, in the old testament as well the children pay on through the generations. Does this fit our sense of justice today? What has changed?
-
Well, in this country at least many young people feel that they are paying for the financial sins of their parents - the greed and extravagance that for some people characterised the 80s is now leading to the cuts in student funding, lack of affordable housing, cuts in benefits, etc etc.
Rosemary
-
Joan K I have been dictionary gazing into my Liddell and Scott (Ancient Greek) and my J.T. Pring (Modern Greek)in order to find the correct translation of προγυμνασματα. I thought that it was spelled with an eta, but was wrong. It is spelt with an eepsilon. Different letter, same pronunciation. A big problem for Greek learners, as there are three "ee" sounds in Greek. Also my PC has decided that it hates inserting Greek accents. The ending -ματα indicates that it is a neuter plural noun, of the same noun group as stigma/stigmata.
I couldn't find the word in the Liddell and Scott, but did find it in the J.T.Pring. Which leads me to think that it may have been Koine Greek or New Testament Greek that your father had to translate. I don't have a Koine dictionary, but I know that Modern Greek is more similar to Koine than it is to Ancient Greek. Anyway, back to the word - it means "before the exercises", "prior to the exercises".
Thanks for that. I enjoy such challenges.
-
Ahha! So preliminary exercises gets tthe spirit. It makes sense that Descartes would have known Old testament Greek. Thank YOU for taking the time.
-
Παρακαλώ JoanK. Meaning "a pleasure" or a very polite "please", depending upon context, of course.
-
Well, since I have a dusty old copy of Plutarch on my shelf, that
would be my first choice. I'm sure I could find at least one more
when we start nominating.
DANA, I trust 'Daphnis and Chloe' also comes in a good translation.
I confess I really can't read (or write, or speak) Greek and that
recommendation really caught me.
In many US universities, beginning math classes are used to weed out students. My husband taught them when he was a graduate student, and was ordered to fail a high percentage of the student
JOANK, I was shocked to read that. I don't understand the purpose
of failing a high percentage of the students. Aren't they cutting
their own income? Or is it simply that they don't have the staff, etc.
to handle large numbers of upper classmen?
So true, GUM. I have been reading 'Selections from the Classic
Historians' a bit at a time. So often I find observations that could
easily apply people, events, etc. of modern times.
gasp I thought I'd never catch up! So many posts already.
-
gasp I thought I'd never catch up! So many posts already.
As I said before Babi - this discussion is going to be HOT - HOT - HOT
And it already is ;D
-
Roshanarose: Thanks for the advice. Ordered the Reading Greek series. Found that I can remember a little of it! Still have the font on my desktop.
-
BABI: "JOANK, I was shocked to read that. I don't understand the purpose
of failing a high percentage of the students. Aren't they cutting
their own income? Or is it simply that they don't have the staff, etc.
to handle large numbers of upper classmen?"
The university where he taught (I won't name it) indeed admitted more students than they had the capacity to handle, and used the math classes to "weed them out". I've heard stories that lead me to believe that other universities do this too. It is a State university -- perhaps they feel they should be open to any student in he state with a halfway decent record, but are not given enough resources to reeally handle that many.
-
kidsal - Good on you for buying those books. We can soon converse in Greek here. On some sites you are able to get an idea of what Greek letter agrees with the English letter with a keyboard guide that you can print out. I lost mine long ago. However, one soon learns where the Greek letters are that have no equivalent in English. The font I use is in the language bar at the absolute bottom of the screen.
Wyoming is a part of the States I have always wanted to visit. Please tell me a bit about where you live.
-
Kidsal, I had'nt noticed you are from Wyoming. My BF was stationed at several of the AF bases out there years ago. The stories he tells. He really enjoyed the area.
-
I wasn't quite sure upon which board to post this - but www.about.com (ancient history) has a very interesting article about Jesus' birth. It wouldn't let me post a link, but is worth a look.
When you get into about.com - ancient history put the following in the search box
The Star of Bethlehem and the Dating of the Birth of Jesus
-
I have both a Greek and an Arabic font for my Rosetta Stone -- fun to watch it print from right to left.
I live in SW Wyoming (Rock Springs). It is in high desert -- few trees, sand dunes, wild horses, etc. Lots of coal and trona mining, oil and gas drilling.
-
kidsal - Do you see Clint Eastwood often? Pray tell - what is trona?
-
I suppose it makes sense of a sort, JOANK. And math is probably the easiest
course to set a pass/fail line. It would be a waste of the student's time and
money also to continue where the school is unable to provide the necessary space
and attention.
-
Indeed Roshanarose - I see it as some kind of mining troll.....
R
-
Trona - it's a sodium compound - sodium carbonate .... heaps of it in the States - also found in Aus - NSW
-
Laughing at Rosemary's idea of a trona. A mining troll as the word would suggest.
Thanks Gum for explanation.
-
It would have been a female troll, the male would be tronus!! Too much holiday prep ! gone to my head!!!
-
trona / tronus love it JoanR - I've been neglecting the Latin this past week - better get started again - and soon!
-
hi there
its Deb here, (been mostly in the Durant book site) presently in Rockport, Texas temperature this a.m. --temperature was 47 F this morning
-interested in your 'classics group'-where does one begin when, in my situation have no previous that I am aware of readings from this area
(might find I have overlapped in my reading & been unaware)--anyway am following your threads & find it quite interesting....
I remember on our local radio station at home --it may have been a CBC station (Canadian Broadcasting Corporation)--the broadcaster was reading 'The Iliad' and seeing if he could complete the poem/prose?? ...
Am always willing to try a new reading endeavour
Would any of the books be available on the 'Gutenberg' site?
-meanwhile I'll just keep lurking in the shadows....
cheers
-
Bookad!! Welcome welcome welcome! What a joyful thing to see here on our Second Day of Christmas, you AND Babi, and some great repartee, I am loving all the conversations here and half afraid to post and ruin the spell! WELCOME, Everyone!
Oh I would be shocked if anything we picked was not on Project Gutenberg (http://www.gutenberg.org/wiki/Main_Page) They say "Project Gutenberg is the place where you can download over 33,000 free ebooks to read on your PC, iPad, Kindle, Sony Reader, iPhone, Android or other portable device."
What a service, that is, amazing, really, and free on Ipad and Nook and everywhere else, and what a fun prospect to fill our 2010 minds with 2010+ year old thoughts, maybe we're not as au courant and "modern" as we think we are, OR do the ancients have nothing to offer US? We'll find out! Maybe you disagree with Horace this morning in the Newsline? IS he right? "He is not poor who has enough of things to use. If it is well with your belly, chest and feet, the wealth of kings can give you nothing more."
We don't have to agree with him even if he IS 2000 years old. On the other hand, Hammertoe City here thinks he may have a point. What do YOU think, that's what this discussion will be about!
AND we have snow here, glorious beautiful snow, a White Christmas for the first time in 47 years or so they say here in the South, and it's just absolutely gorgeous. It held off here till everybody could come and go safely and then let loose, so we had the best of all worlds, joy joy joy!
(http://www.seniorlearn.org/latin/graphics/hollysmall.gif)Welcome, Welcome Welcome, Bookad, Babi, and ALL!
Welcome in, grab a chair next to the fire or sit with Gumtree and the Australians before the open fridge hahahaa and join right IN! The weather here is fine for wherever you are!
-
Greetings Ginny,
Glad you are enjoying your snow. I was expecting to see some flurries by now, here, but nothing but WIND so far. We should still get an inch or three by morning.
I haven't decided on what to nominate yet. I'll probably just sit back and see what the others nominate.
-
BOOKAD: GREAT TO SEE YOU HERE! We will learn together.
"If it is well with your belly, chest and feet," ahhh, Horace was clearly our age when he wrote that (but he forgot knees).
-
ahhh, Horace was clearly our age when he wrote that (but he forgot knees).
But Homer didn't forget knees. A favorite line from Iliad:
Nestor, old sir!
If only your knees
Were as strong as your spirit!
-
I have just downloaded "The Odyssey". Kind of nice having the impression that I am back at Uni. I hope that warm and fuzzy feeling remains.
Gum lives on one side of the continent and I on the other, so our weather patterns often vary considerably. Looking at the weather map I know that Gum in Perth is experiencing very hot and perhaps windy weather. On my side of the continent in Brisbane, it has been raining for about 3 weeks non stop. Bad luck for the main school holidays which occur in December, our summer. The rain is due to a cyclone in the Coral Sea which fortunately petered out as it crossed the coast. We are now experiencing the tail of the cyclone down the Queensland coast, and it is very soggy indeed. A "sticky wicket" as the cricket followers say.
-
Yes, Roshanarose is right about our weather here in Western Australia - it's HOT - Xmas Day was 40 Celsius which translates as about 104F - the same on Boxing Day and today is expected to be about the same. Very strong hot winds as well and our fire alert remains high - despite the heat we had a great Christmas (thanks to air con) - all the family together for first time in a few years and all as happy as could be, everyone with new books to read and DH well enough to enjoy - - couldn't be better.
Hi Bookad - good to see you here - I sometimes lurk on the Durant board - love it.
PatH - did you just dredge that Iliad quote on knees out of your head? If so, I dips me lid to you.
Suddenly it's almost time to think seriously about nominating titles - what to single out from the ancient riches? One of my sons disciplines himself to wake an hour early each morning to read one or other of the ancients before he faces today's world - He's done so for years and is currently reading Livy. Great way to start the day - but don't worry - I'm not going to nominate Livy - at least not for our first foray :D
-
Gumtree - I believe that Joyce Grenfell set her alarm clock for an hour earlier than she needed to get up so that she could read. I do not need to do that as I am a poor sleeper, but of recent years when i wake up far too early, instead of lying there fretting about it I now just put the light on and read - it's amazing how much more alert I am then than late at night - I get through far more books this way.
Brunetti, Donna Leon's Venetian detective, reads the classics, doesn't he? He seems to find them very calming after a day with the Italian underworld (although Italian - or at least Venetian - days seem a bit different from ours; he spends a large part of his time popping into bars and cafes or going home for lunch).
Roshanarose - I think the Odyssey is a great idea, all the more so because I have a copy!
Rosemary
-
Welcome to
(http://www.seniorlearn.org/bookclubs/classicsbookclub/Thanksgivingclassicsbookclub.jpg)
The Classics Book Club, a forum for reading in translation those timeless classics written by ancient authors you always meant to get around to but never have. We've done the Iliad, and we did the Odyssey, but it was in 1996, so it's back up for grabs and what of the Aeneid? Aeschylus? Euripides? Plutarch? Plato?
Cleopatra is all the rage currently, with two new books and a claim her palace in Alexandria has just been found, she's hot. Why? Do what Shakespeare did and read the original sources, a world of incredible fascination and insights awaits.
The floor is now open for nominations! We'll vote January 15 for one week and we'll begin discussing part of the book (which you'll determine first) February 15.
Bring all your background materials, we'll desperately need them, and join us on an unforgettable enriching adventure! Dust off those old moldy books you always intended to read and join our merry band of adventurers in our new venture: The Classics Book Club!
Everyone is welcome!
Discussion Leaders: Joan K (joankraft13@yahoo.com) & ginny (gvinesc@gmail.com )
Nominate through January 14, we'll vote on the 15th-22.
I preferred the Odyssey over the Iliad when I first read them. I was so much more into an adventure story over one with war and love interests when I read them.
-
Well, I do think Horace may have overstated his point. I can think
of things I would sorely miss, quite apart from the comfort of my
belly, chest and feet.
For most of the ancient writers, much of their work is no longer extant.
I assume we would be reading 'selections' in many cases.
-
Babi- Perhaps translated, in today's vernacular, Horace's comfort or belly, chest and feet meant:
to have a full stomach (enough to eat), someone to love would be the comfort of the chest (heart) and the freedom to travel at will (feet).
I guess I wouldn't make a very good philospher now, would I, although I've supposed many thoughts over a glass of wine. :D
-
PatH - did you just dredge that Iliad quote on knees out of your head?
Yes, I did. When we read Iliad on the old site, I was highly amused by it, and thought it would make a good motto for me. There aren't many lines I could come up with like that.
-
" it's HOT - Xmas Day was 40 Celsius which translates as about 104F"
Just finished a Christmas mystery set in Australia (Kerry Greenwood) where the character hates Christmas because of the heat. Maybe South of the equater, you could celebrate it on june 25. It's not Christ's real birthday anyway, but a celebration of the Winter Solstice.
Just last night saw a rebroadcast of the Perth air races, and was thinking of you, Gum. Too bad they show so little of the city.
-
PatH - I've got the same sort of knees too -
JoanK - Yes Christmas feasting should be in wintertime - Hotels and restaurants here feature special traditional Christmas menus during July - it's very popular with clubs, societies and workplace social groups. I can't say how many Christmas in July lunches and dinners I've been to over the years. But it's just not the same somehow.
Did you see anything of the dismal performance put on by the Australian cricketers in the Boxing Day Match for the Ashes. My sons are weeping. I say bring back Shane Warne.
-
Oh, I like your version, ALF. Sounds like good philosophy to me. :)
-
:D Babi, particularly at this time of the year, my heart and belly are full and I'm traveling back to Florida tomorrow. (Not by my feet however.)
-
PatH, amazing. We should all tip our lids to you. And Gum, I'm really impressed with your son, reading the classics before he starts his day. How much can be accomplished if one doesn't fritter.
Yes, no, this is not the site for recipes, but as we round out the holiday season, it seems appropriate to include at least one food eaten by the ancients. In this article our local food guru, Dr. Tom Harte, describes some dietary habits from the Odyssey that are still alive today. (It's an August article, but I came across it while reading about chestnuts.)
Greek Cheese (http://www.semissourian.com/story/1655700.html)
Frybabe, I'm with you -- will let the rest decide on the selection. My only background in the classics is what I've learned in Latin class.
-
Here is a link to the Loeb Classic Library which I believe is the same as the Harvard Classic Library
http://www.hup.harvard.edu/collection.php?cpk=1031
-
as this is the pre-classic book discussion is it appropriate to ask opinions on buying a 'nook' or 'kindle' or ??--I would ideally like something of this nature that has the ability to include notes and ability to underline/highlight passages ...I was not interested in one of these till I noted all the free books downloadable thru Gutenberg & other sites ...
--not having any children consequently grandchildren, have to be able to manage this new gadget on my own, so hopefully the learning curve is not too complicated
I can go to another board if that is necessary for further comments on my concern...having heard some of you talk about your e-books it sounds like a wonderful device
--might also cut down on some of the weight in our RV as I started out with 10-12 books, but by now must have over 30...sigh ...such is the dilemma of a book addict
Deb
-
pedln - Thanks for the Feta story. On my first visit to Greece, way back in '82, I used to have feta (Greek salad); a smal loaf of Greek bread; a piece of freshly caught grilled fish;and a small carafe of Macedonian red wine for lunch. I stayed on one island, Samos, which is a very short distance from Turkey. I would gaze across the water and feel the sun on my shoulders. It was there that I first started translating Constantinos Cavafis, my favourite Greek poet. I was happier then than I had ever been. I had found my true love - Greece. Thanks for reminding me, pedln.
-
roshanarose, ambience is everything, isn’t it. You paint a lovely picture of your lunch in Greece.
Bookad, Deb – I’m a relatively new Kindle3 owner who has done nothing more than explore the books that Amazon has available, download some of them (magically, by wireless), and then read them. The learning curve for that is pretty much nil.
Now, if you want to add notes, etc. or skip around from one section to another, highlight phrases, that sort of thing, you will probably need to read a bit in the ebook guide. I h ad to, and I’m not really comfortable with those procedures yet. BUT – just yesterday I downloaded the Kindle app for my computer and without any effort on my part, all the books from my Kindle show up on the PC. Just playing around, I opened one already read, and found out that you can highlight a phrase just as you would any phrase in a WORD or Notepad essay.
So, yes, there is a learning curve, but it should only enhance your use and not deter your ability to read from your ebook as soon as you receive it. I love mine, and carry it in a sleeve in my purse, so it’s always available.
-
I love feta cheese, PEDLN. Unfortunately my daughter doesn't, so anytime I
buy some I have to eat it all myself. I consider it an indulgence...a happy one.
-
Pedin--thank you for the your thoughts on e-books--have been searching around the net and on some message boards
and found something disturbing re; perhaps not being able to use all its features while in Canada...so going to do some more
research before I invest in one.....I thought it would be a wonderful thing to have though especially as a lot of the classics are
published on 'gutenberg' web stand libraries have free 2-4 week download of many books...this would certainly reduce the amount of books we currently are carrying in our RV because of me...my husband is not really an avid reader
thanks again
Deb
-
I spent last evening in the Roman Empire! My PBS station (KOCE) had three programs back to back about the Romans.
The first was a segment of their regular archeological program (Secrets of the Dead). It dealt with the mystery of the skeletons of 44 beheaded Romam soldiers that were unearthed in Kent, England, and dated around 200 AD. Who had beheaded them and why? Their proposed answer dealt with the palace politics of the time -- the current Roman Emporor was in Kent organizing raids across Hadrians Wall to subdue the Caladonians. (Interestingly, he had to learn the same lesson we relearned in Vietnam -- that a regular army can't deal with guerilla warfare). When he died, his successor killed anyone who had opposed him, and the theory is that these soldiers had done so in some way.
More later.
-
The second program was a BBC program called "The Coliseum". I gave some information on the building of the coliseum, but the main focus was on the lifeof a real gladiator who faught in the opening games of the coliseum in 80 AD. They didn't make clear whether the biography they gave was known or given as a typical gladiator. I assume the latter, except for the fight itself, which is the only such fight that was descibed in detail and has come down to us.
It didn't hurt that the actor who played the gladiator is a real hunk. (Classical study is not all bookish).
-
The third program was the last day of Pompaii (79 AD). They dramatized the last hours of the people whose remains had been found. It was too hairy for me, waiting for all these people to die, and I turned it off.
-
It didn't hurt that the actor who played the gladiator is a real hunk. (Classical study is not all bookish).
That's the living truth. :) I myself was quite taken by the actor Mark Noble who played Gaius Suetonius Paulinus in the History Channel's production of Warrior Queen Boudica , he was something else! Just ate the screen up. Here's a scene I can show without fear of being attacked by the copyright police because it's on Youtube. Here you can see him exhorting his 10,000 troops who are surrounded by (depending on whose history you read) either 100,000 or 250,000 (Dio) angry Britons: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wwyKx8cwydM&feature=related
I mean the man was so good he actually had the audience feeling sympathetic to him and not Boudicca.
I wish those had been on here, Joan K! I think the one on the Colosseum is on Youtube, there's a ton of documentaries pirated there. There's also a 1 hour 48 minutes Yale Courses lecture on the same subject. Sounds like your PBS station is having a Roman Holiday!! The Romans are SOOO hot right now. There's a new Pompeii Exhibit opening on Times Square in NYC this March, when the Tut goes down.
Bookad, that seems a fantastic option for reading the Gutenberg titles, you could carry an entire library in your RV! Let us know about the Canada restrictions. I think once you've got the book on (I have an ITouch) it's on, no matter where you are, is that right, Nookers, Kindlers, and Ipaders? Regardless of the country?
ALF! (Andrea) is that YOU? Welcome, welcome! So glad to see you, I hope this means you will join us, I know you have experience in reading the Great Books. I am quite excited to see what we'll nominate.
Pedln that is a super Feta Cheese page and, not incidentally, a great Greek salad recipe, thank you!
Thank you Barbara for the Loeb, nothing quite like them. Don't they look appealing tho in their holiday colors, and so MANY!
Hahaha, PatH, LOVE that quote!
Me too, Gum, I seem to have the BEST ideas early in the morning but if I don't write them down, forget it. hahaha I'm sooo impressed with your son's programme of reading the Classics and I hope we can begin to imitate it here with our hardy band of adventurers!
Well the hour is almost upon us, tomorrow is New Year's Eve, how exciting to be anticipating a year full of great reading AND most importantly, discussing! I can't wait. I picture you all with your herring and sour cream New Year's Eve treats, happily perusing the pages of all those books you hoped to get to, NOW we will!!!
Hopefully you'll nominate a book, and tell us why you think it might be interesting to read. Tell us something about it (other than it's gathering moss on my shelves hahaha)...look the book up and see what seems interesting about it. I hope we can get a real conversation going here on the pros and cons of our nominees.
AND I am super excited because today brought a new book in the mail I have longed to see ever since I heard about it, it's new, it's called The Classical Tradition. I don't know if it will address anything we'll take up here, and it's possible it won't, but I read at random this afternoon when it came, about the sirens---the page just happened to fall on it, to give an idea of the entries, it's kind of an encyclopedia I guess.
It's about, first, the subject in antiquity, who mentioned it, etc., who enlarged on it, etc., and then through the ages until today. Naturally they can't cover every subject, but the sirens were most interesting. For instance they explained when the sirens lost the bodies of birds which Odysseus (Ulysses) saw in the Odyssey, (http://www.seniorlearn.org/latin/ulysses_penelope/Odysseysrirensmast300.jpg) but which confusingly seem to become more mermaid like in art and literature, and all sorts of things. I really enjoyed that ONE entry, which took me forever to read; the book is almost 1,100 gigantic pages. (I mean, come on, we think of "sirens" as alluring, how alluring is this one?) hahaha, maybe if you're an ornithologist? :) (http://seniorlearn.org/latin/ulysses_penelope/Odysse222ussirencall.jpg) But it wasn't, apparently, the physicality. It's like having an annotated voice in your head or something. Highly recommended!
This is SO exciting, I can't wait! My own list of unread works is gigantic and I hope with this great group assembled to have a wonderful experience at last!
Everyone is welcome!
-
JoanK - Thanks for this interesting snippet about the headless Roman soldiers. A long time ago I went to a lecture about this very topic. The lecturer said it had a lot to do with Celtic customs.
I have a wee book called "A Beginner's Guide to the Timeless Wisdom of the Celts". As to be expected the book does not go into much detail, just enough to whet the appetite. I will quote the entry entitled "The cult of the head"
The head had special significance for the Celts, who believed it contained the soul. Warriors cut off the heads of their enemies, replaced the brains with a lime mixture or preserved the heads with oil and then displayed them as trophies. Numerous carvings of heads were used to decorate doorways and the hallways of ancient sanctuaries. The sacred skull was a feature of the cult of the dead or of the blessed ancestors.
The above quote is only part of the explanation. I am sure a search for the cult of the head would reveal more information.
I spent last evening in the Roman Empire! My PBS station (KOCE) had three programs back to back about the Romans.
The first was a segment of their regular archeological program (Secrets of the Dead). It dealt with the mystery of the skeletons of 44 beheaded Romam soldiers that were unearthed in Kent, England, and dated around 200 AD. Who had beheaded them and why? Their proposed answer dealt with the palace politics of the time -- the current Roman Emporor was in Kent organizing raids across Hadrians Wall to subdue the Caladonians. (Interestingly, he had to learn the same lesson we relearned in Vietnam -- that a regular army can't deal with guerilla warfare). When he died, his successor killed anyone who had opposed him, and the theory is that these soldiers had done so in some way.
More later.
-
The Celtic practice of decapitating heads and displaying them continued in England for centuries...
The following relates to London Bridge - (alas! its from Wikipedia)
The Northern Gate, the New Stone Gate, was replaced by Nonsuch House in 1577. The southern gatehouse, the Stone Gateway, became the scene of one of London's most notorious sights: a display of the severed heads of traitors, impaled on pikes[1] and dipped in tar to preserve them against the elements. The head of William Wallace was the first to appear on the gate, in 1305, starting a tradition that was to continue for another 355 years. Other famous heads on pikes included those of Jack Cade in 1450, Thomas More in 1535, Bishop John Fisher in the same year, and Thomas Cromwell in 1540. In 1598 a German visitor to London Paul Hentzner counted over 30 heads on the bridge[8]:
“ On the south is a bridge of stone eight hundred feet in length, of wonderful work; it is supported upon twenty piers of square stone, sixty feet high and thirty broad, joined by arches of about twenty feet diameter. The whole is covered on each side with houses so disposed as to have the appearance of a continued street, not at all of a bridge.
Upon this is built a tower, on whose top the heads of such as have been executed for high treason are placed on iron spikes: we counted above thirty..
”
The practice was finally stopped in 1660, following the Restoration of King Charles II.
Ginny: Yep - I'd like to emulate my son's practice of regular reading from the classics - but early morning is just no good for me or more accurately, I'm just too lazy. BTW you can forget the herrings and sour cream - I'll be having gorgeous prawns from the barbeque...
-
GINNY, I'm glad you identified Mark Noble. From what I could see of the face within the helmet, I could have mistaken him for Patrick Stewart. Since he referred to 'small numbers' of his army, I guess they were going with the '100,000' historian.
My opinion of King Charles II just went up markedly. I had no idea the
display of heads was still going on up to 1660. I suppose my 'picture' of
Charles II was influenced by this little witticism, from a courtier named
Wilmot:
We have a pretty witty King,
whose word no man relies on;
He never said a foolish thing,
And never did a wise one.
To which Charles is reputed to have replied "that the matter was easily
accounted for: For that his discourse was his own, his actions were the
ministry's." The man did have a quick wit.
-
What? Prawns on the barbie? Herring in sour cream tonight, mince pie tomorrow, good luck everywhere, (actually mince pie every day of the 12 Days of Christmas and at the end you are 800 lbs but very lucky.) hahaha
Babi, I have to say I'm a fan:(http://www.seniorlearn.org/latin/caesar/CaesarBoudicaS.jpg) The man just runs away with the movie. The scene shown on youtube is not his best but I love his Latin.
No the Roman numbers of 10,000 are considered accurate, the other numbers are up for grabs, like all recountings in battle of the Romans, the numbers of the enemy may be exaggerated. The point is there were a LOT of them and the Romans were overwhelmed and trapped. Good, you may say?
The interesting thing about Boudicca, and you can see it here in the fascinating talk of the heads thing, thank you Roshannarose, Gum, and Babi, is the Celts themselves apparently were no saints, either: a warrior nation, who, lacking an enemy, fought amongst themselves. Boudicca and her daughters herself, if you read beyond the exciting Warrior Queen thing, actually took such revenge on helpless women who had nothing to do with the rape of her daughters as to make you sick for a week. I would not read it, if you are impressionable, you'll have nightmares for a long time. Nothing.... seems as easy to understand or clear cut as it would seem on the face of it, you have to dig deep, and that's what we hope we can add to our discussion here, or what I hope for, some depth of understanding; between all of you we can suss out the backgrounds, and understand, I hope, some of these books, in ways we would not, alone, for a memorable and exciting time. A useful and productive use of time. I can't wait!
The chart is in the heading, waiting. I can't wait to come in and see what you want to read, and most importantly, WHY. We can only choose one to start, let's discuss the contenders, be our own Oscar Judging committee!
Every member of the group here will bring something to the table unique to him or her, we hope to have a veritable smorgasbord of ideas to bounce off of in the New Year!~
What's better than a truly GOOD book, one which has stood the test of the ages, unless it's a great bunch of intelligent people to discuss it WITH? Fun, fun FUN in the New Year!
Everyone is more than welcome!
-
Re Mark Noble - he is, as my father used to say (although not about men, a good sort.
Ginny - Do you mean us to fill in the table at the top of the page? It wouldn't work for me when I tried to enter the information.
"The Odyssey" Homer is my pic.
-
I'm going to nominate two books here and assume the clever tecs will
transfer them to the grid. I'm nominating "Plutarch's 'Lives' " and "The Meditations of Marcus Aurelius".
-
Yahoo and Happy New Year!! No we'll just post our nominations here! Now why the Odyssey over all the hundreds of others? I'll put it up now, our first nomination of 2011!!
Let's discuss! It would be so exciting to me to do the Odyssey, we first did it in 1996, in fact, it was our first Great Books on SeniorNet, so much has happened in the last ...gosh, is it....it can't be....15 years? But we're a whole different bunch now.
AND in looking up the sirens I just found the most incredible site on artworks centering on the Odyssey, so if we were to choose that one (we'll vote January 15-22), we won't lack for artistic illustrations, and I'm sure you all can find even more! In fact, there are tons of sites on the art of anything we'd choose, really. A rich feast!
What commends you to the Odyssey? (Anybody here drive a.. is it Honda Odyssey?)
PS, I looked it up, does Fagles have a new translation as of November 10, 2010? See this link which I'm trying to put in the heading:
The Odyssey (http://www.amazon.com/Odyssey-Homer/dp/1936041413/ref=sr_1_3?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1293891046&sr=1-3)
YAHOO!
-
OH and Happy New Year, Babi, with two great new nominations, thank you! Plutarch's Lives and the Meditations of Marcus Aurelius, why those two, tell us what you think might be interesting about either? It's amazing how many people are now reading Marcus Aurelius and how many have not read Plutarch, up they go!
What interests you about both of them?
-
Oh my word, I tell you what let's do? If nominating, will you please supply a review or a line or two anyway, (and this is new, and we will have to tweak it as we go to suit ourselves) because the reviews are breathtaking and make you want to rush right out and get a copy.
For instance on the Odyssey: Robert Fagles's translation is a jaw-droppingly beautiful rendering of Homer's Odyssey, the most accessible and enthralling epic of classical Greece. Fagles captures the rapid and direct language of the original Greek, while telling the story of Odysseus in lyrics that ring with a clear, energetic voice. The story itself has never seemed more dynamic, the action more compelling, nor the descriptions so brilliant in detail. It is often said that every age demands its own translation of the classics. Fagles's work is a triumph because he has not merely provided a contemporary version of Homer's classic poem, but has located the right language for the timeless character of this great tale. Fagles brings the Odyssey so near, one wonders if the Hollywood adaption can be far behind. This is a terrific book. -(Amazon.com review)
On Marcus Aurelius: (which, note, has an annotated edition). THOSE would be most useful, if any of you have them. We could really use them. With facing-page commentary that explains the texts for you, Russell McNeil, PhD, guides you through key passages from Aurelius's Meditations, comprised of the emperor's collected personal journal entries, to uncover the startlingly modern relevance his words have today. From devotion to family and duty to country, to a near-prophetic view of the natural world that aligns with modern physics, Aurelius's words speak as potently today as they did two millennia ago.
Now you can discover the tenderness, intelligence and honesty of Aurelius's writings with no previous background in philosophy or the classics. This SkyLight Illuminations edition offers insightful and engaging commentary that explains the historical background of Stoicism, as well as the ways this ancient philosophical system can offer psychological and spiritual insight into your contemporary life. You will be encouraged to explore and challenge Aurelius's ideas of what makes a fulfilling life--and in so doing you may discover new ways of perceiving happiness.
(Amazon review)
On Plutarch: Plutarch's Lives lives! This is an astonishing volume. Who would have expected a "page turner" out of a tome written in the 2nd century A.D.? So much for cultural and temporal hubris--this is magnificent reading.
(Amazon review).
Wow!~ Already three of the brightest and best and I hope many more to come. We won't waste a minute if we read any of these!
Bring 'em on, bring us a review too so we can whet our appetites. Wow! I want to read all three right now, because, don't you see, with THIS group it will be such an exciting journey!
Bring 'em on!! :)
-
Ginny- I have laughed for 10 minutes over your comments. You are funny!
Ornithologists? Mermaids? You need help girl.
However, I do sort of like the Noble guy. My brain is a still abit fuzzy from all of the festivities last evening. Yep, i had the herring and a ga-zillion crab legs. OK I may have sported a glass or 2-3-4 of wine.
-
wow Ginny
your excitement makes me wonder why with all the reading I have done I never pursued any classics, I only went to nursing school, never university where the English courses might have opened that door for me
when I was in Corpus Christi the second hand book store classic section I bought 2 books, not even sure if they were what was intended in this group but here goes (please do not take these as any suggestions, they are only for my own interest in trying to start somewhere--my intent is to follow the groups suggestions since you guys sound like you certainly have a background in this arena)
book 1: Philosophical Classics, the thinking person's guide to the great philosophical books
edited by James M. Russell
the intent of this book is only an introduction to the philosophical classics
and to answer ??why I would want to read this book(of the books discussed )[/i]
book 2: Nietzsche by Laurence Gane
(this is a graphic nonfiction book--have never had an interest in this format before)
concern am I anywhere close to what the classics entail??
anyway Happy New Year Everyone
Deb
-
I would like to do Plutarch because Shakespeare seems to have used him so much. The Odyssey, however, would also be great. In fact, I will happily do whatever is recommended!
Rosemary
-
Andrea, hahaha.
Bookad, what interesting books, I'd like to hear more about the graphic Nietzsche, have not heard of either.
I am so glad you brought this up because you've actually gotten to the true heart of the thing.
Of course "classic books" covers a lot of territory, the Western Canon for instance which includes authors much more recent than our old guys.
What we're going to do here, at least at first, is limit our nominations and reading to the Ancients in Translation, which as we've noted is standard college fare, usually there's one course in Greek Literature in Translation and one in Latin Literature in Translation in any Liberal Arts course, (the theory being it's a shame to miss them if you can't read the original), and we'll read books by the ancients in translation, so no previous knowledge is required.
Then when we READ them, our task will be to apply what they say to us today and here is where your books will be invaluable, I mean Aurelius alone if we choose him, his Stoic philosophy. I am an imbecile on philosophy. I have always found it most difficult, and the one required course I took in it almost incomprehensible.
I mean look at Babi and Alf on the Horace. I took him literally! I thought he meant if you can eat without your stomach bleeding and your heart will allow you to get up from your chair, and your feet will allow you to walk, you're rich. But look at what they made of it! Philosophy! Which type of philosophy did each espouse? I don't know!
I just read Plutarch on the death of Cato the Younger and again, the PHILOSOPHY he had was pretty stunning, where did he get that? It's the IDEAS each of these ancient books will espouse we'll really want to talk about: is it ours today?
Golly if you've got those two books you'll be an invaluable resource, I remember (I am ashamed to say it) nothing of Nietzsche, but if we could incorporate him and your first book into the 2,000 year old philosophies we'll find, we'll be in hog heaven!
I find philosophy quite difficult and we would ALL be the richer for your sharing what's in those books (start reading!) hahaha
Hopefully whatever book we start with will seem as fresh to us as 2011, but several things will need explanations: the historical background, the references, the philosophy (what WAS a Stoic and how does that apply in 2011) the mythology, the art, and what other writers made of it, it's endless.
I hope this answers, however badly, your excellent questions. I have to go out for a bit but everybody nominate on, your nominations will appear in the heading. Initially we'll limit our nominations to those authors of antiquity but anything you have got which bears on any aspect of the subject will be sorely needed: it will be a group project, beginning to end.
Everyone is welcome!
-
Rosemary, a good point on Plutarch. We could, for instance, choose the sections Shakespeare wrote about, say, Coriolanus, or Julius Caesar, or Antony and Cleopatra, or Brutus, or the death of Pompey. We can't read Plutarch straight thru, but we can pick and choose.
One of the reviewers on Amazon suggests Plutarch on Crassus, as a starting point: surely a man for our own times. What IS it about a man who seems to have everything but who wants to be something else? The actor or rock star who admires the athlete? The athlete who wants to be a rock star? What IS it that drives a man to want something he does not have or to be something he is not?
Crassus, the richest man in the Roman Empire, who was also of the highest political office, (think the so called First Triumvirate), but who WANTED to be a victorious general in battle. Had himself made a suit of golden armor. His story beats most of those you'll read today, you'll never forget it, and it is real.
Most of the great stories are IN Plutarch.
We can also compare what Shakespeare did with it, if we liked. It will all be up to you all!
-
Great suggestions and so whatever is chosen I will be delighted - but I must throw in for considerations "Antigone" I have not read it but I understand the tragedy is built around a change of events that was out of her hands and imagination - a surprise that floored her - I would like to discover how thousands of year ago a woman reacts and acts toward the shock and how her experience was talked about and handled...
-
Ginny- don't be silly, everyday you philosophize! It is an attitude, a common sense approach that can be pondered- thought about, talked about, mussed over. Many times it is profound, other times simple reasoning. You are a sophist and don't know it.
-
Oh another good one, thank you Barbara! Interesting to me is that Amazon wanted to offer it in conjunction with Things Fall Apart by Chinua Achebe. THAT says something about how relevant the theme is today!
Here are two reviews of Antigone from Amazon:
To make this quintessential Greek drama more accessible to the modern reader, this Prestwick House Literary Touchstone Edition™ includes a glossary of difficult terms, a list of vocabulary words, and convenient sidebar notes. By providing these, it is our intention that readers will more fully enjoy the beauty, wisdom, and intent of the play. The curse placed on Oedipus lingers and haunts a younger generation in this new and brilliant translation of Sophocles’ classic drama. The daughter of Oedipus and Jocasta, Antigone is an unconventional heroine who pits her beliefs against the King of Thebes in a bloody test of wills that leaves few unharmed. Emotions fly as she challenges the king for the right to bury her own brother. Determined but doomed, Antigone shows her inner strength throughout the play. Antigone raises issues of law and morality that are just as relevant today as they were more than two thousand years ago. Whether this is your first reading or your twentieth, Antigone will move you as few pieces of literature can.
I bought this book for my 10th grade English students to read. The language is understandable, but offers some challenging words to use for vocabulary purposes. The sidebar information is informative and helpful. The introductory information about the play itself, Greek mythology and Greek tragedy gives the students good background information. The book explains what a "classic" is and why classics are important. Finally, it gives the students what themes and conflicts to look for.
Andrea, a sophist? I'll look that one up! Maybe there's a Philosophical Index we can take after our first read which will tell us which philosophy we espouse, that would be fun. :)
This is going to be fascinating, all around.
Everyone is welcome!
-
WOW! I'm getting excited too! All of these reviews sound so great. I'm not going to vote for the Odyssy, only because I've already read it, and I'm up for something new. But if it's chosen, that will be great, too.
ROSE: the two different explanations of the beheaded Roman soldiers are interesting. I'll bet that Roman scholars think the Romans did it and Celtic scholars think the Celts did it. ;)
-
I learned in my "Socrates Cafe" group that philosophy is not only for the college graduate student or the "highly intellectual" people, it is the love and pursuit of wisdom by intellectual means and self discipline (I'm still working on that one.)
Truly, we do it here all of the time. We discuss our thoughts openly and honestly with one another, questioning assumptions in a discussion without fear of being attacked because our opinion my be different. That's philosophy and you, Ginny are an A student.
-
Socrates cafe? Tell us about that.
-
JoanK- It is a group who meets twice a month. Socrates Cafe, technically, is a book written by Chris Phillips,, author and co-founder of the Society for philosophical Inquiry. He developed the idea of Socrates Cafe to do as Socrates did, bring philosophy to the everyday people who seem to know a lot about everything. We politely sit and discuss a plethora of subjects and usually wind up asking more questions than opinionating. (Is that a word?)
-
Welcome to
(http://www.seniorlearn.org/bookclubs/classicsbookclub/Thanksgivingclassicsbookclub.jpg)
The Classics Book Club, a forum for reading in translation those timeless classics written by ancient authors you always meant to get around to but never have. We've done the Iliad, and we did the Odyssey, but it was in 1996, so it's back up for grabs and what of the Aeneid? Aeschylus? Euripides? Plutarch? Plato?
Cleopatra is all the rage currently, with two new books and a claim her palace in Alexandria has just been found, she's hot. Why? Do what Shakespeare did and read the original sources, a world of incredible fascination and insights awaits.
The floor is now open for nominations! We'll vote January 15 for one week and we'll begin discussing part of the book (which you'll determine first) February 15.
Bring all your background materials, we'll desperately need them, and join us on an unforgettable enriching adventure! Dust off those old moldy books you always intended to read and join our merry band of adventurers in our new venture: The Classics Book Club!
Everyone is welcome!
Discussion Leaders: Joan K (joankraft13@yahoo.com) & ginny (gvinesc@gmail.com )
Nominate through January 14, we'll vote on the 15th-22.
ALF, Ginny et al
Although I know a bit about Odysseus through the stories of Circe, Cyclops, Calypso and Nausicaa, and his adventures through reading Greek Mythology, I have never actually read "The Odyssey" in its entirety. I look forward so much to doing so.
We have based so much of our lives it seems on classical thought. The Milesian philosophers are particular favourites of mine. They started with the basics of freedom of thought; they worked with what they could see and feel in the universe. . My favourite "modern" philosopher is Bertrand Russell, although I haven't made my way through all Western Philosophy (amen to that)in order to compare him to others.
I often find that academics and quasi-academics have immersed themselves in philosophy to the extent that they have no "people skills" and are quite loopy. For example, one sweet old professor, used to be found wandering along the main street carrying his cup and saucer of tea; and in the philosophy department at my University all the academic staff were "born agains". Not knocking their beliefs, but their take on the Greeks was very patronising; it was quite weird. They despised Bertrand Russell, as he had proclaimed himself an atheist. Let's just say that those academics did not have the necessary "open mindedness" that is required to teach any subject.
So - let's embark on our own voyage "η οδύσσεια" MG; "η οδυσσεία" ΑG. Can you spot the difference between the Modern Greek (MG) and the Ancient Greek (AG)?
-
I would like to read The Aeneid mainly because I have two translations which have been on my shelf for years. Have read both the Odyssey and the Iliad on my own so reading them again would greatly increase my knowlege of them. The Meditations are a zillion sayings about how to live your life. Think they would be better if perhaps a couple could be posted each week to think about. "How many with whom I came into the world are already gone out of it." "People exist for one another. Teach them then or bear with them."
-
Happy New Year to Everyone!!
I'm very enthusiastic about reading sections of Plutarch! What a good idea.
I also will not vote for the Odessey because I've already read it more than once. Something new to me would be better!
Hi, amica mea, Sally (Kidsal) ~ The only reason I'd vote not to read the Aeneid is that I had hoped we would read some of it in our Latin class, unless it's too difficult?
I would think the Iliad will not be listed in the nominations because several years ago in SeniorNet it was discussed, with our Ginny as DL!
-
Oh good nomination, Sally, how can we not have the Aeneid on our roster of nominated first books and great discussing?
I love the discussion of the various books already, thank you, Mippy and Sally. Mippy, yes of course your class could read the Aeneid now. Anybody who can read Ovid can read Vergil.
For some reason the Aeneid scares me to death to even contemplate it as a translation book club choice: it's long, political, and...but....but..... interesting, in its way. I would say read the reviews on Amazon or B&N as to how the Aeneid compares to the Odyssey and the Iliad, both of which you'd want to possibly be familiar with before reading it, since it so constantly refers to them. Yet Aeneas is an interesting character, and of course you've got Dido there, and of course with him, the Iliad and the Odyssey, you also do get bits of the Trojan War; maybe this will be a time to stretch all our horizons a little, mine included.
Yes we did do the Iliad, not so long ago, and we did it with Dr. Lombardo, and Dr. Stone, as time permitted, reading Dr. Lombardo's translation; that is, he agreed to answer questions. I had just taken a class in it using his translation with Dr. Stone, and was in awe of Lombardo and what he did. And still am. His Aeneid has come out since then; his publisher actually notified us of it; and it was immediately eclipsed by the Fagles which came out about the same time. It would be interesting to compare them. If anybody has the Fagles, that is, if we decide to read the Aeneid in our vote. In fact he has very few reviews of it on Amazon.
Here are three: All three are Amazon reviews or descriptions and pertain to the Lombardo Aeneid.
No other translator comes close to Lombardo at capturing the pace and power of the poem. . . . --Joseph Farrell, Professor of Classical Studies and Associate Dean for Arts and Letters, University of Pennsylvania
.... With characteristic virtuosity, he delivers a rendering of the Aeneid as compelling as his groundbreaking translations of the Iliad and the Odyssey, yet one that—like the Aeneid itself—conveys a unique epic sensibility and a haunting artistry all its own.
W. R. Johnson Introduction makes an ideal companion to the translation, offering brilliant insight into the legend of Aeneas; the contrasting roles of the gods, fate, and fortune in Homeric versus Virgilian epic; the character of Aeneas as both wanderer and warrior; Aeneas' relationship to both his enemy Turnus and his lover Dido; the theme of doomed youths in the epic; and Virgils relationship to the brutal history of Rome that he memorializes in his poem.
A map, a Glossary of Names, a Translator’s Preface, and Suggestions for Further Reading are also included.
I bow to no one in my love of Robert Fitzgerlad's translation of the Aeneid--the standard for the last 25 years. Stanley Lombardo's relavatory [sic] translations, however, nudges the older one aside. Lombardo has a history of actually performing the great poems of antiquity, not at fashionable coffeehouses but on sidewalks, plazas, parks, and other public areas to the accompaniment of drums or music. And let me tell you, these performances capture his audiences--including jaded college students who leave their hacky-sacks and stand mesmerized while the readings go on. This kind of percussive, driven performances carries over into the book form, and similarly to his translations of the Iliad and Odyssey, you feel like you're reading a WWII triller. [sic] That is not to say his translation is ugly or course, [sic] particularly in this most elegant of poems. No, he matches being relentless with being refined to create a story that actually matters--it is a gripping tale that covers the very social, political and moral issues we struggle with today. But the language is so immediate that you can't put it down.
The Aeneid's fortunes have waxed and waned over the centuries, and for a while it was in danger of being relegated to a second-year Latin grammar text. This translation transforms the work and win over a whole new generation of listeners.
Not sure how that reviewer, who says he is an historian and an archaeologist, but who seems to have some issues with spelling, feels that Vergil is second year Latin. Caesar is Latin II, Cicero is Latin III, Vergil is IV. Perhaps he's going on an accelerated Latin course at university; yet he does say "second year Latin grammar text." Ah well.
Somebody else found the translation "And Lombardo's translation, while sometimes more creative than faithful, is very readable."
Oh my, that "faithful," is really a slap. I would doubt sincerely that Lombardo was not faithful, in more than one way, to the Vergil...oooo. Here we may have another academic (anonymous) or a student with a couple of years of Latin under his belt taking on the zen master. This MAY be a case of academic pique, or simply not knowing enough, the sophomore definition.
______________________________________
RoshannaRose, I'll bite, I only see one difference, a dot over the u in the modern Greek, how does that change the pronunciation?
η οδυσσεία
Now what IS this word? Is it Odyssey?
Is this η οδυσσεία an example of a "loan word" in Greek? (Same in the ancient Greek as in the modern, like audio is in Latin and English?) The letters look, with the doubling, like Odyssey? What's the η? Is that an article?
What a great slate already up, and hopefully more to come. Good point on the Meditations, Sally, this is the very type of conversation we hoped we'd do.
When we read the Iliad, we chose one version to read as a group, (Lombardo's) and the other versions to compare, this time I wonder IF we ought to not choose one version for all, and then compare, but each one bring his own? Some of these translations are quite famous in their own right. I mean Book I (of whatever) is Book I, right? We'll need to decide this, and how far to go February 15. So we have lots of decisions to make.
Welcome, All! The floor is now open thru the 14th for your nominations! Is there something you've always heard about but never read written by an ancient you have been curious about?
You've come to the right place! Nominate it here! Everyone is welcome!
-
Ginny, I have both those on my shelf, which is a big plus in their favor. I like
Plutarch because he gives me a glimpse of several different people and their background.
I like Marcus Aurelius because a lot of what he says resonates with me. We have some
opinions/attitudes in common. (It occurs to me that most of those I learned from my
Dad, who as far as I know never read Marcus Aurelius.) My copy is not, alas, annotated.
-
Apuleius - Metamorphoses (or The Golden Ass)
I read an excerpt of this a year or so ago and thought it funny. According to the Wiki entry, it is the only Latin novel to survive in its entirety.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Golden_Ass
I would have suggested Aristotle's Poetics, but it is a short work. Still, it would be nice to read his take on poetry and plays. I know very little about the development, construction and "rules" governing Greek plays and poetry.
-
Two excellent nominations, Frybabe! Thank you! What a slate we're getting up here!
Here are reviews on both, from Amazon.com:
On the Golden Ass:
Apuleius's Golden Ass is a unique, entertaining, and thoroughly readable Latin novel--the only work of fiction in Latin to have survived from antiquity. It tells the story of the hero Lucius, whose curiosity and fascination for sex and magic results in his transformation into an ass. After suffering a series of trials and humiliations, he is ultimately returned to human shape by the kindness of the goddess Isis. Simultaneously a blend of romantic adventure, fable, and religious testament, The Golden Ass is one of the truly seminal works of European literature, of intrinsic interest as a novel in its own right, and one of the earliest examples of the picaresque. This new translation is at once faithful to the meaning of the Latin, while reproducing all the exuberance of the original.
THE GOLDEN ASS by Apulius is not a household title in the list of classics, but it was much better known and more often enjoyed by many of our reading predecessors. In fact, Apulius's Latin "novel" -- a 2nd-century version of the picaresque -- influenced such well-known classical writers as Petrarch, Boccaccio, Cervantes, Spenser, Marlowe, and, of course, that master "borrower" who reinvented so many themes and made them his own, Shakespeare.
THE GOLDEN ASS tells the story of a young rake named Lucius who proves a little too curious about the magic arts and gets turned into an ass for his troubles. After the conversion, Lucius goes through a parade of owners who mistreat him and witnesses all manner of misadventures, sometimes in an active and sometimes in a passive role. The well-known technique of a "story within a story" is also utilized, as Apulius treats us to the story of Cupid and Psyche. It serves as an echo to the main plot, as Psyche similarly pays a price for excessive curiosity. Entertaining and at times ribald, THE GOLDEN ASS can be enjoyed both for its story and for its importance in influencing many classic works to follow, such as THE DECAMERON, DON QUIXOTE, and A MIDSUMMER NIGHT'S DREAM.
And on Poetics:
The original, Aristotle's short study of storytelling, written in the fourth century B.C., is the world's first critical book about the laws of literature. Sure, it's 2400 years old, but Aristotle's discussions--Unity of Plot, Reversal of the Situation, Character--though written in the context of ancient Greek Tragedy, Comedy and Epic Poetry, still apply to our modern literary forms. The book is quite short, and Aristotle illuminates his points with clear examples, making the Poetics perfectly readable, the better to impress people at parties when you say, "Of course, as Aristotle says..."
The "Poetics" contains Aristotle's observations on what elements and characteristics comprised the best tragedies based on the ones he'd presumably seen or read. He divides "poetry," which could be defined as imitations of human experience, into tragedy, comedy, and epic, and explains the differences between these forms, although comedy is not covered in detail and tragedy gets the most treatment. For one thing, tragedy, he states, seeks to imitate the matters of superior people, while comedy seeks to imitate the matters of inferior people.
To Aristotle, the most important constituent of tragedy is plot, and successful plots require that the sequence of events be necessary (required to happen to advance the story logically and rationally) and probable (likely to happen given the circumstances). Any plot that does not feature such a necessary and probable sequence of events is deemed faulty. Reversals and recognitions are plot devices by which tragedy sways emotions, particularly those that induce "pity and fear," as is astonishment, which is the effect produced when the unexpected happens. He discusses the best kinds of tragic plots, the kinds of characters that are required, and how their fortunes should change over the course of the plot for optimum tragic effect.
What a great beginning for us, how will we ever decide? We'll vote January 15-22, but what have we left out?
Everyone is welcome, pull up a chair and let's nominate and discuss!
-
My goodness! what a wealth of nominations already.
I know I'll be happy to vote for any of those already up so I'm not going to suggest any further ones. In any case I was tossing up between Odyssey, Aeneid, Plutarch and Antigone - not necessarily in that order. I've read them before in whole or in part (Plutarch & Aeneid) but only on my own and without the benefit of fellow travellers.
Tonight I rather favour Antigone simply because it is such a superb play and a pinnacle of the tragic form. I fell in love with the play many many years ago and have several translations of it but it's a long time since I've read it so I would really be coming to it with a fresh eye. Apart from being extremely moving, it is a complex play and examines questions pertinent today. Other touching on theOedipus legend etc if we read it I think we'd also be able to explore a little of Aristotle's views on the tragic form in his Poetics as we go along - I'm guessing they're on Gutenberg - which might even, in part at least, kill two birds with one stone. - and Nietschke might get into the act as well with his Birth of Tragedy and there's Lukas Death of Tragedy And then there's all the treatments the play itself has had - adaptations and reworkings -Jean Anouihl used it to attack Petain's Vichy govt. and in more recent times Seamus Heaney did a creative translation. And there's Opera too and ... and... So although it is a play and therefore quite short as a piece of literature it's a very rich seam for us to mine.
The Golden Ass would also be interesting especially for those interested in the beginnings of the novel ... again years since I read it but I still have the old Penguin edition with is now so foxed that the print is almost unreadable to my old eyes.
I'm not keen on Marcus Aurelius - as someone (sorry didn't take note) a thought for the day from him would be great but I tend to weary of a too rich diet of worthwhile precepts.
What to choose?
-
____________________________________
RoshannaRose, I'll bite, I only see one difference, a dot over the u in the modern Greek, how does that change the pronunciation?
η οδυσσεία
Now what IS this word? Is it Odyssey?
Is this η οδυσσεία an example of a "loan word" in Greek? (Same in the ancient Greek as in the modern, like audio is in Latin and English?) The letters look, with the doubling, like Odyssey? What's the η? Is that an article?
Ginny Well spotted. I thought that you would get it. Indeed, the word is Odyssey. The only difference between the two words is the placement of the accent.
So, the Ancient Greek would be pronounced (in Roman script) as ee odYsseia; while the MG would be pronounced ee odusseIa. The η is eta pronounced ee and is the feminine singular definite article. I am not sure what you mean by "loan word" in this context. It is not the same as a Latin word becoming an English word, more a case of the word Odyssey continuing from AG to MG with just a change of accent. There are many, many, nouns; some verbs; adjectives and prepositions that are the same in MG as AG. Why change them?
Thanks for your interest.
-
Ginny - What a silly sausage I am! I woke with a start at 4am this morning and understood what you meant by "loan word" relating to The Odyssey. You meant how a Greek word (Or Latin) can be borrowed by English to mean the same thing. I mistook you meaning from AG to MG. Sorry about that.
I am going to have to look closely at "The Aeneid", as I suspect it might get the nod.
-
What? Ho, no, you're not the sausage, hahahaaaaaaaaaaaa Lemme see now, Latin- English= Greek-Greek...hmmm. Who is the sausage? And yet...I think the conception I had here may not be quite... I really need to find out more.... but I do know one thing... if there's a contest for Sausage Queen, I claim it! (I'm afraid to ask what a sausage is, but I am sure I'm it). hhahaha (Don't be waking up at 4 am, we'll have to start a club, what IS it about 4 am?)
Gum, what a stunning post. I am almost but not quite ashamed to post in the same discussion, but I love the way you expressed that. I just came from a PBS interview with Robert Fagles and it's sort of making me swing back toward the Odyssey: http://www.pbs.org/newshour/bb/entertainment/jan-june97/odyssey_3-3.html
Of the Odyssey he says:
I think in the case of the Odyssey it's a poem that can hit us, strike chords with us at virtually every age, the kind of wild and wooly yarn from childhood. It's a tale of growing up for adolescents. It's a tale of struggle, an epic poem of struggle and success for our middle years, if we're lucky, if the gods are good. And for our later years, it's always a song of eternal return. It's everything to all people. It's something like the autobiography of the race and most everyone's favorite poem.
And a list of what it has influenced would truly take an entire page, right up to the present Honda vehicles and the Coen brothers. When you go from Dante to the Coen brothers you know you have influenced the world. He also says in this interview that you should read it AFTER the Iliad, it's a natural progression.
The interview goes on to say why he decided to do another translation, it's really good and speaks to every translator every time.
BUT... what of Plutarch? I love Plutarch, I love the way he writes. He's like a You Are There in the most incredible moments. Shakepeare, Bacon, Montaigne, Emerson, Milton, Browning, and more... all were influenced heavily by Plutarch as well as artists, other writers and...well here's what the Oxford Companion to Classical Literature says his works,
perhaps more than the work of any other ancient writer, transmitted to Europe knowledge of the moral and historical traditions of the classical world, and influenced immeasurably its ways of thought.
The thing about Plutarch is that nobody reads him and there he sits with these fabulous unforgettable stories, they aren't long, and in his biographies comparing famous men, you can always find something of yourself in them, not always something noble, but you never forget how they are portrayed. Pompey on that nasty little rowboat, with the sorry reception waiting on the shore, trying to make small talk with a soldier he recognized, Cicero fleeing for his life and the crows around his bed, Brutus arguing with Cassius in his tent, Crassus in his golden armor. Antony and Cleopatra. Those are just the Romans and one Egyptian, he's got Greeks and he's got lots of scenes nobody else has.
I love Plutarch and would love to explore the themes in his biographies of men, because I think each one has something every one of us can relate to in 2011. He was a philosopher, also. The OCCL also says that "Plutarch is one of the most attractive and readable of ancient prose authors, writing with charm, geniality, and tact."
But (there's always a but) he's disjointed, he's got lots of small stories, so a person wanting to read a complete work would not, if they read him. Any time you quote him tho, he blows people away. So he belongs up there, it's just a shame he's not more widely read.
But as good as our slate is, and it IS good, we've got room for lots more, what's or who's missing? Do you want to do Ovid? Socrates? Cicero? Aristophanes? Euripides?
Everyone is welcome, and so are your ideas and opinions. Come on in and draw up a chair, and make yourselves at home! :)
-
I just found on my bookshelf two books - Euripides I and Euripides II, The Complete Greek Tragedies. Think I have had them since the 50s. Edited by Richmond Lattimore. Alcestis, The Medea, The Heracleidae, Hippolytus, The Cyclops and Heracles, Iphigenia in Tauris, and Helen. Don't know if they are still in print.
http://ancienthistory.about.com/od/greektheater/a/051210GreekPlays.htm
Site with downloads of Greek plays.
-
H'mm - Yes, which Greek play to actually nominate is quite a puzzle - We haven't mentioned Aeschylus yet - I have his Agamemnon translated by Richard Lattimore which is part of the Oresteia trilogy - the others are The Libation Bearers and The Eumenides He is also credited with having written Prometheus Bound but the authorship is somewhat disputed-
And what about the other plays in Sophocles' Theban trilogy - Oedipus The King, and Oedipus at Colunnus...
Any of these including those by Euripides would give us quite a workout.
Maybe we need a board just for the Greek plays :D :D I'm joking Ginny, I'm joking!
-
I was probably too young and naive when I first read "The Golden Ass", but what the reviewer calls 'ribald' struck me as shocking. If I read it today, after all Hollywood has seen fit to film, it would likely seem mild.
"tragedy, he states, seeks to imitate the matters of superior people, while comedy seeks to imitate the matters of inferior people."
This comment from the review of Aristotle's Poetics
brought back to me a scene from a Dickens novel (don't recall which one)
that truly angered me at the time. A lady is mourning the loss of her son.
The leading character mentions to her (as best I recall) that a fisherman lost his daughter in the attempt to save him. She waves this away with
the comment that, of course, those classes of people don't feel things the
way genteel people do. Grrr!!
-
Hi Babi - yes, the Greeks went along with the idea that only the upper echelon or superior beings could know tragedy - a case of 'the bigger they are the harder they fall'
It is an idea that has long been perpetrated by writers and their audiences alike though from time to time some of the great playwrights have written to the contrary by placing the ordinary man in a situation where the end is inevitable - Anouilh did so in the scenario of WWII Resistance but I'm not sure he really believed it because he drew so heavily on Sophocles. Of course Arthur Miller's Willie Loman and John Proctor are prime examples of the tragic. Arthur Miller's essays on the subject make worthwhile reading for anyone interested in tragedy as a genre.
-
Do you think Richmond and Richard Lattimore are the same person. Seems I did have a translation of plays by Richard Lattimore. Richmond at the time of publication of the above mentioned books was teaching at Bryn Mawr.
-
I believe he is one and the same man. Published under both Richard and Richmond - don't know why.
-
It seems to me we have another decision to make beside which work to read: short versus long. If we read something as long as the Odyssey or Aeneid, it will take several months, and call for persistence and stamina, though reaping great rewards. If we read something shorter, we can cover it in depth in a month or so, then go on to something else, hence get more variety. I don't know which is better, but they're different experiences, and we should think about which we prefer when we vote.
-
GUM, have you told us about your background, while I wasn't listening? You sound so scholarly and knowledgeable about literature, both ancient and modern. I am strictly a dilettante, reading for my own pleasure and with no solid studies in the classics. My only 'philosophy' class, if you can call it that, was a course in Comparative Religions.
I got that book of Marcus Aurelius' off the shelf and looked at it last night. I had totally forgotten it was more than just his meditations. It is "Marcus Aurelius and His Times: the Transition From Paganism to Christianity". In addition to the Meditations, it has chapters from Walter Pater showing Marcus performing his duties on return from war in
the east; another of him at home with his family; and one of his coming across a 2nd century Christian service. I had to stop and read that one last night. Quite moving.
In additin to Aurelius it includes two writings from Lucian and two from Justin Martyr. Riches!!
-
Hi,
This looks so exciting. I have no knowledge to put on the table. I do have a heart desire to learn.
-
What about NEFERTITI? There is a book titled NEFERTITI by MICHELLE MORAN. I've wanted to read it for a long time.
-
HATS!!! Welcome, welcome~! That's all you need! So good to see you again! We were posting together on the Nefertiti book. It sounds wonderful, I have not heard of it. This time we are only reading works by the ancient authors themselves (in translation), but I think I'll look up the Nefertiti because I also have heard of it, and I got a gift certificate for B&N for Christmas!
What wonderful conversations here and ideas! I spent all yesterday thinking about Sally's Agamemnon. I can't get over how surprised he was and aggrieved at his homecoming...one wonders what he expected. Then I looked him up to see if any plays were extant and found one by an English author and it's quite short and very readable. We might do worse in our readings to include something modern or Shakespeare, anyway, depending on the subject, a different take, as it were, when we read the original.
Iphigenia. Such great ideas here.
PatH another real consideration and decision to make. Some of our nominations will take us a long time, months perhaps, and some might take an afternoon. What do you all think? Should we get our feet wet with a short one (the background and allusions alone might make any of them long) so we can have that under our belt (can I mix any more metaphors here? hahaha) or should we go for broke and bet a big one totally complete?.
Which of the huge list of plays do we want to add to the heading now? We could do Euripides's Iphigenia and Aeschylus's Agamemnon as Gum mentions (IF still in print, I'm sure they are), and compare them. Sometimes they take completely different paths, too, on the same subjects.
Babi, very impressive volume, I envy you!
-
Hi, Hats! Good to see you here. Don't worry about feeling your way around some unfamiliar stuff - many of us will be doing just that; after all, that is what the discussion is for!! I know that I'll be reading material that I've had on my top shelves for years and years and been looking for company to read it with.
I took a seminar course in Classical criticism more than half a century ago - still have the basic texts, Aristotle's " Poetics" and his " Rhetoric" but have hardly touched them again in all these years. The Greek plays are up there on that shelf, so are Vergil's and Homer's epics both in Fagles' translations. Seneca and Epictetus are on a more reachable shelf and I do read them in bts and pieces now and then.
"The Golden Ass" has been mentioned - I saw this in the Guardian today:
In this Latin novel, Lucius rubs himself with a stolen ointment which he believes will turn him into an owl. Instead, due to a mix-up with the magic ointments, he finds himself becoming a donkey. In his subsequent life as a beast of burden he is subjected to various abuses and indignities including beatings, threats of castration and bestiality, before the goddess Isis intervenes and brings about his transformation back into a man. Despite all this, the tone of the book, in Robert Graves' translation at least, is surprisingly light-hearted.
Sounds a bit slap-sticky, doesn't it! I think I'd prefer The Aeneid or the Odyssey!!
-
HI HATS. Great to see you hear!
I remember being blown away by Agamnon years ago. It's got the only greek quote I can remember: "Man is born to trouble as the sparks fly upward." And not liking Aesculus (Oh, stop whining already!). But I could have the opposite reaction today.
-
HATS - great to see you again. This is going to be a great read no matter what we choose. Can't wait!
JoanK That quote from Agamemnon just about encapsulates all of Greek tragedy - maybe you'd like Aeschylus better if you read a different translations - it can make the world of difference.
Babi Thanks for your kind words - methinks signs of a misspent youth are showing. - I just like to read - I tried to read it all until I realised it was an impossibility - by then I was in pretty deep in some areas.
-
I tried to read it all until I realized it was an impossibility
Sounds like me when I was younger. I read every word of every magazine I got (even sports) because I was afraid (?) I would miss something. I don't much read magazines anymore. There only a few books I never finished, one recently; it got so tedious.
-
That 'man is born to trouble..etc..." can be found in the Book of Job in the Bible. Is it actually also in Agamemnon? I've always been of the opinion that Job was actually written after the Babylonian captivity, for
several reasons. I would be most interested to confirm that the author
must have been familiar with 'Agamemnon'.
-
Babi - man born to trouble - can't really help you there. The concept is certainly present in many Greek writings especially the tragedies and it's there in Homer as well. I'm sure the Odyssey refers to Agamemnon in those general terms - so the idea has been around for quite some time. Who knows whether the words are the same or are the creative work of the translator who may also be informed by his reading of the Bible - one would need to read the original Greek to satisfy oneself.
Sorry I can't turn up a quotation for you - it's quite a while since I read the Greeks and my old notes are in a very sorry state - but thinking about it is leading me right back to considering Odyssey as our first venture. I know it will take quite a long time to work through it but the rewards will be great. I read a couple of pages of it last night and no matter where I opened it and started to read I was caught up in the story in just a few lines. I think it's going to get my vote -
-
My only problem with the Odyssey, GUM, is that it is one of the
few nominated that I've already read...tho' it was a long while ago.
I'd like to try something new (to me, that is).
As best I can gather from the dates, the formal end of the Babylonian
exile pre-dates Agamemnon by nearly a hundred years. So whenever
Job was actually written, it must have pre-dated the Greek play.
I love putting these little pieces together. I think I missed my career
calling. :)
-
Senior moment: I said it was Aesculus I didn't like : wrong, he's the one I DID like. It was Euripides that drove me crazy..
I'm accumulating some of the choices on my new IPOD (they're free or $1.99) so I can sample them and vote intelligently. Now we'll see if I do it.
-
Second senior moment: that quote IS from the bible (Job), the King James Version). I couldn't find the whole hebrew quote (I read a little Hebrew) but it seems to be literally man is born to labot as the sons of fire fly רשׁף בנ(י benēy reshep).
So I wronged Aesculus twice, gave him too much and too little credit. Of course, it could have been a saying that was used in both places ( just as Virgil talks about men beating theit ploughshares into swords, and the Bible the opposite).
-
The whole theme of man being born to trouble in this life is so widespread, I wouldn't be surprised to find versions of it most everywhere.
There is an old jingle on the subject hovering on the edges
of my mind but I can't quite recall. I think it ended "..nothing on earth
but common sense can ever withstand these woes." It was definitely a
tongue-in-cheek bit of doggerel. Ring any bells with anyone else?
-
II fell into this by chance and of course all your interesting opinions entrapped me. In High School I was in an advanced honors class in which we read the complete Odyssey and Illiad. I loved them and often thought of them but aside from "The Golden Ass" which i read on my own have never continued in this vein. Now that you folks have offered me the opportunity to learn more I can't refuse. I am hooked.
Since poetry has always been one of my interests I would probably like to read what the Greeks have to say on that subject.
I wonder if Aesops tales would be considered as an ancient classic ? He is the one writer whose work has come through the ages and is known by many children and adult even today ..
-
Jude! Welcome, welcome! So glad to see you here!!
I agree, the conversation here is electric!
I'd say Aesop definitely qualifies as an ancient and what an influence he had! Have you seen Aesopica by Laura Gibbs? The sheer number of translations of Aesop through the years are staggering. She does a super job, has a new book out on it, the illustrations are what just amaze me, here are a couple:
(http://www.seniorlearn.org/latin/graphics/Fables/FoxandGrapesCrane.jpg)
The Fox and the Grapes
Baby's Own Aesop (1887) Walter Crane
(http://www.seniorlearn.org/latin/graphics/Fables/wolfandlambhieronymousosius1574.jpg)
The Wolf and the Lamb.
Phryx Aesopus Habitu Poetico, by Hieronymus Osius, 1574 (artist not identified). Available online at the University of Mannheim.
(http://www.seniorlearn.org/latin/graphics/Fables/FoxandGrapesWinter1919.jpg)
Aesop for Children (translator not identified), 1919. Illustrations by Milo Winter (1886-1956). Available online at Project Gutenberg
(http://www.seniorlearn.org/latin/graphics/Fables/wolfandlambwinteraesopforchildren1919.jpg)The Wolf and the Lamb. Aesop for Children. 1919. Milo Winter (1886-1956)
And there are tons tons TONS more.
When my children were young we had the sweetest little book of Aesop and we all just loved it. I haven't seen it since, and I'd like to. You could make a career (and Gibbs has) out Aesop.
But there are a lot more of them than are read to children and possibly with good reason. It would be fascinating to look at ONE and see how many iterations it had through history or influence,...er....YES! Welcome!! :)
I love fables of any kind. Is there a version we could nominate?
-
Ginny - I have to say that those illustrations are quite spectacular. I love the one with the fox and the volcano as it has a very Japanese feel to it. Aesop is probably the only Greek writer that practically everyone has heard of, and jusitifably so.
-
Once I saw it I remembered seeing the name Roger l'Estrange in a long ago addition of Aesop Fables - looks like 'Everyman' has made a copy of that 1930s translation of Aesop Fables (http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/1857159004/bestiarialati-20#reader_1857159004)
If we are considering fables the first of them all must be Gilgamesh which I never have read - only read about the storyline - this appears to be a new and interesting version that includes the Epic of Gilgamesh (http://www.amazon.com/Epic-Gilgamesh-Rob-Simone/dp/1434848965/ref=sr_1_16?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1294635826&sr=1-16) along with other research from the author of his travels around the world where traces of the fable can be found.
And here is the copy The Epic of Gilgamesh, Complete Academic Translation: Translated from cuneiform tablets in the British Museum literally into English hexameters (Forgotten Books) (http://www.amazon.com/Epic-Gilgamesh-Complete-Academic-Translation/dp/1605060348/ref=pd_sim_b_4)
I'm still shooting for Antigone and this Brecht translation looks interesting Antigone - In a Version by Bertolt Brecht (http://www.amazon.com/Antigone-Version-Bertolt-Paperback-Applause/dp/0936839252/ref=sr_1_11?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1294636319&sr=1-11) The more I read about what I see as a crisis of morals during a time of changing ethics this play could pull out what we value.
-
My childhood copy of Aesop's Fables is long gone. I remember taking my watercolors to the black and white illustrations.
-
I agree, the conversation here is electric
Ginny
Aha! Ginny - hope you didn't get a shock ;D
I was dreading that someone would mention Aesop - as a child I hated it. Maybe I was too..oo young but it's one of the few books I've never come to terms with. Obviously I need some education and maybe a reread is called for but I still have that mental block and you would have to drag me kicking and screaming.
The illustrations are great - but I get that odd Aesop kinda shivery almost sinister feeling I had as a child.
-
Babi Here's the 'poem' you were thinking of - it's The Pessimist by Ben King - I keep getting bumped off using a link so will post it here...
1 Nothing to do but work,
2 Nothing to eat but food,
3 Nothing to wear but clothes
4 To keep one from going nude.
5 Nothing to breathe but air
6 Quick as a flash 't is gone;
7 Nowhere to fall but off,
8 Nowhere to stand but on.
9 Nothing to comb but hair,
10 Nowhere to sleep but in bed,
11 Nothing to weep but tears,
12 Nothing to bury but dead.
13 Nothing to sing but songs,
14 Ah, well, alas! alack!
15 Nowhere to go but out,
16 Nowhere to come but back.
17 Nothing to see but sights,
18 Nothing to quench but thirst,
19 Nothing to have but what we've got;
20 Thus thro' life we are cursed.
21 Nothing to strike but a gait,
22 Everything moves that goes
23Nothing at all but common sense
24 Can ever withstand these woes.
-
THAT'S IT, GUM! Thank you for digging it out. That tongue-in-cheek attitude throughout the
poem delighted me. It still does. I think it probably influenced my own tendency to take the
optimistic viewpoint. If I have a problem that comes and goes, I just enjoy it's being gone!
-
Welcome to
(http://www.seniorlearn.org/bookclubs/classicsbookclub/Thanksgivingclassicsbookclub.jpg)
(http://www.seniorlearn.org/bookclubs/classicsbookclub/CBCvote1.jpg)
Vote now thru January 22! Just click on:
http://www.surveymonkey.com/s/7LV3VLC
The Classics Book Club, a forum for reading in translation those timeless classics written by ancient authors you always meant to get around to but never have. We've done the Iliad, and we did the Odyssey, but it was in 1996, so it's back up for grabs and what of the Aeneid? Aeschylus? Euripides? Plutarch? Plato?
Cleopatra is all the rage currently, with two new books and a claim her palace in Alexandria has just been found, she's hot. Why? Do what Shakespeare did and read the original sources, a world of incredible fascination and insights awaits.
The floor is now open for nominations! We'll vote January 15 for one week and we'll begin discussing part of the book (which you'll determine first) February 15.
Bring all your background materials, we'll desperately need them, and join us on an unforgettable enriching adventure! Dust off those old moldy books you always intended to read and join our merry band of adventurers in our new venture: The Classics Book Club!
Everyone is welcome!
Discussion Leaders: Joan K (joankraft13@yahoo.com) & ginny (gvinesc@gmail.com )
Nominate through January 14, we'll vote on the 15th-22.
(http://www.seniorlearn.org/bookclubs/classicsbookclub/CBDvotelonog.jpg)
Vote now thru January 22! Just click on:
http://www.surveymonkey.com/s/7LV3VLC
Marcus Aurelius or the Odyssey are my choices. I think the odyssey wd be more fun tho because M. Aurelius has a rather depressing (altho realistic) view of the human condition.
-
I'd like to recommend Homer's The Iliad.Last week I happened to hear Eleanor Wachtel on her weekly CBC radio show Writers and Company interview Caroline Alexander about her book The War the Killed Achilles. She goes back too Homer’s Iliad which encompasses 2 weeks towards the end of the 10-year Trojan War. In discussing Achilles’s difference with his commander Agamemnon on the need to prolongue the war, Caroline presented many parallels between their discussions and ours today regarding war. She made the Iliad seem most modern and significant and whetted my appetite to read it.
This link will take you to the podcast:
http://www.cbc.ca/video/news/audioplayer.html?clipid=1734663273
Susan from Ginny's Latin105a Latin class.
-
Susan, WELCOME! We are so glad to have you! Agamemnon, we could do an entire year on him, and that sounds fabulous. If you have not read the Iliad, you are right, you really want to.
We just actually did the Iliad, unfortunately, when.. about a couple of years ago? It's pretty strong in memory. We did it with one of the translators, Dr. Lombardo (I recommend his version over any other) and Dr. Stone who taught a course in it. It's still pretty fresh in our memory (or is it, Everybody?) and so I'd hate to do it over when there are so many others. That said, truly the Iliad, to me, is the big one of the Big Three. Since it's about rage (and is SO applicable as you say to modern warfare, cf. Achilles in Vietnam) it's not the same charming tale as the Odyssey, nor a political history like the Aeneid, but is sort of hard to put down.
It surprised me, actually, and certainly should be on everybody's read list. Thank you for that nomination, please do not leave, there are a lot of us here and only one pick, for the first one, anyway, we'll start voting this Saturday the 15th for a week. And hopefully we'll enjoy the discussion so much we may do another one next time.
We have, once we select something, a lot to decide. Even before we select we need to consider the length of the piece: do we want a short one to get our feet wet or a longer epic? So much to consider!
Welcome Susan, I'd say your taste is perfect, the Iliad is the prize, unfortunately recently claimed. or IS it, what do you all think?
-
Looking over the slate, it's a pretty strong one, I hesitate to add Ovid's Metamorphoses to it because of the length, but the stories there are just as compelling as any in the Odyssey: Midas, Arachne, the Trojan War, Theseus, Jason and the Argonauts, Niobe, Baucis and Philemon, etc., etc., etc. if it's an old myth, it's in Ovid. I'll add it but beware, it's gigantic in length.
Here's a review from Amazon:
The stories of the Metamorphoses are, of course, wonderful. It's the book itself that I want to talk about.
The beautiful Waterhouse painting on the cover spans the front and part of the back covers. The line numbers at the top of each text page are those of the Latin text in the Loeb edition; how many translators would go to that kind of trouble for you? Rolfe Humphries' introduction is light, funny, and enjoyable. His love of his work shines through. The last line of his intro is, "So - here he is [Ovid], and I hope you like him."
The table of contents is annotated, making it easy to find any major story you are looking for. I also love the designs at the beginning of each book/chapter: such details enhance my enjoyment of reading this edition.
If you have never read Ovid's Metamorphoses, don't be intimidated. It is a collection of mythology stories, and you will find much that is probably familiar to you (Echo and Narcissus, Jason, Pygmalion, and more). If you are at all serious about literature, this is a basic building block in your knowledge. And even if you're not, it's just a damn good book.
The translation itself is so fluent and enjoyable. Just listen to the introduction:
My intention is to tell of bodies changed
To different forms; the gods, who made the changes,
Will help me - or so I hope - with a poem
That runs from the world's beginning to our own days.
This is exciting, eloquent stuff! Please do yourself a favor and make sure you read this at some point during your lifetime.
In addition, no slate is complete without Cicero, what a man! What a complex, emotional man.
His works are relatively short. It's possible to find his On Old Age alone or with others.
From Amazon:
Marcus Tullius Cicero was multi-talented and distinguished Rome?s greatest orator and innovator of Ciceronian rhetoric. He is also known as scholar, lawyer and statesman. He wrote books of rhetoric, philosophy, political essays, orations and letters.
It's an essay on old age and death. Its rational and philosophical subject matter is embellished by beautiful language. This book is a luminous substantiation of Cicero's meticulous emblematic style. It is still popular as Cicero?s powerful commentary over a very momentous issue of growing age with explanatory notes is astounding. Timeless!
It's also full of quotes and something to think about in 2011, such as:
Give me a young man in whom there is something of the old, and an old man with something of the young: guided so, a man may grown old in body, but never in mind. De Senectute: On Old Age, XI.
It's full of juicy thought provoking quotes. I would like to nominate both Ovid and Cicero and we only have till Saturday, who else would you like? I am unsure which edition of Aesop we're thinking of but I'll put one up and we can decide if he wins which one we'd like to do (or which ones we'd like to compare). Laura Gibbs, in addition to having several Aesops out in print, one of which is very expensive, has a huge and inclusive website of Aesopica, so called where all the previous translations (AND ILLUSTRATIONS) are displayed. For that reason I'm linking to her 2008 version rather than the pricey 2009:
Here are a couple of reviews from Amazon and the description of the text:
"'Laura Gibbs has recently brought out a splendid translation with a very helpful introduction of the bulk of the fables in the Oxford World's Classics.'"
The fables of Aesop have become one of the most enduring traditions of European culture, ever since they were first written down nearly two millennia ago. Aesop was reputedly a tongue-tied slave who miraculously received the power of speech; from his legendary storytelling came the collections of prose and verse fables scattered throughout Greek and Roman literature. First published in English by Caxton in 1484, the fables and their morals continue to charm modern readers: who does not know the story of the tortoise and the hare, or the boy who cried wolf? This new translation is the first to represent all the main fable collections in ancient Latin and Greek, arranged according to the fables' contents and themes. It includes 600 fables, many of which come from sources never before translated into English.
Excellent reference for for the novice story teller. This book is cheat sheet for the complete Aesop's fables and also gives you the take home message. I grew up hearing Aesop and wanted my kids to have the same experience. This is definitely not for reading to the kids verbatim. I highly recommend it for the storyteller parent.
OK that's three new ones, what else should we add here before we put up the voting ballot?
-
Wether or not anyone votes for Aesop I thought I would add to our "slush pile" of general knowledge with some interesting lines from a copy of Aesop's Fables that I found in a Librarysale of donated books. For fifty cents I bought a large (14 by 10 inchess) copy with breathtaking illustrations by a man named Charles Santore. In the intro the publisher writes as follows:
"Santore read an intro to an early twentieth century volume of AF by G.K.Chesterton."
"The moment I read Chesterton's explanation,I could visualize the majestic lion always occupying center stage: the sheep always doomeed, plodding on, never comprehending pawns in the game of life. They have no choice, they cannot be anything but themselves. Each animal- the wolf, the clever fox, the silly crow-represents and symbolizes some particular aspect of the human condition. Whatever the situation, the animal's reaction is always predictable. That is true of all the creatures that populate the fables, and they never disappoint us. They are never more or less...........the reader or child listener can follow each creature from one situation to another and can better gain an understanding of the particular animal's role as a parody of human behavior."
I think of Gum's remark of disliking these tales as a child. I wonder what about them was disturbing for you, Gum?
-
If we choose something long, like Ovid, perhaps we could do selections from it.
-
We did "Fairy Tales and Their Tellers" in August. So sort of covered some of those ancient tales.
-
Oh, my! The list gets longer and choosing gets harder. Perhaps I can narrow it down by seeing
how many of these tempting tales are available in my library. That's always a motivator. ::)
-
Jude I loved your post!! What a treasure you have there, that book goes for $60!
Have you seen the Pinkney I think it's called? Absolutely spectacular illustrations. I loved the quote you put about the Santore!!
JoanK, yes we could do that in Ovid, particularly, since it's a lot of myths. We could begin at the beginning and read as far as we liked. (I doubt we'd get too far, we'd probably be entranced by Paradise Lost and The Inferno for starters...I think all of our selections will be that way. It will be a fascinating journey, you can see what Gum posted, to explore what has been done with the themes, the allusions, in the ensuing 2,000 years and even today: but what a wonderful garden to wander IN! Not to mention the background, and the different translations... wow! Very exciting possibilities here!
Sally, which ancient myths have become fairy tales? I am excited that you read in that book discussion, do you still have the book? That's a derivative I would never have thought of which will be invaluable. Proserpina maybe? Midas?
I notice in one of the reviews that the reader said you wouldn't read Aesop to children, you'd have to change it.
Babi, yes, I think we have an incredibly good slate, and worthy of our first effort. I have a feeling any library system will have them all. Most of them also are online free.
Jane will have the ballot ready for Saturday morning. So we have today and tomorrow to add anything to it we like.
-
Is it alright to nominate by Stacy Schiff, Cleopatra: A Life, or is that to be avoided because it is a presnt day work? Whatever is chosen, I am going to try to read, but I don't promise that I will have time to keep up. For those who don't know me, I am a Latin student living by the beach on the outskirts of New York City.
-
With 10 great nominations already up on the slate, I don't think that I would add another - maybe after we've read all of those already there! And we will, won't we? I was thinking that we could take them up in the order of number of votes received until we exhaust the list, each nomination being worthy of a discussion. Several of them, if discussed in entirety would take more than a month to do, but if we limited ourselves to sections of the longer works we should accomplish the whole slate in a year - rather like an overview. Then we could go back and take up a whole work for as long as necessary.
Just an idea! Does this sound totally goofy?
-
sounds great to me - a smorgasbord or buffet that introduces these major works so that we can later decide what author we want to live with for a year.
-
Lucy, welcome, welcome! I agree we should read the Schiff, isn't it good? But the books for this particular group need to be written by somebody who lived 2000 years or so ago. Maybe as we progress we'll feel the need to read biographies, too, the Everitt Cicero comes to mind. If we end up reading anything of the Republic however, the Schiff, Everitt and of course Goldsworthy will be a rich mine. I like your attitude.
Joan I like your idea, too. And I see Barbara agrees, that's a good metaphor, Barbara. I like that.
In Joan's suggestion we'd take them in the order voted and we'd end up doing all of them. Or parts of all of them.
What do the rest of you think? I like the idea that we'll hit them all according to your choices, the obvious backfire might be our taste might change, or we might get off on a tangent in the first one and want to follow IT up. AND there are a lot of works not up there.
What can we do about this aspect, and what do you all think about Joan's idea?
I do like the idea that if our own fave is not chosen we'll gamely read along till it's our turn.
Alternately we could take turns suggesting a book like a face to face book club, it would be XXX's month next month.
We don't have to take a year to read these, either. I'm not sure some of them lend themselves to bits but some of them definitely do.
Are there any of them we want to specify now we must read the entire thing of? We would never get thru Plutarch. hahahaa
-
so far I feel like a stranger in a strange land....have been lurking enjoying the postings and all the chatter
sounds like I have really been missing something and previous never found an interest in this area...but you guys are intriguing my curiosity
the fables of Aesop's sound interesting, mainly as I can relate to them
would it be of value to begin with something in between a complicated piece and relatively med to easy piece....to allow those of us, if any beside me who have next to nil previous reading of this area something just to wet our feet, then go for the 'gusto'
-or how can I find ways of keeping up or learning from the 'learned' segment of our group?
I really feel out of my element.
so I really choose not to vote...feeling you guys better able to make this choice....
Deb
-
Omigosh! I had to take the best part of this week off to deal with health issues and I come back to find all this new 'stuff' nominated and it's almost time to start thinking hard about the vote................
but if we limited ourselves to sections of the longer works we should accomplish the whole slate in a year
The whole slate in a year ? Yikes! I'm defeated already. A timeline of a year to even attempt so much? - even when dealing with limited excerpts there would be no time to follow up many of the issues raised or to fully absorb the knowledge brought to the table by other posters - - and more importantly, wouldn't a year-long discussion be a rather a lot to ask of our discussion leaders.
It's rather a lot to commit a full year to the project, I'd rather read one - take a break - read another - and so on. I think on balance I would really favour an in depth study of one of the pieces - the whole or in part - even though the whole might take more than one month.
I'm sure that as we read our views and desires will change so that our first vote may not be indicative of what we might want once we have started on this journey -our personal Odyssey ::) and have become better acquainted with the ancients -
I had been thinking about Cicero but he seems to have written so much I wouldn't have known where to start. His On Old Age seems a pertinent choice. I'd like to read a biography of him too - Hasn't Robert Harris written something on his life - a trilogy I think.
The Ovid is appealing especially in that we could easily decide to read just parts - I'd need to be guided as to what parts may be the best to start with. - and that would apply to any of the pieces - if we read only a selection from a work how do we choose it?
-
I see "Paradise Lost" and "Inferno" and I'm thining Milton and
Dante and GINNY is talking about Ovid. Ovid had stories with those
titles? I thought wrote love poems. I love this place; I keep
learning how ignorant I am. ::)
An overview sounds like a very practical approach, JOANR. There
is so much material; people spend years studying this material.
GUM, don't think of it as a commitment to a year of study. Think
of it as different books being on offer over the year, which you
can pick and choose as you like.
-
Just a comment on Cleopatra by Stacy Schiff, which I finished last month. It is interesting, but would probably be a better fit for some other area, perhaps the non-fiction discussion.
I'm a little surprised to see the book remaining on the best seller list, since it was, IMHO, informative but not that outstanding. I'm currently in the middle of A. Goldsworthy's Anthony and Cleopatra, which is more dry, but is a more inclusive treatment of Roman history and the very exciting life of Anthony.
I really like the idea of doing many of these nominations, Ginny! Cicero and Plutarch are my top of choices!
-
so far I feel like a stranger in a strange land....have been lurking enjoying the postings and all the chatter
sounds like I have really been missing something and previous never found an interest in this area...but you guys are intriguing my curiosity . . . I really feel out of my element.
Deb, you are a member of a very large club, certainly not alone in your feelings. I understand what you’re saying – “They are so profound and I am so mundane.” Not really true. Like you, I paid little attention to writings in this area, and even now, after being in the Latin classes here, while I know more than I did earlier, am still not well-versed in classic literature. Never read the Illiad, never read the Odyssey, although I have learned that Penelope was true to her man Ulysses. The other day, before translating “Damon and Pythias,” I was thinking it was going to be about Icarus. You know – three syllables, the last one ending in “us” or “as.” So don’t feel bad. You are not alone. But do vote, Deb.
I’m not nominating anything, and will probably vote for Ovid. Reading selections of the myths in English sounds very appealing. Also, a play would be nice, so Antigone (of whom I know nothing) would also be a choice.
-
Deb, whether or not you vote, I hope you will try whatever is selected. We're none of us experts here--we all learn from each other. That's what the discussions are all about.
-
This list of titles reminds me of the old potato chip add--"Bet you can't read just one!" I'm game for any of them.
I've been enjoying the "History of Rome" podcast, though, so I'll probably vote for Plutarch. http://www.learnoutloud.com/Podcast-Directory/History/European-History/The-History-of-Rome-Podcast/25263 (http://www.learnoutloud.com/Podcast-Directory/History/European-History/The-History-of-Rome-Podcast/25263)
-
Yes, Deb - I am another who has not read any of these works except as excerpts here and there - a couple of them I have read as a story in English and so I kinda know what to expect but an actual translation I have not read. I feel that even reading the couple as a story I missed so much since I had no one who know the classics, who could alert me to the symbolism or history or metaphors to guide me and so if this discussion turns out to be true to form it will be like one big classroom .
I remember way back when SeniorNet was in its hay day and where I read many of the greats there were a few authors I always assumed were deeper than my ability - James Joyce being one of them - well JoanP was the discussion leader for one of the most memorable discussions to me of Joyce's A Portrait of a Young Man - we lost many along the way but a few of us saw it through to the end and I enjoyed every minute - some of the research we did at the time to bring to life the story, the back story, the history on and on stays with me to this day. Best of all, reading it got me over the hump so that today there are few authors I will not tackle.
I would still not tackle alone Joyce's Ulysses and I sure am looking forward to this guidance with the ancients - and one day I hope we could tackle something like Paradise lost, another phase of English Lit [Medieval and Renaissance authors] that I am not confident to read alone.
So Deb I hope you stick along with us - it always amazed me how what seemed the silliest question opened a can of worms that was so insightful it took someone having no background about the book and the times to question what we are reading.
-
Well the sun is slowly setting in the west and our first ever Classic Book Club Nominations are drawing to a close with a slate of 10 anybody would be proud to claim! :)
In the morning if you'll check by, you'll find the ballot and I hope you will vote.
What great points brought up here as usual, I'm not the least surprised, this is a super group. Feel free to say anything you like, after all, if you don't say it our ESP will not allow us to know. Mine won't, anyway. :)
First, Gum, I think Joan was suggesting that we, even tho we can't do them all first, do all of them sometime, in the order that they got votes. But not in a year. And not on a schedule. That way somebody disappointed their choice didn't win will feel content that it will be done, someday.
I'm in agreement with your idea of doing the first one and taking a break and then doing the next one as you suggest. (I hope there will be a "next one.)" ...what that next one might BE we'll have to decide. One of these 10? I agree with Mippy any of them would be super. Or perhaps a new one our current reading inspires us to want to read.
(I didn't know Robert Harris had written a novel about Cicero!! You are right! He'll have to go some to beat Everitt), has anybody read it?
Once we HAVE the book chosen, then we can decide how long, what parts or all of it, and lots of other things, it will go entirely on what the group here wants. This is definitely a group endeavor and will depend on you all.
bookad (Deb), I appreciate your thoughts here, and I love the way you express yourself. Not to worry, you're perfect just as you are. Hopefully nobody will have read whatever we choose, that's one reason for these discussions, as PatH says. And as she also says we learn from each other, that's what makes it so rich, the sharing of ideas and experiences as they relate to the book.
We're all from different parts of the country and world and have different points of view, but I think you've hit the nail on the head actually with: mainly as I can relate to them.
That's the whole point, so there you go already, getting right to the crux! How these people 2000+ years ago are like us, and if they have anything to say to us in 2010. What we can relate to. We'll find out the 15th of February. :) You can see you're in great company here, many have no background in classical literature as Pedln says but everybody has a curiosity and enthusiasm and if one can read English that's all you need, our group will do the rest! I can't wait, what a spectacular, and NICE group of people. Fun to read with and bounce ideas off. What more can you want?
With everybody bringing something to the table, we'll have a feast indeed!
Roxania is right, or I hope she is, anyway: you can't stop at just one! hahaha I HOPE it will become a series, we'll depend on you all for that. What an interesting link, Roxania! A weekly podcast on Roman history, my goodness! Is it good? I see the reviews are 5 star. The internet is absolutely overflowing with SUCH interesting stuff!
Babi, Milton and Dante were influenced by what they read in Ovid, his Metamorphoses begins with the creation of the world. Like Barbara, someday I'd like to read Paradise Lost on SeniorLearn, and I hope when we do there's somebody in the discussion with more knowledge of it than I have. hahahaa
We're on our own Odyssey here, what fun it will be. (It's already fun just reading your comments!) I think we're in super company here and each of us will bring something different, a different point of view or idea or research or who KNOWS what to the table, what fun.
And we've room for MANY more, so sign in please and vote, we're saving a chair next to the fire (or fridge in Gum's case) just for you!
Tomorrow's the day, I hope everybody will vote and join right in with us once the first selection is announced.
-
Harris's novel is Imperium, and it is written through the eyes of Tiro. I think I read it, I think. It's been a while. I also have Everitt's Cicero. After reading that, I couldn't make up my mind if I like Cicero, the man, or not. He certainly was tenacious in persuing his opponents, but he was also a fence switcher. So, it often depended on the way the political winds were blowing as to who his opponents were. He apparently was a constant talker, so I can understand why, when he was finally done in, that she (forget who at the moment, a Cattiline perhaps?) had his tongue cut out so he could never speak again.
-
Pedin, Pat H., Barb, Ginny
thank you for your kind words....I am determined to follow the group into this new regieme-- for me ...looking forward to this new world of learning
Deb
-
DEB- I really feel out of my element.
so I really choose not to vote...feeling you guys better able to make this choice....
Welcome to my world Deb. Some folks here are experts, others of us, "don't have a clue." Myself, I feel dumber than a box of hammers when it comes to choosing one classic or the other. We can not all be well versed in everything so I have always enjoyed sitting back and letting the people that know take me on a wonderful ride. I always learn something and as apprenticed as I am my knowledge of the classics, no one has ever made me feel my ignorance. There are wonderful, accomplished people here to answer questions, take your interest at heart and guide you.
Give it a shot, I'm going to follow. (We can always hide in the back row. Yeah, right, like Ginny would allow us to do that trick.)
-
Hmm,..I'm in too early. Voting box not open yet. I shall return! Is
my eagerness showing? :P
-
YAY for you and your eagerness!
What a beautiful post, Andrea!
Don't withhold a vote, you may be sorry, vote now for YOUR fave!
Ta DA! Jane has prepared this super ballot in alphabetical order, vote for one:
(http://www.seniorlearn.org/bookclubs/classicsbookclub/CBCvote1.jpg)
http://www.surveymonkey.com/s/7LV3VLC
Very exciting, I'm off to find a blinking Vote NOW sign! hahahaa What will win? What will we read first? So exciting!
-
Vote for ONE - I've got it down to three - I'll have to sleep on it one more time.
-
:)
I may never sleep again, just found out I have been an Aquarius which suits me to a T all these years and am now a Capricorn...isn't that a goat? They blabber on about 200 +- BC and how this tilting on the axis was first noticed, why didn't they adjust it then?
-
Ah the sure footed Capricorn goat that can navigate frighteningly steep mountain gorges on rocky narrow paths - what courage, what perseverance, what a steady influence to guide the assent of great heights - plus - Charlie Rose is a Capricorn and that is a true Renaissance man to have as a brother in arms so to speak - cheers - the realization may rock your identity but oh the wonder that is you...
-
:) hahaha BAAAA, oh the loss of the Age of Aquarius! I'm sure they're wrong, I appreciate the positive slant, however.
-
;)
-
I have voted!
Thanks Ginny for organising this - I'll really be happy to read any of the nominations.
Rosemary
-
Huh - looks like I am in the change as well from an Aquarian to a Capricorn. Huge shifts hmmm but this gal is not so sure there is the kind of personality shift that would be matching these shifts...
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2011/01/14/AR2011011403094.html
-
PS - I would also be interested in doing Paradise Lost one day (I appreciate it doesn't qualify for this Club) - I did it at university many years ago but was v lazy and never researched all the political background, etc - now of course I wish I hadn't wasted so much time. Those days of wine and roses, they are not long (Jane in Jane and Prudence, Barbara Pym - though I think she is quoting someone else and I really should know whom ???)
Rosemary
-
Looking forward to seeing the result--any of them will do!
Robert Harris has done two novels about Cicero--"Imperium," followed by "Conspirata," which gets us through the Catiline conspiracy. I hope he does another one to finish Cicero off.
I'm well over halfway through Everitt's "Augustus," and we've only just now finished off Antony and Cleopatra. I have to say, I'd be willing to trade a bit of our knowledge of Roman military history for a bit more knowledge about everything else. But Everitt writes better than a lot of historians, and he has found a lot of interesting details.
I may pass on Schiff's "Cleopatra." It hasn't been that many years since I did Margaret George's novel, and it sounds like Schiff's approach is rather novelistic. I wish somebody would do more books on Roman women. Agrippina would be interesting--the one who was married to Germanicus.
-
There's probably not a great deal of factual data available on women
in Roman history. The historians tended to pretty much ignore them.
Unless, of course, they were ruling queens like Cleopatra. I read one
bit about a city that was exceptionally generous to the army that
rescued them. The historian said that was because they did not want it
said that they did less than the woman who ruled a city near them. The
historian never bothered to identify the woman or the other city.
-
babi - one of my fave Queens during Roman Times was Queen Zenobia of Palmyra. She was quite a woman, but ultimately the might of the Roman Empire crushed her. I had a beautiful Abyssinian cat who I named Zenobia in honour of this extraprdinary woman.
-
The sad,..or aggravating...thing is that there are bound to have been so
many remarkable women that we will never know about. There's no
use in crying over what can't be helped, though. I'm glad Zenobia made
it through despite the morass of masculine snobbishness.
-
Deb and Alf....save a seat for me in the back row please.
I stumbled on this classics book club about a week ago and have been thinking and thinking---can I do this??? Seems way over my head...but after reading your posts I must give it a try.
-
Welcome to
(http://www.seniorlearn.org/bookclubs/classicsbookclub/Thanksgivingclassicsbookclub.jpg)
We have a winner! Our first ever read in the Classics Book Club to begin on February 15, with the initial segment, schedule still to be decided but we'll break it up into parts, of Homer's Odyssey!
(http://www.seniorlearn.org/bookclubs/classicsbookclub/cbcodyssey.jpg)
If you have been casting about for a great book to lose yourself in this winter, you've come to the right place! Help us decide on a schedule, how far DO we want to go that first week? How to divide this? Whose translation do you have?
**NB: There are probably 50+ famous translations of the Odyssey. If you find the translation you have does not speak to you or does not convey to you what's happening, this book is too fabulous to waste on an old outdated translation: try a new one.
Everyone is welcome!
Discussion Leaders: Joan K (joankraft13@yahoo.com) & ginny (gvinesc@gmail.com )
Welcome to the circle that includes several of us newbies sandyrose...
-
babi (and others) - Here is a link about Zenobia and Palmyra you may find interesting.
www.atlastours.net/syria/palmyra.html
-
Sandyrose--good to have you in the back with me....fascinating to see all the excitement around here....as you have seen I'm having a struggle regarding voting ...I always have a rapport with animal books, so the fables, or The Golden Ass seem to feel a bit of comfort...and the Meditations seem more familiar English...hoping the vote will allow for a download from the Gutenberg site...
all the going ons feel something akin to being in grade one where the readers (books) are just put in front of the students holding a new world within their covers (am talking about the grade one of the 1950's)
-
Sandyrose!!!! Welcome, welcome, WELCOME!!
As you can see, this is a great group!
The back row looks nicely populated, I myself like to sit on the back left seat. I don't know why that is, so shove down one place, All. hahahaa
Thank you Roshannarose for the Zenobia information, most interesting!
Babi, there were a lot of Roman women and women of the time of the Romans, who have passed into history, just for starters, Cornelia, (she of "these are my jewels"), Turia, Veturia, Pomponia, Octavia, Agrippina, Livia, and Fulvia, just to name a few off the top of my head. Or course there's Boudicca as well, who, tho not Roman is certainly remembered for her hatred of them.
I loved this: fascinating to see all the excitement around here....
Me, too, how well that's captured it, bookad! And this:
(books) are just put in front of the students holding a new world within their covers
That's exactly how I feel, too, how well you express things.
At the moment, the voting is super exciting! There is one front runner and 5, count em, 5 tied for 2nd place! Golly, it's impossible to tell what will win. Will there be a late surge? Will the front runner hold on? Can't say WHAT they are, as that would sort of mess up the integrity of the thing, but boy it's a real horse race!
I'm glad I voted early as now we can watch it unfold.
Welcome, ALL!!! We can all sit in the back. hahahaha
-
Ginny, that so reminds me of my senior school Latin lessons - our teacher was really old school and absolutely terrifying. She was infuriated when we turned up age 12 not knowing the parts of speech or what she meant by conjugating and declining - we had not been taught English like that (I wish we had), it was all airy-fairy "how do you feel about this?" etc. Miss Edmunds' Latin lessons were the worst part of our week - she was, as I see in retrospect, a very well educated woman who had a great passion for the Classics, but at the time we were so scared that we regularly begged our mothers for sick notes on Latin days.
When she retired I was in 5th year - the class was taken over by a much milder-mannered woman, who couldn't understand why we were too scared to open our mouths. We did, however, get over it and 4 of us went on to take A-level Latin. I now appreciate that Miss Edmunds did teach me a lot, but what I remember most is sitting in those classes wishing the ground would swallow me up. My friend and I didn't sit at the back because she was more likely to pick on you there than anywhere else - and if you got it wrong, blackboard erasers, books, anything would come flying your way - oh yes, this was years before PC was even heard of!
Incidentally, has anyone seen the Simpsons episode when the school is divided into two - girls' and boys' sections? The girls' maths lesson is one of the funniest things I've seen for years - poor Lisa wanting to learn algebra, and the very right-on teacher asking them to wave their arms to show how the number seven made them feel :D My school was NOT like that!
R
-
Thanks for that link, Roshana. A pity Zenobia let her ambition
lead her into conquests. She might have known that once Rome's
immediate problems were resolved, they would be coming to take
back their territory. She grabbed more than she could keep.
GINNY, my remark was influenced by recent readings from the ancient
Greek and Roman historians. The was virtually no mention of women
in those excerpts. Do we actually know much about Cornelia, for
examble, other than that she was Caesar's wife and warned him of
danger? I have heard of Agrippina, Livia and Octabia, but know very
little about them. Boudicca, of course. There does seem to be more
written about her, tho' it's hard to say how accurate the stories
are.
"..the very right-on teacher asking them to wave their arms to show how the number seven made them feel."
How the number made them feel? I don't watch the Simpson's
ROSEMARY, so please tell me there aren't actually schools like that.
Fiction a la Simpson, right? :-\
-
Maybe Ginny was meaning Cornelia mother of the Gracchi, an idealized version of a truely noble woman who seems to have suffered great losses including the murder of both her sons whom she obviously brought up to believe in the right democratic ideals. (!) It's just a pity that our female forebearers, burdened down by endless childbearing were usually only able to contribute in a behind the scenes kind of way and never got immortalized by being written about, as they surely deserve.
-
I'm back online, after being off forever! It's sooooo good! I don't realize how much these discussions mean, til I don't have them.
ROSEMARY: you've added a case to my theory that the main result of literature classes in the States is to make the students feel they are too stupid to read literature. It sounds like the Latin class you took had the same result.
IT'S NOT TRUE! (here I go on my hobby horse again). Those books are OURS! YOURS! MINE! We can do anything we want to with them!!
If we can't understand something, it's not because we're stupid -- it's because 2000 years of history and culture and different ideas and language are standing betweeen us and the person on the other end who is trying to tell us something. And we can decide whether it's worth finding our way through, or asking guides who have been there.
I know I need all the help I can get! A few of us have been here before, and can help us, most of us will bumble along together. As long as we stick together, we're bound to have fun, and learn a lot.
-
What INTERESTING conversations here, love it, and a front runner has emerged from the 5 way tie for 2nd while the original front runner is holding on, this is becoming quite interesting! Very much like a horse race.
Rosemarykaye, our teacher was really old school and absolutely terrifying. What a hoot! I can sing that song, nothing beats those old school Latin teachers. I think I've had some of the best and I know I've had some of the worst. hahahaa One year in high school our beloved Latin teacher, Miss Haas, had to retire mid year and we got this Harpy who moved me immediately to the front (I was quiet and shy) and stood over me and screamed at me, I can hear her to this day: NON AUDIO!! NON AUDIO!! (I can't HEEAR you!) in kind of a sing song drill sergeant mode. Wonder what the poor thing was thinking? At any rate she made our lives miserable. Your post certainly brought back memories, I've just erased a paragraph of them. hahaha
Babi, you're possibly thinking of Calpurnia who warned Caesar. Of Cornelia (she of "these are my jewels,") there seems, for the times, to be a good bit known (let's put it this way: more than will be known of me in 2000 years, hahaa). The writings of the times, however, as you and Dana have said, do concentrate on the male figures, and the references to women seem often to be scattered, and not all in one place; usually in a piece about men.
I am sure between all of us, hopefully somebody here will have a annotated text or some commentary, and that between all of us we can figure whatever we choose out. I'm proud of us for trying, it's an exciting undertaking, somewhat akin to setting off into the Underworld, what strange and wonderful things will we see?
-
babi - What sort of leader would Zenobia have been without ambition in that world?
-
Oops! Quite right, GINNY. I was confusing Calpurnia and Cornelia. I'm expecting this
foray into the classics to refresh my memory on a lot of things.
My worst teacher was an old, retired teacher who was drafted back into teaching when
WWII pulled so many teachers away. We were a group of 8-9 year olds and she expected us
to all sit still. She couldn't stand the creaking of the chairs and would yell at the
offending culprit...usually me. She also instituted a little daily session of 'let's
all tell on each other', which had the kids backstabbing their playmates in order to
appease the dragon. Really, a horror.
ROSHANA, I can't help wishing Zenobia had been a bit more modest in her ambitions. She
might have preserved all that she had built, instead of seeing it destroyed. She was an
exceptional woman who created a marvelous world about her, but she obviously badly overestimated her military strength.
-
Ginny, Wonderful nominations all. I haven't had time to post but checked regularly and voted last night. With some trepidation - because the Survey Monkey refused to cooperate on at least two previous occasions, and was not responsive to JoanP link.
I was so see Cicero and De senectute added. That was the spark, years ag, wasn't it?
-
Babi - yes, it was fiction a la Simpsons, as you say - but we have Waldorf schools in this country which are a bit like that. I don't know if you have them in the US - they are part of the Rudolph Steiner Foundation. Here in Aberdeen we have at least three "Camphill" communities run on the R Steiner principles, one is a community for adults with learning difficulties, who live there alongside helpers; it's a in a beautiful setting on Deeside, and they run a farm, a cafe, a gift shop, a bakery, toy shop, etc. Another is a school for severely disabled children, and another is a sort of retirement community.
The Waldorf school is connected to all of this, but is for "normal" children; the teaching is along Steiner lines, with a lot of "touchy feely" stuff and something called "Eurythmy". The school does do the standard exam courses, but the children have to leave at 16 and go to another school for 6th year - I believe this has caused problems in the past as they found it hard to fit in at the local academy, but now I think many of them go instead to the International School (which is largely American) and that works better. Some families absolutely love the Waldorf school - it is a real way of life, as the parents are expected to become involved in fund raising, etc - it's quite alternative, so it tends to attract that kind of person. In his Scotland Street books, Alexander McCall Smith pokes fun at the Edinburgh Waldorf school that poor Bertie is forced to attend when he really wants to go to Watsons (one of the oldest independent schools in Edinburgh - many people are "Old Watsonians") and play rubgy. His classmates have names like Tofu and Hiawatha, and although these are of course exaggerations, they do give you a good idea of what the schools are like :).
Rosemary
-
Welcome, welcome, Traude!~ We are so glad to see you here! What a memory you have, and I believe you are right!
Welcome!
Babi, another bad one. I think if we all put here our worst memories of bad teachers (being the age we are) people would be shocked. Today I would like to say there are more safeguards but I wonder, I really do.
RosemaryKaye, thank you for that explanation of The Waldorf Schools. I occasionally come across that term in reading and had no earthly idea what was meant.
The voting continues apace and is taking some interesting turns, a newcomer is closing fast but the lead horse has just gotten some support, it's truly fascinating. Can't say what they are, it would twist the deal. 3 more days, a great vote and representation!~
Everyone is welcome, join right in!
-
I don't doubt we have some schools like that here, too, ROSEMARY.
It's been so long since I had a child or young relative in school
that I've pretty well lost touch. I got a smile from your remark
about the kind of people attracted to 'alternative' whatever. I
know what you mean, and I must confess that I've found a few ideas
in 'alternative medicine' that were quite helpful.
-
Rosemarykay
Yes-we have Waldorf schools here too. Quite expensive .
My niece went to the NYC Waldorf School from First Grade to end of High School. It seems that you never have to learn things that don't interest you in that school.. It takes the utopian idea that a child knows best what is good for them to its zenith.
My niece went to acting school after High School and now is working as a waitress. Luckily she is beautiful and sometimes gets short modelling jobs.
Somehow with all the horrible teachers we experienced in the public schools we did learn that you have to follow the rules, learn things that seem at first impossibly difficult and that there are subjects that seem hopeless at first and as you conquer them you find yourself interested and enriched.
But then again -to each his own.
-
I agree, each to his own - but my elder daughter has said more than once that she's very glad we didn't send her there! There are quite a few Waldorf children in one of her choirs and quite honestly the behaviour of the little boys is appalling. The girls seem more subdued, but that is probably just coincidence - in McCall Smith's books, Bertie's classmate Olive is by far the worst offender, a real tyrant of the playground who even manages to convince poor Bertie that in the course of a game of doctors and nurses he has "tested positive for leprosy".
Babi - I think alternative medicine is different. For one thing, it is between you and the practitioner, and doesn't affect other people the way those boys' behaviour does!
I forgot to say that, in the Simpsons episode I was speaking about, Lisa finally escapes over the wall into the boys' section - dressed as a boy. The boys' school was, IMO, an equally brilliant caricature - they were all charging around the playground making anything and everything into weapons (mostly guns) or just fist fighting on the floor.
Rosemary
-
Hi JoanR,
I am just wondering how you are getting on with daphnis and Chloe. I'm plodding along slowly with the translation. But I really enjoy it. The words are so beautiful. I don't know any german but I am wondering if it has something in common with ancient Greek as I know words are strung together to make up compound words and this happens in Greek too--at least in this book--it is the first really long piece of unmodified translation that I have done--for example, "clap of the hands, reaching down to the feet, carry on one's back, chatter at random, with the beard just growing," are all single words made up of strings of other words, maybe its just this author that does this, or maybe all the authors make up their own words, because my text book made a great point of explaining how words are put together, as if training one to figure them out for oneself at some point,--that's a trouble with learning on your own, no one to ask. Anyway, Daphnis and Chloe is really beautiful in Greek, like a poem in prose. And funny too, but that may not come across in translation. I hope the translation you have is captivating.
-
Actually, JUDE, I discovered early on...to my great benefit...
that the teachers with a reputation for being tough were usually
the best teachers. I made a point of getting them if I could.
Probably one of the smartest moves I ever made.
Good point, ROSEMARY. I must say, however, that I have never
seen an alternative med. physician. I have a book on alternative
medicine, and have used it in matters of diet, helpful herbs,
and similar practical suggestions. I've found it most useful in
resolving some problems.
-
Dana - Is the Daphnis and Chloe you are translating online? It is often the case that Greek uses compound words. They also add "infixes" , something I had not encountered until I learned Greek.
-
We have a winner!! The voters have spoken and our first ever selection is probably one of the greatest books ever written:
(http://www.seniorlearn.org/bookclubs/classicsbookclub/cbcodyssey.jpg)
A wise choice, a great read, an inventive, great plot with countless modern allusions in literature, art and our world today, including but not limited to Ulysses by James Joyce, Tennyson's Ulysses (who can ever forget: Telemachus?)
This is my son, mine own Telemachus,
To whom I leave the scepter and the isle—
Well loved of me, discerning to fulfill
This labor, by slow prudence to make mild
A rugged people, and through soft degrees
Subdue them to the useful and the good.
Alfred, Lord Tennyson, "Ulysses"
And THEN there's the Honda Odyssey, the faithful Penelope, O Brother Where Art Thou by the Coen Brothers, Star Quest, the Odyssey, the Odyssey of Pat Tilman.....and...and... we'll find there are countless allusions to the Odyssey in your own lives, but would we have known if we had not read the original? Talk about the Pirates of the Caribbean, Homer rocks!
The Odyssey led the ballot the entire vote, but there were two others as close seconds closing in when the voting ended. Here's the final ballot: http://www.seniorlearn.org/bookclubs/classicsbookclub/ClassicsBookClubFirstVote.jpg
We had 32 votes which is spectacular for a book club and even if YOUR choice did not prevail this time, we hope you'll read with us starting on February 15. (Who lives who does not love The Odyssey? No matter how many times a year he reads it he'll always discover something new he did not see before). Especially in this company.
Now we have much to decide here!
First off we want as many different versions as we can get, we'll not read any one translation from the Greek, we'll each read one which we prefer. Hopefully somebody will have an annotated version or commentary, we'll rely upon you to fill us in on the details we need to know.
Hopefully we can compare translators. Those of you who read ancient Greek are a bonus, we may call upon you to help us in some of the translations or you may find a word which you want to bring to our attention as well.
Some of us may want to focus (this is a HUGE undertaking) on one particular theme or aspect of the book. It's a great story, just the right thing to lose yourself in this winter, and there's nothing else like it in the world.
What aspect will interest you in addition the absorbing plot of this fabulous story?
--The Trojan War? The background history?
--Homer himself?
--Mythology? The role of the gods in this saga of the man of constant sorrows?
--The representations in art of this saga over the last 3000 years?
--Penelope as a representative of faithfulness in marriage?
First up we need to figure out how long we want to take to discuss this book and how many pages or chapters we want to read each time. What do you think?
For my part, I'm going to order the Fagles, shown here. I've never read it and apparently it's fabulous: Robert Fagles's translation is a jaw-droppingly beautiful rendering of Homer's Odyssey, the most accessible and enthralling epic of classical Greece. Fagles captures the rapid and direct language of the original Greek, while telling the story of Odysseus in lyrics that ring with a clear, energetic voice. The story itself has never seemed more dynamic, the action more compelling, nor the descriptions so brilliant in detail. It is often said that every age demands its own translation of the classics. Fagles's work is a triumph because he has not merely provided a contemporary version of Homer's classic poem, but has located the right language for the timeless character of this great tale. Fagles brings the Odyssey so near, one wonders if the Hollywood adaption can be far behind. This is a terrific book. (Quote from Amazon).
***I'm going to be blunt here and go out on a limb. What IF you have tried and failed, in the past, to read one of the great ancient works, and thought it was either YOU or the ancients whom you found difficult or uninteresting?
I have the Pope/ Flaxman Odyssey here, a gorgeous leather bound gold tooled volume. My Pope here is in rhyme, English rhyme, it rhymes for heaven's sake. . I started this morning to try to read a bit of it. It was written in the 1700's and is stilted, formal, the eye wanders, the mind wanders, despite its being one of the famous translations.
One puts it down. One KNOWS this is an incredible story, one knows it's SUCH a good read, but one's translation is almost 300 years old itself and shows it.
If you find with whatever copy you get, whether from Gutenberg or online free and you begin to doubt your own ability, give yourself a chance? Get a more modern translation? We don't live in the 1700's. If you are an expert in the speech patterns of 1700 or prefer them, by all means enjoy. I'm addressing this to those who don't find Pope palatable. Get a copy of Fagles or Lombardo. Lombardo, a distinguished scholar in his own right, does his in modern cadences and expression, here's his bit on the Cyclops, for instance:
"Lombardo's Odyssey offers the distinctive speed, clarity, and boldness that so distinguished his 1997 Iliad. From the translation:"
"And when the wine had begun to work on his mind,
I spoke these sweet words to him:
'Cyclops
You ask me my name, my glorious name,
And I will tell it to you. Remember now,
To give me the gift just as you promised.
Noman is my name. They call me Noman-
My mother, my father, and all my friends too.'
He answered from his pitiless heart:
'Noman I will eat last after his friends.
Friends first, him last. That's my gift to you.'"
If you find your TRANSLATOR does not convey clearly to YOU what's happening you need another one, period.
I love Lombardo, I love the way he translates. I think I'll get him, too, just in case I need a translator for the translations. hahaha If you've read the Odyssey every year, try a new translator and see what it brings to your experience. I bet you'll be surprised.
Let's decide, whichever translation YOU like, how far we want to read the first week!
If you've been longing for a good book to lose yourself in, long no more, sign in and join us! :)
A wise choice to get our feet wet, voters, huzzah!
-
YIKES! We start Feb. 15th? That means I'm going to be working with
both Odyssey and Quanah Parker's "Empire of the Summer Moon".
Oh, boy. I hope my brain cells are up to it. :o ::)
-
I hope my brain cells are up to it.
You and me, both, Babi. My first choice is tied for second, but Odyssey almost got my vote. I'm in -- for the duration? We'll see. Probably more like a silent partner or quiet lurker. Now to check out these different translations. A freebie, probably a Gutenburg, has been, untouched, on my Kindle for quite some time. Thanks for the input on Fagles and Lombardo, Ginny.
-
Not my vote either but it is being read by so many now that it has become a 'must-read' by the many returning from Iraq.
Need to look first - it could be buried someplace on one of shelves - but if not I am inclined toward the Everyman publication - the translation gets high marks and not only does it fit my love of a hardback but it goes right up there with the many other Everyman publications I own.
Isn't there a section of this story where he relates his journey - that is what I would be most interested in discussing - the war - uh - and for sure not listening to yet one more 'faithful' wife who really had no choice unless she wanted to be on the garbage heap of society describe all the times the guys gave her a hard time hoping to knock her off her pedestal - then for him to come home after what 20 years and rather than falling into her arms and smothering her with 20 years of longing and love - with weak knee heartfelt admiration for her sticking by him while tumbling out his words and kisses outlining dreams for their future - oh no - first thing he does is 'SECRETLY' test her faithfulness - sheeesh...that is when I lost all respect for the guy but I'll put up with him in hopes that his long journey home is interesting with all sorts of mythical symbolism included as he describes each event ...
-
Oh great, I'm very pleased. I shall get the Fitzgerald. The Greek is available on the Perseus website. Can't wait, really. Its been on my to read list for ever.
Roshanarose--the Daphnis and Chloe I am translating is not on line (tho I expect its on the Perseus site too) but is a book published by Bolchazay-Carducci edited by Byre and Cueva. really user friendly, vocab. on facing page, exellent notes, but they don't go too far ( i hate these notes that translate the thing for you, I just like hints!!)
-
THE ODYSSEY BY HOMER- HOOORAH
!
Pedln and Babi- I have singed up for the Empire Moon as well. Oh boy and my college roommate wilL be here from Feb. 14th thru March 1st. Oh dear, so much to do, so much to read. Isn’t this fun?
I, for one, still plan on sitting in the back row with Sandy and Rosemary. I have to check out the Odyssey at our library and see which translation it is. I don’t think that I could do this with my e- reader. I need to get up and move around and emote while reading. Ginny’s Lombardo sounds like that would be right up my alley. Maybe I’ll order that one. Today is a big play off day so I am tied up for the day BUT tomorrow watch out Homer, here she comes!
-
YIPPEE! YIPPEE! At last we know the verdict. I didn't vote for it but it was my second choice so I'm truly happy with the outcome.
I just checked my shelves and found four copies - translated by -
1.Samuel Butler in prose 1900 in a Great Books edition.
2. T.E.Lawrence better known as Lawrence of Arabia in prose 1932
3. Albert Cook of Brown U in verse 1974 - this is a Norton Critical Edition and has some backgrounds and short critical pieces etc. It has very little annotation.
4. E.V Rieu in prose originally for Penguin Books 1946 but in a hardback, glossy, illustrated edition of 1980. Great colour and black and white photos of artifacts and places.
Despite having these I'm intrigued by the Fagles and Lombardo translations and might have to seek those out - oh boy!
First up we need to figure out how long we want to take to discuss this book and how many pages or chapters we want to read each time. What do you think?
- Ginny
My answer to how long we want to take is simply as long as it takes - but in reality it comes down to how long the DLs can spare to the project.
As for how many pages or chapters each time - that's best left up to the experts here.
I haven't felt this excited about a prospective read/discussion for years.
-
Hurray! Not the one I voted for, but it is not unexpected that it is No. 1.
I am off to the Project Gutenberg site to see which translations (and there are more than one) are available. I plan on reading it on my Kindle. My Modern Library editions of The Odessey and The Illiad disappeared from my bookshelves long ago in one of my periodic sweeps/moves. I don't know who translated them.
-
I didn't vote for this book but in a way am pleased to reread it . The last time I read it I was 16 and hopefully I have learned something since then.
I like annotated classics so I will research and find one that appeals. This is an exciting project!
-
Wow, I just checked my ereader and The Odyssey is a free download by Homer. There is also one that says Homer and Alexander Pope.
???????????????????? Hello, wasn't Pope from the 1700'S? Pedln- which one of them are you going to use?
-
Ginny: am glad you mentioned the 2 translations that are kind to readers who might be intimidated by the old language of the 1700s...I admit I was worried when I looked at the book online thru Gutenberg...think I will go looking at some of the newer translations, and perhaps use that alongside the Gutenberg
Jude: can you tell me more about the 'annotated' books, is this like someone writing in the margins, who looks like they know what they are talking about, or ???
sounds interesting!!
Deb
-
Gosh yes, isn't this exciting? I LOVE the reaction here! Whoop!
I am thrilled as it's SUCH a good read, and such an interesting group, I like just reading the comments now for heaven's sake, and such excitement here! And yes we definitely want to get something readable. If you CAN get one with notes or annotations or commentary, please please do, we need all the commentary we can get! We need so much brought to the table!
Gum with 4 of them!! YAHOO and some of us have the Pope, his Cyclops is not bad but it's not Lombardo, here he is on the same thing as I put above for Lombardo:
"Thy promised boon, O Cyclop! now I claim,
And plead my title; Noman is my name.
By that distinguish'd from my tender years,
'Tis what my parents call me, and my peers."
"The giant then: 'Our promis'd grace receive,
The hospitable boon we mean to give:
When all thy wretched crew have felt my power,
Noman shall be the last I will devour.'"
I dunno, it may be me, but I think as pretty as this, (and it is pretty), sort of jingly, I find myself looking for the next rhyme and marveling at the cleverness of Pope instead of paying attention to what the story says.
Barbara, hahaha listen, I can see right now, we are all really going to have the discussion at the end, the climax of the book, because when the Odyssey was first mentioned I thought, I wonder, if it gets chosen, what they will think of Penelope? She definitely had an interesting reaction about his return. I have some trouble understanding her attitude toward him, to be honest, so I look forward to hearing what this group says: I bet this group can understand her and explain it; but let's not spoil the ending, let's get there together.
Next we must decide how MUCH we're going to read each week and for the first week. And it's hard to do that without the book we will be using.
I love the excitement here! Now we must decide this:
First up we need to figure out how long we want to take to discuss this book and how many pages or chapters we want to read each time. What do you think?
Gum says: My answer to how long we want to take is simply as long as it takes - but in reality it comes down to how long the DLs can spare to the project.
As for how many pages or chapters each time - that's best left up to the experts here.
I haven't felt this excited about a prospective read/discussion for years.
Me either, I'm afraid to breathe lest I break the spell and the excitement. We've got all the time in the world, we can take it as fast or slow as you all like and really enjoy it.
Let's get a copy we can actually read and enjoy, because the book is marvelous, and then see how much we'd like to read?
We're going on our own Odyssey, that just occurred to me!
A little indecision about the dates here, now resolved, February 15th it is. It will be our own little Valentine to ourselves in the new year.
-
Goodness - without the book in hand to determine length I have no clue what would be a comfortable pace - one thing for sure I do not intend to learn any Greek during this read - and so those of you who are looking forward to polishing up your Greek please have at it but I am not joining that part of the conversation - I do love to research symbolism and history and that is how I see contributing to the conversation -
Reading the reviews for the various translations on Amazon it appears some of the translations are in a poetic form and others took it one step further into a narrative like reading a novel today. I will be curious to read the poetic and as a result often a music with a different set of beats says as much as the actual words - yes, I am looking forward - at first it felt daunting but Ginny you are so right - the enthusiasm and reaction by this group is contagious - I am so glad to be a part of all this.
For those who do have the book on hand - can you give us an idea how many pages are devoted to the story? As of right now I would hope we could be finished by mid to late June - although our July and August because of high Temps can be like winter for those who live up north. We very often stay close to home and only get out when we must - therefore if this read takes 6 months so be it. I do think it is 'The' basis for all Greek and Roman literature therefore in my mind it is worth whatever time it takes.
hmmm an annotated copy hmmm need to look into that...
-
Ginny ~ What an interesting vote! Although I did not vote for this, I'm game.
I assume the discussion will take months and months!
Are you planning to travel this spring? Will we take a break if so, or are you game, Joan, to
take this DL task in hand if Ginny is away?
Margie/Frybabe ~ I can't attempt this on my Kindle. How do you find you are able to page back and discuss details that others mention? I tried it in the discussion of Zeitoun by Dave Eggers, and it didn't work out well for me at all.
p.s. for anyone reading this ~ I love my Kindle, but only for lite reading, so far.
-
If you get Fitzgerald there is a commentary you can get to go with it. I like the Fitzgerald Iliad very much. It's older (late 50s or early 60s I think), so it hasn't got the hype of the more recent translations, but it got plenty hype when it first came out--i remember my latin teacher raving about it !
-
I found a copy of The Odyssey on my bookshelves. Unread. It is the Great Books version (copyright 1955) and reads like a narrative. (Translated by S.H. Butcher and Andrew Lang (1879), based upon the third edition, 1888.)
I will be in the back row, listening to all of you and may raise my hand and make a comment now and then. But most of the time I'll be quietly learning. I just wanted you all to know, I'll be here. March 1.
Evelyn
-
Evelyn, welcome welcome, WELCOME!! So good to have you, and isn't this a fabulous group and variation of translations already? I love it!~
It's February again, February 15, had to move it back to avoid conflict with another discussion so February it is, our own personal Valentine. :)
What matters is not the year the translation was done but only if you understand it, that it's written in such a way that resonates with YOU, that's all that matters. If one begins to feel this is over one's head then one is not reading the right translation. It's very readable and enjoyable, inventive and creative. There's nothing like it in the world, Pirates of the Caribbean notwithstanding hahahaa.
OH I can't wait!~ Welcome, All!
-
Ok found some information on length - it appears Everyman has this broken in to essentially 24 chapters while the Loeb library addition breaks it into 12 chapters - another synopsis I read - forget what addition - says there are between 12000 and 15000 lines - like it or not looks like for me to be content I am going to have to consider a passing foray into Homeric Greek that is evidently not the same as even the Greek spoken by the populace, rather an Ionic Greek .
Here is a good link without going to Gutenberg - an on-line translation in 24 chapters - this site has many of the classics
http://www.online-literature.com/homer/odyssey/
-
Oh boy, I can see I'm going to have Odysseys coming out of my ears. Andy, the one on my Kindle is a freebie and is an Alexander Pope translation. Pope's introduction is very very very long. I'm assuming this is a Gutenburg and there is no table of contents. So, I spent part of the afternoon learning how to make bookmarks, and can now jump to Books I, II, III, and IV.
That's an interesting site, Barbara, and the Samuel Butler translation shown there is what I checked out from the library today, mainly because it looked like it had a list of the players, something I will definitely need.
Let me see if I have this straight. First came the Illiad, which is about the Trojan War? Then came the Odyssey, which took place AFTER the war? I am remembering bits and pieces, some from Latin class and some from earlier isolated readings. It will be good to get it all connected.
-
Evelyn, after going back and forth between the available translations on Project Gutenberg, I finally settled on the Butcher and Lang too. I liked the Pope translation, but wasn't sure how he managed to make it rhyme all the time without changing things a little. Cowper is there in a what looks like a semi-poem/semi-prose mode. Church was interesting if you want to try reading it in King James English. In the forward of the Gutenberg version of Samuel Butler, it said it was meant as an supplement to an earlier work of his, so I thought it might not be complete. There are several Greek versions and a French version. There is a very interesting version translated from a primary school reader from Athens, Greece. This last one is written as a story narrative. The audio version is read from Samuel Butler's translation.
Mippy, I haven't tried the bookmark feature yet. I understand that you can use that to bookmark pages you want to go back to. There is also a highlight and personal notes feature which I have not tried yet.
-
Welcome to
(http://www.seniorlearn.org/bookclubs/classicsbookclub/Thanksgivingclassicsbookclub.jpg)
We have a winner! Our first ever read in the Classics Book Club to begin on February 15, with the initial segment, schedule still to be decided but we'll break it up into parts, of Homer's Odyssey!
(http://www.seniorlearn.org/bookclubs/classicsbookclub/cbcodyssey.jpg)
If you have been casting about for a great book to lose yourself in this winter, you've come to the right place! Help us decide on a schedule, how far DO we want to go that first week? How to divide this? Whose translation do you have?
**NB: There are probably 50+ famous translations of the Odyssey. If you find the translation you have does not speak to you or does not convey to you what's happening, this book is too fabulous to waste on an old outdated translation: try a new one.
Free SparkNotes background and analysis on the Odyssey (http://www.sparknotes.com/lit/odyssey)
"I haven't felt this excited about a prospective read/discussion for years."--- Gumtree
Discussion Leaders: Joan K (joankraft13@yahoo.com) & ginny (gvinesc@gmail.com )
Everyone is welcome!
Pulled my copy of the Odyssey off the shelf. Bought it in the 60's when I was purchasing books on a monthly basis which had leather covers on the spine ::) It is a 1956 translation by Alexander Pope with intro by Thomas Yoseloff and a postscript by Pope, a Conclusion by W. Broome.
-
Aside on Kindle use:
I also have started the bookmarking the start of chapters in the Odyssey on my Kindle, and that's ok as far as it goes. The Alexander Pope translation is a difficulty of a different color.
But what I found to be a difficulty in reading groups is when someone mentions a phrase or a particular sentence, and one cannot easy flip through pages to find it. It isn't like a real paper book using either sticky notes or light pencil marks. I'm going to decide which translation to buy shortly. The Lombardo Iliad was so good, that will probably be my choice.
-
I assume I'll get Lombardo or Fagles--with any luck Barnes and Noble will have both so that I can compare them, but they cut their inventory so drastically when the recession hit that they may let me down. I had a falling-apart old paperback, probably from the 1960's, but it was disintegrating and we got rid of it before we moved, and my daughter claimed our set of "Great Books."
With everyone using different translations, it doesn't seem practical to assign readings by the number of pages, since different people could end up at different places. Would it be better to "read through the Cyclops part," or "read up to where Circe comes in"?
-
WEll I have no idea what I am doing but I walked up to our library where I live and in the Classic section I found The Odyssey on the shelf so I borrowed it. It was copyrighted in 1944 by Walter J. Black, Inc. (?) It has an informative introduction and preface and then lists the principal personages of the Odyssey.
Do they all have this feature? I don't know if they are all the same but I am assuming that they are all broken down into "books." Is that correct instead of chapters? After i have a funeral service for my computer I will sit down and glance through the intro. I have no idea if this will be alright to read with the other translations.
-
My Pope edition is broken down into books. This edition has a copyright date of 1956.
-
The Odyssey wasn't my first choice either, but it was a very close second, so I'm happy. I own Lombardo, but think maybe I'll get Fagles too, since it's been praised so highly. My problem with Pope is that, while it's lovely poetry, it seems more Pope than Homer.
How long to take? Why not figure out a reasonable size first chunk, dive in, then see how it goes before making a schedule for the rest?
-
hi there
-went out this morning to try and locate a copy of 'Odyssey' and came up with a 1946 published by penguin--translation by E. V. Rieu
-located it in a second hand bookstore in Rockport, and paid $1.89; it only cost 1.15 Canadian when first put on the shelves in 1946
--it is not prose or poetry but reads like a book, & there are 24 chapters
the author writes in the introduction:
This version of the Odyssey is, in its intention at any rate, a genuine translation, not a paraphrase nor a retold tale. At the same time, and within the rules I have set myself, I have done my best to make Homer easy reading for those who are unfamiliar with the Greek world. Nevertheless they are bound to find here much that is strange and I beg them to bear with me patiently through a few preliminary pages so that I may provide them beforehand with the answers to some at least of the questions that will occur to them as they read.
even though this book was translated in the 1940s it looks very user friendly....I intend to follow online a poetic version as well...but at least the book will keep me on track with the story I believe or hope
**yesterday found a web site with many of the translations of the Odyssey so I thought I'd include that if it might help anyone wondering about varying translations--after Ginny mentioned the 70 some-odd versions from translations I just had to check into that
https://records.viu.ca/~johnstoi/homer/homertranslations.htm
-seems strange to have passed by this book so many times on bookshelves now to be eager to begin this endeavour
Deb
-
I'm so happy that we'll be reading the Odyssey! Have had the Fagles translation sitting on my shelf for a few years now but have never tackled the whole thing and I know I've been misssing a wonderful experience.. I am familiar with some of the stories from it, of course, but that is absolutely nothing like reading Homer from beginning to end!!!!!!
My edition has a long introduction by Bernard Knox. At the end of the book there is a translator's postscript and notes on the translation. There are maps too. This looks like a pretty useful book - also I understand that the Fagles translation has been much praised - so I'm going with this one, for sure.
-
Hi fellow travellers (Odysseians).
My "Odysseus" is the prose translation by T.E. Lawrence. It is divided into 24 books.
I am not too sure of how we are going to handle this, but to my eye, at least, it would appear that concentrating on "the books" would be the way to go. This is open to debate, of course.
-
After researching on Google and Amazon I ordered the Fagle translation since so many readers couldn't stop praising it.
Also it is definitely not the version we read in high school since the Fagle edition wasn't yet published. With shipping it cost only ten dollars and that will undoubtedly provide me with many hours of pleasure.
Although my husand has a Kindle and I could read it that way, having a book in my hand is still too great a joy to give up.
Having already read the book it seems that at least two months are necessary to have a serious discussion, with background provided by those of you with a grounding in Classical literature.
Perhaps there are some articles that some of you may suggest as preparation?
-
My "Odysseus" is the prose translation by T.E. Lawrence
Roshanarose Aha! that's one of the ones I have too - It's very readable. I just opened it at random and Lawrence's take on the rosy fingered dawn leapt off the page at me -
He says, At dawn's first redness in the sky... I think it will be fun as we read to discover how different translators word the epithets here and there.
The Samuel Butler translation is also readable and online. For me, a major drawback is that he uses the Roman names for the gods so that Zeus is Jove/Jupiter - Athene becomes Minerva etc. which is OK but for a Greek text I prefer the Greek names for the pantheon of gods.
Bookad/Deb I like the Rieu translation - I have it in a glossy coffee table book with colour plates etc and am thinking of using it along with the Albert Cook version - one prose / one verse. Although I am tempted to look out for the Fagles as well as everyone speaks so highly of it.
The reading will divide easily into a number of books each time - and I'm sure the DLs will sort that out for us.
As for how long to take I like PatH's idea -
Why not figure out a reasonable size first chunk, dive in, then see how it goes before making a schedule for the rest?
Oh Boy! Such fun!
-
Roshana, I think your suggestion of the "books" is the way to go. At least we can all keep on track that way.
And Jude, yes I hope we take it slowly. Why set any time limits? We are a mixed bag here, backgroundwise -- like a computer class where some are getting acquainted with the mouse and others are writing software.
-
Oh wow what a discussion here, just love it. I enjoy reading the posts about as much as I anticipate the book! :)
Ok first up for me, since we're going on our own odyssey, or any trip, is to make a list. I'll be the traveling list maker or...secretary. I am so excited about this! I think I'll make a list for the heading of what translation each of us is reading, we'll want to hear how the different translators did it, and it will be interesting to see the different ones, I am not thinking we've ever done this before. Seems like we all used the same version in 1996. I like this better, it's different and exciting.
I'll go back thru and read all the posts again and get that up over the weekend.
Golly moses, Bookad, what a list of translations! I had no idea there had been so many, and look at the new ones!! Doesn't that make you curious? Supposedly each age deserves its own translation, I have never heard of some of them.
Gum, T.E. Lawrence? THE Lawrence of Arabia? Wow. Rieu? Will somebody put in something of his?
The Butler sounds very user friendly and reassuring, that's what we need. Everybody keep him in mind if your own copy gets tedious, it appears there are tons of them online.
I'm always in favor of everybody in a book discussion having the same info from the get go. To that end, you do know that Spark Notes is online free? And they do have the Odyssey: http://www.sparknotes.com/lit/odyssey
Now for those who want a Character List, there it is.
I like the idea of going by books and seeing how it goes, taking our time and deciding as we go. Love it. I can see this is the right group to read this with, just love all the suggestions here.
Do you think the week before the discussion starts (we'll want a new discussion just for the Odyssey) we might try to each bring something of the history which the book references? Like the Trojan War? And what caused it? And Homer himself? The Oral Tradition?
I think if we start with some background we'll enjoy the book more, what do you think? In this we'll hope that each person will bring something of the history or background here to share.
***Now here I go off on another limb? *** Wikipedia is not the best source. I know it comes up first? But it's full of inaccuracies. Why take your time, feel good about what you have found and bring it, only to find it's not true?
You have to keep looking sometimes, sometimes 3 pages to find somebody who is reliable. Usually something with .edu at the end of it (but not always) is good?
All right, books it is for a schedule. JoanK is having computer problems but I'm sure she'll agree, it makes perfect sense. My books are not here yet, they come tomorrow, but I have the Pope. There's no long introduction, just a Note Upon the Translation, and it starts right in. I've got 14 pages in Book I, they are BIG pages, this is a BIG book but it's 14 pages for Book I?
Those of you with LONG introductions, how do you normally approach them? Joan R, a long introduction by Bernard Knox. Do you feel duty bound to read it now, or later?
And then there's an "Argument, " short, which explains the opening plot and it's FULL of names we need to know before we start too: Nestor, Minerva, Telemachus, Taphians, Menelaus, Penelope, Phemius, Calypso, Mercury, Ulysses, Pallas, Ithaca, Mentes, Ulysses, and I see Troy and Muse in the first 20 lines. We need to get some background here unless the name Menelaus means as much to you as your own name?
So we need to include them also, in our background week, it's hard to read about Menelaus and Mercury without knowing who they were and why they are in the story.
I also see Orestes and Pluto and AEgysthus, in the first two pages. Don't you think if we get these first we can add on any others as they come up? We want to start out reading enjoyably, not stopping at every capitalized word wondering now who or what is this? And why is it here? That can sometimes be a turn off or a discouragement. One of the joys of group reading is there are so many hands on the plow, it goes better.
I guess just like we have the Honda Odyssey and it refers back to the Odyssey they also referred back to things and people they knew like the Trojan War and the gods and they expected everybody to know what it was, just like the Honda, but we may not. AEgysthus? Maybe in the week before we can all get some of these ironed out?
So are we looking at Book I for starters, no matter how many pages it is in your book? I don't have an "Introduction," what will those of you with them do?
-
My copy is the Robert Fitzgerald translation. No notes, no introduction..just plunges right in.
It's quite readable, but I have no idea how accurate the translation might be. I will no doubt
discover that as we compare notes. The only additional information offered is occasional
numbers referring back to the original Greek text, which of course is of no use to me at all. Even
if I had the original Greek text I couldn't read it, but behold!!.. I will be discussing the book with
people who actually can!! :)
-
As mentioned: My book has a preface, a very comprehensible introduction, an all inclusive cast of characters and an idiot trying to read it. ;D
I agree Ginny, I think that the week prior to our start we should discuss the background information about the tragedy of this youth.
-
Rieu? Will somebody put in something of his?
Glad to, Ginny - Beginning of Book II
As soon as Dawn with her rose-tinted hands had lit the East, Odysseus' son put on his clothes and got up from his bed. He slung a sharp sword from his shoulder, bound a stout pair of sandals on his comely feet and strode from his bedroom looking like a god. He at once gave orders to the clear-voiced criers to call his long-haired compatriots to Assembly. The herald cried their summons and the people quickly mustered. When all had arrived and the assembly was complete, Telemachus himself set out for the meeting-place, bronze spear in hand, escorted only by two dogs that trotted beside him. Athene endowed him with such magic charm that all eyes were turned on him in admiration when he came up. The elders made way for him as he took his father's seat.
Here's the same passage from Albert Cook:
And when the early born, rosy-fingered dawn appeared,
The dear son of Odysseus rose up out of bed,
Put on his clothes, and set the sharp sword round his shoulder,
Bound the lovely sandals beneath his shining feet
And went on out of the bedroom, like a god to look at.
At once he ordered the heralds with their piercing voices
To summon the long-haired Achaians to an assembly.
The herald made summons, and they gathered together quickly.
And when they were gathered and had come together
He went to the assembly and held his bronze spear in his fist -
Not alone, but the swift footed dogs went along with him.
Moreover Athene shed a divine grace around him.
The people all marveled at him as he was coming up.
He sat down in his father's seat, and the old men gave way.
And finally, Lawrence of Arabia:
So soon as rosy-fingered morning came forth from the first grey dawn, the beloved son of Odysseus sprang from bed, dressed, threw the sling of his cutting sword over one shoulder, and tied the rich sandals round his nimble feet: stately as a God he stepped out and down from his bed-chamber. On the moment he had called his heralds and told them to sound with their ringing voices, the assembly amongst the long-haired Achaeans. As he bade, the heralds sounded: and as they bade, the Achaeans assembled speedily. Telemachus waited till all had come together into place and then, tightly gripping his copper-bladed spear, he strode through their throng. For company he had just his two flashing-footed dogs at heel: but Athene poured about his form so significant a glory that upon his approach the eyes of the crowd were held at gaze. The elders yielded him way and in his father's great chair he sat him down.
So which one do you like best...
-
Here's the beginning of Book 2 from Fagles:
When young dawn with her rose-red fingers shone once more
the true son of Odysseus sprang from bed and dressed,
over his shoulder he slung his well-honed sword,
fastened rawhide sandals under his smooth feet
and stepped from his bedroom, handsome as a god.
At once he ordered heralds to cry out loud and clear
and summon the flowing-haired Achaeans to full assembly.
Their cries rand out. The people filed in quickly.
When they'd grouped, crowding the meeting grounds,
Telemachmus strode in too, a bronze spear in his grip
and not alone: two sleek hounds went trottting at his heels.
And Athena lavished a marvelous splendor on the prince
so the people all gazed in wonder as he came forward,
the elders making way as he took his father's seat.
-
For comparison, and thanks to Gumtree and JoanR for the above
here's A. Pope's version (typed as poetic lines, from Kindle)
Now reddening from the dawn, the morning ray
Glow'd in the front of heaven, and gave the day
The youthful hero, with returning light,
Rose anxious from the inquietudes of night.
A royal robe he wore with graceful pride,
A two-edged falchion threaten'd by his side,
Embroider'd sandals glitter'd as he trod
And forth he moved, majestic as a god.
Then by his heralds, restless of delay,
To council calls the peers: the peers obey.
Soon as in solemn form the assembly sate,
From his high dome himself descends in state.
Bright in his hand a ponderous javelin shined;
Two dogs, a faithful guard, attend behind;
Pallas with grace divine his form improves,
And gazing crowds admire him as he moves,
His father's throne he fill'd; while distant stood
The hoary peers, and aged wisdom bow'd.
-
I wonder why Alexander Pope thinks Telemachus is "anxious"!! The other versions show a rather confident young man.
I find Lawrence's diction too flowery - the term "Greek" brings "clean-cut " to my mind, Rieu's prose version rather leaves me cold so I guess I'm prejudiced in favor of R.Fagles!!!
Other opinions??
-
Oh I do like Pope's poetry version. I haven't the time just now to compare with the Butcher and Lang. Will be back this evening.
-
really all these translations are fine, aren't they. Your comment JoanR about the anxious youth is interesting and prompted me to look up the Greek and I cannot see where anxious comes from in that ,maybe anxious meant something different in Pope's day, like enthusiastic to get on with the day, or something. The word for rosy fingered dawn is nice tho--rododactulos--rosy fingered!!
-
This is the beginning of Book II that I have.
Now when the child of morning, rosy-fingered Dawn appeared.
Telechamus rose and dressed himself.
He bound his sandals on to his comely feet, girded his sword about his shoulder and left his room looking like an immortal god.
He at once sent the criers round to call the people in assembly, so they called them and the people gathered thereon. Then, when they were go together, he went to the place of assembly spear in hand- not along, for his two hounds went with him.
Athene endowed him as he went by and when he took his place in his father's seat even the oldest councilors made way for him.
Holy smokes, who know which to choose? I like Alexander Pope's version I think.
-
OK, at Barnes and Noble this afternoon, I speed-dated Fitzgerald, Fagles and Lombardo, and came home with the latter. It was a tough call. I liked Fitzgerald's, too--his translation had almost an Anglo-Saxon feel, but in the end I went for the vigor. Fagles was my least favorite, except that the printing in his version was the easiest on my eyes.
-
I absolutely love this. I just love reading all the versions, they are all good. My Butcher & Lang is similar to all of them... in this version he has "smooth feet and goodly sandals". :D
This is going to be such a great discussion. It's going to be such fun to compare the different versions.
Evelyn
-
Rieu version of Odyssey-1946
I am amazed that my version is so readable and I can follow it as a story...I was afraid with a poetry version I would get lost in the story among the flowery language...but as I said I intend to follow one of the online versions alongside the penguin-Rieu hardcopy I have
-he writes an intro of 10 pages
chapter 1 is titled 'Athene Visits Telemachus-pg 25-- 36
at the back of the book is a sort of crib sheet
Greek Gods in the Odyssey
i.e.
name relationship to Zeus functions
Aphrodite daughter of Zeus & Dione Goddess of Love
(Venus)
Apollo son of Zeus & Leto God of light, music, archery
(Apollo) prophecy
and so on......
Ginny-thank you for mentioning the'sparks' notes online-I was all set to go to half-priced books again
to get a copy of something like that to help me
I am really eager to begin this, I think it will be fun...
Deb
-
Anchialus Antinous Atrides
Calypso Eurymachus Hermes
Icarious Ilus Jason
Jove Laertes Menelaus
Mentes Mercury Minerva
Muse Neptune Nestor
Ops Orestes Pallas
Penelope Phemius Phorcys
Pluto Polybus Pisenor
Polypheme Taphians Telemachus
Thoosa Ulysses Zacynthus
PLACES, ETC.
Achaian coast Brutian strand Duliehium
Ephyre AEthiopia lion
Ilus Ithaca Neion
Ogygia Olympus Phrygian shore
Pyle Reithrus Reithrian port
Samos Sparta Stygian gloom
Taphian relm Temese Troy
Zacynthus Island
NAMES FOUND IN BOOK I OF POPE EDITION!! WHOOPS MY NICE COLUMNS WON'T STAY PUT!!
-
I will have to say the Spark notes are very impressive. For instance look what they do with Sally's character list:
Penelope - Wife of Odysseus and mother of Telemachus. Penelope spends her days in the palace pining for the husband who left for Troy twenty years earlier and never returned. Homer portrays her as sometimes flighty and excitable but also clever and steadfastly true to her husband.
Read an in-depth analysis of Penelope.
Athena - Daughter of Zeus and goddess of wisdom, purposeful battle, and the womanly arts. Athena assists Odysseus and Telemachus with divine powers throughout the epic, and she speaks up for them in the councils of the gods on Mount Olympus. She often appears in disguise as Mentor, an old friend of Odysseus.
Read an in-depth analysis of Athena.
And so on, those are not real links, in my post but they are on the website. We need Spark Notes in the heading, it's quick and easy and germane to the story.
I don't actually SEE them saying Athena is Minerva as Pope mentions in Sally's post, but maybe that's in the longer explanation.
Now the business about "anxious," is exactly what I am hoping those who know ancient Greek here (I believe there are three of you) will help us with.
What IS the word in Greek? Why, one wonders do three translators put here by Gum, JoanR and Mippy, thank you, mention nothing of anxiety but Pope does? What is the definition of that word? Are there circumstances when it's used for "anxious" and when it's not? That was a very good question, by JoanR: I wonder why Alexander Pope thinks Telemachus is "anxious"!! Why indeed?
I liked Dana's response, she thought it was Pope and the times he lived in what IS the word and what are the definitions?
What a trip to be able to find out here, maybe our three Graiae (just kidding KIDDING!) Greekists can figure it out, argue it out, between them, pass it about like the one eye, and present us with a solution.
Failing that, failing a consensus between our Greekists, I think this type of thing would make a perfect question for Dr. Lombardo, and he'd answer, you can bet on that, but let's see if we can work it out ourselves and not ask him anything we can't manage. I can't wait to see what HE has for that passage.
Some of those translations put here are VERY readable, this is exciting, I agree, Evelyn.
Roxania you scare me with the Fagles, didn't care for it? Good thing I ordered the Lombardo too, I know he's readable. With so many on Amazon in the "look inside" situation you really can read a bit of each, too, speed date hahaha
It just boils down to what speaks to YOU, really. Nobody is translating the Odyssey who doesn't know what he is doing, that's what makes it so exciting: the differences. What fun!
Welcome, All! Today my books should be here!
So we're looking at Book I for the 15th? and the 7th to the 15th for background, which we'll all bring here?
-
My Greek dictionary shows φροντιζω - for being anxious
επιμελεια ας η - for anxiety
-
Oh, GUM, that was great. I can see how much it's going to add to my enjoyment to have other
versions for comparison.
Naturally, I had to go read that passage in Fitzgerald's translation. Fitzgerald presents
a more human aspect, I believe. There seems to be more emphasis on the man and less on the
influence of the gods.
Just comparing the translations given here, it seems to me that Pope is sounding more like
Pope than Homer.
-
Oh my goodness. Φροντίζω (Attic Greek / Ancient Greek) has several meanings according to my Liddell and Scott p.768. It can mean to think; to consider; give heed; to care about; to devise. I would have to read the original Greek to get an idea of the context. Φροντίζειν περί τίνος means to be concerned or anxious about something. The ω or omega ending in Greek verbs always signifies "I". The ειν would indicate a he/she/it ending.
Η Επιμέλεια according to Liddell and Scott p.255 is a feminine singular noun meaning care, attention, diligence, or all of the above paid to a thing.
My Modern Greek dictionary (J.T. Pring p. 208) has the same verb Φροντίζω which means to look after; take care of; I will see to it.
Is it really necessary at this stage to concern ourselves about the intricacies of translation? Personally, I find it fascinating, but I have the feeling that other participants in this discussion may not.
-
This is what my Crowell’s Handbook of Classical Mythology says about Athena and Minerva
Minerva, a Roman goddess regularly identified with Athena. Minerva was the patroness of the arts and crafts and therefore of the intelligence and skill reqauired in their practice. These qualities were extended to the skills of war. Her funtions were so similar to those of Athena that the two goddesses were readily equated, but Minera was an important deity in her own right.
That doesn’t sound like they were one and the same. I grew up knowing Minerva as the Goddess of Wisdom; my poor mother had been given the name of Ruby Minerva. As a little girl 100 years ago she lorded that title over her little sister Violet Thora, who was only the goddess of thunder. (My grandmother picked out some doozies for her girls. ;D )
-
I wanted to figure out which translation we had read in class so many years ago. Since some of the pages (the ones with drawings) are still imprinted on my brain, I remembered that the pages opposite the drawings were in verse. Therefore , after reading the verses presented here (they seemed somehow more familiar than the other translations) I went to find out about Pope and who he was and why he translated this book.
Besides finding out about his many maladies, the fact that he was only four feet six and that he was one of the great writers of his time I came upon this:
"Encouraged by the success of the Illiad,Pope translated the Odyssey in 1726. Confronted by the arduous ness of the task
he enlisted the help of William Broome (8 books) and Elijah Fenton(4 books). Pope (12 books) tried to conceal this collaboration but the secret leaked out. It did not effect the commercial success of the book which was one of Popes main concerns."
So praising Popes translation might be praising Pope-Broome-Fenton translations.
Sorry, didn't really want to be a spoil sport.
-
That was interesting, Judi. I wonder if anyone can tell the difference between the three, or if Pope did an overall edit of the others to make and differences in style consistent with his translation.
-
Pedln - I think Ruby Minerva is a gorgeous name, but not so sure I would want to be saddled with it for life. Names like Ruby are enjoying something of a revival these days. So Minerva as a second name would be quite fitting.
As I understand it the Romans adopted the Greek deities as their own but gave them different names, and possibly a couple of extra attributes? e.g. Hermes/Mercury; Aphrodite/Venus; Hephaestus/Vulcan; Hera/Juno; Mars/Ares etc.
For sure Minerva was a Goddess in her own right in Rome. So were all the others. The Romans adopted them from Greece to suit their own purposes. I don't know the politics regarding the name changes, but I bet they were there. The conquerors' prerogative, no doubt. But Athena was also the Goddess of many crafts, weaving being one.
-
Aaaarrrgghhhhhh! I just wrote up a whole summary of Athena, my own words, not cut and paste, and the whole bloody thing disappeared into cyberspace. Don't you just HATE it when that happens? It was information about the great Goddess that I gleaned from about 6 websites.
btw φροντίζω is pronounced fronteezo; and φροντίζειν is pronounced fronteezeen. Modern Greek has dropped the ending of "ν" which is actually pronounced n.
-
I have had so much disappear into cyberspace that I now make two copies of everything I value keeping. Keep wondering if I'm hitting the Control key or something?
-
Oh boy oh boy oh boy.
I got my copies of Fagles and Lombardo. I think the Fagles cover (in our heading) is the prettiest book I ever saw. In Edit: yes it is but it's not Fagles, see below. The Edit: Butler paperback edition has a fairly short preface as has been said, but lots of great notes. The Lombardo has a HUGE introduction and I know from experience that Lombardo's will explain what he's doing and why so I need to read it.
Fagles Edit: Butler see below: uses the Roman names for the gods, Minerva, Jove, Neptune.
Lombardo uses the Greek for the same people: Athena, Zeus, Poseidon.
Pope uses Minerva, Jove, etc. Roman names.
The differences in Minerva and Athena? An interesting point. If we do bring anything here as research, we'll need to put the source. No matter how many sources , or how summarized, so others can see it too.
What an interesting point you bring up, Pedln. What was WITH those old names? Love it. My grandmother's name was Arsinoe, which is quite a name in Greek. She was told it meant water nymph but it has other connotations also. People called her Sina. It would appear our ancestors were well read? Now we will be too.
On the Greek language bits, why yes indeed, we do want to hear any points of interesting contention or clarification. It can only add to the overall picture. To do this somebody has to have a copy of the Odyssey in Greek so we can (or you can) examine the actual word as it occurs in context.
I am truly excited about this adventure! These books look eminently readable and understandable (wasn't that interesting about Pope and the other collaborators, that's fascinating, Jude, where did you read that? Does it say why Pope tried to hide the collaborators? I need to hear more about Pope, I think.
This is like a launch of a rocket ship, the countdown has begun, but do we have everything in place, everything checked? We'll start February 7 with some background and launch right in on the 15th with.... Book I? Books I and II?
Everyone is welcome, and obviously if I don't even know whose translation I bought, take heart from my example and join us, you'll love the adventure and there's nothing to be intimidated about. hahaha
The Countdown Begins! (Can you hear them counting in the distance?)_ T-18 is it? And counting!
-
Gee, Ginny - I think someone sent you a fake Fagles !! The introduction by Bernard Knox in my edition (Penguin) is a full 61 pages long and Fagles is using all the Greek names for the gods and goddesses. There is a pronouncing glossary at the end with no Roman names in it - only the Greek with identification.
I've reserved the audio version of Fagles' translation from our county library and should have it soon. I'm looking forward to hearing it.
It's interesting seeing the Greek words that those of us who study Greek have been putting up but I can only look at them, not hear them in my head, since I haven't the faintest idea of the pronunciation.
-
JoanR - I can help with pronunciation if you have any queries. But pronunciation of AG is a contentious issue. How can we be sure of how it was pronounced when we have never heard it? I do know that the pronunciation of AG and MG differ with certain letters. Having more than one source of pronunciation is very helpful, if that is your interest, and can be found in reputable dictionaries/lexicons.
-
Oh DUH ? Hello, the one in the heading? The glorious cover? The "fake" Fagles? Is not by Fagles at all, you really have to look and see who DID do it, his name is almost nowhere, not on the cover or the back, it's a 2010 edition of Butler! Hello? One had done a search for Fagles and ended up with a page of his displayed and this one was right there, and one hahaha went for the glory and never thought to double check that it was his hahahaha and behold! It's Butler. Very readable I must say, no Greek names. Sigh sigh, off to B&N tomorrow to get the Fagles, but I must say now that gives me Butler, Lombardo and Pope. They are very easy to compare, too.
I swear maybe I am a Capricorn after all, my year as one is certainly starting out goatish. Sheesh.
-
Welcome to
(http://www.seniorlearn.org/bookclubs/classicsbookclub/Thanksgivingclassicsbookclub.jpg)
We have a winner! Our first ever read in the Classics Book Club to begin on February 15, with the initial segment, schedule still to be decided but we'll break it up into parts, of Homer's Odyssey!
(http://www.seniorlearn.org/bookclubs/classicsbookclub/cbcodyssey.jpg)
If you have been casting about for a great book to lose yourself in this winter, you've come to the right place! Help us decide on a schedule, how far DO we want to go that first week? How to divide this? Whose translation do you have?
**NB: There are probably 50+ famous translations of the Odyssey. If you find the translation you have does not speak to you or does not convey to you what's happening, this book is too fabulous to waste on an old outdated translation: try a new one.
Free SparkNotes background and analysis on the Odyssey (http://www.sparknotes.com/lit/odyssey)
"I haven't felt this excited about a prospective read/discussion for years."--- Gumtree
Discussion Leaders: Joan K (joankraft13@yahoo.com) & ginny (gvinesc@gmail.com )
Everyone is welcome!
I just got my copy of Fitzgerald. It has a fascinating introduction by someone called D.S. Carne Ross who is described as one of the finest critics of classical literature in English translation since Arnold. Anyway, it puts The Odyssey in context very nicely I think.
I don't have a copy of it in Greek, I do have it in my favourites on my laptop. I just ordered a dictionary--never had one before, just used the dictionaries in my various books, but the words describing Telemachus' getting up are not in them! Tme to get a dictionary, I thought!!
If we do want to talk about a Greek word there's no point writing it in Greek, I would think people would want to be able to pronounce it, especially as its such a beautifully onomatopoeic (? sp.) language.
-
I received my Penguin Classic (Deluxe Edition) and look at the "goodies" it includes:
Intro by Bernard Knox -67 pages
Maps of the area in the book-6 pages
Translators Postscript
Genealogy Charts for the families of Odyseus:Phaecia: Theoclymenus: Tyro
Notes on the translation
Suggestions for further reading
Pronouncing Glossary. Both a general one for Greek words and a Specific one for every name in the book.
All this for ten dollars. Oh what a winner this is.
-
Hi, Jude - That's the one I have. A beauty, isn't it?
-
JoanR and Jude -- what is the ISBN no. of the Fagles / penguin ed. that you have?
-
Dana and JoanR - I agree with you Dana, that Greek words written in Greek are not much help if one is wondering about pronunciation. I endeavoured to write an English pronunciation guide for φροντίζω = fronteezw. In my opinion this is the best way to do it if those who know some Greek are asked to help, as it satisfies those who know Greek or may like to learn Greek. If spelled out in English it helps give the others some idea of how the word is actually pronounced.
Following up that topic I was thinking about the name Odysseus itself. In English we pronounce it as Odi-see-us, but if it follows the rule of most Greek names ending in -eus, e.g. Perseus, Zeus and Theseus, we should pronounce it as Odi-ss-use, if you get my drift. Of course, because this is an online discussion we never hear how our companions pronounce Greek words. If I, and the other Greek speakers, could be heard speaking Greek, to those interested, that would be of great benefit. Having said that my Modern Greek pronunciation is much better than my Ancient Greek. As I explained before there are some changes from AG pronunciation to MG pronunciation.
Jude - that book sounds as though it is worth its weight in gold, especially the glossary. btw glossary is a Greek word. η γλώσσα = glossa means tongue or language in both AG and MG.
-
6 pages of maps?!!! 6 pages of MAPS? It sounds like that IS winner, Jude and Joan R, we'll rely upon you both to fill us in on every aspect. We'll need maps here, too. There are bound to be some on the internet. And then we can see Odysseus' journeys for ourselves, it will make it more understandable. I think there are some on the internet which actually trace his journey. The ones I use in our classes are not of the best quality so I hope we can get some new ones here.
OH my goodness and guess what? I can't believe it but I have the Odyssey in Greek here on my old (puff puff off the dust) shelves!!!
So I can scan in any passage we should wonder about, should we want to know for instance why Pope said "anxious," and our Graiae here can help us with understanding that particular word!!
So here again we have the benefit of group work, we can actually see the original (should it come up that is) and we have three (or is it 4) people who can then tell us the word, so we can compare translations, love it.
And there are several classicists who have recorded parts of Homer on the internet, I know Lombardo has the Iliad's opening lines, let's see if we can find somebody reading the Odyssey.
Good point Roshannarose on Odysseus being pronounced O dis seus, like Dr. Seus, but call him what we'd like, (what, Jude S and Joan R does your pronouncing area say for his name?) we'll be here with bells on on the 7th with background and on the 15th with our read.
And due to the internet I bet somebody here can find a super map of Odysseus' wanderings and perhaps Troy and Greece, so we'll really get a lot out of this experience.
I think sometimes things happen for the best, I absolutely love sitting down with the blazing sun book in bleak January and reading a good story. I'm interested to see which version I keep on with, that's going to be the test, and it may depend on what you all are getting out of YOURS. What fun!
Welcome, All!
-
Good morning! Up to our eyeballs still in snow so have had to cancel 2 appts. today. My DH is 88 and I'm not far behind so our shoveling is limited!
The ISBN, Pedln, is ISBN 0 14 02.6886 3 (paperback - a good sturdy one)
hardcover is ISBN 0-670-82162-4
Ginny - My book gives the pronunciation of Odysseus as (o-dis' yoos ) That's a relief since it's easier to say than some I've heard!!
-
Oh, goody, JUDE. I do hope you'll share the pronouncing glossary
and the maps with us. Though I imagine GINNY will have maps, too.
I've noticed that different maps tend to emphasize different
things.
And here, all my life, I've heard the name pronounced
O-dis'-see-us.
-
Thanks JoanR for the ISBN number. It's the same as the one I found on Amazon. After reading what you and Jude had to say about the Fagles Penguin Deluxe edition I decided to order it. I've got it in my cart, so off to purchase.
Done
-
Nope! Sorry, I am sticking with O Dys- se-us. It sings, doesn't it?
-
Joan R gave you most of the info on this Fagles Odyssey.
I will add the content of the maps:
Homeric Geography:Mainland Greece (2 pages)
" " : The Peloponnese " "
" " : The Aegean and Asia Minor (2 pagess)
It seems Fagles has done some original writing on the period we are about to study. Here are some of his titles:
Oedipus at Thebes:Tragic Hero and His Times
The Heroic Temper:Studies in Sophoclean Tragedy
Backing into the Future:The Classical tradition and Its Renewal
Now its time to start reading the intro; I feel as though I am about to embark on a real journey. Hope its not as frought with dangers as was that of Odysseus.
-
Project Gutenberg had an audio recording of Butler's translation. It comes in several formats including mp3 and Apple iTunes. They open when I click one them so I don't think I can download them to my Kindle. That means I would have to stay glued to my computer while listening. Bummer!
-
oops-made a mistake .
The books I mentioned were not written by Fagles but by Bernard Knox-he who wrote the intro to Fagles translation.
Fagles has written:
Homer-A collection of Critical Essays
I Vincent:Poems from the Pictures of Van Gogh
-
Well as my mother used to quote frequently, 'the best laid plans of mice and men...' My friend was clearing out books from Bill's library and wouldn't you know among them was a 1996, Penguin hardback copy translated by, Robert Fagles with intro and notes by Bernard Knox. - there are 64 pages of intro and 6 pages of maps.
And so why buy a copy as I intended. I was going to order the Everyman edition with Robert Fitzgerald (Translator) and Seamus Heaney (Introduction) - .
Also in the pile is an interesting book "The World of Odyssues" by M.I.Finley and Bernard Knox writes the Intro for it - published in 1982 and first published in 1954.
In the intro Knox gives an example of a young women on the Island of Crete who sacrifices her virtue to a German general during WWII in order to help partisans capture him at the request of the British and American headquarters in Cairo and how after the war the story was ignored although she was sold on the idea that she held the honor of Crete in her hands. The upshot, the story is promoted 9 years later to the leadership as a purely fictitious character of a different nationality. His point, there is nothing to connect Agamemnon, Achilles, Priam, and Hector with the fire-blackened layer of thirteenth century ruins known as the Troy Vii A except a heroic poem which cannot be fixed in its present form by writing until the late eighth century, at least four illiterate centuries after the destruction
In the first chapter, Finley tells us that Homer is not the equivalent of Anonymous. Homer was a man's name. Before Homer and Hesiod tablets from Linear B demonstrate people speaking Greek - writing appeared 2000 BC and no one knows from where these Greeks came. The original migrants were not Greeks but people who spoke proto-Greek just as Angles and Saxons were not Englishmen but they became Englishmen. Up until 300 BC Greek was a language of many dialects with different pronunciations and spelling.
Huh - interesting - only in Egypt did papyrus texts last indefinitely because of the natural dehydration by the climate. Greece came under control by Alexander the Great with an extensive migration of Greeks to the Nile - in the library established at Alexandria all the scraps and fragments of literary works was published in 1963. Of the 1,596 books copied half were of the Iliad and Odyssey with the Iliad outnumbering the Odyssey by about three to one.
Finley says, Homer is not a poet he is a teller of myths and legends. He finishes the first chapter explaining that "...Homer occupies the first stage in the history of Greek control over its myth; his poems are often pre-Greek, as it were in the treatment of myth, but they also have flashes of something else, of a genius for ordering the world, for bringing man and nature, men and the gods, into harmony in a way that succeeding centuries were to expand and elevate to the glory of Hellenism.
If it is true that European history begins with the Greeks, it is equally true that Greek history began with the world of Odysseus. For history, as Jacob Burckhardt remarked is the one field of study in which one cannot begin at the beginning."
-
For history, as Jacob Burckhardt remarked is the one field of study in which one cannot begin at the beginning."
I like that. It's saying that we always have an intriguing element of mystery surrounding the past. But human nature doesn't change much. It's a given we can use to judge the myths
and draw some idea of what could have actually happened.
-
There could not have been a better choice than Home's Odyssey to start our venture into the Classics. The excitement is contagious.
A long time ago we read the 24 "Gesänge" (Cantos) in class in the German translation by Johann Heinrich Voss . I look forward to reading the English text in Stanley Lombardo's translation, which is on order.
Ginny, re your # 220, may I say that Edith Hamilton's Mythology (illustrated) also is an excellent resource on every aspect of classical literature and mythoogy, especially the first chapter of Part I on The Titans and the Twelve Great Olympians.
-
As I read the intro. to the Odyssey I am amazed at this fact and can't stop thinking about it.
All the characters in the Odyssey were illiterate! The intro goes to great lengths to prove this (and does). But what is amazing to me is that this fact would never have occurred to me without the help of this fascinating introduction.
The next thing that fascinated me from going on line about the development of the Greek language was that from 600 to 800 BCE they wrote Boustraphadonically. This word means "as the Ox plows". . When you get to the end of a line you continue from that end and write in mirror letters.
Thinking to overwhelm my husband with this new knowledge I asked him if he knew what Bousterphonic meant.
"Sure" he answered ." Its the way you make Microchips. The machine (called a Stepper) inprints the "wafers" in a snake like manner in order to save time and energy.Its called the Boustrophonic method-a mathematical term."
I knew i would be learning new things on this journey with you all. I just couldn't imagine these particular facts.
-
That is amazing!
-
Well, I'll be ding-dinged! Ingenious! Not easy to do mirror writing, but my mother could. She enjoyed astounding us children with it.
-
As I read the intro. to the Odyssey I am amazed at this fact and can't stop thinking about it.
All the characters in the Odyssey were illiterate! The intro goes to great lengths to prove this (and does). But what is amazing to me is that this fact would never have occurred to me without the help of this fascinating introduction.
The Greeks today still say in conversation "There is nothing new under the Sun" and can rattle off many instances in whuich this is the case, going right back in Ancient History.
For those interested: Myceneae (the spelling may vary) in AG is η Μυκήνη and pronounced in English as Meekeenee or Mykeenee. btw there is no C in Greek, only K (kappa).
After the Myceneans were wiped out and the empire of King Minos disappeared there was a "dark age" in which writing was no longer used. Another "dark age" happened when the Turks occupied Greece in 1453AD. Greece literally came to a standstill culturally. This in many ways explains why to some Europeans, Modern Greece still may appear "culturally lacking". For instance whilst Dante was writing "The Inferno", Greeks were writing poetry about milk maids and shepherds, influenced in part by the Venetian occupation of many islands. The Ottoman occupation was to hold Greece under its yoke for 400 years.
I found the following quote from about.com/Ancient History which may help to explain the illiteracy of the people during the first Dark Age.
"The period when the events of the Iliad and the Odyssey took place is known as the Mycenaean Age. The period when Homer sang the epic stories is known as the Archaic Age, from a Greek word for "beginning". Between the two was a "dark age" in which somehow the people of the area lost the ability to write. We know very little about what cataclysm put an end to the powerful society we see in the Trojan War stories.
Homer and his Iliad and Odyssey are said to be part of an oral tradition. Since the Iliad and Odyssey were written down, it should be emphasized that they came out of the earlier oral period. It is thought that the epics we know today are the result of generations of storytellers (a technical term for them is rhapsodes) passing on the material until finally, somehow, someone wrote it. This is just one of the myriad details we don't know. "
Some modern historians says that part of Crete (Minos/Knossos) was wiped out by a huge tsunami resulting from the eruption of the Thera volcano (modern day Santorini). Thera is said to have erupted with four times the force of Krakatoa, so the impact must have been cataclysmic.
Santorini History www.santoriniweb.com/Santorini_History.htm
Ship in the Caldera - Pic of Santorini by yours truly www.flickr.com/photos/roxanataj/2167913384
-
http://www.academicearth.org/courses/introduction-to-ancient-greek-history
Great lecture series on history of Greece.
-
Thanks, Kidsal. I lost my bookmark when my other computer died. I have yet to finish the Roman Architecture series.
-
That's incredible, Jude! Bousterphonic and Microchips! I love it!
It's amazing how modern computer technology echoes ancient stuff. I had mentioned something about needing to show print in a certain way for parsing to the Geek guy who was restoring my computer and he said PARSING? That's a bad word in computers. I said huh? He then explained what it IS, it sounded very time consuming, but it surprised me that it was a word used in computer-ese.
And now here's Bousterphonic, fascinating.
And what interesting history and background here. It's clear we will all emerge knowing something we did not at the outset.
What a journey this will be! Dearest to our hearts will be the discoveries we each make individually, and I hope there will be a million of them, what a joy!
This apparently is some book we've undertaken!!
I do have the Fagles now and it is a wonderful book. I love the ending of the pages, they are not uncut but they are ...rough? Some stick out, some don't, I love that. It (this is the paperback) looks like going on a trip, it looks like a passport stuck here and tickets there, maps over there, some explanations here and there, and I love the way the cover makes bookmarks. Also like the dolphins on the chapter headings if that's what they are.
Love the maps.
But I also like the Lombardo. It also has a map of Homeric geography and a Troy inset, and a diagram of the Palace of Odysseus, which I think will be extremely useful, have always had a problem picturing it. Also I love the cover, a photo of Earth taken from the Apollo 11 mission, it's called "Earthrise." Love it. An Odyssey, for us, too, not just in space or maybe from Troy to Greece but in other ways, too. .
I'm only two words into the Lombardo, and already I have questions. He did not write the long intro, but the woman who did does address what he does particularly with the epithets which I am so glad to see somebody doing. But 2 words in he's done something different (and she may address this, and I just haven't gotten to it) but instead of Muse in the first lines (Butler: "Tell me o Muse;" Fagles: "Sing to me of the man, Muse;" Pope: ".....O Muse;" but Lombardo says "Speak, Memory," and I'd like to know from our Graiae here what there is about this particular word which might make him choose that:
(http://www.seniorlearn.org/latin/graphics/OdysseyGreekMuse.jpg)
I looked up the Muse of Memory Mneme (Lower Greece) and found out a LOT about the early 3 Muses and the later 9 Muses, they are quite interesting and a good bit of other stuff, but why has Lombardo chosen "Memory" over Muse here, can our Graiae enlighten us?
He's not the only translator that uses "Memory" here for "Muse," either, we know there's a reason, and I'm sure it's an excellent one, can we figure it out?
-
Homer is quoted all over, isn't he? "Speak, Memory!" is the title of Vladimir Nabokov's autobiography!!
-
Was that before or after his seduction of Lolita Joan? ;D
-
I think the Muse is the cultural memory,or the collective unconscience, which breathes into the poet so that he is inspired to weave a true tale, realistically, culturally, psychologically, true, which I guess the most perfect tales are The verb eneppe means breathe in, same as inspire. I think muse and memory are interchangeable in this context.
-
OK Ginny-Thank you for talking about our individual journeys through the Odyssey. Our discoveries will be our own but we can share them with all.
What I have discovered in reading the first part of the intro is this (Please bear with me for the background):
Five years ago a friend who is interested in Biblical Archeology got me a subscription to the magazine "Biblical Archeology". I really wasn't interested but the magazine has continued to come each month for the past five years. Its here and so every now and then I read an article. Then I read more and more articles especially on methodology and dating of artifacts.
LO and behold the same methods have been used in dating the Odyssey as has been used in Biblical dating (i.e. figuring out when the various books of the Bible were writtten). Using a linguistic analysis is the favored method of scholars. That is figuring out when certain words and forms of words entered the language-wether it be Hebrew or Greek. Together with Archeological finds this helps scholars relate to the various layers of the poem.
Many folks see the Bible like I saw the Odyssey. It appeared full blown and finished, all at once.
-
Seems to me Jude that I read back some time ago that the linguistic analysis was favored because there was no funding for an Archaeological approach. And that it is only the past 20 years or so that funding has been available for the work to translate the Archaeological finds to these ancient texts plus the additional resources in the case of the Bible to explore and locate more Archaeological material.
Finley, in the small paperback from which I was quoting, suggested that there was more material written on papyrus that disintegrated because the climate in Egypt was such it preserved the writings where as not so in Greece. And so his thesis is that the poems were not just word of mouth - but who knows - until there is more evidence anyone can have a theory.
There is a book about the ancient practice of memorizing but I have gone way over my book budget this month by 3 to 4 times and so It will have to be for another time. Dreams and Experience in Classical Antiquity by William V. Harris - http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0674032977/ref=ord_cart_shr?ie=UTF8&m=ATVPDKIKX0DER
I was blown away with what you shared about Boustraphadonically - keep 'em coming - wow...
-
boustrophedon: n.
[from a Greek word for turning like an ox while plowing] An ancient method of writing using alternate left-to-right and right-to-left lines. This term is actually philologists' techspeak and typesetters' jargon. Erudite hackers use it for an optimization performed by some computer typesetting software and moving-head printers. The adverbial form ‘boustrophedonically’ is also found (hackers purely love constructions like this).
Note spelling of "boustrophedon".
The only similar example in EnglishI could think of is AMBULANCE (called Mirror Writing) so that the drivers ahead of the ambulance can read what is on the front of the vehicle behind them.
-
Ginny - When Fagles says " Sing to me of the man, Muse",... he is asking for a tale to be recalled and recited . The muses were goddesses of poetry, music and song - The Odyssey was originally sung,it is believed.
According to Harvard's new encyclopedic work, The Classical Tradition ( I got it too, Ginny - love it!) The muses were the daughters of Zeus and Mnemosyne (memory) so it would seem as if whoever was calling on Memory was calling on the Muses' mother. Thus, I really like the use of "Muse" in preference to "memory". Or am I way off?
-
A nice pic of a boustrophedon text. Back then they didn't separate words, use accents, or lower case. Would have been hell to translate, at least for me.
www.flickr.com/photos/fillzee/2731230851/
I have sought the photographer's permission.
-
Leonardo Da Vinci was famous for his mirror writing.
-
I have started reading my copy of 'The Odssey' translation by E.V. Rieu
1946 Penguin edition
I think I am going to need to keep a line drawing of characters to keep all these gods straight in my mind, along with their specialties of Godmanship or whatever one calls it
--it looks intriguing but I must begin a mind-map
-the history courses on ancient Greece look interesting...am only sorry now I didn't really jell with the book on Greece by Will Durant when he was being discussed online......oh well I may just have to go back to that book
Deb
-
Roshanarose - Great pic of boustrophedron text - unfortunately its all Greek to me :D
Oddly enough I can do mirror writing - a childish whim I developed when I should have been studying other things perhaps. I can also write equally with my left and right hand and can write with both simultaneously - in unison or as mirror. A quirk of the brain maybe or signs of misspent youth. - It my adult years I realised it was really rebellion against being made to use my right hand when I was naturally a leftie. I'm sadly out of practice these days.
Perhaps by calling on Memory (the mother) in preference to a particular Muse (poetry or song etc) the poet is calling on the source of all the muses so that he may invoke not just one but all the muses - poetry, song, music etc - and bring to bear their individual attributes on his story thus producing a fully dimensional product rather than one composed of only one element eg poetry alone.
-
Gracious day, what intelligent readers we have here! I love all the excitement, the information shared here (I agree Deb, and I find myself wanting some kind of time-line here also, to get not only the geographic stuff straight but the general dates as well)...
I'm in "awr" of you all, as Tony Soprano used to say. hahaha And what wonderful ideas, Dana, JoanR and Gum, on the puzzle of "Memory."
I thought with so many different thoughts perhaps I should ask Dr. Lombardo himself (he's a great guy) and before doing so I first read the Introduction to his translation by Shelia Murnaghan of the U of Pennsylvania, which talks, among a million other things about Lombardo's "creative solution to one of the most difficult problems of translation, the way in which there is almost never a single word or phrase that captures what is in the original."
I thought that seemed on point and then I stumbled into a long interview about Lombardo's translation of the Odyssey (those of you who have Lombardo may find this interesting:) http://jacketmagazine.com/21/leddy-lomb-iv.html and then there it was right down at the bottom, I couldn't believe my eyes! Right from the horse's mouth! (Fagles also has these types of interviews and it interests me that he and Lombardo see the Odyssey as about something different). I think we can all make our own decisions at the end WHAT in fact the Odyssey IS about, something to dream about. :)
But he says:
Leddy: One last question. Is there a muse of translation, and if so, what is her name?
Lombardo: Mind. The word Muse in Greek means ‘mind’ originally. It’s originally mont, cognate with ment, which comes into Latin. The suffix was a -ya sound, montya, and eventually that came to be Mousa, which I sometimes translate, though not in poetry, as ‘mind-goddess.’ Memory could be another answer. Memory, Mnemosyne, is the mother of the Muses, and memory is the closest word we have in English to ‘mind-goddess.’
Mind is for me the essence of translation. Odysseus has to attain the minds of many people in his wanderings. That’s what Homer has done, and it’s why his characters are so real — he attains the human mind, he attains many human minds. Translation is mind to mind, not dictionary to dictionary. Homer is a mind that I try to attain.
So there it is, and I think I'm pretty impressed with our group here for getting instinctively right to the heart of the thing immediately! I think we can count on the acumen of this group for anything!
Oh and Jude? Our discoveries will be our own but we can share them with all. Oh I do hope so, that's why we're here. That way we can all be fellow discoverers. Thank you for generously sharing what you've found! :)
Everyone is welcome! It's clear that this one will be "one for the books." Come with us!
-
I love these lines and in reading them over today I thought they seemed to fit us here and our journey:
Come, my friends,
'Tis not too late to seek a newer world.
Push off, and sitting well in order smite
The sounding furrows; for my purpose holds
To sail beyond the sunset, and the baths
Of all the western stars, until I die.
It may be that the gulfs will wash us down:
It may be we shall touch the Happy Isles,
And see the great Achilles, whom we knew
Though much is taken, much abides; and though
We are not now that strength which in old days
Moved earth and heaven; that which we are, we are;
One equal temper of heroic hearts,
Made weak by time and fate, but strong in will
To strive, to seek, to find, and not to yield.
Ulysses by Alfred,Lord Tennyson (1809-1892)
Here's the whole thing, full of famous lines:
Alfred,Lord Tennyson : Ulysses
It little profits that an idle king,
By this still hearth, among these barren crags,
Matched with an agèd wife, I mete and dole
Unequal laws unto a savage race,
That hoard, and sleep, and feed, and know not me.
I cannot rest from travel: I will drink
Life to the lees: all times I have enjoyed
Greatly, have suffered greatly, both with those
That loved me, and alone; on shore, and when
Through scudding drifts the rainy Hyades
Vexed the dim sea: I am become a name;
For always roaming with a hungry heart
Much have I seen and known; cities of men
And manners, climates, councils, governments,
Myself not least, but honoured of them all;
And drunk delight of battle with my peers,
Far on the ringing plains of windy Troy.
I am a part of all that I have met;
Yet all experience is an arch wherethrough
Gleams that untravelled world, whose margin fades
For ever and for ever when I move.
How dull it is to pause, to make an end,
To rust unburnished, not to shine in use!
As though to breathe were life. Life piled on life
Were all too little, and of one to me
Little remains: but every hour is saved
From that eternal silence, something more,
A bringer of new things; and vile it were
For some three suns to store and hoard myself,
And this grey spirit yearning in desire
To follow knowledge like a sinking star,
Beyond the utmost bound of human thought.
This my son, mine own Telemachus,
To whom I leave the sceptre and the isle—
Well-loved of me, discerning to fulfil
This labour, by slow prudence to make mild
A rugged people, and through soft degrees
Subdue them to the useful and the good.
Most blameless is he, centred in the sphere
Of common duties, decent not to fail
In offices of tenderness, and pay
Meet adoration to my household gods,
When I am gone. He works his work, I mine.
There lies the port; the vessel puffs her sail:
There gloom the dark broad seas. My mariners,
Souls that have toiled, and wrought, and thought
with me—
That ever with a frolic welcome took
The thunder and the sunshine, and opposed
Free hearts, free foreheads—you and I are old;
Old age hath yet his honour and his toil;
Death closes all: but something ere the end,
Some work of noble note, may yet be done,
Not unbecoming men that strove with Gods.
The lights begin to twinkle from the rocks:
The long day wanes: the slow moon climbs: the deep
Moans round with many voices. Come, my friends,
'Tis not too late to seek a newer world.
Push off, and sitting well in order smite
The sounding furrows; for my purpose holds
To sail beyond the sunset, and the baths
Of all the western stars, until I die.
It may be that the gulfs will wash us down:
It may be we shall touch the Happy Isles4,
And see the great Achilles5, whom we knew
Though much is taken, much abides; and though
We are not now that strength which in old days
Moved earth and heaven; that which we are, we are;
One equal temper of heroic hearts,
Made weak by time and fate, but strong in will
To strive, to seek, to find, and not to yield.
Alfred,Lord Tennyson (1809-1892) 1833
-
The last five lines of Tennyson seem most appropriate to us. Thanks for that Ginny.
If any of you are still "musing" about the word muse, there are many derivatives in my Dictionary. The one I liked was from the word "mouseion" (το μουσείον). The Mouseion is the temple of the Muses. We get our word museum from mouseion. "ou" in Greek is a "oo" sound. No Gwendoline, it is not a mouse house!
-
Last night I tried to buy the Fagles edition on-line using a gift card that my daughter had been given (we exchanged, I didn't just pinch it!), Website acknowledged that card had £10 credit, book cost £9.74. After I placed the order I received an email from them "Your credit card has been declined" - aaaaargh. I hadn't even used a credit card. Now I don't even know if they've debited the gift card or not. Have sent them a stroppy email, to which I will no doubt receive no response, and in the meantime still no book. These things are sent to try us!
Borrowed "Ancient Greece for Dummies" from the library.
Rosemary
-
One thing leads to another on the web -
I found several Youtube links showing Greek antiquity held in Greek museums - this is a link to the Youtube video of the New Museum of Pella/Νέο Αρχαιολογικό Μουσείο Πέλλας (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BRRdWFJezDo&feature=related) The exhibits include finds from the Macedonian and Hellenistic periods excavated in the area of Pella.-
This is the link to a series of 3 Youtube videos from the Archaeological Museum of Heraklion (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AG0_FfiEMyA&feature=related) where some of the Cretan Archaeological finds are displayed.
I knew enough from classes taken at the Blanton UT museum of Art (http://blantonmuseum.org/about/) that the age of the life size statues of women - [since, I have learned they are called Kouros] can be determined by the drapery of the clothing - the actual draped look came later and the earlier look almost looks like accordion pleats and before that, simple straight with a larger hip area in relationship to the body - next I was trying to date Homer - it appears the Odyssey and the Iliad were written during the time called the Dark Age which extended in Greece between 1200 - 800 BC.
I have not yet matched the Kouros from that period but I am working on it - aha - this information may help
Facts on Ancient Greek Art (http://www.ehow.com/about_6384705_ancient-greek-art.html) -
In the meantime I found this wonder that is held at the British Museum. It is a Apotheosis which is a word suggesting the person featured has been given a godlike status. It is a marble relief found in Italy however, sculpted in Egypt around 300BC.
Throned on top Zeus presides over all the characters. The nine Muses are above Homer on the middle tier.
On the bottom tier Homer is seated to the left side of the alter - On the right of the altar, from left to right, History, Poetry, Tragedy and Comedy, then Nature (Physis), Virtue (Arete), Memory (Mneme), Good Faith (Pistis), Wisdom (Sophia).. .
(http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/4/47/Apotheosis_Homer_BM_2191.jpg)
Here is a close up of the area of the relief with Homer seated and the names of those sculpted around him to the left of the alter...
http://www.mlahanas.de/Greeks/Bios/PtolemyIVPhilopator.html
(http://www.mlahanas.de/Greeks/Bios/PtolemyIVHomer.jpg)
-
One can see what an enormous amount of sculpting/carving went
into that apotheosis. One could spend hours studying it in detail. It's beautiful.
-
Welcome to
(http://www.seniorlearn.org/bookclubs/classicsbookclub/Thanksgivingclassicsbookclub.jpg)
We have a winner! Our first ever read in the Classics Book Club to begin on February 15, with the initial segment, schedule still to be decided but we'll break it up into parts, of Homer's Odyssey!
(http://www.seniorlearn.org/bookclubs/classicsbookclub/cbcodyssey.jpg)
If you have been casting about for a great book to lose yourself in this winter, you've come to the right place! Help us decide on a schedule, how far DO we want to go that first week? How to divide this? Whose translation do you have?
**NB: There are probably 50+ famous translations of the Odyssey. If you find the translation you have does not speak to you or does not convey to you what's happening, this book is too fabulous to waste on an old outdated translation: try a new one.
Free SparkNotes background and analysis on the Odyssey (http://www.sparknotes.com/lit/odyssey)
"I haven't felt this excited about a prospective read/discussion for years."--- Gumtree
Discussion Leaders: Joan K (joankraft13@yahoo.com) & ginny (gvinesc@gmail.com )
Everyone is welcome!
I am so impressed with the magnitude of knowledge that has been brought to this discussion already and we're not even "into" the book yet.
I am the neophyte here and like Gumtree said, "It is all Greek to me."
I love to learn and already my notebook is full of posts that are not only educating and enlightening me but that stun me as to the depth of wisdom you are offering. I am sooo enjoying this. I like Rosemary's idea of getting Greek for Dummies and will check it out today at our library.
Thank you all, be patient with me. There's not much that I can bring to this extraordinary discussion but I assure there is much that I can take from it and learn.
-
Ginny What a joy to read through Tennyson's Ulysses - thanks for posting it. I know that one by heart - it was one of my 'party' pieces in the dim distant past when my extended family gathered together and the elders were 'treated' to youngsters strutting their stuff.
It truly is a great poem and, as Roshanarose points out, has relevance now in the 21st century - no doubt we will find the Odyssey itself has bearing on our lives and the world around us today.
Hey ALF Don't sell yourself short -, you have so much to offer this or any other discussion as we all well know- for starters you bring the wisdom of your life's experience which is no small thing... and the desire to learn... and ... and... What a journey we're all going to have.
Barbara Glorious scupture - thanks...
-
I read the interview with Lombardo that Ginny posted up (in #314), and really was reminded of the importance of viewing the work as a performance--so naturally I decided to pick up an audiobook, which is as close as we can get to that experience (and I'm an audiobook junky anyway). I've got the Lombardo translation of the printed book (and have greatly enjoyed the introduction). However, Lombardo's translation is read by Susan Sarandon--but Fagles's is read by Ian McKellan, and I would happily listen to him read the oration at a dog's funeral. I think it will be very interesting to read one translation and listen to another.
I've also picked up Margaret Atwood's "Penelopiad," a re-imagining of the story from Penelope's point of view, which came out five years ago as part of the Canongate Myth Series.
-
ALF - I feel just the same as you - I read the Odyssey at school, can't remember much about it, and can't read of word of Greek, ancient or modern. However, I'm still looking forward to this - I feel it will start to fill a great lacuna in my knowledge, and there are a lot of those that I am hoping to fill over the next x years.
So don't worry, you won't know any less than me - probably more - but it will still be fun, and we have the benefit of all these well read and knowledgeable people to enlighten us!
Roxania - the thought of Saint Ian reading anything is irresistible. I am going to have to have a look for that audiobook! I saw him once on stage at Stratford, many years ago (I think I was about 18), and have never forgotten it.
Rosemary
-
Just getting back online after having to abandon my old computer and buy a new one. I'm stunned by the posts and how much we've learned already.
Roshan: I love your picture of the volcano, and the description of what happened to Crete. And this "dark age" of greece. when people forgot how to read and write! Homer was written then?!? Strange.
I guess people now think Homer was one person? When I read "the Iliad" my gut reaction was "this isn't all written by the same person".
-
I wonder Joan if as the story was passed along it was not only added to but possibly different voices made parts of the story sound more interesting and it was those voices that remained with the story - just a guess...
I did not know how tight Greece was with Egypt and how much the Egyptian monarchy glorified the Greeks. I did not know there was such an exodus of Greeks to Egypt during the early years after Alexander the Great.
I am so glad we are doing this and I ended up coming up out of my cave to join - this whole period of history is coming alive and it goes hand in glove with all the intensive research I have been doing about how the church formed its attitude about women. Seems Aristotle had a lot to do with what is currently the attitude among the Curia in Rome. I know Aristotle is much later but the whole of early Greek history is finally being charted in my head.
-
Barb - I see your cave as being cosy and warm in tones of red and gold and you sitting in your comfortable chair surrounded by poetry books, and several (maybe hundreds) of other books that have been loved and read by you. Your bedside table is crowded with books all asking to be read. I feel your contentment - yours is not a Winter of Discontent. As long as you have your poetry in your mind and at your fingertips you will always be "complete".
As the Romans "borrowed" from the Greeks, so did the Greeks "borrow" from the Egyptians. You can see that one of the oldest type of statuary in Greece (called "kouros" singular)is borrowed from Egyptian statuary by the stance. One foot slightly forward, no facial expression except for the later "archaic smile", but quite stolid and chunky. No sign of the genius of a much later sculptor by the name of Praxiteles. Pronounced Prax - i - teel - ees. A search will reward you with his work.
Also after the death of Alexander the Great his conquered lands were divided up among his generals. Ptolemy was the general who inherited Egypt. Cleopatra was as much Greek as she was Egyptian thanks to Ptolemy's bloodline. This would also account for the exodus from Greece to Egypt. Alexandria was Alexander's city in Egypt and evidently the most heavily influenced by the Greeks. I know that you appreciate Cavafy as I do. It may come as no surprise that although Greek, Cavafy was from Alexandria. That shop full of those beautiful things was (maybe still is) in Alexandria.
-
Ah, yes, BARB. It was one of the interesting quirks of history
that after Alexander's conquests, the Egyptian rulers were the
Greek descendents of Ptolemy, including the line of "Cleopatra's".
(Ah, I see Roshana has addressed this, too.)
-
I read that Alexander the Great kept a copy of the Iliad, given to him by his
mentor tutor Aristotle, with him at all times. He kept it under his pillow with a daggar. He wished to convey a heroic image of himself comparable to Achilles in Homer's Iliad. His aspirations and his behavior represented the ultimat expression of the Homeric vision a a conquering warrior.
-
I have one basic question that I must ask before reading anything else about the Odyssey.
Was Achilles the young man (of the Iliad) who went off to war now returned with the name of Odysseus? Are they one of the same. This is probably laughable but it sounds like the same dude with a different name. Help!!
It appears that it is also questionable whether Homer wrote both of these stories. Did he or didn't he?
-
Andrea, no, Achilles did not come back from the Trojan War. Odysseus in fact saw him in the Underworld in Book 11.
Odysseus's Roman name was Ulysses. He was known as the "wily" Odysseus, he did a lot of fast thinking on his feet.
Your question about Homer writing both the Iliad and the Odyssey is a good one. We probably need to address the Homer issue in general, what do you all find in your researches?
-
i'm excited about this book and the discussion that will ensue. just today i started reading the robert fagles' translation and am pleasantly surprised at the richness and beauty and the fact that i think i can do this!
-
Thank you Ginny, I was almost shy (believe it or not) about asking that fundamental question but it kept popping up in my head. Achilles didn't return and Odysseus was gone from his home land for 20 years or so, is that right? I thought maybe Odysseus was the adult version of Achilles, returned safely after 20 years.
Thank you for that clarification, now I can move on to another fractured thought. ??? Thank you as well, Gum, you made me feel better. With all of my life's experiences, the closest I ever came to understanding anything Greek was the Gyros I bought.
I'm sure I will have you all nuts before long.
-
Hi carol
I think you need to post this in the Classics Book Club as well. We are discussing the Odyssey there, and a lively discussion it is. :)
-
Not at all Andrea - We are all learning as we follow Odysseus on his Odyssey. In our own way we are all Odysseians.
-
Re the dates of the Iliad to the Odyssey........Knox, the scholar who wrote the intro to the Fagles translation says as follows:
"..in the second century BC a number of scholars, known as chorizantes-"separators"-recognized that the Odyssey was composed later than the Iliad but suggested that they had different authors. This is the position taken by many modern scholars , who find significant differences between the two poems not only in vocabulary and grammatical usagebut also what they consider development from the Iliad to the Odysseyin moral and religous ideas and attitudes......
That the Odyssey was composed later can hardly be doubted. For one thing , though it takes for granted the audiences knowledge of the Trojan War saga but of the particular form it has been given in the Iliad, it carefully avoids duplicating its material. Incidents from the tale of Troy are frequently recalled, sometime in detail, but they all fall outside the time frame of the Iliad.........."
The author goes on for a number of pages with examples that prove his theory. But of course everyone with a theory about anything picks and chooses his facts to support his theory. I tend yo believe his theory in this case.
-
Some time ago one of our number asked for a list of the characters in The Odyssey. I have found www.bookrags.com/notes/odyssey. Hope it helps. I am sure that there are other sites that have this list as well.
Eeeek! They want to charge $16.95 (I assume US dollars) for that list. If you are keen click on Lesson Plans - Character Descriptions.
In addition, a nice printable PDF list of characters is to be found at www.angelfire.com/ego/westmontdrama/ODYCharacters.pdf. This is probably the one I will use. No charge on this one.
You too can get good results if you type in the Search box "character list the odyssey". There are lots more choices.
The good thing about our group is that no one needs to hear our attempts at pronunciation, we just need to type the names. If you do want pronunciation guides that can also be found online or you can ask us here.
Good Luck
-
JudeS--I find in the introduction to my translation written in 1946..
Homer's Iliad and Odyssey have from time to time afforded a first-class battleground for scholars. In the nineteenth century in particular, German critics were at endless pains to show not only that the two works are not the product of a single brain, but that each is a piece of intricate and rather ill-sewn patchwork. In this process Homer disappeared.
By now he has been firmly re-established on his throne and his readers may feel as sure that they are in one man's hands as they do when they turn to As You Like It after reading King John.
so in the 1946 Penguin edition translated by E. V. Rieu he feels it had been resolved to be the one author 'Homer' at least that is what I got from reading....did they change their mind in the subsequent years ??
Deb
-
i'm excited about this book and the discussion that will ensue. just today i started reading the robert fagles' translation and am pleasantly surprised at the richness and beauty and the fact that i think i can do this!
Welcome, Carol! We are so glad to have you here! I predict you will love this!
On the question of Homer's writing the two books, (the Iliad and the Odyssey), the Oxford Companion to Classical Literature says what Jude quotes Bernard Fox saying but then adds: "Other modern scholars, the 'unitarians,' thinking that the differences between the two poems can be accounted for by their very different subject, believe, as the ancient Greeks themselves believed, that both poems are the work of one man...." This is 1991. So there's another side.
And then they go on to tackle the "so- called 'Homeric Question,'" (was there a Homer at all). I did find a very interesting set of questions, part of a college course in the Odyssey, and one of them was astounding, I had never heard of the issue, so we may want to consider it somewhere along the way too. (I do hate, and I may be the only one, but I do hate to read a book and MISS what apparently is a major point, which everybody else seems to know). I am sure with this group (I can see already) that won't be an issue, I do hope.
JoanR: Ian McKellen! I am still trying to get over his Richard III, his voice would be perfect!
Thank you for the character lists, RoshannaRose. I'm still compiling the lists of who has what translation (I'm slow) but when we get them they will be in the heading.
Achilles didn't return and Odysseus was gone from his home land for 20 years or so, is that right?
Yes. The Trojan War took 10 years and then he wandered for 10 as well, if I have that correct. The Odyssey opens, does it, 10 years after the fall of Troy to the Greeks? Is that right as well?
I need to get the dates straight on the fall of Troy and Homer, too. Need to throw Heinrich Schliemann in the mix. Am I the only one here with his book?
I have found THE most incredible site of illustrations for the Odyssey as I said earlier, but they are just blowing me away, 2000 years of art based on the Odyssey, we could literally put up a new one a day for whatever duration we'll have here. What fun!
How different these books are, the different translations! Some have an "Argument," or sort of background outline or summary in the beginning, of what's coming, some don't. Some have it set off, some don't. Of the 4 translations I have I believe I like Pope's the best, he sets it off in small type in an indented paragraph.
OH my word, check that, I have 5 translations, and the 5th is, holy smoke, THE Dr. Murray's. He calls Odysseus, "the man of many devices..." I like that. This is in a Loeb edition where the Greek is on the left and the translation is on the right.
Lombardo calls him (this is the first line) "the cunning hero."
Pope goes all out: "The man for wisdom's various arts renown'd."
What do you have in your books for the "wily Ulysses?" It's really quite eye opening to me to see what the others have, each one seems to add to the collective consciousness here and expand the idea of whatever they are saying. How different they are!
Lombardo in his article did me a big favor, he freed me from the need to get hysterical about one word....I loved his idea of it's not dictionary to dictionary (paraphrased). Love it.
I am so glad we're doing this! I feel quite excited, as we prepare to embark.
The gangplank does not go up til the 15th, so you've plenty of time to get your passport and those cereal bars you are never without and get on board!
Everyone is welcome!
-
Ginny - I agree with you that things are shaping up nicely with The Odyssey.
20 years does seem to be an inordinately long time for Odysseus to be away from Penelope. 10 years fighting in the Trojan War (see Iliad). According to the list of characters I have given a link for, above, there is a very short summary of each character. Odysseus spent 7 years as a "prisoner" of Calypso until she is convinced to release him by Hermes, messenger of the gods. Odysseus also spent a year with Circe as her lover. He may have dallied with Nausicaa for a while, and also travelled to the Underworld in Book 11. It was a long, although obviously not always arduous journey, for our hero.
As for Schliemann the only book I have about him is called "The Lost Treasures of Troy" by Caroline Moorehead. It is a wonderful book. ISBN 0 297 81500 8. It is generally acknowledged by scholars that the ruins of what Schleimann thought was Troy were actually those of a much earlier settlement. The same was the case in Myceneae, on the plains of Argos, mainland Greece. I, too, have gazed upon the face of Agamemnon at the National Museum in Athens. The Bronze Age exhibition there is my favourite. A place to visit before you die, as they say.
What book are you referring to Ginny?
-
Thank you everyone for all of this information. I
read scanned a book last evening entitled Why The Greeks Matter. Actually with all of the books that I had set aside @ our library, I somehow picked this one up instead. It's a fine book that did help explain some of the Greek importance and the ties into the Iliad and the Odyssey for me.
Ginny:I do hate, and I may be the only one, but I do hate to read a book and MISS what apparently is a major point, which everybody else seems to know). I am sure with this group (I can see already) that won't be an issue, I do hope.
No! You are not the only one. How many times I have been reading away the postings and I stop dead in my tracks with a brilliant "HUH"????? ???
"What did I miss? How could I have missed that? Oh my goodness, YES!"
That is the reason I do read with SeniorLearn. You each teach me something and more over, something in a way that I will forever remember.
My book fortunately has the whole cast of characters that the author has called "Principal Personages of the Odyssey. I thank you sir.
Oh by the way, HAPPY BIRTHDAY GINNY (ON THE 4TH)-
Friday is your day we will celebrate.
-
For those who are visual learners , like myself, you can put into Google "Voyage of Odysseus". The first title heading is "Travels of Odysseus".
What will appearwill be a map of the first leg of the voyage (Ithaca to Troy). Press NEXT and you wil get a map of the next leg of the journey, Troy to North Africa. Next to each map is a synopsis of the adventures on that part of the journey. These maps continue until Odysseus finally arrives home after 20 years.
-
Jude: I can't seem to duplicate your exact finding. Could you post the link?
I've been reading the introduction to Fagles. In addition to the points already mentioned, he raises a few others.
He talks at length about the question of when The Odyssy was written down. Some scholars feel that its form shows that it was part of the oral tradition, passed on orally through the generations. Interestingly, the evidence for this comes from Yugoslovia, where the oral tradition is still alive (or was at the time the work was done). There are other such place, too.
But of course, other scholars disagree (when don't they?) and feel it was written fairly early.
Another thing that interested me: I had always heard comments saying that The Odyssey was far inferior to the Iliad. I wondered about this: the Odyssey is more an action/adventure story but still.
Fagles dismisses this, saying it is only ecause The Odyssey deals with more everyday things. We shall see for ourselves.
-
GINNY - HAVE A GOOD ONE ON THE 4TH.
-
JudeS-thank you for the posting of the maps lining the routes taken by our team of travellers thru the years...it is very helpful and little things like this and the naming of the prominent characters in my copy of the book and their connection help me immensely....
I initially tried to look up some maps on the internet and almost got involved with a virus or something, good thing my husband always comes to my rescue at times like these
Deb
-
Thank you Jude, that's a lovely site of maps and explanations.
Thank you all for the birthday wishes as well! :)
RoshanaRose, the book I was thinking of is Schliemann's Discoveries of the Ancient World, by Dr. Carl Schuchhardt, which was sort of... co authored by Schliemann, or at least heavily collaborated on, and published right after his death. Naturally it has his passion and his point of view which is quite different from how history has treated him in it and describes with 300 photos his discoveries at Troy, Tiryns, and Mycenae. It sort of leaves out some of the...er...disastrous...possibly dishonest? work he did in excavating the site at Troy. And of course, what is it, 9 or 11 levels have been found? But the point is they are ON the spot where he said Troy was.
Apparently he destroyed several levels of Troy, himself, in his quest to find the "real Troy." History has not been kind to him, (nor apparently has he been forthcoming with it), but he was a fascinating character. I think his story of using the Iliad when archaeologists laughed at him and "Troy" was thought of as a myth and fairy tale, TO locate and actually find the real site of Troy at Hisarlik, an amateur at his best, is pretty incredible. The book also talks about Calvert and his finds, it's quite interesting.
It's a wonder somebody hasn't made a movie of it. It was spoofed along with Howard Carter's find of Tut's Tomb in the wonderful Motel of the Mysteries by David Macaulay, who made heyday with the famous photo of Sophia Schliemann wearing the (http://www.seniorlearn.org/latin/graphics/schliemannsophia.jpg) treasures found at Hisarlik.
I too have looked upon, in the fine museum in Athens, at what Schliemann called "the face of Agamemnon," (which is also on the book's cover) which we now know is not, having been proved to be of a different time. And I seem to vaguely remember how you can tell the time periods, something about the flatness of the face, etc., etc., but I'm afraid that has gone with the many other interesting winds which have blown by since. hahaha.
-
TODAY IS THE DAY OUR LEADER WAS BROUGHT FORTH!!
HAPPY BIRTHDAY DEAR GINNY!
-
HAPPY BIRTHDAY, GINNY !
-
DITTO
-
HAPPY BIRTHDAY TO YOU -
TRA LA LA LA - LA LA...
HAPPY BIRTHDAY DEAR GINNY -
HAPPY BIRTHDAY TO YOU
-
Many Happy Returns
-
http://www.classics.upenn.edu/myth/php/homer/index.php?page=sounds (http://www.classics.upenn.edu/myth/php/homer/index.php?page=sounds)
found this interesting site with pronunciations of names in the odyssey, and another page shows routes of the odyssey plotted by 2 people, they are not exactly the same, but there is an explanation
http://www.classics.upenn.edu/myth/php/homer/index.php?page=odymap (http://www.classics.upenn.edu/myth/php/homer/index.php?page=odymap)
just surfing around trying to get a feel for this book and timeline
Deb
-
Ginny, felicem diem natalem
-
Gracious day! Thank you all so much!! Makes the day just that more special. :)
-
Here I come trailing at the end to say: HAPPY, HAPPY BIRTHDAY, GINNY!!!!!!!!!!
Am finally back on line - the storm took down a bunch of branches along with our electric and cable lines. We got our electricity back late yesterday, but the cable company has been pretty overwhelmed - but here we are at last. Nasty stuff coming tomorrow but only a little nasty, I think.
My audio of the Odyssey came today! Yay!
-
bookad Good site. Well spotted.
-
I'm finally back online with a new computer, just in time to wish Ginny happy birthday and welcome Carol. I'm eager to start.
-
Ginny Has a birthday
So what shall we say?
Hurrah! for the Captain of our ship.
She'll lead us on this great trip.
Joan K.
To get tothe link I mentioned put into Google:
Voyage of Odysseus
A list of titles will appear. The first one is "Travels of Odysseus" Go to this title and a map will appear of the first part of the journey of Odysseus. Under the picture is the word "next' .Hit that and get the map and synopsis for the next leg of the journey. Continue through each leg of the journey by pressing next under the pictures of the maps.
-
JoanK - He talks at length about the question of when The Odyssy was written down. Some scholars feel that its form shows that it was part of the oral tradition, passed on orally through the generations. Interestingly, the evidence for this comes from Yugoslovia, where the oral tradition is still alive (or was at the time the work was done). There are other such place, too.
I haven't got Fagles so don't know what he says about the ground breaking research done in Yugoslavia by Millman Parry and Albert Lord in the 1930's. Parry actually recorded the Yugoslav 'singers' of the oral traditions on steel discs (I think). He died soon after and his work wasn't published for many years (perhaps 1960s). Lord went back later and undertook more work in the field and he has been followed by others since.
The main thing shown by their work is how the oral tradition is passed down being adapted and modified by each generation. No two 'singers' ( or perhaps in Greek 'rhapsodes'), sing the same song or text and the song is never the same twice. The Yugoslav singers used a similar kind of formulaic phrasing as occurs in Homer - 'the rosy-fingered dawn' etc - as a base on which to build their stories.
- When their theory was applied to the Greek and Homer in particular the similarities were striking. What it suggested is that the oral tradition of the Greeks had been in practice for centuries before 'Homer' was committed to writing and that what we know as 'Homer' was the result of the work of generations of rhapsodes and that the work had been distilled over centuries to keep pace with changing social mores and sensibilities. As Gilbert Murray points out in his Rise of the Greek Epic there are signs of successful expurgations in the text which deal with practices the Greeks no longer tolerated such as torture, insult to the dead, mutilation, poisoned arrows etc. which suggests the changing nature of the 'songs' Nonetheless the work of these ancient poets was to record history.
As for the date of Homer - it seems to be that every generation of scholars pushes the date further back - I have no idea of the opinions of the current crop.
I must say that SeniorLearn has much to answer for - apart from having me crawling around on my knees searching for long neglected books it has opened a 'tin of worms' which is seething in my head- disjointed and possibly confused memories of long ago reading. I guess it will do me good.
-
In regard to the oral tradition of Homer, Gilbert Murray also says to the effect that the main conclusion he draws from the opinions then available (1930's) is that the poems cannot have been committed to writing in their present form till a much later date than is usually supposed ... he deals with changing forces on the language over time, incursions of other peoples etc which bought other elements to bear and over time thus enriched the poems.
He also refers to Dr Parry's work as illustrating an "all-pervading influence of tradition and convention on the epic diction, and the vast difference between Homeric and modern conceptions of poetry". ...something we should perhaps bear in mind as we read through the text.
He goes on to say: A tradition is a social fact, based on the unspoken agreement of poets and audiences, from which neither can vary widely or abruptly. And the problem to be understood is how and why through many generations the normal Greek public expected its epic poets to speak in a particular artificial dialect, to use a particular type of simile and description, and to obey certain subtle and probably unconscious rules of symmetry. Certainly the artistic instinct implied in both poet and audience by these facts is very remarkable, but perhaps not more so than the exquisite conventions of symmetry and proportion which were traditional in other forms of Greek art, for instance in architecture and the carving of bas-reliefs.
So many avenues to explore - I can see there won't be many chores getting done around here for quite some time....
-
Welcome to
The Classics Book Club, Beginning February 15 with
(http://www.seniorlearn.org/bookclubs/classicsbookclub/cbcodyssey.jpg)
**NB: There are probably 50+ famous translations of the Odyssey. If you find the translation you have does not speak to you or does not convey to you what's happening, this book is too fabulous to waste on an old outdated translation: try a new one.
Free SparkNotes background and analysis on the Odyssey (http://www.sparknotes.com/lit/odyssey)
Book I: The Situation at Home:
(http://www.seniorlearn.org/latin/ulysses_penelope/PenelopeatLoomJohnWWaterhouse1912.jpg)
Penelope at her Loom
John William Waterhouse
1912
Discussion Schedule:
February 7-14: Background, history, The Trojan War, the Oral Tradition, Homer, the dates, let's get the backgound established.
February 15-22: Book I
"I haven't felt this excited about a prospective read/discussion for years."--- Gumtree
Discussion Leaders: Joan K (joankraft13@yahoo.com) & ginny (gvinesc@gmail.com )
Everyone is welcome!
I am reminded of a phenomenon known to any parent. A child will
demand a favorite story be read umpteen times, and knows it so well
that the slightest omission or variation is greeted with cries of outrage
and a swift correction. So I can well believe that an oral tradition will
carry a well known story fairly intact through many generations. Still,
language does change, and translations do emerge over time, with
more or less felicitous results.
-
Well, see, that's the thing.
We're all familiar with the old game of forming a line and repeating a story, and then seeing what the story has become at the end of the line, it's never the same story. So imagine trying to repeat this Odyssey, I mean really.
I've always wondered how on earth anybody memorized this thing! What's the longest poem you have ever memorized?
Thank you, JoanR, PatH and Jude (a POEM yet!! Love it!) for the birthday wishes, this is so fun!
I must admit I have been thinking of it as a voyage, hopefully we won't end up like Gilligan! :)
With this crew and Joan K as First Mate, we're set for adventure and hopefully unlike Ulysses's men, we can all survive to the end to tell about it.
I must say that SeniorLearn has much to answer for - apart from having me crawling around on my knees searching for long neglected books it has opened a 'tin of worms' which is seething in my head- disjointed and possibly confused memories of long ago reading. I guess it will do me good.
hahahaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa a regular Pandora's box, huh?
A tradition is a social fact, based on the unspoken agreement of poets and audiences, from which neither can vary widely or abruptly. And the problem to be understood is how and why through many generations the normal Greek public expected its epic poets to speak in a particular artificial dialect, to use a particular type of simile and description, and to obey certain subtle and probably unconscious rules of symmetry. Certainly the artistic instinct implied in both poet and audience by these facts is very remarkable, but perhaps not more so than the exquisite conventions of symmetry and proportion which were traditional in other forms of Greek art, for instance in architecture and the carving of bas-reliefs.
This is something. There IS a lot of repetition of the rosey fingered dawn stuff and the wine dark sea. I won't bore you all with the woman, the grown woman, who stared continually at the seas surrounding Greece and Crete for two weeks not to mention the land of the Sirens, Sorrento, some think, and never saw anything resembling wine dark, at all. But who keeps looking every year anyway?
In our past history in this country we used to memorize long poems till "rote memory" got a bad rap. In fact China is about to dispense with it and they used it to rise to the educational heights they have done. But new research (I MUST find this article) reveals that doing rote memory leaves the mind free to then analyze and apply those facts to new principles, it's a good thing. It's like muscle memory involved in playing the piano.
I'm trying to think of the longest thing I had to memorize and how far it went. I think it must be the Ancient Mariner, we were supposed to memorize the first part (and the whole thing if we could).... I got nowhere near that, but I did get the first part, I think. Snatches of it come back and I can do some of it now.. The Psalms of course. Some of Shakespeare, but NOTHING like this thing.
Of the longest things you ever memorized, how much of any of it can you remember offhand?
-
Of the longest things you ever memorized, how much of any of it can you remember offhand?
I think the ONLY thing I had to memorize was the prologue to Canterbury Tales, and it wasn’t very long. “When that April . . . . .vertu engendered is the fluer” Pronouncing it is something else.
My Fagles came yesterday. Thank you to those who recommended this version, and gave the ordering info. I think this will be the one I like the best, though it is early yet. The first line of the author’s Translator’s Postscript reads
“Homer makes us Hearers,” Pope has said, “and Vergil leaves us Readers.”
The intro to the Pope translation on my Kindle (by Thomas Buckley) had this to say about the oral tradition:
For whom was a written Iliad necessary? . . . The only persons for whom the Iliad would be suitable would be for a select few; studious and curious men; a class of readers capable of analyzing the complicatedemotions which they had experienced as hearers in the crowd. . . Incredible as the statement may seem in an age like the present, there is in all early societies, and there was in early Greece, a time when no such reading class existed.
-
Oh my gosh, I remember when I had to memorize Hamlet's speech in 10th grade. "To be or not to be." (Heck, that is still the question... ::)
I love to listen to stories! My grandmother would tell my cousin and I tales that we were held privy to as she told us "don't tell your mother i told you this story." It kept us quiet for hours and now I, as a grandmother, understand the love and joy relating those stories must have given "grams."
I like to tell stories too, I like to "get into it."
I agree Pedln and as the oral tradition was passed on from generation to generation, many times by the minstrels or by the traveling bards, no reading class needed to exist.
When I write something, much is left unsaid.
If I can relate it, the story becomes much more interesting and adventurous.
-
Wow Ginny- Penelope is quite the stunning lady. No wonder Odysseus wished to return to her.
-
Andy, your listening experiences made me think of that movie Inn of Sixth Happiness, about a missionary in China close to WWII. The people would all gather together to hear stories.
-
Aside from Hamlet's soliloquy, and The Rime of the Ancient Mariner, we memorized Paul Revere's Ride and some of the Song of Hiawatha.
-
My mother used to try to get me to memorize "the Face on the Ballroom Floor." It appeals to me now, but not at that point in time. ;D
-
What memories come to me of memorizing poems. First and foremost all the Nursery rhymes. Then Robert Louis Stevenson -eapecially The Shadow(Goes in and out with me). Then in seventh grade "The Anciemt Mariner" and choosing a poem of our choice to recite. i chose "In Flanders Fields" by Joel McCrae. I remember all the words to that and then In H.S. large portions of T.S.Eliots "Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock".
If as is strongly rumored Homer was blind, perhaps from birth, other senses are embellished. His hearing and memory could be highly developed so that he made his living as a story teller.As an actor learns the lines to a play, so did Homer learn all the words of the Odyssey . Finally a scribe wrote it down and perhaps embelished it (or not).
-
JudeS- really? That is the first I've ever heard that? Who's to say right?
-
I am so glad that we were made to memorise poems and parts of plays at school. I am forever quoting lines at my children - needless to say they think I should get back on my broomstick. They don't seem to have to learn anything off by heart at school, and I think that is such a shame.
I learned great chunks of Anthony & Cleopatra, Henry IV, Henry V, Hamlet, etc. When I went to stay with my French penfriend at the age of 14, we were taken to see the opera Falstaff sung in French, and I could follow the plot only because I knew Henry IV and V so well.
I still remember parts of TS Eliot - The Waste Land, and more especially the Lovesong of J Alfred Prufrock (I say to my children "Let us go then, you and I" and they reply (if they can be moved to reply at all) "Waaa?" ) and some of the cat poems; also Robert Frost, Hilaire Belloc (Tarantella), Tennyson - The Lady of Shalott, Keats, lots of John Donne, Andrew Marvell, Wilfred Owen, Rupert Brook. I wouldn't pretend that I remember many whole poems any more, but even little snatches are such a comfort and a joy when they come back to you at the right moments, aren't they?
They are also often handy for doing crosswords :)
WH Smith seems to have lost my order for the Fagles Odyssey - I am so frustrated, am aching to join in with all of this. I have emailed their customer services twice and received no reply; they have taken my money happily enough. I am about to write them an extremely stroppy letter.
Rosemary
-
Oh, Oh Watch out. Here comes Rosemary. Everytime I read one of your posts about your kids, I chuckle and think, oh boy, she's got either tweens or teens.
-
Thank you, Jude. I'll give it another try.
I wonder if the Yugoslovian oral tradition has survived the (relativly) recent turmoil there. Books can be destroyed in war, too, but may have a better chance(?).
PatH and I had good memories children (where, where did it go?) and used to like to memorize things. We both liked "The Highwayman" and memorized it (she can still recite a lot of it). And the patter songs from Gilbert and Sullivan.
Our school made us memorize a poem every month. My only memory of that is once (I must have been about 10) -- my poem had a line "The squirrel held intercourse with the mountain". I went rushing into my mom:
"Mom. what does this word mean?"
"WHERE DID YOU HEAR THAT WORD?"
"I have to memorize it for school".
Such a fuss! My father's calmer head got her to look at the poem and calmed her down, but it took awhile.
Needless to say, I remember nothing about that poem, except the one line, which I'll never forget.
-
All this kind of reminds me of Fahrenheit 451 where the books were burned. The book lovers rose to the occasion, and each who joined the outcasts committed a favorite book to memory, passing them along to others who would memorize them and perpetuate them also.
-
How dyslexia changed the stories told to my older two children -
Who knew about dyslexia in the early part of the twentieth century? Yes, the way the brain process written information seems to be passed on to at least one member of each generation starting with my father - Result: he and mom would visit and mom would read a story that she would be interrupted and the kids would ask grandpa to finish - of course he knew the outline of the story and not being able to read he pretended and with great flourish and gusto it all became very exciting with alterations that made the story even more entertaining than the original.
Upshot - I would be asked to read the story again - Oh no mama, read it like Grandpa - that is not how it goes - a long distance call to grandpa - Dad how did you - what did you ??!!?? Barb I don't remember - I just made it more fun - none of us knew he could not read - after this same scenario happening twice I would make it a point to listen whenever he "read" to my kids so I could tell the story as they wanted to hear it. I was not as good with the flourishes but I sure could get the voice sounds and story alterations.
Yep, you get the point - those story tellers were paid with food and a place to sleep by the inn keeper - to assure a full tummy and a good night's sleep it behooved the story teller to make the story as interesting as possible. Now in the Mediterranean I understand the story teller was often a group, or a father and son and all those listening in an outdoor setting used their camel whips as a baton - they would strike the ground beating time in unison which kept the story teller on track - years ago I read that meter was the method that made memorizing and repeating a work easier and that was the rational used why early prose has a rhythmical meter.
Have been, for a couple of years now, studying the early Christians and learning of the many many Bibles that existed and because of both popular use and politics the choice of Bible books were accepted 200 to 300 years after they were written and the current Bible as we know it was not recognized as 'The' Bible till the Council of Trent in the mid-1500s - Significant to me is that the Bible History of the New Testament is within the last 2000 years and it was not sorted out and agreed upon including verbiage translations even after 1500 years as well, there were differences of what to include in the Torah as to the written work written BC and here we have Homer we believe to have been an oral story for at least another 1000 years earlier than the written story which according to which anthropologist you read was written 700 to 900 years BC never mind we have in front of us the availability of several translations each slightly different with a few differences affecting the interpretation of the story.
And so to nail this as authentic I think we are barking up the wrong tree and we would be more at peace if we focus on understanding the history of the time, the culture, and try to deduce the underpinnings of the story as we do with any piece of literature along with the beauty of the translation we are reading. I am just betting there were lots of 'grandpa's' along the way that made the story a bit more exciting with extra flourishes and told with a bit more gusto.
-
my memories of poems always begin with
Robert Frost's 'Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening'
whose woods these are i think i know
his house is in the village though
he will not see me stopping here to watch his woods fill up with snow....
Flanders Fields I would think most Canadians know
and believe it or not we had to learn the 'Gettyburg Address' when I was in grade 8
Four score and seven years ago, our fathers brought forth upon this continent....
but my favourite lines are from a poem by William Blake
'to see the world in a grain of sand and heaven in a wild flower,
hold infinity in the palm of your hand and eternity in an hour'
Deb :)
-
JoanK - again this group has provided me with my first laugh of the day - amd it's 8.22am! Your squirrel story made me think of The Lady Of Shalott; I'm sure I only remember that because of the immortal line:
"The curse has come upon me! cried the Lady of Shalott"
You can imagine how that went down in a girls' school similar in its quota of supressed hysteria to that of the school in Picnic at Hanging Rock :)
R
-
Well, Rosemarykaye, now you've given me my first laugh of the day, and it's only 7:30.
-
What a HOOT! hahaha another laugh o the day!
OH I forgot the Lady of Shalott which I have never been able to spell from the onion. I LOVE these poems you've all memorized!
OH I can do the Lady;
Out flew the web and opened wide
The mirror cracked from side to side
The curse is (has?) come upon me, cried
The Lady of Shalott or however you spell it.
She left the ..something.. she left the loom
She took three? paces through the room
Boy I love Tennyson. I've long wanted to read him here. I DO get him mixed up with Macaulay, sometimes, tho, author of Lays of Ancient Rome.
We need to do a game here on our website where you try to remember what you had to memorize, without looking it up, it's hilarious, and see if somebody can piece the parts in. Without looking of course, anybody can look something up. I LOVE all the things you've put here, isn't it fascinating what differences there are in what you learned to memorize and what pieces you learned!
Oh yes the Gettysburg Address, we did too! And the Preamble to the Constitution. I don't think they do any of that any more, do they?
Andrea on Penelope, I'm not thinking that it was her beauty that attracted the suitors, but rather her kingdom. Waterhouse is a wonderfully graphic painter and all his women are beautiful. Or most of them anyway.
Somebody mentioned "modern scholarship" on Homer and JoanR said, "I've got it, too, ginny." She was referring to the new (The Classical Tradition, huge huge brand new tome of how the classics have influenced us today it's as big as the new Oxford Latin dictionary and I think it weighs more, and VOILA! Homer, turns out to be one of the huge entries, not surprisingly, the latest scholarship on his dates we've all got him pretty much pegged: "The most recent consensus puts him in the 8th century BCE." And this is dated 2010, so I think we can accept this one as our Homer date?
Oh my word, if you can get your hands on a copy of this monster at the library, I'm pretty sure they are not going to let IT go home, you'll see the scholarship on Homer down thru the ages until today, it's absolutely fascinating, and no name or theory mentioned here is omitted, and a lot more added, but it's FASCINATING to see how the perception of him has changed throughout time, how it changed, what that means, and what it's become. Traces the earliest known texts, that alone is fascinating.
It traces "the trajectory of the Iliad and the Odyssey through the Western tradition," too. HUGE article, my poor typing could not begin to attempt it.
Andrea it also says that a Homer portrait occurs in Homer's Hymn to Apollo, "line 172, long identified as the bard's unique description of himself: 'a blind man from rocky Chios.'"
OH my word even to Poussin, the artist, starting with Herodotus, and ending with the moderns, I did not know that Ezra Pound's Cantos has Odysseus in it! I took an entire course in the "modern poets," and we did do Pound. (He was modern then, shows you how modern I am hahaha). I am beginning to wonder if the old mind is going. ahhaaha Or maybe the old mind was on other things while "studying." I fear it's the latter. Garbage in, garbage out, right? hahahaa
Whooo, who KNEW this would be so exciting?
Everyone is welcome!!
-
We start tomorrow with some background. This discussion now contains such valuable stuff we don't want to lose it so we'll just keep on here.
We need background on Troy itself, the Trojan War, why all the Greeks had assembled, what really caused the Trojan War, when the date of the Fall of Troy was, what an Epic poem is, that seems important, what kleos is, and how it pertains to this, if it does, and all kinds of things.
Please grab one of these brass rings or anything else YOU think is interesting or we need to think about as background and bring it here.
We have here a very fabulous group of intelligent people and obviously well read. We will be counting on you to bring up topics or questions you want to talk about, in other words hopefully YOU will supply some talking points, just like you already have!
Bring 'em on!
-
Ah, but GINNY, that's what professional minstrels were all about.
They learned every word of long sagas from other minstrels. I
wonder if there was an apprenticeship for gifted young candidates?
When I write something, much is left unsaid. If I can relate it,
the story becomes much more interesting and adventurous.
How interesting, ALF. I am the opposite. If I write something down,
I can express myself more clearly and without distraction, and make
sue I haven't left something unsaid. Whenever I had something important to say, I would write a note and give it to the person I wanted to 'hear' it. Then we could go from there.
Nothing like seeing Mom have a fit to impress something on your
mind, hmm, JOANK? I am constantly surprised at the things I can
recall from memorization in my early years. It's particularly
poignant when I realize I can't remember those memorable lines I
read yesterday!
-
We used to have to memorize poetry and bits of Shakespeare in school , but the only long poem I have memorized recently is Tam O'Shanter, which is performed annually at Burn's suppers. Well with my accent I was in high demand for the annual Burns night when we lived up north . There was a Scottish hotel/restaurant that used to serve haggis all year round, not just in Jan. and put on a great Burns night, piper and all. Anyway, Tam O'Shanter was pretty easy to memorize, it just rolls along. (If you miss bits, nobody understands anyway....!) Its pretty long, but nothing to compare with the Odyssey of-course. Unfortunately here in S Carolina, they just say......Burns who.....???
-
Wow - the oldest known written copy of the Odyssey was only made available to the larger public in 2007 - it has been housed since the 15th century in the Biblioteca Marciana in Venice, Italy and dates from the 10th century A.D., but the Byzantine goat skin parchment includes notes and comments that reach back as far as the 3rd century B.C., to the work of Homeric scholars in Alexandria, Egypt.
There was a smaller group of scholars who had access in 1901 to a photographed copy that did not show clearly the written notes and comments.
The entire story is here: http://www.research.uky.edu/odyssey/summer08/iliad.html
-
Barb - a very interesting article. Unfortunately, the link to see some of the script did not work for me. Later when I get some more time I will have a fiddle and see if I can view it by some other means.
-
Wow is right! The article described the scanning techniques we read about when we did our discussion of Carol Goodman's The Night Villa. I would love to see the online copy, but that link is not working for me either.
http://digicenter2.furman.edu/luna/servlet/detail/furmanfdc~61~61~338726~148661:Ilias-cum-Scholiis,-Venetus-A,-Foli?embedded=true&widgetType=detail&widgetFormat=wiki
http://digicenter2.furman.edu/luna/servlet/detail/furmanfdc~61~61~338698~148659:Ilias-cum-Scholiis,-Venetus-A,-Foli?embedded=true&widgetType=detail&widgetFormat=forum
Even better, http://www.homermultitext.org/ has its "HMT Manuscript Browser" (see left hand column to click) where you can tell it what you want to look at.
Ginny, it looks like Furman has some involvment. Isn't that where you were teaching an evening Latin class a few years back?
-
Great link to manuscript - thanks Frybabe
-
Thanks Barb. Your link worked for me and the enlargements did too.
-
Barbara What a gem to uncover for us. Thanks and more thanks.
and to Frybabe as well for those links It's mind blowing just what they can do with the technology today and how amazing that we had read about the techniques so recently when discussing The Night Villa.
-
from Ginny:
We need background on Troy itself, the Trojan War, why all the Greeks had assembled, what really caused the Trojan War, when the date of the Fall of Troy was, what an Epic poem is, that seems important, what kleos is, and how it pertains to this, if it does, and all kinds of things.
I'll have a go at the Epic poem:
The epic is a long narrative poem, almost always on a grand scale, and tells the story of the deeds of warriors and heroes. These heroic stories incorporate myth, legend, folktales and history. They are often of national significance in the sense that they embody the history and aspirations of a nation in a somewhat lofty or grandiose manner.
There are two kinds of epic poetry - the first is known as the oral epic and belongs to the the oral tradition - so it it originally composed orally and recited and then later are written down as is thought to be the case with 'Homer'
The second kind of epic is known as the literary epic which is written down from the start. The Aeneid, and Paradise Lost are examples of literary epics.
Here's a little of what M.H. Abrams says in his Glossary of Literary Terms
In its strict sense the term epic or heroic poem is applied to a work that meets at least the following criteria: it is a long verse narrative on a serious subject, told in a formal and elevated style, and centred on a heroic or quasi-divine figure on whose actions depends the fate of a tribe, a nation, or (in the case of John Milton's Paradise Lost) the human race.
There is a standard distinction between traditional and literary epics. Traditional epics were written versions of what had originally been oral poems about a tribal or national hero during a warlike age. Among these are the Iliad and Odyssey that the Greeks ascribed to Homer: the Anglo-Saxon Beowulf: the French Chanson de Roland and the Spanish Poema del Cid in the 12th century; and the 13th century German epic Nibelungenlied
Literary epics were composed by individual poetic craftsmen in deliberate imitation of the traditional form. Of this kind is Virgil's Aeneid which later served as the chief model for Milton's literary epic Paradise Lost
In his rather long essay on the epic Abrams goes on to say that epics usually share the following features derived from the traditional epics of Homer -
1. the hero is a figure of great national or even cosmic importance...
2. the setting of the poem is ample in scale and may be worldwide or even larger...
3. the action involves superhuman deeds in battle such as Achilles' feats in the Trojan War or a long, arduous, and dangerous journey intrepidly accomplished such as the wanderings of Odysseus....
4, In these great actions the gods and other supernatural beings take an interest or an active part...
5 An epic poem is a ceremonial performance, and is narrated in a ceremonial style which is deliberately distanced from ordinary speech and proportioned to the grandeur and formality of the heroic subject...
-
And a link to the 10 greatest epics...
http://listverse.com/2008/07/06/top-10-greatest-epic-poem/
Oviously Iliad is rated No1 and Odyssey at 3 - Aeneid comes in at No 10.
You'll have to scroll right down to reach Iliad.
-
Gumtree - Thanks for all the research you put into the questions Ginny asked. By no means a short list. I am going to give a go to Troy. Just now all I can see is the face of Priam (Peter O'Toole), thanks to the wonders of cinematography, as he begs for the return of Hector's body. I will need to read up on the Iliad as background, that is obvious.
I just wish I could get those images of the destructive fires near Perth out of my mind as well. You are right - we may need to ask ourselves - "What did we do?"
I intend to look at the cause of the Trojan War. To blame it on Helen and Paris reflects the Greeks' disdain of human folly. More likely, it was about acquisition of territory. Difficult, indeed, to interpret the reasons behind the Trojan War. I have some serious reading ahead of me, but it will be worth it, as it encourages debate and didacticism.
-
DANA, I don't think it's the place, but the time. The younger
generation was taught a different group of poets, I suspect. So
many times, watching some quiz show, a question is asked that I
would have thought everyone knew, only to see a row of young,
puzzled faces.
-
I love the story of Helen- The face that launched a thousand ships. Check this out: both mythology and cause. I like this site.
timeless myths (http://www.timelessmyths.com/classical/trojanwar.html#Origin)
-
OK, kleos. I read an interesting thing about the difference between kleos and time
kleos means reknown which Homer's heroes always strive for. It means rememberance by future generations (through epic poetry actually, when you think about it)
time means honour or prestige, attained in the eyes of contemporaries.
-
I feel a nap coming on, but before I do, I thought I'd chime in to say that I downloaded the Butcher and Lang version. Also, while exploring Project Gutenberg, I ran across Lang's Homer and His Age and downloaded that also.
Okay, my cat is pesting, I have dishes to do and an nap to take. You know what I will be doing don't you? Exploring the Kindle Store. ;D
-
So far the research shows the Trojan war is possibly a myth - I have ordered the Michael Wood book of his TV special looking for evidence of the Trojan War - Amazon does have the availability of watching the 4 night series for $1.99 each night - since the book was less then the usual shipping fee when ordering from an outside vendor and it is going to be shipped by Amazon I went for the book.
This site really confused me telling me that the Trojan War was a poem composed during the middle ages to explain Chaucer's background for
Troilus and Criseyde.
http://www.lib.rochester.edu/camelot/teams/troyint.htm
And here is a copy of the Roman prose written in the early C6th AD - whatever that date means - do you think it means the 6th year or the 600th year? - anyhow there is talk of a forgery etc. etc. - interesting background as well as the prose entitled, Dares Phrygius
http://www.theoi.com/Text/DaresPhrygius.html
And this young man from Sweden has pulled together into one site many of the conflicting bits about Troy and how the Trojan war could fit a timeline.
http://home.swipnet.se/~w-63448/grekhist2.htm
And I love this site - I have seen many photos of the death mask of Agamemnon and here it is with the story of how Schiliemann took the mask from the Mycenae dig as proof of the Trojan War.
http://www.historywiz.org/agamemnon.htm
-
in reading my post, time should have a thing like this ^ above the e, anyone know how to do that?
-
Why I am comfortable with the concept that what we read today as the Odyssey including the Trojan War was mythologized over the centuries is, because of the hours of research I did during the 1960s while I was still living in Kentucky on Traditional Folk Music and as a result what I learned about the oral tradition.
I had a friend who made me a lovely Mountain Dulcimer – they are narrow lap four string instruments - plucked or strummed using a feather quill rather than a large, often standing instrument, beaten as the European Dulcimer. Of course I could not leave well enough alone and so after learning to play some of the old music I became curious as to where, when, how etc.
One of the early and most revered collectors of early Ballads – was Francis James Child; I have a copy of his 10 books where he describes who he interviewed and what texts he found, including the many, many, many changes to each of the Ballads, some still sung, mostly in Southern Appalachia.
Professor Child was born in 1825, graduated from Harvard in1846 having majored in Literature. This man is not a rural, friend-to-man, taking notes – he is a scholar - a two-year leave of absence from his duties as an English instructor at Harvard he studies at Berlin and Göttingen, where he earns his Doctor of Philosophy, after he obtained an advanced degree in Math from Columbia. His models and whom he had on his desk a copy of their faces were the Grimm Brothers.
His private passion for the study of poetry, ballads, folklore and music became central after he edited a series of British Poets. His research published as The English and Scottish Popular Ballads included every obtainable version of existent and extinct Ballad tracing back to early versions in Italy, Greece, northern Europe and northern Africa. He includes in his manuscript a full discussion of related songs or stories in the ‘popular’ literature of all nations.
Some of his books are on-line - however, after comparing what Google is showing, whole swaths of text are missing and page numbers do not match the information on the same page number of these books.
Back to Child - Securing trustworthy texts was paramount. He achieved a coup with many attempts before gaining permission to research and publish the folio of Percy MS. an earlier researched account of some Ballads. He formed a library at the University on Folk-lore amassing 7000 volumes
A popular ballad that most of us know today is Barbara Allan – Bonny Barbara Allan has 92 versions, here is one version written as an anonymous poem (http://wonderingminstrels.blogspot.com/2000/09/barbara-allen-anonymous.html) and another on Bartleby as an anonymous poem (http://www.bartleby.com/40/10.html) and Percy’s earlier researched version as the Cruelty of Barbara Allan (http://www.poemhunter.com/poem/barbara-allen-s-cruelty-2/) – the ballad is referred to by Samuel Pepys in 1666.
I can easily get lost in all of this but the reason I want to share is; Professor Child’s research led him to the conclusion that, “long- repeated tradition have always departed considerably from their original - Oral recollection was a possession left to the uneducated - Once in the hands of the professional, the ballad singer, minstrel whose sole object is to please the audience before him, will alter, omit, or add, without scruple, and nothing is more common than to find different ballads blended together.”
“…last of all comes the modern editor, whose so-called improvements are more to be feared than the mischance’s of a thousand years. A very old ballad will often be found to have resolved itself in the course of what may be called its propagation into several distinct shapes, and each of these again to have received distinct modifications”
He goes on to extol how Ballads and oral poetry were at times lengthened or shortened or compounded with stanzas from several sources or, made unfaithful as they tried to fit the story into the Northern European’s view of Heroes or adjusted to accommodate the European, English, Scottish view of the Moore’s [Muslims] e.g. the ‘brown girl’ is most often a Moore. He does suggest the crusades brought together an interchange of stories and songs.
But folks - here is the real kicker – ”Ballads are at their best when the transmission has been purely through the mouths of unlearned people, when they have come down by domestic tradition, through knitters and weavers.”
And what is Penelope – A weaver! – no wonder there are some scholars who think the Odyssey was a story told by a woman rather than Homer, the man, the educated writer.
-
From the - An Illustrated Encyclopaedia of Traditional Symbols by J.C. Cooper
Weaving The Primordial Weaver, the Great Weaver, is the creator of the universe, weaving on the loom of life the fate of all. All goddesses of Fate and Time are spinners and weavers. The weaver is also the Cosmic Spider and the tread of the Great Weaver is the umbilical cord which attaches man to his creator and his own destiny and by which he is woven into the world pattern and fabric.
Aha, so within this story could be some symbolic meaning that ties Penelope to the goddess of fate and time, which fits her part in the story in addition to her being a weaver.
The warp is the vertical plane, joining all degrees of existence; the qualitative essence of things; the immutable and unchanging; the forma; the masculine, active and direct; the light of the sun.
The weft or woof, is the horizontal; causal and temporal; the variable and contingent; the human state; the material , feminine and passive; the reflected light of the moon.
The warp and weft in relationship form a cross at each thread, the crossing symbolizing the union of opposites, the male and female principles united. Alternating Colours depict the dualistic but complementary forces of the universe. Night and Day are two sisters weaving the web of Time, the spatio-temporal fabric of cosmological creation.
Graeco-Roman:Athene/Minerva is a weaver of the world, as is Harmonia. The Fates, the Moirai, weave the web of destiny.
-
Barb
Thank you for mentioning folk ballads. As a young person (when was that?) I was enamored of folk ballads. I recently heard Barbara Allen sung on PBS by my favorite, Richard Dyer-Bennett, and ordered two of his CDs.
You can hear his version by going to his name and Barbara Allen. But perhaps you are aquainted with this man who devoted his life to keeping folk music alive?
I can see the relationship between Ballads and our much more involved Odyssey and even the brothers Grimm. It is the fact that they all want to help us remember stories from the past. Especially today, when new inventions seem to evolve on a weekly basis it is even more important to remember the roots on which our culture is based. Even when, or especially when cruel and frightening things occurred and brave people stood up for what is good and true.
-
Welcome to
The Classics Book Club, Beginning February 15 with
(http://www.seniorlearn.org/bookclubs/classicsbookclub/cbcodyssey.jpg)
**NB: There are probably 50+ famous translations of the Odyssey. If you find the translation you have does not speak to you or does not convey to you what's happening, this book is too fabulous to waste on an old outdated translation: try a new one.
Free SparkNotes background and analysis on the Odyssey (http://www.sparknotes.com/lit/odyssey)
Book I: The Situation at Home:
(http://www.seniorlearn.org/latin/ulysses_penelope/PenelopeatLoomJohnWWaterhouse1912.jpg)
Penelope at her Loom
John William Waterhouse
1912
Discussion Schedule:
February 7-14: Background, history, The Trojan War, the Oral Tradition, Homer, the dates, let's get the backgound established.
February 15-22: Book I
"I haven't felt this excited about a prospective read/discussion for years."--- Gumtree
Discussion Leaders: Joan K (joankraft13@yahoo.com) & ginny (gvinesc@gmail.com )
Everyone is welcome!
A little more on the meaning of kleos -
"kleos
{kleh'-os}
A word in Ancient Greek with the origin of "that which is heard" and literally means "fame in epic song" or "fame sung far and wide," although it is more loosely translated as simply fame, glory, or reputation.
The concept of kleos is related to the tradition in Ancient Greece of the bard as entertainment. Tales were told via oral tradition, and news and history spread through songs which were sung by the bard as after-dinner entertainment.
Homer's the Odyssey is a story about the kleos of survival and coming home--that is, earning kleos in a non-war situation. Odysseus earns kleos through nostos (homecoming) after the Trojan War. Odysseus also earns kleos by being a just king and benefitting others in his kingdom of Ithaca.
The idea of kleos is even more prevalant in Homer's Iliad. Agamemnon and Achilles discuss different ways of dying or being laid to rest, where kleos is from death and funeral. Eventually Agamemnon, murdered by his wife Klytemnestra and her lover Aigisthos, has no funeral, thus no kleos; Achilles, on the other hand, has the greatest funeral because of his heroic death in battle, and this earns him the most kleos. Kleos is the driving motivation behind the heroic deeds of the great heroes. In a sense, it is a means to achieve an immortality, a lasting impression. Achilles, the ultimate embodiment of heroism, is given a choice before entering battle.
For my mother Thetis the goddess of the silver feet tells me
I carry two sorts of destiny toward the day of my death. Either,
if I stay here and fight beside the city of the Trojans,
my return home is gone, but my glory shall be everlasting;
but if I return home to the beloved land of my fathers,
the excellence of my glory is gone, but there will be a long life
left for me, and my end in death will not come to me quickly. -- Iliad, IX.411-7 (tr. Lattimore)
As we know, Achilles chooses the first of the two. He dies valiantly in battle in the Trojan War, and his memory lives on."
Source: www.everything2.com
Perhaps also it is how Kleopatra got her name. Patra is a place with a magnificent new bridge linking mainland Greece to the Peloponnese. But the -patra part of her name seems more likely to be from "patritha" roughly meaning from a race of lineageThat's my take on it anyway. Nice name.
-
Dana That enclitic ^ (which may also be rounder, like a little rainbow) is called a "circumflex" in AG. MG, fortunately, rid itself of all but acute accents in 1982. Every word in Modern Greek has an accent, with very few exceptions. Every word in AG may have three (at least) enclitics. If you are studying either AG or MG at a formal level, you need to learn the accents/enclitics with the words. It is a pain, but makes the language sound quite melodic. Some may adore enclitics and accents, but I don't. If you want to see how they work in AG, Berkeley University has a very good AG site.
Dana: I tried to type the circumflex above a greek letter, but failed. I am sure there is a method, though. Just needs patience.
-
Idea - look in your bundle of extras that came with the computer - probably found in programs by hitting the button on the bottom that says start - anyhow there is a link that says 'Character Map' and it is all the various ways that letters can be written with marks above - it also includes I think it is Greek letters - and mine even has some Arabic letters - you simply pick one save it and then paste the letter in place of the one you typed and it works.
Jude yes, I think folks like to feel attached to their past - reminds me of how when we wake someone everyone tells stories of various experiences they shared or of stories of fun or proud moments - I guess when we remember the past in story we are waking the past. I am thinking this story not only allows us to wake past events but along the way we will be touching on ways of life that are easily lost over time.
Roshanarose earning kleos almost sounds like earning coup, where a brave dares danger to touch their enemy.
-
Barb : Earning coup. I have not heard that one before. Is it Native American? French word though.
I thought of another word similar also:
Kudos
Meaning and Definition
(n.) Glory; fame; renown; praise.
(v. t.) To praise; to extol; to glorify.
Kudos: words in the definition
Extol, Fame, Glorify, Glory, Praise, Renown, To,
Kudos synonyms
Praise,
Barb : Thanks for that hint.
Dana : Some sites use the Spanish "tilde" ~ for the circumflex.
-
This web site does a wonderful clear job of explaining coup...
http://www.schoolhistory.co.uk/year8links/natives/Nativewarfare.pdf
-
Confession is good for the soul, FRYBABE. :D
There's a tilde (^) above the 6 on my keyboard, Dana, but I've
never been able to place it above a letter. There must be a way,
I'm sure, or it wouldn't be there. I'd like to know the answer to
that myself.
BARB, thanks so much for that research. I clarifies a great deal
for me. I was thinking a minstrel would be trained to repeat a song/
story accurately, but of course he would have to adjust a song not
to offend his hearers. Minstrels traveled, and the people of a new
country would not care to hear a story extoling the virtues of their
enemies. I appreciated the explanation of warp and woof, too.
-
Barb - Quite fascinating. In Australia we have a game called "touch" football where points are won by merely touching an opponent. I live and I learn. That is just exactly the way I like it.
Gumtree - I am so relieved that the bushfires are now under control. Not much comfort for those who have lost everything, though.
I forgot to mention that "kudos" is also Greek.
-
Dana - found this online - the instructions are more thorough - Babi you may want to take a peek as well since the Tilde on the keyboard will never be placed on top of a typed letter - but it can be accomplished by using your Character Map.
To open Character Map,
click Start,
point to All Programs,
point to Accessories,
point to System Tools,
and then click Character Map.
For information about using Character Map, click Help in Character Map.
For more information, click Related Topics.
-
timê
Hooray!! Look at that!! Thank you Barb!!
-
From Knox's intro to the Odyssey:
"In the Iliad Hera and Athena are ferociously bent on Troy's destruction because of an insult to their pride and preeminence-the Judgement of Paris, the Trojan prince, which awarded the prize for beauty to Aphrodite. Poseidon, brother of Zeus, is equally intent on Troy's destruction, because the Trojan king Laomedon cheated him of payment for building the walls of Troy. Apollo, whose temple stands on the citade lof Troy, is the city's champion, and Zeus, the supreme arbiter, is partial to Troy because of the devotion of its inhabitants to his worship. The fate of the city and its women and children, as well as the lives and deaths of the warriors on both sides, are determined by the gine-and-take of theses divine wills in opposition, by pattern of alliance, conflict, deceit and compromise that form their relationships."
After reading the Archeologic fasts about Troy i.e.that there were at leasr eleven cities called Troy on the same site, and then reading this paragraph I imagined the great minds of Troy (people not Gods) figuring out why there was an earthquake that destroyed their city. These people had no knowledge of Science as we do today and needed to figure out why natural phenomena occurred.Their pantheon of Gods were the answer. What amazing imaginations they had.
-
Gosh what an interesting discussion you're having here! The Indian thing was quite interesting, Barbara, I spent a lot of time on the site. The business about the scalp ties in actually with the ancient Celts, who believed that the head was the dwelling place of the immortal soul, and to possess an enemy's head was to possess his soul. Somewhere I've got a too graphic illustration of this. Here it is: (http://www.seniorlearn.org/latin/caesar/Caesargallicwarrior.jpg) (this information is from Celtic Warrior 300 B.C-A.D. 100) by Stephen Allen.
On Troy, there's endless stuff written about the Medieval Romance's treatment of the Trojan War but I'm not sure myself that the possibility of a war should be written out. There was definitely a Troy, and the date of 1250 seems (Oxford Companion to Classical Literature) indicated as a "reasonable date for mainland Greece to be making a concerted attack on the city, since after that time Greece herself was involved in the general upheavals of the Mediterranean world which began in the middle of the century. Greek authors gave different dates for the Trojan War, from c 1280 to 1184 BC and even later. Eratosthenes favored 1184.
He worked backwards from the established date of the first Olympian games 776 BC, using the genealogies of the Spartan kings, which gave him 1104 for the Dorian Invasion. According to tradition this happened two generations, i.e. 80 years, after the Trojan War."
When you consider that Troy itself was held as a fairy tale for years and then was found, and that the eyewitness description of the mushroom cloud (like an umbrella pine) Pliny gave for the eruption of Vesuvius was laughed at until Mt. St. Helens erupted (now called "Plinian" eruptions) and that Aeneas was thought to be another fairy tale (invented by Vergil this time to explain the founding of Rome,) when just a year or so ago they found Turkish DNA in some bones on the very spot of Italy where he supposedly landed, which would date from that period, I personally am not eager to dismiss the possibility at least of a kernel of truth under all the embellishment that has followed...I mean who can say with definitive proof there was no Trojan War?
What the Medieval Romantics or the Roman poets or any writers thereafter made of it is one thing, but somewhere it's possible, even if it wasn't what Homer made of it, there's possibly some truth somewhere underlying it all. Maybe not but that is what I think, anyway, never sell the ancients short. It's possible it's all a myth, but nowadays it seems people are over keen to proclaim everything a myth, and I do mean everything.
Thank you for kleos, Dana and Roshanna Rose, that has got to be one of the main reasons of Odysseus's journey, and all the epic heroes, particularly Achilles. Whether or not we particularly think that was a good thing, they did, and were willing to die for it. The Iliad really points that out forcefully when Achilles, who knows he'll die, decides which would be better. I liked that bit about the poem actually conferring it, Dana, after all, we are reading it in 2011. :) Kleos and the homecoming, very big themes here I am thinking.
Gosh what a rich discussion this is already, loved the weaving, and the links, Barbara. I also like the weaving in of this ancient myth with some later bards, etc., even American Indians. That U of KY stuff is likewise fabulous, thank you for that link, also, Frybabe.
Ginny, it looks like Furman has some involvement. Isn't that where you were teaching an evening Latin class a few years back?
I retired from Furman in 1981, and have taught Latin there since 2005 in their Osher Lifelong Learning Institute (in the day time). :)
Gumtree, I loved your tackling the Epic poem, what a good job, thank you!
So we have a date of 1250 (or 1184 or later) for the putative Trojan War. I had thought 1250 was the fall of Troy, I'll have to look deeper. But it's in that range. And we've got Homer in the 8th C BC, right? We probably need to put this stuff up in the heading somewhere.
Andrea thank you for the interesting website on mythology, they sure nail the facts, don't they? That's a good and succinct explanation of the Trojan War, why it happened, why the Greeks all turned out to attack Troy and even touches on Helen, how she went with him and left her husband (Menelaus) and her daughter behind. Which book is it? The Iliad? Where she second guesses and admits her willingness to go? She wasn't abducted, she second guesses this decision and she did pay for that later. It's either the Iliad or the Aeneid.
Golly we've covered a huge amount of background stuff already.
What is missing? What don't you understand? What questions do you have before we start? What would you like to hear more about, we've got some wonderful researchers here, I love the dynamic.
What are we hoping, each of us, to gain out of this reading? What have we not covered yet?
-
Whoops - Ginny you posted while I was writting this - another addition to what warriors believed - the Celts now - and yes, I think it is the Daoists that proclaim everything is a myth and isn't it the Buddhist that talk about the blink of the eye being a universe coming and going.
Jude yes, amazing and what it reminds me of is the intrepidity of man - I think of my childhood before medicine as we know it today - this is before penicillin was available to the public although made available during WWII to the troops - think of the time when we had no antibiotics except sulphur - the medical profession still did not know how all the bodies systems worked and for many the cure was to pray - to take trips to holy places - Lourdes has all sorts of crutches, slings, wheelchairs left as folks willed so hard for a cure that today we can hardly believe this was true - that anyone could have such faith in an unseen God. That this power we call God was able to cure. We still pray when something beyond our ability to easily cure is in question.
And so I am thinking that just because the Greeks named this unseen power with several names and gave each named identity part of the powers we think of as all stemming from one God and just because their visual of what this unseen God or, in their case Gods looked like, they were probably weaving a story to explain just as so many of the cultures through out the world have their creation stories and stories of how fire was brought and how the winds came and how our need for adulation, love, greatness, power and strength came and how we best use these characteristics.
Many crown Homer and the Oddessy with laurels as defining Greek culture and what we seem to be realizing every culture is riddled with religion that attempts to explain the unknown and holds together the ethics of a people. My take is that all religions are better understood if the stories are read as a myth so that we can un-knot the truths or underlying principles by reading the symbolisms within these stories.
My curiosity now is to learn more about how the early Greeks practiced their beliefs - there is more than enough information defining their gods and later, when temples were built there is information about how the various gods were venerated but how did the average Greek incorporate their belief in their gods in their everyday life - that is what I am hoping we may get a clue about reading the Odyssey but more I can already see the symbolism of travel to understand yourself and to learn where your load star is located.
The book on symbolism that I often quote from says:
Journey Heroic journeys symbolize crossing the sea of life, overcoming its difficulties and attaining perfection; they are also transformation symbols; the search for the lost Paradise, initiation; facing trails and changes in the quest for perfection and realization; testing and training the character; passing 'from darkness to light, from death to immortality'; finding the spiritual Center.
Such journeys are those of Heracles, the Argonauts, Ulysses, Theseus, the Knights of the Round Table, etc. The symbolism of the journey is also bound up with that of the crossroads and the choice of the left-hand or the right-hand path.
-
"Thank you for kleos, Dana and Roshanna Rose, this has got to be one of the main reasons of Odysseus's journey, and all the epic heroes, particularly Achilles."
Not only the heroes that we think of. When we read the Iliad, it was notable: each warrior that fell was given his paragraph, describing his deeds and how he died: dozens and dozens of them. It made tough reading at times (remember "his liver landed in his lap") but it was clear (I think Homer even said) that this recounting was the way of giving each fighter his kleos, and that this was important.
There is nothing like that in the Odyssey.
-
Barb - Lourdes is still very much a place of pilgrimage. My Irish friend Marian spends part of her holidays every year accompanying sick people to Lourdes; they have a real faith in the power of prayer and in God. She says it is a wonderful experience.
Rosemary
-
The discussion of kleos fits in with our old discussion of Iliad. Dr. Lombardo said that Homer respected everyone and everything, animate and inanimate. And it’s true; they all get their say. We not only get at least the parentage of everyone killed, and maybe other stuff about who they were and what they did, but we get the same respect for inanimate objects. On the battlefield, one goddess throws a rock at another (I think it’s Athena throwing at Aphrodite, but I’m too lazy to look it up). Anyway, we get the history of the rock, how it had been the marker in a border dispute, etc. Even a rock has kleos.
-
Ginny - In answer to your question asking what we haven't covered yet, I though an introduction to the players, and other details, in the Iliad leading into The Odyssey might be a good idea. I have listed the summary in point form using "The Lost Treasures of Troy" by Caroline Moorehead as my guide. I will start with a quote:
1. "When Reading Homer, I feel as if I were in a balloon, raised far above all earthly things, posed in the intermediate space, between heaven and earth, where gods flit to and fro" Goethe.
2. The gods that mostly "flitted" in The Iliad were Zeus, Athena, Hera and Aphrodite all of whom had their favourites among the mortal players.
3. Troy was said to be a city near the Dardanelles in Asia Minor (now Turkey).
4. King Priam was the king of Troy. Priam had fifty sons and twelve daughters; his eldest son was Hector, his second Paris.
5. On mainland Greece, the most powerful ruler was King Agamemnon of Mycenae.
6. Agamemnon's wife was Clytemnestra. Agamemnon sacrificed their daughter, Iphigeneia, in order to have good winds to take him to Troy. Clytemnestra's revenge for Iphigeneia's death is described in the Iliad when Agamemnon returns to Mycenae with his "war prize" Cassandra.
7. Clytemnestra's sister was Helen. Helen was married to Agamemnon's brother, Menelaus. After Helen escaped / was kidnapped from Menelaus' (or Agamemnon's) house by Paris, Helen and Paris set sail for Troy.
8. Infuriated, Agamemnon seeks revenge for Paris' betrayal and breach of hospitality by assembling an army from 164 places in Greece. The troops set sail from Aulis, a bay in Euboea (an island north of Athens). They sail in "black ships".
9. The Iliad opens with Achilles, Prince of the Myrmidons, quarelling with Agamemnon over the slave girl Briseis as to who she "belongs" to. Briseis is part of the legitimate spoils of war.
10. Angry, Achilles returns to his men and refuses to take part in the battle of Troy.
11. The remaining Greek army marches towards Troy to battle it out and get Helen back.
12. Hector proposes that his brother, Paris, should fight it out with Menelaus (Helen's husband) and the winner will claim Helen. Paris was defeated but doesn't die due to the intervention of the goddess Aphrodite. Strictly speaking Menelaus should have claimed Helen and a peaceful resolution agreed upon.
13. Aphrodite was not happy with this resolution and sees to it that the battle continues.
14. It is only after his best friend (some say lover) Patroclus was killed that Achilles joined the fray.
15. The Trojans, who had been outside fighting the Greeks, now retreated inside the walls of Troy. Only Hector remains outside. He faces a one on one fight with Achilles. Achilles wins and Hector is mortally wounded and dragged back to the Greek camp.
16. During the night King Priam visits the Greek camp to beg for his son's body. Hector's body is returned to Priam, cremated and his ashes placed in a golden box and buried beneath a grave of stones. "And so they buried Hector, tamer of horses."
17. The Iliad ends before Achilles is shot in the heel by Paris and the fall and sack of Troy.
18. The tale continues in "The Odyssey" as Odysseus and fellow Greek companions sail back to Greece.
I enjoyed putting this together thanks to Caroline Moorhead's excellent book. It put a lot of things into perspective or me. I love summaries 8) I hope that more participants will comment on this board often.
-
Roshanrose - that is a fantastic summary - thank you so much! I know I will be referring to it daily once my book finally arrives. I have thrown in the towel with WH Smith (and written them a v cross letter), and am awaiting the Amazon delivery now.
I did all of these works at school, but I don't think I ever really worked out who was related to whom - now, thanks to you, I know! Aphrodite was some character, wasn't she? Such a beautiful name and such a lot of meddling!
Rosemary
-
Discovered on a book shelf today a copy of The Odyssey translated by George Palmer with Intro by Robert Squillace. So now have two -- one by Pope and now Palmer.
Finally got my computer up and running again after five days of withdrawal pains.
-
great run down roshanarose - thanks - seems to me there was a movie of the Iliad not too many years ago - in fact I think I may even have a copy - hmmm maybe it was longer than I think because in my minds eye I am seeing it as a tape and not a Cd.
I always thought it silly the rational for deadly fights and wars in these ancient tales - it always seemed that they had a women at the root of it all - I need to look now at what it all symbolized because the tales themselves I am sorry they just seem silly to me - I mean I know lovers run afoul of family and husbands big time however was Helen married - I guess so but she appears to be a pawn - anyhow to go the extremes of revenge and rage with clanking swards and blood streaming that are part and parcel of these stories - my word... ;) :o
-
Barb - last night's episode of the series we have here at the moment about gypsies/travellers showed the men engaging in a fist fight - apparently this is a regular occurrence and can go on for anything from 5 minutes to 5 hours. People sometimes bet thousands of pounds on the outcome. The programme said the fights can be about anything, but are often about "honour". Women are not allowed to be present. One of the travelling men - now "retired" from fighting, said that he had bought his car (he gets a new one twice a year!) and his house (they live on a static site and he runs it for the council) from the proceeds of fights in his youth.
There was also an interesting bit about memorials - the oldest son of one of the head men had been killed along with his cousins in a car accident some years ago. Every year the entire clan assembles at the graveyard to remember them with a big party - I must say it was a lot jollier than the memorial services that non-travellers tend to hold.
Rosemary
-
Barb - I don't want to appear sexist - BUT - a lot of what happened in the Iliad, e.g. Achilles spitting the dummy over Briseis, is about Agamemnon getting the better of him, and showing off his "prize" publicly. Achilles' ego (another Greek word - meaning an emphatic "I"). Also women were, and still are, blamed for many of the catastrophes and wars in history, and displays of machismo in general. The creation story is a perfect example. Wasn't it all Eve's fault? And what about Pandora? Her curiosity released all the ills of the world except Hope. Then there was Lilith - and the list goes on.
The cynic in me thinks that there was quite a bit more to the Iliad than Helen being the scapegoat for the Trojan War. Think about it? Women in general were not regarded very highly in the Greek world (sad but true). I doubt that a canny commander like Agamemnon would go to war over a woman. After all he sacrificed his daughter for favourable winds. I am still searching for a source that sets out to prove that the Trojan War was more about the acquisitiion of territory and greed for power and booty than anything else. Would the Greeks have waited outside the walls of Troy for approximately ten years waiting upon the whims of Helen? Somehow I doubt it. Keep an eye out and tell me what you find.
Aphrodite, to my mind, was the Greek equivalent of Mary Magdalene. The goddess/whore complex personified, as is so often revealed with her trysts with Ares. The adulteress. If you read further into the Iliad you will find that she had a "close" relationship with Paris, due to an unfortunate choice he made in deciding who was the fairest of the goddesses. Most certainly a contest one should steer well clear of.
Barb - Perhaps the movie you saw was "Troy" with Brad Pitt as Achilles, Peter O'Toole as King Priam and our own rather dishy actors, Eric Bana as Hector and Rose Byrne as Briseis. Brian Cox played Agamemnon with his usual flair.
-
Roshanarose Thanks for the refresher on Iliad - just a few words like that and it all rushes back so clearly.
Have you read David Malouf's Ransom which deals with the wrath of Achilles and Priam seeking the return of Hector's body. It's written in Malouf's usual spare and poetic prose - a short book but I enjoyed it immensely and have given a couple of copies away as gifts.
Had a horror start when I came in tonight and turned on the computer - nothing happened. DH was summoned, fiddled around and hey presto! back in business again - I hope.
-
Thanks, BARB. There's still so much I don't know how to do on my
computer, but since I know enough to play games and function here,
I haven't put in the time and effort to learn more. Lazy, I know.
GINNY, I've always been inclined to think there would be a basis
of truth for all the ancient stories, however much they may have
been embellished since then. Whenever some evidence emerges in
support of one of the 'myths', I am quite pleased.
nowadays it seems people are over keen to proclaim everything a myth, and I do mean everything.
I know what you mean. It's become too common to declare anything that doesn't fit one's own opinions or view of the world as a fabrication
by one's enemies.
From the Morehead summary ROSHANA gave us, it appears Agamemnon's rage was directed more toward Paris' betrayal than Helen's. He went to war because the Prince of Troy had insulted and betrayed him.
ROSHANA makes the point beautifully in her last post. Eve has been
a sore point with me for some time. I hasten to point out that Eve
was "deceived"; Adam knew perfectly well he was doing something wrong but did it anyway!
-
This discussion is like a treasure trove. Every day, I go in and find more great things waiting.
Thank you, thank you, fot that summary, ROSE. It's perfect. And the Odessey takes up right where the Iliad leaves off, so keep your eyes open. remember, at the end of the Iliad, we are still in the middle of a war, and don't know yet who will win or what's going to happen to everyone.
Rosemary: " Aphrodite was some character, wasn't she? Such a beautiful name and such a lot of meddling!
Yes, all the Gods are meddling in the Iliad. Most of what happens happens because the gods are meddling.
More later -- have to run.
-
;) - the universal consciousness of man had to include Flip Wilson - the devil [gods] made me do it...!
-
I think women are so often at the center of myths (Eve, Pandora, Helen) because men are unconsciously afraid of them--bringers of life as they are. And because they are the bearers of life, annually prior to birth control, they either died or had their lives taken up with the new generation,so, physically weaker, busy with the enormous ongoing task of raising the young, they didn't have much time to get into fights or rule the world (except through their men, which I think they did more often than we give them credit for). And men were able for these reasons to subjugate them,keep them in their place, make sure the son was theirs....etc.
I have always taken it for granted that the reason for the Trojan war was trade and expansion, don't know where I learned that from tho, but probably at school.
-
Yes! ...my books arrived..one translated by Rieu and one by Lombardo.
I have been busy reading all your wonderful posts and putting links in my favorites--- learning, learning, learning.
Thank you roshanarose for the summary. I printed it and find it very helpful.
And Deb I also like the Rieu translation. I liked it right off, but your descriptions sold me on it. Besides if we sit in the back row and I forget my book, I can peek at yours :)
-
Kidsal: two copies! Let us know which you like better.
Rosemary: are Gypsies called travelers there? Is there still the prejudice that there used to be against them? There are a few here in the US, but you rarely see them -- for some reason, a lot of them go into the car repair business.
Women as scapegoats. Ah, yes, so familiar!! Sigh!
But Homer gives even the scapegoats (Briseis and Helen) a voice, and we get to hear how they feel about it..
-
I actually don't think women are scapegoats, just victims of their nature, as are men of-course, different nature, but equally victims.
-
Sure, it was the promise of booty that brought so many Greeks to Troy. There were many profitable diversionary raids up and down the coast during those ten long years. Things came to a glorious, epic climax with the argument over booty in the form of the beautiful Chryseis. Helen, after a fashion, was only being used.
-
We're all victims. It's a very current notion. And Homer is to blame, with making his stories so otherworldly.
-
Greek philosophy considered woman to be incomplete human beings.
‘The relationship between the male and the female is by nature such that the male is higher, the female lower, that the male rules and the female is ruled.’ - Aristotle
Aristotle (384 BC – 322 BC) Greek philosopher, student of Plato, teacher of Alexander the Great. In metaphysics, Aristotelian’s profoundly influenced philosophical and theological thinking in the Islamic and Jewish traditions in the Middle Ages, and it continues to influence Christian theology, especially Eastern Orthodox theology, and the scholastic tradition of the Roman Catholic Church. With the push for women priests, Aristotle's philosophy is the object of active academic study today.
According to Aristotle, women are inferior because of a defect. “Women are defective by nature” because they cannot produce semen which contains a full human being. When a man and a woman have intercourse, it is the man supplies the substance of a human being (the soul, i.e. the form.) If conception occurs, the woman provides only the nourishment (the matter).
The fundamental principle for Aristotle – there are two factors or components in every being, ‘form’ is superior to ‘matter’, sexual reproduction was considered beneficial because it demanded that the one who gives the ‘form’ (the male) be separate from the one who supplies the ‘matter’ (the female). Thus, the ‘lower’ is not mingled with the ‘higher’ in the same individual.
Aristotle subscribed to what philosopher Caroline Whitbeck calls the ‘flower pot theory’ of human generation. Since the female is deficient in natural heat, she is unable to ‘cook’ her menstrual fluid to the point of refinement at which it would become semen (i.e. ‘seed’). Therefore, a woman's only contribution to the embryo is its matter and a ‘field’ in which it can grow. A woman's inability to produce semen is her deficiency. ‘A woman,’ Aristotle concludes, ‘is as it were an infertile male’ (Generation of Animals, I, 728a). ‘A male is male in virtue of a particular ability, and a female in virtue of a particular inability’ (Generation of Animals, I, 82f).
This link is about the roadblocks women hurdle who are attempting to change the Christian Church's point of view but it does give the background voiced by Aristotle and continues with other early church leaders having their opinion floating in the mix
http://www.womenpriests.org/traditio/inferior.asp
Women were held responsible for bringing original sin into the world, and for being a continuing source of seduction therefore woman are to be in a state of punishment for sin.
Tertullian, 160 – 220 AD, a philosopher/theologian admired by early Church Fathers – later, because of his view on Jesus as God not man, he was excommunicated – that did not seem to stop his views on women to continue to this day by the Curia to be front and center –
Although, few practice "Churching" any longer, as a young Catholic Mother I was expected to partake of that purification blessing after the birth of my babies which allowed me to attend Mass again and to receive Holy Communion which stems from Tertullian philosophy.
Tertullian say, – “Do you not know, woman, that you are (each) an Eve? The sentence of God on this sex of yours lives in this age: the guilt must of necessity live too.”
- “You are the devil's gateway!
- You are the unsealer of that (forbidden) tree!
- You are the first deserter of the divine law!
- You are she who persuaded him (Adam) whom the devil was not valiant enough to attack!
- You destroyed so easily God's image, man!
- On account of what you deserved - that is, death - even the Son of God had to die!"
- “How could such sinful creatures be channels of God’s grace?”
Women were considered ritually unclean because of their monthly periods. According to Church Fathers St Augustine of Hippo and St Jerome, all sex is tainted with sin and a woman’s womb is “simply revolting”. e.g., Rules in the diocese of Canterbury (690 AD): “During the time of menstruation women should not enter into church or receive communion, neither lay women nor religious. If they presume to do so all the same, they should fast for three weeks”.
“In the same way those women should do penance, who enter a church before their blood is purified after birth, that is for forty days”.
These were cultural prejudices held for thousands of years before the Christian Church – they became theological prejudices assumed in Church doctrine as they were entwined for centuries in secular law. These are ACTIVE beliefs that women are confronted with especially among those who attempt to share their spiritual calling with others.
Yes, there were a few women throughout history who achieved remarkable success in governess and if a woman was wealthy she had the power to influence the politics of the Secular and the Church however, the average women within her own home did not have much more power than a slave – pillow talk is a fine way to feel good that women did influence society however, that kind of power was no better than a favored slave or concubine who were the favored runners between Cardinals and men of property during the Middle Ages.
Obviously I have little truck with the concept that men and women are equal victims in their power, based on gender type cast. We will just have to agree to disagree on that one. [/list]
-
Jonathan! Is that really YOU?
Every day I come in here and every day I think here we go setting out on a great voyage, where's our sailor in the Crow's Nest? hahahaa Wasn't that you?
And here you are!! I hope you're signing on?
RoshannaRose, I agree with SandyRose (welcome back Sandy! You and Deb will have to share the Rieu with us, I don't have it. I MUST get these translations straight!), I like your summary, RR, but best of all I love your Goethe quote.
Sally and Gum, welcome back from the Land o Defunct Computers! Another strange and interesting translation.
Babi, I agree!
I liked Barbara's idea of what she hoped to get from the discussion, too.
Here's exactly what I want from it: quoted by RoshannaRose:
"When Reading Homer, I feel as if I were in a balloon, raised far above all earthly things, posed in the intermediate space, between heaven and earth, where gods flit to and fro" Goethe.
That's exactly what I want. I want to go back, back in time, away from 2011. I want to hear those doors slam in the palace again, it's more dramatic than The Curse of the Golden Flower and every bit as good. I want to understand at least ONE of the questions on it asked in the faculty paper for a course I found online. I know we can do it with this wonderful group.
I did like PatH and JoanK relating the kleos issue to the Iliad. A lot of the Odyssey does refer back to the Iliad and I think it's a great thing to be able to make those comparisons, but if you haven't read the Iliad, not to worry, we've had two great summaries put here already, you'll probably know more after this than if you had read it (which of course you may well want to do too).
There's a lot here to like already, I am enjoying your comments tremendously.
I LOVE the way you're all talking to each other. Might JoanK and I beg you to keep that up? This is a huge group, so intelligent, please please continue to engage each other, it makes it SO interesting! It's a privilege to read it, much less to be a part of it.
This is a great undertaking and we begin discussing Book I next Tuesday. As you read if there is ANYTHING you want to ask about, please do, there are lots of people here who will know.
There are plenty of copies online, and everyone is welcome.
-
Ginny - I experience what Goethe wrote, but replace Homer with "When in Greece...". Greece has that effect on me.
Dana - The old adage "Keep her barefoot, pregnant, and in the kitchen" was in place for such a long, long time.
Gumtree - I do have "Ransom" by David Malouf in my bookcase, but it remains on my TBR pile. Perhaps this is a good time to read it. Thanks for the reminder.
and Barb - Ouch! All so true about Aristotle. I will comfort myself with the way he is perceived in Monty Python. Aristotle, Aristotle was a bugger for the bottle
-
You have to see Aristotle reacting to his unconscious fear of women by putting them down with fancy speculation--then it falls into place and you can dismiss his theories. Of-course the church etc was unable to see through him....but why??.....all men, driven by the same fear, that's why !!!
-
hi there
regarding a summary of The Iliad, I found in the library the other day a copy of the book for children....by Diana Stewart 44pages, so it is a good summary of the book, and it gave me a good feel for the prelude to our present read of The Odyssey..
how does one begin to keep all these gods straight though
....I did read online of a helpful person giving his knowledge about
the Odyssey, and having a love of this type of read in his youth --- his parents would quiz him and he would be able with very few clues to win a guessing game as to which god am I guessing about...in fact there seem to be quite a few game ideas online revolving around mythology and the gods...wonder why this never triggered my interest prior to now...
amazing where paths lead....
Deb
-
I hate it when posts get lost in cyberspace, here goes again
think I cleared up a mystery for myself, couldn't figure out why the penguin edition of a 90's translation of the odyssey read different from my own copy a 1947 edition...father /son...the son has revised here and there so they read much the same....
according to Wikipedia article, the father started translating during the bombing raids in London in the second world war...to his family
I would cite the reference, but if I go back to link to it I will lose this message, so hopefully will figure this out later or if someone can help me....but I did find a reference giving good rating to the 'Rieu' translation' of the Odyssey--stating it went according to the translation as well as the style of prose (though I thought it read like a novel, and thats why I liked it)...glad to have read this as I thought because I could understand the translation it must not be very good, if that makes any sense...some of the translations I read a bit of were so hard to understand
-
Oh dear Jonathan - do you feel as if you walked into a den of vipers all hissing - re-reading your post though I sense you too see the irony in the very "current notion" - Pax vobiscum - it is just now some of us will not have it.
My Michael Wood book, In Search of the Trojan War arrived this evening - I do like his specials on PBS - the only place he traveled that I thought he was not enjoying himself was the series he did in South America - he seemed cranky, exceptionally tired and put out - but the other specials were pure magic filled with a new appreciation for the place and history. Seems like this site, Troy is almost back to ground zero because of all the archaeological digs, most before current technology that would not destroy as much and do a better job or cataloging. - ah so
I wondered - who among us has visited the location thought to be the Troy of the Trojan War? I know from the poetry discussion that you roshanarose, have visited Greece and have a deep affection for the history having attended university as an adult to study the language and culture. Did you by any chance visit this location? I am most curious - in the first few pages Michael Wood says that Homer says there is a constant wind that blows - is that true?
I love the description of the distant mountain being the one believed that Poseidon stood upon and watched the Trojan War. I am reading and sensing the gods are thought of as human but I am having fun with this in my head and imagining as if the gods were unseen - that in our minds eye or the mind's eye of the characters in this story they see the gods like we often think of saints or the Blessed Virgin or even God, looking down on us when we call them to mind. Like a good omen or like many who have statues of saints or crucifixes over their beds to keep them safe and so Poseidon is looking on from a nearby distance, with all his god like powers keeping an eye on this war.
Please lets hear it - who among us has visited Greece and where in Greece related to the Odyssey have you visited? And who among us studied the language? Ginny would ya - would ya - would ya - pleeease, sugar and sweet molasses too - a reference list of whose who among us.
-
I studied the Greek language here on SeniorLearn. Really miss the lessons.
-
Great posts here. Lots to say but am on my way out the door, back asap.
In order for people to answer Barbara's question about where Odysseus/ Ulysses traveled, we need a map showing where he supposedly went, here's one for our discussion, we'll see how accurate it is as we read:
(http://www.seniorlearn.org/latin/ulysses_penelope/Odysseusmap.jpg)
On the other hand:
(http://www.seniorlearn.org/latin/ulysses_penelope/Odysseusmap2.jpg)
We'll soon find out which is more accurate! And there are more!~
THIS one is interactive and is from the University of Pennsylvania and is probably more accurate than any!
http://www.classics.upenn.edu/myth/php/homer/index.php?page=odymap (http://www.classics.upenn.edu/myth/php/homer/index.php?page=odymap)
But you notice they don't have Sorrento or Capri here long thought to be the home of the Sirens. Here's what they say:
Map of Odysseus' Journey
Odysseus' journey does not map with certainty onto any known geography. Homer doesn't specify exact locations. This has not stopped Homer's readers, ancient as well as modern, from attempting to reconstruct his travels by real world landmarks in the Mediterranean -- and it won't stop us! While the map produced here should be used with this caveat, it will give a useful guide to keeping his wanderings straight, and a workable approximation of the physical template onto which Homer and his audience might have projected the hero's travels. We can be relatively sure that Homer's audience of sea-faring traders would have done a similar exercise, trying to match Odysseus' travels with their own experiences in the Mediterranean. Read books 8-13 carefully, and gather as much empircal data as you can. Try to produce your own rough map of Odysseus' journey. If you find evidence that argues against the map produced here, please feel free to produce it.
-
Welcome to
The Classics Book Club, Beginning February 15 with
(http://www.seniorlearn.org/bookclubs/classicsbookclub/cbcodyssey.jpg)
**NB: There are probably 50+ famous translations of the Odyssey. If you find the translation you have does not speak to you or does not convey to you what's happening, this book is too fabulous to waste on an old outdated translation: try a new one.
Free SparkNotes background and analysis on the Odyssey (http://www.sparknotes.com/lit/odyssey)
Book I: The Situation at Home:
(http://www.seniorlearn.org/latin/ulysses_penelope/PenelopeatLoomJohnWWaterhouse1912.jpg)
Penelope at her Loom
John William Waterhouse
1912
Discussion Schedule:
February 7-14: Background, history, The Trojan War, the Oral Tradition, Homer, the dates, let's get the backgound established.
February 14-21: Book I
"I haven't felt this excited about a prospective read/discussion for years."--- Gumtree
Discussion Leaders: Joan K (joankraft13@yahoo.com) & ginny (gvinesc@gmail.com )
Translations Used in This Discussion So Far:
kidsal: Alexander Pope, George Palmer
Dana: Fitzgerald
Gumtree: Butler, T.E. Lawrence, Cook, Rieu
EvelynMC: S.H. Butcher and Andrew Lang
Mippy: Lombardo
Roxania: Lombardo
PatH: Lombardo,
JoanR: Fagles
Frybabe: Butcher and Lang
Deb (bookad): Lattimore, E.V. Rieu
roshanarose: T.E. Lawrence.
JudeS: Fagles
Babi: Robert Fitzgerald
Mippy: Pope, Lombardo
ALF43: Butler (corrected in edit)
Babi: Pope? Fagles
BarbStAubrey: Fagles
straudetwo: Lombardo
rosemarykaye: Fagles
caroljwl: Fagles
JoanK: Fagles.
sandyrose: Rieu,Lombardo
ginny: Lombardo, Fagles, Pope, Murray, Butler
Oh, BARB. Did you really have to post all that. It's quite put me out
of humor. I do wish some of those old ranters on male superiority
could visit us today. They would no doubt have heart attacks...and
receive very little sympathy.
I like the first map, GINNY. I can read that one! It is clear that
Odysseus was near home at Pylos. I'll be interested to explore why he
was then shunted off on that tremendous detour.
-
Barb - Χαίρετε. Unfortunately I have not visited Hissarlik, the site Schleimann identified as Troy. Neither have I visited the Ionian coast which comprises the islands that Odysseus visited, primarily, on his way home to Ithaca. There is so much to see and do in Greece for the tourist or the classicist. I HAVE visited Mycenae, and a beautiful place it is. I can offer you pictures of that awesome site through Flickr. There has been some sort of "osmosis" occurring between me and Greek history for a long time, and the Bronze Age is my favourite area of study. This love, this obsession of mine with Greece, is inexplicable. I just know that when I am away from Greece I am incomplete. A kind of primal memory drives me. It is no burden.
Delos is a sacred island quite close to Mykonos. Mykonos is an island anything but sacred. I have made a point of avoiding it. Pylos is a long way south in the Pelopponese, and my journeys have not taken me that far, but I know it was a part of the Mycenaean hierarchy. I have been to Knossos and would find it difficult to forget such an incredible site. The word "incredible" somehow does Knossos no justice. Some say that Sir Arthur Evans created Knossos to suit his imagination. If this is so, he may have succeeded, but the site is able to stand alone on its own merits.
Ginny - Doubtless, Sorrento and Capri are not mentioned as these places did not exist in the Bronze Age. At least not under these names.
-
Even tho Sorrento has been settled since 600 BC, (certainly not the Bronze Age!) but maps today sometimes use modern names for the old place names, perhaps, so that people can make the connection in 2011 where they used to be, it would be good to have both on the same map. Sorrento (or Capri, that area) has long been associated with the Sirens. Of course nobody knows where, really, he went, they have to "guestimate," hence the differences in all these maps.
Here is another (!) map from wesleyan.edu, their Sirens can be seen here below Ischia, on the Galli islands, pretty darn close to Capri, wouldn't you say?
(http://www.wesleyan.edu/~mkatz/Images/Voyages.jpg)
This map shows the sites of Odysseus' wanderings as they have been reconstructed by scholars relying in part on descriptions in the Odyssey itself and in part on the speculations of ancient writers like Strabo and Eratosthenes.
In Book 9, Odysseus begins the recitation of his voyages (page 212), and explains that he was driven by the winds first to Ismarus, the land of the Kikones (1), where he and his men sacked the stronghold but were subsequently attacked.
From there he sailed on, but ran into a storm as he rounded Cape Malea and was driven past Cythera (2) for nine days (page 214). He reached the land of the Lotus-Eaters (3) on the tenth day, where those men who ate the lotus lost "all memory of the journey home" (page 214).
The rest of them sailed on to the land of the Cyclops (4), where, although some men were eaten by the monster, Odysseus and others escaped after blinding the Cyclops. The Cylops prayed to his father Poseidon to be avenged upon Odysseus: "grant that Odysseus...never reaches home. Or if he's fated to see / his people once again and reach his well-built house / and his own native country, let him come home late / and come a broken man--;all shipmates lost, / alone in a stranger's ship&emdash; / and let him find a world of pain at home" (page 228). Poseidon grants the Cyclops' prayer, and this is the origin of the curse upon Odysseus that we read about in the poem's opening lines.
Next, Odysseus and his remaining crew reach the island of Aeolus (5), where the hero is given a bag of winds to aid him in his voyage home. His shipmates, however, suspicious that he is carrying treasures, open the bag of winds just as they are in sight of Ithaca, and are blown off course once again (pages 231-32).
Next, they reach the land of the Laestrygonians (6), another group of giants, who attack the men. More men are lost, and the remnant sails on to reach the island of Aeaea, home of Circe (7). The "bewitching queen" turns some of the men into swine and other animals, but Odysseus, protected by a magic herb that Hermes brings him, is immune to her spells. Circe releases the companions from her spell and gives Odysseus instructions on how to reach home. First, she tells him, he must journey to the land of the dead, the Underworld (page 246).
In Book 11, the journey to the Kingdom of the Dead (8) is undertaken, and Odysseus learns from the prophet Tiresias the outlines of the rest of his voyage (pages 252-53).
Afterwards, Odysseus and his men return afterwards to Circe's island (7; page 271), and receive from her further instructions about the journey home.
They start out, passing first the island of the Sirens (9), where Odysseus, lashed to the mast by his companions, is able to resist their allure (page 277).
Then, they encounter Scylla and Charbydis (10), and six men are lost to Scylla (pages 278-79).
They reach the island of the Sun (Thrinakia, 11), which they had been instructed to avoid; but the men mutiny and slaughter some of the cattle of the Sun-god (pages 282-83). This seals their doom: the ships are hit by a storm sent by Zeus (page 283), and the remainder of the men are drowned: "the god cut short their journey home forever" (page 284, line 452).
Odysseus himself is carried back to Scylla and Charybdis, escapes, and is cast up on Ogygia, Calypso's island (13: Sardinia or Malta?). This is where we find him when Book 1 of the Odyssey opens. He leaves Calypso's island in Book 5 and lands on Scheria (14), home of the Phaeacians, at the end of the book.
-
Babi I am sorry you were put out of humor and anyone else who was offended. I only wish those old ranters on male superiority were old and in the attic someplace however, I have several friends in the middle of this fray and within the last 3 years the women religious and convents have had the thumb of the Curia announcing unreasonable demands so that the convents in the US have all banded together in protest.
To have learned just over a year ago the basis for all of this I was stunned - To realize how we are affected still by these beliefs I am outraged - there are too many of us still being damaged by these beliefs to think we can continue to ignore the information because it is uncomfortable -
Believe me, it is more uncomfortable to innocently ask a question of 'why' in a small group setting and in lowered voice as if a state secret is being shared a priest tells you it is because of our monthly that women cannot be on the alter - And then to realize how programed I am to accept and be quiet till the shock of what I heard and how it was told to me stewed a few days - the research was on - along with much communication contacting those who were and are still affected - enough is enough.
It is nice and easy to think the story of successful powerful women does not fill our bookshelves because we were too busy keeping house and rearing children when if you dig you learn, over and over the stories were squashed - to this day folks are comfortable allowing the confusion to continue that Mary Magdalene was a prostitute in particular the prostitute who anointed Jesus' feet and wiped them with her hair or she was Mary of Bethany, the sister of Martha and Lazarus. Her Bible was not included in the canon just because she was a women - and so, enough is enough.
One of my sisters is doing an outstanding job of adding to our scholarship about women - because of her web site she was recently hosted by UNICEF to speak at the Symposium for Women Philosophers held in Paris last November. Here is the link to her web site.
http://www.women-philosophers.com/
Now back to the project at hand - thanks so much Ginny for printing the maps - interesting, I wish I had bookmarked it - on-line there is a map that shows the journey with a moving line and where he reaches a port the events are encapsulated in a pop up window. I know it can sound irreverent but I cannot help how my brain associates with tidbits - the map does remind me of that one picture cartoon, I think it was called Family Circus that showed one of the children supposedly looking for something and the wondering lines of his travel.
Found an on-line copy of one of the travels but not the one I am remembering where one of the children wanders all over the backyard and later, in another he wanders all over the neighborhood...
http://dfc.furr.org/archive/64.html
Never thought before but I guess these wandering's depicted in comics and stories are all as a result of this ancient story, the Odyssey. ;) hehe just thought I bet lots of us have small Odyssey like journeys as we go to anther room to retrieve something and not only get waylaid because something catches our interest or the phone rings but we have to retrace our steps just to remember what we were going to retrieve.
-
JoanK - yes, gypsies are also referred to as travellers here, but most of them are no longer travellers really - they live in their caravans on static sites, usually provided by the local councils, although sometimes the gypsies do own their own land.
There is a vast amount of prejudice against them. It is very difficult to work out the truth about them - the ones that still move about the country do leave huge amounts of revolting detritus behind them when they leave, they have scary dogs, etc. The ones on static sites often seem to have vast amounts of money that they cannot possibly have amassed from tarmacking (?) drives, which is mostly what they do. On the other hand, these programmes have shown that many of them are articulate, reasonable people who struggle to settle down anywhere because even when they have bought their own land, the council won't give them planning permission if they find out they are gypsies. They are evicted, sometimes with appalling amounts of physical force, by the local bailiffs.
The position of women in the traveller community is, however, almost certainly not what we would find acceptable. They are not allowed to work outside the home after marriage - which happens very young indeed. They are expected to spend their days cleaning their trailers obsessively, cooking, etc and generally pleasing their man. Many of the men, even the young ones, expressed the view - on camera - that they "owned" their women. There is a lot of domestic violence. Once children come along, the oldest daughter is expected to take over all of the cleaning, cooking and childcare. As soon as she gets married, the next daughter is taken out of school (if she was there to start with), possibly as young as 13 or 14, to take over the cleaning/cooking/childcare role. As a result, many of the women are illiterate. They are not allowed to have anything to do with the money - that is considered a man's role; in fact they are not allowed to express opinions that differ from their husband's or father's at all. Obviously some families are more extreme than others - some seemed to have become a lot more liberal and outward looking, others were still extremely traditional.
This series is attracting an unbelievably high audience - everyone is watching it, although I think most people feel a bit guilty about watching it as well. Nevertheless, the traveller community co-operated fully with its making, and although they may be illiterate, they are far from stupid.
Rosemary
-
All the info is very interesting re the place of men vs. women in these works. For those who have the Fagles translation ,in the forward he has ten pages (and in small print) about the importance of women in the Odyssey. He gives particulars in every case.
In his opening to this subject he says: "The two Homeric epics are alike in their vision of the Olympian Gods and their affirmation pf the heroic code., but there is one striking difference. The Iliad celebrates the action and suffering of men at war:.........The few women who make an appearance....are secondary figures who play no part in the main action. But the Odyssey...presents us with a world at peace..........and almost everywhere in this peaceful world,women,human and divine, have important roles.
Some of the women he mentions are :
The sea nymph Ino, Arete and Nausicaa who smooth his path, Calypssso who keeps him prisoner for seven years, Calypso who offers him immortality,Eidothea-daughter of the old man of the sea,Helen, Penelope and on and on.
As we get into the "real action' we will have many men AND women to love and hate.
-
Barbara: yes, we have all gone on odysseys of our own -- big or small. There is something very familiar about U's wanderings. Perhaps just that it is like those dreams we all have where we are trying to get somewhere or do something and things keep getting in the way. Or perhaps it's more like our lives.
Ginny: I love the maps-- I couldn't make head or tail out of the ones in Fagles. I think the fact that they are so different tells us that we haven't got a clue.
Funny that one of the maps gives a location for the Underworld and the other doesn't.
Rosemary: interestingabout the Gypsies. Although they are in the US, they aren't a large enough presense anywhere to enter the consciousness of most people (I think I'm right in this).
JUDE: I haven't finished Fagles' intro yet. I'll look for the women. I'm glad there are more here. We'll have to look closely at their roles.
When we read the Iliad some years ago, we each had to take a part, of a Greek or Trojan person. I took the part of all the women (most of whom are neither Greek or Trojan). It was small enough I could handle them all. If I remember right, Jonathan took the part of the Gods.
Barbara: good for your sister.
-
Barb, I remember the Family Circle maps. I especially liked the ones where to get from point A to point B in the neighborhood, instead of the direct route, the trail led through backyards, the woods, the park, etc.
-
Hi JoanK I was just reading your post about the maps--re the location of the underworld. Interestingly, in one of my books it mentions that Mentes the stranger impersonated by Athena says he comes from Taphia. The Taphians, a real tribe, whose name means "burial people" live up north near the legendary entrance to Hades. I can't find them on a map, though.
The point being made was not exactly to do with that, but that its an example of how intricately woven the tale is, because that is where Odysseus actually is, when she is visiting Ithaca. We shall see....!
-
Since the issue of women has been brought up, I think it will be interesting to see how Penelope is portrayed, 8th C B.C. She's no push over, by a long shot, this is going to be interesting.
Love all the comments here, how far ranging and interesting.
Joan K, I remember that about the Iliad and taking parts, and the Ancient Mariner, is there any interest here in doing the same?
Deb, sometimes things done for children are better than those done for adults. Here's Odysseus the man of constant sorrows as the Coen brothers named him, online:
(http://www.mythweb.com/odyssey/media/ody.gif)
http://www.mythweb.com/odyssey/ (http://www.mythweb.com/odyssey/)
You all have mentioned so many great books, and films, I hope you will share here what you find in them.
Barbara, in answer to your question, I have not been to Troy but I went a couple of years ago on an archaeological study tour of Greece for 2+ weeks and it was wonderful. We went to Crete and stayed there also, and I'm sure we missed something, but I can't imagine what, we really covered a great many of the classical sites pretty exhaustively. We even went up into Thessaly, known as Aeolia, home of Aeolus, which is in the Odyssey. Having been to Meteora, I can see that. :)
Greece is a magic place. I saw no wine dark seas and don't remember any wind particularly except on the coast and the boat rides, (that doesn't mean a thing, it may be windier than Oklahoma) and what I do remember other of course than what we went to see, is we climbed and climbed and climbed stairs and steps and what seemed like mountains continually. Love the Greek people, loved the food, the museums were spectacular, got my share of the local pottery, other than this, I have no experience with Greece. It's a place like any other which you like (how many times do some of us go to NYC a year): you'd need to stay a long time and it would never be enough.
RoshannaRose, that's why I have gone back to Italy as part of every trip for 24 years, the "Goethe" effect. :) I have lost count of the times I've been to Pompeii, but it's always more than once a trip. Always something new to see, and to learn and experience.
I guess the ironic thing is this year I was going to do another archaeological trip; this time, believe it or not, it was the Roman ruins from Alexandria and Cairo Egypt and along the North African coast, including Leptis Magna and Tunisia. Can I pick em? hahahaaa Maybe NOT? hahahaa I'm glad I'm not there now. :)
-
Barb - Odysseys Around The Hearth. I like it. Sometimes I don't even need a phone call to make me forget what I am looking for.
I have two stories about MCPs, then I will leave it. The first is about my darling Daddy. My husband and I were living in Brisbane and Mum and Dad were coming to visit from interstate. About one month before their arrival my husband had bought a 3/4 size pool table with a slate base. A beautiful object, indeed. This was about the time when Pot Black was so popular. The game played was snooker, (similar to billiards, but the balls are not numbered and the rules differ slightly)and I became addicted to practising playing pool/snooker. By the time my parents arrived I was hot! as far as snooker was concerned. I challenged my father to a game of snooker. He looked at me aghast and said "Women can't play snooker. You will tear the baize". I said "Come on Daddy." He agreed reluctantly and I beat him soundly. We played three more games after that, and I beat him every time. After the last game he was looking a bit sheepish and I reminded him of what he had said about women and snooker. I then added as the final thrust - "Daddy. What makes you and me different has nothing to do with playing snooker." I have had cause to use that sentence, modified accordingly, many times since that long ago game.
The second MCP to challenge me about being a woman, so therefore useless, was my FIL. We had joined MIL and FIL with some academic friends of FIL. He decided that he wanted to show off at my expense. He gave me a bottle of wine to open (before screwtops were the go on wine bottles). Then rushed across to get his friend, saying "This will be funny". I asked him politely why it would be funny, and he said that I didn't have the genes to open wine bottles. I told him I didn't need an opener and opened the wine bottle with my teeth, a trick I had learned as a student. His male guest loved it, Wade (FIL)skulked off and, most unusual for him, kept his mouth shut for the rest of the evening.
-
Oh, BARB, I wasn't offended by your post. I was irked reading those
condescending, insulting passages from the supposedly great minds of
old. Your sisters site is impressive. I would like to hear the accepted
definition of 'philosophy' that she attributed to a woman (unnamed, or
I'd look it up for myself).
Amazing, isn't it, ROSE. I assume men learned some of these ideas
from their Daddies and have never bothered to question them. Isn't
that the way most old misconceptions and prejudices get passed down?
-
Good morning!
My book arrived, the Lombardo translation, with a wonderful 18-page glossary of names, as well as extensive suggestions for further reading and a good map of Homeric geography.
The introduction by Sheila Murnaghan is over 60 pages, and well worth reading!
Ginny ~ That was a wonderful map you posted. Would it be worth a link in the header?
I've written down the post number, #442, for reference and have save the map in my documents.
-
GINNY: I love your voyages. You always share them with us, so I feel I've been there too. The one time I was in Pompeii was in 1963: they didn't have many of the things excavated yet. my indelible memory though is of a house of ordinsary people. Theroomswere so small my 6 foot son would have to lie down diagonally in order to fit.
ROSE: I love your stories about MCPs!! They are funny, because you won. I wasn't so lucky. I was a math major in college and took many graduate courses. But when I applied to graduate school, the Department head said no, because women can't do math.
"But I took three graduate level courses from you and got As in all of them" I said.
"That's true, but women can't do math".
Even with mathematicians, logic is no match for prejudice.
(I later got my degree from a different University).
-
Ginny-were you compiling a list of who had what translation of 'The Odyssey'?
I have acquired a copy of Richmond Lattimore's translation and am glad as I felt I was missing something not having a poetical format to follow, it keeps tabs on the lines i.e. 5-10-15.....and so on, also with chapter headings have a brief description of what each entails ...so I intend to follow with the Rieu, and Lattimore editions
following all the information and enjoying this more and more I must say...
why do you think so many people keep re-translating this story...always needing to improve on someone else??...or just so much new information comes to light and gives new insight into Homer's book
all the maps, lists of the Gods, and people involved, plus a synopsis of the Iliad --all this prelude; never thought I'd get involved and actually want to move forward with the interest I have developed
thanks to all
Deb
-
JoanK - I haven't told the stories about when I lost. There were many of them. Good on you for eventually proving that MCP wrong :D
Deb - Comments like yours make all that promotion worth while.
-
JOANK, I do hope you sent your old dept. head a copy of your diploma.
I wonder what he meant by 'do math'?
It's a good thing so many of you have introductions, and guides/maps/
lists, etc. My old Classics edition has the translated Odyssey...period!
Now I'll have access to all the goodies you all will be sharing.
-
I finally got around to reading the preface to the Butcher and Lang translation. It is a short piece. They promote the theory that Homer wove together various old tales into one book using Odysseus as the main plot devise to do so. They believed, with a few exceptions, he did a masterful job of it. The bits that didn't quite mesh well were the bits that others have pointed to as being the work of more than one author. The translators pointed to older tales from around the world (including Aztec and South Seas) that were essentially the same (or very, very similar) as the different adventures in The Odyssey to support their theory. They also briefly mentioned their research on how Minstrels would tell their tales, modifying them slightly as they went depending on their audience. In that way, they explained differences and distortions between tales.
-
Ok now here's our very poor list, please correct it! I went back 456 posts but didn't find conclusions for everybody, we had a lot of discussion on what's out there and the different translators and some would say I'm going to get XX but then quote YYY so it is a tad confusing but that's a trip, you've got two trips, the one you plan and dream and the one which actually happens, often something quite different, so in this way we're right on target.
Please correct/ add to this list?
Translations Used in This Discussion So Far:
kidsal: Alexander Pope, George Palmer
Dana: Fitzgerald
Gumtree: Butler, T.E. Lawrence, Cook, Rieu
EvelynMC: S.H. Butcher and Andrew Lang
Mippy: Lombardo
Roxania: Lombardo
PatH: Lombardo,
JoanR: Fagles
Frybabe: Butcher and Lang
Deb (bookad): Lattimore, E.V. Rieu
roshanarose: T.E. Lawrence.
JudeS: Fagles
Babi: Robert Fitzgerald
Mippy: Pope, Lombardo
ALF43: Butler (corrected in edit)
Babi: Pope? Fagles
BarbStAubrey: Fagles
straudetwo: Lombardo
rosemarykaye: Fagles
caroljwl: Fagles
JoanK: Fagles.
sandyrose: Rieu,Lombardo
ginny: Lombardo, Fagles, Pope, Murray, Butler
Now this is obviously NOT everybody, if I've left your name out I am sorry, please refresh our memory here or provide us with the latest info, and the translators here MAY not be correct! Please correct the list and add your name and translation(s), looks to me as if we have a super representation of everything out there!
-
:) Thank you JoanK! . The one time I was in Pompeii was in 1963: they didn't have many of the things excavated yet. my indelible memory though is of a house of ordinary people. The rooms were so small my 6 foot son would have to lie down diagonally in order to fit.
You were there at a pivotal time. In 1967 and 1969 the Villa Del Pastore, all 124,000 sq feet of it, was discovered. Excavation work still continues on the other mega mansions of Stabiae, it's estimated there are over 8 palatial villas and 50 rural villas so far. The residential huge complexes, palaces really for the rich, make Tiger Wood's new incredible house and Bill Gates's houses look like small change. There's the Villa San Marco's 65,000 sq feet, (and the recent thought in the last couple of years because excavations are jingling there's an entire wing left uncovered, possibly another 90,000 sq feet, and the Villa Arianna at over 140.000 sq feet. These things were so large they are breathtaking to visit. Plenty of elbow room. Many had their own thermal baths, and I saw in one, the Villa Arianna, a small raised tank/ pool painted red for fresh fish right outside the kitchen.
Deb, yes, thanks to your reminder, I just posted a list of the translations, thank you for repeating the Lattimore and the Rieu. I notice Lombardo gives a nod to Lattimore. This is such a fascinating discussion I keep going off on different tangents, I'll get that up today.
Mippy, the map in 442? Sure but I better put them all up as they are all different; some of them don't have all the places! I just had somebody in the Latin 101 class send me an antique map of the area with place names on it, perhaps that would also be interesting. We may have a problem following along with no map. hahaa or even with one! We can suss it out together.
Joan K and I, while our ship here is bring provisioned for our long (I do hope it's not 10 years) voyage, and while you're all climbing on board and finding your quarters, (complainers get to row, this is not the Queen Victoria, hahahaa) have been pondering how to attack this discussion, how to pose questions (we start Tuesday!), what to do.
Questions to me make it seem like a class. That's not the experience I want this time. I'm always looking for the "perfect" book discussion. I kind of like the idea of a voyage of discovery, everybody chiming in as something strikes them as Deb just did, ask the question YOU have or like Frybabe just did, put something the ...Introduction says in YOUR book...or like Jude has done, bringing things she's read in her Fagles introduction, or Barbara has done with her Michael Wood, or Roxania with her "Penelopiad," or Rosemary Kaye with her Greek for Dummies or Gum with her burning the midnight oil, everybody bringing something to the table of their own, sort of like a feast, and then we can respond and sample this or that offering and talk TO each other and see what we make of it. Like a real conversation?
I can't think of a better group to try this new experiment with. After all there are hundreds of Odyssey Study Guides out there, maybe we together can produce something even better when we're thorough, just thru engaged conversation.
To do this, we must all respond to what's said here, so grab somebody's ideas and hang on! Let nothing go unremarked?
To ME this is a very enjoyable discussion already. I love it. I love coming in here, it's so interesting just to read the different viewpoints.
What do you think about putting up points of interest from you in the text of the conversation itself rather than in the heading?
Deb has posed this one already: why do you think so many people keep re-translating this story...always needing to improve on someone else??...or just so much new information comes to light and gives new insight into Homer's book
What do you think? Do your Introductions address why your translator has undertaken to improve on the great Lattimore? We're talking opinions here, not proof. If you saw that list that Deb posted of all the translations of the Odyssey including some very recent, why a new translation?
Why follow Fagles? Is it because in his interview available on the web, he says the Odyssey is primarily a love story, that that should not be forgotten? IS it? He's one of the few who says that, we'll each decide for ourselves WHAT it is at the end. What IS it? Let's keep that one in mind somewhere.
I'm actually quite interested in the latest translations. I think I'll order one, I'll go back and get Deb's list and pick one of those only a year or so ago, why would you follow the greats? What do you have to say they didn't? What do you know (as unlikely as it might seem) that they didn't? I have nothing but respect for the old classicists, the Dr. Murrays, most of them have never been equalled. Or have they?
I think that's an excellent question, Deb. How would you all answer it?
I love it. This, so far, to me, is the dream of a book discussion. The only thing it lacks today is YOU, and your thoughts, which we long to hear. Our collective ESP can't hear you muttering dire imprecations over there, so type away so we can know where you stand. hahaha
Join in, post your thoughts whatever they are, your questions, whatever they are, what you've found, and let's see what happens. We begin on Tuesday with Book I, which is only (in my book) 14 pages. A nice start. What shall we make of it?
I've got my passport. Unlike a couple of trips I've taken I do have my credit cards and some money. :) I've got my IPodTouch so I've got no end of books to read and reference so long as the battery holds out, (do we have electricity on this ship?). Does anybody have any illustrations of what the ship Odysseus sailed in might actually look like?
We've got our books but what we want is somebody to talk WITH about them.
But will we get stranded? Will we land in a Tunisia or an Alexandria or worse, will we be bewitched? Will we not want to come home? Will we crash on the rocky shores or encounter strange people who will threaten or even kill us?
I would think it would rather be the norm than the reverse that sailing off to war in 1250 BC did NOT carry the assurance that you'd get home? Think about it. Think about battlefield triage. Andrea is a nurse, think about war wounds and no anesthetic, ER or triage units.
Unlike Gilligan, Odysseus has been gone for 10 years when the story opens. How long in the United States what's the law, is it 3 years before you are declared dead? What is it in the UK? In Australia? It's been 10 years with no word whatsoever.
No phones. No news broadcasts. No TV. No Ipods.
Penelope sits and weaves. What would you do to find out if he's alive? What does she do?
She is besieged by suitors, it's not her beauty, she could be a dog, it's her huge kingdom. How come they can't leave her alone? It's a strain to feed them much less deal with them. Why can't she throw them out?
Everyone is welcome, pull a stump up here next to the fire, we'll reconnoiter here on the beach before setting sail Tuesday. Have we got EVERYTHING we need? We ARE going to need to hear about any auxiliary books you find on this theme, any films you've seen, anything pertaining remotely to the Odyssey. We're about to start our first installment of our own Odyssey!
Welcome aboard, the gangplank goes up Tuesday morning, ready or not!
-
Bravo Ginny! With your enthusiasm and your love of the classics this should prove to be a paramount discussion.
The composite of posters and positions offered help so that noone (me particularly, sitting in the rear)should feel deflated before we even begin.
It is a praiseworthy discussion in its infancy. I agree whole heartedly with the theory that our questions will prove more valuable than the plethora of study guides available.
Ginny your point that everyone should involve themselves by "grabbing on" to someone else's thought and/or opinion is extremly important for a good discussion. If one is not at least acknowledged when they post, it is depressing and forces some to abandon the whole discussion.
As a DL we know how difficult it is to keep up with every single post so let's all pinch in here and help Ginny and Joan with this monumental task. The discussion alone with these references will take hours of hard work by our DLs. I personally have a zillion questions that need answering or at least exploring and I back off when I know that the DL has to acknowledge each poster. Just chime in and at least say"Andy, you're an idiot, where did you get that thought?" It will be OK, it will encourage me to rethink it or stand by my thought.
Ginny, I have the Butler translation, edited by Loomis, copyrighted 1944.
-
Does anybody have any illustrations of what the ship Odysseus sailed in might actually look like?
Well, there's always the Siren Vase - I've spent quite some time trying to get a link to the British Museum where the vase is held and other sites to work - in desperation here's one from the dreaded wiki people. scroll down and you can click on an image of the whole vase.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Odysseus_Sirens_BM_E440_n2.jpg
-
hahaha - I really enjoyed your post Ginny - on and on as you waxed poetic - it was a joy and fun - exhilarating and informative - thanks ever for the list of shipmates and the books they are using to view the land/seascape of Greek Heroes.
Some shipmates I know however, a few names I will have to get to know - and that I am sure will be part of our journey - probably no deck chairs on this voyage - sounds like all hands to the rowing oars - hehehe - that is fine - we are strong, bold and up to the voyage. I love it!
For me this is a perfect time to sail - it appears our winter is over - thank goodness - the last of the really cold, below freezing temps is over as of last night and we slide back into the 70s over the weekend with nothing on the weather map to break the trend - and so if a week from now a norther blows it will be too late in the year for it to have any significant affect on us - I'm expecting the Jasmin to bloom next week along with the Redbuds - if all this was for real it would be a perfect time to set off on a sea voyage -
-
Unlike Gilligan, Odysseus has been gone for 10 years when the story opens. How long in the United States what's the law, is it 3 years before you are declared dead? What is it in the UK? In Australia? It's been 10 years with no word whatsoever.
In Australia? I think the period for death in absentia is still seven years. -
In 1967 our Prime Minister, Harold Holt disappeared whilst swimming in the sea and had to be declared dead. Of course there are many urban myths that have grown up around his disappearance - His body was never found and some believe he was a spy for the Chinese and is still alive and well in China (picked up by a submarine of course) or that he faked his 'disappearance' to go off to live with his lover... These days in the Aussie vernacular to "do a Harold Holt' means to 'disappear' suddenly and without saying goodbye usually from a social gathering.
-
In Scotland it is 7 years - after that the next of kin can apply to the coroner for a death certificate to be issued dated 7 days from the last day on which the person was known to have been alive.
I have had one such case at work. It was very interesting for me but a complete nightmare for the family - it was obvious that the poor man had died, but without a body or other proof there was nothing they could do. The man was unmarried, and his sister was unable to sell his house, but could not draw on his (substantial) funds to pay the outgoings. His pension providers immediately found loopholes to stop paying his pensions, but the Inland Revenue still insisted that he was alive for tax purposes. I wrote several strongly worded letters on the sister's behalf, but to no avail.
I imagine that Penelope would not have had all this trouble in Ancient Greece - or would she? Would she have been able to deal with her absent husband's property or not? Could she spend any of his money? My Fagles Odyssey has arrived AT LAST - just about to open it - but i have taken my other books (well, a small selection of them - Madeleine tried to take all of hers, every last one) to my friend's where we will be living for 6 weeks from Friday, so i can't look at the Dummies book until next w/e.
Husband has just managed to smash the door of our built-in oven - 7 days before we hand over the keys to the house - I have been a model of patience and understanding ;D but despite this our kitchen is not a good place to be right now - the girls and I are retreating to our bedrooms until the storm has past. Barb, I could certainly jump onto a sailing ship right now, and come back once the tempest of moving house is over!
Rosemary
-
Well, good for Wikipedia !! What a beautiful vase, Gumtree
.
I had instant thoughts about a couple of things you said, Ginny.
Re why does it keep being retranslated........I have to think that the translators do it for the joy of translating, and then to be able to put one's translation into poetry is just the icing on the cake. I love translating, myself, reading a translation can't compare. I bet they do it for the love of it.
And re why does Penelope wait--don't know, wouldn't like to speculate but as we read about her maybe we'll find out how her mind ticks.
How interesting about Harold Holt, reminds me of Lord Lucan.Now the previous SC gov did a minor disappearing trick but was tracked down or confessed, can't remember, to visiting his girlfriend in Argentina. Leading to new meaning to the passtime of "hiking on the Appalacian trail."
ALF3 I think you're right, we should respond to what people say.
-
Gumtree- I love the link to the vase . However, that ship doesn't look too sea worthy, does it?I feel bad for the poor dude that they have tied to the mast before he has to walk the plank. Anybody we know from our reading yet?
Dana- It appears that Penelope was left in beautiful surroundings: queen of the palace, many male suitors and oh yeah-$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$
Yep, that would do it for me, I'll stick around and await my husband's return. :o
Rosemary- RUN FOR YOUR LIVES!!!!
-
Our laws in the US have several criteria for declaring someone dead by assumption. One, if he/she has been missing from his/her residence for a period of seven years ; or such absence has been continuous without explanation, or when those persons most likely to hear from him/her have heard nothing; and the missing person cannot be located by inquiry and by diligent search.
This also varies from state to state and if declared legally dead and the assets are distributed it can still be challenged. I imagine this happens quite a bit if there are treasures such as Penelope has in her possession.
-
The guy tied to the mast is Odysseus who made his men do that so HE could hear the song the sirens sang without perishing. I beleive he stuffed their ears with cotton, but we will find out!
-
Oh, Ginny
I laughed when you asked why do people keep translating the Odyssey?
The answer of course is like Mount Everest.. because it's there!
It's also a challenge and the opportunity to ONE-UP all the brilliant people that came before you and because you are convinced that you are more brilliant and talented than they. What higher accolade could an academic want after his name, in his obituary, TRANSLATOR OF THE ODYSSEY!!
And little Johnny, the translator's son lisping to his classmates , "My Daddy twanslated de Odyssey".
My learned travelers perhaps you have another explanation but I will always believe mine is the best! So there!
-
Deb asks why do people keep retranslating this story. Dana says, for the joy of translating. That’s very real. When you translate something, it’s yours in a way that nothing can equal. You have had to think about every bit of it, exactly what does it mean, and how can you get the same effect in English. I’ve done this a bit in Spanish (taking days to get a 14 line sonnet right in prose) so I see the appeal. JudeS says it’s for the challenge and chance for one-upmanship. That’s true too.
But why is there a market for new translations? I think that that each generation needs to hear this ancient tale in a voice they understand. Pope sounds flowery to us now, but his contemporaries were used to that kind of language and expected it. Keats wrote a moving sonnet, “On First Looking Into Chapman’s Homer”, about the revelation of getting away from stuffy old Pope. I looked at Chapman when we were starting the Iliad discussion and found him almost unreadable.
The best translation would be the one which didn’t either add or omit anything, but still spoke in a contemporary voice. (Which also means it wouldn’t last forever.) Lombardo does that for me. He was quite clear about sticking to the original and also trying to make it something that could be told aloud.
I haven’t read Lattimore, but my daughter read his Iliad in college, and I’ve read a convincing discussion by her profs about why it was the right translation to read.
I think in the end it boils down to: what is transparent to you in getting at what Homer is saying.
-
Ginny--sorry but you forgot me in your group listing the Odyssey translators
I have the Lattimore translation, mainly because I read Lombardo's thoughts about his writings and was quite interested --so when I went to the Rockport, 'Booknook store' and saw 2 different translations, one marked up with underlined passages-- I chose the other hence Lattimore thinking I was buying the Lombardo one--though I am quite happy with my choice upon reading this one --it was published in 1965, 1967
before I had first acquired a copy translated by E. V. Rieu....when looking him up in amazon (now don't ask me why I would look him up after acquiring the book), I noticed the translation there was different in a number of respects...and searching found my translation was by the father in 1946,-- then came the penguin edition 1999 by the son E. Rieu--a revised translation
would it be of any help if when we post, use some short form of what translation we are using, i.e. first letter of translator
I love the fact that I have a poetical translation-Lattimer-with numbered lines and a novel type translation by E.V Rieu
unfortunately we are due to leave Rockport, Texas Tuesday, and I am not sure when we will next have use of internet, we are heading for Ft. Myers, Florida and will take about a week, but I intend to keep up as best I can, though may not be able to post
being the visual learner type that I am I have been striving to find online a family line drawing of people mentioned in the Iliad & Odyssey, sort of generational thing, varying levels outlining who is who and where they fit into the narrative...I am striving to create one for myself but it is always nice to find one neatly done for me online--if the gods were posted into this bonus
Deb
-
bookad - Something of a coincidence that you should mention a "family line" because that is exactly what I was thinking before I went to sleep last night. I am sure there are more connections than those surrounding Agamemnon and Menelaus, Helen and Clytemnestra. Just love their names. Did you know that Schliemann, whose wife was Sophia, had two children - the boy was called Agamemnon and the girl Andromache. Andromache was the wife of Hector, son of Priam (and Hecuba?) in the Iliad, I think. Andromache and Hector had a son called Astyanax. I have a beautiful poem about Astyanax somewhere. I have gleaned this knowledge mainly from Modern Greek poetry and the movie "Troy". Being the fuss-pot that I am there were several things in "Troy" that did not seem ring true for me. However, it is worth seeing as a prelude to "The Odyssey".
Achilles (aka Brad Pitt ;) is a demigod. His mother is Thetis, Goddess of the Sea. It was Thetis who dipped Achilles into the river Styx when he was a baby to ensure his immortality. She held him by the heel. Prizes for anyone who can remember his dad.
A long time ago I saw a TV series about Odysseus (1997). I wish I could remember the actor's name who was in it. Armand someone. I remember, it was Armand Assante. I am onto it.
www.imdb.com/title/tt0118414
Gum : Yes. That is a beautiful depiction of Odysseus. I have another depiction on the cover of my book. Ginny posted a beautiful pic of the ever patient Penelope and the artist was John William Waterhouse. Waterhouse painted the cover of my "Odyssey" also. You may like to see it at www.johnwilliamwaterhouse.com. To my eye it is a bit dark. Fortunately for us, many pre-Raphaelites used mythology/classics as a preferred theme in their art. Perhaps Ginny can work her magic on it.
Note the "eyes" on the prow. Greek sailors and fishermen still paint them on their sea craft. They are meant to repel evil and keep the sailors safe. The "Evil Eye" in other words.
-
For those of you who chose the Emile Rieu, or E. V. Rieu translation - he wrote children's poems and here is one called;
"The Flattered Flying Fish"
~ by Emile Rieu.
Said the Shark to the Flying Fish over the phone;
"Will you join me tonight?, For I'm dining alone.
Let me order a nice little dinner for two,
And come as you are in your shimmering blue!"
Said the Flying Fish: "Fancy HE remembering ME,
And the dress that I wore to the porpoises' Tea!"
"How could I forget?" said the Shark in his guile;
"I'll expect you at eight!",and rang off with a smile.
She has powdered her nose, she has put on her things;
She is off with one flap of her luminous wings....
Oh! little one, lovely, light-hearted and vain,
The Moon will not shine on your beauty again!
-
Barbara: Good Grief - I hadn't thought of that poem for XXXX years. Thanks.
-
Ginny: I also have a translation by George Palmer -- prose edition
-
Alf: I'd just about forgotten about Lord Lucan's disappearing act - if that's what it was - was he ever declared officially dead?
I see that Dana has answered your question about who was tied to the mast - thanks Dana. I didn't know whether to put it up or whether that would be a spoiler for those who haven't read the book.
Bookad - I've got the Lattimore Iliad and found it a wonderful read - I've a couple of other translations too but think Lattimore is best for me.
About E.V Rieu - Emile Victor - His 1946 translation of the Odyssey was the first book in Penguin's Classic Series -and for many years E.V was the General Editor of that series. Here's something about how his translation came into being:
Before 1946 ‘classics’ were mainly the domain of students and academics, without good, readable editions for everyone else. Penguin had previously dabbled in what were regarded as classics, with a batch of ten books published in 1935 that included Samuel Butler’s Erewhon, and a 1938 series of ten Illustrated Classics including Swift’s Gulliver’s Travels, but with little success.
This was all to change after the Second World War. E. V. Rieu, a distinguished but obscure classicist and publisher, had whiled away odd idle hours of wartime service perfecting his translation of Homer’s Odyssey and reading these efforts aloud to his wife Nelly, who encouraged him to complete the task and try to get it published.
“I began on the Odyssey three years before the Second World War started, and completed the first draft as France fell. Home Guard service intervened, and I could not finish the job till 1944. Even so, its revision was undertaken to the sound of v1 and v2 explosions and the crash of shattering glass – an accompaniment which would have chimed in better with the more warlike Iliad, and which, I hope, is not reflected in my style. Actually, I went back to Homer, the supreme realist, who puts his magic finger every time on the essential qualities of things, by way of escape from the unrealities that surrounded us then – and still surround us in a world of fantastically distorted values.'
Ignoring the doubts of his colleagues, Allen Lane not only instantly agreed to publish the translation, but invited Rieu to edit a new series of Classics. It was a typical Lane decision: an instinctive leap, a certainty that an eager audience existed for new and accessible translations, one that Rieu’s achievement had clearly created. It was not so much a gamble as an act of faith against all odds, one that any rational publisher guided solely by the balance sheet would have been unlikely to take.
Rieu's translation of the Odyssey became an immediate triumph and went on to sell some three million copies, occupying the position of the best-selling Penguin until rudely usurped fifteen years on by Lady Chatterley s Lover and, ultimately, Animal Farm.
I guess the initial 3 million readers can't all be wrong. wonder how many million copies have been sold now. Just think of the number of copies of the combined sales of all the translations - I can't envisage how many that would be.
-
Why do they keep on translating the ancient texts? - As Jude says - because they're there! love it! And I do think that is part of the answer.
PatH also touches on another part in the need to bring the works to a new audience in language they can readily understand.
I see the translators as part of the long line stretching back to the Greek bards themselves who during the oral tradition repeated, embellished and brought up-to-date the old stories or histories. Once the stories were written down in ancient times they were still repeated, embellished and brought up-to-date by scholars and scribes who made notes in the margins (scholia) and who changed words here and there to suit their own times - its language, its social mores and in some instances its politics as well.
Modern day translators do the same, consciously or subconsciously. Their aim is to make the stories readable for their contemporaries - and in many instances to translate the classics is a necessary part of academic life. In reality they are passing on the cultural heritage and the tribal memory of ages past to the new generations who in turn will do the same.
All sorts of stories have been passed down through the generations by oral and then written forms - the legends surrounding King Arthur are a case in point - we can look at the French legends and Mallory's classic which have been rewritten countless times by writers good and bad - Many people find Mallory's English too difficult to read and without the likes of say John Steinbeck who rewrote King Arthur, perhaps the stories would eventually be lost. - and the films and musicals are just another form of telling the stories, adapting them and passing them on to new audiences.
It is a curious thing that in every generation there are those who respond to these ancient and medieval texts despite their difficulties and a few of those make sure the tales are passed on. I read somewhere that the number of people who actually read an ancient text is less than one in a thousand of population. So that makes each of us who will read Odyssey something of a rare breed. I know you all knew that anyway.
-
GINNY, I have the Robert Fitzgerald translation, as published by the
International Collectors Library.
ROSEMARY, I was appalled at the situation you described. Surely,even
though Inland Revenue might claim the man was, technically, still
alive, he obviously wasn't earning a paycheck! I can only suppose he
had other sources of revenue,..but were they paying anything in his
'absence'? Oh, well, it's history now. It just got me puzzling.
-
Gumtree, I particularly liked this part of your quote:
"Homer, the supreme realist, who puts his magic finger every time on the essential qualities of things"
Very true.
-
The Book Club Online is the oldest book club on the Internet, begun in 1996, open to everyone. We offer cordial discussions of one book a month, 24/7 and enjoy the company of readers from all over the world. Everyone is welcome to join in.
Welcome to
The Classics Book Club, now discussing
(http://www.seniorlearn.org/bookclubs/classicsbookclub/cbcodyssey.jpg)
Free SparkNotes background and analysis on the Odyssey (http://www.sparknotes.com/lit/odyssey)
February 15-21: Book I: Meanwhile, Back in the Castle....
(http://www.seniorlearn.org/latin/ulysses_penelope/PenelopeatLoomJohnWWaterhouse1912.jpg)
Penelope at her Loom
John William Waterhouse
1912
Discussion Leaders: Joan K (joankraft13@yahoo.com) & ginny (gvinesc@gmail.com )
Translations Used in This Discussion So Far:
kidsal: Alexander Pope, George Palmer
Dana: Fitzgerald
Gumtree: Butler, T.E. Lawrence, Cook, Rieu
EvelynMC: S.H. Butcher and Andrew Lang
Mippy: Lombardo
Roxania: Lombardo
Pedln: Pope, Fagles
PatH: Lombardo,
JoanR: Fagles
Frybabe: Butcher and Lang
Deb (bookad): Lattimore, E.V. Rieu
roshanarose: T.E. Lawrence.
JudeS: Fagles
Babi: Robert Fitzgerald
Mippy: Pope, Lombardo
ALF43: Butler (corrected in edit)
Babi: Pope? Fagles
BarbStAubrey: Fagles
straudetwo: Lombardo
rosemarykaye: Fagles
caroljwl: Fagles
JoanK: Fagles.
sandyrose: Rieu,Lombardo
ginny: Lombardo, Fagles, Pope, Murray, Butler
Homer and the Epic Form:
By definition an epic is a long narrative poem, written in lofty style and dealing with the preternatural exploits of a national hero. Certain accepted conventions mark the epic. The most important are these:
A:The theme is a series of adventures befalling a national hero.
B:The poem begins with an invocation of the Muse (the goddess of epic poetry, one of nine goddesses of poetry and of arts and sciences.)
C:The poem begins in 'media res'(in the middle of things) . What has happened before is told by flashbacks.
D:A classic ,dignified meter is used. In Greek & Latin dactyllic hexameter.
The Stock Epithet
Homer uses many stock epithets, the conventionalized adjective or descriptive phrase applied again and again to persons and things.Morn is usually rosy fingered;the sea is wine dark or loud resounding;Odysseus is brilliant Odysseus or Odysseus of many wiles. Scholars realized that the poet used set combinations , of noun and epithets as building blocks to fill out his six foot lines .Brilliant Odysseus for for a two foot space and for a three foot space he had Odysseus of many wiles.This became an accepted device for Greek epic style---(From
Greek & Roman Writers by McNiff)--- Submitted by JudeS
-
Babi - I know, it was a completely ridiculous situation. He had income from investments, etc, but his sister couldn't get at it, because in the normal course of events, as soon as a bank or share registrar is informed of a death, they "freeze" the accounts and withhold the dividends, etc until executors are properly appointed, probate granted, etc. All the fund holders decided "disappeared" meant dead, whilst - typically - the tax office said it didn't. That is what I said in my letters to the pension providers - if there is no death certificate, how can you presume that this man is dead when the law doesn't - but they quickly found some sub-clause or other allowing them to withhold payments more or less whenever the fancy took them. Fortunately the man's current a/c was with a small local bank (he lived in the country) and the manager there did eventually agree to let the sister pay a few bills direct from the account - if he had lived in London, for example, she would have just met a stonewall of bureaucracy. She was such a nice woman, and immensely determined and sensible - most people would have thrown in the towel, but she just kept plugging away at it, even though she lived the opposite end of the country.
There was a lot to be said for the old way of dong business - ie everyone knowing their local bank, post office, etc staff and people trusting one another. Now these places hide behind the catch all defence of "data protection" just as other institutions use "health and safety" as an excuse for anything they don't want to do.
R
-
There was a lot to be said for the old way of dong business - ie everyone knowing their local bank, post office, etc staff and people trusting one another
.
I couldn't agree more, ROSEMARY. We once lived across the street
from the vice-president of a local bank and I would have liked to have
our accounts there. I know he could have been helpful if we ran into
problems. Unfortunately, my ex-husband didn't like the idea of people
he knew knowing his private business.
On the Classics theme, I found this lovely spot:
http://www.artsales.com/Ancient%20Ships/kGreekWarShips.htm
-
The pictures of the ancient ships are fascinating! I notice that the ship on the vase has room for only a few oars, and not all of these are manned. (Interesting-- presumably, O had already lost some men before he got to the Sirens.
The ships in the last pictures have many more oars. Wec should be able to get a sense when we read the text of how many men O had.
In either case, we can see how the ship worked. PatH, our sailor, will want to know how they navigated. Not well, obviously, since they got lost so often.
-
I love the poem about the shark. You make Reiu's translation sound interesting. I'm beginning to wish I had them ALL. I had two, that I couldsn't find -- bought Fagles, and have just ordered Lombardo (got it used really cheap). Soon I'll need a bookcase just for the Odyssey.
-
Jude says...
And little Johnny, the translator's son lisping to his classmates , "My Daddy twanslated de Odyssey".
And in E. V. Rieu's case his son could say not only that his father translated the Odyssey, but "I revised his translation--twice."
D. C. H. Rieu says....to ensure that the translation continued to be as accessible and useful to modern readers as it had been to EVR's first readers.
-
Yesteday my library had a fifty cent sale. What did I find? First and foremost "Ancient Greek Literature in its Living Context" by H.C.Baldry. Ninety percent of he book is illustrations of Greek artifacts, scenes (in color) of the places where the action of the Illiad and the Odyssey took place and erudite wording along with the pictueres.If you wish to look for it on Amazon or another site it is a McGraw-Hill Paperback 1968 copyright in London -reprinted 1972. What a treasure.
The other book I found for the same price "Greek and Roman Writers" by the Rev. William T.McNiff, OSC thr Macmillan Co.
printed in1962 .I simply couldn't put it down for the background it gave me on the subject we are engaged in learning. It was written for the Catholic Education Division.
Of course I realize that much has been learned and discovered since these books were written but for myself it helps me to move into the subject on surer feet.
-
So, tomorrow's the day?
Ginny, you can add my books up there -- Fagles in print, Pope on the Kindle. I also have a Butler from the library, but haven't had time to do much with it.
I feel like a bee or a butterfly, flitting from plant to plant, sampling a bit here and a bit there, trying to make sense of it all. So grateful for all your stories and input.
Today I found a slim volume picked up in a used books store a few years back --Dateline: Troy, by Paul Fleischman. He tells small stories about the goings on at Troy, and then pairs them with an appropriate current news clipping. Ex. Priam orders the baby Paris to be killed -- Contemporary article -- Newborn found in dumpster.
-
OK, I am overwhelmed with conflicting information – the “why” of so many translations seem to be rooted in several factors – The big two that I find is: those who believe it is important to read the poem with a beat that our western ears will relate rather than the beat inherent to the old Greek and then, others who believe the question to prove [and with each new proof there must be an adjust to the translation] how the length of this story could be passed down intact much less remembered during the oral tradition.
The books I am getting the most information from are Michael Wood, ‘In Search Of the Trojan War’ and M.I. Finley’s, ‘The World of Odysseus’ and the intro to my copy of Fagles Odyssey.
First, let me get a few smaller bits of information out for us to chew on – After the time when Gods no longer shouted and spoke from mountain tops and sea floors as caretakers of the universe - the concept of rain was explained – seems the sky was considered a large inverted bowl that would spring leaks as holes were opened and so the concern - a large hole would open drowning/flooding the known world. Moreover, the known world was located in the middle of an endless sea of water that was held up by huge tree trunks with deep roots.
Michael Wood in his book, names all the heroes and their families from all the sources of antiquity and explains how each was killed off – the ’Age of Heroes’ was broken apart and destroyed, the god-like race of hero-men who lived between the Bronze Age and the age of Iron. Some of his litany of heroes include; Agamemnon, murdered by his wife. Menelaos and Odysseus along with Mopsus wander onto Anatolia where after they settle were attacked by pirates. Diomedes, Philoktetes and Idomeneus find new lands in Italy, Sicily and western Anatolia.
Thucydides in the 5th century tells of constant resettlements till finally the Greek-speaking peasantry from the north, Dorian’s mark the end of Agamemnon’s world and the Dark Age follows.
The belief that Ajax defiled Athena’s alter during the sack of Troy incurring her everlasting enmity, was so strong that as late as the 4th century BC barefoot maidens with shorn hair lived out their days like slaves in extreme poverty cleaning the precinct of Lokris.
Joseph, the Jewish historian of the first century AD writes that the Greeks have no accurate good source for their prehistoric past. Oral tradition was all they had to rely on. However, the Romans are fired up by the legend, as Alexander claimed ancestry for Achilles, Julius Caesar called the Trojan Aeneas his ancestor.
Justine worshipped the ‘old gods’ despite his uncle Constantine adopted Christianity as the official ‘state’ religion writing a letter hoping the hated ‘Galilean’ [Jesus] would not in the end conquer. When he travels to the city of Ilium Novum to make his offering of oil he is relived to find the Christian Bishop keeping the flame burning at the tomb of Achilles. The two take a stroll around the city swapping Homeric tags.
The early middle ages Christology rejects Homer as the devil’s entertainment. Byzantium is the enemy of Hellenism and Homer rests with the pagans. Knowledge of Greek almost vanished until the nineteenth century.
And yet, it is during the early middle ages in St. Marks in Venice we have the oldest known complete hand written copy of the Iliad created about AD 900. Also in Italy, the first printed edition of Homer was issued in Florence in 1488.
Most interesting, not long before the fall of Rome historian, Ammianus Marcellinus tells a story that fugitive Trojans settled in Gaul. The story served political ends. - In 550AD, the King of Italy was supposed to be related to these escaped Trojans. The story in Britain ties Wales as related by Nennius and the founder of Britain, Brutus was declared descended from Ilius popularized by Geoffrey of Monmouth who has Brutus finding London as Troynovan. Most Elizabethan poets accept the story; the Tudors ascending the throne after Bosworth assume they will usher in the Golden Age.
Ok back to Homer’s poem – there are many scrapes of incomplete as well, as many as 6 separate stories showing up in pieces on numerous fragments of papyrus, a few as old as the 3rd century BC. Athenian Hipparchus in 6th C. BC, reformed the recitation of Homeric poetry.
M.I.Finley offers the dichotomy with each point of scholarship suggesting what is taken for granted by each school of thought cannot be backed up – However, recently we see words in published essays and Introductions saying, ‘suggesting a guiding hand’ ‘Building-blocks’ Bard or Poet’s ‘construct’ – All another way of suggesting the finding of Milman Parry is present.
Milman Parry demonstrates the influence of Darwin's publication of The Origin of Specieson the life sciences. Along with his assistant-successor Albert Lord, in1934 they meet a Serbian Bard, who chants a story as long as the Odyssey during a two week recital of two hours each morning and two hours each afternoon. He follows in the footsteps of a Nineteenth Century Bard from the Hindu Kush who shared this formula to “sing every song; for God has planted the gift of song in my heart”. – Neither of these Bards could read or write – To do this Parry finds they had at their disposal necessary raw material, that includes masses of incidents and formulas; the accumulation of generations of minstrels.
Chanting is not the language of everyday speech with a meter imposed including, repeated lines, [that many translators try to omit] an artificial word order and predicted rest stops during which time the orator is preparing the next episode.
Parry and Lord explain, the tales of ‘Mortal Heroes’ have a pattern that fit incidents of the coming of dawn and of night, scenes of combat, burial, feasting, drinking, dreaming – descriptions of palaces, meadows, arms, treasure - metaphors of the sea, pasturage, and so on… characteristic are incidents particular to the hero, strange grammatical forms and vocabulary evolves including an artificial dialect, which in the case of the Iliad and Odyssey no Greek ever spoke. He suggests the greater the accumulated material the greater the poet’s freedom.
He goes on to explain that the Greek world of the 8th and 7th centuries BC was mostly unlettered despite the introduction of the alphabet and therefore, literature continued to be oral. The men who could read were in the hundreds however, the stores were heard and re-heard by tens of thousands all over Hellas. In historical times, the ritual drama was most often performed during great festive occasions with professional reciters who lived, worked, and died within his tribe or community.
Traveling artists were important in Greece and were the first to take on the lack of political centralization diverging further and further from the original story to keep territorial disputes from erupting until the 4th century AD when Solon prescribed Homer in a fixed order.
Both Finely and Wood sound so authoritarian in their conclusions that I am struck when I read others who have different opinions – first I check to see when their article was written thinking it was before Parry and Lord – but no – and so I think we have landed ourselves in a scholar’s soup du jour – they are still sorting opinions until more conclusive evidence is discovered.
-
For those who like myself are not scholars of Greek Lit and language I will just quote two things that helped me most prepare for this journey (from Greek & Roman Writers by McNiff).
Homer and the Epic Form:
By definition an epic is a long narrative poem, written in lofty style and dealing with the preternatural exploits of a national hero. Certain accepted conventions mark the epic. The most important are these:
A:The theme is a series of adventures befalling a national hero.
B:The poem begins with an invocation of the Muse (the goddess of epic poetry, one of nine goddesses ofpoetry and of arts and sciences.)
C:The poem begins in 'media res'(in the middle of things) . What has happened before is told by flashbacks.
D:A classic ,dignified meter isused. In Greek & latin dactyllic hexameter.
The Stock Epithet
Homer uses many stock epithets, the conventialized adjective or descriptive phrase applied again and again topersons and things.Morn is usually rosy fingered;the sea is wine dark or loud resounding;Odysseus is brilliant Odysseus or Odysseus of many wiles. Scholars realized that the poet used set combinations , of noun and epithets as building blocks to fill out his six foot lines .Brilliant Odysseus for for a two foot space and for a three foot space he had Odysseus of many wiles.This became an accepted device for Greek epic style.
-
Thanks Jude, it really helps me to have things in a nutshell - though I did originally read "rosy fingered MOM" instead of "morn" (haven't got my glasses on yet :)).
Of course there are some writers who use the same descriptions all the time without any need to squeeze them into a set form - JK Rowling and her adverbs spring to mind. At least Homer had an excuse. And before I am torn to shreds by JKR's defenders, I do think she's wonderful, and also a really nice person - it's just occasionally that I feel the need to score out a few of those "shrillys"!
R
-
really a lot of 'food for thought' here, to help with the journey
first-sorry Ginny for when I thought you had omitted me from the translation group list; don't know how I could have missed that, as I had read that list a couple of times-and rereading it again (searching for a particular quote someone expressed an idea that struck me as 'a wonderful way to put ...'-about judicial system often not measuring what one ordinary non-judge would expect)
wish I could type out large amounts of quotes for example that fit in with what I am trying to express, but till I have cataract surgery hopefully this summer on returning home... I read books without glasses, and computer screen with font +++++and glasses, making for hard situation following from book to screen for me...constantly losing my place...
Joan ref.R 453-Jan 11-talking about women being denied....I received a letter from Morristown N. J. Nov. 1963A stating about my interest in becoming a guide dog trainer...they did not accept women into the 4 year apprenticeship course, as women tended to 'get married and have children' and all that work to train them went to waste
Frybabe--ref. R 457--my upbringing included going semi-freq to the opera-Gilbert and Sullivan's Mikado--the wandering mistral, the son in disguise of the Mikado, sings.....about his ability to make his singing connect with the audience at hand, and his versatility to do so
BarbStAub--loved the poem by Rieu--have been looking for a poem saw on a 'get well card' once about --God and how he must have had a sense of humour to have created the universe with some of its strange colour combinations etc i.e. the zebra--perhaps I should be looking at this author further
obviously I get sidetracked easily--just rein me in when I do I don't mind...
Deb
-
.........continued ...post note to the Morristown N.J. item...I never really wanted to have children couldn't imagine how to cope with raising a family and having a career,....--would have loved a career training dogs...oh well, it wan't in my cards I was dealt I guess
Deb
-
This discussion is like a dazzling...I don't even have the words. It just dazzles on every front. I absolutely LOVE coming in here, what you say sends me reeling off in another direction.
Happy Valentine's Day!~
TOMORROW (one of us apparently can't tell dates, but it's tomorrow we begin), on the 15th with Book I. I'm just blown away by what you've all put here.
Gum! On first looking into Chapman’s Homer by John Keats (1795–1821)!
I haven't thought of that in years and I found that Arthur Quiller-Couch (those of you who liked Helene Hanff, does that ring a bell? I became so enamored of her 84 Charing Cross Road, that I bought a set of Quiller Couch's lectures. One of his anthologies gives it:
MUCH have I travell’d in the realms of gold,
And many goodly states and kingdoms seen;
Round many western islands have I been
Which bards in fealty to Apollo hold.
Oft of one wide expanse had I been told 5
That deep-brow’d Homer ruled as his demesne;
Yet did I never breathe its pure serene
Till I heard Chapman speak out loud and bold:
Then felt I like some watcher of the skies
When a new planet swims into his ken; 10
Or like stout Cortez when with eagle eyes
He star’d at the Pacific—and all his men
Look’d at each other with a wild surmise—
Silent, upon a peak in Darien.
Yes I'd say that's what you want YOUR translation to do for you. I haven't read Chapman. This, however, is how I feel coming in here: Then felt I like some watcher of the skies
When a new planet swims into his ken;
Deb and Pedln, I'm SO sorry to have left you off and thank you Andrea and Babi and Sally and everybody for the corrections, we apparently have had a blip or two since the 11th when they upgraded the site and lost a couple of things.
But what's THIS? One of our crew already is wandering off to climes unknown? Oh dear, it's a dangerous thing to leave the ship! Will Deb wander in Texas and Florida forever? Will she be snapped up by some hideous monster or beguiled into staying? Our own life imitates art here, safe sailing, All, till we meet again!
__________________________
Gosh what fantastic discussions here on the translations and why people keep translating. I've read them twice. I liked especially the idea of making the classics the stuff of our everyday lives, not just something only a few classicists or academics can enjoy. That makes sense. And if Pope no longer speaks to YOU somebody else might.
_______________________
Dana, Wikipedia is excellent for art references, and they have to be checked, just nothing else. I am rather proud to see the links put here so far on background which range beyond wikianything. Just Friday I heard on Sirius CNN Clark Howard warning people NOT to take the "first link which comes up, you know who that is") as evidence for anything. Who was it who called Wikipedia "Truthiness?" He came very close to saying that there's a good reason why some of these links come up first and he's right, but everybody donate to Wiki for their "bandwith," now. Right.
Enough rant!
Roshanna Rose (loved the bit on Shliemman's children and their children's names!) Being the fuss-pot that I am there were several things in "Troy" that did not seem ring true for me. You're not a fuss-pot, and you're not alone.
Achilles (aka Brad Pitt That is , without exception, the worst movie I have ever seen in my life. I could not finish it. We were reading the Iliad right after it came out. Kind of like Russell Crowe and historical Gladiator accuracy (if you don't believe me find one of the classics sites which talks about the discrepancies). However, it's better than the extra in the Spartacus of Kirk Douglas's time with the Rolex watch. :) (Again check a site which does Spartacus for accuracy).
Thank you all for the illustrations of Odysseus tied to the mast and the boats!!! And for Harold Holt and Lord Lucan!
RosemaryKaye: how interesting: JK Rowling and her adverbs spring to mind Really? How interesting! She has quite the classics background as you can see in Harry Potter, I loved his correcting his grammar in Exspecto Patronus... and it didn't work till he changed it to Patronum. Fabulous!
In fact somebody showed me just recently the answer to the question why should one take Latin in 2011 and the answer was, well you can see some in Harry Potter. The mind boggles!
_________________
JudeS, thank you for that excellent outline, it's spectacular and you introduce C:The poem begins in 'media res'(in the middle of things) . What has happened before is told by flashbacks. I'm thinking that outline might be good in the heading as a nice jump start.
I almost fell over with your 50 cent treasures at the Library sale. Just think, somebody with a love of the subject gave those books up, or maybe somebody who owned them died, and the family gave them away or maybe...... not being sure if anybody would be interested. Imagine! I never heard of them, and what a FIND! Now we will be enriched as you share from them, I love that outline. I love this experience!
This one: "Ancient Greek Literature in its Living Context" by H.C.Baldry after reading your description, I had to have. With the internet here we can call up these places for everybody. It cost a little more than 50 cents (but not much) and I can't wait (but apparently I get to wait several weeks) to see it.
What riches!
Barbara: I liked your conclusion here:
Both Finely and Wood sound so authoritarian in their conclusions that I am struck when I read others who have different opinions – first I check to see when their article was written thinking it was before Parry and Lord – but no – and so I think we have landed ourselves in a scholar’s soup du jour – they are still sorting opinions until more conclusive evidence is discovered.
I'm thinking we need scholars in the classical field before we examine the soup, first. What is Wood's background? We wrote him originally during one of his programs and actually our question was put on PBS. I'm thinking that his background is history and English, primarily Anglo Saxon history. I'm thinking he's not a classicist primarily? Of course his broadcasts are famous, and all inclusive. And most interesting, as you write. If he graduated from Oxford he knows something. Still you don't go to a podiatrist for heart failure. I found his programs fascinating.
You mention:
Most interesting, not long before the fall of Rome historian, Ammianus Marcellinus tells a story that fugitive Trojans settled in Gaul. The story served political ends. - In 550AD, the King of Italy was supposed to be related to these escaped Trojans
Does he not mention Virgil ? The Aeneid? The original Trojan tie in to Italy, far preceding 550 AD?
I also think it would be wonderful and most useful if those of you interested in a family line got a chart up. I am still trying to get over Agamemnon's shock and anger in the Underworld, at not having the same homecoming the others did, I can't get over the guy. :)
I feel like a bee or a butterfly, flitting from plant to plant, sampling a bit here and a bit there, trying to make sense of it all. So grateful for all your stories and input. Me, too, Pedln, and this way we get the best of all worlds, samplings from all these readings.
I think before we get too much further, I'll make another list: I am the official list maker, running around behind you all gathering up the scraps you throw down, each one more a treasure than the last. I'll make a list of the books and films you're discovering and the literary references you've made, and a separate list of the links. We can put them when we finish on pages for others to reference, right now we've got them here for us to savor.So many many people with so MUCH knowledge are and have been as was quoted here about Rieu, laboring in obscurity, out there, some of them long forgotten: thanks to this discussion and YOU, we can have it all here. I have to say, fabulous! It's our own archaeological dig. :)
Andrea: Ginny your point that everyone should involve themselves by "grabbing on" to someone else's thought and/or opinion is extremely important for a good discussion. If one is not at least acknowledged when they post, it is depressing and forces some to abandon the whole discussion.
I think that's the key and you're all doing it so well!
Meanwhile here on the shore all provisions are in the ship and I see people are pretty much aboard, I'm not sure about the bathroom facilities? But the gangplank goes up at 6 am sharp tomorrow, we'll all be piped aboard.
But what we CAN do today as part of our preparations is bring here the questions we have concerning the Book I.
For instance, here's what I've been wondering about: we keep talking about Troy. 10 years. Greek ships. Troy falls, about 1250 BC.
Here's Raphael's idea of the fall of Troy, here's Aeneas, a Trojan, carrying his old father Anchises from burning Troy, leading his son by the hand with his wife following. Escaping the city. (http://www.seniorlearn.org/latin/aeneas/raphael_aeneas318.jpg)
The Greeks have been lined up on the shore, Odysseus (Ulysses) is a Greek. He's about to sail away home. (http://www.seniorlearn.org/latin/graphics/Iliad/Iliadships300.jpg)
So we open Book I and where is all this? Where is burning Troy? Where is Ulysses/ Odysseus getting in the boat? WHAT is all this?
JoanK has an interesting question on this, and it concerns this issue and something JudeS just put up today, and I'll wait for her to introduce it and we can start with it tomorrow and/OR any question YOU all have as you read Book I? Food for the trip as Deb just put it.
Everyone is welcome, bring your back-packs, oranges, books, junk food, and questions. All ashore who's going ashore! We pull up the gangplank at 6 am tomorrow!
PS Oh I just have to say one more thing! I just read an interesting query of what three things would you want with you on a desert island? The answers were revealing. What three things do you want with YOU on this trip?
-
Thanks, Jude, I’ll ditto Rosemary – even down to the M/rn
My Odyssey folder, for everyone’s comments is now set up, as is my Odyssey folder in Favorites, with the links many of you have put here. If only I could figure out how to get a shortcut from Favorites to put on my desktop.
And our Latin lesson for today’s class is the beginning of Latin verse, with a description of the dactyl foot ____ ˘˘ . The gods must be watching.
-
:) on the meter!
OH good, Pedln, I just completed a long look back to get all the book references and links, we can compare notes when it's over and see what I missed!
But in going back I noticed a disturbing thing which I want to mention in passing: skipped posts. It seems that for some reason I missed some of your posts, I am not sure how this happens but it happens to all of us. So IF you say something and it seems to be unremarked upon, it's possible somehow it was missed when the others came in, just repeat it. I have noticed this several times now.
You may all be interested to look at the new thing on the top left of every page here? Marcie has done this last night:
Hello ginny
Show new replies in discussions in which you have posted.
Total time logged in: 10 days, 22 hours and 16 minutes.
The thing in red here is what you want to click to see new posts. The older link over it which took you everywhere has been removed. This is what you want, it will take you to any new thing mentioned anywhere you have been. It won't show you where you have not been.
RoshanaRose, I particularly wanted to ask about this one: Waterhouse painted the cover of my "Odyssey" also. You may like to see it at www.johnwilliamwaterhouse.com.
Now is the illustration on top of the page the one on your book? What's the title or subject of it, does it say? I can't get anything to come up with the mouse. I LOVE Waterhouse.
-
Just on a guess, JOANK, I'd say they probably navigated by the stars.
Which isn't a great deal of help when the weather is stormy or
overcast.
What a find, JUDE! Congratulations. There must be treasures hidden
in my library book sales; I just don't have the stamina to check out
all of the books displayed.
I think we have landed ourselves in a scholar’s soup du jour
Beautiful, BARB :D
Thank you for the Keats poem, GINNY. I was so struck by it the first
time I read it; it's a pleasure to read it again.
-
Ah - It is so fantastic to see so many being awakened to the joys of Homeric translation. Ginny, you write as though your very life is entirely consumed by this subject, and I cannot imagine that it should be any other way.
Dactyl is the AG and MG word for "finger" and Dactylidi is the word for ring.
I merely mentioned the movie Troy because there are some excellent individual characters playing the main parts : e.g. Agamemnon played by Brian Cox; Priam played by Peter O'Toole and Hector played by Eric Bana. Paris unfortunately, played by Orlando Bloom, was much too effete to have the guts to snatch Helen from Menelaus.
As we were talking about the worth of women in Homer and Greek society in general, I thought that I should mention that even today at Mount Athos women are forbidden to set foot in the monastery. Even hens are forbidden. FYI Mount Athos is situated on the third "finger" of Chalkidiki, northern Greece. I saw a program on Mount Athos on TV and the monks there were asked why women were forbidden there. Diplomatically, the monk who was being interviewed replied that it was not the fault of the women, but of the monks' lust. I feel certain that his reply was a lot different than what one would expect from medieval monks.
As for what I would bring along for the journey - Well, I would make sure that I did not set sail anywhere near the Coral Sea or the Great Barrier Reef, cyclone prone as they are presently. I would take along some plastic sheeting, plastic bottle containers and some coathangers, some shark repellent, my Cavafy and Seferis, and, doubtless my Odyssey with my rather large collection of Greek books and lexicons, many stout fishhooks and a small coal driven barbie, some detailed maps and a compass, and a psychology book or two regarding settling disputes at sea. Maybe if I am given two or three days to reconsider I would probably stow some good Australian wine as well. And some Chanel No 5 in case I should meet the Greek of my dreams. I would also take along some rosehip oil for my skin.
-
GINNY Some detail on how to access that J.W. Waterhouse you were asking about :
Got to www.johnwilliamwaterhouse.com/pictures
You will see "Featured Paintings"
Scroll down to "Ulysses and the Sirens" - it is the last entry.
I, too love Waterhouse. There is also a painting of Circe that is just sublime in its colours.
Peacock blue and green.
-
" Paris unfortunately, played by Orlando Bloom, was much too effete to have the guts to snatch Helen from Menelaus."
I think Aphrodite did the dirty work for him. I haven't seen the movie, but he does come through as rather weak in the Iliad which makes it ironic that he's the one who kills Achilles -- from long distance, of course.
-
Before JudeS posted her wonderful list of characteristics of the Epic form, I had suggested to Ginny the following question:
Is it confusing that Homer starts in the middle of the story, well into Ulysses voyage? Did you realize that that is what he is doing? Why do you think he does that?
Now we know that starting in the middle is characteristic of epics, so we could speculate instead about why? I admit, I do find it confusing and frustrating. I want to hear the end of the seige of Troy, but I guess I'll have to wait.
-
Roshanarose, I love your essential shipwreck list. Let's hope the Cavafy doesn't get waterlogged.
I watched the movie Troy shortly after we read the Iliad under Ginny's fearless leadership, so I was well primed. It mostly wasn't a very good job, but there were a couple of spots where quality leaked through--the director had been caught by the original and made it stick, and for a few minutes you actually felt the spirit of the poem.
-
Yes, Ginny Virgil is mentioned as are others but like you they were wise – wise enough not to fall for the rouse that Trojans had escaped to Gaul – and so in an attempt not to type out all the points in the chapter they were omitted and I only shared the litany of those who were caught up in the far fetched fantasy.
OH Jude thanks so much for synthesizing what Parry concluded – interesting the author of your book – he was a Holy Cross priest and it is the Holy Cross priests who are here at St. Ed’s in Austin – what a find – an no shipping costs – I hope you share more of what you learn reading the book. I am also curious about what is included in the Intro of the translations by the other authors being read.
For me both Ken Burns and Michael Wood tie together so much scholarship and bring it alive by photographing the sites while telling their journey of discovery – For me they are a wonderful research tool – I have been researching the Bibliography of all three authors of the books I have about Troy and the Odyssey and there are various institutions mentioned – Wood includes Warburg and Courtauld Institutes (http://www.ingentaconnect.com/content/warburg/jwci)
While looking in Amazon for the article mentioned I found another book from the Institute that included a “Look Inside” History of Scholarship: A Selection of Papers (http://www.amazon.com/History-Scholarship-Selection-Institute-OxfordWarburg/dp/0199284318/ref=sr_1_3?ie=UTF8&qid=1297725849&sr=8-3) What I got a kick out was in the Introduction it says – Scholarship is by definition endless and the ability to finish one’s work before one is overtaken by illness and death has been , and will be, many a scholar's fate.
At which point I roared laughing – with the love of books and scholarship among this group it looks like the quote he also includes in the Intro by Mark Pattison was written for Senior Learn “Thus it has been the fate of many men of learning to be crushed under the burden of their own accumulation…” Can you see it now as we are crushed by the burden or our own scholarship or, as I think of it, the burden of our curiosity – like most of you the avalanche or crush could be made from the books in my house both read and still waiting to be read
In the Fagles intro, he speaks to how the request is made to the Muse at the beginning of both the Iliad and the Odyssey, suggesting that there is no clarity of direction telling the Muse where to start in the Odyssey as there is in the Iliad.
He also brings up that the story of Telemachus as not in keeping with a Heroic Epic – and so a quick look at the symbolism for ‘son’ – ‘son’ - The double; the living image; the alter ego. And so I wonder if this was a way that the unknown story of Odysseus’ childhood could be explained and the son’s story is the story of Odysseus
All three of the authors in their bibliography or suggested reading mention G.S. Kirk Homer and the Epic does anyone have a copy? There is a shortened version available resale on Amazon that is tempting but at the same time, I am ready to simply read this Epic for its story and art form rather than more research. I am really looking forward to tomorrow.
-
And a bright good morning to you all as we embark on our new journey! RoshannaRose's "3 things" have already taken up half of the hallway, (loved that list), there is already some tension amongst our group on stepping around this..er...junk? hahahaa One of our crew (Deb) is already AWOL, I already hear grumbling amongst the rowers hahaha and methinks here as we are creakingly setting sail before sunrise that this is going to be no ordinary journey. Did anybody bring seasickness pills? hahaaa
I am really looking forward to tomorrow. Me too, Barbara, and now like most trips all our anticipation comes to a height with our actual embarkation. WILL this cruise live up to the expectations or will we all be stricken with mal de mer?
I just read Book I again before coming in here and am struck by how much there IS in it. Element after element fly by and are repeated. Let's make a list of what struck you. We've got Odysseus as "cunning," (Lombardo), we've got Zeus constantly referred to by Telemachus as in charge of everything, it's their (the gods) fault, all of it, man proposes, in this case the gods dispose....we've got "They are eating us/ Out of house and home, and will kill me someday" from Telemachus , l. 268 (L), (Deb suggested we say whose translation we're quoting from), we've got Laertes, Odysseus's father, withdrawn up on the mountain..so we've got a kingdom, a regnant queen, a presumptive heir, (how old IS he, anyway?), and the original king? Up on the mountain. We've got the famous Greek hospitality where the stranger is entertained first and then asked to tell his story, we've got Telemachus coming of age here and taking over, "you should go back upstairs and take care of your work...Speaking is for men, but for me/ Especially, since I am the master of this house."
Hoo.
And there's more! That's a lot for a 4 minute read. So what we want to know now is, which element, maybe one not mentioned here yet, for YOU seemed the most important? What do you want to talk about?
Our opening question by Joan K (we'll use your own questions here) is:
Is it confusing that Homer starts in the middle of the story, well into Ulysses voyage? Did you realize that that is what he is doing? Why do you think he does that?
Now we know that starting in the middle is characteristic of epics, so we could speculate instead about why? I admit, I do find it confusing and frustrating. I want to hear the end of the siege of Troy, but I guess I'll have to wait.
How do YOU feel about where this story begins?
Thrown into this what JudeS defined yesterday as "in medias res," (see heading), a literary technique where the reader is plunged right into the action, what is your reaction? Why do you think Homer started here, at home? What do you think is the most important thing IN this section?
What, in short, DO you think, about this or anything else? The deck is now open for your thoughts? Bon voyage! :)
-
My read is from the Fagles and I am immediately caught into the story - I love how he asks the Muse to sing him of the man of twists and turns - that description alone fascinated me and brought me in wanting to know more.
And then to finish [do we call this a stanza or a strophe? Although I think a strophe is two stanzas answering each other - help what is it called when these 12 lines have a break? Does reading Homer give us another description of the poetic form?] anyhow back to the finish of this first break - the last line - start from where you will- sing for our time too. the line made me feel like a 10 year old sitting with knees hugged waiting with bated breath for what will come next.
And then such adventure with phrases like avoided headlong death - oh my just the grits for a listener looking forward to a sword clashing adventure.
Where the Sungod sets and rises - reminds me of Native American literature based on the comfort that the sun rises from and sets in the earth.
Oh this is so much better than a movie - it is like the adventure stories I read as a child and my imagined picture of the action was so much richer than any movie was ever able to produce. And on top the sound of the words rolling around in my mouth reading this - pure wonderment.
-
It occurs to me that as this story begins, it is not known that Odysseus
is in the middle of his journey. Most presume him dead. It is only when
his son starts out to try and find out what happened to his Father, where and how he died, that the story of Odysseus re-emerges. It does
make a logical introduction to the story.
-
Thank you for the explanation of what exactly an epic is, it does help. Also, I will keep in the back of my mind the one thing that really struck me. Written in the introduction is this statement:
"The special virtue of Odysseus, the one from his youth up raised him conspicuously above other brave and chivalrous men,was, everyone agrees, his intelligence. He had a keen man's love of daring plans and zest for unusual adventures. He was quick to read other men's minds, grasp the meaning of a situation, exceedingly fertile in resource and persuasive in counsel. Withal, he was canny, cool-headed, able to keep his own excitement under control. He never let a good scheme be spoiled for lack of a little caution and patience in carrying it through."
That tells me all that I need to know. BUT-- but-- will I embark as an adversary during this journey, to defame and defile our gallant, wily protagonist or will I choose to be a beneficial and benevolent friend to our hero?
HMMM--By the description above, me thinks my allegiance should be as a faithful, loyal friend. I'm not certain that I would like to cross this guy so I will pull on my big girl panties and fight to the end for my legendary hero. ;D
Ginny, it is my understanding that O left his homeland for Troy when Telemachus was a baby. He has been gone for 20 years.
Is that right????
-
I think most of those at Ithaca - presume Odysseus to be dead but the gods tell us that he is still around. Poseidon is the one who makes it impossible for him to return - but we hear
... to be sure, earth-shaking Poseidon has not
Killed Odysseus but does make him wander far from his homeland.
Well. come now, let all of us here carefully devise
His return, so he may arrive ...
(Lines 74-77 Albert Cook)
So we do know that he is still alive.
I love how this first chapter introduces us to so much - several of the Gods, especially Athene as herself when among the Gods and disguised as Mentes whilst with Telemachus in Ithaca, the suitors, Penelope, Telemachus. Lots to sort out and already some action taking place.
-
Speaking is for men, but for me/ Especially, since I am the master of this house."
Ginny: It's interesting already to note the differeces in the translations.This is how Cook puts those lines-
This talk will concern all the men,
But me especially. For the power of the house is mine.
I just love that last sentence - For the power of the house is mine. - almost gives me shivers especially coming from this young man who is just beginning to assert himself.
I'm off to compare a couple of other versions...
-
It occurs to me that as this story begins, it is not known that Odysseus
is in the middle of his journey. Most presume him dead. It is only when
his son starts out to try and find out what happened to his Father, where and how he died, that the story of Odysseus re-emerges. It does
make a logical introduction to the story.
Good point, Babi. The Gods know where Odysseus is, but there isn't a single human who even knows he is alive, since his whole crew has been killed and he is trapped with the goddess Calypso.
-
For the power of the house is mine.
That's the best version of that line. Fagles says "I hold the reins of power in this house."
I was a bit put off by the preceding lines, though, in which Telemachus pushes his mother back to her lowly female role.
"You should go back upstairs and take care of your work,
Spinning and weaving, and have the maids do theirs.
Speaking is for men, for all men, but for me
Especially, since I am the master of this house." (Lombardo)
-
I prefer the Rieu, " for I am master in this house" because it tells me he is going to be the boss so the power of the house is not lost. It is more to the point for me--that Telemachus must take control.
-
I love the way Athena eggs on Zeus to do something about Odysseus and he wants to have a discussion about it, (come now, we're all at leisure here...let us take up the matter of his return) but she leaps right in there, tells him to send off Hermes and takes off herself to put some backbone into Telemachus. And then the first thing T. does to show his new found maturity is be rude to his mom. Super! We really haven't changed a bit. She goes off to bed gazing in wonder, you can imagine her shaking her head and thinking what's come over him all of a sudden.......Next he's rude to the suitors, tells them in no uncertain terms to assemble tomorrow because he's going to tell them to leave. They are are stunned by the change in him too....by now their teeth seem fixed in their underlips, Telemachos' bold speaking stunned them so......then he goes off to bed, still accompanied by his nurse though! Lovely.
-
in medias res: in the middle of things, in the midst of events
How does the reader feel? If you are a modern reader of novels, it feels familiar.
My reaction was: oh ... no wonder so many modern, and of course 19th century novels, which I've been reading all my life, start in the middle. It was a traditional way to start a story.
Moreover, the listeners in ancient times did not have the concept of libraries, they had the experience of tales being told and songs being sung over and over.
For example, we sing our 2-year old grandson the Fuzzy-Wuzzy was a Bear song (we made up the tune) and he shouts out: now sing Medium! so we sing F-W was a Medium-size Bear, etc.
Then he shouts Big, and ... you see the pattern ... then he shouts Little. But he does any order
he wants. Is that how the human brain learns patterns? Who knows, but perhaps the bards of old sang the favorite verses over and over, and the listeners learned the songs ... but learned the favorite verses more easily. Recall there was no copywrite. Listeners were supposed to learn and repeat the songs to others.
Back to the home coming of Odysseus: could this have been a favorite episode? Is that why it's first, ahead of the long, hard-to-learn "songs" about the long journey? What do you think?
-
Oh I like that Mippy - yes... a favorite part of the story becomes the starting place
PatH I read somewhere and cannot remember that these suitors were eating them out of house and home - they all but moved in and either the remark is made or it is something known that they were consuming all Telemachus' stores and wealth - evidently Penelope does not have the power it takes to get them out of her house or for treating the house as their own.
Another 'Candle in the Wind' that we saw in Diana - no matter how accomplished, beautiful and caring among the powerful it looks like unless, women are willing to ignore what is feminine and attractive to fight on 'guy' terms, regardless how young, the guys have it - and so I wonder Dana if she is shaking her head as she goes off to bed - part of it appears to me that mother's train their boy children to take their place as 'masters' which puts them in the forefront of a power play.
I guess the practicality is as you say Sandyrose - he will be head of the house - and then this is the common history we share that adds to the equality issues of today - this is not the discussion to examine it however, the concept of a women in the role of powerful leadership seems to tip the scales away from her being an attractive feminine women dreaming of her man. And yet, guys can be virile dreaming of their love while in battle gear.
The time on this - I was under the impression there was a 10 year war at Troy and a 10 year sea journey.
I wonder if there are as many translations of this story into the modern Greek as there appears to be in English.
-
MIPPY: "could this have been a favorite episode? Is that why it's first"?
Good point. What do the rest of youi think?
PATH, SANDY, DANA: react differently to T's statement to his mom. Is it adolescent rudeness or a necessary part of growing up?
Already we havve three women (Athena, Penelope, and the nurse) and we can tell a lot about the role of women. What do these three women tell us?
-
Barbara posted while I was editing. Do you all agree on the role of women?
-
Poseidon is away
The gods will play!
Can they sneak O home only because angry Poseidon, god of the sea, is away and not paying attention? Those gods are a hoot!
-
Hmmm - had a thought after reading your post Joan - I want to remember this exchange with mother and son or rather son to mother in reaction to these over-zealous suiters - if we are saying Penelope has no power to get rid of them and still remain the 'good' wife - the attractive wife waiting for the return of her lover, her husband - being the 'good' women raising her son as is expected in a community setting - compare that to the times in the story that Odysseus is so called captured and held supposedly against his will be females - I want to see if the story shows the differences - my guess is what a women can do alone isolated from a community ethic allows her the power to take what she wants where as in a society the dualistic beliefs that are justified with biology hold sway.
-
I think we have three powerful females here, each in their role, which we will find out more about.
I think Telemachos' behaviour is adolescent rudeness and a necessary part of growing up, you know, like toddlers say no to establish their independent identity, teenagers do the same thing over again. And then you have the shifting back and forth--rude to mom and suitors, nurse still tucking him up at night. I think its very cleverly done.
-
The Book Club Online is the oldest book club on the Internet, begun in 1996, open to everyone. We offer cordial discussions of one book a month, 24/7 and enjoy the company of readers from all over the world. Everyone is welcome to join in.
Welcome to
The Classics Book Club, now discussing
(http://www.seniorlearn.org/bookclubs/classicsbookclub/cbcodyssey.jpg)
Free SparkNotes background and analysis on the Odyssey (http://www.sparknotes.com/lit/odyssey)
February 15-21: Book I: Meanwhile, Back in the Castle....
(http://www.seniorlearn.org/latin/ulysses_penelope/PenelopeatLoomJohnWWaterhouse1912.jpg)
Penelope at her Loom
John William Waterhouse
1912
Discussion Leaders: Joan K (joankraft13@yahoo.com) & ginny (gvinesc@gmail.com )
Translations Used in This Discussion So Far:
kidsal: Alexander Pope, George Palmer
Dana: Fitzgerald
Gumtree: Butler, T.E. Lawrence, Cook, Rieu
EvelynMC: S.H. Butcher and Andrew Lang
Mippy: Lombardo
Roxania: Lombardo
Pedln: Pope, Fagles, Butler
PatH: Lombardo,
JoanR: Fagles
Frybabe: Butcher and Lang
Deb (bookad): Lattimore, E.V. Rieu
roshanarose: T.E. Lawrence.
JudeS: Fagles
Babi: Robert Fitzgerald
Mippy: Pope, Lombardo
ALF43: Butler (corrected in edit)
Babi: Pope? Fagles
BarbStAubrey: Fagles
straudetwo: Lombardo
rosemarykaye: Fagles
caroljwl: Fagles
JoanK: Fagles.
sandyrose: Rieu,Lombardo
ginny: Lombardo, Fagles, Pope, Murray, Butler
Homer and the Epic Form:
By definition an epic is a long narrative poem, written in lofty style and dealing with the preternatural exploits of a national hero. Certain accepted conventions mark the epic. The most important are these:
A:The theme is a series of adventures befalling a national hero.
B:The poem begins with an invocation of the Muse (the goddess of epic poetry, one of nine goddesses of poetry and of arts and sciences.)
C:The poem begins in 'media res'(in the middle of things) . What has happened before is told by flashbacks.
D:A classic ,dignified meter is used. In Greek & Latin dactyllic hexameter.
The Stock Epithet
Homer uses many stock epithets, the conventionalized adjective or descriptive phrase applied again and again to persons and things.Morn is usually rosy fingered;the sea is wine dark or loud resounding;Odysseus is brilliant Odysseus or Odysseus of many wiles. Scholars realized that the poet used set combinations , of noun and epithets as building blocks to fill out his six foot lines .Brilliant Odysseus for for a two foot space and for a three foot space he had Odysseus of many wiles.This became an accepted device for Greek epic style---(From
Greek & Roman Writers by McNiff)--- Submitted by JudeS
It is only when his son starts out to try and find out what happened to his Father, where and how he died, that the story of Odysseus re-emerges.
Babi, that makes such good sense. Yes, definitely a logical introduction.
I’m not sure I think Telemachus was rude to his mother. Pope expresses it a little differently
“What Greeks new wandering in the the Stygian gloom,
Wish your Ulysses shared an equal doom
Your widow’d hours, apart, with female toil
And various labours of the loom beguile;
There rule, from palace-cares remote and free;
That care to man belongs, and most to me.”
Mature beyond his years, the queen admires His sage reply,
and with her train retires.
But Butler lays it on a little stronger
“Make up your mind to it and bear it.
Odysseus is not the only man who never came back from Troy.
. . . Go then, and busy yourself with your duties . . . .
for speech is man’s matter, and mine above all others
--for it is I who am master here.”
But if there were a vote, I'd take the Cook
"The power of the house is mine."
-
Pedln, how interesting, I think Pope's is a mistranslation. The Greek word is thaumazo which means be amazed at, wonder at, not necessarily the same as admire. The Greek for the suitors reaction is thambysasa which means be astonished at,marvel at
-
Oh Good - I did not know you understood Greek Dana - you are just the one I need to help me understand - being able to understand the translation of a word - what a gift and I hope you can sort all this out - I really want to understand.
I've been reading how the Greek used by Homer is supposed to be so different than modern Greek and there is an older version of Greek that is after Homer that is not the Greek used by Homer which is supposed to be even more ancient - and so I am thinking like English went through change and some of the old books like Beowulf need to be translated and interpreted for us to understand would be like the older version of Greek -
Even though I am not schooled in the older English I can pretty much get a gist of what is being said - but then I do not believe we have an ancient form of English not spoken by the average English speaking world as we are supposed to know there is this ancient form of Greek not spoken by the average Greek that is used for these Epics -
My question - what is used - what dictionary or thesaurus or other writings are used by authors who translate this ancient Greek into the Iliad and Odyssey - I do know that the first known texts were continuous marks with no word or sentence breaks - but if this ancient Greek is anything like the old English there must be more than separating a line of marks into words and sentences.
I have read that there are fragments of papyrus and that the first known full story is a hand written copy of the Iliad and Odyssey in 900AD preserved in St. Marks in Venice but again - what did they use as the basis to translate the ancient Greek into something that someone like yourself who knows Greek can understand today. Is there a web site that those of you who understand Greek can go to see the translation of the words - and most of all - do you have any idea how many modern Greek translations of this story from old Greek is available to the buying public...
In fact among those of us on this journey it seems to me there are a several who understand Greek - please I would like to understand and have a clue what the Greek speaking public is using to read these stories. Do folks who read the stories know the old Greek in addition to modern Greek? Are these stories taught in Greek schools today or are they so well known that the story is passed down in families? Is the language difference between the ancient and modern so well known among Greeks that they can easily read the story and it is only the translation of the ancient Greek into a European language that presents a problem. For that matter the translation of any language presents many problems with most poetry and so I can only imagine.
Hate to go on but one more - the markings I have seen in pictures of this ancient Greek remind me of how the Chinese markings for ancient poems can be interpreted many ways because there is no direct translation - of course they use a form of pictographs - is that what is going on with the ancient Greek markings when the Epic was translated and put into the 24 piles of papyrus that became 24 books?
-
Am I reading this correctly? As Zeus is speaking with Athene he reminds her that Poseidon is still angry with O for having blinded an eye of Polypehemus, king of the CYCLOPES? Don't cyclopes only have 1 eye??
???Also- I have the Butler translation and when Telemachus speaks with Athene, the goddess, he calls her sir.
-
Hi Barb, I don't think I can answer most of your questions. I am learning Attic Greek, but the other forms of ancient Greek, homeric and ionic for example are not that different--tt instead of ss, alpha instead of eta, for example. There is also koine Greek which is used for most of the new testament which is a later form of Attic (300BC to 300AD)
My textbook had examples to translate from Homer(7-800BC) to Herodotus (450BC) to Thucydides (400BC). Also bits of Plato, Sappho, Aristophanes and the new testament--all slightly different time periods, but all translatable, so I don't think the differences are that dramatic. My Greek lexicon quotes all the possible forms which is why it is v. large (although only "intermediate" !) and practically requires a magnifying glass to decipher.
I know nothing about modern Greek.
-
In the Rieu also Telemachus addresses her "sir". Not wanting the suiters to know ???
Lombardo though says "My dear guest....
And how do other translations describe the eyes of Athene???
Rieu uses, bright-eyed and flashing eyes,
but Lombardo (who calls her Athena) --owl-grey, owl-eyed, sea grey, grey as saltwater and the Grey eyed One ( G and O in caps)
When I good searched it, it seems the most-used is bright-eyed. What is in your translations???
-
Dana- I didn't see Telemachus'es behavior as that of an adolescent, but rather as a young man who "feeling a new courage" takes the helm. He is the man of the house and acted as such. He called the suitors shameless and asked them to leave. I like a guy who takes charge.
-
Quite right, Alf, Polyphemus had only one eye. Lombardo says
...Odysseus blinded his son, the Cyclops
Polyphemus. (His of course being Poseidon's)
Athena appears to Telemachus as a man, Mentes, son of Anchialus. Telemachus quickly realizes he is talking to a god, but doesn't know which one, so it would be reasonable to say "Sir". Lombardo carefully avoids gender-related pronouns here.
-
Barb - You have opened the Pandora's Box that is the Greek language. I found a beautiful Greek papyrus, circa Medieval (File:P46) in Wiki to illustrate a Greek manuscript. Don't give Wiki too much stick about being unreliable, because I can understand some of this Koine/Medieval Greek because at least two of the words are Demotic (Modern Greek).
ενσαργανηεχαλασθηνδιατουτειχουσ
καιεξεφυγοντασχειρασαυτουκαυχασ
θαιδειουσυμφερονμ[ε]νελευσομαιδε
εισοπτασιασκαιαποκαλυψεισκυοιδα
ανθρωπονενχωπροετωνδεκατεσσαρων
translates as:
"...[and I was let down] in a basket [through a window] in the wall, and so escaped his hands. Boasting is necessary, though it is not profitable; but I will go on to visions and revelations of the Lord. I know a man in Christ who fourteen years ago--"
So we know that this Greek is Koine or Medieval Greek because of the mention of Christ. I was able to cut off the Greek script at "man ..... fourteen" because I know both of these words from Modern Greek. Koine was fast approaching what we know as Demotic, ie Modern Greek today. I will need to check my Liddell and Scott Lexicon later and let you know if the same words were in Ancient Greek.
Just one more point, when I zoomed in one the papyrus, I noted that the script was written in capital letters, not lower case, as below. Also, note that there are no accents. I would have to become a Greek scholar to be able to tell you the difference between Koine and Medieval (Byzantine) Greek, but all this to me is fascinating and I will see what I can find out. In addition, Barb, I need to go through your questions and answer them as best as I can.
I have to rush off now as I am tutoring a Uni student in Academic English and have to meet him. No. He's not Greek, he's from Afghanistan.
-
Thanks Dana - trying to get a run down in the history of this Epic just passed down in the Greek language - I really wonder now if there are as many translations of this Epic from these old forms of Greek to modern Greek as there seems to be translations available to us in English - I Also wonder what is the Greek used in the hand written copy of Homer housed at St. Marks in Venice?
This is like trying to track down the various interpretations of the Bible - there are all these active translations and at least with the Bible we have a few known sources that later translators used but its the understanding of language and customs like in this ancient text that has developed with more equipment that gives us more archaeological answers -
I had limited my thinking to the developments we read about when scholar-translators, as a result of their formal education, over the centuries attempted to change meter and poem form as compared to how the peasant in the street converses - the history of the legacy of the changing language of this Epic sounds like it could be a lifetime of research in itself
roshanarose do you have any idea of the number of translations into modern Greek are sold today? And also, do you have any idea if this Epic is read or taught to the young Students in Greece or is the story an elective pursued in college?
I am thinking of how we know our own history - some, because we learned it in school but much, because many children visit local historical monuments, participate in parades and holiday celebrations that bring the story to our attention. Also, there are popular movies that bring the nation's history to our attention.
(Amazing is, if you ask a youngster here in Texas about the Revolutionary War they know that it happened someplace back east if they have been in the 5th grade - but ask them about the Texas Revolution and like my grandboys they could almost tell you the number of bullet holes in the Alamo. Since Texas history is 6th grade mandatory they learn who was captured where and when - including,the quotes kept alive from many an average participant. In addition, another semester in High School and in order to graduate from a state College you have another semester of Texas History - so folks know their stuff.)
Reading how Homer's Hero Poems are emblematic of the Greek nation I just wonder how the story is kept alive and relevant.
-
Barb - Thank you for your interesting questions. You have a very enquiring mind. I wish you had joined my Greek class which I taught about one year ago. I have got lots of material about the history of the Greek language, and a fascinating history it is, at least to me. I did a search, and put in the search box "ancient greek into modern greek the odyssey" and got one good hit, straight from the horse's mouth, ie from a Greek. I hope it helps.
"Hi,
I'm a greek and I would say it's a complicated situation.
All greek junior high and high school students take 6 years of ancient greek classes at school and at the last grades Antigoni, the Heliad and the Odyssey are some of the "text-books" used at class. So most greeks have an understanding of ancient greek and it's usually quite easy for an educated person to understand a phrase in an older form of greek.
Of course, since greek is an evolving language, nobody SPEAKS ancient greek. It's a written language so even philology graduates won't speak the ancient greek language but they will be able to read it. I stress this because a lot of non-greek people actually say that they speak ancient greek, which to a greek sounds completely weird! The ancient greek language (at least in a greek's point of view) exists only as a written language and nobody is supposed to start a conversation in ancient greek or Koine unless they're quoting an old text. Of course there is some people who use Katharevousa or archaic language in some contexts (the current archbishop of Athens and a lot of clergymen for example tend to use a lot of archaic forms in their speech inside the church, of course the use modern Greek in everyday life and interviews).
Anywayz, although the language is the same and almost all of the modern words are derived from ancient Greek, the older the text is the more difficult it would be for a common greek to understand it. For example an average greek will easily understand the Bible (written in Koine) without trouble, but will need time or even have to ask somebody else in order to "decode" a text written in the 5th century Attican language.
Thus, even my grandma who's a primary school graduate will easily understand Koine and read the Bible in prototype.
A lot of ancient greek, Koine and Katharevousa phrases are also commonly used in modern speech.
So, to sum up, I would say that modern day greeks won't have much trouble to read something in Koine and Byzantine Greek since it's very close grammatically and lexilogically to the modern language. When ancient (mostly Attican) language comes into consideration then most of greeks won't get it immediately but will have to think a little or even ask someone's help in order to understand a phrase. Nevertheless a greek would probably get the meaning out of a carved script (for example on ancient statues, pottery or columns in a museum) but won't usually try to do it since carved text doesn't have spaces and it will take quite a lot of time to separate the words and then find the meaning..."
To say it is complicated is something of an understatement. I see the way youngs Greeks learn the Odyssey at school, similar to the way we learn Shakespeare at school. We HAVE to learn it and may not appreciate it for its literary merit until much later, if at all. In Australia Greek children are still sent off to "Saturday schools" to improve their Greek. I hsave never met one young Greek who enjoyed "Saturday school". I, have however, many people who as they got older and began to appreciate the Greek culture, applied themselves with zeal to language and literature of Greece.
I wrote My Masters thesis about language shift and maintenance in Modern Greek. In brief, most of it boiled down to "losing the language" = shift with the young Greeks because they were made fun of at school, when they took Greek food for lunch; , holidays and many other factors. The kids were under pressure at home to keep the language, but at school they were under peer pressure to "conform" to what an Australian kid should look like and act, etc. The language maintenance "keeping the language, was most often the result of a kind of "valorisation" of the language, ie its prestige value in the outside world; endogamy(marrying into the ethnic group); pressure from parents; return trips to the home country (Greece) and several other factors. It was a fascinating study. I learned so much. I didn't meet anyone who had read the Odyssey in Greek though :o
-
Wow - thank you - I am so glad you shared - interesting and amazing how we admire this story as something so special and yet, to Greek Children it is something they 'have to' learn using their playday, Saturday, to learn the Greek and hear the stories. Sounds typical of many first generation immigrant children. The Indonesian children here have a similar experience but I do not hear them complaining - maybe they all have 'Tigar Moms' ;) whatever their experience they are all very accomplished and bright kids.
But 6 years of Greek and reading these classics - wow - that impresses me - we have put so much emphasis on comtemporary literature that most kids here no longer read Shakespeare much less the Classic in their English classes till they take English Lit. in College.
Well there are more forms of Greek than I ever imagined and the one word is something I need to better understand "Katharevousa" - it seems to be bridging the old Greek to the modern Greek - does the part of the word 'Katha' have a meaning like a suffix or a stem or a root -
-
:D Did y'all see this KIA ad where Poseidon come roaring out of the sea - funny -
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BLGj6iSZvak
-
Sandyrose: The Cook translation uses 'bright-eyed' for Athene and sometimes Pallas Athene.
The epithet 'Pallas' is perhaps thought to be either the name of her father or one of her childhood friends. Athene killed Pallas in some accident and afterwards used 'Pallas' with her own name as a kind of remembrance.
In some myths Athene is associated with an owl so maybe that's where that epithet comes from - doesn't appear in Cook so far anyway.
The Cook version has Telemachus addressing Athene (disguised as Mentes) as 'stranger'
-
Gosh what a rich discussion, and what different things you all see. Fantastic beginning! I wish Butler had put line numbers, I can't seem to see him saying ANYTHING about eyes on Athena whom he calls Minerva. Strange again, I've always heard grey for Athena's eyes, she's wise like an owl, isn't that her symbol of wisdom? Here's one reference: http://gogreece.about.com/cs/mythology/a/mythathena.htm
Interesting Fact about Athena: One of her epithets (titles) is "Grey-eyed". Her gift to the Greeks was the useful olive tree. The underside of the olive tree's leaf is grey, and when the wind lifts the leaves, it shows Athena's many "eyes".
Here we have, in the first few pages, a huge and complicated scenario. For a blind 3000 year old bard, this is some kind of socko beginning.
Great stuff on Greek here!
Am I reading this correctly? As Zeus is speaking with Athene he reminds her that Poseidon is still angry with O for having blinded an eye of Polypehemus, king of the CYCLOPES? Don't cyclopes only have 1 eye?? Right, at least he had one, of course, as we shall see, he was depriving Odysseus's men of more than that, but the Graiae only had one eye between the three of them, so he was ahead. Usually portrayed as in the middle of his head, ugly guy in more than one way. :)
_____________________
To me, and perhaps only to me, this supposedly more simple story than the Iliad, and supposedly less intricate, is harder to read WITHOUT background research. To Homer's audience, the mere mention of this or that figure, Agamemnon or Poseidon, would bring an exclamation of "oh yeah," of recognition from the audience, to us, all we hear is WHO? WHAT? HUH? Another name? It's like War and Peace (which actually is not a bad comparison hahaa), name after long name starting with a capital letter.
Those of you talking about Telemachus's speech being the master or holding the power or whatever phrase was used, master of the house, I am perplexed, what do you suppose he MEANS? He's finally going to step up to the plate? What does THAT mean for Penelope?
Usually a book will start with ONE...tension. Dramatic tension. Here if we count the ways, how many do we have?
Odysseus is missing, presumed dead. Lombardo has T saying I know he's dead. Tension #1.
But we know, only because we are privy to the discussion of the gods, that he's not. Tension #2. So what person and voice is this told in?
The gods are apparently running the show, tension # 3. They are having a confab, they are in charge. These Greek gods are quite capricious and perhaps not what YOU want in charge of YOUR life but early on we see they are definitely in charge of man.
Athena appears in the guise of a man, a stranger, tension #4. Note that it's apparently not uncommon to see god in the face of a stranger, to welcome that stranger INTO your house before you even know who he is (the famous Greek notion of hospitality, very important, we'll see it over and over again), but Telemachus knows this is a god. Perhaps these ancient 3,000 year old people were somewhat a step above us, no?
How times have changed! You certainly couldn't do that today.
At any rate, she's come to.... what? Direct him on his path, so he's going on a journey too. Tension #5, a Bildungsroma for Telemachus?
Meanwhile the suitors are literally (Lombardo) eating them out of house and home. All the translations I have say this. They are rowdy and obnoxious at the same time. Tension #6.
Here's my question, why can't Penelope get rid of them? Tension #7.
How old is T anyway? How do the Greek states rule their kingdoms? We have a kingdom with a 20 year absent king, missing, presumed dead. There WAS a king, Laertes, Odysseus's father, did he abdicate? Took to the hills, how old IS he? He's too old to resume? Telemachus is too young? So that leaves Penelope to do her best and here her son comes and...feels it's time to take over? Assume the mantle? (Why do I keep thinking of Queen Elizabeth and the Heir in Waiting?)
So he's feeling his testosterone oats? Is there any mother of sons who has not startled at the son's having opinions or giving a manly instruction? Tension #8. Always a shock and no matter how gently done (and I agree he's not very gentle here, to my mind, but he IS young at this) somewhat amusing, makes one feel 100 years old, right? Reversal of roles, child parenting parent, but is Penelope ready for this? How old IS she? In her 40's?
What tension is this, I'm losing count. So now he's leaving, but he's going to take on the suitors first. Tension #9. What will be their reaction?
Get out, he says. I am now the master of this house. My kingdom. I hold the power now, I'm of age, c'est moi, not my mother, get out.
How well do you think Penelope has handled this so far? 10 years! Who is handling it better, Penelope or Telemachus? What are his chances, realistically, alone against this horde of men?
I liked the ideas some of you had on why we're beginning here, at home. Could the reason be possibly that THIS is the most important thing in the entire Odyssey? Not the Odyssey or journey itself but the reason for it? Could in fact Homer as some of you think be sandwiching the journey by the two ends of the Nostoi, return or homecoming?
There seems a missing element here which Homer's listeners would know which I don't: what's the protocol for handing over a kingdom? Why would Laertes's (Odysseus's old father, the former king) old supporters not support HIM in moving back and retaking what obviously was his old kingdom? Is he too sick or ill? See what happens, this old woman muses, when you take over from your elders and throw them out? We need to understand how these kingdoms are turned over? Why has one of the suitors not made a bold move against the others? This is really quite interesting.
Of all the tensions so far, which do YOU think is the most important? Is there one I've missed? Will Homer somehow manage to follow ALL these themes or threads to the end?
Can't you just see everybody hunched around the fire waiting breathlessly (I know I am) for this or that thread to come to fulfillment? Which one is the most important?
In your opinion?
This business on a man of twists and turns, I don't have twists and turns. What does that mean? Let's examine the first description of Odysseus in YOUR book, what is it? Lombardo has "cunning."
Butler has "ingenious," Pope has "the man for wisdom's various arts renown'd/ Long exercised in woes..." Dr. Murray has "the man of many devices," is this tension #10, the character of Odysseus?
Such a simple little fairy tale. hahahaa
Which tension or thread are YOU most interested at this point in seeing tracked? What have we missed? What to YOU is the most important plot development in these opening lines?
A drachma for your thoughts! I think I missed one, what is it? I'm thinking it's the wily Homer at this point, he's the man of twists and turns. :)
-
GINNY ASKS:
Here's my question, why can't Penelope get rid of them? Tension #7.
You're kidding right? She's as wily as our Odysseus. She is a single parent, alone in beautiful, luxurious surroundings.
She has maids and men that do her bidding whenever she wishes. I think she's smart to let the fools sit around and party. They will protect her and her riches with the presumption that one of them will soon be the KING!
-
Gumtree : My interpretation of Pallas Athene relates to her childhood friend, whom she accidentally killed. I have never quite understood the importance of "Pallas Athene" as a common epithet, mainly because there is so little written as to its meaning in the Classics. Athena Nike (Athena Victory) is more widely applied. One can perhaps assume that Pallas Athene is a much older and less understood (or used) epithet.
We can only wonder as to why Homer usually gives his goddesses such beautiful descriptions/adjectives before their names. The "grey-eyed" adjective applied to Athena in Greek is the word "Glaukos", although because it refers to a woman it would more likely be "glaukia" or "glaukee", which has an interesting modern meaning for us, as the word/condition "glaucoma" comes from "glaukos". According to Homer her eyes were grey, but she probably didn't have glaucoma. This is a case of English borrowing from Greek, obviously. There are many of these words/conditions in Greek, both Modern and Ancient, and they only make Homer's works the more interesting and descriptive. Another example is "wine-dark sea" and I am busily going through my files to find a very interesting take on the use of colour according to Homer that I found somewhere. "Rosy-fingered" dawn makes perfect sense to me, particularly after you have seen a dawn in any island of Greece. "Wine dark sea" is a little more difficult to comprehend. The light in Greece is renowned for its changeability, but I have never seen the sea "wine dark". I think I need to see that description in Homeric Greek before I can translate.
Ginny - Sacre Bleu! I am hoping that someone else will tackle those "tensions".
Katharevousa means purified. The Cathars of France borrowed this word from Greek; and also the word "catharsis" springs from it. In MG the word "katharo" κάθαρω means to clean or cleanse. After Greece had settled down from its many conflicts in relatively modern times, there was a purist movement in Athens to get rid of Demotic (the language of the people) and replace it with a basis of Attic and other ancient dialects in order to retain the linguistic purity of ancient times and bridge it into modern day language. The movement failed because of a counter-move to keep Demotic as the national language. Demotic won, thank goodness, and the language of the people reigned. This was rather a tumultuous time in Greece (when isn't?). If you really need to know the intricacies of the story just do a search for "Katharevousa". I studied Katharevousa for a semester, and it was some kind of hell as there was no dictionary for it, and we had to translate/interpret a word using just our present knowledge of AG, tainted with Koine leading into MG. For anyone who was not a true Hellenophile, this was extremely challenging. Can you imagine?
-
What a great observation, BARB. I had never thought to compare
Odysseus' captivity to Penelope's situation. I'll keep that in
mind.
Where, please, is this exchange between Telemakhos and his mother?
I can only find, going back, the one following her request to the
minstrel not to sing the story of Odysseus, because she find it so
painful. I felt his reply showed a lack of understanding of her
feelings, but not rudeness.
I'd also like to know how some of the other translations refer to
this young man. Fitzgerald keeps referring to him as 'clear-minded'
Telemakhos. I sounds awkward. "Clear-minded Telemakhos" did this,
said that, ..repeatedly. What do some of the other translations say?
-
Gum and Ginny, thank you re: Athena's eyes. Do not know why her eye color struck me, perhaps because it was said many times. I love this from Ginny's link above..
Interesting Fact about Athena: One of her epithets (titles) is "Grey-eyed". Her gift to the Greeks was the useful olive tree. The underside of the olive tree's leaf is grey, and when the wind lifts the leaves, it shows Athena's many "eyes".
-
Pope says Athene has celestial azure eyes. There is no recurring descriptive name for Telemachus. Usually just referred to as "he." Does use young, royal youth, bold, and blooming heir of sea-girt Ithaca.
-
GINNY::Here's my question, why can't Penelope get rid of them? Tension #7.
ALF: You're kidding right? She's as wily as our Odysseus. She is a single parent, alone in beautiful, luxurious surroundings.
She has maids and men that do her bidding whenever she wishes. I think she's smart to let the fools sit around and party. They will protect her and her riches with the presumption that one of them will soon be the KING!
Good point. I had the same question. Fagles says she "would" not end it (the suiter's pestering).
But then I saw that Lombardo translates the same line as she "could" not end it. Big difference.
We will see in the next book how wily she is being.
-
Fascinating information on the various forms of Greek, and on the study of Greek in Greece. And on the attempt to make ancient Greece the official language. I can only com,pare it to the movement in Israel (which DID succeed) to make Hebrew, a language spoken by no one, the official language. The difference is in Israel, there was no other commen language, as immigrants were coming from all over.
The story of Greek immigrants in Australia sounds just like immigrants here in the US. I'm reminded of a friend from Salvador who says her daughter won't speak Spanish because it's "boring". The cliche is that thefirst generation clings to the ways of the :"old country", the second generation is split: some remaining with the old ways and some becoming assimilated (I saw that with my second generation father and his siblings) and the third generation is assimilated.
-
The "wine dark sea" fascinates me. Another place, Lombardo (I think it was) has someone sailing the "deep purple".
Perhaps there was an algea bloom in Homer's day, and the sea was actually purple (!?!)
-
Just popping in to say that I am switching from the Butcher and Lang to the Pope version. The B&L version did not hold my interest. In fact, I found it a bit hard to read the prose and make much sense of it. And, I didn't care for the "th" word endings they used. Maybe that's because I was tired when I started reading the first book.
-
Good choice. And if you don't like Pope, there are other translations out there, free or almost free.
-
Had to look up this nurse - Eurykleia - evidently she is more like the head of the household - like Mrs. Hughes, house-keeper in Downton Abbey. She was also Odysseus' nurse when he was a child and of all the servants the one they can trust, who is loyalty which evidently was a big deal in ancient Greece to have anyone in your household that you could trust. She also takes Telemachus to the hidden room with all of the wealth owned by Odysseus so he understands his father's wealth.
I am reading outside the book to get a handle on these characters - it appears that Odysseus has power in the community - I cannot figure out if he was a governor of the town - or, if his house like these old English Estates that I can wrap my head around - if the family estate was large and with all sorts of support farmers, wine makers, horse breeders etc. the head of the Estate so to speak is like a governor or mayor.
Regardless all the intrigue it would seem that if the governor or mayor disappeared after a great battle with no one knowing what happened for the sake of the Estate it is logical, regardless how the story exploited this fact, that a new leader was needed - and it looks like - why am I surprised but then am I really - women had no power, no rights to land or wealth and so Penelope could not simply fill her husband's place - although, in the ninth century BC there is Sammuramat; an Assyrian Queen, (http://www.hyperhistory.net/apwh/bios/b1sammuramat.htm) wife of Nimrod - from what I read she did accompany her husband into battle - the women's role seems to be tied to if she was still a feminine love partner and looks like Sammuramat's military genius resulted in a win so she used her success to calculate Nimrod's murder. Not exactly in keeping with the picture we're told of Penelope at the loom.
Than I thought, what happens to a widows in ancient Greece - Turns out - If she is poor she went back to her family. If she were rich as our Penelope she got a new husband, usually a relative of the deceased husband. And then I remembered, years ago one of my friends in Kentucky was Jewish - back in the 50s and early 60s in Lexington that was like someone from Mars had landed. Anyhow, in the early stages of WWII living in Holland her father was taken - she was not much more than a baby, she and her mother were in hiding and within a week after the war her father's brother, who had not died in the camp, married her mother - When I looked quizzical she explained - that was how it was done regardless if the brother had another wife he married the wife of a deceased brother and had two wives. In this case there was no other wife. At the time I was only knowledgeable of marrying for love so it was all a new concept to me. Now I can see that is how windows were cared for and not tossed out with the garbage.
I think it is easy for us to imagine from our 'marrying for love' point of view that Penelope chose to wait because of love - but I wonder if there is some other message here - I read patience being banded around and loyalty - hmmm with how the loyalty was valued in servants I wonder if loyalty was the currency.
They got into this mess, as I again read - because of Odysseus' bright idea after a dozen suiters were after Helen and to keep those who lost from killing one another he suggests this pact - forget its name - I will see if I can find it again - Oh all you scholars of Greek probably know it on the tips of your fingers - anyhow, the pact was agreed to by all these guys that they would come to the aid of any of them that was under attack. And so Agamemnon uses the pact as the way to hoodwink Odysseus into his war - now the bit that has the gods taking Odysseus on this journey I am going to be looking at with judicious eyes - these gods sound to me more like the conscience of the character - back to Flip Wilson's comedy routine - "The devil made me do it."
To follow up on the rights of a women during ancient Greece - All houses belonged to men. Women were secluded into part of the house. The only houses that men did not own would have been the temples for the goddesses. The roles the women had in their separate portion of their house included spinning and weaving, cooking, carrying water, cleaning, and serving food. Some women also performed musical instruments and danced. Huh nothing here about raising the children - I bet that was a given.
After all that I have a new picture of "the nurse" who evidently was a slave and therefore never married because that would have shown to the master he could not trust her and her loyalty would be in question.
-
Knox in his intro to the Fagles; This is my synopsis but I feel an important point to remember throughout the Epic.
The Odyssey owes much to its power to enchant so many generations of readers to its elegant exploitation of something that war temporarily suppresses or corrupts--the infinite variety ofthe emotional traffic between male and female. Homer
displays an understanding of human psychology throughout.
A case in point is the first encounter between members of the opposite sex-Telemachus and Penelope in Book 1. She has just told Phemius to change his tune since the one about Odysseus pains her. Telemachus intervenes to remind her that Phemius is not to blame for her sorrow, it is Zeus who allots to mortals whatever destiny he pleases. He concludeswith harsh words to her: ......"Mother go back to your quarters . Tend to your own tasks.....As for giving orders men will see to that.....'
At this point (and other), it is important to remember thatTelemachus has grown to manhood without the correction and support of a father! He has been raised by women and so his normal adolescent rebellion wil come out strongly against women!As soon as his mother leaves he anounces he will call an asembly where he will give HIS orders to the suitors.
Like Shakespeare, Homer is an expert in Human Psychology, and perhaps, that of the Gods as well.
-
Wow - no rights to even change the TV station ;)
-
I bet quarters means the women's part of the house - I wonder when it was OK for the women to be out of their quarters? I wonder if she would be in this part of the house if her husband Odysseus was there - I wonder if there was a natural area or, if the houses were divided into men's and women's quarters - if so, was Penelope in this section of the house only because it was where Telemachus should be now that he is no longer a small child - hmmm lots to understand here in just that one phrase isn't there...
-
OH yes, I thought the phrase was familiar - my youngest grandboy reads Patrick O'Brian's series about the sea and one of the books is called:
The Wine-Dark Sea (http://www.amazon.com/Wine-Dark-Vol-Aubrey-Maturin-Novels/dp/0393312445)
Look another - Over the Wine Dark Sea (http://www.amazon.com/Over-Wine-Dark-Sea-H-Turteltaub/dp/0765344513/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1297897207&sr=1-1) by Turteltaub
Hmm I wonder if it is not so much about purple or deep red but about that inky look that the sea can look like on a warm night - but in Homer's time there would be no ink and the closest thing to use as a metaphor or simile would be wine.
Joan I did not know Hebrew was a language not typically used - was there a part of the world that used Hebrew as compared to other parts of the Jewish population spread all over before WWII? What is the difference between Yiddish and Hebrew?
-
Love your post, Barb. This bit
within a week after the war her father's brother, who had not died in the camp, married her mother
I believe this is common in oriental families.
-
Well I agree of-course Jude. (About Homer having psychology down pat)....just like Shakespeare and Sophocles....I think this is why they last...we can give any other type of explanation, but basically it boils down to if it rings true to our unconscious knowledge of what makes sense....this is why I love the description of Telemachus' final maturing....and he was a bit delayed...has to have been 20, as Ginny pointed out, and Alexander commanded an army at 16, Augustus rose to prominence at 19 (or so). (This is why I had high hopes for the untried Obama although of-course he was much older....not to be, unfortunately....)
-
JoanK and others interested in Homer's use of colour - This is a hotly debated issue among linguists and folks with an interest in the psychology of colour etc. I found the article I alluded to earlier, but it is too long to post here. The link follows :
http://serendip.brynmawr.edu/exchange/node/61
And below is one of the comments on the article:
"I cannot believe that the whole theory of "under-developed eyes" of the ancient Greeks is still promulgated as well as the theory of linguistic relativity. As the ideas of the ancient Greeks existed even before Plato so too did the ideas of Emmanuel Kant in German before he coined new terms for his philosophies. But I digress, the point is, colour perception and colour naming are very different things (the two may not be mutually exclusive, but they are perceptually and qualitatively different between languages). The theory of the evolutionary development of the ancient Greek eye (as for colour perception) has been disproved on any number of accounts, particularly in light of a few points: 1.) the person who decided that the ancient Greeks were not as developed in sight was altogether an amateur philologist and the then Prime Minister of England in 1858, Gladstone, who posited that the paucity of colour terms in Homeric Greek must equate to them being colour blind. Right, so we have a NON-Scientific approach which is completely unfounded - bravo! I suppose he could find some retinae lying about from 800-500 BC and perform a rod and cone analysis of the retina, which would be the scientific approach. This smells of the same 19th Century approach that the Germans used, for denigrating the modern Greeks... positing that all Ancient Greeks were blonde and blue-eyed and so the moderns were no longer heirs, (apparantly the Germans were heirs-apparent)... smack of "Aryanism?" (SIC) by Fallmeyer?! Sorry this is just utter crap, And 2.) The ability to distinguish 7 colours in a rainbow (from Aristotle's De Anima in which he states the 7 colours of a rainbow reflect the 7 tones of musical notation and possibly the 7 heavenly spheres, and explanations on refractivity of light in Ptolemy's Optica, to name but a few). This point espouses the ability of the ancient Greeks to finitely determine the seven colours of the visible spectrum of light (Red, Orange, Yellow, Green, Blue, Indigo, and Violet).
It is however true in my personal opinion, that the sea is wine-coloured (as per Homer) whereby if you have ever seen the swirly waves of seas during storms, which appear dark/hazy and sometimes dark blue almost purpley. The wine-coloured aspect must be thought of as swirling wine in a cup (not distilled) that is more akin to a Ribena berry juice colour rather than a brilliant red. Don't think of the coast of the Mediterranean as being aquamarine, journey further into the sea under stormy weather and then see if it's brilliant blue!). C'mon these people were seafarers, not coastal amateurs!
A quick read through Liddle and Scott will show a plethora of colour terms or colour associated terms in ancient Greek, and just like chloros is yellow-green, there is prasinos = green from prason = leek (the vegetable). Even in English, green and grow are from the same root word (in accordance with J. Pokorny and his PIE linquistic theory) which imply a young growing plant or shoot/shrub, so too the ancient Greeks applied their colour terms. So language develops the need to describe colour as it applies to the situation and that is what Ancient Greeks did...FYI a few colour terms in Ancient Greek (Homeric to 5th C Attic)"
I cut this opinion without including the colour terms, but they may be viewed, along with other opinions on the link given above. Enjoy - I did.
Μου αρέσει :)
Re the language question (Katharevousa). Joan I am sorry if I gave the impression that Katharevousa was JUST Attic Greek. That would have been much easier to learn, but it wasn't, it was a polyglot of past varieties of Greek including Koine, Medieval. It was however, predominantly Attic Greek, but also with smidgens of Demotic. The Purists invented a whole new language, in fact it is called an "artificial language". As I understand it, Katharevousa is still used in the legal professions and other bureaucratic organisations and also some churches.
The language question in Greece was very similar to that of Israel in that it was (not so much now as Demotic takes over) a true Diglossia. That is two varieties of the language being the standard. Although I studied all this, it is quite difficult to explain without resorting to lengthy quotations. May I be charitable and say that even though Katharevousa served its purpose for a certain part of Greek society, the majority of Greeks are happy to use Demotic, ie the language of the people.
-
Probably a good time now to quickly? note some differences between Attic Greek (AG) and Modern Greek (MG).
1. The pronunciation is different for several letters.
2. The endings of words differ.
3. AG is laden with what are called "particles", MG Greek uses only a small remnant of these.
4. The accentuation system is different. AG uses acutes, circumflexes and graves. MG did too, up until 1982 when the accentuation became monotonic, ie only one accent per word.
5. AG has "breathings", MG doesn't use them. e.g. Hydra in AG is pronounced as Heedra, in MG it is pronounced as Eedra. Helen is Eleni in MG.
6. The good things about AG and MG is that many, many abstract nouns remain the same in both languages. Over thousands of years of linguistic evolution this is kind of comforting to the MG learner. Many verbs also reflect this sameness. Some colour adjectives are the same, some not. I put a quiz about AG and MG colours together if anyone is interested in taking it. I would email it to you. For masochists only, but fun.
7. In general, having learned a little AG and a lot of MG, I would say that MG is much easier. Amen to that.
8. Both AG and MG have three genders. Feminine, Masculine and Neuter. (I could go on about cases here too, but grammatical stuff is a bit too dry for most).
Please bear in mind that this list is not written from a scholarly point of view and is by no means exhaustive. They are just points that I can think of now.
-
Oh this is great - we have so many with different experiences that we are able to dig deep to get a better picture of what we are reading other than simply taking the observations and scholarship from those who translated the work as 'the only' guidance to what we are reading - the realization that folks who lived 11 thousand years - wow 11 thousand years ago would have the knowledge and insight that we enjoy and yet, to realize how much of their morality and experiences we can relate to - what blew me away was to realize how the best laid plains of mice and men sorta thing that still plagues leadership is with good intentions caused Odysseus to get himself involved in what became the direction for his life and seriously affected the life choices of his family.
roshanarose several of us would not know if the list of differences was exhaustive or not - but having an idea that there are differences helps to put into perspective what the translators over the centuries are dealing with. I can see the advantage now of having access to several translations and I am so pleased that we have that access here in our group - this is s dream experience.
Now I must say I have not ever seen a wine colored sea - even a raw wine colored sea but then I do not think I have ever seen raw wine - fresh grape juice yes, and that is pretty dark and if the sun is below the horizon but its glow is still in the sky I could imagine the reddish tinge to a dark grape juice sea - I just have not see it - inky dark yes, - wine dark no but again I can imagine it.
Now for me the morning is NOT lovely, gentle, picturesque, rosy fingers - I've seen too many dawns from the edge of the mesa across from my house or from a dune on the Gulf Coast. The sun starts with a glow and then a sliver of a furnace hot flame of fire red that turns the window panes into ruby blood shot eyes - I am expecting any moment a god like size iron hammer to strike the earth where the sun is coming up as a blacksmith strikes an anvil - where as on the Gulf Coast it is as if a red ball of fire has engulfed the entire stretch of water and half the sky with the other sky half like half a bowl fading from indigo to navy to marine and finally settling into an orangey golden yellow reflection from a nearly white hot yellow sun against a light blue sky. The sky goes from trumpet's red glare to flutes.
But then 11 thousand years ago there were no trumpets - not for another seven centuries and bone flutes just do not wake the gods much less me in the morning. In spite of my annoyance with the sun-god's rude awakening I can still think that near Greece maybe some fairy pulled rosy fingers across the sky before he awoke. - or in this part of the world we just have a different sun-god who is not as mildly mannered as the sun-god in ancient Greece or Ethiopia or where ever he lived.
-
What an interesting article on color. If Homer were blind as has been believed, would he actually know what the colors were?
C'mon these people were seafarers, not coastal amateurs! hahaha, well there you are. I love these off the cuff comments on posted articles. I'm a coastal amateur and I saw no wine dark sea. It's true on the cruises we took that the sea takes on strange colors but it didn't look like wine. (Or anything I've ever seen in a bottle, and I DID look continually for the wine dark sea).
The wine-coloured aspect must be thought of as swirling wine in a cup (not distilled)
I am not an oenophile, (or an ophthalmologist) but having just had a thorough grounding in my face to face class on the properties of the proof of wine and distillation of same (of which I knew nothing) I wonder what kind of moonshine hahaa this person is acquainted with?
hahaha Have any of you ever swirled non distilled wine in a cup? I think the possibility among the readers here and of that article in general is probably nil? In the interest of accuracy and fully embracing the story, does anybody want to try making their own?
What a fascinating seque, and POV, thank you for bringing it here, Roshannarose.
This was interesting, Barbara: OH yes, I thought the phrase was familiar - my youngest grandboy reads Patrick O'Brian's series about the sea and one of the books is called:
The Wine-Dark Sea
Look another - Over the Wine Dark Sea by Turteltaub
Do you think that these authors were referring TO Homer's descriptions as a nod to great literature, rather than indicating the seas ARE wine dark? Another example of the influence of Homer? Or not?
Psychology, well we've come to the right place, I keep forgetting Dana is a doctor in this field, so I will rely upon her help us not miss the psychological implications of what we're reading, great point Jude S. I think we're admirably suited for this voyage and I love the enthusiasm here and expertise.
Barbara, you radiate, I love it. Good point on the nurse, I sort of glossed over the nurse as he's got to be 20 at least, but I do think she's also an important character.
Now the would/ could thing on Penelope seems MOST important, thank you for bringing it up, Joan K.
What do your translations all say about Penelope's ability to get rid of these guys? Let's get the lines for easy reference: are we talking about lines 266-267? Lombardo has T say (and T is the one saying it, we've not heard from Penelope) "She refuses to make a marriage she hates/ But can't stop it either."
"They are eating us/
Out of house and home, and will kill me someday."
That's his opinion. What's hers?
Either way, there's a little bit of stress. They are eating US out of house and home and will kill me someday. I'm thinking, Andrea, that any mother who sort of played along with this one is nuts, right?
So what is she doing here, she can't be enjoying this? Barbara asks if she can come out of her quarters, would YOU all want to come out with a house full of cigar smoking drunkards making merry and eating your food day and night? Demanding that you make a decision. Stress, stress, stress.
Joan K says To follow up on the rights of a women during ancient Greece - All houses belonged to men. Women were secluded into part of the house. The only houses that men did not own would have been the temples for the goddesses. The roles the women had in their separate portion of their house included spinning and weaving, cooking, carrying water, cleaning, and serving food. Some women also performed musical instruments and danced. Huh nothing here about raising the children - I bet that was a given.
So what do the suitors need her for?
I still think there's something missing here about how the Greeks ruled their kingdoms.
I think the most striking thing to me so far, the most serious tension or thread is the gods. You don't find too many books starting with a confab of gods deciding on the fate of the characters, nor do you find them taking on disguises and appearing amongst man? Do we? When's the last time you saw the gods all getting together and taking a part in the life of the protagonist?
Isn't there a TV show where that does happen tho? I am also thinking of the old movie with Cary Grant and Loretta Young, The Bishop's Wife where Cary Grant (was it?) appeared as an angel.
But it looks as if this first book has neatly summed up all of the state of being in a capsule. Odysseus (Ulysses) is not dead, he's caught on the way home, the situation meanwhile back at the castle, and not incidentally, the role the gods are going to play in this set out first. What odd gods they are, interfering in the life of man as they do, why is this so up front in the beginning?
Am I the only one with the Greek edition? We need to see, as Sally has put: Pope says Athene has celestial azure eyes. we need to see the Greek word and have our experts here tell us what it actually means?
SandyRose, I also liked the grey sided olive leaf allusion. I have always wanted an olive tree, but was put off by the time they take to bear, NOW last summer I just learned you can't eat them right off the tree at ALL! They HAVE to be processed, who knew?
Jude, those are excellent points, too, male/ female (that's thread #11) and T growing up without a father, good points. So he really has NOT had a male example, his grandfather is off in the mountains, the only males, the suitors, are rowdy and eating them out of house and home, it's a mess. I'm still trying to figure out which is the most predominant stressor, possibly the suitors? Brought on by the absence.
I tend to look at things like this: if the suitors were gone, what would be the stress? How would the story be different by removing this or that stressor?
O being gone might be a setback, but they could (and apparently are) have dealt with that? So it's the suitors, they want the kingdom and she, naturally, does not care for a forced marriage. They don't want to force the issue (why not?) and so things amble along 10 long years, till the gods in the form of (Athena) stir T up. As Book I ends, he promises in the morning (Lombardo has him calling them at the end of Book I "arrogant pigs," he's going to tell them to get out.
Antinous, a suitor, immediately recognizes that T has been prompted "by the gods, " but he's not deterred because he also has a prayer: "May the son of Cronus never make you king/ Here on Ithaca, even if it is your birthright." So it seems it's whoever has the most favor with the gods may win, the fact that T is obviously spoken to by the gods means nothing, as Antinous seems to feel the gods are an EOE.
When you start talking about Cronus you go way back. Cronus was the precursor of the Olympian gods, he was a Titan, children of Uranus and Gaia, Heaven and Earth. These are the oldest creation myth gods. Cronus and his sister Rhea had many children, which Cronus swallowed so as not to be supplanted, but Rhea hid Zeus on Crete when he was born and handed Cronus a stone instead, which he ate. Possibly Cronus was not the brightest bulb in the firmament. I love these old creation stories.
When Zeus grew up he forced Cronus to throw up the stone (now traditionally displayed at Delphi) and all his swallowed siblings. Zeus et al., waged war on the Titans and won, the Titans were consigned to Tartarus. This extraordinary narrative of succession is paralleled among the Phoneticians and the Hittites in the 2nd millennium BC, and it's thought they may have brought it to Greece sometime. Part of it shows the separation of Heaven and Earth. A completely different set of myths has Cronus after he got the kingdom from Uranus ruling in the so called Golden Age on earth, this was almost an Eden. Cronus is "mainly a figure of myth (rather than of religion) and rarely the object of a cult. The Romans identified him with Saturn." (Oxford Companion to Classical Literature).
Cronus is an old god, I love "the son of..." Everything in the Iliad is "the son of" half the time you don't know who you're talking about, also especially strong in Jason, everything is the "son of Aeson." So genealogy does seem to matter.
You really can't help comparing this to Milton's Paradise Lost and another creation of heaven and earth.
We sure have covered a LOT in these opening pages, that's a heck of a lot of plot for 14 pages.
What will happen, one wonders? Shall we read on now and find out? Do we feel confident enough with Book I already? Could we/ should we do 2 and 3 for Monday? I want to see what happens at the meeting the next morning.
What other thoughts do you have on Book I?
Off to a great start!
-
"May the son of Cronus never make you king/ Here on Ithaca, even if it is your birthright."
Okay, so if Odysseus were history (which they are all assuming), then the one to inherit the property would be Telemachus. But at what age? I expect that the suitors want to marry Penelope before he comes of age thereby usurping his birthright. Was there a proper waiting period for missing husbands before they are declared dead? What happened to property if there wasn't a male heir?
-
Well, we have a marked difference in translation of the scene between mother and son. In Fitzgerald, Penelope has come down to ask the minstrel to sing something else. [side note: it does seem to me that after 20 years she should be well past this point of grief. Could it be part of her campaign to keep the suitors at a distance?"]
Anyway, Telemakhos tells her, as Jude posts, that the 'poets are not to blame, but Zeus who gives what fate he pleases to adventurous men". But then the translation changes markedly. Fitzgerald has:
"Men like best a song that rings like morning on the ear.
But you must nerve yourself and try to listen. Odysseus was
not the only one at Troy never to know the day of his
homecoming." Then, per Fitzgerald,
"the Lady gazed in wonder and withdrew, her son's
clear wisdom echoing in her mind."
-
Albert Cook treats that passage-
...Men acclaim the song the most
Which has come round newest of all to those who hear it,
Let your mind and spirit resign you to listening.
Odysseus is not alone to have lost his day of return
In Troy. Many other mortals perished there also.
Then Telemachus tells her to - get back in house etc.
ending up with-
For the power in the house is mine.
She was amazed at him and back into the house she went.
The sound minded speech of her son she took to heart.
She entered the upper chamber with her serving women,
And then wept for Odysseus, her dear husband, until
Bright-eyed Athene cast sweet sleep upon her eyelids.
-
Quote from Barbara : Than I thought, what happens to a widows in ancient Greece - Turns out - If she is poor she went back to her family. If she were rich as our Penelope she got a new husband, usually a relative of the deceased husband. made me think of Catherine of Aragon "Humble and Loyal" who when 3, was betrothed to Arthur, son of Henry VII of England. Arthur was not quite 2 at the time. Arthur was a sickly youth, and after his death, Catherine was betrothed to the future Henry VIII, Arthur's brother. The primary reason for the betrothal was Henry VII's desire to keep Catherine's dowry.
Source : www.tudorhistory.org/aragon
I am not too sure if the notion of dowry existed in Ancient Greece, but it certainly would be a strong incentive to keep the bereaved daughter-in-law "in the family". I found this portion of an article in about.com ancient history, which may shed some light on Penelope's situation. Of course, this can only be conjectural regarding Penelope in particular.
Types of Marriage:
There were two basic types of marriage that provided legitimate offspring. In one, the (male) legal guardian (kurios) who had charge of the woman arranged her marriage partner. This type of marriage is called enguesis 'betrothal'. If a woman was an heiress without a kurios, she was called an epiikleros, and might be (re-)married by the marriage form known as epidikasia.
It was unusual for a woman to own property, so the marriage of an epikleros was to the next closest available male in the family, who thereby gained control of the property. If the woman were not an heiress, the archon would find a close male relative to marry her and become her kurios. Women married in this way produced sons who were legal heirs to their fathers' property.
Dowry:
The dowry was an important provision for the woman, since she would not inherit her husband's property. It was established at the enguesis. The dowry would have to provide for the woman in case of either death or divorce, but it would be managed by her kurios.
This explanation raises the question: Who was Penelope's guardian (kurios)? Telemachos? Or, is it possible that this "law" was post Bronze Age?
-
The Book Club Online is the oldest book club on the Internet, begun in 1996, open to everyone. We offer cordial discussions of one book a month, 24/7 and enjoy the company of readers from all over the world. Everyone is welcome to join in.
Welcome to
The Classics Book Club, now discussing
(http://www.seniorlearn.org/bookclubs/classicsbookclub/cbcodyssey.jpg)
Free SparkNotes background and analysis on the Odyssey (http://www.sparknotes.com/lit/odyssey)
February 15-21: Book I: Meanwhile, Back in the Castle....
February 22-29: Books II and III: Telemachus, Nestor, and Agamemnon
(http://www.seniorlearn.org/latin/ulysses_penelope/PenelopeatLoomJohnWWaterhouse1912.jpg)
Penelope at her Loom
John William Waterhouse
1912
Discussion Leaders: Joan K (joankraft13@yahoo.com) & ginny (gvinesc@gmail.com )
Maps:
(http://www.seniorlearn.org/latin/ulysses_penelope/Odysseusmap.jpg)
(http://www.wesleyan.edu/~mkatz/Images/Voyages.jpg)
(http://www.seniorlearn.org/latin/ulysses_penelope/Odysseusmap2.jpg)
Translations Used in This Discussion So Far:
kidsal: Alexander Pope, George Palmer
Dana: Fitzgerald
Gumtree: Butler, T.E. Lawrence, Cook, Rieu
EvelynMC: S.H. Butcher and Andrew Lang
Mippy: Lombardo
Roxania: Lombardo
Pedln: Pope, Fagles, Butler
PatH: Lombardo,
JoanR: Fagles
Frybabe: Butcher and Lang
Deb (bookad): Lattimore, E.V. Rieu
roshanarose: T.E. Lawrence.
JudeS: Fagles
Babi: Robert Fitzgerald
Mippy: Pope, Lombardo
ALF43: Butler (corrected in edit)
Babi: Pope? Fagles
BarbStAubrey: Fagles
straudetwo: Lombardo
rosemarykaye: Fagles
caroljwl: Fagles
JoanK: Fagles.
sandyrose: Rieu,Lombardo
ginny: Lombardo, Fagles, Pope, Murray, Butler
Homer and the Epic Form:
By definition an epic is a long narrative poem, written in lofty style and dealing with the preternatural exploits of a national hero. Certain accepted conventions mark the epic. The most important are these:
A:The theme is a series of adventures befalling a national hero.
B:The poem begins with an invocation of the Muse (the goddess of epic poetry, one of nine goddesses of poetry and of arts and sciences.)
C:The poem begins in 'media res'(in the middle of things) . What has happened before is told by flashbacks.
D:A classic ,dignified meter is used. In Greek & Latin dactyllic hexameter.
The Stock Epithet
Homer uses many stock epithets, the conventionalized adjective or descriptive phrase applied again and again to persons and things.Morn is usually rosy fingered;the sea is wine dark or loud resounding;Odysseus is brilliant Odysseus or Odysseus of many wiles. Scholars realized that the poet used set combinations , of noun and epithets as building blocks to fill out his six foot lines .Brilliant Odysseus for for a two foot space and for a three foot space he had Odysseus of many wiles.This became an accepted device for Greek epic style---(From
Greek & Roman Writers by McNiff)--- Submitted by JudeS
This is off-subject from the Odyssey, but does address ancient language, to answer a post above:
Barb St A. wrote: I did not know Hebrew was a language not typically used - was there a part of the world that used Hebrew as compared to other parts of the Jewish population spread all over before WWII? What is the difference between Yiddish and Hebrew?
Since the First Diaspora of the Jews, in the 8th-6th centuries, B.C., Hebrew had been used in prayers and, at some period in time, to write out the Five Books of the Old Testament, but no country in the world had a Hebrew-speaking population for centuries. At the founding in 1948 of the state of Israel, which had been called Palestine under the British Mandate (1923-48), there was considerable controversy about what the language of the new state would be, with some politicians suggesting Yiddish, some even suggesting English, but Hebrew won out. It's difficult to learn, but is wonderful!
Yiddish is a "mash-up" of Hebrew, German, and a little English. It was widely spoken in Eastern Europe, Poland, and the Pale in Russia, and widely used in theater, including vaudeville, and newspapers, and was the published language of many famous novelists and essayists.
I watched my grandparents reading Yiddish newspapers as a child and was puzzled by the Hebrew characters in which they were written. Yiddish theater has almost ceased to exist, although in New York City there have been many attempts to revive it. Yiddish is a rich and beautiful language, but has, likewise, no country to call home in the 21st century.
-
The word used to describe Athena is glaukopis Athene.
In the lexicon glaukos= "in Hom.,prob. without any notion of color, gleaming, silvery, of the sea. Later,certainly with a notion of colour, bluish green, gray, Lat. glaucus, of the olive. glaukopis as epith. of Athena, with gleaming eyes, bright-eyed."
glaux, glaukos is the word for owl, "so called from its glaring eyes" Athena is also called owl eyed I believe.
-
Sorry to interrupt with a side issue but these are the facts about the revival of the Hebrew language.
Eliezer Ben Yehuda (1858-1922) was the driving spirit of the renewal of the Hebrew language. Born in Luzhi, Belarus he went to school to learn hebrew at the age of three (This was the custom among the Jews).Later he studied French, German and russian. There was , at that time a hebrew newspaper which he read. Thus he became acquainted with the new Zionists led by Theodore Herzl.
He studied the history of the Middle East at the Sorbonne in Paris and became convinced that without hebrew as a national languagethere could not be a jewish State.
Ben Yehuda emigrated to Israel in 1881 and raise is son entirely in Hebrew. He became part of the Hebrew Academy of languages whose task it is to bring Hebrew into the modern world. This group existseven now integrating new words like computer, to key in etc.etc. Ben Yehuda created the first Hebrew dictionary, wrote articles for newspapers and journals in hebrew and became the "Father of the Language".
He died in1922. 30,000 people came to his funeral. It is said that before Ben Yehuda people could speak Hebrew, after him, they did.
-
Hi all, i'm lurking since i don't have time to re-read the book - in ANY translation, :). I've got two books i've borrowed from friends and must get them back in a reasonable time and a book from interlibrary loan that i must return in three wks.
But your discussion is so interesting that I'm peeking in each day to eavesdrop.
The last time i read Odys was in 1967 when i was the lead teacher in a group of five who developed a hi schl humanities program for the sophomores. The course was based on my world cultures course that Pennslyvania had just instituted. My main partner was the English teacher who choose all the literature to go w/ the culture i was teaching at rhe moment. We started w/ the creation story from the Bible and she paired that w/ Lord of the Flies as a beginning and an ending of societies. Then as i was teaching Egypt, Greece and Rome, she
taught The Odysessy. The rest of the team were an ex priest who taught the religion or
philosophy of the time or place, an art teacher and a music teacher who put in their expertise.
The art teacher conducted world tours in the summer and had slides of the architecture and
art. All of the literature was from the culture, not some westerner who had written abt the culture.......... What fun that was to develop and to teach.
I'm looking forward to reading all the little tidbits of info you all provide...... Jean
-
P.S., i love the picture of Penelope at her loom w/ all the suitors. Thanks to whomever found it and placed it, Joan or Ginny....... Jean
-
Welcome, Jean!! That sounds like a great teaching experience! If you like that one, definitely don't go anywhere, we've got literally almost a million of Odyssey illustrations. :)
Do you have any insight on why Penelope couldn't get rid of the suitors? So glad to see you here!
-
OMG Ginny, i don't think i can remember any details from 40 yrs ago. Unfortunately, i only got to teach the course for two yrs, i got married and moved to your town in 1968.
Barb mentioned
"I am thinking of how we know our own history - some, because we learned it in school but much, because many children visit local historical monuments, participate in parades and holiday celebrations that bring the story to our attention. Also, there are popular movies that bring the nation's history to our attention."
I always said to my students, particulary my college students, and other adults w/ whom i talk history, " as far as we know......." or "most historians believe........" bcs we are learning new history everyday and still historians have disagreements abt what is " truth" . Actually that's part of the fun of history for me. I just love continuing to learn new perspectives and new "facts"........ Jean
-
Jean - I so agree; what would life be like if we were not continually learning new things? Although I do think my appetite for this has increased far more in recent years - when I left university I felt like I never wanted to read a book again, and when my children were babies I didn't have time to read much - now it's such a pleasure to find out as much as we can.
I feel that my education was very narrow so far as history goes - at school we did small parts of history in great detail, whereas I would like to have more of an overview. It's a bit like my driving - I have certain routes around this not very large city, but it's taken me years to work out how even some of the areas link up. Similarly, I struggle to understand how things happening in the UK at any period relate to things going on in, say, China, India or even the USA at the same time. When something does slot into place, it's such a revelation. If anyone can recommend any books that would help, please do!
Thanks
Rosemary
-
GINNY: Barbara made the interesting comment about women being seclude that you attributed to me above.
Also from BARBARA: "Joan I did not know Hebrew was a language not typically used - was there a part of the world that used Hebrew as compared to other parts of the Jewish population spread all over before WWII? What is the difference between Yiddish and Hebrew?
Hebrew was (and still is) ananogous to church Latin, used in religious services, but not actually the spoken or written language in nonreligious affairs anywhere, as far as I know (in fact less used than Latin, which was used by scholars).
However, there is a lot of Hebrew in Yiddish. Yiddish is a vernacular which started in Eastern Europe. It is a mixture of Hebrew and German words, and is written with the same alphabet as Hebrew. Most Eastern European Jews know andd speak it. And there was a movement to make it the Israeli language. However, Jews from other parts of the world don't know Yiddish, including the many Sephardi Jews, whose ancestors had been expelled from Spain. The argument was that the language should be one that represents the heritage of all Jews.
Of course, a religious Jew would know a fair bit of Hebrew from studying the Torah and other religious books. But even so, not know words for many everyday things and activities. Biblical Hebrew, written for shepherds, is incredibly rich in words for all kinds of livestock, but poor in words for many everyday activities, not to mention things like airplanes and computers. One man, named Ben Yahudah, took it upon himself to modernize it by adding words for things not covered (for example the word for pen, et, is the old word for feather), and simplifying the grammar.
-
But two languages are enough for us: greek and the sometimes obscure English it's translated into. I downloaded Pope's translation onto my kindle (it's free) and I couldn't understand it, even though I'd just read Lombardo's and knew what he was trying to say. FRYBABE AND OTHER POPERS: are you having trouble?
-
JUDE: when I wrote the post above, I had somehow missed your post. Yes, Ben Yahuda was amazing. His dictionary was still the one I used when I was in Israel in the 60s. I just spent some time looking for it -- it is hiding in the same placeas the two copies of The Odessey that I can't find.
Having used it as a housewife, I can tell you one weakness at least: very few food names are in it. When I went to the grocery store, I wouldhave to bring the empty bottle, or the last scrap of whatever it was, and say "I want this".
-
Joan Hi,
Can you imagine how many new words have been invented since Binlical times?
Knowing the development of the Hebrew language gives me a greater understanding of the discussion here of ancient Greek vs. Modern Greek. Knowing the Bible (in Hebrew and English) gives me insight into the world of the Greeks.
The basic emotions and problems remain the same....now as then.
Here is a quote from Greek and Roman Writers in a text by a Catholic Professor:
"Western culture is a stream fed by two main tributaries-one rising in Palestine, the other in Greece. To the Hebrews we owe the power and development of a personal God and a divinely inspired moral code....To the Greeks and Romans we are
indebted for the humanist tradition which has given us so much great literature, philosophy and art and which lies behind scientific inquiry."
-
Someone said that if Penelope married before Telemachus reached his majority her new husband would get the property. If that's so, I think Penelope was doing a very delicate balancing act. If she sent all the suitors away, one of them might carry her off, but if she keeps them all dangling, she is safe while they all think they still have a chance.
-
JUDE: I had never thought about our heritage in just those terms, but that is very true. How lucky we are to be able to go so far back in time, and follow both those tributaries.
PAT: That makes a lot of sense of Penelope's actions.
-
I can't think about the story of Cronos without thinking of Goya's ghastly painting Saturn Devouring his Son. (Saturn=Cronos) Warning it really is ghastly--don't look at it right before eating.
http://www.ibiblio.org/wm/paint/auth/goya/goya.saturn-son.jpg (http://www.ibiblio.org/wm/paint/auth/goya/goya.saturn-son.jpg)
-
Good Grief!! How yucky!
ROMAN NAMES: I notice that POPE uses the Roman names, not only for Odysseus (Ulysses) but for the gods. Do other translators as well? Does anyone need help with these names? The main ones so far are Athena (Minerva or Diana) and Poisedon (Neptune).
-
JoanK, once seen, never forgotten. I saw it (a copy, not the original) 50 years ago and still remember. Goya had a skill for the horrific.
-
I've missed not being on top of the posts and having time to read about Troy and Homer - just caught up with the posts and THANK YOU for all the effort to explain Hebrew and Yiddish and the history of how Hebrew became the language it is today - facinating -
You know the thing that strikes me is how much change that we are hardly aware is happening and yet it is with us all the time - I am always struck when a water line breaks or a new commercial building's foundation which does go at least 5 times deeper than a residential foundation and they find our past in the process - even here in the states where our buried past does not include a thousand years much less thousands of years of western civilization - more often it is the evidence of Native village or camp grounds that is found - and now added to that I never realized before just how much change is in language - amazing - what a gift to have people who love language so much they want to learn other languages and to think, we are fortunate enough to have several of these folks right here in this discussion - wow -
Well all day today I was in training - from 8: to 5: - and all day tomorrow as well - we need all these hours to renew our license every other year plus this was training on working with seniors when they want to sell their home - not only the legal ramifications, but tax issues and then the biggie that is more evident in this age range - the families - some that pull apart and some that help and some that hinder and still other's want to take over - legally we have a contract with the seller and oh oh oh - then on top the older seniors - many times only when the will is opened or probated we learn that daddy had a couple of kids that no one knew about [that was a long war in far away land or daddy was a beatnik and sprinkled fairy dust children all over the map] and so there can be no sale till they are found - on and on it goes -
Interesting there was a young very attractive agent in her early 30s among us - we had to divide up by age range to learn how the different age groups like to communicate and so everyone could see the thinking of the different age ranges working on a common issue - anyhow chit chatting she was complaining how boys or young men today do not seem to know how to tell a girl she is pretty and ask girls out on a date. Looking in from the outside it was easy for us to suggest that because boys and girls are brought up together today without emphasizing the differences and both learn and compete when they are young it is difficult for boys all of a sudden to think of a girl as much more than one of the texting guys - friend, fellow and equal and now they should be opening doors for her or telling her she looks cute or is pretty much less taking her out in a way that makes him feel he is in charge.
That is when my thoughts went to Penelope - and women in general - there does not seem to be a way that a women can be a seductress or love interest and one of the guys, an equal - someone said it earlier - she may have been holding in tact the wealth of Odysseus for her son the only way she could while maintaining her femininity by stringing these suiters along till Telemachus was of age and could stand up for his rights. And it appears here we are 11 thousand years later and women still cannot be powerful, intelligent successful career women while being feminine enough for the guys to pursue her as a love interest.
Anyhow on top of all the classes when I got home at 5:30 I turned around after grabbing some grapes and a cup of coffee to attend a large neighborhood meeting held at the school with city officials because some newer residents do not like all the deer and see them as a nascence - they are pitted against the long time residents who are used to them and only grow as landscaping what the deer will not eat where the ones that want everyone to stop feeding them so they will disappear and they can have roses and pansies etc. in their front yards. Oh me oh my... and so it has been a long long day and will be another long day tomorrow with having to take a test in order to get credit - so I am off to study and will not be sticking my nose in here till maybe tomorrow night but for sure Saturday.
-
Some fantastic reading here. I hate to say this but I had no idea how Hebrew came to be the language of Israel. As noted many times before, everyone has something to bring to this discussion.
JudeS - Somehow I missed what you had written about why "Homer uses many stock epithets, the conventionalized adjective or descriptive phrase applied again and again to persons and things.Morn is usually rosy fingered;the sea is wine dark or loud resounding;Odysseus is brilliant Odysseus or Odysseus of many wiles. Scholars realized that the poet used set combinations , of noun and epithets as building blocks to fill out his six foot lines .Brilliant Odysseus for for a two foot space and for a three foot space he had Odysseus of many wiles.This became an accepted device for Greek epic style---(From
Greek & Roman Writers by McNiff)--- Submitted by JudeS"
This makes so much sense and has come to me as something of a revelation. I remember writing in one of my posts "I wonder why Homer uses colourful adjectives so frequently?". And now it is clear. The veil has been lifted from my eyes, so to speak.
JudeS - Interesting also to see how the early Greek alphabet, borrowed originally from Phoenician, Proto-Canaanite, has so many similarities to early Hebrew. Alpha and Aleph are identical in Ancient Athenian script as resembling a Bull's /Oxen head laid on its side, and Beta (both were originally pictographs) morphed into our B. That B originally signified "house" - a two-storeyed house, so common in warm Mediterranean climes, written as a tall box with a line through its centre.
Source: Reading the Past - Ancient Writing from Cuneiform to the Alphabet Intro. by J.T. Hooker. ISBN 0-7141-8072-6
I will definitely be taking this book on our voyage. It is fascinating.
-
FRYBABE AND OTHER POPERS: are you having trouble?
Not as much as I did with the Butcher and Lang translation, JoanK.
So far, the Roman names for the Gods haven't bothered me too much, except for Minerva (Athena). That one always makes me stop just a sec.
-
Some questions from: Temple Univ:
Why is Athena so concerned with Odysseus? Why is Zeus so surprised with her plea? In the line ending her speech, the words "dead set against," odusso, puns on the hero's name.
Why does Homer tell the story of Aegisthus? Why does Athena mention Orestes to Telemachus?
-
JEAN, I love that team approach to an entire program. It is bound
to give the student a much clearer and firmer grasp of a culture and
era. Kudos to the Pennsylvania school system.
Oh, I do wish I had a clearer overview of world history. I am still
surprised at times to discover that such-and-such events were taking
place in Asia while Europe was doing thus-and-so. I need a large
chart that plots what was going on throughout the world in a given
time.
Thanks for bringing up that point about Telemakhos inheritance vs.
losing it to a new husband, PatH. It emphasizes for me the importance
of his making it clear to the suitors that he was now master of the
house and it was his decision whom, or if, his Mother would marry.
(If they were simply after the property, maybe some of them would
now go home!)
-
Wow, you all dazzle, I must say, such interesting things here today.
PatH! I had completely forgotten about Goya's representation of Cronus eating his children, what a horror that thing is! Good thing we know he had to throw them up alive. The last Goya exhibit I attended at the Met was a sold out venue and believe it or not, (this was years and years ago) Katie Couric and her children were there, she is some kind of tiny. SRO at that thing, wore one out trying to get IN it.
I think you must be right on Penelope. The organization of the Greek kingdoms has become my own personal bone to pick, I've got several books on the history of Greece, so I am going to keep on but I liked your thought: it makes sense when nothing else does.
The new book The Classical Tradition traces the path of Penelope throughout the ages and you all would be shocked (I was, anyway), at what different people in different times made of her. She's a saint representing true marital fidelity to some and a harlot to others believe it or not. It's amazing what different people throughout the different ages have interpreted from the same lines (maybe they are reading Pope hahahaa)...but still it runs a 360 gamut, all based on WHAT she was doing leaving those suitors there. And it goes right through every mention of her through time.
But it's one woman against a crowd of men in a man's world, and let's face it, Telemachus has been in a state of boyhood, so she's really had little choice. And from the Oxford Companion to Classical Literature's description of the times involved, I think she was lucky to be able to do that, apparently one made one's own laws in this time period, kind of scary. I now see her holding on to some ideal that perhaps (the suitors) not all share. I'd think the first 14 or so years she HAD no choice, it's tie a yellow ribbon time, she misses him and she's keeping the light on for him, and her only heir is a very young boy. But as the book opens, the veil is falling from his eyes, he's growing up, thanks to some prodding from Athena.
I wonder, do you? I think she might actually have gotten used to running the kingdom, do you? Like some military wives? Yes or no?
And the former king Laertes (I still don't understand him, maybe we'll hear more later ) and her own father (is he alive?) seem passive and silent. But they MUST have had SOME influence sometime or other (Or O did, somebody did) or the suitors would kill each other and the winner take the prize.
Andrea said it first: she obviously is ALSO cunning and wily, she and the "wily" Odysseus are a good match; she's also using her wits to keep for him (and for her) her kingdom.
But I KNOW there is a reason, otherwise throughout the ages people, especially the ancients, would have questioned this. There may NOT be an answer, after all it was the ancient Dark Ages , maybe nobody knows. I'll keep looking, I mean you have thousands of people setting out to help Menelaus get his wife back, the Trojan War, they swore a pact to help each other? But they are all home, Odysseus is the only one who has not made it in the Odyssey, he's still wandering...so why aren't they helping HIS family? Has she not called them?
Here's what I've found so far:
By 800 BC the population of Greece was already structured much as it was going to be in the classical age, and in communities that were somewhat different in organization from those of Mycenaean Greece, being small independent cities, which owed no allegiance to a higher authority. During the following century the art of writing was rediscovered, and there was a resumption on a large scale of communication and trade with the East, and the start of exploration and colonization in the West. Greece was now about to enter the period for which documentation exists.
Despite the fact that Greece was made up of a large number of independent communities, the Greeks formed a single people, with one and the same civilization; they spoke the same language and were distinguished thereby from the "barbarians;" there was a broad similarity in the political institutions (government in city-states, normally under oligarchic or democratic constitutions); they had a common religion and respected the same oracular shrines; they had a common heritage of literature from Homer onwards, and their art, despite certain diversities, had unity; many of the Greek colonies were founded in common by emigrants from more than one state." (OCCL)
In reading this I actually got chills. "Greece was now about to enter the period for which documentation exists." Talk about your wild west, it appears anything goes. Isn't it fascinating how this presages the so called Dark Ages which occurred after the Fall of Rome? (One never knows any more if the "Dark Ages" when Rome fell is or is not back in fashion?) Is it? But here we have a former Dark Ages emerging and here's Penelope alone holding out against it. I myself have lived thru three sets of thoughts on the Dark Ages: there was a period of Dark Ages after the 476 Fall of Rome, there was not a period of Dark Ages , there was a period: I don't know what they think now. Anybody?
Wow.
I'm beginning to wonder who the actual protagonist IS in this story? So far our hero of the Epic Hero is MIA. So for whatever historic or cultural reason, she's holding on by herself.
Man o man!
Oh my word and here comes Sally with the $64,000 question: the nature of the NAME of Odysseus!
I had found on another university site a set of questions on the Odyssey and have temporarily (I hope) lost them but Sally has hit the nail on the head?
Some questions from: Temple Univ:
Why is Athena so concerned with Odysseus? Why is Zeus so surprised with her plea? In the line ending her speech, the words "dead set against," odusso, puns on the hero's name.
Why does Homer tell the story of Aegisthus? Why does Athena mention Orestes to Telemachus?
Apparently Odysseus's very name means more or has more allusion than what we think. It seems to have more than one implication. We need somehow to figure this out, too.
Why IS Athena (Minerva for those who have that version) so concerned with Odysseus, anyway? We tend to brush off these superfluous (to us) and silly (to us) gods. Should we? Super question and I'm thrilled to see it here, what do you all think?
JoaK, I'm sorry to attribute to you something somebody else said here. You all are so dazzling when I come in here it's like being bombarded with dazzling rays and that commercial where everybody is talking at once. hahaha I can't separate the dazzle from the rays.
For Monday we want to move on to Books II and III, but for now what do you think about Sally's Temple University Questions and the possible meanings of the word Odysseus?
Inquiring minds never HEARD of this and want to know? I knew nothing would escape this group!
-
Babi - here are some sites that give a history timeline
http://www.hyperhistory.com/online_n2/History_n2/a.html
http://www.fincher.org/History/WorldBC.shtml
http://www.infoplease.com/ipa/A0001209.html
http://ehistory.osu.edu/world/TimeLineDisplay.cfm?Era_id=4
Also, check w/ your library to see if they have any high school or college world history, or western civ text books. They often have a time line in them.
Jude, those two elements from Jewish history and Greece and Rome are what every teacher of western civilization begins their course stating: monotheism, code of laws, the importance of the individual and democratic principles is the basis for western civilization.
-
Hi, everyone! Sorry for being late to the party--I've just been trying to catch up with the posts!
Kidsal asks:
Why does Homer tell the story of Aegisthus? Why does Athena mention Orestes to Telemachus? (ftp://Why does Homer tell the story of Aegisthus? Why does Athena mention Orestes to Telemachus?)
I think it's because the whole Agamemnon/Clytemnestra/Aegisthus story makes such a perfect foil for the Odyssey. Clytemnestra is the wife who doesn't hold off her suitors--she chooses Aegisthus out of revenge for Agamemnon's murder of Iphigenia, and as a result Agamemnon is murdered. It looks like this theme of comparing and contrasting what's going on in these two families is going to be recurring. When Athena is telling Telemachus to go out and search for Odysseus, she says, in Lombardo's translation:
Haven't you heard how Orestes won glory
Throughout the world when he killed Aegisthus,
The shrewd traitor who murdered his father? (ftp://Haven't you heard how Orestes won glory
Throughout the world when he killed Aegisthus,
The shrewd traitor who murdered his father?)
Sheila Murnaghan, who wrote the intro to the Lombardo translation, points out:
The male heroes of the Odyssey view Clytemnestra's behavior as an expected norm and a reason to mistrust all women, as Agamemnon makes clear when he sees Odysseus in the Underworld and warns him not to fall into the same trap. (ftp://The male heroes of the Odyssey view Clytemnestra's behavior as an expected norm and a reason to mistrust all women, as Agamemnon makes clear when he sees Odysseus in the Underworld and warns him not to fall into the same trap.)
I think we can add this to Ginny's list of tensions! It could be an endless list.
As to the meaning of the name "Odysseus," I'm no Greek scholar, so I'm just going with what my intro tells me: that it's related to "odussomai," to suffer pain. Stay tuned--I expect that the pain of Odysseus will turn out to be a motif.
In the line ending her speech, the words "dead set against," odusso, puns on the hero's name. (ftp://In the line ending her speech, the words "dead set against," odusso, puns on the hero's name.)
In Lombardo, it's "Why is Odysseus so odius, Zeus?"
-
Oh, wait, here's another one! In The White Goddess, Robert Graves says:
. . . Odysseus ('angry' according to Homer) was a title of Cronos and referred to his face artificially colored crimson with the dye of the sacred alder. The origin of the story that Odysseus stopped his ears with wax and refused the Sirens' summons is probably that in the late thirteenth century BC a sacred king of Ithaca, Cronos's representative, refused to die at the end of his term of office. This would explain why he killed all the suitors for his wife Penelope's hand, after disguising himself in dirt and rags during the usual temporary abdication. (ftp://. . . Odysseus ('angry' according to Homer) was a title of Cronos and referred to his face artificially colored crimson with the dye of the sacred alder. The origin of the story that Odysseus stopped his ears with wax and refused the Sirens' summons is probably that in the late thirteenth century BC a sacred king of Ithaca, Cronos's representative, refused to die at the end of his term of office. This would explain why he killed all the suitor's for his wife Penelope's hand, after disguising himself in dirt and rags during the usual temporary abdication.)
In The Penelopiad, Margaret Atwood takes the idea that whatever original events inspired the Odyssey took place when the Mediterranean was shifting from worship of the Mother Goddess, with all of the sexual rituals surrounding kingship that went with it, to worship of the patriarchal Olympians and goes even further with it. She equates the twelve murdered maids--analogous to the twelve companions of Odysseus-- with the traditional priestesses of the Mother Goddesses, who had to be killed so that the patriarchy, as embodied by Odysseus, could take over. (Interestingly, Graves asserts that the Vestal Virgins also had their origins as priestesses of the Mother Goddess.)
-
I haven't read this book, just came across it in my History Newsletter, but some you who are interested in the evolution of speech might like to look inside it. A History of Communications from Speech to the Internet by Marshall Poe.
http://hnn.us/roundup/entries/134250.html
Do you remember the PBS series on the development of English? That's probably now available as a video or disk set.
Roxania's post reminded me of the book When God Was a Woman. Have any of you read it? That was probably 30 yrs ago for me. I loaned it to a theological student and never got it back! Huuuummmm, should i be pleased it liked it si much he wanted to keep it, or shld i suppose he and his fellow theologians tho't it was blesphemous and destroyed it?!? ??? ::)
-
Welcome, Roxania, we're so glad you made it on board!!
Tension #12!! You're absolutely right, and it went right over my head.
I loved this: It looks like this theme of comparing and contrasting what's going on in these two families is going to be recurring.
I have a thing about themes. I always want to talk about themes/ threads/ and now you've mentioned motifs! hahaha
I need to get them all straight.
as Agamemnon makes clear when he sees Odysseus in the Underworld and warns him not to fall into the same trap. I can't wait to see him there. It's quite interesting that Murnaghan views Clytemnestra's behavior as an expected norm in a man's opinion of that age!
Hello? Agamemnon... well we'll see about Mr. Agamemnon.
Loved the bit about Graves and Atwood and the Mother Goddess and Mabel's When God Was a Woman, I haven't read it but I do think I've heard of it. The History of Communication sounds really good!
"odussomai," to suffer pain. Oh my goodness. Have you all seen O Brother Where Art Thou? With George Clooney? It's from the Coen brothers, and it's based on the Odyssey, and the theme song is The Man of Constant Sorrows. Take a look, this preview gives you a good idea of the movie, showing the Soggy Bottom Boys singing I Am a Man of Constant Sorrow. It's even got Sirens. hahahaaa Very very VERY cleverly done. I first heard about it in a class on the Odyssey believe it or not, I thought the professor was crazy, he wasn't. Maybe we could make it our theme song hahahaa
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=08e9k-c91E8
PS I wonder if you can figure out who the Cyclops is? There are two blind seee-rs, it's hard to tell with the second one in this clip, but he's the man with the hand cart on the railroad tracks. Really cleverly done.
PPS: Barbara, that KIA commercial with Poseidon is priceless!! I love the end: "An Epic Ride." hahahahaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa
-
I can't relate to that Man of constant sorrows Cohn brothers stuff . I guess I'm just not an American.
-
Mabel - Those history/timelines are great. Thank you.
-
Mabel ~ Ditto! The timelines are great! Finally found a chance to look at them again!
Dana ~ The Coen brothers films are, IMHO, a mixed lot and an acquired taste. Despite the thumbs-up from our Ginny I didn't like that one, and my hubby hated it so much he wanted to walk out before the end.
You bring so much to this discussion, Dana, with your background, please forget the Hollywood stuff and bring more of your knowledge of Greek and Latin to this varied table, amica mea.
-
:) Dana, it's probably an acquired taste, I myself was a bit stuffy about it till I actually saw it. (And I huffed, and tut tutted half way thru it, it does have one questionable scene I think they could have left out). It's a joke. It's amazing how many ways the Odyssey lives in 2011. Imagine what the events of the original would look like in a teaser, it would make the Transformers look pale by comparison. hhahaa The score is brilliant, woven in with the modern movie. I didn't even realize what I was hearing.
We seem to have made the leap into the unknown beautifully. As we're here on the cusp (Monday) of Books II and III, are there any elements you all wonder about in Book I you'd like to discuss, or do you have questions you'd like to add, at this point?
How do you feel about the background so far? Have you made the transition into being comfortable with what we're reading or are you struggling with the references, the way the book is written, and the names? Aegisthus threw me for a momentary loop and now when I see it I think of Roxania's recurring contrast of homecomings and it makes sense.
I think that's a great idea, Frybabe, if your translation you find simply is not making sense or speaking to you, to get one which does. I like Pope, I like his words, but as somebody said here, he seems more Pope than Homer, and when you find your mind wandering as you read so that you need to read the same sentence over and over without really understanding what it says, it's time to check out somebody else's version.
My Greek version (the Loeb of course) has Dr. Murray saying "The flashing-eyed Athene," and we need a map. Penelope and Home are in Ithaca, and as the book opens, Odysseus is with Calypso, a prisoner. Now where, exactly, is she? I need to get the maps up today in the heading. I am so geogaphy76 challenged with a map in 2011, I am ashamed last night as the horrific events unfolded in Bahrain to having to look it up on the map. So let's get up a map so we can see Ithaca and possibly where HE is now. I'll put up the one Mippy found useful first.
Dr. Murray in his translation put in a note here for the "flawless Aegisthus," (1.30) saying "Used to the formulaic style as we are not, Homer's audience was more able than we to separate the generic description from the particular event."
OH and here's a footnote (I'm going to try to [put in all his footnotes since a footnote from Dr. Murray is like talking to...well...)
On Roxania's wonderful take on Odysseus's name and Sally's Temple U questions, Dr. Murray says:
(I'll copy it in here so those of you who can read the Greek can see the actual word): see how yellow it is!
(http://www.seniorlearn.org/latin/graphics/Murraymanofpain.jpg)
As a personal aside, this old book means a lot to me, not only for the notes of Dr. Murray but those of Dr. Klein. Have any of you been in our Books & Lit sections long enough to remember LJ Klein? He was a retired physician who had opened clinics for the poor in Kentucky I think it was and led some of our book discussions before his untimely death. He read Latin and Greek and had mentioned to me how much he would enjoy reading Homer again, in passing, so as a surprise I sent him my copies of Dr. Murray, I wasn't using them, to keep but he wanted to be sure I had them back when he became seriously ill and they've got HIS notes in them too. :) So when I pick this book up several voices of the past speak to me: our past here in the Books & Lit since 1996, Dr. Murray (1866-1940), and his Odyssey translation made in 1919, LJ's voice, and your voices here in 2011, casting light on these older things. Personally that makes this particular Odyssey of mine especially relevant, to me.
I must say the description of the golden bowls for washing hands before dinner and the sumptuous feast set before Athena in her disguise, the pitcher of gold with the water to wash and the silver basin for the water (is this the first finger bowl?), bread and "dainties," platters of all sorts of meat placed before them by the carver, golden goblets for the wine, and then after dinner entertainment, all sounds pretty sumptuous. For any age, actually. No veggies? hahahaa
Let me go find those maps!
-
Oh and here's Mippy posting at the same time with the same "acquired taste," hahaha
O Brother Where Art Thou is just a joke. hahaha A satire. Sort of a Monty Python type thing, a riff.
Husbands and movies: I tried to show my husband Monty Python's Holy Grail which I think I have memorized, and he lasted exactly to the point where the coconuts were shown as the horse hooves sound before he got up and said it was the "stupidest thing he ever saw," and left. If you've seen that one you know how many seconds into the movie it was. I actually could act it out, parts of it.hahahaa De gustibus. :)
NOT a requirement for enjoying the Odyssey! I'm beginning to wish I hadn't put it here, but in the interest of...knowing what other people talk about... on this topic... there it is, for better or worse.:)
At any rate here is your map 442, Mippy and the other two, now where are we actually putting Calypso and Odysseus?
(http://www.wesleyan.edu/~mkatz/Images/Voyages.jpg)
(http://www.seniorlearn.org/latin/ulysses_penelope/Odysseusmap2.jpg)
I'm leaving off the nice last one as it seems to diverge more toward My Nice Trip in the footsteps of Odysseus and less from what's accepted as where he went. :)
-
Wait, does the Ohio Wesleyan have Calypso on Malta? Then the bottom one here is not so far off:
Ohio Wesleyan: (http://www.wesleyan.edu/~mkatz/Images/Voyages.jpg)
Somebody's Odysseus recreation travels:(http://www.seniorlearn.org/latin/ulysses_penelope/Odysseusmap.jpg)
OK so we have him leaving Troy, now in ...Malta with Calypso and going to Ithaca, right?
-
JEAN, thank you so much for taking the trouble to find those history timelines. The fourth
link was just the sort of thing I wanted. I've happily added it to my favorites for handy
reference.
so why aren't they helping HIS family? Has she not called them?
GINNY, maybe they did. It's been twenty years, so it's unlikely that kind of help would have
continued so long. Penelope is now what we might consider 'squared away' in her situation,
and most would probably consider her satisfactorily settled.
I did see "Oh Brother, Where Art Thou", and consider it a classic. The music was haunting
and some of the scenes magical. At the same time, it had characters who were all too human.
People have such different tastes. My son found 'Monty Python and The Holy Grail' hilarious.
He saw the film so many times he knew all the dialog and could recite whole sections of it,
in character. He has a quirky sense of humor.
Odysseus was almost home at Pylos. I'm curious to know what sent him off in the opposite
direction. The meddling of the gods, no doubt.
-
Now I do love Monty Python. Everyone used to watch the flying circus every week when I was a junior houseman back in the UK many moons ago. The common room was crowded out! I guess it was a cult thing at the time.
Re Penelope--I expect the norm would have been for her to remarry (like Klytaemnestra) so she had to connive hard and long not to, which she is still doing at the beginning. I don't think she is "squared away", she has to work at keeping the status quo. She seems to have expected Odysseus to return and never lost that faith. One does hear about people like that. Maybe we will find out more about why.
-
Coincidentally, Anna and I have just been discussing the Madeleine McCann case, and whether her parents can really still believe that they will find her. That has been 3 years, I think, but it's a long time for a 4 year old. People go on believing because what else can they do? But in Penelope's case it's maybe a bit different - it's not her child, and so many other men would have died in battle, etc, that it seems surprising that she still holds out any hope.
-
I have to admit, I'm with Klytaemnestra. If my husband had sacrificed my daughter to the gods, I'd have killed him too!
ROXANIA: WELCOME, WELCOME! You're not late, you've come in just at the perfect time. We are just setting off, and haven't been blown off course yet, although I expect we will be.
Correction: I said Diana was a Roman name for Athena. Not true, PatH reminds me. Diana is the Roman name for another goddess.
On Athena's gray eyes: sometimes they are called "owl-gray". Sometimes bright or flashing. Of course, some owls are gray, but their eyes aren't. Owl's eyes ARE bright and flashing. I wonder, could the origilal have refered to "owl-like" and there be some confusion as to whether that refered to their plumage (gray) or their eyes (bright, flashing etc.)? Just a thought, from a birder.
-
Have we forgotten someone?
If you went and questioned old Lord Laertes
He I gather, no longer ventures into town
but lives a life of hardship, all to himself,
off on his farmstead with an aged serving woman
who tends him well, who gives him food and drink
when weariness has takrn hold of his withered limbs
from hauling himself along his vineyard's steep slope .
Laertes son is missing in action. There is no word of when , where, how or if he has died. His wife is dead. His only Grandson is thinking of going to find his father (or his father's body).
Homer presents us with pain and tragedy along with the world of old age in Laertes. He is an important symbol. A father mourning a lost son. So many wars. So many dead sons So many fathers alone with their grief.
-
I confess I couldn't answer any of the temple University questions. Hmmm, contrasting Ag's family and O's. Brilliant.
I'm not surprised that Clytemnestra was held to be more typical than Penelope. Cultures that hold women in low esteem, always seem to have an undercurrent of "the evil woman".
Perhaps Athena's interest in O goes back to the Iliad. I don't remember the Iliad well enough. Was she on the greek side there?
-
The Book Club Online is the oldest book club on the Internet, begun in 1996, open to everyone. We offer cordial discussions of one book a month, 24/7 and enjoy the company of readers from all over the world. Everyone is welcome to join in.
Now reading:
(http://www.seniorlearn.org/bookclubs/classicsbookclub/cbc2odysseysm.jpg)
February 22- Books II and III: Telemachus goes on his own quest
(http://www.seniorlearn.org/latin/ulysses_penelope/OdysseybodyofPatroclus.jpg)
Attic black figure kylix, 530BC
Attributed to Exekias
Antikensammlungen, Munich
In this scene, set between 'eyes', warriors fight over the body of Patroclus,
stripped of his armour. One attempts to drag the body away.
(http://www.seniorlearn.org/latin/ulysses_penelope/OdysseyclyagamurderGuerin.jpg)
The Murder of Agamemnon
Pierre Narcisse Guerin (1774 - 1833)
Louvre, Paris
Discussion Leaders: Joan K (joankraft13@yahoo.com) & ginny (gvinesc@gmail.com )
Useful Links:
1. Critical Analysis: Free SparkNotes background and analysis on the Odyssey (http://www.sparknotes.com/lit/odyssey)
2. Translations Used in This Discussion So Far: (http://www.seniorlearn.org/bookclubs/odyssey/odyssey_translations.html)
3. Initial Points to Watch For: submitted by JudeS (http://www.seniorlearn.org/bookclubs/odyssey/odyssey_points.html)
4. Maps:
http://www.seniorlearn.org/latin/ulysses_penelope/Odysseusmap.jpg (http://www.seniorlearn.org/latin/ulysses_penelope/Odysseusmap.jpg)
http://www.wesleyan.edu/~mkatz/Images/Voyages.jpg (http://www.wesleyan.edu/~mkatz/Images/Voyages.jpg)
http://www.seniorlearn.org/latin/ulysses_penelope/Odysseusmap2.jpg (http://www.seniorlearn.org/latin/ulysses_penelope/Odysseusmap2.jpg)
(http://www.seniorlearn.org/latin/ulysses_penelope/Odysseyclyandagaredfigure.jpg)
Clytemnestra and the body of Agamemnon
Attic red figure kylix
attr. to the Byrgos Painter
c. 490 BC
Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York
(http://www.seniorlearn.org/latin/ulysses_penelope/Odysseyatheneandtflax.jpg)
Telemachos, accompanied by Athene disguised as Mentor, searches for his father
Engraving and etching on paper
John Flaxman
1805
Tate Gallery
JUDE: we were posting together. Yes, homer lets us see all of the effects of war. The aging father as well.
-
MIPPY: I missed your post on Hebrew -- it was at the end of the heading, and I must have scrolled past it. Do you speak or read Yiddish? Is it written right to left, as hebrew is?
-
The word used to describe Athena is glaukopis Athene.
In the lexicon glaukos= "in Hom.,prob. without any notion of color, gleaming, silvery, of the sea. Later,certainly with a notion of colour, bluish green, gray, Lat. glaucus, of the olive. glaukopis as epith. of Athena, with gleaming eyes, bright-eyed."
glaux, glaukos is the word for owl, "so called from its glaring eyes" Athena is also called owl eyed I believe.
-
"I'm not surprised that Clytemnestra was held to be more typical than Penelope. Cultures that hold women in low esteem, always seem to have an undercurrent of "the evil woman"."
JoanK.....
That is the point I was trying to make a while back. The evil woman held in low esteem is the stereotypical cultural attempt of the male to rationalize the unconscious fear of woman's power as the bearer of life
-
DANA: your post about eyes was one of four in a row that I missed seeing. Something must have happened.
So perhaps it would seem that the progression MIGHT have gone like this: originally, the word in Homer was gleaming, silvery, of the sea. Then the idea of color got added. Then, because owls had a similar name because of their gleaming eyes, Athena's eyes became associated with owls.
-
JoanK - The Roman Goddess of the Hunt is Diana. The Greek Goddess of the Hunt is Artemis.
I have also been wondering why Athena favoured Odysseus. It could have had something to do with her half brother, Poseidon, who was Athena's rival for the patronage of the city of Athens. Zeus, father of both, pitted them against each other and wanted to know what each of them could offer Athens. Poseidon offered a spring of saltwater (or was it fresh water?); but Athena offered olive trees. Zeus chose Athena's offering. In my reckoning and having read about gods and goddesses ego, Poseidon was probably miffed about it. There is likely to be something in the Iliad about Athena's and Poseidon's attitude to Odysseus. The gods did have to arrange Odysseus voyage home to coincide with Poseidon's visit to AEthiopia.
Also, according to some sources Athena was largely responsible for the idea and execution of the Wooden Horse and gave Odysseus ideas on how to build it.
Athena and Hera both sided with the Greek side in the Trojan War, said to be due to Paris' choice of Aphrodite in that beauty competition.
-
FYI Greek/Roman gods and goddesses
Apollo - Apollo
Aphrodite - Venus
Ares - Mars
Artemis - Diana
Athena - Minerva
Demeter - Ceres
Hades - Pluto (see more info on link)
Hephaestos - Vulcan
Hera - Juno
Hermes - Mercury
Hestia - Vesta
Kronos - Saturn
Persephone - Proserpina (I once had a possum called Persephone)
Poseidon - Neptune
Zeus - Jupiter
www.ancienthistory.aboutcom/od/romangods
-
"Zeus chose Athena's offering. In my reckoning and having read about gods and goddesses ego, Poseidon was probably miffed about it."
Anybody else hear an echo of another story in JOANK'S words? This reminds me of Cain's reaction when God preferred Abel's offering to his. (There was a good reason for that, but that's another story.)
It's clear the various gods and goddesses have favorites among the
mortals, whom they support and defend in times of trouble. So of
course, this brings them into sly conflict with those gods supporting
favorites on the other side. I can see why they are often seen as playing games with mortal lives for their own amusement. And of course, as rivals for dominance in cities and the worship of these humans.
-
What interesting posts these last have been.
I am glad to have Jude taking up the cause of the father in absentia, too, and what a good point, another father/ son relationship.
Roshannarose, thank you for those great musings on Athena/ Odysseus, it's fascinating to see what all may lie behind these 14 initial pages, and the Roman equivalent of the Greek gods, we probably need to put that up somewhere too. We're saving all these for a Reader's Guide we will construct of your questions and charts, links and comparisons, so we're saving as we go.
Babi, what an interesting series of thoughts on the pettiness of the Greek gods.
You said, I can see why they are often seen as playing games with mortal lives for their own amusement.
Let me wonder this with you all: this concept of "Gods Behaving Badly," being spiteful, taking sides, quarreling like children, and a lot more and a lot worse, how does this strike your own 2011 sensibilities?
Is this a deal breaker as regards being able to relate to these people? How does this conflict with the way we view our own idea of deity in 2011? Can you relate to these gods with these all too human traits? There ARE "modern" gods with these traits, am I thinking of the pantheon of Indian (the country of India) gods? And are there more around the world?
How does one reconcile "gods" who behave like children?
Great points here!
-
I suspect that Odysseus might be Athena's guy because they have so much in common. Odysseus is described as "wise," but with the main meaning of "clever" and "cunning."
In her book "The Goddesses in Everywoman," Jean Shinoda-Bolen, a Jungian therapist, describes Athena as the ultimate Daddy's girl, having been born from the head of Zeus. She's the goddess of wisdom, but she has a lot of cunning in her makeup, too. As Shinoda-Bolen says, if Athena were around today, she'd be the kind of woman who succeeded by kissing up to the powerful men in her organization, while not giving any other women a hand up. And the first thing she does after the conversation with Zeus is hop into a disguise--the first of many. (Granted, that's what the gods did when interacting with humans, but in her case it seems especially appropriate. I love the way she never even seems to have to think about which disguise she should assume.)
I've been wondering about the whole political set-up in the story--are we looking at the end of a matrilineal succession? Otherwise, why would Odysseus be king if his father were still around? And Laertes is referred to as "Lord Laertes" and "that good old man," so it doesn't sound as though he was ever a king. It would make sense if Odysseus became king by marrying the daughter of a previous queen. That would also explain why there are all these suitors, even though Penelope has also, presumably, produced an heir--but only a male one. If she had had a daughter, I'd bet the suitors would be after her instead.
It makes me wonder whether, if Graves is right about whatever events inspired the story happening about 800 years before the Odyssey was written, Homer, who didn't have access to GoogleScholar, wouldn't necessarily have known about the matrilineal aspect of it, and so superimposed the story onto the patriarchal kingship model of his own time. It's the sort of thing Shakespeare did with his sources, after all.
And if you buy that idea, we can add yet another tension--the old matrilineal system vs. the new patriarchy, where Telemachus inherits because he is Odysseus's son.
-
ROSE: thank you for that list of Greek-Roman names. Your possum would have been proud of you.
I admit I prefer the name that's the easiest to spell.
"Also, according to some sources Athena was largely responsible for the idea and execution of the Wooden Horse and gave Odysseus ideas on how to build it."
Then she definitely was on O's side during the seige of Troy, and is just continuing her help. The gods do seem to be loyal -- once they pick someone to help, they stick with them. Unfortunately, once they pick someone to be against, they stick with that also.
-
ROXANIA: an interesting take on Athena. And I had no idea that greece had been matrilineal. Do historians have dates for that?
-
I think the kings come to power thru a power struggle,not necessarily a transfer from father to son.. As T. says,
"There are eligible men enough,
heaven knows,on the island,young and old,
and one of them perhaps may come to power
after the death of king Odysseus."
Interestingly, I discovered that Penelope, Klytaemnestra and Helen are all related. K. and H. are sisters and P. is their cousin. Her father is Agamamnon and Meneaus' brother. They are kings in their own lands.
-
Goodness! The relationships among these Greeks get very complicated, don't they.
-
If they ever were, it would have been in pre-historical times. It's just an idea that I got because I read Margaret Atwood's The Penelopiad, and she put me onto Graves--and the whole idea of a Mother Goddess cult being replaced by the Olympians was just kind of a throwaway line in a larger discussion. Plus, it seems to account for Laertes not being a king and all those suitors. So I'm definitely running away with something that could well be pretty flimsy. But if it had been the case, a religious shift like that would probably involve a change in the political system as well--separation of church and state not having been invented yet!
I once read an interesting book by a guy who got interested in the question of why so many ancient shrines around the Mediterranean that had originally been dedicated to female gods were later rededicated to male gods. He comes up with an explanation, but I'm not entirely sure I buy it:
http://www.alphabetvsgoddess.com/
From what little I've read, there seems to be a general sense that matrilineal succession was practiced in many early European societies, but I'm not sure how much hard archaeological evidence there is for it--or who was doing it, or when they stopped. I do seem to remember that, ages ago, when I was an undergrad, the theory was that Mother Goddess worship came into being before primitive people figured out the connection between sex and the arrival of a baby nine months later, and ended when they figured it out--and men decided they were responsible for the whole process, and women were merely incubators. So obviously it's something very early in human history. And as Telemachus said, it's hard to be sure who your father is. Your mother is pretty obvious.
-
Roxiana, your comments are enough to make me want to go off and do some investigating. I remember reading about matriarchal and other kinship groupings long ago in anthropology classes. I don't recall if it was considered common in ancient times.
Since I am reading the Pope version, your comment about Shakespeare hit home. Every time I pick it up to read, I feel like I am reading a Shakespearean play.
-
I wrote that wrongly--for what its worth I meant to say that Penelope's father is the brother of Helen and Klytemnestra's father.......!
re the greek gods as portrayed here anyway--I see them as mankind's best fantasy of the ideal life....immortal, eternally vigorous and enthusiastic, given to feasting and lovemaking and for diversion interfering in the affairs of mankind...
they certainly add a delightful dimension to the story
perhaps these people who play virtual reality games today feel a bit like Greek gods!
-
"perhaps these people who play virtual reality games today feel a bit like Greek gods!"
or goddesses :)
Next week we'll read Book 2.
-
Frybabe, I REALLY feel like I'm getting a Shakespearean version, because I'm listening to Ian McKellan read the Fagles translation--and I can't tell whether it's because of the translator or the reader! Certainly I've never heard anyone else who could pump so much nuance into a single syllable! I'm also reading the Lombardo translation, which is more like Hemingway! I also think the whole thing is kind of Shakespearean, because each character has such a well-developed point of view--and I'm not sure we really get that again until Shakespeare turns up. There was a long time during the Middle Ages when writers relied a lot more on idealizations and stock character types.
Dana and JoanK, I loved your comments about the video games! We inherited some ancient video game set years ago--the only one we've ever had--from a relative who upgraded. One of the games, which I think was called "Populus," pretended that each of the players was a god. At first all you could do was raise or lower the level of the earth to cause floods, but your power increased as your number of followers grew, and then you could cause wars and disease and all kinds of stuff for your opponents' followers, and deliver prosperity and victory to yours. The idea, obviously, was to get as many followers as you could, while eliminating everyone else's followers.
Poor Telemachus can't seem to do anything by himself! Athena recruits the crew, loads the supplies, provides the winds, tells him what to say to Nestor (which explains why he asks about that promise between Odysseus and Nestor, which he otherwise probably wouldn't have known about). Makes you wonder why she ever thought he had any potential at all.
-
yes, I agree, Telemacus is a youth who needs to grow up. A case of retarded developement!
-
As i had said before, i read When God was a Woman too long ago to remember details, but i tho't some of might enjoy reading it, and i might go back for a second reading.
Here is the Amazon site for the book. The description is not helpful, but the consumer reviews are thoughtful and very interesting and give you a better idea of what is in the book.
http://www.amazon.com/When-God-Woman-Merlin-Stone/dp/015696158X
Jean
-
Sounds interesting--thanks, Mabel!
-
I always thought that The Earth Goddess was first and then the Sky God. These deities don't only exist in Greek religion (Gaia and Zeus). The Earth Goddess was worshipped because she was the mother and controlled the seasons, and fecundity in general, or so it seemed. After humans had stopped their nomadic existence and settled in one particular location, fights developed among the inhabitants of different settlements as to who should have the land with the most water, the best soil and the best farming land. As soon as the fights began, men being physically stronger, became higher in status, and protectors of goods, and the warlords began to worship the Sky Gods, in the Greek case, Zeus. Just a theory. I read it somewhere, but can't remember where. In short - Earth Goddess = Peace; Sky God = War.
I have visited Olympia in Greece twice. The original temple built there was to Hera, Zeus' wife in Olympian terms. btw Olympia and Mt Olympus are not the same place. Mt Olympus is on the mainland, a fair way north of Athens, and Olympia in the Pelopponese. Olympia is a beautiful place, peaceful, serene and beautifully set not too far from a river. The running track is straight and is about 50 metres long. There is no seating, just sloping banks of grass for the masses. There is however, one prominent marble seat, resembling a throne. Our guide told us it was originally for Hera and the Women's Games which took place in history before the games were for men only. Women were then forbidden to attend the Olympic Games. After I wrote this (from memory)I checked about Heraia, Hera's games for women. Some say it took place at Olympia the same year as the Olympics were held, but on different days to the mens' games. One other site says that the Heraia were held in Argos.
Another interesting point about temples in Greece. It is normal to see a Orthodox Church built on the foundations of an ancient Greek temple. They wouldn't want to let those amazing sites go to waste. One church I saw in Paros, with a magnificent view, had huge marble slabs as its foundation. A wall, also on Paros, was built mostly of column drums and slabs from an ancient temple. They like to recycle. Of course I would have preferred to see the original temple, but I was told that it was a matter of convenience that the Islanders of Paros recycled the marble for building, after all people never TAKE marble to Paros.
-
Odysseus is mortal; his Father; Laertes – Grandparents; Arcesius, and Chalcomedusa
Odysseus’ Mother; Anticleia – Grandparents; Autolycus and Amphithea
Laertes, the son of Arcesius, King of Ithaca and Chalcomedusa.
Grandmother: Chalcomedusa - chalcos ("copper") and medousa ("guardian" or "protectress"), identifies her as the protector of Bronze Age metal-working technology.
Grandfather: Arcesius was the son of Cephalus, and king in Ithaca. Zeus made his line one of "only sons": his only son was Laertes, whose only son was Odysseus, whose only son was Telemachus. - Cephalus is an Ancient Greek name, used both for the hero-figure in Greek mythology and carried as a theophoric name by historical persons. The word kephalos is Greek for "head", because Cephalus was the founding "head" of a great family. It could be that Cephalus means the head of the sun who kills (evaporates) Procris (dew) with his unerring ray or 'javelin'. Cephalus was one of the lovers of the dawn goddess Eos.
Odysseus’ mother Anticleia is the daughter of Autolycus and Amphithea. His mother, Anticleia is the granddaughter of the trickster god Hermes (who was the father of her father, Autolycus).
Grandfather: Autolycus is the son of Hermes and Chione. Chione was the daughter of Daedalion. She was very beautiful, and had countless suitors, including the gods Apollo and Hermes. Apollo waited for nightfall and then approached her in the guise of an old woman. Hermes put her to sleep and raped her. She became pregnant with twins, one (Autolycus) the son of Hermes, and the other (Philammon), the son of Apollo.
Here is a nice web page of the Zeus Family of Gods and Goddesses (http://www.theoi.com/Olympios/ZeusFamily.html)
I thought this was an interesting quote
The majority of Zeus' children were only linked to him with the briefest of genealogical references. Most of these were the mythical founders of certain (historical) noble and royal houses, who naturally wished to claim descent from the king of the gods.
And then later in history we have kings and Rulers crowned with the blessings of the Holy Roman Church which was the considered direct link to God. These noble and royal houses sure like to advertise a pedigree that cannot be topped…
-
Researching and someplace I did read that the reason the games were boys only is because the boys were nude. The reason for that is that earlier there were girls who dressed as boys and won - the embarrassment was too great and so to assure that boys were the winners, in keeping with the original plan for the games, as an all boys games, naked the proof was assured. The chariot races evidently were the only part of the games that were coed. However, the Olympic games originated after the Trojan War and after the Odyssey - 776 BC is the beginning of the Olympic Games
So far I am finding it was the Minoan civilization that held women in high esteem with women jumping over bulls on wall decorations and goddesses ruling the roost. They appear peaceful as compared to the Mycenaean civilization of pre-Greeks who were war-like and who existed on piracy and trade.
I wanted to look at the culture from the point of view of what marriage meant for women, and what part of the house they could enter. One thing leads to another and timing for this story becomes part of making suppositions - the Polis, ‘City/State’ concept of governing came after the Dark Age, which was after this Bronze Age, which is the time of the stories, the Iliad and the Odyssey. There seems to be many who say that Homer is telling a story that happened 800 years prior to his lifetime - and so I am guessing some of his references would be during the time he lived - as everyone agrees there was no books much less the internet to make sure his references were timely.
Sparta had a different culture than most of the other areas in what we now consider the Greek World. The women wore lighter fabric, short, tunic dresses and had more power that allowed them to inherit land from their husbands and fathers. I cannot find anything specific about Ithica, however, the time of the story is before the Dorians, during the time when clans and tribes were the way of life.
Think of what we have learned about Tribal law since Iraq. Trial culture and law is as a result of family loyalty that started with a clan and grew to include several families. - Early Roman families include I believe 7 families among the earliest tribes of Rome that later became a dozen and grew from there. During the time of Odysseus I cannot find the number of tribes in this area - we do know that Tribal law is not the same as the Democratic system of the Polis. Sparta is credited with an early City/State form of government but not until 800BC which is after the Odyssey - and Athens Democracy is around 508 BC.
And so again, we are talking of a time before City/State, Polis, when Tribal Law and Clan loyalty was the rule. The communities of people would have been alike and in one way or another all related to each other. There are sites explaining who could or could not marry and so there had to be some understanding of defective children as a result of in-marriage. I am also thinking Hollywood has so glamorized the people in these stories and during this time in history that we may be trying to imagine behavior, ethics and personal morality based on our conception of modern man - and so I question the motive of Penelope based on Love. Love in marriage is a medieval concept.
It sounds like Odysseus was a clan chieftain or king. The marriage rituals that describe women dressing the bride, that include a long ceremony, took place in a later time around 600-525 BC coinciding with the art found on the various archaeological vases that also depicts women talking at fountains - the Trojan War and the Odyssey took place some 300 - 400 years earlier -
There were two marriage rituals in keeping with tribal societies during the Late Helladic, in the area of Mycenae, Troy, Athens and other nearby areas during the Bronze Age. I cannot tell which Penelope would have experienced. One practice involved Bride kidnapping. The more a girl kicks and screams the more she is thought to be virtuous and if she refuses to eat or sit she is again thought to be pure and virtuous.
Another marriage ritual involve the new wife tucked away in a room - head shaved - wearing boys clothes - [that I cannot figure out why] - and the groom, after eating with his chums, sneaks in - this sneaking in to see his wife secreted away can go on for weeks on end so that some women are pregnant when they finally join the household.
After marriage, we learn from our story that a women had quarters on the second level. Again we have no information if this was Homer telling the story from his perspective 8oo years later since we only have evidence of stone houses after archeological digs.
Known is that after 600 BC the Greek house was a two story timber framed house with a tile, slate or stone roof, built around a courtyard. There was a 'men's apartment or 'banqueting hall' and the women's quarters, which were the rooms on the second floor with the men’s quarters directly underneath. Usually women were kept secluded in their second floor quarters, out of way of male visitors whom the husband might be entertaining at a banquet and symposium.
The symposium is a 'drinking party'. All who attend wore wreaths and reclined on couches. A female double-aulos player, who often was a hetaira, a call-girl, entertained the men along with female slaves or other female entertainers (like dancers or acrobats). Although wine was the drink of choice it was always mixed with water. The host decided the ratio and everyone abided with the choice.
It was more honorable for women to remain indoors. The household was under her management; where as for men it was more shameful to remain indoors rather than taking care of affairs outside the house. The husband lived out of doors in the Agora, the Assembly, the gymnasium, on the farm, and in time of war, on warships or on the battlefield.
Because women were viewed as incapable of a rationally informed moral decision, she was not trusted to go outside of the house unaccompanied; the husband or a slave did the shopping. The only times a woman could go outside without damaging her reputation would be to attend weddings, funerals, and religious festivals limited to females
-
From what I am reading it appears that a matriarchal society could have been active during the Minoan Civilization - they were big on Goddesses and they honored women, who wore distinctive high hair styles - no time now but a look see to find any women rulers would probably give us a clue.
-
Goodness gracious what a discussion you're making of this, and all the elements you bring in here dazzle more than the last. One of the huge benefits of our book discussions here, is that it's like talking to a million encyclopedias, and so many of your ideas are things I've personally never heard of. Or thought about.
Now today we start with Books II and III which I personally loved. Pirates of the Caribbean has nothing on the Odyssey, and Lombardo is in his element here. How are your translations holding up in this section? I WOULD like to hear McKellen on this!
So Telemachus starts out on his own Odyssey, another parallel! What struck YOU most about Books II and III? We'd like to hear from everybody today, Presidents Day in the US with all it's ancient backgrounds and ramifications, believe it or not.
One of our overarching questions needs to be does this book have anything to say to US in 2011? Isn't that the definition of a "classic?" That it still speaks to us? Standing in the way of that somewhat is the behavior of the gods, perhaps?
But this morning we have Tension #...is it 13 or 14?--the old matrilineal system vs. the new patriarchy, where Telemachus inherits because he is Odysseus's son.We're keeping a list, good one Roxania!
Geneology, the political structure, the women goddesses, the I also think the whole thing is kind of Shakespearean, because each character has such a well-developed point of view--and I'm not sure we really get that again until Shakespeare turns up element, and the game Populus, which made me just about fall out of my chair! You all do know that some of the most popular video games (and board games) involve creating your own Roman kingdom and getting to play god with the characters. This: "Populus," pretended that each of the players was a god. At first all you could do was raise or lower the level of the earth to cause floods, but your power increased as your number of followers grew, and then you could cause wars and disease and all kinds of stuff for your opponents' followers, and deliver prosperity and victory to yours. The idea, obviously, was to get as many followers as you could, while eliminating everyone else's followers. blew me out of the chair....sounds like a combo of Facebook and Twitter and the ancient Greek gods. Amazing the things which come up in these discussions!
What will be discussed today? This discussion reminds me of a sushi bar I just saw in Heathrow Airport, where the diner sits expectantly with his own thoughts and watches a silver spiral of wondrous treats, each different and interesting, on a moving track snaking in front of him. He grabs what he wants and enjoys regarding the rest, and he gets to make a full meal and something to talk about later on. You can't beat that experience,. and we have it right here without undergoing a scanner, too. :)
Here YOU are providing the sumptuous feast! What are your thoughts on Books II and III? I absolutely loved them.
I'm going to glory in what you just said one more time and then frame some thoughts on II and III.
-
Marcie has done these two spectacular pages for us, which will appear as links in the heading, and I wanted to call your attention to them as our headings here will be filled with art (submissions always welcome):
http://www.seniorlearn.org/bookclubs/odyssey/odyssey_points.html : Jude's list of initial points to watch for
http://www.seniorlearn.org/bookclubs/odyssey/odyssey_translations.html
Everybody's translations.
Beautiful work, I thought you'd like to see it! Thank you, Marcie!
-
The discussion about matrilineal succession has been astonishing! I'd previously assumed the sons of kings were kings, as in the background of the Greek Alexander the Great.
Is any of the confusion about who would rule because Ithaca was a City-State, not a big kingdom?
Other nearby city-states have their own active kings or chieftains. Perhaps the suitors include some
of the younger sons of those chieftains, who do not expect to inherit wealth at home. So they are fortune hunters, as Lombardo says: eating (Penelope) out of house and home.
Apparently Laertes, the former king, is retired, not disabled:
In Lombardo [line 205]
Go and ask old Laertes. They say he never
Comes to town any more, lives out in the country,
A hard life with just an old woman to help him.
Here is some of the Pope version, line numbers not in Kindle
Laertes can relate
Our faith unspotted and its early date;
Who press'd with heart-corroding grief and years,
To the gay court a rural shed pretors,
Where, sole of all his train, a matron sage
Supports with homely fond his drooping age ...
In edit: Babi, I agree. The poetry of Book II's opening is extraordinary!
Want to jump on a plane and go to the Greek Isles!! :D
-
GINNY, my 2011 sensibilities tell me that the Greek and Roman gods were pretty much
a reflection of mortal behavior. Some virtues, some power, quarrelsome, envious,
lustful, etc.
Good questions, ROXANIA. We do know, tho', that Penelope was the daughter of another
Greek king. I had thought that Laertes must have simply retired to spend his old
age tending his vineyard. One would think, tho', that he should return when his
daughter-in-law and grandson needed him. It may be, as you suggested, that Odysseus
did not inherit his 'kingdom' but carved it out for himself.
What you wrote about Mother Goddess worship sounds very likely to me. It would be
only natural to worship the females when they apparently were solely responsible for
the survival of the race.
Book II....I loved the opening verses, with their description of Telemachus waking and preparing
to confront his mother's suitors. I can't help thinking, tho', that with "a god's brilliance upon him"
a "clarion voice" and "a sunlit grace that held the eye of the multitude", the men he called to
assembly should have been more impressed. Obviously, some managed not to be awed.
-
Oh good points, Babi, and more contrasts, why not, one wonders? With all that godlike sparkle, why have they managed not to be awed?
Poor Telemachus shows his testosterone oats, girds his loins, says the power is his now in this house, tells mom to go upstairs, goaded on to this by Athene, and what's the result?
Book II lines 326 ff: Lombardo:
Ah, Telemachus, the dauntless orator,
That's the spirit! No hard feelings now!
Let's just eat and drink as we always have.
The townspeople will provide you with everything--
A ship, a crew--to speed you on to sacred Pylos
In your search for news of your noble father." --Antinous who came up to Telemachus "with a laugh."
The suitors are laughing at him! Antinous, do we see him as sort of the ring leader?
In these two sections we hear why the neighbors don't help, why the suitors are there, it made sense to me, did it to you?
THIS one was ELECTRIC to me:
II: line 268ff, another suitor, Leocritus, speaks:
And do you think that even with superior numbers
People are going to fight us over a dinner?
Even if Odysseus, your Ithacan hero himself
Showed up, all hot to throw the suitors out of his house---well, let's just say
His wife wouldn't be too happy to see him,
No matter how much she missed him, that's how ugly
His death would be. No, you're way off the mark."
What on earth does this mean? Why does he say this? Is he right?
We could talk on these two books forever! Let's do hahaaha
-
To reply to Ginny's post:
His wife wouldn't be too happy to see him,
I think that's a misdirection by an angry suitor, not a fact about how Penelope would feel.
There is a large amount of tension here about what Penelope is up to, especially keeping in mind that the Homeric listeners would already know the end of the tale, wouldn't they?
We, the modern readers, do not yet know, in theory, how Penelope would feel if her husband showed up after so many years. Were the passage of years felt differently by ancient people?
We can hardly walk in their footsteps, as we are annoyed if an Internet page takes more than a few seconds to update.
The big hint that Penelope does want to put off the suitors for years and years is the famous weaving and unraveling at night, isn't it?
-
In the Introduction to the revised Rieu translation, Peter Jones says.....Homer does not precisely record for us....the moment when the suitors invade the house. ....One reason must be that Homer is interested primarily in the consequences of their intrusion, because this is what makes the return of Odysseus so urgent. ....... and Homer does not explain why everyone acquiesced in it.
What in particular, was Laertes doing? Why did not Mentor summon help?
Homer suppresses these questions because it is not in his interest to have them asked. In particular, he has seen what a rich and complex situation can be created in Ithaca by thrusting the growing Telemachus into the limelight,
and this requires that Odysseus' father Laertes, whom one would expect in normal circumstances to take over when his son left for Troy, be shunted quietly off the stage.
Also in Peter Jones' introduction...During the period that Odysseus has been away, his mother Anticleia has died; Ctimene has left to be married; Eumaneus has been sent out to a country estate; and his father Laertes has retired to the country in grief -- (shunted quietly off the stage :) )
And now I must go out and shovel snow...Our Goddess of February weather, winterstorm Dana, has dumped over a foot of snow on us and it is still snowing.
-
"I also think the whole thing is kind of Shakespearean"
Funny you say that, because I had exactly the same thought, just from reading Lombardo, the most modern of the translations. It made me glad I was reading it, and moved me.
have we pinned down what that "Shakespearean "quality is? Do we know if Shakespeare was familiar with Homer?
I took the remarkabout Penelope not being too happy to see him to mean because she would have to watch them kill him.
Good point about Athena having to do everything for Telemachus. The whole sequence in Books I and II doesn't make sense: telemachus calls a meeting one day (in book I) to tell them that he's going to call a meeting the next day (which he does in Book II). What was the point of the first meeting? I felt like I was back working in theGovernment! ;)
The whole situation doesn't quite make sense to me, as several of you have said. All the people who could have resolved it (Laertes, P's father. the townspeople) are kept offscene. Oh well, it makes good drama.
-
The suppositions about matrilineal descent and the worship of goddesses is very interesting, and makes a lot of sense.I would like to read "When God Was a Woman".
I got confused, and only read Book II for today -- off to read Book III. Want to see how Telemachus does away from home. Will Athena still tell him every move to make?
-
1. That speech just sounded to me like Penelope wouldn't be too keen to see Odysseus if the suitors ganged up on him and brutally murdered him--a none-too-veiled threat. The sort of thing the Godfather would say.
2. I'm a little confused about the whole possibility of sending Penelope back to her father's house.
In Book I, it sounds as though it's Penelope's choice, since Athena tells Telemachus (Lombardo, line 294 ff):
Your mother--if in her heart she wants to marry--
Goes back to her powerful father's house.
Her kinfolk and he can arrange the marriage,
And the large dowry that should go with his daughter.
In Book II, line 56 ff., Telemachus says of the suitors:
They shrink
From going to her father Icarius' house
So that he could arrange his daughter's dowry
And give her away to the man he likes best.
In this speech, it sounds as though Telemachus is criticizing the suitors for not following a traditional procedure, in which THEY would go to her father and ask for her hand.
But then, in lines 144 ff., Telemachus says:
It would not be fair
If I had to pay a great price to Icarius,
As I would if I sent my mother back to him
On my own initiative. And the spirits would send me
Other evils, for my mother would curse me
As she left the house, and call on the Furies. . .
So it sounds like sending Mom to her father's house really isn't an option. Penelope can go of her own free will, the suitors can go and ask for her hand, but poor Telemachus--the guy that everyone keeps telling to send his mother away--is the one guy who really can't afford to do it. (And don't we all wish we could have called in the Furies when our kids were teenagers!)
I also thought the speech by Antinous about this was telling (lines 123 ff.):
Send your mother away with orders to marry
Whichever man her father likes best.
But if she goes on like this much longer,
Torturing us with all she knows and has,
All the gifts Athena has given her,
Her talent for handiwork, her good sense,
Her cleverness--all off which go far beyond
That of any of the heroines of old,
Tyro or Alcmene or garlanded Mycene,
Not one of whom had a mind like Penelope's,
Even though now she is not thinking straight--
We will continue to eat you out of house and home. . .
So Penelope is yet another member of this family that Athena is really keen on. And despite the fact that Athena has bestowed these amazing intellectual gifts upon her, this thug of a suitor still feels entitled to declare that "now she is not thinking straight." The condescension! The sheer nerve! How would he know?
3. Lines 159-161:
But I will pray to the gods eternal
That Zeus grant me requital: Death for you
Here in my house. With no compensation.
This is an exact repetition of Book I, lines 399-401.
Telemachus does seem concerned about the likelihood of having to fork out money for one thing or another. Though here I think he means to emphasize that killing the suitors would be just, so no compensation would be needed. I don't remember how Fagles translated it (a disadvantage of audiobooks), but I really like the rhythm of "Death for you. Here in my house. With no compensation." It sounds almost like a knell tolling.
-
Do we know if Shakespeare was familiar with Homer? (ftp://Do we know if Shakespeare was familiar with Homer?)
Well, he wrote "Troilus and Cressida," set during the Trojan War, in which "Ulysses" plays a minor part. But we don't know much about Shakespeare's education, apart from the fact that he attended school in Stratford. He spent seven years in London, during which we have no idea what he was doing, so it's conceivable that he studied further.
Ben Jonson famously remarked that Shakespeare knew "small Latin and less Greek." Given the sheer number of words that Shakespeare coined from Latin roots, he may have been being facetious.
-
http://www.flickr.com/photos/28390194@N03/5465310583/
-
Jude, I can't see whatever you posted. Flickr says it's private and not open to everyone.
-
fOR THE GENEALOGY OF THE rOYAL hOUSE OF ODYSSEUS CLICK ON THE LINK IN THE POST ABOVE THIS.
Sorry this is so messy but I tried several ways to get this link up so we could have it to refer to in front of us.
This genealogy appears on page 497 0f Fagels translation. Perhaps one of you who has Fagels knows a way to get this page onto this site.
-
The Book Club Online is the oldest book club on the Internet, begun in 1996, open to everyone. We offer cordial discussions of one book a month, 24/7 and enjoy the company of readers from all over the world. Everyone is welcome to join in.
Now reading:
(http://www.seniorlearn.org/bookclubs/classicsbookclub/cbc2odysseysm.jpg)
February 22- Books II and III: Telemachus goes on his own quest
(http://www.seniorlearn.org/latin/ulysses_penelope/OdysseybodyofPatroclus.jpg)
Attic black figure kylix, 530BC
Attributed to Exekias
Antikensammlungen, Munich
In this scene from the Trojan War, set between 'eyes', warriors fight over the body of Patroclus,
stripped of his armour. One attempts to drag the body away.
(http://www.seniorlearn.org/latin/ulysses_penelope/OdysseyclyagamurderGuerin.jpg)
The Murder of Agamemnon
Pierre Narcisse Guerin (1774 - 1833)
Louvre, Paris
Discussion Leaders: Joan K (joankraft13@yahoo.com) & ginny (gvinesc@gmail.com )
Useful Links:
1. Critical Analysis: Free SparkNotes background and analysis on the Odyssey (http://www.sparknotes.com/lit/odyssey)
2. Translations Used in This Discussion So Far: (http://www.seniorlearn.org/bookclubs/odyssey/odyssey_translations.html)
3. Initial Points to Watch For: submitted by JudeS (http://www.seniorlearn.org/bookclubs/odyssey/odyssey_points.html)
4. Maps:
http://www.seniorlearn.org/latin/ulysses_penelope/Odysseusmap.jpg (http://www.seniorlearn.org/latin/ulysses_penelope/Odysseusmap.jpg)
http://www.wesleyan.edu/~mkatz/Images/Voyages.jpg (http://www.wesleyan.edu/~mkatz/Images/Voyages.jpg)
http://www.seniorlearn.org/latin/ulysses_penelope/Odysseusmap2.jpg (http://www.seniorlearn.org/latin/ulysses_penelope/Odysseusmap2.jpg)
(http://www.seniorlearn.org/latin/ulysses_penelope/Odysseyclyandagaredfigure.jpg)
Clytemnestra and the body of Agamemnon
Attic red figure kylix
attr. to the Byrgos Painter
c. 490 BC
Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York
(http://www.seniorlearn.org/latin/ulysses_penelope/Odysseyatheneandtflax.jpg)
Telemachos, accompanied by Athene disguised as Mentor, searches for his father
Engraving and etching on paper
John Flaxman
1805
Tate Gallery
I keep holding forth here--one more, and I'll shut up!
Ginny mentioned how Antinous greeted Telemachus "with a laugh." I remember in Fagles it was something like "he caressed his name," and that's exactly how McKellen reads it. "Te-LE-ma-chus!" It's as though he's coaxing a child to come and sit by the fire and eat with them like he used to, and forget all about this traveling nonsense, and be a good boy.
Here's a link to the McKellen version in Audible, in case anyone else does MP3 downloads:
http://www.audible.com/pd/ref=sr_1_1?asin=B002UZMUZG&qid=1298331688&sr=1-1
-
Roxania: thanks for gathering together the statements about sending her back to her mother. Taken together, they don't quite make sense. Could this be a place where different versions of the story were woven together.
Yes, Telemachus is always saying how broke he is. But in the scene where the nurse gathers the wine and grain for his journey, she is in a storeroom piled with gold. Perhaps T wasn't allowed to touch that. Or perhaps he is a miser.
JUDE: flicr wants a password to get into the photos. Would this be my e-mail password?
-
When did the suitors invade the house? In the meeting in Book two, Antinous, one of the suitors, tells Telemachos not to blame them:
.....It's not the suitors
Who are at fault, but your own mother,
Who knows more tricks than any woman alive.
It's been three years now, almost four,
Since she's been toying with our affections. (Lombardo)
I wonder about the timing. Odysseus has been away for 16 years or so, and all of a sudden the suitors all descend, like vultures gathering around a dying animal. Why now?
I agree with Mippy, that so far we only have behavioral clues to Penelope's feelings about Odysseus--the weaving and unweaving, etc. Antinous continues his speech:
She encourages each man....
...But her mind is set elsewhere.
-
http://www.flickr.com/photos/28390194@N03/5465310583/
Hope this is now available for all to see.
Genealogy of the Royal House of Odysseus
-
Got it! Thanks.
-
When I look at the geneaolgies of the characters in the Odyssey, I wonder, what fraction of them were NOT descended from Zeus. Not many, I'm guessing.
-
As I am a member of Flickr, I had no troubles accessing that link. Perhaps you need to join. This is no hardship and there are fantastic pix of just about everything. Sticking to the topic - there are many marvellous pix of Greece and all things Greek as well. Thanks Jude - Good find.
-
Antinous means against the thought or mind...so he's always the oppositional one....
Penelope must be playing a game to keep all options open for hubby...otherwise she'd have chosen someone out of the suitors, but she thinks he's alive and is keeping the kingdom open for him with this cat and mouse game...I'll marry someone whe I've woven the shroud....she chose right, Klytemnestra must have thought Agamemnon wasn't coming back....and who can blame her (from a woman's perspective)...but she was wrong and got her comeuppance....
-
OK I am getting a wily Penelope - the question someone threw in our pot was, why now the suitors -
Her only value in life is as a pawn - her feelings as I can read the various Marriage rituals and life for Women has as much to do with playing a game that is supporting her virtue and if there are boy children raising them as winners, god like in statue and courage.
The wealth seems to play into the arranged marriages - if Penelope were to go back to her father - even though that option is off the table - if she had her dowry would go with her - she is a favored daughter and would probably do well with the marriage he would arrange - if she were to go back to her father there would be less wealth than the combined wealth accumulated by Odysseus with her dowry. And so a suitor would want the whole pie.
Her value is not only showing evidence she is loyal and virtuous only to Odysseus but is raising his son to be worthy of his father's name and the inheritor of his father's wealth that includes her dowry. She must be aware that an out and out fight with the suitors would show her weakness. Her skill to hold them off is to hold them off till Telemachus is capable of fighting them away.
Any of the suitors wants to control Odysseus wealth and pass it down within his family which means he must have a child with Penelope and probably get rid of Telemachus.
Let's say Penelope was only 14 when she married Odysseus - there are the 3 years they had before the Trojan war and now this is the 16th year since he is gone - and so she is 33 years old - how much longer can she still bare a child? That is what I think the suitors are thinking - because without a child with Penelope they cannot trust that she would support them after marriage. They are assuming that a 'good' mother is loyal to her own child and that is the only way the suitors can assure themselves that Odysseus' wealth will be passed into their family by having a child with Penelope that splits her loyalty from Telemachus to their child.
I also see Penelope has goaded her son Telemachus into manhood - from everything I read she had no business in the men's quarters - here she set up her loom in the hall where the banquets and symposiums are held - and for sure to make a comment on the music which is in the domain of the symposium that includes a naked women playing the double-aulos while they drink lots of wine - She is setting it up to push Telemachus to show who is the man - she 'played' the men as long as she could to give Telemachus time to grow up - to keep him from thinking he is dependent upon her wily games with the suitors she given him the impression she cannot make up her mind. In that way he will be annoyed with her which gives him backbone since for so long he was dependent upon her as all children are for sustenance.
Fagles has her say, "She took to heart the clear good sense in what her son had said." then she "falls weeping while watchful Athena sealed her eyes with welcome sleep - while the suitors broke into uproar through the shadowed halls, all of them lifting prayers to lie beside her, share her bed."
Reading about marriage, the only reason the guys go to bed with a wife is to produce a child - most articles go on to explain the use of Call Girls and the young boys back in their bed chamber - And so, I am thinking that Penelope put on a great act of enlisting their desire for what she represents so that Telemachus could slip in and take command.
Just in time does Athena show up - but then if the gods are really the thoughts and conscience within each of us - or some outside force that is like luck - rather than talking acting gods - or maybe another dimension does exist and they control our luck - whatever it seems to me that Penelope started the ball rolling so that her son would do what must be done and as the old saying; The moment you definitely commit yourself, then Providence also moves. All sorts of things occur to help that would never otherwise have occurred. A whole stream of events issues from the decision, raising in our favor all manner of unforeseen incidents and meetings and material assistance, which no one could have dreamed would come our way. Our dreams will be fulfilled only through action. Success will happen when we tell ourself there is no limit, that today we will surpass anything we did yesterday.
Well Athena sure was the Providence and Telemachus received all manner of unforeseen incidents, meetings, and material assistance. I would also suggest he received the support of men he had no idea were there waiting to support him as Halitherses read the meaning of the flying eagles.
-
Interesting the symbolism of Music is of nature in her transitory and ever-changing aspect - and so the scene where Penelope complains of the music is a tell tale sign in the story that change is about to occur.
And the Eagles - wow - that is a biggie symbolically - They symbolize the sky gods, the spiritual principle, ascension, inspiration, release from bondage, victory pride, contemplation, apotheosis, royalty, authority, strength , height, the element of air - In Greek culture they are an attribute of Zeus and the lightening -bearer sometimes with a thunderbolt in their talons. An emblem of Ganymede depicted as watering an eagle in the overcoming of death. a symbol of victory according to Homer.
Athena closing her eyes - the Eye is the all-seeing divinity, the faculty of intuitive vision, The eye is s symbol of all sun gods and their life-giving power of fertilization by the sun; their power is incarnated in the god-king.
The single eye is symbolic of evil as with the Cyclops or the single eye of enlightenment, the eye of God and of eternity. the Greeks suggest the eye symbolizes Apollo as 'viewer of the heaven's', the sun, which is also the eye of Zeus.
-
Question? Why does Telemachus blame the elder Achaean assembly for having allowed the suitors to live in his home? These men appaently had no power and hadn't met since before Odysseus left home.
I am mixed up as to who killed who in story of Aegisthus.
1. Aegisthus married wife of son (who) of Atreus.
2. When son of Atreus comes home, Aegisthus kills him.
3. Orestes, son of Atreus takes vengence when comes of age.
4. Sons of Atreus -- Menelaus and Agamemnon
-
Leocritus is an arrogant fellow, isn't he. He rather plainly
says that if Odysseus did return, he'd simply be murdered.
Penelope, instead of rejoicing, would have the grief of seeing
his 'ugly' death.
I must confess I've wondered how Odysseus could handle this
many rivals if they chose not to budge.
I thought there was just one meeting, JOANK. Telemachus told his
servant to announce the meeting and summon everyone, but it was
for the next day, as far as I can see.
ROXANIA, thanks for that note about Antinous treatment of
Telemachus and the way the name was spoken by McKellen. That adds
so much to the entire scene. Makes it more realistic.
I may be off base here, but I have the impression that these
early Greeks counted much of their wealth in herds and flocks.
With the suitors ravaging through these to feed themselves, I
can understand Telemachus claim that they are impoverishing him.
-
Question? Why does Telemachus blame the elder Achaean assembly for having allowed the suitors to live in his home? These men appaently had no power and hadn't met since before Odysseus left home.
The fathers of the suitors are members of the assembly:
"Suitors have latched on to my mother,
against her will, and they are the sons
of the noblest men here."
The suitors are violating the rules of hospitality, which were very important, and their fathers should have controlled them.
-
Question? Why does Telemachus blame the elder Achaean assembly for having allowed the suitors to live in his home? These men appaently had no power and hadn't met since before Odysseus left home
I didn't realize they didn't have power, not the way someone like Antonius speaks to Telemachus . . . from Butler
"Telemachus,insolent braggart that you are,
How dare you try to throw the blame upon us suitors?
It is your mother's fault, not ours,
For she is a very artful woman."
-
hmmm I thought that Aegyptius and Halitherses were elders where as I thought Antinous is one of the suitors ??
-
I think Eurymachus response to Halitherses is what gives the impression the elders have no power.
"Stop, old man!"
Eurymachus, Polybus' son, rose up to take him on.
"Go home and babble your omens to your children -
save them from some catastrophe coming soon.
I 'm a better hand than you at reading portents.
Flocks of birds go fluttering under the sun's rays,
not all are fraught with meaning...."
Eurymachus is responding to
"Until the old warrior Halitherses,
Mastor's son, broke the silence for them -
the one who outperformed all men of his time
at reading bird-signs, sounding out the omens,
rose and spoke, distraught for each man there:"
Where it was Antinous that Telemachus responds to about how he, Telemachuis "can not drive his mother from our house against her will, the one who bore me, reared me too"
-
KIDSAL: "I am mixed up as to who killed who in story of Aegisthus."
While Agamemnon, one of the leaders of the Greeks, was away, Aegisthus married Agamemnon's wife, Clytemnestra. When Agamemnon returned, Aegisthus killed him, with Clytemnestra's help. Agamemnon's son, Orestes, in turn killed Aegisthus, in order to revenge his father. I don't remember the relationship of Menelaus to Agamemnon: were they brothers?
Everyone is blaming Clytemnestra for being unfaithful. but they don't tell you the background. Earliier, when Agamemnon first set off for the Trojan war, his ship was becalmed. An oracle told him that the only way he could get the winds to sail for troy was to sacrifice his daughter to the gods. Ag knew that Clytemnestra would never agree to that, so her sent her a message that he had arranged a marriage for their daughter, and to send her to him. She arrived, in her bridal clothes, expecting to be married, and instead is burned at the stake, a sacrifice to the gods. When Clytemnestra found out, she was furious: she probably spurred Aegisthus on to kill Ag. As I said earlier, I don't blame her: I would have done the same thing.
-
This story goes on and on: Orestes has a sister, Electra, who is mad at Orestes for killing there mother, and the revenge cycle goes on. This is what happens when justice is brought about by revenge: A kills B, then B's relatives kill A, then A's relatives kill one of B's relatives, and on and on -- the Hatfields and the McCoys. It can last for hundreds of years. One historian (I forget who) points out that many societies start that way, but realize how destructive it is, and institute first a system of "blood money", later trial and punishment by the state. But we still see it going on in many parts of the world.
-
" I don't remember the relationship of Menelaus to Agamemnon: were they brothers?"
When I wrote that, I forgot that Jude had given us a family tree. They weren't brothers, but were connected somehow.
-
BarbSt.A,
Your posts were so interesting that dozens of thoughts and questions went through my mind.
First -thanks for noting the fact that playing music signifies that change is about to occur.Just as in a modern movie script to exite us and up the tension.(Do you write movie scripts for a living?)
Second- the idea of combining the symbols of the eagle and the lightning bolt. I researched this and founfd it is the symbol of the 100th missile defense divisions of our armed forces.
Third Zeuses part in this story. The articles I read delineate Zeuses personality and power to two different times. The first before the Homeric Epics-When Zeus was a god of a portion of nature. After the Homeric epics the primitive character is erased and he appears as a political and national divinity, king and father of men and the founder and protector of all institutions hallowed by law and custom.
Some other facts that are attributed to the Homeric Zeus:He is the source of all prophetic power, he assigns good or evil to mankind, can produce storms and tempests at will, during the Trojan war favored the trojans until Agamemnon made good the wrong he had done to Achiles.
I could go on and on but best to stop before I bore you. (Music out).
-
Hello!
i got completely behind last week - partly because had no book, and partly because had no time. So on Saturday I decided I would read right through all the posts from page 1 to get up to speed - and I've just finished tonight, 4 days later! So many thoughts and suggestions have emerged - who would have thought we (or I should say, you) could get so much out of the first few pages?
I'm sure when I did this book at school we were never asked what we thought - we were just told. That was not entirely the teacher's fault, as we had to be drilled in what the examiners would be looking for, and I suppose that when they are marking hundreds of scripts, they don't have time to consider different ideas - they just have a list of points that each attract so many marks. Depressing really - it's so much more interesting to do it this way, with everyone contributing their different ideas and impressions.
I loved the homely touches with the nurse making Telemachus's bed for him. I am however still confused as to why all these suitors have been allowed to hang around. I am quite sure they are after power/land/money rather than Penelope's body, though I expect they wouldn't mind if that came thrown in - after all, as has already been said, wives were only for producing heirs, whilst slaves, call girls, etc were for everything else.
I thought there were two meetings too. Is the first one of the elders and the second one with the suitors?
Is everything coming to a head now because Telemachus has finally come of age?
Sorry if these are dim questions - still trailing behind, but doing my best!
Rosemary
-
Thanks to Jude, for the genealogy, which I was finally able to see, and also to BarbStA for the thoughtful analysis. I especially liked this bit:
but then if the gods are really the thoughts and conscience within each of us (ftp://but then if the gods are really the thoughts and conscience within each of us)
In the book I mentioned before, "The Goddesses in Everywoman," the author treats the goddesses as patterns of human behavior, and patterns of how we see ourselves and relate to the world. I'm not saying that Homer was a Jungian therapist or anything, but I've often wondered whether the gods concocted by early societies weren't some kind of externalization of human impulses. Sure, they can create the earth, and they're lousy with superhuman powers, but at bottom they act like people--and not always like sane or admirable people, either!
-
Roxiana,
why should the gods"concocted by early societies" be any different from the gods concocted by us today??
-
Joan K - Agamemnon and Menelaus were brothers. Agamemnon was married to Kytemnestra; Menelaus was married to Helen. Klytemnestra and Helen were half-sisters. Agamemnon ruled in Myceneae; Menelaus ruled in Lakedomonia (Sparta). Menelaus and Helen had one daughter, Hermione.
-
Goodness, Rosemarykaye, your head must be rally spinning after reading all that so fast; I'm not sure I could do it. Yes, sometimes we really manage to squeeze the last drop of juice out of a book in these discussions. I think the pace will speed up in a few chapters though, as it turns into more of an action story.
Is everything coming to a head now because Telemachus has finally come of age?
I think you're right. Up to now he has been to young even to try to figure out how to get rid of the suitors. Now he is realizing he really has to do something. At the same time, Athena, freed by the absence of Poseidon and the coming end of the prophesied 10 years of exile for Odysseus, comes to help him find a way.
-
What happened to Helen's daughter after her mom was kidnapped by Paris?
-
Hermione (hərmī'ənē), in Greek mythology, the only daughter of Helen and Menelaus. When Helen eloped with Paris, Hermione was abandoned to the care of Clytemnestra. She later married Neoptolemus, the son of Achilles. In Euripides' Andromache, she is carried off by Orestes who marries her after he has contrived the murder of Neoptolemus at Delphi.
Read more: http://www.answers.com/topic/hermione#ixzz1Ek9OVfXN
-
Helen and Clytemnestra are of interest to twins. Their mother was Leda, wife of Tyndareus. On the same night, Leda was seduced by Zeus (who appeared as a swan), and slept with her husband. This produced four children: Castor and Clytemnestra, children of Tyndareus, and Pollux and Helen, children of Zeus. Castor and Pollux were also identical twins (OK, the ancient Greeks didn't know about genetics). They don't appear in this story, but if it was less cloudy and I wasn't so close to a lot of light pollution, I could walk out my door right now and see them overhead as Gemini.
-
When you think about it, the gods concocted by the ancient Greeks were a lot less lethal that the ones that hold sway today. I don't think the ancient Greeks went to war over their gods or believed they had the only true answer and all that.
I think its interesting that nothing seems to be done by them that couldn't be done by the humans themselves, at least in the Iliad and Odyssey so far.
-
Thanks for replying to my question about Aegisthus. In my prose translation it keeps calling Agamemnon "he."
My translation states that the meeting of the elders was the first that had been called since Odysseus had left home. When he hadn't come back after a few years you would have thought they would have called a meeting and asked what they should do?
-
"The son is rare who measures with his father, and one in a thousand is a better man."
What do you think of these words of Athena (as Mentor)? If it held
true, the generations would decline with only a rare son being the equal
of his father. There have surely been just as many occasions with a
rather ordinary man may have a remarkable son.
The line sounds good, but I don't think it holds up.
-
Dana--I don't think they are any different, really, in terms of the arbitrariness of their behavior. (And thanks for your note about the meaning of Antinous's name--interesting.)
I recently read a comparative religion book called "God is Not One," by Somebody-or-other Prothero. He makes the point that each god requires something different from his followers--the Hebrew god demands the keeping of his covenant, Allah demands submission to his will, and the Christian god demands belief--although keeping covenants and submission certainly imply belief, but belief isn't enough in and of itself for Judaism or Islam. Confucianism and Buddhism, though they don't have "gods" in the same sense that the three big monotheisms do, demand that we get along with everybody and behave appropriately on earth, or seek enlightenment, respectively.
I really don't know what the Olympians expected of their followers--other than to follow the rules of impeccable hospitality in case one of them turned up for dinner, apparently! The Greeks had their household gods, and each city-state seemed to have a patron, but beyond that, people seem to have been able to pick and choose. There was no demand that anybody worship one god exclusively, which must have made for more mellow religious discussions than people tend to have now. Certainly the gods did not seem to expect that humanity would turn to them for any meaningful answers, which is a good thing, since they were often the ones causing the confusion in the first place.
And Babi--I had exactly the same thought. Statistically, it's a recipe for disaster!
-
Roxanina I was so surprised to receive for Christmas "God is Not One," - I left my Amazon page with the list of books I wanted open while I was fixing dinner while visiting for the holidays and my daughter came along - chose from my list and had it for under the tree Christmas morning - I did start to read and got waylaid by other books - but last year I must have read 20 or more books about all the goings on during the first 800 years of the Christian religions - whew - hard to tell if it is a political system or spiritual system...
I just get a kick out of how in order to claim a superior position in leadership you align yourself with a god - wasn't that part of the Nazi's claim to fame for Germany in the 1930s - looks like we are still at it... Thinking about all the unexplained horror and pain in the world that folks react to either by embracing or rejecting religion the explanation that it is because of the gods sounds as good as any explanation I have heard.
I've only read around the edges how romantic love became part of our thinking and the reason for marriage starting in the middle ages - I am thinking to better understand the dynamics among folks in these ancient tales it would be a good thing to know more about. And I also think having a better understanding of Honor killing among tribal societies today would be another understanding that would do us well reading these ancient epics. So much to learn and so little time - .
-
having a better understanding of Honor killing among tribal societies today would be another understanding that would do us well reading these ancient epics. (ftp://having a better understanding of Honor killing among tribal societies today would be another understanding that would do us well reading these ancient epics.)
It really shows how elemental that world was, with no legal or social infrastructure to think of--just whatever people can come up with, or get away with, themselves. No wonder they were so fascinated with heroes.
-
Roxania I think Honor killing is the legal way used to handle issues in a Tribal society - not only does Middle Eastern societies use this system of law but it is the basics of law for many others that are living side by side with common law since the Magna Carta.- there are many systems of law and we measure everything based on the a constitutional law utilizing a system of police/sheriff etc. - remember there is private law - the law of monarchy - religious law - on and on it goes...gotta go - late for an appointment...
-
Barb: "I've only read around the edges how romantic love became part of our thinking and the reason for marriage starting in the middle ages."
God point. We react to these stories in terms of our ideas of romantic love, which don't necessarily fit.
Roxania: "It really shows how elemental that world was, with no legal or social infrastructure to think of--just whatever people can come up with, or get away with"
Yes: peoples all nover the world have come up with honor killing, and also (sometimes) have seen its fatal flaw -- that it goes on forever. Unfortunately, some still haven't realized that (the Middle East for example).
BARB: "in order to claim a superior position in leadership you align yourself with a god"
That is why the separation of Church and State in our constitution is so important. When the civic leader can claim to speak for a god, it becomes absolute power, and individual liberties are lost.
-
ROXANIA: fascinating point: " each god requires something different from his followers"
The greek gods seem to have demanded sacrifices. This hasn't come up here yet, but in the Iliad, gods were always getting mad because someone forgot to sacrifice to them, or the sacrifce wasn't large enough. In Book 3, we see them sacrificing to Neptune (How do they know which god needs a sacrifice?)
DANA: "I think its interesting that nothing seems to be done by them that couldn't be done by the humans themselves,"
Their imagination was limited to what they knew. But the gods did have better means of transportation (eg Athena's sandals -- as a kid I always wanted sandals like that!)
ROSE, PatH: I had no idea twinship was so complicated in Greek times. Pat, do you suppose one of us is really the child of a god?
-
BARB: "The moment you definitely commit yourself, then Providence also moves."
A very interesting idea. Do you remember who the quote came from? Is this the Greek idea of fate, do you think?
-
Am I just a softie for a young man who is trying to go from being a youthful lad into a great leader, guided by the gods?
Dana said:
Telemachus is a youth who needs to grow up. A case of retarded development!
I don't see Telemachus as a problem child. He is in the throes of his youth, exuberant, awkward and green but he can now be guided by Athena into the spring of his life. He will blossom and surprise all of us. :D (she hopes)
The lovely Polycaste, Nestor's youngest daughter hopes so as well. With each chapter I feel him gaining strength, confidence and instinct.
-
Joan, Nestor's huge sacrifice to Neptune/Poseidon in Book Three has its bit of comedy. Telemachus and Athena (looking like Mentor) arrive just as things are starting. Nestor's son welcomes them and, as is proper, allows the older stranger to make the first libation and offer the first prayer.
You recall that Athena and Poseidon were bitter enemies; it must have stuck in her craw to pray to him, but she did so with a straight face, asking for renown for Nestor and his sons and a safe return for Telemachus. But she takes care to grant the prayer herself.
-
The Book Club Online is the oldest book club on the Internet, begun in 1996, open to everyone. We offer cordial discussions of one book a month, 24/7 and enjoy the company of readers from all over the world. Everyone is welcome to join in.
Now reading:
(http://www.seniorlearn.org/bookclubs/classicsbookclub/cbc2odysseysm.jpg)
February 22- Books II and III: Telemachus goes on his own quest
(http://www.seniorlearn.org/latin/ulysses_penelope/OdysseybodyofPatroclus.jpg)
Attic black figure kylix, 530BC
Attributed to Exekias
Antikensammlungen, Munich
In this scene from the Trojan War, set between 'eyes', warriors fight over the body of Patroclus,
stripped of his armour. One attempts to drag the body away.
(http://www.seniorlearn.org/latin/ulysses_penelope/OdysseyclyagamurderGuerin.jpg)
The Murder of Agamemnon
Pierre Narcisse Guerin (1774 - 1833)
Louvre, Paris
Discussion Leaders: Joan K (joankraft13@yahoo.com) & ginny (gvinesc@gmail.com )
Useful Links:
1. Critical Analysis: Free SparkNotes background and analysis on the Odyssey (http://www.sparknotes.com/lit/odyssey)
2. Translations Used in This Discussion So Far: (http://www.seniorlearn.org/bookclubs/odyssey/odyssey_translations.html)
3. Initial Points to Watch For: submitted by JudeS (http://www.seniorlearn.org/bookclubs/odyssey/odyssey_points.html)
4. Maps:
http://www.seniorlearn.org/latin/ulysses_penelope/Odysseusmap.jpg (http://www.seniorlearn.org/latin/ulysses_penelope/Odysseusmap.jpg)
http://www.wesleyan.edu/~mkatz/Images/Voyages.jpg (http://www.wesleyan.edu/~mkatz/Images/Voyages.jpg)
http://www.seniorlearn.org/latin/ulysses_penelope/Odysseusmap2.jpg (http://www.seniorlearn.org/latin/ulysses_penelope/Odysseusmap2.jpg)
(http://www.seniorlearn.org/latin/ulysses_penelope/Odysseyclyandagaredfigure.jpg)
Clytemnestra and the body of Agamemnon
Attic red figure kylix
attr. to the Byrgos Painter
c. 490 BC
Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York
(http://www.seniorlearn.org/latin/ulysses_penelope/Odysseyatheneandtflax.jpg)
Telemachos, accompanied by Athene disguised as Mentor, searches for his father
Engraving and etching on paper
John Flaxman
1805
Tate Gallery
-
BARB, I am personally of the opinion that Christianity got involved
in politics when it became the official religion under Constantine.
Once it no longer had to fight for survival, attention turned to
doctrinal differences and the leadership competed for power and
influence. The best argument I know of for keeping politics out of
religion.
I agree with you, ALF, about Telemachus. (My translator uses the
'k' spelling, but it's simpler to use the one I see most.) I see
a young man, barely out of his teens, beginning to come to grips with
what is expected of him. He seems very real to me.
After that assembly, Antinoos greets him with a 'get over it, and come
have a drink with us'. Telemachus reply, to me, is firm confident and manly.
"Athenoos, I cannot see myself again
taking a quiet dinner in this company.
Isn't it enough that you could strip my home
under my very nose when I was young?
Now that I know, being grown, what others say,
I understand it all, and my heart is full.
I'll bring black doom upon you if I can...."
company.
-
Babi, thanks for bringing up those lines. Butler continues with Telemachus saying,
"Now that I am older and know more about it, I am also stronger, and whether here among this people, or by going to Pylos, I will do you all the harm I can. I shall go, and my going will not be in vain -- though thanks to you suitors, I have neither ship nor crew of my own, and must be passenger, not captain."
-
Babi it started long before Constantine - he simply brought a trained army into the fray with Bishops and other leaders disagreeing over a myriad of issues but mostly if Jesus was God, Man or both - that ugly fight went on for 100s of years starting at the beginning of the second century -.at best Constantine gave freedom to the average Christian to walk and worship in the open which prompted individuals yearning to be martyrs and missing the possibilities to embrace a cult of martyrdom with many going off to live in austere desert communities.
I think I am getting someplace on finding out about the woman's role in marriage that does not include romantic love - there are reams of information on how romantic love is about passion and the unification of families through marriage have nothing to do with passion but has everything to do with extending the influence of a tribe with the birth of a child. A women is only considered a hot house so to speak for producing children. The second importance of marriage is the transfer of wealth - her dowry, a bride price that fills up the coffers of the bride's family who paid the dowry and then the wealth of the children born into this union.
And so the possibilities for birth are the most guarded and important element for the continuation, growth and protection of a clan and a tribe. Women in ancient Greece as in other tribal cultures are married by age 16 and the men are usually about 30 - The girls unless prostitutes were secluded in the women's section of the house only to be secluded again in the women's section of her husband's house. Men had no opportunity to mix with girls and so instead it was usual for men to admire the bodies of boys and young men by spending much time in the baths, and what we would call the gym.
Back to the law - when we were talking about this over dinner last night my friend suggested it was an example of taking the law into your own hands - that was when it hit - of course - just like in the old west - there was no force to assist with law and order - and the most precious thing that the family in a tribe cannot risk loosing or being damaged is the sexuality of a women.
There are several definitions and most of what I see on-line is explained from a western point of view - central is a society's concept of honor and shame - I found and have ordered a book that the bit I could read on-line from Amazon sounds like it will explain further; Honor Killing, Blood Feud, Vendetta, Eye for an Eye, Blood-Revenge, Blood Law, Code of Life, that were expressed in every culture, that gave rise to satisfying the harm by money exchanged, stoning to death, Chariot races, cities burned to the ground, Maniot Vendetta, laws determining how many layers of relations must respond. This legal practice gave rise to cultures like the Samurai, the Mafia. Carrying on in these traditions side by side with our Constitutional law are gang wars, drug cartels and street gangs.
Reading this stuff it is easy to recognize that the Trojan war, if it was true or not was about the psyche of the Greek's value for a women as a child bearing entity so that Helen was not only valued for her wealth but, whatever it was that was her beauty it must have been about her ability to produce children.since beauty in a wife to stir passion was not valued. This emphasis on this biological aspect of a women is so great that a whole story of the reason for the Trojan War becomes part of the collective memory of a people.
I remember with sadness when the myth of George Washington chopping down the cherry tree and not lying about it to his father was destroyed as proven to be untrue - with its passing something in the character of the average American went with it so that truth telling, even when you fear punishment is no longer valued.
Back to Penelope - oh yes, and then there is Athena - who dresses as a man hmmm - and research says she was born from the head of Zeus suggesting she has the intellect that is attributed to men - no wonder - if you live your life in the women's quarters and are married by the time you are 16, there with no books to read - wow, talk about marrying the dumb blond - for being a dumb blond type Penelope is as we call it today street smart - to have lasted in our canon of literature this long this story has to be more than an exciting adventure story - I am thinking one of the points of interest has something to do with exploring passion versus intellect - not sure if that exploration was part of early Greed dialog but it sure was by the middle ages, which is when scholars had available a complete, hand written copy, of Homer's Epics and it could be the philosophical under current of why the story resonates today.
-
This is just a reminder that "The Middle East" is not a euphemism for Islam. In the Middle East are found these religions:
Judaism
Bahai
Christains
Druze
Zoroastrians
Coptics
Shia Muslims
Sunni Muslims
The "honor Killings are more a sanctioned political act that is used by certain Muslim Clerics to show their power over the people.This is not the place to enter in a discussion about this so I will return to the Odyssey.
-
JUDE: my comment was aimed at the Arab-Israeli conflict. Having lived in Israel, I get so frustrated -- with Israel as well as the Arab countries. When, when, will both sides realize that what they are doing doesn't work?
I must be stupid. It seems obvious to me that as long as the economies of the Arab countries are bad, there will be crowds of young men with no future, and nothing to do except fight Israel. Yet Israel seems to do everything they can to make the Arab economies WORSE, hence MORE unemployed angry young men with no future -- fodder for hate groups. Why don't they offer to help BUILD the Arab economies, instead of destroying them?
-
BARB: Athena " was born from the head of Zeus suggesting she has the intellect that is attributed to men - no wonder - if you live your life in a the women's quarters and are married by the time you are 16 there with no books to read - wow talk about marrying the dumb blond."
Sigh. and the only way to be smart is to be born from a man's brain. But there are plenty of smart, independent women in Greece's later literature.
-
Whoops Jude I hoped I was not leaving an impression that Honor killings had to do with religion - ouch - no, this is a legal matter carried out in a political unit that is the clan - and, tribal law is of and for the tribal families, based in the expression of how groups in society organize themselves creating laws that value what is important - the societies view of honor and shame and how they keep everyone organized or in line. I can see how it would be easy to think this was about religion since in so many areas of the world religion is tied to law, government and politics. Since religion per se is not featured in the Odyssey I was hoping to simply explore tribal law to help us have an appreciation for Homer's Epics as it relates to the relationships between men and women.
Did any of you see the NY Times had an on-line article that renamed most of the important books of Lit and the new name for the Odyssey was 'Don't Mess with a Veterans Wife"- laughed - right on...another Title could be something about, 'Warning! take the gods seriously'. Whee Athena puts Telemachus in his place being reminded how much the gods influence what happens in life. I think many of us are still looking for, and to, that influence...as we dream of our personal utopia.
Joan just saw your second post - hehehe - ah so - women all popping out of the head of Zeus - I think that Athena is a goddess so I do not think her birth is the same as other ancient Greek women - but again, to see how far back this stuff goes and what we are up against - folks still feel it is legal to have control of a women's body for fear of what she will do with the freedom to make her choices and now they are talking a form of legal honor killing of professionals who help her with a legal procedure.
-
Barb - You make some very interesting points in your posts, the second last in particular.
When I read that you were discussing "law" with a friend, I went a little green with envy. The only people I can talk to about reasonably "cerebral" topics are my daughter and my son in law. Unfortunately, at the moment they are very busy getting their house back into order after the floods. I hope to see them soon.
-
It is special isn't it roshanarose to have someone you can talk with who will show an interest in what you are reading or learning. It was easy though since Charlotte's younger daughter is a lawyer over in Houston.
OK a few more Bits and pieces -
Polycaste is Nestor’s youngest daughter – was it important to explain that she was the youngest? Is that a reference to Hera, who was the youngest daughter of a youngest daughter?
Hera was the jealous protectress of marriage. Riled up easily if she felt her territory was threatened. Her marriage to Zeus – Zeus’ third - has Zeus turning himself into a cuckoo (a notoriously randy bird in Ancient Greece), and when she put the little bird to her breast, took advantage. However, Hera was the perfect patriarchal image of marriage: a shrew, she wasn't very nice, to anyone, including her children, and she destroyed anyone who Zeus even looked at sideways (she was right in assuming that he was sleeping with them). She also went after the children of Zeus' illicit affairs, most famously, Heracles.
And then, to top it off, a heifer is slaughtered for the feast that night – a heifer is a young cow and a cow is a form of Hera, also symbolic of the productive power of the earth, plenty, procreation, and the horns are the crescent moon representing both the moon and earth goddesses. Horn wrapped in gold – oh my – making the horn a quality of sacredness, incorruptible, wisdom, durable, noble, honorable, superiority, wealth.
And so, reading this is like a story in a story as we can visualize the wonder on the faces of those hearing Homer tell the story as these symbolic messages would be understood by those listening, just as we understand what a street light means or a wedding band or a hanging sign of a giant shell.
I’m thinking it would have helped to have read the Iliad first – so, lots of research to figure out who is who - I learned that after Agamemnon those who contributed the largest fleets were second, Nestor and third, with 80 ships was Diomedes. Drinking from Gold cups, riding in a chariot are symbols of greatness – sounds to me like the story is preparing us for Telemachus’ greatness to come. I am so caught up in Telemachus I want to see how he gets himself and his mother out of the situation they find themselves. Telemachus sure has older guys telling us he is pretty wonderful.
All this about bulls – Poseidon is at a ‘beach barbecue’ that is serving up bulls – there are offerings of the hind legs of bulls – again, referring to my handy dandy copy of An Illustrated Encyclopaedia of Traditional Symbols by J.C.Cooper – Bulls are the masculine principle in nature, the solar generative force sacred to all sky gods, male pro-creative strength, royalty. Attribute of Zeus as sky god, also of Dionysus who was horned and sometimes bull-headed. Sacred to Poseidon, whose wine-bearers at Ephesus were bulls. As the humid power, the bull was an attribute of Aphrodite.
Amazing to me was that Nestor brings the strangers to a banquet and only after they have eaten well does he inquire who they are and what is their mission. The feasting of food and drinking of wine is all they ever seem to do – we have the suitors partying every night, eating Telemachus and Penelope out of house and home, Poseidon is off feasting, then in one chapter we have Nestor preparing two banquets, one in which as a guest, Telemachus is bathed and oiled. The oil symbolizes consecration, dedication, spiritual illumination, mercy and fertility, conferring wisdom. Hmmm so, Nestor’s youngest daughter confers wisdom on Telemachus.
Old Nestor’s advice gives us a good idea how small the known world was at the time –
You might abandon hope of ever returning home,
Once the winds had driven you that far off course,
Into a sea so vast not even cranes could wing their way
In one year’s flight - so vast it is, so awesome…
-
Wow, you'all are getting into some seriously heavy studies here. I
keep checking the clock to see how much time I've got!
Would this be an encouragement or cause for trepidation? Athena
speaking: "Reason and heart will give you words, Telemakhos; and
a spirit will counsel others. I should say the gods were never indifferent
to your life."
I'm not at all sure I would be thrilled to hear the gods were interested
in my life. I'm inclined to sympathize with Nestor's viewpoint. In telling
the story of the Greeks heading back for home, he said, "I fled, with every ship I had; I knew fate had some devilment brewing there."
Wise man.
From Encyclopedia Britannica: Homer speaks of Fate (moira) in the singular as an impersonal power and sometimes makes its functions interchangeable with those of the Olympian gods. There
definitely does seem be be such an 'interchange' taking place here.
-
Tee hee, Babi, I like the comparison, think I might run too. It's not so scary in Lombardo, though:
"You'll come up with some things yourself, Telemachus,
And a god will suggest others. I do not think
You were born and bred without the gods' good will."
-
Amazing to me was that Nestor brings the strangers to a banquet and only after they have eaten well does he inquire who they are and what is their mission.
Barb, you've put your finger on an important rule of hospitality. When someone arrives asking for shelter, you see that they are fed and refreshed first, and only then ask who they are and what they want. Telemachus does the same when Athena arrives at his house:
"Greetings, stranger. You are welcome here.
After you've had dinner, you can tell us what you need."
He doesn't find out her (assumed) name until after she has eaten.
These rules were important in a time when travel was dangerous and there were no inns. The host had to put up strangers and treat them well. Guests had duties too, they had to respect the host and his property, and not injure him or steal from him. The suitors are violating this rule, and Paris violated it bigtime when, as Menelaus' guest, he ran off with Menelaus' wife Helen.
-
PatH ~ Excellent summary of hospitality. From various reading, I've found that the concept of hospitality is still like that for some ethnic groups, such as the Romanies (gypsies) and the Bedouins in the desert.
Aside: I also found back the the 1960s in Israel that a remnant of that wonderful Middle-Eastern hospitality occurred there. I had an introduction to a professor in the biological field that I was studying in the US, and when I showed up at his office one morning, he said ... let's talk science later ... and brought me to the department conference room, where at midmorning everyone gathered for tea or coffee. What a difference from the US, where no biology department would stop work to sit together and have even a moment of discussion that was not work-related.
I have no idea if the Hebrew University in Jerusaleum is till like that, but it's a terrific memory of true hospitality.
-
I will quote Knox in the intro to Fagles translation.
"If there is one stable moral criterion in the world of the Odyssey it is the care taken by the powerful and well-to-do of strangers, wanderers and beggars.The divine enforcer, so all mortals believe, is Zeus himself, Zeus xeinios, protector of strangers and supplians.........
Of all the hosts measured by this standard , the Phaeacians stand out as the most generous, ..... in their regal entertainment of Odysseus...
Mippy
The bedouins still treat strangers as honored guests and give them strongly brewed coffee in tiny cups-perhaps the precursor to our Espresso.I can't speak for the University though.
In the middle ages the Monasteries inEngland followed this custom. Any traveler or wanderer could get a meal and one nights lodgings for free in their guest houses, built specifically for that purpose.
.
-
I am enjoying just such hospitality now - of course my friend Heather and her husband do know who we are and why we are here, but they have opened their home to us so generously and kindly - I can't imagine that I would ever be so good, but this experience of being so welcomed and cared for certainly makes me think that I will try to do the same for someone else - so, as they say, what goes around comes around (or something!) - maybe that's what the Greeks thought?
I also remember pitching up, as an impoverished student, at the home of one of my mother-in-law's wartime friends in Wellington, NZ. I don't think MIL had seen Barbara since the war (it was by then about 1990), but she welcomed us with open arms, fed us royally, and put us up in a beautiful cosy bedroom (we had been staying in pretty basic hostels in winter and were cold, tired and miserable). She was a very alternative woman, very interested in the Rainbow Warrior and politics in general. I remember she baked her own bread, which we gobbled up whilst she talked to us about what was going on in the world. Again, such hospitality is never forgotten - I will endeavour to remind myself of that when all of my son's friends turn up on my doorstep in Edinburgh!
Roshanarose - I know what you mean, but you can always discuss such things here. I don't think many of us have lots of people that we can discuss things with - much as I love my friends, each relationship is different and has different benefits. With some of my friends I can have a good laugh because we find the same things funny, with others I can talk about more serious stuff, but those people might not get the same jokes. I can discuss politics, etc with my husband, but my Alexander McCall Smith moments are enjoyed with one of my former work colleagues. My friend Dorothy and I have great conversations about our children, animals, gardens - when we lived close to one another we used to while away many a morning wandering around plant nurseries - but we have no reading interests in common.
One of the great things about this site, IMO, is that there is nearly always someone who is interested in what you say - and you do say some very interesting things :)
Rosemary
-
ROSE: "The only people I can talk to about reasonably "cerebral" topics are my daughter and my son in law."
I think we all have that problem. I am lucky to have my sister, and a few dear friends that I can talk to about anything, but, as Rosemary says, without Seniorlearn, it would be pretty hard.
-
Jude: I still remember that hospitality in Israel in the 60s. I hope it's still there, but probably not.
-
Y'all are so right - it is so easy to feel elitist when really it is that our interests are not shared by many - with all the bookstores and I think I recently read that only 10% of the public are readers - and then of those readers we know there are those who only read Gothic Romance and another group who only read Mysteries and from the size and business of the department the young seem to be exclusive Computer nerds only reading the latest Tech info - and so where 5 or 6 % of the reading public sounds like small leav'ens in reality I think in the US we are 7 billion so that leaves us with 350 million - you would think we could find more folks who do not look blank when we refer to a character or book title in our conversations -
I wish I had either purchased the book or remembered the title - but some years ago there was this wonderful children's illustrated book - more illustration than story so you know it was for the younger child age 4 or 5 to maybe 8 - it was about a grandmother who liked to read - she finally decides she could move to the country where all the everyday expectations on her life that are part of city living would go away and she could read to her hearts content. The illustration shows her as a chubby grandmother boarding a train with all her cat, suitcases, piles of books tied with string and her grandchildren waving her goodby. The problem was once in the country there were all these animals that depended on her feeding them or caring for them, from mice under the floor boards to birds in her attic, cats and dogs and chickens and visiting wildlife and and and so that she had no more time to read in the country than she did in the city.
I've often looked on Amazon hoping I could find the book again because it was perfect as I have imagined this life where I had no other responsibilities and could read to my heart's content. I guess that is our fantasy utopia - some want a perfect garden, others to travel the world or at least to see the wild or famous places in their own country and still others want to have a stack of quilts competed, one for each member of their family - and others of us have a foot long list of books we want to read and now we are worrying if our list is longer than the days we have in our lives. This is when I wish I could come back - not as a child though - I would like to come back at about age 20, no 55 would be better, after most of the responsibilities are completed. That's it - life could be on a rotating ferris wheel that everytime it hits the bottom we are renewed by 20 years for another go at it.
Well right now I am going crazy - during all the snow in early February I had three deliveries that Amazon shows UPS left on my front porch and for the life of me I cannot find those books - the one book I am seeing in my mind that I did receive and there were three books in that box so, I must have the other two - but where - and then the other two packages that I cannot see those books in my mind's eye. I will have to tear into books this weekend and of course just as well - this forces me to organize.
-
I didn't think I was alone when I mentioned the subject of being in many ways solitary. This is my choice, of course, I genuinely love living alone. As they say in the Classics ... "I need to get out more..."
Re Hospitality - I think I've mentioned before that I have several good friends from Afghanistan, from the Hazara tribe. The Hazaras have arrived in Australia after very hazardous ocean trips from Indonesia from unseaworthy boats. Some of them have endured 5 years of detention in camps built by the government. I was an advocate for refugees in Brisbane. Sometimes I would need to visit my friends and I would alway phone and arrange a time. Hassan asked me one day why I always phoned before visiting. I told him that it was a custom in Australia. He took me aside and told me that he had never heard of such a thing before. He told me if I wanted to visit that I could, any time, and to please not telephone next time but just come. I was always welcomed like a blessed friend by Hassan and his family, and was plied with green tea and biscuits. Then I was expected to stay for dinner. No ifs or buts. These friends live a long way away now, but I still remember their hospitality. Hazaras are beautiful people. In Afghanistan at one stage their lands were stolen from them by the Taliban and another tibe. The Hazaras were forced to eat grass and many died of starvation. I suppose this was in the back of my mind when they offered such hospitality, it was very humbling. I always did feel strange about visiting unannounced, though.
-
Fort Myers, Florida
hi there, belatedly reporting in from our odyssey around the Gulf of Mexico, stationary for who knows how long...
so interesting the posts, love the part about various thoughts on 'why' and the Gods in our lives/their lives
below are not the exact quotes:
Gods don't expect that humanity will turn to them for meaningful answers-reply 671 & each God requires something different from his followers reply 676
have been reading my 2 translations more or less once each then together, comparing and figuring out where the differences/similarities in passages reside...E. V. Rieu, Lattimore
was getting a bit lost in the 3rd book, but in reading my sparks notes helped me get it sorted out...but still all those greek names sort of brings to mind trying to read 'Poland' by James Michener--I had to map the names to sort them out
but this is such a wonderful exercise in learning the unfamiliar and I just wanted to let you know I haven't jumped ship on the journey..
Deb
-
Hey Deb - I remember you said you were to be away for a time. Glad you're keeping up.
I'm also working between a couple of translations - the Rieu and the Albert Cook which is really really good - I find it a great way to sort out stuff - something which may be ambiguous in one becomes clear (or do I mean less obscure) reading the second.
A day or so ago I happened to be in a bookshop and when I reached the checkout I found Fagles had somehow jumped into my hand. So I now have five different translations to work with - too much really but I had jettisoned the Butler right from the start because of his using Roman names for the Gods.
I'm looking forward to working with Fagles now as well. I think I'm going to get the McKellen audio if it is available here.
I 've had a tough week and haven't read Book III as yet so I've some work to do. Love the wide ranging discussion - just what any great literature induces in perceptive readers - love it.
Roshanarose: Yes, you're certainly not alone in not having lots of people around you to share your intellectual interests. In my experience they are few and far between but they are there and once found become friends for life. I'm a bit like Rosemary and have friends with whom I can share different parts of my life and interests - gardeners, family life, music (esp grand opera), literature, embroidery and other crafts, painting etc - there are lots who cross-over between those interests. But the hardest to find are those who have a genuine interest in the ancient world - and now some have come together here on SeniorLearn - and all thanks to Ginny for making this discussion and the website itself possible. How blessed we are.
-
Well I am afraid I am not one of those intellectuals -- but will read along and learn. ::)
-
Gumtree 5 - 5 - 5 -five translations - oh my!!??!! Frankly I am envious... one problem for me is I do not have yet another table where I could spread them all out and see the same passage in all 5 translations at one time. So far have you noticed a difference in the overall flavor of the story from each of the 5 translations?
-
Kidsal, how can you say you're not an intellectual? You inhabit a site that does almost nothing but talk about books.
Gumtree, You're right, we all owe a huge debt to Ginny for crafting this site when the old SeniorNet blew up.
THANKS, GINNY
-
It's not only an important rule of hospitality, PAT, it's good sense
too. A well fed and rested guest is much more pleasant and amenable
than a tired, hungry one. ;)
Speaking of what the gods want, probably awe and respect is at the
top of the list, wouldn't you think? I noticed a bit of that when Athena,
still posing as Mentor, responded a bit tartly to something Telemachus
said.
Nestor had just suggested to Telemachus the possibility that Odysseus
might yet turn up and and oust the unwelcome suitors. Telemachus
replies, "I don't think what you say will ever happen, sir. It is a dazzling hope, but not for me. It could not be--even if the Gods willed it."
Well, that was a rather rash statement. Athena immediately replies,
"What strange talk you permit yourself, Telemachus. A god could save the man by simply wishing it--" Watch your tongue, boy!!
-
I am so glad you ARE all here, look what we would have missed, and welcome back, Deb!! I'm glad to see one of our wandering crew has made it, I fear for our crew here on our long journey back!
I do see what people sometimes feel coming into one of these discussions, tho, each post is so fabulous and dazzling. I read them and say WOW to self and go away and they really change and inform my own viewpoint... it's like fireworks really, oh that was just the MOST oh no, now THAT was spectacular, oh no THAT ...and so on.
It's lovely to have this opportunity TO read and discuss.
As we're now doing Books II and III, I suggest anybody who is coming in and is totally dazzled by what's here, to just say something just to say it and then enjoy reading back thru the truly wonderful posts.
Rosemary I think you are to be commended for reading every prior post!! Welcome aboard!
I really think once we, together, decode Homer, he's for everybody. He's not a special interest. I think he covers things anybody can relate to, once we can figure out what he's saying. I did think the names might be a problem, since he refers to the GREEKS variously as Achaeans and Argives and so forth. I also see that Fagles does not use the name "Gerenian" in the last of Book III, 521, Lombardo has 'The Gerenian * corrected Nestor spoke." Fagles has "Nestor the noble chariot driver issued orders..."
This is right before the lines "My sons, yoke the combed horses..." Right at the end. I'm a bit confused on Gerenian. Is this yet another word for a type of Greek or what is it? Does your book have? Does your book define "Gerenian?"
What do YOUR translations have for this passage?
I can do Achaeans:
"Achaea and the Achaeans (Achaioi) denoted two regions and peoples in historical times. One was in south east Thessaly, and the other was a narrow strip in the north of the Peloponnese between Elis and Sicyon, a territory comprising 12 small towns forming a loose confederacy.
In Homer the names are used both in a restricted and in a general sense. They may denote the region and people in south Thessaly where Achilles licved, and also the people in the north east Peloponnese (Argolis), the followers of Agamemnon who ruled Mycenae and the surrounding area.
But they may also denote, by extension, Greece and the Greeks in General.
Modern scholars sometimes use the name Achaeans to refer to the Greeks of the Mycenean period. "
And so on.. it does go on and on. Lots more but this seems to pertain to us here. This is from the Oxford Companion to Classical Literature.
When you're reading and we see adjectives like Gerenian and Achaean, it might help some to know what they mean but the word Gerenian I can't find anywhere.
Do you know what "Gerenian Nestor" might refer to?
(Also those of you with Lombardo, at the VERY end of the book is a Translator's Postscript where he explains his use of, "Speak, Memory," it's worth a read! :) One thing he does mention is it DOES recall the title of Nabokov's memoir, "who himself was recalling Homer as he recalled his own art. This is the way of translation as art, a kind of anamnesis in which we remember our own voice as the poet's."
Interesting! And somebody said it HERE! Who was it? JoanR? Gum?
So: Problems in Reading Books II and III:
1. Confusing terms:
Achaeans
Grenian
Lacedaemon and Lacedaemonians: I can do these, too, thanks to Fagles and his glossary in the back: Lacedaemon is the city and kingdom of Menelaus, in the southern Peloponnese.
Argives :
---1. Of or relating to Argos or the ancient region of Argolis.
---2. Of or relating to Greece or the Greeks.
---A Greek, especially an inhabitant of Argos or Argolis.
2. The son of...Atreus
I can do Atreus too thanks to the Oxford Companion to Classical Literature:
"Atreus in Greek myth was one of the sons of Pelops; he was king of Mycenae, father of Agamemnon and Menelaus."
Everybody is a son of.
The sons of Atreus.
So, to sum up, here we have Achaeans, Archives, Lacedaemonians, and Gerenian. We lack a definition for Gerenian, and these names pepper II and III, and may confuse the issue, it's good to get them straight so we can enjoy the plot lines.
Wait this is too long...more. :)
-
You know, to be 3,000 years old, and to be something recited aloud, this thing is really complex. As Joan K said, it goes on and on. She was referring to the background of ONE of the stories mentioned, but it applies to a lot of things. In that day and time the audience would be not only familiar with the subjects alluded to, they would jump up at the mention of them.
Sort of like those who watched Dallas would know what the shower refers to (or those who watched Psycho would know what the "shower" refers to).
But we don't have, most of us, the instant recognition of the "shower" moments of antiquity, and Homer here is attempting to provide them and I think you're doing a fabulous job catching them!
If we were going to try to plot the story line like JudeS's wonderful genealogy (thank you Jude) from the Fagles, what on earth would it look like?
We've got a son coming of age, trying to take over, telling his mother what to do. Is there anybody here with sons who can't relate to this? No matter how gently one's own son tells one, (or one's daughter for that matter), the day WILL come and it appears that the day came early for Penelope because of the problems she has.
But is Telemachus up to it? ALF thinks he is, what do you think?
We've talked about why the suitors are there, super discussion and why the old men don't help, and I thought that was wonderfully quoted:
Barbara quoted:
I think Eurymachus response to Halitherses is what gives the impression the elders have no power.
"Stop, old man!"
Eurymachus, Polybus' son, rose up to take him on.
"Go home and babble your omens to your children -
save them from some catastrophe coming soon.
I 'm a better hand than you at reading portents.
Flocks of birds go fluttering under the sun's rays,
not all are fraught with meaning...."
For people who put so much store in genealogy and "the son of whoever," this seems a bit odd, doesn't it? It does to me. Compare Aeneas and his flight from Troy carrying his aged father, leading his small son by the hand, his wife to follow as best she could. The aged father in a famous statue by Bernini(http://www.seniorlearn.org/latin/aeneas/aeneassculpturebernini.jpg) carries the Lares and Penates, the household gods. Aeneas's story is one of total filial piety.
Not only does the old man ride in the boat, he warns and gives a lot of advice which is heeded to. We seem to have a different situation here. I wonder why? Here our old men so far are saying nothing, except Nestor. And he's home with his sons. What does this indicate, I wonder.
So we have mothers and sons, fathers ...but the join is broken here, we've got Nestor and HIS son but the father Odysseus is missing, so we have a disconnect.
We've got Athena, in these two books not only owl eyed but flashing eyed (in Lombardo) as mentor. Literally as Mentor, Odysseus's friend and of course what the word means. A play on words again. And we've got Nestor as mentor too. So the young man has a lot of help. She helped Odysseus, she's helping Telemachus, the gods are present in their lives. For better or worse, sometimes worse if they wanted nothing good for you.
I have Telemachus calling one meeting, I don't see two.
At the end of Book I (line 398) Telemachus says
"But in the morning we will sit in the meeting ground,
So that I can tell all of you in broad daylight
To get out of my house."
And in the morning, his debut as a man, they laugh at him. So here we have an additional tension in that he's trying but the world is resisting. He needs help. He gets it, from gods (Athene as Mentor) and men (Nestor).
Dana I appreciate knowing the meaning of the word Antinous, it suits him.
So he sets out on another journey, his own Odyssey, another parallel, to the journey of Odysseys and t he journeys mentioned when Menelaus and Agamemnon argued about returning home.
Nestor went with Menelaus and got home.
Odysseus went with Agamemnon, neither of them has had a happy homecoming.
What has the story of Agamemnon's return got to do with our story here?
What did you think of the flashback technique here to the Trojan War? Do they fit in or do they distract? We've got a lot of plots going on here, and another parallel in the "Return Home" thread. Agamemnon returns home and is killed. Odysseus has yet to return home and I liked Barbara's post here on the difficulty in the ancient world of actually expecting TO return:
Old Nestor’s advice gives us a good idea how small the known world was at the time –
You might abandon hope of ever returning home,
Once the winds had driven you that far off course,
Into a sea so vast not even cranes could wing their way
In one year’s flight - so vast it is, so awesome…
So it's not a cruise...although today one might encounter the same thing, actually, depending on where one cruises in the world, right?
I was really glad in Book III line 238, to see Nestor asking the $64,000 question about the suitors and the home situation, I mean it's the obvious question anybody would ask.
"Why do you put up with this?"
What is the answer he gets? What does that mean?
-
Gods in everything. Roxania said, "I really don't know what the Olympians expected of their followers--other than to follow the rules of impeccable hospitality in case one of them turned up for dinner, apparently! The Greeks had their household gods, and each city-state seemed to have a patron, but beyond that, people seem to have been able to pick and choose. There was no demand that anybody worship one god exclusively, which must have made for more mellow religious discussions than people tend to have now. Certainly the gods did not seem to expect that humanity would turn to them for any meaningful answers, which is a good thing, since they were often the ones causing the confusion in the first place. "
The gods demanded sacrifice as JoanK mentions and they demanded respect. By the time the Romans took the Greek gods over, it was more about following the ritual then the actual gods, but there was a lot of superstition going on due to the plethora of cautionary tales passed down through the centuries.
Like the ancient Mafia, you dis the gods at your peril. Pride or hubris caused many mortals a fall, think of the weaver Arachne turned into a spider or Niobe who suffered horribly for her pride in Greek mythology. Think of Baucuis and Philemon who received the strangers hospitably, they were gods in disguise. This gods among us in disguise seems to be a very old concept with very modern ramifications.
This is something actually seen in other ancient cultures, also, including China, if you read Pearl Buck''s The Good Earth we can see Wang Lung, at the birth of a boy, loudly lamenting his being a boy aloud in the streets lest the gods be jealous and take him back.
Think then, of Agamemnon, who wanted to stay behind as Troy burned and NOT sail with Menelaus and the others because he wanted to do a sacrifice to appease the wrath of Athena (line 159ff in III). Nestor says :----poor fool/ He had no idea she would never relent." ( 159ff, III)
The ancients would have instantly known why he was wasting his time. We don't, do we?
Why not? What did Agamemnon DO to Athena that caused this enmity? What has THIS got to do with what we now think of as OUR story? It's a flashback. He sure seems to have tried to appease the capricious gods, including sacrificing his own daughter, and failed. It appears if they set their caps against you, you're dead in several ways? Or is it something else and why include it here? It's our Epic, right?
Are the flashbacks distracting? Why do you think they are here?
Book III is full of the GREATEST descriptions! I love the images of the birds.
What are your favorite lines so far?
I like "For seven years in gold encrusted Mycenae..." concerning the murder of Aegisthus...339...another flashback. This whole sequence is kind of confusing. In it Menelaus has a rough trip back home and Orestes arrives home to kill Aegisthus who took up with Clytemnestra and killed Agmemnon. So here is another parallel, the son avenging the father. Told to Telemachus as a good heroic thing. And a homecoming.
The plots and sub plots are DEEP here, one needs a score card, but at the same time, if you tried to explain the TV show DALLAS to somebody, what would your explanation look like?
hahha
Another parallel: Clytemnestra, and Helen go willingly with their suitors.
Barbara you mentioned: What happened to Helen's daughter after her mom was kidnapped by Paris?
She was not kidnapped, she went willingly just like Clytemnestra did. Helen got to reproach herself, was it in the Iliad? Lots of other people reproached her too as Troy lay burning.
On the other hand, what choice did she have as a prize in the contest? Have we looked at the story of Paris and Helen? Does anything in it have parallels here?
But Penelope so far has held out. What happened, by the way, did Menelaus ever get Helen back? Why or why not?
There are a lot of powerful themes in this so far.
Here we've got Odysseus (who? We're talking about everybody else so far hahaha) as the man of constant sorrow:
"He was born to sorrow,/ More than any man on earth." (III 105 L)
But he's also the Master of all strategies (133, III, L). There seems to be a LOT of thinking going on here, we have another plan revealed at the end of III, we seem to have another journey, by land with Peisistratus, Nestor's son. What's this one all about? Where are they going and why?
We don't have sacrifices today in religion or do we? What are your thoughts on ALL these sacrifices in Book III? Are you repelled?
Does the effect of these flashbacks make you impatient to find out what the real plot is going to say, do they build expectation or the reverse?
Inquiring mind or what passes for it would love to know some of this. :)
-
Ginny - I have just re-read the first three books again, and I have the following queries:
In Book One , line 456, Telemachus refers to;
"all that King Odysseus won for me by force"
- does this mean that there is no automatic inheritance of property, etc, and that ownership is asserted by force?
In Book Two, line 60, Telemachus says the suitors;
"would rather die than approach her father's house"
- why is this the case? Why are the suitors happier to hang around trying to ingratiate themselves with Penelope than to ask her father for her hand? Is it because they can't prove Odysseus is dead? I am a bit confused here :) In line 137, Antinous says that the suitors will stay "as long as she holds out" - so is it Penelope's choice? I got the impression that a woman didn't get much say in whom she married, but here there seem to be two alternatives - either Penelope makes a choice, or she is sent back to Icarius and he makes a choice. Is that right? In lines 147-8, Telemachus seems to be saying that to send her back would cost him too much.
Later, in lines 229-30, Eurymachus says he and the other suitors are fed up with waiting for Penelope and;
"Never courting others, bevies of brides who'd suit each noble here"
- why? Is it because Penelope is potentially richer than the other available women, or what?
In lines 414-5, Telemachus tells the store-woman not to tell Penelope where he has gone until ten or twelve days have passed "or she misses me herself" - this seems to me to imply that Penelope might not even notice Telemachus has gone for some time. Isn't this a bit odd? Or would Penelope not see that much of Telemachus in the huge palace?
In line 504 of Book 1, when the nurse "puts Telemachus to bed", she is said to "slide the doorbelt home with its rawhide strap" - this sounds like she is locking Telemachus into his room - is that right? Or is she inside with him?
About both Nestor and Menelaus it is said;
"he'll never lie - the man is far too wise"
- I am not sure how wisdom links with truthfulness, and would have expected something like "he'll never lie - he's too moral/reliable/honest" - why "wise"? What do the other translators say?
There are also some lines which I would just like to mention because I like them so much:
- the repeated use of;
"the roads of the world grew dark"
to signify nightfall. What a beautiful phrase, so visual - one thinks of a country road as darkness falls.
- line 239 of Book 3, which Fagles translates as;
"Now that you mention it, dear boy"
- wonderful, seems to make Nestor so much more real - he makes all these regal statements, then throws in this little aside and becomes human.
When Nestor tells Telemachus the story of Clytemnestra and Aegisthus's betrayal of Agamemnon, (line 310, Book 3) he sums it all up in the simple words:
"lover lusting for lover" - what a powerful phrase, it says so much
I also love the line:
"flocks of birds go fluttering under the sun's rays"
- a wonderful image, and the sound of the words is so "fluttery" - I think we can see the black birds flying. I sometimes notice at dusk, here in the city, huge flocks of birds circling above the buildings, and out in the country I sometimes here a noise that I know is the approach of a flock of arctic geese on their way south - sure enough, when you look up, there they are, always in a "V" formation. They come to some of the lochs in winter (which presumably, for them, count as warm!)
That's my twopennyworth for today - sorry it's taken so long, and also if I have asked about things you have already covered -I was racing to catch up,
Rosemary
-
Ginny, I really appreciate the way you summarize the organize all of this material, especially for those of us who are unfamiliar with much of it. And I need to read it closely. I like your "shower" analogy.
But right now, must refer back to Babi’s post (#705) with a question. Does Telemachus know that Mentor is really Athena? Somewhere I’ve picked up the idea that he does know, and her disguise is for the others who are around.
Speaking of what the gods want, probably awe and respect is at the
top of the list, wouldn't you think? I noticed a bit of that when Athena,
still posing as Mentor, responded a bit tartly to something Telemachus
said.
But if that be the case, he certainly does need to watch his mouth, as Babi pointed out.
Right after Mentor tells him to watch what he says, he goes on with
. . .the gods have long since counseled his (Odysseus’) destruction. . . However, I should like to ask Nestor, for he knows much more than anyone else does. They say he has reigned for three generations, so it is like talking to an immortal.
(Butler)
Telemachus is saying this to a goddess? He does need to watch his tongue. He maturing, but has Mentor’s presence made him a bit full of himself?
-
Oh what wonderful questions! I have copied them out happily and will take them away and think on them!!
This one: In Book Two, line 60, Telemachus says the suitors;
"would rather die than approach her father's house"
- why is this the case? Why are the suitors happier to hang around trying to ingratiate themselves with Penelope than to ask her father for her hand? Is it because they can't prove Odysseus is dead? I am a bit confused here Smiley In line 137, Antinous says that the suitors will stay "as long as she holds out" - so is it Penelope's choice?
This is an excellent question and brings up another theme: blame. Everybody here is blaming everybody else, the blame game was flying in the first two chapters, I wonder where the buck really stops. Wonderful questions, thank you!~!~
What do you all think about these or anything else?
-
Ginny - our posts "crossed"!
I think the flashbacks are essential to keep the story exciting. We need to know what has led to all of this, but if Homer just rattled it all off in order, I don't think it would be as interesting. I like this method.
I am not sure about modern day sacrifices. I suppose suicide bombers make the ultimate sacrifice. The most that most people do, I think, is light candles, but they are usually in memory of someone, or to pray for someone, not to "appease" a god. I am amazed that these Greeks always eat the animals' "innards" - somewhere along the line something has changed, as no matter what I do with the stuff my children will not eat liver, kidney, etc! But maybe modern Greeks are more sensible - I think offal (as it is called in the UK) is widely eaten in France. for example.
I laughed when you mentioned the numerous sub-plots in Dallas - does anyone remember the spoof programme "Soap"? - at the start of each episode there was a long synopsis of the previous week's story, after which the voice would always say:
"Confused? You won't be, after this week's episode of Soap"
Clearly things haven't changed for thousands of years.
Rosemary
-
Pedln, we were posting together, thank you.
I thought where the bird flew off was the aha moment of Athena as Mentor, does every translation have that? It was actually a cool moment, I thought.
-
We lack a definition for Grenian,
This is Gerenian -From memory (shaky) I believe there was some dispute even in antiquity as to where Nestor's Pylos was located. One theory put forward was that Pylos was actually in Spain.There is a place named Pilas (Pylos?) which is not far from Gerena - thus Gerenian Nestor ?? Maybe the use of Gerenian by Homer perpetuated an already ancient dispute as to the location - I've checked a couple of references I have but can't turn anything concrete up at the moment.
-
Thanks Gumtree - sounds convincing to me. I tried googling it and I all I got was (1) the name of a financial services company, and (2) the "archives of erotica" or something - a US site which I did not open!
Rosemary
-
" did Menelaus ever get Helen back?"
That's one I can answer -- most of them I can't.
Yes. We'll see them together as a couple shortly, when T visits them.
The different explanations of why Penelope doesn'rt just go back to her father's house struck me, too. I wondered if several versions were cobbled together here.
I think it says that T realized early that "Mentor" is a god early. but when she turns into a vulture, everyone realizes it.
Why a vulture, I wonder? Perhaps because it is a big bird (can't have a goddess turning into an itty bitty bird) and no one eats it (you can't eat a goddess!) but it doesn't have the association with power that a hawk or eagle would.
But eating carrion? throwing up on enemies (that's what vultures do!). No! No! As a birder, I want to make her a falcon., with its speedy flight. Or at leaast a sharp-shinned hawk, sliding through the trees with her silver sandals.
-
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pylos
Gumtree, re your post #714. I don't think Spain. Sounds too far out to me. I checked Barry Cunliffe's, The Extraordinary Voyage of Pytheas the Greek. Pytheas, somewhere around 320BC sailed along the Mediterranean coast, around Spain, around the British Isles, and possibly as far as far as Iceland. I could not find any reference to Pylos or Genera.
I saw several mentions that Generian is most likely a descriptive title. Apparently Nestor was rather elderly.
PS: I just found this ongoing archaeological dig at Pylos and surrounding area. Includes pix and maps of what they think may be Nestor's palace. http://www.iklaina.org/
Sorry, almost forgot the link.
-
gere'nian: epithet of Nestor, iii.68, etc
the above is from the glossary in the back of my copy of Odyssey transl by Lattimore
14 pages of spelling of names from translated Greek and at least one reference to each
-
Re Nestor and Gerenian:
I went to about ten sites in relation to this name. It seems we are not the only ones who have trouble figuring out the meaning. In the end these facts seem to explain that word the best :
Nestor was born in the ancient town of Gerenea in Messina.
Nestor was brought up among the Gerenians.
The word Gerenian refers only to Nestor and not to anyone else in the Odyssey.
Fun Fact:
In an interview with Colin Firth (he of The King's Speech) the fabulous actor said that he would skip Literature class and read and reread HIS favorite book. What was that, asked the interviewer. His answer "The Odyssey"!
-
The Book Club Online is the oldest book club on the Internet, begun in 1996, open to everyone. We offer cordial discussions of one book a month, 24/7 and enjoy the company of readers from all over the world. Everyone is welcome to join in.
Now reading:
(http://www.seniorlearn.org/bookclubs/classicsbookclub/cbc2odysseysm.jpg)
February 22- Books II and III: Telemachus goes on his own quest
(http://www.seniorlearn.org/latin/ulysses_penelope/OdysseybodyofPatroclus.jpg)
Attic black figure kylix, 530BC
Attributed to Exekias
Antikensammlungen, Munich
In this scene from the Trojan War, set between 'eyes', warriors fight over the body of Patroclus,
stripped of his armour. One attempts to drag the body away.
(http://www.seniorlearn.org/latin/ulysses_penelope/OdysseyclyagamurderGuerin.jpg)
The Murder of Agamemnon
Pierre Narcisse Guerin (1774 - 1833)
Louvre, Paris
Discussion Leaders: Joan K (joankraft13@yahoo.com) & ginny (gvinesc@gmail.com )
Useful Links:
1. Critical Analysis: Free SparkNotes background and analysis on the Odyssey (http://www.sparknotes.com/lit/odyssey)
2. Translations Used in This Discussion So Far: (http://www.seniorlearn.org/bookclubs/odyssey/odyssey_translations.html)
3. Initial Points to Watch For: submitted by JudeS (http://www.seniorlearn.org/bookclubs/odyssey/odyssey_points.html)
4. Maps:
http://www.seniorlearn.org/latin/ulysses_penelope/Odysseusmap.jpg (http://www.seniorlearn.org/latin/ulysses_penelope/Odysseusmap.jpg)
http://www.wesleyan.edu/~mkatz/Images/Voyages.jpg (http://www.wesleyan.edu/~mkatz/Images/Voyages.jpg)
http://www.seniorlearn.org/latin/ulysses_penelope/Odysseusmap2.jpg (http://www.seniorlearn.org/latin/ulysses_penelope/Odysseusmap2.jpg)
(http://www.seniorlearn.org/latin/ulysses_penelope/Odysseyclyandagaredfigure.jpg)
Clytemnestra and the body of Agamemnon
Attic red figure kylix
attr. to the Byrgos Painter
c. 490 BC
Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York
(http://www.seniorlearn.org/latin/ulysses_penelope/Odysseyatheneandtflax.jpg)
Telemachos, accompanied by Athene disguised as Mentor, searches for his father
Engraving and etching on paper
John Flaxman
1805
Tate Gallery
-
Oh, good, another reason to like Colin Firth. I had the same inconclusive search everyone else had for Gerenian.
Reading the Iliad with Ginny was good preparation for this; I've already met a lot of the characters. I'm particularly glad to meet Nestor again, as he was one of my favorites. He is already old in Iliad, and very wise. He mostly gives good advice to people and makes stirring speeches to the soldiers that inspire them to fight furiously.
Although he has already seen 3 generations (I'm guessing that that's about 50, given marriage ages) and is regarded as physically weak, he is still valiant and does fight well in battle once or twice. But my favorite bit is Agamemnon's remark to him:
"Nestor, old sir! If only your knees
Were as strong as your spirit...."
I adopted that as my motto.
-
Wow - my hats off to all of you for taking on the Gerenian adjective - whew - and it sounds like you solved it Jude. Bravo - I was thinking a note to one of these translators was going to be the only solution.
As to Penelope and her choice.
I think that is the tension of this entire story - it is why the journalist with the NYTimes had an article that renamed 100 of the top books and for the Odyssey the rename was something like 'Don't Mess with the Wife of a Veteran'
Without her having a choice the tension is gone - it is an easy exchange of household leaders - not only is wealth at stake but for Penelope there is her son as the rightful heir to his father's wealth as well as, her role as the good women as compared to the gods who toss their kids around as if human services would save them.
Why would Telemachus seek his father except if as a teen, he did not like his mother's choice for his step-dad and then we have a very different story - but Telemachus says that he could not walk out on his mother in her efforts to hold off the suitors.
As to him being rough with her - that to me is typical of any child when they are becoming an adult - they usually pick the safest one - the parent they know will love them no matter how much they hurt them - in Telemachus' case he didn't have much choice - he couldn't very well sass back his father and he was not yet angry with his father - he wanted to know what happened - he had not yet felt abandoned - his mother's example of not making a choice helps him to not feel abandoned.
I remember my own children and I was so worried about my youngest who was not snapping back or trying to argue with me - I just knew that is part of taking the bold step to grow up in that it is very hard to have an opinion different than you parents and yet, to be their own person they must - kids usually try to please the one they are dependent upon and to take the bold step of having your own opinion much less a plan of action - Holy Hannah that is revolution time - and funny - my youngest didn't rebel, announcing his own opinion till politics rolled around when he was in his 30s - I think he knew that up until then I needed support - which is what Telemachus offered Penelope, so he was taking a risk to get them out of the mess they were in. He did have the family's faithful servant his nurse.
As to the leather on the door and Fagles says, also a silver bar or catch of some sort - I think both are said for their symbolic meaning - from my trusty J.C.Cooper book, An Illustrated...
Leather - to wear leather is to take on the power or mana of the animal and puts the wearer in touch with the animals and their instinctual knowledge - worn in initiation ceremonies, assurance of immortality.
Silver - is symbolic of the moon, virginity, the feminine aspect with the virginal state of prima materia, which is the primitive formless base of all matter, given particular manifestation through the influence.
That to me says the nurse is acting almost like a Shaman or a priest blessing Telemachus after he told her of his daring and adult plan - a story is about showing, not telling - so the story shows her closing the door with a leather hinge or strap or whatever it was - just a bit of extra color to the story? I doubt it - any author gets rid of what is extra - and so I am content believing it is a blessing and then clasping the door with silver so that the strength of the animal is one of the influences she hopes to confer on Telemachus during his last night in the house as a child.
When we look at the arc of this entire Epic it hinges on Penelope having a choice and in spite of Odysseus' choices or dilly dallying from the gods returning Odysseus to Ithaca, upon his return the story is of how he dispenses with those who tried to force Penelope into a choice and punishing them for the means they chose to press their case.
-
Oh perfect Pat - oh too perfect
"Nestor, old sir! If only your knees
Were as strong as your spirit...."
-
The doorbolt:
Fagles: drawing the door shut with the silver hook,
sliding the doorbolt home with it's rawhide strap.
Lombardo: Pulled the door shut by its silver handle,
And drew the bolt home with the strap.
I took this to be the equivalent of the frontier latchstring. Your door is held shut by a bolt--it has a string attached; if you want to get in from outside, or close the door after you, you poke the string through a hole. then you can raise or lower the latch from outside. "The latchstring is out" is an invitation--it means anyone is welcome to come in.
So what it means here is that Eurycleia is properly shutting the door after she goes out. But, and I wouldn't have noticed this if Rosemary hadn't asked, there is kind of a final click to it:
"And drew the bolt home with the strap." Snap. Click. Tomorrow is showdown time.
-
There are some fabulous posts above. I am about to look up Gerenian in my Liddell and Scott., but what Jude says makes sense. My first impression was that Gerenian came from Gerousia, the name of the war council in Sparta. They were called the Gerousia because they were all old, chiefs and leaders. Nestor had ruled for three generations so certainly was no pup. We get the word geriatric from the Greek root Ger (as applied, as mentioned) to the Gerousia.
I Checked my faithful L & S, which is all Greek, not English/Greek. It is possible that if Gerenian is not a place name it could equate to elderly as I mentioned in the first para. If I could see the word in Greek it would help a lot. You have probably noticed that there are variations in transliterating Greek into English. Anyway, my L&S has a couple iof interesting entries. The adjective I have is "geraion" (masculine, singular) which means "old" and "venerable". "Geraion" is in the same column as gerousia, so there is definitely a connection. But without seeing the Greek writing, I cannot be sure that I am correct.
One of the most unfortunate mortals who suffered the wrath of an immortal was Medusa, who was once very beautiful. She was turned into the snake haired monster by Athena when she was either raped by Poseidon; or "lay" with him on the floor of one of Athena's temples. Another case of the woman copping the blame.
-
Oh Dear - I have just spotted an "anomaly". The Captain will probably make me walk the plank for this, but it is not mine.
In an earlier post there was a section about "confusing terms". One of those terms was Lacadaemonia. The post entry defines this word as kingdom of Agamemnon in the Southern Peloponnese. Actually Agamemnon's kingdom is Mycenae which is in the northern part of the Peloponnese. The palace with The Lion Gate. Mycenae was the stronghold of Agamemnon and Clytemnestra. It was here that Schliemann found some wondrous gold items.
Lacadaemonia is actually southern Peloponnese and is another name for Sparta. If you have ever seen a picture of a Spartan soldier (think Thermopylae) he carries a large shield with what looks like an inverted V on it. It is not a V, but actually an inverted capital Lamda= Λ. That Λ actually is the first letter of Lacadaemonian, an alternative name for Spartan. The KIA car company spells itself as KIΛ. Because I have two brainσ, one Greek and the other - well I am not too sure - I always read that car's logo as KIL.
So when Telemachus goes to visit Helen and Menelaus he visits them in Sparta, not Mycenae.
-
Interesting posts on the 'Generian' epithet. I'm still not convinced on any of them simply because if its meaning and/or origin was a clear cut case surely that would appear in one or other of the glossaries or annotations.
Jude's Fun Fact: I'm wondering whether Colin Firth reads Odyssey in Greek :D
PatH: I wasn't around when you discussed Iliad - one of my true regrets.
-
Does anyone else think that kylix at the top of the page looks a bit like Donald Duck?
Rosemary
-
Wondering how much danger Telemachus was in? Had there been threats from the suitors? Did they take him seriously or would it be better if he was out of the way?
Seems odd that no one in the palace would have told Penelope that Telemachus had left. Not like the intrigue in the English palaces.
Why were Pylos and Sparta selected as the first stops? Nestor's reputation for giving advice?
Νέστωρ Γερήνιος
Nestor Generian
-
Have just finished Book III in the Cook version. and will read it this evening in the Fagles...
And yes, Barbara I do have 5 translations but must say they've been acquired one by one over my adult lifetime - say one translation every ten or twelve years. :D
One question that's been rolling round in my mind all afternoon - why does everyone question Telemachus' paternity? I know that it's a wise son who knows his own father but those who question then go on to say T has the look of Odysseus etc. I've probably missed discussion on this....
Interesting that the tragedy of the House of Atreus is reiterated and from different points of view - we hear it first from Zeus telling it from the gods' perspective and then Gerenian Nestor tells it from the perspective of a seasoned old man who amplifies the basic story told by Zeus. I see it as a warning to Telemachus to keep Penelope out of the suitors hands else the house of Odysseus should suffer the same fate.
Rosemary Donald Duck? - I do wish you hadn't said that ;D
-
Oh how interesting, I knew there was more than one reason I liked Colin Firth. haahhaa
Pedln had a very interesting thing about the guy who founded Facebook and whom the new Oscar nominated movie is about... (have you all seen that?), maybe she will put it here, he's also interested in ... has a diploma in...Classics.
Roshannarose, now I AM confused, for sure! I rechecked my Fagles again and it does say Lacedaemon: city and kingdom of Menelaus, in the southern Peloponnese.
Then I read the Oxford Companion to Classical Literature and it says Lacedaemon, the ancient Greek name of Sparta used by Homer both for the country (in the south east of the Peloponnese) and its capital.
Under the entry Menelaus, the Oxford says, "He reappears in the Odyssey living at Sparta, reconciled with Helen." (You were right, Joan K, they DID get back together).
Am not sure now what to think?
Thank you all for Gerenian, I do think that one should be in SOME glossary, I mean after all! While looking thru the Pope to see what he had, I found, to my astonishment, the Flaxman Odyssey engravings, one of which (obviously from an old spattered book) is in the heading along with Donald Duck. ahahhaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa
DONALD DUCK? haqhahahaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa
Anyway, here's a beauty: this is for Book III and depicts Penelope Surprised by the Suitors as she tears out her weaving..isn't this something?
(http://www.seniorlearn.org/latin/ulysses_penelope/PenelopeunweavingloomFlaxman.jpg)
Pope has here as a verse:
We saw, as unperceived we took our stand,
the backward labours of her faithless hand.
Neat-O!
Also I found Pylos yesterday in Greece, here it is today, pretty place, am blown away by Frybabe's post on finding Netsor's PALACE, too!
(http://www.seniorlearn.org/latin/ulysses_penelope/PenelopePylosgreece.jpg)
-
Perhaps I should be spending more time with the Loeb. When I copied over this scan of the Greek for Roshannarose, which I see Sally (kidsal) has beaten me to the punch with, thank you Sally!
(http://www.seniorlearn.org/latin/ulysses_penelope/GreekGrenian.jpg)
I saw a small notation I had thought was a blot on the paper (go figure hahahaa) but it's a note.
First off Dr. Murray translates Gerenian as "Nestor of Gerenia."
Then there's a note after the word Nestor:
Apparently the original purpose of this rite, no longer understood in Homer's time, was to reconstitute the animal symbolically by burning representative bits of its several members together with the bones and fat." The reference given is Walter Burkert, Greek Religion, Cambridge and Oxford 14. 427-28.
So there you have it. hahahaa
I'll tell you, if this is the Dr. Murray I think it is, I wouldn't argue with anything he said. But I am beginning to think there are two of them, I'll research it. I have heard THE Dr. Murray spoken of with nothing but awe from a lot of renowned scholars. Of course Fagles (who says this is about a love story, that's what's at the bottom of it) and Lombardo are scholars, too.
Well I have to say I'm with Homer unless somebody can find the Burkert and the chapter Odyssey as given, I have no earthly idea what they are saying. Apparently there was a purpose in the ritual sacrifice, what has that to do with Telemachus's horses? It's a bag of? hmmm? Under the yoke? huh?
Rosemary feels that the flashback technique is useful.
I think the flashbacks are essential to keep the story exciting. We need to know what has led to all of this, but if Homer just rattled it all off in order, I don't think it would be as interesting. I like this method.
What do the rest of you think? I had to get off early yesterday, my 4 year old grandson is staying over 4 days while his parents try to take a vacation, but I've been thinking this over.
Does this flashback thing keep your interest up? Or confuse things?
"Confused? You won't be, after this week's episode of Soap"
Clearly things haven't changed for thousands of years. hahhasaa I loved that thing AND Mary Hartmann, Mary Hartmann. I like being confused (good thing) hahaa
I don't know WHY she didn't want to return home to her father. Apparently in this society like the Chinese once married you do leave the family home, is that what you all are getting? So to go back would be...a disgrace? Anybody know anything about this culture?
These are excellent questions from Sally to go with the ones from Rosemary:
Wondering how much danger Telemachus was in? Had there been threats from the suitors? Did they take him seriously or would it be better if he was out of the way?
Seems odd that no one in the palace would have told Penelope that Telemachus had left. Not like the intrigue in the English palaces.
Why were Pylos and Sparta selected as the first stops? Nestor's reputation for giving advice?
These suitors seem not easy pushovers. I think T is in a lot of danger, he's already said they will kill him, I'm wondering if Penelope is of childbearing years and that's running out. An heir and a spare about to disappear? Whoever wins her will not want O's son claiming the throne.
But as Rosemary asks, how DID O get the throne? We really need to know this one, won by force? What can we find out?
I like PatH's explanation of the doorbolt. I wanted to look the same thing up in Butler, but he does not use line numbers or anything so it's quite difficult. Dr. Murray has the nurse "drawing the door to by its silver handle, and driving the bolt home with the thong."
What do make of that? Just something to keep the door shut? On the outside tho. But the next day he got up, got dressed and "went forth from his chamber like a god to look upon." (M) so apparently he was not locked in or this is not important.
It DOES remind one however of another closing and bolting of doors when O gets back, I'm glad we picked up on it.
Gum also has some great questions:
One question that's been rolling round in my mind all afternoon - why does everyone question Telemachus' paternity? I know that it's a wise son who knows his own father but those who question then go on to say T has the look of Odysseus etc. I've probably missed discussion on this....
Interesting that the tragedy of the House of Atreus is reiterated and from different points of view - we hear it first from Zeus telling it from the gods' perspective and then Gerenian Nestor tells it from the perspective of a seasoned old man who amplifies the basic story told by Zeus. I see it as a warning to Telemachus to keep Penelope out of the suitors hands else the house of Odysseus should suffer the same fate.
I don't know why I think a question of his paternity might save his life, actually. If he's not the son of O, they don't have to kill him, which i think they probably would. But why, as Rosemary asks, is it a line of inheritance?
I thought this was good by Barbara on the Choice of Penelope:
When we look at the arc of this entire Epic it hinges on Penelope having a choice and in spite of Odysseus' choices or dilly dallying from the gods returning Odysseus to Ithaca, upon his return the story is of how he dispenses with those who tried to force Penelope into a choice and punishing them for the means they chose to press their case.
Choice here might be another theme. Particularly in these epic poems where the hero...has a choice or does he?
Aeneas and Dido, how many operas have been made of that? He chooses to leave her...does he choose or do the gods make him? The gods literally made me do it, he says when he meets her in Hell because she killed herself. She won't even talk to him. "I had to go found Rome," he says.
Here's O, stuck off on an island with Calypso and he's been there a LOOONG time, (how long? I forget), dilly dallying as Barbara says, because of the gods? Because of his own choice?
I dunno, why would telling this story in the order it happened change the interest? You could have flashbacks of Meanwhile Back in the Castle, for that matter, would it change things? I must admit to a desire to keep moving, that's clever story telling.
This is a nice point by Pedln which I missed completely:
. . .the gods have long since counseled his (Odysseus’) destruction. . . However, I should like to ask Nestor, for he knows much more than anyone else does. They say he has reigned for three generations, so it is like talking to an immortal.
(Butler)
Telemachus is saying this to a goddess? He does need to watch his tongue. He maturing, but has Mentor’s presence made him a bit full of himself?
I do get the impression T is full of self. He's impotent, he can do nothing about his mother but order her upstairs and then he leaves. He can do nothing about the suitors, he does try, they laugh him off and get serious when he doesn't. Apparently these men are nothing to fool around with. One boy against these hardened warriors apparently is no match at all. I note no fisticuffs have evolved yet. Would fisticuffs in this group lead inevitably to death? (Please don't give me the "noble Greeks," always killing each other, sheesh). But I had a student in my face to face class point the difference between the Athenian Greeks and the Spartan. Maybe there is something important being said here by the constant references to where they come from? Apparently there was QUITE a difference?
Must have been a very big castle, as someone said here, that T's mother is not to know. Kind of like a Chinese palace. Why not? Would she try to stop him? Would she lament at losing her other man in the house? Would she feel afraid to face the suitors alone? Didn't she WANT him to go, tell him to go somewhere and look for news of his father?
So many great questions to ponder and discuss and here's Frybabe with what may have BEEN Nestor's palace!! Wowza! Thank you! I personally don't for one moment dispute that these people lived. Legends may have grown up around them but I think somewhere way underneath there's a kernel of truth.
Fantastic adventure we're on now!
Oh and in this one Rosemary mentions:
- line 239 of Book 3, which Fagles translates as;
"Now that you mention it, dear boy"
Lombardo has, "Well then, my child, I will tell you all.) (280)
Murray has, "Since you ask, my child, I will tell you the truth. (254)
I'm interested to hear what the others have?
Fantastic adventure/odyssey we're on now!
-
Oh oh oh look look look, where IS my mind? Look what else I found yesterday, the complete Odyssey drawings of John Flaxman:
http://www.mccunecollection.org/Odyssey%20of%20Homer.html
Wooo hoo!
-
Hmmmm. I am glad we have cleared up the Spartan question. I am not perfect, but I doubt that I would debate this statement if it was correct. Oh well - c'est la vie.
As for Gerenia, Jude is absolutely correct, but it is not an adjective, which misled me. It is actually a Genitive, e.g. Nestor of Gerenia. This makes absolute sense, backed up by my translation..
-
RoshannaRose, thank you for the translation!
Help me out with this one? I'm still confused. You said, In an earlier post there was a section about "confusing terms". One of those terms was Lacadaemonia. The post entry defines this word as kingdom of Agamemnon in the Southern Peloponnese. Actually Agamemnon's kingdom is Mycenae which is in the northern part of the Peloponnese. The palace with The Lion Gate. Mycenae was the stronghold of Agamemnon and Clytemnestra. It was here that Schliemann found some wondrous gold items.
Was this my post? I worried that I had misquoted Fagles, who didn't mention Agamemnon, you did, he says what I posted:
Roshannarose, now I AM confused, for sure! I rechecked my Fagles again and it does say Lacedaemon: city and kingdom of Menelaus, in the southern Peloponnese.
Then I read the Oxford Companion to Classical Literature and it says Lacedaemon, the ancient Greek name of Sparta used by Homer both for the country (in the south east of the Peloponnese) and its capital.
Which one of those is wrong? Or both?
-
Everybody is a son of.
Yes, indeed. It's the equivalent of a last name for us. It's more obvious in names like Ericson or Williamson.
It occurs to me that the suitors' disrespect for their elders is
of a piece with their abuse of hospitality. This is a pretty shoddy
lot, by Greek or modern standards.
Rosemary, my own take on wise men not lying, is simply that they
are wise enough to know that it doesn't pay in the long run. You get
caught in the lies and lose your credibility, at the very least.
Does Telemachus know that this is Athena accompanying him? There
is a real 'Mentor', a known friend and guide. He knows that Athena
once appeared to him in that form, but does he really know that the
'Mentor' accompanying him day by day is Athena and not his friend?
Where is the real Mentor, by the way? Is this some sort of godly
'occupation' of a mortal?
Interesting questions about modern sacrifices. I would suppose that
practices like the Lenten fasts are a modern form of sacrifice. And
many people still practice giving up something special for the season.
Congregations are frequently asked for a 'sacrificial'level of giving
for some church need.
I suppose that originally the idea of sacrifice was to give back,
in some way, in gratitude for all that the gods gave men. Obviously,
they don't need those slaughtered oxen, etc., for food. It was the
idea that counted.
The suicide bombers who give up their lives are doing so in hopes of
a great reward in paradise, and the assurance that the act is pleasing
to God. Just as terrible an injustice as Agamemnon's sacrifice of his
daughter. May that is why Athena hated the man. ??
GUM, I took those references to Telemachus looking like his father
to be the normal, common, .."Oh, you look just like your Daddy! I'd
know you anywhere!"
-
line 239 of Book 3, which Fagles translates as;
"Now that you mention it, dear boy"
Lombardo has, "Well then, my child, I will tell you all.) (280)
Murray has, "Since you ask, my child, I will tell you the truth. (254)
I'm interested to hear what the others have?
Albert Cook has - line 254
"All right, my child, I shall tell you all of the truth"
Rieu has - no line No.
'My child,' Gerenian Nestor answered, 'I shall be glad to tell you the whole tale.'
Interesting that Cook and Murray have the same line number as Cook emphasizes that his translation tries to render the poem not only literally, but line by line, so that almost always the expressions in a given line of Greek are those in the corresponding English line. Looks like Murray was doing the same. On the other hand Rieu's prose version is more verbose overall.
-
I'll tell you, if this is the Dr. Murray I think it is, I wouldn't argue with anything he said. But I am beginning to think there are two of them, I'll research it. I have heard THE Dr. Murray spoken of with nothing but awe from a lot of renowned scholars
Ginny: I'm sure your Dr Murray is Gilbert Murray who was renown as a Greek scholar and his translations of Greek plays and of course Homer.
He was, in fact, born in Sydney, Australia (where else, I ask you) - studied at Oxford I think, certainly taught there. He was also very involved in firstly, the League of Nations and then the United Nations of which he was a founding member and its first President.
This is from the blurb on the cover of his Rise of the Greek Epic
Gilbert Murray, Regius Professor of Greek in the University of Oxford from 1908 to 1936, was the best-known interpreter of Greek literature in the present century. His writings include many verse translations of Greek plays. and studies of Euripides, Aristophanes and Aeschylus. He also edited Euripides and Aeschylus (Oxford Classical Texts), and was an editor of the Oxford Book of Greek Verse
-
"So when Telemachus goes to visit Helen and Menelaus he visits them in Sparta, not Mycenae." Yes, Lombardo has Menelaus referring to it as Sparta.
I have a question for those of you who know greek. Is Mentor called mentor because of a greek word with the modern meaning of mentor, or do we get the modern word from the Odyssey character? Does anyone know?(Which came first, the chicken or the egg?)
-
Ginny - As I said before there is no way I would contradict what I know to be true.
In an earlier post there was a section about "confusing terms". One of those terms was Lacadaemonia. The post entry defines this word as kingdom of Agamemnon in the Southern Peloponnese.
Actually Agamemnon's kingdom is Mycenae which is in the northern part of the Peloponnese. The palace with The Lion Gate. Mycenae was the stronghold of Agamemnon and Clytemnestra. It was here that Schliemann found some wondrous gold items.
Lacadaemonia is actually southern Peloponnese and is another name for Sparta. If you have ever seen a picture of a Spartan soldier (think Thermopylae) he carries a large shield with what looks like an inverted V on it. It is not a V, but actually an inverted capital Lamda= Λ. That Λ actually is the first letter of Lacadaemonian, an alternative name for Spartan.
You must have misquoted Fagles, otherwise why should I correct it? This is no big deal, we all make mistakes. It would be an easy mistake to make to write Agamemnon, rather than Menelaus. I make mistakes every day, e.g. my hunch about gerenia was wrong. That's fine because I learned something from it. However, because there had been some confusion in other posts earlier about Agamemnon and Menelaus, I thought it best to point out what I have quoted above. I note now that your original post (re Fagles) has been changed from Agamemnon to Menelaus.
I hope this settles this matter. We can agree to disagree.
-
We'll be moving on to Book 4 soon. There Menelaus and Helen tell us some of the things that happened after the end of The Iliad. One of the stories refers to "the wooden horse." Did anyone forget to read the newspapers the day that happened, and need an update?
-
Fitzgerald's translation is close to Lombardo's, GUM. It reads,
"Well, now, my son, I'll tell you the whole story". This is what
I like most about Fitzgerald; his people and the way they speak sound
real to me.
Something I found curious, but could find no good information about
it. All I read about minstrels describes them as wandering bards, who
became regular fixtures in royal courts in the middle ages. However,
the minstrel Phemios seems to be a resident at Telemachus home , and we find that Agamamnon, on sailing for Troy, left his wife
under the 'companionship' (guardianship?) of a minstrel. This
suggests that minstrels sometimes took on roles beyond singing and
telling stories. Can anyone tell me more about this?
-
T his is a nice power point of the history of Minstrels - For awhile I was looking into the Jester which spills over into the Minstrel and it helped me sort it out to know in ancient times the Minstrel was not only adapt in poetry and music but also history and the healing arts - the Minstrel had to be proficient in one healing art.
Ancient Minstrels were considered Bards rather than the Troubadours we can picture from the Middle Ages - and as this power point shows even in early Europe, Bards were hired by a patron to commemorate their ancestors and praise the patron.. They were not the roving musicians from later times which was after they lost their prestige.
http://www.authorstream.com/Presentation/sancarnomad-325676-evolution-minstrels-nomads-epics-education-ppt-powerpoint/
And so with that it is easy to see that in Ancient Greece the Bard would be the most intellectual member of his court or in service - the warrior was brave and wily but I see no where that he was given Kudos for his scholarship or intelligence - plus the ancient Mistral would have some healing knowledge - what better person to leave responsible for your wife and children.
-
Barb
Thanks for the material on the minstrels.
Here are some facts I've gleaned from reading various sources. We have not discussed who the poems were written for, so this is the material in relation to that thought.
The Greek poets wrote for an aristocratic audience and glorified leaders of the past.Neither the Illiad or the Odyssey is much concerned with democracy.That some men are born leaders and others just a faceless mob was accepted as fact. The few common people mentioned (like Telemachus's servant girl) are there because of their loyalty to their leaders or masters.
Before the audience heard the tale they were familiar with the stories and wanted to relish new insights offered by the poet.(Sort of like us comparing translators).
The Greeks believed that Homer took his divinities seriously and many revered the books as religous as well as literary texts.
-
The Greek poets wrote for an aristocratic audience and glorified leaders of the past.Neither the Iliad or the Odyssey is much concerned with democracy.
Jude that is in keeping with earlier research that the city/states we associate with ancient Greece called "polis" that were political entities ruled by a body of citizens divided into types of citizenship did not develop till the Archaic period, which is after the Dark Age. The first city/states were ruled by a king or a small oligarchy. Sparta is considered my most scholars as the first city/state in the 9th century near or at the time of the Trojan War but it was not a polis. Ancient Greeks didn't refer to those who lived in Athens, Sparta, Thebes as citizens, as in a poleis, but rather, the inhabitants were, Athenians, Lacedaemonians, Thebans.
Some days the gods are with you - :D found the link I read a week or so ago that I thought had a good explanation of the polis - when and why and how it occurred http://www.wsu.edu:8080/~dee/GLOSSARY/POLIS.HTM
Interesting "religious as well as literary texts" - I guess to eek out the religion is to see some of the sacrifice included in the Epic as part of religion and not just as a further description of begging gods for assistance...??!~!?? What do you think - is that what is the religion? hmmm
-
"Why were Pylos and Sparta selected as first stops?"
They are both good examples of "intact families" so to speak, and serve as a contrast to Telemachus' lack of family without its head. You've got old garrulous Nestor with his sons and wife waiting for him in bed,or whatever !, and weak Menelaus (at least I always think he is) and lovely still alluring Helen and the delightful one upmanship power play between her and him
I believe our use of "mentor" comes from the use of the name in The Odyssey.
Menelaus is king of Sparta/Lacedaemonia. Agamemnon was king of Mycenae.
-
Is there a schedule of what chapters we are reading when - are we starting chapter 4 - and if not when do we start chapter 4...I am anxious to read what happens next and I like the feedback from everyone - makes the story rather than reading it alone.
-
We'll start chapter 4 on Friday. It's a longer one, so you might want to start reading now.
-
Thanks :-*
-
Thank you so much for that synopsis, BARB. I had found that site,
but being unable to listen to the video, I had only the brief written
descriptions below. This is exactly the information I wanted.
With mind wandering a bit, I couldn't help but wonder what 'debt'
Athena wished to collect from the Kaukonians. Couldn't find anything
helpful, but I suspect those folks are in serious trouble. I did learn that
the Kaukonians are descended from Kaukon (Caucon?), a priest of
Demeter who spread her religion into what became the region of the
Kaukonians. So far as I could find, tho', Athena had no quarrel with
Demeter, so that doesn't seem to have been the problem.
-
Gosh what wonderful background and links, thank you Barbara and Jude!! And Dana I loved your post, I like your answer to the question why Pylos, it sure fits, doesn't it? I did not know we get the word mentor from the Odyssey, I'm not surprised.
I'm so glad to get here at last, we had tornado warnings last night and here in the beautiful sunny day the satellite would not work! I hope this posts, there's still quite the wind.
I also have my 4 year old grandson here for a "Jammy Partay," he's been here since Saturday while his parents try to take a well earned vacation. I have always seen people say here, I've got the grandkids here and disappear and I never understood. hahaah I do now. It's been quite the 4 days. :)
Babi,
So far as I could find, tho', Athena had no quarrel with
Demeter, so that doesn't seem to have been the problem.
Oh mercy, another feud, there sure are a lot of them, woe betide the mortal who gets in the way of the gods and their wrath tho.
It's quite complicated, and I was very interested in Barb's Minstrel findings.
We said initially that we would do our schedule as it suited us, and I think 4 is a good idea for Friday, is everybody up to III at this point? Is there anything you are wondering about?
Roshannarose, oh! hahaha I honestly did not know what you were saying, I thought you were saying Fagles (or Knox) or the OCCL was wrong? Oh you're talking about me? I'm always wrong, it doesn't bother me a bit. Particularly about Greece, of which I know next to nothing. I hope to remedy that with this, and so far I've learned a lot. :)
Gum, it was Gilbert Murray of whom I have always heard, but this is not Gilbert, it is another one!
Oh gosh I've lost all my notes previous to this morning on the computer as well, sigh sigh.
This is A.T. Murray Augustus Taber Murray (1866-1940), Professor of Greek at Stanford for 40 years. The editor of this Harvard Loeb says, "No more faithful translation of Homer was ever made......Translation today, however, has to satisfy different expectations." So "Homerist" George Dimock of Smith college did the editing of the English phraseology, only altering the Greek in 6 places. Where he differs from Murray's notes, he puts his own too. Precious few notes at all.
It is, as you note, almost line by line tho. I'm not familiar with Cook. I like literal translations, myself.
So it's not THE Dr. Murray, it's another one. I'm afraid to find out if they are related some way. I wonder in passing what passes for a mind this morning how many Murrays in Classics there ARE? hahaha
Dana why do you think of Menelaus as weak? That's interesting!
I liked Rosemary's and Babi's stabs at sacrifice, it's an interesting concept.
I'm sort of confused about the nurse, too. She seems to keep appearing, but why is she important? I'm struck by the constancy implied? Or is it? In the women in this piece. Yet it's a woman who undoes Penelope, right? A servant girl who lets them in on her unweaving it by night?
Why would she do that? Does anybody wonder but me? Did she hope to curry favor with whatever suitor was chosen? Surely as a woman servant she understood that she would be in disfavor with Penelope, tho? What do you think might have been the rationale here? Whatever it was it will seriously backfire for her.
Loyalty or lack of it appears here too as a theme.
Was it Sally with the Temple Study Guide for the Odyssey? I went to look and on this site: http://www.temple.edu/classics/odysseyho/index.html I found some interesting summaries and questions, would you say we're up on these three books or....?
Book 1
77 Invocation to the Muse; survey of Odysseus' condition in the 10th year of his wanderings. "The whole of the action and most of the principal persons are introduced in the first few hundred lines." (D. Page) What is missing from the proem (the opening lines)? How does it define Odysseus? Why is Poseidon angry? As you read on, ask whether the action goes as the proem says it will.
78-80 Council of the gods on Olympus. What types of gods does Homer present? How do they match your expectations? Why is Aegisthus singled out by Zeus? What kind of system of morality does Zeus invoke? Why is Athena so concerned with Odysseus? Why is Zeus so surprised with her plea? In the line ending her speech, the words "dead set against," odusso, puns on the hero's name
Are the concerns and behavior of the gods any different here than in the Iliad?
81-86 Athena goes disguised to Ithaca to see Telemachus and persuade him to seek news of his father. What is happening in Ithaca? What kind of person is Telemachus? How old is he? What does he need? Why does Athena mention Orestes to him? Is her story about him complete? And why start in Ithaca, not with Odysseus? Note the concern with hospitality, which will be a key theme throughout the epic.
88-9 Penelope is upset at the song of a bard who tells of the sufferings of the heroes. Telemachus replies that Zeus, not the bard, is to blame. Zeus earlier blamed humans for their sufferings. As you read the rest of the epic, think about whether Zeus or Telemachus is correct.
Book 2
93-96 T. complains in the assembly of the suitors' bad behavior and smashes a scepter to the ground. Try to remember a similar scene of scepter-smashing in Homer and think about what point the poet might be trying to make with the comparison.
97-106 Athena, disguised as Mentor, appears to Telemachus and promises help. He sails off, after asking Eurycleia under oath of secrecy, to prepare provisions. Who is in charge in Ithaca? Where is O.'s father? Is T. just looking for O.? And why should Telemachus visit Nestor and Menelaus?
How has Penelope kept the suitors at bay for so long?
Book 3
The travels begin. At each place, act as an anthropologist, noting the customs, landscape and character of the people; start with Ithaca itself. T. arrives first at the palace of Nestor. Why go there first? What is happening at Pylos as T. arrives?What do we learn about O. here? Note the gracious hospitality he receives from Nestor; compare T.'s reception of Athena earlier. Keep your eyes open for other such encounters. One thing to watch: when does the guest reveal his name? What sign does Nestor see as indicating Athena's presence?
I like this one:
88-9 Penelope is upset at the song of a bard who tells of the sufferings of the heroes. Telemachus replies that Zeus, not the bard, is to blame. Zeus earlier blamed humans for their sufferings. As you read the rest of the epic, think about whether Zeus or Telemachus is correct.
Given the gods situation here what hope do the mortals actually HAVE? So how can anything be the mortal's fault?
And this is a great question:
Who is in charge in Ithaca?
I love that one, who would YOU say? Why?
(What does he mean, "proem?")
So we're about to start Week 4 on Friday, who is in charge back home? I love that question. How do we define "in charge?"
And I've got another question just based on reading these. He says "81-86 Athena goes disguised to Ithaca to see Telemachus and persuade him to seek news of his father."
That makes me wonder why? Why appear in disguise and then fly off as a...vulture so he knows it's you? What's the point?
Let's hear from everybody, what are your thoughts on the first three books? Are you feeling pretty confident so far? Or what are you wondering? Or what do we lack?
-
I wonder in passing what passes for a mind this morning how many Murrays in Classics there ARE? hahaha
Ginny, how amazing that there were two Murrays working at the same time and in the same field and both were born in the same year- Gilbert Murray 1866-1957 and Augustus T Murray 1866-1940 -
Another Murray, overlapping the same period a little but of the previous generation was our friend Sir James Augustus Murray, one time Prof of Greek at Glasgow but better known as the first editor of the OED. I know quite a bit about him because he was born in the same village, Denholm in Scotland as were some of our family. :)
-
GUM: the two Murrays were born in the same year. could they be twins? Both had long lives, didn't they. The gods must have looked favorably on their work.
Tell us about the first editor of the Oxford English Dictionary. Does he appear in "The Professor and the Madman", the book about the making of the OED? I read it years ago and, as usual, don't remember anyone's name.
Hmmm -- good questions. I can answer the easy ones, anyway.
I love the gods and the humans each blaming each other. Doesn't this sound familiar? "It's his fault!!" "No, it's his fault!!" There's a quote I love about that from someone named Smith:
" Whether the weak link or the heavy load is called the cause of the chain breaking always depends on which one you'd rather fix."
-
Holy Hannah are we going to revisit Luther and try for the definitive decision on free will versus predestination as ordained this time by the gods rather than by "the" God of Abraham??!!??
-
Oh, my goodness, I have house guests for a few days, and look how behind I get!
The whole question of sacrifices brings two things to mind:
1. Christianity in itself is based on the idea of Christ as a sacrifice. I'm not an expert on this by any means, but apparently some scholars believe that this concept originated not in Judaism, which doesn't emphasize the afterlife or the messiah as a sacrifice, but in the Graeco-Roman religious practices that were widespread all around the Mediterranean at the time; the New Testament was, after all, written in Greek. (And yes, I was kind of grossed out by the animal sacrifices in book III. But as a child I was always REALLY grossed out when Pastor Ludwig got to the "Take, eat, this is my body. . ." part of the Communion in church! Mom would always poke me and whisper, "Don't you dare say 'EWWWWW'!")
2. I think there is still a ritual, sacrificial element in the very specific method of slaughter required for an animal to be considered kosher--the animal's throat must be slit so that it bleeds to death quickly. It's probably similar to what the ancients did when they were slaughtering animals for religious sacrifice. Modern sanitation experts may point out that kosher slaughterhouses are cleaner than their non-kosher counterparts, but the real reason it's done that way is because it says so in the Torah.
how many Murrays in Classics there ARE? (ftp://how many Murrays in Classics there ARE?)
Well, if you count me, there are at least three Murrays in Classics. I'm just splashing around in the shallow end, but still...
As to who's in charge back in Ithaca while Telemachus is gone, I really don't know. I didn't know who was in charge when he was still home, either, come to think of it. I suspect it must be Ginny's old friend Tension--this time among the suitors. If any one of them tried to carry Penelope off by force, he'd presumably have all the others to answer to.
-
Why visit Pylos and Nestor first?[/b] (In addition to Sal's and Dana's) Two reasons I think:
1) Geographically, Pylos is closer to Ithaca than Sparta by ship. Sparta is not a port and is quite a long way inland. So visiting Pylos first would just be easier.
2) It is fair to say that Athena is "grooming" Telemachus. She is aware of his youth (I think he is twenty) and wants to present him as the son of a King, Odysseus, who T is trying to find. Athena wants Telemachus to prove his maturity by discussing his father with Nestor. Telemachus baulks:
"Mentor, how shall I go up there and greet him?*
I've had no practice with such formal speech.
And then, when a young man seeks to question
an older one, that could bring him shame."
but true to Athena's faith in him, he presents himself admirably. No doubt he learns a lot from Nestor.
Nestor is so impressed with the young Telemachus, that he offers him a chariot and his son, Pisistratus, as guard and companion in order to reach Sparta (and Menelaus) with all speed.
In reality Sparta sits in very rugged terrain and it is doubtful that there was a road in the Bronze Age.
This journey is an impossible one. Telemachus and Pisistratus would have been obliged to drive over the Taygetus range, over which there has never yet been a road for wheeled vehicles. It is plain therefore that the audience for whom the "Odyssey" was written was one that would be unlikely to know anything about the topography of the Peloponnese, so that the writer might take what liberties he chose.
Read more: Telemachus Visits Nestor at Pylos. http://www.infoplease.com/t/lit/odyssey/book3.html#ixzz1FP7fn7QK
-
My bet is that the servant girl who gave Penelope's trick away was probably seduced by one of the suitors. We shall see.
I think Zeus is correct when he blames human beings for their own misfortunes. The gods may interfere but it seems humans still have freedom to make their choices. There is an ambiguity surrounding the actions of the gods. Athena helps Telemachus but on the other hand he could be finally maturing himself with the help of the real humans Mentes and Mentor. This is what is so absolutely brilliant about the story for me.
-
Ginny, reading the familiar story in English has been a wonderful experience so far. I greatly enjoy the Lombardo translation. It is melodic and flows beautifully.
Early on someone question the mention of Minerva. That's what the Romans called Athena. They adopted the pantheon of Greek gods and gave them all Roman names.
Until Odysseus sailed for Troy, he was king of Ithaca. His long absence has not changed the status. Laërtes, his old grief- stricken father, has gone to his farm where his wife had died of a broken heart, as we would now call it. It would seem that nobody is in charge in Ithaca; the suitors have taken over the home and put Penelope under siege.
There are lists in the web, identifying the characters in the Odyssey. Here is what one of them says about
Mentor - A faithful friend of Odysseus who was left behind on Ithaca (when O. left for Troy) as Telemachus' tutor.
He is wise, sober and loyal. According to another list he also was to be also a sor of an 'overseer' in the palace. I'm going to have to find my note on this one.
Obviously, Telemachus knew Mentor someone asked about that) and trusted his tutor.
More tomorrow.
-
GUM: the two Murrays were born in the same year. could they be twins
JoanK: :D No not twins - doubt if there was any relationship
1. . Gilbert Murray had an elder brother, Hubert, who was brilliant in the law and who became the Administrator of Papua New Guinea at a time when things there were going from bad to worse. He did much to improve the administration of law and order and vastly improved the lot of the Papuans and New Guineans.
A little trivia: Gilbert Murray, our distinguished Greek scholar married into the British aristocracy -his bride was one of the Howard family and the ceremony took place at Castle Howard which was used as the Flytes' family home in Bridehead Revisited .
2. I don't know anything much about Augustus T Murray who is Ginny's Dr. Murray.
Sir James Murray - he of OED fame also has quite a history but not really connected with our Odyssey. His is a rags to riches story - at least from modest circumstances to that of scholastic fame. He was fundamentally a philologist and his reputation rests on his lexicography work which resulted in the OED. And yes, he does appear in Simon Winchester's story of the making of the OED. He is also referred to as 'the professor' in the Surgeon of Crawthorne aka The Professor and the Madman.
More Trivia: Sir James Murray received so much mail that anything addressed to ‘Mr Murray, Oxford’ would always find its way to him, and such was the volume of post sent by Murray and his team that the Post Office erected a special post box outside Murray’s house which is still there complete with a suitable commemorative plaque nearby.
4. And now we have a fourth 'Classics' Murray among us in the form of Roxania Murray who says she is cavorting around the edges. :D
-
The Book Club Online is the oldest book club on the Internet, begun in 1996, open to everyone. We offer cordial discussions of one book a month, 24/7 and enjoy the company of readers from all over the world. Everyone is welcome to join in.
Now reading:
(http://www.seniorlearn.org/bookclubs/classicsbookclub/cbc2odysseysm.jpg)
March 4---Book IV: Helen, Proteus and the Trojan Horse
(http://www.seniorlearn.org/latin/ulysses_penelope/HelenTrojanTiep.jpg)
The procession of the Trojan Horse
Giovanni Domenico Tiepolo
National Gallery
(http://www.seniorlearn.org/latin/ulysses_penelope/HelendepartsReni15751642.jpg)
The Abduction of Helen
Guido Reni (1575 - 1642)
Discussion Leaders: Joan K (joankraft13@yahoo.com) & ginny (gvinesc@gmail.com )
(http://www.seniorlearn.org/latin/ulysses_penelope/HelenTrojanHorseLeFebre1464.jpg)
The Trojan Horse
Raoul Lefevre
1464
Useful Links:
1. Critical Analysis: Free SparkNotes background and analysis on the Odyssey (http://www.sparknotes.com/lit/odyssey)
2. Translations Used in This Discussion So Far: (http://www.seniorlearn.org/bookclubs/odyssey/odyssey_translations.html)
3. Initial Points to Watch For: submitted by JudeS (http://www.seniorlearn.org/bookclubs/odyssey/odyssey_points.html)
4. Maps:
Map of the Voyages of Odysseus (http://www.seniorlearn.org/latin/ulysses_penelope/Odysseusmap.jpg)
Map of Voyages in order (http://www.wesleyan.edu/~mkatz/Images/Voyages.jpg)
Map of Stops Numbered (http://www.seniorlearn.org/latin/ulysses_penelope/Odysseusmap2.jpg)
Our Map Showing Place Names in the Odyssey (http://www.seniorlearn.org/latin/graphics/AncientGreecemap.jpg)
(http://www.seniorlearn.org/latin/ulysses_penelope/HelenabductionredfiguredkylixMakron480BC.jpg)
Paris leads Helen away
Attic red figure kylix
Makron
480 BC
Antikenmuseen, Berlin
(http://www.seniorlearn.org/latin/ulysses_penelope/HelenTrojanHorseEntersCityUnatt.jpg)
The Horse entering the city of Troy
Unattributed
Early 17th century
Off the cuff? I think Penelope is 'in charge' in Ithaca. But
being a woman, she can't arm herslf and her servants and drive off the suitors. She must use tactics women have always used against the more dangerous male...subtlety, deception, feminine wiles.
Having her deception re. the weaving discovered is going to seriously
jeopardize her defenses.
-
So there are two "mentors"? Hmmm. I'll have to check The Iliad.
And the geography of the trip to Sparta is wrong? Not too surprising. It's hard for us to appreciate howlittle it was possible to know about geography then.
-
question:
is the feast for Poseidon first paragraph ch 3 the same feast as in chapter 1? ....and I find it interesting how much sacrifice it will take to make the him happy.....' there are 9 settlements each with 500 holdings, and each holding must sacrifice 9 bulls' !!!
a number of times the use of 'but' instead of 'and'
E. V. Rieu--But the men lifted he heifer's head from the trodden earth and held it up while the captain Peisistratus cut its throat.
I have found this a number of times thru this translation, the use of 'but' where it feels they mean 'and', but is like a pause or sudden switch of direction...but the words lead in the direction the talk was taking
I'm wondering why the translation would be that way....the translation to our english would lead a 'and' to be inserted; but did the Greeks feel each bit of talk even with same subject matter was another thread of thought, hence the 'but'
Deb
-
;) :D ;) the translator just did not use word - word keeps telling me to change my 'but' to However or Nevertheless --
-
word keeps telling me to change my 'but' to However or Nevertheless
Barbara :)
Deb, good question. I can't find the first sacrifice of Poseidon, was it in Ithaca? And the second one in Pylos with Nestor? I found the sacrifices hard to get by but they sure did practice them, the Ara Pacis in Rome is full of bulls and horns, etc.
E. V. Rieu--But the men lifted he heifer's head from the trodden earth and held it up while the captain Peisistratus cut its throat.
This is line 498 (453 in Murray) in book III, Lombardo has "Then the men...."
Our new Dr. Murray has it on line 453, and he also has Then the men...
Butler has "then they" and really Butler is quite hard to read in these scenes, you'd think Bacchantes were jumping round in an orgy or something.
So maybe that's a Rieu-ism? What do the rest of you have?
I really like the way we can compare translations by the line numbers, it makes it fun and easy to literally get on the same page.
____________________________________
Ginny, reading the familiar story in English has been a wonderful experience so far. I greatly enjoy the Lombardo translation. It is melodic and flows beautifully.
I am glad you like it, Traude, I like it, too. I agree, it appears Mentor was left behind and is actually IN Ithaca, is that what you all get, he was left behind as tutor and he's AT the suitors meeting or at least he is in Lombardo, (244, 224 in Murray) "Then up rose Mentor..." so he's there, giving a speech.
Then Athena appears as Mentor to go on the trip with Telemachus,
She looked like Mentor now..." Book 2, Lombardo 425....Murray 400...
So for travel she looks like Mentor but he's back with Penelope, is this what you all get?
But now Babi asks:
Is this some sort of godly
'occupation' of a mortal?
I'm thinking not. I'm thinking this is not old Mentor but just a....hmmmmm....what do you all think? Not old Mentor possessed but a new "person" who looks like him.
___________________________________
Roshanna Rose:
Geographically, Pylos is closer to Ithaca than Sparta by ship. Sparta is not a port and is quite a long way inland. So visiting Pylos first would just be easier.
In reality Sparta sits in very rugged terrain and it is doubtful that there was a road in the Bronze Age.
This journey is an impossible one. Telemachus and Pisistratus would have been obliged to drive over the Taygetus range, over which there has never yet been a road for wheeled vehicles. It is plain therefore that the audience for whom the "Odyssey" was written was one that would be unlikely to know anything about the topography of the Peloponnese, so that the writer might take what liberties he chose.
What a fabulous fact! Thank you for bringing it here and the link, who knew? I ran immediately to the maps in the heading and stopped short at "Delos" being the first stop on the map till I realized (DUH) that the maps show Odysseus's journey, not that of Telemachus, we've got two sailors here.
Neato!
hahaha Murray #3 or is it #4? hahaha: I suspect it must be Ginny's old friend Tension--this time among the suitors. He's a very popular character in this book I think, so far he beats love all to pieces. :)
I am bemused with all the Murrays in Classics and elsewhere, Gum, that's pretty amazing. I love the names of some of these classicists too, Augustus is a fitting name for a baby who will grow up to be a great translator of Greek.
Barbara, what a provocative statement! I've thought of it ever since I saw it!
Holy Hannah are we going to revisit Luther and try for the definitive decision on free will versus predestination as ordained this time by the gods rather than by "the" God of Abraham??!!??
This blew me away. Is the situation we have here the same thing? Free will? Predestination? Gods squabbling and quarreling, taking sides, being spiteful, playing dice for men's souls figuratively and literally taking things in their own hands, appearing in person to make sure what they want is done?
Let's discuss this. How do you all see these "gods?" This is what I wanted to talk about earlier. Achilles for instance knew he would not come out alive, he'd been told so. So what choice did he have? He did make some. What feeling do you get so far conveyed in this about the relationship of the ancient Greeks to the gods?
JoanK, I love this:
" Whether the weak link or the heavy load is called the cause of the chain breaking always depends on which one you'd rather fix."
Choice again. CHOICE for Penelope, choice for Telemachus, choice for Odysseus? We don't know, he's not on stage. Maybe instead of asking who is in charge of the palace we should ask who has the most choices here and what do they do with them?
Those maps in the heading are not good enough for inland stuff, but I've got one I'll put here and we can see the old place names more clearly. Since Odysseus went to so many places, you have to back way off, let's get one closer up. Hold on.
What, by the way, did the great Greek sailors use as navigational equipment?
-
Nothing like a few good maps to confuse the issue!
Here is Ithaca, to the left, in red. It's on an island. Sparta here is in green and is inland and as Roshannarose said, there's a major mountain range between it and Ithaca. Troy (Illium) is in blue in Turkey up there towards Constantinople.
(http://www.seniorlearn.org/latin/graphics/AncientGreecemap.jpg)
Missing is Pylos. If somebody can make this out, where would we put it on our map above which we can edit?
There's THIS one (I know we found it before but now there appears ...well...look....
(http://www.mlahanas.de/Greece/Cities/Images/PylosArea1.gif)
OK now there's Pylos and it appears Nestor's Palace is NOT in Pylos? It's up the coast a bit? See it in red?
Where should we put Pylos on the black and white map? Down there in that kind of dog leg thing to the left of Sparta?
-
Ginny--book 1 from my copy R.V. Rieu
Poseidon, however, was now gone on a visit to the distant Ethiopians, the furthest outposts of mankind, half of whom live where the Sun goes down, and half where he rises. He had gone to accept a sacrifice of bulls and rams, and there he sat and enjoyed the pleasures of the feast. Meanwhile the rest of the gods had assembled in the palace of Olympian Zeus, and the father of Men and gods opened a discussion among them.
Athene uses this meeting that is without the presence of Poseidon to bring up the fact of Odysseus needing some help to return to his home and loved ones.
chapter 3 giving feast to Poseidon is in Pylos where the sacrifices were being offered; guess i answered my own question--they couldn't have been the same place could they!!??
**by the way my edition of R. V. Rieuis translated in paragraphs; and i use my edition of Lattimorewhich has lines numbered to keep track by correlating more or less in the Rieu edition so i can refer back and forth
such an interesting discussion-is this how it was in college or university when taking Homer studies?? I can't imagine trying to read this book without all the insight, and 'come on you can do it' from everyone!!
Deb________________________
-
Ginny - I got out the modern day map I used on my trip in 2004. It has archaeological sites marked on it. A microscope would help!
OK - So if you draw a straight line from Sparta to the extreme west coast, then go south, approximately two thirds down you have the location of Pylos. Have a look at a big map of modern day Greece to make my instructions clearer. My map doesn't have a kilometre scale but I am guessing that Pylos is only about 30km from the bottom of that little peninsula (more like a protuberance) that is located in the Ionian Sea.
The sea voyage from Ithaca to Pylos would be a lovely journey today (dependent on Poseidon's mood, of course).
Even today the east coast of Lakonia (Sparta) is barely inhabited. It would be fabulous to go there. A part of Greece rarely visited by tourists. If you check Sparta out on a big map you can see why, apart from their legendary fighting ability, no one much bothered them, even in Sparti the city.
It is quite surprising when you see how close Crete is to the southernmost point of the Peloponnese. The trip would probably not have been so arduous, as far as distance is concerned, for the Mycenaeans who would have gone through Sparta, assuming Menelaus was still king of Sparta. Agamemnon and his army would have been able to pass freely through to Crete. (This is conjecture on my behalf)Agamemnon and his soldiers were the people who were instrumental in bringing about the downfall of the Minoan empire. The final straw for Crete would have been the tsunami caused by the volcanic eruption on Thera. The tsunami and volcanic dust would have wrought havoc on Crete, and is supposed to have had the same effect on many areas of southern Greece. Thera is also called Thira in some ancient texts, but nowadays is called Santorini. The most beautiful island I have ever visited 8)
Nice detailed link of the area. Pylos is named Pilos on this map. Click on map to enlarge.
www.greeklandscapes.com/images/maps/greecemaps/gr_tc_01.jpg
-
....regarding the use of "but " or "and"
Greek uses the conjuctions "men" and "de" very often, meaning "on the one hand", "on the other hand" . They are often untranslateable or redundant to English. "de" can be translated "and", or "but".
In the example quoted "men" and "de" are in fact used.....on the one hand men (guys that is !) held up the heifer's head, on the other hand P. cut her throat. In translating you could miss then out, or use either "and" or "but". Fitzgerald uses "but".....he seems to be emphasising the contrast between the heifer's actually being dead (her "spirit failed") BUT they held her up as if still alive
-
ah so - thanks Dana - what a great boon to us to have those of you who know Greek to share your knowledge - seriously - this is a wonderful addition - interesting how sentence structure in translation can be altered so easily -
When it comes to symbolism my trusty J.C.Cooper An Illustrated... says - Sacrifice: the restoration of primordial unity, reuniting that which is scattered in manifestation. As all creation implies sacrifice it is the death-life, birth and rebirth cycle, so that sacrifice is equated with creation, and identifies man with aspects of the cosmos.
Human sacrifice implied a atonement for hubris, the overweening pride of man, and a blood offering to the gods. Kings were sacrificed ritually as they were regarded as the bringers of fertility to the land as initiating irrigation works which brought the fertilizing and life-giving water. When the king's fertility waned the land and the people also suffered, hence his sacrifice to the Earth Mother Goddess to restore virility in the new king. The sacrifice took place at the death of the old year, the time of the twelve days of chaos before the rebirth of the sun and the new year.
Later a substitute or scapegoat was offered in place of the king. In animal sacrifice the head represents the dawn, the eye the sun, the breath the wind, the back the sky, the belly the air, the under-belly the earth. In sacrifice the sacrificer and the sacrificed became one with each other an the universe, microcosm and macrocosm meet and attain unity.
The Ram Virility; the masculine generative force; creative energy; procreative power; hence its association with sun and sky gods as the renewal of solar energy. Greek: Sacred to Zeus/Sabazios as the ram god; fertility; generative power. Sacred to Dionysos as generator; the ram of Mendes was sacred to Pan In Cyprus the ram was associated with Aphrodite.
The spiral of the ram's horns is used as a thunder symbol and can be connected with both sun gods and moon goddesses. The ram is pre-eminently a sacrificial animal.
Blood The life principle; strength, the rejuvenating force, hence blood sacrifice. The red, solar energy. Greek Drinking blood is usually symbolic of enmity, but it can also absorb the power of the foe and so render him harmless after death.
-
Navigation: Line 269, Book IV discusses the use of the stars for navitgation. They also probably stayed close to shore much of the time.
-
Kidsal - you've probably told us before, but which canem are we cave-ing? Just wondered :)
Rosemary
-
Homer does give a nod to the difficulty of the geography. He
writes that the duo "by vales and sharp ravines in Lakedaimon
the travellers drove..." After looking at the map GINNY found
for us, I considered that the trip only took two days. I wonder
if the site of Menelaos beautiful home was simply in the foothills
at the beginning of those mountains, but still a part of Sparta?
I think one thing we should remember about these mass sacrifices
is that only a part of the beef went on the altar. The rest was
roasted to feed the celebrating crowd. Think 'holiday' and
'barbecue'.
I hadn't noticed the 'but' vs. 'and', BOOKAD. In this
particular case I assumed there was some religious significance
to keeping the heifer's head from touching the earth during the
sacrifice. I'll have to keep my eyes open to the 'but/and' usage.
Another reference to 'minstrel', this time to a "holy minstrel". Anybody know what a 'holy minstrel' is?
The the big surprise for me, in Book Four, is that Helen is back home
with Menelaus and enjoying all the privileges of her position. I really had
no clear idea what happened to Helen after the fall of Troy, but I didn't
really expect her husband to welcome her home.
But then I learned that Helen is supposed to be a daughter of Zeus.
Well, that would put the matter in a different light, wouldn't it? I imagine
a man would put up with a good deal to remain Zeus' son-in-law! Even
Helen herself describes her actions of the past as "the wanton that I was".
-
Barb - I wear a a Greek torc with rams' head as the finials. I bought it in Olympia. It is a beautiful piece of hand made jewellery 18kt gold. It is a bracelet, not a neckpiece. The ram does have a great deal of significance to the Greeks it is true. I was told when I bought my torc/torque that the ram's head was the symbol of power. It is also the symbol of Jason and the Argonauts search for the Golden Fleece. Later in Greece is was the symbol of the battering ram, and its terrible force. If you know anything about Keltic customs and religion you will know that the torc was only worn by those who were kings and/aristocracy. I didn't buy it for its historical significance, byut for its beauty and personal appeal. Greece and the Keltoi have a connection through the supposed fact that Aeneas settled in England after the sack of Troy. There is a slight problem with the dating, but it is worth a look/search, although many writers/chroniclers say it is all hearsay.
The spiral has been an integral part of Greek art since the Bronze Age.
My link for the map seems to have gone awry. My advice is to just go to www.greeklandscapes.com and find your way around the site.
-
Deb, thank you. I found it. Poseidon, however, was now gone on a visit to the distant Ethiopians, the furthest outposts of mankind, half of whom live where the Sun goes down, and half where he rises. He had gone to accept a sacrifice of bulls and rams, and there he sat and enjoyed the pleasures of the feast.
I agree with you, I think this is in two separate places, I wonder why this is mentioned. They do credit Homer with these gods, at least he and Hesiod are the earliest mention of them, so it's fascinating to see what was thought.
such an interesting discussion-is this how it was in college or university when taking Homer studies?? I can't imagine trying to read this book without all the insight, and 'come on you can do it' from everyone!!
I am so glad you are enjoying this, I think we're in the hardest part, like jumping into a frozen stream in January, so much to get used to, fast! But once there and the background, thanks to the excellent participants here, explained (or as well as anybody could), why it's clear sailing from now on.
I want to understand in this next bit how Helen could simply go off and enjoy self. Can't wait for Friday, I love reading something which so influences our lives today, and which, in addition, has some depth and meat on it in cheerful company.
such an interesting discussion-is this how it was in college or university when taking Homer studies??
I don't know! Speaking personally, I honestly don't recall reading the Odyssey in college!! I didn't take Greek. I felt odd and somewhat defensive about it for years, but at the time (and now) Latin Majors actually had all they could do to do the Latin, much less dabble in Greek. There are actually enough Latin courses required to choke a horse and more than fulfill a requirement. I actually looked recently out of curiosity at the requirements now for a Latin major. ( I am wiling to bet less then 1 % of those currently teaching Latin anywhere are Latin majors). I already had 8 years of French, so the second language was no issue.
The Latin Major then and now might have been as scarce as hen's teeth, but the Classics Major was much more common, he did a little Latin and Greek and related culture and history, AND archaeology. I used to think of this major, dismissively, as "Jack of all Trades, Master of None," how ignorant I was! I'd now love a course in ancient Archaeology!!!! Or Greek. You can never know enough! Barbara Patla, our former Greek Instructor, now unfortunately deceased, said with Athenaze anybody can teach themselves Ancient Greek; someday I hope to have the time to give it a whirl. In my old age, as Cicero said.
But I did take Greek Literature in Translation which was required, and remember none of it. Do any of you have any experience in Homer courses in college? Either in the original or in translation?
___________________
RR:
It is quite surprising when you see how close Crete is to the southernmost point of the Peloponnese. The trip would probably not have been so arduous, as far as distance is concerned, for the Mycenaeans who would have gone through Sparta, assuming Menelaus was still king of Sparta. Agamemnon and his army would have been able to pass freely through to Crete. (This is conjecture on my behalf
I was actually shocked when we took a ferry to Crete to find out this same thing: how close it was and how NOT far from Africa Crete was! I made all kinds of plans, wonderful trip.
I can't get the map to show in your link, is there another one? I want to fix our map to show all the places! Thank you for it.
________
Dana, I agree with Barbara, it's so helpful to have people here who can read ancient Greek! Thank you for that explanation of the and/ but thing. Everything I have says "then."
_______________
Barbara, these are good points!
As all creation implies sacrifice it is the death-life, birth and rebirth cycle, so that sacrifice is equated with creation, and identifies man with aspects of the cosmos.
Human sacrifice implied a atonement for hubris, the overweening pride of man, and a blood offering to the gods. The hubris or pride of mortals is a BIG theme in the ancient Greek gods, I wonder why, offhand? Why that one trait particularly?
Blood The life principle; strength, the rejuvenating force, hence blood sacrifice. The red, solar energy. Greek Drinking blood is usually symbolic of enmity, but it can also absorb the power of the foe and so render him harmless after death.
This last one explains why the Romans thought that the ghosts of the dead preferred blood to drink and why they brought wine (I guess as a symbolic blood) to the tombs, even had shunts so they could pour it in. This Roman tradition of gathering at the tombs and eating dinners, etc., is still followed today actually in the Dia de los Meurtos, in Mexico, Day of the Dead, in which the family gathers at the grave site, bringing flowers and feasts, just like the Romans did 2000 years ago.
We know that the Romans by the time of the Empire did not actually believe in the gods, either the Greek or the Roman adaptations (due to the antics?) but followed the rituals out of a sort of superstition. Exactly like Wang Lung in The Good Earth. And the ritual had to be followed exactly, lest some god become offended and bring bad stuff on the person involved. Do you all know the story of the Romann Admiral and the Sacred Birds?
Just yesterday I was reading about the Lombards, and their early ancestors the Langobardi, who had literally a Mother Nature, Mother Earth, goddess they dragged out for ceremonies on her altar which was covered with cloth, wheeled her out, only the priests could approach. While she was out, happiness and peace reigned, but when it was time to put her back in for war, she had to be washed in the river and her cloths washed, (have no idea what she looked like) and those who washed her were put to death. It's no surprise that the Lombards were distinguished as Tacitus says, by fewness in number. hahaha
Homer is writing of the very beginnings of religious beliefs among the Greeks. It's fascinating! But I don't think we should sell the ancients short here and consider them some kind of cave men, in any aspect, even emerging from the Dark Ages. I was just reading last night about the invention of the Odometer, for Pete's sake!
One last day before we leap into Book IV, what thoughts are you sitting there pondering? Share them! Is your translation holding up or holding your interest? Can you make anything at all out of it? hahahaa
-
Wow, we're all posting together, more later, my 4 year old grandson says hurry hurry there's a fire in New York City he needs to put out!
Later, what interesting posts!!!
-
The spiral has been an integral part of Greek art since the Bronze Age.
My link for the map seems to have gone awry. My advice is to just go to www.greeklandscapes.com and find your way around the site.
-
Ginny - Oooops. Sorry, I meant only to quote the last lines in my previous post. :-[
-
Right, I did see your correction, thank you, but we were posting together. We're now completing a huge art mural but I'll be back tonight when little John is gone.
-
Just a note to say I am still following along (barely). School work and Mom are taking a lot of my time right now.
I don't recall if anyone reading the Pope translation mentioned it, but I noticed that Pope used Minerva, Athena and Pallas at different times in the text. I didn't pay a whole lot of attention before, but I am going to try and note when the different names are used to see if it has to do with the context of that particular scene.
-
OK roshanarose I fixed your quote post for you - hope it is closer to what you intended. - if not I can go back and re-enter what you originally included.
-
I'm still here! Completely in awe of all the erudite posts! What a wonderful way to read this great epic.
For some reason I was determined to find Gerenia on a map. My copy of Long's Classical Atlas (pub.1856 but in very good shape) listed it in the index with its latitude and longitude - still hard to see since it's tiny, but I did find it! I also looked in Google for Nestor of Gerenia and found references including one on - of all things - Facebook! What? What? I looked and Nestor does indeed have a Facebook page! Athena is listed as one of his friends!
By the way, I am also a Murray! Until I married a Roberts, but I've kept the Murray as my middle name. I didn't major in Classics but I did take a seminar in Classical Literary Criticism which I hugely enjoyed.
My antique atlas was published on Murray Street. Connections galore!
-
I see the question of "free will" a little differently. I see these Greeks as people desperately trying to understand the universe and to get some control over it (as do all peoples). Their explanation is that the things they don't understand are caused by "gods", so the only means they have of control is to appease the gods, get them on their side.
So they sacrifice to the gods. But it doesn't work! The storms still rage! So the sacrifice wasn't big enough! More bulls. And more. Even a daughter or two!
If it still doesn't work, they look for another explanation. The gods are angry. Someone did something to make the god angry. But i've done everything to get him/her on my side, and it didn't work. It must be a different god. There must be two gods quarrelling. I can have one on my side, but not both. So we get more gods and more quarrels.
So the gods cause everything. but humans cause everything, too because they keep doing things that make the gods angry. Humans have free will in this belief, but only to either make the gods happy or make them angry. And if they're caught in the middle between two gods they're stuck. Or if their fathers made a god angry. They can only keep piling on more and more bulls and hope for the best.
-
wow! Joan I love the way you put it...about the Gods
amazing, I feel like I can visualize it now...makes sense
thank you
Deb
-
'the gods are angry...keep piling on more and more bulls and hope for the best'
Joan, what a wonderful, hilarious post. It's making believers out of us. So, was the ODYSSEY meant as a gospel? Or as an exposé of those gods on Olympus.
-
Yes Joan, I agree - brilliant post. I can just picture them piling on those bulls. Makes me think of Asterix & Obelisk (I know they weren't Greek, but all the same).
Rosemary
-
Joan great - I love it - the hubris of man - we want everything the way we want it and if our own efforts cannot control nature and each other its got to be gods or the furies or witches or diabolo, or the dragon or fairies or the angles or or or - and sacrifice we do to appease what we think is causing or stopping us from what we want. Oh my....
Maybe its time to switch from exploring the issue of free will versus predestination on to absolute (control) verses ambiguity. ;)
Great post Joan...
-
When I read of Telemachus and the servant girl bathing him and rubbing him with oil I wondered if that is a euphemism for something else ?
Again in Chap. four we read Helen's words ,talking of Odysseus :""But after I bathed him and, rubbed him down with oils".
This after she talks about his beauty. What do othes think or is it only me with a dirty mind?
What was the attitude towards sex among the well bred in Greece of the time? Anybody knowledgable? Did the Gods and Humans mix in this way?
Is this subject fit for a Senior learn discussion? If not, please excuse the intrusion .
-
JoanK, I'm laughing too--funny, but still a perfect precis.
Rosemary, I'm glad to see another Asterix fan here. Hmmm--maybe if we add some wild boars to the sacrifice it'll work.
-
Regarding the sacrifice issue....I just started reading "The Bull from the Sea" and was interested that the first big issue in it is the sacrifice of the best, leading stallion, and it immediately reminded me of the Roman custom of sacrificing the October horse, the champion, best, horse who won the October race, and that reminded me of Colleen McCullough's title for one of her Julius Caesar series, "The October Horse"--I guess she saw JC's murder as a kind of sacrifice of the best man they had, (although they did it out of jealousy and rage at his ambition, or perhaps just his superiority and the fact he wanted to change the status quo.)
I guess the ancients sacrificed the best.... the king, the best horse, whatever, as the most valuable thing they could give up to the gods in order to obtain their favour, kind of like leaving gold jewelery at shrines....maybe......
In reading my post of-course it occurred to me that the crucifixion is the ultimate sacrifice of the son of god. I remember all that now, in The Golden Bough....has anyone read it, what a book....Barb, have you? I bet you'd love it, if you haven't.
-
Jude - It is rather a sensuous notion, I agree. I know that the ancient Olympians used to rub themselves down with oil to get the dust and dirt off after competing using a hand device invented for that purpose. Homer often describes Telemachus as 'god-like' so his presence would no doubt cause some titillation among the people in Sparti.
The hand device looks a bit like the one they use on racehorses in modern times after a race. The horse is hosed down, has a roll and then this device is used to get all the dirt off. I will try to find the word ??? for the Greek device.
Thanks Barb for fixing up that quote for me. Some days my knowledge of the cyber world disappears into the ether. Well, probably, most days :(
I found this relating to perfumed oil in Ancient Greece
Perfume was also integral to cleanliness, and used in elaborate bathing rituals by both men and women. It was used so widespread that the philosopher Socrates openly disliked and dismissed its usage claiming it made a free man indistinguishable from a slave. Athletes used perfume after exercise for medicinal purposes in the form of balms and unguent oils. This is an early recognition of the possible therapeutic and healing properties that are reminiscent of attitudes towards aromatherapy and aromacology in modern times. Hospitality also required an abundance of perfume as guest`s feet were washed and anointed on being seated. Some wines were also perfumed according to works by Appicius, in the hope that they had medicinal properties
www.articlesbase.com/education-articles/perfume-in-ancient-greece
Bathing during the Ancient Olympics
www.olympics.org.uk
Olympic Fact Sheet 1
p.4
Because they were not covered by clothing, athletes
took great care to protect their skin. Before starting
the day’s training or competition, athletes would rub
their body with olive oil then dust themselves with
fine sand. This helped to regulate their body
temperature and protect them from the sun. After
competing, athletes would scrape off the sweat, oil
and sand with a curved tool called a strigil. Then they
would be washed using water and a sponge.
Strigil was the word I was trying to remember.
-
strigil is the word. My understanding is that it was a courtesy to a guest to be oiled and/bathed by slaves/servants. Human nature being what it is, I expect one thing could lead to another and no doubt you could choose your sex of slave too. I know the Spartans are supposed to have no shame re the body, so even women/girls exercised naked, as men did at the Olympic games and so on. It would not be the norm for Helen to oil down Odysseus, so if she did it she must have taken over the role from a slave girl--which fits in with her character as a bold, flirtatious and sexy lady--but what's so lovely is her saying it to everyone, with Menelaus right there!! It paints a evocative picture of what she was like (and is one reason I find Menelaus to be a weak kind of guy). He does retaliate by calling her bluff after she says she had repented "long ago", by pointing out how she tried to help the trojans by imitating the Greeks wives....
whether O. succumbed to her charms, or whether the story it true is up in the air for me. I like to think that's how Homer wanted it.....
-
JoanR: If you give us the latitude and longitude of Gerednia we can find it on Google Earth.
-
hahaha What super posts! Joan K, I love what you did there, absolutely love it, it captures completely how I would feel anyway, caught up in trying to appease the gods.
RR that was a beautiful site and maps, I'll put one up later, and we can compare Pylos, I may have the wrong one, can't stop staring at the maps, they are beautiful. (They do say, did you all know, that the first thing to go in Alzheimer's is the ability to read maps, I'm a dead woman) hahaa
There seems to be another geographic question in Book IV we need to address. Yes PLEASE let's get
Gerenia or however it's spelled, Murray #V , haha if you'll give the coordinates.
I thought Jonathan had a great question: So, was the ODYSSEY meant as a gospel? Or as an exposé of those gods on Olympus.
Maybe both? What a good point!
The Oxford Companion to Classical Literature says of the Greeks and their religion:
The Greeks would have agreed with the historian Herodotus that it was the poets Homer and Hesiod who gave the gods their names and settled their ritual. The gods in Homer are the twelve Olympians who constitute a divine family of which the individual members are strongly characterized, they are essentially human in their behavior and motivated by human desires, but differ from men in their power and in their immortality.
The Greeks did not have a word for "religion." Eusebeia (piety) is the word that comes closest to the idea. Piety lay in the performance of traditional rituals and in the observance of traditional modes of restrained behavior and thought expressed in the Delphic maxims. Performance of cult had little to do with men's ideas about god....State gods were important for the safety of the city and were not to be interfered with....
There was no organization remotely comparable with the Christian church, no dogma and no firmly asserted connection between religion and morality, linked to an afterlife (except for the mystery religions). But certainly divine attitudes shown in Homer's Odyssey and Hesiod's Works and Days provided a basis for morality; by the 4th century Zeus was regarded as the upholder of justice, and for the philosophers it was self-evident that god must be good. The religious awe with which the gods were regarded is apparent in Greek art as well as literature.
The old gods and the old myths finally lost their vitality among the educated classes in the Hellenistic age, with the disappearance of the city state, though the simple cults of the peasantry survived. Among the educated the old religion was replaced, in so far as it was replaced at all, by philosophical systems, notably the Stoic and Epicurean.
So it appears Homer more or less invented the Greek gods and shows in the Odyssey how they are to be venerated.
Good point Jude S and Dana, I thought the same, something not quite right there, I agree with JudeS, very erotic, and I agree with Dana, Helen is no slave girl, is she? She is, in fact, a goddess herself. She was the one born of Zeus and Leda and the swan, talk about your grade A porn, and actually she and her brothers were worshiped as important deities in Sparta, but in the literary tradition, starting with Homer, she is the entirely human wife of King Menelaus, of Sparta, the younger brother of Agamemnon, who is married to Helen's sister Clytemnestra.
(OCCL)
So Helen herself is the daughter of a god. This mingling of gods and men continues all over the myths of Antiquity, (think Aeneas, Hercules, Achilles, you name the hero, he's not only godLIKE he's related genetically TO the gods). This is one super reason why Julius Caesar traced his ancestry back to Aeneas, the son of a goddess.
As the "face that launched a thousand ships," (who said that?) Helen now appears back home with her husband.
Let's start Book IV, I absolutely LOVED Book IV, did you? Just loved it. I sat down to read it yesterday while the baby who insisted in watching a DVD on machines sat next to me, and I don't know who was the more entranced. :) Didn't last long enough.
PROTEUS! I absolutely love the shape shifting Proteus, love it!! Pirates of the Caribbean, Transformers, nobody has a patch on 3000 year old Homer. But let's do Helen first!
After all this build up and Brad Pitt movies, how did you envision Helen? What have we actually got? How is she like what you thought and how is she different?
The Temple U Questions on Helen run like this:
Book 4
124-34 T. and Pisistratus are welcomed at Sparta (Lacedaemon) by Menelaus and Helen, who recognize T.'s resemblance to his father. They all cry in grief over old memories, and Helen puts a soothing drug in their wine. Note the two stories told by Menelaus and Helen (note the importance of story-telling in general). What more do we learn about O. and about Agamemnon? Do you see any pattern in the accounts of the heroes as they return from Troy? Is Helen as you expect her to be? Is there anything strange about her marriage? Compare Sparta to Ithaca.
134-43 Do M and H deserve the happy afterlife Proteus predicts? In general, so you see any signs that Telemachus is maturing?
144-152 T is persuaded to stay in Sparta. The scene changes to Ithaca where the suitors plot to ambush T. en route home. Penelope is upset, but Athena cheers her with a dream. The ambush is laid. How many days are we into the story at this point? Try to keep track of this. We won't be seeing T again for a while.
Let's start with talking about Helen. How do you visualize her? Did you imagine her as blond or brunette? You must have an idea in your mind's eye, or do you? The art on her is astounding, I guess it's hard to depict ethereal beauty. Do we have a movie star or beauty today who seems to be what you'd think Helen was?
Does this do it for you?
(http://www.seniorlearn.org/latin/ulysses_penelope/Helen.jpg)
Helen
Dante Gabriel Rossetti (1828 - 1882)
How DO you see Helen? And how do you read her going to Troy? The art through the ages on this is amazing. Some have her taken off forcefully, some have her tripping happily along with her child reaching out in vain, how do YOU interpret how she went to Troy?
What surprises you about Helen in Book IV? Anything?
What's this business about the Trojan Horse and what she did?
In short, what do you make of our Helen here?
YOU'RE the reader, and in you the story lives again if only for a brief moment, what's YOUR judgment of Helen?
-
Ginny, I think it was Telly Savalas...... ;D
I imagine Helen as a tanned blonde beauty (though maybe blonde isn't very Greek?). I am trying to think of someone famous like her but so far I can't. Maybe the sort of women you see in spas - and who look like they practically live there!
Rosemary
-
PS - I have just googled "the face that launched a thousand ships" and was told that it was first said by a character in Dr Faustus by Christopher Marlowe. He apparently referred to Helen as "Helen of Greece".
R
-
Thanks for the reference, Rosemary! Here's a link, so that everyone call recall the Marlowe play, in which the so-called hero, Dr. Faustus, searches for, among other matters, the most beautiful woman who ever lived:
http://www.dartmouth.edu/~matc/MathCulture/4-14.html (http://www.dartmouth.edu/~matc/MathCulture/4-14.html)
The Spark Notes link tells how Faustus calls up Helen of Troy, before his own death.
http://www.sparknotes.com/lit/doctorfaustus/summary.html (http://www.sparknotes.com/lit/doctorfaustus/summary.html)
-
Ginny - Gerenia is: Lat. 36.46 and Long. 22.9. It's on the western coast of the piece of Messenia that sticks farthest down into the sea. That's a bay there called the Messeniaeus Sinus (!!) Love that name. I hope this helps with your map. Remember mine is a very old one, sprinkled with archaic names.
By the way, the Pompeii exhibit has opened in NYC and will be there through Sept.5. I'll put a link to the NYT article in the Classics site.
-
From what I recall of images I've seen of ancient earth/nature/
fertility goddesses, is that they were all rather stumpy, with
prominent breastsm abdomens and hips. Not at all attractive. By the
time the Greek Cybele appeared, the image was full-bodied, but
pleasantly so.
Part of the King's responsibility was the protection of his
people. The fact that he would be, if necessary, the ultimate
sacrifice was the reason he had so many privileges and a more
pleasant life. How many of them actually made that sacrifice is
problematic. Many died in battle, of course, but I don't really
recall one who actually gave himself up for sacrifice to appease
the gods on behalf of his people. So all this may have been an
astute political maneuver on the part of their majesties.
I find a curious thing in my translation. Menelaos, speaking of his
love for his friend Odysseus, concludes with the line, "But God himself must have been envious, to batter the bruised man so that he alone should fail in his return."
This is the only time I have seen the singular "God" used. Am I to
assume that this is a reference to Zeus? In all other instances, the
god is identified by name.
Helen does have a way of saying contradictory things, doesn't she.
One time she refers to her 'wanton' past; later she blames in all on
Aphrodite, who "drew me away from my dear fatherland, forsaking all".
-
I feel Helen was two faced and am surprised that her family would be happy to have her back.
she blames Aphrodite for her leaving her husband and going to Troy
my heart had changed by now and was for going back home again, and I grieved for the madness that Aphrodite bestowed when she led me there away from my own dear country, forsaking my own daughter, my bedchamber, and my husband.
line 261Lattimore
are they thinking this is a joke --history could have been changed, and this book would not be as long
line 277-LattimoreThen you came there, Helen; you will have been moved by some divine spirit who wished to grant glory to the Trojans...Three times you walked around the hollow ambush, feeling it, and you called out naming them by name,...and made your voice sound like the voice of the wife of each of the Argives
I cannot believe they are talking so lightly about this situation, or so it seems to me....
I am not feeling too keen on Helen at this point. How would one redeem themself after such actions!!!
Deb
-
The Book Club Online is the oldest book club on the Internet, begun in 1996, open to everyone. We offer cordial discussions of one book a month, 24/7 and enjoy the company of readers from all over the world. Everyone is welcome to join in.
Now reading:
(http://www.seniorlearn.org/bookclubs/classicsbookclub/cbc2odysseysm.jpg)
March 4---Book IV: Helen, Proteus and the Trojan Horse
(http://www.seniorlearn.org/latin/ulysses_penelope/HelenTrojanTiep.jpg)
The procession of the Trojan Horse
Giovanni Domenico Tiepolo
National Gallery
(http://www.seniorlearn.org/latin/ulysses_penelope/HelendepartsReni15751642.jpg)
The Abduction of Helen
Guido Reni (1575 - 1642)
Discussion Leaders: Joan K (joankraft13@yahoo.com) & ginny (gvinesc@gmail.com )
(http://www.seniorlearn.org/latin/ulysses_penelope/HelenTrojanHorseLeFebre1464.jpg)
The Trojan Horse
Raoul Lefevre
1464
Useful Links:
1. Critical Analysis: Free SparkNotes background and analysis on the Odyssey (http://www.sparknotes.com/lit/odyssey)
2. Translations Used in This Discussion So Far: (http://www.seniorlearn.org/bookclubs/odyssey/odyssey_translations.html)
3. Initial Points to Watch For: submitted by JudeS (http://www.seniorlearn.org/bookclubs/odyssey/odyssey_points.html)
4. Maps:
Map of the Voyages of Odysseus (http://www.seniorlearn.org/latin/ulysses_penelope/Odysseusmap.jpg)
Map of Voyages in order (http://www.wesleyan.edu/~mkatz/Images/Voyages.jpg)
Map of Stops Numbered (http://www.seniorlearn.org/latin/ulysses_penelope/Odysseusmap2.jpg)
Our Map Showing Place Names in the Odyssey (http://www.seniorlearn.org/latin/graphics/AncientGreecemap.jpg)
(http://www.seniorlearn.org/latin/ulysses_penelope/HelenabductionredfiguredkylixMakron480BC.jpg)
Paris leads Helen away
Attic red figure kylix
Makron
480 BC
Antikenmuseen, Berlin
(http://www.seniorlearn.org/latin/ulysses_penelope/HelenTrojanHorseEntersCityUnatt.jpg)
The Horse entering the city of Troy
Unattributed
Early 17th century
.In the lines 4:635 to 4:639 we find answers to two questions.
1) There are blond Greeks because Rhadamanthys (Son of Zeus and Europa, brother of Minos, and the justicer who rules the Elysian fields) is described as "gold-haired".
2) Though the Greeks supposedly had no religion the description of Elysian Fields sure sounds very much like a description of Heaven.
The Elysian Fields are the distant home of the fortunate after death.
""where life glides on in immortal ease for mortal man:
no snow, no winter onslaught, never a downpour there
but night and day the Ocean River sends up breezes,
singing winds of the West refreshing all mankind."
-
The Rosetti picture doesn't do it for me. But ideas of beauty change over time. What do you all think.
I have those thoughts about the bathing scenes too, but I don't think sex is necessarily implied.
Good catch, BABI, the reference to God. Is that the translator or Homer, I wonder.
Yes, Helen is like quicksilver -- keeps slipping away from us. Does anyone remember what she was like in the Iliad?
-
I do, or do I? And it's funny you mention that because what I remember most about Helen in the Iliad is her standing there while they were throwing the babies off the wall. Remember that scene? She seemed to doubt herself? Second guess herself in the face of all that carnage? Did she blame herself? I can't remember, but that was an horrific scene, the burning and taking of Troy.
All for her, or so it seems. Didn't somebody, an old man, reproach her?
What on earth was she doing going around the Trojan Horse, when she knew who was in there? She had been told they were there. She took on the various voices of their wives in order to....?
??
And it was Odysseus who stopped the men coming out. If they had been revealed they'd all have been killed, without the gates open to let the main army in. One has to ask what she thought she was doing?
I'm with Deb on this one.
Maybe this is why she didn't walk across the field to her husband and end the war. What a reunion theirs must have been, when they finally DID get together. I was just reading about that somewhere. Dana, maybe he's not weak but blinded by love? Then she slips the guests a mickey in their drinks. Man o man!
She sure is no prize, to me, to either side. Somebody who remembers the Iliad better than I do, didn't Paris tire of her?
I've got Menelaus about 50 times as "the red haired king." I wonder what that means, do you all have anything about the color of his hair?
I really saw a lot of parallels in this book to other things in the Odyssey, am I the only one?
Deb, I totally agree with you:
I feel Helen was two faced and am surprised that her family would be happy to have her back.
she blames Aphrodite for her leaving her husband and going to Troy
my heart had changed by now and was for going back home again, and I grieved for the madness that Aphrodite bestowed when she led me there away from my own dear country, forsaking my own daughter, my bedchamber, and my husband.
line 261Lattimore
are they thinking this is a joke --history could have been changed, and this book would not be as long
line 277-Lattimore
Then you came there, Helen; you will have been moved by some divine spirit who wished to grant glory to the Trojans...Three times you walked around the hollow ambush, feeling it, and you called out naming them by name,...and made your voice sound like the voice of the wife of each of the Argives
I cannot believe they are talking so lightly about this situation, or so it seems to me....
[/b]
Are you thinking that when they say Artemis made me do it, that it's like our joke "the devil made me do it," and she seeks or somebody seeks to slough off responsibility for what she did that way?
That's a super point, I think. I don't know why Menelaus wants her back, either. I wouldn't. Maybe he's thinking poor her she was abducted and what's mine is mine. I never could figure out why she didn't walk across the battlefield TO him and end all the hostility. Stockholm Syndrome? Does anybody remember that in the Iliad? She would have stopped the war, right? Which had gone on for 10 years, if she only went across but apparently it did not occur to her. Didn't somebody suggest it?
Truly to me in this Book IV she seems to have some very undesirable traits. I can't understand her trying to get the men out of the Horse to reveal themselves.
But here again we've got their gods (religion) entering the lives of man, influencing it.
Jude, 2) Though the Greeks supposedly had no religion the description of Elysian Fields sure sounds very much like a description of Heaven.
Homer and Hesiod wrote of Elysium, the Islands of the Blest, which was thought by Homer and Hesiod as a place in the far West beyond the stream of Ocean where certain favored heroes are sent by the gods instead of dying, to enjoy a full and pleasant after- life. It has been suspected that this Elysium, at variance with the idea that all the dead dwell together in the Underworld or Hades, is a survival from the Minoan religion. It seems probable that the attainment of Elysium was promised to the initiates of the mysteries of Eleusis. In later myth Elysium was represented as part of the Underworld ruled over by Rhadamanthys and Cronus. That is where Virgil locates it in Aeneid 6; for him as for Plato is it the place where the good soul temporarily rests before being reborn. (OCCL).
I don't think anybody is saying the Greeks at the time that Homer wrote of had no religious belief.
Babi that was a good catch, do you have the line number for that handy? I can't seem to find it (it possibly is not in my translation but I'd like to look to see what the others have said. I do remember the bruised thing.)
Joan, thank you, maybe Sally can plot those coordinates and we can add it to our maps here.
Here's one of the maps that Roshanarose mentioned, now is Pilos here the same thing as Pylos in the second one? Or do I have the wrong end of the map?
Here on the left above the yellow circle 15 is Pilos, can you see it?
(http://www.seniorlearn.org/latin/ulysses_penelope/Pylos.jpg)
I want to put it on our map and was confused by this one but the longer I look at it, these are the same thing, aren't they?
(http://www.mlahanas.de/Greece/Cities/Images/PylosArea1.gif)
Strangely enough in Book IV we do see that Nestor's Palace is not IN Pylos. I sure do like maps, for somebody who can't read them. :)
Rosemary, I see Helen as a blond, too but not that Rossetti thing. Thinking of the great beauties of our living history (because unlike Cleopatra, Helen WAS known for her beauty)...who.....do we think of Elizabeth Taylor in her youth? Or maybe Vivian Leigh? Would they be beautiful enough to launch 1000 ships?
Thank you Rosemary and MIppy for identifying the source of that quote as Marlowe in Dr. Faustus! And thank you for the link Mippy.
I just came in and my son was watching a movie called Falling Down with Michael Douglas as a laid off engineer in a defense plant shooting up a fast food place and he said, and I nearly fell over, it's a take off on...and he was trying to think of the James Joyce title and I said, of the Odyssey? Ulysses? And he said yes!
Gosh, it's everywhere. I have never seen this movie with Michael Douglas.
Frybabe, what an astute observation, it will be interesting to see what, if anything, is meant by changing her name, wouldn't it be SOMETHING if it was some kind of symbolic code?
Joan, thank you for the notice of the opening of the Pompeii Exhibit, I can't wait to see it, are you going?
Book IV is FULL of great stuff, what struck YOU? And what do you make of Helen's behavior here?
-
These were interesting questions from the Temple U questions and I'm not sure I know the answer to the first one:
Is there anything strange about her marriage? Compare Sparta to Ithaca.
Do you see anything strange about her marriage?
Do M and H deserve the happy afterlife Proteus predicts?
I think SHE'S strange, period.
-
I think in ordinary circumstances Helen would have been "dead meat". Weren't women punished for adultery? However, since getting her back was the pretext for the whole war, I am guessing taking her back was necessary to save his (Menelaus) reputation. Personally, I doubt I would ever trust her again.
-
In Greek the words for god and for Zeus are the same....Zeus is the nominative form and the word changes to theos,-ov etc in other cases. (which is the same as the Latin deus of-course)
-
If I can visualise Helen as a movie star of today, I would say that Charlize Theron resembles her most. Of course, she probably wasn't as tall as Charlize. I have just started reading "Helen of Troy" by Bettany Hughes, who is a bit of a dish as well. She starts off by saying that so much has been written about Helen, always by men, and that because there is such an incredible amount of conflicting information that it is well nigh impossible to get a clear picture or true impression of Helen at all.
Helen was not born from a womb, but from an egg. Zeus raped Helen's mother Leda while he was disguised as a swan. Then when Helen was between 10 or 12 she herself was raped by Theseus, a man of about 50 at that stage. He kidnapped Helen and took her back to Athens, thus outraging her kin. Her brothers Castor and Pollux (also born from Leda's egg) set out to bring Helen back to Sparta. The brothers attacked Athens and considerable damage was done to the city. It is believed that these actions of three men - Theseus, Castor and Pollux - started the ongoing rivalry and enmity between Sparta and Athens. Thanks guys! >:(
I have this gut feeling that the story of Helen was borrowed from another older tradition and kind of plonked (with some embellishment) into Homer's epics. I will check it out.
(Paraphrased)Source:
"Helen of Troy"
Bettany Hughes
ISBN 0-224-07177-7
-
Ginny regarding Menelaos
-from Lattimore--fair-haired Menelaos
-from Rieu--red-haired Menelaos
*in answer to your question
I have a cute bit of translation that intrigues me
from line 390Lattimore--and tell you how to make your way home on the sea where the fish swarm
but my favourite is from E. V. Rieu
and direct you home along the highways of the fish
Deb
-
We will have to compare notes roshanarose - I too decided to read what is called a bio of Helen of Troy - I chose the one written by Margaret George - and yes, rape was the name of the game -
Here is a link to her web site - whew does this author do research - http://www.margaretgeorge.com/about-margaret/author-bio
In the Reader's Guide included on the web site for Helen of Troy there is this interesting tid bit.
In book four of the Odyssey, back in Sparta with her husband Menelaus, Helen relates an interesting tale about her colluding with Odysseus during the Trojan horse episode because “my heart had changed by now-/I yearned to sail back home again!”
Another ancient source, Stesichorus, claims that the real Helen never actually went to Troy but was kept in Egypt during the entirety of the war, while a ghostly double took her place in Troy. In his comedy Helen, Euripides draws upon this variation, portraying her as a misunderstood and virtuous woman warding off the advances of Egyptian princes until Menelaus rescues her.
Finally, the second-century A.D. satirist Lucian imagines further trials for Helen in the underworld. After the judge Rhadamanthys awards Helen to Menelaus over Theseus, who had abducted her while she was a child, Helen runs off with another ghost.
While all these variations on the Helen story-as well as those by later commentators-agree on her powerful erotic appeal and its potential to cause havoc, they differ wildly on questions about the nature of her character and adultery. Was she, like her mother, the victim of a brutal rape? Was she taken to Troy against her will? Did the riches of an eastern kingdom lure her? Had she genuinely fallen in love with Paris or was he a convenient way out of a passionless marriage? Was she somehow deceived by Paris? Was she just the passive instrument for the gods to play out another of their quarrels?
-
Barb - That is super. If I haven't had enough of Helen after reading Hughes, I will certainly drop in on Margaret George. Interesting - I had a Margaret George in my Modern Greek class, she is married to a judge. I looked George up, but they are not the same person.
Another snippet about Helen - there are many:
Hermione is suggested by one school of Homeric thought to have been the daughter of Theseus and Helen, not Helen and Menelaus.
-
There's a book which I know some of us here hate , by Colleen Mc Cullough , her own peculiar version of the story of Troy, "The Song of Troy" which I thought was a brilliant example of her ingenious mind and actually better written than some of her books--anyway , her depiction of Helen matches how I feel about Helen, devious, gorgeous, cunning, the match of any man. I just can't agree with those of you who don't like her. She's a law unto herself, a force of nature, a powerful woman. I'm glad to see she still has that dominance, so it wasn't all based on looks and youth but also on personality....the more I read of the Odyssey the more I admire Homer's ability to paint character indirectly,ie he doesn't say, "she was like this"--he paints a picture..
Helen is anything but a passive instrument--look at how she is described, coming down in the midst of the banquet , settling calmly all her accoutriments around her....and...taking over.... (apart from a little pushback by Menelaus)....but who puts the potion in the wine?? Who comes right out and says, I know who you are, Telemachus...not Menelaus...he agrees with her, but she says it first.
-
Interesting Dana, that is how Margaret George describes her - her beauty she says was a powerful force rather than runway good looks. I need to find it again and give the quote - she also saw something in a museum in Greece that showed Helen to have bronze colored hair.
This book starts with Helen a young seven year old girl. The family is on their way to see 'the' or 'an' oracle at Delphi who was to give direction to her father, Tyndareus [she does not know yet that her mother was raped by Zeus] who just regained his throne from a brother who exploited their riches. On the way to the top of the mountain is a Sybil - she is some sort of old crone sitting on a rock who sees the future - her name is not Sybil it is the word used to describe people like her - she grabs Helen predicting the war, Troy and the men in her life. Helen's two brothers come to her rescue.
She is never allowed to look in a mirror as her mother does and she is not allowed outside the very high walls of their palace. She feels a prisoner. At age 9 she is allowed to accompany her brothers into the Taygetus Mountains behind the palace - Helen is so swift a runner they call her Atalanta.
Later while walking with her mother's friend they discuss Persephone and the special cave where she comes and goes is called Eleusis.
It was on the way to her initiation with her family that includes a time of jeering as they walk past group of rag tag people surrounding the Sybil - Helen did not like the experience and learns from her parents it is to pass through a wall of insults that makes everyone equal and teaches humility so that they know the worst said about them since they are surrounded by flatterers. The father decides the lesson he learns is to call Helen, who all this time walked with a veil covering her face attached to a gold ring on her head, will increase curiosity and drive up her bride-price by the family saying she is the most beautiful woman in the world. After each from the family puts in their two cents it is agreed.
And so that is how she got her reputation...
-
I plotted the coordinates on Google Earth and it places it under water. Of course it might not have been at that time -- remember Atlantis?
-
Those repeated descriptions,..like 'red-haired king'...I suspect
are a kind of descriptive nomenclature that becomes part of the
name. Like the Roman names you see with terms like 'Maximus' or
"Africanus".
Why did Menelaus take Helen back? Oh, people, look at it!
The Ancient of the sea also re-affirms Menelaos favored position
as Helen’s husband. Aside from the fact that she is one of the
most beautiful women alive, she is also the reason for much of
his success, power and wealth. "Zeus’ son", indeed! And yes,
since Homer describes her as "straight as a shaft of gold", I
would think she was blond.
My translation does not have numbered lines, unfortunately, but
each double page has the numbers of the lines on those pages. The singular 'God' was spoken by Menelaos in Book 4, describing to
Telemachos the hardships of Odysseus. I would estimate the line
to be about 180. I see that DANA confirms that the Greek for God
and Zeus are the same.
I liked Menelaos words about Penelope's suitors. “Intolerable--that soft men, as those are, should think to lie in that great captain’s bed. Fawns in a lion’s lair.” Actually, I think fawns is not the best choice, as fawns are adorable creatures. I would think ‘mice’, or ‘vultures’ would be more appropriate.
I also checked to see exactly what a hecatomb was. Hecatomb--a sacrifice of 100 cattle. Wow! Not many could afford that, I should think. Menelaos, obviously, could, so the gods apparently expected it
of him.
-
Ginny regarding Menelaos
-from Lattimore--fair-haired Menelaos
-from Rieu--red-haired Menelaos
*in answer to your question
On Menelaos: Cook gives us 'The Blond Menelaos'
I have a cute bit of translation that intrigues me
from line 390Lattimore--
Quote
and tell you how to make your way home on the sea where the fish swarm
but my favourite is from E. V. Rieu
Quote
and direct you home along the highways of the fish
Line380 in Cook:
And tell about my return, how I may go on the fish laden ocean
and then Line 424 Cook:
And about a return, how you may go on the fish-laden ocean
Doesn't the business about hiding among the seals ready to pounce on the old man of the sea, Proteus, seem very reminiscent of the Trojan Horse. There they are in his territory and covered by sealskins as a kind of disguise -
She (Eidothee), bedded us down in a row and threw a skin over each:
There the ambush would have been most dreadful
Lines 440/441 Cook
Those books about Helen sound intriguing. Might have to see if the library has them. Thanks Barbara and Roshanarose for mentioning them.
Dana: Colleen McCullough - Now there's an Aussie author I just love to hate. butyour description of her as having an inventive mind hitsthe spot and she certainly she can be brilliant at times.
-
The depictions of the Trojan Horse amaze me - I would never imagine a horse built in 900 BC would look so life like - however, the art work is spectacular.
The relationship between gods and men are another - this book is not a whole lot different than these Japanese Fantasy stories - did you see the Japanese film where all the appliances and other contents of our homes are made to look like people and they all higgly piggly in an unorganized mass march down streets. Looks like Homer started all this costuming of folks that in his story is to fool the gods - hmmm is that what kids are doing on Halloween - fooling the gods or maybe the ghosts.
I found a great online site from the University of Utah - I love this quote that starts off the page talking about Ancient Epic Homer and Virgil http://www.usu.edu/markdamen/1320hist&civ/chapters/03epic.htm
History and literature share much in common, not only the written word but the exploration of humanity. If history sets out to tell explicitly what-really-happened-in-the-past, fictional stories do much the same by engaging their readers' imagination and appealing to their sense of logic about what's possible or likely to have happened. That is, to be effective, literary works depend on the readers' ability to see some larger truth behind the façade of made-up characters and situations and to connect fiction with fact because of the story's immediacy and pertinence to the audience's world. Thus, authors hope the reader will connect with their work somehow and see that it's not just a story but, as Vergil puts it, sunt lacrimae rerum et mentem mortalia tangunt ("there are tears for what's happened and mortal matters touch the mind"). In the end, history and literature have a similar agenda, to reflect truth—however imperfectly—and, in doing so, illuminate the human condition.
Literary and historical styles are not all that different, either, since the principles which drive and govern literature also inform history to some extent. For instance, if a historian's work does not provide some readership with a certain level of reading enjoyment, it tends not to be read, making its impact just that much less widespread and instrumental in the formulation of our understanding the past. Indeed, a good story lies at the heart of every influential historical work, so it behooves historians not only to examine the substance of literature for the history it may contain but also to study the methods used by writers of fiction in advancing their art.
-
Barbara: That looks a great site - have put it in my favourites to read at leisure -thanks!
-
While you folk were investigating Helen,I was interested in Proteus, The old man of the sea.
Proteus is an early Sea God..(first appeard in Linear B script) His name suggests first(protos). He became the son of Poseidon and was made the herdsman of his seals. He can foretell the future , but, in a mytheme ,will change his shape to avoid having to. He will answer only those who those who can capture him.
From this persona comes the adjective Protean, with the meaning of versatile, mutable, and 'cpable of assuming may forms". Protean also has connotations of versatility, flexibility and adaptability.
Proteus of Egypt is the immortal man of the sea who never lies,Poseidon's servant.
Many famous authors, beside Hemingway refer to Proteus. Among them Wordsworth, Asimov, Jung and Shakespeare. The latter named one of his two men of Verona, Proteus.
-
Interesting isn't it Jude to find out so many have been influenced by Homer and we just went blithely along not realizing the ancient connections.
This whole idea of hiding oneself in seal skins has caught my fancy - sure enough, I found theYoutube clip from that Japanese move I earlier refereed to called, Paprika that includes a parade of household appliances and other household items including various pets all looking and acting human - it is a riot -
I am thinking we have Homer to thank for the concept of concealment that has been taken further in the creative mind - this movie is about a scientist who creates a machine that if you are hooked up with another you can swap dreams and enter the dream of the other person to affect what happens. It goes haywire when one of the techs hooks it up to something that gradually affects dream swapping throughout the nation.
Here is the clip http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FAnSKN9s7eY&NR=1
-
Oh man, I love coming in here, just look at all the riches here today!
Sally, where do the coordinates put it? Is it near an island? (Thinking of Santorini destroyed by a volcano during the Minoans). I think that's very romantic, somehow. I just read last week about a new thought that perhaps the Bay of Naples is itself the caldera of an ancient volcano.
I LOVE all the Helen readings and thoughts, that's three new authors for our incredible list already of adjunct readings. As you all read, will you be on the lookout for an explanation of why she tried to entice the Greeks out of the Trojan Horse?
I really liked this quote from Barbara: While all these variations on the Helen story-as well as those by later commentators-agree on her powerful erotic appeal and its potential to cause havoc, they differ wildly on questions about the nature of her character and adultery. Was she, like her mother, the victim of a brutal rape? Was she taken to Troy against her will? Did the riches of an eastern kingdom lure her? Had she genuinely fallen in love with Paris or was he a convenient way out of a passionless marriage? Was she somehow deceived by Paris? Was she just the passive instrument for the gods to play out another of their quarrels?
(That Paprika is a hoot, my 4 year old John really enjoyed it). :)
This question is driving me nuts, do ANY of you see anything strange about Menelaus' and Helen's marriage?
Is there anything strange about her marriage? Is this a hint? Compare Sparta to Ithaca.
What does this MEAN?
Driving me nuts.
-
There are LOTS of other Trojan Horses, I'm glad you like these, here's a page of them which look more like somebody could construct them on a beach out of wood, I like this one:
(http://www.seniorlearn.org/latin/ulysses_penelope/TrojanHorseShliemannMAnkershagenGr..jpg)
At the Heinrich Schliemann Museum in Ankershagen, Germany
http://www.schliemann-museum.de/
Here's a page showing more, although I can't find the one now IN Troy built as a memorial for children to climb over, it's woodish too: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trojan_Horse. (Wikipedia is good for illustrations, you just have to be careful about how they are labeled).
That was very interesting on Proteus, Jude. I liked your list of the other times he's appeared throughout history. I absolutely LOVE the way the descriptions of him are written, they are spectacular, to me, I want to put some of Lombardo's stuff in here.
Babi, thank you for the lines, looking at them in my book I don't have "God," but Zeus is all over the place. I loved your thought: Intolerable--that soft men, as those are, should think to lie in that great captain’s bed. Fawns in a lion’s lair.” Wow, I'd hate to be a baby deer lying in the lion's lair, I wonder if this is a foreshadowing of what will happen to them? I didn't even see that, I'll have to go back. Loved your "hecatomb" info.
Barbara, I love that University of Utah site, it should be required reading, doesn't he write beautifully. I loved this from him on why the gods being so childish and obstructive matters:
An epic is a long, narrative poem in which the central character, usually depicted as a hero of some sort, struggles against great odds—sometimes death literally—to achieve a noble end. Most often, the story involves gods or, at least, the supernatural in some respect, which serves to aggrandize humanity in its all-too-often vain quest for heaven and immortality. The hero's inevitable failure only underscores the tragedy of mortal weakness inherent in us all. In capturing all at once the sense of human grandeur and frailty, Homer's works are unsurpassed.
I also love this explanation: That is, to be effective, literary works depend on the readers' ability to see some larger truth behind the façade of made-up characters and situations and to connect fiction with fact because of the story's immediacy and pertinence to the audience's world. Thus, authors hope the reader will connect with their work somehow and see that it's not just a story but, as Vergil puts it, sunt lacrimae rerum et mentem mortalia tangunt ("there are tears for what's happened and mortal matters touch the mind"). In the end, history and literature have a similar agenda, to reflect truth—however imperfectly—and, in doing so, illuminate the human condition.
Deb, I loved that the "highways of the fish." Murray has "fish-filled sea." Maybe that bit inspired some of the translators, I thought the Proteus part was spectacular.
Gum, Doesn't the business about hiding among the seals ready to pounce on the old man of the sea, Proteus, seem very reminiscent of the Trojan Horse. There they are in his territory and covered by sealskins as a kind of disguise - Yes, I missed that!! Having read the Odyssey before, it reminded me of the Cyclops. I am wondering if there are a lot of parallels in the Odyssey, maybe more than we thought.
Here are some more of the Temple U questions on this section and they cover Proteus, too:
134-43 Menelaus predicts the destruction of the suitors and tells the story of his return, including the encounter with Proteus, who told him of the other homecomings. What do you make of Proteus? What are the functions of this episode? Note the Odyssean elements here. Do M and H deserve the happy afterlife Proteus predicts? In general, so you see any signs that Telemachus is maturing?
I like these questions, as they presuppose that everything is there or in this story for a reason. What is the purpose of the Proteus inclusion, other than the fantastic writing, do you think?
Stesichorus (6th c BC) wrote two versions of the Helen story, the one we are familiar with and that there were two Helens, and that the real Helen was carried to "King Proteus" of Egypt. There were two Proteuses too, even possibly a third. I am not sure if our sea god here in the Odyssey is the same King who received her in Herodotus and Euripides, who wrote several hundred years later, does anybody know? In Herodotus and Euripides he is a virtuous king who is Helen's keeper. So there were at least 2 of the Proteus characters, one a minor sea god and one a king, and in Greek literature, possibly two Helens. Neat way to avoid problems, send a phantom, but it's mythology, they can do anything. I find it fascinating that "Proteus" should appear here. In the later versions of two Helens, Menelaus went to Egypt and took her home. If he's the same Proteus it's interesting he should show up here when we meet her for the first time, because she's about as enigmatic and evasive as he is.
I think he's fascinating, because you have to hold him to get him to answer a question, he avoids having to give an answer by the shape shifting.
RR, Charlize Theron would be perfect as Helen!
In the Iliad Helen is a tragic figure, forced to be the wife of Paris and aware of her wrong doing. I've been rereading the Iliad, she does reproach herself, but the Trojans don't reproach her and neither do Priam or Hector, so I remembered that incorrectly. Instead, seeing her on the battlements of the burning Troy, the old men say her beauty puts her beyond blame. So there's the beauty thing again. But in the Odyssey she's a puzzle, at least so far, to me, many conflicting elements here.
Oh here's a quote, "Later writers, Greek and Roman were generally hostile to Helen, and the speeches in her defense composed by Gorgias and Isocrates are little more than rhetorical demonstrations or how to defend the patently guilty." (OCCL)
I can see why the Romans, particularly the Roman Republican ones, would not have admired her based only on what we've seen so far about her loyalty to the Greeks. The Trojan Horse thing is very disturbing, I sure would like to see somebody's positive spin on it. But one things for sure, the characters are really interesting. Heck of a book so far! :)
What strikes YOU about Book IV?
-
OK, I have to put in one of my favorite takes on the Trojan Horse:
http://i239.photobucket.com/albums/ff125/PatriciaFHighet/IMG_1419.jpg (http://i239.photobucket.com/albums/ff125/PatriciaFHighet/IMG_1419.jpg)
-
Bettany Hughes holds me in her thrall. Very little is getting done in my humble abode because of her. I have only read the introduction and various bits and pieces of her "Helen of Troy", but already she has some interesting theories.
I have paraphrased and made point form of what Hughes has to say:
1. After the dark ages writing was reintroduced about 800 BC. Helen's epoch was 1300BC.
2. Helen was worshipped as a demi-godess, a heroine and had shrines all across the Eastern Mediterranean.
3. Some scholars say Helen never existed, but is the face of an ancient nature goddess....A visceral force that brings with it both life and death.
4. Also there is the beautiful sex goddess we have come to know, lambasted in theological texts. Her beauty and sexuality both lusted after and despised.
5. Aristocratic women, written about on broken writing tablets were used as trading chips, highly valued commodities, passed from one state to another.
6. There is no real evidence that Agamemnon, Menelaus and Achilles were ever at Troy. What is known is that Troy was burnt and its culture destroyed. The Hittites, however, did have land bordering Troy.
As you can tell Hughes has some very interesting things to say about Helen and the whole Eastern Mediterranean. The points made above were made in the Introduction. I hope that she will expand upon them the further I read. What do you think about the points Hughes makes?
I note that Linear B was mentioned in one of the posts. If you have not read about this fascinating script, I strongly recommend that you should. A search will help. 8)
PatH - your link of the Trojan Horse is absolutely gorgeous. It made me laugh. Μου αρέσει πάρα πολύ. Ευχαριστώ.
kidsal - Nice thought about Atlantis. Actually some ancient historians (some more recent ones, too) believed that Santorini/Thera WAS Atlantis. I have always been a bit leery about this though as Santorini is in the middle of the Aegean Sea, in the Cycladic group, so how could it be called Atlantis?
ginny - My apologies for not answering your question about the map. Yes. You have it exactly right. Ah would be so nice to be there, right now. Sandy Pylos. I agree they are beauiful maps.
-
The part I liked about being concealed under the seal skins, is
the naiad dabbing ambrosia perfume under their noses to block out the
terrible stink. :)
I was interested in Proteus, too, JUDE. Proteus’ daughter refers
to him as “Proteus of Egypt”, suggesting that he was originally
an Egyptian sea God. Now he appears to be a lesser God, under
Poseidon, charged with the protection of the seals. Of course,
many foreign gods took on new identities or roles when the Greeks
and their gods were in ascendancy.
I wonder now, since reading your post, if Shakespeare intended
to suggest that the Proteus in Verona was always truthful.
Pharos…that finally struck the proper chord in my mind. The lighthouse of Pharos, one of the seven wonders of the ancient world. Of course, Homer’s saga pre-dates this 3rd century BC wonder.
-
PatH, hahahaaa, what you wanted it hollow? Love it. hahahaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa
I really think in Book IV we begin to see why this book has stood the test of time. I am not sure I can answer the question of how the marriage of Menelaus and Helen is strange. It's strange to me that she refers to herself as "shameless," and then says her heart had turned homeward and she was glad to see the Greeks hiding in the horse, and then Menelaus puts the issue to a head saying "Some god who favored the Trojans must have lured you on."
Here we seem to have a marriage where the wife's...infidelities of spirit? Could you call them that? Are excused with understanding by the...can we call him cuckolded husband? He can't admit her guilt, as she's just said there was nothing wrong with him or his looks, he believes her. He needs to believe her because he's lost his best friend and his brother.
When you're reading a ancient book and trying to relate to the characters in 2011, I can see this, apart from all the supernatural interference of the gods, on a modern level. He just can't see her for what she was. Whatever she really was really makes no difference, HE can't see her faults.
The difference is back at Ithaca waits the faithful wife, with plenty of temptations and reasons to stray; she doesn't.
I do have to say that I jumped right up there in the beginning when the horses were being fed:
At the stalls where they threw before them
A mixture of spelt and white barley.
Spelt is mentioned pretty constantly in Caesar's Gallic Wars and I finally got to taste a sandwich made of it last week, in an organic restaurant, the sandwich was served on "spelt." Apparently it's getting some fame for being...gluten free? Or lactose free? Or whatever, it tasted not very different, to me. I felt more ancient than I usually do, however, eating it. hahaha
Meanwhile another flashback, Menelaus' return journey, and we really get the first of the fantastic adventures, like a fairy tale, in Proteus. IF Menelaus can hold him down he will answer, he will tell the route, and the distance AND what has been happening back at home.
Now Proteus in Lombardo is referred to as "the old god."
So they lie down under the skins just like Odysseus will under the sheep cover with the Cyclops and lay hands on him (which Odysseus didn't).
And the Old One didn't forget his wiles,
Turning first into a bearded lion,
Then a serpent, a leopard, and a huge boar.
He even turned into flowing water,
And into a high, leafy tree. But we
Held on, gritting our teeth, and at last
The wily Old One grew weary, and said to me:
the entire tale of what happened to Ajax, (who boasted, hubris again), and Agamemnon,
So he brought Agamemnon up to the palace
Unaware of his doom and slaughtered him
The way an ox is slaughtered at the stall.
None of Agamemnon's men was left alive,
Nor any of Aegisthus'. All were slain in the hall."
Here's a fabulous work on this slaughter by Thulden, he's got an entire book of these on the Odyssey:
(http://www.seniorlearn.org/latin/ulysses_penelope/MurderofAgamemnonThulden.jpg)
The murder of Agamemnon and his followers
17th century etching
Theodor van Thulden (1606 - 1669)
Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco
And what happened to Odysseus.
And then he says to T, stay awhile and then set off. (Why? Where is T going now? He's heard of O?) Is he going straight home with his news?
And then he offers T gifts which T refuses. Why? He does accept the solid silver bowl with the lip in gold.
But at home things are changing fast. What is Penelope's reaction to the news she is told? Who talks her out of it. Why? I'm not sure I understand the logic here. Is Eurycleia sort of dotty?
And in this one we have the first strange thing set off in my book by italics:
Surrounded by men, a lion broods and then panics
When they begin to tighten their crafty ring. This is Lombardo's 792-824.
What IS this?
This is a book, here, we've got ourselves a book with enough subplots to choke a horse and lots of great imaginative stories for any century, what do you make of any of this?
-
Ginny, I thought Telemachus refused some of the gifts because the couldn't lug them around on all his coming travels - also he says he can't accept horses because Ithaca doesn't have any plains for them to graze on - it's too rocky.
The lines that you quote from Lombardo (about the lion) are translated by Fagles as:
"Her mind in torment, wheeling
like some lion at bay, dreading gangs of hunters
closing their cunning ring around him for the finish"
which I take to mean that Penelope is tossing and turning, trying to think of ways out of her predicament - each time her thoughts follow one line of action, she realises that it won't work and turns to another, and another.
Penelope thinks she will run off to Odysseus's old father, Laertes, to ask him what she should do about Telemachus having left the palace. The nurse, Eurycleia, talks her out of it because - she says - Penelope shouldn't bother an old man. Maybe she thinks Telemachus should be allowed to get on with his voyage? Or maybe she just knows there's nothing to be done? I didn't get the impression she was dotty.
Rosemary
-
Lattimoreline 791
as much as a lion caught in a crowd of men turns around in fear, when they have made a treacherous circle around him, so she was pondering,
-
you know a couple of years ago, I believe there was a radio announcer on CBC (Canadian Broadcasting Corporation) who had it in mind to read the entire Iliad or perhaps the Odyssey,...anyway he would give commentary where he was in the read thru the summer...I do believe he gave up in his endeavour...
if I could remember who in earth it was I would e-mail him about this group, and the fact he may have been reading a translation that was not very 'today's reader friendly'
Deb
-
Deb, speaking for myself, I think it would be very difficult for the uninitiated (without a lot of background) to read The Odyssey by himself. The comments here, the questions asked and answered, make all the difference in the world.
For example, I was unfamiliar with Proteus, whom Fagles refers to as the Old Man of the Sea, and was therefore glad to see the input from Jude and Babi.
And for simpler things, -- a bread made without yeast
Spelt recipes (http://allrecipes.com//Recipe/very-simple-spelt-bread/Detail.aspx)
-
Having received a "classics" diploma from Exeter, he's hardly uninitiated, but the Aeneid is one of Mark Zuckerberg's favorite books. This from a New Yorker article --
“ But there are definitely books—like the Aeneid—that I enjoyed reading a lot more.”
He first read the Aeneid while he was studying Latin in high school, and he recounted the story of Aeneas’s quest and his desire to build a city that, he said, quoting the text in English, “knows no boundaries in time and greatness.” Zuckerberg has always had a classical streak, his friends and family told me. (Sean Parker, a close friend of Zuckerberg, who served as Facebook’s president when the company was incorporated, said, “There’s a part of him that—it was present even when he was twenty, twenty-one—this kind of imperial tendency. He was really into Greek odysseys and all that stuff.”) At a product meeting a couple of years ago, Zuckerberg quoted some lines from the Aeneid.
On the phone, Zuckerberg tried to remember the Latin of particular verses. Later that night, he IM’d to tell me two phrases he remembered, giving me the Latin and then the English: “fortune favors the bold” and “a nation/empire without bound.”
Before I could point out how oddly applicable those lines might be to his current ambitions, he typed back:
again though
these are the most famous quotes in the aeneid
not anything particular that i found. ♦
And I would not be surprised if he's also read The Odyssey and the Illiad.
-
wow talk about stacking the decks as a journalist with the New Yorker suggests that because Mark Zuckerberg read the classics he has "this kind of imperial tendency." ??!!??
-
ROSEMARY: "Penelope thinks she will run off to Odysseus's old father, Laertes, to ask him what she should do about Telemachus having left the palace. The nurse, Eurycleia, talks her out of it because - she says - Penelope shouldn't bother an old man."
Strange. Every time there is a suggestion of going outside the circle of the household for help (such as P. going back to her family) it is turned down. Telemachus does appeal to the villagers, but without success. And T doesn't even ask Nestor or menelaus to send men back with him to fight the suitors. Odysdeus' household seems very isolated.
Thanks, ROSEMARY and BOOKAD for the other translations. I was stumped by the lombardo, also. how good it is to have all these different translations. Lombardo is very good IMO, but even the best is enriched by comparison.
I gather Mark Zuckerberg is the founder of Facebook? I'm way behind on such things. I admit I have mixed feelings about facebook but it is great for people of my kids age (30s-40s) to keep in contact with old friends. I've had less success finding old friends on it, and have stopped going in.
-
all the social contact media reminds me of when my children were young teens and we teased they had phones growing out of the ears. They were on the phone all the time - only now the need to talk everything over with a friend or now it is friends seems to have spread to folks beyond their school years. I am shocked at how much Real Estate transactions are discussed with Twitter and face book by mostly the younger agents.
-
Barb, that is amazing - I must be old, because I would never even think of discussing any of my clients on any electronic media - the only people i would discuss them with would be colleagues face to face in the office.
Rosemary
-
wow talk about stacking the decks as a journalist with the New Yorker suggests that because Mark Zuckerberg read the classics he has "this kind of imperial tendency." ??!!??
Barb, I should have included the link to the much longer article. The "imperial tendency" is not because he read the classics, but because of the risks he took when establishing his business. Sorry to be off topic.
But, since I am, we are, there was a Wall Street Journal article last week about another film that made me think of The Odyssey. The reporter likened Winter's Bone's Ree Dolly's search for her meth-making father as a QUEST, and I would agree. But what really caught my attention were her words to her undernourished, hungry little brother -- referring to food she said, "Never ask for what should be offered." There's the hospitality (or lack of it) turning up again.
-
Yes, I thought it had to do with his start up style and yet, to me that is saying it as if not honoring him - golly he was a kid - and yes, he holds his head way up high - but have you noticed all these super smart geeks have a similar posture - they are all in their head with few social skills except to talk some sort of strange language with other Geeks - he like so many with a vision and fast brain just barrel ahead like a whale opening their jaws and taking everything from the sea into their mouths - I guess I have a problem with folks saying that is an Imperial characteristic and that I am sure is because most of us do not take that word to be a complement.
Interesting - I did not see the movie Winter's Bone's but that reminds me I am anxious to read James Joyce's Ulysses - have the book and just never got past the first page assuming it would be difficult.
-
I have to make a comment about the simile describing Penelope as like a lion at bay with the hunters circling. I think its so interesting that Homer compares her to a lion (ie no deer in the ancient Greek headlights here!) -its obviously meant to build up our image of her, even although every time we've seen her so far she's weeping (not very lion like to me)--I have no feeling for Penelope yet (what I mean is, no positive feeling, but also no sense of what she's like as a person);I realise she's loyal and smart, she's kept all the suitors around, but at bay, ensuring that no one takes over, but I don't really know what she's like in the way I feel I do Helen and Telmachus and Nestor and Menelaus. We'll see I guess
-
I like your comparison of Helen and the faithful Penelope, GINNY.
I definitely prefer Penelope, and would love to be her friend. I
would be very much on my guard around Helen.
Telemachus does explain why he refused the first gifts offered.
He very courteously declines, explaining that he cannot take the
horses on his ship, and besides, stony Ithaca has no fields for
them. Only herds and flocks thrive there. He accepts the bowl; a
parting gift to a guest is traditioal and it would be offensive
to refuse all that is offered.
AHH, reading on, I see that ROSEMARY has made much the same
comment.
A line that raised my eyebrows was the phantom's answer to Penelope's request for information about Odysseus. She said she could
not say, and that "empty words are evil". Evil? That's a strong word.
What, precisely, did she mean by 'empty' words?
I checked some other translations on-line (none of which seemed to
identify the translator) and found these:
‘there is no use in idle conversation."
.."it is wrong to utter words idle as the wind."
There's a big difference between evil and idle. And it would be wrong
to speak carelessly on something that is so important to the hearer.
I think these translations are more likely than the one in my copy.
-
This is VERY intersting!
Dana, I liked your use of "simile" here.
Lombardo sets it off with no mention of Penelope:
Surrounded by men, a lion broods and then panics
When they begin to tighten their crafty ring.
This is set off in italics and even indented. He did this in the Iliad too.
This is called something, anybody remember what? These extended similes?
Murray in his more literal translation says:
In line 789: And just as a lion is seized with fear and broods among a throng of men, they they draw their crafty ring about him....
Fagles has made the leap to comparing Penelope to the lion, which of course is the intent. I think, for my own part, when you remove the sort of set off simile (it's not set off in the Greek physically) (a simile is comparison in literature using the words like or as...that's a pitiful explanation I'm sure somebody can find a better one), you sort of diminish the intent.
Pope has sort of a compromise:
So when the woodsman's toil her cave surrounds
with grief and rage the mother-lion stung
Fearless herself, yet trembles for her young...
hmmmm So he also takes it a bit further.
What do the other translations say?
-
Rosemary, good points on why T refused the gifts. I am wondering tho what this does to the notion of hospitality?
My book says the initial section of the Odyssey, the first 4 of its 24 books, is called the "Telemachy," the story of T. Didn't we just see the Temple questions saying we wouldn't see him for a while?
I think that Odysseus appears at last in Book V, and the poem begins again, what a BOOK! You can see this style in modern authors, too, some books go quite a while without the protagonist actually appearing.
Good point also on the nurse. I am wondering what mysterious troubles Laertes has that he can't protect his grandson or DIL, and I agree with Joan K, it does seem odd that whenever outside help is called everybody shrinks off.
What do your books have for the nurse's explanation of why not to bother Laertes?
The nurse may not be dotty but she sure is bossy and self assured and I'm not really sure that I'd listen to her that much.
Deb! Write him!!!! Wouldn't that be fabulous, I'm sure he would be thrilled you remembered him!
Spelt, looks awful, tastes pretty good, like flatbread. Thank you Pedln for that recipe! :) And for the Mark Zuckerberg info.
Babi, what a good question: A line that raised my eyebrows was the phantom's answer to Penelope's request for information about Odysseus. She said she could
not say, and that "empty words are evil". Evil? That's a strong word.
What, precisely, did she mean by 'empty' words?
Lombardo has Empty words are ill spoken.
What DOES she mean by "empty words," and what do your books say about this or any of the issues here today? I think these similes are important, I'm going to keep trying to find something about them.
-
The Book Club Online is the oldest book club on the Internet, begun in 1996, open to everyone. We offer cordial discussions of one book a month, 24/7 and enjoy the company of readers from all over the world. Everyone is welcome to join in.
Now reading:
(http://www.seniorlearn.org/bookclubs/classicsbookclub/cbc2odysseysm.jpg)
March 14---Book V: Odysseus, Calypso, and Hermes
(http://www.seniorlearn.org/latin/ulysses_penelope/CalypsoandOBreugheltheElder1612.jpg)
A Fantastic Cave Landscape with Odysseus & Calypso
Jan Breughel the Elder (painted with Hendrick de Clerck)
c. 1612
(http://www.seniorlearn.org/latin/ulysses_penelope/CalypsochestOredfiguredhytria450BC.jpg)
Calypso offers Odysseus a chest
Lucanian red figure hydria
c. 450 BC
Museo Nazionale, Naples
Discussion Leaders: Joan K (joankraft13@yahoo.com) & ginny (gvinesc@gmail.com )
(http://www.seniorlearn.org/latin/ulysses_penelope/CalypsoHermesFlaxman.jpg)
Hermes' message to Calypso
Engraving and etching on paper
John Flaxman
1805
Tate Gallery
Useful Links:
1. Critical Analysis: Free SparkNotes background and analysis on the Odyssey (http://www.sparknotes.com/lit/odyssey)
2. Translations Used in This Discussion So Far: (http://www.seniorlearn.org/bookclubs/odyssey/odyssey_translations.html)
3. Initial Points to Watch For: submitted by JudeS (http://www.seniorlearn.org/bookclubs/odyssey/odyssey_points.html)
4. Maps:
Map of the Voyages of Odysseus (http://www.seniorlearn.org/latin/ulysses_penelope/Odysseusmap.jpg)
Map of Voyages in order (http://www.wesleyan.edu/~mkatz/Images/Voyages.jpg)
Map of Stops Numbered (http://www.seniorlearn.org/latin/ulysses_penelope/Odysseusmap2.jpg)
Our Map Showing Place Names in the Odyssey (http://www.seniorlearn.org/latin/graphics/AncientGreecemap.jpg)
(http://www.seniorlearn.org/latin/ulysses_penelope/CalypsoHermesOdysseusMaurer.jpg)
Hermes visits Calypso and Odysseus
Etching
Hubert Maurer (1738-1818)
(http://www.seniorlearn.org/latin/ulysses_penelope/calypsomodern.jpg)
A modern Calypso:
Tia Dalma aka Calypso, goddess of the sea
The Pirates of the Caribbean, At World's End
2007
Lattimore--in the introduction he says
there is sometimes an odd note of inconsistency
which might explain confusions cropping up here and there
--------------------------
E. V. RieuDoubts and fears chased through her mind as they do through a lion's when he finds himself surrounded by the beaters and stands in terror as they stealthily close in
LattimoreBut in the upper chamber, circumspect Penelope,lay there fasting, she had tasted no food nor drink, only pondering whether her stately son would escape from dying or have to go down under the hands of the insolent suitors; and as much as a lion caught in a crowd of men turns about in fear, when they have made a treacherous circle about him, so she was pondering....
I see this as comparing Penelope to the behaviour of a cornered lion, pacing and scared; those traits of a lion in that situation
going in circles, not sure whichway to go with her problems( but not the traits of a lion generally when in command of his environment,) and all the worries do not solve anything...... generally just making it worse...till fortunately the goddess Athene steps in with the dream of her sister...taking some of the pressure off....
Deb
-
There are many things weird about the marriage of Helen and Menelaus. The table in Fagles ,page 500, shows she had children with Deucalion and Aeolusenelaus.The children are Salmoneus and Cretheus, who fathered Tyros , wife of Poseidon.So Helen is the Grandmother of Poseidon. How strange!
If we look at one of Fagels geneology charts "The Geneology of Tyro" we see that Helen could be from an older generation than Menelaus. The articles on Helen list (by name) close to 70 different suitors for Helens hand. It is not just Paris who wants her for his own. The articles seem to indicate that Paris was too weak and unmanly to catch her as a real lover.
She plays with many men and she doesn't seem to age. Some sources say she was abducted and raped when she was seven. Other sources claim she was ten. They all agree she was gorgeous.
What really caught my imagination was the fact that the word Hellenistic describes a whole civilization. In researching this I found that there are two words and they mean different things. First Hellenistic civilization, 323-146 BC, represents a fusion
of the ancient Greece, the Near East, Middle East and Southwest Asia. The Hellenistic period was characterized by a wave of Greek Colonization. The mixture of cultures gave birth to a common dialect known as Hellenistic Greek.
Hellenistic itself is derived from Helen. It was the Greeks traditional name for themselves. Some still claim that it came from the nale of the moon...but I don't want to go into all the theories.Greek culture before Alexander the Great is known as Hellenic.
So
-
The whole board froze up on me-why?why?why?
Anyhow I will finish here what I wanted to continue in the previous post.
So is Helen a symbol for Greece? Why would they become a "Hellenistic civilization with a Hellenistic language? Why were they Helleniv before Alexander and hellenistic afterwards?
I'm sure there is a Doctoral thesis there somewhere but perhaps you studiers of Greece and its History and Language can explain why the nation would have this women's name, or, does she have the name of the Nation?
-
I see my posts are breaking up into uneven lines again. I have no idea why that happens.
Let's just say Helen is grandmother to Poseidon's wife, JUDE. The
mind boggles at calling her Poseidon's grandmother. Apparently being a
demigod is a great preservative of life and beauty.
-
perhaps you studiers of Greece and its History and Language can explain why the nation would have this women's name, or, does she have the name of the Nation?
Jude: What a perfectly magnificent question you've asked - it's been rolling round my mind all evening - Does Helen have the name of the Nation? - of course I've no idea in this world as to the answer but why wouldn't Helen - the idea of Helen - be simply a symbol - the attributes of the nation itself applied to the symbolic form of a woman. Perhaps the nation was worth the ten years of war.
-
good points on why T refused the gifts. I am wondering tho what this does to the notion of hospitality?
[/b]
Ginny: The refusal of gifts may be par for the course. In Book I as she takes her leave of Telemachus, Athene refuses his offer to wait while he finds her a gift -
Bk I:314 Cook
Then the bright-eyed goddess Athene answered him,
"Do not hold me back now, longing as I am for the journey,
Whatever gift your own heart bids to you give me,
Give it to me to carry home when I return again.
And pick a lovely one. It will be worth the exchange to you."
Having spoken so, bright-eyed Athene went off.
I guess if it's good enough for Athene to decline the offer then its Ok for Telemachus to do likewise.
Lombardo sets it off with no mention of Penelope:
Surrounded by men, a lion broods and then panics
When they begin to tighten their crafty ring.
This is set off in italics and even indented. He did this in the Iliad too.
What do the other translations say?[/quote][/b]
My Cook translation Line 792:
As much as a lion deliberates in a crowd of men,
Fearing when they draw the stealthy circle about him...
This is called something, anybody remember what? These extended similes?
[/b]
The only thing I can think of is that it's the epic simile -
From Cuddens Dictionary of Literary Terms :
epic simile: an extended simile in some cases running from fifteen to twenty lines, in which the comparisons made are elaborated in considerable detail. It is a common feature of epic poetry, but is found in other kinds as well...
Cudden cites Milton as the reference but of course, it originates with Homer.
M.H Abrams says:
Epic Similes are formal, sustained similes in which the secondary subject, or vehicle, is elaborated far beyond its specific points or close parallel to the primary subject or tenor, to which it is compared. This figure (of speech) was imitated from Homer by Virgil, Milton, and other writers of literary epics, who employed it to enhance the ceremonial quality and wide-ranging reference of the narrative style.
Abrams also cites Milton.
-
Gosh what great posts here!! Thank you Gum for that great info on the Epic simile.
This is also a great question from JudeS: So is Helen a symbol for Greece? Why would they become a "Hellenistic civilization with a Hellenistic language? Why were they Helleniv before Alexander and hellenistic afterwards?
The OCCL says Hellas and Hellene are names used by the Greeks in classical times to denote Greece and the Greeks. Homer (who did not have a comprehensive name of the Greeks, calling them Achaeans, Argives or Danaans) used these names to denote a small regions of south Thessaly and its inhabitants; by Penhellenes he seems to mean the northern, as opposed to the southern, Greeks. Hesiod, however, uses Hellas in the general sense of Greece, and from about the seventh century BC onwards the Greeks called themselves and their country by these names, deriving them from a mythical ancestor Hellen. (note the two l's), and it does go on and on throughout history.... if anybody wants to hear more.
Hellen in Greek myth (that last e is long), was the eponymous ancestor ( a man) of the Hellenes, usually described as the son of Pyrrha and Deucalion. He was the father of Dorus, Aeolus and Xuthus, whose sons were Ion and Achaeus, thus he engendered the ancestors of the main ethnic divisions of the Greeks in historical times.
Hellenism is the national character and culture of the ancient Greeks.
Hellenistic is the term used to denote the civilization, language, art, and literature of the Greek world from the late 4th to the late 2nd centuries BC.
There was a Hellenistic Age, starting from the death of Alexander the Great of Macedon in 323 BC and ending with Rome's absorption of Greece and the Greek East in the latter part of the 1st century BC.
So the term doesn't seem to be associated with Helen of Troy, but that makes one wonder if she is, in fact, a symbol herself.
Great questions!
-
This morning Lynn Truss (who wrote Eats, Shoots and Leaves - she's a good writer and speaker) was doing a radio programme about language and science. She was asking why scientists can't seem to put things into plain English. She mentioned that in Ancient Greece things like maths and physics were taught through poetry (ie sung), and she said that Lucretius called poetry "the honeyed cup", because it sweetened the learning of all this difficult stuff.
Sorry, I know this isn't very relevant but I thought it was interesting!
Rosemary
-
I hit a wrong key. The Greek culture in its original form, before Alexander conquered all those lands was called HelleniC, not HelleniV.Thanks Ginny for your answer.
It's sort of a chicken or an egg question. The name and persona Hellen or the Hellenic, or later Hellenistic, culture?Which came first?
Perhaps Helen is a symbol of all that is beautiful and all that is wiley, and all that is worth fighting for in the society of the time. It sure shows that women were quite important in the Greek culture.
-
It sure shows that women were quite important in the Greek culture.
As symbols!
Sorry, don't mean to offend it is just the issue of women's lack of freedom or expressing power unless it is bound by the opinions of men get me going real fast...
I do like the idea of Helen as more than a character but as a symbol for Greece - it makes this Epic like many Epics that explain the creation of their culture and people...
-
"This figure (of speech) was imitated from Homer by Virgil, Milton, and other writers of literary epics,"
So again, we see Homer as the beginning: this time of a literary form. How much, in our culture, we owe to him.
-
Even today the Greeks don't call themselves Greeks. The name of the country is still 'Ellas (Hellas) as far as they are concerned. The name of the language is "ta 'ellinika"; the word for a man of Greek nationality is "o 'Ellen/as"; a woman of Greek nationality is "ee 'Ellenida"; and the name Helen (which is very common still) is "ee 'Elenee". All of these look so weird to me in English letters, but I think you get the idea. The word "Greek" is not really used by the Greeks, as gamma (the Greek g) doesn't translate well. If the word Greek is used it has to take on a rather awkward spelling, ie gkreka. The words "Greek" and "Greeks" were given by the Romans. Ginny knows more about this topic than I.
The Ancient Greek words are either the same or similar, some have slightly different morphology.
ginny - Good stuff about Hellen. My Liddell and Scott has this to say about him:
Hellen, son of Deucalion ; his descendants were the Hellenes, at first, dwellers in the Thessalian Hellas ; later the common name for the Greeks, opp. to Barbaroi.
Unfortunately, there is no entry for Helen.
Much earlier in these posts I set out some of the "posers" (as in questions) that Bettany Hughes concentrates on in her marvellous book "Helen of Troy". She points out that there may have been two Helens - not referring to the phantom. Hughes believes that one Helen was a goddess of an older cult; and secondly, one may have been the nemesis of Troy that Homer writes about. Hughes also believes that Helen is "symbolic". The way Homer writes about Helen is that she certainly is a real person? "I am shameless" and "I want to go home" she says. Or was it all just a fairy story using the original goddess as some sort of template? Schliemann was one individual who set out to prove that Agamemnon, Priam et al were actually real. There is no real way to know if they existed or not. Just makes studying it all the more fascinating.
-
Roshanarose:
Even today the Greeks don't call themselves Greeks
Hellenic appears to be the nomenclature preferred by those of Greek heritage even here in the wilds of the Antipodes. Only yesterday when speaking to my grocer who is of Greek extraction he mentioned his father had been moved to a care facility. When I enquired as to which he replied the "Hellenic Aged-Care Village." -That village is situated on Hellenic Drive - and then there's the Hellenic Club etc etc.
-
ROSEMARY, I would have been delighted to have a 'sweetened
cup' when I had to tackle high school physics. And think what
a challenge to the poet!
I seem to have gotten ahead in my reading. I'll lie in wait...like that
lion. ;)
-
Barb - Bettany Hughes is at pains to point out that the women of the Bronze Age, particularly Sparta, had a great deal more freedom and say in matters of state than the women of Athens had in later times. If any of you get a chance it is worthwhile to read "Lysistrata" by Aristophanes, Athen's leading satirist, which is about the Athenian women going on a "sex strike" in order to stop their menfolk from going to war (in this case the Peloponnesian War) at every opportunity.
-
Gumtree - Your account of the Greek grocer reminded me of when I was studying Greek at Uni. I made the mistake of telling the Greek man at my favourite fish and chip shop that I was learning Greek. Whenever I went to pick up my order of fish and chips he made me count from one to ten in Greek before he gave me my order. As time went by and I continued ordering fish and chips from him he would test me on what I had learned in class. He finished up teaching me from one to a hundred. He was tougher than my lecturer.... Greeks can't help but teach !
-
Yes, I've read that Sparta was a place of more freedom for woman - and yes, the Amazons were warrior women however, even in Sparta women's occupation was at the loom. Granted I do not have first hand knowledge of living in a monarchy, however, most monarchies of the western world today incorporate representation however, it is not governments alone that keep the 'power over' model going when it comes to women. Knowing how and that Greek philosophers determined men were superior to women chaffs - no wounds -
Yes, woman have always been important to every society - that fact is in various degrees easily set aside when power is bandied about. Just as today, women have more opportunity and freedom that could be similar to Spartan women but, we are still paid seventy seven cents to the dollar - when during war a women's body is violated - during the guerrilla warfare that exists in too many homes she is violated. And so, I do think it is patronizing of us as women to suggest that the small freedoms for some women are cause to sit back and say - look there...we made it...or in the past some women were in better circumstances than others. Better is not good enough, especially when it is based on the silent gender one-up-men-ship
-
ROSE:" The name of the country is still 'Ellas (Hellas) as far as they are concerned."
Thank you. That was one of the words in the Sunday New York Times Crossword puzzle ("Greece to the Greeks").
In "A room of My Own", Virginia Woolf talks about societies ( the ancient Greeks, Shakespeare's England) where women had subserviant rolews, yet the literature is full of strong women. I forget her conclusion.
-
Oh I know how easy it is to digress - and yes, there were strong women who flaunted the traditions of the day - but then do we say there are some strong men who flaunted the traditions to make their mark - and also, upon reading I find more often than not these strong women were from the upper class.
We also find many women today trying to show evidence of a society where women were the ruling class - there is talk of the society before the one Homer is telling us about - Crete - that because of paintings on the wall of women jumping over the bulls as the young men jump therefore, they were equal - well maybe but there is nothing else so far other than the paintings and then the tale goes - well look at Egypt - well just look at the life of the average Egyptian women - a few female rulers does not make society free from Misogyny, the World's oldest Prejudice
There are all sorts of statues and paintings of woman as symbols for a nation or freedom or justice but then a Dove is a symbol of peace - when there is a release of Doves for a national or community event that does not magically make peace and so the same with symbols of figures of women.
Most of us are already behind Penelope - she is weak and is being the 'good' women but our understanding and appreciation for Helen is straining our concept of what a 'good' girl/woman should be. We do not hear of Agamemnon offering one of his sons to the gods - no, it is his granddaughter - the sons can fight and if they perish so be it but they are actors in their own death.
Been reading like crazy Margaret George's Helen of Troy and it appears I must read the entire book to get to the end to understand from this author's point of view why Helen was back in Sparta with Menelaus - the book is 639 pages and filled with one gripping event after the other - each chapter has me on the edge of my chair - she is some page turner of a writer - you can almost see how she gathered facts, little known facts and weaved them into this story based on what Greek [ or is it Hellas ;) ] writers have told us about Helen.
So far Margaret George has both Helen and Paris acting because of the interference of Aphrodite - seems that the night of Helen's marriage to Menelaus she called on two other goddesses and forgot Aphrodite and so her punishment was her bedroom life with Menelaus was without satisfaction - then he is not a passionate man although, she finds him with a slave girl he impregnated the day before he leaves for Crete for the funeral of his father. He protests with the usual - 'it was nothing' - but does sound sincere as if he reveres Helen more than he feels passion for her and please forgive him - Helen is numb - says nothing one way or the other and reminds him the ships are waiting for him - Paris is 9 years younger and she was immediately aroused when she saw him - 9 days of 'Hospitality' to Paris and his cousin took precedence over the trip to Crete and in that time sparks flashed - now she goes to the alter built for a pet snake and lo and behold who comes - you guessed it..
Then it turns out later, after their mock up marriage in the forest on the way to Troy and after they learn that Agamemnon is planning to attack and lots of other events that include skirmishes with an angry, then feisty King Priam and Hecuba, his parents, we learn Paris had an experience before he was accepted back in the folds of his family, while still living in the forest, three goddesses, Hera, Athena, and Aphrodite approach him along with Hermes and Paris had to choose the prettiest - each goddess promises him a power and Aphrodite promises him Helen.
And so this whole story is supposed to be because Aphrodite set the wheels in motion. Taking the goddess aspect away and looking at this from today's point of view - again, it sounds like desire and emotion took over - but then to look at this story as an allegory or myth and reading how Helen means the Sun ray or shining light, torch or shining one she could be, as Jude suggested, the symbol and name sake for the Greeks.and although, many Greek gods, they could be similar to the God of Abraham who holds the power of the universe. But back to women, even the goddesses are shown as manipulative that we take sides based on our learned concept of place. Helpful is OK - making things happen - ah maybe, according to who is benefiting but not the best of characteristic's.
Well the war is unfolding so back to my book, Helen of Troy and then I can get back to the Epic of Homer.
-
I agree, we don't have many clues to what Penelope is really like. She has had to keep her own counsel for a long time now, and she is not giving anything away.
-
Barb - Hughes was not crowing about how well off women in Sparta were. She was comparing how well off they were compared to Athenian women. In fact they weren't "well-off" at all by our standards. Spartan boys were taken from their mothers and homes when they were just eight for martial training. Babies were exposed on hillsides if they had any deformity. Young girls had their heads shaved, dressed as boys and sent to prospective husbands' tents. The hub to be would come in, rape the girl, and then leave her and repeat the "act" until she got pregnant. Never any affection. The women grew up tough. Perhaps that what Hughes meant, that they were better off because they were tougher. Who knows? Methinks, however, you would be hard-pressed to find many here who did not agree with you, and who had not experienced the "power" of men in some way in their everyday lives.
The reason that women, in general, think we are better off today is that in so many ways we are. But the glass ceiling is still impenetrable for the majority of women in the workplace. Many workplaces sack women first and casualisation is rife. Have you ever heard of a casual Manager or CEO? Man's hold through the centuries on women has always been about "power" martial or otherwise. Ousting men from that lofty position is well-nigh impossible.
Some women look back somewhat wistfully on Minoan/Spartan women and point out how free they were then. Knossos didn't have any walls of defence and was a Thalassocracy, and looking at the beautiful frescoes discovered on Santorini and at Knossos, there is a joyous spirit. These places have the mark of a peaceful society. I have to look up my history books again and check if Knossos and Santorini were influenced by the earth goddess. Personally, I think that when any woman, in whatever society, today finds it necessary to compare the role of women now and then, it is a bloody good indicator that things are not well in the world for us right now, and haven't been for a very very long time. How often do you hear men comparing themselves to men in past cultures. They don't because they have no need to. I know a lot of women who like the idea of the Amazons: ie kidnapping a man, keeping him imprisoned and breeding from him. I don't like the idea at all. I don't think role reversals are ever straight-forward. We are not perfect either.
Having said all that, Barb, I agree with most of what you say :D
-
This an excerpt from an article posted in Hazara News Pakistan. It follows the theme of the previous discussion.
" I remember her exuberant face, the confidence with which she would walk up to the front of the class and express herself. I remember like it was yesterday. While the rest of us plagiarised content or came up with the laziest commentary for a class topic, she would tell the class of her genuine aspirations, her dreams, dreams about the great things she wanted to do with her life. Then. Then her life was cut short. She went home one day, tied the one end of a rope around the off-white ceiling fan and tearfully put on the noose of disappointment. She died and took to grave her aspirations, her dreams. dreams about the great things she had wanted to do with her life.
As a 10 year old kid, I cared more for the afternoon football match in the maidani than for the death of a classmate from the Language center where I learned English, as per the wishes of my parents. Friends told me that she had been sold of to someone fat-cat rich guy living in Saudi Arabia. They told that she had refused to be wed off to some fat-cat rich guy living in Saudi Arabia. They told me that she had been subject to torture and unspeakable physical punishment at the hands of her dear brother and her respectable father. They told me that there wasn’t going to be a police inquiry. And they told me that since she had committed suicide she didn’t qualify for a proper fatiha and proper burial. She was a woman, a daughter, a sister, a friend and she was dead."
I can direct you to the source if you are interested.
-
I had to laugh - to get so worked up - but the problem, it really isn't funny and I cannot understand so many who go along or cannot see or pay no attention - ah so - we go on - however this Epic, for so much of continued history, is the beginning defining the role of/for women and the philosophy of the Greeks is still used to justify these concepts –
A bright spot this week – hearing some of the guests featured on TV marking the day of 'Women in the World'. suggest that awareness is creeping in with several suggesting the next forward movement in society, economics, science etc. will happen by using the talents and brainpower of 44% of the population which are the disengage women.
Thanks for clarifying Hughes - her book sounds like she is looking into Helen in a scholarly way where as Margaret George has created a bio that reads like an adventure story, a novel. Reading her book I have come to realize there are many conflicting stories and ideas about Helen as well as, other characters in this story, where and why the acted as they did –
To the question if it is all a myth, or did the characters live and if so, did they live at the time in history Homer is suggesting and did they carry out the experiences he outlines in his story - I'm on the fence, true or not I am very comfortable with the concept this is a myth that explains Greece. All this with gods and prophecy makes it for me more like a fantasy story.
What is confusing me is the number of examples in art and pottery design that are used to show how it must have been when most of what we have from archaeological digs are from a time period 400 and 500 years later. I know time moved very slowly as compared to how quickly change surrounds us - but 400 years ago Henry Hudson was last seen, the telescope was invented and the official version of the King James Bible was first printed. For that matter, Shakespeare was alive, writing and presenting his plays. I cannot imagine that we would use examples of dress and culture from today or even from 1811 to bring to life 1611 - do we know - was life in Sparta or Troy or Ithaca anything like the examples of figures on the ancient pottery held in museums...are there wall paintings depicting people from the time in history that this Epic is telling us about...
Also, the ships used to transport the soldiers is the same kind of ship I have to assume Paris and Helen used to made their escape - there are many pictures of these ships with large sails and rows of rowers - one thing I do not see is any privacy - I do know that the old sailing ships of the sixteenth century it was over the side or off the bow since the ships captain's quarters were usually at the stern but these ships of ancient Greece show no cabins at all - I am thinking our viewpoint of modesty and proper deportment may be more colored than we realize by Victorian values that were not the view folks held earlier than the eighteenth century.
-
BARB: I don't blame you for getting worked up -- we need women to get worked up, and not just except things as they are. So good for you.
I realize that I haven't realized (how's that for a sentance) how unique Homer is -- I almost want to say isolated. We are used to there being a ton of books written in any period. But (correct me if I'm wrong) Homer is IT, as far as the century in which he wrote. The other Greek writings were later, and heavily influenced by Homer.
Suppose only ONE book survived to represent the 20th century!! What would you want it to be to give an accurate picture of life then (now)? Suppose it was a Sci-Fi thriller? What would historians millenia from now think of us? Should we assume that Homer accurately portrays life when he wrote/orated?
-
I know we should be discussing the next book of the Odyssey (sigh) but Bronze Age Greece is so fascinating I can't leave it alone! I also feel as though I am dominating the board, that is in no way my aim. Maybe the next items will help people actually "see" and "feel" how it was in the Bronze Age for women and men as far as gender roles were concerned.
We have established (although not fully) that there could have been a matrilineal system in place in the Bronze Age. This would seem to be particularly the case in Crete. Once again it is hard to prove that this system did exist, but there are some clues in an a very good article I just found.
NOTE: Much of the following discussion is drawn from Kenneth Atchity and Elizabeth Wayland Barber (see BIBLIOGRAPHY) from link below.
"....However, for the "myth" of matriarchy to have had some validity, and in order for a Classical Greek theatre audience to accept the fact that women such as Helen, Clytemnestra, Antigone, Iphigenia, Hecuba, Andromache, Penelope, Medea, Alcestis, and Elektra (fully half of all extant 5th century plays have powerful women in leading roles) could indeed threaten patriarchal social order or alter the course of history, it must have had some basis in historical reality. The "historical" situation of the majority of the myths and legends is the Bronze Age, during or near the end of the Minoan civilization, and the "reality" may have been not matriarchy per se but rather matriliny.
A common feature of patriarchal and patrilineal cultures is "virilocality" (or patrilocality), which means that when a man and woman marry, the wife goes to live at her husband's family's residence. A distinguishing feature of matrilineal cultures is "uxorilocality" (or matrilocality), which means that the husband goes to live at his wife's family's residence.
Evidence of uxorilocality can be found in various myths and legends which are "historically" situated in the Bronze Age. For example, in the well-known story of Helen, when Menelaos first marries her, he travels to live with her in Sparta where he rules as king, even though Helen has two worthy brothers, Kastor and Polydeukes (Castor and Pollux). Menelaos attains the kingship of Sparta through his marriage to Helen who carries the bloodline of the Lakedaimonian throne.
When Helen is abducted by Paris and taken off to Troy, Menelaos, his position as king thereby made insecure, makes every effort to get her back, enlisting the help of all Greece. When during the course of the siege of Troy Paris and Menelaos agree to fight in single combat, the prize is not only Helen but "all her possessions." Later, after Helen's death, it is her daughter, Hermione, and not one of Menelaos' sons, who becomes the next ruler of Sparta.
Helen was the daughter of Leda who was ostensibly married to Tyndareus. Tyndareus, however, was not the father of Helen. Later tellers of the story, no doubt uncomfortable with Leda's evident promiscuousness and lack of adherence to patriarchal laws of male inheritance, interpolated the myth of Leda's seduction by Zeus as a more satisfactory explanation of her behaviour.
Leda's case is by no means unique. Bronze Age myths and legends are filled with important children whose mother is named but not their father. These children obviously had a human father, and one who wasn't necessarily the husband of their mother, but when the stories were retold this affront to patriarchal sensibilities was softened with the explanation that each child was in fact fathered by a god......"
If you do decide to visit this site there are several pix of frescoes from Crete and Santorini. They probably pre-date Helen though, so it is still difficult to say what type of clothing she wore. However, I did read somewhere (I have read so much on this subject that I have lost track)that women's fashions in the Bronze Age remained the same for generations. A lot different to today :o
http://witcombe.sbc.edu/snakegoddess/minoanwomen.html
Ginny : Maybe this helps explain why Helen went back to Menelaus. She didn't go back to him so much, as she went back to her inheritance. Menelaus may have just been her consort while she was absent from Sparta. He could never become king while Helen, Hermione and the twins' progeny lived.
-
Yes, that could be part of what happened if we can use Margaret George's bio/novel to help light our path - when Helen learns of the plan to attack she learns her mother had killed herself because of her running off with Paris and, since Helen was no longer in Sparta Menelaus is no longer the king. - Her father is the active King again.
roshanarose - I know, it is easy to think that what we post is the cause for folks to take a break therefore we feel we are dominating - all I can say it is exciting to read the many thoughts and ideas - For as many readers that have posted there are as many ideas to mull over and get our heads wrapped around the points they post - I can hear your excitement as you share what you love where as, I gravitate to discovering and sorting out what I believe while I read any book. The big plus is having others who are looking at the story from a different point of view share which just makes it more exciting with that many more ideas to sift through and adjust what we value. With this story there is much to keep different opinions alive and so, I doubt we will have a consensus on some issues.
To your post - my head scratcher is, if women were equal to men in Crete it would be neat to know what happened that prompted the kind of protection of progeny that had women isolated, leaving the quarters of their father's house to the women's quarters of the chosen husband's house -
My reading suggests that the purity of women was important to each tribe during this time when families stayed with their own kind. That seems to be the common explanation for this protection of women and later, her seeds so to speak were the honor of the family and tribe. I read all this within the first week of our reading the Odyssey and it never dawned on me to save the links - the information from several sites was trying to say, it was not to cage women as it was to keep them pure and protect the birth of future children since it was important children's progeny was traceable to the tribe through the husband.
Since then I've read a site that makes a very good point - that men had children with many women - slaves, concubines, goddesses, you name it - so what was this all about that a woman, called wife had to be proven pure so that her life and opportunities were curtailed including her education. Those who expected women to remain sexually pure effectively gained control over them and are vilifying one-half of the population for following our very nature.
Men marrying young girls is a way to keep inexperienced girls from an equal exchange so there is no expectation by the girl/women. The question becomes; how did sexual purity tie into women's morality, is sexual purity her most important measurement of her worth as a human being...why - what happened that all of a sudden tribes of people expected women to measure their worth as a wife by her protected closeted existence for the purpose of proving her purity.
I guess I am thinking that why would Crete be that different during that time in history - there were most likely bands of families that were tribes of people - And for one, or a couple of tribes living on Crete to have such a different concept of the progeny of their off springs - unless, because Crete was a small enough Island there was a belief that only men from Crete could be the fathers so that it was un-necessary to keep the women separate and, to include women as equal owners of property since the wealth of every family regardless of gender birth order was required for the continuation of the community.
If it was a matriarchal society that progeny was accountable to the women that why and how was there such a reversal among not only the Greeks but other tribes and people from other parts of the known world.
I wonder if the concept of war and having warriors is when all this started - warriors trained and were separated from family so that during separation they may have thought more security to assure them their women were faithful suggested the concept of cloistered protection.
Surmise is all we can do and share the information we find written by scholars who have been knee deep in Ancient Greek History. I do not know how the Bible compares in time line to Homer however, reading the Red Tent that book also waxed poetic about a respect for women and her physical nature that was supposed to have existed before the time of Ruth.
This all sounds good except why the big switch - Most change we hear took hundreds of years - how many hundreds of years before Homer are we talking about that women were free and as equal as Helen represents – so that while the story was an oral Epic men listening would be shaking their heads back and forth murmuring, – ‘No, we do not want that - we do not approve of Helen – story teller, be sure she is the disgraceful one in this story and Penelope is rescued for being so faithful battling to stay pure to Odysseus'.
As the fun piece in the New York Times suggested new names for the classics - the suggestion for Odyssey was something like, Don' t Mess with the Vet's Wife. Penelope, the Vet's wife cannot protect herself and Odysseus' wealth, her only act of self-protection to remain in her home and to live as she chooses is to fain an exercise in weaving a shroud - even her son keeps her in the dark as he matures and goes about his father's business - hmmm is this a 100th monkey coincidence to Mary's experience when her son matures...
Well it looks like we go around and around on this point and maybe there will be more clarity as the story unfolds, but my guess is that those [interesting they are all men] who translated the story were not necessarily looking at it from the women's prospective and those women who have taken on ancient Greece scholarship, few are in the mainstream with their findings - and the findings that do break the surface I feel are for the most part still 'trying' to prove women are worthy...
-
I am greatly surprised to learn that Menelaos was not the king in his
own right, but purely because of his marriage to Helen. I've never come
across this before. It certainly answers all those questions as to why
he 'accepts' Helen back home, quite aside from the fact that she was
the daughter of Zeus.
-
I think it's great to have all these interesting side bits revealed and I think it's legitimate to look at the role of women in the Odyssey and specifically how Homer portrayed them. I've been off with major computer problems in the storm still not resolved and am typing on a 9 inch laptop with great difficulty.
It was Agamemnon's daughter that he sacrificed, I think?
I really think Menelaus's pride was wounded and he wanted her back. After all look what Achilles did when Menelaus took his own prize, Briseis. I think it was nothing but male hubris, to which the others could relate. .
On this one:
A common feature of patriarchal and patrilineal cultures is "virilocality" (or patrilocality), which means that when a man and woman marry, the wife goes to live at her husband's family's residence. A distinguishing feature of matrilineal cultures is "uxorilocality" (or matrilocality), which means that the husband goes to live at his wife's family's residence.
Penelope certainly breaks this mold, doesn't she? She's not living with her powerful father in his household, she's living with the King Odysseus, the Man of Sorrow and Pain (Lombardo says this a million times) and nobody seems to think it odd. They think it odd when she wants to turn to Laertes, which I would think would be normal. If she needs somebody to give her away again, she can return to her own father and he will, but the kingdom is not going with her, it's not his to distribute and it's the kingdom they want.
If she were the Queen and the male were not important she could say get out, and not resort to subterfuge, the reaction of Nestor shows they would support her, she doesn't. She thinks about it, she thinks about going to Laertes when T may be in danger, (note, not her own father) and is talked out of it.
I think also that historical fiction (this is my own and admittedly prejudiced point of view) is often inaccurate. If it were not, it would be non fiction. I personally never take anything historical fiction, (even tho it brings great moments to life splendidly and makes one feel one is there) as fact. I don't care how well it's researched and that, unfortunately, includes McCullough and Harris.
I know it was a man's world and that the fate of women was much improved in the Roman era. :) The only reference to Greek monarchies I can find is that after the dark ages there is documentation in the Hellenistic Age.
I am not seeing anything in my sources other than kingdoms ruled by kings. That doesn't mean new theories abound about the line of women, but the world of the ancients was a man's world, and for sure our Epic here is about Odysseus, Ulysses. All three big epics, the Iliad, the Odyssey and the Aeneid are about men. The women are incidental.
The OCCL says "Despite the appearance of democracy the fact remains that the cities were contained within kingdoms that were absolute monarchies, their independence ultimately depended on the will of the King. Cities often called on the help of the king in an attempt to avoid war, or indeed a king might interfere to help prevent one....." and on and on, but nothing about women or a matriarchal society.
I don't know enough about the history of ancient Greece. It appears nobody knows much till the age of Alexander. What we have is Homer. A very ancient Greek civilization, the Mycenean, for instance, is only known thru myth and legend. But the figures mentioned were male. The pottery is pretty much male oriented, but Helen appears in countless pottery causing men to go to war. Mycenae was "founded by Perseus." I don't think anybody knows. There may be tons of theories, but if Helen were all so powerful, all she had to do was walk away, and she didn't. And note in Troy there was a patriarchal dynasty with Priam and Hector. Maybe this is the half god thing in Helen's case, but then so was Achilles. And so was Aeneas.
It's a myth, going back to the first Greek Bronze Age, called Helladic, the Mycenaean period beginning 1600 BC. We're lucky to have Julius Caesar's 54 BC remarks on the Britons painting themselves blue hunched over a fire, much less something from 800 BC.
So to ME the Odyssey is a time machine, an incredible look back into history, a time nobody really knows about , shrouded in mist and fantasy, and Homer is one of our few windows. Penelope is not at her father's home she's at the King, Odysseus's home, and some things we may never know. The nice thing is that through our reading and adjunct reading we can form our own opinions. And we're entitled to them. Even tho the Odyssey itself is fiction (is it?) it shines a light on something nobody else has or does.
So now we're moving on to 5, and it appears T is going to scarper. We're not going to see him again for a long time. Where is HE going? Home?
And NOW we get to the MAN, Odysseus, and he's living up to his name the man of constant sorrow, man o man has he got problems. hahaha
He's stuck with Calpyso, another woman, but he's getting to leave! However Poseidon is back from Ethiopia, and he sees the man almost to Phaeacia...can't have that.
Have we determined why Poseidon hates him so? I am sorry if we have and I forgot. And now it's getting good, with the "help" of the gods? he ends up in 6 at the Cyclops.
What do you think while we're reading 5 about the end of Book IV? Here T has been off hearing about other sons avenging their fathers, and the difficulty of leaving his home (HIS home) unprotected for a long time, and he's got news, I say he's going back, but look what awaits him there!
Noeman starts it out, he's loaned T his ship. He needs it. Boy Antinous is right on it, he reminds me of some of these Top Chefs, are you sure you wanted him to have it?
Oh yes, I gave it freely. So he leaves, having said Mentor went too. So Antinous is filled "with rage was his black heart wholly filled, and his eyes were like blazing fire." (Murray)
(I've gotten to where I like Murray, for some reason his measured literal translation appeals to me.)
What's Antinous' s beef? What's his real beef? Why now is he planning to eliminate the male heir?
-
Have we determined why Poseidon hates him so?
Here it is Ginny -It's early on in Book I - Poseidon hates Odysseus because O had blinded the Cyclops, Polyphemus who was the son of Thoosa who in turn was the daughter of Poseidon by Phorcys (she was a lesser sea divinity). So it appears that Polyphemus was Poseidon's grandson so no wonder he's feeling a little aggro toward O for blinding him and
For that, to be sure, earth-shaking Poseidon has not
Killed Odysseus but does make him wander far from his homeland
(Cook Bk I : 74/5)
Must say I agree with your take on historical fiction - I never take it all as fact but as you say the fiction can bring the people and the period to life in a way that straight history does not. When I want to learn about history, I read the historians.
I must say I'm not enamoured of the Fagles rendering which I bought on impulse a week or so ago. Much prefer the more restrained and perhaps more elegant Cook translation. Cook dates from 1967 so the language isn't really old, old and to me it reads fluently whereas sometimes a word or phrase in Fagles will really jar on my mind.
Now on to read Book V
....
-
I am only just catching up at the end of the week.
I think it was Barb who said that kings, etc had to keep their much younger wives "pure" and cloistered. It struck me that until very recently indeed things were still the same in the monarchy here. Diana was chosen to marry Charles because all of his other girlfriends were not virgins - Diana was very young and naive, so was seen as prime consort material; not only was she "pure", she was also unlikely to have any opinions of her own, and - as she subsequently discovered - she was supposed to accept that her husband would continue his longstanding relationship with his mistress.
As we all know, this marriage was the one that blew the old school royals apart. Diana rebelled and strayed, Charles was found out, and it all ended in disaster. It changed the way the royals do things - Camilla was eventually accepted and is now quite popular, and now we are about to see the wedding of William and Kate, who have been openly cohabiting for some time.
Barb, I think you also mentioned that the few women who "broke the mould", as they say, were almost invariably upper class. This is of course still frequently the case today - only upper class women had/have the money, freedom, etc to do as they like. Virginia Woolf was wealthy, and also came from the sort of Bohemian family where "non-conformist" behaviour would have been accepted. Most women were until recently kept in a continuous state of pregnancy/nursing until they were so worn down that they would never have had the energy to fight back - only the wealthy had childcare and domestic help enough to allow them to do something else. It is not only about money but attitudes - even if my grandmothers and my mother had had money, they would still have been totally constrained by what society expected them to do. My mother still thinks a woman should be grateful that her husband has a job and doesn't drink/abuse her.
Sorry, I digress. Will stagger down from my soapbox and make the tea ;D
Rosemary
-
I think we have to look at these works of Homer in context. In my opinion , if he were alive today, he would be making blockbuster, acton filled movies.. In one book I read "Homer is always complaining that people are always askimg me for something new.") He is a superb entertainer and story teller.
But others of the 6th cent.BC were had different ideas of the Gods and of their society. Theognis (or Xenophanes) writes about the Gods:
"The Aethiop's gods are black,snub-nosed.
Blue-eyed,red haired the Thracians"
and in another verse:
Could horses, oxen,lions hold
The tools to paint and carve like men,
They'd make the gods in their own mould
Gods would be oxen and horses then.
Another poet,Theognis, complains in bitter elegiacs that cross breeding between rich and poor is ruining the community and the lower orders no longer know their place. He writes of his OWN FEELINGS. He is not telling someone elses story as Homer is:
-
The post site froze up again. Anyhow here is Theognis's poem (partial of course)
I heard the crane cry unto the men his greeting,
To tell them it was time to drive the plough;
Ah,friend! he set my sorry-heart a-beating,
For others have my fertile acres now.
I got the idea for this post from reading the two books I bought for fifty cents each.
"Ancient Greek Literature in its Living Context" and "Greek and Roman Writers"
The ideas about Homer are my own..
-
I don't recall saying anywhere that the men and women of Crete were equal, or that it was a matriarchy
What the article and site suggested (with Ancient Histiory one can only ever, suggest), was that the women played a major part in the religion. imho this ties in with Knossos having no need for a wall of defense. If Knossos did have women playing a major role in their religion, it is possible that they are still worshipping the Earth Mother, Gaia or at least some remnants of the Mother Goddess. The figurines of the snake goddesses according to Bettany Hughes are imports from Egypt, the women have well-developed bare breasts suggesting lactation, and some have a snake wrapped around their thighs or stomachs. The snake can be a symbol of sexuality. Maybe they are representative of fertility? As I said Knossos has a very peaceable air. The people around the palace were farmers and as far as I can tell had never gone to war. Things changed when the Mycenaeans arrived on the scene. Please read again my comments and check out the site I gave to clear up any misunderstandings.
Barb: "I wonder if the concept of war and having warriors is when all this started - warriors trained and were separated from family so that during separation they may have thought more security to assure them their women were faithful suggested the concept of cloistered protection." This is a good point. Earlier on I gave support to the notion of the Earth Goddess (pre territorial wars) and The Sky God (advent of war and warriors).
The "concept" of war maybe only have been introduced into Crete after the Mycenaeans arrived. I am talking about war on land here. Also, please note, what I have quoted only refers to the palace of Knossos of Crete and not other parts. Someone else pointed out that this dominance of women in religion would only apply to women of a certain class, ie the aristocracy. The word aristocracy in Greek means the "power of the best/bravest". Hoi Polloi literally means "The Many".
There is something in the Iliad I am confused about. Is there a part that mentions Helen and Paris after leaving Sparta going on a long cruise, (6-7 years) including Egypt, before they arrive in Troy?
-
Jude: very interesting. What are the date3s of the poets you cite?
Yes, as I said above, we get all our ideas of early Greece (as opposed to the later period rich in writing) from one source. This has to bias them.
I love the use of the crane in the poem above. Clearly, the cranes return in the Spring, and humans react to them as people do to the Spring return of birds everywhere. It makes me feel very close to the Greeks.
-
Let's dip our toes into Chapter 5 tomorrow, and meet Odysseus at last. But first, we have Hermes, who has GOLDEN sandals (compared to Athena's silver ones. Hmmmph.
-
And here he is: hermes (Mercury) himself, in everyones favorite statue:
http://www.google.com/imgres?imgurl=http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_TZ4zYEBSw1I/SosZlc2e5UI/AAAAAAAAKkU/r638Oj2HxDw/s400/caduceus.jpg&imgrefurl=http://publicdomainclip-art.blogspot.com/2009/08/winged-mercury-caduceus.html&h=400&w=232&sz=15&tbnid=xZ3trBP55jPc-M:&tbnh=124&tbnw=72&prev=/images%3Fq%3Dwinged%2Bmercury&zoom=1&q=winged+mercury&hl=en&usg=__7R1oifS7sIu1YFG536AHSPrGs6E=&sa=X&ei=ktt6Td7DGI2QsAOsyZ0i&sqi=2&ved=0CCgQ9QEwAw (http://www.google.com/imgres?imgurl=http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_TZ4zYEBSw1I/SosZlc2e5UI/AAAAAAAAKkU/r638Oj2HxDw/s400/caduceus.jpg&imgrefurl=http://publicdomainclip-art.blogspot.com/2009/08/winged-mercury-caduceus.html&h=400&w=232&sz=15&tbnid=xZ3trBP55jPc-M:&tbnh=124&tbnw=72&prev=/images%3Fq%3Dwinged%2Bmercury&zoom=1&q=winged+mercury&hl=en&usg=__7R1oifS7sIu1YFG536AHSPrGs6E=&sa=X&ei=ktt6Td7DGI2QsAOsyZ0i&sqi=2&ved=0CCgQ9QEwAw)
-
Jude, I love your notion that Homer would now be making blockbuster action flics. Maybe he could have made something good of "Troy".
Cranes: you and JoanK mention them, which gives me a flimsy excuse (illustration that cranes were a common figure) to plug in a favorite bit from Lombardo's translation of Iliad, beginning of chapter 3:
Two armies,
The troops in divisions
Under their commanders,
The Trojans advancing across the plain
Like cranes beating their metallic wings
In the stormy sky at winter's onset,
Unspeakable rain at their backs, their necks stretched
Toward Oceanic streams and down to strafe the brown Pygmy race,
Bringing strife and bloodshed from the sky at dawn,
While the Greeks moved forward in silence,
Their breath curling in angry plumes
That acknowledged their pledges to die for each other.
-
OK, let's start Book 5 on Monday. bring your binoculars: I have some bird identification for you.
-
:D to you JoanK on birdwatching! Right on!
Away for a couple of days, but will look in Monday.
-
Oh man that's good writing and a good translation too, thank you for that JoanK!
(http://www.seniorlearn.org/latin/graphics/Iliad/Iliadend.jpg)
While the Greeks moved forward in silence,
Their breath curling in angry plumes
That acknowledged their pledges to die for each other.
Gum, thank you so much. I don't know why I can't recall that, I must have a Poseidon block or something!
I found your thoughts on Cook very interesting, as we go let's compare Murray and Cook, both doing the literal thing. You find Cook more elegant than Fagles, I must look up Cook, especially now that I have reread your post and find that he's not 1600 (unless 1967 was 1600, it seems like it sometimes aghhahaa)
Yeah that would do it, I think. I love that he's been off in Ethiopia and returns to see something he does not want to see. I love the idea here of gods constantly interfering with or influencing the lives of man. Seems to be a yin and yang, one god opposes, the other supports. So it ends up being a battle between them with man as the pawn.
Roshanarose: I get it! Loved the hoi polloi thing! On this one: There is something in the Iliad I am confused about. Is there a part that mentions Helen and Paris after leaving Sparta going on a long cruise, (6-7 years) including Egypt, before they arrive in Troy?
I thought that was in the Odyssey, I'm not remembering it in the Iliad, but since I seem to keep forgetting why Poseidon was such an antagonist, hahaha, I'm not the best source. Isn't it funny what you remember and what you don't? I wonder when we get through here if we might each say what we think we'll remember from the Odyssey.
I came in to say how amazing it is when you read something, that it seems references to it pop up everywhere.
I'm reading a bunch of new books and I must somehow remember to keep some sort of marker handy because right in the middle of one of them came the phrase "protean" and I did not understand what was meant. I know OUR Proteus but the reference was in a decidedly 2010 book and time. Turns out protean means "of or resembling Proteus in having a varied nature or ability to assume different forms. 2. : displaying great diversity or variety : versatile ..."
I did not know that. I suspect it was Annie Prolux's Bird Cloud but am not sure, it's not indexed, but she's got a lot of Latin and references to the classics in it, including the Gracchi, so it's probably her. If you can index and search in an e book that would be a marvelous tool for a book discussion, but in paper unless you've marked it, you're sunk.
Jude, that Ancient Greek Literature in its Living Context is a treasure, isn't it? I can't get over the art. I am so glad you found it and mentioned it here. I hope my computer ability to do art comes back before this is over because he's got so many pieces I've never seen. I also really like the chapter The Scholar Poets of Alexandria, and the stuff about Orestes. I did not realize so much had been written on him and his journey to avenge his father, he's huge. Aeschylus, Euripides, it's amazing. We don't hear much about him today, or I don't, I can't recall the last time anybody mentioned Orestes to me. :)
I've been looking forward to meeting our hero Odysseus at last. Can we think of any modern book which delays the appearance of the hero till the 5th chapter? Would the modern reader stand for it? I have read several times that modern editors give a new book about a page and a half, if the reader is not totally caught in that time, they throw it out. Would Homer have made it in 2011, do you think?
Actually in the Murray, his introduction is pretty powerful. When you add to all that plot outlined the fact that the people hearing about it would have been totally interested, as much as we may be interested in the wedding of Prince William or his mother) you can see why it was a hit.
We've not addressed this question from the Temple U site:
144-152 T is persuaded to stay in Sparta. The scene changes to Ithaca where the suitors plot to ambush T. en route home. Penelope is upset, but Athena cheers her with a dream. The ambush is laid. How many days are we into the story at this point? Try to keep track of this. We won't be seeing T again for a while.
Anybody have any idea of the time frame here? I'm still trying to figure out why the inclusion of Proteus occurred. For the predictions? OR?
Anybody have any thoughts on that one? In glancing back over the questions at Temple, however, it does look as if we've done a great job so far, and to me, at least, they looked totally daunting initially, so I say hooray! And on to Calypso. Unlike Aeneas, it appears Odysseus has not particularly enjoyed his stay with this femme fatale.
Have no illustrations whatsoever on Calypso, so am off to see what I can find. What a wonderful prospect for this 2011 spring day: Book V of the Odyssey! Better than Harry Potter!
-
The Book Club Online is the oldest book club on the Internet, begun in 1996, open to everyone. We offer cordial discussions of one book a month, 24/7 and enjoy the company of readers from all over the world. Everyone is welcome to join in.
Now reading:
(http://www.seniorlearn.org/bookclubs/classicsbookclub/cbc2odysseysm.jpg)
March 14---Book V: Odysseus, Calypso, and Hermes
(http://www.seniorlearn.org/latin/ulysses_penelope/CalypsoandOBreugheltheElder1612.jpg)
A Fantastic Cave Landscape with Odysseus & Calypso
Jan Breughel the Elder (painted with Hendrick de Clerck)
c. 1612
(http://www.seniorlearn.org/latin/ulysses_penelope/CalypsochestOredfiguredhytria450BC.jpg)
Calypso offers Odysseus a chest
Lucanian red figure hydria
c. 450 BC
Museo Nazionale, Naples
Discussion Leaders: Joan K (joankraft13@yahoo.com) & ginny (gvinesc@gmail.com )
(http://www.seniorlearn.org/latin/ulysses_penelope/CalypsoHermesFlaxman.jpg)
Hermes' message to Calypso
Engraving and etching on paper
John Flaxman
1805
Tate Gallery
Useful Links:
1. Critical Analysis: Free SparkNotes background and analysis on the Odyssey (http://www.sparknotes.com/lit/odyssey)
2. Translations Used in This Discussion So Far: (http://www.seniorlearn.org/bookclubs/odyssey/odyssey_translations.html)
3. Initial Points to Watch For: submitted by JudeS (http://www.seniorlearn.org/bookclubs/odyssey/odyssey_points.html)
4. Maps:
Map of the Voyages of Odysseus (http://www.seniorlearn.org/latin/ulysses_penelope/Odysseusmap.jpg)
Map of Voyages in order (http://www.wesleyan.edu/~mkatz/Images/Voyages.jpg)
Map of Stops Numbered (http://www.seniorlearn.org/latin/ulysses_penelope/Odysseusmap2.jpg)
Our Map Showing Place Names in the Odyssey (http://www.seniorlearn.org/latin/graphics/AncientGreecemap.jpg)
(http://www.seniorlearn.org/latin/ulysses_penelope/CalypsoHermesOdysseusMaurer.jpg)
Hermes visits Calypso and Odysseus
Etching
Hubert Maurer (1738-1818)
(http://www.seniorlearn.org/latin/ulysses_penelope/calypsomodern.jpg)
A modern Calypso:
Tia Dalma aka Calypso, goddess of the sea
The Pirates of the Caribbean, At World's End
2007
-
Man o man, it's absolutely amazing how many references there are to Calypso today, this list is from IMdB and it doesn't even include the most famous: the Pirates of the Caribbean which is absolutely full of classical references. I do think that their portrayal of Calypso in the last movie At World's End (2007). (I hoped to find it on Youtube but can't) was just brilliant.
But here are the others: (I bet Wikipedia has more):
Titles (Exact Matches) (Displaying 6 Results)
1.
Manfish (1956)
aka "Calypso" - UK
2.
"Calypso" (1999) (TV series)
aka "Calypso" - Hungary (imdb display title)
3. Calypso (1958)
aka "Calypso"
4. Calypso (2008)
aka "Calypso"
5. Calypso (2009)
aka "Calypso"
6. Calypso (2010)
aka "Calypso"
Characters (Exact Matches) (Displaying 4 Results)
1. Calypso (The Odyssey (1997) (TV), Vanessa Williams)
2. Calypso ("Spider-Man" (1994), Susan Beaubian)
aka "Noir Calypso"
aka "Calypso Enzili"
3. Calypso (Twisted Metal 4 (1999) (VG), Mel McMurrin)
4. Calypso (Simon the Sorcerer II: The Lion, the Wizard, and the Wardrobe (1995) (VG), Roger Blake)
Keywords (Exact Matches) (Displaying 1 Result)
1. calypso (18 titles - Beetle Juice (1988), ...)
Companies (Exact Matches) (Displaying 1 Result)
1. Calypso (Talent Agent)
Names (Partial Matches) (Displaying 14 Results)
1. Lasso Calypso (Self, Crazy Horse - Le show (2002) (V))
2. Macbeth's Calypso Band (Self, House-Rent Party (1946))
3. Anthony S. Calypso (Miscellaneous Crew, Beloved (1998/I))
aka "Anthony Calypso"
4. Paquita Calypso (Costume Designer, El futuro está en el porno (2005))
5. Calypso Eaton (Camera and Electrical Department, UK Green Party Election Broadcast (2004) (TV))
6. Louis Farrakhan (Self, The Shadow of Hate (1995))
nickname "Calypso Gene"
7. George 'Calypso' Browne (Self, Rock You Sinners (1958))
8. Calypso Medeiros (Actress, Derrière la porte (1999))
9. Calypso Molho (Actor, Les sept péchés capitaux (1992))
10. Calypso Rose (Self, One Hand Don't Clap (1991))
11. McArtha Linda Sandy-Lewis (Self, Calypso Dreams (2004) (V))
aka "Calypso Rose"
12. Calypso Barnard (Actor, Wings (2005))
13. Dr. Calypso (Self, Amb el cor a la mà (2009) (TV))
14. calypso medeiros (Katabami)
Titles (Partial Matches) (Displaying 14 Results)
1. Bop Girl Goes Calypso (1957)
aka "Bop, rock och calypso" - Sweden
aka "Bop Girl Goes Calypso"
2. Calypso Cat (1962)
aka "Calypso Cat"
3. Calypso Is Like So (2003)
aka "Calypso Is Like So"
4. Calypso Dreams (2004) (V)
aka "Calypso Dreams"
5. Calypso Heat Wave (1957)
aka "Calypso paraati" - Finland
aka "Calypso-Fieber" - Germany
aka "Calypso Heat Wave"
aka "Cuban calypso" - Italy
6. Calypso Joe (1957)
aka "Calypso Joe" - Sweden
7. Cristobalito, the Calypso Colt (1970) (TV)
aka "Cristobalito, the Calypso Colt"
8. Island Women (1958)
aka "Calypso-saari" - Finland
9. Ulysses and the Giant Polyphemus (1905)
aka "L'île de Calypso: Ulysse et le géant Polyphème" - France (original title)
aka "L'île de Calypso: Ulysse et le géant Polyphème"
10. Ay... Calypso no te rajes! (1958)
aka "Ay... Calypso no te rajes!"
11. Calypso III (2010) (V)
aka "Calypso III"
12. Cowboy Calypso (1946)
aka "Cowboy Calypso"
13. Jeffrey's Calypso (2005)
aka "Jeffrey's Calypso"
14. Podwójne calypso (1987) (TV)
aka "Podwójne calypso"
-
Joan K
The Greek poets I mentioned were from the 6th century BCE.
Here is a list of the known writers of the time:
580-Alcaeus and Sappho
544-Theognis
Beginning of Attic tragedy
530-Anacreon
515-Simonides
The Illiad and Odyssey are listed as being written between 800-700.
To put it in perspective Sophocles is listed at 456 and Aristophanes as 410 while Plato is listed as 387 and Aristotle at 344.
This list has helped me put many Greek events and people in perspective. I hope it helps others.
-
JUDE: that helps a lot! Thanks.
-
Amazon has Ancient Greek Literature in its Living Context (used) for $2.99 plus shipping, so I ordered it.
-
I await tomorrow eagerly; I've already read chapters 5-7 (6 and 7 are pretty short) and am ready to go.
In the meantime, I'll comment further on Orestes. Over 50 years ago I saw Aeschylus' Oresteia, put on by the excellent drama department of Catholic University. I was unfamiliar with the play, and it completely blew me away; some of the scenes are still vivid in my mind. The stilted conventions of Greek drama, in which most of the action takes place offstage and the time frame can't be more than 24 hours don't matter--it's incredibly powerful.
As Aeschylus tells it, after Orestes kills Aegisthus and his mother Clytemnestra for killing Agamemnon, he is punished by being pursued for years by the Furies as he wanders from place to place. Finally he wins free by atoning and pleading to Athena and Apollo for forgiveness.
Homer doesn't mention this aspect; in the Odyssey, Orestes is mentioned to Telemachus as a good example.
-
I had this all set to post last night, but my server went down...
...................................................
hi there
I am so glad to have a 'catch up' day, though am keeping up with the chapters and the story...but the posts bring up lesser characters; must try to get them straight in my mind....I suppose another mind-map to sort out names might be in order...
would it be of any interest to add to the list of translations being used for this discussion the year of initial publication so as to get an idea of the era of publication!!!
the books I am reading are:
translated by Lattimore/1967--initial publ in 1967
E. V. Rieu/1946--pub initially 1946
it perked my interest when Cook was mentioned and I wondered when this translation took place ...also wondered if anyone was pursuing an older translation
an old memory came back to haunt me this evening about being read comic books revolving around fairy tales and perhaps the classics, when I was age 6 in hospital(I was there for 3 months) and my father would come in to visit as I was in downtown Toronto, and they lived out of the city, from his office across the road, during his lunchhours, and read to me...and I can remember a comic with an older gentleman, Zeus and a younger lithe, agile man, maybe Hermes walking almost on air, with wings on his feet and sort of a helmet with wings on his head, both dressed in roman togs, with staffs... now I'll have to put my mind to work on what the story might have been; it evades me right now
my thoughts for today
take care
Deb
-
OK, Deb, I'll add
Lombardo, Stanley/ 2000
Fagles, Robert/ 1996
I have both, but am mostly sticking with Lombardo, which is probably the youngest of the lot.
Goodness, I wonder what that comic could have been. I read a lot of comics, but don't remember it.
-
Deb - The Cook translation is 1967
-
Murray's translation is 1919 and the revised edition by Dimock is 1995, it's the Harvard Loeb series.
Deb, what a wonderful memory. (Your father, not the 3 months!) The guy with the wings on his feet was probably Mercury or Hermes, the wings on the hat also sounds right.
Don't you all remember the Classic comics? I've got one of Caesar's Gallic Wars which I love, it's in Latin and is so fun.
-
Mystery solved! Not by me but by my husband who remembered the name of the Hero.
THE FLASH!
He was somewhat fashioned after Hermes.
Go to Wikipedia and read all about him!
Perhaps all the superheroes of our comic book youth were fashioned ,to some extent, after the Greek Gods.
And yes Ginny. I read every Classic comic available for a period of my childhood. I remember when we had to read A Tale Of Two Cities by Dickens, I thought to myself: But that's a comic book for kids. Luckily I didn't say that aloud.
-
HOMER AS BIRDWATCHER, PART I
Everyone gets out of reading things that resonate with there experience. As a birdwatcher, i'm fascinated by the many references to birds in Homer (here and in the Iliad). The descriptions are usually so spot-on, I feel that Homer (or someone) was observing these bird closely.
Not so in Chapter V. I've decided that while Homer was a birdwatcher, his translaters aren't! I need help.
In the beginning of Chapter V, Hermes is sent with a message: (l. 54 ff
Lombardo:
"Skimming the waves like a cormorant.
The bird that patrols the saltwater billows
Hunting for fish, seaspume on its plumage
Hermes flying low and planing the whitcaps"
Okay, I've seen dozens of cormorants, and haven't seen them hunt that way. They sit on the ocean and dive down underwater to catch fish.
PatH said that Fagles trnslated it "tern".
Tern is better, although gulls skim more than terns.
help. What do your translations say? What is the Greek word?
-
Cormorants and terns are nothing alike. I can't imagine they had similiar names in greek. Here are cormorants:
http://www.northrup.org/photos/cormorant/
And here are terns. They fly with a flitter, hover, and then dive, as the pictures show:
http://stock.tobinphoto.com/arctic-terns-photos.php
-
JoanK, Murray has a cormorant!
Butler has a cormorant!
My computer is just hanging on here till tomorrow at 10:30 when the repairman comes so I can't do the Greek word, maybe Sally can help.
Jude,
Imagine your husband remembering The Flash all these years!
And YES, the Classics Illustrated Comic books, YES! And I looked them up and lo and behold Amazon had one for the Odyssey and one for the Iliad, I could NOT resist revisiting my childhood!!
I don't know what Pope has, his lines are not numbered but in this section he seems to say right before Hermes meets Calypso: "the chough, the sea-mew, the loquacious crow,-/ And scream aloft, and skim the deeps below."
What on earth a chough and a sea-mew are I have no idea. :)
-
I'll round off Fagles by quoting a bit more:
...skimmed the waves like a tern
that down the deadly gulfs of the barren salt swells
glides and dives for fish,
dipping its beating wings in bursts of spray--
It's not a trivial point. In that economy, an accurate knowledge of nature and its creatures and their behavior was a necessary survival skill. I don't know if terns were important, though bird behavior was a useful navigational tool, but you would expect people to have an acute awareness of all nature's workings and an epic should get it right.
-
In my dictionary, a chough is any bird of an Old World genus of crows (even less appropriate than cormorants) and a sea-mew is a seagull, esp the European Larus canis (quite appropriate).
-
Back to earth. Now we meet Odysseus for the first time, and he's sure not a happy camper. He spends his time sitting by the sea, weeping from frustration and homesickness. Here he is, leading a life of ease and luxury, with a beautiful goddess to warm his bed, and the promise of immortality if he'll stay. But that's not what he wants. He wants the stony, inhospitable soil of his own Ithaca, and his own wife Penelope by his side. He must also want a life with some purpose and action to it; he's hard-wired to be doing and fighting and accomplishing.
-
I am so intrigued by different translations; its something I must look into...
when I took home those different translated copies of Anna Karina by Tolstoy I never thought this might come back to haunt me, only more so...
sorry PatH but must get in my 2 cents worth in with my translations of the above..they are so different still
E. V. Rieu--like a sea-mew drenching the feathers of its wings with spray as it pursues the fish
Lattimore--like a shearwater who along the deadly deep ways of the barren salt sea goes hunting fish
Deb
-
Deb, that's exactly what we want--all the translations we can get. I like Rieu better than Lattimore here.
-
OK, we're all over the bird world. I suspect that it's not Homer's fault: I'm betting that he knew exactly what he was talking about. My guess (I love to make guesses like this, although I may be 100% wrong) is that the Greek word used is an orphan: a word that only appears once, or a few times, so that translators have to guess.
An example: remember the lines in the Song of Songs:
"Comfort me with apples,
For I am sick with love" (King James)
Apples is such a Hebrew word. It only appears this once, and no one knows what it means.
-
Homer as birdwatcher, part 2.
It gets worse on the next page: he's describing calypso's island"
Lombardo Book 5 67 ff
"Around her cave the woodland was in bloom,
Alder and poplar and fragrant cypress
Long-winged birds neested in the leaves,
Horned owls and larks and slender-throated shorebirds
That screech like crows over the bright saltwater."
"shorebirds" is the name of several families of birds that include sandpipers, and their larger relatives. Sandpipers do not nest in trees. What do the other translations say?
-
Fagles:
and there birds roosted, folding their long wings,
owls and hawks and the spread-beaked ravens of the sea,
black skimmers who make their living off the waves.
Joan, I think I know what you're going to say about skimmers nesting in trees with owls.
-
JoanK - I wish I could see these words in Greek. Modern Greek and Ancient Greek share at least one name for a bird. It is a "peristeri" περιστέρι, in English we call it a swallow. All I could find in my MG to do with sea birds of passage was "diabatariko" διαβατάρικο. It doesn't appear in My Ancient Greek dictionary though. My Liddell and Scott is wonderful but it only has from Greek to English. I need to get on the trail of terns, seagulls, cormorants and such.
-
Roshanarose, you're just what we need to sort this out, assuming it's sort-out-able.
-
My translations were not too far removed from those cited
E. V. RieuThe cave was sheltered by a verdant corpse of alders, aspens, and fragrant cypresses, which were the roosting-place of feathered creatures, horned owls and falcons and garrulous choughs, birds of the coast, whose daily business takes them down to the sea.
Lattimore--There was a growth of grove around the cavern, flourishing alder was there, and the black popular, and fragrant cypress, and there were birds with spreading wings who made their nests in it, like owls and hawks, and birds of the sea with long beaks who were like ravens, but all their work is on the sea water.
it gives a nice dimension to the book to be able to visualize the environment especially when I can relate parts to what I am familiar with ...the types of trees,...the birds their habits,....
I feel kind of sorry for calyspo, spelled Kalypso by Lattimore/ losing her
companion in this chapter
Deb
-
Bird ορνις ιθος ο/η
Crow κορας ακος ο
Hawk ιερας ακος ο
Lark κορυδος ου ο
Owl γλαυξ γλαυκος η
Raven κοραξ ακος ο
Swallow χελιδων ονοσ η
-
JoanK : This is fascinating about the birds ...
Cook has V lines 51-53:
Then he hastened upon the wave as a sea gull does
That over the terrible gulfs of the barren sea
Dips its rapid wings, while catching fish, in the brine.
and then lines 63-67:
Wood was growing in abundance around the cave,
Alder and black poplar and fine-scented cypress,
Where the birds with their long wings went to sleep,
Horned owls and hawks and, with their long tongues,
Salt water crows, who are busy with things of the sea.
Seems to be a lot of variance in translations for the names of birds but in the main they agree on the names of the trees - alder, black poplar and cypress.
-
Ooops mea culpa regarding swallow. It is "helidon (ia)" as Sal says. Same in MG. The word I put forward was "peristeri" which on second reading means dove or pigeon in AG and MG, only in AG it is a feminine noun and in MG it is a neuter noun. There is a legend in Macedonia about a custom involving the helidon. It is off-topic, but I will post the link if anyone is interested.
btw I checked out some Homer links today about Hermes and his encounter with sea birds on his way to Kalypso's isle. They all agree that the bird mentioned was "cormorant". If anyone can find that in their lexicon, they are to be congratulated!
Etymology of Kalypso
The etymology of Calypso's name is from καλύπτω (kalyptō), meaning "to cover", "to conceal", "to hide".[10] It is the opposite of apocalypse, meaning to reveal, which suggests that Calypso may have originally been a death goddess.[11] According to Etymologicum Magnum her name means καλύπτουσα το διανοούμενον, i.e. "concealing the knowledge", which combined with the Homeric epithet δολόεσσα, meaning subtle or wily, justifies the hermetic character of Calypso and her island.
The spelling of Calypso music reflects a later folk-etymological assimilation with the mythological name[12] and is not otherwise related to the figure from the Odyssey.
From Wikipedia
-
Thank you so much Sally. I tried half the night to scan in those lines. Could you scan in the actual line in question? I love the discussion here on the difference in birds, who knew?
I found a site on Birds in Greece. It appears there are 40 species of Cormorants extant and one in Greece called the Pygmy Cormorant (which looks like an elephant to me) which is almost extinct.
I am unable to copy and paste suddenly, good thing I have a service call scheduled for today, but somewhere I did read the etymology of cormorant is surprising, it's Latin sea raven or something like that. Jeepers how vague, hopefully I can soon back up with copying what I'm seeing.
But on a Birding site of Greece I found that there IS no tradition or history of birding in Greece, so that may account for the variance in description of the habits of the bird. It's fascinating, I think.
I love Book V. Lombardo's cormorant notwithstanding, he appears in good company, I love his translation here, it's so Robinson Crusoe. Could you just build that raft yourself?
I woke up thinking I believe I could draw it. I'm going to try.
LOOK at these characters!!!!
Odysseus, the sad (when we meet him he's in tears on the shore). The Man of Constant Sorrow. That does not keep him from sleeping with Calypso, note.
But note the wily Odysseus, always thinking, always...I loved the bit about, here's help from the goddesses, er.... no, I don't think I will do what you want, I'm going to think for myself. How many times does he do this? He's definitely a thinking man. What good does it do him? Man proposes, god disposes.
SHE, Calypso, for her part, is quite irritated about the orders from on high, Zeus. Much in Lombardo about the "aegis," that is an important concept to the ancients, do we all know what it is? Zeus has the "aegis," so they all have to do what he wants, but not before Calypso lets loose with her own HEY, you...and then you.... how come the male gods have all the fun, double standard here!
Is she right?
Here are some fabulous beginning questions from Temple:
Book 5
152 Second council of the gods. Note the reference to Athena's plan. Hermes to order Calypso to send him home, and Hermes delivers the message. When was the first council? Are there any real differences from the first one? Why Hermes? Think about his functions.
What is the etymology of Calypso?
Roshanarose has done this one, thank you!
Try to comment on the description of her domain. Is she a good hostess? Note her "feminist" complaint.
Why has Homer kept Odysseus from us for 4 books?
152-7 Calypso agrees, tells O to build a boat, and reassures him when he suspects treachery. The next day he departs. What is O's first utterance in the epic and what does it say about his attitude to other humans and to the gods? Why is he like this? Why does he reject Calypso's offer of immortality? Does this situation remind you of any other myths? Can they guide your interpretation of this episode?
161-7 As O sights the island of Scheria after 17 days, the home of the Phaeacians, Poseidon wrecks his boat. Why? The sea-goddess Leucothea (Ino) saves him, but in his near-paranoia, he almost rejects her help; again, as you read, think about how he has reached this point. Athena stills the storm, and he reaches the coast, finds shelter and falls asleep.
Note the similes in this book; are they different from the similes in the Iliad?. To what is O being compared?Why are these comparisons made?
In this book you read (at least) 2 indications of the seasons. What time of year do you think it is? (This is important for understanding some of the underlying mythic patterns).
What are your thoughts on any of the above, particularly the question in red here? I'm going off to draw the boat. If you can scan or take a photo of your own work, give it a shot: draw your conception of his boat and scan it in. Might be a hoot?
They are coming out here at 10:30, cross everything you've got they can fix what ails this BRAND NEW computer, and I can scan in my hilarious boat. I love love love the description here. But I loved Robinson Crusoe, too.
-
CORMORANT: κορμορανοσ
I don't understand what line you want me to scan???
Why did Homer wait to bring Odysseus into the story? Believe it was to set up suspense. Will Odysseus make it home in time to save Penelope? Will Telemachus find his father?
Question -- why did Hermes tell Calypso that Zeus sent him against his will??
Feminist complaint? Gods may mate with mortals but they begrudge goddesses this right.
-
I think JoanK identified it as l. 54 ff. In Murray it's right before Hermes went to see Calypso: On to Pieria he stepped (this is beginning with 49) from the upper air and swooped upon the sea, and then sped over the waves like a bird, the cormorant, which in quest of fish over the frightening gulfs of the unresting sea wets its thick plumage in the salt water.
The simile there? LIKE a bird? If you can, thank you so much. I simply cannot.
I note here that Murray is not saying it flies and watches and swoops along but rather only that it wets its plumage which it would do if it sat in the water and dived. Maybe it's the rest of the translation which are at fault?
I guess it's also possible if Homer were blind that he did not know what a bird did but went by descriptions?
-
I love Calypso’s island. Woods, birds, a fireplace smelling of cedar and thyme, grapevines, clear springs, the sea. With some books, I could happily spend a month there.
It is clear that while their may be gods, there is one supreme God. Hermes is quite clear on that.
“But it is not to be thought of--and no use--for any god to elude the will of Zeus.”
Calypso’s tirade, when told she must give up Odysseus, is interesting. She makes a point I hadn’t recognized before. As much as Zeus/Jupiter played around, fathering children all over the place, there was little tolerance for the love affairs of other gods with mortals. She points to two examples. Were there others? If so, why this hypocrisy? Is Zeus the only one allowed to indulge himself?
-
According to Temple U's timeline we are in day 31 of the adventure at end of Book V.
POPE’S TRANSLATION
The god who mounts the winged winds
Fast to his feet the golden pinions binds
That high through fields of air his flight sustain
O’er the wide earth, and o’er the boundless main.
He grasps the wand that causes sleep to fly,
Or in soft slumber seals the wakeful eye:
Then shoots from heaven to high Pieria’s steep,
And stoops incumbent on the rolling deep.
So watery fowl, that seek their fishy food,
With wings expanded, o’er the foaming flood,
Now sailing smooth the level surface sweep,
Now dip their pinions in the briny deep:
Thus o’er the world of waters Hermes flew,
Till now the distant island rose in view;
-
Man o man, I hope this is visible, it's taken me an hour and a half on my tiny little travel computer with no photo editing software and NO FTP. Boy photobucket has become quite the run around, can anybody see this? This is the line wanted I hope about the cormorant?
(http://i1230.photobucket.com/albums/ee500/gvinesc1/greek2.jpg)
Also you may like to see this, it's another Trojan Horse, this one from the Latin 300 class, I just found it and it may conform more to our ideas of what the Trojan Horse looked like:
(http://www.seniorlearn.org/latin/ulysses_penelope/UlyssesTrojanHorse.jpg)
-
I can see it fine, Ginny, except that I can't read Greek.
I think that is a marvelous passage Kidsal.
I can feel Calypso's pain at having to send Odysseus on his way.
-
Deb...I am using E.V. Rieu (initial translation 1946) revised translation by D.C.H. Rieu, 1991, 2003
and Lombardo 2000
and the revised Rieu translation regarding the birds says...
...swooped down on the sea, and skimmed the waves like a sea-gull drenching the feathers of its wings with spray as it pursues the fish down fearsome troughs of the unharvested deep. So Hermes rode wave after wave.......
And speaking of cranes, the sandhill cranes are back. Spring is near.
JoanK says.. "shorebirds" is the name of several families of birds that include sandpipers, and their larger relatives. Sandpipers do not nest in trees. What do the other translations say?
My revised Rieu.. The cave was sheltered by a copse of alders and fragrant cypresses, which was the roosting place of wide-winged birds, horned owls and falcons and cormorants with long tongues, birds of the coast, whose business takes them down to the sea.
-
ginny - Thanks for the Greek (I think ???). I have made no attempt to make this a pretty verse, all I have done is translated the words quite literally. Anyway, it reads something like this:
"rapidly upon the wave(s) a bird resembling a (ravenous sea bird; gull or cormorant)in/before the terrible/wondrous swelling salt wasteland."
I looked more closely into My Lexicon and the first entry told me that λάρως (laros) means gull; the second entry, same word means ravenous sea bird; gull or cormorant. Go figure. Unless the second entry is meant to be it more "poetic".
Let me say I stand in awe of the first person who translated Homer into English! I think it was a medieval monk bent over his desk, sitting on one of those stools, his eyes completely ruined. I am similar, only I bet the monk didn't have to do the housework, attend to emails, do the washing and then go shopping :o.
If anyone would like to check out their lexicons and find more elegant ways of writing this, please do so.
-
Whew get tied up for a few days and there is a ton of posts to review - SXSW and the Rodeo are both in town - both groups include many investors with political influence - the Mortgage lender I work with is working on getting a new Texas Mortgage Guarantee Corporation and so, we were all over the place meeting and getting proposals into helpful hands - plus, the Texas Book Festival committee called to help them man their SXSW room at the Hyatt for a few hours - then on top of it the Save the Deer group had a meeting on Saturday - needless to say, Odysseus and Penelope and their saga was last on my mind - all that to explain that this group requires a bit more than an off the top of your head remark to respond and so now it is catch up time.
Let me work backwards - Birds...
According to 'An Illustrated Encyclopaedia of Traditional Symbols' they are the symbol for Transcendence; the soul; a spirit; divine manifestation; spirits or the gods; spirits of the dead; ascent ot heaven; ability to communicate with gods or enter into a higher stat of consciousness; thought; imagination.
Large birds are identified with solar; thunder and wind gods; their tongues are lightening. Birds are a feature of tree symbolism; the divine power descends into the tree or on to its symbol, a pillar. E.G. Two birds in a tree, sometimes one is dark and one light, are dualism, darkness and light, night and day, the unmanifest and the manifest. Birds frequently accompany the Hero on his quest, giving him secret adviste (the little bird told me)
Flights of birds are omens - to understand the omen is to communicate with celestial powers, (talking to angles) The ability to understand the language of birds symbolizes heavenly communication. Flocks of birds are magic or supernatural powers connected with gods or heroes. The direction of a flock of birds is an omen.
Raven - is a talking bird hence prophecy; either solar or darkness of evil, as wisdom or destruction of war. Greek longevity, sacred to Helios/Apollo, a messenger of the son god; also an attribute of Athene, Cronos, and Aesculapius, invoked at weddings as fertility. In Orphic art the raven of death is depicted with the pine cone and torch of life and light.
Peacocksacred to Hera, the protector of marriage and takes special care of married women.
Vulture, symbol of Ares, God of War.
Owl, Athena, goddess of the city, handicrafts, agriculture; invented the bridle; trumpet; flute; the pot; the rake, plow, yoke; the ship, chariot; embodiment of wisdom, reason, and purity.
Apollo, god of music, playing a golden lyre. The Archer, far shooting with a silver bow.; god of healing, taught man medicine; god of light; god of truth, (can not speak a lie). His tree was the laurel. The crow his bird. The dolphin his animal.
Aphrodite, goddess of love, desire and beauty. Her tree is the myrtle. The dove, the swann, and the sparrow her birds.
Artemis, goddess of the hunt, lady of wild things.
Sirens, Birds with women's heads.
A nice web page about Birds in Mythology (http://www.mythencyclopedia.com/Be-Ca/Birds-in-Mythology.html)
-
Hi Barb - Busy girl. Did that book say anything about cormorants? ;)
-
Whooops saw your post after the fact - cormorants follow
This web site includes many of the ancient texts as well as others who have gleaned bits and pieces that make up the so called history of the time since it all comes from stories that as archaeologists uncover hundreds of years of soil they are piecing together a different story and time frame than the oldest of texts tell us - most of the early history is based on Homer which is a story and so far no one has been able to connect the dots that suggest it is factual -
Sacred Texts Archive: the Classics (http://www.sacred-texts.com/cla/index.htm)
In this site there is an article accompanying one of these ancient books - sorry I was into all this last Friday and I just cannot remember which - but the author of the article wrote it in I believe 1809 and his scholarship included work on the gods associated with stars as well as the calendar - at the time Homer using to tell his story there was no knowledge of months or the years - they did know seasons and the four cardinal points - they did not understand how to sail from place to place using stars for direction -
To find a fishing ground they lined up landmarks, such as a near rock against a distant point on land; doing that in two directions gave location on the surface of the sea. They took 'sounding' using a lead and line. From Herodotus in the 4th B.C."When you get 11 fathoms and ooze on the lead, you are a day's journey out from Alexandria." The Greeks navigated from one island to the next in their archipelago, a Greek word meaning "preëminent sea." - They may have followed clouds (which form over land) or odors (which can carry far out to sea).
Here is a link to an early Trojan horse on a pot from 670 BC which is after Homer's time frame Pot with Trojan Horse (http://www.lessing-photo.com/p2/100102/10010204.jpg)
I have been trying to get a picture in my mind of these people - learning that a comb was often a teasel I am thinking how do you get these picture-perfect folks and statues of goddesses with flowing hair when they used a teasel as a comb. Now there are plants that can act as soap but did they have any knowledge of how to make soap I wonder - shampoo?!? OK we read of oils but oil on the scalp in the heat? hmmm ...
I did learn that the ground being so rocky meant little to no farming - that scrub land is fine for cattle and therefore, the emphasis we read about animals - so many, they are used for sacrifice - they seem to be the mainstay of the feasts that are prepared at the drop of a hat.
-
The Book Club Online is the oldest book club on the Internet, begun in 1996, open to everyone. We offer cordial discussions of one book a month, 24/7 and enjoy the company of readers from all over the world. Everyone is welcome to join in.
Now reading:
(http://www.seniorlearn.org/bookclubs/classicsbookclub/cbc2odysseysm.jpg)
March 14---Book V: Odysseus, Calypso, and Hermes
(http://www.seniorlearn.org/latin/ulysses_penelope/CalypsoandOBreugheltheElder1612.jpg)
A Fantastic Cave Landscape with Odysseus & Calypso
Jan Breughel the Elder (painted with Hendrick de Clerck)
c. 1612
(http://www.seniorlearn.org/latin/ulysses_penelope/CalypsochestOredfiguredhytria450BC.jpg)
Calypso offers Odysseus a chest
Lucanian red figure hydria
c. 450 BC
Museo Nazionale, Naples
Discussion Leaders: Joan K (joankraft13@yahoo.com) & ginny (gvinesc@gmail.com )
(http://www.seniorlearn.org/latin/ulysses_penelope/CalypsoHermesFlaxman.jpg)
Hermes' message to Calypso
Engraving and etching on paper
John Flaxman
1805
Tate Gallery
Useful Links:
1. Critical Analysis: Free SparkNotes background and analysis on the Odyssey (http://www.sparknotes.com/lit/odyssey)
2. Translations Used in This Discussion So Far: (http://www.seniorlearn.org/bookclubs/odyssey/odyssey_translations.html)
3. Initial Points to Watch For: submitted by JudeS (http://www.seniorlearn.org/bookclubs/odyssey/odyssey_points.html)
4. Maps:
Map of the Voyages of Odysseus (http://www.seniorlearn.org/latin/ulysses_penelope/Odysseusmap.jpg)
Map of Voyages in order (http://www.wesleyan.edu/~mkatz/Images/Voyages.jpg)
Map of Stops Numbered (http://www.seniorlearn.org/latin/ulysses_penelope/Odysseusmap2.jpg)
Our Map Showing Place Names in the Odyssey (http://www.seniorlearn.org/latin/graphics/AncientGreecemap.jpg)
(http://www.seniorlearn.org/latin/ulysses_penelope/CalypsoHermesOdysseusMaurer.jpg)
Hermes visits Calypso and Odysseus
Etching
Hubert Maurer (1738-1818)
(http://www.seniorlearn.org/latin/ulysses_penelope/calypsomodern.jpg)
A modern Calypso:
Tia Dalma aka Calypso, goddess of the sea
The Pirates of the Caribbean, At World's End
2007
hi roshanarose - haven't found anything particular about the cormorants although it is a large bird and that may fit - I have another book of symbols in my library if I can find it - it is a thicker book and may have something to say - since this is a sea bird I wonder if it is a messenger of direction of something
I am seeing these birds give a message to those listening to the story that was probably common then and a struggle for us now - like when we hear in a story the geese are honking overhead and the frogs are making sounds or flies are getting into our mouth we know that means Spring where as if the geese or high overhead that usually means fall - we do not have to have the poet or author say more - we know what that means - and so I am thinking these birds and trees are saying more than the name of the bird or tree.
I even wonder if the translators got all the details that would be part of the message - for all of you who know this ancient Greek how about a look at the entire bit of one of the phrases and see if the birds are described with more than the proper Greek word.
-
Hahaha -we just have to make things difficult don't we - right on the internet are some of the answers about cormorants
Conmorant Symbolism (http://mara-gamiel.blogspot.com/2008/03/cormorant-symbolism.html)
CORMORANT: At sea, or on the inland lakes, they make a terrible havoc. From the greatest height they drop down upon the object of pursuit, dive after it with the rapidity of a dart, and with an almost unerring certainty, seize the victim. Then emerging, with the fish across the bill, with a kind of twirl, throw it up into the air and dexterously catching it head foremost, swallow it whole.
From Cliff notes:
Popping up in mythical tales, cormorants are medium to large-sized black or predominantly dark seabirds. The long-necked birds live along coasts in trees or on cliffs and make their nests in colonies. Cormorants dive into the water to catch fish, eels, and sea snakes.
Many cultures consider cormorants a symbol of nobility and indulgence. In more recent history, the cormorant is considered a good luck charm for fishermen, or a talisman that will bring a fisherman a bountiful catch.
In China and Japan, humans once exploited the fishing skills of the cormorant by tying a snare to the bird's throat and sending it to sea. The snare prevented the bird from swallowing fish, and when the bird returned to the fisherman's boat, the fisherman removed the fish and kept it.
Some specific stories of cormorants in literature include
* In the Greek tale of Ulysses, after a storm broke the mast of Ulysses' raft, a sea nymph disguised herself as a cormorant and handed Ulysses a girdle to keep him afloat while he swam to shore.
* In Norwegian myths and folklore, three cormorants flying together are said to be carrying messages and warnings from the dead. In northern Norway, cormorants are considered to be good luck when they gather in a village. Norwegian myth also states that people who die at sea can visit their former homes in the form of a cormorant.
* In Polynesian mythology, Maru-tuahu used feathers to make himself "as handsome as the crested cormorant" when both young daughters of Te Whatu declared their desires to marry him.
* In Ireland and some other places, seeing a cormorant perched atop a church steeple is a warning of bad luck to come.
* In England, the mythical "Liver Bird," the symbol of the city of Liverpool, is thought to be a cross between a cormorant and an eagle.
The cormorant is also a symbol of greed and deception in John Milton's epic poem, Paradise Lost, as the form Satan took to disguise himself to enter Eden before tempting Eve.
-
In Heraldry the TERN: Also known as the graceful gull, the Tern are harbingers of Spring and the hopes of a bountiful harvest, and have been used to represent one who is always optimistic. Also called the swallow of the sea
I used to have a curiosity about sea birds and I am remembering the Tern has a very long lifespan - like 20 years if I remember correctly.
Ok here is a photo and under it the information is the tern can live up to 30 years - wow
photo Tern (http://theabysmal.files.wordpress.com/2008/12/arctic-tern0.jpg?w=450&h=579)
-
Jude yes, what a help to have some names and dates - I know I am hogging up this site but I missed this discussion and I love the research that y'all and this story suggests at every tern - yes, yes, yes - Sappho - found it - I knew I had a book with excerpts of her poetry - that is all that remains. It is said there were nine books of lyrics - none of the music survived and only one complete poem - all the rest are fragments. My book "If not, Winter" includes only fragments.
From the fragments the name of Troy is Ilios and Kalliope first of the nine Muses, whose name means "beautiful-voiced."
The book I have has the Greek on one side and the English translation on the other - I am sorry I do not have any knowledge of Greek nor do I know how to write it on the computer or I would share some of this in Greek for those of you who do know and read Greek. The translations is edited by Eva-Maria Voigt, Amsterdam, 1971 with further translations by Anne Carson from Canada.
Here is one that includes the bird...
night
girls
all night long
might sing of the love between you and the bride
with violets in her lap
wake! and go call
the young men so that
no more than the bird with piercing voice
shall we sleep
Interesting here is a fragment that includes the swallow...
why does Pandion's daughter
O Eirana
the swallow
aha - "Pandion, king of Athens, whose tragic daughters, Philomela and Procne were metamorphosized into a nightingale and a swallow, respectively. The story is that Philomela sister Procne was married to Tereus, King of Thrace, but Tereus wanted and was possessed with Philomela. Tereus told Pandion that Procne was dead (a lie) and Pandion offered him Philomela as his new wife.
Philomela in the mean time did not want Tereus, and Tereus resorted to rape. To hide what he had done, he hid Philomela and cut out her tongue. Philomela managed to tell her story by weaving it into a piece of embroidery and sent it to Procne. Procne killed her son, Itys, and served his flesh to Tereus. The sisters fled from the palace and Pandion pursued, but the gods intervened and the tragedy ended. The gods changed Procne into a nightingale and Philomela into a swallow. Tereus became a hoopoe."
EIRENE --- EIRHNH - "The goddess of peace and of the season of spring (eiar, eiarinos). Late spring was the usual campaign season in Greece when peace was most at risk. Eirene was one of three Horai, goddesses of the seasons and the keepers of the gates of heaven.
The figure of Eirene or Pax occurs only on coins, and she is there represented as a youthful female, holding in her left arm a cornucopia and in her right hand an olive branch or the staff of Hermes. Sometimes also she appears in the act of burning a pile of arms, or carrying corn-ears in her hand or upon her head. A daughter of Poseidon and Melanthea, from whom the island of Calauria was, in early times, called Eirene"
And so does the swallow have something to do with Peace do you think?
-
While in China in 2000 we went on a side trip, at night, to watch the Chinese fisherman using their cormorants for fishing.
Each man has two birds with a cord around its neck. The bird dives, catches a fish and the ring around its neck is tightened. The bird returns to the raft which is lit by lanterns, disgorges its fish and dives again. This continues till the fishermen has enough fish. He then lets the cormorants free fish:i.e. the bird gets to eat his catches until he or she is full.
The birds are considered members of the family and all have their own names to which they answer as a dog might. They are trained by the fishermen and his "older"birds soon after they are hatched. It takes about five months to train each bird. When they die (at about twenty-twenty five) they are given a serious funeral and buried , often with a bottle of wine or whiskey.
In relation to our story these facts might be interesting: The cormorant's scientific genus name is latinized from the Ancient Greek from "phelakus"(bald) and "korax" (raven). Cormorant is a contraction derived from Latin "corvus marinus" or sea raven. However these birds are not related to ravens but to Pelicans.
-
Jude I have heard of the fishing in China with these birds - amazing and oh to have seen them - oh Jude how absolutely magical - where in China were you when you saw the birds fishing - on what river where you - were you with a group or just you and your travel companion... I know off the subject but oh Jude how magical - fill us in please with the wonder of it all.
-
Ginny: Now I see you are getting the Greek from Loeb. I don't have it -- but just ordered the first few chapters from Amazon.
-
Sandyrose--just finished reading your posts from you Rieutranslation, so interesting the subtle differences from my Rieu(father) translation...can just see the younger Rieu sitting among his family during the war while his father read to them from his translations of Homer; and this instilling him the interest to pursue the same and follow in his dad's footsteps
Deb
-
Sally, thank you for getting our days straight, so we're in the 31st day of our adventure in their time! Now why is this important, I wonder? I love those Temple questions.
What a beautiful passage you've put in as well. Pope does write well but honestly to understand what's being said, you can't beat Lombardo. He was lyric on the raft, I'm going to find a quiet hour today and reread him and draw it.
SandyRose, thank you for the Rieu, I didn't catch until Deb did there are two, father and son, I absolutely love that. I agree with Roshanarose, all tribute to anybody who can translate it! hahaha Love it, so glad to see you, too!
Roshanarose, thank you for that translation! So, the word can mean cormorant, so maybe, JoanK, it was Homer himself who was misled, and his blindness did not help in his description of the habit of this bird? Or maybe it was a bird, since Greece kept no birding records, which no longer exists? OR?
Thank you Barbara for those backgrounds. I think you are right and that the birds here are symbolic. I think the issue is the feeding habits of the cormorant, versus the other swooping sea birds. The cormorant, as you and Jude have said, floatson the water and dives rather than skims (? maybe, I'm not a birder), over the water looking and then swooping (do I have that right JoanK and PatH?) which really (is it?) is how Homer described Hermes here. When you think about it, using a bird at all as a swooping symbol is pretty cool. :) I love all this background information. I liked RR's second meaning for the bird, it looks like he just meant sea gull but that the translators are not entirely wrong in using cormorant, maybe the wrong context? I don't know!
Babi I agree on the cave descriptions, how beautiful and that does explain the one by Breughel in the heading (they are holding hands he's not grabbing a body part). You mention the supreme power of Zeus, in Lombardo he uses the word aegis, and that's an important word, do your translations not use it? What word do they use for Zeus' supreme power?
I love the Temple questions:
What is O's first utterance in the epic and what does it say about his attitude to other humans and to the gods? Why is he like this? Why does he reject Calypso's offer of immortality? Does this situation remind you of any other myths? Can they guide your interpretation of this episode?
The first thing Lombardo has O saying to us, our first encounter with O, is:
Odysseus' eyes shone with weariness. He stiffened,
And shot back at her words fletched like arrows:
"I don't know what kind of send-off you have in mind,
Goddess, telling me to cross all that open sea on a raft,
Painful, hard sailing. Some well-rigged vessels
Never make it across with a stiff wind from Zeus.
You're not going to catch me setting foot on any raft
Unless you agree to swear a solemn oath
That you're not planing some new trouble for me." (Lombardo, 170ff)
Here is our first introduction to Odysseus and he's miserable, crying on the beach, homesick, wanting to go home, he's been on the road for...how long at this point? We know he fought for 10 years and Troy fell and we know he gets home 10 years later but how long has he been gone now? He's lost all his men and ships and now here she comes and says HOORAY, I'm sending you home, here's a nice ax, make a raft, I'll stock it up with provisions, clothes and a nice wind, the gods decree it, they want you home, so off you go!
What a strange reaction from him!!
What do you make of it, and him?
-
When I read that description of Hermes, I immediately thought of that childhood myth, the
'sandman' who waves his wand and drifts sand into our eyes to make us sleepy. That is too
close to Hermes not to be a descendent.
So, all these gods had trees, birds and animals associated with them. I wonder if that
is why all our States have associated trees/birds/animals...and mottos? Tradition!!
There is no evidence of soap when the princess and her maids do the laundry, BARB. They
have some special place along the river where the rocks and rapid flow do the cleaning
while the girls 'scrub' them by trampling with the feet.
After all that the gods and and demigods have done to Odysseus, I'm not at all surprised
that he is suspicious when Calypso suddenly tells him he is free and can go home. I'd want
that solemn oath, too. Even so, Poseidon did manage to cause him some more grief before
he reached the next island.
-
Tales of Brave Ulysses
From the album "Disraeli Gears"
Band : Cream
You thought the leaden winter would bring you down forever
But you rode upon a steamer to the violence of the sun
And the colors of the sea blind your eyes with trembling mermaids
And you touch the distant beaches with tales of brave Ulysses
How his naked ears were tortured by the sirens sweetly singing
For the sparkling waves are calling you to kiss their white laced lips
And you see a girl's brown body dancing through the turquoise
And her footprints make you follow where the sky loves the sea
And when your fingers find her, she drowns you in her body
Carving deep blue ripples in the tissues of your mind
The tiny purple fishes run laughing through your fingers
And you want to take her with you to the hard land of the winter
Her name is Aphrodite and she rides a crimson shell
And you know you cannot leave her
For you touched the distant sands with tales of brave Ulysses
How his naked ears were tortured by the sirens sweetly singing
The tiny purple fishes run laughing through your fingers
And you want to take her with you to the hard land of the winter
-
Barb St.
In answer to your questions.
In China we were on the Li river when we saw the fishing. It was part of a tour which, among other wonderful things, we spent seven days sailing on the Yangtze.
Roshanarose
Thanks for the modern update on Brave Ulysses. It only proves again that the story is such a great one that it will never die but will transmogrify into other venues.
-
Jude - My pleasure. As I read the words to that song I can plainly hear the music in my mind. The lyrics were way ahead of their time. A lot different to their contemporaries, Cream introduced Psychedelic style to a conservative world. btw I love the word "transmogrify". I first read it in Keats' wonderful poem "Lamia".
Odysseus spent about 6 (maybe 7) years with Kalypso.
-
Wow! I've been ill and haven't been on the computer for two days: so much to think about.
Thank you for your wonderful responses to my bird questions. Still too fuzzy-headed to take it all in, but I'll say more about it tomorrow.
For those who don't care about birds, I think this is good, because it reminds us what a difficult task those who attempt to translate this ancient document have. As ROSE says, after her wonderful translation:
"Let me say I stand in awe of the first person who translated Homer into English! I think it was a medieval monk bent over his desk, sitting on one of those stools, his eyes completely ruined. I am similar, only I bet the monk didn't have to do the housework, attend to emails, do the washing and then go shopping" .
I stand in awe of you all, who can do both!!
-
Rose found that the word used in the first quote means gull or cormorant. Most translaters chose cormorant, but the description fits a gull exactly:
"Skimming the waves like a ????.
The bird that patrols the saltwater billows
Hunting for fish, seaspume on its plumage
Hermes flying low and planing the whitcaps"
-
And the SECOND quote fits cormorants:
""Around her cave the woodland was in bloom,
Alder and poplar and fragrant cypress
Long-winged birds neested in the leaves,
Horned owls and larks and slender-throated ?????
That screech like crows over the bright saltwater."
Especially when one translator called them "ravens of the sea".
A large black noisy bird. I thought of cormorants, but didn't know whether they nest in trees. They do! Here's proof.
http://freedigitalphotos.net/images/Birds_g52-Cormorant_Nest_p27175.html (http://freedigitalphotos.net/images/Birds_g52-Cormorant_Nest_p27175.html)
-
BARB: great picture of a tern. here are some gulls:
http://www.pbase.com/jpkln/franklins (http://www.pbase.com/jpkln/franklins)
-
Joan K.
Look at my post #924 , last paragraph, for info on the name of the Cormorant as derived from the Greek.
From my meandering on the subject I read there are 40, yes forty, types of cormorants (sometimes, in England, known as Shags).
As to Calypso-I sort of liked her. She loved Odysseus and didn't want to let him go. But when forced she did a good job of preparing him for the journey ahead. Perhaps its my translation but she seemed very modern in her personality and somehow accessible.
-
Off the subject a bit but oh how my grandmother hated gulls - she thought them so filthy since they hovered over and picked in the garbage heaps of towns - we lived on an Island where she saw them following barges of garbage as well as circling and picking in a garbage heap located up the shore from where we could see. Then she saw them picking up shell sea creatures and drop them from a great height to brake the shells and again, she thought they were too lazy to fish - she had no respect for a gull. She mumbled some long triste in German that always ended with head shaking from side to side saying, dreck - hersteller von dreck - dreck
-
JUDE: " The cormorant's scientific genus name is latinized from the Ancient Greek from "phelakus"(bald) and "korax" (raven). Cormorant is a contraction derived from Latin "corvus marinus" or sea raven"
yes, I saw that, but when I went to post, couldn't find it again. That's why I think the "raven of the sea" is a cormorant.
-
Ah, yes, JOANK, a picture is worth a thousand words. I note they are definitely 'slender-
throated', too.
This is the first time in my translation that I have noticed anyone speaking in verse. Hermes speeches are in the form of a poem. It made an interesting diversion. I considered whether I would have liked the entire saga to be written that way, and decided not. The story seems more real with the action and most of the dialogue in prose.. The poesy now becomes simply a quirk of Hermes speech; an identifier, perhaps, and pleasant to read.
-
Gee I love the posts here. So he stayed with Calypso 6-7 years, thank you RR.
Now we've met Odysseus and the first thing he does is take issue with a goddess, Calypso, who offers him his freedom, and says I don't trust you, give me assurance.
(I guess I used to watch too much I Dream of Jeannie or something I was surprised when she handed him an ax and said have at it. He seems a bit surprised, too. hahahaa)
And then in the middle of all this, when he's blown WAY off course Ino appears, another goddess, sitting on his raft...this is better than The Ancient Mariner...and she says here's what to do....what is his reaction THEN? And what does it show about him? If you were in his shoes would you say the same thing?
Deb feels sorry for Calypso and Jude sort of likes her, she seems modern. I agree with both, and Frybabe can feel her pain: how do you all feel about Calypso?
Babi asked a good question way back there about Calypso:
Calypso’s tirade, when told she must give up Odysseus, is interesting. She makes a point I hadn’t recognized before. As much as Zeus/Jupiter played around, fathering children all over the place, there was little tolerance for the love affairs of other gods with mortals. She points to two examples. Were there others? If so, why this hypocrisy? Is Zeus the only one allowed to indulge himself?
What do you say to this one?
Hermes in Lombardo is not speaking in rhyme. Neither does Murray have him doing so. I would not take anything for us all reading different translations! What does YOURS have Hermes doing? Babi's is rhyme, whose translation is that, again, Babi?
And then Odysseus sets out on this wonderful raft, keeping to the left hand, watching the stars, the Pleiades and the Bootes and the Bear (Ursa Major? Minor?) for 17 days and on the 18th he sees Phaecia! And this is not home, but it's the last stop, see maps, before he gets to Ithaca.
He can see it but that's about it because Poseidon is back from Ethiopia. He unleashes an horrific storm and Murray has O saying:
"Would that like them [the other Greeks] I too had died and met my fate on that day when the throngs of the Trojans hurled upon me bronze-tipped spears, fighting around the body of the dead son of Peleus.
Then should I have got funeral rites, and the Achaeans would have spread my fame, but now it is by a miserable death that it was my fate to be cut off."
And even "as he was saying this the great wave struck him from above, rushing upon him with terrible force, and spun his raft in a circle."
(Murray)
This is such an important thing here.
The son of Peleus is Achilles. The mention here of Achilles is not by accident. Achilles struggled with his kleos through the entire Iliad, it WAS his raison d'être.
There are two very important words repeatedly used throughout the Homeric epics: honor (timé ) and virtue or greatness (areté ). The latter term is perhaps the most reiterated cultural and moral value in Ancient Greece and means something like achieving, morally and otherwise, your greatest potential as a human being. The reward for great honor and virtue is fame (kleos ), which is what guarantees meaning and value to one's life. Dying without fame (akleos ) is generally considered a disaster, and the warriors of the Homeric epics commit the most outrageous deeds to avoid dying in obscurity or infamy (witness Odysseus's absurd insistence on telling Polyphemos his name even though this will bring disaster on him and his men in the Polyphemos episode).
Polyphemos is the Cyclops, that's just coming up soon.
From:http://www.wsu.edu:8080/~dee/MINOA/HOMER.HTM
This is beautiful work here, and something we want to watch out for: Odysseus has two quests here which he feels deeply: to return home, and to gain kleos.
-
Struck with amaze, yet still to doubt inclined,
He stands suspended, and explores his mind.
“What shall I do? Unhappy me! Who knows
But other gods intend me other woes?
Whoe’er thou art, I shall not blindly join
Thy pleaded reason, but consult with mine:
For scarce in ken appears that distant isle
Thy voice foretells me shall conclude my toil
Thus then I judge: while yet the planks sustain
The wild waves fury, here I fix’d remain;
But when their texture to the tempests yields,
I launch adventurous on the liquid fields,
Join to the help of gods the strength of man,
And take this method, since the best I can.”
Odysseus decides to do what he thinks best rather than blindly follow the god's recommendations. I would be inclined to believe the god's were out to get me and not put too much faith in their advice.
-
the Pleiades and the Bootes and the Bear
Ginny, Pope says the Northern Team rather than Bootes. I thought it might be the Gemini Twins. I looked at a star chart. Polaris (the premier navigational star) is at the end of Ursa Minor's handle, so I expect Minor is what he meant. The Pleiades and Bootes (the Herdsman) are pretty much in a straight line, one on either side of Ursa Minor. If the Northern Team is Gemini, then Gemini, the Pleiades and Ursa Minor form a triangle. Do we have any sailor's who learned star navigation around?
-
PatH is our sailor and star gazer. What do you think of that navigation, Pat?
Has anyone noticed in the bird quotes above that the trees are blooming and the birds nesting, so it is Spring. Maybe Ulysses' doldrums at the beginning are Spring Fever. When we got moody in Spring, our mother used to give us molassas.
-
The problem - stars were a navigation tool used after the time Homer is writing about - there was yet, no knowledge of navigation by stars and the star groups - constellations - were not yet, named and so it is either something that was added later or, as some suggest, the story that was used from which to translate or copy was told after 500BC. There is also the concern of known changes, additions and omissions in the hand copying of other ancient texts including the Bibles and therefore, it is easy to make the assumption that this Epic/Translation is not pure.
Here is a link to a site that explains the History of Navigation (http://www.aero.org/publications/crosslink/summer2002/backpage.html)
Which is in keeping with what Mosses Finley, Cambridge professor of ancient History says in his book "The World of Odysseus" - He gives Hesiod, in Works and Days a great deal of credit for keeping the Homer's story alive - he suggests it was "Hesiod or some nameless predeccessor who converted this eastern myth of four ages into the Hellenic myth of five ages which captures a 'god-like race of hero-men' who are called demi-gods the race before our own, throughout the boundless earth. Grim war and dread battle destroyed a part of them...Unfortunately, neither Homer nor Hesiod had the slightest interest in History as we might understand the notion. The poets' concern was with certain "facts" of the past, not with their relationship to other facts, past or present, and, in the case of Homer, not even with the consequences of those facts."
To paraphrase he says, the Trojan War would have been "of prime importance to a historian of the war. Yet the poet of the Iliad was indifferent to all that, the poet of the Odyssey less so." In this chapter he continues to point out the weakness is translations and why as a result, for a couple of centuries reading Virgil became the favorite. He says that when Greeks made up the chronology in detail, although there was not entire agreement, few departed dating the Trojan War to 1200 BC with Homer living 4 hundred years later and Hesiod was his contemporary and in one version his cousin.
Finley tells how Herodotus writing after the fifth century, found with hundreds of Greek communities having different political structures and separate sovereignties, there was no single national territory under one sovereign rule called Greece. "Such a world could not possibly have produced a unified consistent national mythology...Each new tribe, each new community, each shift in power relations within the aristocratic elite, meant some change in the genealogies of heroes, in the outcome of past family feuds, in the delicate balances among men and gods..."
Interesting to me is that Finley says, "Of course, Homer reflected the views and values of the aristocracy, from the opening line of the Iliad to the final sentence of the Odyssey." In his tome he gave many quotes from both books showing how in the poem the multitude remark at the orders commanded and accomplishments of mostly Odysseus. He goes on to explain that aristocrats and commoners held two completely contradictory sets of values and beliefs. He continues to further this explanation with who and how the scepter is passed and that it was a club -
Finley explains that Warrior and hero are synonyms - and then goes on to explain the profound differences between the "Bronze Age and the eighth century BC and importantly, the Dark Age separates the supposed Mycenaean world of Odysseus assisted by continuous archaeological excavation and study." This is where in the book he describes the pursuit of agriculture and pasturage, magical ships that he suggest came for the story as part of Homer's poem originated from the Phacacians. Trade, gifts, etc.
-
I don't think that Kalypso has too much to grumble about to Hermes re Gods having all the fun. She did have Odysseus for 7 years all to herself, after all. Zeus' dalliances were never long term affairs. He was a proponent of the practice of "Wham. Bang. Thank You, Maam". Perhaps Kalypso vented because she knew that Odysseus didn't love her and that he sat around all day pining for Penelope. That situation could not have been much fun. I have been wracking my shrinking cerebellum wondering about what other Goddesses had affairs with mortal men. One young man spotted Artemis nude and she turned him into a deer, and then set her dogs onto him. Helen was semi-divine, I know, but ..... any ideas??
-
Rosanarose
I have also been searching in a number of places to find the answer to your question.
One site said Calypso was not a Goddess but a nymph.
The one example that was sited was Aphrodite and Adonis.Then it went on to all the mortals Zeus had affairs with and the progeny that arose from these affairs.
Another site said the following:In answer to liasons between mortals and gods there was mostly seductions and rapes of a mortal woman by a male god. These relationships rarely had happy endings. In one case a female, Aphrodite , mates with a mortal, Anchises to produce Aeneas.
A number of the sites were lead ins to "So you want to be a Goddess"! Let us help you." kind of ads.
After three of these I gave up.
-
She evidently has a few sons - they do not seem to be fathered by Odysseus - is that right Roshanarose?
Found this - "KALLIOPE (or Calliope) was the eldest of the Mousai (Muses), the goddesses of music, song and dance. She was also the goddess of eloquence, who bestowed her gift on kings and princes.
In Classical times--when the Muses were assigned specific artistic spheres--Kalliope was named Muse of epic poetry. In this guise she was portrayed holding a tablet and stylus or a scroll. In older art she holds a lyre.
Kalliope was the mother of the bard Orpheus. When her son was dismembered by the Bakkhantes, she recovered his head and enshrined on the island of Lesbos."
-
Gosh the things that come up in here! Another super research topic. Thank you Jude, RR and Barbara. You'd have to take a list of the major and minor Greek goddesses (Charlie Sheen notwithstanding) and then look up each one for children. If somebody will provide a list, we can share the looking up, there are quite a few of them. Orpheus, for example, was said to be the son of a Muse. Do we consider a Muse a goddess? Let's get up a list of female goddesses and each one look one up. I keep thinking of Julius Caesar who enjoyed tracing his line back to Aeneas, due to the goddess connection.
Barbara, thank you for this:
Finley explains that Warrior and hero are synonyms - and then goes on to explain the profound differences between the "Bronze Age and the eighth century BC and importantly, the Dark Age separates the supposed Mycenaean world of Odysseus assisted by continuous archaeological excavation and study." That's interesting!
JoanK, good catch on the season we're in here, 31 days into it!
Sally: Odysseus decides to do what he thinks best rather than blindly follow the god's recommendations. I would be inclined to believe the god's were out to get me and not put too much faith in their advice.
Good point!
Frybabe: I looked at a star chart. Polaris (the premier navigational star) is at the end of Ursa Minor's handle, so I expect Minor is what he meant. Thank you. I can't even find the Big Dipper in the sky so I'm no help on constellations, in fact, I'm confused on the whole "constellations" issue here, too. Are we saying in here the ancients did not know any? Or they weren't named?
In our reading of Ovid, for instance, in our Latin classes we are constantly coming across this or that figure being placed in the heavens by this or that god, Callisto comes to mind. This is in keeping with the creation myths and the anthropomorphic nature of the need to explain every element the ancients saw. But certainly the stars were named by the ancients, and sometimes in connection with others:
For instance, this is from: http://stars.astro.illinois.edu/sow/const.html
A Brief Introduction
Constellations are named patterns of stars. All societies created them. The classical -- "ancient" -- constellations that populate our sky began in the lands of the middle east thousands of years ago, their origins largely lost to time. They passed through the hands of the ancient Greeks, who overlaid them with their legends and codified them in story and verse. During Roman times they were assigned Latin names.
The 48 ancient constellations single out only the bright patterns. From around 1600 to 1800, post-Copernican astronomers invented hosts of "modern" constellations from the faint stars that lie between the classical figures, from pieces of ancient constellations, and from the stars that occupy the part of the southern sky that could not be seen from classical lands. Later astronomers broke the ship Argo into three parts, yielding 50 ancient constellations.
In the early twentieth century, the International Astronomical Union (IAU) adopted 38 of the modern constellations and drew rectangular borders around all 88. Many of these contain informal constellations, or "asterisms," that are often the first to be learned, Ursa Major holding the "Big Dipper" and so on. Other asterisms, like the Winter Triangle, cut across constellation boundaries. Some constellations look like what they are supposed to represent, but most do not. Constellations, both ancient and modern, are generally meant to honor and represent, not to portray.
I don't know anything about astronomy but it's clear that Homer is referring to certain named stars. Here's another mystery for us to figure out together, why do we say in this discussion there were no constellations in Homer's time and what is our definition of "constellations?" The 88 named in 1922? Or the ones the ancients talked about?
Love the discussion on Calypso (also a type of music), and in looking for a true Calypso piece (apparently there's a difference) I found these words yesterday "by Harry Belafonte (Calypso version). (Apparently if you saw Beetlejuice or are a fan of Belafonte, a true representation of Calypso is not this but rather Jump in the Line. Very bouncy.
Man Smart, Woman Smarter Lyrics:
I say let us put man and a woman together
To find out which one is smarter
Some say man but I say no
The woman got the man de day should know
(Chorus)
And not me but the people they say
That de man has always lead woman astray
But I say, please listen when I say
She's smarter than the man in every way
That's right de woman is uh smarter
That's right de woman is uh smarter
That's right de woman is uh smarter, that's right, that's right
So it occurred to me to ask, so far, in our narrative, which ones ARE the smarter, the men or the women? I find it interesting that in this ancient story the women seem to actually be out thinking our Epic heroes, on every turn, and the men around them, despite the men's reputation and propensity for "thinking."
What do you think? So far? Jump in the line! hahahaa Can't get that out of my head.
I would say based on what I've seen so far, the women are smarter AND more strong, not physically, but in steadfastness. Odysseus is always "thinking," and yet the women...I would say seem to have the upper hand, but do they?
Homer DID start with the besieged Penelope and the suitors but I am not sure we understand how difficult her situation really was. When O gets home we can see it clearly, for now she's holding an entire pack of them off. I'm so far voting with the women. I guess it depends on your definition of "smartness."
I think Helen is as dumb as a brick, sorry Helen fanciers.
-
Ginny - Do your remember the movie "Who Framed Roger Rabbit"? The lovely and much maligned and lusted after Jessica Rabbit says: "I'm not bad. I'm just drawn that way" always makes me think of Helen. I love Helen because she is truly an enigma.
Barb - Not too sure whether you mean Kalliope or Kalypso. I did read somewhere ? in my research on Kalypso that in yet another version of The Odyssey, Kalypso had borne Odysseus children in their 7 years together.
-
I have the Robert Fitzgerald copy, GINNY. I just noticed in the back of the book that a
number of lines from the Greek text were deleted as being questionable. The addendum does
identify which lines were deleted, if it ever becomes an issue.
I did a quick search on demigods in Greek mythology, and was startled at how many I found.
I was thinking I'd check into their histories and see if there was evidence of unfair
treatment of god/mortal partners, but I simply don't have time enough to track down all of
them.
I find it interesting that Arete (I can't make the markings) means virtue or greatness.
It can't be accident that the queen of this island where Odysseus is shipwrecked bears
that name.
(She may not have told you, JOANK, but there was probably sulphur in that molasses. It's
an 'old wives' rememdy for spring fever.)
Ah, ROSHANA, your quote misses the poetic thythm. I think the phrase is "Wham, bam, thank you, Ma'am".
I did find out that Eos, Goddess of the Dawn, had a husband and a large number
of lovers, including a mortal. As far as I can tell, she did as she pleased.
-
Babi : I stand corrected on that quote. Here is the source:
Suffragette City
David Bowie
Chorus
Ohhh, Wham Bam Thank You Ma'am!
A Suffragette City, a Suffragette City
Quite all right
A Suffragette City
Too fine
A Suffragette City, ooh, a Sufragette City
Oh, my Sufragette City, oh my Suffragette City
Oh, Suffragette
Suffragette!
-
We may be confused a bit because various legends and stories abound about the more "exotic" Goddesses, Nymphs , Muses etc.
Here is the example Roshanarose alluded to.
Calypso was a nymph who loved Odysseus and wanted him to be her husband. In some later stories Calypso bore Odysseus a son,Latinus. In other accounts she bore him two children Nausithus and Nausinos.In other accounts Nausithus is the son of Poseidon.
Fagles calls Calypso a goddess-nymph.
Many, like myself, found her a fascinating character. Jacque Cousteau named his ship "Calypso".
-
KALYPSO (Latin spelling - Calypso) was the goddess nymph of the mythical island of Ogygia, (the navel of the sea), a daughter of the Titan Atlas. She detained the hero Odysseus for many years during his wanderings after the fall of Troy.
It appears we are reading a translation that uses the Latin spelling for the names of some of the characters.
We keep bumping into so many inconsistencies that all I can see is this is a wild adventure story offering us the ability to see it as a myth that explains a people - this 5th chapter taken as a whole seems to explain the birth of a people. Just reading the chapter for the symbolic meaning is like a birth of man story.
The Raft/Boat/Ship is built of trees that some say were Alder, Pine and Black Poplar - some say was Poplar, Cypress and Fig - some say Fir, Ash and Willow. Makes a huge difference in that each tree symbolizes a strength - like a talisman - often of one of the gods or goddesses.
Some say that Kalypso/Calyspso brought Odysseus an auger to help him build his raft - others say a Bronze ax and still others an Adze and others both an ax and an adze - they all agree she brought him linen for the sail.
Getting a handle and trying hard to figure out just what these people were like and what they knew is a trick and a half. I read how little the folks of the Mycenaean world knew of other cultures except, for Crete and that some were blown to Egypt. However, there does not seem to be anything that suggests there was a sea-path across to Egypt. Now the issue of stars - we have several web sites explaining, it was the Phoenicians in 1100BC who figured out the pole star. With the next group that benefited from their prowess at sea seems to be the Romans. Inventions and Discoveries (http://www.historyworld.net/wrldhis/PlainTextHistories.asp?ParagraphID=bng) - and then this one Phoenician Navigation (http://www.pharology.eu/Lighthouses/AncientLights/phoenician_navigation.htm)
Here is a wonderful article about the Greeks and the Bear/pole star but no dates when it was part of their navigation. We know at the time of Odysseus there was not a unified Greece. Later dates are given for the inclusion of the pole star in Greek literature but this time Homer is not mentioned. Greeks and the Polaris (http://www.constellationsofwords.com/stars/Polaris.html)
Then finally, on this confusing issue there were 5 separate stars considered at one time or other the pole star: Polaris - Al Deramin - Deneb - Vega - Thuban. They form a circle. This article, so far is the only one I can find showing the Greeks had information about a Pole Star. Prof. Emeritus of Astronomy, University of Illinois (http://stars.astro.illinois.edu/sow/thuban.html). He quotes Homer as his authority - that is where I throw up my hands. How can we be using Homer as a basis when there are so many inconsistencies - unless, he had access to an early copy written in the Greek - so far we have seen translation after translation showing different wording with some information included and some excluded - it makes a difference. Example the silly trees –
-
Why I am trying to nail this is that I can see this myth as a symbolic story more than an accurate account of life in 1100BC or even 800BC - I think there are tickling bits about the life of that time but I also think the translators did not always have access to the archaeological finds that helped nail the story and they also translated from their own knowledge and experience so that they may have in their minds eye an understanding for translation that shades the meaning or story.
So with that I do own two books that give us the symbolic meanings in literature and the Internet has many other sites that help with this knowledge. Just as we know what a red light means or a sea buoy or a flying horse on a gas station sign other signs that are no longer as popular in their use can give us the importance of a story - having spoken with several authors they readily admit they were not writing to achieve this symbolic meaning as a secondary message - however, each admits it was right on and there must be an instinctive force that has them choose the happenings or use of props in the story when they write.
And so with that - the 5th chapter of the Odyssey is filled with symbolism.
Raft/Boat/Ship: carry the sun and moon across the seas. The earth is a boat floating on the primordial waters.
The raft, as in our story is the sheltering aspect of the Great Mother, the womb, the cradle, the vessel of transformation; a saviour and protector on the sea of life. As bearer of the sun and moon boats represent fecundity and fertility of the waters; they signify adventure; exploration; setting out on the sea of life; also crossing the water of death; crossing from this world to the next. The ship of life, setting out on the waters of creation.
The mast has an axial symbolism - the mast is the axis mundi and shares the significance of the Tree of Life.
Water: is the source of all potential in existence; the source and the grave of all things in the universe; the unmanifest; the first form of matter. All waters are symbolic of the Great Mother and associated with birth, the universal womb, the prima materia, the waters of fertility and refreshment and the fountain of life.
Water is the liquid counterpart of light; the continual flux of the manifest world, with unconsciousness, they dissolve, abolish, purify, wash away and regenerate; they infuse new life; baptism by water or blood in initiatory religions, washes away the old life and sanctifies the new. Rebirth from the static condition of death, the waters of the spring or Fountain of life rise from the root of the Tree of life in the center of Paradise.
[There are issues of lower waters and higher waters - there is a whole bit on the relationship between fire and water - there are pages and pages of symbolic meanings for water - with just about every culture having their special association with a symbolic meaning for water.]
Water Greek: Aphrodite rose from the waters, Poseidon controls the power of the waters. River Lethe is oblivion and river Styx is crossed at death.
Waves: as water in ceaseless movement, waves denote vicissitude, change, illusion, vanity , agitation.
Storm: the creative power, the bringer of fertilizing rain.
River: the flux of the world; the passage of life, the realm of the divinity, the macrocosm, The River of Death, the world of change, the return to the source. Symbolized by the river flowing is the return to the pristine, paradisaical state to find enlightenment.
The mouth of the river shares the symbolism of the door or gate, giving access to another realm, to the ocean of unity, in rites of passage, or journeys from one state to another, the journey is from one bank to another, across the river of life or death.
If the journey is taken to the mouth of the river the banks become dangerous and must be avoided and the symbolism becomes that of the dangerous passage. River Greek: Are depicted as virile men with horns and long, flowing beards.
Leaf:- [Odysseus covers himself with leaves] Fertility; growth; renewal, Dead leaves are sadness. Green leaves depict hope, revival, renewal.
Then all the numbers - four days to build the raft - two days in the storm at sea - 7 years on the Island - that is another whole post.
As to the various Trees: - this is a pretty good link of two pages of symbolism for plants and flowers that includes most of the trees
Plants and Flowers of Greek Myth (http://www.theoi.com/Flora1.html) the ability to go to page two is at the bottom of the page.
The tree cited most often is the Alder - this is a good paired down [would you believe] explanation: Alder is a member of the Birch family... both Birch (Beith) and Hazel (Coll), have flowers and seeds born in catkins. Usually found near streams - as is the case with Willow (Saille) it does not thrive well on dry ground.
The wood used for pumps, troughs, sluices and for bridge building. It resists water, the timber fends off underwater decay indefinitely, used in the underwater construction of the Celtic lake dwellings found in Switzerland. Although a poor fuel Tree, as Willow, Poplar and Chestnut, it yields the best charcoal, continuing the image as a Fire Tree.
Alder/Fearn is seen to fend off the destructive power of Winter, signifying the Spring's dew and the year's true start.
In The Odyssey, Alder is the first of the three Trees of Resurrection - along with White Poplar and Cypress - forming the protective wood around the cave of Calypso, the daughter of Atlas. The Greek word for Alder, clethera, is derived from cleio, meaning, "I close" or "I confine”. In legend, paradisaical Apple orchard islands are surrounded for protection by Alder Trees.
Alder renders three different dyes. Red from bark, green from flowers and brown from its twigs. The dyes represent three of the four Elements - Fire, Water and Earth. The red dye was used to dye the faces of Sacred Kings in ritual. The green dye was associated with the clothing of Faeries, who may be regarded as survivors of earlier, dispossessed tribes and coincides with the legend of the Green Man. The use of these dyes are very ancient.
It is identified with Phoroneus who was the inventor of fire (which Prometheus brought to Man); also symbolizes Mars due to its inherent Fire nature, in addition it is seen as the lord of birth, death, generation and destruction, of sexual and spiritual power that can both liberate and destroy. Its powers, are said to promote courage, boldness and vitality.
Of its magical uses, whistles to call up the North Wind are made of the wood and divining rods are of Alder, used by Witches to make rain.
Since its buds grow in spirals, it has become a symbol of resurrection and new life and is a harbinger of Spring, showing a hardy survival to the rigors of Winter, reinforcing the resurrection and protective power image.
Its keyword in divination is 'foundation'. When Alder appears, it gives great strength in contentious situations or competition, granting tenacity and determination. Fearn's spiritual protection in disputes, allows for oracular strength but asks you to be true to your principles - your foundation - and thus to remain steadfast in decisions based upon this quality.
The challenge of Fearn/Alder is to have the knowledge of when to act, to allow change and when to remain quiescent. It may also indicate that you fear defeat to such a degree that your courage is impaired and you may hesitate when action is necessary. Alder tells you that you must listen to your inner voice, be receptive to its message. Similarly, since resurrection is called for, maintaining a youthful approach and demeanor may be helpful.
-
Yeah I think we have three different women going here:
Callisto: nymph changed into a bear whose son nearly killed her by mistake until they were both changed into the Great Bear and the Little Bear constellations (the Little Bear, Ursa Minor, was also known as Bootes).
Calypso: our goddess or nymph here with Odysseus.
Calliope: one of the Muses, representing the Muse of Epic poetry, sometimes said to be the mother of Orpheus.
Mythology is about as ephemeral sometimes as a flame, and there are often many different versions of the same story, so it's not surprising that there are conflicts in the details of the stories told.
Babi, if we come to (or have come upon) a passage that the Fitzgerald identifies as possibly deleted as being questionable, I sure would like to hear what they are, if you don't mind?
I came in to say I am delighted to have already received the Classics Illustrated Odyssey and it's just beautiful. It's nothing like I expected. It's small and compact, a little smaller than 5x7 and it's very bright, and on good paper, it's not a comic book as I remember them. It's followed believe it or not by a study guide and a huge analysis of the Odyssey and it's got some great questions, or so I think. It's 1997 for a copyright date. Must be some kind of reprint or something, I love it.
Here's a bit from it:
The basic unit of Homeric composition is the dactylic foot. Each line of text consists of six feet--mostly of dactyl units (with spondees mixed in for rhythmic variation and various sound effects.).
It's interesting to realize, at least to me, that the original Greek which of course most of us are not reading, holds to this form, 6 feet, or stressed syllable patterns, per line: It makes those who try to emulate it in their translations more understandable now.
This is a super site on meter: http://myweb.stedwards.edu/georgek/poetics/scansion.html
They say of the dactyl:
Dactylic Foot
The dactylic foot consists of three syllables, the first of which is spoken louder than the second and third. The following words are all examples of dactylic feet:
/ _ _
mur mur ing
/ _ _
ru mi nate
/ _ _
Hen der son (name of a person called Henderson)
And here's a spondee or spondaic foot:
Spondaic Foot
The spondaic foot consists of two syllables, both hard. There is no unaccented syllable in a spondaic foot.
/ /
gum drop
/ /
pen guin
So just, to me, looking at that makes you, even tho we can't read it in the original, have more appreciation of what Homer or the ancient bards, or whoever, did. It's amazing, to me.
Is anybody reading a translation which copies this meter exactly? Does Pope? I'd like to see those spondees in an English version of Homer, just out of curiosity: they are literally heart stoppers, aren't they? Bam Bam. I'd like to see how they are done in an English translation of Homer. If possible.
The book starts with a fabulous drawing of the raft. But it doesn't look like it was described, in Homer, to me. I'm really obsessing over this raft! I like the idea of a raft as symbol, thank you Barbara. If you look back at all the times a raft has been used in literature, it's interesting what it represents in that work. I still wonder why she just didn't whip one up but handed HIM the ax. haahaha
Also according to this little comic book, Books I-IV are, as we've said, the Telemachy, and V-VII are The Homecoming. Since PatH says VI and VII are short, maybe we should read them next, together?
Since we're not putting questions for discussion IN the heading but rather taking them from the posts or suggestions here of the participants, here are a few more. We were talking about women, the little book asks: Are there characteristics that the mortal women share (Penelope, Arete, Nausikaa)? What about the immortal women? (Kalypso, Hera, Athene, Aphrodite?)_
We haven't met all these women yet, so I'm not sure we can answer this one but it might be good to be thinking about. I notice they don't ask about Helen, interesting.
Here are all the questions from Temple U on Book V:
Book 5
152 Second council of the gods. Note the reference to Athena's plan. Hermes to order Calypso to send him home, and Hermes delivers the message. When was the first council? Are there any real differences from the first one? Why Hermes? Think about his functions.
What is the etymology of Calypso? Try to comment on the description of her domain. Is she a good hostess? Note her "feminist" complaint.
Why has Homer kept Odysseus from us for 4 books?
152-7 Calypso agrees, tells O to build a boat, and reassures him when he suspects treachery. The next day he departs. What is O's first utterance in the epic and what does it say about his attitude to other humans and to the gods? Why is he like this? Why does he reject Calypso's offer of immortality? Does this situation remind you of any other myths? Can they guide your interpretation of this episode?
161-7 As O sights the island of Scheria after 17 days, the home of the Phaeacians, Poseidon wrecks his boat. Why? The sea-goddess Leucothea (Ino) saves him, but in his near-paranoia, he almost rejects her help; again, as you read, think about how he has reached this point. Athena stills the storm, and he reaches the coast, finds shelter and falls asleep.
Note the similes in this book; are they different from the similes in the Iliad?. To what is O being compared?Why are these comparisons made?
In this book you read (at least) 2 indications of the seasons. What time of year do you think it is? (This is important for understanding some of the underlying mythic patterns).
Do any of these interest? I don't like to miss a trick, but I am not sure I know the answers here. Together I am sure we can figure them out. I am wondering what is different about the Confab of the gods starting in Book V, versus the first one, do any of you see a difference, and if so what is it?
Why do you think Homer has kept Odysseus from us for 4 books?
-
ginny : Re: dactylic foot. In MG and AG daktylo/ς means finger. Daktylidi means ring, and other variations exist as well. The pronunciation in English for finger is dak til o and for ring is dak til idi. In Greek they are written δάκτυλος (finger) and δακτύλιος (ring) Just to confuse matters even more my Liddell & Scott - now an extension of my hand ;) tells me this about "dactyl".
"daktylos, o, plural daktyloi, poet. also daktyla - a finger ....... II the shortest Greek measure of length, a finger's breadth (seven-tenths) III a metrical foot, dactyl _ ^ ^, e.g. axios."
I guess this illustrates that too much knowledge can prove to be very confusing. My first impression was why on Earth use finger and foot together, as they are obviously two different things, but I now realise that for "convenience" they decided to combine them in order to make it more understandable for English readers in regard to measure, not body parts? Huh! I am still wondering.
-
huh - interesting - now I am wondering - when I was a kid folks did more measuring using hands and fingers and the length of the part of the thumb from knuckle to tip of nail - the thumb measured the width of liverwurst purchased - cloth was measured out in arm lengths - lace was measured out by the stretch of the hand from thumb to pinky finger - loose grain was sold by the hat full - the same for apples and onions - but nails were sold by the handful and boards were measured off by walking next to them - so now I wonder if those types of measurements were the actual feet and finger breadth that were interpreted into a beat for poetry...?
-
I never did care for David Bowie, ROSHANA. That chorus reminds me why. What a welcome
relief Homer is!
Yes, my translation uses the Greek spelling, BARB, but I decided it was easier to go with
the majority here. I didn't want to be the only one posting about 'Telemakhos'. What you
say about the Greeks having little knowledge of lands across the sea is reasonable; they
had to sail pretty close inland. With such poor navigational skills and tools, any sailing
far out to sea usually was due to a bad storm.
"..having spoken with several authors they readily admit they were not writing to achieve
this symbolic meaning as a secondary message.."
I think we readers often do this, BARB; attach hidden or symbolic meanings that the author never intended. They're working hard
enough just to turn out a good story or poem. What we see as symbolism could have been
simply widely understood references in Homer's time. We can see symbolism in Odysseus
covering himself with leaves, or we can assume he was simply trying to get warm.
I do notice that many of the symbols you identify also convey similar messages in the
study of dreams. Since we think in images, the subconscious also uses them in dreaming.
GINNY, so far in our reading the only lines cut as being "thought spurious or out of
place in antiquity" are from Book I. These are lines 275-278 and 356-359. Naturally, I
don't know what those lines said, as they are not in my translation. I'd be curious to
know what they are.
-
The Book Club Online is the oldest book club on the Internet, begun in 1996, open to everyone. We offer cordial discussions of one book a month, 24/7 and enjoy the company of readers from all over the world. Everyone is welcome to join in.
Now reading:
(http://www.seniorlearn.org/bookclubs/classicsbookclub/cbc2odysseysm.jpg)
March 14---Book V: Odysseus, Calypso, and Hermes
(http://www.seniorlearn.org/latin/ulysses_penelope/CalypsoandOBreugheltheElder1612.jpg)
A Fantastic Cave Landscape with Odysseus & Calypso
Jan Breughel the Elder (painted with Hendrick de Clerck)
c. 1612
(http://www.seniorlearn.org/latin/ulysses_penelope/CalypsochestOredfiguredhytria450BC.jpg)
Calypso offers Odysseus a chest
Lucanian red figure hydria
c. 450 BC
Museo Nazionale, Naples
Discussion Leaders: Joan K (joankraft13@yahoo.com) & ginny (gvinesc@gmail.com )
(http://www.seniorlearn.org/latin/ulysses_penelope/CalypsoHermesFlaxman.jpg)
Hermes' message to Calypso
Engraving and etching on paper
John Flaxman
1805
Tate Gallery
Useful Links:
1. Critical Analysis: Free SparkNotes background and analysis on the Odyssey (http://www.sparknotes.com/lit/odyssey)
2. Translations Used in This Discussion So Far: (http://www.seniorlearn.org/bookclubs/odyssey/odyssey_translations.html)
3. Initial Points to Watch For: submitted by JudeS (http://www.seniorlearn.org/bookclubs/odyssey/odyssey_points.html)
4. Maps:
Map of the Voyages of Odysseus (http://www.seniorlearn.org/latin/ulysses_penelope/Odysseusmap.jpg)
Map of Voyages in order (http://www.wesleyan.edu/~mkatz/Images/Voyages.jpg)
Map of Stops Numbered (http://www.seniorlearn.org/latin/ulysses_penelope/Odysseusmap2.jpg)
Our Map Showing Place Names in the Odyssey (http://www.seniorlearn.org/latin/graphics/AncientGreecemap.jpg)
(http://www.seniorlearn.org/latin/ulysses_penelope/CalypsoHermesOdysseusMaurer.jpg)
Hermes visits Calypso and Odysseus
Etching
Hubert Maurer (1738-1818)
:D and who among us was it that suggested we find all the goddesses and see if they had half human children - well here is the list of gods and goddesses - hmmm and how many weeks is this discussion ;) Alphabetic list of Gods and Goddesses (http://www.theoi.com/TreeIndex.html) and from the same site, probably easier to take it in by going to this page first - Family trees - Genealogy of the gods (http://www.theoi.com/Tree.html)
-
Oh my we have to know this poem about Ithica the home of Odysseus now in the twentieth century -
Ithaka - The Canon
~ By C.P. Cavafy, Translated from the Greek by Edmund Keeley/Philip Sherrard
As you set out for Ithaka
hope the voyage is a long one,
full of adventure, full of discovery.
Laistrygonians and Cyclops,
angry Poseidon—don’t be afraid of them:
you’ll never find things like that on your way
as long as you keep your thoughts raised high,
as long as a rare excitement
stirs your spirit and your body.
Laistrygonians and Cyclops,
wild Poseidon—you won’t encounter them
unless you bring them along inside your soul,
unless your soul sets them up in front of you.
Hope the voyage is a long one.
May there be many a summer morning when,
with what pleasure, what joy,
you come into harbors seen for the first time;
may you stop at Phoenician trading stations
to buy fine things,
mother of pearl and coral, amber and ebony,
sensual perfume of every kind—
as many sensual perfumes as you can;
and may you visit many Egyptian cities
to gather stores of knowledge from their scholars.
Keep Ithaka always in your mind.
Arriving there is what you are destined for.
But do not hurry the journey at all.
Better if it lasts for years,
so you are old by the time you reach the island,
wealthy with all you have gained on the way,
not expecting Ithaka to make you rich.
Ithaka gave you the marvelous journey.
Without her you would not have set out.
She has nothing left to give you now.
And if you find her poor, Ithaka won’t have fooled you.
Wise as you will have become, so full of experience,
you will have understood by then what these Ithakas mean.
-
Barb - It was I who was curious about goddesses having children with mortals. That is a fabulous link, thank you. Who would have known there was such a comprehensive family tree?
Great to see my favourite Modern Greek poet up. Cavafy got it right.
-
Barb - Yes. When you measure the height of a horse you say "15 hands high". And of course there is the word digital (from Latin)which makes it even clearer in our digital world.
We use the metric system here, but I have never got used to saying 135 centimetres. I am much better with weights (kilos) and distance (kilometres).
-
Great links and information, such a rich discussion! Thank you all!
Babi:
GINNY, so far in our reading the only lines cut as being "thought spurious or out of
place in antiquity" are from Book I. These are lines 275-278 and 356-359. Naturally, I
don't know what those lines said, as they are not in my translation. I'd be curious to
know what they are.
OK on these lines in English (and I can put in the Greek if needed)
275-278:
Let her go back to the hall of her powerful father, and there they will prepare a wedding feast, and make ready the gifts in their abundance, all that should go with a well loved daughter. And to yourself I will give wise counsel, if you will listen. Man with 20 rowers the best ship you have and.....
Lines 356-359:
..the loom and the distaff and bid your handmaids be about their tasks; but speech shall be men's care, for all, but most of all for me, since mine is the authority in this house.
She then, seized with wonder, went back to her chamber, for she laid to her heart the wise saying of her son. Up to her upper chamber she went with her handmaids...
So here the very things we commented on, and found meaningful: T telling her it was HIS control now and the possibility of her returning to her father, the suggestion and re marrying seem to be thought additions or not correct?
Do your books say anything about this?
Thank you Babi!
-
I keep thinking back to the main plot, the man traveling trying to get home. I keep thinking about this theme, hasn't it been repeated in countless movies? I'm thinking of the George Clooney movie where he went about firing people, it was just on TV last night. A traveling man with his own demons and obstructions. Bill Murray in that one a couple of years ago, about a traveling man on the road constantly (we can tell who goes to movies, I can never remember the names of them) but each one about a man alone, despite whatever affairs, longing for something else, always something ELSE to complete him, and having to struggle against modern odds.
It's true they don't have Poseidon coming out of the sea, but those who stood on the wing of that airplane in the Hudson might have a feeling of intervention, too. So I'm trying to think how these characters relate to us in 2011, what character traits they have that we CAN relate to.
Odysseus, for instance, I can see in NYC in a skinny minute, arguing with everybody he meets. Thinking always thinking. I am well familiar with this type of man, from my own childhood in Philadelphia, he was quite common. As Sally says, the way his life has gone, he's not trusting anybody, can we understand that? Do you know of have you ever met anybody like this?
He's a slick talker, too, he tells Calypso with whom he's sleeping that his own wife at home couldn't compare to her in beauty, but he remains true to his wife, that's novel, and hard to pull off: a man up front about his wife. No "she doesn't understand me," no "I'm really separated" (and O really is) just, I want to get home, take me as I am, or not. Both the Murray character and the Clooney character were up front about their aloofness but I think both weakened, in the end. Did they? So far Odysseus has not.
Would you call him a strong man? Despite all these tears and moaning?
Is his a case of the green green grass of home in memory overpowering the real thing? Haven't you ever gone "back home" to find everything so much different than it was when you were a child? O did not leave home as a child but perhaps his longing has gilded the lily. I know a LOT of people like this. Again in my own childhood I heard tales of the "old country," from adults, those who came to America to escape WWII's horrors, and Poland particularly (in my part of the country) was really portrayed as a wonderful place. Before.
Then he encounters Ino and says, "Not this. Not another treacherous god...I will not obey....I'll play it the way that seems best to me."
His experiences have produced this reaction, do we know anybody like this?
Calypso has offered him the moon to stay with him: Immortality!
He's apparently turned it down. How many times we've seen this theme in literature. Dr. Faustus. Dorian Grey. How many modern celebrities have given practically their souls in exchange for some fleeting fame? How many authors write TO ensure their own immortality?
What is Modern Immortality anyway?
Do you know anybody like Odysseus? If you remove the pesky gods (and I'm not sure you should because there are enough Angels in America television productions and movies to counter this issue for the positive) do you know anybody like Odysseus? James Joyce did, do we?
-
Thank you for those lines, GINNY. That explains why I did not find the line quoting
Telemachos as saying "mine is the authority in this house", when all that discussion was
going on.
"Would you call him a strong man? Despite all these tears and moaning?"
I don't think these ancient Greeks thought tears a sign of weakness. So far in our
reading there have been several instances of emotional Greeks shedding tears freely. It
seems to be perfectly permissible.
I notice “Homer” does express some social views. He points out the discrepancy in the gods reaction to immortal/ mortal relationships. He also makes a statement, “..the best thing in the world being a strong house held in serenity where man and wife agree.’ He shows us
again and again the importance of hospitality to the traveler and lordly treatment of the guest.
Not to mention the importance of a bath, before anything else! ;)
-
The Odyssey is the first great novel..Its an adventure story that is hard to beat.
Odysseus is an optimistic , resourceful person who is physically handsome, strong and charismatic.He is also clever and can be devious if necessesary.According to Calypso he is also a great lover yet loyal to his wife.
Can you believe all this?
Even if you can't you want to.
Authors from Swift (Gulliver) to Burroughs(Tarzan) to Fleming (Bond,James Bond) have fashioned heroes who we would like to meet but never will. They are too good to be true.
I think Shakespeare said "Oh, this too, too mortal flesh".
-
Babi Re the lines omitted from your copy - my Cook translation has much the same as Ginny's one by Murray:
line 274...
And your motherm if her spirit urges her to marry
Let her go back to the hall of her father who is great in power.
They will prepare a wedding and set in array
The many gifts that ought to go with a dear daughter.
For yourself, I strongly advise you, if you will listen,
To fit out the ship that is best with twenty oarsmen
line 356...
Well come into the house and apply yourself to work,
To the loom and the distaff, and give orders to your servants
To set at the work. This talk will concern all of the men,
But me especially. For the power in the house is mine.
She was amazed at him, and back into the house she went.
The sound-minded speech of her son she took to heart.
She entered the upper chamber with her serving women,...
Cook makes no mention of these lines being thought to be spurious. Babi, Does your author give any more background for omitting them?
-
Just a note to let Ginny know that I am still lurking. I have been reading and actually am actually keeping up with the chapters and posts. Amazing!
-
BARB: what a wonderful poem. Thank you. I think that poem tells us the timelessness of this story: why it has been and will be repeated over and over again in literature.
" I think we readers often do this, BARB; attach hidden or symbolic meanings that the author never intended." I had an instance of this when we read "The Jane Austen Club" with the author. I asked her if ----- was a symbol for -----. She politely answered. "Oh, I never thought of that. What a good idea." Since then, I've been slower to attach symbolic meaning to things.
FRY: isn't it!
JUDE: "heroes who we would like to meet but never will. They are too good to be true." yes, they are. But at the same time, Odysseus is us, don't you feel?
-
I know - what to do - I had a couple of English Lit classes that were all about knowing and reading from the symbolic message - and then you hear from authors who tell you - oh ya - interesting - that fits but not what I was thinking when I was writing it - I am with Babi on this - I think there is an inner knowledge which still comes out in our dreams that I think when it is put in our face we can see more clearly what is going on .
I love it Jude - "Can you believe all this?" - Because I too hit the roof with Odysseus suggesting before his night, or if we read other accounts his many nights, of love with Calypso that she, Calypso had it all over Penelope - Ya, we've all heard that before... - I was up in arms pacing the living room - why should I read this claptrap - just because "MEN" in places of literary importance think it is good for our souls - oh I was on a tear along with Margaret George, who has Helen of Troy having no truck for Odysseus - he is on the bottom of Helen's list as far as men go and looking at it from her point of view it is easy to see why. But then I reviewed the symbolisms - breathed - and I have a different take...
I see this chapter as a resurrection - in fact it was just those words used in the bit explaining the Alder tree - it is as if Odysseus is reborn like many the soldier after years of war - they have a journey of the soul to rejoin a peaceful society - I see it as if we have Odysseus coming out of the ferment of the earth - like it or not, for thousands of year women were considered close to the earth because of their ability to bring to term a man's seed -
Odysseus experiences like Noah, or even the creation story and pieces of the Death and resurrection of Christ - there are pieces of all of it - the storm at sea - the waves - the raft or boat built in the four days which is the sacred number to Hermes - his raft had a mast signifying the Tree of Life the cosmic axis transcending good and evil, called also, the Tree of Knowledge with its knowledge of good and evil - bringing him close to the banks but he had to be wary of where he landed and then choosing the Olive bush with two bushes from the same root - two, duality of nature, conflict and reflection - and the Olive - Achievement, Immortality, fertility, peace, plenty, Zeus' crown to Hera's moon - but mostly it symbolizes renewal of life.
And so like many of the stories including Nursery Tales that are nothing more than mythology dressed up or is it down - the stories are often brutal filled with monsters inflicting monstrous acts or stories with wild sexual escapades. I think some take all this at face value - and even try to in-act what they read - while others see a deeper symbolism is what we believe is behavior worthy of a jail cell.
I do like what James C. Thompson, B.A., M.Ed. says about women in ancient Greece - "Most of our written evidence from the ancient world was produced by educated, well-to-do men. They have undoubtedly left us a reasonably accurate picture of their own life, but how much trust can we put in the comments they made on the lives of everyone else Nowhere is this situation more troubling than in Ancient Greece where women were largely regarded as inferior creatures scarcely more intelligent than children. Most of the written record comes from Athens; the little bit we know about the other Greek states was more often than not written by an Athenian
The picture that emerges is that seen by the men of the age. There is no reason to doubt its accuracy as far as the law and public appearance is concerned and we certainly know what men thought of women. What women's life was like out of public sight or in the company of other women must remain largely a mystery to us.
Keep that caveat in mind as you proceed to the pages on specific aspects of Ancient Greece."
-
Just thought of something - sorta off the wall but fun - if in legend, alder trees surrounded Apple orchard islands for protection I wonder if there were Apple Trees on this lush, luxuriant island of Ogygia and Calypso was our first Eve.
Evidently Odysseus looses all his mates in war and those aboard the ship returning to Ithaca before he came to Ogygia - how do we know this? Is this explained in the Iliad? Or is it just the 'oh by the way' bit of information that we can take from the brief announcement with no backstory included in Book 5 - or do other translations go into more detail as to how and when and where and who and how many etc that this shipwreck if that what it was happened.
-
Jude : According to Calypso he is also a great lover yet loyal to his wife. Calypso, and those who believe this are missing the obvious, aren't they?
I read somewhere (sorry Ginny I forgot the source) :( that after 10 years as a warrior and therefore devoid of female company, Odysseus was eager to leave the company of men. Perhaps that is why "The Odyssey" (as someone else has suggested) is more about women than the "Iliad".
-
Sorry, GUM, he doesn't. His note states, "Line numbers throughout this book refer to the
Greek text. A few lines thought spurious or out of place in antiquity, and later, have been
omitted from the translation." He lists them.
Fitzgerald then goes on to thank various people for their comments, corrections and suggestions. The line that really intrigued me, though, was "One salutary blast came from Ezra Pound." Now I would love to know what that was about!
I was about to add another note, but I see it is not from Ch. Five. I am finding the "Odyssey"
so easy to read, I keep getting ahead of the discussion.
-
Babi Oh yes, I am too -finding O easy to read - for me the Cook translation is perfect and Rieu is Ok too... but I'm only just level pegging with the reading and discussion.
Ezra Pound - I can't say that this is what your Fitzgerald was referring to but wouldn't mind betting that it is. This extract is published along with other comments from various sources in a section of my Cook.
Ezra Pound - [The Homeric World]
The Homeric world, very human. The Odyssey high water mark for the adventury story, as for example Odysseus on the spar after shipwreck. Sam Smiles never got any further in preaching self-reliance. A world of irresponsible gods, a very high society without recognisable morals, the individual responsible to himself.
Source The Odyssey Homer, Trans & ed Albert Cook. (Norton Critical Edition) Page 406
There is a note which indicates the extract comes from Ezra Pound, Guide to Kulchur (New York, New Directions Publishing Corp n.d) p.38 copyright 1970.
I had to look up Sam Smiles -23 December 1812 – 16 April 1904 he was a Scottish author and reformer.
The origins of Smiles' most famous book, Self-Help, lay in a speech he gave in March 1845 in response to a request by a Mutual Improvement Society, published as The Education of the Working Classes. In it he said:
I would not have any one here think that, because I have mentioned individuals who have raised themselves by self-education from poverty to social eminence, and even wealth, these are the chief marks to be aimed at. That would be a great fallacy. Knowledge is of itself one of the highest enjoyments. The ignorant man passes through the world dead to all pleasures, save those of the senses...Every human being has a great mission to perform, noble faculties to cultivate, a vast destiny to accomplish. He should have the means of education, and of exerting freely all the powers of his godlike nature.[2]
The book was initially rejected by publishers but Smiles published it at his own expense 1859 and it sold like a hot cake. 20,000 copies in one year and by the time of Smiles' death in 1904 it had sold over a quarter of a million.
Self-Help "elevated [Smiles] to celebrity status: almost overnight, he became a leading pundit and much-consulted guru.
Source was Wikipedia --- Shhh... don't tell Ginny :D
Smiles was certainly preaching self reliance and of course this is exactly what we, (as well as Ezra Pound) are finding in Odysseus -even though he is being helped by the Gods, he relies on himself to build the raft and he doesn't jump immediately to suggestions made by Ino but continues on until he is forced to abandon his craft. Even then he relies on himself to find a landfall.
I like Ezra Pound's summary -a very human world - the high water mark for adventure stories - irresponsible gods - high society without morals - and individual responsibility. I think the discussion has touched on all of those already.
-
:) hahaha Oh wow Ezra Pound! We had to read no end of him in college, I wonder why, now. He was considered a Modern American (was he American?) poet.
Shows you how old I am? hahahaa Oh horrors I just read his bio in the famous Wikipedia, why on earth did they insist we read so much of him? Golly moses, I think I'll pass on reading any more, I had no idea.
Man this hits it right on the spot, doesn't it?
Ezra Pound - [The Homeric World]
A world of irresponsible gods, a very high society without recognizable morals, the individual responsible to himself.
Last night for lack of anything whatsoever on TV I watched Jersey Shore. There were several episodes of it on at once. I sat fascinated. I had never seen it. I have been trying to figure it out ever since. But one thing is clear: without recognizable morals and the individual responsible to himself certainly fits this series. Everything old is new again.
I wonder if that's good or bad. I liked your analysis Gum of how he sets to and does it without advice. Of course this process has not particularly won for him now. I guess if I were he, given my own temperament, I'd have concluded it wasn't working. But he... is he persevering or is he just sitting and crying? When you look at him really what is he doing? Who gets him up and out?
Is it his efforts or is it Zeus, Hermes, Calypso?
I dunno maybe I'm being too hard on him, I mean why hasn't he been able to out talk Calypso, he's sassy enough with her when she tried to help (or gives him an ax) ahaha I still can't get over that.
Babi, what a good point on: He points out the discrepancy in the gods reaction to immortal/ mortal relationships. He also makes a statement, “..the best thing in the world being a strong house held in serenity where man and wife agree.’
And at present it's clear O agrees with nobody.
I'm still trying to get over Jersey Shore. What's the point of that program? I wonder if any of them have ever read the Odyssey?
RR, this is interesting: Perhaps that is why "The Odyssey" (as someone else has suggested) is more about women than the "Iliad". I am sure after 10 years of war he's sick of it, but he seems unhappy here. He may have done better WITH the men, tho I seem to remember a lot of arguing and jockeying for position, particularly with Ajax. He's probably depressed to have been gotten the better of by women (would you say he has been gotten the better of?) I wonder what's keeping him with Calypso.
This is a really good question, Barbara: Evidently Odysseus looses all his mates in war and those aboard the ship returning to Ithaca before he came to Ogygia - how do we know this? Is this explained in the Iliad? Or is it just the 'oh by the way' bit of information that we can take from the brief announcement with no backstory included in Book 5 - or do other translations go into more detail as to how and when and where and who and how many etc that this shipwreck if that what it was happened
I think Homer is going to do flashbacks and show us how. I bet the reaction of somebody sitting around a campfire listening to this would be the same: how did it happen? And they would be full of interest. Maybe it's a teaser, we know he set out with tons of man but they are all gone. We've presented with the end result and don't know how it happened. I bet we find out.
I thought this same thing: if in legend, alder trees surrounded Apple orchard islands for protection I wonder if there were Apple Trees on this lush, luxuriant island of Ogygia and Calypso was our first Eve. It sounds like Eden, anyway. In the creation myths of the Greeks there WAS a sort of Eden too, that time is divided into four ages. But he's a very unhappy Adam.
That is a very interesting quote by James C. Thompson! I am glad you put it in here.
I keep thinking about Jersey Shore and the Odyssey.
I am finding this easy to read too, I'm surprised, it's easy and fun in short bursts, and I am shocked to see that 6 and 7, so short, are actually half way through my book!!
?? How can we be halfway thru, we just started?
So he's landed on Pyrhgia but there's no place TO land. I love this section, so exciting:
Lombardo:
411:
Ah, Zeus has let me see land I never hoped to see
And I've cut my way to the end of this gulf,
But there's no way to get out of the grey saltwater.
Only sharp rocks ahead, laced by the breakers,
And beyond them slick stone rising up sheer
Right out of deep water, no place for a foothold,
No way to stand up and wade out of trouble.
If I try to get out here a wave might smash me
Against the stone cliff. Some mooring that would be!
If I swim around farther and try to find
A shelving shore or an inlet from the ea,
I'm afraid that a squall will take me back out
Groaning deeply on the teeming dark water,
Or some monster will attack me out of the deep...
Then he slams up against the rocks and gets the skin torn off his hands when the backwash hits him and drags him back out to sea.
That's just great writing. It's better than any movie, or so I think. There's something about it that's....what?
I want to build a raft and stock it full of all the care and provisions she did, such love in those provisions. If you were sending a child off to college you couldn't pack a better care package.
Love this chapter. At least he's trying to do something other than the Jersey Shore bunch.
Do we want to do 6 and 7 for Wednesday? PatH says they are short?
-
Wow Gumtree did you open Pandora's box for me today - I had all these tasks lined up and instead started to look into Samuel Smiles - at first I was real proud finding and was going to even share here his books on Amazon with the first chapter available to read - then it hit me - his books have to be more than 100 years old and therefore, are no longer under any restrictions. Sure enough they are on Gutenberg and several other places.
I've been fascinated reading Self Help and then decided to look into Character - oh my - oh, oh my Y'all MUST read the second chapter of Character - this is written before 1900 - talk about seeing women/mothers in particular being more valuable than we received credit but more, he promotes that for a successful nation and successful adult population the women need to be educated - the one paragraph of course says exactly what we have been riling about reading Homer with the examples of Penelope in his story.
First here is the link to Character by Samuel Smiles, Gutenberg (http://www.gutenberg.org/files/2541/2541-h/2541-h.htm)
And then the quote near the end of this chapter:
The highest praise which the ancient Romans could express of a noble matron was that she sat at home and span—"DOMUM MANSIT, LANAM FECIT." In our own time, it has been said that chemistry enough to keep the pot boiling, and geography enough to know the different rooms in her house, was science enough for any woman; whilst Byron, whose sympathies for woman were of a very imperfect kind, professed that he would limit her library to a Bible and a cookery-book. But this view of woman's character and culture is as absurdly narrow and unintelligent, on the one hand, as the opposite view, now so much in vogue, is extravagant and unnatural on the other—that woman ought to be educated so as to be as much as possible the equal of man; indistinguishable from him, except in sex; equal to him in rights and votes; and his competitor in all that makes life a fierce and selfish struggle for place and power and money.
Now before we get too excited he also is true to the paternal views of the Nineteenth century - he wants women at least to be educated BUT...he espouses the bird in the gilded cage sort of thinking...
But while it is certain that the character of a nation will be elevated by the enlightenment and refinement of woman, it is much more than doubtful whether any advantage is to be derived from her entering into competition with man in the rough work of business and polities. Women can no more do men's special work in the world than men can do women's. And wherever woman has been withdrawn from her home and family to enter upon other work, the result has been socially disastrous. Indeed, the efforts of some of the best philanthropists have of late years been devoted to withdrawing women from toiling alongside of men in coalpits, factories, nailshops, and brickyards...
Nor is there any reason to believe that the elevation and improvement of women are to be secured by investing them with political power. There are, however, in these days, many believers in the potentiality of "votes," 1122 who anticipate some indefinite good from the "enfranchisement" of women. It is not necessary here to enter upon the discussion of this question. But it may be sufficient to state that the power which women do not possess politically is far more than compensated by that which they exercise in private life—by their training in the home those who, whether as men or as women, do all the manly as well as womanly work of the world.
-
Ginny: He's probably depressed to have been gotten the better of by women (would you say he has been gotten the better of?) I wonder what's keeping him with Calypso.
I have been puzzling over this too. Or rather I have been puzzling over why Homer allowed his "hero" to spend so much time in one place. I am making a concerted effort NOT to read Homer as history. It has been said before, but O is definitely out of the action during those 7 years he is with Calypso. Maybe Homer condensed the Calypso story, or maybe it was a "snippet" of a longer adventure. Does anyone know?
At this stage of The Odyssey I don't think O has been "gotten the better of by women". Poseidon seems to be his main problem. I agree that V is a beautifully written "Book". If you have been hurt by rocks while swimming or surfing it is easy to identify with O's attempts to gain land.
-
Wow, I just turned on CNN, Operation Odyssey Dawn just hit the Ghadafi Compound. I didn't know they called it Operation Odyssey Dawn!
-
haha NOT Rosy Fingered Dawn but Odyssey Dawn - ah so - maybe it has to do with the first letters actually having another meaning OD - I am thinking a lot of these war names hide what they really would like to say... a lot of fireworks for sure - seems more like Iliad Dawn or Trojan Dawn than Odyssey Dawn - it sure is easy isn't it Ginny to be rooted in front of the news on a day like this - what a week...
roshanarose - what about considering the meaning of the number 7 - that may have something to do with why 7 years - the universe was created in 7 days - 7 is considered a complete number with 3 of the heavens and the soul and four of the earth and the body. It is the first number that contains both spirit and body - it is considered a perfect number and is the number of the Great Mother - there are 7 cosmic stages, 7 heavens and 7 gates to 7 hells, 7 pillars of wisdom, 7 days of the week, 7 notes of the Diatonic scale, 7 wonders of the world, 7 deadly sins, 7 branches on the Tree of Life each having 7 leaves, 7 strings on Apollo's lyre, Pan has 7 pipes, and 7 is the sacred number for Apollo, Minerva and Mars.
As the battle goes on today, if the universe was made in 7 days as we know a 24 hour day I wonder if similar to those who think the 7 day theory is simply the use of a number then, the number 7 could have been used to convey a message - in all actuality this is a story and who knows how long or, if a real Odysseus was on that Island - somehow the torment of this character, that showed itself in tears along with nights in a love-nest cave, seemed like 7 years - Wait a minute - I remember reading - during this time in history there was no knowledge of an actual year except for the seasons of the year - so even at best we can assume 7 Springs, 7 Summers, 7 Autumns and 7 Winters of his discontent have gone by...
I am amazed at his physical strength to be buffeted around in deep water by a storm for 2 days and then jockey his swim for a landing location on the beach for another day and actually getting himself to a spot under the olive bushes rather than simply landing half conscious where ever a wave swept him ashore or where ever he could climb over rocks to reach the shore. I guess living on what is described as a lush Island allowed him a food supply that aided his physicality.
hmm - just looked it up and Cadmus, the father of the girl with the lovely ankles, Ino - evidently he is credited with bringing the alphabet to the Greeks, the Phoenician letters.
However, I'm with Babi - I would like to get on with the story - Ginny are we planning on a week for each of the 24 chapters or is there an alternate plan that I have forgotten...I'm imagining the next chapter will help us put in place the chapter preceding each chapter.
-
Received my Loeb Homer, Odyssey, Books 1-12 with Murray translation yesterday. Will order the remainder next week. Tiny book!
-
Sally, isn't it? Tiny. In some ways it brings back long forgotten memories of old old Latin texts with their (was it called rice paper? What IS rice paper? Thin thin pages, tho these are sturdy enough). Still it does resonate and actually adds to the thrill. I am such a sucker for literal translation. But even IT has to be changed to go with today's idiom.
Barbara, I did not make that connection! Rosy Fingered Dawn is not the best application for a coalition attack, possibly, but I missed that connection to Dawn completely. I just jumped at Odyssey. What do we think the coalition means by Odyssey Dawn?
What an interesting post on 7 and his physical strength, had not thought of that. And now battered and bruised, he's pulled leaves up over him on a new land. I was taken by his prayer to the river god, too.
The Phoenicians and their travels with the alphabet has always seemed impossibly romantic to me. They are one reason that Severus and Hannibal's portraits look like they did, people forget about the Phoenicians.
RR oh yes, the Earthshaker Poseidon, he's been busy lately, hasn't he? What awful disasters, what a time we're living in. No I meant between men and women, how is he faring, how does he measure up? I'm thinking the women at this point are stronger, or are they? Just musing, I agree Poseidon has done a job on him.
This is an excellent question, can anybody find out? Maybe Homer condensed the Calypso story, or maybe it was a "snippet" of a longer adventure. Does anyone know?
Why would the Calypso story be included at ALL, do you think? I never thought of it much till you mentioned it.
____________________________________________________
Barbara asked about the schedule, we don't have one! We said we'd go along and then when ready move on. Would you like to do 6 and 7 for Wednesday? They are short, so PatH says?
I want (1) not to leave these wonderful descriptions and (2) to get to the Cyclops. Thus far O is not perhaps the deepest drawn character there is, but how might there be time with all these adventures? Kind of like Spider Man or something, the Man on a Mission. But he does seem to tell us about himself, his wants, his grief, the jury is still out here. Any last thoughts n 5 or 1-5? Let's move to 6 and 7 for Wednesday?
-
I want to say I'm so glad we're reading this. I'm so glad you wanted to read this and we can talk about it together. It's so...comforting.... somehow with this crazy world we're living in, TO be reading it. I've read a lot of good books lately. I'm reading Old Filth which is a great book, perhaps not one we might discuss in public, but a great book on the lines of an R rated Major Pettigrew, but nothing comes close to the thrill of the depth of the Odyssey, what a joy!
-
That was excellent, GUM! I had the impression Pound's contribution to Fitzgerald's
translation was more personal, but your find could very well be correct reference.
I do like his summary of the 'Homeric World'.
I've never watched "Jersey Shore", GINNY, but I've had glimpses of similar shows. The
only reason I can see for the popularity of such shows is that they seem to justify
immorality and irresponsibility by making it seem that 'everyone is doing it'. What really
bugs me is that young people watching such shows assume that is true.
"..the chapter preceding each chapter"? Am I missing something here, BARB? This seems to suggest a pattern in which alternate chapters are introductions to the succeeding chapter.
I haven't noticed anything like that.
-
Babi I find any book I read that the next chapter always clarifies for me the preceding chapter - like any continuous story will - it is so easy to get caught up with baited breath on the part of the story we are hearing or reading but to connect it to the whole is a journey and the next chapter most often shades the last bit that is part of the story.
Thanks for mentioning the Major Ginny, I finally took time last night to start reading Major Pettigrew's Last Stand and it is living up to the delight that others have championed - of you are looking for a story with an undercurrent of light humor to balance your reading this great Epic, that does enlist strong reactions, the Major's story is a contemporary, romantic story for the over 60 crowd that I have to thank, with a tip of the hat, those who read the book and recommended it to us here on Senior Learn.
Oh I am so glad we are pushing ahead Ginny - the story grabs you and then all the bits can - or it least for me can - cause a jamlog that in order to sort out reminds me of seeing the loggers jump from one log to another at times barely hanging on to their balance. Now, it would be easy to simply read this as a story but once past the adventure it is bringing up all sorts of connections and references - so far, nothing enlists a hearty laugh while reading but who knows we may yet be hit by that emotion - Homer seems to be hitting so many. This last chapter reminded me of the old silent movies about tying the heroine to the railroad track - so the gods do the tying and then it takes the humans to cut themselves loose and get on with life.
I never did get very far reading Ezra Pound's poetry - I even purchased a couple of cheat books to help me understand his work but I decided I need a class to understand what he is saying - I do remember the Canto as starting with Odysseus on his way to I think hell to get answers about the future - it all got mixed up for me between the Odyssey and Dante - Babi have you read Pound's work - were you able to follow along - please, post in the Poetry discussion any help you can offer - this poet is a challenge.
Funny how things come to you in the oddest times - as I was taking a shower a picture popped in my head about not having a calendar to track time and yet, a poet talks about years - I bet tracking yearly time was like tracking Easter - it comes every year but the time is different because it is dependent on the moon. And so I could see the issue of time as years of Easters - ancient Greeks cannot go look up on a calendar to figure out when Easter was last year never mind predict when it will occur next year because it is always when the moon is such and such and when the leaves are such and such or, certain fish are running or, flies are swarming or, whatever that is a special event in nature that goes with the moon's activity - just trying to get a handle on what it was like to live without the very basic things we take for granted.
Lots of reading on my plate while trying to fit in so many Spring time activities - I could use an 8 day week about now.
-
Yes Major Pettigrew is a wonderful book and Pedln's daughter knows the author and came to her book club too!
Babi: The only reason I can see for the popularity of such shows is that they seem to justify
immorality and irresponsibility by making it seem that 'everyone is doing it'.
I am already loving Book VI! Washing on stones, I love this entire thing. I hope to learn how one actually washes anything on a stone. Is that why people used to use washboards?
I want one of those new washers, front loaders, are they British or German? I have seen them in both countries. They use a teaspoon of water, how does this get clothes clean? Yet they swear it's cleaner! How can it be? (Despite, the German ones, taking half a day to even begin to wash).
Can't wait to hear this: the issue will be: water: is more better or worse? hahahaa
-
Ginny
If you are reading "Old Filth" by Jane Gardam you must follow it up with "The Man in the Wooden Hat" which is the sequel. It is the same story but from the wife Betty's point of view. The two books together round out the picture that is one sided in each book.
Let me know what you think of the book(s).
-
Oh thank you! I was looking it up for something for my e-reader by the same author and saw that one but they don't give (in my Ibook store) reviews, so I thought (she's written a bunch of them) that I'd go to Amazon and look there first. If you recommend it I'll get it, too, but for the e-reader.
Did you like either?
-
BARB: "Evidently Odysseus looses all his mates in war and those aboard the ship returning to Ithaca before he came to Ogygia - how do we know this? Is this explained in the Iliad?"
No, here in the Odyssey. Homer has jumped us into the middle of the story (actually, near the end of the story). Chapters 8 on will tell us how he got to where we now find him.
Odyssey has become a word meaning any long journey or quest: I'll bet that's the sense in which it's being used. The beginning of the journey to freedom. I'll bet they're saying "It's a long journey, but were here only to get it started."
Okay, I can't wait to get to the next chapter. tell you why then.
Smiley sounds like a typical "enlightened" view of his day. To misquote Orwell: men and women are equal, but some are more equal than others.
-
Thanks Joan - so the explanation will come - great - maybe many things will be cleared up as we read...
OK Ginny if you want an experience doing laundry in the river here is your opportunity ;)
Wash laundry in the river as they did 1000s of years ago (http://kehilha.com/attractions/activities-experiences/1000-years-ago/laundry.html)
And here is a link to a modern in comparison History of laundry (http://www.oldandinteresting.com/history-of-laundry.aspx)
From what I have read on other sites it appears during the BC time it wasn't dirt so much as lice and also, the setting of the dyes after weaving, and finally for warmth the first we had after skins was felt - where ever there was weaving there was felting which is taking the wool cloth to the river and tumbling and swishing it - it is the action in the water that causes the felting to occur - so when your wool items shrink it is because you swished them in the water - lay them and let them float and do not wring them out and they will not shrink up, which is the start of the felting process. Used to teach the history of design and the history of needlework and weaving,.
Oh yes the cleaning and bleaching and ridding clothing of lice was done with a combo of mud that was a clay mud mixed equally with water and urine - sorry but that is it. In recent history we know the molecular make up of this combo but then it simply did the job. Some areas had pumice that is an excellent stone for cleaning but I do not know if that was a stone used in ancient Greece or if the rivers of Greece had pumice stones. I understand pumice is the rock from lava.
-
Pedln wow to know someone who is achieving fame - does your daughter live near Helen Simonson? Her memory of her home is written as if she was a British author - wonderful and amazing - but then she may go back to visit family often enough to keep her memories fresh and alive. The story is a delight and her writing is so refreshing - I am loving the book. I think Joan P was going to ask Helen Simonson to join us for the discussion - if she is overwhelmed with all that must be expected of her I hope she could peek in at least one time. We shall see what we shall see - in the meantime there are enough topics in her story to explore so that we will easily be busy for the month.
Sorry Ginny a by the way - back the the journey of Odysseus...or again, another side path - just spent the last hour listening to what is going on with Odyssey Dawn - I like that Joan - it sounds so right - a journey towards freedom for Libya - interesting difference between the leader of Libya as compared to the long time leader that was in Egypt -
Looks like Homer's Odysseus meets another god or is it a goddess - I found several - who is Pallas - under which shell is Pallas - is the Pallas in the story yet a different Pallas from any of these...
PALLAS - a Titan god of warcraft and the Greek campaign season of late spring and early summer. He was the father of Victory, Rivalry, Strength and Power by Styx (Hate), children who turned to the side of Zeus during the Titan-War. Pallas' name was derived from the Greek word pallô meaning "to brandish (a spear)." Some say he was the winged husband of Styx, the father of Nike and (if the rumors are true) Eos.
PALLAS - a nymph of Lake Tritonis in Libya, North Africa. In the mythology of the local tribes, both she and the Libyan Athena were daughters of Triton (a Libyan sea-god identified with Poseidon) and Tritonis (goddess of the salt-water lake Tritonis, identified with Amphitrite). In their childhood war games, Athena accidentally slew Pallas. The story was reenacted in an annual festival celebrated by the lakeside tribes.
PALLAS ATHENA - Greek goddess of wisdom, of household arts and crafts, of spinning and weaving, of textiles. Inventor of the flute, the plough and the ox-yoke, the horse bridle and the chariot. Athena, goddess of war, guardian of Athens, the city named for her; defender of heroes, champion of justice and civil law, who sprang fully-grown and fully-armed from the head of her father, Zeus, ruler of the gods on Mount Olympus.
PALLAS(#4): A son of EVANDER and best buddies with Aeneas.
PALLAS(#5): A son of Pandion, King of Athens, who had fifty sons known as Pallantids. They were all wiped out by THESEUS.
-
Odysses Dawn means nothing. The army has a list of words and they must select one word from the A list (between, for example O and W) and one word from the B list (between A and F)
Book VI. Interesting that the Phaeacians live aloof from other peoples. Have no interaction with them.
Nausicaa asks Odysseus to go ahead of her as she fears the people will believe she prefers a stranger for a husband which will cause a scandal.
-
Kidsel did you get the notion that the parents the mother and father she speaks to are her intended parents - the parents of her future husband - and that she is trying to ingratiate herself with them by offering to do the laundry? The description of her sleeping arrangement had me thinking she was a young women in her home but then the way she worded the bit about his [her father's] sons when she seeks his permission for the wagon - unless the sons who I would assume then would be her brothers are possible marriage partners??!!??
And this Pallas from the beach pops up again in this chapter - who is he or it a she?
-
Hi, all! I'm reading along and find your posts most informative!
Barb wrote: Pallas from the beach pops up again in this chapter - who is he or it a she?
She's the goddess, Pallas Athena, master/mistress of many disguises:
Here's a link: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Athena (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Athena)
Sally/Kidsal ~ Odyssey Dawn means nothing. That's right! I was about to post that, too. Thanks! The word odyssey is creeping into English as a non-proper noun, isn't it.
-
Sally, that's priceless: it means nothing. What a hoot.
Why would Odyssey be on the list in the first place? It must mean something for them to put it there or is it as Mippy says a ...what is a non proper noun, Mippy?
Listen, just jump in any time and say your own piece!
Barbara, thank you for the washing stuff and the felt issue, who knew felting? Why am I getting a picture of wrinkled ancients running around wrinkled? I'll read the link next! There are lots of places people still beat on rocks.
I keep thinking of Poe and The Raven: a pallid bust of Pallas just above my chamber door.
And the raven, never flitting, still is sitting, still is sitting
On the pallid bust of Pallas just above my chamber door
I love Poe.
-
Okay, BARB, I see what you mean. My unhelpful response to your question about Pound is
posted in Poetry.
Oh, I'm sure this is the daughter of the house. I'm not surprised that she refers to her brothers, in speaking to her Father, as his sons. My husband and I frequently referred to our
children, in their troublesome mode, as "your son" or "your daughter". ;)
-
Just marking my place, am trying to follow along, but behind in reading. Barbara, I'm emailing you.
So Odyssey Dawn means nothing. What a disappointment. Like being told there is no Santa Claus. I think the powers-that-be have made a big mistake. They could have said that it's the beginning (Dawn/day) of a quest -- for -- ? Is "quest" the now non-proper meaning for odyssey?
-
Hi Barb - I am fairly certain that this is the closest personification of Athena Pallas you are enquiring about.
"PALLAS - a nymph of Lake Tritonis in Libya, North Africa. In the mythology of the local tribes, both she and the Libyan Athena were daughters of Triton (a Libyan sea-god identified with Poseidon) and Tritonis (goddess of the salt-water lake Tritonis, identified with Amphitrite). In their childhood war games, Athena accidentally slew Pallas. The story was reenacted in an annual festival celebrated by the lakeside tribes." But she is also personified in items one and two on your list. A combo, so to speak. ;)
Apart from the Parthenon (meaning Virgin) Athena also has another beautifully proportioned temple on the Acropolis. Its name is the Temple of Athena Nike. Nike means victor/victory in AG and MG. In modern day English we use it for the 'SWOOSH" a symbol (imagine a large tick) for a popular brand of sneakers. It is pronounced Ny-kee.
Parthogenesis means "virgin birth" an extremely unusual medical condition. ??? Mary, mother of Jesus, is probably the only woman we know who has experienced parthenogenesis.
If you know of any other instances of this rarity, please tell us.
Barb - btw thanks for the very interesting symbolism of the number 7. It has always been my favourite number.
-
ohhh so we are talking about Athena again - she sure gets around - I will look for your email pedln - as usual it takes forever to comb through the daily allotment ::) - running late - one of those days...
-
The Book Club Online is the oldest book club on the Internet, begun in 1996, open to everyone. We offer cordial discussions of one book a month, 24/7 and enjoy the company of readers from all over the world. Everyone is welcome to join in.
Now reading:
(http://www.seniorlearn.org/bookclubs/classicsbookclub/cbc2odysseysm.jpg)
March 28---Book VIII:
At the court of Alcinoös
(http://seniorlearn.org/latin/ulysses_penelope/OdysseusPhaeciansRubens1577-1640.jpg)
Odysseus on the island of the Phaiacians
Peter Paul Rubens (1577 - 1640)
(http://seniorlearn.org/latin/ulysses_penelope/OdysseusNausicaaRosa16151673Hermitage.jpg)
Odysseus and Nausicaa
Salvator Rosa (1615 - 1673)
The Hermitage, St. Petersburg
Discussion Leaders: Joan K (joankraft13@yahoo.com) & ginny (gvinesc@gmail.com )
(http://seniorlearn.org/latin/ulysses_penelope/OdysseusweepsFlaxman.jpg)
Odysseus weeps at the singing of Demodocos
John Flaxman
1805
Useful Links:
1. Critical Analysis: Free SparkNotes background and analysis on the Odyssey (http://www.sparknotes.com/lit/odyssey)
2. Translations Used in This Discussion So Far: (http://www.seniorlearn.org/bookclubs/odyssey/odyssey_translations.html)
3. Initial Points to Watch For: submitted by JudeS (http://www.seniorlearn.org/bookclubs/odyssey/odyssey_points.html)
4. Maps:
Map of the Voyages of Odysseus (http://www.seniorlearn.org/latin/ulysses_penelope/Odysseusmap.jpg)
Map of Voyages in order (http://www.wesleyan.edu/~mkatz/Images/Voyages.jpg)
Map of Stops Numbered (http://www.seniorlearn.org/latin/ulysses_penelope/Odysseusmap2.jpg)
Our Map Showing Place Names in the Odyssey (http://www.seniorlearn.org/latin/graphics/AncientGreecemap.jpg)
(http://seniorlearn.org/latin/ulysses_penelope/OdysseusNausicaaLeighton.jpg)
Nausicaa
Frederic, Lord Leighton (1830 - 1896)
Ginny
Re Jane Gardams books "Old Filth" and "The Man in the Wooden Hat"- I would say they are an enjoyable and satisfying read. They tell the story of a childless couple in a certain era in English history and keep us interested all the time.Not a Noble Prize winner but certainly the kind of book you would want to read while plunging into the depths of the Odyssey.
Roshanarose
Number seven is indeed fascinating. I may be repeating some info but here are some interesting facts on the number seven.
Pythagoreans saw it as sacred because it is made up of three and four which themselves were considered lucky numbers.
The Hebrew word for seven" Sheva" (soft e) is the same root as to swear which literally means to come under the influence of seven things.
In the Bible there are many mentions and its importance is immense.Seven days of creation, seven days of the week,seven graces, seven deadly sins etc.
-
Barb/Ginny/Joan--about laundry being washed in the great outdoors--must tell you a cute, true bit about someone I met and her laundry experience
1976 a friend and I went on a ship cruising from Vancouver, British Columbia to Alaska, thru the inland passages, seeing places like Glacier Bay, Sitka, Juneau, Ketchican --there were a group of ladies from ports in Alaska who would join the boat and join the passengers to relate their Alaskan experiences...we lucked out as the person on our cruise also sat at our table for dinning...her first name was Helen...
she relayed her laundry experience when her children were small, she would wash their items in the river-ocean and one day she was distracted and she saw her diapers floating out to sea....with nowhere to buy diapers she had 2 options, either to let her kids go diaperless, or get in the water and rescue the diapers; which she did...even though it was June we were wearing warm clothing ...and I imagine the water temperature was invigorating to say the least when she had to rescue her diapers
Deb
-
That scene, of the women washing clothes in the ocean, is my favoprite scene in the Odyssey. Here's why.
Some years ago, I was teaching English as a second language for the Literacy Councel. my student was a young woman from Salvador. She was homesick, and was telling me about her life in a small jungle village. When she was a teenager, she and all the
young girls in the village would go down to the river to do the laundry. They would laugh and play; it was the fun time in the week. The boys would hide in the bushes and watch them.
I had goosebumps. Here 2000 years later and half-way around the world, was the same scene that Homer depicted so vividly.
-
Ginny, just to let you know I am keeping up with the posts and reading Lombardo and Rieu. Learning alot from all the posts.
I realize we are moving on to 6 and 7 Wednesday, but want to say I was sort of bothered that Athena intervened. Odysseus was given a veil and instructions by Ino/Luecothoe the White Goddess so that he would make the swim safely. Maybe because he doubted her....
I also was taken by O's prayer to the river god. Beautiful.
-
Ginny ~ did I try to coin a non-word? By non-proper noun I meant a noun that is not a proper noun, which is traditionally capitalized, such as place names and names of people or books.
So in some uses, has odessey become a lower case word?
Sandyrose ~ Hi, we miss you in Latin class! I actually like the way Athena keeps showing up. To me it is a reminder that this was a song-story sung by bards, before it was written down. A good song-story needs a good helping of fantasy, doesn't it?
-
Oh these are marvelous memories of washing in the river, and I loved, Joan K, that it was a happy time your student remembered. One sees photos of people washing clothes in the Ganges and one wonders how on earth they can get clean.
Deb, what a priceless memory and again washing comes up! Oh my word: .her first name was Helen.... I'm not even going to go there, but Homer would have wrought his own tale about your meeting Helen! :)
Mippy, what do I know? I thought if a noun was not proper (the name or title of persons or books, etc.) it was called common but again, who knows today?
Washing! I am so temped, don't laugh but I am tempted to take something dirty to our creek it's quite a nice flow and there are nice rocks and see what I can do with it. No soap. What were the old wash boards for? Do any of you remember them? Am I a relic from the past? I remember people violently rubbing clothes against washboards, whatever for?
I have totally messed up and read Book 8, for some reason I got started and ended up with 8 and now I am wondering what sort of people these Phaeacians ARE! The more you go on the more mysterious they get.
This is like sci fi, these people look normal but these little hints and stuff, as somebody so wisely said earlier and I can't find it, these people are ODD. They stick to themselves, they are odd. I love the little hints Homer gives here and he keeps expanding on it, it's very like the old horror shows where the man and woman's car breaks down in a storm and they arrive at the spooky old mansion; something is not RIGHT in the mansion, and that's the case here. But wow, the hospitality. But wait, the towns people might turn on a stranger or...what's Nausicaa's reasoning to Odysseus as they go to town? That seemed at variance with the "hospitality" motif we've seen, or did it? And wait, the stranger is sitting in the ashes of the hearth!
What did you like best about Books 6 and 7, and what did you like least?
SandyRose, I am so glad to see you here and me too!! but want to say I was sort of bothered that Athena intervened
I found myself in these two (three) books totally irritated at her, she's appearing now as this person and then as that person, and I'm beginning to find her irritating. Why doesn't she let him alone? She is having a good time, anyway. Do you all think he really could not make it without her?
The Greeks seem to accept her now as this or that person, and I have to say there's a strong movement in 2011 to see God in every person, so this is not particularly out of line I guess, but it's so ODD that she keeps this UP. It's as much about HER as it is him. I have a feeling this is not an accident.
The bit about going into the city, I did not understand that at all? What's the deal? ...Nausicaa tells him to do one thing but what happens? It's strange. These people seem on the outside very solitary and not interested in strangers and then my goodness at the hospitality.
What did you like best about these two chapters and what least?
Here are some questions on it from Temple U: I think the questions in red here are really good ones, can we answer them?
Book 6
168-72 Note the history of the Phaeacians early on, and consider whether this affects their reception of O. Athena visits Nausicaa, princess of Scheria, in a dream and tells her to go wash clothes at the river. She meets O (naked), who asks for help. What does Athena appeal to in Nausicaa? Try to visualize O's meeting with this young woman. What do we learn about O's character in this encounter? What information does he withhold?
172-8 O addresses Nausicaa; she gives him clothing and food, and instructs him on how best to approach her parents. Why does'nt she take him herself? On reaching the city, O waits outside in Athena's grove. Why do you think Athena fails to reveal herself to O? Describe Skheria.
Book 7
O is hospitably received and promised convoy home. Queen Arete questions him and he describes how he came to Scheria. Who wears the pants in this family? Compare the reception with those we have seen so far. Note exactly what O says about himself. Is he a good guest? Who are the Phaeacians, anyway?
And I have another question. This seems, prima facie, like a simple little adventure tale. IS there anything here other than these interesting scenes? The new stories our young people read now of super heroes seem very similar: lots of exciting adventures, but the hero, tho bruised and battered, always rises to the top of each new adventure. Is this all it is?
I am wondering what this stop over, this detour, this segue into the land of the Phaeacians is here for? These are strange people. Having read 8 I'm sort of leery of saying too much.
What annoyed me most about this section: Athena. She's all over the place. And then we have a bizarre thing in 8, coming up.
What I liked the most: the washing scene, makes you want to carry some out to the stream yourself, and the description of the palace:
The bronze walls, surmounted
With a blue enamel frieze, stretched from the threshold
To the inner hall. The outer doors were golden,
And silver doorposts were set in the bronze threshold.
The lintel was silver and the door handle gold.
Flanking the door were two gold and silver dogs
Made y Hephaestus with all his art
To guard the palace, and they were immortal
And ageless....
(Lombardo, 94...)
Quite a place, and the description here is just marvelous. Must have glittered in the sun. A magic kingdom a long time before Disney, in more ways than one, apparently, having read 8. I love the way Homer sucks us into this, but hist, O is sitting in the ashes.
What did you make of these two chapters? What did you like best and least, what is your opinion on Athena here and what do you think of the questions in red? There are no right or wrong answers (or if there are, I don't know what they are), let's discuss what YOU think?
This is strange, what did you make of any or all of this or what questions do YOU have here?
-
Oh Jude, I forgot to say, you had the 1000th post, you win a prize!! More later on that, congrats, all, that's a record for a Book Club Online discussion!
-
Oh, my! Lastman's depiction of Nausicaa is hardly the delicate young 16?-year old of my
translation. And there's a crowd there, instead of just her three maids.
GINNY, the old washboards offered the same dirt-bashing aid that the rocks in the river
did, and the beaters in your washing machine do now. The loosen the ground in dirt so the
water can flush it away.
Odysseus is a strong character and will do all that it is in his power to do. But let's face it,..
without Athena he would still be languishing on Calypso's isle. And having those young women
to help him and take him into the city was...well, literally 'providential'.
I was startled at the long speech made by the ‘child’ who led Odysseus through the city to the king’s mansion. It seems so inappropriate for a “small girl child” to provide so much pertinent information, unasked. After all, Odysseus is not supposed to know who this really was. I finally decided that if the child was a natural chatterbox, delighted to have a grown-up listening to her, she might proudly tell all the stories she knew about her city and her king. Putting it mentally into a film setting, I can see where that would work.
-
"So in some uses, has odessey become a lower case word?" Yes, and different things are referred to as "odysseys".
" IS there anything here other than these interesting scenes?" There's berilliant literature! The delicacy of this scene with Nausicaa and her maid, following the rough sea adventure and preceeding the Cyclops is just what the book needs. There is no love story in Oddysey to provide a human touch to balance the roughness of the adventures. This takes it's place.
Do you remember in the Iliad, a story of war, we had the scene where Vulcan makes Achilles" sheild with the picture of men and women playing in the woods? The peaceful life that is possible when war is over. That is what Oddyseus is seeing here, hidden, and as an outcast, looking on.
And the delicacy whith which he approaches it, knowing it is something precious that can be broken. His delayed approach to town is part of that delicacy. Remember the restricted role of women in this society. If N were seen going through town with a strange man, her reputation would be ruined forever.
-
Thank you Mippy. I miss Latin class and all of you--it gives me a nice feeling when I see you post here. And thank you for the reminder that this is fantasy....and I am enjoying the song-story very much.
What were the old wash boards for? Do any of you remember them? Am I a relic from the past? I remember people violently rubbing clothes against washboards, whatever for?
I am a relic from the past and used a washboard--especially for scrubbing dirty socks. Then I decided I was probably rubbing holes in them and hung the washboard on the wall for a decoration. The river washing reminded me of times we went "up north" and I washed diapers in a tub of lake water and rinsed them in the lake.
I was wondering why a princess should have to do her own laundry?? She even drove the cart??
-
Washboards were for washing clothes. I remember my Mom using one when I was a tot.
Today they are for sale for 14.95 on the web.
The Columbus Washboard Co. in Logan Ohio is still manufactoring them! You can buy ten differeny types depending wether you want to wash on them or use them as a musical instrument or as a decoration for your wall.
And if you are ever in Logan they offer free tours to their factory.
Washboards were popular in 1941 when this company alone made a million and a quarter washboards.
Other companies sell imported wahboards. So they must still be popular in other places in the world where the need for them still exists.
-
I vaguely remember a washboard, but it could be my imagination. What we did have, when I was little, was a deep tub basement sink with the wash grooves set right into front side which was slightly angled rather than straight up and down. And then there was the wringer washer. Ouch! That was my arm it tried to wring. Fortunately it didn't break my arm, but it did swell up a bit after being squished.
-
My mother used a washboard, a copper and a wringer - then the magic washing machine came along :D
-
Gumtree - my mother had all that washing apparatus. I remember being fascinated with the copper lining of the copper. My mother took advantage of this and asked if I would like to clean it every week. I think I used Ajax or something. Very corrosive, but we didn't know about things like that then. There were no liquid cleansers. Gumtree - did you mother also use those little Reckitts blue thingies? Now one can use Napi-San to keep clothes white - it costs a bomb. And Mum used one of those rather strange looking clothes line (before Hills hoists) of a couple of sticks hoilding the "line" up in the middle. Pre-dryers of course. I don't have a drier, I choose that option for a number of reasons, including financial and environmental.
I bet Athena never had to do the washing ???
-
O addresses Nausicaa; she gives him clothing and food, and instructs him on how best to approach her parents. Why does'nt she take him herself?
Nausicaa asks Odysseus to go ahead of her as she fears the people will believe she prefers a stranger for a husband which will cause a scandal.
The story of Athene taking O into the city is a little scrambled. First she has him hidden in clouds. Then she speaks to him as a little girl. Has she taken away the clouds? Is she speaking to clouds? The she has him in a mist. Still speaking to him.
Amusing that Athene made him look like a hunk -- taller, broader. Why? Were these people more handsome?
Phaeacians had long boats that they took out into the open sea rather than skimming the coast. Thought of as great sailors. They were said to be aloof and didn't interact with other peoples yet they sailed out into the open sea. Wonder where?
-
SANDY, I believe the 'kings' of that age, and their families, were not as lofty as they
later became. Their homes would be a bit larger, but very much like everyone elses. They
still managed their flocks/herds/farms...whatever they had. The women had help, but they
still managed the household. Few were as wealthy as Menelaos.
Feel free to correct me, anyone, if I'm wrong about this.
I find myself speculating whether the 'Phaecians' could have been ancestors of the
Phoenicians? They seem to be remarkable seamen, as the Phoenicians certainly were. I
was surprised to read that the Greeks got their alphabet originally from the Phoenicians.
Some disagreement as to the time period on that.
-
Roshanarose: re Wash boards - My mother used all of the things you mention including Reckitts Blue (good for bee stings) and Silver Star Starch - I used both of those myself. I don't think Ajax was invented when I had to clean the copper. Mother had some preparation we used - don't really know what it was. Old Coppers are just the thing for cooking crabs and prawns... they fetch good prices due to the copper content whenever anyone is pulling one out of an old house. The old clothes lines strung between supports were everywhere as were the 'props' - fashioned by aborigines out of young saplings and straight branches of ... you guessed it ... gumtrees. :D
-
It seems to me that the Phaeacians rarely, if ever saw a stranger - they were "the farthermost of men, and none of her mortals are conversant with them" - so the girls doing the washing would naturally be cautious when O appears before them starkers.
Book VI tells us that Phaeacians at one time "dwelt in Hyperia of the broad-dancing place" close by the Cyclopes who were stronger and used to injure the Phaeacians - and then we're told of the move by the Phaecaians to colonise Scheria.
Then godlike Nausithoos rose up and led them off
And settled them in Scheria, far from bread-earning men.
He set a wall around the city, built houses,
Made temples to the gods, and divided up the fields. (Cook Book VI:7-10)
So it seems that the Phaeacians isolated themselves - a wall around their city - fields divided and obviously they were rich and self sufficient - any strangers would be obvious and rare due to the location ofScheria thought to have been 'far off'. I have seen somewhere (aeons ago) that Scheria was thought to be Corfu whilst others claim it was Atlantis. In any case they were a fair way from anyone else.
Now as Ginny is wont to say Odyssey is everywhere among us today -
and she's right ... today I took down an Australian classic novel, For Love Alone by Christina Stead and nearly fell off my chair as I read the preamble in which Stead describes something of Australia
...This island continent lies in the water hemisphere. (thousands of miles from anywhere etc )
- and a page later there's this):
It is a fruitful island of the sea-world, a great Ithaca, there parched and stony and here trodden by flocks and curly-headed bulls and heavy with thick-set grain. To this race can be put the famous question "Oh, Australian, have you just come from the harbour? Is your ship in the roadstead? Men of what nation put you down? ..."
How apropos of our reading is that ? The inference is so clear and how reminiscent of 'fruitful' Phaeacia it all is and Stead's copying the Homeric use of the hyphen - sea-world - curly-headed bulls - thick-set grain - and then substitute 'stranger' for 'Australian' and you have Odysseus.
I just had to share...
-
GUM: that's neat!
I think we've all done too much laundry to appreciate this passage. remember it was written by a man, who probably never knew what a hard job it was. He sees the young women playing ball and laughing while waiting for their clothes to dry.
I used a washboard in Israel in the 60s. I'm sure there are many places where women still use them.
Notice how unique a request is seems when N asks to launder the clothes. If they only did the laundry when Athena reminded them, I'd hate to be around these folks.
-
Hi everyone, I've been travelling the last couple of weeks and not bothering with email, but did take along the Odyssey and it made great bedtime reading. In fact I'm into book 10 so will have to slow down. I've been skimming thru the previous emails and I agree, its a super story and a great adventure. The descriptions are terrific, how could a blind man be so observant of the way nature behaves, doesn't make sense to me. I read somewhere that the blind harper Demodocus is the reason that the ancients started thinking Homer was blind, and then everyone else followed along in that assumption....if he was blind, he must have gone blind in later life, maybe cataracts......anyway, I realise I'm quoting ahead of the group--where are we supposed to be reading to now? I think Arete is definitely the power behind the throne, and one smart lady (her daughter takes after her!). Alkinoos is a garrulous, sensitive and impulsive man. Odysseus however is more of a cardboard copy of a hero to me so far, again I think I'm saying the same as some of you already have, have not been particularly impressed by his deviousness yet, either!!
-
Thanks, GUM. Now I need to see what I can find out about Hyperia. I did note during my
'research' that the Phoenicians colonized all around the Mediterranean.
Okay, it seems that Hyperia may be an older name for the island of Amorgos, the
easternmost island of the Greek Cyclades. The remains of an ancient walled city can still
be seen there, scattered about the island. All this is speculation, with no mention of
Phoenicians and some possibility of settlement by Cretans. And to bring all this
speculation full circle, the earliest know literary sources for Greek mythology are....
The Iliad and the Odyssey! :)
-
I really love the passage in Book VII (Pope's version) that describes the garden at Alcinous' palace.
Close to the gates a spacious garden lies,
From storms defended and inclement skies.
Four acres was the allotted space of ground,
Fenced with a green enclosure all around.
Tall thriving trees confess'd the fruitful mould:
The reddening apple ripens here to gold.
Here the blue fig with luscious juice o'erflows,
With deeper red the full pomegranate glows;
The branch here bends beneath the weighty pear,
And verdant olives flourish round the year,
The balmy spirit of the western gale
Eternal breathes on fruits, unthought to fail:
Each dropping pear a following pear supplies,
On apples apples, figs on figs arise:
The same mild season gives the blooms to blow,
The buds to harden, and the fruits to grow.
Here order'd vines in equal ranks appear,
With all the united labours of the year;
Some to unload the fertile branches run,
Some dry the blackening clusters in the sun,
Others to tread the liquid harvest join:
The groaning presses foam with floods of wine
Here are the vines in early flower descried,
Here grapes discolour'd on the sunnyside,
And there in autumn's richest purple dyed,
Beds of all various herbs, for ever green,
In beauteous order terminate the scene.
Two plenteous fountains the whole prospect crown'd
This through the gardens leads its streams around
Visits each plant, and waters all the ground;
While that in pipes beneath the palace flows,
And thence its current on the town bestows:
To various use their various streams they bring,
The people one, and one supplies the king.
I got curious as to the origin of pears and apples. I knew that apples are believed to have originated in China (Tien Shan Mountians). Apparently, pears originated in the same area (although I saw claims of European origin). The first mention of pears in literature is none other than The Odyssey. Apple remains have been found as early as 6500bc in the Middle East and may have reached these areas as early as 8000bc.
-
"I got curious as to the origin of pears and apples."
I had a translation of "The Song of Songs" with notes. In the passage "comfort me with apples, for I am sick with love.", as I mentioned before the word for "apples" is an orphan only appearing the once, and no one knows what it means. This translator argues that it couldn't be apples, as they were unknown in the Middle East at that time, and argues for apricots. Your source seems to contradict this.
-
I love thinking of things like this: had these people ever seen an apple? a pear? Did they have fruits unknown today? If you wanted to be comforted by a fruit, what would it be?
-
This is by no means the end all be all of the debate of when and where apples came from, but it has a nice timeline.
http://www.hort.purdue.edu/newcrop/maia/history.html
Other tidbits: Our modern name "pear" apparently came from the German or French. The Romans didn't eat pears raw; they liked to stew them in honey.
Actually, if I wanted a comfort fruit in would probably be a strawberry.
-
I am LOVING the conversation here! So many interesting things brought up!
What kind of fruit is comfort? I love that question. I keep thinking pears tho I can't imagine why. I love apples, Fugi apples. I love cherries. Maybe an apple? Unfortunately I have not moved to the point where "comfort food" means fruit. Tomato soup now and a grilled cheese sandwich? Yes. hahahaa cake? Yes. er...
There are tons of myths about apples, so unless they had a different fruit in mind I guess they had apples. OK I looked it up, so far as the Romans went, according to Warsley they had a "choice of fruits," from "olives (is an olive a fruit?), raisins, apples, apricots, melons, peaches, cherries, grapes, oranges, pineapples, dates, figs, bananas, pears, and plums, though some were imported."
Frybabe, how interesting, the first mention of a pear was in the Odyssey! So many firsts, I did not know that. Loved the Pope, he was quite lyrical. I don't really know anything about him but he sure can write.
Babi, isn't that evocative: The remains of an ancient walled city can still
be seen there, scattered about the island. The Phoenicians fascinate me. We know they founded Carthage but that's another hero who left behind another woman who loved him, trying to get home, Aeneas.
Seems to be a common thread if I'm reading Naucisaa right, what's this from her father at the end of 7? He's just MET Odysseus, and he's already:
"My kind of man--would marry my daughter
And stay here and be called my son."
Dang, that's fast.
Even tho he's just said he lost all his crew crashing on Ogygia with Calypso. And they are seafarers. They are really strange.
Now when they talk of the "Spinners" in line 210 Lombardo (whose lines are off, this is between 198-231) are they referring to the Three Fates? I always thought they were eerie and wondered which one was the most important: Clotho, Lachesis or Atropos and I hope they are right as I memorized them a long time ago.
But which is more important, the one who spun the thread of life, the one who measured it out or the one who cut it?
Anyway, love those three.
Dana, welcome back! I agree he's not shown us a lot of deviousness yet or particularly much thinking except for arguing with the goddesses.
In the interest of not writing 800 mile long posts, I'll try a new one. :)
-
Frybabe, what an interesting time line! Strawberries, now, yummmm, I may change my comfort food to strawberries and cream or ice cream, or maybe even shortcake, yum! I made a raspberry fool last Sunday and it really was good and I actually don't care for raspberries having had to eat so many as a child.
Babi I was kind of taken with the "little girl" guise of Athena, too. She said they were not particularly welcoming and were intolerant of strangers, isn't that odd?
I did like the mist she put around him so nobody could see him. I bet you a dollar that's where Rowling got her Harry Potter stuff, she has a classics background which shows.
hahaha SandyRose, you put your finger right on it!
I was wondering why a princess should have to do her own laundry?? She even drove the cart??
OH good point, with all those servants, or is this some kind of ritual wedding thing or something?
Gumtree, how fabulously interesting, it's getting spooky how it's all around us!!! I love that aspect of reading, thank you for that!
The thing IS, if we were not reading this, that might have slipped by, unnoticed. Makes you wonder how many other allusions slip by.
People used to read the Classics in translation just TO understand the references. Looks like that benefit is not gone!
That's a good point, too, they may have just been so isolated they were suspicious.
Sally,
The story of Athene taking O into the city is a little scrambled. First she has him hidden in clouds. Then she speaks to him as a little girl. Has she taken away the clouds? Is she speaking to clouds? The she has him in a mist. Still speaking to him.
This makes me laugh. Lombardo has a mist instead of a cloud. haahahaaaaaaaaaaaaaa It must be late, I find him traveling in a cloud impossibly funny. hahaa Shades of Monty Python. :)
Amusing that Athene made him look like a hunk -- taller, broader. Why? Were these people more handsome?
Now that's a good point. Well Nausciaa is, she has "white arms." What does that mean?
I've been noticing how many times she makes him look godlike or fabulous. Maybe appearances do matter? The thing is we've all had moments when somebody has looked really fabulous and never again or one looks especially great. I love the idea that they did, then, too, and attributed it to the gods.
This IS sort of an amusing chapter in some ways. Apparently that ceases in 9-12.
Everywhere he goes the ladies fall for him, hard. I am trying to figure out why? He's a regular Adonis apparently. Maybe a Clark Gable, then I could understand it. Ok Clark as O.
So he's safe when he meets the little girl, as he's in a mist, but I agree this is kind of scattered and magical. He speaks to the "little girl" first. One assumes he's now visible, just like Harry Potter.
But why a little girl? Why not look like a man or a cobbler or somebody they all know like Mentor was in Ithaca?
Why all these disguises? Why not keep him in a cloud the whole time? hahahaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa Monty Python, I can't stand it. hahahaa
And then Athena told O in the guise of the little girl they are allowed to sail by Poseidon. I am not sure if she means like everybody else on the sea or if they have a special friendship. Or relationship? Or kinship? Does the king say somewhere they have a special kinship with somebody? If they have any kind of relationship with Poseidon, it's going to get very sticky here.
SHRIEK! hahahaa Joan K, you are so funny: If they only did the laundry when Athena reminded them, I'd hate to be around these folks. hahaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa
One thing that the Romans thought really set themselves off from the other peoples of the ancient day was the Baths: they bathed. Daily. Imagine. hahahaa
You all are a hoot on these washboards, from Sandy not wanting to rub holes in the socks, to Gum and another Greek mythology reference: Ajax!
This just blew my mind, Jude: The Columbus Washboard Co. in Logan Ohio is still manufacturing them! You can buy ten different types depending whether you want to wash on them or use them as a musical instrument or as a decoration for your wall.
You're KIDDING! I want one. I told my husband this and he said well there's the creek and the rocks. Droll droll man. ho ho ho Don't you wonder where those Cracker Barrel Restaurants get those old timey things? I guess we know now where they get the washboards!
Margie those ringers have really messed people up. I used to be in total fear of them, you were lucky: I've seen people's fingers lost. Why wringers, they would wring things before hanging them on the line? Golly moses it's a wonder the women of yesteryear weighed 50 pounds. I wonder what percentage of time daily was taken with this kind of hard physical labor. And it seems as if I recall more than one stage in the wringer? There was a high wringer but did it go thru another one? Man one feels old here. hahahaa
OK here are two as yet unaddressed questions to go with our great reader questions as we're contemplating our comfort fruit:
On reaching the city, O waits outside in Athena's grove. Why do you think Athena fails to reveal herself to O?
That's a good question, she sure puts on enough other costumes, you'd think it was Halloween. Did he know who she was as the "little girl?"
No wonder the man's depressed, nothing is who or what he thinks it is.
How about this one?:
What do we learn about O's character in his first encounter with Nausicaa? What information does he withhold?
Let's go on to 8? Itr is so EASY to read these little snippets at a time and they do seem to be contained in themselves.
Does anybody know why the books are organized as they are?
Why the breaks? 7 and 8 are about the same thing, why are there breaks? Does any source tell about how these came to be arranged in books?
I want to discuss these odd people, this is very like Harry Potter, isn't it?
OK here a couple of chapters from the end of 7, Alcinous, the king, tells O ( about 4 paragraphs from the end of 7)
You will lie down and sleep
While they row you over the calm water
Until you come to your home....
But you will see for yourself
How good our ships and rowers are."
Ok mark that, the rowers thing. He's said twice they "row."
Let's read 8 for Monday and see if they actually DO row?
He sure has taken a fancy to O, hasn't he?
Could we do 8 for Monday? It's kind of hard to stop reading in places, this gets very interesting.
OH peaches and ice cream, now there's something that's hard to beat?
-
DANA: glad you're with us! Fun, isn't it.
FRY: great history of apples.I never thought of this before: apples do have a connection wwith sin, don't they. First:
"The sexual and romantic connotations of the apple were powerful reasons why apples came as dessert at the end of the meal. They not only tasted heavenly and were good for digestion but were regarded as a cunning transitional aphrodisiac for the pleasures that followed. "
(I must be eating the wrong sort of apples).
And then, an artist depicts the forbidden fruit in Eden as an apple, and so it's assumed that it was (does this mean we don't know what it was?).
Once it's identified as the forbidden fruit, it's shunned by the illiterate but popular with the literate. What does THAT mean?
-
isn't there a Latin saying
ab ovo usque ad malam from the egg to the apple
from soup to nuts
I guess they had apples then
I was thinking about what I said about Odysseus--that he didn't really make an impact on me "personalitywise" and I realise that's not true, he actually rather irritates me--all that endless debating with himself (eg
when clinging to the tiller, later deciding how to approach Nausicaa) and weeping (well that annoys me with Penelope too) and then later on he turns out to be his own worst enemy....but mustn't jump the gun, I think I'll not say any more till I'm back in line with everyone again because its too hard not to be influenced by the progression of the story
By the way, was just reading in Newsweek that Atlantis may have been found (again!) situated near Gibraltar round about Cadiz--apparently they found some concentric circles there as mentioned by Plato. Also artefacts. Thought to have been destroyed by a tsunami about 4000 years ago. Not mentioned in the Odyssey tho!
-
For comfort and sensuality all rolled into one delicious pagkage, it is mangoes every time.... They say the best place to eat them is in the bath :o
-
roshanarose - you ccan have all the mangoes - I'm so allergic to them that if I even touch one I have severe reactions.
As for my comfort fruit - I like them all it's hard to choose but one thing I really do like is the tomato. A well grown and vine-ripened tomato has everything - it is succulent, rich and tasty, and with just an added touch of sharpness - for me, the king of all fruits.
-
A fresh picked tomato warm from the sun - I can see my grandmother now in her Hoover standing in the garden eating a red tomato trying to keep the juice from dripping down her chin. The tomato is an Aztec fruit traced back 700 AD
Gumtree - I only read the reason the tomato was considered poisonous in Europe was because the acid leached out the lead in the pewter - since poor folks used wooden spoons and plates they were not made sick and so the recipes using tomatoes came from the peasants.
Roshanarose - I did not know the history of the Mango - wow - we are talking ancient
http://www.plantcultures.org/plants/mango_history.html
I had no idea it was related to cashews and pistachios. All of sudden the color of the mango and now that I know more of its history is bringing up scenes of an arched gazebos with sheer silken sari cloth floating in a breeze on a dark blue sky summer night - ahhhh.
Frybabe I am trying to remember who it was but only last week or maybe the week before - I think on the Charlie Rose show of all places there was someone on who was singing the glories of Kazakstan and among the tidbits he was saying, they take credit for the first domesticated apple and evidently the countryside is covered in apple orchards - it is mountainous and apple trees are in bloom covering the landscape in white. This site has the history pretty much as you shared it...http://www.hort.purdue.edu/newcrop/maia/history.html
Are the Scuppernong's your comfort fruit Ginny? http://www.scuppernongs.com/id2.html
For me a comfort fruit - I flirted with the idea of a peach drooling down my chin but had to settle on the apricot with its warm soft and fuzzy skin - sweet without being cloying sweet - no sugar or cream needed to heighten the flavor - just like kissing a child's cheek rosy from the sun and best of all the dried apricot in winter is a delicious treat along with apricot jam between layers of yellow cake and slathering a pork roast - yes, an Apricot it is. http://www.apricot-oil.com/en/apricots/apricot_history.html Evidently in China a branch of apricot is used as a bridal decoration much as we think of a branch of orange blossoms.
-
I read more symbolism in King Alcinous' palace. The dog is symbolic of Fidelity, watchfulness, nobility philosophical principle of life. A keeper of boundaries between this world and the next; guardian of the passage, associated with all messenger gods and gods of destruction - an attribute of Hermes - Homer suggests the dog is shameless and also accompanies the hunter Orion. The monster dog Cerberuis guards the entrance to the underworld - there are many more meaning on a full page devoted to the Dog -
A Symbol is considered the instrument of knowledge and is the most ancient and fundamental method of expression which reveals aspects of reality that escape other modes of expression. Symbolism urges meditation, is international and stretches over the ages, is fundamentally basic to the human mind.
A door symbolizes Hope; opportunity; opening; passages from one state or world to another; entrance to a new life; initiation; the sheltering aspect of the Great Mother. The open door is both opportunity and liberation.
hmmm I wonder if this door symbolism is strengthened as an aspect of the Great Mother by Odysseus being instructed to seek out the queen.
Silver is symbolic of the moon, virginity, the feminine aspect with gold as the masculine - the queen with the King as gold. Gold the sun, illumination, self-luminous, the quality of sacredness, incorruptibility, wisdom, durability, nobility, the equilibrium of all metallic properties, superiority, wealth.
All the fruits mentioned have a symbolic meaning - i am just going to include the oldest symbolic meaning since later in history and in other cultures there are additional meanings. Grapes wisdom, Figs peace and prosperity, Pear hope and good health, Pomegranate immortality, unity, plenty, rejuvenation, emblem of Hera, Ceres, Persephone the return of Spring, fertility to the earth, grew from the blood of Dionysos. Apple fertility, joyousness, knowledge, wisdom, luxury, love, sacred to Venus, as love and desire, a bridal symbol and offering,. Apple branches are an attribute of Nemesis and Artemis and in the rites of Diana. the Apple of Dionysos was the quince. The Apple tree was associated with health and immortality, sacred to Apollo. Olive Immortality, fruitfulness, fertility, peace, plenty, achievement. Grass usefulness, submission, conquest of a land, surrender.
-
FRYBABE, it's lovely poetry, but again I feel as though I'm reading Pope, not Homer. The
sense of a saga told by a minstrel is just not there.
I agree, GINNY. Daddy's assessment of Odysseus for a future son-in-law was awfully quick.
I'm more inclined to think that Homer is just gilding his hero a bit more, showing everyone
esteeming him highly. Nausicaa's 'white arms', now, I think is an indication that this is
a lady, not some sun-tanned farm wench.
Grown-up men crying is not widely acceptable today, is it, DANA? And even women we now
prefer to think of as strong, and not weepy. (They are excused, of course, for weeping over
the loss of a loved one.) From all the weeping going on in Homer, tho', I would say that
emotional displays were quite acceptable in ancient Greece.
-
Yum, yum. I think I would go with that peach.
-
Well, I was going to say my favorite fruits are raspberries and apricots, but then roshanarose mentioned mangoes, and that reminded me of something. Forty years ago, an Indian friend, returning from a visit home, brought us some mangoes he had brought back on the plane. I think maybe a different variety of mango thrives in India, and these were absolutely dead ripe. They tasted like a super-idealized perfect idea of what a mango could only dream of becoming. If I could get mangoes like those, they would definitely be my favorite fruit.
-
You may be right Babi, but then he may be closer to the way it was written. The references I looked at say that the Odyssey was written in dactylic hexameter and more than likely accompanied by music. I am not sure whether that means that the poems were simply related with a background of music or whether they were actually sung. Who knows, it could have been an ancient form of Rap ::) I am not much of a poetry person, so I can't tell if Pope tried to stay close to the dactylic hexameter form or if he used his own poetic style to tell the tale. I think very early on in the discussion there was mention of poetic forms at which my eyes glazed and skimmed over.
-
I'm back in town, and finally gotten my wind after the worst plant trip I've had in decades. Now to play catch-up and say the things I've thought of while away.
Constellations: some of them are quite ancient. Here's some info from my star maps (old, but with a text by astronomer Donald Menzel). Stone age carvings in caves in Sweden unmistakably show the Great Bear (big dipper). Astrology developed about 1200 BC, and the Assyrians and Babylonians had already divided the zodiac, mostly into the same constellations we now use.
The "Bear (also known as the Wagon)" is probably the Big Dipper, not the Little Dipper, since that's the one that is also the wagon. But either would be in the north, so by sailing with the Bear on his left, Odysseus is going east. It is "aloof from the wash of Ocean" because it never sets.
-
my thoughts about 'the Odyssey' are all over the place so here goes.....
when I read of Odysseus crying and carrying on because being marooned on the island with Calypso...why doesn't he do something beside feel sorry for himself.,.. begin creating a raft, start storing up provisions so when the opportunity arises he is ready to leave/escape...why is he sleeping with calypso when he has Penelope back home pining for him
so many discrepancies...are they due to the translations...the time period and not understanding how people of that era thought...is Homer a poor writer of the era, but the one that came thru the ages for us to read (will I get chastised for that last thought!!!!)
one more point though having trouble with the princess telling Odysseus to travel alone for the sake how her friends would view her instead it was easily found out that she had already met him and then allowed him to continue alone ...so she gets chastised by her parents for doing so
I am not very empathetic for Odysseus as a character
what happened ...of course 20 years more or less and he could have shifted in his character, loss of confidence...he may be the hero of our story but my empathies don't really lie with him...and then a part of me says well he is genuinely expressing his feelings something we feel men have shut out of their lives in our society quite often, so why do I condemn him for this
as far as Athena...would Athena not be letting Odysseus realize her identity so not to let him get dependent on her super powers as a Goddess!!!......he seems to be an 'oh woe is me' type person, yet in his battle actions was a man of action with confidence and daring and 'go get them' attitude while in Troy...maybe Homer did another first writing of a character 'depressed' and not able to manage his life while in this mind set
if my thoughts are totally out in left field tell me and I'll back off
Deb
-
Au contraire Deb - I think you make excellent points about Odysseus. A psychologist of today would probably describe him as suffering from clinical depression and post-traumatic stress. At least that is how he appears. (Psychologists most welcome to argue this point) It is so tempting to put people in pyschological boxes, and I hope that I am not doing O a disservice. Maybe he got sick of being the tough guy with the troops for so long in the Iliad. A man, a King is not meant to show emotion during war. He is, after all, a "creation" of Homer's. But Homer is writing about him a couple of hundred years after the "fact". We, necessarily, look at him with modern eyes. People's emotions haven't changed, but so many other things have. btw psycho in Greek is pronounced Pseehee, p and s are pronounced together, i.e. the p is not silent (Ancient Greek)- ψυχή = breath (Latin) anima. In Modern Greek the word has taken on a slightly diferent meaning - soul, spirit, energy and butterfly. :)
-
The Book Club Online is the oldest book club on the Internet, begun in 1996, open to everyone. We offer cordial discussions of one book a month, 24/7 and enjoy the company of readers from all over the world. Everyone is welcome to join in.
Now reading:
(http://www.seniorlearn.org/bookclubs/classicsbookclub/cbc2odysseysm.jpg)
March 28---Book VIII:
At the court of Alcinoös
(http://seniorlearn.org/latin/ulysses_penelope/OdysseusPhaeciansRubens1577-1640.jpg)
Odysseus on the island of the Phaiacians
Peter Paul Rubens (1577 - 1640)
(http://seniorlearn.org/latin/ulysses_penelope/OdysseusNausicaaRosa16151673Hermitage.jpg)
Odysseus and Nausicaa
Salvator Rosa (1615 - 1673)
The Hermitage, St. Petersburg
Discussion Leaders: Joan K (joankraft13@yahoo.com) & ginny (gvinesc@wildblue.net)
(http://seniorlearn.org/latin/ulysses_penelope/OdysseusweepsFlaxman.jpg)
Odysseus weeps at the singing of Demodocos
John Flaxman
1805
Useful Links:
1. Critical Analysis: Free SparkNotes background and analysis on the Odyssey (http://www.sparknotes.com/lit/odyssey)
2. Translations Used in This Discussion So Far: (http://www.seniorlearn.org/bookclubs/odyssey/odyssey_translations.html)
3. Initial Points to Watch For: submitted by JudeS (http://www.seniorlearn.org/bookclubs/odyssey/odyssey_points.html)
4. Maps:
Map of the Voyages of Odysseus (http://www.seniorlearn.org/latin/ulysses_penelope/Odysseusmap.jpg)
Map of Voyages in order (http://www.wesleyan.edu/~mkatz/Images/Voyages.jpg)
Map of Stops Numbered (http://www.seniorlearn.org/latin/ulysses_penelope/Odysseusmap2.jpg)
Our Map Showing Place Names in the Odyssey (http://www.seniorlearn.org/latin/graphics/AncientGreecemap.jpg)
(http://seniorlearn.org/latin/ulysses_penelope/OdysseusNausicaaLeighton.jpg)
Nausicaa
Frederic, Lord Leighton (1830 - 1896)
Barb - Slightly off track, but we are talking about exotica. I always knew that the mango had a fascinating history. Thanks for the link and the heady image :)
-
Deb regarding discrepancies and inconsistancies, one of the theories postulated by scholars has been that Homer brought together older tales he had gathered and incorporated the tales into one. The discrepancies and inconsistencies are what they point to as "proof".
-
GORGEOUS, JUST GORGEOUS pictures!
-
Hello
This is my first post soooo...
I have been following along and am having a great time thinking over all the views and info.I felt prompted to post because of what I thought is an interesting side note in my old cliff notes . Supposedly Builer at one time tried to
prove that Nausicca was the real writer of the Odyssey.The writer did not elaborate except to say that R.Graves
developed a novel from this idea ;HOMER"S DAUGHTER .Interesting ????
Amicah
-
Correction!
Of course, I meant Butler . So much for my typing skills.
Clark Gable ;yes, but I keep seeing Gerard Butler as Odysseus. { the actor from Scotland }. Hope I'll do better with my next post.Back to reading!
-
AMICAH so glad you posted - since I am not up on the current crop of actors I had to look up to see who was this Gerard Butler.
Here we go - yes, I agree - a bit nicer looking and a bit softer looking but the look that I too would say was a good choice for Odyesseus (http://www.google.com/imgres?imgurl=http://www.daemonsmovies.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/11/Gerard-Butler_1.jpg&imgrefurl=http://www.daemonsmovies.com/2010/11/16/gerard-butler-may-star-in-afterburn/&h=400&w=400&sz=36&tbnid=lPDovQMRQqY8-M:&tbnh=124&tbnw=124&prev=/images%3Fq%3Dgerard%2Bbutler&zoom=1&q=gerard+butler&usg=__22ZJ_fEBOAvOxYzEm6X_tE00ZpU=&sa=X&ei=q5mPTeT1DeeR0QG3-oG_Cw&ved=0CEAQ9QEwBQ)
-
Oh yummy! Sigh!!
Although Robert Graves wrote extensively, I am mostly familiar with him via his I Claudius and a volume containing letter correspondence between him and T. E. Lawrence.
-
AMICAH: WELCOME, WELCOME! Sit down at the feast, and I'll have slaves bring you food and wine!
Actually, since the men always have womeen serving them, can we have men servants? Maybe that yummy Gerard Butler! (If we're going to havea virtual feast, let's do it up right!)
On mangos: there has to be more to mangos than I know. My husband grew up in Florida and picked them off the tree. He loved mangos, but said those we got in Maryland weren't the same. I never learned to like them, so haven't tried them in California.
I'm not surprised they come from India: if you've ever been in an Indian grocery store, the have mang EVERYTHING: mango ice cream, mango popsicles, mango jam, mango chutney, dried, fresh, frozen, you name it.
-
I'd like to see the argument that Nausicaa wrote the Odyssey. I love the picture of her by Lord whats-is-name.
-
I have to say it--none of the pictures of any of the characters by any of these middle ages artists do anything for me. But neither do Taylor and Burton or any of the latest stars playing Romans or Greeks. They're just so of their time. (Whatever that means, how could they not be?) Anyway I have a vague fuzzy idea in my head,or no idea, and that's better to me.
-
AMICAH--it's good to see you here. You'll certainly get all sides of the story here--we're all over the map on what we think about everyone and everything, and we won't reach a consensus, but I guarantee we'll squeeze every drop of juice we can out of the Odyssey. You've never really read a book in depth until you've read it on Seniorlearn.
-
Dana, what you feel about the artists being too much of their time, I feel about some of the translations. That's why I like Lombardo. He uses some colloquialisms which will make him seem dated after a while, but he deliberately stays very close to the original, not adding anything, and keeping the sense as close as possible to Homer. Plus he has kept a rhythm which asks to be read aloud, as the original was recited. In fact, when we read his translation of the Iliad here, I did read most of it aloud to myself.
Deb regarding discrepancies and inconsistancies, one of the theories postulated by scholars has been that Homer brought together older tales he had gathered and incorporated the tales into one. The discrepancies and inconsistencies are what they point to as "proof".
There is a good example of this in the Iliad. There is a chapter or so in which some of the Greeks go off on a horse stealing raid to the Trojan camp which is in totally a different tone from the rest, serves no purpose in the overall story, and looks very much like something inserted.
-
Χαίρετε ΑΜΙΚΑ
I like looking at Gerard Butler too, but if he played Odysseus it would be a tad confusing because he played Leonidas at Thermopylae in the movie "300".
JoanK - Yes there are mangoes and mangoes. They sell about 4 varieties of mango in my state, but everyone knows the best is the Bowen Mango. Not quite as big as some but absolutely delicious. The way you know you are buying a good mango is colour and then scent. Mmmmm I can smell it now. I agree that it would be great to have serving men at out banquet to welcome AMICAH.
-
Amicah Hello Hello - so happy to meet you. your man Gerard Butler is new to me - looks good!
Frybabe Thanks for mention of Grave's Homer's Daughter - I'll try to unearth a copy.
Graves had a huge literary output. Apart from I Claudius and Claudius the God there are other novels Count Belisarius for one and biographies, translations and considerable poetry. He also wrote The White Goddess which was mentioned here earlier. His interpretation of The Greek Myths is still well regarded though come classicists are not so impressed. I found Martin Seymour-Smith's biography of Graves worth reading.
PatH I feel the same about my Cook translation as you do about Lombardo. Cook tried to give a literal line by line translation -which to my mind is elegant and reads timelessly . So far nothing has grated as being too colloquial or too much of the 1960s.
-
Oh my, what a wonderful start for Book VIII we have here this morning!!
And we have a billion questions here in this post, grab one and hang on!
Welcome, Amicah!! We are so glad to have you! This is what I love about the Odyssey, I love the short books and people able to join in. What a provocative theory about the author of the Odyssey!! Thank you for bringing it here! Gerard Butler, I had never heard of but I followed your link and he's perfect! Wow!
Gum what does Martin Seymour-Smith's biography say about Graves? I've always been somewhat suspect of Graves, what did he conclude?
RoshanaRose, Butler was in 300? I tried but could not watch that thing, maybe I was watching the wrong one? Scary, very scary. Are we thinking of the same film? Cartoon like thing?
Welcome back, PatH, I agree about Lombardo. Thank you for letting us know O is going East. I would be a hopeless sailor, but the new IPhone has a compass! At last I know which direction I'm going. :) hahahaa I think this needs to be our motto:
You've never really read a book in depth until you've read it on Seniorlearn.
Frybabe with the glazed eyes, hahaha what rhyme scheme is Pope writing in? I would like to find somebody who is copying the dactylic hexameter in English if that's possible and I am pretty sure somebody somewhere has tried, tho it's not our rhythm of speech.
JoanK, loved that feast analogy! I like mangoes but they need to be ripe.
________________________________
I was reading Goldsworthy's Antony and Cleopatra last night and he does go on quite a bit about Athens and Sparta, things I did not know. I recommend him, even if you have to put him on Kindle, (he's really easier to read that way).
Ella, welcome! I am so glad you like the art here. I am also glad to see Dana say I have to say it--none of the pictures of any of the characters by any of these middle ages artists do anything for me. But neither do Taylor and Burton or any of the latest stars playing Romans or Greeks. They're just so of their time. (Whatever that means, how could they not be?) Anyway I have a vague fuzzy idea in my head,or no idea, and that's better to me.
It isn't supposed to illustrate the characters for us each individually or even to suggest what they look like? The purpose of the art in the heading, which so far has spanned from the 6th C BC Greek vases, kraters and plates, to the 20th c, (John William Waterhouse is 20th) is to illustrate instead the abiding influence that the Odyssey has had visually over the centuries. We've shown pottery, sculpture, etchings, book illustrations and paintings, and while it's true we've not put up a 1/10th of what's out there, it's a good representative bunch, so far, I think.
But no, trying to capture everybody here's individual idea of the appearance of these characters? Not.
In fact normally in a book discussion we do ask, what modern actor could you see in the part? I threw out Clark Gable, I like Gerard Butler better, whoever he is, but the fact is I personally never form any kind of image when I read and I certainly don't have one here.
In fact I dislike normally illustrations IN a modern book, because inevitably despite my having no idea of the appearance of the charcter, they interfere with what amorphours image I do have, that's why I dislike seeing a film portrayal of a book. Once having seen Geraldine McEwan as Lucia (quite a difference in her and the dark haired Benson protagonist, I think) and that voice, one can't see anybody else. Don't get me wrong, she IS Lucia for me, but if I had read the book first I think I would be confused.
So no, please take the illustrations as what they are and were intended as, and no more: the representations through the centuries (I mean Rubens is no slack) of what struck that artist about the story and how he chose to portray it. Isn't that what art is about?
For instance I put up the old Flaxman to make my own point about 8: the weeping.
How IS it that O sits weeping and "nobody sees him except XXX."
Are they all blind? Are they not looking at him? When's the last time (God forbid) you entertained a guest at your table and he started crying? Wouldn't that seem odd? How is it nobody sees him?
Chapter 8 is about as odd as you can get.
What's the strangest thing about it to YOU?
Who would YOU put as Odysseus? Nausicaa? Or are they not fleshed out enough and if not, why not?
Here are the excellent questions from Temple, I just love these questions, for some reason, want to try one?
Book 8
191-4 King Alcinous summons the Phaiakian assembly, which agrees to send Odysseus home by ship. Having returned to the palace, they're entertained by the singer Demodokos. Describe Demodocus, and think about any other figures that he suggests. O weeps at his song (why?), and, after being taunted, wins a discuss contest. Demodocus sings three songs that are thematically relevant to the epic as a whole.
194-210 Alcinous introduces exhibitions of dancing; Demodokos sings of Hephaestus' revenge on Ares and Aphrodite. Why does Odysseus react to this story differently? More dancing, and gifts for O. He now asks Demodocus for a certain story and weeps again. Alcinous questions him. Think about the content of the songs, O's response to them, and the epithets given to him in this book. What is going on? Do you recall another incident of weeping at dinner? Also, do you like the Phaeacians? Do they resemble any other group of people?
Intepretive interlude
We are now 1/3 of the way through, and the epic can in fact be divided into three parts. In Book 9, we see Odysseus at the beginning of his return; in Books 5-8, near the end, 10 years later. Has he changed? How?
Try thinking again about Books 6-9 as an anthropologist might in investigating alien cultures. How would you categorize or classify these cultures? As always with myth, think about food. Why do you think Homer has put them all in the epic? Remember, Homer does nothing without cause.
Start thinking about the type of human being that Odysseus personifies and about the larger allegorical significance of his journeys. The Odysseus myth has influenced texts from Dante's Inferno, to Joyce's Ulysses, to Conrad's Lord Jim, to Huckleberry Finn -- even Captain James T. Kirk of the Starship Enterprise (yes, think about that!) owes much of his identity to Odysseus.
I'm off to see if I can find out why the books are divided the way they are....OH, I have a new IPhone and one of the Apps was Quiz Quiz Quiz, trivia questions which are graded. Not only do they have Epics, they have a section of Latin and Latin pops up everywhere along with O himself! They do seem to have Greek history and I'm waiting to see if they have the Roman Empire as well. Fun fun fun, you'd get them all so far!
I want to leave with Deb's post and the questions SHE asks:
when I read of Odysseus crying and carrying on because being marooned on the island with Calypso...why doesn't he do something beside feel sorry for himself.,.. begin creating a raft, start storing up provisions so when the opportunity arises he is ready to leave/escape...why is he sleeping with calypso when he has Penelope back home pining for him
WHY doesn't he do something besides feel sorry for himself? Do you all see him as a "woe is me" type of character? What choices does he have to take control of his own life? He prides himself on his THINKING his way out of situations, and that's his rep. What thinking is he doing? How does it affect his situation if at all?
He reminds me at this point of that awful song, was it a country show? Hee Haw perhance?
Doom, despair and agony on me
Deep dark depression, excessive misery.
If it weren't for bad luck, I'd have no luck at all,
Doom, despair, and agony on me.
Note however the use of the Subjunctive in "were," pretty sophisticated hicks, huh?
Deb then asks:
I am not very empathetic for Odysseus as a character
what happened ...of course 20 years more or less and he could have shifted in his character, loss of confidence...he may be the hero of our story but my empathies don't really lie with him...and then a part of me says well he is genuinely expressing his feelings something we feel men have shut out of their lives in our society quite often, so why do I condemn him for this
But do we relate at all to O at this point? Somebody (sorry) mentioned he was at present a sketchy cartoon sort of character, is he?
as far as Athena...would Athena not be letting Odysseus realize her identity so not to let him get dependent on her super powers as a Goddess!!!....
What great points you are making, Deb is better than Temple. So as not to let him get dependent on her super powers? Does he have much choice?
She is all over him. Is she all over him to counteract Poseidon and "help?" Or what, exactly, is she doing? He knows, right? He knows it's Athene, or does he?
Wow what a roster of questions here today! Pick one, ask your own, talk to us about Book VIII!
-
I keep seeing Gerard Butler as Odysseus. { the actor from Scotland}
We really should see if we can't find a Greek actor for the part. John Cassavetes could have done it in his day. George Chakiris, in his younger days. Hey, did you know Nicholas Cage is Greek?
Oh, yeah! Gerard Butler looks like he would make a great Odysseus.
I loved the imagery of the young men dancing at the feast Antinoos held for his still unidentified
guest. It sounds like these were really good dancers. So I did a little research.
The Greeks danced at religious festivals, ceremonies; they danced to ensure fertility;
to prepare for war and to celebrate victories; they danced at weddings; to overcome
depression and to cure physical illness. Almost every dance has a story to tell. Dance was
regarded as one of the highest forms of art.
In major cities/kingdoms of Ancient Greece, men were taught to dance. According to
Athenaeus in Arcadia, the expenses were met from the civic purse and pupils staged an
annual display of their accomplished skills which all citizens attended. (That sounds like what the king was referring to when he said his young men had won prizes for their dancing.)
Most Greek dances are either performed in a circle, or in a long line. There are regional
differences in the dances as well. The 'eastern' islands are now known as the Aegeans, and
"the music of these islands is very delightful and lyrical and.... are characterised by the
lightness of steps and the springing in the knees. " Sounds very much like the Irish jig or
the Scottish hornpipe, doesn't it?
-
Sounds like the music and dance in "Zorba The Greek"... I did enjoy that film
-
Babi - Forgive me for correcting you re Nicholas Cage. Actually he is related to the Coppolas (Godfather fame and very Italian) and his mother was of German descent. Perhaps you are thinking of Nicholas Gage, who is Greek and wrote the very Greek novel "Eleni".
-
Ginny - What you call a hicks' song is actually blues. .
Doom, despair and agony on me
Deep dark depression, excessive misery.
If it weren't for bad luck, I'd have no luck at all,
Doom, despair, and agony on me.
Cream took up some of the lyrics, and in no way were they hicks.
by Booker T. Jones and William Bell
Born under a bad sign.
I've been down since I began to crawl.
If it wasn't for bad luck,
I wouldn't have no luck at all.
Bad luck and trouble's my only friend,
I've been down ever since I was ten.
Born under a bad sign.
I've been down since I began to crawl.
If it wasn't for bad luck,
I wouldn't have no luck at all.
-
Roshanna Rose, I was referring to the TV series Hee Haw, have you ever seen it?
I m sorry not to have been clear.
They used used this song as part of a running skit on the weekly show, which ran for years. I appreciate your concern, but my point was they used the song in a television show by country music characters, and singers, wasn't Roy Clark in it? It was a satire, featuring country type situations, and people deliberately exaggerated, poking fun seemingly at themselves but in reality at those who looked down on country music and people I guess. It's hard to describe if you haven't seen it, or if you don't know the genre. It was a major hit, actually.
I was pointing out, apparently not very well, that the song's lyrics were one of the many things which belied the "hick" image. And that was just one of the more telling things about the show.
That is all I was saying? And the only "motive" behind my saying it. I'm sorry not to have been clear. I'm not calling anybody a "hick." They did. Anybody who has actually seen the show knows what I'm talking about. Thank you for bringing to my attention that I expressed that poorly.
Sorry not to have been clear on that one.
-
I' ve been looking for info on Homer,s Daughter .I too am familiar with the Claudius books , but had never heard or seen anything about Homer"s Daughter, but there it is on Amazon .Used editions are available ,but the reviews are not too favorable. Of course, this is just an aside bit of information , back to the real thing! I must say I am learning a great deal here at Senior Learn. I started to read the O. years ago and got sidetracked. This is WONDERFUL ! ]And i am getting to know how to use a keyboard as well . ] Thanks
,
-
Gumtree, minor correction, Amicah is the one who first brought up Homer's Daugter not me.
One more comment about the weepy O and why he stayed so long with Calypso. Major Depression is a real nasty thing. It is like a whirlpool that just sucks you down so low that you have great difficulty bucking the tide. Do don't want to do anything, and often, don't want company. I know one person who, on some days, couldn't muster enough interest and strength to get out of bed. It takes a great deal of effort to break the cycle. Remember O didn't have the benefit of mood lifting drugs and psychiatric help as we know it today. It is, however, hard to believe that one could stay in a Major Depression for so long or that Calypso herself would put up with such behavior for so long.
-
I have to look back to see. But I thought we were told that O was under a spell so that he couldn't leave. Of course, this could be the way the Greeks explained the kind of deep depression we're talking about.
-
well he wouldn't have had any sex drive if he was in a major depression and Kalypso wouldn't have liked that! (maybe she lifted his depression every night though!!)
-
Good points JoanK and Dana.
-
Odysseus as loving husband: None of the Greeks seem to be faithful. The Iliad starts with a quarrel between Agamemnon and Achilles over who will get to sleep with which slave girl. This is about prestige, not sex, but they are both married men. But given that background, Odysseus admits that although Calypso, as a goddess, is more beautiful that his wife, he still wants to go back to Penelope.
Later he says something even more telling. He has just met Nausicaa, and is asking her help:
"And for yourself, may the gods grant you
Your heart's desire, a husband and a home,
And the blessing of a harmonious life.
For nothing is greater or finer than this,
When a man and woman live together
With one heart and mind, bringing joy
to their friends and grief to their foes."
-
You know, following on what I said that perhaps Kalypso lifted his depression every night , I thought that I had read something to that effect in the chapter--and sure enough when I looked:
Though he fought shy of her and her desire
he lay with her each night, for she compelled him.
But when day came he sat on the rocky shore annd broke his own heart groaning, with eyes wet
Truely Homer is a poet for all seasons I expect that's why he's lasted
-
Dana, that's exactly the sort of detail that would have blown by me if not for this discussion.
-
Dana--good for you...I wasn't giving much credit to Odysseus but after you found that information; I now feel I must read much more carefully...it makes me sad that I didn't pick up the reason for his sadness ...I will certainly be checking more carefully when I read and not be so quick to criticize ---the character
but I wonder why we are told the same thing thru past tense, present tense, one person's eyes then another person's thoughts...makes me think of someone with a word limit trying to pad out a story to fit the needed length of pages....of course when people had a lot more time and entertainment was in the telling of stories ....allowances would be made I imagine for drama and heightening suspense by various methods, one of these methods perhaps being that of repetition
Deb
-
This book reminds me of my father whose middle name was Achilles (my uncle's middle name was Ulysses). Under my father's picture in his high school year book was the phrase: "Woe is Me"
-
Gumtree, minor correction, Amicah is the one who first brought up Homer's Daughter not me.
Frybabe and Amicah Sorry I got my wires crossed - it's sometimes hard to keep everything straight especially when pressed for time. Any excuse :D
Whilst on the subject of Robert Graves I should attempt to answer the question Ginny posed:
Gum what does Martin Seymour-Smith's biography say about Graves? I've always been somewhat suspect of Graves, what did he conclude?
I should say I was never totally convinced by Graves either but am more inclined toward him now than I have ever been. The more I read Graves the better I appreciate him - which is not to say I read him every day :D
It's ten years or more since I read the biography so for what my memory is worth.....
Firstly, Seymour-Smith was a life long friend of Graves so one wonders whether he was truly objective OR alternatively by knowing his subject so well he was able to cut through the facade. He did hold back on some issues in the first edition but the 1995 edition (the one I read) was fully revised and extended to include matters he previously left unsaid. What they were I'll never know as I've no intention of reading the original 1982 edition but I believe chiefly it was to do with Graves' womanising -he had to have his Muse. S-S goes into those aspects quite thoroughly.
Seymour-Smith praises Graves' knowledge and facility for writing but is at pains to make the point that his own wife, who was an Oxford classicist, worked with Graves daily as his assistant whilst he was writing The Greek Myths - which he wrote for Penguin as part of their push to popularise the classics - Janet Seymour-Smith was appalled at the lack of scholarship and in part was responsible for correcting Graves' work - the inference being that Mrs S-S's contribution was vital in establishing some degree of accuracy -
So he really is suspect - on the other hand S-S praises Graves so far as the content of The White Goddess is concerned which Graves described a 'a historical grammar of poetic myth' - this is what S-S says about it (in part)
"The White Goddess ...is the product of a highly sophisticated, independent and uncompromising mind... The answer to the question as to whether Graves believed its thesis in a literal sense is that The White Goddess is a gigantic metaphor - although it is at the same time an idiosyncratic 'key' to, not all, but some, mythologies. It is, as well, the lively and stimulating expression of an outstanding and unusual temperament, a temperament which loathes and distrusts machinery, which hates the developments of technology, and which needs to live as near as possible to nature, in accord with the season.
..."
Graves wrote "The study of mythology...is based squarely on tree-lore and the seasonal observation of life in the fields"
I think Graves' long term reputation will rest on his poetry. He was one of the WWI War Poets along with Brooke, Sassoon, Owen et al. He was writing lyrical poetry at a time when it was way out of 'fashion' and he stuck to his guns continuing to write his brand of poetry until the end. The White Goddess is something of a testament of a practising poet.
Which brings us right back to our reading of Odyssey and the part that myths and 'tree lore' -the seasons and their fruitfulness - nature itself - have to play in our story and in the affairs of men - and Gods! And as we noted recently Odyssey and Iliad are the earliest sources we have in regard to the Greek myths - myths which are rooted in nature.
-
Understanding Odysseus's character is very interesting.
In the first chapters we hear about an idolized version of the man as portrayed by Penelope and Telemacuus who have not seen or heard from him in twenty years. In fact his son never really knew him since he was barely one or two before his father went away.
In the following chapters we see a real person. A man who weeps . A man who likes sex with Calypso. A man who can be goaded into showing off in physical sports like the discus. A man who knows he is weaker than he was, when he honestly proclaims:"I've taken a shameful beating out on heavy seas No conditioningthere on shipboard day by day. My legs have lost their spring"
He is still strong, physically attractive (Athena constantly is making him look more attractive than he is.) But after all, he is a man of at least forty. Perhaps in his prime by todays standards but not young either.
I really don't believe he was suffering from depression while with Calypso. Perhaps he was under a spell. A spell named Calypso.
-
On another subject, Mangos, I want to say that I am jealous of you folks who can eat this delicous fruit.
Mangos are related to Cashews and to Poison Ivy and Poison Sumac. All of these plants contain an irritant called Urushiol that causes in some people (ME in particular) terrible, itchy rashes.
There are over 1000, yes, one Thousand, varieties grown in India.
The irritant Urushiol has an interesting side note. This toxin is used by the Japanese to make laquer for their traditional lacquerware.
-
I'm allergic to mangoes too Jude - itchy rash - swollen face - closed eye - blistered lips - have had them all from mangoes and from the sumac (rhus). I am not in the least jealous of those who can eat mangoes - they're poison to me - and to you too.
Didn't know the lacquer made by the Japanese contained the toxin - I'll remember to avoid any art classes in Japanese lacquerwork.
-
I'm fascinated y the description of the blind singer. I'll bet our image of Homer is taken from this description (?!?).
I liked U's statements of his skills too --- good at discusa, not so good at running. It's details like this that make the story and characters seem so real. If he'd been super at everything, we would have thought "yeah, yeah, another superhero". But weak knees! Boy, can I relate to that! Now I start to emphasize with him.
Remember the quote from the Iliad? I'll bet homer had bad knees!
-
Gosh what great posts! It sure is nice to come in here, and breathe in the intelligent conversation and great ideas and enthusiasm on this really great book. I agree with Dana, Truely Homer is a poet for all seasons I expect that's why he's lasted.
It's a heck of a lot better than taxes!
I think Homer IS a poet for the ages and I think together we're beginning to see things we would not have alone, too. He's touching things I had no idea on, thank you Dana, for that fabulous noticing about Calpyso and O, and how he might have been able to have some interest despite his depression, and Frybabe for calling it depression. Whether or not he IS depressed, he's crying. The new issue of Time Magazine has some interesting statistics on crying at work, have you all seen it?
48 percent of men thought it was OK to cry at work versus 41 percent of women.
43 percent of women considered people who cry at work unstable, versus 32 percent of men.
(This is the April 4 2011 issue). Apparently this crying is a hot topic. In their study they found that 69 percent of respondents felt that when someone gets emotional in the workplace, it makes the person seem more human and 88 percent of all workers (93 percent of women and 83 percent of men) felt that being sensitive to others emotions at work was an asset.
It's a very interesting article, I'm sure it's online. I am trying to think of other Greek heroes who cried. Off the top of my head I can't think of ONE Roman hero who cried? Can anybody? It makes you wonder why Homer has him crying, what the purpose was.
I still think the women have the better of him and he's frustrated and trapped. Calypso certainly does and Athene (of course they aren't women per se) runs him around like a puppet. I'd cry, too. hahaaa
Pat H, thank you so much for that quote and you've answered also one of the Temple Questions, what does his speech to Nausicaa show about his character? He's clear on that. Others don't seem to share that opinion; it will be interesting to see the contrast.
-
Sally: This book reminds me of my father whose middle name was Achilles (my uncle's middle name was Ulysses). Under my father's picture in his high school year book was the phrase: "Woe is Me" From the names, your family must be Greek! I did not know that! Are they still with us or have they passed on? I'd love to hear their thoughts on our reading the Odyssey, every Greek I know is fantastically proud of their heritage.
Those are excellent points, Jude!
Oh Deb, what fabulous musings: but I wonder why we are told the same thing thru past tense, present tense, one person's eyes then another person's thoughts...makes me think of someone with a word limit trying to pad out a story to fit the needed length of pages....of course when people had a lot more time and entertainment was in the telling of stories ....allowances would be made I imagine for drama and heightening suspense by various methods, one of these methods perhaps being that of repetition
What do you all think about that? I hadn't caught the red part at all. Is there any reason to change persons and tenses and retell the story, do you close readers think?
Gum thank you so much for that wonderful review. It's like the guy who authored the book on Schliemann, he was a friend and colleague, too. I found this extremely telling: - Janet Seymour-Smith was appalled at the lack of scholarship and in part was responsible for correcting Graves' work - the inference being that Mrs S-S's contribution was vital in establishing some degree of accuracy - That's in line with what I thought, actually, tho I did not know about her. You are the most widely read person!!!
Amicah,
I must say I am learning a great deal here at Senior Learn. I started to read the O. years ago and got sidetracked. This is WONDERFUL ! ]And i am getting to know how to use a keyboard as well . ] Thanks We are DELIGHTED you found us and that you're enjoying the experience!
Babi, those were good points on the dance and the "still unidentified guest," and Joan K, that was another good one on the spell. Lots of magic here in the Phaecian kingdom.
But there's more...
-
This Book VIII is apparently an extremely important book. Every commentary I read refers back to Book VIII. There's a lot going on here.
One major thing seems to be the blind bard Democodus and IS he in fact Homer put into the play? Apparently HE is the reason people think Homer was blind. Does the blind poet thing make what he has to sing about more important to the plot? What IS he singing about? The affair of Ares and Aphrodite, and how Hephaestus caught them.
It seems a little incongruous to me, why is O crying at it? What message did you get from the subject matter? Did you get any message from it?
And then Demodocus has another song, the story of the Greeks sailing away with O in the Trojan Horse. And so O cried again, but managed to conceal his tears from everybody but Alcinous at his elbow. Alcinous stops the music and asks O's name and then he tells a strange prophecy. This is just SOOO chilling:
But I remember hearing
My father, Nausithous, say how Poseidon
was angry with us because we always give
Safe passage to men. He said that one day
Poseidon would smite a Phaecian ship
As it sailed back home over the misty sea,
And would encircle our city within a mountain.
Oh man, that gave me chills. There's an old Latin book from the 50's with a photo of this ship turned to rock or so the legends go, and so it's labeled. It's in black and white but I hope I can find it, it's really stunning.
But now what do you make of Demodocus's two songs here? There are three songs, really, aren't there? One at the very beginning of this chapter, about the quarrel between O and Achilles. (Are there more than these 3 songs?)
The SONGS take up almost the whole book.
Why are they here? It seems we're not the only ones to notice the tears and sighs and hang dog expression. But again O "managed to conceal his tears from everyone/ Except Alcinous, who sat at his elbow."
What do you make of his two challengers, Laodamas and Euryalus? They have got to be in here for a reason, why do you think this challenging to O is here? Do you all have the same names of these characters? I see "Broadsea" in another text?
What did you make of these incidents? Where's the famous "hospitality?"
-
I have two more things I HAVE to say hahahaa
1. Notice this stunning thing somewhere around (Lombardo is off his lines) 543-579 (page 123 Lombardo)
Alcinous speaking:
....so that our ships
May take you there, finding their way by their wits.
For Phaecian ships do not have pilots,
Nor steering oars, as other ships have.
They know on their own their passenger's thoughts,
And know all the cities and rich fields in the world,
And they cross the great gulfs with the greatest speed,
Hidden in mist and fog, with never a fear
Of damage or shipwreck.
Magic. Here I see I read this passage incorrectly. it does not say they don't row, (or does it?). It says they have no steering oars, does he mean keel? The rudder? Or does he mean oars? Their ships don't need "steering oars" because they know their passenger's thoughts!
Dooo de doo dooo. Cue the Star Trek music, isn't this marvelous? I just love it.
So if all this self propelling is going on, who has caused it? We've seen enough of god interference, who's behind this?
And finally I have been giddy with delight since last night when I found a fabulous scholarly article on why there are books in the Odyssey from JSTOR. Apparently the idea of them being divided into books by somebody later, whether an Alexandrian critic like Zenodotus or whoever are now in doubt. I have to say it's like breathing mountain air to see how many many MANY erudite men and women have taken this small topic to heart and have written seriously exhaustively researched articles on it and what the conclusions are and why. It's 14 pages and each one seems to glow. Maybe they are magic, too. :) When I get through, assuming I can understand what they are saying, hahaa I'll report back but the conclusion seems to be Homer did them himself for a reason. So far.
This is the kind of thing I just personally absolutely LOVE! I'm so glad you voted to do this!
-
Joan K we were posting together.
Remember the quote from the Iliad? I'll bet homer had bad knees! No, which one? The one about if your knees were as strong as your will or something?
You are dead on about the blind bard Demodocus being thought of as the reason Homer was thought to be blind! Do you think D is Homer inserting himself into the poem?
-
The Book Club Online is the oldest book club on the Internet, begun in 1996, open to everyone. We offer cordial discussions of one book a month, 24/7 and enjoy the company of readers from all over the world. Everyone is welcome to join in.
Now reading:
(http://www.seniorlearn.org/bookclubs/classicsbookclub/cbc2odysseysm.jpg)
March 28---Book VIII:
At the court of Alcinoös
(http://seniorlearn.org/latin/ulysses_penelope/OdysseusPhaeciansRubens1577-1640.jpg)
Odysseus on the island of the Phaiacians
Peter Paul Rubens (1577 - 1640)
(http://seniorlearn.org/latin/ulysses_penelope/OdysseusNausicaaRosa16151673Hermitage.jpg)
Odysseus and Nausicaa
Salvator Rosa (1615 - 1673)
The Hermitage, St. Petersburg
Discussion Leaders: Joan K (joankraft13@yahoo.com) & ginny (gvinesc@gmail.com )
(http://seniorlearn.org/latin/ulysses_penelope/OdysseusweepsFlaxman.jpg)
Odysseus weeps at the singing of Demodocos
John Flaxman
1805
Useful Links:
1. Critical Analysis: Free SparkNotes background and analysis on the Odyssey (http://www.sparknotes.com/lit/odyssey)
2. Translations Used in This Discussion So Far: (http://www.seniorlearn.org/bookclubs/odyssey/odyssey_translations.html)
3. Initial Points to Watch For: submitted by JudeS (http://www.seniorlearn.org/bookclubs/odyssey/odyssey_points.html)
4. Maps:
Map of the Voyages of Odysseus (http://www.seniorlearn.org/latin/ulysses_penelope/Odysseusmap.jpg)
Map of Voyages in order (http://www.wesleyan.edu/~mkatz/Images/Voyages.jpg)
Map of Stops Numbered (http://www.seniorlearn.org/latin/ulysses_penelope/Odysseusmap2.jpg)
Our Map Showing Place Names in the Odyssey (http://www.seniorlearn.org/latin/graphics/AncientGreecemap.jpg)
(http://seniorlearn.org/latin/ulysses_penelope/OdysseusNausicaaLeighton.jpg)
Nausicaa
Frederic, Lord Leighton (1830 - 1896)
hurrah with the help my wonderful daughter and as soon as possible I will join EVERTHING HURRAH
-
Hurrah, Anna, it's good to have you back.
-
Imagine O is saddened by recalling the war and loss of his friends. Read somewhere and now I can't find it but there is a question about the song of the fight between Achilles and Odyssey - don't know where this was referred to previously by Homer. Odyssey didn't cry when the song about Ares and Aphrodite was sung. They all seemed to find this quite amusing.
No my family isn't Greek. My father was born in 1904 and my uncle about the same time. Perhaps everyone was reading Homer in school then ;D
Food -- in many cultures it is considered essential to feed your guest even if your enemy and a little poison might be tossed in. Remember the story of Gertrude Bell in the book Desert Queen. She was always offered a meal at each oasis and she learned quickly not to refuse.
-
48 percent of men thought it was OK to cry at work versus 41 percent of women.
43 percent of women considered people who cry at work unstable, versus 32 percent of men.
Actually, I can understand this. Working women were frequently passed over for pay
raises and promotion, as you all know. One of the reasons often cited was that they were
'too emotional'. It's no wonder they've come to believe crying at work is unacceptable.
"..the blind bard Democodus and IS he in fact Homer put into the play?"
GINNY, it did seem to me that the bit about the poet/singer greatly enjoying the meat
that O sent over to him...that sounded like a very personal note. It is a kind of sidebar,
and I can well believe that 'Homer' had such an experience. Makes a good hint to those
hearing him sing his saga, too, doesn't it? ;)
So right about the prophecy Alcinous quotes. I dread the thought of all those fine
young men on the ship coming to grief. I do hope it doesn't happen, but I'm afraid it
will.
I note Odysseus words, “All men owe honor to the poets--honor and awe, for they are dearest to the Muse who puts upon their lips the ways of life.”
Poetry does that, and preserves the memories of a particular way of life as Homer has done for us.
That said, I am amazed at the richness of the gifts that are given to a stranger about whom they know nothing whatsoever. What if Odysseus were a shipwrecked pirate, a spy, or any other type of man that they would be more likely to jail than feed? Must be those auras
Athena keeps putting over him; everyone knows he is a high-class gent. 8)
-
I agree with this by Dana...
I have to say it--none of the pictures of any of the characters by any of these middle ages artists do anything for me. But neither do Taylor and Burton or any of the latest stars playing Romans or Greeks. They're just so of their time. (Whatever that means, how could they not be?) Anyway I have a vague fuzzy idea in my head,or no idea, and that's better to me.
I also find them too clean. The actors often look freshly showered and squeaky clean instead of oiled.
Also, thank you PatH for why you like Lombardo. I agree, but was not able to put my thoughts into words.
Dana, thank you for finding that about Calpyso and O-- "for she compelled him." I tend to forget these are gods.
And Alcinous is the only one to notice O's weeping?? I thought perhaps the others attending these feasts are there only for the food and drink so do not care what O is doing.
Ginny, I thought this scarey also,
But I remember hearing
My father, Nausithous, say how Poseidon
was angry with us because we always give
Safe passage to men. He said that one day
Poseidon would smite a Phaecian ship
As it sailed back home over the misty sea,
And would encircle our city within a mountain.
--and now the Phaecian's will be giving safe passage to the man that killed Poseidon's son.
-
Greek ships: the oar terminology can be confusing. The steering oar is the equivalent of a rudder--it's a wide oar at the back of the boat whose angle is changed to keep the ship going in the desired direction. Viking ships had steering oars too; I don't know when rudders came in. Even if the magical Phaeacian ships sailed themselves, they would need a steering oar to keep them pointed right.
In addition, the ships had a number of rowing oars. These were used whenever there was no wind, or the wind was in the wrong direction. Those old square sails would only work when the wind was coming from somewhere behind.
That's a pretty big ship Alcinous is giving Odysseus; it's got 52 oarsmen. The ship Telemachus took had 20.
Here are some good pictures of ancient Greek ships, with an interesting article. If you scroll down to the Phoenecian coin and the Greek warship from the Persian wars just beneath it, they show the steering oar clearly.
http://www.artsales.com/ARTistory/Ancient_Ships/09_epic_poems.html (http://www.artsales.com/ARTistory/Ancient_Ships/09_epic_poems.html)
-
--and now the Phaecian's will be giving safe passage to the man that killed Poseidon's son.
Yes--I wonder if we'll see them punished for it.
-
How about a red headed Russell Crowe for Odysseus? (he often looks a bit scruffy too, which wd fit, Sandyrose). Odysseus is supposed to be barrel chested, short legged, red haired, looks more dignified sitting down than standing up......
-
It has been so long since I have seen a Ulysses movie, I didn't remember who played the part. Lo and behold, it was Kirk Douglas. Really? It is the only one I remember seeing unless there was something earlier.
-
I have never seen an Odysseus movie. What are the titles?
Physically Arnold Shwarzenegger might look a bit like our Odysseus. But the personality doesn't match.
How about Roger Moore-he of James Bond fame?
This is an aberrant thought. Why does Athena spruce up Odysseus for the Princess?. I did imagine that scene like a movie set and the actor playing Odysseus spending two or three hours with the make up lady.
-
The Kirk Douglas movie was called Ulysses (circa 1954).
Armand Assante did a TV mini series back around 1996 or so. I did not see it.
Sean Bean played Odysseus in Troy.
Warner Brothers apparently is going to make Odysseus. Last date I saw was 2012. There doesn't appear to be any info on whether or not anyone was signed for it yet. Ann Peacock (Chronicles of Narnia) wrote the screenplay. The director is Johnathan Liebesman whose latest release is the scifi, Battle: Los Angeles and is also listed for an upcoming remake of Clash of the Titans.
-
HI, ANNA! great to see you here.
DANA: Russel Crowe did a good job as a sailor in Master and Commander as Jack Aubrey. I'm not sure I could see him in the Nausicaa scene, though.
Pat: I love that article about the ships. The author seemed as taken with O's raft as we are. And I'm glad to understand the steering oar. I don't quite see why you wouldn't need one even if you knew the way.
And the square sails were a handicap to all early sailing. We take for granted that sailing ships can go in any direction by tacking. But then, they had to go where the wind took them. And the wind DO take them.
I hadn't quite realized til I read that article that there was noplace to sleep on the large boats. if the rowers wanted to rest, they had to pull the boat ashore. This makes sense in an area of many islands: wouldn't do for exploration far from shore. Were the Viking ships like that too?
-
I'll bet there are more cultures where it is considered perfectly ok for men to cry than ours. I don't know, but I'll bet we're the minority. Even cultures who have stronger ideas that men must be "macho", don't consider crying over tragedy a loss of macho-ness.
Having worked for years as a woman in a man's fielfd, I agree with BABI. There was a time when women, to be taken seriously, had to be as "macho" as the men. you wouldn't dare cry at work! I see that's not completely over.
-
This is an aberrant thought. Why does Athena spruce up Odysseus for the Princess?. I did imagine that scene like a movie set and the actor playing Odysseus spending two or three hours with the make up lady.
Tee hee, Jude, I like it for a spoof movie. I don't think Athena was sprucing him up just for Nausicaa, though. He had to impress the Phaeacians, especially Alcinous and Arete, enough so they would give him the help he needed. Nausicaa was impressed though, leading to a touching moment. After the games, Odysseus has been bathed and clothed, and is striding to the banquet.
"Nausicaa,
Beautiful as only the gods could make her,
Stood by the doorpost of the great hall.
Her eyes went wide when she saw Odysseus,
And her words beat their way to him on wings:
'Farewell, stranger, and remember me
In your own native land. I saved your life.'"
Odysseus promises that he will pray to her as to a god.
The painting by Lord Leighton Hunt in the heading captures this very well (even if it's totally of its own time), the beautiful young woman looking wistfully at something more splendid than anything she can have.
-
PatH - Thank you for that link about Ancient Greek ships. It was quite fascinating.
The quote Ginny gave describing the Phaecian ships has set me to thinking. (ooooh it hurts). If the ship had no need to be steered (rowed) why did Alcinous send 52 oarsmen who would be obsolete. Knowing of Poseidon's threat would he risk so many good men?
Part of Ginny's quote:
so that our ships
May take you there, finding their way by their wits.
For Phaecian ships do not have pilots,
Nor steering oars, as other ships have.
They know on their own their passenger's thoughts,
Another interesting item in PatH's link was regarding the "Argo", Jason and the Argonauts' ship. Athena must have liked Jason too. The way the "Argo" is fitted out bears a resemblance to the Phaecian ship.
At the prow of the ship Athena fitted in a "speaking" timber from the oak of Dodona, which would advise the Argonauts on the right course. In fact, that "speaking " timber ("Koraki" in the Hellenic nautical terminology) operated like a compass, and it corresponded to the North while the steering oar ("Diaki" in the Hellenic nautical terminology) to the South. The imaginary line between the steering oar and the "speaking" timber extended towards a certain point of the horizon-which was determined by the positions of stars (I.E. the Pole Star)- enabled the Captain to trace the course of the ship approximately
The Phaecians are not like other people as Nausicaa points out. Could Odysseus be hallucinating? He sleeps the entire journey home and wakes up in Ithaca. There is no doubt that the Phaecians are "different". Maybe their home is some sort of Utopia. It could possibly be Atlantis with that type of advanced technology, such as the ship and the dogs. The Phaecians originally inhabited Amorgos, but left there because of their close proximity to Cyclops. Many historians have placed Phaecia on Corfu (ancient Corcya) but because this island is so close to Ithaca it is unlikely that the Phaecians would not have heard of Odysseus.
-
Fascinated by the drawings by Flaxman I went to his Google Site and from there to another and another site. Finally found something I must share with you. This poem by Robert Graves:
Odysseus
His wiles were witty and his fame far known,
Every king's daughter sought him for her own.
Yet he was nothing to be won or lost.
All lands to him were Ithaca:loved tossed
He loathed the fraud,yet would not bed alone.
And now from a man named G.E.Dimock Jr:who says that the best single word translation of the Greek verb odyssasthai is"trouble".Odysseus is the recipient of trouble and its cause. Is this a necessary part of the human condition?
-
From www.imdb.com
Proposed release date 2012
Clash of the Titans 2: Warner Bros. Announces Start of Production
23 March 2011 8:00 AM, PDT
Just last week, we told you about Warner Bros. Pictures and their apparent fear of putting their Gods in the forthcoming sequel to Clash of the Titans up against Lionsgate’s big-screen adaptation of The Hunger Games and moving the release date for Wrath of the Titans, directed by Jonathan Liebesman (Battle: Los Angeles, Odysseus) from March 23rd to March 30th, 2012.
Now, we have the official press release announcing the start of principal photography, and something interesting I noticed is the fact that the press release is still calling it Clash of the Titans 2, rather than the Wrath of the Titans, which was confirmed as the title by actor Liam Neeson back in December. Has the studio changed their mind on the title, or do they still think it’s a secret?
IN PRODUCTION
Status: Filming
Start Date: March 2011
Release Date: 30 March 2012
Locations: London, England, UK more »
Summary: A decade after his heroic defeat of the monstrous Kraken, Perseus-the demigod son of Zeus-is attempting to live a quieter life as a village fisherman and the sole parent to his 10-year old son, Helius. Meanwhile, a struggle for supremacy rages between the gods and the Titans. Dangerously weakened by humanity's lack of devotion, the gods are losing control of the imprisoned Titans and their ferocious leader, Kronos, father of the long-ruling brothers Zeus, Hades and Poseidon. The triumvirate had overthrown their powerful father long ago, leaving him to rot in the gloomy abyss of Tartarus, a dungeon that lies deep within the cavernous underworld. Perseus cannot ignore his true calling when Hades, along with Zeus' godly son, Ares (Edgar Ramírez), switch loyalty and make a deal with Kronos to capture Zeus. The Titans' strength grows stronger as Zeus' remaining godly powers are siphoned, and hell is unleashed on earth. Enlisting the help of the warrior Queen Andromeda (Rosamund Pike), Poseidon's demigod son, Argenor (Toby Kebbell), and fallen god Hephaestus (Bill Nighy), Perseus bravely embarks on a treacherous quest into the underworld to rescue Zeus, overthrow the Titans and save mankind.
Summary written by Warner Bros. Pictures
Liam Neeson ... Zeus
Gemma Arterton ... Io
Ralph Fiennes ... Hades
Sam Worthington ... Perseus
Bill Nighy ... Hephaestus
Rosamund Pike ... Andromeda
Danny Huston ... Poseidon
Édgar Ramírez ... Ares
Toby Kebbell ... Agenor
-
JUDE, I assumed Athena cleaned up Odysseus for the princess because she didn't want
him to frighten the poor girl. Not only for the girl's sake, but also because she was
needed as Odysseus entree to the royal court.
Actually, I think Russell Crowe is a good idea, JOANK. I have always found him to be
very versatile, able to successfully take on a number of very different roles.
I don't know whether trouble is necessary, Jude, (tho' I believe it is), but it is
certainly unavoidable!
For those who enjoyed Bettany Hughes biography of Helen of Troy, you may be interested
to know she has a new book, this one on Socrates. The title is "The Hemlock Cup: Socrates,
Athens and the Search for the Good Life." The Smithsonian interviewed her for their April
issue. Even in the interview I learned things about Socrates I had never known before. Did
you know that for most of his life Socrates was a soldier?! Sounds like the book is going to
be a good one.
-
babi - Thanks for the info about Bettany Hughes' new book about Socrates.
I can't see Russell Crowe as Odysseus. He is neither quick or cunning. Daniel Craig perhaps?
kidsal - Thanks for the news regarding Clash of the Titans Part 2. I personally think the movie would be better with another actor playing Perseus. Although a fellow countryman, I didn't like Sam Worthington in the role of Perseus.
-
Was the 2010 "Clash of the Titans" any good? I've only seen the 1981 version, which was extremely bad, to the point of being funny.
-
JUDE: love the poem.
" Is this [trouble] a necessary part of the human condition?"
Apparently the greeks thought so. "man is born to trouble as the sparks fly upward" Aeschulus.
The Buddists thing so to. When you escape trouble, you escape the wheel of life.
What do you all think?
-
Frybabe
Thanks for the name and date of the movie. Its going onto my Netflix Quo.
Joan K re: trouble
The more you want , the more trouble you get. Even people who want very little have troubles. Odyssseus is so ambitous and has such adventures that his pile of troubles is large if not gigantic. The whole epic idea is how this fellow beats all the
troubles and comes out on top . Like all good adventure stories the reader has to wonder "How is he gonna get out of this one?" When he does beat the next foe or monster or sneaky villain we say Thank goodness! He sure is clever or strong or talented. He is our HERO !!
Part of the greatness of this Odyssey is that the Hero not only overcomes impossible odds but in doing so understands himself and the world around him a lot better. Every Hero after this was patterned on this brilliant plot. From Gulliver to Robinson Crusoe to Captain Kirk all are Odysseus in different garb.
-
Man o man, what great posts here. It's a pleasure and joy to read. I have been slogging in the underworld of computer problems, email problems, 4 days straight of storms and satellite malfunctions, am beginning to feel like Odysseus myself hahahaa (without the tears), but there does appear to be a light at the end of the tunnel without a train whistle. :)
I love my new I Phone App Quiz Quiz Quiz. Last night when I just gave up on gmail for good, I played a few Trivia Games to get my mind off it. (If O had had an I Phone I suspect he'd have been a lot happier and more engaged). There were categories like Latin, and Epics and Ancient Greece, and under the latter was the following question: In which book of the Odyssey does Odysseus meet Nausicaa?
Would you believe that? They gave as answers 4, 6, 8, and 9. I felt particularly smart, especially after missing how many works by Sophocles are extant?
So this is doing us good! :)
I have also been floating in the throes of academe with the scholarly article by Bruce Heiden on the book divisions of the Odyssey which proves several points: as we are an educational group here in quest of learning I'll poorly dare to paraphrase some of his points:
(1) Absolute tons of scholars, all footnoted and quoted, almost all of whom are well known and respected, are totally and unequivocally at variance with each other, and almost all of them disagree on the reason the Odyssey is in books and who put them in. Occasionally 2 or 3 will agree on one facet. This article was written in 2000.
(2) The Odyssey or Iliad may in fact NOT have been performed at one sitting. There may have not only been intermissions, they may have lasted until the next day.
This, to me, is a bombshell. What have I been thinking all this time, that they sat there for days upon days (how long would it take to read this?) while the poor bard carried on with no potty breaks or food? Apparently this is well known, it's thrown in at the end almost in passing (but with tons of citation). In fact he says that recitation of several "stages" without pauses is unlikely and cites another scholarly piece.
So it's probable apparently that there were pauses.
Did you realize this?
Here's a poor summary of what he explains on the divisions into books, with many charts proving his points and a million citations and explanations. I love reading this stuff.
(1)The book divisions make comprehension of the plot easier. They mark important junctures of plot.
(2) The Odyssey has "stages" which mark the routes upon which the characters proceed to their goals.
(3) The scenes preceded by "segment markers" are those which begin a stage.
(4) The scenes followed by segment markers usually anticipate a stage. It may not be the next stage but it's coming. I assume (we do know what that makes of you and me) the "segment markers" are book beginnings or so it appears in the chart.
There appear lots of reasons why those Alexandrians credited by dividing the Odyssey could not have done it.
He says, dismissing all the objections one by one, that there's no reason Homer himself could not have done the book divisions.
And then he lists them all and proves his point. He did lose me with Zenodotus "since he athetized the 'Shield of Achilles' in the Iliad," but he's way over my head anyway.
I thought this was fascinating. I wondered why the Odyssey was divided into books and who put them there and this seems to be an intelligent and actually overwhelming presentation of the facts, as remarkable for the exhaustive research and scholars it cites as anything else.
I thought you'd like to know these findings, anyway. I for one did NOT know there were intermissions! Duh!
-
Had to get that down before I forgot it, now to the best stuff, your thoughts.
Welcome back, Anna, we are delighted to see you, and since poetry is your field, do join us asap!
PatH, that is the most fabulous site I ever saw. I absolutely love those boats. I can't stop looking at them. I put them in my bookmark toolbar, and a little red heart gleams out as their symbol. I love it love it love it. THANK you! So it's rudder not oars. They don't need a pilot they don't need a rudder but...RoshanaRose says: If the ship had no need to be steered (rowed) why did Alcinous send 52 oarsmen who would be obsolete. Knowing of Poseidon's threat would he risk so many good men?
That is an excellent question. What do you all say to it?
Would the boat have gone without them? I mean if Alcinous wanted to speed the honored godlike guest on his way, or so he said to the gathering he called, would the guest have been speeded if nobody rowed?
This is a fascinating topic, with all kinds of ramifications, what do you all think?
I am sort of seeing Alcinous as...ingenuous. I don't think he's a plotter. He seems to ME to be a nice man who spots this impressive guy and has a marriageable daughter and thinks oh HERE we go, stay a while, stranger, but if you must go we'll help you. He seems confident but then he has told (foreshadowing) the strange tale, that his father told him, that one day Poseidon (as mentioned before) would turn a ship into stone.
Maybe Alcinous is like me. Maybe he thinks it may happen someday but it can't happen to us because look we're doing all the right things. That's the way I think, that may in fact not be the world is. And one does have to wonder why it should ever happen to them? Sandy Rose mentioned that O had killed Poseidon's son but does Alcinous know this?
He doesn't evenh know who O IS till book 9 and the only reason he does know is he finally asks him his name. After two spells of crying (both times at the bard's reciting of Trojan/ Greek war stuff).
I'm not seeing Alcinous or the Phaecians, as strange as they are, in any guilt here whatsoever, are you all?
Alcinous told him in Chapter 7 they would row him out, a royal send off wherever on earth he wants to go. He distinctly mentions rowers in 7. Maybe you can have rowers and no pilot or rudder if you have a magic ship?
I don't know!
What do the rest of you think about Alcinous and the rowers?
____________________________________
Babi this is an interesting point: That said, I am amazed at the richness of the gifts that are given to a stranger about whom they know nothing whatsoever. What if Odysseus were a shipwrecked pirate, a spy, or any other type of man that they would be more likely to jail than feed?
Now Sally talked about hospitality but suddenly I'm realizing what happened at the end, so we need to watch I guess for those who don't offer hospitality (the Phaecians almost didn't!) or don't seem to abide by the rules of xenia, the Greek concept of hospitality to one away from home. And I'm not sure in this one where he's challenged by Laodamas (does that name have any particular significance?) if that counts as lack of hospitality. I don't think Poseidon cares about hospitality much.
Too long too long,. why can't I be succinct?!
-
A lot of contrasts in this chapter.
Odysseus has said what he thinks is the most important thing for a man, now Laodamus somewhere around 160 or so says:
For there is no greater glory a man can win in life
Than the glory he wins with his hands and feet.
That's somewhat different from what O said. O is a major war hero, already proven.
Even O asks him, "Laodamas, why do you provoke me like this?"
Why DO you think he has?
And then here comes Euryalus. He says, "no, you're no athlete."
O says to him somewhere around 182:
"That's a reckless thing to say, stranger,
And it makes you look like a reckless fool."
..and later in this same speech:
"Your looks
Are outstanding. Not even a god
Could improve them. But your mind is crippled."
What's going on here? Why have these two come out and challenged O, and most importantly, why has Alcinous not stepped in here? Is this hospitality?
-
Pat, I loved the boat article, thanks for the link.
Ginny, thanks for the list of reasons for the book divisions.
-
Sandy, we were posting together, but I did finally manage to credit you with your own quote! You are so funny on the "clean" thing, squeaky clean instead of oil. I had not thought what somebody who was oiled might look like. (Kind of like some people who tan with baby oil I expect, shiny)? That used to be a very popular look.
Jude, that was a beautiful post. We should put it in the heading. You've captured beautifully the whole thing:. Like all good adventure stories the reader has to wonder "How is he gonna get out of this one?" When he does beat the next foe or monster or sneaky villain we say Thank goodness! He sure is clever or strong or talented. He is our HERO !!
Part of the greatness of this Odyssey is that the Hero not only overcomes impossible odds but in doing so understands himself and the world around him a lot better. Every Hero after this was patterned on this brilliant plot. From Gulliver to Robinson Crusoe to Captain Kirk all are Odysseus in different garb.
My mother used to recite a poem about Poor Pauline. I can do it to this day. It was about the cliff hangers, what did they used to call them of the early movies? They'd get the hero hanging off a cliff or something and then stop till the next week? There's a name for it but I can't recall it. (Could it be cliff hangers? hahaha) At any rate this is a type of plot well appreciated by the ages.
Joan K: The Buddhists think so too. When you escape trouble, you escape the wheel of life. Does that mean you die or you are not fully alive? (Lombardo is a Buddhist).
Babi where is the article about Bettany Hughes in the April Smithsonian? When I saw your post I snatched the magazine up because I had been so engrossed in the Capri article I missed it initially and I still don't see it?
Frybabe and Sally, thank you for the movie information, the ancients are HOT HOT HOT. I'd like now to SEE a movie on Odysseus just out of curiosity. Robert Harris' Pompeii is supposedly still in production too.
Talking about other media, don't forget The Lost Books of the Odyssey by Zachary Mason. It's new and has had tons of exciting reviews. It's small and short.
JoanR here read it and really enjoyed it. It's fiction and Mason has invented "alternative episodes, fragments and revisions of Homer's original that taken together, open up this classic Greek myth to endless reverberating interpretations....great wit, beauty and playfulness." (From the book jacket).
RoshanaRose asked could O be hallucinating? I think that's another excellent question and apparently Mason has offered three more\ possible interpretations also. I think it sounds like a super clever read. (I am thinking you'd want to know the real thing first, so you may want to wait to read it.)
Jude you went to the Flaxman site? I didn't know he had one. I must investigate. That's a great poem.
Why is the Ares/ Aphrodite/ Hephaestus story here, O does not cry at this, you all are right, he enjoys it. What's the point of it?
Hephaestus is the cuckolded husband. He comes home to find Ares in bed with his wife. He had set a trap ("as fine as cobwebs") of unbreakable chains and caught them. And all the gods are laughing. And H says he'll get back his wedding gifts from her father and Ares talks him into letting them go.
? huh? Is this just light entertainment? O likes it, because....?
Knowing that somebody could outline this book by book makes me want to look more at the plot and figure out which elements are meaningful and which are not. Why is this scene in here?
-
PatH - asked was the latest "Clash of the Titans" any good? It took itself much more seriously than the first "Clash" which I adored. Sam Worthington is great until he opens his mouth in the last movie. Even I, who am used to the Australian accent, felt it grated in that setting. So this spoilt the role of the hero, Perseus, for me. I suppose he looks the part, but....
Perseus and his followers do have some excellent adventures, and it needs to be said that the movie is worth seeing for the scenes with Medusa alone.
I have to 'fess up and say the highlight for me in the last "Clash" was Mads Mikkelsen, who plays Perseus' 2IC. His face is quite extraordinary, and although he is Danish, he is one of those actors who "fits" well in any movie role, and seemed perfect as the baddie in Casino Royale (the one who plays high stakes poker with our James and nearly kills him). I do attempt to watch every movie he makes, he is just so magnetic. I don't remember him saying much in "Clash" and he only smiles once: he tells you when he will have something to smile about. As a piece of trivia he also learned ballet for some time. His body and movement bear witness to this.
Despite my likes and dislikes I enjoyed the movie. The effects are quite extraordinary and if you love Greek mythology you should enjoy it for the telling alone.
Ginny - Your posts included some very interesting aspects. It will take me some time to "digest" all of it. I have been looking for a book that analyses "The Odyssey". I will probably have to go to the University library to find one and read it in situ.
Sam aka Perseus www.imdb.com/name/nm0941777
Mads Mikkelsen www.yahoo.com/movie/contributor/1800360188/bio
-
I'm sure the Phaeacian ships had to be rowed, whether or not they needed the steering oar (which wasn't used for rowing). At the start of book 8, Alcinous is ordering a ship to be made ready for Odysseus so he can leave quickly, and says:
"When you have lashed the oars well at the benches,
Disembark, and hurry to my house...."
A few lines later, they
"Fit the oars into the leather thole-straps"
So they expected to row.
-
OK, Roshanarose, "Clash 2010" goes on my Netflix list.
-
Jude, that was a particularly brilliant summing up of the universal adventure story plot.
-
PatH - I have added two links to my post about "Clash". One for Sam and one for Mads. Hope you enjoy the movie :)
-
Your Mads link didn't work, but I worked through the stuff on IMDB. That's the kind of good looks I particularly like. I see he's also in an about to be released version of the "Three Musketeers" that looks pretty strange, and he played Igor Stravinsky in the recent movie about S. and Coco Chanel. He sure doesn't look much like Stravinsky, but I can just imagine how he could morph his expression and pull it off.
I agree with you about Perseus.
-
PatH - Stravinsky and Chanel movie not so good. Mads is great in "The Wedding Party", if you like his looks mmmmm you will like him in The Wedding Party. It has a good storyline and his costars are good as well. It is a Danish movie.
-
While we're all mulling over the latest questions, etc., in Book 8 (or ordering washboards, which ever suits, I really want one, isn't that stupid? I wonder if our fabrics today can stand up to the stress or if, as Sandyrose said, we'll rub holes in them), I'd like to make a point about the field of Classics scholarship in general.
In post 1102 I posted a poorly paraphrased article by Heiden on the origin of Books in the Odyssey. In it he must reference and not only by name but by position 28 other scholars who cordially differ in opinion. I haven't counted them but there are literally tons of them. Now his voice is added to the others, some of whom go a long way back.
This is what it is in Classics. This is normal. There are always opposing viewpoints with renowned scholars, this IS what it is.
It's good to hear the opinions of X. But he's not Moses and the tablets. That's his opinion. Y may have the same credentials and think completely the opposite. Z may have come to a completely different conclusion. Just because we take the time to read one, that does not make HIS opinion written in the clouds, he's one of many which add to our overall understanding. We NEED to have as many as we can.
Almost every museum of Roman antiquity has little labels on things which go something like "it was once thought that ... but now..."
that does not mean, however, that in every instance what's thought NOW is better, either.
In Classics you get used to opposing viewpoints. It's the norm. It has nothing to do with us reading it or reporting it here, it IS what it IS. Not to know some of them is a shame, but we need more than one voice on a subject.
I've put Heidens. There are at least 27 more from equally erudite scholars, which say something else. Neither he nor any of the rest of them are The Second Coming.
So we must, if we're going to READ something this old, get used to different submissions of different opposing viewpoints. If opposing viewpoints do not upset scholars writing in the field, if the Lombardos of the world are not upset by the differences in the Fagles translations and vice versa, then we also need to be open to different ideas which may differ diametrically from scholar to scholar.
If we can't do that, we can't read the ancients. This is standard operating procedure. It is what it is. And it makes it SO rich to get more than one view.
-
ROSHANA, having seen Russell Crowe in many different roles, I am persuaded he could
play 'quick and cunning' with the best of them.
JOANK, I can't tell you how intrigued I was when I first learned that the writer of
Job had quoted Aeschylus! I have always been persuaded that Job..though the story was
very old...had not actually been written until after the captivity and followed the
Greek format for presentation.
If the ship had no need to be steered (rowed) why did Alcinous send 52 oarsmen who would be obsolete. Knowing of Poseidon's threat would he risk so many good men?
I will venture a reply. The steering oar was to give the ship it's direction. It did
not propel the ship. You still need the oarsmen for that, even it the ship supposedly
knew where to go on its own.
The questions about the challenges of Laodamas and Euryalus are certainly valid. I
find myself wondering if possibly the atmosphere of competition in the games permitted
such challenges, without violating hospitality?
On another issue, of the cleaning with oil, I was always under the impression that the
oil, along with any deep grime it loosened, was scraped away. And certainly the oil was
important in keeping the skin hydrated in those hot southern climes.
GINNY, The article is early on, one page, about pg. 16 or thereabouts. It's listed in
table of contents.
-
Perhaps Odysseus is being challenged because he hasn't told them who he is--he drags it out thru the whole chapter, Alkinoos asks several times but does not press as that would not be polite, but he ought to have told them after he was first fed, he's dragging it out to make an impact I think (an example of his deviousness?), and I think maybe the son and Eurylaus just get a bit miffed with this mysterious stranger....
-
Dana, this is good! but he ought to have told them after he was first fed, he's dragging it out to make an impact I think (an example of his deviousness?), and I think maybe the son and Eurylaus just get a bit miffed with this mysterious stranger....
I got the miffed impression also, I thought it was because he was sighing and crying but apparently not, or so the text keeps saying nobody noticed by Alcinous.
Of course it's normal to not give his name until he's wined and dined and bathed, I had missed Alcinous's asking him more than once!!! Was there anything that caused him, an interruption or something not to answer when he was first asked? I must reread!
Still he must have had somewhat of a hang dog expression. Or maybe they were so busy feasting as we've said, nobody noticed.
Babi, what are you referring to here?
GINNY, The article is early on, one page, about pg. 16 or thereabouts. It's listed in
table of contents.
-
Thanks for the "nudge", Ginny! I've been horribly remiss about posting mostly because I am so enthralled with all the wonderful discussion here and, since I already know what I think, I am more interested in that which others are thinking. There's also the fact that I'm a hunt & peck typist, thus am rather slow.
Re: Lost Books of the Odyssey by Mason - it was some time ago that I read it & I had not yet read Homer. Now I really must go right back to the library and check it out again - it will be much more meaningful the second time around.
Why in the Odyssey are there 24 books? My thought is that the earliest written version was on papyrus scrolls. These are more brittle than vellum and if too much was on a scroll the repeated rolling & unrolling of it would damage the scroll. Therefor the epic was divided into 24 parts. Just guessing!
I love the way it is written in flashbacks. The structure is so sophisticated that it's hard to believe in its age! Very effective.
Crying: Isn't it only in our Anglo-American tradition that we have the "stiff upper lip"? We're more likely to find both sexes weeping in other cultures.
It was heartbreaking to visualize O. weeping on the shore of Calypso's island having been rendered captive and helpless by her spell. He was only human whereas she was at least partly if not wholly one of the Olympians.
There is a film by Miyazaki, "Nausicaa", about the princess of the last habitable little valley on earth, which is the only place I've ever seen that name other than in the Odyssey. Her realm and that of the Phaeacians (sp?) are both isolated and different from the rest of the world. Homer must surely be studied in Japan.
-
Joan R
I very much agree with the idea of the Vellum scrolls. I picture the audience sitting around the raised platform where Homer is reading and watching him unfold the scroll until its end. Then its time to eat and drink and do whatever they did at these feasts.
They are awaiting the next scroll. Perhaps he will read it in an hour or perhaps tomorrow. We want to know what happens to our hero.
The idea that this is so came to me because of our expression-THE STORY UNFOLDS. It is the scroll that unfolds.
-
The Book Club Online is the oldest book club on the Internet, begun in 1996, open to everyone. We offer cordial discussions of one book a month, 24/7 and enjoy the company of readers from all over the world. Everyone is welcome to join in.
Now reading:
(http://www.seniorlearn.org/bookclubs/classicsbookclub/cbc2odysseysm.jpg)
April 5----Books IX and X: The Cicones, the Lotus Eaters, and the Cyclops!
(http://seniorlearn.org/latin/ulysses_penelope/Odysseussheepkrater350.jpg)
(http://seniorlearn.org/latin/ulysses_penelope/Odyssey9LotusEatersThulden.jpg)
The Lotus Eaters
17th century etching
Theodor van Thulden (1606 - 1669)
Discussion Leaders: Joan K (joankraft13@yahoo.com) & ginny (gvinesc@wildblue.net )
(http://seniorlearn.org/latin/ulysses_penelope/Odyssey9Cyclops.jpg)(http://seniorlearn.org/latin/ulysses_penelope/Odyssey9Tishbourne.jpg)
Useful Links:
1. Critical Analysis: Free SparkNotes background and analysis on the Odyssey (http://www.sparknotes.com/lit/odyssey)
2. Translations Used in This Discussion So Far: (http://www.seniorlearn.org/bookclubs/odyssey/odyssey_translations.html)
3. Initial Points to Watch For: submitted by JudeS (http://www.seniorlearn.org/bookclubs/odyssey/odyssey_points.html)
4. Maps:
Map of the Voyages of Odysseus (http://www.seniorlearn.org/latin/ulysses_penelope/Odysseusmap.jpg)
Map of Voyages in order (http://www.wesleyan.edu/~mkatz/Images/Voyages.jpg)
Map of Stops Numbered (http://www.seniorlearn.org/latin/ulysses_penelope/Odysseusmap2.jpg)
Our Map Showing Place Names in the Odyssey (http://www.seniorlearn.org/latin/graphics/AncientGreecemap.jpg)
(http://seniorlearn.org/latin/ulysses_penelope/Odysseus9Blindingvase.jpg)
The blinding of Polyphemus
Lucanian red figure calyx krater
c. 400 BC
British Museum
(http://seniorlearn.org/latin/ulysses_penelope/Odyssey9CyclopsFlaxman.jpg)
Odysseus mixes wine for Polyphemus
John Flaxman
1805
oops! If Homer was blind he wasn't unfolding the scrolls Perhaps he wasn't the only act in town and there were other readers. Or perhaps the idea of the blind Homer really comes from the blind bard in the odyssey itself
(as someone has suggested).
-
Ginny thank goodness you shared
(1) Absolute tons of scholars, all footnoted and quoted, almost all of whom are well known and respected, are totally and unequivocally at variance with each other, and almost all of them disagree on the reason the Odyssey is in books and who put them in. Occasionally 2 or 3 will agree on one facet. This article was written in 2000.
Because this first chapter online in a book about Crying (http://www.nytimes.com/books/first/l/lutz-crying.html) is not how I imagined crying and yet, it could fit since Odysseus cries covering his face with his sea-blue cape.
Transformative rituals and axioms about the sustaining pleasure of crying are found in many Greek sources as well. In The Iliad, Homer talks of the "desire for lamentation" and "taking satisfaction in lament." According to classicist W. B. Stanford, the function of poetry in Homer is to give pleasure to the listener even if the audience finds the story painful. Odysseus cries in pleasure, for instance, when the bard Demodokos tells the story of the Trojan horse, despite the pain he experiences in remembering lost comrades and lost time. And the pleasure of tears goes beyond such aesthetic response. Meneláos tells Odysseus that when he thinks of the men who died in the war, "nothing but grief is left me for those companions. While I sit at home sometimes hot tears come, and I revel in them, or stop before the surfeit makes me shiver." The tears here are somehow compensation for grief, and are the opposite of purgation—Meneláos was empty of everything but grief until his tears came, and then he reveled in them until he was surfeited, satiated. Euripides is even more explicit in The Trojan Women:
How good are the tears, how sweet the dirges,
I would rather sing dirges than eat or drink.
Here the "desire for lamentation" is a desire for pleasure and sweet satisfaction, more satisfying than food or drink. Weeping is so pleasurable that it can make one "shiver" with delight.
The information from the book talks about how whole tribes of Hebrews would go into the desert each Spring and start with "slowly moan and cry, moving from whimpering to weeping to wailing and then, over the course of several days, to frenzied hysterics and finally to raucous laughter in exhilaration before dissolving into giggles" over days that was to clear out the emotions. Hmmm maybe I am part Hebrew because that is often how I react even after the death of my son. The book also goes on to tell how the first record of crying is over the death of the god Ba'al - "found on Canaanite clay tablets dating from the fourteenth century B.C. Named after the village in northwestern Syria... Ugarit as a fabled city of advanced civilization and learning, no one was sure of its exact location until an Ugarit tomb was uncovered in Ras Shamra in 1931"
Odysseus sure goes from one emotion to the other - from weeping at the dinner table to besting everyone and proud of it on the gaming fields. And then more gifting - has anyone ever read anything about all this gifting - I wonder - do you think this is a case of advanced quid pro quo - the world was small and in affect they are all neighbors during dangerous times. Is gifting buying insurance that is stronger than family or the treacherous gods...
-
Ginny, I'm glad you described the disagreements among classical scholars. Sometimes when I disagree with an interpretation, I think "wait a minute--why aren't they seeing (whatever it is)? and I don't know which of us is missing something or seeing too much. Now I have the answer: it's the disagreement of scholars, and I'm as good as any of them.
JoanR, thanks for reminding me of Nausicaa of the Valley of the Wind. I hadn't thought of it for a long time. It would be interesting to know why Miyazaki chose that name.
Babi, now that you mention that the oil was scraped off, I remember that they had special tools for doing it:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Strigil (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Strigil)
-
GINNY, in one of your posts you inserted a quick question about the Smithsonian interview
with the author of "Helen of Troy", about her new book on Socrates. 'Bethany?' Hughes? Was
that the name? (It's very early, I'm still coming alert.)
What a neat conclusion, JUDE. The scroll..thus, the story, unfolds. I like it!
In one sense, BARB, I think all the gifting is a form of quid pro quo. Since any of them
could find themselves in a position similar to Odysseus, at any time, it makes sense to
keep a cultural standard of welcoming and succoring a guest and helping him get back on
his feet. "There but for the grace of God...." Or in the case of the ancients, "There, by the
curse of the gods...."?
-
Babi, thank you, I've got Second Acts, My Kind of Town, Cleveland, Ohio on page 16 by Charles Michener. Maybe you've got the May edition? I bet it was the March edition and I threw that one away!)
Entertainment Magazine sure is on the superheroes, tho. Arnold Schwarzenegger is coming out the 4th pf April with a new cartoon/ comic book hero the Governator. Drawn by Stan Lee (who looks absolutely amazing at 85), it's possible it will make a movie too, takes on Facebook, it's very very clever. More also on other super heroes and somewhere one of the actors says they're the Greek gods of our time
Isn't that interesting? The Governator will have suits he can put on to be in the same mist that Athena did for Odysseus, and other guises as well. Isn't it exciting to be reading this and be able to see the influences?
Pat H: Sometimes when I disagree with an interpretation, I think "wait a minute--why aren't they seeing (whatever it is)? and I don't know which of us is missing something or seeing too much. Now I have the answer: it's the disagreement of scholars, and I'm as good as any of them.
:) When you consider that it's the reader who carries on the tradition by reading it and bringing it to life again in his or her own mind, then reading like this in a group and talking about it, when we either don't see a point or see one nobody else sees brings the tradition to a new level, I think. Plus keep in mind none of us have read all the scholarly articles and books written on this and I have a feeling somebody somewhere may have thought somewhat on the same lines we might in the last 2000 years. Perhaps not. But we know how it resonates with us.
Barbara, interesting on the crying and lamentation, thank you, and a great question: And then more gifting - has anyone ever read anything about all this gifting - I wonder - do you think this is a case of advanced quid pro quo - the world was small and in affect they are all neighbors during dangerous times. Is gifting buying insurance that is stronger than family or the treacherous gods...
I wonder if in a way, the accepted social mores of all societies are sort of a quid pro quo? You can extrapolate it and apply it to a lot of varied things.
JoanR, I need to read the Mason Odyssey again, I think I'll wait at least till we get to Chapter 12 here so I can appreciate what he's done.
Thank you for the reference to Nausicaa, the movie. I have never heard of it!
I just saw last night another piece about Speaker of the House John Boehner who seems to do a lot of weeping in public, or at least they show it every 2 minutes. Since I'm not around him personally but only see him in the act of breaking down on television and it's played over and over and over, I think maybe the incidents are exaggerated by this constant replaying, and are not something he does every minute. I think if it were something that occurred every five minutes or so you'd want to ask, like Alcinous, what's really going on?
We probably need to move on on Tuesday to Books 9 and 10. Together are they 20 pages? I wish every book were like this, it makes for such easy and enjoyable reading, most can easily read 20 pages in 3 days.
In 9 O finally begins his tale and we FINALLY get to see him in action as a hero and a very clever one at that.
I'm trying to think of how many other books could hold off the actual story till the 9th chapter, there WAS one recently but I can't think now what it was.
So the blind bard sings three songs. Two on the events of the Trojan War, in which we hear that O is a VERY well known hero (and here he sits incognito in our midst), and one on cuckolding, the husband catches his wife with the guy in the act. Laughter all around, both the watching gods in the story and the audience at the palace. It's a hit. O on this one is NOT crying because perhaps he? Assumes that Penelope is not doing this? Has trust in her, even tho he's been compelled to stray? Wonder why it doesn't occur to him that a passing male god might have had the same effect on her?
___________________
How are we doing with the Temple questions?
194-210 Alcinous introduces exhibitions of dancing; Demodokos sings of Hephaestus' revenge on Ares and Aphrodite. Why does Odysseus react to this story differently? More dancing, and gifts for O. He now asks Demodocus for a certain story and weeps again. Alcinous questions him. Think about the content of the songs, O's response to them, and the epithets given to him in this book. What is going on? Do you recall another incident of weeping at dinner? Also, do you like the Phaeacians? Do they resemble any other group of people?
Interpretive interlude
We are now 1/3 of the way through, and the epic can in fact be divided into three parts. In Book 9, we see Odysseus at the beginning of his return; in Books 5-8, near the end, 10 years later. Has he changed? How?
Try thinking again about Books 6-9 as an anthropologist might in investigating alien cultures. How would you categorize or classify these cultures? As always with myth, think about food. Why do you think Homer has put them all in the epic? Remember, Homer does nothing without cause.
Start thinking about the type of human being that Odysseus personifies and about the larger allegorical significance of his journeys. The Odysseus myth has influenced texts from Dante's Inferno, to Joyce's Ulysses, to Conrad's Lord Jim, to Huckleberry Finn -- even Captain James T. Kirk of the Starship Enterprise (yes, think about that!) owes much of his identity to Odysseus.
Of course we're not TO 9 yet, we may want to keep these in mind. (They sure are full of spelling errors, I have to keep correcting them!)
I'm still, for my part, hung up on the two young bucks challenging him. Are they too full of vino? He's been weeping over the song of Achilles and Agamemnon but pulls his cape over his head. Alcinous notices this (the groans alone would alert one) but nobody else does,. I am not seeing joy here. So A says let's put on one of our boxing wrestling jumping footraces events to show our honored guest. And off they go.
First a race. Then jumping discus boxing and the king's SON says, you look good, let's invite the stranger to participate. So he does. He makes the statement about there's no greater glory but he's also noted before that O is somewhat "broken" by his time at sea, he's out of shape, still he thinks he's got what it takes. (But maybe in the back of his mind they can beat him?)
That seems innocent enough, sort of a game high they're all on? Testosterone flowing kind of thing, manly challenge?
And O responds rather strangely, to me, "Laodamas, why do you provoke me like this
I have more serious things on my mind
Than track and field.
I've had my share of suffering,
And paid my dues. Now I sit in the middle
Of your assembly, longing to return home,
A suppliant before your kind and all the people."
That's a nice answer and a humble one for our Epic hero. I can't see Agamemnon saying that, nor especially Achilles. Here he says, this great and famous godlike hero, sung about yet by the bard, that he's a suppliant. We should note this, O can be very humble when he likes.
Does this increase or decrease your respect for him?
Is this normal for a Greek super hero?
Where by the way is the omnipresent Athene at this point?
But then it escalates. Euryalus says he's seen a lot of sportsmen,
"And you don't look like one to me at all.
You look more like the captain of a merchant ship,
Plying the seas with a crew of hired hands
And keeping a sharp eye on his cargo,
Greedy for profit. No, you're no athlete."
Them's fighting words, buddy. hahahaa
That's an insult to his manhood in any century, you're just a greedy merchant. This does show us the culture of the day, doesn't it? If you read the Schwarzenegger article you see it's not over either. I recommend it, actually.
So then O enters the contest, throws the discus, gets Nausicaa, now smitten, on his cheering squad and cheers up himself:
"Step right up-- I'm angry now--
I don't care if it's boxing, wrestling,
Or even running. Come one, come all--
Except Laodamas, who is my host.
Only a fool would challenge the man
Who gives him hospitality in a distant land.
He would only wind up hurting himself.."
He means if he wins over Laodamas, he, who is presumably the age of Alcinous to start with, that he'd hurt himself if he won.
Here O is showing us some fine thinking, even tho he let Euryalus goad him into throwing the discus, he's thinking all the time. In this one speech he reminds L he's the host and he's in danger of breaking this xenia generosity courtesy hospitality thing, and that only a fool would take him up on it personally. He's just told Euryalus that he IS a fool: by his words he's "crippled" in the mind. It's clear that even enraged O is in control of his mind and careful in what he says and does.
And what's the result? If you were writing this what would have happened? What did?
I like this segment. We have a world today where young men get the wind up, especially under the influence of an after dinner crowd where the booze flows freely and challenges are thrown, and I like the maturity here O shows and the presence of mind even WHEN he's shown them he can still deliver the goods. I love what Homer has done here, he's captured it on both sides beautifully.
It's amazing (I just watched Jersey Shore again last night) how some things never change. Or maybe the more things change the more they stay the same. You can see this from the POV of the aging man and the young one, too. Amazing writing.
What are your thoughts on anything through Book 8 before we move on Tuesday to 9 and 10? As PatH says your thoughts are as good as anybody else's and we'd love to hear them!
-
GINNY: " He did lose me with Zenodotus "since he athetized the 'Shield of Achilles' in the Iliad," "
I don'tt know what "athetized" means either. But I was struck by this phrase, because the scene with nausicaa reminded me too strongly of the scene in the Iliad where vulcan makes a sheild for Achilles. The shield has two pictures, one of a cirty at war, and one of a peaceful scene in the woods of young people playing and laughing.
here in the Iliad, and in the scene in Nausicaa in the Odyssey of the young women playing ball by the sea, Homer gives us his vision of the idyllic life, what life could be, to hold up against the horrible scenes of trouble, pain and death in the rest of the Iliad and Odyssey.
-
Not easy to find but this is what I did find Joan
Ath´e`tize
v. t. 1. To set aside or reject as spurious, as by marking with an obelus.
[imp. & p. p. Athetized ; p. pr. & vb. n. Athetizing .]
obe·lus
noun \-ləs\
plural ob·e·li\-ˌlī, -ˌlē\
Definition of OBELUS
1
: a symbol − or ÷ used in ancient manuscripts to mark a questionable passage
2
: the symbol ÷
-
On another issue, of the cleaning with oil, I was always under the impression that the
oil, along with any deep grime it loosened, was scraped away. And certainly the oil was
important in keeping the skin hydrated in those hot southern climes.
Now that you remind me, Babi, I remember that they even had special tools, strigils, for scraping off the oily grime. Here's a vase showing it--side B, scroll down for description.
http://www.royalathena.com/pages/greekcatalog/Vases/AtticRF/PK0994K.html (http://www.royalathena.com/pages/greekcatalog/Vases/AtticRF/PK0994K.html)
-
Ginny:
We should note this, O can be very humble when he likes.
This is an important part of Odysseus' character that we haven't yet seen (except that when he first comes to Alcinous' house he sits quietly in the ashes of the hearth until they notice him). It will serve him well.
-
Poseidon as protector of the Phaeacians: the Phaeacians seem to be under Poseidon's protection, and have a huge temple to him. Alcinous is Poseidon's grandson, and Arete is his great granddaughter (through the same person; they're first cousins once removed). I don't know if this will protect them from his wrath when they give Odysseus transport or not.
-
Ginny and PatH - (Book 7) Alcinous and Arete both know that Poseidon (and Zeus) have given Odysseus many "dour griefs" and tried to dispose of him.
As Odysseus begins telling the king and queen how he came to be washed up on their island, Phaecia, he mentions that both Zeus and Poseidon are responsible for his wretched state. Before he meets Calypso:
"...Zeus had let drive with a dazzling thunder-bolt at our good ship
and riven it in the wine dark unbounded sea"
O continues to tell Alcinous and Arete about travelling on the raft made by Calypso:
"My heart exulted - too soon: for it was written that I should yet know the further dour griefs allotted me by by Poseidon the Earth-shaker, who stirred up the winds to block my passage and raised such seas as not even the gods could tell of."
After telling them this, iIt should be clear to the king and queen that Odysseus is ill-favoured by Zeus and Poseidon. !Spoiler alert!
NOTE: My translation is by T.E. Lawrence in prose who doesn't mention the almost supernatural (Star Trek style as Ginny says) ability of the Phaecian ships. I kind of wish Lawrence had described the ships as fantastically as the other translator. Anyway, it all makes for good copy and lively discussion.
-
Alas, GINNY, it was the March edition. No matter..you can still get the Socrates bio.
if you like.
PATH, you embolden me to confess. After trying several times to read Plato's Republic,
and getting bogged down in the fifth chapter(?) every time, I came to the brave conclusion
that it didn't make sense to me for the simple reason that it DIDN'T MAKE SENSE! The
brilliant man's ideas were amazing for his day, but in the light of the knowledge we've
gained since, I take leave to think they were mistaken.
ps: I knew there was an instrument for scraping the skin, but couldn't remember what is
was called. And aren't those vases beautiful?
GINNY, the translation you cite, of O's response to Laodamas, has too modern a sound to
me. I think it's the phrase "paid my dues" that does it. I like Fitzgerald's translation.
"Laodamas, why do you young chaps challenge me?
I have more on my mind than track and field-
hard days , and many, have I seen, and suffered,
I sit here at your field meet, yes; but only
As one who begs your king to send me home."
As you say, a nice and humble reply. And yes, it did increase my respect for him.
-
:) Babi, I liked that "paid my dues." Different strokes. I felt more respect for him too, and unlike a lot of the other episodes I am not seeing the constant epithets about "always thinking," which signal us the reader that he's doing a bit of cogitation. Murray doesn't mention it either, but he does say "the resourceful" Odysseus before he answers, which shows us, I guess, he's thinking. Kind of like the new Museum movie, where The Thinker goes "I'm thinking, I'm thinking..." hahahaa
That was Lombardo I quoted but did not attribute to.
PatH, Poseidon as protector of the Phaeacians: the Phaeacians seem to be under Poseidon's protection, and have a huge temple to him. Alcinous is Poseidon's grandson, and Arete is his great granddaughter (through the same person; they're first cousins once removed). I don't know if this will protect them from his wrath when they give Odysseus transport or not. Man that's some connection! No wonder they're cocky. :)
RoshanaRose, oh good points on what O thinks the Earthshaker has done to him in the past. but that doesn't seem to bother A at the time? He still offers a ship, but that's before he knows who O is. I wonder if it will make any difference.
Maybe A feels so secure in this family relationship that he does not worry about these things? If so he's about to come a cropper, huh?
I love the tension here, and I missed entirely those two passages many thanks.
On the magic ships Star Trek aspect, it's not a Lombardo thing, here are two more:
(1) Murray's literal translation in 1919 has:
line 555 ff: And tell me your country, your people, and your city, that our ships may convey you there, discerning the course by their wits.
For the Phaecians have no pilots, nor steering oars such as other ships have, but the ships themselves understand the thoughts and minds of men, and they know the cities and rich fields of all peoples, and the gulf of the sea they cross most quickly, hidden in mist and cloud, nor ever have the fear of damage or shipwreck.
______________________________
(2) I was curious as to what the flowery Pope might make of it in 1725 and here's his take:
In wondrous ships, self-moved (!!!) instinct with mind;
No helm secures their course, no pilot guides;
Like man intelligent, they plough the tides,
Conscious of every coast, and every bay,
That lies beneath the sun's all -seeing ray;
Through clouds and darkness veil the encumber'd sky,
Fearless through darkness and through clouds they fly;
Unless I'm losing it, did he just say they need no rowers?
Talk about Star Trek!
What do your texts have for lines 555 on about the 'magic ships?" What does Cook say, Gum?
That was interesting on the obelus, Barbara.
That's a good point, Joan K, about the scenes here of a happy life, this does seem to be a nice interlude before the considerable storms to come. Talk about the troubles of Job! You kind of want to see him succeed.
I think maybe as readers we need these interludes. For contrast. Those of you who read the Iliad: can you imagine the great Agamemnon or Achilles sitting in ashes as a "suppliant?" I guess in their case pride went before the fall.
But his weeping, his showing of emotion, and emotion caused by the longing for his wife and home makes him more human than they seemed. Seems to me Achilles got his emotions out in anger. When his friend Patroclus was killed, he went on an awful rampage. O seems a feeling hero who is not so big he can't be humble. And now in 9 he's about to tell his story. I love the Cyclops part, it's, well I was about to say it's what most people remember from the Odyssey but I see Circe here too and the Lotus Eaters, and of course not to forget Penelope and her situation, we're about to find out what happened to his men and his ships. What a story! What an adventure! I can't think of anything modern which compares to it.
I was about to say even Superman had to go in a phone booth or something and put on a suit...and that makes me wonder why O doesn't have to put on a suit to do his stuff? The only time he gets to have a metaphorical "suit" is when A wraps him in a mist, but he's about to put on a physical one... can't wait for 9.
I find self warming to O finally and I don't know why? hahaha
How do YOU feel about him? Do you care if he makes it back or not? We have a penchant for the underdog, do the challenges of the young bucks at Alcinous's palace make you more or less on his side? (Looks like bullying can occur any time any place, huh?)...wonder what brings it on?
Anyway it's got a lot of modern applications despite the gods and goddesses who are never far from sight or view tho mysteriously absent here. I am not sure what that means, either.
It's really getting good, now. What IF it had started with 9? Would you have personally liked the book more or less? Supposedly we live in an Attention Deficit Disorder world, short little attention spans, get it out and over with. We don't have that here, does that affect your enjoyment or interest?
Inquiring mind or what passes for it would love to know.
-
Babi, here's the Smithsonian article with Bettany Hughes on Socrates:
It definitely says April, but you've noted the in print article is in the March issue. Looks like she already has a naysayer commenting, it will be interesting to see more comments.
The OCCL says the charges were (1) "In 399 he was brought to trial by Anytus Meletus and Lycon on the charge of not believing in the gods whom Athens believed in but of introducing new gods," and (2) "of corrupting the youth of the city."
So they're both right, neither goes far enough. Two versions of Socrates' speech in his own defense exist in the Apology by Plato and in that by Xenophon but "neither makes exactly clear the precise significance of the charges. They were connected, however, with Socrates's well -known association with many of the Thirty Tyrants who overthrew the democracy. ...The attack on him was not merely because of the political views of his proteges, it was also felt that he had undermined the traditional morality and religion of the city, the practice of which had in former times, it was felt, made Athens great....."
http://www.smithsonianmag.com/history-archaeology/Bettany-Hughes-on-Socrates.html
-
I think the Phaikians were a people not human like the rest of us, especially loved by the gods, who lived in a garden of Eden. Their land as described is like no real place--abundant fresh water and produce at all times and so on, a lyrical description
Regarding the prophecy. I believe it was regarded as tempting the gods to try to subvert "fate". If a prophecy said something was to happen and you tried to change that, it usually went wrong anyway. Look at when Croesus tried to protect his son from being killed--it happened anyway, by the man who was supposed to protect him. One gets the distinct impression that Croesus, as described by Herodotus, was thought to have too much hubris in trying to find a way round the will of the gods, and punished for it. And that's just one example. So i don't think the prophecy would stop Odysseus from asking or the Phaiakians from responding to his request because to give him the ship was the right thing to do and if they refused the gods would twist things around anyway so the prophecy was fulfilled.
-
What do your texts have for lines 555 on about the 'magic ships?" What does Cook say, Gum?
Tell me your land and your district and your city,
So that the ships that are steered by thought may convey you there,
For there exist no pilots among the Phaeacians,
And there are no rudders at all such as other ships have,
But the ships themselves know the intentions and minds of men.
They know the cities and fertile fields of all men
And very swiftly, shrouded in mist and a cloud,
They traverse the gulf of the sea. There is no fear
At all for them that they suffer harm or be lost. (Cook VIII: 555-563)
The thing that gets me in this passage is that fact that the Greeks could envisage 'thought control' of the ships.
Oops - I've just got here and I have to go - maybe back tomorrow.
-
Fagles says,
"For we have no steersmen here among Phaeacia's crews
or steering-oars that guide your common craft.
Our ships know in a flash their mates' intentions,
know all ports of call and all the rich green fields.
With wings of the wind they cross the sea's huge gulfs,
shrouded in mist and cloud-no fear in the world of foundering,
fatal shipwreck."
Looking for the practical in the story I wonder if "With wings of the wind" mean they used sailing vessels with a large and more responsive sail. Also, I wonder what the currents were like in their area - maybe they went to sea and the currents and natural direction of the prevailing winds pulled them back to their home port.
Yes, the Phaikians homeland sure does sound like an Edan doesn't it - had a thought on the gifting - I wonder if it set a precedent still carried on today - visiting the many libraries and museums of past president's always there is a showcase that includes all these fabulous gifts received from ambassadors and heads of foreign governments - and I guess today the issue of foreign-aid stems from this hospitality and gift giving so that continued practice makes it easy to accept the outstanding hospitality Odysseus receives as part of the fabric of life.
And then one other thought in this chapter - I wonder if Shakespeare was influenced by Homer - the songs that are stories remind me of how Shakespeare used a story within a story in Hamlet - oh and the other play about summer and the character with the horses head - galloping senility and I cannot think the name. There may be others but those two Shakespeare plays come to mind.
-
Have any of you ever wondered why all these places/islands Odysseusvisits have such varied and unique, and often downright murderous inhabitants? Is it all just a fairy story or is there some element of truth in the telling?
Between c2000BCE and 600BCE People were on the move into Greece: Nomadic Hellenes c2000BCE; the Dorians moved into Greece c1100BCE; and then mainland Greeks started to colonise places in Sicily (Syracusa) c700BCE all the way up to Naples (Neapoli - meaning New city). In 600BCE the Greeks colonised Marseilles and then some of the colonists from Marseilles founded other colonies in Antibes, Nice, and Agde. The name Nice actually comes from the Greek word for victory NIKE. These colonists went on to colonise Sardinia and Corsica; Naukratis in Egypt and Kyrene (Libya). There are many more, two as far away as Spain.
Nice map/s to help.
http://learningobjects.wesleyan.edu/greek_colonies/
I have never colonised anywhere, but I am still part of a colony and my country is a loooong way from Europe and the US. I have only visited one country in which I didn't feel comfortable and that was Egypt. In Cairo so many strange sights and smells and I felt that there were many people there who I could not trust. I was nearly accosted twice, both times in very good hotels, by the bell boys! Anyway what I am leading up to is - even now although we may see on TV or DVD or read in books or online what these exotic places look like and learn of their history and culture, way back c.700BCE, landing by boat at any of these places would have been daunting, to say the least for the colonisers. They probably had to deal with a great deal of hostility from the original inhabitants.
This is a quote from Michael Grant p.146, The Rise of The Greeks:
"But before the poet [Homer] comes to the more static second half of Odyssey........the hero [Odysseus] is tossed up on strange lands, which as Eratosthenes pointed out as early as the second century BC, defy indentification. Yet, unidentifiable though they are and intended to be, the wonderful accounts of these places reflect, in a general sense, the bold journeys actually accomplished during the age of migrations, which preceded and prepared the way for the feats of the Greek colonizers."
Theory or truth? Could these Homeric mysteries be explained by the experiences of the colonists c700BCE? Although we undertstand that Homer was writing about the Bronze Age , the timing in Ancient History is correct to use the recent Greek colonisation as inspiration for Odysseus' adventures.
ibidp.140
"The poems seemed to have reached their final, or nearly final form in c.750/700BC more than 200 years, that is to say, after the arrival of the Ionians upon the island of Chios and half a millenium later than the supposed events events that their poet purported to describe."
-
but I am still part of a colony
Hey Roshanarose - in case you haven't heard, Australia became a nation on 1st January 1901 - it's called the Commonwealth of Australia. ;D
-
Haha Gum - I knew I would get a bite out of you. Luv ya!
-
Glad you found it, GINNY. I've still got my copy and a number of articles in it I want
to read. I just have to squeeze them in between other reading.
You must be thinking of "Midsummer Night's Dream", BARB.
You notice how everything is attributed to some god or other? If there is a storm it’s Zeus’ fault, or Poseidon’s . Storms do come up at sea, even when feeble men aren’t there. And
why do they take for granted that some god would destroy a whole boatload of men out of anger at one man?
-
Thank you Gum, and Barbara for two other versions of the ships, it's clear they are fantastical, I liked that "thought control," Gum.
It's about to get a lot more fantastical!!
Babi, that's a good point on the gods always being thought of when anything happens, and a good question: And
why do they take for granted that some god would destroy a whole boatload of men out of anger at one man? That's an interesting question. There was something quite like it in one of the Pirates of the Caribbean movie. They wanted to get Cap'n Jack Sparrow off the boat because if they didn't whoever (Davy Jones?) would take the entire ship of them down. Nobody seems to question that in the movie, or in the audiences, I wonder why? Once you articulate it, it does not make sense.
I am seeing a lot of derivative films from this, especially having just read 9 again.
Let's just do 9 for starters starting tomorrow? There are a million things going on in it!!
Since I'm to have major storms here forecast for tomorrow I've put up the heading now, let's hold on the Temple questions and see what you thought of it. I just absolutely love this chapter.
RoshannaRose, that's interesting on Michael Grant idea about colonization and how it might relate to the Odyssey sailings, and thank you for the great link to the great maps of Greek colonies. The animation is something else and I do like the fuller explanations. For some reason I did not realize Cyrene was a Greek colony, I need to read up on that.
_________________________________
I love this chapter and it looks like we've encountered another Eden here as well.
Don't you find the numbers interesting? 6 men lost from each ship for starters among the Cicones? Why? Notice nobody is blaming the gods this time. We're about to find out how lost his ships and men.
What, in this Book 9, is causing their problems? Is there one thing which predominates all the adventures?
And I loved this part:
I wouldn't let the ships get under way
Until someone had called out three times
For each mate who had fallen on the battlefield. (65ff or so)
That's impressive. I wonder if it's the origin of some of our customs today, I can think of several times in memorial that names are read, thinking of 9/11.
Then the Lotus Eaters, shades of Star Trek, who I think copied this themselves.
And THEN the Cyclops!
You don't get a whole lot better than this. How clever O is on the spur of the moment! Noman. There is no way I could ever have thought of that one, ever.
He IS smart.
And the descriptions!!! This is as good as any book, this bit, so evocative. Which description did you like best?
What struck you the most about Book 9? You can read it in 5 minutes, but don't, it's worth a nice sit down and contemplation.
Would you call Odysseus modest?
What do you think of his character in this segment?
Where does the blame need to lie here? With the gods?
I loved the surprise at the end of the story, the revelation of who was the father of the Cyclops!! Can't you just see the audience gasping and sitting up?
What's O's reaction to this news item and what is the result?
Lots going on here for us tomorrow!! :)
-
Batten down the hatches Ginny - that storm is sweeping across the nation - we had the experience this morning and the sky was scary -
I can see if you have no idea of science, your place in the Universe and still believing the earth is flat held up by monster size tree trunks that the gods are in control especially if you see a sky like we saw here this morning.
Ever since I've had 'Moaning Myrtle' camped in the trees in my side yard since the other day, she is increasing her moans to wailes - the wind...whew...TV says gusting at 52 and blowing at 40 - at this rate we will have all of west Texas on our roofs by nightfall. I ended up taking the safer route by pulling the plug on most all my electronics and just now plugged back the computer.
-
Roshannarose, I was struck by your comments about the migrations into Greece and westward. Perhaps great migrations spawn these heroic tales. When I read The Nibelungenlied the introduction stated that the tale, or tales strung together into one (sound familiar?), is thought to have been triggered by the Hun migrations into Eastern Europe. BTW, I am awaiting the arrival of J. R. R. Tolkein's, The Legend of Sigurd and Gundrun. This is not a translation, but his own retelling of the Norse version of the tales. This was written before The Hobbit, etc. but only recently published.
-
PATH: I love those bath tools. Hard to tell if they're brushes, or more like combs -- I'm betting the latter.
BABI: "why do they take for granted that some god would destroy a whole boatload of men out of anger at one man? "
you see that all through ancient literature. It seems so unjust to us, but not to them. But it makes it easier to explain misfortune: if bad luck comes, you can always find one person on board who has earned it.
I'm reminded of the "Jonahs" in our literature's stories. If a person on board was suspected of being a "jonah" i.e. a person who had been doomed to bad luck, the other sailors felt justified in throwing him overboard to save the ship.
-
Barb: I hope "Moaning myrtle" has gone away. Or you can flush her!
I wonder how much Homer influenced Shakespeare, too. The forests with young men and women wondering through sound very Greek. And I should go look at The Tempest to see how much the island there sounds like it could be one that O visited.
-
In reading chapter 9 I am beset with curiosity about how the Phaiakians reacted to finally being told, " I am Laertes' son Odysseus" . I'm tempted to skip ahead and take a look, but have restrained myself (so far)
I'm really struck with Odysseus' stupidity in this chapter. Why did he go off to meet the Cyclops. he had no need to. Why did he taunt him by telling him his name and thus calling down the wrath of Poseidon. Now we can see he really sows the seeds of his own misery. Perhaps that is the point--no matter how polytropos we may be, we still mess things up for ourselves and everyone else.
I must look up the Greek for
......................but he seemed rather
a shaggy mountain, reared in solitude.
-
well the translation is,
...nor was he like
a grain eating man, but rather from another kind
from a wooded peak of lofty mountains.
-
Dana is there more meaning to the translation - it sounds to me like grain grows in the lowlands and he is characterized as someone who lives with a higher opionion of himself than the average lowland grain eater. And in fact a lofty mountain peak filled with woods indicating not a barren mountain but one filled with substance - sort of a left handed compliment - is that it or am I missing something?
-
Barb - "Moaning Myrtle" must has flown very quickly from Tx to Queensland, she was here last night. One of my favourite characters from Harry Potter. I hope we are talking about the same one.
Sailors are notoriously superstitious and the Greeks are/were no exception. Playing the blame game they felt absolved them of any disaster, as someone said. We still say things like "somebody up there likes me" and "what have I done to deserve this?" But often now our monotheistic deity still gets the blame for earthquakes, tsunamis and volcanoes. The Greeks were much closer to their gods, they were almost semi-domesticated, after all they did live on earth at Mt Olympus. I have only driven past it in a bus, but it certainly looks like it could be the gods' home. Also don't forget that after poor old Jonah, women were considered bad luck on boats and got the blame for sailing calamities. This superstition still exists in some South Sea Islands. Another way of keeping women "barefoot and pregnant and doing the housework at home".
From Frybabe - Roshannarose, I was struck by your comments about the migrations into Greece and westward. Perhaps great migrations spawn these heroic tales. When I read The Nibelungenlied the introduction stated that the tale, or tales strung together into one (sound familiar?), is thought to have been triggered by the Hun migrations into Eastern Europe.
Those tales continue in our collective psyches to this day as far as I am concerned. New material is needed. :o
-
roshanarose;
When you mentioned that sailors are superstitous it brought to mind the great poem by Samuel Taylor Coleridge-The Albatross-(Remember-Water, water all around but not a drop to drink). As late as the 1800s we have this:
And I had done a hellish thing
And it would work 'em woe
For all averred, I had killed the bird
That made the breeze to blow.
Ah wretch! said they such birds to slay
That made the breeze to blow.
There are inumerable tales of magical and frightening things happening upon the seas. Perhaps all influenced by Odysseus or perhaps long voyages on the sea leads to great imagintive thoughts.
-
Yep, sorta fun - Homer had the gods I choose to call out the imagination of JK Rowling - for the past few days first in this incredible still life, dripping mist that had a stirring that sounded like moaning and then today, this fierce wind was easily heard out the window that faces the side yard where I have set up my office - the Greeks of 800BC and before may have believed in gods - I just think it is fun to associate happenings with fun characters from literature.
With all of Odysseus' fame that he outlines and brags on he still says it is the women who held him captive - Calypso the 'lustrous goddess' and so he is mesmerized by luster and the magic of a goddess saying these qualities held him back from his rugged land, no sweeter sight on earth - nothing here about Penelope as his reason to get back to sunny Ithaca -
And then we have a 'warmly' women who bewitched him - and so we know warmth from a women is irresistible to our hero who expresses neither women won his heart but then, Circe won something because he still does not mention Penelope - his parents, yes ---
And then to top it off he wants everyone to know he, at Ismarus was the one who said to his men - let's go - and so it is the fault of the men and Zeus that they were left vulnerable to the Cicones who broke their lines leaving him with the few to row away glad to escape their death.
On and on he goes telling us of storms, the magic power of lotus eating, lured to a cave, his fears, his heart shaking, his cunning, his weeping but not once does he tell us he missed, wept, thought beautiful, his son and wife back on Ithaca. He could spike the Cyclops and hold off his men as they tried to quiet his burst of anger but he, Odysseus could not fight off either Calypso or Circe - my oh my....
Well we are only a third of the way through this story so maybe his prowess will show him matching this conflicting show of strength - we shall see what we shall see!
-
As usual I'm running behind - must catch up the reading tonight.
Frybabe:
I am awaiting the arrival of J. R. R. Tolkein's, The Legend of Sigurd and Gundrun
I bought Sigurd and Gundrun the day it was released but it's still in my TBR pile. I need another couple of days in each week.
-
;D
-
GINNY, I would make a difference between what a pirate would do and what I would expect
of a god. When it comes to these Greek and Roman gods, perhaps I shouldn't. :-\
I don’t at all understand why Zeus has refused Odysseus’ sacrifice and determined to do him harm. After all, the Cyclops grossly repudiated all Zeus’ laws of hospitality..to say the least. Why should he be angry because the monster’s prey escaped? Poseidon, yes...but
why Zeus?
if bad luck comes, you can always find one person on board who has earned it.
Ah, yes, JOANK. Shades of Jonah!!
-
Well it's not raining and we're still here despite that awful storm, I sure hope you all are! What an awful sight that thing was crossing the country on the radar from the Midwest. We're fine despite a ton of trees down, and I hope everybody else anywhere else confronted with such a thing is, too.
Great conversations here. I love the allusions to Coleridge, Toklein, Rowling and Shakespeare. The entire experience is pretty amazing, when you start to look at it.
Babi, what a good question: I don’t at all understand why Zeus has refused Odysseus’ sacrifice and determined to do him harm. After all, the Cyclops grossly repudiated all Zeus’ laws of hospitality..to say the least. Why should he be angry because the monster’s prey escaped? Poseidon, yes...but
why Zeus?
What do you all think?
Dana, what a provocative statement! Here I am thinking how smart O is in Book 9 and here you are saying: I'm really struck with Odysseus' stupidity in this chapter. Why did he go off to meet the Cyclops. he had no need to. Why did he taunt him by telling him his name and thus calling down the wrath of Poseidon. Now we can see he really sows the seeds of his own misery. Perhaps that is the point--no matter how polytropos we may be, we still mess things up for ourselves and everyone else.
I love provocative questions. What do you all think? In Book 9 do you all see O as stupid?
If you do, how so? If you don't, why not?
What else is driving him in Book 9? If it's not stupidity, what is it?
Do you think more or less of him after reading 9?
-
ROSE: "Sailors are notoriously superstitious." It's still true!! I'm addicted to the reality show on the Discovery Channelcalled "Deadliest Catch" which follows crab fishermen in the Bering Sea. All of them have their superstitions. Once, one of them wouldn't leave port when he found his lucky something-or-other wasn't on board. On another boat, someone has to eat a raw fish before they start to bring luck.
And JUDE when they see a sea animalor bird, someone always asks if that's good or bad luck. Not as much has changed, as we like to think).
(Of course, I can't talk. I'm convinced that what I do or don't do while rooting influences whether my sports team wins or not. But that's not superstition: it's true!)
-
BABI: "I don’t at all understand why Zeus has refused Odysseus’ sacrifice and determined to do him harm. After all, the Cyclops grossly repudiated all Zeus’ laws of hospitality..to say the least. Why should he be angry because the monster’s prey escaped? Poseidon, yes..."
Even Poseidon. After all, the cyclops was going to eat him! What did he expect O to do.
-
JoanK - On another boat, someone has to eat a raw fish before they start to bring luck. Goodness me, I sure hope that raw fish is in the form of sushi!!!
I sometimes think that there is a little messenger who is going around these places before O and his men land letting them know about him and what they can expect. And I am not talking about Hermes!
-
Ginny,
You asked if this chapter makes us like or dislike Odysseus.
Hmm-First I see he is a terrible show off. The kind of guy who has to respond to every challenge no matter how stupid it is. He has to keep proving himself by outwitting others.In this chapter he has a real mean monster to outwit. He uses his clever deceit to his advantage to once again save himself and his men.
I picture the audience listening to the reading (or telling) of this chapter laughing at the clever joke of Odysseus calling himself "Nobody". Like in every good cliffhanger, Odysseus once again is saved.
So do I like him more or less? Well neither. I feel like saying "Odysseus grow up already! Go home if thats what you want. But you seem to be having one hell of a good time on the way. Obviously its glory you want. O.K. but how much more of this silliness do we have to endure?"
-
The Book Club Online is the oldest book club on the Internet, begun in 1996, open to everyone. We offer cordial discussions of one book a month, 24/7 and enjoy the company of readers from all over the world. Everyone is welcome to join in.
Now reading:
(http://www.seniorlearn.org/bookclubs/classicsbookclub/cbc2odysseysm.jpg)
April 5----Books IX and X: The Cicones, the Lotus Eaters, and the Cyclops!
(http://seniorlearn.org/latin/ulysses_penelope/Odysseussheepkrater350.jpg)
(http://seniorlearn.org/latin/ulysses_penelope/Odyssey9LotusEatersThulden.jpg)
The Lotus Eaters
17th century etching
Theodor van Thulden (1606 - 1669)
Discussion Leaders: Joan K (joankraft13@yahoo.com) & ginny (gvinesc@wildblue.net )
(http://seniorlearn.org/latin/ulysses_penelope/Odyssey9Cyclops.jpg)(http://seniorlearn.org/latin/ulysses_penelope/Odyssey9Tishbourne.jpg)
Useful Links:
1. Critical Analysis: Free SparkNotes background and analysis on the Odyssey (http://www.sparknotes.com/lit/odyssey)
2. Translations Used in This Discussion So Far: (http://www.seniorlearn.org/bookclubs/odyssey/odyssey_translations.html)
3. Initial Points to Watch For: submitted by JudeS (http://www.seniorlearn.org/bookclubs/odyssey/odyssey_points.html)
4. Maps:
Map of the Voyages of Odysseus (http://www.seniorlearn.org/latin/ulysses_penelope/Odysseusmap.jpg)
Map of Voyages in order (http://www.wesleyan.edu/~mkatz/Images/Voyages.jpg)
Map of Stops Numbered (http://www.seniorlearn.org/latin/ulysses_penelope/Odysseusmap2.jpg)
Our Map Showing Place Names in the Odyssey (http://www.seniorlearn.org/latin/graphics/AncientGreecemap.jpg)
(http://seniorlearn.org/latin/ulysses_penelope/Odysseus9Blindingvase.jpg)
The blinding of Polyphemus
Lucanian red figure calyx krater
c. 400 BC
British Museum
(http://seniorlearn.org/latin/ulysses_penelope/Odyssey9CyclopsFlaxman.jpg)
Odysseus mixes wine for Polyphemus
John Flaxman
1805
TV presenter and celebrity chef Rick Stein is in town cooking up a storm at the theatre with his latest show demonstrating foods from his journeys around the world - it's touted as a Food Odyssey - there is no end to it.
-
Why did Odysseus go off to meet the Cyclops? Why wouldn't he? They didn't yet know who
inhabited those islands and wanted to find out. They went bearing gifts and trusting in
the powerful Greek customs of hospitality. And Odysseus did not taunt the Cylops with his
name. He gave him a false name as part of a plan to escape captivity and a place on the
monster's menu!
JUDE, you are undoubtedly right about Odysseus being a seeker of glory. Weren't they
all? But one could hardly say, with all that happens to the man, that he was having "one
hell of a good time"!
-
Oh, gosh, O. is not stupid! O. is a hero! A hero has to take wild and crazy chances!
Moreover, isn't this fiction? I thought Homer wrote a song-story to be sung/told both to his audiences and to generations of audiences to come. How can an author be a best seller, in the ancient sense of the word, if his hero doesn't almost fall off the metaphorical cliff? Or almost get killed? over and over?
I'm enjoying all these adventures, and this Book of the story, so much more than when I read this as a student! Nowadays I can imagine the life of Homer, or a bard like Homer, who wanted to write for the ages! No bland, milktoast (spelling?) hero for him. No-sir-ree!
And the comrades getting killed? It's the stuff of action films! Yucky, certainly, but the listeners had lives full of near-misses and loss of loved ones in battle, no doubt! A little blood and gore wouldn't have put off the audiences of Homer's time!
-
Right on Mippy!
-
I think Odysseus taunted the Cyclops as he sailed away - even making sure that the Cyclops got his name right - because he was building up his "kleos", his "fame" that would live on after him. This was a very important thing for ancient heros and warriors. Unfortunately, now Poseidon would know exactly who it was who blinded his son.
Orion was another of Poseidon's sons - I can't quite remember who it was that slew him with an arrow or who was so saddened that he caused him to be placed in the night sky as the constellation "Orion". On a clear night he is quite visible!
-
JOANR: O "was building up his "kleos", his "fame" that would live on after him. This was a very important thing for ancient heros and warriors. "
Good point!! This is very obvious in the Iliad, which is all about "kleos". Achilles knows he will die if he fights at Troy, but chooses sure death rather than sacrifice "kleos". And Homer very carefully gave to each fighter his kleos, by describing each soldiers war in endless detail.
I had forgotten that it must be just as important to Odyssius.
How do you all feel about this?
-
And I'm glad Orion was put in the sky. It's the only cobstellation I can find.
MIPPY: Yeah, we need our heros. (but it's too bad that his men had to pay with their lives for O's heroism).
-
I think I am reacting to myself as a teenager reading Odysseus. Chapter 9 was my favorite chapter then and I remember how brilliant I thought O. was for thinking up the ploy with the sheep. I also remember thinking how heroic O. was for attacking the Cyclops the way he did.
Now I am reading the same story with, what I am afraid is a jaundiced eye. Perhaps thinking of all the men that die on every adventure and how they are mourned for a minute and on goes the story to greater adventure makes me a bit unhappy.
True , in all adventure stories many unnamed people die, thats why I don't watch adventure movies anymore. Loved them when I was young.
-
hi there
just letting you know am still with you, and catching up in my reading
we left Fort Myers, Friday, just missed a Tornado 2 hours north of Madison, Indiana, Sunday--home Monday evening, Ontario--going from 85 degree weather to no leaves on the trees, and pockets of snow everywhere, heartbreaker
found the Barrie library has the book 'The Lost Books of the Odessey' on order, hoping to get my hands on it, sounds so interesting...
found it so interesting the discussion about the varying opinions of what the author has said and so the story has its variations, keeps one on their feet especially when limited to one book...so glad that the group has all these varying authors to cite from ....gives added interest
am still back with book 8 and away for next couple of days but then steaming ahead with a catch up
Deb
-
Come on Eurylochus, let us jump ship and leave this Odysseus! All he does is cry and get us in trouble!
Question?? Why do Cyclops give law to wives and children only and care for no one else?
What was the purpose of Odysseus attacking the Cicones -- destroying their town, killing their men and taking their women and treasure? Had the Cicones killed many of his men prior to this attack?
Where does Odysseus come up with all these men when so many are swept overboard and eaten?
-
BOOKAD: " just missed a Tornado". Ouch. Glad your back with us, and glad you're safe!! Let us know about the "lost books."
KIDSAL: I'd jump ship with you, but I don't see any other ships. We're stuck!
JUDE: maybe we're too old for heros. Life is hard enough without making it harder.
Which of you say "Yeah for heros", and which of you say "Oh, go soak your head and get your sailors home"?
-
Well we all love to hear about a hero (at a distance), by my husband was a military guy and always has said anyone serving with one would say keep me away from heroes, they'll just get me killed.
-
This book is really something. What a joy to see everybody here with all different opinions all over the place!! That's the way it should be.
Such changes here in our hero! First of all, he's telling the story in this book in the First Person, he's saying I and we. So he's telling the story, not the 3rd person omniscient narrator. And O in person is somewhat different from the hero on a pedestal that we might have expected.
Your questions here are fabulous. In fact one of them has taken me half the day and in so doing I have wished I could find my Greek history books, I put them away thinking I'd have no need of them, boy was that wrong, and I'm having quite the time not using Wikipedia. I had no idea it has gotten so bad. I know they pay to get their listings first but it's ridiculous to have go 10 pages of google just to find anybody else of value. On the way tho I found quite a few books I'd love to read, I guess I need to take a day and immerse self in the library (what a joy) to see what I can find on some of these things.
I am so interested in your takes on Odysseus! I think yours are more interesting than a lot I have read.
--Jude thinks he's a show off (that was so well written)
--Dana thinks he's stupid.
--Deb is enjoying all these differing opinions, says it keeps us on our toes (glad you missed the tornado!! Welcome back!)
--Joans K and R are talking about O's kleos (as did Jude), his driving force. JoanK ta;ls about modern day sailing superstitions and Joan R remarks: I think Odysseus taunted the Cyclops as he sailed away - even making sure that the Cyclops got his name right - because he was building up his "kleos", his "fame" that would live on after him.
I think so too because of the WAY he did it. Did anybody notice the information he gave shouting across the water to the Cyclops?
And how do we see the Cyclops? Do we see him as a monster or something else?
Who actually seems to show more kindness in Book 9?
--Mippy says he's a hero, this is what they do in ancient epics. Roshana Rose agrees.
--Babi mentions in going to see the Cyclops they take wine as hospitality. Apparently there's a huge thing about this wine, and the so called "missing book of the Cicones" in the Odyssey. The wine may not be as innocent as we think.
---and Sally's got some super questions and quite difficult, to go with the one Babi had on why is ZEUS so angry?
---ginny thinks he's smart and here we finally get to see some of it demonstrated. It's about time.
Sally asked:
What was the purpose of Odysseus attacking the Cicones -- destroying their town, killing their men and taking their women and treasure? Had the Cicones killed many of his men prior to this attack?
As i said I was unwilling to take Wikipedia's word for it so I spent half the day and found out some of it but not all. Apparently the Cicones were Thracians, Vergil wrote in his Georgics in Book 4 that The Cicones were a people of Thrace living near the mountain Ismarus and the outlet of the river Hebrus.
Thrace sided with Troy and against the Greeks in the Trojan War, so they were the enemy. This is not explained so the reader is somewhat shocked and somewhat disillusioned to find our hero despoiling etc. Our concept of "hero" and the ancient concept are possibly not the same.
But even in this situation O is thinking: the wily leader explains that he gave the order to pull out, but his men drank too much wine and would not. So here it's the men's fault, O is having to save them by his judgment, and reinforcements come and they lose 6 men per ship. But they get out, those left. Motto: listen to the leader.
This is a theme we'll see repeated. We need to see if it's justified, remember, this is O talking, not the omniscient narrator.
I am somewhat confused also, Sally, over the numbers here, but he's just lost 6 per ship. Does anybody recall how many ships there are?
Then there's Maron. Maron appears in Book 9 but not in the Cicones section, he's another flashback and starts somewhere around line 189 in Book 9. He's the priest of Apollo there among the Cicones and he had given O, when O spared him and his wife and child out of respect for the god, seven bars of gold, a solid silver bowl, and twelve jars of wine.
Nobody knew about this wine, just Maron, the wife and a single housekeeper but it was apparently potent stuff. They had to dilute it with 20 parts water to one part wine. That's very high for the ancients, the normal was 3/1. Some of these ancient wines would put the hair on anybody's head, there was one the Romans had which could be caught on fire and this was before distillation, probably close to 90 proof, I have no idea what this thing was but it was powerful.
And THIS was the jug of wine O took to the Cyclops. Now was he thinking before hand and felt he might need it? Or was it as Babi said a nice hospitality gift?
It's interesting to me how the "hospitality" laws flew right out the window from the get go at the Cyclop's place. He's out, they help themselves? (!?) He returns, he follows no hospitality rules or god rules, he himself is a Cyclops, in Hesiod they are the sons of Uranus (Heaven) and Gaia (Earth), who made the thunderbolts of Zeus and aided him in his war against the Titans. Hesiod's Cyclopes don't seem to bear a lot of resemblance to those of Homer, but it's clear that these people were semi gods themselves. There's also a drama called Cyclops by Euripides, in which the same tale of blinding etc, is told but Silenus is present, and he's really a very old figure. This is a satyric drama and was humorously written.
So whoever the Cyclops is, he's not normal and as he says fears no god. Nor man apparently he eats two of them. And rolls the big stone.
Why do I think O is smart?
--he lies about the location of his ship, saying Poseidon smashed it into pieces, thus saving the men on it.
---he realizes he can't kill him and live, they can't roll the rock
---he decides to blind his one eye so they can sneak out under the sheep as they leave
---he tells the Cyclops his name is No man, that's totally brilliant, so when the C is asked who is hurting you he can say nobody is.
----he rides out under the ram
----he gives the Cyclops the wine to knock him out.
Now one might say he's lying, he's sneaky, he's hiding, he's......
He's never been Mr. Clean, I don't think, has he? His boasting over his besting Ajax which we just read in one of the Latin classes shows him to be a different sort than our Clark Kent.
It makes me wonder if we think perhaps that the ends don't ever justify the means. Is a lie however innocuous, ever warranted? Like now when he hopes to save what's left of the men with him?
We seek to hold our political figures to a high standard only to be disappointed time after time with their flaws. Are the Greeks 2000 years ago more or less advanced when their heroes (heck their gods, too) have flaws?
Who does not, really?
-
Gum, I loved that about the Food Odyssey. Hopefully the menu is a bit different. hahahaa
What all does O do which is not smart in the cave of the Cyclops?
----the men say let's take the cheese and come back for the sheep, load them on board and sail away.
O says, But I wanted to see him, and see / If he would give me a gift of hospitality....
(line 220-225 or so)
Why? Hubris? More of a chance to spread his name and fame?
In one place (311 Lombardo) he says, "And I was left there, brooding on how/ I might make him pay and win glory from Athena."
That's pretty clear, he's wanting him to "pay," and he wants to "win glory from Athena."
On the stupid side (or apparently stupid things O did side:)
----As he sails away, safe, he hollers out to rub it in (as Lombardo says) you got yours! I'm no coward!
And the Cyclops throws a huge boulder.
-----then O's men AGAIN entreat him not to call out but he does anyway.
"They tried, but they didn't persuade my hero's heart---/ I was really angry---and I called back to him..."
And this time he tells him the standard Greek formula:
1....I am Odysseus "the marauder," (including the epithet here, what do your books have, this is about line 504? )
2....Son of Laertes
3. ...whose home is on Ithaca.
So he's given his name, rank and serial number or name, patrimony and address.
Ok Spark Notes here says that "this manner of introduction was very formalized and formulaic in Homeric Greece and should have been familiar to readers of the Iliad. Odysseus here is going through the motions of confirming his kleos (the glory or renown that one earns in the eyes of others by performing greet deeds). He wants to make sure that people know that he was the one who blinded Polyphemus, explicitly instructing Polyphemus to make others aware of his act. Like the heroes of the Iliad, Odysseus believes that the height of glory is achieved by spreading his name abroad through great deeds."
So here we have also wit against brute strength. This is a giant, and a cannibal, why does he seem more sympathetic to our 2011 sensibilities than O does who is trying to save his men (and himself).
TWICE O's men have tried to talk him out of doing what he has done. At least he admits they were right.
Polyphemus returns the favor by revealing he's Poseidon's SON!
And THAT brings on O's fate! So would you say O caused his own problems as Dana did?
Another huge boulder, O is blown back to his other ships where he sacrifices the famous ram (quite a contrast between the Cyclops and O here) but as Babi says Zeus won't take the sacrifice, why?
Here's another view of the Cyclops/ O thing:
Sheila Murnaghan writing in the Introduction to Lombardo, says that since the laws of hospitality in the Cyclops' cave have been broken, O has to ask for a gift. The Cyclops says he'll eat him last, that's his gift. (367-68). This is paralleled when O gets home at last and encounters the suitors. She says "this is characteristic of the way in which the adventures provide a heightened, fantastic, dreamlike preview of the more realistic world of Ithaca, so that, for example, Penelope is prefigured in certain ways by Circe, just as the suitors are by the Cyclops."
She also says that "the Odyssey playfully subverts familiar expectations about truth and fiction."
From this and a million other pages I am getting the impression that there is more here than at first met my own eye. It's a fantastic tale, and it's got undeniable cleverness in it, I mean even the Cyclops is clever. And kind of pitiful I think, do you? Who do you feel more sympathetic to at the end of the Cyclops story? The Cyclops or Odysseus? Why?
Still trying to figure out Babi's Zeus question and Sally's two other unanswered questions and Joan K's question and why not make it even more interesting and add these from Temple:
I thought she had a startling thing here: . Don't assume he's always telling the truth.
Don't assume he's always telling the truth?
-
Here are the Temple Questions, in an effort to make posts on one subject. hahaha
Book 9
Note exactly how O identifies himself, and how and where he begins his story (Compare it to Menelaus' account of their departure from Troy). Don't assume he's always telling the truth. Pay attention to what he says about his behavior and his awareness of his audience.
212 The attack on the Cicones: what happens?.
214 Storm; land of the Lotus Eaters.Think about the specific danger here.
215 The Cyclops Polyphemus. This is the key episode. Note the description of the island and the nature of Cyclopean society. Pay attention to O's behavior. Is it commendable? Is he a good guest? Is Polyphemus a good host? Look for mentions of Zeus and the guest-host relationship.What vice gets O into trouble? What virtue gets him out of it? What types of behavior are approved and condemned by this story? Does Odysseus' victory over the Cyclops, and the means he uses to achieve it, suggest any other myths? What is the significance of calling himself Nobody?
What was the specific danger of the Lotus Eaters? That they would not get back home? How is that different, one wonders, from the other two, the Cicones and the Cyclops?
Now THIS however, is a super question: What vice gets O into trouble? What virtue gets him out of it?
What would you say?
Virtue and vice in a Greek hero, what a concept.
Spark Notes says Dante in the Inferno puts O in the "Eighth Pouch of the Eighth Circle of Hell-- the realm reserved for those guilty of Spiritual Theft--because of his treachery in the Trojan Horse episode that enabled him to slaughter the unwitting Trojans."
Isn't that interesting? Do you think that suits him? I love the Inferno, it's quite interesting who Dante put in the lowest circle of Hell: Brutus, Cassius, and Judas.
I love this: What vice gets O into trouble? What virtue gets him out of it?
What would you say to that?
-
Ginny - Great post, really got me thinking.
Firstly, it is quite obvious that the Ideal Greek Hero (IGH) is very different from what we regard as a Modern Day Hero (MDH). The IGH disregards all around him in his quest to be "remembered", even immortalised, to confirm his kleos. And because we are reading about a man who at all costs wants to get home to his kingship and family after being away for so long, we need to realise that he is necessarily depicted/created in the Homeric tradition of heroes - warriors, soldiers and sailors, fresh from a ten year war. The other men (no women) who sought to make a difference to the laws of society in the Greece of those days are politicians, e.g. Solon, but they are never regarded as "heroes" per se. Olympic Athletes have their day of heroism and bring glory to their town for four short years.
Attempting to point out that the Greek ideal of kleos and kudos were all important in Bronze Age Greece. Today, our heroes are often sportsmen who are not always the sharpest knives in the drawer. (I must add that they are not my heroes :)) But our real heroes are those who can change society in one way or another to benefit humanity.
Who is the hero in Australia, I would say that it is the sports hero, generally a footballer of one code or another. imho the soldiers who are fighting in Afghanistan are all heroes. The few who receive military medals such as the VC are the people who show bravery in going in and getting their comrades out of harm's way. The opposite of Odysseus.
There are other heroes too, I guess we could call them freedom fighters such as Martin Luther King; fighters for peace such as Mahatma Gandhi. They, too, are heroes and fighters.
We live in an entirely different world to the Greeks back then. In the age of colonisation and expansion of territory war was fought hand to hand if and when necessary. Cities and towns were burned and their inhabitants enslaved. There was no anaesthetic and no penicillin. People like Odysseus and Achilles were the sort of people you wanted on your side in times of war. Even if they didn't exist it was essential that they be created. They were cunning and wily and also when necessary, ruthless. In the Odyssey it is frequently noted that O has a muscular body and great strength, so that helps people to have confidence in him. The way he looks is important. Is he a good leader? Not by our standards, he isn't.
www.associatedcontent.com/article/290324/the_heroic_ideal_greek_v...
.
-
Very well said Roshannarose. I was just going to say I probably wouldn't like the man. He reminds me of a Gorilla beating his chest as in, I am king of the mound. Or like Mohammad Ali's theatrics in the ring, dancing around and shouting "I am the greatest." Hubris for sure. Egotistical, for sure, thinking of himself and putting what he wants before the best interests and wishes of his men for whom he is responsible. And yet, all he says he wants is to go home. He sure isn't acting like it a good bit of the time.
-
Lotus Eaters
Because I had seen lotus plants growing in China and being sold by a vendor just like ice cream to the Chinese children who were playing near the lake I had to find out more about this plant that is mentioned in the chapter we just read. In the Odyssey the people were known as lotophagi (in the GreeK) and they lived on an island near North Africa (possibly Djerbo). They ate mainly lotus fruit and flowers which are known as drugs that cause sleep and apathy.
The passage in the Odyssey was the source for Tennyson's poem "The Lotus Eaters", it was referenced in James Joyce's Ulysses.
Herodutus claimed that the Lotus eaters really lived in Libya and Odysseus was very off course when he arrived there.
Today the Lotus plant, seeds, young leaves and rhizomes are used extensively in cooking in China, India,Vietnam and Korea.
The lotus is considered one of the healthiest foods there is.
In Indian mythology the lotus has come to represent sexual purity and non-attachment and many Gods are portrayed as sitting on Lotus leaves.
-
I'm not sure how many ships there were under Odysseus' command, but with all their
losses in manpower, I'm thinking they must be critically short of rowers. Could they
really keep those ships moving without a full contingent of rowers? With all those losses
they must be down to nearly half the usual oarsmen.
I couldn't really fault Odysseus for boasting about his victory over Ajax. That is all
part of the 'fame and glory' of the Greek warrior. They all proclaim their victories,
don't they, and the bards write songs about them.
Excellent, ROSHANA. I completely agree with your observation that "Odysseus and Achilles
were the sort of people you wanted on your side in times of war". We really can't fairly
judge them by today's standards.
FRYBABE, it does seem that Odysseus should be more focused on getting home. But he is who he is, and is bound to react to circumstances that arise according to his nature.
-
Wow, I learned something again. Lotus - The lotus tree of The Odyssey is supposedly mythological, however there are the Diospyros lotus (sp), better known as the Date-plum or Caucasian Persimmonnus and the Ziziphus lotus (sp). The first is a tree and the second is a shrub, both have edible fruit and both are native to the Mediterranean areas. The genus Lotus is comprised of bird's-foot trefoils and deervetches. The lotus I am familiar with is the lily of the orient. None of these reside in the same family.
-
Though we are deeply concerned with Odysseus,Tennyson's poem The Lotus Eaters deals with O.'s crew and their feelings.
This is from the last verse of this very long poem:
We have had enough of action and of motion we,
Roll'd to starboard, rolled to larboard when the surge was seething free
Where the wallowing monster spouted his foam fountain in the sea
Let us swear an oath, and keep with equal mind,
In the hollow Lotus-land to live and lie reclind
On the hills together, careless of mankind.
Tennyson also talks about Asphodel meadows,the place where people who lived lives of near equal good and evil (according to Greek mythology)go after death. Before they entered they drank from the river Lethe which turned them into something like machines.(Rather like Stepford Wives).
Those who took up arms were believed to be rewarded with everlasting joys in the fields of Elysium. (Think Beethoven's Ninth Symphony)
-
JUDE: good poem: I would feel the same way at this point.
But the lotus-eater is one of those figures that have come down to us. Sometimes I feel that I am a lotus-eater, living my comfortable life, not concerned for the future or for contributing what I can to others. have any of you ever felt that way?
JUDE: "it (THE LOTUS) was referenced in James Joyce's Ulysses". Yes, James Joyce's Ulysses is a remake of the Odyssey. All of the episodes are in there, some more explicitally than others.
FRY: do I understand you: the lotus Homer talks about is not related to the Lotus of fame in Eastern religion? Is it some kind of poppy?
Why is the Cyclops the key episode? It explains the curse that O is under. Is it key in other ways as well?
"What vice gets O into trouble? What virtue gets him out of it?" Hmmm?
-
It is my understanding that the Odyssey refers to a lotus tree. If it is a tree then it could be something like the Diospyros lotus (species name), better known as the Date-plum. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diospyros_lotus What we commonly call lotus is a water lily either of the genus Nelumbo (Nelumbo nucifera is the nation flower of India) or the genus Nymphaea (commonly called Egyptian lotuses). The actual genus, Lotus, include mostly birdfoot-trefoils or deervetches. These are nitrogen fixing plants located throughout the world. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lotus_%28genus%29 I am not a taxonomist by any means, so I am curious to know why Linnaeus attached the name Lotus to a genus of plants that are not at all related to plants that apparently were commonly called lotus (Greek lōtós) by the ancients. Do we have a description of what the ancient Greeks called lōtós other than Homer?
-
Frybabe and others interested in the Ancient Greek Lotus, this is what my Scott and Liddell lexicon says:
"Lotus - name of several plants: 1. The Greek lotus - a kind of clover or trefoil on which horses fed. 2. The Cyrenean lotus or jujube - an African shrub, the fruit of which was eaten by certain tribes on the coast, hence called Lotophagi: the fruit was honey sweet: in size as large as the olive, and in taste resembling the date......"
The jujube tree:
The scientific name of jujube tree is Ziziphus jujube. It is also known as Chinese date. This is a deciduous tree and is native to China. Today, it is grown in many other parts of the world like Russia, Australia, North Africa, Europe, the United States and so on. On an average, this tree can grow up to a height of about 40 feet. There are almost 800 varieties of jujube tree. This tree has been cultivated by the Chinese, as a fruit crop, for over 4000 years. Its fruits are not just tasty, but also have several medicinal values. Know more on jujube fruit benefits.
Jujube Tree Identification
The trunk of jujube tree has a rough bark. The branches of most varieties are thorny and they grow in a zig-zag manner. The leaves look very attractive with bright green color and a waxy texture. They are oval shaped and grow to a length of 1 or 2 inches. There are two small sharp pines found at the base of each leaf. The tree sheds its leaves in the winter. The blooming time for the tree is March to May. The flowers are small and fragrant and appear in clusters. The flowers are either white or slightly yellowish in color. These flowers develop into a green fruit which turn red on ripening. It has a long harvest time from July to November.
Homer and the Jujube Tree
www.flowersinisrael.com/Ziziphuslotus_page.htm
-
Fascinating, fascinating, fascinating! I am loving the Lotus information, Frybabe, Jude, and Roshana Rose, and the modern adaptations of the tale. Thank you for the Tennyson, Jude. I love Tennyson and he's not read all that much today.
I love the Lotus information. Jujube, I haven't heard that name in 50 years, there used to be a candy called Jujubes, do you remember it? I'm sure it was noxious but I seem to remember they were good.
How about Somerset Maugham for another modern adaptation?
I went first looking for Captain Kirk of Star Trek fame and the Lotus Eaters. There was such an episode, but I found an entire series, was it a TV series? On Star Trek: Odyssey 03 The Lotus Eaters Part 1, and it appears it follows O's adventures pretty much as we are. I see Circe for instance. I missed this series and am amazed.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jORCe9UTnFE
Then on the modern adaptations of the Lotus Eaters:
http://www.mlahanas.de/Greeks/Mythology/Lotophagi.html says
In Greek mythology, the Lotophagi (or Lotophagoi)("lotus-eaters") were a race of people from an island near Northern Africa dominated by lotus plants. The lotus fruits and flowers were the primary foodstuff of the island and were narcotic, causing the people to sleep in peaceful apathy.
When Odysseus and his men landed on the island of the lotus-eaters, Odysseus sent two of his men and a runner to investigate the island. But the men began doing as the natives did: eating the lotus fruit. This caused them to forget about leaving the island and ever going home. Finally, Odysseus managed to drive the three wailing men back to the ship and set sail.
The lotus plant in Greek mythology is thought to have been a variety of jujube or date.
Which is just what RoshannaRose said. So here he's in Africa? We must check out our maps in the heading!
In modern usage, people who frequently daydream or think of impractical ideas can be called “lotus-eaters.”
The Lotus Eater is a short story written by Somerset Maugham in 1945. The story is set in 1913 and tells of Thomas Wilson, who comes to the island of Capri in Italy for a holiday. He is so enchanted with the place he gives up his job in London and decides to live the rest of his life without any cares in Capri.
I haven't read this short story but I bet it's online. I will go look for it. I would say Capri is a super place to be indolent. I first went there this past summer and fell in love with it, millions of tourists notwithstanding. It's charming.
-
Roshannarose I thought you made two important points (among many) and that was: There was no anaesthetic and no penicillin. People like Odysseus and Achilles were the sort of people you wanted on your side in times of war. Even if they didn't exist it was essential that they be created. They were cunning and wily and also when necessary, ruthless. In the Odyssey it is frequently noted that O has a muscular body and great strength, so that helps people to have confidence in him. The way he looks is important. Is he a good leader? Not by our standards, he isn't. j
The shortness of life...this is it, this is all we get, and it's perilous, how to attain immortality or lasting fame? When you've got an entire culture agreeing this is the way to do it, it's pretty clear the sharpest or strongest are going to try.
Odysseus succeeded, didn't he? hahaha Are we or are we not reading this almost 3,000 (I keep saying 2,000, that's Caesar, this is almost 3000 years old and may be older actually) year old poem?
Do we know who O was? He succeeded :)
On the bit about who you want in times of war, it seems in our enlightened society nobody wants a Patton till you need him. Caesar fell out after WWII in classrooms due to his surviving text being a journal of war, nobody wanted to be reminded of it. He's now coming back for good reasons, he's the new AP Latin author for instance, for good reasons, tho he's always been popular in the world's military academies.
Now on O's character, Frybabe says, I was just going to say I probably wouldn't like the man. How do YOU all feel about O at this point? He seems somewhat irresistible to women? All women? Everywhere? Of all ages, whether or not he even opens his mouth.
Would YOU "like" him or not? What a great topic!
What are his vices? His virtues? We are seeing more of the man here, do we like him or not? Which predominates, in your opinion, his vices or his virtues? There are no right or wrong "answers," what do you THINK?
-
"What vice gets O into trouble?"
I'd have to say pride. The 'nobody gets the best of me" sort of arrogance. That is the sort of attitude that tended to invite a godly slap down. Hubris....
that's what it was called. Still, I can't dislike the man for being the epitome
of what his times considered a hero. His hubris frequently led him and his men into grief, but
that's common enough. We have different terms for it today, but it's still part of the masculine
makeup. (No offense, guys. You know it's true.)
That sounds like it, ROSHANA. And here I had always envisioned the lotus fruit as large
and white. I realize know that image was affected by my acquaintance with our 'lotus',
the large, white water lily. Interesting what images can form in our minds on reading,
and totally distort what the author meant.
-
Frybabe and Babi have not forgotten the...well IS it or is it not the most important theme? Which is more important, getting home, or kleos here?
??
Frybabe says: And yet, all he says he wants is to go home. He sure isn't acting like it a good bit of the time.
Babi agrees: FRYBABE, it does seem that Odysseus should be more focused on getting home. But he is who he is, and is bound to react to circumstances that arise according to his nature.
I don't see this. I see him trying to GET home. Can he help it if he's blown onshore? He's got no end of men to feed, they have to eat, they are in ??? ships setting out from Troy blown about like toy boats. And here's how he loses them:
First to the Lotus Eaters, 6 from each ship down.
Then to the Cyclops, 2 each night eaten, but he..
Why, Margie and Babi do you think he's not wanting to get home? What makes you say so? What do the rest of you think?
I'm sort of seeing him wheel this way and that to deal with the danger. Is he CAUSING the dangers? Is he enjoying or taking advantage of too much the "hospitality" thing?
Why do you both say this and is this what the rest of you think also?
_______________________________
Babi had asked the question, why did Zeus not accept the sacrifice of O after the blinding of the Cyclops
On the Zeus thing apparently it was partially a measure of hubris again which caused Zeus not to accept O's sacrifice. Writing in The Journal of Hellenic Studies, Vol. 111 (1991), pp. 16-28, Rainer Friedrich points out in his article The Hybris of Odysseus, the interesting fact that we don't have Zeus' word for it here, we have Odysseus as the first person narrator. He would have no way of knowing what Zeus thought or if Zeus accepted the sacrifice or not, this is his opinion.
So it may not be true. And since O has dared to not only blind the son of Poseidon, but to brag on it that it was because of the wrath of Zeus that he was blinded (somewhere between 467 and 502), some scholars have claimed it's hubris. And of course that is a major issue with the gods. Lombardo says to the Cyclops for his first speech as they sail away:
So Cyclops, it turns out it wasn't a coward
Whose men you murdered and ate in your cave,
You savage! But you got yours in the end,
Didn't you? You had the gall to eat the guests
In your own house and Zeus made you pay for it.
I do remember pausing on this one, where he claims Zeus made the Cyclops pay. Hubris in the extreme you might say. But that may not be all it is.
Babi, you appear to have put your finger on one of the major sticking points of the entire poem. It's a fascinating article and again references tons of scholars all saying something different, but it deals with the inconsistency of Zeus, the question of authorship of the Odyssey, the issue of the hubris of the Greek Epic Hero and whether or not the hero is moral by our standards.
I think the answer lies here somewhere, but I'm still reading. It's impressive, to me, that so many scholars have taken so much careful thought on this one tiny issue which I, at least, completely overlooked until Babi brought it up. Apparently it touches on the entire "soul" of the piece, how interesting. Thank you for noticing it, Babi!
I'll bring what he says to the table once I read it this weekend, and maybe some of the rest of you can find something on it also.
Good reading, Babi!
-
And of course while I was posting that here comes Babi with hubris!!! hahahaa
Are you on it or what? hahaha You may just have answered your own question.
-
Ginny, sorry, not that O doesn't want to get home, but he seems to get himself sidetracked. I will concede that often it isn't under his control where he ends up, but he explores his new surroundings and lingers way too long. Again, not always his choice, but he does have some choice in all of this.
-
He absolutely did not have to go and visit Polyphemus. He could stock up with what was readily available, his men begged him not to go, and he himself can only offer by way of explanation,
"I wished
to see the caveman, what he had to offer_"
Regarding the Zeus disdained my offering thing--
Obviously O is speaking now, looking back on what happened, he doesn't mention any sign of disdain at the time. I also don't think that it means Zeus himself specifically had it in for him, so to speak (eg as does Poseidon) If you remember that Zeus is the Greek for god (in its other cases the word changes to theos etc as I ment. before), I think he is using Zeus in the generic sense of god the governor of all things--so if things go wrong and you're a pious ancient Greek then it has to be in god's grand scheme ultimately
-
DANA: in other words, he made an offering so that things would go well, but they DIDN'T, so his offering must have been refused. Is that right?
-
Yes, I suppose--he is saying it in retrospect, because things didn't go well, god therefore was against him.
I would think it hubris to imagine that a god would be involved in everything I did, but I don't know what the ancient Greeks thought about that, philosophically. Of course this is a story and the gods are super involved, so that's different, but the Greeks were too sophisticated thinkers to believe that in actuality I would imagine (but I don't know, not having done a philosphy course!!).
-
In Knox's intro to Fagls translation he spends many, many pages on the place of the Gods and especially Zeus in the fate of the characters in the Odyssey (and the Illiad). I will just quote a very short passage :
"In the opening of the poem(1:37-40) Zeus didcusses the case of Aegithus , who disregarding a warning delivered by Hermes, has seduced Clytemnestra and , with her help, murdered Agamemnon. Says Zeus "Ah, how shameless,
"the way these mortals blame the gods.
From us alone,they say, come all their miseries,yes,
but they themselves, with their own reckless ways,
compound their pains beyond their proper share."
So ,the way I see it, men blame the gods and the gods return the compliment by blaming them.
It seems that many, many scholarly men and women have debated this point and written many books on the subject. In fact there seems to be people who have spent their whole career teaching the works of Homer and writing about him.
It makes me feel very small in addressing some of these questions. I wonder should we find a smaller (or larger) font when addressing these issues?What say you?
-
That's the great thing abbout literature: we can all read it and make up our own minds. Of course, scholars may have Historical sources that throw light on a situation, but still, a cat is as good as a king in deciding what we think of what we read.
-
Let's move on to the next book on Monday (Book 10).
-
Oh, I don't doubt Odysseus wants to get home, GINNY. I'm just saying that there are
instances when I would say he should not have allowed himself to get sidetracked or take
unnecessary risks when a cooler head would have served him better. Yelling at the Cyclops
a second time, after the vivid demonstration of how far the monster could hurl a boulder,
is a case in point.
Someone posted a remark about the 'inconsistancy' of the gods. They do leave an impression
on my mind of inconsistancy. These 'gods' are all too human with their foibles and pique. In
our time, with our view of an omniscient and infallible God, these 'gods' don't really impress us
seriously.
-
i AM HERE AND WONDER WHAT BOOK WE ARE READING i DO WANT TO GET INVOLVED :)
-
HI, ANNA. We,re reading book 10 for tomorrow.
-
my thoughts on our hero?
how can he be so rash to flaunt his anger at the cyclos when he is endangering not only himself but his own crew and then he goes and does it again
-I cannot really say I feel much empathy for Odysseus, he enters the cyclops cave and it appears theirs is a probing party to determine the mind set of the occupant....so they eat his food and relax in his domain, sitting in an undefendable area as I would expect only the mouth of the cave would be an exit point for them....would military men willingly put themselves into this position
................
when I was reading about Odysseus naming himself 'nobody' to the cyclops...I was reminded of Laurel & Hardy's "Who's on First..."....
I am finding I enjoy and can follow easier the Rieuversion best as it reads like a story book, maybe I am not really a poetry reader
Deb
by the way I love jujubes, especially the black licorice ones....
-
The Book Club Online is the oldest book club on the Internet, begun in 1996, open to everyone. We offer cordial discussions of one book a month, 24/7 and enjoy the company of readers from all over the world. Everyone is welcome to join in.
Now reading:
(http://www.seniorlearn.org/bookclubs/classicsbookclub/cbc2odysseysm.jpg)
April 16----BookX: Aeolus, the Laestrogonians and Circe!
(http://seniorlearn.org/latin/graphics/Graphics/Ulysses_Penelope/circepigsbest.jpg)
The imagination of a modern poet, Keats, has discovered for us the thoughts that passed through the brains of the victims of Circe, after their transformation. In his "Endymion" he represents one of them, a monarch in the guise of an elephant, addressing the sorceress in human language, thus:
"I sue not for my happy crown again;
I sue not for my phalanx on the plain;
I sue not for my lone, my widowed wife;
I sue not for my ruddy drops of life,
My children fair, my lovely girls and boys;
I will forget them; I will pass these joys,
Ask nought so heavenward; so too-too high;
Only I pray, as fairest boon, to die;
To be delivered from this cumbrous flesh,
From this gross, detestable, filthy mesh,
And merely given to the cold, bleak air.
Have mercy, goddess! Circe, feel my prayer!"
(http://www.seniorlearn.org/latin/ulysses_penelope/AeolusOdysseusBagofWindsThuldenTheodorvan1606-1669.jpg)
Aeolus gives Odysseus the Bag of Winds by Theodor van Thulden (1606-1669)
Discussion Leaders: Joan K (joankraft13@yahoo.com) & ginny (gvinesc@wildblue.net )
(http://seniorlearn.org/latin/graphics/Graphics/Ulysses_Penelope/Circe3.jpg)
Circe offering the cup to Odysseus:
painting by J.W. Waterhouse from the Oldham Art gallery Collection UK
Useful Links:
1.
Critical Analysis: Free SparkNotes background and analysis on the Odyssey (http://www.sparknotes.com/lit/odyssey)
2.
Translations Used in This Discussion So Far: (http://www.seniorlearn.org/bookclubs/odyssey/odyssey_translations.html)
3.
Initial Points to Watch For: submitted by JudeS (http://www.seniorlearn.org/bookclubs/odyssey/odyssey_points.html)
4.
Maps:Map of the Voyages of Odysseus (http://www.seniorlearn.org/latin/ulysses_penelope/Odysseusmap.jpg)
Map of Voyages in order (http://www.wesleyan.edu/~mkatz/Images/Voyages.jpg)
Map of Stops Numbered (http://www.seniorlearn.org/latin/ulysses_penelope/Odysseusmap2.jpg)
Our Map Showing Place Names in the Odyssey (http://www.seniorlearn.org/latin/graphics/AncientGreecemap.jpg)
(http://seniorlearn.org/latin/graphics/Graphics/Ulysses_Penelope/Circepigs2.jpg)
(http://www.seniorlearn.org/latin/ulysses_penelope/CirceWrightBarker1900.jpg)
Circe by Wright Barker, 1900
Babi--hadn't read all the posts when I posted above...guess I was seconding you point of Odysseus putting his men in jeopardy
--lucky to have got that post in before Monday as am now caught up in the reading
Deb
well I guess my last posting was below on the last page
-
I think several of us were incensed at Odysseus placing his men in jeopardy, BOOKAD. Our
idea of the responsibilities of a military leader are somewhat different now. His first responbility should be his men. Of course, there have been notable departures from that in our times, too. Was it the Korean War where some top guy in Washington said he wanted
a high body count, at any cost? Those weren't the exact words, of course.
Ah, the first indication of awareness that one’s bad luck is sometimes one’s own fault.
“...the fair wind failed us when our prudence failed.” In looking for the explanation of
that statement, I found only an example of greed with O's men opening that bag of winds,
certain it was treasure. Is that what he calls a lack of prudence? I'm not finished with Book
10, so perhaps something else wil arise.
-
There's certainly a lot in Book 10 to take in.
I love the story of the bag of winds, for some reason. When you're at a long boring meeting, don't you sometimes wish you could put all the wind in the room in a bag and close it up?
-
hahaa I love it too. I love the images and there's a lot in this chapter as well. Or book.
Just see these descriptions:
Aeolia
is a floating island surrounded by a wall
Of indestructible bronze set on sheer stone.
Aeolus' twelve children live there with him,
Six daughters and six manly sons.
You know when you read something like this you can almost see the origin of every fairy story there is. How many times have we seen a palace high on the hill, with princesses within? I'm not sure I've seen one with a wall of bronze but I'd like to.
This start reminds me of the awe and wonder I felt as a child reading this type of story and it's kind of cool to have it here as an adult.
Of course like Cleopatra they soon married their brothers, we frown on this today.
But wow what a story! THIS time there's no doubt (or is there?) who is at fault but two things really surprised me about the Bag o Winds story, did they you?
First off I'm not surprised the men wanted to open the bag, that sounds perfectly normal human behavior: he gets everything, we get nothing (had he told them not to open the bag?) let's just peek.
But I was surprised our hero considered, actually considered, jumping over the side and ending it all, were you? He didn't. Why not? What do you think made him change his mind?
Then they get blown back to Aeolus and he tells his tale as they are surprised to see him and wow, what a reaction! Did you expect that?
I guess once you give the hospitality you're not obligated to keep repeating it? or?
In these things I always try to think what I would do, am I the only one? If I were O, (who does seem to be having a lot of bad luck) what would I do? He's been blown back, so he's had no choice, what else can he do but ask?
The first question on 10 by the Temple people is:
230 Aeolus, king of the winds, receives O., and sends him off with a bag of winds, which his crew opens when he sleeps. Who is to blame here? Pay attention to the description of Aeolus' family. What does that mean?
-
I think Odysseus should have explained to his men about what was in the bag and why they shouldn't open it, but that wd spoil the tale......
In Fitzgerald Aiolos says why he won't help him again
"Take yourself out of this island, creeping thing--
no law, no wisdom lays it on me now
to help a man the blessed gods detest--
out! Your voyage here was cursed by heaven!"
-
In a book I have called "It's all Greek to me" we have a history of "windbag'.
After the description from chapt. 10 in Odysseus the author, Michael McCrone, writes:
"In the fifteenth century the word was used to describe the bellows of an organ. Later one's winbags were his or her lungs. Finally a "windbag " became a pretentious braggart. The proverb "words are but wind" appears as early as the thirteenth century, but it wasn't till the nineteenth that someone full of hot air was called a windbag.
Homer has had so much influence on Literature -In the Hunchback of Notre Dame, Hugo compares Quasimodo to the Cyclops. In other passages he brings up Homeric comparisons that it must have been a book every child studied in school.
I wonder if Homer is taught in the High School curriculum these days?
-
OH isn't that fascinating, thank you for that! I don't know if the kids read the Odyssey in school any more, how can we find out?
If not they are really missing something. I absolutely love this chapter. Everybody is reading Harry Potter, how is that better than this? All we need is a youthful hero here and we don't have one. :) Unless you consider Telemachus one.
I know a lot of adults who read Harry Potter, I myself read quite a few of them, this is sooo much better, this touches on The Twelve Dancing Princesses and every Once Upon a Time story there ever was.
Dana, so it's the gods again? "Creeping thing?" wow. Cursed by the gods.
Here I have to feel for O. How do you feel about him here, Deb? THIS is not his fault, is it? He can't stay awake 24/7.
Dana says he should have told his men to keep off. Do you agree?
This scene was repeated in The Pirates of the Carribean, and I think more than once. It's good stuff. He wasn't watching over the bag, he was tired of trimming the sail himself. Maybe he can't...what do you call it? Delegate authority?
On the plot before and the issues which came up, we can all think as we please about the book (we're going to anyway hahahaa) and we might find interesting some of the stuff this latest guy says as he makes some good points (or read that some I never thought of), so once the storms die here tomorrow I'll bring him in and if we don't like him we can throw him overboard.
Poor O, this is the first time I've felt sorry for him, all his pizzaz is gone, and he has been thru a lot. He's lost his cockiness, he's really taken a hit, he's seriously considering jumping overboard, but decides to remain with his robe over his head. Groaning again. I can't figure out why, tho? HE didn't do the wrong thing.
Did he? I don't know, seems like no matter what he does it's wrong. What does that Temple question mean?
Babi, how do you feel about O now?
Frybabe, that's interesting that you think he's had some choice in all of this, I kind of agree actually. He's just made a big one but he didn't choose to open that bag.
This is just a magic section, Harry Potter for Adults. :)
The first question on 10 by the Temple people is:
230 Aeolus, king of the winds, receives O., and sends him off with a bag of winds, which his crew opens when he sleeps. Who is to blame here? Pay attention to the description of Aeolus' family.
Huh?
-
I don't know if modern kids study the Odyssey or not, but the Greek gods are alive and well. Just ask JoanK's grandson. A current best seller for middle schoolers is the 5 volume series "Percy Jackson and the Olympians" by Rick Riordan, in which a modern day 11 year old (11 in the first volume) Percy Jackson, son of Poseidon by a mortal, has to find out who he is, then figure out how to defeat Kronos, who is once again trying to rise and overthrow his children (Zeus, etc). In the process we meet all the gods, learn about many of their rivalries, and a lot of the myths and stories we're dealing with here. Actually, it might be a pretty decent preparation for this discussion. ;)
-
Did Odysseus know what was in the bag??
-
I was surprised at Aeolus reaction when Odysseus and his crew returned. But from what
Aeolus said, I gather that the incident was considered to be evidence that these men were
in strong disfavor with the gods. Aeolus wasn't about to get on the wrong side of that.
I see DANA has quoted the verse I had in mind. And I do agree that it would have been
sensible to let the crew know what was in the bag. Of course, they might still have decided
that was just a story to keep them out, and opened the bag anyway.
-
Okay, it seems I didn't get the memo. Where is everybody?!! 8)
-
Did Odysseus know what was in the bag??
It sounds like he did, though it's not specifically said. Too bad he didn't use it for a pillow when he got sleepy.
By the way, since Aeolus left the West wind free (that means the wind coming from the west) that means they had to sail east to get home.
-
I keep noticing ways in which these Greeks are sort of like the Vikings.
Their ships and seamanship are similar—the steering oars look the same, as do the sails, and what they could do was similar, though the Vikings were more expert.
The Vikings had a similar style of feasting and gift giving. The leaders would hold huge feasts and give costly gifts. These were mostly to the people who served them though, who would presumably help on the raids that would bring more treasure. The Greeks seem to give more to random guests. I wonder about the economics, though—how did they afford the constant drain? Where did they get more treasure?
The raid on the Cicones, killing all the men and carrying off the women and treasure, was exactly what Vikings would have done, though the Vikings mostly had the sense to sail away promptly.
-
BABI: Book X
-
PATH told me about viking sailors and beards. Among the Vikings, beards were a sign of manhood. But they could be a problem -- blowing in their eyes. So they used to braid their beards.
So I noticed whether the Greek sailors on the vases had beards. Most of them were cleanshaven. A few had beards, but short ones. Clearly beards weren't needed to show manhood.
Which raises other questions. Did sailors at sea shave? With what? Were they too young to have beards? Ahhh, the questions are endless.
-
end of ch 10
wouldn't you think one year is kind of overstaying your welcome--does our hero remember his wife is probably worried sick about him, and how is she managing on the home front?
-
:D I meant where are the posters, KIDSAL. No one had posted since my last post the previous day.
Nothing like being able to tell your own story; you can dress it up nicely. Here we have Hermes telling Odysseus that Kirke “ will cower and yield her bed,- a pleasure you must
not decline..” This is how O’ was to set his friends free, you see. He wasn’t being unfaithful...certainly not...he was doing what was necessary. Yeah. Right.
-
;D
-
At the beginning of chapter 10, when Odysseus starts his story to Alcinous:
No sight is sweeter to me than Ithaca. Yes,
Calypso, the beautiful goddess, kept me
In her caverns, and yearned to possess me;
And Circe, the witch of Aeaea, held me
In her halls and yearned to possess me;
but they could not persuade me or touch my heart.
Odysseus is good at putting himself in the best light.
-
I think your reactions are fascinating. It seems in 2011 we want to hold our heroes to a certain standard, would you agree or not?
We want them to be pure in mind, morals, and spirit.
Why is that?
Are people so different than they were 3000 years ago?
Some people might say O is remarkably moral, would you agree or disagree?
When has he failed (I'm just being Devil's Advocate here but I'm reading old Filth which in itself is another Odyssey, every time you turn the page you've got something as my grandson, now 4, would say is "new and interesting.") but when has he failed to be moral, really, what choice does he have in most of this? He keeps coming up against "women" who are goddesses and he really has no power over them. Note when he does have power, as in the case of Alcinous's daughter, he has no problem moving on.
And Old Filth encounters odd happenings, too, it reminds me somewhat of The Odyssey, it's strange, perhaps not as strange as a sorceress turning men into pigs, but strange.
Perhaps O has had a reason for all this sighing. Man can't catch a break. They sail to Aeolus, they get winds, within 10 miles of home the men open it in a truly Pirates of the Caribbean gesture. They get blown back, Aeolus says begone cursed people.
They next land in the land of the Laestrygonians. The scouts get eaten. O flees, they hurl boulders and here O loses all his men except one ship, so here's the great loss. These are giants too and again with the cannibalism.
Is there much mention of cannibalism among the ancient Greeks? I am not sure other than this book I've read of it, but these are monsters, too. Giants. I mean Harry Potter is tame next to this. Reminds you of the ancient maps: here there be monsters.
Again the Laestrygonians spear the men and eat them.
O canNOT catch a break.
And THEN they come to the island of Aeaea, and they creep in without a sound and lay low for 2 days.
Then O peeps out, he IS the leader. He needs to feed his men, he sees smoke, he kills a stag, I loved his talk to the men,
"It's been hard going.
We don't know eat from west right now,
But we have to see if we have any good ideas left."
hahaha
Notice the "ideas" bit, he's still relying on his wits, not his brawn.
They don't want to hear this, after what they've been thru, he divides the men into parties, the first gets to the goddess Circe's house, she's weaving. Weaving again. She gives them drugged wine, cheese, and honey stirred in (UGG) and bingo:
(http://seniorlearn.org/latin/ulysses_penelope/Circepigs1.jpg)
What a hoot! Is this the origin of men as pigs? hahaha
Now if O were not a moral man, what would he be tempted to do? What would you do? What would George Clooney do in 2011?
Would you say the sailors in 2011 would be more or less expendable than they were 3,000 years ago?
O is telling this story to an audience and from that audience he wants help. Is he more or less likely I wonder to paint himself as good here or not? Should we be surprised if he does paint himself in glowing terms?
How can he be a "hero" to all mankind if he paints himself otherwise?
And here comes another intervention, this time by Hermes. O will need something because Circe is a goddess herself, a sorceress, and he would normally be powerless. He gets a potion, he gets the royal treatment, he protests he can't enjoy himself while they are pigs and she turns them back, I loved his description of how his men on the ship greeted him upon his return to the ships, what writing this is!
So now we have another small rebellion, this time by Eurylochus. O says come on to the palace (wonder why? Has he forgotten he's the only one with Hermes and the magic potion?) Eurylochus, who has just seen what wonders await, says HEY, NO!
For the first time it appears somebody else has directly blamed O for the death of his men. (IS this the first time somebody IN the book has blamed O?)
"Remember what the Cyclops did when our shipmates
Went into his lair? It was this reckless Odysseus
Who led them there. It was his fault they died."
That's the first I've seen O being directly blamed by somebody other than us. hahaha
I thought the reaction was fascinating. Finally he listens to the crew.
They stay a year and then the crew again intervenes... let's GO.
Isn't this interesting? So he listens again. I need to make a list of the times he listens and when he does not and the result and see who's right, just for my own curiosity.
And she says sure you can leave, but first you have to go to Hell. hahashaaa Literally. And he's not the only superhero of the ancients who has to take a trip there, is he? Seems to be a regular rite of passage and again most do not come back out. We've got Aeneas and the golden bough, and now we have O, too.
I'm not sure how much more exciting this could get to the ancient listener hearing it for the first time. We have a book out now on the bestseller lists which is about a young boy's trip into death and his return and telling of his experiences, so we can't look too askance at somebody 3000 years ago with the same type of experience.
One of the questions the Spark Notes asks is "In what ways does Odysseus develop as a character during the course of the narrative? Does he develop at all?"
Their answer here is very interesting and the episode we just had with the Cyclops seems to be a good pivotal point. We didn't think much of him there, right? He's rash, he's a braggart for whatever reason, he's speaking for the first time and we get a look at him from his point of view.
An interesting point Spark makes is "Odysseus's internal conflict is not nearly as consuming as that of Achilles in the Iliad, making up a relatively small part of his overall journey..."
Even if you haven't read the Iliad and know nothing of Achilles, what's your opinion of any internal conflict O might be feeling?
If he is feeling it, what is it? Are we in 2011 more or less a ... I want to say navel gazing psychobabble society but I am afraid to offend, but are we more...sensitive to feelings than they were? What's he supposed to do?
I am not seeing a lot of internal conflict? It seems that most of his conflict is with other, bigger battles? Is his biggest battle with himself or others? What are your thoughts?
Sorry this is so long, I obviously lack the gift of succinctness. :)
-
Oh, GINNY, you are so right. We do want to hold our heroes to certain standards. However,
they are not heroes, to my thinking, if they are inhumanly perfect. I don't expect a hero
to be 'pure' in mind, morals and spirit. I expect him to hold himself to certain standards,
to struggle with it along with the rest of us. But he will dare more, do more, and make
a difference.
At times, in this story of Kirke (Circe), I can see why there is speculation that the Odyssey was written by more than one person. It seems to change from a tale of a noble and cunning warrior to a story for leering and knowing male chuckles.
Circe is all sympathy, telling the men she knows how much they have suffered, how hard the journey has been, with no joys or pleasures for them. She invites them to stay and rest until they are recovered, eating and drinking until they “restore their gallant hearts”. Then Odysseus, narrating, says “As we were men, we could not help consenting.” So
they lingered for a year!?? And they could not help it, because 'they were men’? Oh, please, spare me.
-
Babi
They were MEN!
Look, if this is a reality story we can find a lot of fault. However if this is fiction (I tend to think it is) then we have to look at the story in another light.
I think what brought this question front and center to my mind is Ginny mentioning that book of a three year old boy and his journey into death and back told by the boy. Now whoever believes that story will believe(or wish to believe) anything.
I find a lot of "fun" in The Odyssey if I compare it to Harry Potter. I find a lot more problems if I compare it to the story of Kon- Tikki by Thor Hyderhal (a true reality story of a sea voyage). What I want to look at is the fantastic art this story has elicited, the importance of the plot in the literature of the last 3,000 years and the hints that lead us to understand the life of the Greek people of that time. I can't judge it by the morals of today.
-
" What I want to look at is the fantastic art this story has elicited, the importance of the plot in the literature of the last 3,000 years and the hints that lead us to understand the life of the Greek people of that time. I can't judge it by the morals of today."
Good point!
But we do see in this story, differences from the orals, customs and thinking of today. To me, the point is not to say how awful those Greeks were, but to use the differences to better understand our own culture. For example, this ook is full of men throwing their clothes over their heads and weeping. If a man in our culture did that, we'd think he was crazy. But clearly among the Greeks it's a normal way of expressing deep emotion. O's always saying he feels like killing himself the same.
Do greek men have deeper emotions than 21st century American men? I doubt it. But the way in which we express those feelings is different in different societies. that's interesting to me.
Clearly the sex mores of the greeks are different from ours. Throughout the Iliad and odyssey, it's taken for granted that men sleep with other women, while their wives should remain faithful. I don't like this, but we can't blame O for the mores of his time. In fact, he's better than the other Greek heroes, who capture women to sleep with, whether they want to or not. O only has sex when the woman initiates it, and he is "compelled".
-
Doubt if George Patton thought much of O. Sends his men directly into towns without first scouting around to get the lay of the land. As soon as they saw the drugged wolves they should have suspected something. O did once have a fall back plan when he left his ship outside the harbor -- but otherwise NO. Why does Hermes care?
-
JUDE & JOANK, it's that "compelled" part that I'm having a hard time swallowing. Though,
come to think of it, I don't suppose it's greatly different from the school of thought that
says people can't help their actions because of early hardships or trauma.
After a year with Circe, the crew...not Odysseus...decides enough is enough and asks O, “Captain, shake off this trace, and think of home--if home indeed awaits us...” Circe agrees to let them go, but not home. Once again, a god/goddess tells O he must do something else before he can go home, and of course the gods must be obeyed. Odysseus must go to the “cold homes of Death and pale Persephone” and hear what the prophet Teiresias has to say.
Naturally, I was curious about this Teiresias. I found this...
A famous prophet of Thebes. Teiresias accidentally came across Athena while she was bathing, so she blinded him. At his mother pleading Athena gave Teiresias the gift of prophecy to compensate for his blindness. Among his prophecies were: A warning to Pentheus to recognize and honor Dionysus when he first appeared in Thebes. A prediction of the greatness of Hercules. He revealed to Oedipus that Oedipus had unknowingly murdered his own father. Advice to Odysseus on how to placate Poseidon.
Thought this was excellent, too. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Johann_Heinrich_F%C3%BCssli_063.jpg
-
have had a change of heart about reading 'The Odyssey'
have been reading 'Homeric Moments, clues to delight in reading the Odyssey by Eva Brann' and she compares translations ...stating the obvious...that each translation 'preserves different features of the origional'--maybe this book has been mentioned before, but don't want to scroll thru the posts to find out--but in only the first chapter have found something to help me understand a 'why' that has been at the back of my mind, and stopping me from enjoying the book in the sense I believe it was intended
her example which really brought this home to me came from 'The Iliad'
where Achilles is saddened by the death of his friend, Patroclus
in one translation Achilles states 'I have lost him' ::)which to me would suggest misplaced, 'oh well win some lose some'....lack of emotion
the author uses a different set of words meaning the same but :('I have destroyed him'''gives me a better feeling about Achilles having let his friend go to war in his place and how he feels about it and his empathies are a deep sadness for what has happened to his friend
the book I have, is very readable; the author having read and taught Homer for over 50 years and I am excited to have found it
now back to reading
--just wanted to share my thoughts; not on topic as usual
Deb
-
The "compelled" bit may be more real than we think. The Greek stories are full of people who try to escape prophecies, but no matter what they do, their actions bring about the prophecy anyway.
For some reason, although I've been picking holes in Odysseus' character for several days, that doesn't put me off him. He's a mythic hero, and I'm standing back and watching. Later on we'll see a different side of him, a contrast to Achilles.
That's a great painting of Tiresias, Babi. Later, in Ovid, Tiresias is said to have spent 7 years as a woman before figuring out how to turn back into a man. Jupiter and Hera asked him to settle their argument over which sex got more pleasure in coupling. If you get in the middle of an argument with the gods, you're toast no matter what you do. Tiresias said women, and Hera blinded him.
-
We were posting at the same time, Deb. That sounds like quite a book.
-
DEB: that sounds like a real find. Do share more of it, when yoou see good bits.
PAT: I remember hearing that version of Terisias, but didn't connect it to this one.
BABI: he looks just like a profit should look, doesn't he? Or at least an Old Testament profit. He looks like he's in Hades, so maybe that's O listening to him?
-
I finally caught up on reading all your posts. It is so interesting as there are so many different interpretations here. I find myself saying "wow, why did I not see that".
A ways back Ginny said---remember, this is O talking, not the omiscient narrator.
This was also mentioned in the intro to the revised Rieu translation I am reading.... Page XXII says remember 9 thru 12, "O is telling the story at this point: no one will steal his limelight." And it says this is probably why the crew seems to be rather colorless.
Since Book 9, Cyclops, O in my opinion is foolhardy rather than stupid. I looked that up just to be sure it is what I mean...Miriam Webster says... Definition of FOOLHARDY : foolishly aventurous and bold : rash
Kidsal asks Why does Hermes care?
What a great question....was he sent by another god? Athena maybe?
And my question is why is O called the favorite of Zuess?? yet always complaining about his woes brought on by Zuess ?? Perhaps I forget it is O telling this and has to blame someone.
-
SANDY: great that you're up with us. If any of you fall behind, don't feel that you HAVE to read all the old posts. If there are a lot, it can be overwhelming, and we'd rather you just jumped in than feel you can't catch up.
Did you notice that O attributes EVERYTHING to the gods? "Some god helped me" if any little thing goes well. So at least he's consistant when he blames the gods for everything that goes badly.
-
Yes, thank you Joan. Good way to look at it-- O does give credit to the gods for everything and makes sacrifices as well.
-
The topic of the ancient Greeks and the origin of their gods is huge. I have just done a quick bit of research as to the gods' origins, and found this:
Theories of origin
In antiquity, authors like Herodotus speculated that the Greeks had borrowed their gods wholesale from the Egyptians. Later, Christian writers would attempt to explain Hellenic paganism as a degeneration of Biblical religion. In the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, however, the sciences of archaeology and linguistics were brought to bear on the origins of Greek mythology.
Historical linguistics, on the one hand, shows that certain parts of the Greek pantheon were inherited from Indo-European society, along with the roots of the Greek language. Thus, for example, the name Zeus is cognate with Latin Jupiter, Sanskrit Dyaus and Germanic Tyr (see Dyeus), as is Ouranos with Sanskrit Varuna. In other cases, close parallels in character and function suggest a common heritage, yet lack of linguistic evidence makes it difficult to prove — as in the case of the Greek Moirae and the Norns of Norse mythology.
Archaeology, on the other hand, has shown extensive borrowing by the Greeks from the civilizations of Asia Minor and the Near East. Cybele is a clear example of borrowing from Anatolian culture, while Aphrodite takes much of her iconography and titles from goddesses of the Semitic world such as Ishtar and Astarte.
Textual studies reveal multiple layers in tales, such as secondary asides bringing Theseus into tales of The Twelve Labours of Herakles. Such tales concerning tribal eponyms are thought to originate in attempts to absorb mythology of one tradition into another, in order to unite the cultures.
There is quite a bit more on the topic. Here is the link: www.photius.com/religion/greek_gods.html
Ginny asks are we so different to people of 3000 years ago. Religion is definitely a reason why we are so different; but when you think about it religious differences are still a major concern. Now I am going to go back to that link - it is fascinating.
-
Oh my gosh Roshanarose
What a great article!
However I will need at least one University semester if not two in order to learn all that material.
It is the best LOOOOONG summary I've seen. A great referral tool.
Thanks
-
Good point, PATH, about the Greek belief that one cannot escape prophecies...or fate.
Remembering that makes all these side jaunts of O's more reasonable.
"If you get in the middle of an argument with the gods, you're toast no matter what
you do."
Yes,indeed!
Yes, JOANK, that's supposed to be Teiresias prophesying to Odysseus. I didn't take a
close look at the background; just had the impression of blocks of stone towering to
one side. Teiresias was supposed to be in the "cold home" of Persephone. Was the Greek
idea of Hades cold? Or was that 'cold home' perhaps a reference to the grave?
From our viewpoint today, SANDY, I'd definitely say we'd consider Odysseus foolishly
adventurous and rash. Or maybe that's just a woman's viewpoint? Would today's men still
find O's actions bold and daring, I wonder?
-
It is hard to take all this with 'the gods made me do it' after having seen Flip Wilson on TV with his signature 'The Devil made me do it'. I keep waiting to find the twist that is not so obvious - O does have a reputation for being wily and above the fray of the average so that I keep looking at this as a chess game rather than checkers with his exploits - but so for all I am seeing is checkers which is not fitting the rap about O. It appears like O is saying 'look ma no hands' while racing dangerously close so that he risks the lives of others.
Yes, the web site was great - used it as a guide to find some University web sites that offer bits and pieces where as that site gathers it all together in one spot.
Fascinating to me PBS is showing a Nova about the history of the Bible and that brings in the history of Egypt - amazing to me - I knew but didn't know till now when it hits me - how much older Egypt is than the Greeks and then to see what was going on in Egypt and Canaan when this tale is supposed to have taken place as well as later when Homer is reported to be alive weaving the tale.
Found this site that has a chart showing the various civilizations and what was happening when BC. -
http://http-server.carleton.ca/~mflynnbu/archives/chrono.htm
-
Timelines help to put things in perspective. Thanks for the link, Barb.
Roshanarose, I noticed Karl Jung listed among the modern interpreters of Greek myth so I looked him up. Years ago I read a book about Jungian Archetypes. Other than that I didn't know (or remember) much about him. Interestingly, his father's middle name was Achilles. He seems to have delved quite a bit into mythology, religions and proto-religions, and rituals. He even wrote about about the archetypal meaning and psychological significance of reported UFO sightings.
-
BARB: The timeline really does put things in perspective. I also hadn't realized how much earlier the Egyptians were than any of the other civilizations we know about.
Also puts into perspective time differences in Homer. The difference between his writying and what he is describing is what? (I've forgotten -- hundreds of years.) And hundreds of years again between homer's writing and the Greek History and writers we think of when we think of ancient Greece.
ROSE: The question of where the greek gods came from is fascinating: and one I never thought of before. I wonder to what extent Homer is the earliest source that later greeks had. Of course, that doesn't tell us where homer got his picture of the gods. Borrowing from Asia minor seems very plausible.
-
I am so glad you liked the web site I offered. Yours is great also, Barb. Isn't the internet just awesome???!!! I personally think that a thorough knowledge of the Greek gods and goddesses is essential in understanding Homer.
Frybabe you might also like to look up Max Muller and Karl Kerenyi and their work on mythology.
I have just seen on Yahoo news the devastating tornadoes that hit parts of the US. My thoughts are with you. I truly hope that if you or any of your loved ones who are in that area all came out unscathed. Blessings.
Nature is still meting it out here, in Australia, too, but on a much lesser scale. We have been having minor earthquakes up north and around Perth. I hope you are OK Gum.
-
talk about natural disasters - tonight on PBS is an hour long show of the "bush fires that tore through the Australian state of Victoria in February 2009 incinerated over a million acres of land, including key mountain ash forest ecosystems"
-
The Book Club Online is the oldest book club on the Internet, begun in 1996, open to everyone. We offer cordial discussions of one book a month, 24/7 and enjoy the company of readers from all over the world. Everyone is welcome to join in.
Now reading:
(http://www.seniorlearn.org/bookclubs/classicsbookclub/cbc2odysseysm.jpg)
April 22-----Book XI: Hades
(http://seniorlearn.org/latin/ulysses_penelope/odysseuscompanionsenterhadesfresco1.jpg)
Odysseus and his companions enter Hades
Fresco from a house in Rome
1 BC
Vatican Library, Rome
(http://seniorlearn.org/latin/ulysses_penelope/OdysseusElpenoratticredfigurepelike475BC.jpg)
Odysseus and Elpenor
Attic red figure pelike
c. 475 BC
Discussion Leaders: Joan K (joankraft13@yahoo.com) & ginny (gvinesc@wildblue.net )
(http://seniorlearn.org/latin/ulysses_penelope/OdysseusTiresiasLucanianredfigurecalyxkrater4BC.jpg)
Odysseus consults the shade of Tiresias
Lucanian red figure calyx krater
4th century BC
Useful Links:
1.
Critical Analysis: Free SparkNotes background and analysis on the Odyssey (http://www.sparknotes.com/lit/odyssey)
2.
Translations Used in This Discussion So Far: (http://www.seniorlearn.org/bookclubs/odyssey/odyssey_translations.html)
3.
Initial Points to Watch For: submitted by JudeS (http://www.seniorlearn.org/bookclubs/odyssey/odyssey_points.html)
4.
Maps:Map of the Voyages of Odysseus (http://www.seniorlearn.org/latin/ulysses_penelope/Odysseusmap.jpg)
Map of Voyages in order (http://www.wesleyan.edu/~mkatz/Images/Voyages.jpg)
Map of Stops Numbered (http://www.seniorlearn.org/latin/ulysses_penelope/Odysseusmap2.jpg)
Our Map Showing Place Names in the Odyssey (http://www.seniorlearn.org/latin/graphics/AncientGreecemap.jpg)
(http://seniorlearn.org/latin/ulysses_penelope/OdysseusseeksoutotherdeadsoulsThulden.jpg)
Odysseus seeks out other famous dead men
17th century etching
Theodor van Thulden (1606 - 1669)
Thank you, PatH
-
I personally think that a thorough knowledge of the Greek gods and goddesses is essential in understanding Homer.
I was lucky in having a grade school education that gave me a reasonable background in mythology, so at least I'm familiar with the cast of characters. For background and some details, I've also been consulting a book recommended to me by a friend, Edith Hamilton's Mythology. It's written simply, as though for young people, but it gives a good overall summary of most of the myths. The disadvantage is that she synthesizes the stories from different sources, so it's not always possible to tell what comes from where, even though there is a preface to each section telling the sources. But she truly loves the whole body of work, and it shows in her descriptions, often amusingly. examples:
Cupid and Psyche--"This story is told only by Apulius, a Latin writer of the second century A. D. It is a prettily told tale, after the manner of Ovid. The writer is entertained by what he writes; he believes none of it."
Events leading up to the Trojan war, not described in the Iliad, after describing her major sources: "...adding a few details, such as the tale of Oenone, from the prose-writer Apollodorus, who wrote probably in the first or second century A. D. He is usually very uninteresting, but in treating the events leading up to the Iliad, he was apparently inspired by touching so great a subject and he is less dull than in almost any other part of his book."
-
Who were these people?
TYRO was a Thessalian princess who fell in love with the river Enipeus. As she was sitting by the banks of the river, Poseidon approached her in the guise of the river-god and seduced her. She bore him twin sons, Pelias and Neleus, which she exposed in the wilderness to die. There they were found and rescued by passing herdsmen who raised them as their own. Tyro's father Salmoneus later married her to his brother Kretheus, King of Iolkos, and she bore him three sons – Aeson, Pheres and Amythaon. Upon reaching manhood the sons of Poseidon returned to their mother, and seized control of their uncle's Kretheus' kingdom. They also slew his second wife Sidero, who had been mistreating Tyro.
ALCMENE was the mother of Hercules and the wife of Amphitryon, but the night she conceived Hercules and his twin brother Iphicles, Alcmene mated with both Zeus, who had disguised himself as her husband, and Amphitryon. As a result, Zeus was Hercules' father, but Amphitryon was the father of Iphicles.
EPICASTE was the daughter of Menoeceus, and wife of Laius, by whom she became the mother of Oedipus, whom she afterwards unwittingly married. She is more commonly called Jocaste.
CHLORIS was married Neleus and become queen in Pylos. They had several sons including Nestor, Alastor and Chromius and a daughter Pero. Chloris also had a son, Periclymenus while married to Neleus, though by some accounts Periclymenus's father was Poseidon (who was himself Neleus's father). Poseidon gave Periclymenus the ability to transform into any animal. Other children include Taurus, Asterius, Pylaon, Deimachus, Eurybius, Phrasius, Eurymenes, Evagoras and Epilaus.
IPHIMEDEIA was the daughter of Triopas, who in his turn was the son of Poseidon and Canace. Iphimedeia was married to Aloeus, but fell desperately in love with her grandfather, and would walk up and down the beach to get him to come to her. She bore twins: Otus and Ephialtes. The twins grew bigger and stronger, and finally were so huge they even worried the gods. They managed to capture Ares and put him in chains, and threatened they would instigate war on the gods. The son of Zeus killed them when they were youths.
PHAEDRA was the daughter of Minos and Pasiphaë, wife of Theseus and the mother of Demophon of Athens and Acamas. Though married to Theseus, Phaedra fell in love with Hippolytus, Theseus' son born by either Hippolyta, queen of the Amazons, or Antiope, her sister. In one story Theseus killed his son and Phaedra committed suicide.
PROCRIS was the daughter of the Athenian king Erechtheus and the wife of the hero Cephalus (Kefalos). The ancient authors give us a romantic story with a tragic ending about this beautiful couple. Their troubles began when the goddess of dawn Eos fell in love with Cephalus and abducted him to the end of the world. According to one version of this myth, Cephalus wanted to go back to his wife and Eos said she would let him, if he agreed to one condition: he had to return to his wife in the image of another person, to make sure that she would stay faithful to her spouse. So Cephalus visited Procris -- who did not know that he was her husband -- and she did not want to hear any of his proposals. Cephalus then tried to bribe her with golden jewelry and at very moment Procris hesitated, Eos changed Cephalus back into his original form. Procris immediately recognized her husband and she was so ashamed of herself that she ran away. She went to live in the mountains with the nymphs attending the goddess Artemis. After some time Cephalus managed to locate Procris and brought her back home, taking along with her the gifts of Artemis -- a hound which never failed to catch his prey and a magical dart that never missed its mark.
ARIADNE was the immortal wife of the wine-god Dionysos. There were several versions of her story. In one, Ariadne, the daughter of King Minos of Krete, assisted Theseus in his quest to slay the Minotaur, and then fled with him aboard his ship. However, when they landed on the island of Naxos, Theseus abandoned her as she was sleeping. It was here that the god Dionysos discovered her and made her his wife. Some say that she was later slain by Artemis at Dia.
MAIRA (or Maera) was the nymph of the dog-star Seirios whose rising in conjunction with the sun brought on the scorching heat of midsummer. Like the Pleiades and Hyades, Maira was a starry daughter of the Titan Atlas. She married a mortal king, the Arkadian Tegeates.
CLYMENE was the Titan goddess of renown, fame and infamy. She was one of the elder Okeanides, wife of the Titan Iapetos, mother of the Titanes Prometheus and Atlas and the ancestress of all mankind. Like the Titan-wives she was probably an earth-goddess, her name bringing to mind "Klymenos," a common euphemistic title of the god Haides. CLYMENE was also named Asia, and in this guise portrayed as the eponymous goddess of the region of Anatolia (i.e. Asia Minor). It should be noted that it was only later that geographers applied this name to the continent.
ERIPHYLE was the daughter of Talaus, the mother of Alcmaeon, and the wife of Amphiaraus. Eriphyle persuaded Amphiaraus to take part in the Seven Against Thebes raid, though he knew he would die. She had been persuaded by Polynices, who offered her the necklace of Harmonia for her assistance. Amphiaraus asked his sons Alcmaeon and Amphilochus to avenge his death, and Alcmaeon killed his mother after Amphiaraus died.
None of these women were faithful wives. Did it make O wonder about Penelope?
-
The Babylonian Epic of Gilgamesh. There is a house where people sit in darkness; dust is their food and clay their meat. They are clothed like birds with wings for covering, they see no light, they sit in darkness. Source of Homer's Cimmerian's?
Why are Tiresias and Alcinous in Hades? Have they died since Telemachus visited them?
-
I had to drag myself away from that link, BARB. It does indeed put events in better
perspective.
Another one of those coincidences. Last night the SCi/Fy channel was showing...guess what...
"Odyssey"!! It is a four hour show, which squeezes the war with Troy into a brief introductory
segment. Agamemnon and Menelaus show up to drag Odysseus off to war the same day
Telemachus was born. I decided I'd rather stick with the book. :P
-
BARB: I watched part of that show: it was really scary. But the way both the people and the forests recovered was heartening.
Is everyone in the path of disaster all right?
-
Wow what great posts and links.
Thank you for saving the heading space, PatH.. I am so glad to see your analysis of the Edith Hamilton Mythology. I never understood why people tended to go on and on about her, (I like Bulfinch better) but you've managed to nail it. I am interested in your quote about Apuleius Cupid and Psyche--The writer is entertained by what he writes; he believes none of it." What an odd thing to say about a fairy tale embedded in a story, the only extant Latin novel, of a man who becomes literally an ass, a donkey.
I thought you made a good point with this: He's a mythic hero, and I'm standing back and watching. Later on we'll see a different side of him, a contrast to Achilles.
This later on stuff seems to be important. One major question is: does Odysseus grow as a person as the Odyssey progresses? It will be interesting to see how we all answer that one at the end.
Sandy Rose, what a good point on the Rieu translation: . Page XXII says remember 9 thru 12, "O is telling the story at this point: no one will steal his limelight." And it says this is probably why the crew seems to be rather colorless
Now there's something that never occurred to me.. It's possible the rather colorless or flat nature of the crew (I was surprised to see Eurylochus stepping up to the plate), may be intentional. To make O look since he is the one talking, more hero like. Good point!
Frybabe, I didn't know that about Freud and the UFO's, thank you for bringing that here.
RR thank you for that link, it's a great resource. I think you are right on the question of how are we different from the ancient Greeks in citing religion (at least for most of us), and in saying religious differences are still a major concern. There do seem to me to be some comparisons between some of the Greek gods and the Hindu gods of India today (who themselves are quite ancient).
Jude I liked your comparison of Harry Potter and Kon Tiki when comparing the Odyssey to both. That's very good.
Babi I am not seeing many male chuckles here, it could be my translation.
I guess what I AM seeing is where do we draw the line of the "willing suspension of disbelief?"
Do we accept a giant who eats men? Do we accept that Circe turned O's men into pigs? Then if we accept the pigs, why do we quibble about whether or not she had power over him in the manner of sleeping with him? Where do we draw the line and why?
I think it's interesting what we choose to accept and what we think is bogus or an excuse. But how can we not apply our own critical minds to the text? Where do we draw the line?
Joan K, great points on the nature of the emotions of Greek men then and modern man. I loved that, the differences explain the culture.
Sally, loved that on Patton. I had thought he did send scouts but it appears he took two companies. You asked why did Hermes care? Hermes is only the messenger so far as I know. I don't think he does care.
Deb that book sounds wonderful! I really think it's great how many auxiliary books and websites everybody is reading. We can't help but be the richer for it.
Barbara that is a fascinating site, thank you. It IS interesting to contemplate the whole time line, in relation to the others of the world.
Babi, isn't it amazing how once you start reading something it appears everywhere: loved the the SiFi channel and the Odyssey and the new issue of Time which came Saturday, has as a cover story: What if There's no Hell?
And here O is about to go to Hades himself!
It seems everywhere you turn there's a reference to the Odyssey, and we've had some super ones brought here. Heck, I just heard this morning again that the police were looking for a black Odyssey hahaha. But in all these references, since we're lucky enough to be reading it for ourselves, what are we actually taking OUT of our experience in reading the original Odyssey?
If somebody asked you what you were getting from it, what would you say?
Super discussion! I need to break this up.
-
Sally, what questions you ask! That huge page of women and then: None of these women were faithful wives. Did it make O wonder about Penelope?
I don't know why it wouldn't, if he knew of them. Yet he did laugh over the tale of Mars and Hephaestus and the unfaithful Venus, which sort of shows a man without worries. Still.
Does O know at this point about Agamemnon's fate?
And then this one: Why are Tiresias and Alcinous in Hades? Have they died since Telemachus visited them?
Man o man now THAT'S close reading. I didn't even catch that. I've only got Tiresias there, but I didn't notice him at all till you mentioned it, got caught up in the death heads my text has. I don't have Alcinous. He's telling this story to Alcinous, right?
When did we last see Tiresias? I can't remember. And where?
And more strangeness: at the very end of 10 O says that Circe had gone ahead and tethered a ram and a black ewe (wonder why black is the only color to give Tiresias? )...
"She had passed us by
Without our ever noticing. Who could see
A god on the move against the god's will?"
Here Circe is once and for all identified as a goddess.
But she's not the only one.
SandyRose asked:
And my question is why is O called the favorite of Zeus?? yet always complaining about his woes brought on by Zuess ?? Perhaps I forget it is O telling this and has to blame someone.
I did not know the answer to that, apparently I need to read a little more closely, because just today it's jumping out all over me:
Somewhere around line 508: (BUT Fagles does not have this! He has "royal son")
"Son of Laertes in the line of Zeus."
Huh? Odysseus is in the family of Zeus?
This is repeated again in 527.
And again in line 442 of Book 10:
" With you back, Zeus- born, it is just as if
we had returned to our native Ithaca."
Now call me crazy (and of course we do remember who is telling this story) but here not only a goddess but his own crew seem to feel he's related to Zeus?
Is this the first time we've seen this? I feel as if I've been asleep at the switch here. That would account for a lot of things. Is he just....what? Hallucinating? Sort of bragging? Making grandiose statements?
This is getting exciting, it really is. We get to go down into Hades where Pulto and Proserpina (for 6 months) live, and she apparently has taken her job seriously while she's there:
"To consult the ghost of Theban Tiresias (around 509)
The blind prophet, whose mind is still strong.
To him alone Persephone has granted
Intelligence even after his death.
The rest of the dead are flitting shadows."
Wow. And we get to meet them all as they "loom" (Lombardo) as shades. I can't wait.
And then there's a ritual. And the River Styx. I don't see Charon tho. What are the feeble death heads? What does your translation have for this? It's somewhere around line 555 or so. Note they have to be kept from the blood. The Romans (I don't know about the Greeks) believed the favored drink of the dead was blood, that's why they brought wine (a substitute) to the graves for the dead on special occasions.
Now Elpenor, a young man, as they are getting ready to cast off, falls off the roof, drunk, and breaks his neck and goes down to Hades. Why?
Seems kind of anticlimactic?
Why do they need to consult Tiresias, it says "He will tell you the route and how long it will take
For you to reach home over the teeming deep."
Does O not know the way home? I'm getting lost in the length of the journey again with all these flashbacks.
Since he stayed with Circe a year, (how long with Calypso...was it 10 years?) and how long with Nausicaa, do you think there anything we can deduce from the length of times spent as to his feelings on each (or should we be asking about the power of each?)
I'm trying to make a list of modern values that we can see in this so far.
Loyalty
Honor?
Faithfulness? (Penelope)
Bravery? Or foolhardiness as SandyRose said. We need to keep our own lists, so we can see if he changes any at the end.
I have more questions than answers at this point! Super discussion, just super!
-
Rosehannarose, I must have been asleep when I read your post. Just reread it. Max Muller I have heard about, but don't know anything about him. Karl Kerenyi is not familiar to me at all. Will look them up.
Ginny, Freud? Good heavens no. Jung, Karl Jung. On the whole, I am not a Freud fan, but his work on defense mechanisms was interesting.
-
oops! Must have been a Freudian slip! hjahahaha I wondered as I typed it, thought it was sort of a strange combination, it was. hahahah Sorry!
-
JoanK and I have a long acquaintance with the story of Circe. When we were in grade school we used to write plays, probably more distinguished for their enthusiasm than their literary quality. One of these was about Circe. We disagreed about whether it should be serious or a comedy, and the compromise was that it would be a straightforward telling of the story, but the obligatory Greek chorus would consist of animals, men Circe had already changed. They stood around making wisecracks like "don't drink that stuff--you'll be sorry", and saying "I told you so".
-
Shriek!! hahahahaa Oh my goodness aren't you CLEVER!! And you did this as children? Just reading it made ME want to do it, maybe I'm having a fifth childhood! I bet we could write one now. hahahaa
THAT is priceless! hahahaaa
-
Frybabe - If I have helped you with your slumber, I am happy!!! :D I thought that line was so sweet.
Sal - I also enjoyed reading your post about those gods and mortals. Many of those names (preOlympian I think) were unknown to me, but I did recognise one very famous hero. Re your First para.
There they were found and rescued by passing herdsmen who raised them as their own. Tyro's father Salmoneus later married her to his brother Kretheus, King of Iolkos, and she bore him three sons – Aeson, Pheres and Amythaon. Upon reaching manhood the sons of Poseidon returned to their mother, and seized control of their uncle's Kretheus' kingdom. They also slew his second wife Sidero, who had been mistreating Tyro.
Aeson is Greek for Jason of Argonauts fame. I think his exploits predated those of Odysseus. I will attempt to find out.
Language Trivia : the end of the word Argonauts, i.e. -nauts, mean sailor/s in both Modern and Ancient Greek. In a modern sense it was used in the Space Race. e.g. astronaut + star traveller; and cosmonaut means world/sky traveller (cosmos has several meanings in Greek - it can mean "the whole world (as in people) knows about it" or as it does in cosmonaut "world, universe.
As for Odysseus and Zeus being related, maybe we can take that back to the explanation that if in the world of heroes children were born whose mortal father could not be identified, he/she was conveniently explained as being parented by a god. Even Alexander thought he was a child of a god. He believed this because Phillip treated his wife, Alexander's mother, badly and Alexander grew to dislike him intensely.
-
PatH What a riot that must have been.
-
Perhaps Elpenor is in Hades because he was not buried -- important to him that O go back and give him a burial.
-
This "son of " thing will drive you nuts.
I thought Aeson was Jason's father.
And Laertes is Odysseus's father. I wonder if we can find out anything about Laertes and his own father? Reminds me of an old commercial for Petri wine featured in the old WWII Sherlock Holmes series on radio: from Father to Son, from Father to Son.
Very interesting history, that one had. The Petris turned into Italian Swiss Colony.
-
Sally, that makes sense on Elpenor, we'll have to watch (I can't remember the rest of it except the end) and see if you're right! Otherwise it seems such a waste.
I am not sure what more we could ask of Odysseus, really, when you think of it. Yes in the Iliad he was a braggart, I guess, I seem to remember him pointing out, Donald Trump like, his successes at outwitting Ajax and how he should have had the credit. I am not seeing a lot of this here, strangely enough?
He seems strangely modest, actually. He's sitting in the ashes, he's being a supplicant, the only time he does get riled up is when one of the young bucks challenges him, I think anybody of a certain age can relate to that.
He wants to go home to his wife and child, it's been...well how long NOW is it? 11 years? so far? He's long past "presumed dead," and he's wanting to get back home. Talk about George Clooney in the movie Up int he Air, now there's another modern Odysseus, I wonder if the current sex with no attachments is any different than what's happening here?
If you were to consider the entire story a metaphor (PatH gave me this idea with her play with Joan K) and try to stage it in 2011, I keep wondering how O would come across?
You'd have to change some of the challenges. You could not have a giant eating men, or a woman turning men into pigs, it's fun to contemplate what you WOULD have, tho. I mean what the modern expression might be for seeing your men turn into pigs or the walls crawling?
Either way he keeps meeting the challenges and coming out on top, but he's losing men and when he gets to Alcinous to whom he's telling all this, he's down to one ship and one man: him, is that right? The Laestrygonians got all the ships but his? The flashbacks are confusing me. He's got men at Circe's, he's got enough to divide them into two packs of 11 each. And now after 11 years? of effort he gets to go to Hell...er Hades. This 11 has got to be one of the best books of the entire thing, except for the end.
Are we caught up enough to go on to it? For...Friday?
He doesn't seem to question that he needs to ask Tiresias the way home. I wonder why Circe could not provide him that information?
If he needed it. Maybe she didn't want to? Maybe she hoped HE would never come out either?
And once again his MEN seem to see a clearer course and beg him to leave Circe so he goes and asks. Ok she says!! Does this mean he could have gone all this time and it's more him (Babi!) than her?
Sally we need to thank you, I had not read ahead and did not realize what you did, that's a great glossary to some of those O will meet in Hades, I've actually copied it out, thank you (in addition to being a great question you've asked).
I would say if we were putting on a performance of the Odyssey in 2011, using modern metaphors, I would not put it on as the Coen brothers did in O Brother Where Art Thou (tho you have to admit they were very clever, VERY) but I wonder if the challenges could be done with less...physical drama (nobody eating anybody or running from the police but still having challenges) and more psychological stuff?
I guess I'm trying to ask if our modern heroes face dangers similar to, if not more than, O did? Or not? Can this be an allegory of sorts, I wonder idly, charmed by the idea of PatH and Joan K doing a play on Circe?
What do you think? About this or anything else?
-
I wonder if today this story represents more a homecoming journey in the mind after war and it could be why so many returning from Iraq are reading the Odyssey.- so that rather than being blown hither and yon and confronting monsters in real life it is a case of confronting the feelings not allowed during war but stay unexplored and must be traversed in order to have a full homecoming.
-
BARB: AN EXCELLANT IDEA!
-
When talking of Mythic heros we are forgetting Penelope who has raised her son on her own (O. left shortly after his birth) and keeps the home fires burning (so to speak).
Penelopes name lives on as a symbol of marital faithfulness. So here is some more info on this very symbolic personage.
Her name comes fromthe Greek "pene" (weft) and "ops' (face) which is the appropriate title for a cunning weaver who for many years keeps weaving and unravelling her husband's shroud.
Penelope is recognized in Greek and Roman paintings and staues by her seated pose, by her reflective gesture of learning, her hand on her cheek and by her protectively crossed knees, reflecting her long chastity. It is an unusual pose not found representing other figures. Some believe that this is not an action entertained by an ordinary mortal, but is the contemplated pose or act of a Goddess.
The Penelopiad is a book by Margaret Atwood retelling the Odyssey from Penelope's point of view.
-
Ginny - I stand corrected Aeson was Jason's father. Normally the famed Jason is called Aeson in Greek texts for the simple reason that there is no other way his name can be transcribed from Greek to English, ie there is no "J" letter/sound in the Greek alphabet.
Still pondering O's relationship with Zeus. I have done a few searches regarding this, and can't find the connection anywhere. Can anyone help to clear this up?
-
Roshanarose
I did a search and this is what I came up with -but be patient it is convaluted a bit.
ZZeus was once married to Metis a daughter of Ocean who was renown for her wisdom. When Metis became pregnant Zeus was warned that a son, born to Metis would usurp his throne. So Z. swallowed Metis. In time he was overcome with a splitting headache and called for help from Hephaestus the Craftsman god. H. cleaved Z.s forehead with an axe and Athena sprang forth fully armed.
One may read into this that the mythmakers wished to show that the male skygod gave birth to Athena as if to say "Who needs a woman to bring forth new life?"
Over time Athena fought with Poseidon over who would be the Patron Saint of Athens. She won this difficult struggle. She befriended Odysseus because of his defense of Athens.
Another theory or addition is that she is the Mother Goddess and eternal being. Odysseus was one of her select mortal companions. By helping him she showed her matenal qualities. She unifiesthe strength of humanity with Natural forces thus
bridging the gap between matriachal and patriarchial types and create a balance in the natural cycle of life.
So the answer to Odysseus and Zeus's relationship can only be told by understanding the bond between Athena and Zeus.
I hope this helps to answer your question.
-
Oh excellent tie in, Jude! Well done!
Barbara, what a neat hypothesis, I love it. And of course we have the Achilles in Vietnam: Combat Trauma and the Undoing of Character by Dr. Jonathan Shay who ALSO wrote: Odysseus in America: Combat Trauma and the Trials of Homecoming. That second book might make an interesting parallel here, actually. I haven't read it, have any of you?
And he wrote exactly on what you have described. And more. We once had Dr. Shay agree to come in and discuss the Achilles book in our book discussions, but we could not get up enough people to read it!!! And had to cancel it. Shortly thereafter I was happy to see he received a very prestigious award for his work in Traumatic Stress Syndrome. It's entirely possible with this cape over the head and weeping that's exactly what O is experiencing, he's actually really been through it, hasn't he?
Roshanarose, that's interesting on Aeson in ancient Greek. Latin does not have the j either but substitutes the I as in Iason or Jason, which changes character when followed by a vowel. The Latin Argonautica by Valerius Flaccus, which is a couple of hundred years later and derivative of the Greek Argonautica, (the only surviving Greek text of the story of Jason and the Argonauts by Apollonius of Rhodes), often confuses Latin students who keep seeing the word Aesonis, and translating it "Aeson," in the somewhat adapted version we use. Last year one of the students exclaimed "who IS this Aeson, and why is he here?" It's irritating to find it peppered throughout the text. Kind of like "son of Laertes" is here for Odysseus.
But in Latin the" is" on the end of the word Aesonis means "of Aeson," and is the same type of thing we're seeing here, "son of Laertes," (Odysseus). In the case of "Aesonis," in Latin means "son of Aeson, " or Iason. (Jason).
How is the greeting "yasou" in modern Greek spelled? (My Greek consists of conversational Greek with the owner of a small eatery locally. Lovely man.)
-
In reading Jude's post I was somewhat surprised to see the meaning of Penelope, and when you combine that with Odysseus, the man of constant sorrow, as the modern song goes, the whole thing could easily be seen (bit of an extrapolation) as a metaphor, the entire set of characters symbolic, which is a pretty strong thing to be 3000 years old. In that context then Elpenor must also stand for something. He's not been buried properly, we know what a trauma that was in the Iliad, when Patroculus is dissed in that way.
IF all these characters are symbolic a dream did Roshannarose say some time back? I hope I've attributed that correctly, we've had so many fine ideas and comments, if not and it was YOUR idea, please correct me, then we CAN apply it today.
I mean those thinking of the promiscuity, have you ever watched 5 minutes of Jersey Shore? (How would you as a civilization like to be remembered by future generations? by the Odyssey or by Jersey Shore tapes? hahaha)
It iS the culture now.
I can't help noticing SOME parallels here between Ron and Odysseus actually. He holds Sammi to a higher standard than he has and is devastated by her not having been faithful to HIM. Of course they have not been married...how long must O and Penelope have been married at this point? He's 20 years getting home, T must be at least 20? Must he?
Following this theory, of all the challenges so far which O has faced, which one seems to have been the worst for him? And which the best in his point of view?
-
Does this mean he could have gone all this time and it's more him (Babi!) than her?
I have no idea, GINNY. 'Homer' is distressingly vague on this point. He seems intent on
making this trip home incredibly long, and manages to toss in year-long stays with no
real justification or explanation. Artistic license, I suppose.
I echo JOANK, BARB. That is a really terrific thought, very apt. So many of our returning
warriors are having a very hard time of it.
-
roshanarose-really enjoy it when learning roots of words, like your sailor thing...meshes us with the source
and with your comment about Gods siring children without a father...why couldn't this have been peoples thoughts for years instead of the illegitimate horrible label that just was hurtful and a stupid human folly
from reply 1252
Deb
-
Just a note on the reading of Odyssey by vets - there is a city library just south of Lakeland Airforce base in San Antonio that has had a Thursday night discussion group on the Odyssey for over a year now - I almost drove down but then realized it would be filled with vets and I felt like I would be horning in on their healing and discovery -
Near as I can tell from what I hear there is after a bit of time a seductiveness to being on the front line so that they never really drop it when they are on rotation if they know they are going back and almost feel they would rather not have had the time back in the States. Then, because of how differently we look at marriage today as compared to ancient and even courtly love as well as, church marriage up till the very early 1980s, the guilt for the attachment they feel toward their unit and fighting on the front line, especially for young Dads becomes a homecoming issue.
After reading The Art of Courtly Love by Andreas Capellanus and Charles J. Reid's Power over the Body, Equality in the Family, Rights and Domestic Relations in Medieval Canon Law it was easy to understand that Odysseus would not have had such guilt with a very different view of marriage which would not have been based in love -
This story is reminding me though of a persistent nightmare when we are trying to solve something and each night a new twist with something preventing us from solving the issue comes along and we wake up in a panic. It is like all these events are simply exercises for Odysseus to use his craftiness to solve only to be thwarted again by another kerfuffle. A new email advertisement could be '21 ways to avoid roadblocks to success.'
-
Deb as I understand it the awfulness that was and in some cases still is attached to children born out of wedlock has to do with progeny and the law. Remember Jane Austin's Sense and Sensibility how after the father dies they were forced out of the estate and by the good graces of a relative of the mother they had a humble home to move into with a meager allowance. She was not legally married and although on his deathbed he asked that she be cared for, legally she had no rights.
There may be the odd story here and there of a 'bastard' child making good as an adult but mostly because of not just the family wealth but the importance of the family name - everything was done in what we call a 'good ol'boy' way - as an adult the chances of being part of the great unwashed was greater and so the concept of bringing into the world one more child who would fill up the poor-houses or lay about on streets and lanes unemployable was a blight to society. Here my knee jerk reaction comes in but here goes - as usual the guy who thinks with another part of his anatomy than his brain is never blamed it is the product of his 'indiscretion' that is blamed.
-
I wonder if today this story represents more a homecoming journey in the mind after war and it could be why so many returning from Iraq are reading the Odyssey.- so that rather than being blown hither and yon and confronting monsters in real life it is a case of confronting the feelings not allowed during war but stay unexplored and must be traversed in order to have a full homecoming.
Barb, I think that's brilliant. That puts a whole different feel to the whole story. And it fits in perfectly with the ending, where Odysseus' reunion with Penelope isn't quite smooth.
Even if the Greeks didn't consciously know what we do now about stress in battle, a lot of the old myths describe psychological truths so accurately they can't be beat.
-
Remember Jane Austin's Sense and Sensibility how after the father dies they were forced out of the estate and by the good graces of a relative of the mother they had a humble home to move into with a meager allowance. She was not legally married and although on his deathbed he asked that she be cared for, legally she had no rights.
As the resident Jane Austin fanatic, I have to defend Mrs. Henry Dashwood, mother of the heroines of Sense and Sensibility. She was legally married. The inheritance problem was the result of a sloppy will, plus the untimely death of the heir who might have set things right.
-
Wow wow, Wow, I just finished 11! Talk about excitement.
We're going to try for 11 Friday, right?
Man o man there they all are!
I wonder if there's a reason for the order they come out.
(http://seniorlearn.org/latin/graphics/Graphics/sisyphus.gif)
I've got a million questions!
PatH: And it fits in perfectly with the ending, where Odysseus' reunion with Penelope isn't quite smooth. I think we may be about to see another reason why in Chapter 11.
'Homer' is distressingly vague on this point. He seems intent on
making this trip home incredibly long,
That's a good point, Babi, wonder why, particularly? 20 years is a lOOONG time, could he not have accomplished the same thing in 10?
Or is it 20? I am thinking it's 20.
- there is a city library just south of Lakeland Airforce base in San Antonio that has had a Thursday night discussion group on the Odyssey for over a year now THAT is interesting, Barbara! I'd sure like to hear some of their thoughts on this, wouldn't you? But as you say it might interfere with their own process. I wish they were online.
I am loving the far ranging discussion here and all the interesting things brought to the table.
-
JudeS--after reading your post about Penelopiad by Margaret Atwood, found my local library had a copy...have read the first 3 chapter today and thinking this may change my impressions of Penelope who up to now has seemed like an insipid character...it sure gives her more dimension and I am enjoying that
was trying to figure out if we were already into chapter 11 but your last post cleared that up for me Ginny....guess its not a question anymore
Deb
-
Will be out fot the next four days. House full of guests. Will rejoin you on Monday if I have the energy.
Don't have too much fun while I'm gone.
-
Have a lovely holiday weekend Jude.
Ginny, Sisyphus is sure getting a workout. Here is a wonderful quote I ran across on the first page of P. J. O'Rourke's book, The Bachelor Home Companion which shows a picture of the author pushing a rock uphill. "Camus had it all wrong about the myth of Sisyphus - it's not symbolic of life, just housekeeping."
-
Ginny said:
IF all these characters are symbolic a dream did Roshannarose say some time back? I hope I've attributed that correctly, we've had so many fine ideas and comments, if not and it was YOUR idea, please correct me, then we CAN apply it today.
In reply he may have been eating asphodels, white waxy sort of flowers. These flowers still grow in Greece and are used in MG to symbolise death and mourning. I wonder if these flowers are similar to datura which is definitely hallucinogenic? Think about how many times O encountrers "drugs" on his journey. Helen gives him and Menelaus a soothing drink to relax them; Circe (Kirke) gives his men drugs that cause metamorphosis. He didn't partake of the fruit of the jujube tree, but some of his men did. I read somewhere that perhaps the soporific effect of the jujube (lotus) may have been because a very potent drink had been made through a similar process to that whis is now used for Sake, ie fermentation.
Also, Ginny, I noted that he seemed to have dreamt the whole Nausicaa story. It was certainly surreal.
In Greek Yas sou is Γεία σου which roughly means Your (informal) Health.
Jude: Thanks for the explanation about Zeus and O, it kind of makes sense in a very Greek way :)
-
Jude, we'll miss you, have a great time this weekend!
Thank you Roshanarose for that Yas sou is Γεία! In retrospect it appears that "George" was a great teacher. You have a point too on the drugs flowing throughout the tale so far, asphodel! The vision of Achilles moving through asphodel in Book 11, elated at the news of his son, is just fabulous. I love Book 11.
hahaha Frybabe, that sure is true of my house. hahaaha
PatH, I liked this: a lot of the old myths describe psychological truths so accurately they can't be beat. I wonder if that's why people read them in part, and then are shocked to learn they were people, too? Some of them, of course seem more like "us," whoever "we" are, and some don't. I wonder what psychological truths we see in Book 11?
We're seeing O in his battle armor I think, up until now, his "hero" suit, sort of a shield, and I think it's deliberate, even when he's crying he's not particularly approachable to us, there's more there being hidden. Sort of like an onion, Homer keeps peeling back the layers, contrasting now with flashbacks and then and it's hard really to get a grip on who he is.
Book 11 just blew me away, what in our literature or experience does it recall to you? (I have to start now, we're to have awful storms tomorrow)..
I keep thinking of A Christmas Carol. When the Ghost of Marley directs Scrooge to the window to look at the souls lamenting and here Odysseus is, plunged right into the middle of them.
Why do you think Book 11 is in this story? What has it to do, really, with the adventure so far?
He's come ostensibly to see Tiresias, the seer, (I now understand the one in O Brother Where Art Thou better, they took it a lot from this). But Tiresias is more than a MapQuest, he'll say what's to happen.
It's a strange order they're coming out in? Can we make anything of the order in which they come forward? I bet you anything Dante took his circles of Hell from this.
And there's his mother, now I did think that was poignant, and we hear more about his father,too. So now we know what Laertes is doing off there in the mountains. Sounds like O is questioning Penelope's faithfulness just a little?
He also gets advice from Agamemnon, wasn't that something? I actually felt a chill when Agamemnon began coming forward. And then ALL of them! How exciting this must have been to hear 3000 years ago when these people were so well known!
Then came the ghost of Achilles, son of Peleus
And those of Patroclus and peerless Antilochus
And Ajax, who surpassed all the Danaans,
except Achilles, in looks and build.
I loved Achilles:
Don't try to sell me on death, Odysseus.
I'd rather be a hired hand back up on earth,
Slaving away for some poor dirt farmer,
Then lord it over all these withered dead.
But tell me about that boy of mine...
Loved that. This is just so fabulous, whoever he lets drink can speak the truth, whoever he won't let drink will fade back again.
I am confused on two things, maybe you all have a clearer picture of this.
Elpenor comes first:
First to come was the ghost of Elpenor,
Whose body still lay in Circe's hall.
And he says
Now I beg you...
When you put the gloom of Hades behind you
And beach your ship on the Isle of Aeaea
As I know you will, remember me, my lord.
Do not leave me unburied, unmourned (Sally was right)..
So O agrees he'll do that for him.
How is he going to do that? He's left... he's left Circe and is in Hades? He's not going BACK is he?
Also I was most confused on Heracles. Greek art is full of his apotheosis, his rise to sit with the gods, one of the few semi mortals make that great honor. But here it's:
His phantom that is, for Heracles himself
Feasts with the gods and has as his wife
Beautiful Hebe, daughter of great Zeus...
This image for some reason really confused me. O's mother has already told him what they are made of, what they consist of there and how they became what they are upon death (wasn't that SOMETHING about the soul?)_so why does Hercules have a separate phantom?
And he's pretty scary. I don't understand the phantom thing, or why he came out? What did you get out of his words which "beat down on me like dark wings?"
I tell you, you'd have to go a long way to beat this chapter, and was that actually O talking to Agamemnon who talks about being persecuted by Zeus (somewhere around 435) , the "house of Atreus from the beginning,
Through the will of women."
!!!
THIS is a chapter!! What with the little boy in USA Today, today's paper, talking about Heaven, and Time Magazine saying What if There's No Hell this week, this is a perfect time to read this and isn't it absolutely splendid!
What struck YOU about this book?
-
What's with Achilles? Did he change his mind once he got to Hades? Isn't he the one who, given the choice, chose a short life but lasting fame over living a long, ordinary, forgettable life? Now he gripes.
Ajax. Why wouldn't he speak to Odysseus? I am afraid I skipped through most of the chapter. I wasn't following Pope too well. I am going back and trying it again. I must have been tired the first time. The Christmas Carol image is helping, believe it or not, to grasp the action better.
-
Why do you think Book 11 is in this story? What has it to do, really, with the adventure so far?
GINNY, I saw your question, and what sprang to my mind was that song from "A Funny
Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum". "Something for Everyone!" Homer..singular or
plural...is a minstrel entertaining the crowd. And who doesn't like a good ghost story?
-
BABI: good point. And it's a way to get in a lot of stories about a lot of different people. Including the umpteenth telling of the Agamemmnon/Clytemnestra story. This makes me think that again that the Odyssey is definitely a melding together of different sources. I THINK this version of Ag's death is slightly different from an earlier one (although I couldn't ind the referance).
FRY: you're working a lot harder than I am by reading Pope. His poetry on top of homer's. Is it worth it? Do you also want to look at a modern version?
GINNY: "Don't try to sell me on death" Lombardo has Achilles saying. I find these passages in non-poetic language in Lombardo somewhat jarring. But when Lombardo was with us in the Iliad discussion, he said that they are very true to the spirit of the original. Homer's greek is not high flown and poetical, but very down-to-earth. What do you all think?
-
And what do you think of this version of life after death. Did this become part of the Greek religion? How depressing!
-
The Book Club Online is the oldest book club on the Internet, begun in 1996, open to everyone. We offer cordial discussions of one book a month, 24/7 and enjoy the company of readers from all over the world. Everyone is welcome to join in.
Now reading:
(http://www.seniorlearn.org/bookclubs/classicsbookclub/cbc2odysseysm.jpg)
April 29-----Book XII: First: The Sirens
(http://seniorlearn.org/latin/ulysses_penelope/Odys400seysrirensmast.jpg)
Odysseus ties himself to the mast so as to hear the Sirens call and live
(http://seniorlearn.org/latin/ulysses_penelope/Odysse222ussirencall.jpg)
The Sirens call
(http://seniorlearn.org/latin/ulysses_penelope/Odysseysprettysirens.jpg)
Some more appealing Sirens call Discussion Leaders: Joan K (joankraft13@yahoo.com) & ginny (gvinesc@wildblue.net )
(http://seniorlearn.org/latin/ulysses_penelope/Ulyssesjourney2.jpg)
Ulysses leaves Troy and sees the world! Note the position of the Sirens
Useful Links:
1. Critical Analysis: Free SparkNotes background and analysis on the Odyssey (http://www.sparknotes.com/lit/odyssey)
2. Translations Used in This Discussion So Far: (http://www.seniorlearn.org/bookclubs/odyssey/odyssey_translations.html)
3. Initial Points to Watch For: submitted by JudeS (http://www.seniorlearn.org/bookclubs/odyssey/odyssey_points.html)
4. Maps:
Map of the Voyages of Odysseus (http://www.seniorlearn.org/latin/ulysses_penelope/Odysseusmap.jpg)
Map of Voyages in order (http://www.wesleyan.edu/~mkatz/Images/Voyages.jpg)
Map of Stops Numbered (http://www.seniorlearn.org/latin/ulysses_penelope/Odysseusmap2.jpg)
Our Map Showing Place Names in the Odyssey (http://www.seniorlearn.org/latin/graphics/AncientGreecemap.jpg)
(http://www.seniorlearn.org/latin/ulysses_penelope/SirensD.jpg)
Odysseus and the Sirens
Herbert James Draper
1909
Ferens Art Gallery, Hull
(http://www.seniorlearn.org/latin/ulysses_penelope/Sirensmosaicdougga.jpg)
Odysseus and the Sirens
Mosaic floor, Dougga, Africa
(http://www.seniorlearn.org/latin/ulysses_penelope/SirensOdandthesirensW.jpg)
Odysseus and the Sirens
John William Waterhouse
c. 1891
National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne
INTRODUCTION TO ODYSSEY – ROBERT SQUILLACE
Hades represents an encounter with ultimate knowledge, the knowledge of endings – of the story, of the hero’s life, of human life. The Homeric dead declare both directly and indirectly the final sovereignty of bodily existence. The fact that they cannot speak without a fresh infusion of the blood they lack shows the utter dependence of the bodiless dead on the bodied living. In contrast to later theologies that regarded the soul as the true essence of being, in the Odyssey the soul survives as a mere reminder of real existence, insubstantial as memory.
For Homer the departed intervene in present life only as shades cast in the minds of those whose hearts still beat. The way a poet envisions the afterlife reveals his sense of timeless, of what survives death. In the Odyssey nothing of the individual remains when breath leaves the body, reputation and lineage alone outlasting time.
All the spirits Odysseus speaks to bear great names, children, or both. The ordinary dead are not even acknowledged. It reveals fame lacks the value from the perspective of finality that it carries in the living world; again, the alternative reality forces a reevaluation of cherished assumptions.
Meeting Achilles, Odysseus proposes that even death can make little difference to so mighty a hero; just as his fame was secure among the living, so must he be a king among the dead. But the intangible reward of glory offers little consolation for an early death: “Better to be the hireling of a stranger,” Achilles answers, “and serve a man of mean estate whose living is but small, than be the ruler over all these dead and gone. The immortality of fame is an empty bubble.
A son is left as the sole means to continue a man’s existence. The poem’s insistence on women’s fidelity takes on new meaning from this perspective, being revealed as the consequence of male fears of annihilation,. A man’s children must positively have sprung from his own being if his real afterlife comes only through the continuation of his lineage, as both Agamemnon and Achilles affirm. The long catalogue of famous women who great Odysseus at the gates of Hades all owe their fame to their role as lifegivers to male children. Women’s power lies in their special connection to sexuality and birth.
Odysseus talks to none of the famous women who have won a kind of immortality through the success or failure of their children.
-
I didn't want to be tactless, but the quotes I've read here from Lombardo I found really
jarring. They simply don't seem to fit with the time period and the characters. I assume
he was trying for a 'modern' version, but I don't at all care for the result.
Depressing? Yes, I agree with that, JOAN. The Greeks believed in ghosts; they called them 'shades’ and phantoms. They believed that the dead still hungered for life and were drawn by the scent of blood. Drinking blood gave them...what? The ability to speak? Not exactly; perhaps the strength to speak at length.
What’s more, Odysseus kept the shades away from the blood with a drawn sword. What could the sword do? Kill them? Why did they care about his sword? Odysseus would let none of them reach the pool of blood until Teiresias came. I suppose he feared they would take it all and leave none for the seer. His own Mother, though he grieved, he held off from the blood until his purpose was finished.
Elpenor comes, and explains what happened to him. Since O must return by the same route he came, Elpenor begs him to stop at Aiaia Island to burn his body and gear and build a cairn for him. He is in distress at being left, “unwept, unburied, to tempt the gods’ wrath”. All in all,..yes, depressing.
-
Frybabe, I wonder if Book 11 will be the turning point for some translations! I can't imagine reading Pope on this, but I will, since you mention finding it diffy and skipping parts, I think I'll try.
This is the reason we have different translations!
Joan K: "Don't try to sell me on death" Lombardo has Achilles saying. I find these passages in non-poetic language in Lombardo somewhat jarring. But when Lombardo was with us in the Iliad discussion, he said that they are very true to the spirit of the original. Homer's Greek is not high flown and poetical, but very down-to-earth. What do you all think?
hahaa, Babi: I didn't want to be tactless, but the quotes I've read here from Lombardo I found really
jarring. They simply don't seem to fit with the time period and the characters. I assume
he was trying for a 'modern' version, but I don't at all care for the result.
If Lombardo does not appeal to you, it's not tactless to say so. This is the reason why there are so many different translations.
I'm just putting in Lombardo because he's the primary one I'm reading. He, like all the others, is trying to put things in the modern medium of the time, that's all any of them are doing. Why not take one of those selections and put in the one you think is better?
I'd love to see it. Whose do you favor?
Lombardo's credentials are above discussion, I personally love him, but just for you I'll read a more literal one. Let's hear from everybody on these passages cited, what do YOUR translations say on the key points of 11?
(What ARE the key points of 11?) hahahaha
But you sure whoever you are reading (I forget, sorry) have an understanding, several things I missed here which you honed in on, good for you!
Depressing? Yes, I agree with that, JOAN.
What? DEPRESSING?
Joan K asks:
And what do you think of this version of life after death. Did this become part of the Greek religion? How depressing!
Yes it did.
Why is it depressing?
Do you all find it depressing?
Am I the only one who is awe struck at seeing there IS something after death portrayed 3,000 years ago except rumor and fame and fleeting glory?
And what do you think of this version of life after death? That's one of the
$ 24,000 questions in this book!
Why should there be ANY version of life after death 3,000 years ago?
The Greeks believed in ghosts; they called them 'shades’ and phantoms. They believed that the dead still hungered for life and were drawn by the scent of blood. Drinking blood gave them...what? The ability to speak? Not exactly; perhaps the strength to speak at length.
I agree. Drinking blood perhaps which is from a living being or one recently dead revives them? Kind of like vampires?
And then Babi asks the $124,000 question:
What’s more, Odysseus kept the shades away from the blood with a drawn sword. What could the sword do? Kill them? Why did they care about his sword?
Oh Babi you're such a hoot, I laughed right out loud at that, because of course I totally missed that. Totally.
Swipe thru the air perhaps? Priceless. Perhaps it's symbolic?
Odysseus would let none of them reach the pool of blood until Teiresias came. I suppose he feared they would take it all and leave none for the seer. His own Mother, though he grieved, he held off from the blood until his purpose was finished.
Another fabulous point. So here O is showing not so much personal desires, but more purpose, he's changing perhaps?
Man of Purpose instead of Man of Impulse? We need to watch the Man of bits, I'm thinking. What a close reader you are!!
Elpenor comes, and explains what happened to him. Since O must return by the same route he came, Elpenor begs him to stop at Aiaia Island to burn his body and gear and build a cairn for him. He is in distress at being left, “unwept, unburied, to tempt the gods’ wrath”. All in all,..yes, depressing.
Yeah well unless Lombardo is wrong, Elpenor is still back on Circe's floor one assumes having been dredged out of the water. How O is going to do this one has no idea.
And what do you think of this version of life after death? That's one of the
$ 24,000 questions in this book!
What do you all think?
-
Sally that quote, now in the heading, is magic, where on earth did you come across that book? This is fabulous:
Hades represents an encounter with ultimate knowledge, the knowledge of endings – of the story, of the hero’s life, of human life. The Homeric dead declare both directly and indirectly the final sovereignty of bodily existence. The fact that they cannot speak without a fresh infusion of the blood they lack shows the utter dependence of the bodiless dead on the bodied living. In contrast to later theologies that regarded the soul as the true essence of being, in the Odyssey the soul survives as a mere reminder of real existence, insubstantial as memory.
For Homer the departed intervene in present life only as shades cast in the minds of those whose hearts still beat. The way a poet envisions the afterlife reveals his sense of timeless, of what survives death. In the Odyssey nothing of the individual remains when breath leaves the body, reputation and lineage alone outlasting time.
In that one introduction (everybody read it, it's in the heading?) Squillace (who?) explains the purpose of 11 and what it means. It's fascinating to me. He also shows WHY ( which I had not noticed) that O does not speak to any of the women noted who have come forth who were unfaithful and why faithfulness is so important. That's absolutely brilliant!
A soul separate from the body, and how the dead live. This is right in keeping with the Romans and their feeding tubes for the tombs. And it neatly explains why Achilles, who did die for Kleos is there and unhappy. Brilliant. Where is this Squillace? I need to read more of him.
But what can we make of this ourselves, beyond Squillace? I just remembered this morning about Jon Krakauer's The Odyssey of Pat Tillman, another recent "Odyssey" book.
Joan K's question:
And what do you think of this version of life after death?
I like it. What did we expect? Angels singing? A little early for that. When you die you're like a tree? Gone?
At least there IS "life" of sorts, and the....shades of what were can see the future (and apparently the present), so there IS immortality. Imagine the effect this would have on the ancient listener. Did we expect to see people reincarnated as worms? Or as other people? Reincarnated in stages?
If you were a Greek man living 3,000 years ago with such disease and perilous times and very short life span, and you hoped there was something more, you hoped for or wanted immortality, or hoped to be remembered in some way, just imagine the effect this would have on you! Electrifying. ? (Oh and what if you were a woman, what was your hope?)
We know this was a man's world, isn't it interesting how many women seem to be powerful tho. It almost suggests here that should Penelope not have been faithful that O would not be remembered thru his own son. Achilles goes away happy because of his son, the news of his son. If his wife had not been faithful then people might say I don't know if that's Achilles's son or not, just like Telemachus mused in the beginning, actually.
It would seem that O's getting home is very important suddenly, to all of them for more than one reason.
HERE is "proof," in the form of the "gods" that immortality of a sort, for the seeking, does exist and why one should try very hard to DO the hero thing, (if a man), but Achilles and Agamemnon in their examples seem to say this path if likewise fraught and I can't figure out Hercules to save my life. He DID ascend, he IS with the gods, he's truly an Immortal, but here he is or his shade or...shadow is..... stalking thru Hades, why?
As Joan K asked we all like a good Ghost Story, don't we?
The Romans sure did, they loved to tell ghost stories after dinner just like the boy scouts or girl scouts do now. We've got vampires on TV, and in the movies, and in books, we've got any trip to Hampton Court Palace accompanied by tales of the Screaming Ghost, we've got Washington Irving, and how many many haunted houses here in the 20th century, the Shining, the Amityville Horror, Ghost Busters, and Disney World with a Haunted House ride, where are all those ghosts supposedly coming from? In the 21st century?
Where are the ghosts of today coming from? Do YOU actually believe in ghosts at all? And if you do, where are they coming from? Heaven? Hell?
A drachma for your thoughts. :)
-
(Incidently, I just finished a mystery story in which the detective is a ghost. It's a series -- she's sent back from heaven to solve murders).
The Navaho, so I'm told, believe in ghosts -- spirits of the dead that hang around.
But in Homer, the ghosts don't hang around. Homer has to go to hell to find them. And this seems to be a rare, almost unheard of, event. It's not too clear to me what the dead do when he's not around with his blood.
-
With these words I feel as if someone pulled loose one of the persistent weeds in Society - the role and historical limitation as the purpose of life for women - I will save these words - thank you Callie for bringing them to this discussion.
The long catalogue of famous women who great Odysseus at the gates of Hades all owe their fame to their role as lifegivers to male children.
Women’s power lies in their special connection to sexuality and birth.
Odysseus talks to none of the famous women who have won a kind of immortality through the success or failure of their children.
-
Apparently the lines following Ajax refusing to speak to Odysseus up until Herakles vanishes are thought to be an ancient interpolation or addition. The issue being that the presentation of the underworld changes. Odysseus has been standing on the edge of the world of the dead and the souls come to the trough he has dug and speak to him from there. Suddenly he is within the landscape "viewing heroes and giants in tableax, with significant objects in their hands, sometimes performing some action." Also he sees them being punished which has not been the case up to then. So my accompanying notes to Fitzgerald say that for these reasons scholars mostly agree that "this section is a later patch with a clearly different take on the underworld." It is thought that making Herakles a phantom is "a rather obvious interpolation within the interpolation. Someone realising that there was a major problem with a text that put Herakles in the underworld since he was known to have been taken up to Olympos, added this line to solve the problem, ie it is not really the dead herakles but a phantom of him."
Interesting!
-
Robert Squillace edited and wrote the Intro and Notes in my 2003 prose edition of the Odyssey as translated by Palmer. He teaches Cultural Foundation Courses in the General Studies Program of New York University. He has published extensively on the field of modern British literature, most notably in his study Modernism, Modernity and Arnold Bennett (Bucknell University Press, 1997). His recent teaching has involved him in the world of the ancients. He lives in Brooklyn with his wife, the medievalist Angela Jane Weisl.
-
Hmm, am I remembering incorrectly? As I recall, Elpenor was up on the roof of Circe's
dwelling when O and his men were ready to go. In scrambling down, he fell and either broke
his neck or his head. The others had no idea what had happened, but apparently could not
stay longer to hunt for him. Who knows what Circe might have done with the body.
(So pleased to be providing you with some laughs, GINNY. ;))
In contrast to later theologies that regarded the soul as the true essence of being,
in the Odyssey the soul survives as a mere reminder of real existence, insubstantial
as memory.
That is good. One thing every 'ghost' story implies is the deep-seated instinct that
there is something that survives. The idea of a total blank, a non-being, is more
unbelievable than soul/spirit survival.
Interesting, indeed, DANA. I haven't finished my reading of Book XI yet, but from a
quick perusal I find nothing about Ajax or Herakles. Fitzgerald may have also considered
that an interpolation and omitted it. Can you give me the line numbers for that bit?
-
Well, its the end of book XI, BABI, from line 674 to line 747 in Fitzgerald. It made sense to me. I was a bit puzzled when I read it first, why he was suddenly in Hades rather than outside it, but I just thought maybe I had misread it, until I read the notes. And it answers GINNY'S question about Herakles.
-
I find the ancient Greek version of life after death quite depressing. You drink the waters of Lethe, and forget almost everything, then you just wander around in a grey, pointless sort of way, evidently not even speaking unless someone gives you a chance to drink blood.
-
Sounds like to the ancient Greeks someone's life force was blood and the evidence of life was the ability to speak - I wonder what someone who had no speech was labeled - anyhow in order for the dead to speak they had to have an activation of a life force.
However, I have read that breath is the life force for the ancient Greeks and it is called 'pneuma' - Seems it was the Greeks in 300BC who discovered the difference between arteries and veins which were then seen as the natural highways for pneuma.
The stories of blind Bards - I wonder if they only had cataracts?
-
http://classics.mit.edu/Homer/odyssey.html (http://classics.mit.edu/Homer/odyssey.html)
would you believe it, I misplaced my copy of Rieuand find it the easiest translation format for me to read The Odysseybut went to my 'online translation page for The Odyssey and found Butler's translation to read--what a chapter, rather gruesome I think, but interesting ...I think this chapter really caught my interest as I read it in one sitting; whereas other chapters were losing me --but this chapter :o what a gripper!!! :-\
was getting a bit muddled with all the character names of the dead living in 'Hades' but went to the site below and it really brought some clarity for me...if any new comer to this classic reading is having difficulty would really recommend this site that has been recommended by the group
http://www.sparknotes.com/lit/odyssey/section6.rhtml
(http://www.sparknotes.com/lit/odyssey/section6.rhtml)
Deb
-
oh and and in answer to the question '
do you believe in ghosts'
a friend of mine apparently is involved in a group that meets several times a month, and goes on ghost outings where they spend nights in houses where ghosts are supposed to inhabit
they also will use a 'dowsing stick' as a means to determine whether a ghost is in proximity
fascinating as to what people are into these days...after spending years on shift work and on call, I prefer to spend my nights in my own bed thank you
Deb
-
I didn't care for Book XI, but Book XII is another story. I really liked the poetic flow of Pope's translation.
-
I don't see why we should imagine that the ancient Greeks, or any other civilization for that matter, should have any very different ideas about life after death than are prevalent today. After all, our ideas are just human responses to that major question, "what happens after death?" We can't believe that we could just be snuffed out. Not us! Not we humans !! (Animals, maybe....but are we really that much different?)) And we don't have any more answers today than anyone else has in the past. We can't conceive that we might just cease to be, that the mind and the soul are tied up with life, the chemistry of being alive, we have to imagine, rightly or wrongly , that we go on in some way. Perhaps the Greeks who sometimes seem to have believed that we just cease, so we can only go on through our progeny (male) or through our kleos, were more able to face reality !! For sure the picture of Hades with these lost souls wandering about is pretty depressing, but so is our idea of all these lost souls burning in hell.
-
Thank you, DANA. I see I am lagging behind now. In my quick scan yesterday, I mistakenly
thought the interruption by King Antinous marked the end of the story of the visit to
Hades. Must catch up today.
I've heard some true-life 'ghost' stories from people I knew were truthful. I also
knew a lady who personally had one of those near-death experiences. Her calm and serenity
were remarkable. I thought I was calm and serene; I was a pond compared to her sea.
Now, where was I? Oh, yes. Odysseus and Teiresias. So, after all this, what does Teiresias have to tell him? First, that only one narrow way would take him safely home, and that was denial of himself and restraint of his shipmates. Well, that is certainly good advice. Secondly, he and his men should NOT raid the island and steal the cattle belonging to Helios. Stealing from the god will mean the destruction of everyone but Odysseus himself. They had to be warned not to steal from a major god?!! duh... But considering that in the end, O’ is by himself, I’m guessing they went to all that trouble for nothing.
-
BABI: the classic fairy tale, where you're told you'll be fine if you only don't do -----. Of course you immediately know that they're going to do -----.
-
DANA: :I don't see why we should imagine that the ancient Greeks, or any other civilization for that matter, should have any very different ideas about life after death than are prevalent today."
Right. I wonder if the idea of life after death is as old as humans. Of course, before written language, we don't know what humans believed. (unless early cave paintings give us an idea).
-
hmmm I wonder - is that the question - LIFE after Death or the Death of Life?
-
Hi! I've just resurfaced after four days of Family "doings". Still slightly tired but happy after seeing relatives,grandkids and greatgrand kids. I will clean up slowly and took a breather to return to the world of Odysseus.
I read chapt. 11 in one sitting and found it very different from the other chapters we have read. Could it have been written by a different person than the other ten chapters? I tried to analyze what was different. What I came up with is perhaps idiosyncratic to me or perhaps a different writer really wrote it or at least added to the contents.
First of all there are some extremely deep ideas expressed. It is less of an adventure and more of a historical summary of Gods and heroes who have died. Odysseus is the listener and not the protagonist who stirs up events.
Secondly there are some really negative words about the place of womed especially when Agamemnon speaks:
"There's nothing more deadly, bestial than a woman
set on works like these......... But she
the queen hell bent on outrage-bathes in shame
not only herself but the whole breed of womankind.
even the ones to come, forever down the years!"
Odysseus adds: "Zeus from the very start, the thunder king
has hated the race of Atreus with a vengeance-
His trusted weapon women's twisted wiles.
What armies of us died for the sake of Helen....."
I wonder if anyone else found a difference in the ideas found in this chapter?
-
Yes, I did, and I'm not sure what to make of it. I did like Dana's mentioning that the Fitzgerald edition has a note on the Tantalus, the Tartarus punishment stuff that that, and the Hercules is thought to be added by somebody else. That makes a lot of sense, because it's quite a shift. But what if it's not true? What if Homer DID write this?
Why should there be punishment at all and if there IS why is Agamemnon not having any? What is there about the original deed each of these people did which caused the idea OF eternal punishment? Where are the others so famous in mythology as well being punished?
I really liked this, Jude: First of all there are some extremely deep ideas expressed. It is less of an adventure and more of a historical summary of Gods and heroes who have died. Odysseus is the listener and not the protagonist who stirs up events.
Secondly there are some really negative words about the place of women especially when Agamemnon speaks:
I love this discussion and this book. I got up thinking about all the points you've all made and the book itself.
What a world we live in. It's so media driven. I was listening to HLN this morning the chirpy voice of the moderator, "why would you listen to an alarm clock when you can wake up to my voice," she chirps. Why indeed? Robin something. Chirp chirp chirp. We want our news chirpy. Our local anchors seem to be trying to strike a balance between chripy and sanctimonious, resulting in chirpy sanctimonious pablum.
Most of us I assume here are over 50 and so the three score and 10 allotment is not exactly far from our minds.
I think that Homer that great psychologist, is that what you said, Dana, a while back, is absolutely taking a risk here but it's a risk that the ancient surely would have found fascinating. Short life span? Go off to war with Turkey, the Trojans, no guarantees you'll ever get home, at ALL, no phone, no Skype, you'll hear almost nothing at all unless somebody brings back word...and here we find them ALL!
Here they are. Was the result of kleos (note all the heroes wanted was immortal fame, not a happy ever after ending, no clouds, no singing angels, that's the best a hero could have but look what Homer did). I just can't get over it.
Squillace again:
Hades represents an encounter with ultimate knowledge, the knowledge of endings – of the story, of the hero’s life, of human life. The Homeric dead declare both directly and indirectly the final sovereignty of bodily existence. The fact that they cannot speak without a fresh infusion of the blood they lack shows the utter dependence of the bodiless dead on the bodied living. In contrast to later theologies that regarded the soul as the true essence of being, in the Odyssey the soul survives as a mere reminder of real existence, insubstantial as memory.
For Homer the departed intervene in present life only as shades cast in the minds of those whose hearts still beat. The way a poet envisions the afterlife reveals his sense of timeless, of what survives death. In the Odyssey nothing of the individual remains when breath leaves the body, reputation and lineage alone outlasting time.
All the spirits Odysseus speaks to bear great names, children, or both. The ordinary dead are not even acknowledged. It reveals fame lacks the value from the perspective of finality that it carries in the living world; again, the alternative reality forces a reevaluation of cherished assumptions.
From the heading.
(I find that Squillace, his commentary, Sally's discovery, is available on ebook and I must have it) but here Squillace says that Homer deliberately shakes things up and forces reevaluation of "cherished assumptions."
One can see the ancients with alternating delight (oh HERE comes Agamemnon, at last we find out what happened to him!) and dismay (OH!)..
Yes I agree with Jude, there's depth here. There's plenty of depth in the Iliad. I wonder vaguely why we are surprised to see it in the Odyssey? Of course we've had 10 previous chapters of derring do from a somewhat cardboard hero figure and we know he has to grow and change, will THIS do it?
I wonder why we can feel more at home with rage and anger, the anger of Achilles, in 2011 than we can Homer's depiction of life or what passes for it, after death?
Dana why does your source say this part, does it say the last part only, the Tantalus and the Hercules, In Edit: I just read your post again, makes perfect sense. Do your sources say only that bit or the entire chapter may be added? (I know Dana is traveling this week and may not be able to answer that). Do any of you have ANY notation at all on this or any part of this chapter?
I was startled at the sudden appearance of Tantalus, and Sisyphus, who obviously are being punished. This is a new and different thing than I expected, you'd think Agamemnon if anybody would be punished.
Let's look at those who are in danger there at the last and see what we can make of their inclusion?
Here's the Temple questions for this bit:
Book 11
Remember that O. is telling a story to an audience from whom he wants to obtain something, so pay close attention to how he shapes his story and their reaction to it. If you are unsure about the identity of some of those in Hades, look them up. In general, what does the journey to the Underworld symbolize?
249-60 Leaving Circe's island, O. sails to Hades. He performs the prescribed ritual, and meets:Elpenor, Tiresias, his mother, and a sequence of beautiful (of course) heroines, including Ariadne and Oedipus' mother, here called Epikaste. What does he learn from each? What impact do they have on him?
261-70 O. ceases his story to remind the Phaeacians of his eagerness to return home; they persuade (?) him to continue. The tone of the story changes: how? He tells of meeting Agamemnon, Akhilles, and Aias, Minos and Herakles. Alarmed, O departs. Consider why O. is there. Are his comrades from Troy the same? Which characters have the greatest effect on him, and why? Remember the importance of mortality.
What do these questions mean? Consider why O is there.
He's there because Circe sent him there, to find out from Tiresias his future, isn't he? Remember the importance of mortality. What does that mean? The living are more important than the dead because without them the dead don't live at all? But then how do the dead know the future and how do they know the present?
Everybody seems to agree that the Odyssey came after the Iliad. I am having somewhat of a problem understanding why. Here we have the coda to the Iliad story, Agamemnon, the commander of the Greek fleet, who sacrificed his own daughter to the victory deliberately to a god and then found his wife, and her new husband killed him upon his return, she apparently thought little of that action of his and him.
But we have the end. And if the Odyssey came after the Iliad (or do I have that backwards) then we're finding out the end before the beginning.
I can't think of a modern book with this depth. He's hit on the very reason for existence, and for them,their kleos and the first thing we hear is (well in my book anyway) Achilles saying don't try to sell me on death.
So what does THAT do to the canon of their belief?
Man what a book.
I know WE in 2011 don't like this chapter, it's quite a break, but is there no doubt Homer wrote some of it? The parts possibly added are the punishment theme and Hercules and his dark winged words? I can't figure out why Hercules would be there at all.
And as far as the women go and the negative thoughts on them, we can certainly see why Agamemnon would have them, but here's O chiming in, too? Why?
Everybody is blaming Helen, even in Troy. But was she any more to blame than Odysseus? She appears to have had more choice then he did? She left Menelaus and her child, she says willingly, she doubts herself, to go with Paris after the judging...She at least stepped up and took the blame.
If punishment is the theme, where is Agamemnon's wife Clytemnestra here?
And what are we to make of the ending of Book 11?
Why did O leave Hades? He didn't want to, why did he? And what does THAT mean?
And it looks like O just runs on out, no problem? Is THIS (we really need some notes here) the first mention anywhere of Hades?
What a great discussion you're making of this (suddenly) quite difficult and deep book! :)
more....
-
On the Zeus/ Odysseus question, Murnaghann says in the introduction to my book:
Odysseus is unusual among Homeric characters for the gods' clear endorsement of his cause, and for the steadiness of their support. Zeus' favor is clear form the divine council with which the poem opens. Although he seems to have forgotten about Odysseus at that point and has to be reminded by Athena, his mind is on the terrible crime and just punishment of Aegisthus, the figure in the Agamemnon story who provide a parallel to Penelope's suitors. Before the suitors are even mentioned, then, they are cast by analogy into the role of villains and Odysseus into the role of divinely sanctioned revenge.
The point at which the Odyssey starts is, in fact, the moment in Odysseus story at which Athena can first hope to get Zeus to grand Odysseus his full attention and support.
She also says, which I am not sure I realized fully: Poseidon is Zeus' brother, who received the sea as his not quite equal portion in a division of the universe in which Zeus gained the superior portion of the sky and a third brother, Hades, the Underworld. As a consequence, Poseidon is constantly jealous of his prerogatives and sensitive to any diminution of his honor and he is in a recurrent state of opposition to Zeus's favorite, Athena, an opposition that in part symbolizes a conflict between untamed wildness and civilization.
She has almost nothing to say on Book 11.
Deb, that's a good reminder of the Spark Notes site. From reading it I found that the quote by Achilles (given in Spark as "I'd rather slave on earth for another man/..../then rule here over all the breathless dead..." shows a dichotomy in the kleos idea.
On the one hand here Achilles delivers a caveat to the great bestowing of kleos or fame, on the other he goes away happy to hear that his own son has become a great warrior. Spark Notes says: "Kleos has thus evolved form an accepted cultural value into a more complex and somewhat problematic principle."
Good stuff. We're ALL having to think now. :)
Then they do make great points on the different things and venues each character in Book 11 brings up and they bring up the interruption by the Phaecians. I have not understood that well. They say "The interruption seems to have no other function (that to remind us where he is now), and it doesn't make much sense within the context of the plot. It is hard to believe, for instance, that Odysseus would want to go to sleep before describing the most important conversations he had in Hades. ...The interruption is transparently used to break the long first- person narrative into smaller, more manageable chunks.
And Barbara mentioned: I wonder what someone who had no speech was labeled - anyhow in order for the dead to speak they had to have an activation of a life force. And in that statement we can see centuries even millennia of burial practices of the Greeks and Romans particularly and I'm not sure even today we've forgotten all of it.
Deb, and Babi, I think if we were really honest we'd find there are a lot of people who believe in ghosts, both now and in the past. So far as I know, they are spirits who are unhappy, how many ghost stories occur because they are not buried, not properly in their right place, that goes right back here to the Greeks, apparently.
The question I have is IF Elpenor is not buried, he's here among the shades, where does he go IF buried and happy?
??
This was interesting, PatH, , then you just wander around in a grey, pointless sort of way, evidently not even speaking unless someone gives you a chance to drink blood
Maybe you don't need to speak. Maybe you can communicate with the mind, after all they knew what happened (but Achilles didn't, how come some of them know and a lot of them don't?) Aren't they all pressing forward at the end TO hear of their loved ones on earth?
How did they know O was even there, if they can't communicate? Maybe they communicate by the mind and to SPEAK to those alive they need something alive too, like blood. But without it apparently they have no problem communicating. Mind meld?
Making a bridge between stars, to speak to the humans they need first to take on something alive. Good thing it's not human blood.
I just read Dana's post again on the Fitzgerald note, that makes perfect sense because added on is a vision of punishment which is not present otherwise. It turns INTO Tartarus, or hell. Parts of it. Hercules, swinging through is fabulous, I don't understand him there, his soul or spirit here seems TO be later, TO be different from what the others are, but he's different too.
Babi, these are good points: So, after all this, what does Teiresias have to tell him? First, that only one narrow way would take him safely home, and that was denial of himself and restraint of his shipmates. Well, that is certainly good advice. Secondly, he and his men should NOT raid the island and steal the cattle belonging to Helios. Stealing from the god will mean the destruction of everyone but Odysseus himself. They had to be warned not to steal from a major god?!! duh
So he needs to change, develop denial of self, and the foreshadowing here about the cattle of the sun god Helios, you can't say he's not been warned. Nobody warned him about the Cyclops, now he's been warned. But what can he do about it? I mean he warned the men about the bag of winds, tho I'm not sure he himself knew what was in the bag (Sally's old question) did he?
Want to go on to the last book O narrates? Book 12? Are we all caught up and now thoroughly depressed? I am personally exhilarated by this unexpected trip into the future world of the dead.
Let's try for 12 if it's not too fast reading by Friday?
What would you say was the main lesson HE got out of his trip to Hades?
Why did he leave so fast?
-
In the Odyssey nothing of the individual remains when breath leaves the body, reputation
and lineage alone outlasting time.
This does a lot to explain the great need to gain fame and glory, doesn't it? It's the
only form of immortality someone of this time and culture can hope to attain.
In my version of the coming of the male shades, Odysseus has not moved from his place by the pool of blood. Some of what he saw were visions, but he remained where he was. I read that Agamemnon sipped the back blood. In other places I find phrases like, “And now there came before my eyes Minos”., or, “In my vision “.
Why did he leave so fast?
According to my translation, though there were other shades O' hoped to see, "..but first came shades in thousands, rustling in a pandemonium of whispers, blown together, and the horror took me that Persephone had brought from darker hell some saurian death's head." Apparently there was a deeper hell with occupants that O' wanted no part of.
-
I always liked that Hades has different levels of Hell. My Dad was quite interested John 14:2, "in my Father's house there are many mansions...". He took that to mean that Heaven had different levels, just as the ancient concept of Hell did. If I remember correctly, the ancients didn't have a heaven. Everyone went to Hell. Correct me if I am wrong.
-
Frybabe
There are two other possibilities for resting places for the Greek dead that I know of-there may be more.
1)Elysian Field- There the mortal relatives of the Gods were transported without tasting death to an immortality of bliss.
This is such an important concept that every great literary figure (Schiller, Shakespeare etc.) used it to note a paradise after death. The Champs Elysees in Paris is named for this concept. When Los Angeles was founded in 1781 the first park established was called Elysian Park.
2)Asphodel-This is mentioned a few times in the Odyssey. Here lesser spirits were led by Hermes "where the dead burnt out wraiths of mortals make their home".
-
It's shocking to us nowadays, with the strong sense in our modern religions of a sharp difference between those who are rewarded in heaven and those who are punished in hell, to see these lines blurred in Homer's Hades. A few are punished and one, Hercules, is given a place among the gods. But most, including the great hero Achilles, have the same drab existance.
The sense of morality is radically different from the Judo/Christian ethic. No ten commandments here. Do one thing to disobey the gods (even in something trivial) and you're toast. But a good, godly or worthwhile life means nothing.
I can't believe that this is the ethic people lived by.
-
We've skated over all of the stories that are told here. In a way, this chapter is a way to include a lot of miscellaneous stories that perhaps the audience expected to hear but didn't really fit.
That's ok. I'm for moving on. I do wonder if this is the only source for some of these stories (like tantalus). Does anyone know?
-
One does spot immediately where the word 'tantalize' came from. That story was particularly grim. And the equally horrible story of the poor soul who spends eternity in
water, unable to drink a drop. Personally, I think the idea of 'eternal' punishment is wholly
unjust. The evil anyone could do in our brief life span would deserve punishment, but there
is no 'justice' in making it eternal.
Who was it complained of the long list of ‘magnificent’ women whose claim to fame was as someone’s daughter, wife or mother? I’m with you, girl. And amazing how many of them
bore sons to some god. Excuse my cynicism here, ladies, but I can’t help wondering when exactly they announced the stupendous news to their husbands. Did they tell him a god had honored them at the time of the grand event, or did they make this known when they first realized they were pregnant?
I was charmed when Achilles referred to O’ as “old knife”, after all the grand titles with which they all addressed each other. See, people have always had nicknames bestowed by their friends and companions. One thing Achilles said, tho’, I have not been able to figure out.
At the close of his second speech to O’, he said “Were I but whole again, could I go now to my father’s house, one hour would do to make my passion and my hands no man could hold hateful to any who shoulder him aside.” Does anyone have a different...hopefully clearer...translation?
-
I always get a big kick out of these when I seem them on an antiques show. Display your liquor in plain sight, but lock it so no one can get to it when you are not looking. I always thought the name diabolically appropriate.
http://www.danielsantiques.com/antique_furniture_details.asp?stockID=109
-
Babi, in Lombardo, Achilles calls O "you hard rover". The other quote is clearer, though. Achilles asks if his father Peleus is still respected in his old age. If he's dishonored:
"And I'm not there for him up in the sunlight
With the strength I had in wide Troy once
When I killed Ilion's best and saved the army.
Just let me come with that kind of strength
To my father's house, even for an hour,
and wrap my hands around his enemies' throats.
They would learn what it means to face my temper.
He's expressing his frustration at not being able to protect his father, if needed. Notice "up in the sunlight". That gave me a shiver--a reminder of the greyness of Hades.
-
Frybabe, as a Sherlock Holmes fan, I am very familiar with Tantaluses. I agree--most amusingly appropriate.
-
Here's what Fitzgerald does with Akilleus' wish re his father.
Were I but whole again, could I go now
to my father's house, one hour would do to make
my passion and my hands no man could hold,
hateful to any who shoulder him aside.
I think he's regretting again his choice of kleos over life, so to speak. I wonder if Homer was ahead of his time--in pointing out that the most ordinary life is far better that the kleos of eternal recognition. Perhaps it was not politically correct to express that belief at the time....who knows....!
-
FRYBABE, I've never heard one of those called a tantalus. How very apt! ;)
PATH, thanks so much! That version makes it all very clear. I'm going to re-read it
in my translation and see if I can make some sense of it, now.
I didn’t know Achilles had a son; learned something new. I also had to go find out more about asphodel. (Would you believe after reading this the word turned up in a crossword puzzle yesterday?) According to my source, “its general connection with death is due no doubt to the greyish colour of its leaves..."
I also note that “Asphodelus is a genus of mainly perennial plants native to western, central and southern Europe, but now spread worldwide. Asphodels are popular garden plants, which grow in well-drained soils with abundant natural light. " ???
-
I did not find this book to be grim except a few things like Tantalus & Tityos--but they earned it. I enjoyed it as O seemed at the ready of course, but more subdued, not foolhardy, and he seemed in awe of these people. Sort of reminded me of all the questions I wished I had asked my relatives before they died. Here he has had the opportunity to do that. But I think Homer brings O to his senses abruptly, and O remembers where he is and gets out while the getting is good. I would have been stuck there still asking questions as the way out slammed closed.
-
Sandyrose
Do you think your relatives stories could compete with these peopl?. I hope not.
I must add the most chilling story Fagles tells of Tantalus.
Tantalus, who was a confidant and often invited guest of the gods, invites them to his palace for a feast and serve them the cooked fleash of his son Pelops, as a test of their divine powers of perception. They all refuse the meat except Demeter, who gnaws on a shoulder. After Tantalus was dispatched to his everlasting punishment in Hades-doomed fittingly to eternal thirst and hunger-Pelops was put back together and brought to life: the missing part of his shoulder was replaced by a marble prothesis , which was on display centuries later at Olympus, the site of the games founded by Pelops.
-
Tantalus--you would think the Greeks would have learned not to try to trick the gods (or boast they were better). It never ended well.
-
Jude - Great story of which I was unaware about Pelops.
-
Yes and today we're moving on, first with the Sirens, of whom you can see in the heading there are no end of representations. Actually the Sirens themselves have changed throughout history and I did not realize that until recently, actually.
We might enjoy this information from the new book The Classical Tradition by editors Grafton Most and Settis, huge thing and it's on page 887 that the Sirens begin. In essence they say that Homer's mention in Book 12 was the first ever mention of them, and their emphasis is:
(1) Their physical form (part woman, part bird, part fish)
(2) their compelling song
(3) the means used to withstand their charms.
Greek vases from the 7th c BC show bird women.
Later the philosopher Adriana Cavarero argued that the classical tradition gradually transformed them from a bearer of voice to a more purely feminine and eroticized fount of pure voice and wordless song.
In the 14th c theological writings and musical treatises in bestiaries, the Siren was depicted as part bird. In the Purgatorio Dante stresses the ugly reality thought to lie behind such charms.
The fish like Sirens are found back as far as Greek ceramics but the first verbal description did not appear till the 8th century. Through the Middle Ages, the wings and birds' feet became less common in images of the Sirens and the "purely aqueous Siren has prevailed since about 1600, intersecting with the various mermaid figures in world folklore.
Other ramifications appear in Goethe and Mendelssohn, Foque, ETA Hoffmann, Brenatano, Heine (Lorelei) and Pushkin, Schumann, Liszt, Wagner, Debussy, and Dvorak. Paintings by Moreau and Burne-Jones among many others, show them embedded in nature, indistinguishable from the water, rock, and vegetation from which they emanate.
James Joyce's Ulysses has them as slangy barmaids, Rilke and Kafka have Sirens who do not sing. And on and on actually. Seems each century has its own medium, and not to forget the Coen brothers in O Brother Where Art Thou where they are sensual beings who do sing.
I thought today of all days talking about tradition, this information, which comes entirely from The Classical Tradition, (except for the Coen brothers) might be interesting. I have always wondered where the mermaids came from, that's quite a long stretch from birds.
-
Babi, this was a good point: According to my translation, though there were other shades O' hoped to see, "..but first came shades in thousands, rustling in a pandemonium of whispers, blown together, and the horror took me that Persephone had brought from darker hell some saurian death's head." Apparently there was a deeper hell with occupants that O' wanted no part of.
Lombardo has:
Heroes I longed to meet, Theseus and Peirithous,
Glorious sons of the gods--but before I could,
The nations of the dead came thronging up
With an eerie cry, and I turned pale with fear
That Perseophone would send from Hades's depths
The pale head of that monster, the Gorgon.
I thought Sandyrose made two good points and one of them was something I also thought of: Sort of reminded me of all the questions I wished I had asked my relatives before they died. Here he has had the opportunity to do that.
It's amazing, isn't it, how many questions and things come up after someone dies that it's too late to ask them. If I had a dollar for every time I've said, well my mother would know that, but we can't ask her, I'd be rich. And here actually Odysseus gets to see his mother and talk to her even tho she has died and he didn't know it, a double shock: she died, do I have this right, of sorrow for him?
So he gets to find that out and to express what he'd like to her and to find out from her what's going on with his father and his wife. This is really something, actually, when you think of it and I think Squillace is corect. I also found online a huge chunk of him at amazon talking about the return, so I am excited to keep that in waiting.
Frybabe, thank you for that tantalus thing, I had never heard of it and like PatH I also am a Sherlock Holmes fan, it's amazing how things you think you read take on more resonance once you know the background.
Dana what good points. I wonder if Homer was ahead of his time--in pointing out that the most ordinary life is far better that the kleos of eternal recognition. Perhaps it was not politically correct to express that belief at the time....who knows....!
I don't but since it seems that Homer is doing a lot of interesting and unexpected things I wouldn't be surprised. I think Homer gets more and more impressive the more we read him, (and I loved your thoughts on him as philosopher.).
Jude, thank you for the information on the Elysian Fields and Pelops and Tantalus!
Pat H: Tantalus--you would think the Greeks would have learned not to try to trick the gods (or boast they were better). It never ended well.
Yes what IS it about man that he doesn't seem to learn? Possibly in any religious belief.
I liked Joan K's comparison to the Judeo- Christian concept of death or an afterlife and how could they live that way?
Here we go again with the cattle of Helios and how often have we heard mind what you are told. In the issue of Helios, nobody can blame O. He tries his very best, what more could he have done? But Zeus again, Zeus has them stranded and almost starving, now why one wonders, would he do that? Finally they snap.
I'm trying to keep track of what's O's fault and what is not and his development and any change in character.
Book 12 is the last of Odysseus' narration. Never again does he speak directly to us.
What did you think of this book? I thought the descriptions of the ship, Odysseus on the ship there at the end were spectacular and very lyric.
What is it again that books 9-12 are called? The ones narrated by Odysseus in the first person? The first ones were the Telemachy.
I noticve that O seems to express feelings for others, as in Book 12 somewhere around 262:
And stretched their hands down to me
In their awful struggle. (this is when Scylla grabs them) Of all the things
That I have borne while I scoured the seas
I have seen nothing more pitiable.
Now is that the first time that O has expressed pity for somebody? It really jumped out at me but I am not sure if it's the first. I am thinking we're seeing a real shift from hubris, the sort of metalized Hero to a feeling thinking man, but I could be wrong.
Then I would really like to know on this type of ship we have here what the keel is. I would like to picture this accurately:
somewhere around line 432:
I kept pacing the deck until the sea surge
Tore the sides from the keel. The waves
Drove the bare keel on and snapped the mast
From its socket; the leather back stay
Was still attached, and I used this to lash
The keel to the mast. Perched on these timbers
I was swept long by deathly winds.
Now what are we seeing here?
Are you surprised (I was) that after going down into Hades and then back to Circe (now we see how he can bury Elpenor) and hearing HER (now she talks!) about what's to come, that there should even BE more crisis? Were you? And big series of crises they are.
We most recently saw Charybdis in the Pirates of the Caribbean and they did a good job of it. You don't see it much depicted, tho what I do have (have a fantastic Scylla) we'll put up, but that vortex, that whirlpool, they did beautifully. I can't wait for the new movie in I Max, I started to say they should do him as the Odyssey but they actually are, aren't they? hahaha
Now here are the questions on 12 from the Temple Questions, it seems difficult to me to ask any, what questions do you have on this segment? What did not make sense or did you wonder about?
Why are the Sirens' songs so seductive, especially to Odysseus?
Why doesn't O tell his crew all of Circe's warnings?
Does he follow all her advice himself?
How is his crew like the suitors back in Ithaca? ooo that's a good one!~
Has Odysseus' behavior changed after his experiences in Hades?
How many people has Odysseus killed up to this point? How responsible are the men for their own deaths?
OOO those are good! I think he IS changing.
At first O did not tell his men of Circe's warnings about Helios. I figured since he told them not to open the bag of winds and they did anyway, he thought he'd try another tactic. How did you all figure this one, it was quite blatant, he deliberately tried to avoid the island altogether and the men intervened. Again.
I like that last question: how responsible are they for their own deaths?
(I had not realized Odysseus killed men, other than in the war, do they mean? Can we count them?
What do you think? About these or anything else!~
-
The Book Club Online is the oldest book club on the Internet, begun in 1996, open to everyone. We offer cordial discussions of one book a month, 24/7 and enjoy the company of readers from all over the world. Everyone is welcome to join in.
Now reading:
(http://www.seniorlearn.org/bookclubs/classicsbookclub/cbc2odysseysm.jpg)
April 29-----Book XII: Scylla, Charybdis and the Cattle of Helios
(http://seniorlearn.org/latin/ulysses_penelope/scylla.jpg)
Scylla
(http://seniorlearn.org/latin/ulysses_penelope/UlyssesPelegrinoTibaldi1527_96.jpg)
Odysseus and the Cattle of Helios
Pelegrino Tibaldi
1527-1596
Discussion Leaders: Joan K (joankraft13@yahoo.com) & ginny (gvinesc@wildblue.net )
Useful Links:
1. Critical Analysis: Free SparkNotes background and analysis on the Odyssey (http://www.sparknotes.com/lit/odyssey)
2. Translations Used in This Discussion So Far: (http://www.seniorlearn.org/bookclubs/odyssey/odyssey_translations.html)
3. Initial Points to Watch For: submitted by JudeS (http://www.seniorlearn.org/bookclubs/odyssey/odyssey_points.html)
4. Maps:
Map of the Voyages of Odysseus (http://www.seniorlearn.org/latin/ulysses_penelope/Odysseusmap.jpg)
Map of Voyages in order (http://www.wesleyan.edu/~mkatz/Images/Voyages.jpg)
Map of Stops Numbered (http://www.seniorlearn.org/latin/ulysses_penelope/Odysseusmap2.jpg)
Our Map Showing Place Names in the Odyssey (http://www.seniorlearn.org/latin/graphics/AncientGreecemap.jpg)
(http://seniorlearn.org/latin/ulysses_penelope/UlyssesOdysseusonmakeshirtraftatticblackfigurevase7BC.jpg)
Odysseus on a makeshift raft
Attic black figure vase
7 BC
(http://seniorlearn.org/latin/ulysses_penelope/UlyssesScyllaandCharybdisThulden.jpg)
Sirens, Scylla and Charybdis
17th century etching
Theodor van Thulden (1606 - 1669)
Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco
-
Ginny - I have been meaning to thank and compliment you on the beautiful pictures that you illustrate our story with. They set the scene perfectly.
As I was reading about the Sirens, I was reminded of a movie released in 2009 with Colin Farrell (Alexander the Great - Oliver Stone). The movie, which I haven't yet seen, is about a selkie. The following is a brief description:
"Storyline
On the coast of Cork, Syracuse is a fisherman, on the wagon, living alone. His precocious daughter, Annie, about 10, has failing kidneys. One day, a nearly-drowned young woman comes up in his net; she speaks oddly, calls herself Ondine, and wants no one to see her. He puts her up in an isolated cottage that was his mother's. Annie discovers Ondine's presence and believes she's a selkie, a mythical seal turned human while on land. If this is a fairy tale, is there a happily ever after, or do the realities of alcohol, illness, and worse intrude, including Syracuse's inveterate bad luck? As his priest tell him, misery's easy, it's happiness you have to work at. Any hope of that? Written by <jhailey@hotmail.com> "
I thought it was somewhat apt that the fisherman's name is Syracuse. The way Syracuse is described here reminds me so much of our Odysseus.
-
Yes, I thought it a bit odd that Teiresias didn't mention the sirens
while giving his prophetic warning. Odysseus sails all that way to seek
out this seer, and he sends them off with only half the dangers revealed.
Isn't that rather typical of oracles? It was so easy to misinterpret what
an oracle said, never mind what they neglected to say.
-
In this chapter we see how important Circe is to the plot. She loves O. with a selfless love and gives him sound advice on how to overcome the grave dangers of the Sirens, Scylla and Charybis and eating te cattle of Helios. It is not for nought she spent seven years with O. She knows him well. (lines 12:125-127)
"So stubborn!" the lovely goddess countered.
"Hell bent yet again on battle and feats of arms?
Can't you bow to the deathlikw gods themselves?"
When we discussed Circe (chapter 5) for some reason I mentioned how much I liked Circe since her love for O. seemed so real. Here again is the final evidence of her love . Even though O. is returning to Penelope she helps him.His safety is more important than her love.
-
Thank you RoshanaRose, I appreciate that. I'm glad you are enjoying the heading art. I hesitated to put all that in as it does make a long scroll every day but I figure how CAN we read this and not at least SEE some of the historic art it spawned? Already this discussion is not like any other, it's broken all the records here on SL, it's got more than 1,300 posts, it's got record page views, and it's DIFFERENT. And so is the Odyssey. The issue is, is there anything here we can actually relate to in 2011?
Writing in the April 25th issue of Newsweek on Greg Mortenson, of Three Cups of Tea fame, in The Fall of Greg Mortenson and our Longing for Heroes, in an article titled:
Shattered Faith
What the fall of Greg Mortenson tells us about America’s irrepressible longing for heroes, the author Hampton Sides makes this point:
Americans have a profound longing for heroes—now perhaps more than ever. We need our explorers, our sports icons, our Medal of Freedom winners, our Nobel laureates. We need our Greatest Generation warriors, our “Sully” Sullenbergers, our Neil Armstrongs. On some level, we still subscribe to the myth of the man in the white hat. We yearn to believe not only in his good deeds but in his inherent goodness as a person. Perhaps it’s something rooted in our Puritan past, but we seem to have a monochromatic view of heroism. We have a hard time believing that the doer of a heroic deed could have serious defects or even be rotten to the core. Heroes are supposed to be heroic—period. We prefer to take ours neat.
Here is the entire article: http://www.newsweek.com/2011/04/24/shattered-faith.html
"Heroes are supposed to be heroic- period. We prefer to take ours neat."
And here's Odysseus. Is he a hero by 2011 standards? Captain Sullenberger kept his cool, too. Would O be considered a hero today?
It's been a long time since we've encountered goddesses like Circe and bird women. Of course we can see whirlpools, even mega pools in movies, but here Odysseus the MAN is being heroic-- by the standards of his day, or is he?
Dana has already suggested perhaps Homer went out on a limb with Achilles shown regretting his decision for Kleos over family. O is the essential family man, or would you say so? His abiding interest so far has been:
(1) to get home
(2) to gain fame and kleos
In that last one he's pretty much in touch with our 2011 Celebrity Culture: fame at whatever cost
But equal in his striving is the desire to get home. He's not done particularly well with it, or has he? He COULD have stayed with Calpyso or Circe and not left. What caused him TO leave? Was it he?
IF Homer is showing any of these storied heroes as thinking feeling people other than heroic symbols that would be a great change. Is O changing at all?
Where is the rash braggart of the Iliad (Ajax conflict) bragging on his mental prowess or the rash hollerer to the Cyclops?
Is he changing?
RoshannaRose I loved your parallel of the selkie! Man that description looks to me like a modern tale OF Odysseus, doesn't it, the "or do the realities of alcohol, illness, and worse intrude, including Syracuse's inveterate bad luck? " especially.
Now the Temple questions have me wondering. "How is his crew like the suitors back in Ithaca?"
ARE they like the suitors? The suitors are eating them out of house and home, they are greedy, they are abusing the ideas of hospitality, they are making demands and they are plotting murders. What else are they doing? How is this like the crew?
Babi, good point on Tiresias, I wonder if he did that (as you say the prophesies and oracles sure were vague sometimes) to hone in on the one important danger where O actually could lose it all?
I was interested that it was Circe not O, who came up with what to do to avoid being caught by the Sirens. Several places on the Amalfi coast have been considered to have been the home of the sirens, I like to think Sorrento is because it sure has a siren call even today. :)
I loved the description of Scylla and Charybdis, talk about being between a rock and a hard place!
Let's look at the crew a bit. I have considered them blameless. How responsible are they in any of this for their own deaths and misfortunes, do you think?
A water logged drachma for your thoughts. :)
-
The first thing I noticed was that on the greek vase, thesirens weren't women at all! or at least, you could hardly tell. We had Circe, who lured men in and then distroyed them (i.e. turned them into animals). Are the sirens just a version of that? Is the sexuality in your translation of the text, or do we add it?
And why, why did circe, if she loved him, send him off to hades to hear Tiresis' prophacy, when she could have told him exactly the same thing?
I hope PatH will come in and explain what the keel is. I think it's the rib that runs along the bottom of the boat fron front to back. I'm trying to visualize it tied to the mast. Perpendicular, so the result is L-shaped, and he can stand on the keel (base of the L)?
-
Ginny: the point you made about our longing for heros is important. I clearly am one who wanted to see Mortenson as a hero -- now you HAVETO tell me what he did to fall?
-
I'm surprised I beat Gumtree to this one, but she is the one who first called this poem to my attention. What was the song the sirens sang? Thanks to Margaret Atwood, we now know.
http://www.poemhunter.com/poem/siren-song/ (http://www.poemhunter.com/poem/siren-song/)
-
PatH - Thank you for Margaret Atwood's version of what it is like to be a siren, albeit a somewhat disgruntled one.
The poem I am about to post is actually lyrics of a song by one Jeff Buckley of whom some of you may have heard. YouTube has the song being sung by the two women who formed the duo "This Mortal Coil". Like most of Jeff Buckley's work it is very mournful, very Greek. However, when I re read the lyrics it called selkie to me.
Lyrics to "Song to the Siren" by This Mortal Coil
On the floating, shapeless oceans
I did all my best to smile
til your singing eyes and fingers
drew me loving into your eyes.
And you sang "Sail to me, sail to me;
Let me enfold you."
Here I am, here I am waiting to hold you.
Did I dream you dreamed about me?
Were you here when I was full sail?
Now my foolish boat is leaning, broken love lost on your rocks.
For you sang, "Touch me not, touch me not, come back tomorrow."
Oh my heart, oh my heart shies from the sorrow.
I'm as puzzled as a newborn child.
I'm as riddled as the tide.
Should I stand amid the breakers?
Or shall I lie with death my bride?
Hear me sing: "Swim to me, swim to me, let me enfold you."
"Here I am. Here I am, waiting to hold you.".
-
Roshanarose, yes, that seems very selkie, and very good.
-
The keel: JoanK is right, the keel is the rib that runs along the boat from front to back. The mast is in a socket which is strongly attached to the boat in some way. The mast is held straight by forestays (ropes or leather) leading to the front of the boat and backstays leading to the back. In Lombardo:
First the wind snaps the forestays, and the mast falls backward, killing the helmsman. Then Zeus’ thunderbolt sends all the men overboard. Odysseus
…”kept pacing the deck until the sea surge
Tore the sides from the keel. The waves
Drove the bare keel on and snapped the mast
From its socket; the leather backstay
Was still attached, and I used this to lash
The keel to the mast. Perched on these timbers
I was swept along by deathly winds.”
He gets caught in Charybdis, but grabs on to a fig tree and, when the mast and keel are spat out again, drops down, swims to them, climbs on, and rows with his hands.
This seems mostly clear (the mast seems to have been snapped out twice and we're not sure if more timbers than the keel were left)—O is left with two long pieces of wood lashed together by the leather backstay. Floating or rowing on this he comes to Calypso.
JoanK, I’m sorry the words don’t seem to fit your vision of O standing on the keel with the mast upright, because that would make O literature’s first windsurfer. :)
-
My knowing of a Silkie is from the myth of the Orkney's - the Great Silkie is half human and half seal - there is a belief that at times through out history silkies come ashore to mate with a woman and they later return to take the small child out to sea where they live forever more. One of the most haunting versions of this ancient Ballad is sung by Joan Baez - since I play the Dulcimer that enables the use of the modes the music for this ballad is written in an ancient mode no longer used to compose music. Here is the Great Silkie [or sometimes spelled Selchies] of Sule Skerrie
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6zZy2Q3QY0Q
-
Trying to get a picture of what is left of this ship is not easy - the ship does not need a keel - all a keel does is keep a sailboat from drifting sideway - there can be a center board dropped in place of a keel or there were ancient crafts that used what looked like center boards but they were attached on both side of the boat - and so the fact that the keel remains is helpful to allow the timbers to go with the wind and tides -
A mast is not a stationary attached part of a ship - there are plates or elaberate sockets that the mast slips into - these plates or sockets could be attached to the keel but the fact that the mast split or broke low near the keel would simply means there is quite a length of timber that is the mast sheered off and held on with the backstays - which are the lines [ropes] that are from the mast attached to the stern of the boat
What is confusing is that Homer simply says the sea tore the sides from the keel - it does not say the sea tore the sides from the hull - it says that the timbers shivered at the blow referring to Zeus sending a bolt - I am assuming lightening - even if the sides were torn from the hull there is still a frame that is like ribs which is referred to as Timbers - Homer says the mast fell into the hold which is the space created by the hull.
And so even if all the siding was torn from the ship there are still the timbers that give the ship shape that the keel is attached to allowing this floating barge to move forward rather than sliding sideways in the water with when the waves hit it. The value of saving the mast I would think is the work of finding a tree that large and getting it to the shoreline where it can be dressed into a mast is backbreaking labor and time consuming so he has the mast lashed to the skeleton of a ship with a keel - he is still subject to the currents drifting at sea.
Here is a pretty good site that if you wait a minute all the photos come up with the various parts of this ship labeled - it is a large 3 mastered schooner but you can get an idea if you are not familier with how a sail boat is constructed and the terms used to define the parts of a sailing ship. http://www.sailclassics.com/pdf/instructions/Atlantic-inst.pdf
Here is a video of a small boat being timbered - you will notice you cannot see the Keel which is under the hull being timbered
http://woodenboatbuilder.multiply.com/video/item/5/Timbering_the_Gig
A fun site showing the building of a wooden boat that I think I read is 22 feet.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2QeRt9PPy00&feature=related
-
And doesn't Circe know how to flatter men, JUDE?! She welcomes O's crew with
"Hearts of oak!, did you go down alive into the homes of Death?
One visit finishes all men but yourselves, twice mortal!."
No wonder they were in 'high humor'.
Considering that the crew were supposed to stop up their ears in order not
to hear the sirens' song, I was a bit amused by Mr. Draper's version. He
depicts lithe, naked women swarming over the bows of the ship. I can't imagine
the crew ignoring that!
-
Barb, I really like your video of the boat building. It gives a great notion of the keel, too. Starting at about 4 min 23 seconds, you can see it--the big, pinkish, curved piece of wood in the foreground. By another minute it's been partially painted orange, making it easy to spot as they attach timbers to it. The structure of the boat is quite clear.
-
Only that is not a keel Pat - if you notice before they start adding the timber there is a space worked into the main beam - it is long and about a third of the thickness of that piece - that is where the center board will be dropped - if you look when the boat is closer to being finished you can see the housing for the center board - this is not a keel boat - a keel would be continued below that beam - it has no storage space - it does have siding with a structure - I will see if I can find a Youtube with a keel but you can imagine I bet if you saw a boat out of water and the bottom is not rounded off but continues down as if coming to a sharp edge at the bottom.
I will try and track at what time in the video above you can see where they have prepared the space for the Center Board and then at what time in the video the housing for the center board is visible in the hull.
-
OK on the video clock at 1:48 you see the large saw on a large table that straddles the piece of wood is cutting the space for the center board - then on either side of the newly cut rectangle space are pieces of thinner wood poking skyward on a perpendicular angle - they paint this area on the video blue at 2:24 and then at 4:12 you can see the housing for the center board - that white almost rectangle with a what looks like a piece cut out of it towards the bow.
Now that center piece they are working on- I forgot the name - it is not a beam - on a ship since the beam of a ship is the width from hull side to hull side at its widest - I just flat forget the name of that piece but I used the expression the beam as a piece of large thick lumber that we are used to calling a beam - like an eye beam in a building that spans a large open space that does not have upright supports every 18 to 24 inches apart.
A center board is a large flat piece that can be dropped in open water and pulled back into its housing allowing the boat to get closer to shore or to travel up a river - the weight of a boat means some of the hull is below the water line so a keel or center board is adding to the depth requirement. Again, all it does is keep the boat going forward rather than moving sideways with wind, current, tide etc.
Let me see if I can find a keel being built - most keel boats are large and most likely built commercially - I saw one but the video was all about how he and his family ended up shipbuilders rather than showing the process of building.
-
Success - I found some Youtube of building a boat with a keel - it does not show them constructing the keel but you can see the difference and it is probably good to have seen the other video first to have a better idea of what is going on and the difference
This is a Turkish wooden boat. - Yes it starts with a jewelery ad and then the line of dialogue disappears shortly
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hctvrogbE5Q&feature=related
And that can more easily be followed up with this glimpse of a keel boat built in Bristol
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0YSUcuzC7C4&feature=related
-
Sorry to interrupt the boat talk but I can't get over my urge to share my favorite poetic lines which were influenced by the sirens. They are the ending of T.S.Eliots "The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock". These lines are supposedly some of the best written ones of 20th century poetry .
They are the end of a long and wonderful poem about growing old.
"Shall I part my hair behind? Do I dare to eat a peach?
I shall wear white flannel trousers, and walk upon the beach.
I have heard the mermaids singing , each to each.
I do not think they will sing to me.
I have seen them riding seaward on the waves
Combing the white hair of the waves blown back
When the wind blows the water white and black.
We have lingered in the chambers of the sea
By sea girls wreathed with seaweed red and brown
Till human voices wake us, and we drown.
-
Oh that's a good one, Jude! I love TS Eliot and had not made that connection at all! I used to wonder about the peach when I was younger, I didn't know what it meant. I would ask people why should he dare to eat a peach? I think I know now. hahaa
I totally forgot the bit about the mermaids, in that one, good one!
I like your perspective on Circe's love for Odysseus, too, that point keeps sticking with me, SHE'S the one who told him about plugging up his ears, it wasn't his idea. If she hadn't he'd not have made it, apparently.
My goodness and here's RoshannaRose with Lyrics to "Song to the Siren" by This Mortal Coil, that's marvelous. It's astounding the modern derivatives of this poem.
And here's Pat H with Margaret Atwood's Siren Song, I had never head of that either till Gum mentioned it, thank you for that!
I have LOVED the boat discussion. I'm not entirely sure I know what a keel is, even now, I keep thinking "keel haul" and am not sure but I sure have watched those boat things, absolutely love them.
In the first one with the speeded up motion I had no earthly idea that it took so long to build a boat. I don't know what I was thinking. For the longest time it didn't look like a boat, at all. I actually watched that twice. It's kind of fascinating. I wish it had narration other than the sign, oops we left the camera on all night. hahaha
Then I watched the one on the model boats and I have to tell you, I once thought I'd get a small sail boat? Forget it, there's entirely too much STUFF to have to deal with, never saw so many ropes and masts and what not.
KEEL still escapes me. I can't picture him on this thing whatever it is, and it still floating. Why would one beam sort of thing float? Is he clinging to it like a piece of flotsam?
Golly what gifts you've all brought.
Joan K, The first thing I noticed was that on the greek vase, thesirens weren't women at all! or at least, you could hardly tell. We had Circe, who lured men in and then distroyed them (i.e. turned them into animals). Are the sirens just a version of that? Is the sexuality in your translation of the text, or do we add it?
That's a good question. I was struck, too by their unattractiveness half bird, it's interesting and I don't know the answer because some Sirens don't sing. It was the song, tho, right? I mean it can't be the body, half of them are fish and half of them are mermaids. I like the bird ones, so ugly.
On this one: Ginny: the point you made about our longing for heros is important. I clearly am one who wanted to see Mortenson as a hero -- now you HAVETO tell me what he did to fall? Apparently he lied about being abducted by the Taliban, stumbling into the country and vowing to help, some of the schools he built weren't built, people are denying a lot of what he said, his organization for which he went about soliciting funds may have some non existent bookkeeping and on and on. I don't KNOW, this is what I've been able to gather here and there, I don't know if it's true or not, but it's what's been said. I didn't see the 60 Minutes, did any of you? I wonder if there can actually BE a resolution to this?
Here's something you have GOT to see. I went looking for whirlpools this morning because I wanted to show the one in the Pirates of the Caribbean movie which also references the Odyssey as an example of Charybdis and I found this, it's absolutely marvelous and who knew, he references every piece of literature there is EXCEPT the Odyssey, even Poe, Melville, you name it, they are all here except the Odyssey (obviously he needs to read more? hahaha)
PLUS the Pirates, wonderful footage but he explains what a whirlpool IS and what it ISN'T and how it would NOT take a ship down. He's also got footage of the biggest ones in the world (and they are something else) and what causes them, they are called properly, the big ones, Malestroms.
I found this early on and came rushing in with it and found all this great stuff and got lost for a while in boats and selkies and poetry, just a marvelous day today!
What Are Whirlpools?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_123uDqgsIs
This is another GOOD one!
-
Jude, thank you for reminding me of the Eliot; I hadn't thought of it in this context, but of course that's it.
Ginny, I've been wondering about what the sirens looked like too. There seems to be a convention of them being birds with human heads and shoulders, as on the Greek vase. And Atwood's siren complains about "this bird suit" and the "feathery maniacs", her fellow sirens. Hamilton says no one knows what they looked like, because if you got close enough to see them you never came back.
Hamilton also describes how Orpheus saved the Argonauts from the sirens. When the ship first came in hearing distance, Orpheus picked up his lyre and played a song "so clear and ringing that it drowned the sound of those lovely fatal voices."
-
Sirens - It seems that throughout antiquity and even relatively modern art Harpies and Sirens have been used interchangeably. Hiowever, there is a theory that originally Harpies became Sirens to fit more into the aesthetics of Classical Greek myth. The Harpies, however, do appear in The Odyssey in the Book about Aeolus. They are "storm winds". Harpies are the winged birds with human heads and birds' feet; the Sirens are the beautiful temptresses. The Harpies appear in Jason and the Argonauts and also torment thre blind king Phineas. The Sirens number three; confusingly I think so do the Harpies. This link should help:
www.theoi.com/Pontios/Harpyiai.html
Jude - I, too, love Mr Prufrock. I always wonder about the peach too. My interpretation, not at all scholarly, had to do with him wondering if he should wear white flannel trousers as Peach stains so badly. One must always avoid wearing white or other light colours while eating peaches and walking.
I have that problem with Laksa, a wonderful Asian soup, but it is quite messy to eat. Although, I admit I don't eat it while walking. If I wear white I usually get laksa all over my continental shelf. :o
-
It’s become clear from the song of the sirens that these tales were meant to be teaching tools well as entertainment.
“ Sea rovers here, take joy
Voyaging onward,
As from our song of Troy
Greybeard and rower boy
Goeth more learned.”
I learned something new about the sirens, too. “Charmed out of time we see,
No life on earth can be
Hid from our dreaming.”
I see, too, that youngsters could begin their manhood careers as 'rower boy'. The old songs
are still teaching us.
-
I also always loved "Prufrock", but never associated it with the Odyssey before.
And I had always heard about centerboards, but never knew what they were for.
But I'll stick to my mis-interpretation, and always visualize O balancing on the keel, grasping an upright mast, and windsurfing. Even if it's rediculous, it's glorious!
-
Well if I could fathom (pun intended hahaaha) what a keel is, I'd join you, right now I've got him clinging to a log in the water. hahahaa
I simply can't visualize anything. At all. I mean it's a failing, I can't "see" what a house might look like or a room might look like furnished.
Oh yes let's talk about the peach. How does it go? (Tried to do it from memory, had to look at Jude's; it didn't have the whatever rolled, found it on the internet)
I grow old ... I grow old ...
I shall wear the bottoms of my trousers rolled.
Shall I part my hair behind? Do I dare to eat a peach?
I shall wear white flannel trousers, and walk upon the beach.
This can't be because of dress because anybody eating a peach drools it all over them, man, boy, child, baby and the man would be the one more likely to hold the peach out while bent over to avoid drooling all over himself so it can't be associated with being old. And the white flannel comes after the peach.
(I know, I know, but I've waited a long time to discuss this).
I first thought it was false teeth but peaches are normally soft.
It has to be digestion and the trots. An apple would do the job better. Ever since I read that I have avoided peaches if I had to go somewhere. Got to be digestion?
PatH, maybe because of the unattractive bird descriptions that they morphed into fish. It's hard to think of seductive songstresses who look like birds. hahahaa Interesting site on the Harpies, RR, it's even harder to think of them as seductive at all.
Orpheus, poor man. It seems that the singing thing gets a lot of the singers in trouble.
-
The thing that used to confuse me about Prufrock was the "trousers rolled". Finally, someone told me that just meant trousers with cuffs. Apparently at the time the poem was written that was a stuffy old-man style. This must have hopped back and forth a lot since then.
This turn in the discussion gives me a feeble excuse for sharing my favorite lines from "Prufrock".
The first:
"I have measured out my life in coffee spoons."
The tally of all the pointless social events that make up his days. Sometimes when I'm doing something recurrent like setting out the garbage for the once a week collection or paying some once-a-month bills I think of this and wonder if I'm measuring out my life in setting out the trash.
The other, with no lifestyle implications, but I really like it:
"I should have been a pair of ragged claws
Scuttling across the floor of silent seas."
-
Barb, it's a good thing you are around to set me straight. I didn't have time to watch the videos until now. Yes, the centerboard case is quite clear. And you can see the keel function very clearly in the Turkish boats. Aren't they lovely, especially the bare wood, where you you see the beauty of the design and they aren't yet painted up to be rich men's toys (though Mrs. Angel looks good to the end). Boats are so beautiful.
But what is the name of that piece of wood that I mistakenly called the keel? In terms of holding the boat together, it seems to be doing the same thing, though it doesn't do anything for lateral stability.
-
I have a call into my sister who is on her way home to her house in SC and where her reception is awful so it may be another week before she can get into town for reception - because for the life of me I cannot recall the name of that piece - you want to say it is a beam but we know on a boat the beam is a term used to define the width of the hull from port to starboard - there are so many ways to construct a hull and some do not have at all that center 'beam' for the want of the correct word -
To ask someone it takes more than someone who sails - it takes knowing how the boats are constructed and when I was a teen I helped several ahum young men - it was our (8 of us) way of getting together - anyhow we built a couple of small boats and an airoplane would you believe - using sheets we begged and borrowed from our mothers to stretch and glue over the frame work - which is how using canvas we made one of the boats. The difference the boat we tarred the stretched canvas in place.
I guess the best way to describe a keel is to say it is like a shark's fin only upside down - as if the shark was swimming on its back with its tummy on top.
-
I'll also ask my neighbor tomorrow, if I can catch him and if it's appropriate. He and his 11 year old son just built a 20 foot dory in a yard in Annapolis sort of like that in your video. It's sitting on his porch now, making everything else look small. I don't remember if it has that particular piece of wood. It has a daggerboard, not a centerboard, but I've forgotten the surrounding details, and of course it doesn't have the keel.
I'm really envious of your boat-building experience.
-
Haha - she called - my sister got my message before she crossed the bridge - and we laughed with all the old terminology that brought back memories - and yes, the piece even with a centerboard trunk is a keel - it is called an 'inner keel' - there are several different kinds of keels and according to the size of the boat the keel can contain ballast - the Northwest School of Wooden Boatbuilding video shows an inner keel.
And Joan you are fine with your image - I found in my 55 year old Britannica Dictionary an explanation of how boats in the time of Homer had the mast stepped to the boat. I will try to be faithful without necessarily using word for word.
There is a false outer keel that can be retracted in order to pull the boats onto shore - my guess is the false outer keel is like what today we call either a center board or a daggerboard. [Pat just a different shape - narrower and longer - like a dagger] The keel was cambered [means bowed] with a keelson above - the keelson would lay close to the keel but not down on it where it is hogging [bowing] It is to the keelson that the ribs are attached and above the keelson with the attached ribs spaced every 3 feet is a false keel where the mast is stepped.
The first layer of a step is thick 6 inch or more piece of lumber that is attached to this false keel and reaches the sides of the hull - then a series of 4 to 6 or more thinner blocks of wood till the last is just a bit larger than the base of the mast. There were uprights that were decorated with breastwork. When the mast was dropped there were wedges used at the uprights or apron. There was a collar that the mast passed through. The collar was attached to the upper deck or if no cover the gangway and to the false keel. The collar would allow the mast movement with the weight of the sails full of wind while keeping the mast from too much movement that could tip the boat. And then the lines that hold the mast to all four sides of the boat.
According to how low the mast was broken in Homer's story there would be some of the mast upright held in the apron even if the lines holding the collar went slack when the other lines broke.
The story says the broken section of the mast was lashed to the keel but which keel or all three - which sounds to me like a bit of simplified story telling for affect or maybe in translation over the years the exactness was not included or those hearing the story did not need to know the exactness because the article in Britannica does reference Homer's boat along with the specific differences to the Trireme - a Quinqueremes - an Attic vessel and a Corinthian built boat.
Surfing the west wind on a cambered keel with the keelson and false keel still attached along with the breastwork where the mast is stepped with part of the mast wedged in and the remaining broken part of the mast lashed to the whole thing with ribs sticking out on both sides - quite a sight - why not...
If he hangs in the fig tree like a bat - till the mast and keel comes along - he then lets go and plumps into the water alongside the spars - hmmm not spar, which the mast could be called a spar but spars - that says there was rigging attached to this mast that made it through the storm - or spars suggests more than one mast but more likely spars indicates yards or booms which are what the sails are attached.
So whatever - he has - keel and broken mast and spars - he had to have more than one keel since the broken mast still had to be attached and we know that on a Greek boat at the time the mast was stepped onto a false keel below which is a keelson and below that is a cambered keel. Sounds like a pile of lumber that an intrepid soul like O could drift on for 9 days.
-
wow! I envy your boat-building experience. Did you take it out? did you take the airplane up?
It's not clear whether the mast was "stepped" or laid alongside the keel and lashed together to make a (very narrow) raft. In any case, O made it. If he had 9 lives like a cat, I think he's already used them up.
-
I've never been on anything bigger than a ferry, and my sea-faring knowledge is pretty much
limited to reading things like the 'Hornblower' series.
Umm, ....where were we?
-
We're between Sylla (http://seniorlearn.org/latin/ulysses_penelope/scylla.jpg) and Charybdis
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_123uDqgsIs
or a literal rock and a hard place. ahhahaaa
-
I'll tell you you just cannot get away from the Odyssey. Last night I was reading up on Naples and it's just absolutely full of it, and it's strange things. For instance (this is Naples and Pompeii, the Knopf Guides), I bought it for the stunning art it has in it, but for instance, did you know that the Tarantella, the dance, is related to the Odyssey?
Legend has it that this was created by the Graces in order to seduce Ulysses after his recent escape from the spell of the sirens' song.
I about fell out of the bed where I was innocently reading before sleep. hahaha
And THEN there's Baia, which I love so naturally I'm reading up to see if there is anything I missed and behold:
From the 2nd century BC to the end of the Roman Empire, Baiae, named after Baios, the navigator of Odysseus, who died near these shores, was the most fashionable result on the Bay of Napes.
Who is Baios?? Is this book just making this stuff up?
I just loved that description of the passage thru Scylla and Charybdis and in both that and the evading of the Sirens, O has used his wits (or followed Circe's wits and instructions, it's a good thing he's got her, she's done more for him than any of the others except I guess Athene, where IS she by the way?), but in these he's definitely using his wits.
Now we come to the cattle with the spiral horns (I love that, let me go see what I've got on that) of Helios, and here we encounter a major caveat.
I think this little episode is quite telling, what did you think about it? First O tries to skirt around even GOING there (and remember this is the last of the books in which he speaks to US directly) so as to... avoid the entire thing? He's using his wits but it's the MEN who talk him into landing, is that right? Then how many times does he try to get them NOT to bother the cows? And what happenns? Zeus is avenging his son Poseidon here so the weather kicks up again, who in this must we blame for the plight of the sailors and O at this point?
-
I was particularly taken by the cattle story. Zeus knew exactly what he was doing in creating such bad weather as to force O and his men to stay on the island so long. They ran out of food and were near starving before they decided to defy the prophecy in order to survive. The crew had no choice. They were dead men either way.
-
Too true, FRYBABE. DOOMED! plays a large part in this story.
You all recall how we discussed Odysseus emotionalism, his ...and other Greeks.. easy tears? I came across this excerpt from Arrian, a Greek historian to whom we are indebted for much we know about Alexander the Great.
Alexander had successfully pursued his conquest of much of the known world, up to the borders of India. At this point, his troops refused to go any further. Alexander was most
upset of course, attempting to persuade them unsuccessfully. He withdrew to his tent for three days, refusing to see anyone, hoping their love for him would bring about a change of heart. He made a sacrifice with a view to crossing the river, but the omens were unfavorable.
To quote Arrian: “Then at last he called together the most senior of the Companions and in particular his closest friends, and said to the army that as eerything indicated that they should withdraw he had decided to turn back. There was a shout of joy such as a motley crowd of men would raise in their delight, most of them burst into tears. Some flocked to the king’s tent, calling down blessings on Alexander because he had allowed himself to be defeated by them alone....” I found the story very moving.
-
Me, too, Frybabe!
You have to wonder about these gods. It seems that Zeus, who could have destroyed them all, leaves just enough rope so they get to make the decision, will they be foiled by temptation or will they not? And how will THEY get out of it because I'm not seeing any god assisting O here with the keel and the spars thing?
Or do you all?
Babi what a good point!!
Who gets your sympathy here? Who is the first to buckle? I am beginning to feel sorry for the men actually, but why did O not tell them from the get go, what the issue WAS? Did anybody go with O into Hades? I can't remember, would that person then know or is O on his own there AND here? I'm not seeing him confiding in many, is he?
Then possibly if he HAD, they could have avoided the entire spiral horned cows entirely?
Food sure makes a big splash in this! I wonder when roasted meat first became the style, does anybody know? Just in reading this I found self drooling for saltimbocca of all things. I found three recipes for it and the original one on all recipes.com (a wonderful APP with a rotating dial) has 610 calories!!! I've lost interest. hahaha
But just as in Pearl Buck's books the food seems to play a big part here. So many themes in what seemed to be almost an action/ adventure movie. :)
What are your thoughts on the overarching (love that word) theme here? What IS the overarching theme? hahahaa Babi adds DOOMED to the list, we've got going home, wits over...brawn, what else?
Listen how could Homer show something for a hero to triumph OVER unless he threw in all these natural challenges?
-
I do wonder about their vegetables--endless feasts of roasted chines (whatever they are) and thigh bones wrapped in fat, fresh bread on silver platters, wine by the gobletful--BUT NO VEGGIES.
-
Dana, ;D
Just the kind of meal my BF likes. He thinks anything green is poison. He will eat cole slaw, corn on the cob and potatos. That is pretty much it. Oh yes, and cucumber salad (the cream sauce kind). :P
-
Butchering an animal, even as small as a Lamb is a lot of work - without refrigeration you know that most meat was salted and made into a sausage like mixture with lots of herbs - so to have enough folks assembled to immediately roast fresh part of the animal I can't help think was special and like today a story that would include the menu is to set a scene - so that talking about a meal that included the peas and carrots is seldom part of the story where as the meal described would be special.
As to the veggies themselves - that takes farmers - growing veggies and ground fruit takes water - this part of the world has very dry scrubby land and so a farmer, who needs to make his labor pay is probably more than likely to grow barley, wheat and millet; which can be stored and made into bread.
There would be no elaborate dishes since there is no recipe books - only memory and watching what the older generation did with food - However, even today when you look at a typical French Meal the veggies are most often a course separate from the meat course and most everyday meals that included veggies was a thick soup. Again, no refrigeration the veggies do not stand up very well in the heat and this is a part of the world similar to our climate that many of the old recipes include hot peppers not only because they grow easily in hot dry poor soil conditions but they hid the taste of food not refrigerated.
Frybabe the Greeks would not have known about corn till after 1492 - Corn is from the Americas...
-
The Book Club Online is the oldest book club on the Internet, begun in 1996, open to everyone. We offer cordial discussions of one book a month, 24/7 and enjoy the company of readers from all over the world. Everyone is welcome to join in.
Now reading:
(http://www.seniorlearn.org/bookclubs/classicsbookclub/cbc2odysseysm.jpg)
May 9-----Book XIII: Home at Last!
(http://seniorlearn.org/latin/ulysses_penelope/UlyssesHomewomingClaudeLorraine1624Louvre.jpg)
The Homecoming of Odysseus
Claude Lorrain
1644
Of course this looks nothing like the scene that Homer painted but gives us what impression we'd like to think when we think homecoming, the reality was quite starkly different.
Discussion Leaders: Joan K (joankraft13@yahoo.com) & ginny (gvinesc@wildblue.net )
Useful Links:
1. Critical Analysis: Free SparkNotes background and analysis on the Odyssey (http://www.sparknotes.com/lit/odyssey)
2. Translations Used in This Discussion So Far: (http://www.seniorlearn.org/bookclubs/odyssey/odyssey_translations.html)
3. Initial Points to Watch For: submitted by JudeS (http://www.seniorlearn.org/bookclubs/odyssey/odyssey_points.html)
4. Maps:
Map of the Voyages of Odysseus (http://www.seniorlearn.org/latin/ulysses_penelope/Odysseusmap.jpg)
Map of Voyages in order (http://www.wesleyan.edu/~mkatz/Images/Voyages.jpg)
Map of Stops Numbered (http://www.seniorlearn.org/latin/ulysses_penelope/Odysseusmap2.jpg)
Our Map Showing Place Names in the Odyssey (http://www.seniorlearn.org/latin/graphics/AncientGreecemap.jpg)
(http://seniorlearn.org/latin/ulysses_penelope/UlyssesOsetashoreThulden.jpg)
Odysseus is put ashore in Ithaca
17th century etching
Theodor van Thulden (1606 - 1669)
The Phaiakians put Odysseus ashore in Ithaca, where he is met by Athene:
It was into this bay they rowed their ship. They knew of it beforehand.
The ship, hard-driven, ran up onto the beach for as much as
half her length, such was the force the hands of the oarsmen
gave her. They stepped from the strong-benched ship out onto the dry land,
and first they lifted and carried Odysseus out of the hollow
hull, along with his bed linen and shining coverlet,
and set him down on the sand. He was still bound fast in sleep. Then
they lifted and carried out the possessions, those which the haughty
Phaiakians, urged by great-hearted Athene, had given him, as he
set out for home, and laid them next to the trunk of the olive,
all in a pile and away from the road, lest some wayfarer
might come before Odysseus awoke, and spoil his possessions.
Then they themselves turned back toward home.
(http://seniorlearn.org/latin/ulysses_penelope/UlysseslHomecomoingFlaxman.jpg)
Odysseus asleep laid on his own coast
John Flaxman
1805
(http://seniorlearn.org/latin/ulysses_penelope/ShipofthePhaecians.jpg)
The great seafaring ship
Was closing in fast when Poseidon slapped it
With the flat of his hand and turned it to stone
Rooted in the seafloor...lines 165-70)
just touching base to say how wonderfully much I am learning,
recipes
boating
poetry & quotes "I measure out my life in coffee spoons"-love that phrase
not to mention Odysseus and his journey
I just wonder as a few have mentioned -why does he seem to keep some of his knowledge hidden thus it seems setting the others up for failure as they don't know the repercussions of their actions!
Deb
-
Good question, DEB. It's frustrating to read, isn't it.
Lombardo's introduction made an interesting point. He was talking about the sheme of accents in The Odyssey. (Is that the right term? you know duh DUH duh DUH). He saidevery line started and ended in a fixed pattern, but the middle could vary all over the place. He compared it to Greek storytelling. In the beginning, we're told what will happen. In the middle, the character (in this case O) does everything he can to avoid his fate. But no matter what he does, the end is always the same.
No veggies! I noticed that to. And also in stories of Medieval England. Loads of meat and fruit, but no veggies!
-
Right Barb. In fact, the only one of the four I mentioned that originated in the Mediterranean area is cabbage. Potatoes also came from the Americas and cucumber comes from India. It surprises me to see that cabbage came from the Mediterranean area. I thought it would have come from farther inland with cooler climates or from China. Head cabbage like we use today apparently didn't exist in Greek and Roman times; theirs was a leafy type.
-
Now, I have a delightful Roman cookbook that my husband found someplace . many of the recipes are from a guy called Apicius and the vegetables include cabbage, kale, cauliflower, sprouts, lettuce , endive, onions, leek , asparagus,French beans, artichokes, radishes, cucumber, turnips, beetroot, carrots, parsnips, pumpkin, courgettes and as a spice the famous laserpicium, now extinct thanks to over use by the Romans. I expect many of these veggies were available in ancient Greece, too.
-
Dana looks like according to several sites the veggies available in Ancient Greece follow closely to your list
I thought this was an interesting bit of information from the first site linked below
All the meals in ancient Greece revolved around their religious beliefs and philosophical theories. The Greeks never consumed the meat of a domesticated animal, as they considered it to be barbaric. The only meat that was consumed was that of the animals that were either first scarified to god, or were hunted in the wild.
http://www.buzzle.com/articles/ancient-greek-foods.html
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ancient_Greek_cuisine#Foods
http://www.heavenly-greek-islands.com/ancient-greek-food.html
-
JoanK - I think what you may be referring to is iambic meter/ After a couple of glasses of white wine and a big day I won't attempt to describe it in too much detail. But it is something like that example you gave DUH duh DUH, and is used for literary effect etc. I always though that Greek was difficult enough to learn, rather than worrying about iambic meters and such. You may like to do a search to check if iambic meter is what Lombardo is referring to in the example you gave.
This is from wiki - their linguistic section is very good imho.
The most important Classical meter is the dactylic hexameter, the meter of Homer and Virgil. This form uses verses of six feet. The word dactyl comes from the Greek word daktylos meaning finger, since there is one long part followed by two short stretches.[2] The first four feet are dactyls (daa-duh-duh), but can be spondees (daa-daa). The fifth foot is almost always a dactyl. The sixth foot is either a spondee or a trochee (daa-duh). The initial syllable of either foot is called the ictus, the basic "beat" of the verse. There is usually a caesura after the ictus of the third foot. The opening line of the Æneid is a typical line of dactylic hexameter:
Armă vĭ | rumquĕ că | nō, Troi | ae quī | prīmŭs ăb | ōrīs
("I sing of arms and the man, who first from the shores of Troy. . . ")
This particular meter can turn people off who wish to recite Homer's work. Little wonder! Obviously your AG (or Latin) needs to be better than excellent.
-
Dana, I'm pretty sure the chines are the shinbones. I suppose they would be
easier to deal with than those huge thighbones. I believe BARB is right on
when she says most meals with veggies would be thick soups. In fact, back
when meals were cooked over an open fire, one-pot meals were the standard fare. Porridge for breakfast, stews the rest of the day, and of course, whole grain breads. In fact, those old breads were often a meal in themselves, containing multiple grains, lentils, nuts and herbs.
Odysseus did warn the crew about not eating Helios' cattle, but if you're
starving, what other recourse do you have? On other occasions, since there was
no possible way to avoid what lay ahead, telling his men of what awaited them
could serve no purpose except to terrify them. The theme of DOOM! again.
-
Well, you prompted me to look it up, Babi, and interestingly it says the word chine comes from the old German shina which means shinbone, but the word means backbone, or a piece of meat including the backbone! Not the same as shin which is surely the long bone between knee and ankle, the tibia ( had to get my Grey's anatomy--have messed up my bookcase now....imagine not remembering tibia after all that anatomy I once did....) So the chines might be that nice piece of meat the tenderloin (especially if they wrapped it in fat to roast)....what do you think?
-
You have to wonder if these stories are embedded in our DNA - The Sirens remind me of the Mexican myth of La Llorona.
A few years back - oh it must be 20 years ago now - in Lockhart, a small community south east of Austin surrounded by ranch land, in class there were a couple of Mexican girls who were convinced La Llorona was in the girl's rest room - it got so that none of the Mexican girls would use the restroom. Their bladder not big enough to last the day - which they tried - they were staying home from school - the school had to close down - they could not get about a quarter of the student population, all Mexican American girls to use the rest room they were so frightened - the parents of these girls were just as frightened and would not cooperate with the school - the school board had to arrange to close down the rest room and have a new facility built by September.
La Llorona is a women ghost dressed in white who lives near water, usually lakes, rivers and streams while wailing she is looking for children to replace her own. - sounds like wailing myrtle - however this is a myth that is far older and has more than one version - the most popular versions are -
When the Spanish arrived in Mexico, they were impressed by the beauty of the Indian children. The Spanish took the children and gave them to their wives. Some of the Indian women killed their children in order to keep the Spaniards from taking them. La Llorona is one such woman. She is now searching constantly for her children, whose faces she sees in all children. She kills the children to be united with her own. Rather than abandon their children to the cruelty of the Spaniards, Indian mothers chose to escape their own helplessness over the situation by deciding their children’s fate themselves.
Another that is more common: La Llorona, a female figure represented in varying Mexican and Chicano myths in which she bears the children of her lover, [usually two children] only to be abandoned by him for a woman of his own high rank. La Llorona, in a fit of rage, revenge, and/or insanity, drowns her children in the river, and is then doomed to roam eternally, weeping, looking for her dead children -- or perhaps ones to replace them. In Spanish, llorar means “to cry.” Thus, La Llorona is the “Weeping Woman.” She is crying for the lover who has abandoned her, the children she has drowned. La Llorona is often used by parents to “coerce obedience from misbehaving children” because she is searching for other children to murder.
-
The version of La Llorona I learned about from Mexican friends is as follows:
La Llorona is a figure from Aztec Myth who is known to lure men with SIREN SONGS.She then turns them into stone as punishment for their evil ways.
There are many, many known versions of this most popular of Mexican folk ballad. I wonder how it transmogrified into a horror that attacks young girls who, as I imagine, are rather sinless?
I also wonder how the idea of Sirens got into Aztec Legend?
I don't imagine that Aztec legend got into Greek myth. Curious.
-
The story of La Llorona in the bathroom reminds me of Moaning Millie from the Harry Potter books. Although she was not a mother.
-
Jude hadn't heard of turning folks to stone - interesting the many versions - I bet the surrounding landscape has something to do with how the story is wrapped into the community culture - Aztec - interesting - but then that is why I wonder if some things are some ancient knowledge that we are born with - I know sounds crazy but I just read a book on DNA and how if we can inherit all the aspects of our ancestors we can also inherit parts of the way their brain functions and the books went as far as suggesting we can inherit memory.
IF this is true than all we have to do is look at the history of man - and see where it goes - there was that guy who had a TV program and large thick book where he traced the flow of humanity using DNA - along the way of our populating the earth DNA is carried with each generation and if some along the way inherit bits and pieces of past memory that could explain a lot.
http://www.nytimes.com/imagepages/2006/12/09/us/20061210_DNA_GRAPHIC.html
-
This all reminds me of reincarnation, past life regression, Edgar Cayce, etc. The brain is a wonderful and still mysterious thing. Who knows, it might be possible for a very few people to recall inherited memory. I think most of them think, though, that it is memories of their own past lives, not ancestral memories.
-
I have no idea, DANA. I still, rarely, come across the word 'chine' used in reference
to the shinbone. Or at least it appears to do so in context.
BARB, inheriting memory might explain one or two of my own odd bits. ;)
Hmm, it's Saturday. Are we about ready for Book 13, JOAN, GINNY? It's got me exasperated and eager to speak out.
-
Inherited memory - is this what is referred to as 'tribal' memory that I think Jung called the 'collective unconscious' . more recently there are references to 'genetic memory' which theorise that our ancestor's memories are imbedded in our DNA and genetically passed on through subsequent generations. There appears to be a lot of work done in this area in the study of the inherited memory held by birds and bees which the studies purport to show that the knowledge of the habits is imbedded in their DNA- so if the birds and bees have genetic memory in their DNA why not humans. The big task is for us to recognise the memories and be able to release them.
I'm behind with the reading but hope to catch up over this weekend -
-
Oh man, what great posts, I want you all to know last night I had no end of nightmares on the chine thing, woke up in a panic, it seemed this meat discussion had me reliving the Odyssey meat/ sacrifice/ chine thing but in NYC, was doing a modern Odyssey, on the one hand it made me laugh because one could see that one was reliving it, but on the other hand one was stuck in it and it was most strange.
I also had a giant royal wedding going on, which included this meat thing, down a subway tunnel with the grossest stuff to eat presented as a delicacy you ever saw, so funny.
Wow, don't think your posts go unread haaa.
Babi, yes, let's move on. I looked ahead and behold! Chapter 13 (could it be any shorter?) is called in Fagles (If I could find Lombardo I'd quote it) Ithaca at Last!
Chapter 13 has you exasperated? OH boy! More drama, this is better than the Real Housewives of NYC.
Let's go for it, I'm dismayed how far 13 is in Fagles, half way through.
At last, the famous homecoming!! But first more banqueting.
That was a good point JoanK on the middle of the Odyssey made in the Lombardo introduction!
PatH, have you had a chance to corner your neighbor?
And in 13 O stops talking to us, because it's only 9-12 that he narrates from his own POV. Let's do 13 for Monday, what do you all say?
You wouldn't believe what I've just eaten in my dreams. hashahahaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa LOVE the discussion here! You've all made such good points, just look at them, vegetables, rhyme scheme, sacrificial meals, not telling the men of the dangers and the possibly repercussions of same, La Llorona (had never heard of her), collective memory, DNA, inherited memory, reincarnation (just realized what that word actually means), the tibia, chine, what was that character in Harry Potter? Moaning Myrtle? Or something, it does remind you of that, doesn't it? How strange the tie in.
This is a good question from Babi: Odysseus did warn the crew about not eating Helios' cattle, but if you're
starving, what other recourse do you have?
He did finally warn them when they said they were tired and must turn in to the island to rest. He did not tell them and wanted to avoid the island but they were tired. He didn't mention Scylla either but excused that by saying how can you fight such a thing? So he's making executive decisions as he should as leader. And I am sure they were tired, after all that, , and that Eurylochus, what does his name mean, he's certainly got a lot to answer for here, he says You must be made of iron from head to foot but we need a break.
No, let's give way
To the dark night, set out our supper here.
Sit tight by our swift ship and then at daybreak
board and launch her, make for open sea! (Fagles).
So it was to be an overnighter. It makes logical sense after the Sirens and Scylla and Charybdis. But I think perhaps here O should have prevailed and sailed to the next one, they could sleep on the ship as well as the land.
And here you notice this time O did not fall for the flattery or did he? He didn't insist on his own way. That's new.
And of course we know what happened, here comes the
"howling, demopnic gale, shroudling over in thunderheads
the earth and sea at once--- and night swept down from the sky."
Having just seen on TV the absolutely terrible devastation in Alabama this seemed quite alive.
So then he says Friends we've food and drink aplenty aboard the ship---
keep your hands off all these herds or we will pay the price!
But a month later, marooned in the Zeus caused storm, they were hungry and all the supplies ran out.
And so O gives in to sleep and Eurylochus again says who wants to starve? Not me.
Why couldn't they just sail away? Were they out hunting in all the fury of the storm?
And didn't you love the Sci Fi element here?
the hides vegan to crawl, the meat, both raw and roasted,
bellowed out on the spits, and we heard a noise
like the moan of lowing oxen.
And yet they stayed 6 more days and on the 7th the wind dropped.
So Babi's question is important, what else could they have done, really? If they were boy scouts I bet they could have found something. If the cows are eating there has to be grass? Cows eat legumes, right? And there should be seaweed (is there seaweed in Greece? or wherever they are? I realize that's an ignorant question but I don't know.)
I kind of liked Eurylochus's reasoning, if Zeus wants to smash us up, I'd rather that than starve to death here.
Were there no trees or grass or anything?
Spark Notes says here it's a question of goals and obstacles and O can't avoid Scylla and Charybdis tho he would like to have. He has no choice but to navigate a path thru them (twice).
They say "but many of the obstacles are temptations."
I don't personally see the cattle of Helios at temptations because they were stuck there and starving. I do see the choice to GO there a temptation and here again this Eurylochus has a lot to answer for. The Sirens are obstacles and temptations both but O wins that one by following advice.
Spark Notes says "some scholars believe the straits between Scylla and Charybdis represent the Straits of Messina, which lie between Sicily and Italy....But Homeric geography is notoriously problematic. ...it is entirely possible that Homer neither knew nor cared about the location of the straits that inspired his Scylla and Charybdis episode---or that they were simply the creation of his and his predecessors' imaginations."
Here are the questions from Temple we haven't addressed:
Why doesn't O tell his crew all of Kirke's warnings?
Does he follow all her advice himself?
How is his crew like the suitors back in Ithaca?
Has Odysseus' behavior changed after his experiences in Hades?
How would you answer any one of those? Does he follow all Circe's advice himself?
When did he not?
Has his behavior changed? I think it has. I know it's fashionable to say he does not change in the Odyssey, I think he has here. He listens to Eurylochus when he knows better, why? I think seeing Achilles and hearing him say he sort of regrets his death as a hero, he'd rather be out plowing the simplest field than there in Hades AS a hero has sobered O. I am not seeing the ME ME ME thing here, he seems "a sadder and a wiser man," to quote the other great sea tale, Coleridge, and I think it shows.
Do you all agree or disagree?
But each time he's listened here, he's sorry later on. When the crew listens to HIM they turn out OK since he's started to change but when he listens to THEM it's bad news.
How is his crew like the suitors? They sure abuse the hospitality of where they go, killing the cows is as bad as their behavior in the Cyclops cave.
And he on Monday, he arrives Home at Last! And we've got half a book left. Things are not how he left them, what an exciting tale this is, I hate for it to end.
What thoughts do you have on anything so far?
-
OH my goodness, who knew? Who knew? The things you can learn innocently reading a book.
Seaweed in the Mediterranean? It's a MODERN curse! Check out NOVA:
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/algae/chronology.html
-
Ginny - A very interesting article. It has spread very far, very quickly here, in Australia. This snippet in the article you added alarmed me ...
Researchers discover that the aquarium strain is genetically close to a native strain of C. taxifolia that occurs off the Australian coast at Moreton Bay, which appears to be the original source of the alga that was cloned to form the aquarium strain.
-
I saw a program a while back about the Mediterranean which had a segment about the algae and how and where it is spreading. I believe they were able to trace it back to the source area of infection in the Mediterranean. Pretty interesting.
-
Me either, RoshanaRose and Frybabe, I thought seaweed was natural, who knew?
But now we're HOME!! I mean a Homecoming, but it's not as he (or we?) envisioned! Home at last!
What a book, it's got everything.
First off we've got the Phaecians and their amazing ship which went so fast with him asleep that it drove up on the land half way the length of the ship, what a picture and him asleep and laid out.
Next we've got Athene in disguise again, where has SHE been? She's taking all the credit for his successes so far, and he's giving it to her but he starts out lying to her big time as he doesn't recognize her or where he is, due to her spells.
Now why would he lie, one wonders?
Now she's going to disguise HIM, and he agrees, he says iif she had not been there he'd have met the same end as Agamemnon, he'd have waltzed right into murder.
But the circumstances are not the same, are they? This shows us how powerful this horde of suitors really is, they can, being younger (? are they?) easily overpower one man. This is why she got Telemachus out to the safety of Menelaus, now she's going after him and O is to go to the swineherd, talk about humble and a comedown and he's disguised as an old beggar.
Things are heating up here, what excitement!
That's very handy, that disguise.
So we've got deceit and lies, cleverness rather than brawn, disguises, and oh my goodness Poseidon, gee that gave me chills:
Poseidon (Lombardo):
I want to smash that beautiful Phaecian ship
As it sails for home over the misty sea
Smash it, so that they will stop this nonsense
Once and for all, giving men safe passage!
I have GOT to find that old black and white photo of the ship turned to rock in the old Latin book, it's startling.
And that's just what he does, but the Phaecians don't understand it till Alcinous repeats the prophesy he heard his own father give.
So here we have once again a series of reminders:
...we have the importance of prophesy coming true and we've had quite a bit of it to date, the last being that of Tiresias... or wait, I'm wrong, they went back to Circe so she's the last one with the Sirens and the cattle of Helios.
...we have lying and wits and going from the most incredible presents and gifts to the most humble of estates, going to stay with the swineherd.
---we have the Nostos or Homecoming at last and it's nothing we could ever have imagined, is it? Is this the way you'd like to see YOUR homecoming?
---we have the dates at last: the suitors have been there for 3 years, that makes more sense than 10!
So what surprised you or struck YOU the most in this chapter?
Babi says it exasperated her. Why?
Homecomings are a loaded possibility. We have so many hopes and dreams of what was. Are they always as we found them? After 20 years would they be?
I once took my children on a drive thru Pennsylvania where I grew up, starting in Philadelphia and then to Bensalem township and then to Moorestown NJ where I lived from the 8th grade on....and it had been a long time, since my parents had moved here to SC.
It had been about 27 years I guess, giving them time to be old enough and so forth. Well the first thing that happened was I got lost.
I could not FIND the row house in Philadelphia where I grew up. At all. A lovely elderly lady passing by on the street smiled, I should have asked her, but am too shy. Stupid me. She probably dated from the time I lived there or might even have beenone of our old neighbors! All those years later, stupid shyness.
I did find the house in Buck's County but I got hopelessly lost trying to find the one in Moorestown NJ. ALL the markers, the landmarks, had changed. I finally stopped at a filling station which was not 5 miles from the town and asked and the gentlemen had no idea where Moorestown was! This was the year in which it was voted the Number 1 place to live in the US!! FINALLY we came in from the long side of town and I had no idea, again, even how to find the house. The children said, Mama did you really live here? hahaha
Well one wonders. That actually happened to me twice, along with a friend the second time who said the same thing, are you sure you lived here?
So I can relate here to O not recognizing his surroundings after 20 years and I had no Athene to help. ahahaha And of course I was going on memory and reality was quite different, things HAD changed as they would in an urban environment, the old landmarks were, a lot of them, gone.
But it's the people not the places we think of in "homecoming," and some movies treat this amazingly well, that Four Christmases is priceless in this regard.
We grow up, we change, do the people left behind change? Have you ever had a "homecoming," and did it turn out as you hoped?
It's amazing how much SMALLER everything looks. :)
Here also O shows restraint again, I think I'm going to have to vote that his character has evolved. No strutting in and saying come one come all, I'll take any of you on! (Why could he not do that armed with powerful Athene?)
What do YOU think about this Homecoming at Last chapter? I've got some stunning art on it, hold on.... have got to find that boat turned into stone thing.
OH and why, do you think, we are reminded we've been reading a flashback here?
Two drachmas for your thoughts, this is an exciting chapter!
-
Okay, on to Book 13, titled by my translator as "One More Strange Island".
Lord, can’t these people ever stop their all-day feasting? They rise at dawn to load up a ship ready for Odysseus’ departure, but does he leave? No. First they must spend another day feasting! I don’t understand.
(I do note, tho’, an indication that the Greeks considered their kings to be divinely appointed. Alkinoos is referred to as “the gods’ anointed’, who made offerings on behalf of his people.)
But, I digress. It is not until evening that Odysseus finally sets sail, the “hour that brings fulfillment to the longing of my heart”. I well remember how Odysseus and his crew were out on the sea only during the day, pulling into shore when it grew dark...if at all possible. But these hardy island seamen are not in the least worried about night sailing, which I suppose may be attributed to their ships’ magical ability to steer themselves.
Or, I wonder, could it simply be a matter of waiting for the tide to go out?
It's so easy to read too much into a story.
-
So you were exasperated by yet another meal! Instead of leaving with the dawn he spends the day feasting!
OK in addition to getting him snookered so he'd ride unconscious to his destination (and not see their magic?) Spark Notes says that:
One of the most important cultural values in the Odyssey is that of xenia, a Greek concept encompassing the generosity and courtesy shown ot those who are far from home.....Odysseus's journey takes place in a world in which vast swaths of uninhabited land separate human civilizations. ....The code of hospitality operated as a linchpin that allows individuals such as Odysseus to undertake these kinds of journeys at all. ....the Phaecian royalty prove their worth to Odysseus by showering him with selfless generosity and kindness. Within the Odyssey, adherence to the code functions as a kind of imperfect currency. If one acts in accordance with the rules, one will generally, but not always, be rewarded. "
And that's kind of the sad thing about it, they do help but it turns on them. Ol Poseidon is angry and so Zeus says do what you want and he does. But I noticed also Alcinous saying how they had to group together and levy a tax was it so they could afford this generosity. And Poseidon says "And the Phaecians, yet, my own flesh and blood!" (somewhere around 130-135, Lombardo).
-
But I found it! And I am so proud of finding this old thing and isn't it dramatic? This is from an old old Latin book and they didn't apparently have the depth of pixels or something that we do now, so it's not of good quality and is on yellowed page but:
(http://seniorlearn.org/latin/ulysses_penelope/ShipofthePhaecians.jpg)
They label this as:
The ship of the Phaecians that brought Ulysses home was turned into a rocky island-- and here it is, so they say, near the island of Corfu in the Adriatic.
Going to put that in the heading too! :)
-
Well, the thing that delighted me most about this chapter was the description of Zeus as diplomat. No thunderbolt throwing here, he smoothes over his brother's ruffled feelings......
"are you not always free to take reprisal?
Act as your wrath requires and as you will."
but then, when Poseidon wants to turn the ship to stone and landlock the port, Zeus "says benignly", go ahead, turn the ship to stone, BUT "throw no mountain round the seaport city."
And Poseidon happily agrees.
I just love these little psychological bits (for want of a better word, I don't know what to call them--like when Telemachus is rude to his mother because he's just got a boost to his ego, and Helen comes down to join the men with all her bits and pieces and takes over the show......)
-
I love that picture! You can really see how the island could have been a sailboat.
Late with my reading. Back when I've read 13. What is Homer going to do with a whole half a book in Ithaca?
-
I love Pope's poetry in this chapter.
At the beginning:
Whatever toils the great Ulysses pass'd,
Beneath this happy roof they end at last;
No linger now from shore to shore to roam,
Smooth seas and gentle winds invite him home.
But hear me Princes! whom these walls inclose,
For whom my chanter sings: and goblet flows
With wine unmix'd (an honour due to age,
To cheer the grave, and warm the poet's rage);
I especially like the last two lines ;D
Then there is this:
Thus with spread sails the winged galley flies;
Less swift an eagle cuts the liquid skies;
Devine Ulysses was her sacred load,
A man, in wisdom equal to a god!
Oh, so now O is wise? Do you think he as gained wisdom in his travels and travails?
I am at the passage where Athena is chastising O for telling her a fib and not recognizing her or his own country.
Oh still the same Ulysses! (she rejoined)
In useful craft successfully refined!
Artful in speech, in action, and in mind!
Sufficed it not, that thy long labours pass'd,
Secure thou seest thy native shore at last?
But this to me? who, like thyself, excel
In arts of counsel and dissembling well;
To me? whose wit exceeds the powers divine,
No less than mortals are surpass'd by thine.
Knows't thou not me; who made they life my care,
Through ten years' wandering, and through ten years war;
Great stuff!
-
Frybabe-
Do I think O. has attained wisdom in his travels?
He would be a poor hero and protaganist if he remained impervious to all he has been through. However we may not agree on what exactly the word wisdom means in this context.
He is not perfect nor will he ever be. However he has lost most ,if not all , of his naivety. He is still a swashbuckler but a more prudent and cunning one.
But what I thought of as a question refers to Penelope. How old do you think she is? I figure at least 35. How old are the suitors? I can't believe that there are so many unmarried men of her age around. Are they much younger than she? Is Penelope a "Cougar"? What was the accepted age of marriage in Greece? Are the suitors closer to her son's age of 20 ?
Perhaps some of these questions will be answered in the upcoming chapters or perhaps some of you know the answers.
Another question is-Were the suitors interested inPenelope as an attractive wife orsimply pursuing her wealth?
-
Frybabe's, quote from Pope:
Oh still the same Ulysses! (she rejoined)
In useful craft successfully refined!
Artful in speech, in action, and in mind!
Sufficed it not, that thy long labours pass'd,
Secure thou seest thy native shore at last?
But this to me? who, like thyself, excel
In arts of counsel and dissembling well;
To me? whose wit exceeds the powers divine,
No less than mortals are surpass'd by thine.
Knows't thou not me; who made they life my care,
Through ten years' wandering, and through ten years war;
This is a great opportunity for showing the extremes of translation. Here's Lombardo:
"Only a master thief, a real con artist,
Could match your tricks--even a god
Might come up short. You wily bastard,
You cunning, elusive, habitual liar!
Even in your own land you weren't about
To give up the stories and sly deceits
That are so much a part of you.
Never mind about that though. here we are,
The two shrewdest minds in the universe,
You far and away the best man on earth
In plotting strategies, and I famed among gods
For my clever schemes. Not even you
Recognized Pallas Athena, Zeus' daughter,
I who stand by you in all your troubles
And who made you dear to all the Phaeacians.
Wow! What a difference!Which does anyone like better?
-
Ginny - I love your pic of the petrified ship. This island is close by the coast of Corfu (Kerkyra), said to be the home of the Phaecians. We know that to plot Odyssey's sea adventures to "real" places is extremely difficult. In this case, in particular, I am somewhat confused.
Corcyra (Kerkyra) is actually North of Ithaca. I remember noting a while back in these pages that it would be extremely unusual that Arete and Alcinous had not heard of Odysseus and his exploits, as Kerkyra is very close to Ithaca and word would have travelled there re Odysseus and the Trojan War. So if the small island of Palaiokastritsas (the island said to resemble the petrified ship) was near the Phaecians home, then that obviously means that when Nausicaa and Odysseus met he had actually drifted (if that's the right word) right past Ithaca, as he would have to have been heading North to land on Palaiokastritsas. That is assuming he was sailing in the Ionian Sea. If he was sailing in the Adriatic, then it is a whole new ball game.
There probably isn't any proof that this theory is true, as the words South, North only apply to winds in The Odyssey, and not directions as we know them. I have always had the idea in the back of my head that the island of the Phaecians was Crete, specifically Knossos, which had very advanced technology compared to many other islands of the Bronze Age. Or possibly even Santorini, which many have said was the ancient Atlantis.
Comments would be most welcome. Thanks.
]
-
PatH: Not sure which I like best - but here's Albert Cook's version which seems to lie somewhere between the two posted :
Lines 291 -302 -
"Cunning would he be and deceitful, who could overreach you
In various wiles, and even if a god should confront you.
Versatile minded wretch, insatiate in wiles, you would not
Cease from deceits though you are in your own land,
Or from fraudulent stories that from the ground up are dear to you.
Come, let us say no more of this, as both of us are skilled
In shrewdness, since you are by far the best of mortals
In plans and in stories, and I among all the gods
Am famed for planning and shrewdness, and you did not know
Pallas Athene, daughter of Zeus, who always stands
Beside you and guards you in all sorts of troubles
And made you beloved by all of the Phaeacians".
-
Athena is back! It appears that we all enjoyed her tirade at Odysseus.
She first appears as a shepherd, but soon switches into a woman right before O’s eyes, so obviously she is dispensing with concealment for the moment. Perhaps she wants him to be in no doubt as to who is berating him when she says,
“Whoever gets around you must be sharp and guileful as a snake; even a god might bow to you in ways of dissimulation. “You! You chameleon! Bottomless bag of tricks! Here in your own country would you not give your stratagems a rest or stop spellbinding for an instant?”
Wow! That’s telling him, Lady! On the other hand, she is apparently responsible for that rich outpouring of gifts from the Phaecians. She made them ‘befriend you, to a man”.
I really like that translation. I can visualize Athena, right up in his face and
'letting him have it'.
-
Oh, this is a blast.
Pope reads more like a Shakespearean verse. So I do have to do a little mental translation into the modern for a few of the words.
The Lombardo translation reminds me of someone, but I can't pull who out of my mental archives just now. I am thinking some TV or movie character with a smart a** mouth and a big ego. Lombard is very colorful. Was he translating with the younger set in mind? It is almost flip and in your face. Is the whole book like that?
Cook does indeed seem to be taking a more middle of the road approach.
Babi, I love the quote. I can almost see Athena standing there, brow furrowed and looking stern, poking O in the chest with a finger as she says that. Which translation is that?
-
Fry: " It is almost flip and in your face. Is the whole book like that?"
Yes!
-
I can't tell if you dislike the Lombardo or not. hahaha When I first read the two comparisons I thought well the second (Lombardo) does not mention the 10 and 10 so it must not be good and then Gum posted the Cook. And he doesn't either.
Here for a 4th comparison is Murray's, lines 291-302. His needs to be more literal as it's a Loeb.
"Cunning must he be and stealthy, who would go beyond you in all kinds of guile, even if it were a god who met you. Stubborn man, crafty in counsel, insatiate in deceit, not even in your own land, it seems, were you to cease from guile and deceitful tales , which you love from the bottom of your heart. But come, let us no longer talk of this, being both well versed in craft, since you are far the best of all men in counsel and in speech, and I among all the gods am famed for wisdom and crafty. Yet you did not know me, Pallas Athene, daughter of Zeus, who always stands by your side and guards you in all toils. Yes and I made you beloved by all the Phaecians."
No 10.
I know there is something wrong with me but I don't see a lot of difference in Murray, Cook, or Lombardo, (although I admit Lombardo is more flamboyant), the message seems to be the same.
Or is it?
I love Pope's writing there but I don't see anything in the other three about 10 years? When something like that happens I mistrust the entire rest of the text. Could be just me. :)
RoshanaRose, I don't know where Phaeacia might have been. The OCCL (Oxford Companion to Classical Literature) also identifies the island of the Phaeacians as Scheria, and says "Some have identified it with Corcyra (modern Corfu)." So in that they are consistent. But who knows, you may be right! I do recall we discussed this earlier, but I am totally geographically challenged, so I have to leave this part of it to others. "Here be sea monsters" is about my speed, I like things imaginary. :)
Those are excellent questions, Jude! How old is Penelope? O has been gone 20 years, so was she 15 when he left?
I can't remember, was Telemachus born when he left? Was he small or something? That would help in determining her age.
I have sort of thought the suitors were younger than O. There's no reason O and P have to be the same age. For them to be a threat to O, I would think they would be somewhat younger tho they may be her age. I guess I think that because of the parallel made by Homer with the young Phaecian men challenging him, one of them the son of the host.
Of course I don't know how old Alcinous was either but I assumed he was about O's age. I had not thought of it, but suddenly there does appear another parallel with young and old here. I mean the wisdom of the elders like Alcinous who, when Poseidon turns the ship into stone, and everybody says why? He remembers the elder wisdom passed on to him by his own father. There seems to be a lot of this going on actually which I never noticed.
Babi hahaha where does Athena get off telling O off? Where has SHE been? She says she's stood by his side, oh really? Where was she with Scylla? Where was she with Carybdis? Where was she in Hades? Where was she with the cattle of Helios? She's worse than he is which to me she admits here.
I liked this, Jude: He would be a poor hero and protaganist if he remained impervious to all he has been through. However we may not agree on what exactly the word wisdom means in this context.
He is not perfect nor will he ever be. However he has lost most ,if not all , of his naivety. He is still a swashbuckler but a more prudent and cunning one.
Well of course here comes a storm (that seems to be my constant refrain so I better get off and look forward to seeing what you've made of 13, so far it's quite invigorating! :)
-
Let's talk about Homecomings. Is this how you pictured O's arrival after all these years and all these struggles? If I had written this book I think I'd have the angels singing. Instead what happens?
Imagine how he feels. He doesn't even, (at least Moses got to SEE the promised land) get to SEE it and experience it as they sail up to it.
Why do you think this is?
And why does he lie and present himself as something he's not? I can't figure that out. And what's with Athene and her own disguise and why has (for his own protection lest he go happily in and get killed?) has she caused him not to know where he is?
Further thinking on Jude's questions I really think it's the kingdom they are after and not Penelope, because they desire to kill Telemachus, otherwise there would be no need, they could spirit HER off like Helen and T could stay and rule the country himself.
I did like Dana's remark about the the interplay between Zeus and Poseidon which reminds us they are brothers. That's a super point on his diplomacy, I guess you'd need it. Poor Poseidon, if we made up a list of things HE'S angry about it would fil its own book. I just read something about his Ethiopian trip, he was there out of anger too, he seems to have anger management issues, big time, always being insulted. But then again he didn't get the prize like Zeus did.
I have loved all the different translations and versions and I think this is the first time we've done it this way. We've always SAID bring your translations but we've always HAD one to assign by, this time it's a true bring your own and I love seeing how the different translators have expressed themselves, but are they different? That's the issue. They are different in how they express themselves, for sure, but is the bottom line different?
The thing about translation is: has the translator captured in the idiom of today what the ancient said in the idiom of his own times and understandings? Sometimes ancient idioms can't BE translated as we have nothing to compare them to, that's certainly true of Latin and I can't imagine it would not be true of 1000 years before it.
Do you understand what's happening? And why? That's the issue.
This lying thing has me baffled. Why did he do that? He did that immediately when he encountered Athene in disguise, why? He thought she was a man, why disguise self and lie? (She irritates the crap out of me, she says you did not recognize me...well how could he? She's always in disguise, tiresome person)....
Is it because of the need to keep up the "man of constant sorrows" theme to the end? While it's true this is a sort of rocky island and not Philadelphia, 20 years is a long time. Would anything have changed other than the people? We're about to have a poignant reminder of what 20 years can do.
I think this development is quite stunning, it's not what I expected and it may parallel the surprise Agamemnon got when he confidently arrived home. Arriving home then was not what it is now, it was unexpected and amazing. LOOK at O's "homecoming!" His quest, one of two, for nostos: to get home finally realized what what does he get when he opens the homecoming present?
This is some kind of book! What do you think? What does this SAY indirectly about any homecoming? Anything?
-
That's the Robert Fitzgerald translation, FRYBABE, and I'm loving it.
GINNY, I think Athena explains that. She says "For my part, never had I
despaired; I felt sure of your coming home, though all your men should perish;
but I never cared to fight Poseidon, Father's brother,in his baleful rage with
you for taking his son's eye." It sounds as though she knew she needed to
pick her fights.
-
Ginny, the Lombardo sounds like something I'd laugh my head off a good bit of the way through. What I thought of when I read it was a play. Not the whole thing; that would take too long. Different scenes or skits, done by the youngsters would be a riot. The kids like something with attitude.
-
Babi that explains Athene's disappearance, good for you! So she's choosing her battles, she drives me nuts. If we have a contest at the end for "most irritating character," she's got my vote, and here for a bit it looks as if she's got his. :)
Who, to you all, is most irritating so far?
Frybabe, oh he's got attitude, I find these differences fascinating! (And he's a Zen master in real life, too.) I can see a high school doing some of these chapters, too, no wonder Colin Firth loved it as a young man!
But I am seeing more in this read this time than I did the last time. We don't have that discussion saved, it was in 1997, but I am seeing more overarching (love that word) themes than I did initially. His life is still an uphill battle even WHEN he reaches the goal. Surely that's a message there.
What do you all think of Book 13? Is everybody still trying to finish it?
-
Actually that's not true. I just remembered I've got a loose leaf notebook somewhere with a good many pages of the original Odyssey discussion printed out. I wonder if I can find it.
-
Put the treasure by the olive tree so passers-by won't steal it ::) Passers-by??
O - where did I leave my teasure? Thinks Phaeacians might have stolen it from him -- after they have treated him so well?? He counts it and all is there. ???
Why is always a "black" ship?
Do numbers have a meaning -- haven't kept track, but not many even numbers. As in the Bible, 3, 7, 11, etc.
-
The Book Club Online is the oldest book club on the Internet, begun in 1996, open to everyone. We offer cordial discussions of one book a month, 24/7 and enjoy the company of readers from all over the world. Everyone is welcome to join in.
Now reading:
(http://www.seniorlearn.org/bookclubs/classicsbookclub/cbc2odysseysm.jpg)
May 9-----Book XIII: Home at Last!
(http://seniorlearn.org/latin/ulysses_penelope/UlyssesHomewomingClaudeLorraine1624Louvre.jpg)
The Homecoming of Odysseus
Claude Lorrain
1644
Of course this looks nothing like the scene that Homer painted but gives us what impression we'd like to think when we think homecoming, the reality was quite starkly different.
Discussion Leaders: Joan K (joankraft13@yahoo.com) & ginny (gvinesc@wildblue.net )
Useful Links:
1. Critical Analysis: Free SparkNotes background and analysis on the Odyssey (http://www.sparknotes.com/lit/odyssey)
2. Translations Used in This Discussion So Far: (http://www.seniorlearn.org/bookclubs/odyssey/odyssey_translations.html)
3. Initial Points to Watch For: submitted by JudeS (http://www.seniorlearn.org/bookclubs/odyssey/odyssey_points.html)
4. Maps:
Map of the Voyages of Odysseus (http://www.seniorlearn.org/latin/ulysses_penelope/Odysseusmap.jpg)
Map of Voyages in order (http://www.wesleyan.edu/~mkatz/Images/Voyages.jpg)
Map of Stops Numbered (http://www.seniorlearn.org/latin/ulysses_penelope/Odysseusmap2.jpg)
Our Map Showing Place Names in the Odyssey (http://www.seniorlearn.org/latin/graphics/AncientGreecemap.jpg)
(http://seniorlearn.org/latin/ulysses_penelope/UlyssesOsetashoreThulden.jpg)
Odysseus is put ashore in Ithaca
17th century etching
Theodor van Thulden (1606 - 1669)
The Phaiakians put Odysseus ashore in Ithaca, where he is met by Athene:
It was into this bay they rowed their ship. They knew of it beforehand.
The ship, hard-driven, ran up onto the beach for as much as
half her length, such was the force the hands of the oarsmen
gave her. They stepped from the strong-benched ship out onto the dry land,
and first they lifted and carried Odysseus out of the hollow
hull, along with his bed linen and shining coverlet,
and set him down on the sand. He was still bound fast in sleep. Then
they lifted and carried out the possessions, those which the haughty
Phaiakians, urged by great-hearted Athene, had given him, as he
set out for home, and laid them next to the trunk of the olive,
all in a pile and away from the road, lest some wayfarer
might come before Odysseus awoke, and spoil his possessions.
Then they themselves turned back toward home.
(http://seniorlearn.org/latin/ulysses_penelope/UlysseslHomecomoingFlaxman.jpg)
Odysseus asleep laid on his own coast
John Flaxman
1805
(http://seniorlearn.org/latin/ulysses_penelope/ShipofthePhaecians.jpg)
The great seafaring ship
Was closing in fast when Poseidon slapped it
With the flat of his hand and turned it to stone
Rooted in the seafloor...lines 165-70)
I haven't noticed any significant numbers, KIDSAL. What did you have in mind?
I do know that numbers often had a significance in the Bible. Of perhaps, there
use in the Bible gave them a significance to us??
‘Homer’ must have liked this line; he used it twice in reference to O. “...cutting through ranks in war and the cruel sea.” I does have a wide, bold sweep to it, doesn’t it? It highlights O's prowess both as a warrior and a shrewd sailor.
Who was it spoke of being halfway through the book? The journeying is over, apparently, but Athena warns him of “the gall and wormwood it is your lot to drink in your own hall.” Still plenty of story left, but it does mean that the famous 'Odyssey' is only the half of it.
-
Kidsal, the mention of "Black Ships" always reminds me of pirates. ;D
-
It seems that the order of the lines in Fagles is different than all of your versions. The passage you are all referring to appears on lines 328-339 in his version.
" Any man-any god-who met you-would have to be
Some champion lying cheat to get past you
for all -round craft and guile! You terrible man,
foxy,ingenious, never tired of twists and tricks-
so, not even here, on native sol,would you give up
those wily tales that warm the cockles of your heart!
Come, enough of this now, we're both old hands
at the art of intrigue. Here among mortal men
you're far the best at tactics, spinning yarns,
and I am famous among the gods for wisdom,
cunning wiles too.
I like the idea of the man,O., and the woman,A., being put on equal footing as far as brains go. Perhaps Fagles tries to shade in this meaning to have a more modern outlook.
-
Poseidon " seems to have anger management issues, big time."
I always thuink of the original story, when the three brothers devided up the universe. Zeus got to be lord of the world, Poseiden of the sea and whats-hios-name (Senior moment here) the lord of the underworld. I keep thinking that the other two are jealous of Zeus and very touchy about anything that would undermine their authority or imply that they are not as important as Zeus!
Of couse the sea IS angry, so the greeks had to invent a god that reflected that fact. A nice friendly god wouldn't have done at all.
"Passers-bye?" I agree. can't see a crowd there.
For the first time, I felt sorry for O when he woke up on ANOTHER beach! What NOW!! It's a nice touch. Not sure why he lies to Athena, except that he dopesn't know what the situation is.
-
I think he lies to Athena because he always lies to strangers being a suspicious guy (or at least is very cautious about how /what he reveals), but also he doesn't know it's Athena he's speaking to, she is disguised as a young man and only reveals herself to him after he's told his Kretan story. He has been forewarned about the suitors, and he knows what happened to Agamemnon when he came unsuspectingly home, so he would naturally be very cautious not to give himself away.
-
just backing up a touch wanted to include Lattimore and Rieu's translations of Athene as she transforms back to her female shape when talking to Odysseus-- in chapter 13 --I love that my 'Lattimore' has lines numbered, and my 'Rieu' is just in its paragraphs--I can therefore follow along regardless of translations
Lattimore
Athene addressed him in winged words saying: "It would be a sharp one, and a stealthy one, who would ever get past you in any contriving; even if it were a god against you. You wretch, so devious, never weary of tricks, then you would not even in your own country give over your ways of deceiving and your thievish tales. They are near to you in your very nature. But come let us talk no more of this, for you and I both know sharp practice, since you are far the best of all mortal men for counsel and stories, and I among all the divinities am famous for wit and sharpness; ...
Rieu
Athene again talking-And so my stubborn friend, Odysseus the arch-deceiver, with his cravings for intrigue, does not purpose even in his own country to drop his sharp practice and the lying tales that he loves from the bottom of his heart. But no more of this: we are both adept in chicane. But in the world of men you have no rival as a statesman and orator, while I am pre-eminent among the gods for invention and resource.
above from line 291
one thing I have really gained from all these translations is intrigue for language and its possibilities in translating
Deb
-
just re-reading my post...Athene seems a bit pompous!!
and why would the ship transporting Odysseus just up and leave him alone sleeping on the beach....leaving him defenseless ...wouldn't you think at the least they might wake him up and say 'you're home' and now on your own ....or something....seems they took more care to protect his gifts than him!!!
Deb
-
kidsal - Good question about "black ships". I do remember that when Theseus sailed back to Athens he was still sailing his black sails, which would indicate that he had been killed by the Minotaur. His father who had been waiting to see the ship from his vantage point at Cape Sounion naturally assumed that Theseus had been killed by the Minotaur when he saw the black sails, and then jumped into the sea. This has to be mythical - How could Theseus sail all the way back from Crete without noticing that the black sails were flying? I am spoiling a good story I think.
I also remember that Achilles and his Myrmidons went into battle wearing black armour. Maybe a connection there?
-
Ooops. Achilles and his Myrmidons DID go into battle wearing black armour in the movie Troy. But.... in the Iliad evidently Achilles is clad in beautiful silver and gold armour wrought by Hephaestos before taking on the Trojans. Hephaestos is blacksmith to the Gods and husband of Aphrodite .... and that's another story ;).
-
Here's some trivia which is about all my mind can cope with at present.
Apropos Black Sails Believe it or not, black sails are making something of a comeback in today's yachting world. I think they were first used around 2000 in the America's Cup fleet and since have been frequently used on some of the Sydney maxi-fleets ( and no doubt elsewhere as well). They're made from black carbon fibre and are said to have better speed than the Mylar and other supposed wonder sails - better sail shape retention as well as longer durability - a big factor when one considers the cost of outfitting a maxi-yacht in a full suit of sails. After seeing them on Sydney Harbour I did a large painting of a maxi-yacht with black sails sailing through the strait and past the cliffs of Sardinia into port. I had Odysseus in mind and wanted a Mediterranean setting so used Sardinia for the drama of the cliffs. The yacht I depicted was up-to-the-minute in every respect and the painting was snapped up by a keen yachtie type - I think O and any symbolism I managed to convey would have been far from his mind.
-
Black ships and black sails, isn't that interesting! It does conjure up black thoughts, and I agree, Frybabe, I think in the Pirates movies it also indicates something dire, even among pirates.
I was just reading (a very poor) guidebook of Rome last night which was talking about a veritable horde of Roman ships sunk in a harbor and left there till Mussolini dredged the harbor and put all the spectacular ships on display in a museum. The Nazi's bombed it and they were all lost, but there are two models one can go way out of one's way to see.
Gum, reading your posts "They're made from black carbon fibre and are said to have better speed than the Mylar and other supposed wonder sails - better sail shape retention as well as longer durability " is like reading the Odyssey! Think of you having done a painting on this, I don't suppose you want to put in a photo of it?
RoshanaRose, this is interesting: " I do remember that when Theseus sailed back to Athens he was still sailing his black sails, which would indicate that he had been killed by the Minotaur."
I don't know a whole lot about black sails, you'd have to carry some on board I guess or make them before you left. I do know the presence of sails on Cleopatra's ships indicate to some historians they planned the entire time to make a break through at the Battle of Actium. Sails take a lot of room on a ship apparently.
Of course these were magic ships anyway.
Last summer at Arles in Provence they had an exhibition of Julius Caesar and lots of models of Roman ships. Of course these were Roman but they were quite interesting anyway, not much room to move around tho those destroyed in the case above were said to be mammoth, so apparently they COULD if necessary hold a LOT of people.
Deb, this is a good point: "and why would the ship transporting Odysseus just up and leave him alone sleeping on the beach....leaving him defenseless ...wouldn't you think at the least they might wake him up and say 'you're home' and now on your own ....or something....seems they took more care to protect his gifts than him!!!"
I figured it was because their own ships were magic and they didn't want him to see anything at all about the operation. Why on earth that should be so I have no idea.
He's seen about everything else. :)
And thank you for the Lattimore and Rieu, these translations do add such richness to the entire experience!
Oh good point, Dana, so he's being cautious, due to his past experiences, and he tends as Athena says, to lying anyway as a defense mechanism so that's in character.
Athene is something else tho, she complains he does not recognize her and never did, how could he?
Oh and JoanK, I liked your three bothers thing and the fact that the sea IS angry so they needed an angry god! I've always found it interesting that the Pacific is named from the word pax for peace. It's definitely not peaceful.
Jude, another good point about Fagles and possibly shading it for women and men in equality. In his interview he says it's a love story first. I am not seeing the love yet or are we? I hadn't caught and do agree with you that they should have woken him up!
OH and good points Sally on the numbers, I have no idea what those odd numbers might mean but I bet they mean something, and the "passers- by." I would think even on Ithaca there might be somebody passing by, but I wonder how they expected him to find it and how he did? I must reread that.
OK it looks like the Phaecians moved the stuff a bit from him on the beach under the bole (bole?) of an Olive Tree out of the way of beachwalkers but in plain sight of O himself, as the first thing he does is set about gathering it all up. So if he can see it they could.
It may be that he would know to look for it. He sounds like me on a trip: 211: "Where am I going to take all these things?"
So he counts it all:
And he set about counting the hammered tripods,
The cauldrons, the gold, the finely woven clothes.
Nothing was missing.
But he has to put it somewhere as Athene is going to disguise him (again with the disguises, how many IS this?) He clung to the belly of a sheep to get past the Cyclops, it's on and on.
He's going to be a beggar all withered with a
A great deerskin cloak with the furn worn off.
And she gave him a staff and a ratty pouch....
So he's withered and weak looking and in rags and now SHE who has said she would stand by him, he's said with her along he can take on 300 men, has gone to get his son T.
This is very exciting. And now he's to go to the lowest of the low: his swineherd, who is devoted and loyal to him.
But just in reading over your own thoughts today I'm getting a lot of themes:
disguise
loyalty
love
longing for home/ homecoming
deceit
lying
revenge
symbolism
I'm still not sure what he's supposed to DO with all that booty and I just found somewhere around line 375-80 that they put the gifts in an enchanted cave and blocked it with a stone, now nobody can see it.
So far apparently there have BEEN no passers by, right? Down on the shore.
The Temple Study Guide says two things here:
Here we encounter the first of O's "lying tales".
I am thinking that's not correct. Wasn't there a previous lying tale? How about when he first landed at Phaecia?
I am beginning to wonder about this Study Guide, who actually might have written it, it's full of typos.
But this one made me sit up?
Consider: Odysseus as his own Trojan horse.
It's not the first time, either, is it? Sheep and Cyclops? If Sally's idea holds true that there is some significance in the odd numbers, we'll need a 3rd.
Ok and now here:
Athena warns O. about the suitors (does he know this already?,
I was wondering this myself. Didn't his mother tell him? He says in 398 or so:
"Ah, I'd be heading for the same pitiful death
That Agamemnon met in his house
If you hadn't told me all this, Goddess."
But I thought he knew?
What, to YOU, is the most important theme here?
-
Oh and speaking of Themes, I just saw this chart on the bottom of the Temple thing, "controlling female" as a theme?
And I completely missed "war," tho we've talked about it, here are their ideas of same:
The Thematic Structure of Odysseus' Wanderings (in progress)
war
memory
cannabalism, loss of civilization, kleos
storm, mutiny
cannabalism, monstrous female
controlling female, loss of humanity, divine warning
helpful female, divine warning
memory
loss of humanity, kleos
storm, mutiny
monstrous female
controlling female, loss of humanity, divine warning
helpful female. hyper-civilization
war, controlling female
-
I decided to Google "black ships" and did I ever come up with something interesting,though nothing to do with our story. It seems the Japanese called Western ships "black ships". The Japanese America Society and and Black Ships Festival in Newport, RI holds a Black Ships Festival every year to commemorate Commodore Perry's achievement in opening up trade with Japan.
http://www.newportevents.com/Blackships/main.shtml
I don't see much on black sails except for the references to Theseus. There are games and songs and a very few references to pirate ships. But one interesting website came up, http://www.blacksails.org It was formed just last year in Southern CA by black Americans hoping to promote an interest in sailing among the African-Americans and other minorities.
-
I didn't get anything about Greek black ships either, but here's an interesting site about Greek ships for those who haven't maxed out on ship lore. If you click on the photographs link at the bottom, you get some good pictures.
The ships in the Iliad are referred to as black ships too.
Interesting links, Frybabe.
-
Poseidon doesn't only have anger issues with his brothers, he and Athena are long-time enemies. The biggest sore point was their contest to be the patron god or goddess of Athens. As usual, they did it with bribes. Poseidon produced a salt-water spring, and Athena produced the olive tree. The city-dwellers rightly chose the olive tree. When my daughter was young, she used to refer to Greek olives as Athena's olives.
All the translations seem to put Odysseus and Athena on roughly equal footing in their exchange in Ithaca, but this isn't putting a man and a woman on a level, it's putting a man and a goddess on a level. I bet a mortal woman wouldn't have fared so well.
-
By the way, if any of you know a grade-schooler who should be introduced to the Greek myths, my children had a beautiful book, still in print, by Ingri d'Aulaire and Edgar Parin d'Aulaire.
http://www.amazon.com/DAulaires-Greek-Myths-Ingri-dAulaire/dp/0440406943/ref=sr_1_3?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1305308570&sr=1-3 (http://www.amazon.com/DAulaires-Greek-Myths-Ingri-dAulaire/dp/0440406943/ref=sr_1_3?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1305308570&sr=1-3)
The illustrations are gorgeous, and the stories well told. Amazon says ages 9-12. I think Cathy got it in third grade.
Notice at the bottom another children's book The Black Ships of Troy, about the Iliad.
-
PatH: did you forget to post the link to greek ships mentioned in post 1413 above?
I have another theme we could follow:
wisdom
O. is always called "wise" but by that, Homer seems to mean what I would call "clever" -- able to think of clever tricks. IS he wise in any deeper sense?
-
Darn it, Joan, I did forget the link, and now I can't find it again, but in looking I did find out why they were black: they were painted with pitch, presumably to make them more water-tight.
http://ancienthistory.about.com/od/troyilium/ig/Trojan-War-of-Barry-Strauss/The-Black-Ships-Sail.htm (http://ancienthistory.about.com/od/troyilium/ig/Trojan-War-of-Barry-Strauss/The-Black-Ships-Sail.htm)
Not much in this link except one drawing and the vital fact.
Eureka! Here's the other link:
http://library.thinkquest.org/06aug/00336/greek_ships.htm (http://library.thinkquest.org/06aug/00336/greek_ships.htm)
photos in a link at the bottom
-
Wisdom--good question. I'll have to think about that.
-
Of couse the sea IS angry, so the greeks had to invent a god that reflected that fact. A nice friendly god wouldn't have done at all.
Good point, JOANK. I'd never looked at it that way before and you are
absolutely right.
(Congratulations on the sale of your painting, GUM. It did sound lovely.)
Oh, don't forget 'doom' in the listing of themes. Though I think perhaps 'fate' might
be a a more accurate word. There was often more to a person's fate than doom,
have you noticed? Some were 'fated' to undertake and carry out great schemes,
and they couldn't avoid those, either.
-
This is just another plus for Homer.
Mark Zuckerberg, billionaire founder of Facebook, is often heard quoting from the Illiad and the Odyssey(in Greek).
So the two movies that were up for an Oscar this year, "The King's Speech" and "The Social Network" both have ties to our author.
Amazing how this this tale has influence so many.
-
PatH - Well researched that you found about the pitch. That would seem to be the logical answer to the "black ships".
In general there were some very interesting responses as to why the ships were black. Working together with such excellent tools as search engines, you can find most anything. A large part of the appeal of this site to me is just that "working together".
-
A large part of the appeal of this site to me is just that "working together".
Indeed, Roshanarose, I've learned so much from everyone here.
-
Yes indeed - I think we all learn from one another on this site - it's the best!
Sorry, but I could have said something about the Greek ships being painted with pitch - just thought everyone knew. I believe the Greeks are likely to have used pine pitch. Pitch was used to caulk the seams of the ships, to paint the timbers, canvas, rope, etc. to keep them free from the damage caused by salt water, thus preserving the ships - at least for a time.
The question of the symbolism we attach to the 'black ships' and black sails' is entirely different and more complex an issue as black often symbolises opposites - rebellion/conformity - power/anonymity - sin/holiness and lots of others as well. The western world associates black with many things - mystery, fear, evil, sadness, remorse, anger, mourning, death as well as sophistication, formality, elegance, wealth, sexuality and power.
The fact that Theseus didn't notice he was sailing under black sails could be attributed to the fact that he usually did sail under black - to save wear and tear on the more fragile unpainted sails.
PatH: Thanks! I wouldn't eat too well if I relied solely on my art but the income allows me to splurge on fine art materials and a few other indulgences as well as keeping the 'rainy day' at bay. I look on exhibition sales as money to spend and commissioned sales as money in the bank.
Commissioned sales are often more lucrative but I do love it when someone looks at one of my efforts and just has to have it. Gives me quite a high!
-
Here's a little on the 'pitch' used on ancient ships...
The archaeological recoveries of ancient shipwrecks in the Mediterranean Sea, have revealed samples of pitch that was used in ancient shipbuilding. Not only have scientists been able to determine that the pitch was made from pine resin, in many cases they were able to determine what species of pine were used, as well as the processes and probable temperatures that were used to make the pitch. [TED, 1969]
The construction of Greek ships is described by Hiero, who lived from 306-215 B.C. Pitch (pittan) was brought from the Rhone Valley. Obviously, this refers to a wood product, probably of pine, and not to asphalt [Casson, 1971, p. 194]. The pitch used for Greek ships is described in detail in various ancient sources, which Casson summarizes in a footnote:
Anth. Pal. 11.248.... "And when it [the ship] had been pinned together up to the thwarts, they smeared it with the glistening sap of the pine"... Vergil's phrase uncta carine (Aen. 4.398) must refer to hulls so anointed. The Nemi barges seem to have had a coat of pitch, with perhaps some slight admixture of bitumen, plus some substance containing iron, possibly minimum, as coloring matter (Ucelli 179-80). For pitch and wax, cf. Pliny, NH 16:56: zopissam vocari derassam navibus maritimis picem cum cera "The pitch with wax scraped off seagoing ships is called 'live pitch'";... [Casson, p. 212].
The Greek historian Theophrastus describes two types of pitch, one being black and called pitch and the other referred to as resin, which is a lighter color. [Morrison, J.S., et al., 2000] Plutarch describes the trees used in shipbuilding:
The pitys and kindred trees, peukai and strobiloi, produce the wood most suitable for shipbuilding, and the pitch and resin paint (aloiphe)without which shipwright's work is useless in salt water.' [ibid.]
The Latin word that appears in this quote of Pliny, as well as in the Latin Vulgate's translation of Gen. 6:14 is pix. The source of this word is picea, which means spruce or a similar fir, although some have suggested that it was picea that was derived from pix.. The verb pico means to smear with pitch. Not only does this show that the ancient Romans used tree-derived pitch for caulking ships, but that the Latin translators understood the Hebrew text, since there is a virtually perfect correspondence between pix and pico with the Hebrew source words,
source: av1611.com/.kjbp/PitchofNoah'sArk
-
A fascinating quote, GUM. I am astounded at the material that's available to the searcher now.
I would have never even thought to look for a topic like the "Pitch of Noah's Ark"!!
Well, Athena has now, literally, turned Odysseus into a 'dirty..and ugly..old man'. I wonder
how the famed Greek hospitality will hold up for him in that guise? ;)
-
Yes it's just fascinating coming in here, no end of great stuff: pitch, who knew? And it's useful stuff too, I feel much more informed as a result of this discussion, and in things I knew nothing about.
I love the "working together" aspect here, too. And every voice which chimes in adds something different to our soup, Book Soup. (That's the best I can do here this gray bleary morning). hahaa (How does one spell gray? I thought it had an e but spell check insists on the a?) I use Firefox and it has a spell check and sometimes I wonder what language it's checking, it makes a continual fool of me if I don't carefully reread.
This morning I got up so grateful to be reading The Odyssey, it seems most everything else pales, even tho we do know that the Iliad is "better," or whatever, I wonder what other book could hold up so long to this pieced approach. I love it.
I read Entertainment Magazine last night, full of young actors I know nothing about, but also full of new movies coming out which are pretty fantastic and derivative, each in their own way, of the Odyssey ultimately, they all seem to deal with the SuperHero, who has super powers and fantastic adventures, uh.....and set backs, and romance...uh.....nothing we lack. Also several new books seem to plunge the reader into unexplained and fantastic scenarios (uh...) with flashbacks (uh...) well you get the picture, we're reading the daddy of them all.
I think so far in all I've learned that I'm beginning to be (we're only half through) most impressed with Homer's depth. What seems just slapped down, like a new Disney Ride, (the newest one is Star Wars, you've got your hero...your problems...your fantastic adventures....uh....) is not, at all. It seems carefully constructed and I don't want to miss a trick tho I suspect I've missed several. Surely with this astute group we won't miss anything.
O. is always called "wise" but by that, Homer seems to mean what I would call "clever" -- able to think of clever tricks. IS he wise in any deeper sense?
What IS wisdom? What a question! Is it a combination of experience and the ability to apply solutions? That's what O does and he's quick with it, he doesn't have to take time (as in the Cyclop's cave) to react. But then again, it could have gone the opposite way, too. j
Here's Webster's Dictionary on the definition of wisdom:
Definition of WISDOM
1
a : accumulated philosophic or scientific learning : knowledge b : ability to discern inner qualities and relationships : insight c : good sense : judgment d : generally accepted belief <challenges what has become accepted wisdom among many historians — Robert Darnton>
2
: a wise attitude, belief, or course of action
3
: the teachings of the ancient wise men
I don't know about O and that b?
-
Greek ships being painted with pitch - just thought everyone knew.
Great catch, Gum. I knew but forgot.
It seems to me a few years back I saw a program where they were trying to recreate some of Archimedes' designs. One of the designs was a parabolic mirror (actually a series of small mirrors set as a parabola) that was supposed to catch the incoming ships on fire. Wikipedia actually has a description of this "heat ray" and several experiments that were designed to see if it worked. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Archimedes The program I saw was not one of the Mythbusters segments, but something done by the History Channel, Discovery Channel, or National Geographic.
-
Ginny, we could probably write our on book with all the stuff we come up with. ;D
-
FRY: I saw that program too. I don't remember, but I thought it was Mythbusters. They're always doing stuff like that. Did you see the recent one where they found you could "blow your own sail" by putting a fan on the boat and having it blow into the sail?
I LOVE this discussion. Where else would we discus what kind of pitch the Greeks used?
If you all aren't sick of ship lore, a REALLY STUPID QUESTION? Why are tiremes called tiremes? I thought they had three sails, but the one in the picture has two.
I guess I'm not wiswe. If I were, I'd know what wisdom is.
-
I believe the names tiremes, etc. come from the number of rows of ores the ship has. Some of the pix I found don't clearly show the rows, but Wikipedia has a diagram down by the header "Rowers" that shows the position and angle of the ores for each level on a tireme.
-
Gumtree - Thanks for the quote about pitch, very interesting. Reminded me of that unusual !! drink the Greeks enjoy at their festivals, the much maligned retsina which uses pine resin for its flavour and is stored in Pine barrels. I have tried it. It is not something that you could drink a lot of.
Gumtree - Good point about the sails. I did a bit more research into the story of Theseus and his return from Knossos. Evidently he had made an agreement with his father that he would fly a white sail, rather than the normal black to indicate his slaying of the Minotaur. For some reason he must have forgotten to change them. When you stand on Cape Sounion and look in the direction of Crete (south), this story is easy to imagine.
Ancient Greeks and colour link:
www.cooper.edu/classes/art/hta321/99spring/Rebecca.html
The Siren Song - Last night I watched the new adventures of Dr Who, Amy and Rory, our intrepid time travellers. They landed on a pirate ship and as they were talking/fighting with the crew, a strange but beautiful refrain was heard. I knew immediately who it was. Sure enough a beautiful woman materialised. Anyone who had a black spot on his/her palm was turned to dust after the Siren touched them. The Siren turned out to be a doctor who had her own up-to-date hospital clinic where all those who had black spots were being treated for the sicknesses you could expect pirates to have. There was a lot more to the plot than I have written. Just thought of the story depicting the Siren as a healer was a little different to most.
Ginny - Grey vs Gray - Australian English and perhaps English English spell it as grey. American English as gray.
-
Roshanarose:
Retsina: yes, it's a little like drinking pine needles in your wine, but it goes really well with Greek food, and I sometimes order it in Greek restaurants. You wouldn't want to do this if you were drinking more than one glass, you'd get tired of it. If the waiter is Greek, he usually seems to appreciate my choice.
Ancient Greeks and colour link: That's a really interesting link. My SIL has a degree in cognitive psychology, meaning how you perceive things, and I've had conversations with him before about this sort of issue, but this raises some points I want to check out with him. I'll report back on what he says if relevant.
Gray/grey: currently, both spellings are accepted here, but my spell checker still sometimes scolds me for grey, which I prefer. It's not scolding me now, either it's given up on me or someone has taught it better.
-
Oh goodie! - more about boats :D
Yes - the trireme takes its name from the three banks of oars.
Here's something from Britannica Concise Encylopaedia: on triremes:
"Oar-powered warship. Light, fast, and maneuverable, it was the principal naval vessel with which Persia, Phoenicia, and the Greek city-states vied for mastery of the Mediterranean from the Battle of Salamis (480 BC) through the end of the Peloponnesian War (404). The Athenian trireme was about 120 ft (37 m) long, and was rowed by 170 oarsmen seated in three tiers along each side; it could reach speeds of more than 7 knots (8 mph, or 13 kph). Square-rigged sails were used when the ship was not engaged in battle. Armed with a bronze-clad ram, it carried spearmen and bowmen to attack enemy crews. By the late 4th century BC, armed deck soldiers had become so important in naval warfare that it was superseded by heavier ships. " (emphasis is mine)
The three banks of oarsmen were at different levels - this meant that some men could be easily rested so they weren't all exhausted before it was time for the battle. The upper levels of oarsmen had the more difficult job as they had to row with some kind of outrigger.
On interesting aspect is that the Greeks didn't have 'slaves' as oarsmen but men from all walks of life who were oarsmen as part of their military service. Democracy at work.
The trireme is often seen as a Greek invention but is more likely to have been Corinthian. They were the fighting ships of the ancient world and were superseded by the later quadremes and quinqueremes which obviously had 4 and 5 ranks of oarsmen respectively.
Grey/gray - Aren't they interchangeable? I prefer 'grey' except sometimes.
Roshanarose: that link on color is great- I'll read it more carefully later.
I've never tasted Retsina - can't say I've missed the experience as I'm not much of a drinker.
-
Roshanarose--what an interesting link to the use of colour by the Greeks, I'm going to have to read it a second and third time to get the full benefit, there was so much information to absorb; just really enjoy learning aspects of info of this nature
Gumtree--is the spell check on your computer specific to 'Australian
English' ? Canadian spell check is really American English, and it is so confusing as so many words that I learnt in grade school, spell check to an American spelling; I find so confusing as when I write then spell check it, am never sure if the original was an English I initially learnt, or just my lousy spelling.
I asked a young Canadian grade school teacher how she taught and accepted spelling due to our computers-and she said as long as it was a Canadian or American correct format she was fine with her students spellings. So I imagine Canadian English will meld into American in the next while.
If I try to set the default on my computer to Canadian spelling, the default will need to be reset each time the machine gets shut down it seems, so I just leave it as is!
enough said.
Deb
-
Deb: Yes, I have English (Australia) on my computer. Some of my friends don't and are constantly aggravated by automatic corrections to the American way - can't imagine why they don't just change their system. I can still spell and rarely use the spell check. In a way it will be a pity when every country spells exactly the same - American version of course - as it will decrease our individuality. vive la difference
-
Man, what an interesting discussion! I can't get over the variety of topics. I have loved the pitch thing, who knew? How can one get to my age and not know all this stuff? I found that fascinating. Retsina, now that pronunciation with the T is how Resina, the township which came to be built up following the eruption of Vesuvius over Herculaneum was generally called in the Middle Ages, it's amazing what allusions come to mind here. I'm glad to see the ideas on grey/ gray too, I like grey and so that's how I'm going to spell it if spell check will allow me.
Oh doom is a good theme too Babi, thank you. Am loving the boat discussion. I read an interesting article on the difference in warships and merchant ships the other day which culminated in the information (this is the OCCL) and I'll offer some of it here as a possible different voice on this subject, I find it fascinating.
In the Roman Empire a merchantman could carry 400 tons normally. The current Vatican obelisk was brought by Caligula in an exceptionally large ship just like the Flaminian obelisk was. The Vatican obelisk weighed about 500 tons and the ship carried in addition some 800 tons (according to Pliny) of lentils as packing. 800 TONS OF LENTILS!!!!
In the 4th century BC there appeared quadriremes and quinquremes, 4 and 5 rows of oarsmen and the quinquereme became the standard warship of the Roman republic. The crew on a Roman quinquereme numbered 300, but the arrangement of "oars and rowers is even more obscure than in the case of the trireme."
Between 483 BC and 480 BC Themistocles had 200 triremes build at Athens for defense and by 431 BC the city had 300 triremes.
The arrangement of oars on a trireme has long been a matter or argument. It now seems that there were non each side of the trireme a to row of 31 oars and below it two rows of 27. The rowers sat in three ore or less superimposed rows, called thranitai, zygioi, and thalamioi at the bottom. The individual positions staggered fore and aft so that non was immediately above or below the other; to the outside view this gave a pattern of oblique lines. Each rower thus had his own oar, and the rowers were not seated three to a bench as had sometimes been suggested.....The design was intended to achieve greater oar power than thus to be most efficient in ramming, with as little increase as possible in the weight and length of the ship Even so a good speed for a trireme, in favorable conditions but not under pressure, is unlikely to have exceeded 7 or 8 knots.
Now what is a knot as relates to miles per hour? I know nothing of boats or sailing so this is my one chance to find out. Is this FAST? For a boat?
-
Am I the only one struck by the parallels here between this great seafaring saga and homecoming and another on the same theme: the Rime of the Ancient Mariner?
(http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/8/80/Gustave_Dore_Ancient_Mariner_Illustration.jpg)
Oh! dream of joy! is this indeed
The lighthouse top I see?
Is this the hill? is this the kirk?
Is this mine own country?
We drifted o'er the harbour-bar,
And I with sobs did pray -
O let me be awake, my God!
Or let me sleep alway.
The harbour-bay was clear as glass,
So smoothly it was strewn!
And on the bay the moonlight lay,
And the shadow of the moon.
The rock shone bright, the kirk no less,
That stands above the rock:
The moonlight steeped in silentness
The steady weathercock.
And the bay was white with silent light,
Till rising from the same,
Full many shapes, that shadows were,
In crimson colours came.
He's on a ship propelled by corpses, fast and silent. And out to meet him comes the pilot, the pilot's boy and a hermit:
"This Hermit good lives in that wood
Which slopes down to the sea.
How loudly his sweet voice he rears!
He loves to talk with marineers
That come from a far country.
He kneels at morn, and noon, and eve -
He hath a cushion plump:
It is the moss that wholly hides
The rotted old oak-stump.
So we've got another good man of the woods to go along with our humble shepherd of the Odyssey but in this case, it's the Mariner who has changed. He actually does hear the noise of the partying going on at the wedding
What loud uproar bursts from that door!
The wedding-guests are there:
But in the garden-bower the bride
And bride-maids singing are;
And hark the little vesper bell,
Which biddeth me to prayer!
But he turns away. He has changed. O does not turn away, this is his quest. He's going to seek revenge.
So this is a completely different conclusion, the Mariner is very changed. Whether or not O is changed remains to be seen. Is he?
I found another great set of questions for the Odyssey and they address the idea of the Hero and the Tragjc Flaw. Can we discuss a minute this concept as we have not yet talked about it, at all? What IS a Tragic Flaw? IS this a tragedy?
We know pretty readily what the Ancient Mariner's Tragic Flaw was, Coleridge makes it clear.
Does O have one? If so what is it? Here are some points they make:
* Heroes: Why do societies create heroes? What values do we expect our heroes to represent? What values did the Greeks expect their heroes to represent? How does the idea of the "tragic flaw" change the way we look at our heroes? Do we look for tragic flaws today?
This sure is a good question, our comic books and movies are FULL of Heroes, why?
* Journeys: Almost all societies contain myths/stories of "The Journey." Why? What is the attraction we have to journeys? What are some of the American Journeys? What lessons, what themes, what values do we see played out in the stories of journeys? (Specific to 'The Odyssey: What was the difference between Odysseus' journey and Telemachus' journey?)
* Character: Whose story is this? Who is the main character, Odysseus or Telemachus? (I love this idea, because we got around the idea of which character changed over the course of the story. Is Odysseus' story really just a vehicle for showing Telemachus' coming of age?) There is so much potential for debate here.
Do you think that the days of Odysseus as a hero are over or will they continue on Ithaca? .
What do you think?
-
I love your analogy to the Ancient Mariner, GINNY. It's great!
A 'tragic flaw' is one of those things that seal one's fate. It didn't
have to happen, but because of an innate compulsion there was no doubt that
it would. It's not simply a bad decision, it's a personality trait. "Othello"
is a good example. He was not a bad man; he was a jealous man who was too ready to believe that he was not loved.
And aren't journeys another escape, like our beloved books? A way out, if
only temporarily, of the humdrum and routine of life?
-
Ho Ginny! - Knots to Miles per hour... 1 Knot = 1.15 mph so if you take the average of the triremes at 7knots = just over 8mph. Not so very fast but about twice as fast as an army marches on foot. The triremes went faster under their square sail -but can't remember the figure.
I didn't think it would be too long before you put up The Ancient Mariner. :D
IS this a tragedy?
Well, it is if Aristotle has anything to do with it. His Poetics deals with Odyssey and Iliad as tragedy - at least he maintains they are the prototypes of tragedy. Plato called it tragedy as well. Tragedy has so many faces it's hard to arrive at any definition that fits them all - and that's been the case for all these long centuries since the first ones were written,
The tragic hero's 'tragic flaw' is usually a kind of stumbling block - often related to pride - but he has to show courage to a high degree and there is an inevitability about his ultimate defeat which occurs by one means or another.
The question of 'fate' also arises and takes many forms - in O's case his 'fate' is manipulated by benign (Athene) and/or malevolent gods (Poseidon) and with, I think, fate in another form (Zeus) in the background manipulating the lesser gods.
On the other hand there is the view that Iliad is the tragedy and Odyssey the comedy.
-
The Book Club Online is the oldest book club on the Internet, begun in 1996, open to everyone. We offer cordial discussions of one book a month, 24/7 and enjoy the company of readers from all over the world. Everyone is welcome to join in.
Now reading:
(http://www.seniorlearn.org/bookclubs/classicsbookclub/cbc2odysseysm.jpg)
May 20-----Book XIV: Eumaeus the Loyal Swineherd
(http://seniorlearn.org/latin/ulysses_penelope/UlyssesEumaeus2May18.jpg)
Odysseus and Eumaios
17th century etching
Theodor van Thulden (1606 - 1669)
Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco
Discussion Leaders: Joan K (joankraft13@yahoo.com) & ginny (gvinesc@wildblue.net )
Useful Links:
1. Critical Analysis: Free SparkNotes background and analysis on the Odyssey (http://www.sparknotes.com/lit/odyssey)
2. Translations Used in This Discussion So Far: (http://www.seniorlearn.org/bookclubs/odyssey/odyssey_translations.html)
3. Initial Points to Watch For: submitted by JudeS (http://www.seniorlearn.org/bookclubs/odyssey/odyssey_points.html)
4. Maps:
Map of the Voyages of Odysseus (http://www.seniorlearn.org/latin/ulysses_penelope/Odysseusmap.jpg)
Map of Voyages in order (http://www.wesleyan.edu/~mkatz/Images/Voyages.jpg)
Map of Stops Numbered (http://www.seniorlearn.org/latin/ulysses_penelope/Odysseusmap2.jpg)
Our Map Showing Place Names in the Odyssey (http://www.seniorlearn.org/latin/graphics/AncientGreecemap.jpg)
(http://seniorlearn.org/latin/ulysses_penelope/UlyssesEumaeusMay18.jpg)
Odysseus conversing with Eumaios
Engraving and etching on paper
John Flaxman
1805
Tate Gallery
Thank you, PatH
-
A knot is a nautical mile per hour. A nautical mile is 6,076 feet (a land mile is 5,280 feet), so 7-8 knots is 8-9.2 miles per hour.
The name knot comes from the way they used to measure the speed of a ship. You have a rope, attached to a specially designed piece of wood, with knots tied in it at intervals. You throw the log overboard, and let the rope slip freely through your fingers. You count the knots that slide by during 28 or 30 seconds, timed with an hourglass. The knot spacing has been calculated so that the number of knots equals the speed in nautical miles per hour.
Why is a nautical mile longer than a land mile? It's the distance of one minute of latitude.
-
Ooops, Gumtree, you were posting while I was writing. I didn't know how fast the triremes could sail though.
Can the Odyssey be a tragedy when the main characters overcome their adversity and don't come to grief?
-
Babi--I read once of a person who considered her/him self to be an arm chair traveller
and he/she travelled vicariously--love that word
Deb
-
I remember often hearing that getting there is more than half the fun. I think that, often, people are so tuned into the "getting there" that the actual end of the journey is somewhat anticlimactic.
-
Ginny
My post # 591 mentions "The Albatross" and quotes some lines from that poem.
Now that was a tragic poem! You felt the horror and the tragedy right from the beginning. I find it very hard to relate to the Odyssey as a tragedy.
The Odyssey (at least so far) is a rip roaring adventure story. The Hero always gets away. The Hero overcomes all the difficulties he comes upon. If he has a flaw, it is being TOO adventuresome and losing his neverending crew to the horrors that he personally overcomes. However since his crews are almost all faceless for us, I do not think many people could see their loss as the underpinnings that make The Odyssey a tragedy.
A great tragedy,say KIng Lear, ends in the death and\or destruction of a beloved chaeacter. The death is usually caused by a misunderstanding. Think Romeo and Juliet. We see these situations as tragic since they could have been avoided ..if only......
-
I think the idea that we can avoid our fate if our character is pure is more modern than the greeks. In Greek stories, everything that the characters do to avoid their fate, instead lads them directly to it (for example Oedepus). It is our "Protestant Ethic" interpretation to say that his character must have been flawed, if he was only a better person, he coould have avoided it.
-
Okay, where are we? Still on Chapter 13?
Done with classes, exams out of the way. Hurray!
-
Ginny asked : Is this tragedy? The question has been dogging me all day so here are some thoughts dredged up from the dim and distant past...
I had an equally long, but I think, more coherent post all ready and lost it somewhere in cyber space...
The classic definition of tragedy, at least for Greek tragedy, is Aristotle’s Poetics which is important to any study of tragedy because Aristotle’s ideas and their implications have become woven into our general conception of what constitutes tragedy even though it is no longer regarded as being the final word on the subject. Within its limitations Poetics is as valid today as it ever was and there is no doubt that Aristotle's work has given rise to the ideas we have on the theory of tragedy and the effect tragedy has upon the individual.
Poetics is concerned with poetry as a form of artistic expression and the term poetry is meant to include ‘all imaginative writings’ and so covers the whole range and gamut of literature. Aristotle is particularly concerned with what he considered to be the two highest types of poetry: the tragedy and the epic, and he goes on to examine their nature and to discuss the way the poets obtain their effects and what effect the work has upon the audience.
The chief examples he uses are Homer’s Iliad and Odyssey - he also refers to the great tragedies of Aeschylus, Sophocles and Euripides and he tends to regard the Oedipus of Sophocles as some kind of perfection in tragedy. His comments on tragedy are therefore based on what is regarded as the chief and best work of the Greek creative mind and one reason why his comments are so valuable to the study of tragedy is that he was referring to works which we can still read today and so we can relate his comments to the texts he was using for his examples.
All of the discussion revolves around the assertion that tragedy arouses and stimulates pity and fear to such a pitch that those emotions are released from us and we are left feeling appeased and satisfied and perhaps better able to deal with our own lives. If this is so, then tragedy has a deep psychological impact upon us and it is no wonder that the theatre was considered to be an essential part of Greek education.
Another concept to be found in the Poetics is the theory of the ideal tragic hero and his tragic flaw and there has been a widespread acceptance of Aristotle’s thought on these ideas. For example, the idea of tragic flaw is frequently used in criticism of Shakespeare’s tragedies: Macbeth’s overwhelming ambition, Othello’s unreasoning jealousy and so on. Some folk believe that if you find the flaw you will have the meaning of the play in a nutshell but of course the tragic flaw is not all there is to a tragic hero especially in the hands of Shakespeare or Sophocles.
In tragedy, the characters are often ignorant of the nature of their deeds and unaware of the implications of their action. Sometimes they don’t know the true identity of the people about them. Then at some point in the play there is the recognition of what they have done and who the others really are.
The classic example of this is of course Oedipus where these two factors are present and closely interwoven. At his moment of truth, or recognition, Oedipus realises that he has indeed fulfilled the prophecy that he had taken so much trouble to avoid; he had unknowingly killed his own father and married his mother in ignorance of her identity and his own. He recognises his deed and his subsequent self-blinding is a symbolic act.
There seem to be two fundamental aspects of tragedy. One is man, working out his own destiny or making his own choices. The other is the everlasting laws of a definite order which is unchanging and under the guidance of the Gods and the plays concentrate upon the interaction between the two. It is the resultant struggle between them which gives us an Oedipus and an Antigone.
Fundamentally, tragedy, like other forms of great literature, deals with essential moral questions about our being. It expresses universal truths about the human condition. There is always a conflict between some inevitable power and the tragic hero. The tragic hero always makes a real and conscious effort to avoid disaster. The inevitable power is always the winner and the hero is always destroyed.
Writers on this subject often draw a distinction between classical tragedy which generally attributes the human disaster to fate or chance and modern tragedy which attributes the disaster to a failing in the human character. But, in both cases the disaster is brought about by some overriding necessity and the final result is inevitable.
In his book The Spirit of Tragedy Herbert J Muller wrote:
Throughout the ages men have known tragedy in their earthly existence, they have always lamented that life is hard, that man’s fate is to toil, to suffer and to die. All civilised societies have produced literature, and most have produced drama. Yet men have very rarely written what we call tragedy. By general consent, there have been only four important periods, all of them brief: the ancient Greek, confined to Athens of the 5th Century BC; the Elizabethan, in the generation of Shakespeare; the French classical, in the generation of Corneille and Racine; and the modern, inaugurated by Ibsen.
At that, there is some dispute about the genuineness of French classical tragedy, and much more dispute about modern tragedy. Furthermore these periods have all been confined to the Western world; none of the great Eastern civilisations produced tragedy.
The question, then, is why the experience that all men know has so seldom found its appropriate expression in literature, and then only in one quarter of the globe. The question involves the distinctive values of Western civilisation. It is accordingly a large subject. It is also a highly controversial one. But it is forced upon us, I believe, by any serious consideration of the nature and uses of tragedy.
Muller goes on to argue his case in an erudite and scholarly manner for some 600 odd pages but ultimately, along with many other writers on the subject, he too can reach no definite conclusions as to the nature and cause of tragedy in our literature. We are left then to simply enjoy the experience of tragedy in literature.
The question we have is whether Odyssey is tragedy or not and certainly there are aspects of our story which are indeed tragic. The story meets some of the criteria needed for tragedy - a hero suffering at the whim of the 'fates' or Gods -- with often the inevitability of the outcome taken right out of his hands -the everlasting laws of nature - and there are moral questions and universal truths in plenty - but whether Odysseus is a tragic hero is not clear - not yet anyway - we'll have to wait until the end....
-
Gumtree,
Very erudite. However I must go with my gut feeling re The Odyssey. I feel no sorrow whatsoever for the character, who I imagine, as we all know or can guess, will succeed in the end. That is why it is an adventure rather than a tragedy.
I will quote from a little text on Greek and Roman writers by an unknown professor,Rev.W.T.McNiff:OSC: he is discussing the difference between the Illiad and the Odyssey:
"...the Illiad must move inevitably to its tragic climax and somber end. The resourceful and optimistic character of Odysseus makes his story an entirely different one-a romantic novel with a happy ending. Intellectually and physically gifted, always sure of himself, always in control of the situation, Odysseus is the ideal Greek hero.
...The plot of the Odyssey is complicated. Odysseus'wanderings are interwoven with two important sub-plots: Telemachus search for his father and Penelope's diffuculties with the suitors."
So complex yes. Tragic, no.
-
"none of the great Eastern civilisations produced tragedy."
Is that true? I know very little about it, but I thought some of the Noh plays were tragic. Of course, it would depend on ones definition of tragedy.
"always sure of himself, always in control of the situation, Odysseus is the ideal Greek hero."
What Odessey is he reading? That's not the Odysseus we've seen.
But I agree -- I don't see The Odessey as a tragedy at all. The embedded story of Agammemnon maybe.
-
What interesting posts!
Babi, that was interesting on the role of journeys in our lives and literature. I remember attending a writing workshop by the poet laureate of SC who said, the idea for writing a mystery is to say to the reader, "I'm going on a journey, you come, too." I thought that was neat.
I liked Deb's vicarious traveler and Frybabe's interesting point on the end of the journey for some people being anticlimactic, we sort of have that here but we're not to the climax yet. (I don't think landing on Ithaca is the climax of the story, do any of you?)
Jude, I knew there was some reason the Ancient Mariner was haunting me! Thank you for that mention of your prior post on it! I now remember nodding right along to the albatross allusion, not sure where my mind is. hahaha Sorry.
:) Gum, he haunts me daily.
Gum and PatH, thank you for the nautical mile. That's pretty fast, to me, I mean for rowers to get you there? 5 mph is a pretty good clip on land, that's how fast my grandson's little tractor goes and it seems fast to me.
And THANK you eternally PatH for this:
The name knot comes from the way they used to measure the speed of a ship. You have a rope, attached to a specially designed piece of wood, with knots tied in it at intervals. You throw the log overboard, and let the rope slip freely through your fingers. You count the knots that slide by during 28 or 30 seconds, timed with an hourglass. The knot spacing has been calculated so that the number of knots equals the speed in nautical miles per hour.
Why is a nautical mile longer than a land mile? It's the distance of one minute of latitude.
You lost me on the latitude (I can see I'd be no sailor) but I've always been interested in the knot thing, and just the image of the log thrown overboard, reminds me of Sherlock Holmes counting telephone poles from a train.
Those are wonderful thoughts on whether the Odyssey is a tragedy, Jude, PatH, Joak K (I stopped short at that description myself), I wondered also about the Odyssey. .
Gum, we appreciate so much your going to that trouble to put that here, I'm always confused on the Aristotelian Tragedy, thank you for condensing it so well. It's a very complex subject. I remember very clearly Maryal in our Julius Caesar discussion talking about different kinds of tragedy over the ages and the Aristotle definition was one of many today. Of course the Odyssey IS ancient Greek.
Does anybody have a definition of today's idea of "tragedy?"
So this:
The classic definition of tragedy, at least for Greek tragedy, is Aristotle’s Poetics....Aristotle is particularly concerned with what he considered to be the two highest types of poetry: the tragedy and the epic, and he goes on to examine their nature and to discuss the way the poets obtain their effects and what effect the work has upon the audience.
The chief examples he uses are Homer’s Iliad and Odyssey - he also refers to the great tragedies of Aeschylus, Sophocles and Euripides and he tends to regard the Oedipus of Sophocles as some kind of perfection in tragedy. His comments on tragedy are therefore based on what is regarded as the chief and best work of the Greek creative mind and one reason why his comments are so valuable to the study of tragedy is that he was referring to works which we can still read today and so we can relate his comments to the texts he was using for his examples. is wonderful.
But we tend to think if the ending is not death or whatnot it's not tragic. If the hero does not come to a bad end, we don't consider it tragic. I don't.
And then when you add to it the fact that this is an Epic as well, why you've got some kind of thing going.
According to the OCCL, "an epic is a narrative poem on the grand sacle and in majestic style, concerning the exploits and adventures of a superhuman hero engaged in a quest or some serious endeavour. The hero is distinguised above all men by his strrength and courage, and is restrainged only by a sense of honour."
And this book along with the Iliad, is the earliest surviving form of Greek literature. I do think it says something for it and us that we can read it at all here in 2011.
These are good points:
There seem to be two fundamental aspects of tragedy. One is man, working out his own destiny or making his own choices. The other is the everlasting laws of a definite order which is unchanging and under the guidance of the Gods and the plays concentrate upon the interaction between the two. It is the resultant struggle between them which gives us an Oedipus and an Antigone.
So the Odyssey has some but not all of the criteria. So far?
Strangely enough I found Chaucer wrote a definition of tragedy as he knew it:
Tragedie is to seyn a certeyn storie,
As old bookes maken us memorie,
Of hym that stood in greet properitee,
And is yfallen out of heigh degree
Into myserie, and endeth wrecchedly.
And they ben versified communely,
Of six feet, which men lepen exametron.
("Tragedy is, as old books inform us, a kind of story concerning someone who had enjoyed great prosperity but has fallen from his high position into misfortune and ends in wretchedness. Tragedies are commonly written in verse with six feet, called hexameters." )
So the Odyssey to our modern eyes lacks what we would consider the punch line: the "ends in wretchedness." We're not TO the end yet, he's wretched enough so far, and fallen from high estate as a hero...isn't this interesting speculation, tho? If it ended HERE with him in raqs on the shore or living with the swineherd then I think we could say it's a tragedy, but it's going on for another half of the book.
Homer may have done something way outside the box with this thing. I appreciate it more and more every day.
The story meets some of the criteria needed for tragedy - a hero suffering at the whim of the 'fates' or Gods -- with often the inevitability of the outcome taken right out of his hands -the everlasting laws of nature - and there are moral questions and universal truths in plenty - but whether Odysseus is a tragic hero is not clear - not yet anyway - we'll have to wait until the end....
But just in case we ARE pondering the similarities so far to classic Aristotelian tragedy, what might seem O's tragic flaw, if he has one?
Just a super discussion here! Thank you all! And more....
-
Congratulations on ending up your courses, Frybabe! I know you are glad and I hope they ended well for you!
We are, in fact, still on 13. I got the impression some were behind, are we all ready to try 14? 14's not very long and it's sweet but there he goes AGAIN, lying, or is there a reason?
(Interesting note that Bernard Knox makes in his Introduction to Fagles, cited by Spark Notes in that the gods themselves are able to make an exception to xenia, the hospitality thing, when their own egos are bruised. They say that Fagles claims the most powerful gods never "allow human concerns---the interests of the people whom they favor---to precipitate conflict among themselves....For Zeus, preserving stable relations with his brother is more important than returning favors to one of his most suppliant peoples.")
I did think that was unfair, to punish the Phaecians by turning their boat into stone when all they were doing was helping like they were supposed to. Now in 14 we have another example of hospitality, let's read ahead for Friday, is everybody willing?
Meanwhile, I love the journey question. I'm trying to think of a book lately I've read which does NOT involve a journey, can you think of one? Of one thing or another? Old Filth certainly has one.
I love these questions! Forgive me for putting them back in here, I can't stop thinking about them:
* Heroes: Why do societies create heroes? What values do we expect our heroes to represent? What values did the Greeks expect their heroes to represent? How does the idea of the "tragic flaw" change the way we look at our heroes? Do we look for tragic flaws today?
* Journeys: Almost all societies contain myths/stories of "The Journey." Why? What is the attraction we have to journeys? What are some of the American Journeys? What lessons, what themes, what values do we see played out in the stories of journeys? (Specific to 'The Odyssey: What was the difference between Odysseus' journey and Telemachus' journey?)
* Character: Whose story is this? Who is the main character, Odysseus or Telemachus? (I love this idea, because we got around the idea of which character changed over the course of the story. Is Odysseus' story really just a vehicle for showing Telemachus' coming of age?) There is so much potential for debate here.
Do you think that the days of Odysseus as a hero are over or will they continue on Ithaca? .
While we're waiting to start discussing 14, assuming we can read it by Friday, what do you think of this one:
How does the idea of the "tragic flaw" change the way we look at our heroes? Do we look for tragic flaws today?
Let's see, today on the news we hear that Governor Schwarzenegger like former Senator Edwards, appears to have fathered a love child. Another Governor self destructed (thinking about Mark Sanford) both his marriage and his career over the same type of thing.
Do we consider these "tragic flaws?" Do they occur only in literature? Do we even talk about them today? Tragic flaw: something that ....what's the definition of a tragic flaw?
Babi said, " A 'tragic flaw' is one of those things that seal one's fate. It didn't have to happen, but because of an innate compulsion there was no doubt that it would. It's not simply a bad decision, it's a personality trait. "Othello"
is a good example. He was not a bad man; he was a jealous man who was too ready to believe that he was not loved. "
And Gum said, "The tragic hero's 'tragic flaw' is usually a kind of stumbling block - often related to pride - but he has to show courage to a high degree and there is an inevitability about his ultimate defeat which occurs by one means or another."
What's an example of a modern "tragic flaw?"
And how about this one? Heroes: Why do societies create heroes? What values do we expect our heroes to represent?
My husband used to dislike those comic books and movies the kids loved about the "Superhero," SpiderMan, Star Wars, even certain aspects of Star Trek, tho I argued against it, and we just about memorized Star Trek, but he saw something in the creation of the more fantastic heroes, (the Hulk, the man who turns into dirt, the fire man, the...) that suggested something to children which was not real about solving problems or something. I did point out the moral positions of Star Trek. (I think he felt there were enough real life heroes to inspire anybody, if people took the time to learn about them instead. )
Why ARE these heroes, how ironic a new one, the Governator is just out, so prevalent and popular today?
-
I just noticed that Spark Notes has a cute little quiz on the Odyssey, multiple choice, which we can turn into sort of a Millionaire Game, so we can look forward to that at the end and see what we've gotten out of it besides a great read and a wonderful discussion, that is. Might be fun, I love those Millionaire things because sooner or later you can get it. :)
-
American journeys? Those people who stepped out into the unknown to settle the West.
-
Oh, my. Van Thuldens sailors have remarkable feminine backsides. I don't
think the Phaecian sailors would be at all pleased or amused. Mr. Flaxman's
version is much more appropriate.
(That's me, BOOKAD. I can happily visualize what the author describes, without
the heat, bad weather, the long climbs, or the seasickness!)
I agree, JUDE, the greatest tragedies are those that could have been avoided.
Romeo and Juliet..I wanted to shake some sense into them! Othello! Someone
needed to get in his face and tell him what an ass he was being! Needless
tragedies just make me angry.
I'm not sure purity of character is key here, JOAN. The flaw of character
that causes one's downfall could easily be an excess of a virtue. And the old
John Knox 'ethic' that it wouldn't happen if you didn't do something to
deserve it, ..I don't think many accept that notion anymore. To put it another
way, "the rain falls on the just and unjust alike".
I agree with your comment about the Noh plays. The Japanese adore tragedy!
I am definitely looking ahead to Book 14. One of the thoughts I had when Athena turned Odyssseus into a ..literally...dirty old man, was whether the fine tradition of Greek hospitality applied to wandering bums as well. Happily, I find that the title of the next book is “Hospitality in the Forest”.
-
Ginny
You opened up a conundrum for me when you asked about "American Tragedies".I went to the internet.
One site said that there were only three examples of tragedy in American Lit.:
The Old Man and the Sea-Hemingway
The Great Gatsby-Fitzgerald
Death of a Salesman-Miller
My mind kept going to "A Long Days Journey into Night".
I wasn't so sure about the three books that were listed so I continued to research until I came to the Brittanica list of the Fifty Great Tragedians in Western Literature (starting with the Greeks).
The ONLY American author to make the list was Eugene O'Neill.
I know this is off topic from the Odyssey but I'm glad I read these articles. So thanks Ginny for an interesting sidebar.
-
The more "dilapidated" "the bum"the ever vigilant Greeks who were permanently aware of their Gods' and Goddesses' trickery, the more likely they were to offer hospitality. This worked well for professional "bums". ;) The mostgenuine people in giving hospitality I have found are the Hazara people of Afghanistan.
Ginny - Re Heroes. I am sure we discussed this earlier in regard to "The Odyssey".
-
Why do we need Heroes: Yes, I think we did have some discussion on this question quite early on... though there's always more to say...
thought you might like this little quote from Nietzsche: Birth of Tragedy:
The hero takes the suffering of the world on his shoulders and thus relieves us of the burden.
So perhaps we need lots of heroes simply because there is so much suffering in the world. He goes on to talk about the tragic hero…
The tragic hero also serves as an example to us, for he prepares himself for higher existence through his own destruction, not his victories.
Which of course, begs the question of whether we need such an example – what is the ‘higher existence’ and are we all seeking it? – is it our own personal ‘kleos’?
-
Jude: those three American tragedies are an interesting selection - as I read it I thought, 'what about O'Neill?' but like most lists they are usually subjective. I'll check out the Brittanica list just out of interest. thanks..
Arthur Miller's plays have always aroused controvery as to whether or not they are tragedy - especially 'Salesman'
From Miller’s essay Tragedy and the Common Man
“The tragic feeling is evoked in us when we are in the presence of a character, who is ready to lay down his life, if need be, to secure one thing – his sense of personal integrity.”
Miller suggests that we need to rethink the idea of “tragic flaw,” which he sees not necessarily as a weakness. He says the flaw, or crack in the character, is really nothing but the character’s inherent unwillingness to remain passive in the face of what he conceives to be a challenge to his dignity, his integrity, his honour and his image of his rightful status.
In this essay Miller sees the tragic vision as an optimistic and positive demonstration of “the indestructible will of man to achieve his humanity”
-
One more:
American playwright Maxwell Anderson called theater "a religious institution dedicated to the exaltation of the spirit of man"
and said, "The theme of tragedy has always been victory in defeat, a man's conquest of himself in the face of annihilation. . . . The message of tragedy is that men are better than they think they are. This message needs to be said over and over lest the race lose faith in itself entirely".
-
JoanK and Babi: I tend to agree with you on the tragic aspect of the Japanese theatre but most writers I've read agree with Muller's assessment that they are not tragedy in the sense we are speaking of here.
The Noh is regarded as essentially religious and often with military heroes depicting the salvation of the soul - which for any believer is far from being a tragic outcome.
The Kabuki concentrates in part on the exploits of historical warriors and there are some domestic dramas focussing on social matters - but again our appreciation of these is subjective.
-
Good point, ROSHANA. It would be just like those meddling 'gods' to disguise
themselves as bums to test their reception. I'm reminded of some of the 'old hag
into bountiful princess' fairy tales.
I like Miller's description of tragedy, GUM. It seems to me that says it all.
Thanks for finding and posting that little gem. A
From what little scraps I've seen of Noh, their tragedies do seem to focus on a character
who lays down his/her life in adhering to a duty or integrity. That does fit Miller's definition of
tragedy, and perhaps Anderson's as well.
-
Miller: The tragic feeling is evoked in us when we are in the presence of a character, who is ready to lay down his life, if need be, to secure one thing – his sense of personal integrity.”
I can see why the debate on whether "Death of a Salesman" is a tragedy. Willie Loman does commit suicide rather than accept the loss of what he sees as his personal integrity, but the tragedy lies in the fact that this definition of personal integrity is flawed. the tragedy is in the societal loss, not his personal loss.
-
Sally what a good point about the journeys west. I used to love Little House on the Prairie and the stories of the pioneers going West and having to leave their worldly goods along side the road when the going got rough.
Oh, my. Van Thuldens sailors have remarkable feminine backsides. I don't
think the Phaecian sailors would be at all pleased or amused. Mr. Flaxman's
version is much more appropriate.
hhaha Babi, I am sorry you don't like the illustrations and invite anybody to submit anything they can find on Eumaeus and Odysseus for 14. I look forward to seeing what you find, that stands for the entire discussion, too.
Babi and Joan K, I'm not familiar with the Noh tragic tradition I must bone up on it.
Oh JoanK, what an intresting point, but the tragedy lies in the fact that this definition of personal integrity is flawed. the tragedy is in the societal loss, not his personal loss.. Wow, would it have to BE his personal loss to qualify as a tragedy? This is quite interesting!!!
Gumtree, love that Maxwell Anderson quote and it sure suits O to a "T."
Thank you right back, Jude, I would never have chosen those books! What about Dreiser: An American Tragedy, do people feel that is not a tragedy? It's obvious that we're dealing with several definitions of tragedy here, and over a long time span. The Old Man and the Sea!
And what of....well I guess Ibsen is NOT American, and therefore he can't be counted. But Dreiser is, isn't he? Gosh no Steinbeck?
What an interesting quote, Gum, on Miller's definition. I'm ashamed to say I never read Death of a Salesman but I saw it on Broadway.
Roshanna Rose, good point on the dilapidated disguise. Yes we talked about Heroes, you're right, I guess I would like to say more. I am struck by the new ones coming out, it's a pretty au courant topic, actually.
For instance the new issue of Newsweek Magazine (May 23 and 30: Double Issue), has a full page on which Redux is best in terms of movies? (They chose Godfather II). The names of some of the nominees however sort of stood out, wonder why?
Spider Man 2
The Dark Knight
Iron Man 2
Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles 2
Lord of the Rings: Return of the King
The Empire Strikes Back
Aliens
Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull
Exorcist 2
Shreck 2
They left out the Pirates of the Caribbean (why CAN'T I spell that word!) with its Calypso and apparently in the newest version debuting tomorrow, mermaids! ( Sirens!) ~
Left out, possibly not sequels but certainly featuring super heroes are Thor, Governator, Hulk, the 4 people who turn into dirt and fire (I like them) and many many more.
Why now? I liked this point, Gum: Which of course, begs the question of whether we need such an example – what is the ‘higher existence’ and are we all seeking it? – is it our own personal ‘kleos’?
What a good question! Our 15 seconds of fame. Why? I sometimes thnk that's why authors write.
And it interests me that there seems to be a real effort by the creators of these super heroes to humanize them. To take Superman and give him human sensibilities, why? Does it show that we too can be supermen under the right circumstances? I just think it's a fascinating topic and there's always something that lays him low. And here Ulysses is laid low over and over and enters his own kingdom as a beggar. And this mkorning of course is running through my head the song "We don't need another hero..."
This is going to be interesting.
So tomorrow we embark on Book 14, Eumaeus the Loyal Swineherd.
Why does O conconct that LONG LONG story, LONG involved story for Eumaeus?
I can't figure out why Chapter or Book 14 is in the book. Any ideas?
-
Would think the dogs' behavior would have made Eumaeus wonder about who O was. O's story to Eumaeus about where from and who he is forshadows Eumaeus' story about his past.
-
OH what a good point about the foreshadowing thing, Sally, I didn't catch that!!
Why would the dogs barking at a stranger cause the swineherd to wonder if it were O?
Here we are at last, at home, we're in disguise but why can't O reveal who he is?
I just read that he DOES drop a hint, I didn't see it, do any of you?
And what's this about his wanting a blanket? What has that to do with O?
I can't understand why this little interlude is here? Why, in fact, this little chapter is here, it's such a switch!
Is it hospitality again? RoshanaRose made a point about the beggar disguise thing and how looking really more like a bum was likely to elicit hospitality.
I found this interesting question about that subject on the new Odyssey questions page I cited back there a while:
5. The ancient Greeks truly believed in caring for strangers. Traditional voices in our culture have attempted to continue that tradition by advising all to care for strangers in need and teaching that such assistance is particularly pleasing to God. The media is quick to praise good Samaritans, and civic groups still award medals to humanitarians. But what forces in our time threaten to extinguish this tradition of kindness to and care for strangers? What can we do to care for strangers in need?
I totally forgot about the good Samaritan! I seem to recall that the turning aside to help this person was actually somewhat dangerous. Naturally we'd all think we'd be a good Samaritan but the truly horrific stories of what happens if you let IN a person cancel that out. Perhaps in 2011 there is a difference in turning aside when a need is seen and in letting somebody into your home?
I'm sure we could all have come up with at least one cautionary true tale we've heard. Is it that our world has changed SO much?
I remember no end of tales after the Great Depression and the Dust Bowl and bums and hobos who would come to the door, but now we have also great need, what has changed?
In this peaceful setting there's a LOT of hog butchering and it seems to take place in about as little bit of time as unwrapping a carton of bacon. In reality I understand (I have not participated nor am I ever going to in hog butchering) it's an awful, awful thing and takes a long long LONG time, to do one much less the number here. Kill the fatted calf again.
But under this idyllic pastoral loyal scene of hospitality are deception and lies, for the purpose of revenge.
Why would O not tell Eumaeus who he is? Does O not trust Eumaeus? Eumaeus seems super loyal. Is this a test? Does Eumaeus pass? Why did O not go to his father, his own father who is pining for him, first?
IS this book actually a change of pace at all?
-
GINNY, I love the illustrations! It's just that some of them I find funny and have
to take a poke at them.
ON humanizing superheroes. one of the charms Nevil Shute holds for me is that he took everyday sorts of people and let them accomplish extraordinary things. Now that did give me a sense of something us ordinary folk could aspire to.
-
I had the same questions about this chapter as you, ginny.
Why the long complicated lie? I can see why he would want to test out Eumaius' loyalty but the involved story makes me think he just likes the joy of spinning a yarn--part of his devious nature?
And then, two pork meals in one day? Two piglets for lunch and a boar for supper?? Surely not.......
And then the business with the cloak. Why couldn't he just say I'm cold for heaven's sake? Another example of his devious ways I guess....there was the whole issue about not accepting any gift for what might be a lying story about Odysseus, but surely the loan of a cloak or cover is just hospitality--like being given the swineherd's goatskin to lie on when he arrives.....
-
Why would the dogs barking at a stranger cause the swineherd to wonder if it were O?
Pure speculation of course, but maybe it was the way the dog barked at him, not to mention doggie posture when the recognize someone they know as opposed to a stranger invading their territory.
-
I don't get it about the dogs--this is 20 years on, the dogs could not have known him, I know his own dog has survived, but that's pretty unusual. These dogs didn't know him at all, surely?
-
I think Homer never had his own dog.
My last two dogs lastest 16 years each and I was told by two different vets how amazing that was.
Had a friend with a 20 year old cat but not a dog.
Would a puppy even remember a twenty year old scent? Hmm.....
I wondered what Homer was doing in this chapter. From going over it carefully,I think what the purpose is, is to show how bad and greedy are the suitors. Therefore they will deserve their punishment when it comes.
That is the true foreshadowing of Chapt. fourteen.
-
Homer is EVERYWHERE! I was reading an article on Mathematics ("Mathematics and Folkways" by Martin Gardner), and it talked about the discussion of homer's use of color that we had earlier. Gardner refutes (as we agreed) the idea that the ancient greeks were less able to discriminate color than we are, saying that just because they might have one word for colors that we have different names for doesn't mean that they are less able to distinguish them.
I've been revisiting the question. It may mean that they had less societal need to distinguish them. With our elaborate fashion industry, I am always seeing new names for shades and tints of color. I'll bet artists have many more color names than are commonly used. These differences are needed for communication. (Matching colors). The greeks (certainly blind Homer) might have had fewer dyes and paints, so no need to identify many colors.
But would that mean that some greeks would lose their ability to distinguish colors from lack of use? I've read that babies initially babble with all kinds of different sounds. the ones that aren't used in the language they learn drop out, and in some cases, the ability to distinguish different sounds is lost. When I taught ESOL, there were many exercises in the book to teach the student to recognize differing sounds (eg: many Asians can't hear the difference between "L." and "R". I founed the exercises did little good. The student either could or couldn't hear the difference. I had the same trouble in Israel: I COULD NOT hear the difference between the two "t's" in Hebrew. (tav and tet). Every time I used tet, I was corrected, but I couldn't hear the difference from what I had said.
Could the same be true of colors. Could our ability to distinguish some colors die out through lack of use?
-
Interesting question, JoanK. It's been a long time since I've read anything on perception and the senses. I vaguely learning that we could actually distinguish a rather low number of colors (forget what it was) but now studies are saying in the millions.
-
regarding the question of the dog's behaviour--and the thought of recognition or not of Odysseus---is this book using the same concept of time as we are using today, ...remembering in the old testament of the ages of people being in the hundreds of years, I believe...!!!
would Homer use time unrelated to the calender we use????
just thought I'd throw this thought in....
Deb
-
One thing strikes me as very odd about this chapter. Although it's told in the same third person as the rest of the poem, in my translation (Lombardo) it also seems to be told by Odysseus. In 5 places (lines 63, 183, 388, 476, 547 in Lombardo) we have the line:
"And you answered him, Eumaeus, my swineherd:"
What's that about?
-
JoanKHomer is EVERYWHERE! I was reading an article on Mathematics ("Mathematics and Folkways" by Martin Gardner), and it talked about the discussion of homer's use of color that we had earlier.
Do you have a link for the above JoanK, or was it hard copy?
Joan I didn't realise that you had taught ESL/ESOL. I did too for 22 years. It was the best of jobs. I think, just by saying "tav" and "tet" to myself that tav is unvoiced and that tet is voiced. All very well to make this point, but quite difficult to achieve in a second language I grant you.
The colours thing fascinates me too. I look at the pix that I have of the frescoes at Knossos and Santorini and the colours are predominantly blue, brown (ochre) with some touches of red and white. The Greeks used murex (shellfish?) for purple as later did the Romans. By the time the Romans started to use murex, it was evidently becoming very scarce and expensive, thus only those of noble rank could wear it..
"Murex is a genus of medium to large sized predatory tropical sea snails. These are carnivorous marine gastropod molluscs in the family Muricidae, the murexes or rock snails. [1]
The common name "murex" is also used for a large number of species in the family Muricidae, most of which in the past were originally given the Latin generic name Murex, but most of which have now been grouped in other newer genera.
The word murex was used by Aristotle in reference to these kinds of snails, thus Murex is arguably one of the oldest classical shell names still in use by the scientific community"
I once put together a quiz on Greek colours (online quiz) asking for the (and if) the words for colours in Modern Greek were the same as in Ancient Greek. It was fun to put together but only Greeks got it right ;) Anyone who likes a challenge, I will send it to you. That's how I got interested in Greek colours in the first place.
-
Me, too, DANA. While I understand that O did not wish to reveal himself, I
could not understand why he felt he must provide this elaborate lie to the man
who was being so kind and gracious to him. He would not be the first to make his way home after shipwreck and loss. He could have spoken of that without a lie.
Part of it, I think, is that the tradition of hospitality to the stranger
includes the sharing of news...they had little other means of hearing it....and
entertaining one another with stories. The swineherd had told Odysseus the
story of his master and the behavior of Penelope’s suitors. So O' told him a
really good one in return....just not a true one.
Actually, on reading further on, I find O' did tell partial truth. After establishing a
false background, he went on to tell some of the real story.
Yes, indeed, the mandate of hospitality applies to bums as well. O is welcomed by the swineherd and good food and wine is put before him. The good swineherd does remark that the guest is a wanderer like his own master,..if he is living still. That may be one reason, But the overriding law is still, “All wanderers and beggars come from Zeus.”
It just occurred to me, that’s not so far off from the Christian mandate,
“Do not forget to entertain strangers, for by so doing some have entertained angels without knowing it.” (NIV, Heb. 13:2)
In my version, the dogs were definitely not being friendly. The swineherd had
to chase them away yelling and throwing stones. Perhaps bringing up the subjecct of Odysseus immediately was the swineherd's way of establishing who he was and where the stranger had come to in his travels.
-
Oh man, I was all over those fierce dogs, I just knew there was a clue there! Of course, you're right, these dogs of the swineherd would not have known O, super point, Dana, the dogs could not have known him. Good, now I can stop trying to find that one! hahaha
Of course we know O had a dog and it will soon recognize him, kind of a pitiful story there.
I did find what appears to be a credible source on: Longevity, ageing, and life history of Canis familiaris, from: http://genomics.senescence.info/species/entry.php?species=Canis_familiaris,
and they state: There is considerable variation in life history among the different dog breeds, including differences in longevity. In general, smaller breeds of dogs tend to live longer and may age slower [0423], though some have argued this might be due to artificial selection for high growth rates [0726]. Dogs are considered old after they are about 12 years old, though a few can live over 20 years [0434]. There are anecdotal reports of dogs living around 30 years, including one Australian cattle dog named "Bluey" living 29.5 years. These records are unverified and the maximum longevity of dogs is currently 24 years (J. Veronica Kiklevich, pers. comm.).
Who knew?! So apparently dogs can live somewhat longer than we may have personally thought.
Good thought, Deb, on the length of years in ancient Greece, it appears that they had a civil year of 12 months with 29 and 30 days alternately, each month beginning on the new moon. The year then contained only 354 days. They named the months and these appear very ancient. Hesiod (@700 BC) mentions a lunar calendar used by sailors and farmers. (Oxford Companion to Classical Literature) so it appears that their years would not be that far off.
The colors/ retained language/ memory thing is fascinating as well, Roshanna Rose, Joan K, and Frybabe, thank you all for this! On the tet tev, if a person were to lose the ability to tell either a color or a sound, can that then be remedied?
And then the business with the cloak. Why couldn't he just say I'm cold for heaven's sake? Another example of his devious ways I guess....there was the whole issue about not accepting any gift for what might be a lying story about Odysseus, but surely the loan of a cloak or cover is just hospitality--like being given the swineherd's goatskin to lie on when he arrives.....
Doggone if I know, it may well be his devious ways, what's significant about a cloak and what does that website mean about his "hinting?" I'm going to have to reread book 14, I saw NO hints by O about who he might be. Anywhere!
-
Good morning, all,
Sorry to have have been somewhat AWOL, but it's been a hectic few weeks. I've been going back and forth from my daughter's house, near Boston, to help with my new granddaughter Erin, born on April 27th. She's an adorable tiny girl, almost sleeping through the night.
She's our grandchild #6, but each and every child is a blessing!
Back to our subject,
RoshannaRose ~ please do send or put up here your colors (colours?) of the Greeks, as I'm most interested. I'm reading a terrific book that covers a similar subject, called The Last Speakers by K D Harrison (2010), about languages and cultures which have almost died out.
Haven't many of us heard or repeated the story that the Eskimos have dozens of words for snow or for the color white? It's a myth, it's an example of bad science. He refers to The Language Instinct by Steven Pinker, who found that Eskimos have no more words for snow than English does.
That's why I'm curious about the Greek words; for example, wine-dark sea shows up in novels over and over. What other words does Greek have for the color of the sea? Would you like to post some examples?
I'm reading along and hope to find something to say about O soon ...
-
The Book Club Online is the oldest book club on the Internet, begun in 1996, open to everyone. We offer cordial discussions of one book a month, 24/7 and enjoy the company of readers from all over the world. Everyone is welcome to join in.
Now reading:
(http://www.seniorlearn.org/bookclubs/classicsbookclub/cbc2odysseysm.jpg)
May 20-----Book XIV: Eumaeus the Loyal Swineherd
(http://seniorlearn.org/latin/ulysses_penelope/UlyssesEumaeus2May18.jpg)
Odysseus and Eumaios
17th century etching
Theodor van Thulden (1606 - 1669)
Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco
Discussion Leaders: Joan K (joankraft13@yahoo.com) & ginny (gvinesc@wildblue.net )
Useful Links:
1. Critical Analysis: Free SparkNotes background and analysis on the Odyssey (http://www.sparknotes.com/lit/odyssey)
2. Translations Used in This Discussion So Far: (http://www.seniorlearn.org/bookclubs/odyssey/odyssey_translations.html)
3. Initial Points to Watch For: submitted by JudeS (http://www.seniorlearn.org/bookclubs/odyssey/odyssey_points.html)
4. Maps:
Map of the Voyages of Odysseus (http://www.seniorlearn.org/latin/ulysses_penelope/Odysseusmap.jpg)
Map of Voyages in order (http://www.wesleyan.edu/~mkatz/Images/Voyages.jpg)
Map of Stops Numbered (http://www.seniorlearn.org/latin/ulysses_penelope/Odysseusmap2.jpg)
Our Map Showing Place Names in the Odyssey (http://www.seniorlearn.org/latin/graphics/AncientGreecemap.jpg)
(http://seniorlearn.org/latin/ulysses_penelope/UlyssesEumaeusMay18.jpg)
Odysseus conversing with Eumaios
Engraving and etching on paper
John Flaxman
1805
Tate Gallery
-
PatH, good catch: "And you answered him, Eumaeus, my swineherd:"
What's that about?
Again that one brought me up short, who is the speaker? And you cite it again in In 5 places (lines 63, 183, 388, 476, 547 in Lombardo)
I don't know, I just reread Fagles again, around 547, he doesn't say "my," and it doesn't appear that the third person narration has changed, quotation marks are used. What do the other translators say?
I also don't see anything in what O says here, either hinting who he is or the significance of the cloak (referring to the earlier questions: what hint?) He says I told O that I would freeze and he had a plan but it was Thoas who took off his cloak to go fight, what has that to do with anything?...
Who is the narrator of 14? If we can't find the answer online maybe we could write Dr. Lombardo, tho I hate to because they make a point in the intro and the translator's notes about the impossibility of direct handling of the ancient idiom (they put it a lot better).
Jude, this is a great point: I wondered what Homer was doing in this chapter. From going over it carefully,I think what the purpose is, is to show how bad and greedy are the suitors. Therefore they will deserve their punishment when it comes.
That is the true foreshadowing of Chapt. fourteen.
I think you are right, and as sub themes they mention Agamemnon again too for contrast and we also have the suitors eating way too much pork (!) and despoiling things and loyalty in the form of the most humble, who even can't go in the house or shack at night but must stand guard on his master's herds, (warmed O's heart).
Eumaeus is not looking for O, he presumes him dead, even when somebody purports to tell him, he says no. I don't believe it. The present condition and appearance of O is not how Eumaeus expected him. Of course things in the palace are not as O expected either.
Now Athene has gone to get Telemachus so they can plot a revenge, that's interesting, why can't she just send for him? Mercury?
Babi: Actually, on reading further on, I find O' did tell partial truth. After establishing a
false background, he went on to tell some of the real story. Do you see him hinting anywhere who O really IS? I just don't see it.
It's absolutely amazing as Joan K says how Homer is all around us. And I am loving the segues, because they often are the most memorable thing and they also help (I've just learned this last bit this morning) to cement the original idea in place.
I had one myself this morning, in reading a book called Understanding Roman Inscriptions (which is absolutely fabulous and nothing like it sounds, strongly recommended.) They had an illustration of the Arch of the Sergii in Pula, which I had never heard of and in looking up the Stuart gouache (Gum, what is a gouache? I have read the description on two sites but it makes no sense?)_
I always kind of thought it was a Mapp and Lucia affectation, apparently not.
Anyway in finding some fabulous photos of said arch and the James Stuart A View of the Arch of the Sergii at the V&A in London, but unable to find a print of same, (so bad because it shows the artist himself on TOP of the arch in his enthusiasm!), I was stunned to see this pop up on the search the V&A shop pages: http://www.vandaprints.com/image/14446/ulysses-deriding-polyphemus-after-j-m-w-turner
Isn't that a beauty? So even when one's mind is eons away from the Odyssey, there it IS again! It's everywhere, it's everywhere!
Now do we agree O is biding his time? What's he doing here? He's waiting for T to return so they can plan a revenge? (I hope these O's and T's don't bother you all, but my typing is absolutely awful and it's so much easier!)
Here's a bit on the concept of Revenge: http://www.sblair.com/odyssey/discussion.htm
6. Revenge as a means of obtaining justice was more acceptable in Homer’s society than in our modern society, which has a formidable criminal justice system. Even so, Homer’s idea of revenge bears qualification. Define the nature of revenge in the Odyssey that suggests under what conditions it is an acceptable means of justice.
Revenge is a....would we say non PC thing today? Outdated? Uninformed? Or does this idea only pertain to certain religions? Apparent not the ancient Greeks as Athene is helping? And certainly Poseidon and Zeus both have done their share. This appears to be another major theme now emerging in a sea of themes!
Careful careful planning.
I just thought of this one: does O actually learn anything from Eumaeus that he did not know? What, if so? Off to see what I can find on the narrator of 14.
-
OK so far and I'm not through but there's enough out there to choke a horse, the narrator of book 14 appears to be Homer himself:
I've found this:
* . . . you then answered him and said: Here the narrator makes an unexpected shift and addresses one of the characters in person ("you"), suggesting a certain closeness between the narrator and the character. While this is not common in Homer, it does occur several times (e.g., with Menelaus in the Iliad).
http://www.mlahanas.de/Greeks/Texts/Odyssey/Odyssey14.html
And from: English 240: Ancient Literature
Study Questions on Homer's Odyssey
http://www.ajdrake.com/e240_fall_03/materials/authors/homer_sq.htm
2. How would you characterize the narrator, the fictive "Homer" whose voice we imagine as singing the verses of the Odyssey?
So the only books O is supposedly narrating are 9-12, and the "you" and "my" are apparently the voice of the creator, Homer.
The "my" appears to be a Lombardo addition which I quite like now, as it clearly shows the possession of the author or creator narrator.
I must say that is what I thought originally, does that fit with what you all thought or not? It IS startling. It starts and ends in the 3rd person. Still looking.
That last bunch of questions are good, too!
I do like this one:
Book 14
44. What is the function of Eumaeus the swineherd? How does he treat Odysseus, and how does Odysseus treat him? How much of the truth does Odysseus tell him?
-
Mippy! THERE you are, I was just wondering where you were, and bingo! Welcome back!
Tell us about this book, The Last Speakers by K D Harrison (2010), about languages and cultures which have almost died out, I don't know it!
-
The notes to the translation I have say that the narrator addressing the swineherd (fifteen times apparently in books 14 thru 17) is "one of the most curious features of The Odyssey". Apparently in The Iliad this convention of addressing a character is used with 5 characters from 8 to 1 times each. It says that it may be that the convention of doing this may have become outdated by the time The Odyssey was completed and may have survived in the one case of the swineherd. "It may be a vestige of a primitive ballad singer's phrase". The protocol of ballads to this day, he says, requires the narrator to apostrophise one or more figures.
-
Wowza! Is that Fitzgerald? It's wonderful! Thank you!
-
He goes on to say, "Stanford" (whoever he is) "rightly rejects the idea that this apostrophe is a mark of the poet's special affection for Eumaeus." And it is "highly uncharacteristic of Homer's very impersonal style."
-
Yes, this is notes to Fitzgerald by Ralph Hexter.
-
ooo, thank you, I was just about to ask you which apostrophe he was referencing as I don't have one when I looked HIM up and I see his
Guide to The Odyssey
by Ralph Hexter
This book is available on your iPhone, iPad, or iPod touch with iBooks.
Description
For those of us who know and love the incomparable Odyssey of Homer (and there are many), Dr. Hexter has created a valuable, detailed analysis, taking into account many of Homer's most fascinating subtleties.
Available for the I phone!!! Now who can resist that one? Off to see what this valuable, detailed analysis says! Thank you!
-
OK I see it now! Apostrophes, who knew?!
O my swineherd!
The "my" is definitely there! Dana's quotation is correct. He says the Odyssey only uses it with the one character but the Iliad uses it in connection with 5: Patroklos: 8 times, Menelaos 7 times, Phoibos, two times; Melanippos and and Akhilleus (1 each, data from Stanford 2.218 on XIV 55) so there's Stanford, then he says "the relative frequency of these apostrophes...") and what Dana quoted.
And the definition is: Apostrophes: An exclamatory passage in a speech or poem addressed to a person (typically one who is dead or absent) or thing (typically one that is personified).
Who knew?
And then he concludes "A translator of The Odyssey into English might well be justified in removing this last vestige of the convention."
And obviously some of them have. Isn't that interesting? I don't really remember any of them in the Iliad, do any of you? But something about the Patroclus mention rings a long dead bell which may have to ring hahaha
Dr. Hexter is quite an interesting man with an impressive vita. I like the way he writes.
I've learned something new today. :) Thank you Dana!
-
ROSE: The article I read was in hard copy, in a collection of Martin gardner's essays called "The Night is Large".
I taught ESOL as a volunteer for a few years after I retired. There is an organization in the States called the Literacy Council that teaches both ESOL and literacy for adults who have managed to go through the school system without learning to read. They use volunteer teachers. Only limited instruction is given, but the materials are quite structured and easy to follow. The teaching is one-on-one -- I had the same student for two years, and at the end of that time she was able to reach her goal, which was to get a job where she had to talk, read, and write only in English.
I found the experience quite rewarding -- if any of you aare looking for volunteer work, I recommend it.
-
I, too, was puzzled by the shift in voice, as if suddenly O was talking. I found it touching, but surprising.
I loved the detail of the swineherd working on his shoes. Irrelevant to anything, but it made him seem very real, somehow.
Were you-all surprised that he was a slave? I THINK this is the first mention of the fact that many of the people who served our heroes were slaves.
-
JoanK - It is generally believed that the Greek philosophers and others of their ilk could never have achieved the fame they did without slave labour. After the Romans occupied Greece they took the smartest Greeks back as tutors for their children.
Mippy - I would love to post some questions about Greek colours here, but it is only polite to ask permission from Ginny. A refusal will not offend and I can send the questions by email to Mippy (or anyone else) who is interested.
Lost Languages - a fascinating though sad topic. Tocharian is the one that interests me. Actually Ancient Greek is not "dead" as such as it continues in Modern Greek.
btw the word colour is how we spell it here and also in the UK. Also flavour, favourite etc. Originally these spellings came into English with French kings, queens and courtiers and later the Normans. There are lots more. Also we double our consonants e.g. traveller, leveller, etc. One way of spelling is not "superior" to the other. It is all about usage.
-
When I spoke of foreshadowing I was refering to the fact that when O describes his background he is actually telling the story of Eumaeus being the son of a king who was stolen by a maid and brought to Ithaca and sold.
-
Oh my! a discussion on Homer's Odyssey leads to talk about Bluey, the legendary 29-1/2 year old Australian Cattle Dog - it just shows how all pervading this story is. :D
I should say that half the Aust. Cattle Dogs are called Bluey - mainly because their coats are bluish in colour but just as often they are called Bluey if their coats are reddish. They are a great working dog and were bred from tamed dingoes crossed with the Northumberland Drovers' Dog and are a recognised Breed.
They are generally called Blue Heelers or Red Heelers and on average live for about 14 to 16 years - no wonder that the long lived Bluey is so legendary.
Gum, what is a gouache? I have read the description on two sites but it makes no sense?)_
Ginny: Fundamentally Gouache is simply a heavy, opaque water colour paint. It's usually used on watercolour paper and sometimes on mountboard - they are generally brilliant in colour. Because Gouache is opaque it is often shunned by watercolour purists who prefer the effects of transparent washes. Though gouache can be reworked the medium can be difficult for beginners to use - if the washes are too thin the result can be powdery and if too thick the paint may crack on top as the gum arabic binder is absorbed by the underpainting. I've never used water based paints much but if I did get serious about them I would be tempted to use gouache as I far prefer the results it gives over transparent watercolours and the acrylic based paints.
-
Off topic:
Roshanarose ~ Thanks for your comment. Perhaps you could post just one or two examples here, if you have time.
Ginny ~ re: your question about the book by the linguist
Dr. K D Harrison: The Last Speakers (2010, National Geographic Society): He studies in the field some of the remote tribes in Asia and in South America, whose languages and cultures are about to die out, as the children only speak the broader language, such as Russian in the first example. I've just read the first 85 pages or so, and hesitate to suggest this book yet, as it is a bit uneven.
This has very little to do with our topic, here, except the naming of colors having some interest.
-
RoshannaRose, oh yes, by all means, bring the colors ON~!~ Thank you!
Thank you Mippy, that sounds an interesting book, wasn't there something quite recently on that same subject, a tribe somewhere whose language died out as a result of being discovered by modern civilization? I'm foggy on it but it sounded like a modern morality tale.
Thank you, Gum, for gouache. (Pronounced goo ahsh? I hope?) I must now go see one in person so I can compare it to the water color, so many things have been labeled gouache that I admit to sort of saying oh that's nice and skimming right over.
Art is such a subjective field, or so I think. There was recently a big hoo hah somewhere on an artist I never heard of who was supposedly superior to Vermeer and they had some of his works. You can't tell anything in a magazine, perhaps? I know when I stood in the Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam and looked at that Vermeer with the woman and the pitcher I swear it glowed, it was the most incredible moment.
Sally, When I spoke of foreshadowing I was referring to the fact that when O describes his background he is actually telling the story of Eumaeus being the son of a king who was stolen by a maid and brought to Ithaca and sold.
Wow. And this Hexter book says neither of them, Eumaeus or O is what they seem to be? I need to go back and see if I can find out why, in the case of Eumaeus? Does anybody know? Such a good pointing out of parallels!
This is the type of thing I personally just LOVE. You all are so much more intuitive as readers and catch things I totally miss. Then we've got these commentators, like Hexter, who pick up on things I would never have seen. I totally admire ANYBODY in ANY field who has shown such passion and devotion that they took the time to KNOW things that none of the rest of us do and then to share it, because it adds so much to our understanding. To me that's the truest education you can have, to enlarge your own parameters by this exposure, and what a joy it is to have such wonderful careful readers here with such experience in so many fields (am still telling everybody I know about knots hahhaa...and was quite disappointed my husband already knew about the log thing!) hahahaa so we can get so much more out of it together than apart.
I missed, for instance, Sally's parallel there entirely on my own. It has something to do with the way I read I guess.. Super point.
Gum, I just read that often in inscriptions the Romans would paint the carved letters with cinnabar! It was called "minium" and can survive in crevices of the lettering! I well remember our discussion on cinnabar a while back. Understanding Roman Inscriptions says "According to the Elder Pliny, ' minium is used in books and it makes lettering more visible, both i walls and on marble, and on tomb monuments as well.'" It also says that "sculptured details on the stone were also sometimes painted, an a variety of colours. Today we are accustomed to seeing inscribed stones looking rather plain and grey."
So there's color again too.
Joan K, I didn't even catch that Eumaeus WAS a slave! So O, in establishing his rightful kingdom here is himself as a beggar and with the help of a slave and a boy to take on the mighty suitors.
One thing I missed is that O called Eumaeus, "Eumaeus," thus in danger of giving himself away, reminds you of an old Andy Griffith show where a stranger to town knew everybody's name, but apparently this was not a slip but O could have heard others refer to him. A close call apparently, tho.
Apparently in the great "tale of the cloak," O accomplishes (according to Hexter) what his previous hints have not, that ODYSSEUS needs a cloak! Homer's audience would then enjoy the secret that O himself IS here. Sort of letting the audience in on the joke while E remains blissfully ignorant. This irony continues throughout the book.
Sort of like screaming at the screen on a TV soap, no no, don't let him GO!
Kind of a neat subtle touch by Homer.
Also a play on words with Thoas who runs off, his name means, the root of his name is thoos "swift," from theo "to run." (Greek infinitive theein).
Apparently also if you know ancient Greek Homer does a lot of puns here, especially in around 144-152 with the word "roamed," aletheh and rover alalemenos, and then to andres aletai, and "then produces the root of his pun: 'truth" 152; alethea. So when this is written all out in Greek, it's quite a sight, all those words, and Hexter says, "Homer's wordplay reveals a truth over Eumaios' head: Odysseus is hidden within this wanderer, as 'truth' is in the word 'wanderer.'" And Eumaeus, unwittingly, picks it up further.
So Homer here to his audiences who did understand ancient Greek is really hammering on the audience's delight and tension to hear O's name!
I'm getting kind of excited, too, to find out what happens and how. Want to go on to 15 or do we want to remain here for a bit?
You to say!
-
van Thulden's etching is beautiful. The background appears to be an image from the story Odysseus is telling.
In all fairness, after telling the lies about who he was and where he came from, Odysseus told his story truthfully, I believe, from his viewpoint. He was surely describing himself when he said,
“My strength’s all gone, but from the husk you may divine the ear that stood tall in the old days. Misery owns me now, but then great Ares and Athena gave me valor and man-breaking power, whenever I made choice of men-at-arms to set a trap with me for my enemies. Never, as I am a man, did I fear Death ahead, but went in foremost in the charges....”
-
Mippy's reference to The Last Speakers made me think of the Australia tribal languages which have already been lost and others which are in danger -
In 1788, there were about 250 separate Aboriginal languages spoken in Australia, plus dialects. Today, only two thirds of these languages survive and only 20 of them (eight per cent of the original 250) are still strong enough to have chance of surviving well into the next century.
remedial steps are being taken to preserve what is left but unfortunately as the younger indigenous generations become more mainstream they tend to lose their tribal languages.
Ginny: Vermeer and the 'glowing' - well, it is Vermeer you know.
As for the minium - I think Romans used the term for all red paints including cinnabar/vermilion and mixes - minium is actually 'red lead' highly toxic. It was used by the ancients and later on the illuminated manuscripts - and as you well know from minium we get miniature et al. :D
Gouache is pronounced 'gwash' - g as in gun - wash as in squash. It was used as the medium in much of the Indian and Islamic art miniatures but actually its use dates from ancient Greece ... so there we are back into Homer's territory.
-
Minim is what the Roman generals celebrating a triumph used to paint on their faces, isn't it, and it was red....
-
Dana - a nice lead in for my first Greek Colour question. Of course, anyone may answer. Thanks Ginny and Mippy.
The Modern Greek word and the Ancient Greek word for red/scarlet are the same.
What is the word out of these six?
rubiros
rufus
rouge
russo
kokkino
This question is really "a process of elimination question".
-
Dana: I believe so, though not all generals painted their faces - they painted the faces of the Gods with it as well - It would be interesting to know whether those who did paint themselves suffered afterwards from the effects of lead poisoning as minium is rapidly absorbed through the skin and if ingested has severe effects upon the liver.
-
Red red red!!! We're seeing red this morning. hahaha
Greek for red?
RR, with my luck the red answer would be the only one not spelled like the others: kokkino
I wonder if that's where they got Kokomo :) Looks like coquina, a strange little sea shell creature found on the East coast. What's the answer? I really have no idea.
I'd really love an authoritative source for the generals face painting thing, Dana. I keep hearing this but I am short of a reference to read more on it, do you have one?
Gum, It appears they called any vermillion minium:
Cassell's says minium is an Iberian word and means (1) native cinnabar.
and (2) a red lead (Vergil, Suetonius).
So there are apparently two applications, including calling everything red minium.
Lewis and Short says:
minium, apoc form of min. Vergil, Quintilian. Spanish; native cinnabar.
II. Red lead, minium: Pliny, Vergil, Suetonius, Vitruvius.
minius, a, um: of cinnabar or minium, cinnabar-red, vermilion (Appuleian).
So some of the usages must have been generic.
I also did some reading up on it, and you are right and it appears Agatha Christie missed a great poison to use, it appears to be as toxic as you get, due to the mercury?? (is that right?) in it? I am no chemist. It must be special raw properties or something.
Am I the only one who remembers playing with the mercury in a thermometer? I wonder why I'm not dead. Must be a different form, but even then they talked about how dangerous it was. And what was it that people would lick the brushes for fine work, was it during WWII? Painting something small? Watches? And then were poisoned?
Was it the same thing?
At any rate at Pompeii today the audio tapes talk about rare cinnabar, so they must have figured out how to use the real cinnabar in some way, even tho apparently it blackens upon exposure to air. Or maybe they are wrong!
But back to the subject at hand: Babi, I agree on Van Tulden and also that some of his stuff is strange. How clever of you to notice the background depicted, it must BE the story O has woven, I never even saw it. These engravings all appear to be from a book, and the text follows below, if one can translate it, one knows what the picture depicts. Wouldn't it be a hoot to try to read it?
I would kill to have a facsimile of this book and if I'm ever in San Francisco again I'd love to see it. Let me see if I can blow up an image here and we can try to make the writing under the etchings out: I think it's in French but am not sure: it's really hard to see. I actually in looking at that one can't figure out which person is O and which one is Eumaeus. I take it in the picture of the story being depicted as background that the giant personage is Athene?
Let's see now that you've opened this Pandora's box if we can figure out what it is!
hahah Gum, well golly and GWASH! hahahaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa Will not forget THAT one soon. Thank you!
Babi!! Good one on answering the question about when does O tell the truth: you appear to have NAILED it!
My strength’s all gone, but from the husk you may divine the ear that stood tall in the old days. Misery owns me now, but then great Ares and Athena gave me valor and man-breaking power, whenever I made choice of men-at-arms to set a trap with me for my enemies. Never, as I am a man, did I fear Death ahead, but went in foremost in the charges....”
Good one!
So this little chapter is so deceptive, itself, isn't it? Seems on the outside to be so simple but layered over with word play and levels of story telling and meaning, it's pretty darn amazing!
What else have you all noticed here or would like to comment on? Or shall we move on to 15 if you are ready?
Let's move on, for Wednesday, 15? I am absolutely stunned in reading back over what we've done with 14 what we've covered!!!
-
Drat. No it isn't telling us at all what the scene behind is, it, instead, is apparently talking about O and his swineherd Eumaeus and pointing out a famous maxim which I never heard of, something wbout he who is Great? Or would be great and something about the loyalty of his domestiques hahahaa Pas devant les domestiques. But I'm not sure I can make out the words, can any of you?
(http://seniorlearn.org/latin/ulysses_penelope/Thuldentext.jpg)
-
Oh for heaven's sake! I will shut up about this, but it's fascinating. Look:
Book Description
Paris: Melchior Tavernier, 1634
. First Edition in Latin (first published with French text the previous year). This series of etchings by Flemish painter and engraver, Theodor Van Thulden, a former pupil and assistant of Rubens, documents the large fresco scenes from the Odyssey which Francesco Primaticcio and Niccolò dell'Abbate executed between 1541 and 1547 in the Château de Fontainebleau. The murals were destroyed in 1739, when some structural alterations were made in the palace. oblong folio. [ff. 5]. 58 etched plates. woodcut title vignette & 2 woodcut initials. modern wrs. (title creased, stained & backed & with 2 small inconsequential holes, text leaves browned & soiled - 2 with dampstain in upper margin, upper outer corner of dedication leaf renewed, last plate trimmed & mounted, scattered light spotting & marginal soiling, outer edge of plate 24 trimmed to just inside plate mark)
Title:
Errores Ulyssis, Adumbrati A S. Martino, ut in Regio Fontis-bellaquae spectantur. A Nicolao Depicti; et in aes incisi a Theodoro Van-Tulden, Una cum argumento, & interpretatione morali cuiuslibet Fabulae
by THULDEN, Theodor Van [1606-1669]
Price: $1,665.00
$8.00 standard shipping to USA
My goodness. So the first version was in French, this ad is for the Latin version. The originals were in Château de Fontainebleau, as frescoes, he did this on his own, copying them, as etchings. The originals were destroyed (!), this is all that's left, and you, too, can own the Latin version of the Wanderings (not Errors hahha) of Ulysses for only $1,665.00.
-
The one quote for the minium painting of Roman generals' faces at their triumphs is from Pliny the elder, Natural History, 36.7, quoting one Verrius Flaccus
I don't believe painting their faces for a couple of hours would have harmed them. Its inhaling the vapour from the mercury for hours, day after day that did it--hatters--(remember the mad hatter).
-
Thank you for that reference. I finally, after reading about no end of doves and old birds, some 30 and 40 years old, which I thought that fit in here nicely hahahaa (volume X, books 36, 37)but finally I found this:
XXXVI. Minium or cinnabar also is found in silver mines; it is of great importance among pigments at the present day, and also in old times it not only had the highest importance but even sacred associations among the Romans. Verrius gives a list of writers of unquestionable authority who say that on holidays it was the custom for the face of the statue of Jupiter himself to be coloured with cinnabar. as well as the bodies of persons going in a triumphal procession, and that Camillus was so coloured in his triumph, and that under the same ritual it was usual even in their day for cinnabar to be added to the unguents used at a banquet in honour of a triumph, and that one of the first duties of the Censors was to place a contract for painting Jupiter with cinnabar. For my own part I am quite at a loss to explain the origin of this custom, although at the present day the pigment in question is known to be in demand among the nations of Ethiopia whose chiefs colour themselves all over with it, and with whom the statues of the gods are of that colour. On that account we will investigate all the facts concerning it more carefully.
This is interesting. Of course, a lot of the 4th c BC legends attributed to of Camillus are apocryphal. And, again, not all of Pliny's observations or conclusions in his Natural History are correct, either: to quote: "In spite of many errors and much carelessness, credulity, superficiality, unscientific arrangement and the tedium of dry catalogues, the work is remarkable for the vast labour and the boundless curiosity of the author that it represents; it contains much that is interesting and entertaining, and much unique information about the art, science, and civilization of the author's day." (OCCL)
I've read that his chapter on amber, and the history of painting and sculpture in books 35 and 36 are especially interesting. Unfortunately, like many of his day, he had no use for the Greeks.
You know what? We may want to put him on our possible list of reads for the future because I am reading about some of the fantastic things he talks about and it would make exciting reading and discussion? (Some of it is X rated but we can skip that.) A literary Cabinet of Curiosities, in truth. I love the directions this discussion is taking us!
In Edit II: Apparently the movie Rome for HBO had a red painted triumphator? I haven't seen it but it's spawned a lot of websites with that information. Mary Beard's book The Roman Triumph apparently ...well I'm not sure what they conclude here.... but the issue is apparently talked about somehow in comparison to Mantegna's Triumph of Caesar. Man what a coincidence: I just saw that last year. You need good eyes to see those paintings, I don't recall any red face but (Edit III) having just read Mary Beard's book section on it (which I wish I had had when I saw the paintings ) she says that "what we now see and admire is in almost no part the original fifteenth-century brushstrokes of Mangegna. Instead, it is the historical product of centuries of painting and painting." Here's the article: http://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/books/reviews/the-roman-triumph-by-mary-beard-765125.html
I love these seques, it's hard to get back to the topic hahaha. I just read 15, it's a stunner, do we want to go ahead for Wednesday?
-
Duh. I thought to myself, the cover on that Mary Beard's The Roman Triumph on Amazon looks familiar. It should, it's staring me in the face on the shelf here. I'll let you know what she says for better or worse.
-
oh yes I saw that quoted when I was looking for the reference, wondered if it would be worth reading? (It was amazing--a big chuck of what she said about painting came right up in front of me ! I can't really get over this ease of tracking stuff down.......)
-
Like Mippy I have been AWOL--lots going on here including a trip with my outdoor women's group. Nine of us headed to far northern Wisconsin and spent four days hiking to waterfalls. Fantastic trip. Took Odyssey with me and was surprised most had not read it.
So interesting reading all the posts to catch up. Now on to catch up reading 14 and 15. I will be lurking.
-
I'm ready to move on, if you all are.
What a shame we can't get the sense of Homer's wordplay. Of course that is one thing that is almost impossible to translate.
-
Eumaeus story is told in the next chapter which I thought we were reading for today. It's quite a story! In Fagles version lines 461 -540.
Meanwhile I had seconfd thoughts on many things ,especially on the age of the dog. I realized that this book is partially Science -Fiction or Historic Fiction. If we can have a Cyclops why shouldn't we have a 20 (or 30) year old dog with superior powers?
I thiink that sometimes I get confused trying to sort out fact from fiction. Have decided that is a waste of time. Just sit bck and go with the flow.
-
I think my question got lost. Posted for Mippy - where is she?
Ginny - Yes. You are right - good going :) Kokkino it is. I kind of thought it was related to cochineal a type of beetle whose wings are crushed to make red dye. Evidently the word derived from a kermesberry, used to dye cloth scarlet. I think the Latin is ruber.
A quick search has revealed that I was right about the insect. This is such a rare event, ie that I am right, I thought I would show you what I read:
seeds, of a brown or purple color, a"Coccus cacti
Cochineal Coch"i*neal (k[o^]ch"[i^]*n[=e]l; 277), [Sp. cochinilla, dim. from L. coccineus, coccinus, scarlet, fr. coccum the kermes berry, G. ko`kkos berry, especially the kermes insect, used to dye scarlet, as the cochineal was formerly supposed to be the grain or seed of a plant, and this word was formerly defined to be the grain of the {Quercus coccifera}; but cf. also Sp. cochinilla wood louse, dim. of cochina sow, akin to F. cochon pig.] A dyestuff consisting of the dried bodies of females of the {Coccus cacti}, an insect native in Mexico, Central America, etc., and found on several species of cactus, esp. {Opuntia cochinellifera}. [1913 Webster]
Note: These insects are gathered from the plant, killed by the application of heat, and exposed to the sun to dry. When dried they resemble small, rough berries or nd form the cochineal of the shops, which is used for making carmine, and also as a red dye. [1913 Webster]
-
Licking brushes for fine work -- as I remember it was for watches with hands that glowed in the dark - probably military watches.
-
Roshanarose ~ Not lost, but I'm staying at my daughter's house, helping with her new baby, and cannot get to a computer as often as when I'm home.
Ginny had guessed the color quiz by the time I'd seen it. Thanks.
-
Sandy!! I wondered where you were!
Nine of us headed to far northern Wisconsin and spent four days hiking to waterfalls. Fantastic trip. Took Odyssey with me and was surprised most had not read it.
My goodness you get the prize!! Taking the Odyssey along on your own Odyssey! I've never BEEN to northern Wisconsin, was it just gorgeous? What a trip! I won't ask if you recited parts of it over a campfire, but it's such a thought! Invite them IN here and they can enjoy it with us! Do not lurk, say what you're thinking so we can all benefit.
Mippy, 6 grandchildren and aren't you lucky to get to help!! Nothing like a new baby in the world. Mippy and RoshanaRose: a nice lead in for my first Greek Colour question. Of course, anyone may answer.
Whoops, sorry, hahaha, Let's have another, that was quite interesting, and we can leave that one for Mippy.
Interesting on the Cochinea tie in, thank you so much.
Sally I think you're right, what was the substance, do you recall?
Jude, I like the old dog thing, but I also like your approach to the book as we've gone along, too. and oh good Joan K and Jude, so you're ready to move on, these are quite the chapters and they look so simple.
Dana, yes, it's really excellent. I like it even better than her Pompeii book, but she seems to be taking the 5th on the red face while at the same time lumping it in with things we conventionally think which are not so. She says of those: I'll address only two. Shame. I really like her approach to things, she does address the problems but she doesn't jump, as so many do, on the bandwagon of conclusions but wants to examine things based on the evidence, such as we have. It's a GOOD book, all 300 plus pages of it. I'll wait a bit before telling her thoughts on Pliny and another of his statements.
Nobody lurk, it's just getting good! Jump right in with any thoughts so far and we can tackle 15 tomorrow.
Speaking of grandbabies, I only have one and am sooo lucky to get to keep him some during the week. Today's one of our days and it's 7:00 and am already late for pick up, so will see you all later. I love coming in to read what struck each person as they read. I don't think we're missing much. Is there anything which puzzles you so far that we haven't talked about? Together I'm sure we can solve it!
-
In 1902, inventor William J. Hammer left Paris with a curious souvenir. The famous scientists Pierre and Marie Curie had provided him with some samples of their radium salt crystals. Radioactivity was somewhat new to science, so its properties and dangers were not well understood; but the radium’s slight blue-green glow and natural warmth indicated that it was clearly a fascinating material. Hammer went on to combine his radium salt with glue and a compound called zinc sulfide which glowed in the presence of radiation. The result was glow-in-the-dark paint.
Hammer’s recipe was used by the US Radium Corporation during the First World War to produce Undark, a high-tech paint which allowed America’s infantrymen to read their wristwatches and instrument panels at night. They also marketed the pigment for non-military products such as house numbers, pistol sights, light switch plates, and glowing eyes for toy dolls. By this time the dangers of radium were better understood, but US Radium assured the public that their paint used the radioactive element in “such minute quantities that it is absolutely harmless.” While this was true of the products themselves, the amount of radium present in the dial-painting factory was much more dangerous, unbeknownst to the workers there.
US Radium employed hundreds of women at their factory in Orange, New Jersey. Few companies at that time were willing to employ women, and the pay was much higher than most alternatives, so the company had little trouble finding employees to occupy the rows and rows of desks. They were required to paint delicate lines with fine-tipped brushes, applying the Undark to the tiny numbers and indicator hands of wristwatches. After a few strokes a brush tended to lose its shape, so the women’s managers encouraged them to use their lips and tongues to keep the tips of the camel hair brushes sharp and clean. The glowing paint was completely flavorless, and the supervisors assured them that rosy cheeks would be the only physical side effect to swallowing the radium-laced pigment. Cause for concern was further reduced by the fact that radium was being marketed as a medical elixir for treating all manner of ailments.
A US Radium dial painting factoryThe owners and scientists at US Radium, familiar with the real hazards of radioactivity, naturally took extensive precautions to protect themselves. They knew that Undark’s key ingredient was approximately one million times more active than uranium, so company chemists often used lead screens, masks, and tongs when working with the paint. US Radium had even distributed literature to the medical community describing the “injurious effects” of radium. But inside the factory, where nearly every surface sparkled with radioluminescence, these dangers were unknown. For a lark, some of the women even painted their fingernails and teeth with radium paint on occasion, to surprise their boyfriends when the lights went out
-
"you, too, can own the Latin version of the Wanderings (not Errors hahha) of Ulysses for only $1,665.00."
Is that all? What a bargain! ::)
I've already made a couple of posts referring to Book 15, JUDE, as it seemed
we were through with Book 14. Still lots of other subjects under discussion, tho', so I guess I 'jumped the gun'.
-
BABI: that's ok, we're all jumping in after you.
The story of the watchworkers makes me sick to my stomach! KIDSAL, could you let us know what you are quoting? Do they say what happened to the women?
-
This all reminds me of Karen Silkwood, who tried to blow the whistle on Kerr-McGee for safety violations at one of their plants (plutonium, I think).
-
The Book Club Online is the oldest book club on the Internet, begun in 1996, open to everyone. We offer cordial discussions of one book a month, 24/7 and enjoy the company of readers from all over the world. Everyone is welcome to join in.
Now reading:
(http://www.seniorlearn.org/bookclubs/classicsbookclub/cbc2odysseysm.jpg)
May 20-----Book XIV: Eumaeus the Loyal Swineherd
(http://seniorlearn.org/latin/ulysses_penelope/UlyssesEumaeus2May18.jpg)
Odysseus and Eumaios
17th century etching
Theodor van Thulden (1606 - 1669)
Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco
Discussion Leaders: Joan K (joankraft13@yahoo.com) & ginny (gvinesc@wildblue.net )
Useful Links:
1. Critical Analysis: Free SparkNotes background and analysis on the Odyssey (http://www.sparknotes.com/lit/odyssey)
2. Translations Used in This Discussion So Far: (http://www.seniorlearn.org/bookclubs/odyssey/odyssey_translations.html)
3. Initial Points to Watch For: submitted by JudeS (http://www.seniorlearn.org/bookclubs/odyssey/odyssey_points.html)
4. Maps:
Map of the Voyages of Odysseus (http://www.seniorlearn.org/latin/ulysses_penelope/Odysseusmap.jpg)
Map of Voyages in order (http://www.wesleyan.edu/~mkatz/Images/Voyages.jpg)
Map of Stops Numbered (http://www.seniorlearn.org/latin/ulysses_penelope/Odysseusmap2.jpg)
Our Map Showing Place Names in the Odyssey (http://www.seniorlearn.org/latin/graphics/AncientGreecemap.jpg)
(http://seniorlearn.org/latin/ulysses_penelope/UlyssesEumaeusMay18.jpg)
Odysseus conversing with Eumaios
Engraving and etching on paper
John Flaxman
1805
Tate Gallery
kidsal - what a horrifying account. My youngest grandson showed me his new watch. All the number points are luminous. He said "Just like an old-fashioned watch". I recoiled just a little because I had heard a bit about those workers. I hope he is safe.
Come to think of it, if I recall correctly, and I don't always, I had seen an episode on an early X Files" using that factory as a story line. Also one episode was about Mad Cow Disease at least two years before it hit the headlines.
-
http://www.damninteresting.com/undark-and-the-radium-girls
There is also a book on Amazon called the Radium girls which tells the story and the legal suits when these girls contracted cancer.
-
Sally/Kidsal ~ Thanks for the interesting material on radium used in watches. Years ago I read about that in a bio. of Marie Curie, one of the most outstanding women scientists of her era. It's amazing how many scientists work with dangerous materials!
Aside:
Back in the early 2000 decade when I worked at NIH (the National Institutes of Health near D.C.) we used to detect odd odors from time to time, and would say: there goes Gallo (famous in the discovery of the cause of AIDs) flushing HIV viruses down the drain again.
Of course it wasn't true, but they did run experiments in fume hoods and the air was poured out somewhere on the NIH campus ... so we pretended it was dangerous to inhale.
-
Oh mercy, isn't that awful? Thank you Sally and for the reference too. That's actually more horrible than any horror movie, isn't it? To this day anything that glows in the dark is something I don't want any part of, isn't that crazy? But true. And I'm not sure WHAT makes some of these toys etc., glow in the dark, but I don't want them around me.
But today we move to Chapter 15 and what a chapter it is!
First of all we learn that Eurymachus is the chosen one to marry Penelope, and that Penelope's "father and her brothers" are pressuring her to marry him because he's "giving the best presents," and "has stepped up his wooing." (Lombardo).
I didn't realize her father or brothers had shown any interest.
More anti women thoughts follow immediately!
What's this? Athene has gone to get T and instead of telling him that O has returned she:
(1) disses Penelope? Says "You have to watch out/ She doesn't carry off all your treasure."
Huh?
YOUR treasure? Since when?
THIS is the only way she can get him to come home?
What did you think of that?
This is his mother she's talking about, right?
I don't get that. I never liked Athene anyway.
____________________________________________
Then somewhere around line 74 Lombardo has "Due measure in all things."
I am interested to know what your translation says here? Is it the golden mean in your texts?
__________________________________________
And now we have Helen herself, what's her role here? She's brought a robe for his bride to be when he gets one.
We have an eagle sighting carrying off a goose and Helen steps in again while Menelaus is thinking what this might mean, and prophesies O is either returned or will return soon.
So it's more clear here than ever that Helen is not a woman to sit back and have the men do all the talking or get the glory, she's decisive, and to me that is even more indicative of her own role in the Trojan War: she DID in fact, go off willingly just as she said in the Iliad, and left her child behind. I am not sure why Menelaus wants her. I can see fighting over her going to Troy for his sake, and they did swear to all stand together, but hey!
______________________________________________
And then here's Peisistratus, Menelaus' own son saying he won't let you go empty handed, so get on board quickly. "Once he has you in his house he won't let you go,/ And he'll come here to get you himself/ If he has to, and he won't go home empty- handed."
Now that, to me does not make any sense, we've said good bye, we've had our gifts, we've said it's wrong to keep a guest, what's THIS? Can't these characters do anything for the right reason instead of dissing others?
How many more gifts does he need?
And finally who or what is this traveler, Theoclymenus, and why this long LONG story with a million proper names in it about him? Is it a little late in the game to be taking on even more hangers on?
The best part of 15 for me was O asking Eumaeus about what happened to O's father and mother and Eumaeus revealing his background. Who knew? Poor little kidnapped mite, "She took me by the hand and led me outside..."
Apparently he resents somewhat that he can't speak to his mistress face to face, tho, did you catch that? Why not?
And again at the end when this Theoclynmenus asks when they get to Ithaca, where shall I go now? And as T answers him, behold another bird omen. On the right. This one's a hawk with a dove. For some reason this reminds me of the old Andy Griffith show where Barney tried to use mountain lore to stop a wedding and the horse kept going the wrong way. hahaha
Birds flying to the right or left really figure in old myths, thinking now of Romulus and Remus...would it be useful to talk about this type of foretelling the future?
I've got a great story about it too! :)
In short, Telemachus is striding toward the farmstead where his father and the loyal swineherd are living. What EXCITEMENT!
What a cliff hanger!
Let's try 16 for Monday the action is picking up, let's do, too, but for now what do you think about any of this?
Here are in addition some great questions for 15 from the Odyssey discussion page mentioned above:
Book 15
45. What is Telemachus' main diplomatic challenge in this book? How does Athena help him meet the challenge?
46. What role does Helen play in this book? What does the prophecy she makes reveal about her? Why might it be significant, in terms of the Odyssey as a whole, that Helen, whose misbehavior towards her husband set in motion the Trojan War, gives Telemachus a robe to bestow upon his future bride?
47. Who is Theoclymenus, and why is it appropriate that Telemachus should treat him kindly?
48. What is Eumaeus' own story, as he recounts it to Odysseus? Does the story indicate why Eumaeus is especially loyal to Odysseus? If so, what's the reason?
OR what questions do YOU have and what struck you here the most?
I'd offer a gold robe for your thoughts but if I made one you wouldn't put it for the cat to lie down on. hahahaa
Is there something wrong with me? After all this loyalty stuff here is Athene to get her way being disloyal to Penelope (Penelope really has no supporters, does she? Except O?) and Peisistratus being disloyal (is that how you see it?) to his father.
Women in this section don't come off very well, and that includes Athene, or is it me?
-
Oh, dear, I was talking about Ch. 14. We got off onto so many side topics that I thought we
never did get back to that chapter. It was quite long, and we barely got past discussing the
meeting with the swineherd.
Anyone interested in O's mention of 'dogskin helmet' in Ch. 14. My immediate reaction was,
"Ugh!". I suppose that was silly; obviously animal hides were used for many things. Now, tho',
we tend to think of dogs as pets or valued work animals. I was curious, of course. (No, really?)
The Greek word for "helmet" (kune) means "dog's hair," "dog's hide," or "dog's skin." "Hades'
helmet" was thus a dog-skin cap. And from "Noah Webster-Antiquities": Galea (kranos, poet.
korus, pêlêx). A helmet, casque. The helmet was originally made of skin or leather, whence is
supposed to have arisen its appellation, kuneê meaning properly a helmet of dogskin, but
applied to caps or helmets made of the hide of other animals, not necessarily worn as armour."
--" The helmet, especially that of skin or leather, was sometimes a mere cap conformed to
the shape of the head, without either crest or any other ornament. In this state it was
probably used in hunting.."
-
Great point! I thought we did 14 pretty well and asked several times if anybody had anything else to add. Let's continue talking about 14 and 15 then as long as we'd like. Will that be good? We're in no hurry, I think you had mentioned it was 15 you were referencing.
We have plenty of time to discuss 14 more, what strikes you all that we have not talked about?
What line is the "dogskin helmet" on, Babi? A quick glance back through my book and notes really doesn't show anything on it, or I'm looking in the wrong place, so that's quite interesting.
-
I enjoyed several things about chapter 15.....the evocative description of the setting off home of Telemachus and his buddy, ....(sorry, I'm in Arizona without my book for a day or two, can't remember his name)......Telemachus being nice to the stranger, made me like him (more that I can say so far for his dad)....T.'s polite way of ensuring that they don't waste time with Nestor....Helen once again showing her power....she's not just the FACE that launched 1000 ships, she's a real femme fatale and I can only admire the way she is portrayed. She is just so able to step right in and take over...Menelaus isn't too swift tho, she can certainly run rings round him.......
-
GINNY, O' speaks of wrenching off his dogskin helmet before surrendering to
the King of Crete. That was about line 276 in my translation.
I can see, since most of this story is a total lie, that it doesn't offer
as much for discussion. I did find some bits intriguing, tho', as they
said something about Greek lore and mythology. Like the 'speaking oak'oracle
of Dodona. I found this article interesting.
http://gogreece.about.com/od/westerngreece/a/dodona.htm
The ‘spelling leaves’ are explained in the paragraph “Divining at Dodona”.
So, on to Ch. 15. We return to Telemachos, and find Athena whispering
instruction to him in his sleep. You must admit she is very thorough and
explicit. Tells him exactly what to do. She does make one statement I take
exception to. Speaking of a woman when she remarries, she says, “ “As to her girlhood husband, her first children, he is forgotten, being dead - and they no longer worry her.”
I am astounded. Who thinks like that? It that a typical male attitude for
those times? I would think any man who had been a husband and father...or even reasonably observant....would know better. What do some of your translations say? This one is about line 25-29 in my translation.
-
In Pope: Thou know'st the practice of the female train: Lost in the children of the present spouse, they slight the pledges of their former vows; their love is always the lover past; still the succeeding flame expels the last.
Suppose inheritance comes into play here. If former husband dead would their children inherit from him. If not dead and she brings the former children with her into new marriage what would be the result -- inherit from biological father but nothing from stepfather? Of course if we are discussing love, how could she just forget her children???
-
Cook says: Lines 19-23
Let her bear no goods from your home against your will.
You know what sort of a heart there is in a woman's breast.
She wishes to increase the house of the man she weds;
She no longer remembers or inquires of her former
Children or of her dear wedded husband who is dead.
So perhaps there is the question of some sort of dowry? that Athene is warning him against providing Penelope with. - but to suggest she would no longer think of her children or former husband in ridiculous. Maybe it's meant that after remarriage a woman would not be likely to mention her previous family or ask after their welfare whilst she was living in her new husband's house.
-
The information about the oracle at Dodona is interesting BABI. I looked it up on the map and found that the sit is not as close to the sea as I would have expected. I also followed the link to the Dodona site itself. According to the article archaeologists have only been able to find back to the 4th century BC. However, Homer is estimated to have lived as far back as 850BC. Strabo, Herodotus and Plato also mention the Oracle of Dadona. Strabo apparently thought of the site as ancient and Plato said this about the site:
"They used to say, my friend, that the words of the oak in the holy place of Zeus at Dodona were the first prophetic utterances." - Phaedrus
-
Babi, that's a great point on the Oracle of Dodona! The oracles/ foreshadowing/ auspices here are getting pretty overwhelming when you think about it, and I missed that one, reading too fast. Great research also Frybabe! And in 15 we have two more. The eagle flying on the right or the left seems important somehow. A different type of "sign" which required interpretation. And Menelaus was thinking about it when Helen spoke up.
Dana, ...Helen once again showing her power....she's not just the FACE that launched 1000 ships, she's a real femme fatale and I can only admire the way she is portrayed. She is just so able to step right in and take over...Menelaus isn't too swift tho, she can certainly run rings round him.......
Yes and in this she does show she is capable of making decisions which MAY be the reason for some of the negative remarks about her one encounters. Also that's kind of interesting to me in conjunction with Gum's post:
So perhaps there is the question of some sort of dowry? that Athene is warning him against providing Penelope with. - but to suggest she would no longer think of her children or former husband in ridiculous. Maybe it's meant that after remarriage a woman would not be likely to mention her previous family or ask after their welfare whilst she was living in her new husband's house.
Unfortunately I bet we all know modern and very sad stories of the same type of thing. It's amazing sometimes how history repeats itself, even without a dowry. (Well heck wasn't the new Downton Abbey about the same thing? Inheritance passing into other hands?)
And Babi (thank you for the helmet reference!~). You mentioned: They no longer worry her.”
I am astounded. Who thinks like that? It that a typical male attitude for those times?
Oh I hate to say this but it's not only for those times. How many instances of it in our times have we seen.
And in an strange reverse twist, I just heard of a very sad story of a person I grew up with, who died tragically and too young in a automobile accident, and the second wife removed every single trace of the first wife, photos, everything from the house. One would have to assume with assent of the husband/ father, and the first wife's two small children grew up literally not knowing a thing of their beautiful and wonderful mother. But it had a fairy tale ending, thank goodness, when one of the girls, when she was grown, happened to encounter a former classmate of their mothers (the strange last name caught her attention). She was astounded to learn they knew nothing of their mother. She took her own high school yearbook (in which her mother was prominently featured) and her own memories and made a copy for the girls and told them about their mother. I think she's a hero. But imagine the cruelty of such an act. I guess there are worse, but to deliberately eradicate a mother from her children's lives...staggering.
In that money or inheritance has no bearing but there are plenty of stories where it does. Hard to believe, isn't it?
But it puzzles me, this misogyny coming, is it, from Homer? I'm with Babi here, is this something they would all understand? And it seems kind of odd that it comes after Helen asserts herself so dramatically, or Penelope has been shown to be most loyal. First the swineherd complains and now this. What exactly does Homer want us to get about women after this? I don't understand Athene here particularly.
-
Who is supposed to take care of the children from the first marraige, if their mother doesn't? Or is it assumed that they are grown and independent?
GINNY: your example is one where the FATHER cared nothing for his first wife. I can just see the second wife doing that, but not the father going along. terrible!
I love the idea of getting prophacies by listening to the leaves of oak trees. When I lived in Maryland, I used to go once a month to a retreat center in the middle of a woods (mainly oak trees). I would sit in silence, listening to the breeze in the trees, centering myself for my busy life. I would have loved to have known I was following a practice thousands of years old.
I know what the author of the article means about the atmosphere of the Oracle of Dodona. My retreat center had the same atmosphere.
-
Sneaking in one of my colour questions (evil grin).
This one is relevant to Homer and he uses it constantly as part of an adjective.
The words I list below include the Ancient Greek word for pink (rosy). and the Modern Greek word for pink which is probably a loan-word. Which is which? NB They are different:
Pecho
pinko
rubis
rodo
roz
Babi - Lovely story about Dodona. Very Druidic. I know I have mentioned this before, but the word "Druid" comes from the Greek for Oak Tree.
The war helmets the Mycenaeans wore were a a close fitting cap, most likely made of some kind of animal skin, and covered with boars' teeth. There are pix from the Bronze Age showing these and a search would probably reveal one, and a copy of one appears in the Museum of Iraklion near Knossos. Not nearly as glamorous as the metal helmets of later years with nose and cheek guards and horse hair plumes. Also in many pix of Odysseus he can be seen wearing a close fitting cap with a kind of point at the back.
I did a quick search for some sites of bronze age armour. Quite fascinating. Have a peek. The soldiers were just starting to wear helmets similar to the late Athenian helmets. They also wore linen greaves and the armour had to be light.
www.salimbeti.com/micenei/helmets2.htm
-
What a fascinating website, Roshannarose. I've bookmarked it so I can read more later, but I did cruise the helmets, the ships and Troy. I thought the peel away view of a boar tusk helmet particularly interesting where it shows the layering which would have added strength to the helmet.
In the ship section, I noted that there is a clay tablet that "most likely" shows a scene from the Odyssey. I wonder if a fear of meeting up with monsters while on a sea journey was a common superstition that Homer picked up on that is depicted rather than a scene depiction of the Odyssey itself.
-
I can imagine a new wife getting rid of every reminder of the former wife.
But I cannot imagine a mother (I know, there are exceptions) being no longer concerned about her children by a previous marriage. We are 'concerned'
about our children, now matter how old they are. I still think, from time to
time, of the two sons who died shortly after birth. I never got to know them,
but I still feel a bond with them.
Maybe Athene, as a goddess, is more pragmatic about the whole thing and
doesn't really understand human bonding. But Athene here is an actress
on Homer's stage, and it's Homer's attitude that really puzzles me.
I was surprised to find such a variety of helmets, ROSHANA. The boar tusk
helmets seem to have been especially popular and widespread. I would guess
the leather helmets come closest to the 'dogskin' helmet in Homer's text.
-
Hi, all ~ I'm way behind in the reading, but have the weekend to try to catch up. It's difficult to baby-sit, rather infant-sit and to read a serious work at the same time.
Roshanarose ~ What a difficult quiz!
Ancient Greek word for rosy or pink, as the rosy dawn, as mentioned over and over, so it's an important color.
I only suspect it's not rubis, from the Latin rubeus, red, as well as the medieval Latin rubinus.
-
well the ancient Greek for "rosy fingered" as in dawn is rododaktylos, so rodo must be rosy as in rododendron I would think--red tree, and ofcourse dactylos as in dactyl.
I still don't have my book but perhaps Athena was just employing psychology and trying to make sure Telemachos got a swift move on and started for home, by raising the possiblity that Penelope might be forced to make a choice, finally (after all, 20 years is a long time to wait expectantly).
And forget all about him.
But I was a bit annoyed at Athena because I thought she had rather unfairly changed her tune from encouraging Telemachos to leave in search of news of his father, and now almost chiding him that he wasn't getting home fast enough......
-
Dana and Mippy - Well done. Rodo is the Ancient Greek word for pink/rose coloured, as in Ancient (Homeric) Greek rosy-fingered is ροδοδάκτυλος as Dana says. In Modern Greek it is ροζ. Nice and easy and most likely a loan word from English. The Greek Island of Ροδός celebrates the Rose and that symbol appears frequently there. Trivia for Rhodes is that is was
i) the main base of the Knights of St John of Jerusalem during the Crusades; and ii) the Nazis HQ during WWII. A fascinating island, with beautiful architecture.
I had a look at a few sites but the following link had the most useful info imho, no conversion intended.
www.seekgod.ca/legacy.htm
The following link is easier to negotiate with no politics or mysticism implied. Just a short history of the Knights.
www.greeka.com/dodecanese/rhodes/rhodes-history/rhodes-knights.htm
-
The helmit site is fascinating. I think I mentioned looking at a fragment of a Greek shield at the Hurst castle that reminded me of the description of Achilles shield in the Iliad: closely carvedwith all kinds of scenes. Have any of you ever been to the Hurst castle near Los Angeles? A large collection of greek and Roman statues and artifacts. If any of you are ever out here, I'll go with you.
I'm curious about a phrase Lombardo uses in his translation:
".. And Helen, LOVELY IN HER BONES
Came up with the robe.." (line 133)
I love that phrase, although I'm not exactly sure what it means. What do the other translations have?
-
In this chapter, we have a little bit of Greek life from a slave's point of view. It's interesting that our noble swineherd is not a mere commoner, but was a Noble in his own right before being captured. There's little of the democrat about Homer.
What elaborate stories. In order to introduce a very minor character (or so I assume) Theoclymenus, we have to hear about his family going back generations (lines 244-282). I found this a bit much. didn't you.
-
Joan K
I have been to the Herst Castle four times and was wowed each time by a plethora of artifacts. Each time visited a different part of the site. Still haven't seen it all.
However, as far as helmets go, it was not only the Greeks who cared much about their helmets. In an exhibition devoted to the Ancient Samurai at the Asian Museum in San Francisco there were unbelievable helmets . Each one was personally designed by it's owner to show off some aspect of his prowess . The aesthetic aspect was a major consideratio as well.
Each one was a work of art.
When a people has a creative spirit it follows through not only in their sculpture ,pottery and art but in other important aspects of their lives. Both the Greeks and the Japanese are examples of this type of esthetic.
-
I keep thinking I am missing something. Isn't the swineherd's story of his life the same as that told by Odysseus about his life in the previous chapter????
-
Dana, yeah I find myself intensely annoyed by Athene, it's almost like she's playing a game. I am not familiar enough with the Greek attitude towards gods but it would seem to me that this capriciousness would make for a VERY cautious worshiper, it so reminds me of what Pearl Buck wrote in her Good Earth series. It would tend to make one VERY superstitious. So I agree, Frybabe, with your interpretation.
In that context you can easily see reliance on omens. And that they did a lot.
The position of the birds in the sky as we have seen, in two bird flying auguries here in Chapter 15 is likewise important. Hexter says the "right side is lucky for omens."
The OCCL says the augur would observe the part of the sky to be interpreted with a wand (called the templum, also referring to the area of the ground consecrated for his use), and he would divide it into sections. He would stand facing south or east; the significance of the bird's flight or cry varied according to the direction from which it same. The auspices would be taken before every important event, military or public and, in the old days, private. The officer responsible, however, had the power to reject the conclusions.
A great story of more birds and augury (which did not tell the future but instead told whether a course of action would be favorable or not) happened in 249 BC before the battle at sea at Depranum between Rome and Carthage. The sacred chickens, carried aboard the ship to foretell success in battle, refused to eat. It was considered a good sign if they would eat. Costly delay ensued on the part of the Romans while the constant report came back to the bridge: the sacred chickens will not eat. Finally the admiral P Claudius Pulcher took matters in his own hands and said, "If they will not eat, then let them drink," and threw them overboard. Of course the Romans were defeated. :)
-
Joan K, I finally got a Lattimore whom Lombardo references and for that lovely in her bones he has "shining among women."
Fagles has "her cheeks flushed with beauty."
So she's a natural beauty here.
Dana, why do you think Menelaus is not the brightest bulb in the pack? hahaaha
Sally, you are so good at catching parallels! I did not see that there was a kidnapping tho in O's story?
But there is another parallel with the new character, too! JoanK, I did not see the point of yet another new character but on Theoklymenos, Hexter says (I sure am glad to have Hexter, Dana, thank you so much for mentioning him), that he is the only Homeric name whose first element is "theo," from "theos," god. And it seems Sally is right, it's the same story of having killed a man that Odysseus told (the first version) to Athene. He will not have much of a role apparently, only that of prophet.
Great website on the Greek helmets,. RoshannaRose, thank you. The Met in NYC has an incredible collection of them, too, for those who can get there to see them. Wonderful hoplite helmets of many kinds only a pane of glass away.
Jude and Joan K, That Hearst Castle is something else, isn't it? It has the prettiest indoor pool I ever saw in my life. The one I want to see is the Getty Museum, I've never made it there.
Hexter suggests Homer is "using" Athene as a device to be able to shift from location to location.
He also says it "would be an unthinkable breach of etiquette for T to depart without his host's permission." That makes a lot more sense than what I was thinking. He says Athene is saying this about women as a whole, not P, otherwise T might not have gotten ON the road at all so fast.
-
Oh this is interesting! Hexter also says the bird omens and the dreams themselves serve as epic similes in that "they permit the poet to introduce another perspective, drawn from a field distant from the narrative." And a LOT more. I'd love to be able to take a class of his on this.
And apparently one of the lines here is at issue. I had originally put it in as l. 365, but on more careful observation he may be referring to that particular translator as he takes pains to say it's line [295]. Here's what he says: "No extant manuscript of The Odyssey contains this line [295], but the geographer Strabo (first century CE) includes it when he cites the passage, and it was on the basis of his testimony that it was introduced into printed texts of The Odyssey in the early eighteenth century. Whether this testifies to the fallibility of the ancient textual tradition or that of modern editors can hardly be decided, but in any case the peculiar odyssey of this line provides a good example of the fluidity of the text (at least in details) even after the poem had long been committed to writing (even to print) and reminds us once again of the history and uncertainty of even the Greek 'original' facing any scholar or translator."
Now here I can't see 365, those of you with the Fitzgerald, will you tell us what line 365 is (or I'm not sure what that bracketed 295 is?) It would seem it would need to be a geographical location?
For 15, this is a good question: Does the story indicate why Eumaeus is especially loyal to Odysseus? If so, what's the reason? Back to the "stories" again, which I tend to gloss over. Anybody have any ideas here? (The answers are not given in these online study guides).
I guess we are supposed to think of Helen now as sort of immortal or inspired by the gods?
Here's a good one!
Who is the main female character in The Odyssey so far? THAT is a good one! What would you say?
-
Perhaps it's what an artist or photographer sees when looking at a lovely
woman's face, JOANK. Bone structure..."she has beautiful bones".
Love that story of the sacred chickens, GINNY. ;D
Speaking of tossing things aside... Lord, how casually women were tossed aside, unless, of course, they were a daughter of some god. Here is Melampous, in a fury, accomplishing marvelous deeds to win the daughter of King Neleus. Once he has her, he dumps her on his brother and takes off for other parts, never to return. He didn’t care a fig for the woman; his pride was hurt because her father ran him off. He marries another woman, raises a family, and presumably never gives her another thought.
Did a woman in those circumstances have any recourse? Could she return to her father? Marry? [Ginny? Jude? Anybody?]
-
For "Helen, lovely in her bones" (Lombardo) and "Helen, her cheeks flushed with beauty" (Fagles), Fitzgerald has
"and the Lady Helen
drew near so that he saw her cheek's pure beauty"
so I looked up the Greek, and the word is kalliparynos which means beautiful cheeked, kalos beautiful and parynos cheek or jaw, and the whole phrase in Greek translates , "and beautiful cheeked Helen was standing near and bearing in her arms the robe...."
I just read the beginning again where Athena appears to Telemachus and I do think she is using these comments about the suitors and women forgetting their first husband and kids as a goad to stir Telemachus into action. It works, because immediately,
"He swung his foot across and gave a kick
and said to the son of Nestor:
"Open your eyes
Peisistratos. Get our team into harness.
We have a long day's journey."
This, in the middle of the night. Peisistratos tells him to calm down and wait till morning........
-
Pero the daughter of Neleus was taken home by Melampous as a bride for his brother Bias. So says the legend.
So it sounds like she did OK!
-
Maybe the liner numbers are different in different translations.
For 365, I have "They're (the suitors serving men) young, well dressed in tunics and cloaks"
-
line 365 in Fitzgerald (295 in the greek) is:
passing Krounoi abeam and Khalkis estuary
I'll look for the Greek
-
the Greek is:
ban de para Krounos kai Chalkida kallireethon
which translates:
going by Krounos and beautiful flowing Chalkida
-
It occurred to me that we have to remember that Athena is a devious trickster like Odysseus, so it now all falls into place for me--the whole approach to Telemachus is a devious trick to get him to set out for home--just as Odysseus' telling of the tale to get the cloak was a devious trick to get a warm cover for himself. And their tricks have exactly the same effect on me, annoyance ...
-
To this day it is not easy being a chook.
-
It occurred to me that we have to remember that Athena is a devious trickster like Odysseus
Good point. Neither of them is going to take a straight path if there's a crooked one available.
Athena:....."Here we are,
The two shrewdest minds in the universe,
You far and away the best man on earth
In plotting strategies, and I famed among gods
For my clever schemes."
-
To this day it is not easy being a chook.
I had to look up chook to find it means chicken; indeed, you're right.
Roshanarose, that's a really great site about armor. I hope you realize that you messed up my whole evening. :) I got sucked into it and read on, going from page to page--helmets, shields, ships, swords. Then I spent another wad of time on it today. There are even reconstructions of the armor in the Iliad. I finally see how you might get all those scenes on Achilles' shield.
I can see I'll have to be more careful about throwing out the remains of my wild boars after feasts, though. I'll need 20 to 40 sets of tusks for my helmet.
-
To this day it is not easy being a chook.
:D :D
-
Cook says - Helen of the fair cheeks
To this day it is not easy being a chook.
Roshanarose : :D :D :D - and even harder being an 'old chook'
-
PatH - Yep. When I find a site like the one on Bronze Age Armour I always describe it as the "Black Hole", ie you can't help but disappear into it. Be careful Pat - the most difficult thing about getting those tusks is capturing the boars.
Gumtree - I have been wondering where you were. Glad to see you emerge and celebrate another "old chook". ;)
-
I'm so glad Pero was the bride, DANA, and not a permanent unwanted guest!
And 'beautiful flowing Calkida' sounds so much lovelier than 'Khalkis estuary'.
-
The Book Club Online is the oldest book club on the Internet, begun in 1996, open to everyone. We offer cordial discussions of one book a month, 24/7 and enjoy the company of readers from all over the world. Everyone is welcome to join in.
Now reading:
(http://www.seniorlearn.org/bookclubs/classicsbookclub/cbc2odysseysm.jpg)
June 3-----Book XVI: The Reunion (I)
(http://seniorlearn.org/latin/ulysses_penelope/UlyssesEumaeus2May18.jpg)
Odysseus and Eumaios
17th century etching
Theodor van Thulden (1606 - 1669)
Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco
Discussion Leaders: Joan K (joankraft13@yahoo.com) & ginny (gvinesc@wildblue.net )
Useful Links:
1. Critical Analysis: Free SparkNotes background and analysis on the Odyssey (http://www.sparknotes.com/lit/odyssey)
2. Translations Used in This Discussion So Far: (http://www.seniorlearn.org/bookclubs/odyssey/odyssey_translations.html)
3. Initial Points to Watch For: submitted by JudeS (http://www.seniorlearn.org/bookclubs/odyssey/odyssey_points.html)
4. Maps:
Map of the Voyages of Odysseus (http://www.seniorlearn.org/latin/ulysses_penelope/Odysseusmap.jpg)
Map of Voyages in order (http://www.wesleyan.edu/~mkatz/Images/Voyages.jpg)
Map of Stops Numbered (http://www.seniorlearn.org/latin/ulysses_penelope/Odysseusmap2.jpg)
Our Map Showing Place Names in the Odyssey (http://www.seniorlearn.org/latin/graphics/AncientGreecemap.jpg)
(http://seniorlearn.org/latin/ulysses_penelope/UlyssesEumaeusMay18.jpg)
Odysseus conversing with Eumaios
Engraving and etching on paper
John Flaxman
1805
Tate Gallery
Thoughts to Ponder on 16: Please add your own, too!
Together at Last! What a moving scene as Odysseus and Telemachus reunite.
1. Why does Telemachus call Eumaeus "Papa?" Is that just in Lombardo? What does your book say?
2. Why do you suppose Telemachus councils against telling Laertes the gladsome news?
3. What do you think of Telemachus, now that he's started talking? Do you think he's smart? A chip off the old block? What can you surmise of his character from what he says?
4. "What news from town?
Have the suitors returned from their ambush,
Or are they still looking for me to sail past?" (Telemachus, line 496 ff)
How does Telemachus know that the suitors are planning to ambush him?
5. Speaking of the SUITORS!! Wow wow, who knew? Did you suspect there were so MANY? Did anybody count them? No wonder they're being eaten out of house and home, and what scoundrels they are!
6. Why does T say that Penelope can't seem to decide whether to wait for O or to "go away" with the man among the suitors who is the best? Who gets the kingdom if she does that?
7. What do you think of Odysseus's preparations for the coming battle? Telemachus has reservations, who would you side with?
8. How does the return of the suitors's black ship put a kink in the plans, or does it?
Yes it does, doesn't it BABI, (beautiful flowing sounding nice, I mean). I just love the way Greek is made up of these strung together words--rosy fingered, beautiful cheeked, etc etc etc.........the most divine language I have ever tried to learn....dreadful verbs, all irregular, but worth every minute of the frustration.......
-
Babi, I have no idea! I just read a huge long long thing on the rights of women in noble ancient Greece (very badlly treated) and in Rome (much better woman's lot) but nobody covered divorce and its aftermath, so I wouldn't want to hazard a guess. Can anybody find the answers in some sort of reputable site to Babi's question about what happened to women after a divorce?
Here's the question again: Did a woman in those circumstances have any recourse? Could she return to her father? Marry?
JoanK, I think that the l.365 is as you surmise and Dana says, the Lattimore translation line, the original being 295. Since Strabo was a geographer, I have no idea what his reference places mean. I'm hopelessly geographically challenged, hilariously so, I'm afraid.
Gum and RR, :) on the chook hahaaa.
Pat H and Dana, I wonder why there IS so much emphasis on "trickery." Perhaps the Greeks admired somebody who was quick witted and thought on the fly? O has used his wits all along here, starting with the Trojan Horse and in the Cyclop's cave. I can't help but wonder since Athene here is also portrayed as being devious (which seems to be the same thing as clever and a godlike trait) if it's thought of as desirable.
Not just brawn but brain too? Which, I wonder, will get him what he wants in the end?
How much simpler, to me, and more straightforward, if Athene had simply said, hey, dad's BACK!
That would have gotten him up too? Why take the time to blacken women (if we accept the premise of the scholars that Athene was not blackening Penelope at all but merely talking about women in general)?
I'm trying to get a handle on what's admirable about the "wily" Odysseus?
Thing is, brawn won't do him much good with the suitors. He needs something else. The suitors are standing in the way of his homecoming and goals.
Also it seems one suitor has emerged as the most likely, according to Athene anyway. Then why don't the others go home?
O by himself can't, even with the help of Athene, overpower them and throw them out, he must have these tricky wiles about him, apparently.
The "gods" seem limited in what they can do, or so it seems to me.
I would say the main female character so far in the Odyssey is Athene. I think she becomes the main character because she gets more press time, she's always there (or so she says) but we're hearing a lot more about her than Penelope, and she's playing a more powerful part.
She still irritates me. But what else can O do? He could march in and be killed. Of course if he had not lost his army he wouldn't be. Of course he could go to Menelaus and get HIS army, he's already said he would help, why does this not occur to him?
-
Just saw the PBS show on building the Pharoah's boat. Is that one of the links you had, Barb? Fascinating! A 3500 year old boat (about 800 years older than homer) duplicated from a picture on an Egyptian tomb. And sailed on the Red Sea! In concept nothing like the boaats of today. No ribs! Just strong pieces of wood, cut in all kinds of odd shapes to fit together like pieces of a jigsaw puzzle, a zillion joints, made up caulking (linen and beeswax-- that was kind of cheating, but it wouldn't work without caulking), a wide sail and crazy rigging that looked like it would never work, and it sailed like a dream!
-
Oooh! I wish I'd seen it.
-
Actually, GINNY, DANA was able to clarify what actually happened. She
reported that the legend was that the lady wasn't 'dumped' on the brother;
she was won for the purpose of being the brother's bride. Of course, that
still leaves the question open of what happened to an abandoned woman of
good family. (The lower class females, of course, would simply find another
man. ;)) Right?
hey, dad's BACK!
(Ginny)
I love that! Nothing so straightforward for our Athena. She loves the manipulation, the schemes, the moving of the human chess pieces. She wants to end with a grand, smug, TA-RA!!!
-
Of course he could go to Menelaus and get HIS army, he's already said he would help, why does this not occur to him?
Ginny
Possibilities: Athena didn't include it in her instructions. O was on home ground now and wanted to BE home. Going to Menelaus would have meant more travel and more lost time, not to mention not strictly obeying Athena's instructions and, possibly, giving Poseidon another crack at him.
-
Babi, I think you're right about Athene, she prides herself on the cleverness. I don't know historically what a divorced or shunned off woman would do, specific instances aside. :)
Frybabe but Athene has GONE to Menelaus's palace and T is there. O doesn't have to go anywhere, but maybe he would need to? All she'd have to say is hey, O is back and needs everybody's help. But she doesn't.
As you say IF O went he'd have more adventures and perils.
I do wonder why, tho, SHE couldn't have at least told T and gotten more help, an army. They all have options. Maybe because this legend, of O the wanderer may be based more in fact than we think, and O would have to request assistance himself. If Athene is merely a figment to explain events (which makes sense) then Homer would need to stick to what was accepted for the times. Too bad we can't get Homer resurrected for a dinner. I love those questions: who in history would you like to eat dinner with, choose 3.
I've got two from the Roman era, it would be interesting to see one from the Greek. It's an interesting concept. Of course I'm just guessing, I really have no idea.
Joan K, how fascinating, I do wish I had seen that also.
-
Let's move on to the next Chapter (Chapter 16) on Friday.
Would anyone feel rushed if we set a pace of about 5 days a chaprter instead of a week? We don't want to wear out our welcome, and the plot is thickening!
Now I've got a mystery book from the library with a setting in Ancient Greece (the Pericles commission) I'll let you all know how it goes.
-
Y'all just continue at your pace, I'm way behind! I'll begin to catch up tomorrow night!
Still a mommy's helper at my daughters's house in Medfield today, and darling Baby Erin just is 5 weeks old!
Heading home tomorrow to Cape Cod, to rescue hubby from the hazard of figuring out how to run the new side-loading washing machine ... things have sure changed from the days of Penelope! After I do due-diligence on housework, laundry, and dog walking, I'll return to Medfield on Sunday. I'm having a great time, but am tired.
Summer Latin group begins next Monday! Hurray!
-
JoanK: No worries - as they say - do move on as you wish. Like Mippy I'm also behind with the reading - probably with less reason. I've read it before but need to refresh - I promise I will catch up...
-
Sounds like sound reasoning to me, FRYBABE. If it were me, having finally
set foot on home ground, there is no way I'd take another detour!
"Maybe because this legend, of O the wanderer may be based more in fact
than we think.."
(Ginny)
I have never assumed this whole saga was entirely fiction, but rather
that is based on a true story that doubtless saw many 'sea changes' before
reaching us. It makes sense that there would be limits on the liberties one could
take with a well known story.
-
I have been tracking down the answer to the question "Is The Odyssey a ragedy and if not why not?" I peeked into many sources but was helped mostly by "The Greek Way" by Edith Hamilton.
Tragedy was a Greek creation because in Greece thought was free. Early Greek writers (including Homer)wrote about Godlike heroes and Hero Gods fighting in far off places. This was a lyric world where every common object is touched by beauty.
Then a new age dawned, not satisfied with adventure and beauty, an age that wanted to know and explain.For the first time tragedy appears (in the works of Aeschylus). Tragedy is pain transmuted into poetry. Pain,sorrow and disaster are spokenof as dragging down--the dark abyss of pain. Tragedy uplifts us to heights.There is something in tragedy that marks it off from disaster.
Hegel writes:" The only tragic subject is a spiritual struggle in which each side has a claim upon our sympathy. There is no tragedy without a soul in agony."
The Odyssey is not a tragedy since Odysseus is a brave, heroic trickster and not a soul in agony.
The Greek tragedians wrote "The mystery of evil curtains that of which everyman whose soul is not a clod hath visions. Pain can exalt and for for a moment men could have sight of a meaning beyond their grasp."
-
So far I have never grasped trragedy. When I read Shakespeare which is the closest I have got so far, I find Macbeth a greedy ambitious would be king, King Lear a silly old man, maybe a bit demented, and Othello a jealous idiot. Now maybe we need to read a real Greek tragedy next. ( Or maybe I do !). I wanted to read one in Greek but they are very difficult according to the author of my Greek text book, who suggested I try some simpler stuff first. BUT, how about a Greek tragedy next??
-
"How about a greek tragedy next". I'm with that!
JUDE: what thought inspiring quotes. " The only tragic subject is a spiritual struggle in which each side has a claim upon our sympathy. There is no tragedy without a soul in agony."
I agree that O doesn't fit this definition. Sometimes he is in agony, but because he can't get home. he doesn't seem to have any spiritual struggle.
And again ""The mystery of evil curtains that of which everyman whose soul is not a clod hath visions. Pain can exalt and for for a moment men could have sight of a meaning beyond their grasp."
As a child, I always thought it was a tragedy if people died at the end. And I guess I mener moved past that. But these two definitions talk about spiritual questions as more important than death.
-
I started to read my "Greek" detective story. The detective is Socrates' older brother. Socretes, a child, keeps saying "I think...." and older brother tells him not to think so much.
-
Sounds good to me Dana. The only Greek play I ever read was Oedipus Rex for a lit class eons ago, so I am badly in need of updating myself.
-
It does seem to me that the Odyssey is more of an adventure, a saga, than
a tragedy. I have to agree that the soul-wrenching decisions and choices
are at the heart of a true tragedy.
I'm not at all sure I agree with the notion that pain exalts. Isn't persistent,
unavoidable pain terribly demoralizing, eating away at the individuals
dignity, courage, and emotional balance?
-
I agree with you BABI. If tragedy is supposed to exalt pain then that's an example of human hypocrisy and double think as far as I'm concerned (I mean, exalting pain,.... its all right to do if its someone else's I guess).
But I don't see the exaltation of pain in Shakespeare's tragedies. To me they illustrate different human frailties of character: greed, ambition, jealousy,inability to decide, naive trust. And then the play shows how the heroes have to take the consequences (death) of their flawed judgements. Maybe the tragedy is that they don't get away with their weakenesses as we usually manage to do!
-
" Maybe the tragedy is that they don't get away with their weakenesses as we usually manage to do!"
Good point!
Well, no one said they didn't want to move on, so I guess we will tomorrow. there's a certain unfairness here. For those of us reading a modern translation like Lombardo, it's a fairly easy read, while those reading an older translation like Pope have to work much harder. I admire you, but have to admit I like the relative ease of understanding.
-
Yes it's really delightful, the Lombardo, and so quick and easy you can do 16 in just a few minutes but I do have questions on it.
Right Babi, the adventure, the hallmark of the Epic Poem which this is and the Epic Hero and I liked that Jude, super work! I do recall there are several different definitions of tragedy, too, Dana and I think you're right and perhaps the Shakespearean and the ancient Greek might be quite different. It really might be fun to compare themes, to read a Greek tragedy and then compare Shakespeare's treatment of same. With me the issue was always did the protagonist's tragic flaw lead to his own destruction, and if so I was prepared to call it a tragedy, but you all have opened up all kinds of other doors. Such an interesting discussion, I love it. Frybabe, I agree, I'm in serious arrears, for my part I hope we can skip Oedipus next time, but of course the vote will tell all.
I will be off tomorrow so for 16 I need to start a few thoughts flowing now.
Together at Last! What a moving scene as Odysseus and Telemachus reunite. Why does Telemachus call Eumaeus "Papa?" Is that just Lombardo? What does your book say?
Obviously by the behavior of the dogs, the son of the king is no stranger to Eumaeus' house.
Why do you suppose Telemachus councils against telling Laertes the gladsome news?
What do you think of Telemachus, now that he's started talking? Do you think he's smart? A chip off the old block? What seems to be constantly on his mind?
"What news from town?
Have the suitors returned from their ambush,
Or are they still looking for me to sail past?" (Telemachus, line 496 ff)
How does HE know that the suitors are planning to ambush him? Have I missed something? I honestly don't remember his being told, do you?
And speaking of the SUITORS!! Wow wow, who knew? Did you suspect there were so MANY? Did anybody count them? No wonder they're being eaten out of house and home, and what scoundrels they are!
Now T says that Penelope can't seem to decide whether to wait for O or to "go away" with the man among the suitors who is the best.
Huh? I thought the entire purpose of marrying HER was to get the kingdom? If you "go away" with the best suitor....I guess this is why Telemachus's death is planned?
So they can have the kingdom, too? ...or?
What do you think of Odysseus's plan for the coming battle? Telemachus has reservations, who would you side with?
How does the return of the suitors's black ship put a kink in the plans, or does it?
This is getting kind of exciting and since I lack any more illustrations for 16 I'll put these up in the heading and maybe you can add more things that you wondered about, lots to discuss in this seemingly innocent happy chapter: let's discuss! :)
-
Odd, I thought Telemachus was told, I'll have to go back.
Re the suiters: Although it wasn't spelled out, I my interpretation is that each suiter came with others of his tribe/kingdom which I took to mean he brought with him a whole retinue for subordinates and followers.
-
Frybabe, I agree, it would make sense for them to bring a retinue, like the Medieval kings. It looks like (at least in Lombardo, I need now to read the more literal Murray) that the suitors are differentiated from their hangers on, in the count, is that what you all see? I've got suitors counted differently from the help. For instance I've got
"And from Ithaca itself, twelve, all the noblest,
And with them are Medon the herald,
The divine bard, and two attendants who carve.
If we go up against all of them in the hall...." (somewhere around l. 268)
So there are 12 suitors alone from Ithaca, which is kind of a shock, isn't it? But it would seem he'll have to fight the entire herd of those assembled.
(hahaha on the "who carve," from what I've seen so far of the importance of food, they need 100 carvers. :))
These suitors from Ithaca itself seem to be a MAJOR point, if I'm reading my new Hexter commentary right. That's sort of mind blowing.
Maybe that helps explain this fixation O seems to have with "testing" people's loyalty?
-
In my version (Fitzgerald), Telemachos calls Eumaeus "Uncle". 'Uncle'
seems to have always been a courtesy title for an older friend who fills a
paternal role in a child's life.
I find it hard to believe any household could support that many 'suitors'
and their retinues for years! And while I understand Penelope's delaying
tactics, it does seem she could have gotten rid of some of them, at least.
Couldn't she simply say something like,..'I do not wish to leave Ithaca. For
that reason, I can only consider those suitors native to this country. The
rest of you..please go home!' The Ithacans would be happy to support her in
this decision.
-
I checked on the Greek word translated as "Uncle" or "Papa" and it is "atta" which is used to address an elder. The Greek for grandfather is "pappos" interestingly enough.
Telemachos comes across as a real straight arrow, unlike his dad, and a nice guy too, unstuck up, pleasant to beggars....!.
In my translation Athena does warn him that a ship will be lying in wait for him on his way home.
I think he told Eumaios to come back quickly "not to be caught alone in the countryside." I expect the suitors know that he is a supporter of the royal house, and, learning that Telemachos has made it home safely, might try to see if he knows anything re T.'s whereabouts if they caught him. However T. immediately suggests that the old housekeeper be sent on the quiet to tell his pappos, again, I think, showing what a nice, sensible, kind, guy he is.
-
In my Rieu translation, near the beginning of Book 15, Athene warns Telemachus....The ringleaders among the Suitors are lying in ambush in the straits between Ithaca and the rugged coast of Samos, intent on murdering you before you can reach home.
And also, in Rieu Book 15--Helen of the lovely cheeks stood by.....I think high cheekbones have always been considered beautiful. So "lovely bones" also works.
I thought it odd that Telemachus took the stranger with him. Sort of like picking up a hitchhiker which could be dangerous for either.
Book 16 Rieu, Telemachus calls Eumaeus "old friend". In the introduction it says...Eumaeus greets Telemachus like a father greets a son.
Dana, I agree, Telemachus is not like his father, not foolhardy. But, he will step up to the plate when the time comes.
-
I admit all this business of O changing --- now he's old, now he's young, now he tells this one but doesn't tell that one --- you go here and he goes there etc. just makes my head hurt. It seems so unnecessarily complicated. But what do I know.
The scene between O and T is touching. At one point, Lombardo says that O had nwever seen T. I thought elsewhere that t was an infant when O left. In any case, they don't know each other. how proud O must be to find his son such a good man. And T must be proud of his father, too.
-
In Pope, Telemachus calls Eumaeus friend and also by his name.
Telemachus is more careful now -- doesn't accept everyone's word -- not even O. Not to sure about O's plan to kill the suitors.
I have 108 suitors and about 10 other hangers-on.
-
An excellent book I have just finished reading may be of interest to our classicists.
"The Bull of Minos" by Leonard of Cottrell. ISBN 960 226 2710
Non Fiction - About the discovery and work of Heinreich Schliemann at Mycenae, and Sir Arthur Evans at Knossos. Written in a simple, imaginative and scholarly way. It even has pix of that tusk helmet - How is yours coming along PatH, caught any tuskers yet?
-
Sally, I wondered where you were! 108 suitors and 10 hangers on! And that possibly doesn't include others, servants, etc. I was hoping somebody would take the time to count them, that's a lot!
But it's not really all that unusual, is it? I am thinking about the peregrinations of the time of Henry VIII, it seems that I read or heard somewhere, possibly at Hampton Court itself how large these traveling parties could be. There seems to be an entire tradition of this type of traveling, am thinking incongruously of Biltmore House and the days of travel, and how they'd come and stay months and bring (not this big obviously) an entire retinue with them.
Still 108 would truly eat you out of house and home and it also would be a formidable force for one man, either T or O to deal with, too. I mean one against 2 is bad enough, one against 108 is pretty dire.
That does sound a great book, RoshanaRose, I'll see if I can get a copy, love that Schliemann stuff and have not read about Arthur Evans at Knossos.
Sandy Rose, thank you for identifying where T is told about the ambush. Homer is getting like some textbook authors I have seen: mention it once and expect the reader to remember, good for you!
Thank you all for the different translations on what E called T and why (sorry for the ET stuff, can't type and am tired of correcting these long names). ahahhaa ET call home, that's what they are doing.
-
I love all the different translations on what Telemachus calls Eumaeus!! Thank you for that Greek translation of the actual word , too, Dana, I think the different translators are fascinating, don't you all? Murray (the literal one with the Loeb series ) has "father."
JoanK, hahaa I love reading your posts. At this point what else do you find irritating besides about the shape shifting of O and the suitors and what else?
I have to idly wonder if this feeling of irritation is brought on BY Homer for some reason. For instance are we all here READY to get rid of the suitors and READY to see O finally quit all this subterfuge and get ON with it? So far his quitting all the smoke screens has not been particularly helpful, all he's done is cry. And lose men. Are we ready to rumble as they say? Imagine how the listener felt who heard this thing?
After all, the book is titled "Odyssey" and he's home. But he's got one more task to do like Hercules before he can truly be "home." I am idly wondering if the list of things to be done in the Odyssey also adds up to 12 Labors.
I'd love to know where the lunch breaks were, in the recitation of the Odyssey as we've learned did occur. I am willing to bet somebody knows, and that they end with cliff hangers.
I really am enjoying everybody's takes on Telemachus and his character. We seem to ascribe all sorts of positive things to HIM, of course he's not been thru what O has. It's obvious as JoanK says he's not been seen by his father since an infant, which means Penelope raised him which means she did a good job.
Imagine 108 people to dine every night.
Telemachus also talks about the gods in every other breath. It's hard TO find him not talking about the gods, so he has a spiritual side as well, apparently.
Yes I also thought that Telemachus taking this stranger with him seemed odd, I wonder what part the stranger might play in what's to come.
Babi, great question: Couldn't she simply say something like,..'I do not wish to leave Ithaca. For
that reason, I can only consider those suitors native to this country. The
rest of you..please go home!' The Ithacans would be happy to support her in
this decision.
Apparently the presence OF the Ithacans there is something of a controversy, does anybody have anything on it? If she said that could there have been war?
Here are yet more questions, this set on 16 from http://www.ajdrake.com/e240_fall_03/materials/authors/homer_sq.htm, a course somewhere, I thought this was interesting:
Book 16
49. In this book Odysseus reveals his identity to Telemachus. What does the reaction of the two characters tell us about the Greeks' attitude towards the expression of emotion? How does their attitude differ from ours? (Think of American film heroes like John Wayne or Clint Eastwood.)
50. In what ways does Telemachus show in this book that he has matured?
I just watched a movie last night called Hanging On, and it had John Wayne mentioned in it. We have a tradition in this country of strong silent men, usually in Westerns. I like this first question (I like ours better) but neither of these had occurred to me. What do you think?
I'm still hung up on the plans to stow the weapons of war but leave them a few out and here Murray says that these lines, lines 281-198 (288-94) were rejected by Zenodotus and Aristarchus.
Those lines are about hiding the weapons.
On the "out of the smoke have I laid them since they are no longer like those which of old Odysseus left behind him when he went off to Troy but are all befouled, so far as the breath of the fire has reached them." (l.288) (These are the words O tells T to tell the suitors when they miss the arms and question him.)
In this befouled and out of the smoke business Murray says:
"The Homeric house had no chimney, and the walls with the weapons hanging on them naturally became grimy with soot from the fire which burned in the center of the hall."
The problem I'm having here is would this stash of arms INCLUDE those from the "black ship" which has just landed or not?
So that leaves Laertes. Why does Telemachus not want him told, too?
-
GINNY: " I am thinking about the peregrinations of the time of Henry VIII, it seems that I read or heard somewhere, possibly at Hampton Court itself how large these traveling parties could be."
I read (in a detective story, where else) that one reason Henry VIII would pick up the court and travel around was because the sanitary facilities at Hampton court would become overloaded. He had to get everyone out of the way, and doing their business somewhere else while new ones were dug.
(Talk about lowering the level of the conversation!!!)
Of course, another reason was to save money. H VIII let his subjects pay for the upkeep of his trememdous court for awhile, as the suitors are doing.
I'm surprized there were 12 lords in Ithaca, of a rank to marry P. I was thinking of ithaca as a small island. I guess not.
The emotion O and T feel on meeting is very consistant with what we've seen all along. O and the Greek men have no trouble crying and showing emotion. Maybe that has been true in the majority of cultures throughout history, and it is our Western European culture that is unusual in not allowing men full play of their emotions. What do you all think?
-
"So that leaves Laertes. Why does Telemachus not want him told, too?"
I haven't a clue! Anyone else?
-
The emotion they display seems quite sincere! I really like this chapter, after what seems like months and months of waiting for O. to get home again.
-
I believe both those reasons for the 'King's Progress' journeys are true, JOANK. I've
heard there is another as well. If a noble was getting a bit big for his britches, the
king could 'honor' him with a nice, long visit that would put a considerable dent in his
financial resources. Tended to cool down any belligerent tendencies, I understand.
I think Telemachus concern was that a further journey by the swineherd to speak to
Laertes would attract the attention of the suitors. The alternative proposal, that the
secret would be taken to Laertes by the old servant woman, met with his approval. There
would be nothing out of the ordinary in that.
-
I've been looking at Hampton Court Palace, the official site, which is fascinating in the extreme, they even have a cookbook of the recipes served and they give two recipes there free with the original spelling and words and then "translated." Photos even!
It says:
Built to feed the Court of Henry VIII, these kitchens were designed to feed at least 600 people twice a day.
http://www.hrp.org.uk/HamptonCourtPalace/stories/thetudorkitchens.aspx
and:
The annual provision of meat for the Tudor court stood at 1,240 oxen, 8,200 sheep, 2,330 deer, 760 calves, 1,870 pigs and 53 wild boar.
This was all washed down with 600,000 gallons of beer.
So I'm not sure that the Greeks here are outdoing them. :)
On his retinue I found him at the Field of the Cloth of Gold:
In 1520 Henry was persuaded to forge an alliance with France. A meeting was arranged between the two monarchs at a location just outside Calais, a bit of unremarkable countryside between the villages of Ardres and Guines. Francis and Henry were personal as well as political rivals, and each king prided himself on the magnificence of his court. Henry brought with him virtually his entire court, and he was determined to impress his host with the size and splendour of his retinue.
When it was determined that the castles of both villages were in too great a state of disrepair to house the courts, they camped in fields, Francis at Ardres and Henry at Guines. This was no ordinary camping expedition, however; huge pavilions were erected to serve as halls and chapels, and great silken tents decorated with gems and cloth of gold. http://www.google.com/url?sa=t&source=web&cd=5&ved=0CDEQFjAE&url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.britainexpress.com%2FHistory%2Ftudor%2Fcloth-gold.htm&rct=j&q=Henry%20VIII%20traveling%20retinue&ei=EafqTdTbNszpgAeq88nXCQ&usg=AFQjCNGn9FeCVFJfMkNlOsHpa03KQiaIeQ&cad=rja
Another book by Winston Churchill , you really should look at this one, called a History of the English Speaking Peoples (have never read this book, and it's really lavishly illustrated) says his traveling court on one occasion was 4,000. http://books.google.com/books?id=s0EEAAAAMBAJ&pg=PA76&lpg=PA76&dq=Henry+VIII+traveling+retinue&source=bl&ots=oglTUiv4bQ&sig=Ib6PSJthckLYT1_2x-U5jtwgMmw&hl=en&ei=EafqTdTbNszpgAeq88nXCQ&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=6&ved=0CDkQ6AEwBQ
So one might be forgiven to be dismayed at HIS arrival!
That's a big court!
-
I checked on the Greek word translated as "Uncle" or "Papa" and it is "atta" which is used to address an elder. The Greek for grandfather is "pappos" interestingly enough.
Telemachos comes across as a real straight arrow, unlike his dad, and a nice guy too, unstuck up, pleasant to beggars....!.
In my translation Athena does warn him that a ship will be lying in wait for him on his way home.
I think he told Eumaios to come back quickly "not to be caught alone in the countryside." I expect the suitors know that he is a supporter of the royal house, and, learning that Telemachos has made it home safely, might try to see if he knows anything re T.'s whereabouts if they caught him. However T. immediately suggests that the old housekeeper be sent on the quiet to tell his pappos, again, I think, showing what a nice, sensible, kind, guy he is.
Sorry i ended up quoting all my previous post--the bit that's relevant is the bit about why Telemachus told Eumaios to come home quickly
-
GINNY, JEAN posted this link in Non-fiction and I'm bringing it over here. If
you aren't already familiar with it, you'll love it!
http://www.third-millennium-library.com/readinghall/GalleryofHistory/DOOR.html
-
am really enjoying the information put out, about the courts of England; their travelling, lengths of stay and the effect on the hosts,(all posted previously) and the reasoning of sewage problems therefore the reasoning why the courts was forced to be away for lengthy times --even if only someone's surmising an interesting point
humanizes history for me
am relenting on my earlier 'harsh criticism', of Homer's Odyssey, not understanding whether to laugh at some of the antics of his characters, or try to understand where they were coming from in their century and culture; this is not a comedy, though to me it bears some ideas that are hard to take seriously--
Deb
-
DEB: " to understand where they were coming from in their century and culture". That's one of the great things about reading books written in opther times and places. It makes me realize how different different cultures can be. I always seem to learn from it: sometimes I find new ideas or ways of acting I really like: sometimes I DON'T like them: either way, I learn about what possibilities otheer peoples have chosen, and WE have chosen.
For a small example: the idea that men shouldn't cry. Whether we like it or not, it's fascinating to realize that the idea is a product of our culture, completely unknown in other cultures. Someone once said that a fish cannot see the water he swims in. Only if he could get outside his pond and look back, could he see the water. that's us, swimming in our little pond of OUR time and OUR place and assuming that that is the universe of human experience.
-
For me reading the Odyssey is pure pleasure as it is set in my favourite time in Greek history. The other point I must add is that I have learned so much, and my Greek history is not poor. As for taking it seriously, humorously, tragically, well, that should always be subjective. If one enjoys it - that is all that really counts.
Joan and Deb - great posts. What you wrote about crying was/is so true. I suspect that Australian/English and possibly American men would never ever want to be seen crying; I think that a lot of women are also like that now because they want to somehow impress their menfolk. And the men would most likely baulk at buying material for a woman's garment as well.
It reminded me of an Afghan friend who asked me to go shopping in the city (it's a big city - 2mil population - where I live)with him. I agreed, his wife was ill, he said. So off we went. We must have made a strange couple. I remember when I first saw Amini (my friend) I paused a little - he looks like a bandit! Long black hair and a black beard and droopy moustache; with wild black eyes. But as we know looks can be deceiving. Amini wanted to visit the most expensive dress material shop in the city. Gardams - very exclusive. The looks on the faces of the women behind the counter were priceless when they spotted Amini. He walked into the shop with the confidence of a man who knew what he was doing and what he wanted. Their eyes opened even wider when he held a roll of purple velvet up against himself as a model. Even I was slightly taken aback at this gesture. Then he took the roll of velvet and rushed outside with it into the crowded street, asking me if I could tell the shop assistants he wanted to see it in natural light.
Amini asked me my opinion of the purple velvet and did I think his wife would like it. I told him that I liked it and I thought that she would too. He paid quite a large sum and bought three metres.
When he got home his wife turned her nose up and said she didn't like it at all, but she took it anyway. Many Afghan women were not allowed to shop in Afghanistan, and I think Amina still bears many emotional scars from her life there.
Aminis job in Afghanistan was seller of materials, so he was very au fait with the procedures required to buy and sell. His outward bandit like appearance was so different to the way he acted in the material shop in the city. No wonder they were surprised. Big culture shock for them, but not for him.
Just using this as an example of 1) the neverending fascination of working with and having "refugees" as students and friends; and 2) our way is most certainly not the ONLY way, for better or worse.
-
The Book Club Online is the oldest book club on the Internet, begun in 1996, open to everyone. We offer cordial discussions of one book a month, 24/7 and enjoy the company of readers from all over the world. Everyone is welcome to join in.
Now reading:
(http://www.seniorlearn.org/bookclubs/classicsbookclub/cbc2odysseysm.jpg)
June 8-----Book XVII: Odysseus is in the House!
(http://seniorlearn.org/latin/ulysses_penelope/Ulysses.dog.jpg)
Odysseus returns home
(http://seniorlearn.org/latin/ulysses_penelope/UlyssessuitorsthrowscrapsTulden16061669.jpg)
The suitors throw Odysseus scraps
17th century etching
Theodor van Thulden (1606 - 1669)
Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco
Discussion Leaders: Joan K (joankraft13@yahoo.com) & ginny (gvinesc@wildblue.net )
Useful Links:
1. Critical Analysis: Free SparkNotes background and analysis on the Odyssey (http://www.sparknotes.com/lit/odyssey)
2. Translations Used in This Discussion So Far: (http://www.seniorlearn.org/bookclubs/odyssey/odyssey_translations.html)
3. Initial Points to Watch For: submitted by JudeS (http://www.seniorlearn.org/bookclubs/odyssey/odyssey_points.html)
4. Maps:
Map of the Voyages of Odysseus (http://www.seniorlearn.org/latin/ulysses_penelope/Odysseusmap.jpg)
Map of Voyages in order (http://www.wesleyan.edu/~mkatz/Images/Voyages.jpg)
Map of Stops Numbered (http://www.seniorlearn.org/latin/ulysses_penelope/Odysseusmap2.jpg)
Our Map Showing Place Names in the Odyssey (http://www.seniorlearn.org/latin/graphics/AncientGreecemap.jpg)
(http://seniorlearn.org/latin/ulysses_penelope/Ulyssesandargosflaxman.jpg)
Odysseus and Argos
Engraving and etching on paper
John Flaxman
1805
Tate Gallery
(http://seniorlearn.org/latin/ulysses_penelope/UlyssesArgosRegognizesThulden.jpg)
Argos recognises Odysseus
17th century etching
Theodor van Thulden (1606 - 1669)
Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco
-
Oh such wonderful posts here, on the Laertes thing, Babi, and Dana, and us not seeing our own water we're swimming in, Joan K, and our way not the only way (RoshanaRose) and emotions amongst the Greeks, fabulous stuff. Like Deb I'm so enjoying reading them. Is it just me or are there suddenly so MANY things that are out there I don't personally know?
This is a super way to find out about them. I just read that entire article, with its 1957 ads and prices about the Tudors, it's absolutely wonderful, I love it.
I don't know if you do this but Mippy sort of nailed it here: The emotion they display seems quite sincere! I really like this chapter, after what seems like months and months of waiting for O. to get home again.
I woke up this morning thinking about this chapter and wondering why I liked it also. I realized that for once O is actually DOING something. We've not seen him in action much, now we do. He's planning, he's taking charge, he's making detailed [plans for revenge. I am not sure that we'd qualify this as revenge or taking back what's his or both?
But at any rate, he's got quite the plan here, the wily O, and I'm trying to think when else we've seen this: the Cyclops, and....possibly in the....Trojan Horse, right? Attributed to him, but otherwise he's been pretty passive and so has the story. NOW he's ready finally and so are we!
Has he been a take charge guy otherwise? The wax in his ears and the tying to the mast for the Sirens was not his idea. The cattle of Helios, they didn't listen, right? When have we seen him take control, plan, and execute other than what I've mentioned here?
We are READY to see our hero in action and he's not flying in (he's not got enough numbers) so he has to plan it carefully.
I GUESS the weapons from the "black ship" which had gone out to ambush, would have been brought ashore and put in the hall, so they, too, would be spirited away for the big confrontation.
Now Joan K had proposed every 5 days we move on. Are we ready then to do 17 for tomorrow or is it too soon or is there something we've not covered?
I can see the listeners around the fire hunching closer, leaning in to hear: we're getting finally to the good stuff now!
Our hero is home, but has not completed his final task.
-
It's disappointing to learn that even at Hampton Court it'll take me over half a year to get enough boar tusks for my helmet. :)
I'm ready to move on. We can always fill in anything we've missed.
-
U r cute PatH.
-
Ok super! Then let's move forward tomorrow with 17, giving everybody a day to read it, if necessary.
In 17 things really heat up and we can see why T's new friend is there! Or can we?
O goes to his own palace at last and Penelope sends for O to find out any news of O! This will be their first meeting in 20 years! It should be very exciting!
How simple this little tale seems, almost a caricature of a fairy story, there's no great introspection in our hero, it's just a comic book or so it seems. Quite different from the Iliad. Yet underneath all the activity on the surface, all I see is teeming symbolism, and pretty big themes, actually. I am seeing here in the elaborate plans to "test" the loyalty of what appears to be everybody on earth, issues of faith, loyalty, trust, and revenge. He's home but his home is usurped and that impacts his own quest for "homecoming," and reunion. I wonder if the savagery of his response when it comes is related TO these thwarted desires. Would almost be too much for some, in any age. How to handle these feelings of....well, what would be YOUR feelings if you arrived home at last to find your house full of riotous...let's see, most of us are women, riotous playboy bunnies? Or Real Housewives of Orange County? And your erstwhile husband not being able to choose?
But here for one more day in 16, while we're reading on, are some questions from Creighton U on 16 which I find quite interesting. What, offhand, do you all think about these? Particularly the "justified" part and the last question?
What do you think about the fact that Odysseus reveals his identity to his son? What of their plot to kill the suitors? Is it justified? Does it accord well with the principles of justice set forth in the Odyssey ? What do you think of Athena's eagerness to see the suitors killed? Is that proper in a divinity? Is Athena, the goddess of wisdom, wise?
-
By our definition, GINNY, I think Athena as we see her here would be considered shrewd rather
than wise. Perhaps she shows 'wisdom', as we see it, in other legends.
The re-union of father and son is poignant. But before Odysseus identified himself, I was surprised that this ragged guest dared to speak as he did to the Prince Telemachos. I can’t
quite imagine him saying “are you resigned to being led?” And “..if I were son of Odysseus, or the man himself, I’d rather have my head out from my shoulders by some slashing adversary, if I brought no hurt upon that crew!” I was surprised when Telemachos quietly explained the situation rather than taking offense. But then, Homer often refers to him as ‘clear-headed’, doesn’t he?
Telemachos definitely is not ‘scatterbrained’, as he himself says. He quietly makes a sound argument against part of his Odysseus’s plans, persuading him they didn’t have time to check out the loyalty of every one of O’s field hands before making their attack on the suitors. He's
certainly right there. His own life is in imminent danger.
-
Ginny
You asked about clever actions that O. did before his present plan to get rid of the suitors. Here are two examples.
Another of O.s actions that show planning was when he hid the presents (gold and such) in the cave when he arrived back home.
Still another wily thing (and I liked this one the best) was tieing his men under the belly of the sheep in order to escape from Cyclops cave.
There are others, but let these suffice for the moment.
Here is where my mind is wandering-far from others, I'm sure.
In the back of Fagles book are listed all the names of people and places that appear in the book. There are more than 300. Yes three hundred! The way Homer always mentions characters lineage in relation reminded me of all the "BEGATS" in the Old Testament Bible. I wondered if Homer could have been influenced by this book or if the writers of the Old Testament could have been influenced by the Greek writers. So I searched for the dates. Nobody can be 100% sure but there are dates given in many sources both for the Bible and for the Greek writers and Greek history.
I even found a site that includes both. Also peered into a few books.
It seems that the Bible was more or less finished when Homer and the later Greek writers were writing.
Most sites claim that the earliest date for the first stories of the Bible are from 4,000 B.C.(Genesis mainly).
However during the last thousand BC years the Apocrypha was being put together. The Apocrypha, for those interested, were the book that were not allowed into the Bible after it was codified i.e.closed for changes. The Apocrypha contains the stories of the Maccabees and other exciting, heroic people.
I couldn't find a definite date for Homer but did find the tragedian Aeschylus at525-456 BC.
I found Plato at 427 BC. There is a claim that the Apocrypha was being written from 560BC
So, I think there was some cross-pollination between Greek and Hebrew writers in the BC years.
Hope this isn't too off the topic.
-
" I wondered if Homer could have been influenced by this book or if the writers of the Old Testament could have been influenced by the Greek writers."
I had the same question reguarding a Roman writer, Virgil. In one of his poems he wrote about ploughshares being turned into swords. It reminds me of the phrase in the bible about swords being turned into ploughshares. Of course, that could have been literally what they did then: metal must have been precious to poor people.
-
I'm ready to move on tomorrow. the next chapter is quite interesting, as we see what kind of reception O gets when he returns to his house in disguise I'm sure we all want to know.
-
Isn't that interesting, thank you Jude. Homer's dates are thought to be around 800 BC but that does not mean the two cultures couldn't have come in contact with each other.
Certainly it would not be the only time that disparate religions took from each other. It's interesting you mention Virgil, Joan.
Apparently it was St. Augustine's endorsement of the Sibyls as prophets to the pagans which gave them their cachet. The fourth of Virgil's Eclogues appears to contain a Messianic prophecy by the Sibyl. Augustine's approving remarks about them apparently lent support to the movement that although the Jews were preeminently the recipients of revelation before Christ, the pagans also were given glimpses of divine truth, and thus they are found prominently in the Sistine Chapel.
And then there were the Sortes Virgilianae or Virgilian Lots, attempts to foretell the future by opening his books and picking a line at random, which lasted from the Emperor Hadrian to at least Charles I at Oxford, and Dante regarded him as a prophet of Christianity also.
Interesting!
I'm still reeling with Jude's 300 characters! I had no idea, did you all? He's slipped a lot of them in on us, 300 characters in the book!!
-
I am so glad I didn't try to graph the characters to try and keep them all straight....its impressive the author/storyteller could remember all their names
Deb
-
Isn't it? I'm sure I could not, even with no end of memory devices!
It's interesting to me that none of the artists dealing with the death of Argos, the faithful dog, describe what the text does. Or possibly your own texts say something different? 17 has it all, I can't wait to see what you think of it, it's longish tho.
-
The Argos story brought a tear to my eye
............................................he did his best
to wag his tail, nose down, with flattened ears,
poor Argos, he dies without even getting a pat, a sign of recognition.
-
Agamemnon - my least favourite character of Homer's, makes number two on Ancient History's worst fathers list. Cronus makes number one. Further information can be found on www.about.com in the Ancient History section. If you can think of any worse examples of these dastardly dads, you are free to add them to the list.
Ginny - Was it Nero who kicked his pregnant wife in the stomach? Poppeae (sp), I think. Charmer that he was.
I am trying to think who is a bad dad in the Odyssey?
-
I am firmly persuaded, JUDE, that though Job lived centuries earlier, the written
version of the story was not penned until after the return from the Babylonian captivity.
There are too many things appearing in Job that were no part of the pre-captivity beliefs.
Plus, the book is written in the Greek style and features a theme that was prominent in
the Babylonian 'golden period' of literature; ie., 'Why do the innocent suffer?"
The suitors are concerned that Telemachos could bring “the whole body of Akhaians to assembly”, and rouse them against the suitors. Telemachos earlier attempt to do that was not successful, but his successful journey has apparently established him now as a man to be reckoned with. Antinoos proposes to murder him, then share his flocks and herds among them all. The house will be awarded to whomever marries Penelope . :o The plot thickens!
Penelope, knowing her son to still be in danger, finally gathers up her courage and pours out a tirade on the lot of them. “Infatuate, steeped in evil!”, she calls them. Good for her!
She reminds Antinoos that Odysseus once saved his life when everyone was against him. Who knows what he might have replied, but Eurymachos was ready with a smooth lie, swearing to protect her son. “Blasphemous lies”, Homer called them. I begin to see why Zeus might indeed involve himself in the coming conflict, just as Athena said.
-
Dana, that's what I have too. It IS sad.
RoshanaRose, yes the Empress Poppaea, (who is credited with owning Oplontis) was said to have died in 65 pregnant again from a kick given her by Nero in a fit of temper. Suetonius is often cited as the source, it may only be rumor, however.
Bad fathers, what an interesting question. Do we have any bad fathers here (Father's Day being next Sunday, it's a good question)... besides Agamemnon, who I agree, qualifies in spades.
Babi, yes the plot really thickens. I loved 17, and I loved the way it ends, such a cliffhanger!! Also they are stepping up the invective against the suitors, you are right, with particular ones notes, one has to think, for particular destruction later.
Meet me at night!! And as the book closes:
They were singing and dancing
And having a good time, for it was evening now.
LOVE IT! What suspense! Such echoes of the Ancient Mariner.
I'm beginning to like the Creighton U questions and here are theirs for 17:
Why does Odysseus wish to go to his own palace disguised as a beggar? What does the beggar disguise symbolize? Why is it important for him to show patience and self-restraint, even when hit and insulted? What is the meaning of the death of Argos, Odysseus' old hunting dog? Consider the advice of Athena to Odysseus (lines 470-473). Is that a consistent statement? Does it reveal an internal contradiction?
What IS the meaning of the death of Argos, Odysseus' old hunting dog? These are excellent questions, and no answers are given, what do YOU think? About anything here?
-
Man and the foreshadowing of doom for the suitors is like a drum roll here. If I were making up questions I'd ask how MANY instances of foreshadowing of death for the suitors is in this chapter and what are they?
-
This is apropos of nothing, please don't let it get you off the track, but I just found out yesterday that some of us can't see the script here: can YOU see the writing in script at the top?
(http://seniorlearn.org/latin/graphics/sstestOdyssey.jpg)
-
I see the script just fine, Ginny.
-
Yes, I can see the script.
Even though some suitors are more innocent than others they are all complicit.
Why does Odysseus wish to go to his own palace disguised as a beggar? Why is it important for him to show patience and self-restraint, even when hit and insulted?
O wants to get the lay of the land before the battle. He doesn't want to be recognized until he is sure of what is happening and who is to blame.
-
Where is the script?
-
(http://seniorlearn.org/latin/graphics/sstestOdyssey.jpg)
Here it is, Pat.
I'm glad some of you can see it, I think it's pretty. It's the last (blank) choice among the font choices in the drop down menu, anybody can use it. Whether or not the reader can SEE it depends on their own computer.
Sally, good point. And I am wondering if this means that he's changed, no longer the rash rush in and smash em kind of guy? He's also wanting to do some testing to see who is loyal tho Lombardo has it pretty plainly set out that it makes absolutely no difference if he does or not:
line 389 or thereabouts:
Athena
Drew near to him and prompted him
to go among the suitors and beg for crusts
And so learn which of them were decent men
And which were scoundrels--not that the goddess had
The slightest intention of sparing any of them.
This extends to Penelope too but we're not there yet. So O wants to know.
And again it's said when Telemachus, right when Penelope finishes speaking, sneezes (around 589)
Just as she finished, Telemachus sneezed,
A loud sneeze that rang through the halls.
Penelope laughed and said to Eumaeus:
Go ahead and call the stranger for me!
Didn't you see my son sneeze at my words?
That means death will surely come to the suitors,
One and all. Not a single man will escape.
Hexter makes an interesting point. He says typically when Homeric characters weigh two courses of action, they execute one. Here, Odysseus alone, by exercising self-control, chooses to do neither. The departure from the standard scene of "inner debate" underlines Odysseus extraordinary willpower. So this section is about showing what willpower he has too.
Hexter's got a lot on the dog. The word Argos "is based on an adjective that can mean both 'shiny' and swift. Standford suggests 'Flash' as an English approximation. The name sharpens the indignity of his present bed of manure." But why have the dog at all? I guess O couldn't approach the dog. Would that give him away? I think there's something a lot more likely to give him away here.
Gosh there's a lot here.
Why do you think Antinous threw a stool at him? I mean why is this in the plot?
On the sneeze, Hexter says: "Sneezes were regarded as (minor) incursions of the divine into this world--many people still say 'Bless you,' to anyone who has just sneezed-- and Penelope interprets Telemachus' sneeze, coming ass it did immediately after her wish, as a favorable omen. Hence her laugh, wonderful amid her cares."
And we DO, don't we? hahahaa
-
I was struck by the same passage GINNY quoted. It seems important to Athena in this chapter to find out who are the really bad guys and who are (at least sorta) good. yet it won't make any difference in the end to their fate in this world.
And in the next??? We are so used to the ideas of heaven for the good and hell for the bad that it's hard not to think there was some equivilant in greek religion. Does anyone know?
Perhaps the difference will be in the manner of their death (honorable or not). We'll have to waitand see.
Quibble: why did the dog lie in the manure? Why didn't he just move over a few feet?
The scene of the dog recognizing him is the one I knew about from childhood, before I read The Odyssey. I guess, it makes a big impression on everyone.
-
"What is the meaning of the death of Argos?"
A strange question I thought.
Some deep meaning, or what?
Maybe each person reads something a little different.
To me it means, "life's a bitch and then you die....." Maybe its a reality wake up call. Odysseus is going to win thru in the end, the suitors are going to get punished as they deserve, but the dog dies helpless on a dung heap with the promise of a better tomorrow before his eyes, but too late for him. So either he dies with regret in his heart, or contentment at seeing his master...I don't think the latter, too saintly....he dies in pain, aged and alone.
So its a reality check amid the fantasy.
The Greeks didn't like old age. And thought that life was a trial often.
Here's a couple of couplets:
Men are foolish and childish,who weep for the dead.
and not for the flower of youth that perishes.
Enjoy yourself please dearest one. Soon again there will be other men,
and I having died, will be black earth.
-
Oh boy, another font. I didn't know it was there Ginny. How did you find it? I wonder why it is a blank space on the drop down menu.
-
I found the poetic translation of couplet no 1, by TF Higham--original, Theognis;
What fools men are to weep the dead and gone!
Unwept, youth drops its petals one by one.
And how about this: (Mimnermus, translated by G. Lowes Dickson):
.........................But painful age
The bane of beauty, follows swiftly on,
Wearies the heart of man with sad presage
And takes away his pleasure in the sun.
-
Dana
I have a longer bit of the same poem but by a differeent translator:
We are as leaves in jewelled springtime growing
That open to the sunlight's quickening rays:
So joy in our span of youth,unknowing
If God shall bring us good or evil days.
Two fates beside thee stand;the one hath sorrow,
Dull age's fruit, that other gives the boon
Of Death, for youth's fair flower hath no tomorrow,
And lives but as a sunlit afternoon.
In other words ""Gather ye roses while ye may'.
-
Whoa, those are beautiful, thank you Dana and Jude.
Dana, that's certainly as good a speculation or couple of speculations about the dog dying as any. Dog manages to live all that time, sees master, and dies. I would probably tend to think the dog was happy to see his master again. Hope is here? The dung heap, Joan K, a good question. I guess the dog was worn out and it's obvious nobody was caring FOR the dog, so he just lay where he was, I guess. I'm not sure why O going over TO the dog would have revealed himself, the dog is really old and probably doesn't object to anybody any more.
Hexter has his own interpretation tho this is not his question. I mean you have to wonder why the dog episode is in the book at all?
Hexter says "The man in disguise is recognized only by 'man's best friend.' This phrase is more apt in its Odysseyan context than in times when the relationship is one of a pet to his owner. Dogs were not regarded as items of luxury, but, like other domestic animals, working members of the household: they served as guards or aided in the hunt....Argos had been trained by Odysseus to fulfill his function as a necessary auxiliary to one of the standard peace time pursuits of a man of property and standing. His unappreciated existence had become one of meaningless misery, which demonstrates clearly the impact of Odysseus' twenty year absence. The rot and waste of a land without its lord, of a house without its master, is reflected here by the life of an animal."
So Hexter sees him there to embody the extent of the ruin.
But nobody else recognizes Odysseus.
What do you think of the prophesy of Telemachus' friend? Does he leave after making this prophesy? I mean, is THIS his only purpose? Talk about a walk on part!
...for I will prophesy.....
I swear, ....
That this same Odysseus, mark my words,
Until this moment in his own native land,
Sitting still or on the move, learning of this evil.
And he is sowing evil for all the suitors.
Such is the bird of omen I saw
From the ship, and I cried it out to Telemachus.
But apparently he only said this to Penelope, is that what you got? One might think if this was said, given the superstition of the times, people would be even MORE apt to look for O in every stranger, including the new beggar?
It seems like the cast is being divided now into camps: loyal and disloyal. We've got the two loyal servants, the swineherd and the serving lady, and the dog who died, and Telemachus and Penelope. That's a VERY small army to help O against 108+ Then Odysseus tells his Kretan story yet again. Hexter says he changes it and Antinous interrupts this change before the swineherd can realize it's changed, if he remembers it at all, and Odysseus makes the point that Antinous himself is nothing more than a beggar living off the wealth of another.
Here is where Antinous throws the stool. The others gave him something, tho, am I right? So here whether or not they give to him they are doomed. I am not sure why these passages are in here unless it's to heighten the audience's appreciation of what's coming for Antinous and lest they think OH that's too much?
And speaking of questions with no answer I've found more. I love seeing what aspects people zoom IN on, these are from: http://faculty.gvsu.edu/websterm/Odyssey.htm
In books 13-19 why do you suppose Homer emphasizes the lies that unscrupulous beggars will tell to get a meal? (See 11.373-86, 13.259-64, 13.299-345, 14.137-182, 14.389-438, 19.219-225, 19.286-345.)
In what ways can you connect Odysseus' disguise as a beggar with the themes of "a man" and re-establishing his name and fame? In what ways can you connect his disguise with the themes of "the book of the belly"—gifts, greed, hunger, eating? (See pp. 88, 101, 210-211, 232-3 [15.375-79], 263, 265 [17.310-16], 266-271, 276-77, 280, 287-8, 319-21).
Why do you think pigs and dogs are associated with recognition scenes (p. 240, 265-66) and with begging and the belly (pp. 263-5, 279)?
Now that last one makes one think, doesn't it?
What do YOU think about anything in Book 17 or anything else?
-
Isn't the disguise, the self-restraint and patience, a necessary tactic? You can't just
march in and start fighting that many enemies at once. Some of the famous Odysseus guile
and strategy is definitely called for here.
And isn't it sort of a tradition of the 'faithful old dog', that he keeps going until
his master returns. Having seen him once again, he dies happily? The pile of manure
may be the result of keeping the dog chained in one spot. A cruel thing to do, but it still happens
with puppy mills and thoughtless dog owners.
It seems to me so pointless to determine which of the suitors are comparatively decent
men, when the plan is to kill them anyway. Why bother? Do they want to say something
nice about them at the funeral?
-
That's a good point, Babi. Maybe they won't even HAVE a funeral, that would, in the Greek world, diss them permanently. I have a feeling when the bloodletting starts we'll all be saying oh it's too much, so in this way by demonizing the enemy, the enemy seems to "deserve" it.
Good point on the caution we suddenly see with O.
Frybabe, marcie added the new font but for some reason it won't show its name. :)
-
belatedly...Ginny I was able to see the script
Deb
-
I was able to see it too. I had misunderstood and though you meant there was some script actually in the painting.
-
Amazon just sent me a recommendation for The Orestia, trilogy of plays by Aeschylus, Agamemnon, The Libation Bearers and The Eumenides. All our favorite people--Agamamnon, Klytaemnestra, Athena. Translated by Fagles. The reviewsare interesting. I would like to recommend it for our next endeavour.
-
I got the Orestia on my kindle, hoping we would read it. Don't remember the translator, and we are learning how important the translators are.
I'm feeling very stupid: Don't know the answers to any of the questions. But it's interesting to hear about" the themes of "the book of the belly"—gifts, greed, hunger, eating?". Is that a fair description of the Odessy?
-
I'm reading a book by a captain of a fishing boat (Seaworthy by Linda Greenlaw) and she says "There are no athiests at sea". Would you say the Odyssey bears that out? She also talks a lot about is (or should be) held responsible when something goes wrong. After she nearly loses a crew member at sea, she worries a lot about whether, and how much to hold herself responsible versus nature, fate, God. She says it's human nature to want to hold SOMEONE responsible.
how does The Odyssey deal with this problem? How would it be different today?
-
BABI: that website of biographiesthat you posted a few days ago is wonderful! In case anyone missed it, here it is again.
http://www.third-millennium-library.com/readinghall/GalleryofHistory/DOOR.html (http://www.third-millennium-library.com/readinghall/GalleryofHistory/DOOR.html)
-
It does offer a lot, doesn't it, JOANK. Glad you like it, too.
Homer places what you might call a real 'mouthful' into our faithful Eumaios. .Eumaios manages in one sentence to make an observation about the care given the dying dog, servants, and mankind in general, including Odysseus.
“You know how servants are; without a master they have no will to labor, or excel. For Zeus, who views the wide world takes away half the manhood of a man, that day he goes into captivity and slavery.”
I have nothing whatever to add to that.
-
That's another black hole site, Babi. The choices of modern men to be included seems rather odd.
-
Josn K
re: No atheists at sea:
I heard the saying from WW1 "There are no atheists in the trenches."
and from WW 2 "There are no atheists in foxholes."
So the more perilous the world around us, the greater the need to hold on to something sublime and bigger than the precarious moment.
I will be going away to an Elder Hostel in Baltimore so I will be back on line in about two weeks. I imagine that the discussion will still be going on. I will miss all of your clever remarks and yes Ginny, even the questions that we recalcitrant pupils keep refusing to answer.
-
JUDE: have a great time! Looking forward to learning what you saw and did there.
-
The Book Club Online is the oldest book club on the Internet, begun in 1996, open to everyone. We offer cordial discussions of one book a month, 24/7 and enjoy the company of readers from all over the world. Everyone is welcome to join in.
Now reading:
(http://www.seniorlearn.org/bookclubs/classicsbookclub/cbc2odysseysm.jpg)
June 13-----Book XVIII: "He's very close."
Schedule:
June 13: Book 18
June 18: Book 19
June 23: Book 20
June 28: Book 21
July 2: Book 22
July 7: Book 23
July 12: Book 24
(http://seniorlearn.org/latin/ulysses_penelope/UlyssesPenelope18Irus2Thulden.jpg)
Odysseus destroys Iros
17th century etching
Theodor van Thulden (1606 - 1669)
Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco
(http://seniorlearn.org/latin/ulysses_penelope/Ulysses18PenelopeLoomKlinger.jpg)
Penelope brooding over her loom
Colour etching and aquatint
Max Klinger
1895
Discussion Leaders: Joan K (joankraft13@yahoo.com) & ginny (gvinesc@wildblue.net )
Useful Links:
1. Critical Analysis: Free SparkNotes background and analysis on the Odyssey (http://www.sparknotes.com/lit/odyssey)
2. Translations Used in This Discussion So Far: (http://www.seniorlearn.org/bookclubs/odyssey/odyssey_translations.html)
3. Initial Points to Watch For: submitted by JudeS (http://www.seniorlearn.org/bookclubs/odyssey/odyssey_points.html)
4. Maps:
Map of the Voyages of Odysseus (http://www.seniorlearn.org/latin/ulysses_penelope/Odysseusmap.jpg)
Map of Voyages in order (http://www.wesleyan.edu/~mkatz/Images/Voyages.jpg)
Map of Stops Numbered (http://www.seniorlearn.org/latin/ulysses_penelope/Odysseusmap2.jpg)
Our Map Showing Place Names in the Odyssey (http://www.seniorlearn.org/latin/graphics/AncientGreecemap.jpg)
(http://seniorlearn.org/latin/ulysses_penelope/UlyssesPenelope18Pentoricchio.jpg)
Penelope is surrounded by the suitors - one of the men may be Telemachus. Odysseus, disguised as a beggar, enters through the door. In the background are other scenes from the Odyssey - the Song of the Sirens, and Circe's transformation of Odysseus' companions.
Pintoricchio
1509
National Gallery, London
(http://seniorlearn.org/latin/ulysses_penelope/Ulysses18PenelopeIrus.jpg)
Iros is terrified by Odysseus' physique
Engraving and etching on paper
John Flaxman
1805
-
Jude, that sounds like fun. But you a dollar SOMETHING comes up that applies to the Odyssey, want to bet? hhahaha
We'll miss you!
I will miss all of your clever remarks and yes Ginny, even the questions that we recalcitrant pupils keep refusing to answer.
Gosh, I hope there are no teachers or pupils here, I don't know what a recalcitrant pupil IS, I don't have any, myself. :) I think we're doing a spectacular job with the questions, we tore thru those on 16 in about a half a day. hahaha This is a pretty astute group!
I can't answer all of the questions either but that's what they get if they don't give answers, I feel it's fair game and at least we can see what people are asking. I really hate to be in a conversation on something where I come out later on and the issues never even got raised.
On the pigs and dogs and belly I'd say that personally we're talking the basest of needs, human or animal and as far as estate the lowest of the low, in the swineherd and the pigs. He's fallen as low as he can go as a man, isn't that one of the items in the Epic hero's route? I mean he IS the King, right?
And so he enters his own home, his own former palace as a beggar, which...is a beggar below a slave? He's living with a swineherd, surrounded by a lot of people abusing hospitality (I picture them as a kind of ancient Angry Birds game to which I am now totally addicted, I can extrapolate their grunting over their food like the pigs in the game)...hahasaa I actually hear those pigs in my sleep.
Pretty much people are acting AS animals. Shows you what happens when law and order or in the case of O, the leader, leaves town: anarchy. Lots of modern books on THAT theme.
That's a good point Babi on Eumaeus' speech about Zeus taking away half a person's manhood, when captured or taken into slavery. I hadn't actually thought about that concept: what constitutes a man.
I like that question, Joan K, I think the question of responsibility in the Odyssey is all over the place, do you all? There's always SOMEBODY or SOMETHING being blamed. Mostly the gods. But I have a feeling it's going to shift to the suitors, there have been little hints.
I really loved that question on was Minerva (or Athene), the goddess of wisdom, wise? Reminds me of my childhood in old New Jersey where the tough girls went around asking "are you wise, or otherwise?" hahaha
IS she "wise?" She knows what's going to happen and she will make it happen but to me she's totally annoying. She's there, she disappears, she's in disguise, she's self congratulatory, she's a pain in the neck. Playing with the mortals. She must be very bored.
Dana, that sounds like a very good suggestion!
Deb and PatH, and Frybabe, thank you. I am glad you can see the script, I think it's quite pretty.
So what were you thinking when YOU read this chapter? What of Penelope? She's suddenly rounding on the suitors, is she taking a big chance? Did that take courage? or?
-
Don't believe it took courage for Penelope to speak out -- who among the suitors would dare to harm her??
Ordered Orestia.
-
I see van Thulden tactfully omits the pile of manure. I do appreciate that; it would
be so out of place on that lovely etching.
You know, based on what how Athena is traditionally described, Homer may be doing her
an injustice. She was goddess of wisdom, justice, war, the arts, industry, justice and skill.
(Her role in 'war' was that of strategy only.)
The Greeks..and Romans...did have a way of ascribing to their gods and goddesses
their own character, flaws and foibles. Perhaps Homer's use of Athena was simply more of
that tendency. Call it poetic license.
-
Do all the translations have "manure?" It's commonly thought a dog will not soil its own bedding or place if it can help it but sometimes they can't, especially if aged. Our dogs were in their teens, most of them, when they died and anybody who's had a dog that long knows things can happen, particularly with farm dogs. So for Argus (love that name, it says volumes) to be lying in a pile of it shows how low HE has gone also. Everything has gone to pot when the master is gone.
I have to say this, too. It's commonly thought that pigs are gluttons and also wallow in mud etc., but the pig, I believe, is one of the smartest animals alive, is that the case? I really don't want to get into the pigs knowing what's going to happen stories I've heard but we've got a dog who recognizes O and lots of slaughter of "lower" animals, pigs by the noble and loyal swineherd, to feed what essentially more and more appears to be animalistic humans. This SO reminds me of the various Apocalypse novels, Blindness, Mad Max, the Stephen King novels where our society and the rules we hold fall apart with some catastrophic happening and what happens when anarchy rules.
Even 3000 years ago, I would think the audience, which is listening to this portrayal of the collapse of their society being shown in verse would be rooting on O and T and the swineherd, to restore order as they knew it.
There's a new book out now, Robopocalypse, by Daniel Wilson, already optioned by Stephen Spielberg, and another one where a mother notices a doll is entirely too advanced for its programming, but the themes are the same: the end of civilization as we know it and what the good, the bad, and the ugly do then.
In this one we've got Athene on O's side. She doesn't seem to be taking the suitor's side, that's a good point on how Homer treats her and why, Babi!!!
Remember on the Orestia we'll need to vote first, but it's good to see things before I think.
Sally, good point, who would dare hurt Penelope? Of course T doesn't waste time telling her what to do. I remember T telling her to go back to her room the first time, and here in the first bit of 17 he's giving her more instructions. Go bathe and put on clean clothes (somewhere around line 50)...so we can vow formal sacrifice to the immortal gods that Zeus will grant us vengeance."
The foreshadowing here is relentless and heavy handed. As the mother of sons, myself, I am not sure I'd appreciate all these instructions, go here, go there, do this, do that, do you think she's glad to see some kind of manly leadership in him? It's a nice vignette there on the growing up of sons, actually.
The tone seems to have picked up a bit, we've got one prophesy that O is IN Ithaca and making his way there, we've got prayers for vengeance with a capital V, and we've got Men Acting Badly all over the place.
What did you make of Melanthius the...is he a goatherd? He meets O and party who are sort of nervous anyway on the way in and boy is HE hateful? Is there a Hateful Gas about or is all this in aid of stirring up the tension?
"Well, look at this, trash dragging along trash.
Birds of a feather, as usual. Where
Are you taking this walking pile of s-----,
You miserable hog-tender, this diseased beggar
Who will slobber all over our feasts?"---Lombardo 217---_
Man you can't get less hospitable than that! What's this in here for?
And he KICKS him! I'm trying to keep track of the slings and arrows that O will suffer physically here in his own kingdom from the usurpers.
It's funny that everybody is calling on different gods, tho. Melanthius wants Apollo to kill T.
I think all these incidents and people are here so that when revenge comes, as P once again iterates somewhere around
585:
"If Odysseus should ever come home,
He and his son would make them pay for this outrage."
And...
"That means death will surely come to the suitors,
One and all. Not a single man will escape."
So we have to date two blows from the lowest so far, a goat herd and Antinous, "like black death itself" (542) and we've got endless prophesy of (1) the return of O, and (2) vengeance and not a man left alive.
Man talk about "rising action."
How would all this play out in 2011? We're about forgiveness in 2011, right? It's not like they've killed anybody? Are they going to even have a chance to say sorry, yes, do forgive us, we'll go home? If Athene says none will escape, forget the testing of the "decent" men, then if the gods support vengeance we're dealing with a totally different concept of society and gods than we know about now. IS this, as Joan K, says, men ascribing TO the gods their own foibles? Eye for an eye?
But the suitors are only eating and swilling about. Dante would know what to do with them. hahaaha But what does Homer do? They've not killed anybody yet.
This is good stuff, it's like You Are There into Greek history and culture and we've missed our Friday deadline to move on. What's your pleasure with starting or discussing 18?
-
OK GInny, your comment about manure tempted me into looking up the original and doing a bit of translation--and its so graphic:
.....lying despised, his lord being gone, on a great dung pile of mules and oxen poared in heaps outside of the doors...........
I think he was lying there because he had been thrown there to die and couldn't move.........
-
Dana, that makes perfect sense of something I'd wondered about. Why would a dog lie on a pile of dung he didn't even make? But Argus had just been thrown out with the trash, and couldn't move.
Lombardo's translation is similar to yours:
"Now, his master gone, he lay neglected
In the dung of mules and cattle outside the doors,"
What a lovely approach to a great house--a big aromatic pile of .....
-
GINNY: " we've missed our Friday deadline to move on. What's your pleasure with starting or discussing 18?"
I thought we are moving every 5 days. Since we started Chapter 17 on the 8th, we should move on to Chapter 18 on the 13th, Monday.
-
Pigs do have a reputation for intelligence. And I once read that all the wallowing
in mud is simply to cool off. Those hides are pretty thick. A woman who kept a shed
with tile flooring for her pigs, and hosed it down frequently for dampness, had none
of the wallowing in mud going on.
It appears to me Melanthius had decided it would be prudent to side with the suitors.
It does seem they must come out on top here and he wants to be considered a friend of
the winners. He takes his cue on behavior from them.
Forgiveness for all?? At a personal level, perhaps, and depending on one's own beliefs
and character. Forgiveness for crimes? No way. While I deplore the idea of vengeance, justice is another thing entirely. We should reap what we sow. (I do leave room for amends. One
can realize the wrong, and go back and pull up those weeds as far as possible. :( It's called atonement. )
-
On we go tomorrow. And PatH is arriving tomorrow to visit me for a week, so we may both be posting from my JoanK account.
-
Babi said: "You know, based on what how Athena is traditionally described, Homer may be doing her
an injustice. She was goddess of wisdom, justice, war, the arts, industry, justice and skill.
(Her role in 'war' was that of strategy only.)
The Greeks..and Romans...did have a way of ascribing to their gods and goddesses
their own character, flaws and foibles. Perhaps Homer's use of Athena was simply more of
that tendency. Call it poetic license."
Probably one of the most intelligent and perceptive takes I have read about Athena. Personally, I love her and to prove it I have worn golden coin ring (tetradrachm) with her face on it since I first visited Greece in 1982. To my mind Athena and Athens are inseparable in their allure.
-
It seems odd that O hadn't left guards to protect Penelope and T when he left for Troy. Suppose all these suitors would have been armed. Or was O counting on some of these suitors to protect her? I had imagined that the suitors were living in the palace, but they go home at night. Guess she couldn't lock the palace doors.
-
Babi and RoshanaRose, haha well we can take sides about Athene, she sure was big to the Greeks and Romans, I guess it's Ok to say in 2011 she annoys me to death, with her games, playing about. If she's that powerful, just do it. :) Quit the games and playing about and just do it. To me, she's just amusing herself.
OR being attributed by men (which is something completely different) as being at the core of it, as Babi said.
"You know, based on what how Athena is traditionally described, Homer may be doing her
an injustice. She was goddess of wisdom, justice, war, the arts, industry, justice and skill.
(Her role in 'war' was that of strategy only.)
Especially interesting when you consider the fact that Homer and Hesiod are credited with sort of inventing her.
Sally, what a brilliant thing to say, that never occurred to me and I wonder why: It seems odd that O hadn't left guards to protect Penelope and T when he left for Troy. Suppose all these suitors would have been armed. Or was O counting on some of these suitors to protect her? I had imagined that the suitors were living in the palace, but they go home at night. Guess she couldn't lock the palace doors.
Now that is really a statement! He, the wily always thinking crafty Odysseus, backed up by the all seeing Athene, would have left guards had he figured they would have been needed. A journey to Troy would hardly be like flying to NYC, there would be no guarantee of return flight.
But maybe since they were all operating on a pact to support each other, after all it's Menelaus's wife Helen they are going after, he never dreamed this situation would arise. Maybe there's a message here we should heed. One would think Athene would have foreseen it, but then again, she couldn't play if it did.
And now why couldn't she lock the palace doors? O is about to. Perhaps they would all siege the palace physically? What a great Reality Check you've thrown us.
Dana, and Pat H, yes that makes sense too on the dog.
Babi I was shocked in looking up the smartest animals to see which IS the smartest, and the pig was listed as #6, and I think it was the only domesticated animal of the bunch. Very interesting list. One would never have included the rat. Hopefully nobody here keeps rats as domestic animals (or any other way): http://animal.discovery.com/tv/a-list/creature-countdowns/smartest/smartest.html
I also liked your take on reaping what we sow, so in that we've not changed too much from 3000 years ago. Yet the press is full of incidents of forgiveness for the most heinous crimes. (I can't look at that word without hearing it pronounced as "hi EEEN ous" in My Cousin Vinny. hahahaa Revenge seems to be sanctioned here, too, by the gods, I mean LOOK at Poseidon, for heaven's sake. This is getting quite interesting!
JoanK and PatH, the Dynamic Duo of Twins discussing and posting together! Wish I could be a fly on the wall, let's march on! I've downloaded the Fitzgerald for my trip and I must say I like it, very much, very readable and free too on the iphone.
All right, we have our schedule, on the 13th (tell me this is not Monday the 13th, a more devastating day than any Friday the 13th), we'll do 18 and on the 18th which is Saturday, we'll do Book 19.
Can everybody catch up? Just read 18 for today and jump in and make up the rest later. I love these short contained little "books," they are almost as if intended as units.
Go right ahead this morning into 18!!
I'll read the 18th, see if there are any illustrations to fit it, and be right back. I hope it's dark and O and P finally meet. If they don't, is Homer really stringing us along suspensefully? I bet at this point in the recitation nobody left the camp fire!
BRB
-
Oh man I love 18! It's a drum-roll unceasing for what's about to happen. Character after character comes forward and reiterates over and over what's going to happen shortly. O is coming or here and there will be revenge.
Good heavens what strange allusions tho!
LOTS and lots about the belly. In fact Irus and O fight BECAUSE of the "belly," FOR a prize. Ol Antinous really set the stakes high and poor Irus has a lot to lose: Echetus the Maimer! Golly moses. If you needed no more hint that this, that we're 3,000 years ago here and a totally different culture, this is it.
Athene here makes not only O but P look much better.
But now what do you make of the following:
1. Amphinomus, who seems kind and is addressed kindly by O,
...goes away through the hall with his head bowed
And his heard heavy with a sense of foreboding.
He would not escape death, though. Pallas Athena
Had him pinned, and he would be killed outright...
Sigh sigh. So why is this speech in here? I see all of these speeches as being for a purpose.
2. Lots and lots of philosophy here and it's not all strange to us:
Our outlook changes with the kind of day
Zeus our Father decides to give us. (somewhere around 145).
We have the philosophy man tries to apply amidst the constant drum-roll of the gods in the lives of men, echoed by almost every character and ending the Book.
We have inevitability where despite the will of man the gods will get their way: (Amphinomus)
We have being two faced:
Overbearing men who speak politely to his face
And plan all the while to hurt him later
We have Penelope appearing before the suitors (is this the first time, it sure looks like it?) wanting her maids with her as suitable and covering her face?
Did you catch that? What does that mean for the culture of the Greeks and what does that say about her to date?
Do you think she really was asking for gifts?
Then we have T making a quote very much like one Homer could never have heard:
T says:
"I used to think as a child, but not any more (somewhere around 348), which echoes
I Cor. xiii. 11. ...
When I was a child, I spake as a child, I understood as a child, I thought as a child: but when I became a man, I put away childish things. ...
I don't think there's such a thing as coincidence, and I wonder about the provenance of both these thoughts.
What did you think of O's parting words to P? Has she done what he asked? Why or why not?
Oh man and check out Melantho! No doubt whose side she's on, (or at, literally).
And another footstool is thrown, but O cleverly places himself away from it, tho it appears it was thrown anyway, what did you make of that? He must have moved fast, so why throw it at all?
What do you think of T in this section?
In short, what do you think? I love 18, am not sure why!
A drachma (answer on a trivia contest yesterday) for your thoughts!
-
I've put up a schedule for the rest of the book, and am somewhat shocked to see that we're almost at the end. Somehow I thought we could read this on and on, one tiny chapter at a time, forever. I'm going to actually miss this experience, there aren't many books you can do this with.
Good idea, Joan K, to get us on schedule tho. Looks like I will only miss (and I'll be here electronically) the last chapter. The joy of the internet.
I also hope I can be forgiven for adding back Penelope, now that she's reappeared. We know she is no longer at her loom but I (1) wanted some color (2) like the Klinger where she's contemplating what she tried to do and failed (3) love art of the that time period and liked what the artist threw in there as a summary. Check out the thigh muscles on the Thulden, right in accord with the book (or my book anyway). :)
-
Thank you for the kind words, ROSHANA.
Ah, yes, Thulden was quite good with muscles,..esp. buttocks...and apparently chose to feature
them in most of his works we've seen here. He is unquestionably very good at it.
I have the impression, tho' I couldn't say from where, that Grecian women of that time tended
to stay mostly in their part of the house. It was considered immodest to join the men. We have
seen, of course, that feasts were excepted, and the Lady of the house joined her husband to
act as hostess. I don't think any of them would have appeared socially if the husband was not
present. And if a lady wished to speak to the assembled men, she would have dressed modestly
and had other women with her. I don't know if Penelope's veil was from modesty, or because she did not want to stir up lusts, or simply a sign of grieving over her missing husband.
All the above, of course, is sort of like Wikipedia....unproven. :-\
-
Its interesting to see how these etchings, paintings, follow the fashions of their time--as we always do, I guess. I can imagine a movie of the Odyssey made today with Helen and Penelope and Athena with puffed up lips and tangled hair........
But the drawings of Iros are just plain wrong, he was FAT and slobby....a fat beggar, nice joke there....
Also I think the drawings of Odysseus' house are plain wrong too. I imagine a much scruffier place--a wall around a courtyard and then the entrance to the megaron from the courtyard, and the rest of the house beyond. The dungheap outside the wall, flies everywhere and smoke from the cooking fires, which seem to have been in the hall, or courtyard maybe. Strong smells of dung and cooking meat....animals in the courtyard waiting to be slaughtered and dismembered....and being slaughtered and dismembered.... and the attendant smells....
This chapter seems to be ramping up the violence, maybe to prepare us for the coming deaths
-
I agree the art reflects the time period, I love seeing how the different centuries reflect it.
I also agree Thulden in the 1600's made some mistakes, the beggar was definitely fat!
It's funny the reactions we get to art, Thulden is much enjoyed in some of the Latin classes, he's something else. I would personally kill to have those etchings, lucky whoever lives in San Fransisco and can see them.
But on the house? I am not sure I agree:
Eumaeus, this beautiful house must be Odysseus'.
It would stand out anywhere. Look at all the rooms
And stories, and the court built with wall and coping,
And the well-fenced double gates. No one could scorn it.
And I can tell there are many men feasting inside
From the savor or meat wafting out from it,
And the sound of the lyre, which rounds out a feast.
17/290ff
I keep thinking of Knossos and how impressive it was even in ruin, and I guess I had extrapolated that over the service quarters of Hampton Court, I doubt there would be a dung heap outside the main door. However, my book doesn't say where they actually entered. I figured they entered by the service area, I mean the Romans had them, which would naturally be dung and whatever filled, they see the dog (while passing that area) and "Eumaeus entered the great house." (350) and the hall filled with insolent suitors.
Maybe I have confused Knossos, Pearl Buck and Odysseus's house. hahahaa I assumed they entered by the service areas and made their way TO the great hall. I'm still thinking this is quite the palace, what do the rest of your translations say? I imagine Homer would expect his audience to know about how a beggar went in, but I'm not sure we (or should I say I) do in 2011.
Murray refers to it as a "stately palace," (17 275), and says the outside had "deep dung of mules and cattle, which lay in heaps before the doors, till the slaves of Odysseus would take it away to manure his wide lands."
17, 296). That's standard practice outside farms in the livestock areas, even today, except they put it not by the door but in a pit or a manure spreader. I am thinking this is the stock area or the service area, but wait...well if the dung is outside, does that mean the mules and cows are inside the stately halls?
How DO you all see or picture O's house? Great point, Dana!
Babi, great thoughts on women in Greece and modesty. I had just read something somewhere about their lives, it sounded quite "Not Without My Daughter" ish, very restricted, but I'll have to read it again and get back to you all.
-
I never thought there might be a back entrance but my translation gives no indication of it. There was one piece that surprised me when I read it--its in XVII where the suitors have been competing at the discus throw, and then the "beasts are being driven from the fields to slaugher" and the suitors go back to the "gracious, timbered hall." (210-230 in Fitzgerald)
..........................................................There, first,
they dropped their cloaks on chairs; then came their ritual:
putting great rams and fat goats to the knife--
pigs, and a cow too.
................................................So they made their feast.
It sounds like the animals were in the hall, (or maybe courtyard?)
It made me modify my impression of the house!
-
DANA: I got that impression, too. Maybe it was BOTH grand AND had dung outside and animals in the co7urtyard. After all, standards were different then. They didn't (did they?) have nice flush toilets and sewer systems to carry smells away: smells must have been part of life, so what's a little dung?
-
JoanK - I know that Knossos on Crete had a very sophisticated sewerage system. The terracotta pipes used are identical to those used in relatively modern times. See Knossos before you die!
-
I hope I am not repeating something already mentioned here, but I thought I read all the posts and did not see it so here goes. In my Rieu translation I noticed Homer saying quite a few times...And you, Eumaeus, the swineherd, said in reply, ....... I looked back through Book 14 and found a footnote I overlooked--
Footnote I. Homer really loved Eumaeus, this character he had created, and here, instead of writing about him, he felt impelled to speak to him directly as if reminding him of the story.
This continued in Books 16 and 17. Sometimes it is And you, Eumaeus, and sometimes Then you, Eumaeus. Lombardo uses it also, but not as often.
roshanarose--Interesting about the man buying the purple fabric.
As for the dog, I think Argus knew O recognized him....from Rieu...There, full of vermin, lay Argus, the hound. But directly he became aware of Odysseus' presence, he wagged his tail and dropped his ears, though he lacked the strength now to come nearer to his master. Odysseus turned his eyes away, and, making sure Eumaeus did not notice, brushed away a tear,....
I think Argus saw the tear and was content to let the black hand of death descend on him knowing O will be okay.
Sorry to digress, now I will read 18.
-
Sandy, we did mention that "you" originally but we lacked this footnote: Footnote I. Homer really loved Eumaeus, this character he had created, and here, instead of writing about him, he felt impelled to speak to him directly as if reminding him of the story.
This continued in Books 16 and 17. Sometimes it is And you, Eumaeus, and sometimes Then you, Eumaeus. Lombardo uses it also, but not as often. and I completely did not see it at ALL in 17, so I appreciate learning it's being repeated!
I sort of think the dog died happy too, the shock of seeing or smelling I guess O was too much for his old heart and he died, tho he did signal his recognition. Looks like the dog is smarter than the others as he knows who he's dealing with.
Dana, RR, JoanK, great points, all. I was startled to see that in August of last year they thought they discovere4d O's palace, all three stories of it, but the Telegraph says perhaps it's best left to memory. I suppose we could write Dr. Hexter or Dr. Lombardo, do we want to do that?
Here are the two articles:
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/books/7964507/Odysseuss-palace-is-best-left-to-imagination.html
As you can see the above is titled Odysseus's Palace is Best Left to the Imagination
and the discovery, one of many:
http://en.rian.ru/culture/20100824/160323715.html
What struck YOU in 18?
-
Good point, GINNY. A beggar 'guest' would reasonably be brought into
the kitchen, and that entry court would be the natural place to find
the dung heaps and the dogs.
I believe the slaughters took place in the courtyards. (No way are
we going to allow it in the great hall!) With all those animals being brought in each day, of course there are going to be dung heaps..no doubt quickly removed to the back of the house each day by the servants, for later use in the fields. And JOANK is right, of course. The
odors they must have been accustomed to in those days .... Eew~
-
somewhere in Hechter or the intro to Fitzgerald there's a paragraph about the house and how many have tried to depict it based on Homer's vague descriptions, and basically how they can't. I thought there was a drawing, however I can't find it. Maybe I saw it in another book.......
-
Interestingly enough, Lombardo has it, and it's before the Introduction. It even has the dung heap, across the road in front of the Gate to the Portico of the Courtyard. It says it's "after J. Lazenby."
Rather than risk copyright infringement by reproducing it, here it is, as you can see it's a long rectangular structure:
The Palace of Odysseus (http://books.google.com/books?id=yIFAC9r4NW0C&pg=PR11&lpg=PR11&dq=The+Palace+of+Odysseus+by+J+Lazenby&source=bl&ots=wjNIDlYupk&sig=TKqxN6gQO1I3KhQd8aos5-jaAdY&hl=en&ei=SXf3TaXIOZDpgAeH8_2uDA&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=1&ved=0CBkQ6AEwAA#v=onepage&q&f=false)
The dung heap with a question mark as stated, is at the bottom, across the road then the Gate to the Portico of the Courtyard. This is sort of like a peristyle effect around a large courtyard with a round house in it, the Altar of Zeus, the "Outer Porch" the wine store to the left and then a Wooden Threshold in the back, followed by an Inner Porch and rooms for arms on the left and Penelope's rooms on the upper floor,. Then there's a Stone Threshold with the Great hall, a Hearth, pillars and a "Back Door." There are lots of side rooms which are labeled on the right Quarters for Women? And two "alleys" between them.
-
Read the articles with interest. I was especially interested in some of the comments below the Telegraph article. Thanks.
Thanks, too, for the palace layout, Ginny. When I get a few minutes I may just print it out. George just got here. Gotta go.
-
Ginny, that is a super layout of the house--don't know if that's the one I previously saw; as I don'thave a Lombardo, probably not ! I spent about a month in the jungle/savanah in Senegal many years ago and we lived in grass huts in considerable comfort I would say and our bread was baked daily in brick or stone ovens heated by fire, it was delicious-as Senegalwas a frenchterritory the bread was baugettes. however, going back to ancient greece, there must have been a back kitchen where the bread was cooked, because we know there was always bread. i expect it was flat bread like naan or chapattis or whatever. and there must have been a place where they prepared the "savouries" whatever they may have been. so there has to have been a back kitchen. i hope they did theirbarbecuing in the open courtyard.(for the sake of the furniture, if not their lungs.) But can you imagine the smells--like one of these medieval castles with mud everywhere and no plumbing. i don't think they were as up on plumbimg as the Romans-but they did have a bath place, I'm assuming that didn't happen in the great hall....I expect they carried in the water though, and heated it over fires....
-
Interesting conception of Odysseus house. Is it based on findings of old
homes in ancient Greek ruins, I wonder? Did you notice the altar to Zeus
placed right up front? That was a nice touch.
The placement of the women's rooms seems just right. I was a bit
surprised to see Telemachos' room was outside the main house. That
seems to have the custom in other cultures as well, tho', to place a young
man where he could have some privacy.
Back to the story, I love the biting description of the suitors from Penelope. “How galling, too, to see newfangled manners in my suitors! Others who go to court a gentlewoman, daughter of a rich house, if they are rivals, bring their own beeves and sheep along; her friends ought to be feasted, gifts are due to her; would any dare to live at her expense?”
Of course, we are forced to believe that Athena has been prompting all
Penelope's actions and behaviors as this tale approaches it's climax. I
would have preferred to think Penelope acted on her own.
-
The gods and goddesses remind me of puppeteers. They have all the mortals who matter on strings, doing their bidding.
The floor plan for Odysseus' palace is interesting. I have included a link for one of the Palaces of Knossos. Is is generally thought that the floor plan resembles a labryinth, and that is where the myth of the Minotaur comes from. It's good that a key to the rooms, areas, altars etc. id included in this floor plan. Two goddesses mentioned, pre Hesiod and Homer, and at least one exclusive to the Minoan civilization, ie the Snake Goddess, the other Goddess of the Doves, and the Goddess of the Animals may all have been incorporated into the Snake Goddess. Her altar is relatively small compared to Odysseus' Zeus altar. Knossos is roughly contemporaneous with Troy and the Odyssey. Maybe someone can supply the dates in order to compare.
No altars to male deities were found. After the Mycenaens occupied Knossos the lifestyle of the Minoans changed radically. Anyway, here's the link. Enjoy!
www.mlahanas.de/Greeks/Cities/PlanOfThePalaceOfKnossos
-
Drat, we're still having trouble with the internet connections. I can get
in, obviously, but attempts to use links are usually a failure. We thought
this problem was fixed. It went haywire again after the ITT people came
and 'fixed' the TV problem. There is undoubtedly a connection.
-
Sorry Roshannarose, when I try our link it tells me it can't be found.
-
With regard to my last post about the house layout--just read the next chapter and it would appear Odysseus got his feet/legs washed in the great hall....wot....no bath house... ?!
BTW--I can open Rosanna's link to Knossos--google directs to a differnt address
www.mlahanas.de/Greeks/Cities/PlanOfThePalaceOfKnossos.html
-
Thanks, Dana. I can see that one. What an operation that must have been. I wonder how many were in the household staff. The bath is #17 on the diagram. The throne room and the ante room to the throne room seem rather small. I would have thought they would be much larger. What is the tank for in the throne room? I don't see sleeping cubicles depicted on the diagram, so do the King and Queen only use the palace for formal functions and live at the villa otherwise? The royal villa is not depicted.
-
Sorry for the interruption but you will want to know...
This is Anna's son-in-law, Mick Carrier. By now, many of you may already know of her death the past Tuesday at St.Francis Nursing Center. I just gained access to her address book on her email account and wanted to get a message out to her many friends.
A memorial service is planned for Sunday at Bobby's church (First Baptist). The obituary will be published in the Daily Press (www.dailypress.com Friday. For another tribute, go to www.vgreene.com which you may know as Roberta's website. On behalf of the family, we want to express our appreciation for your friendship over the years. I recognized many of the names in her addressbook as I was preparing this notification and was glad to know she had ongoing contact wit many of you.
Sincerely,
Mick
-
Oh I am so sorry to hear about Anna's passing, Barbara, thank you for putting that here. She will be missed.
-
Those are great diagrams of Knossos, thank you. I don't know a lot about Arthur Evans and this site (assuming one can read it, I had quite a time) gives information which was all new to me.
http://www.agiapelagia-crete.com/Culture-Knossos-Crete-agia-pelagia.html
Apparently Knossos was full of bathrooms:
Evans had some problems with bathrooms at Knossos. In the Throne Room, Evans could not accept that the sunken area was a bathroom as it was located only four metres from the throne so he decided it was a place of ritual purification. But here, in his royal apartments he was quite happy to interpret the lustral basin as an ordinary bathroom. Since there are a number of lustral basins dotted about Knossos, it seems rather likely that they were all used for the same purpose, which would exclude the use of this particular lustral basin as the queen's bathroom.
Dana, the foot washing was part of the ritual of hospitality, it would not take place in a bathroom, I am thinking but could be wrong.
Hexter is on the ball with some things here: Iros is apparently a play on words, his real name was Arnaios, but the suitors dubbed him Iros and Hexter says it's a take on Iris, the female messenger of the gods because Iros was always being sent on errands by the suitors: a gofer. And there's another pun on his name later on as well.
One question Hexter himself asks and does not answer is: does Penelope have a suspicion that O is the stranger? Is that why she appears and makes the speech she does? He says endless reams of paper have been written on Penelope's appearance, and how unusual it is and then cites O's parting words that when the shadow of a beard is on T, then she can choose a new husband and move on. Or is that what she has come to do? It adds a lot of urgency to O's need to return home, time's a wasting.
Lots of suspense here in 18!! And we move to 19 on Saturday, is everybody up with us?
I agree, RoshanaRose, that Athena is acting as puppeteer and I thought that was a good point, Babi, about who is really the driving force, Athena or Penelope? Hexter says that the business about the worthy suitor also going to be killed may be in there (note the may) because Homer wanted to make it clear that the mortals here really have no choice in mercy: the gods will all the suitors dead. (Tho there is some speculation about Amphinomous's being too weak to remove himself, as some sort of tragic flaw, but it's not developed. It would make no difference, apparently.
Babi:
Interesting conception of Odysseus house. Is it based on findings of old
homes in ancient Greek ruins, I wonder? Did you notice the altar to Zeus
placed right up front? That was a nice touch.
I don't know, I'm not finding a lot about J Lazenby other than an astonishing bit of his writings on ancient Greeks, but who or what he was I have no idea nor why he did that design. The lararium, (if this is of interest) or altar in the house was often in the atrium or prominent public room in Roman times. Looking at the structure of the Odysseus Palace does remind me of one of the Greek temples at Paestum, tho.
So it's interesting to speculate on what's motivating Penelope at this point.
-
I've finally found a bit about the life of women among the Greeks. The OCCL says "Homer and the Greek tragedians depict their female characters-- Penelope......and others---as enjoying a moderately free social life, but naturally the heroines' behavior is governed by literary convention and need not be taken to be completely realistic. "
It appears that the women of the 7th c BC, however, enjoyed some measure of independence and considerable social freedom within her own social circle.
"In democratic Athens women had severely limited rights. They had no political rights whatsoever and could take no part in the running of the city....A woman was allowed very little room by law for independent action. Her marriage was arranged by her father or nearest male relation. She could not inherit or own property or enter into any transaction that involved more than the value of a bushel of grain. Any business that concerned her had to be dealt with on her behalf by husband, father or guardian. If she had no brothers to inherit her father's property, she as heiress 'went with the property' (the literal meaning of the Greek word), i.e., the male next of kin who took the property had to marry her, divorcing his previous wife if he had one, unless he renounced his inheritance. The heiress herself might have to divorce her husband in order to comply.
Women were kept in seclusion in the home...The women at Athens had their separate quarters in the house.....They seldom left the house, and if they did were always accompanied by a slave...."
I guess that's where I got the "not without my daughter" idea. There's more. Athens as a Democracy was established in 508 BC.
I don't know how much of this would have been handed down after the "dark ages," or what, that's what makes the Odyssey so fascinating, we're literally peering into the past. Kind of exciting, especially to see so many common emotions surfacing.
-
I was translating recently "The training of a Greek housewife" by Xenophon, a dialogue between himself and Socrates--in which Xenophon describes how he "trained" his young wife (15) to run his household. Of which she was 100% in charge, slaves and all. The interesting thing is , how patronising he is, and how on the other hand she makes fun of him, which he freely reports. There is another book which I have for translation but have not started on yet, called "On the Murder of Eratosthenes" by Lysias (445 bc or so) which is supposed to be about the dysfunctional greek family of the time, as contrasted with the former ideal depiction. Can't wait! Whatever the circumstances, women (and everyone else I suppose) make the best of their situation I guess. If they've got the nous anyway.
I remember reading Simone de Beauvoir when I was a teenager and admiring her attitude and thinKing it ought to be emulated, her attitude to being cheated on by men.....which was, women have to be strong enough to take it in their stride. Now I think its crap. But apparently its still an attitude in France. So perhaps we have moved on, in some places, to some extent. Does anyone remember "The Second Sex"?
-
Oh, yes! Read The Second Sex in the 70's! A must read at the time.
You might like to look at this site about women in Greece.
http://ancienthistory.about.com/od/greekwomen/p/022900ArchGkwom.htm
Jean
-
The Book Club Online is the oldest book club on the Internet, begun in 1996, open to everyone. We offer cordial discussions of one book a month, 24/7 and enjoy the company of readers from all over the world. Everyone is welcome to join in.
Now reading:
(http://www.seniorlearn.org/bookclubs/classicsbookclub/cbc2odysseysm.jpg)
June 18-----Book XIX: Revelations and a Dream
Discussion Schedule:
June 18: Book 19
June 23: Book 20
June 28: Book 21
July 2: Book 22
July 7: Book 23
July 12: Book 24
(http://seniorlearn.org/latin/ulysses_penelope/UlyssesSatatticredfigure.jpg)
Odysseus recognized by his nurse
Attic red figure skyphos
c. 450 BC
Museo Civico, Chiusi
(http://seniorlearn.org/latin/ulysses_penelope/UlyssesSatOrecognizedbynurseBoulanger.jpg)
Odysseus recognised by Eurykleia
Gustave Boulanger
1849
Ecole nationale supérieure des Beaux-arts, Paris
Discussion Leaders: Joan K (joankraft13@yahoo.com) & ginny (gvinesc@wildblue.net )
Useful Links:
1. Critical Analysis: Free SparkNotes background and analysis on the Odyssey (http://www.sparknotes.com/lit/odyssey)
2. Translations Used in This Discussion So Far: (http://www.seniorlearn.org/bookclubs/odyssey/odyssey_translations.html)
3. Initial Points to Watch For: submitted by JudeS (http://www.seniorlearn.org/bookclubs/odyssey/odyssey_points.html)
4. Maps:
Map of the Voyages of Odysseus (http://www.seniorlearn.org/latin/ulysses_penelope/Odysseusmap.jpg)
Map of Voyages in order (http://www.wesleyan.edu/~mkatz/Images/Voyages.jpg)
Map of Stops Numbered (http://www.seniorlearn.org/latin/ulysses_penelope/Odysseusmap2.jpg)
Our Map Showing Place Names in the Odyssey (http://www.seniorlearn.org/latin/graphics/AncientGreecemap.jpg)
(http://seniorlearn.org/latin/ulysses_penelope/UlyssesSatOrecognizedRoman25AD.jpg)
Odysseus recognised by Eurykleia
Roman relief
c. 25 AD
Ah, yes. Traveling along dusty roads, usually in sandals, did make
foot washing a thoughtful bit of hospitality. You'll recall they
were still doing that in the time of Christ. That ritual may not have
disappeared until paved roads came in.
Oh, thanks, GINNY, for that information about women's rights in 8th
century Athens. Lord, I'm so glad I'm living today!
I would love to see a translation of that "training of a Greek
housewife, DANA. I don't suppose you know where I can find one, since
you are translating it yourself? I'll check into the writings of
Xenophon. It does seem apparent that within their own household women
still had a great deal of influence and were able to tease their own
husbands.
-
Babi, if you look up Oeconomicus and follow the wikipedia link, at the bottom of that there is a link to the English translation by HG Dakyns. You are looking for books 7 thru 10.
-
GINNY: great pictures.
This whole scene between two beggars is odd. But I guess it wouldn't be odd if each beggar had his own "territory" and defended it against interlopers.
On to the next chapter tomorrow.
-
Thanks for that referral, DANA. I'll look that up.
So, today we start on Book XVIX. In my translation it is called Recognition and Dreams
Penelope is telling the stranger her tactics and evasions through the years. All this time, I had thought she wove a shroud for her husband, fearing him dead. It even occurred to me that if he never returned, dead of alive, she would have no use for that shroud. Now I learn, finally, that the shroud was for Laertes, her father-in-law. Fortunately for her scheme, he
continued to live in good health while she spun out his shroud-weaving as long as she could.
Now, she says, she has run out of strength to carry on the resistance. “...my parents urge it [marriage] upon me, and my son will not stand by while they eat up his property. He comprehends it, being a man full grown, able to oversee the kind of house Zeus would endow with honor.”
Unfortunately, P insists the stranger tell her about his background and family. Not yet ready to reveal who he is, he begins spinning another one of his whoppers. Now, lo, he is a grandson of King Minos. (I don’t remember ever reading before that Minos was received every year by Zeus in private council. Is this found elsewhere, or only in Homer? I’ll check it out.)
-
That's a good point, Joan. It WAS odd. Perhaps it is there to show....? That his reception even from a beggar at court was rough. He's been treated very badly by all in this house, so the laws of hospitality are definitely broken.
Babi, I agree:
Penelope is telling the stranger her tactics and evasions through the years. All this time, I had thought she wove a shroud for her husband, fearing him dead. It even occurred to me that if he never returned, dead of alive, she would have no use for that shroud. Now I learn, finally, that the shroud was for Laertes, her father-in-law. Fortunately for her scheme, he continued to live in good health while she spun out his shroud-weaving as long as she could.
NOW we get the entire story from Penelope's side!! Her worries, what's going on, finally we find out! I have to idly wonder why we couldn't have been told this in the beginning! Would it have made any difference to us? Not knowing sure kept up the willing suspension of disbelief, at least in me. I didn't really know what was going on. But for the ancients this bit was probably redundant, they would have possibly? known all this. So we have to ask: why now?
I found 19 fascinating, what were YOUR reactions to it?
The scar! He's recognized! So he grabs her by the throat and threatens to kill her, too if she reveals him. I think this sort of behavior is a premonition of the violence to come, the entire chapter keeps shrieking "O will return and will wreak vengeance."
One problem I've always had with this scene is why does Penelope not recognize his voice? I know he's disguised in person, has Athene also changed the timbre of his voice? We can see she's made P's mind wander so she does not catch this or that.
Would YOU recognize your own husband's voice after 20 years, whether or not you could see him? Feet are another matter entirely. ahahaha I don't think anybody would recognize MY feet. I'm not sure I would, but a voice?
I found this book fascinating! I hope we're all here and haven't fallen like some of O's crew, by the wayside? It would be such a shame to make it THIS far and not get to see the end!
The bits about the weapons being gathered, fascinating. The description of the palace and the bits about the household little things, like when the women are taking away all the food and Penelope comes out and sits down:
They emptied the braziers, scattering the embers
Onto the floor, and then stocked them up
With loads of fresh wood for warmth and light. (somewhere around 65-70)
They emptied the embers, the coals, on to the FLOOR? I'm trying to visualize this. The FLOOR must have been...what material? Gosh in one fell swoop or a little description from words, we're back to 1250 BC and what they did with fire embers, pretty magical.
This is an absolutely marvelous chapter in which we learn that doors to the great hall CAN be locked (31 in Lombardo), and we even have the furniture described (sounds very sumptuous), all is glittering in the torches, what a picture.
Penelope says she will test HIM, and now we have a second test or contest proposed. Apparently in the morning she must choose a suitor at last and whoever can string the great bow and shoot thru all 12 curved axes, I think we have a painting of that somewhere) will win.
What excitement.
That stringing the bow thing is no slight feat. My husband has a huge bow, I've now forgotten the name of it, but to actually bend it so that you could put the bowstring on the bottom or top (I no longer remember how it's done) takes incredible strength. I wish I could think of the name of the type of bow, but certainly not every person could do it. This is kind of a Robin Hood type of thing coming up, isn't it? Not only does the archer have to be strong enough to bend the thing he has to be an excellent shot!
Yes O tells another whopper but he tries not to, and she forces it. What relevance does it have at all, I wonder? This is apparently the 4th version of this Kretan tale and the differences are important but who is keeping track of them? I tend, I admit, to skim over them, maybe I should not? Anybody see anything significant here?
Hexter makes some comments on the repetition, for a moment I was afraid I had read too far in the past. He says this may be a marker of a new epidode or movement, that in 16 he was planning but here he's executing. And early editors made this the start of a new book because right before that they were going to sleep.
But there's more. When I read this book I wondered if it constituted some sort of climax for Penelope or something. Hexter says the two lines 62 and 63 repeat the first two lines of the book exactly 1-2, and 51-52, and this is "the classic closure for a 'ring,' making this a self contained but not therefore necessarily dispensable, compositional building block."
Homer leaves no doubt here that O is wily, he keeps repeating what Hexter says in Greek is "polymetis," which means "the master improvisor, the great tactician, the great master of invention."
And what would a new chapter be without some great (diffy) discussion questions?
Here are some from Creighton U:
1. Why does Odysseus withhold his identity from Penelope? Does he trust her?
2. Pay extremely close attention to the scenes when Eurykleia recognizes Odysseus? What gives him away? Follow very closely the story of Odysseus' baptism by his grandfather Autolycus and of the boar hunt on the slopes of Mount Parnassus.
What is the symbolic significance of these events in reference to the determination and shaping of Odysseus' character while he was still a very young boy?
3. Compare the passages describing the boar's hideout (lines 511-520) to those describing the shelter of Odysseus when he first arrives to Phaeacia (Book 5, lines 500-510). What are the implications of the similarities?
4. Who decides to set up the contest of the bow to find a new husband for Penelope? What does that decision imply about her fidelity to Odysseus?
OOO those are good questions! But let's add #5:
5. Why does Penelope not recognize Odysseus's voice? Would you know your husband's voice after 20 years?
Off to find some super illustrations! :)
and #6:
6. Why do we finally hear the background of Penelope's story NOW?
-
One thing I have always wondered about but kept forgetting to write here, is why do you think Laertes is not living with Penelope? In those households in those days the old always lived with the young to be looked after if they needed it, and in this case to be a support to penelope. Doesn't make sense to me at all. Why wd laertes be stuck out in the country on his own, especially after his wife died........maybe they didn't get on (P. and him)
-
I've always wondered about Laertes too, Dana. Doesn't make sense, does it.
I am looking forward to reading this chapter carefully. I had always thought that it was O that suggested to P that she pretend she was finally getting tired of waiting for O and to use the bow test so that he could prove to P and the soon to be departed suitors who he truly was.
-
I'm not reading the book right now, but am lurking and enjoying your comments. Four decades ago i was teaching a humanities course to 10th graders in Harrisburg, Pa and we, of course, used The Odyssey. You're bringing back pleasant memories.
It was a course we designed - a team taught course based on my world cultures class and the other lead teacher was the English teacher who determined we would only use literature FROM the time/culture not ABOUT the time/culture. Another member of the team was the art teacher who conducted tours in the summer time to all parts of the world and had photos of everything. We also used a good movie of the story, but i don't remember where that came from. I think it was a Scholastic film.
Jean
-
JEAN: as usual, I wish I could have taken your course!
Would I recognize my husbands voice after 20 years? Of course, it would have changed! I think I would recognize a similiarity, but not think that it was him necessarily.
-
Ginny - I am sorry I haven't been contributing as much as I would have liked. My SIL has been sick for some time and yesterday had to go to hospital for cardiovascular tests. He has acquired an irregular heart beat.
I also, am not too well. I hope to be having blood tests on Monday or Tuesday, and seeing the doc on probably Thursday for Friday. Just general lethargy and no interest in doing much of anything.
-
RoshanaRose, I'm so sorry to hear that! I hope you feel better soon. Hopefully you're only run down and it can be put right quickly. I also hope your SIL will be OK!! Lots of things for you to be thinking about there. We're looking forward to your being back with us!
Dana, and Frybabe, me, too, on the Laertes thing, especially since it appears as we've read that O asked her to take care of his father and mother. Wonder what he meant by "take care?" Perhaps Laertes himself insisted on moving out so as to give his son the palace. I have no idea. Maybe somebody could find this bit out. I'm not sure a palace could have two regnant kings. I simply don't know.
Jean, that sounds like an event! Those old Scholastic things (some of them) were wonderful. There was a super one on Julius Caesar and the crossing of the Rubicon, I can still recite parts of it, "Never alone, my lord." Badly acted, black and white, but it really gave a great picture of what it was supposed to. I wonder what happened to it. It was on 16mm.
JoanK,. oh I would.Definitely. My husband has quite a distinctive voice, and there's no change in it that I can see in 44 years. Yes I would definitely know that voice if it came out of an antelope. I wonder, myself, as I read this exchange between them, if she doesn't suspect a bit.
I also wonder if her wanting to "test" is here to show her a fit partner for O, who, of course, seems to see everything as needing a wily response.
So why, one wonders, could he not tell her who he was? He's told T!!! So why not her? What do you all think? Does he not trust her? Does he not trust her to keep silent? What does this not telling her who he is and this long silly story ( how is it different) mean?
I wonder what he secretly thinks of the contest: it seems he came in the nick of time, it seems TOMORROW she'll choose , finally, a husband: whoever can string that bow and shoot thru the axes. That must give him pause, maybe that's why he keeps saying O is coming, etc.
What, in short, is he waiting for? You'd think he'd need her help like that of T or maybe he......
-
"One problem I've always had with this scene is why does Penelope not recognize his voice?"
I wondered that, too, GINNY. But it has been twenty years. Odysseus is much older, his voice must certainly be rougher. Voices do change over the years, but those we hear daily we don't notice. Add to that the changes Athena made in his appearance, and it's reasonable Penelope would not suspect.
The floors..certainly not wood. In a poorer home, probably beaten
earth. In a rich man's home, possibly marble. At least, stone. There
must have been plenty of stone available on that rocky island.
The proposed archery contest is clever. That would eliminate a lot
of suitors right there. Penelope may be hoping no one can shoot through
12 curved axes. I wouldn't have thought it at all possible.
-
Here is another echo of the Bible: Penelope line 651, Lombardo has
"For every thing there is a season, and a time
For all we do on the life-giving earth"
the Bible: King James version:
"for everything there is a season
And a time for every purpose under heaven."
Is this Lombardo's translation, making it so close? What do the other versions have?
GINNY: " I wonder, myself, as I read this exchange between them, if she doesn't suspect a bit." I thought that too.
-
I don't think O trusts P completely so he is testing her reactions to his news that he (as the beggar) has heard that O will be home very soon. Does she really want him? All the time tho, her grief and love for O shine thru, so I guess he must have been happy about that. However he has got his plan of action worked out and I guess it involves her not knowing. But she does not believe that O is coming and now that T is grown up the time has come for her to leave with a suitor to the suitor's place it sounds like, leaving the palace for T. ( Which is not what I had understood earlier. I had thought the winning suitor would take over the palace and usurp T. Maybe now T. is grown up that is less likely to happen?) Anyway, she obviously likes this guy (the beggar) and in his wiley way O has encouraged this liking by making himself as beggar a fit person for her liking--the son of a king. I think she does unconsciously/half consciously know that he is Odysseus---there is one point where she says:
Come here,stand by me, faithful Eurycleia,
and bathe, bathe your master. I almost said
for they are of an age........
You know how you can know and not know something at the same time--that's her state. However a part of her doesn't know and as she's a cautious, untrusting, wiley woman, just like O is a man, she's going to test him out in the same way he does her.
I thought Hechter's point was funny, that all the wiley, cautious epithets applied to Odysseus are always translated, but throughout history all the similar epithets applied to Penelope tend not to be!! Sexism in translation!!
I think Homer's expression of how the mind works, eg here that you can know and not know something simultaniously, and all the other examples thu the poem, often expressed in a very few words, are what make it a masterpiece for me, along with his descriptions of nature.
-
DANA: that was the passage I was looking for! So P is seen as wiley and cautious, too? Sexism in translation, why am I not surprised?
-
Ok, so let me get this straight. O in disguise tells P that O is on his way home? P believes that the beggar (O) is describing O. Does it give her hope? Is she afraid to believe after all these years he could really be there soon? If I were P and someone came up to me and described O and said he will be home soon, what would I do? If I were afraid I might not recognize him after 20yrs., I might just devise a test that I knew no one but him would pass. I don't see the point of the bow test if she absolutely believed he would not be back. I'd just pick the guy with the best financial offer.
When is T of age to inherit the property (if one assumes O is dead)? Is P in effect regent until then? If T were of age to take control, then the best the suitors could hope for would be a large dowry. They failed to kill T, so getting their hands on the whole enchilada is out.
BTW, silly question about Laertes: How come, if he is still alive, he isn't still the big cheese. Don't you inherit only on one's parent's death? Homer really doesn't explain Laertes very well does he. If I read the hunting scene (what I did read of it) it appears O had a sibling. What of him? Maybe O's property was a wedding gift and old L has much more. That still doesn't explain why L was not more helpful.
I am finding Pope a little difficult to slog through in these last few chapters. I sometimes lose track of who is talking.
-
O needs secrecy for his plan to work. Probably afraid Penelope won't be able to control her feelings and the suitors will somehow be warned.
Is Laertes sick -- she was preparing a shroud for him?
-
Can't help with that one, JOANK. I can't find a line 651; none of the books in my
translation seem to go that high. Who is Penelope speaking to,and on what occasion.
Maybe I can find it that way.
I have heard other biblical echoes in reading this book. Recall the mandate to treat
strangers well, as they might be angels? The same message of hospitality to the stranger.
I have been thinking that the suitors had hoped to force a marriage before Telemachos
came of age, and claim the property with the marriage. That would explain why they
became so persistent and heavy-handed as that time ran out. That is no longer possible,
so the suitors now plot to kill T., divide up his flocks and herds, and give the house
to whomever marries Penelope. Sweet bunch of guys.
The testing of Penelope. I think Athena wanted to establish, for Penelope’s sake and for Odysseus’ peace of mind, that Penelope has indeed been true and loyal. That does not
mean she does not sometimes despair. I found these lines poignant, “We have no master quick to receive and furnish out a guest as Lord Odysseus was. Or did I dream him? After 20 years of coping, that brief time with Odysseus must sometimes seem unreal, a fantasy, a dream.
As for Laertes, I gathered he was simply old, tired, and wanted to leave all the hassle
to the younger generation. He has lost his wife and fears he will never see Odysseus again.
I feel certain that if Telemachos were to go to him for refuge, for example, that he
would be welcome and safe with his grandfather, but that the old man is not up to a fight.
-
That's logical on Laertes, Babi, and if he is quite old and worn out, it might explain why T has NOT gone to him. I, being of no youth myself, am going to be interested to see if he plays any part at all at the conclusion.
The proposed archery contest is clever. That would eliminate a lot
of suitors right there. Penelope may be hoping no one can shoot through
12 curved axes. I wouldn't have thought it at all possible.
Oh I hadn't thought of that! Suppose nobody gets it? Then it's their fault and she doesn't have to marry any of them! Looks like she's a match for O in smartness!
On the voice, JoanK, it may be that some people have more distinctive voices than others. Why am I thinking about the RCA old commercial with the dog and the speaker record player (what WAS that thing?) His Master's Voice? hahahaa
Dana, such good points on O and the dual testing going on. You'd think that HE at least would recognize that SHE has not married ergo she's waiting for him?
Loved this one: I think Homer's expression of how the mind works, eg here that you can know and not know something simultaneously, and all the other examples thu the poem, often expressed in a very few words, are what make it a masterpiece for me, along with his descriptions of nature.
Good points, Sally, on the need for secrecy. I guess if Laertes is really old it's not impossible that he will die and he'll need a nice shroud. Maybe they made these long in advance? I dunno.
Frybabe, I BET Pope is difficult here. I am not remembering anything of a brother to O, did the rest of you pick that up? Ok, so let me get this straight. O in disguise tells P that O is on his way home? P believes that the beggar (O) is describing O. Does it give her hope? Is she afraid to believe after all these years he could really be there soon? If I were P and someone came up to me and described O and said he will be home soon, what would I do? If I were afraid I might not recognize him after 20yrs., I might just devise a test that I knew no one but him would pass. I don't see the point of the bow test if she absolutely believed he would not be back. I'd just pick the guy with the best financial offer.
GOOD points! I am thinking she doesn't want to pick ANY of them! And she thinks nobody can string that bow much less shoot it through.
Murray here adds a note:
We are to understand, first, that in a trench dug in the earth of the courtyard....twelve aces were set up in a row, their appearance suggesting the vertical props which supported the hull of a ship in the process of being built. Secondly, the metal heads of the axes, from which the handles were removed, were set in the ends of their handles by their bits, leaving the eyes, or handle holes, exposed. Lastly an expert archer could shoot an arrow through all twelve holes, the axes being carefully placed in line, as through an interrupted tube.
When is T of age to inherit the property (if one assumes O is dead)? Is P in effect regent until then? If T were of age to take control, then the best the suitors could hope for would be a large dowry. They failed to kill T, so getting their hands on the whole enchilada is out.
These are good points. I don't know, myself. I guess for me this is what makes it fascinating? Homer is writing along or reciting along assuming everybody knows whereof he speaks but due to the age of this thing, nobody knows. What does Spark Notes or any other commentary say, if THEY know, that is? Some things of the ancients are not fully known by anybody. Let's all see what we can find out. I am loving the sort of feeling that we've been dropped there in a time capsule and we're trying to figure out what's happening by our own standards.
Joan K, good catch on the Biblical parallels. What do the rest of you have? The time for all seasons bit is at the very end, somewhere in Murray around line 592: where she says if you could sit here with me ...the immortals have appointed a proper time for each thing upon the grain-giving earth. That's what Murray has her saying.
Ok next in this chapter, and it's HUGE, is the DREAM!!
Talk about Angry Birds App! hahahaha
O says "No one will escape death's black birds."
She has a dream about an eagle and her 20 geese. The eagle kills them all and they "lie strewn through the hall." And the eagle interprets his own dream as being O, and the suitors are the geese. The foreshadowing here would be clear to a dog.
But then we have the additional interpretation by O, who is thinking fast:
Another slant. Odysseus himself has shown you
How he will finish this business. The suitors' doom
Is clear. Not one will escape death's black birds.
Er...how is this ANOTHER slant?
??
And then P comes out with the famous Gate of Horn and the Gate of Ivory.
Now do we all know what these are and where they occur usually and who made a lot of them? Why are they here?
Why does she say:
My strange dream, though,
Did not come from there. If it had,
It would have been welcome to me and my child.
Ok well if there are "two gates for dreams to drift through," and "My strange dream, though, did not come from there..." (Where? Which of the two is she talking about?) Then what is she saying?
At least O, the Wily, is understandable. Maybe she's the smartest one in the pack and nobody knew it?
Why are the famous Gates of Horn and Gates of Ivory here at all and what is she talking about?
-
O. brings up a point I’d wondered about myself. Speaking to Athena, he says, “If by the will of Zeus and by your will I killed them all, where could I go for safety? Tell me that.” Indeed! These are fellow Akhaians and the princes or nobles of major houses from every island in that part of the world. Killing them would surely bring on a manhunt of colossal proportions.
Athena simply insists that with her help he can defeat them all. Another example of the casual way in which the ancient gods disposed of men’s lives. Not only will she and Zeus help him slay the suitors, they are fully prepared to kill any of their families who take offense and come after Odysseus. Sheesh!
-
Okay, that was a little confusing. No, O did not have any siblings as far as I can tell on re-reading and researching. It was has maternal grandfather, Autolycus who had two daughters and a whole bunch of sons. A little bit of family history there, and not part of the boar hunt itself. The Ithacus named in the boar story must have been another name for O. Well, that is what happens when you read late and keep falling asleep on your reading.
Autolycus was an interesting character in his own right. Something of a master thief, stealing such things as Hermes helmet and a herd from Sisyphus. His daughter, Anticleia, was O's mom and Polymede was the mother of Jason of Argonaut fame.
-
Oh this is so interesting--gates of horn and ivory--I looked them up and wikipedia came thru--the play on words--I then looked up the original, just to make sure, and sure enough, there they are---kerawn and kraiousi---thru gates of horn dreams are fulfilled, and elephantos and elephairontai----thru gates of ivory dreams deceive, "a play on words which cannot be rendered in English."
-
In the Fitzgerald translation its clear she is saying her dream did not come by the gate of horn, ie it is false:
I doubt it came by horn my fearful dream--
too good to be true, that, for my son and me.
-
GINNY: "Now do we all know what these are and where they occur usually and who made a lot of them?"
I don't! Tell us.
Good points on Laertes. I keep remembering that Hamlet's friend was named Laertes in Shakespeare. So I wonder if L didn't have more interesting part to play in another story than that of a sick old man. Otherwise, why name someone after him.
BABI: I double checked. It's line 651 in book 19.
The story of O and the boar is interesting. I assume we're supposed to see O as a boar coming out of his cave (the cave he stored his treasures in) to attack. Somehow the image doesn't work for me. What do you all think.
And what did you think of O grabbing the old woman by the throat and threatening to kill her when she recognized him!!! he went way down in my estimation with that one. Homer has her reproaching him, but he doesn't seem to care.
-
The gates of horn and ivory are quoted by Vergil in the Aeneid but originate in the Greek play on words in the Odyssey.
-
Yikes! With all these thunderstorms daily I've lost a day somehow. We're to move on today to 20!! I'm not ready!
Great topics here this morning. Did O grab the maid's throat as Lombardo says or her mouth as in the heading, isn't that interesting? What do your sources say on that? I found that Roman relief in the heading quite interesting and human: whoops, don't say anything. But Lombardo has the throat!
What does Pope have Frybabe? I'm amazed you can get anything out of Pope!
Interesting on Autolycus!! I sort of skimmed over that one, since another new character at this point is overload! At least for a modern ancient brain! :)
If you all are ready, do plow ahead with 20. I need 5 minutes of clear weather hahahaa
More when I can attend without satellite destroying clouds, what a spring!
Good sleuthing on the Gates of Horn and Ivory being another play on words, and who else featured them, Dana! How confusing they are, to me, anyway, especially in Virgil's Aeneid where they have a more prominent part. One wonders why "horn" would be false, one idly wonders. How creative they were!
I've found an article by Benjamin Haller titled The Gates of Horn and Ivory in Odyssey 19: Penelope's Call for Deeds, Not Words which explains the Gates of Horn and Ivory in ways I would never have imagined, he cites ancient and modern scholars, it's quite surprising. I've just gotten it from JSTOR and will need time when the grandbaby is gone to absorb it but you will be electrified, who knew?
Meanshile on this subject the OCCL says Dreams are frequently personified in Greek and Latin literature: according to Hesiod, they are the daughters of Night. In Homer's Odyssey (24.12) they live beyond Oceanus, near the gates of the sun. Later poets wrote of a god of dreams, Morpheus (hence morphia, etc., ) who made human shapes (morphai) appear to dreamers. Virgil says (in Aeneid 6, 893) that the spirits of the dead send dreams to men from the Underworld, those which are true through a gate of horn, false dreams through a gate of ivory. He thus adapts what Homer says, very similarly, in Odyssey 19, 562.)
I went to Wikipedia also because I thought for some reason that Dante used them or maybe Milton but according to them (and who knows) not, these are the authors listed:
English writing
The gates of horn and ivory appear in the following notable English written works:
Edmund Spenser's epic poem "The Faery Queene" (1590, English) in book 1, stanzas XL and XLIV, in reference to a false dream being brought to the hero (Prince Arthur/the Knight of the Red Crosse).
E. M. Forster's short story The Other Side of the Hedge. The reference from Forster comes when the main character of the story observes the two gates; The Other Side of the Hedge is usually read as a metaphor of death and Heaven.
T.S. Eliot's poem "Sweeney Among the Nightingales," the line "And Sweeney guards the horned gate" is likewise a reference to this image.[11]
Eliot's poem Ash-Wednesday. The lines "And the blind eye creates / The empty forms between the ivory gates" similarly refer to this concept.
H. P. Lovecraft's story, "The Doom that Came to Sarnath," as a set of magnificent ivory gates, carved from one piece of ivory stood at the entrance of a city of vain humans, which seems to be taken from Lord Dunsany's story "The Idle Days on the Yann". It is also mentioned as a passage to the realm of hallucinations in Lovecraft's "Celephaïs."
Ursula K. Le Guin's novel A Wizard of Earthsea
Neil Gaiman's comic book series The Sandman
Robert Holdstock's novel Gate of Ivory, Gate of Horn. In the Holdstock novel, the main character grapples with a traumatic event that has two very different manifestations, one true and one false.
Derek Mahon's poem "Homage to Malcolm Lowry". "Lighting-blind, you, tempest-torn / At the poles of our condition, did not confuse / The Gates of Ivory with the Gates of Horn."[12]
Margaret Drabble's novel The Gates of Ivory
Why should false dreams be sent at all? JSTOR has something interesting on it concerning one being the eyes and one being the mouth, let me read it and come back in today when the baby is gone for the day.
OH good point on Laertes, I kept wondering idly where I had seen that name before, so far he's definitely a bit player here. And I can't see how he could step that up much, due to his age. O is not the same son material as Aeneas was, apparently, not a lot of deference and planning, letting the old man in on it or even asking the old man like Aeneas did. You'd think that O would make his way there first. I'm still confused about that.
Babi: O. brings up a point I’d wondered about myself. Speaking to Athena, he says, “If by the will of Zeus and by your will I killed them all, where could I go for safety? Tell me that.” Indeed! These are fellow Akhaians and the princes or nobles of major houses from every island in that part of the world. Killing them would surely bring on a manhunt of colossal proportions.
Yes but those suitor are in major violation of the concept of Zeus's hospitality with a capital H, don't you recall Menelaus' reaction? And since the Ithacans themselves are the object of controversy among scholars (how could any Ithacan even contemplate such a thing?) then ...I need to try to find where you saw that and see what Lombardo has!!
Super points here today!
Let me see what more we can find on the Gates, since it appears there's even more here. Isn't it interesting how they differentiate between the prophetic quality of dreams? And the origin of dreams?
-
Did O grab the maid's throat as Lombardo says or her mouth as in the heading,...
Ginny, the scene I read is that when Euryclea recognized O's scar she dropped the water ewer and threw her arms around him. The Pope says, "His hand to Duryclea's mouth applied", and goes on to tell her to keep quiet or , "With their lewd mates, they undistinguished age shall bleed a victim to vindictive rage." Of course, she let him have it for thinking she was untrustworthy and would betray his presence then offers to help sort the lot between those who should live or die. O declines the offer. He wants to make his own decision in that department.
-
HA! His hand to Euryclea's mouth applied. I can see that! It's quite modern, thank you. What do the rest of you have?
We need the Greek, I need to come back, but look what I just found on the way out to the Children's Museum!!
The Haller article! See if you can read it here! I think it's an eye opener!
See new link below, hopefully you can get one free:
-
See if you can read this:
http://www.citeulike.org/article/6430585
-
Poor Penelope. I can't blame her for not believing her dream. It's a weak rope on which
to hang a painful hope. She protects herself by insisting 'it's too good to be true'.
BABI: I double checked. It's line 651 in book 19.
Umm,JOANK, you've lost me. I don't know what you're referring to here, and in my translation Book 19 doesn't have 651 lines. Can you clarify for me?
I was also upset with O's treatment of the old servant. Granted that he must be very
'up-tight'; his action was inexcusable. A warning to her of the necessity of secrecy would
surely have been enough. What I'm getting here is a strong impression that the 'upper class'
didn't have a very high opinion of the intelligence, reliability or loyalty of the servant/
slave class. Perhaps with some cause. How their masters treated them would make a very big
difference, wouldn't it?
It would make a difference if O'covered the mouth, rather than grabbing the throat. The
latter is much more threatening, and actually that is more consistent with O's threat to her.
To introduce another thought... Philitios. I like Philitios; he is a fine fellow. But really, do you walk up to a perfect stranger and promptly tell him the full history of the place and everything that’s on your mind? Including things you would probably be careful about saying to a friend? “My own feelings keep going round and round upon this tether: can I desert the boy?” He would not, as it turns out, but it is not a thing I can imagine him saying out loud to any but his most trusted friend.
-
The Greek referring to Odysseus grabbing Euylcleia's throat says
he took her throat having grasped/laid hold of/striven after it with his right hand
and with the other having drawn her near said:
the Greek does use the word farugos which does mean throat
I could not open that article about gates of horn and ivory.
When I first read it in the poem I thought horn is more everyday and ivory is more exotic, so there are two kinds of dreams, the more realistic (horn) ones and the more exotic (ivory). Which in fact is true of course. Tho you can define dreams in many different ways.
-
Hi All-
I have returned from a wonderful Elder Hostel at the Peabody Institute (The Musical University of Johns Hopkins). The subject was The Development of Romantic Music from the Baroque to Brahms. Also it was our first time in baltimore which has inumerable sites to visit. Excellent!
I read ALL your remarks on chapts. 18 & 19.
I have two remarks:
One on Simone de Beauvoir-I actually met her and heard her lecture when she came to Israel with her then lover Claude Lanzmann . It was after she andSsarte had parted ways. If anyone is interested in this let me know and I will reply.
Second :im chapter 19 I was fascinated by the word used bt Penelope line 299:
"Destroy I call it-i hate to say its name." This is a combo of the words Troy and Destroy which was coined by T.E.Lawrence based on the Greek two words:kakoillion --which combines the Greek word for Evil kakos with Ilion ,an alternative name for Troy.
One other thing: Odysseus the man of pain as noted byFagles that this is both in the active and passive states.i.e. he suffers pain and also brings much pain to others. This is in prep for his battle with the suitors.
-
Hey, Jude! (Pun intended!) hahaha I was just thinking about you this morning, welcome back!
Yes tell us all about everything and anything including Simone de Beavoir!
Murray has Euryclea saying to O and "while she spoke, looking toward Penelope wanting to show her that her dear husband was at home," but P of course was diverted by Athena and did not catch it. Maybe O was trying to turn her head away? I dunno. He had a lot to lose, and with the other hand he pulled her close and Murray has him addressing her as "Mother, why will you destroy me?"
Her answer and the "barrier of teeth" plays right into the Gates of Horn and Ivory apparenty. I am sorry you can't open it Dana!
Hang on for 20!!
-
Ok 20 is short and sweet and contains one of the strangest scenes I think I have seen, what did you make of the sutiors' hysteria?
I agree Babi I like Philoitios, and found myself hoping HE wouldn't be killed at all. Perhaps he found himself warming to the beggar, who reminds him so much of O. Hexter says the name Philoitios means "something like 'desirable fate.'"
I guess he's there to show loyalty and there are some good people left. I guess it's an accident they are all herders? And in the case of his old nurse, servants.
hahahI have to laugh at Hexter here, he says with this group in the courtyard, "We now have assembled a swineherd, a goatherd, and a cowherd. For a complete quartet of ancient herdsmen, we lack only a shepherd." hhahahaa He points out rivalries are normal between the different types over grazing lands, and says "Goatherds are usually presented as the rudest and crudest of the lot, and Melanthoios stands at the head of this literary tradition. (After Homer, swineherds appear less frequently than the others; indeed, swine tended to be kept closer to home)."
Hexter says Philoitios' speech shows how courageous he is as he states his loyalties without waiting for O to show what ties if any he might have TO O, a good point.
Now we have the third physical attack on O, in the form of a cow hoof from Ctessipus. And we have more bird omens, and a thunder omen, and Penelope appealing to Artemis. I must admit for a second I had to double think Artemis.
It's also abundantly clear what a burden these men are on the household, it takes 3 herdsmen to bring in the meat and lots of women to grind grain for bread, not to mention the wine-cellar, it's a miracle anything is left.
But what on earth did you make of this:
"Thus Telemachus. And Pallas Athena
Touched the suitors' minds with hysteria.
They couldn't stop laughing, and as they laughed
It seemed to them that their jaws were niot theirs.
And the meat that they ate was dabbled with blood.
Tears filled their eyes, and their hearts raced.
Then the seer Theoclymnus spoke among them:"
Wow, that is powerful! What a picture! What is happening here?
Here are some questions from Creighton, not many, there's not a lot in 20:
Notice the self-restraint of Odysseus. What is the meaning of his conversation with Athena?
Pay attention to the visions and prophecies of Theoklymenos.
Well now it's just that last that I paid absolutely NO attention to, so I'll go back and reread!
These are pretty good from AJ Drake:
Book 20
60. What portents announce the struggle to come? How does Odysseus react to them?
61. Athena inspires the suitors to behave even more inappropriately than usual. Why does she do that? What effect does their behavior have on Odysseus and Telemachus?
I would ask what is this Book 20 doing in here at all? How does it advance the plot or not? Why is it here?
I think Temple has given up, all it's doing is summarizing, we can do that ourselves. :)
I like this one from SJ Blair:
Does being a hero automatically mean that one is a good leader?
That's a good question. To this we might ask: is O, in your opinion, a good leader? How so? Or how not?
Up until now would we say he had been?
Let me go see if there are any illustrations which would suit Book 20!~ We're on target!!
-
Ah, interesting note about the dual meaning of pain, JUDE. That is what I so much enjoy
about discussion. Simply reading the word in translation most readers (like me) would have
no clue about the subtle double meaning.
With all respect to Hexter, I still find it odd that 'Phil' would feel called upon to
'state his loyalties' to a transient beggar who's been invited to have a meal.
A good question about the mass hysteria. I think it was the reaction to the breaking of
the tension that had built up. People do tend to helpless laughter out of sheer relief.
The presence of others sharing the same experience seems to multiply the effect, as I'm
sure we've all experienced.
Does being a hero automatically mean that one is a good leader?
By no means. Personal bravery will rouse admiration among men, of course, but it takes
much more than that to be a good leader. For the most part, I think O was a good leader,
though he did make mistakes. We know he had the knack of command, was a notable strategist, and was able to, as they say, make the tough decisions. Those are certainly
essential, imo, to be a good leader.
-
On the Gates of Horn and Ivory, I'll summarize what I'm reading as I go, that's a 22 page article and it's pretty dense.
Here's what I can make out of the Haller article so far:
First off the ancient scholarship is pretty aligned in saying the ivory is a symbolic nod to teeth (note how many references there ARE in 19 to "teeth"), and the horn is symbolic of the "horny outer layer of the white of the eye, indicating a distinction between the potential for falsehood in speech and the reliability of vision." So that what is seen is more reliable than what comes through the teeth or what is heard. Seeing for yourself not hearing: one is false. You could argue that today. There are tons of ancient sources here cited and those who have commented on them, so this is a poor attempt to paraphrase 22 pages.
Haller says "amid a bewildering sea of speculation, the only ancient interpretations that consistently recur emphasize a distinction of word versus deed through either (1) a pun that links horn to a verb for doing and ivory to a rare verb interpreted as 'to deceive'; or ' to harm,' or (2) the physical similarity between horn and the cornea of the eye and ivory and the tooth." Haller says the cornea bit is not supported by the text or Greek usage of the time. Lots of footnotes.
Teeth in 19 are also characterized as a "palisade or enclosure in the proverbial expression of incredulity" connected with the nurse. Remember also it was Penelope who wanted the nurse TO wash his feet. Haller says she must have been in SOME trance not to notice the beggar grabbing the nurse and drawing his sword? I don't see the sword in my text, but she does appear oblivious. Maybe she already knew instead of being in a cloud of Athena and wanted to prove it thru the nurse. P appears in some commentaries a lot smarter than we thought. Apparently the teeth images are born out throughout the rest of the book as well.
So Haller says "Penelope thus establishes archery not only as a metaphorical ideal of honest communication ("feathered words,") but also a literal solution to the problem of the suitors.
So the thought of many scholars is that Penelope here HAS recognized O (apparently there's tons of debate on this) and she's telling him thru this dream to quit lying and get on with it: deeds, not words. Then she gives him the way to solve his problem: with the bow and arrows. The EYE of the axes also will come, I see, into play.
The bow is definitely (I am rather proud of this one) defined as a COMPOSITE bow, which IS what my husband has, and which name I could not think of, which consists of three main materials, the wooden stave, with belly strips of horn (the "highly flexible sheath of true horn or keratin which encloses the osseous core of the 'horn' of ordinary parlance....)" and more.....
These bows (watch out for this one) cannot be strung standing up, which apparently the suitors do not know, but Penelope and O, do. He does it kneeling, not because he was stronger, but because he "knew the way." (Stubbings)
Winkler asserts P has "simply made up the dream for the occasion as the first installment in a covert message that is continued...." in her telling of the contents. Others don't agree.
Haller says that the "fact that Odysseus' bow is composite and the method of stringing such a bow together comprise a secret sign shared between the husband the the wife and thus constitute the real, hidden test. To the listener able to interpret her clever speech, Penelope gives away the answer to this test in the gates of horn."
Now that's what I've gotten so far out of the first half of the article, very very badly summarized.
It's clear that either Homer and/ or Penelope is much smarter than we give either credit for, or tons of scholars are somewhat fanciful, or something is meant by the horn and ivory beyond what appears to be aimless babble. The allusions in 19 if one knows ancient Greek (which I do not) are also very numerous, the entire thing is full if irony and allusion and metaphor apparently. Who knew?
More when I can decipher it, it's an interesting addition to possible understanding, perhaps. :)
-
It's interesting about commentators on these ancient works.
In beginning Latin often we have serious students who assert their desire and need to provide "Interpretation" of the text they are reading, and that's fine so long as you:
(1) have the background to be able to read, translate, and understand the words you see in the context, and can apply both historical and cultural inferences of the time it was written to the text, and
(2) have experience in this particular author's works and in the other works of the period involved.
There's more to it than just translating the meaning of the words or what we think the words really mean. Caesar is a wonderful example, people love to skim him and pick up derivatives and then form their own "interpretation" or "understanding" of what he's saying. This is where the ideas of the real scholar really come to the front. It's why we need scholars.
That's where the different translators and scholars come in, with their hints and why they are needed as civilization I guess, progresses on. Sometimes I wonder if it has. The translations are different for a reason.
People like Hexter and Haller and many others who have made the ancient Greeks their life's work are going to have a lot more understanding of what they are reading than we get as a "feeling" from somebody's translation, so all I'm saying is that they need to be listened to and hopefully added to the corpus of our knowledge, whether or not we agree with them. You can probably find 10 authorities/ scholars each saying something different and that's fine, too. There IS a difference, however, in somebody like a Haller and, for instance, me.
The part that makes me extremely as Babi says respectful of what they DO say is that IS their field. Knowledge is power, we need to have it all if we possibly can: one of the benefits of a group book discussion....so let's see, Caesar has a disdain of women, you say, from his remarks in the Gallic Wars? You base that on your own "Interpretation" of the meaning of his words? Er....not. :)
-
Oh I do agree. I often think when I'm translating that even the actual meaning of the words, let alone the context, is open to speculation. As a small example, look at the translation of "epimassamenos" which is the present participle of the deponent verb epimaiomai , the various meanings of which are given as strive after, seek to obtain, aim at; with the genetive, make for; with the accusative lay hold of or grasp. Now farugos is the genetive of farux, so the phrase " cheir epimassamenos farugos labe dexiteryfi" could be translated, " making for her throat he took (labe) it with his right hand". The verb lambano of which labe is the aorist active ( think--should be elabe, but Homer is different sometimes) means take or receive or, with the genetive, grab.....! So the phrase might also mean reaching for her, he grabbed her throat with his right hand. Obviously as an amateur at this I couldn't possibly make an informed decision. But my point is, who really knows for sure what the nuances of the words are any more. I can see spending a lifetime on this kind of stuff!!
-
Received Orestia -- on the flyleaf is written Lydia Hoot, Grade 12, Mr White #5 of 15. Grade 12? What kind of school?
O a leader of men? How many men did he lose on his way home? Believe he was thinking more of himself (woe is me) than his men.
-
Oh good opposing points, Babi and Sally, love it, what do the rest of you think, on O's being a "good leader" or not? To me he's certainly changed, no longer the hot head rash risk taker but more a planner now. After what I just said I have to add from the sites I've read they seem to say he's not changed. HAS he "changed," in your opinion, or not?
But I (hhahaa) think he has...begging for scraps, enduring the three thown items, he would not have done that in the past, he could not even resist standing up, on Phaecia, to the son of the king and young men's challenges.
The three thrown insults, the pretending to be a beggar in his own house and these PLOTS and plans! He planned in the Cyclops cave and used disguise, too, but it's nothing like this. I wonder what it IS for a Greek hero to subject himself to this kind of treatment? Is it echoed anywhere else in ancient literature?
I bet the audience lapped it up.
Everything to me is over the top in this book, I would not be surprised to see the suitors cutting up and eating some of the others, they're about as bad as you can get: it's called demonizing the enemy, we're familiar with it in other guises, I think?
I was shocked and absolutely blown away by the description of the suitors' hysteria, that is worthy of any modern horror film! It seemed that their jaws were not their own and that there was blood everywhere! Talk about portents and foreshadowing! And I have laughed, myself, until it wasn't funny, and I liked Babi's "reaction to the tension," I wonder if the audience laughed then, too, or not? I would say not, what do you think?
So I would tend to think that up till now, he's not been a particularly effective leader of men, I think he tried but I agree with Sally he's been thinking of himself first: he's been a bit of a braggart (Ajax) and rash and headstrong and heedless of his men....and even when he did try it seems they for some reason did not listen.
One has to wonder why that was? Why HIS own men would argue and feel they knew best, he's like a pirate after a while with a mutinous crew. :)
But now it seems he's finally focused. Now that all he's got left as "men" to lead is his own son (maybe that has chastened him) and a swineherd, and oh yes Athena, too. So I guess he has to be a bit more wily.
Of course as Babi says he did try and he DID make the tough decisions. I wonder idly why some men are felt to be "leaders of men" whose men would follow them anywhere and some not? What qualities must some men have that O seemed not to? Of course we can blame all of it on the gods but it happens when Athena is not around. :)
Some leaders whose decisions go well and some not. It's really quite a fascinating addition to the already fascinating story.
-
The Book Club Online is the oldest book club on the Internet, begun in 1996, open to everyone. We offer cordial discussions of one book a month, 24/7 and enjoy the company of readers from all over the world. Everyone is welcome to join in.
Now reading:
(http://www.seniorlearn.org/bookclubs/classicsbookclub/cbc2odysseysm.jpg)
July 2-----Book XXII: Death in the Great Hall!
Discussion Schedule:
July 2: Book 22
July 7: Book 23
July 12: Book 24
(http://seniorlearn.org/latin/ulysses_penelope/Ulyssess22womensuitorsMonsiau.jpg)
Odysseus ordering the women to remove the bodies of the suitors
Nicolas-André Monsiau
1791
(http://seniorlearn.org/latin/ulysses_penelope/Ulysses22revealsselftosuitors.jpg)
Odysseus reveals himself to the suitors
17th century etching
Theodor van Thulden (1606 - 1669)
Fine Arts Museuems of San Francisco
Discussion Leaders: Joan K (joankraft13@yahoo.com) & ginny (gvinesc@wildblue.net )
Useful Links:
1. Critical Analysis: Free SparkNotes background and analysis on the Odyssey (http://www.sparknotes.com/lit/odyssey)
2. Translations Used in This Discussion So Far: (http://www.seniorlearn.org/bookclubs/odyssey/odyssey_translations.html)
3. Initial Points to Watch For: submitted by JudeS (http://www.seniorlearn.org/bookclubs/odyssey/odyssey_points.html)
4. Maps:
Map of the Voyages of Odysseus (http://www.seniorlearn.org/latin/ulysses_penelope/Odysseusmap.jpg)
Map of Voyages in order (http://www.wesleyan.edu/~mkatz/Images/Voyages.jpg)
Map of Stops Numbered (http://www.seniorlearn.org/latin/ulysses_penelope/Odysseusmap2.jpg)
Our Map Showing Place Names in the Odyssey (http://www.seniorlearn.org/latin/graphics/AncientGreecemap.jpg)
(http://seniorlearn.org/latin/ulysses_penelope/Ulysses22suitorsdeathredfiguredskyphos.jpg)
Odysseus slaying the suitors
Attic red figure skyphos
c. 450 BC
Antikenmuseen, Berlin
(http://seniorlearn.org/latin/ulysses_penelope/Ulysses22suitorsflaxman.jpg)
Odysseus killing the suitors
Engraving and etching on paper
John Flaxman
1805
Tate Gallery
(http://seniorlearn.org/latin/ulysses_penelope/Ulysses22suitorsThulden.jpg)
The work is ended
17th century etching
Theodor van Thulden (1606 - 1669)
Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco
(http://seniorlearn.org/latin/ulysses_penelope/Ulysses22Roberts.jpg)
The Return of Odysseus
1913
William Roberts (1895 - 1980)
Tate Gallery
-
But here he is at last, and if we put this in the guise of a modern general or hero, it seems (to me) to take on a different slant. It would make a good movie, done like some of those Shakespeare plays, in modern dress. I didn't think I liked those till I saw Ian McKellen and I could barely watch THAT one as Richard III. And I was kind of surprised to find Ian McKellen explaining the famous "Now is the winter of our discontent" speech on Youtube. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v_WJSHy_szE&feature=related
The reason I put this here is there IS a website where you can watch him explain the entire speech, but I'm not fast enough to type it as it shows here as he explains, so here he explains only the first words in one minute and it's quite similar to what we've got here: some words mean more than they appear, there are puns and metaphor, it's quite interesting. I want to watch the rest of it. Is THIS what makes Shakespeare great? What IS it about these two works which make them "Great Books?" They were both written a LONG time ago.
Dana I agree! There's just so much there, so many facets and byways, so MUCH about the ancients, you could literally spend this life and the next happily on one part of it. I am so glad we're doing this.
And I like how you from time to time bring in the reasons you think this is a great or timeless work: the (I can't say it as well as you do) but the amazing psychological insights: here let me quote YOU, you say it better: I think Homer's expression of how the mind works, eg here that you can know and not know something simultaneously, and all the other examples thu the poem, often expressed in a very few words, are what make it a masterpiece for me, along with his descriptions of nature.
________________________
Now that we're in book 20 of 24, and we're nearing the end (and have not had a potty or refreshment break since this exciting stuff began hahaha) what in the Odyssey so far for YOU has made it a masterpiece, or a great book, if it is?
Do you think it deserves to stand among the worlds greatest books and do you feel you can relate to anything in it? If so what?
Is there a modern book which does the themes better, to you? If so what is it?
What ARE, by the way, the "themes" of the book now, do you think? Have they changed?
-
From my translation of the episode with the nurse, Penelope had turned
to walk away. It was the nurse's instinctive reaction in trying to alert
Penelope that brought on Odysseus instant, and overly rough, grab at her
throat. It was imperative that Penelope remain in the dark. Perhaps her
husband and son felt she would not be able to dissemble if she knew, and
the suitors would become suspicious.
Okay, DANA, you had me lost by the fourth line. (You're a teacher, right?) I do like looking for nuances, but I'm reading a
translated version to begin with. So..I don't put too much reliance on
the accuracy of said 'nuances'. I just go with the flow.
...and even when he did try it seems they for some reason did not listen.
Ginny, it seemed to me, on those occasions, that there was a strong sense of fate ruling the situation. 'Doom' was a very real concept to the hearers of this saga, and it explains quite a lot for me.
-
I would say Odysseus is more a hero than a leader. The hero part makes him rash at times, but he is a leader because he takes charge and makes decisions--wrong ones at times, perhaps not a very good leader because he hasn't got that necessary diplomacy to make it OK with his troops or followers (compare Caesar and Augustus--I would think Augustus was the better leader because he was able to get his way but keep everybody happy too, Caesar wasn't--he got himself killed)....
I don't really think he's changed--he's got a plan to defeat the suitors and he's following it, and the plan includes being patient and suffering insults, so he does, with some difficulty as Homer points out. In Phaeacia I don't think it was so important for him to put up with insults, so he didn't.
I'm not a teacher BABI, maybe if I was I could explain better!
-
I don't think O was a particularly good leader, at least not on the homeward journey. On occasion his men disobeyed his instructions, and some his bravado resulted in the deaths of some of his men. In the end, he had no one left to lead. I'd like to think he did change some though. Anyone who gone through war and various catastrophes changes.
-
You sounded very well informed to me, DANA. Your explanation simply
included terms I never got into. I'm afraid I got my 'A's on English
entirely on the strength of familiarity with the written word. I knew
what was correct and what wasn't, but could not at all have given the
technical rule as to why.
People do change, don't they, FRYBABE, and the shocks and horrors of
war can be devastating. I wonder, tho', does everybody at some point
in their life become set in their ways and stop changing? Do some manage to keep open to what comes, and continue to adjust? I'm still
learning, as are most here, but I wonder if that includes any basic changes
in thinking, opinions or outlook? (And will I have sufficient discipline or
curiousity to pursue that thought? :P :-\ )
-
Dana is our famous resident psychiatrist. She will correct me, it's the title, psychologist, psychologist, the one with the MD, and smart doesn't begin to cover it.
I liked your application, Dana, of O as hero and not leader. And is there a difference between leader of men and leader in battle? A general? Have many generals in our own history made good political leaders? I can think of Eisenhower, and.......
and....?
(compare Caesar and Augustus--I would think Augustus was the better leader because he was able to get his way but keep everybody happy too, Caesar wasn't--he got himself killed).. Now you know I can't let that pass without a tiny quibble. :) hahahaa
Caesar's men in his army, unlike those of O, would have happily died for him (and did). His army (and we have seen why in reading his Commentaries: he stomped immediately, using psychology on any hint of quibbling), but his army would have done anything for him and followed him anywhere. O definitely did not have that luxury, but remember also, he kept losing? He started out fine after the Trojan War, lots of bragging, started out home and then kept losing. Caesar didn't. And it's perfectly true that the armies at least in Caesar's day, thought a winning general was blessed BY the gods, and if you hung with HIM you'd be lucky, too. There was a real superstition even a millennium later, in the army.
I think Caesar's biggest fault politically was his clemency. I've forgotten how many of the conspirators who killed him had been pardoned by him, in civil life, and given another chance.
On Augustus? hahaha He was much more the vicious political adversary than Caesar, much more harsh, equally if not more so egotistical, and let's face it, after his proscriptions there was nobody left TO oppose him: everybody lived in total fear, those were certainly rough times. So naturally he became more of a leader of men politically: most of his opponents ended up like Cicero even if they didn't have their heads on the rostrum in the Forum, like Cicero did.
O kept running afoul in his journey home, and that made his men think that he should listen to them. Quite the come down, some of the things that happened to him, but here he's hit rock bottom in his own home, and he's got his own group of conspirators, the suitors, waiting. And we can see why O blames everything on Zeus, or Poseidon, that's the way they thought. Babi has picked up on the sense of "doom" thing, rightfully.
When you think about it O really had double demons to confront: the actual happenings, and being labelled not favored by the gods. (I seem to remember at least one place he went the host marveled at what gods must be against him).
(I just saw yesterday in the new Time Magazine article on hacking how great the devastation of the Malware Zeus has been!
I am loving the comments on O as leader AND has he changed, let me see if I can get you all right?
No he has not changed: Dana
Yes he's showing change: Frybabe, ginny
Babi says people DO change, do you think he's changed, Babi?
What do you all say, do you see any change in O at all? Or not? How would this "change" be noticeable? And would it mean anything at all?
And what kind of "leader" does he seem to be? Would YOU follow him? I am wondering why he can't get Menelaus who has told T outright that they would support any attempt by any suitors to take over O's kingdom, to join in? Would only take one more boat trip?
-
Its interesting Ginny, your question about the difference between a wartime leader and a peacetime leader. i was thinking when I wrote that about Caesar and Augustus that Caesar was a brilliant leader of men in his armies, was ablle to boost their morale, use psychology, be ruthless when he had to be--but then I remembered some of his legions mutinied (not remembering why....). Augustus produced a period of peace and prosperity though. I do think that a brilliant leader has to be ruthless to get done what needs to be done, you have a good point--Caesar should have bumped off a few more of his enemies! In spite of his clemency he wasn't able to charm them or placate them into accepting him perhaps he was just too arrogant. he comes across as pretty arrogant. It seems that these conspirators did hate him.
I'm a psychiatrist, that's the MD one! but now I'm more interested in things Latin and Greek!!
-
DANA: and people do!
I love the ivory referring to teeth (speech) and the horn referring to eyes. Practically again, since the Greeks believe in dreams as prophacy, they need an explanation as to why it doesn't always work.
JUDE: the development of Romantic music frrom Bach on! I am so jealous of you!! Have you talked about what you learned in the Classical Corner on Seniors and friends? For some reason, S and F won't let me log in, and I miss that program.
I just spent two hours listening to Mahler, not my favorite composer. But on my local PBS, the conductor of te San francisco orchestra soent an hour talking about Mahlers childhood, and how he used his chuildhood musical memories in his Symphony No. 1, Then another hour playing the symphony. It was very interesting. I may become a Mahler fan yet.
Why this chapter, indeed. We are drawing out the inevitable here to a painful extent.
-
JoanK, I am having the same experience with S&F. I had trouble for two days, then yesterday, just in time for Don's show, I could get in. A little slow at times, but I was in. Now this morning, it won't let me in again. There was a system upgrade on the weekend that messed things up. They thought they had the problem fixed, but apparently there is something else wrong now.
-
Your mention of Eisenhower brought back a memory, GINNY. I remember
commenting once on Eisenhower and what he had accomplished. My father, who was a very smart man, agreed, but said that as president, Ike's strong point was his ability to pick men who could handle the things he could not. (Not his exact words, but that was the gist of what he was saying.) That's good leadership, too.
We start Book 21 tomorrow, right? I found such a disappointment
awaiting me there. :-X
-
Babi, We start Book 21 tomorrow, right? I found such a disappointment
awaiting me there
A disappointment!!!! What? I can't wait to read! How time flies, seems like we just started 20!
Hopefully everybody will be able to keep up the pace, I am missing some of our contributors here, where ARE you? Are you all fallen by the wayside? I hope not!!
I really am going to miss reading a book like this. There aren't many books you can read in installments, I do think Dickens had the right idea. Some day I'd like to read one of his in the actual installments as it came out in the press, with the same intervals.
Ike's strong point was his ability to pick men who could handle the things he could not. (Not his exact words, but that was the gist of what he was saying.) That's good leadership, too. Delegate, what an interesting point. Caesar did delegate, and O seems to, too, but ultimately the buck stops somewhere. I love this great statement, Babi!
Joan K: Mahler! Not my favorite either, haven't listened to him in years, recommend one for us and I'll try him again. Heavy, why do I remember heavy?
I love the ivory referring to teeth (speech) and the horn referring to eyes. Practically again, since the Greeks believe in dreams as prophecy, they need an explanation as to why it doesn't always work. Me too, and the ivory and horn come back out in this book in later chapters. I am glad to finally have some kind of explanation of it, it confused me no end in The Aeneid.
It seems that these conspirators did hate him.
Dana, I'm not that sure. I'm reading Goldsworthys Antony and Cleopatra and he's just made the point about the political climate at the time of Antony, where political ambition took an ominous turn with the first Gracchus and continued with murder and intrigue slap up to Antony's time, in fact he makes the point that it was normal for the time.
When you combine that with.... I can't get over Dante putting Cassius AND Brutus in the lowest level of hell along with Judas. There all three of them sit, the only ones, at that lowest level, as I understand it, for eternity.
I can see Cassius there. Shakespeare did such a job (thanks to Plutarch) on him, talk about psychology! He practically turns green with envy: nothing like a green eyed monster. But Brutus was naive and a dupe, ironically living UP to the meaning of his name, going proudly on his own historic name's reputation and hoping for himself to equal his ancestor and "save" the Roman republic from a dictator (while the rules about appointing a dictator were still firmly in place) and add his own name to history. He got taken, but since it was something of a precedent, it wasn't quite how we'd see it today. And of course their actions led to Civil War and an Emperor. Stupid things.
Once Brutus was in it, that gave it "legitimacy," which was Cassius's idea in the first place and other men hoping to share the top ranks, once persuaded, joined as well. I'm not sure hatred was their primary motive, you can see that in several of them, but it was mob rule; even so they hesitated, even Casca once he gave the first blow. And of course had they been thinking, they could not have hoped for anything from the 900 man Senate, who stood aghast, not celebrating, 600 of whom Caesar appointed himself, or the people, who all loved Caesar, so once the deed was done, and especially once the will was read, they were hounded out of town and/or torn to shreds, even innocent people with the same name, in the street by the populace. It's fascinating, it really is. Caesar who responded so quickly in battle, simply brushed aside this political envy and muttering; totally discounted it. Was it arrogance? He seemed to trust in the Republican process, that's why he appointed 600 more Senators. hahaha
We know Caesar was arrogant, I guess he thought in the old way: the enemy is the enemy but Rome is home. I guess he made the mistake of brushing off envy...and probably never dreamed of a coniuratio, a conspiracy, which the Romans hated more than anything else. Not expected or done by a true Roman, anyway.
The people loved him and Brutus should have, pardoned as he was, I guess that's why he's in hell, according to Dante. Pride goeth...
but then I remembered some of his legions mutinied (not remembering why....) You're right and we remember Caesar's response, how fast and how cleverly he acted, after all it's not what happens to you in life but how you react. I thought that last one we read was a masterpiece of psychology, he had them all about crying and pleading to go with him, and he DID use delegation to win the day, very very smart. He was on it in the battlefield. In private life...I dunno. I think he's fascinating.
I think I have finalized my list of the 3 people I'd most like to have dinner with: Caesar, Homer, and BL Ullman. I think Dr. Ullman would enjoy that dinner, I could sit like a silent fly on the wall and take notes. hahaha
If YOU could have dinner with any 3 people from history, who would YOU choose?
________________________________
Meanwhile, back at the castle, we've got this additional small chapter which seems to be doing nothing but which is building suspense and actually apparently? has set the final stage of the plot in motion. We're to have a contest! A focus at last! And apparently? Penelope WILL choose? Of course if nobody manages TO string the thing OR shoot thru 12 holes then ...what? Do they all go home at last? Is it over?
Will in fact the contest BE the climax of the book? I think I may have missed that part.
Plot wise we may finally have the action building TOWARD something? He's home, he's still not in control, he's in disguise so his "homecoming" theme is still not fulfilled and certainly his need to be a hero isn't either?
So in these last 5 chapters, thanks to this contest, we're about to see all!
Shades of Ivanhoe and pretty much all the fairy tales we've read, absolutely love it!
Ollie Ollie Oxen Free! Come on in!
Last thoughts on anything up till now?
-
Penelope on sleep:
"Evil may be endured when our days pass
in mourning, heavy hearted, hard beset,
if only sleep reigns over nighttime, blanketing
the world's good and evil from our eyes."
Macbeth on sleep:
"Macbeth shall sleep no more.
Sleep that knits up the ravelled sleeve of care.
The death of each day's life, sore labour's bath,
Balm of hurt minds, great nature's second course,
Chief nourisher at life's feast......"
Not quite the same--Penelope made me think of Macbeth and then when I looked it up to get it right I just had to copy it because it is so perfect.
Three people I would like to dine with??
How about Caesar, Freud and Helen of Troy?? (maybe Augustus.......too)
-
Oh wow those are great lines and that's SOME table you've assembled! Wouldn't you love to hear THAT conversaton! hahaa
There are some fabulous bits in 21 coming up and I think I see why Babi is disappointed, were the rest of you? I'm thinking it's for a good reason, can't wait to find out what you think.
Since we're to have (believe it or not) storms tonight and tomorrow, I've put up the new heading now and will put in some great questions also but first off:
1. Why do you think Telemachus spoke to Penelope as he did? After all it's her idea, and she's come out like a lioness against the suitors, very bold behavior. What is going on, do you think?
Here are some more questions, first from a Dr. Fredricksmeyer. I don't know who he is but I love his questions:
Book 21
73. Does Penelope's initiation of the marriage contest (and her preceding decision to remarry) seem psychologically plausible or not? Explain.
74. After the contest is underway, which of the suitors tries to delay it, and why?
75. Before Odysseus, who almost succeeds in stringing the bow and who/what stops him?
76. What has Telemachus done to set the suitors up for a slaughter?
77. Can you identify language at the end of this book and the beginning of the next that characterizes the killing of the suitors as a culinary act?
Here are some more:
From: http://www.millstoneeducation.com/worldLit/c8thru12/odyssey/questions.php
What is the significance of the contest of the bow? What is Penelope saying to the suitors by having this contest? (bk xxi, pp. 301-318)
Why does it bother Eurymachos that he cannot string the bow? (bk xxi, ln 249-255; p. 315):
Why does Antinoos suggest that they take a break and offer sacrifices to Apollo? (bk xxi, ln 259-268; p. 316):
Why are the suitors so afraid that the stranger (Odysseus) will be able to string the bow? (bk xxi, ln 320-329; p. 317):
From: http://mockingbird.creighton.edu/english/fajardo/teaching/eng120/homer2.htm
What does the contest of the bow symbolize? Why can't the suitors string the bow? Can Telemakhos string it? Pay extreme attention to the scenes when Odysseus strings his bow. Why is the bow compared to a harp or lyre (lines 460-469, p. 374)?
I love that one about why are the suitors so afraid that the stranger (O) will be able to string the bow? Why ARE they?
And this one:
What is the significance of the contest of the bow? What is Penelope saying to the suitors by having this contest? (bk xxi, pp. 301-318)
What do you think about any or all of these? Is there a passage in 21 that you were particularly struck by? Do you see the actual reference to O's having strung the bow sitting?
A drachma for your thoughts!
-
Joan
If you like classical music the Peabody institute hqs 50,yes fifty seminars a year on every aspect of music (Classical mainly but Jazz, broadway and movie music as well) The teachers were amazing. I can't find words to praise them enough. Not just lectures but each of them was a master pianist and each idea was played, not just explained. Every night a concert. What an experience. I'm having a hard time coming back to reality.
Ginny-
It is a good and bad thing to make a two week break from the discussion. Good in that you see things with a slightly changed
perspective. Bad in that it's a bit hard to catch up with all your thoughts.
The one thing that I keep thinking about was the fact that Homer describes objects, places and people in such detail that he became blind later in life , he was definitely sighted for many years. A blind from birth man could not describe things in the manner that he does in our story.
Another perspective is that not all the chapters are written in the same manner. Perhaps the same person didn't write alll of them but there were two or more authors. Or perhaps there was a story that became longer and longer as time past and certain people added parts or enhanced the story. Homer may have beenthe Bard that told the story but perhaps he learned it from someone.
I'm not answering your questions Ginny but just expressing thoughts that are running around in my brain.
-
Does Penelope's initiation of the marriage contest (and her preceding decision to remarry) seem psychologically plausible or not? Explain.
It has been 20 years, the suitors are eating up (literally) T's inheritance, perhaps she has run out of ideas on how to stave them off, perhaps she would like to marry again -- someone of her choice, she isn't getting any younger -- don't know what the cutoff age would be for the suitors?
-
after all it's not what happens to you in life but how you react.
So true, GINNY.
I suspect my 'disappointment' is more trivial than you give me credit
for, GINNY. But I am shocked; I am devastated. The great Hercules, hero of a thousand TV dramas, exposed as evil! “...he murdered his guest at wine in his own home--inhuman, shameless in the sight of heaven--to keep the mares and colts in his own grange.” How can I ever enjoy a heroic tale of Hercules again? :'(
-
Jude, good points! And your trip sounds like a fabulous adventure, no wonder you can't come down!
Babi, uh oh, then you don't want to know how Hercules ended up doing the 12 Labors he's so famous for, maybe. I thought you were referring to the way Telemachus addressed Penelope, I expect he was frantic, of all the times for her to come out swinging, this is not the time. I expect he'd have done anything to get her out of the room.
Sally, I agree, it's obvious they ARE younger but I'm not sure how young. I still don't see anything about, if none of you CAN string it, then you all go home.
I'm unclear if Antinous strung it at all? Did he?
-
Telemakhos does again takes a high tone with his mother, ordering her about and proclaiming himself as master, but this time I understand. He has needed some pretext to get all the women out of the hall and safely behind their own locked doors. All hell is about to break loose down there and Penelope’s safety is paramount to both father and son. Taking this
macho tone would seem perfectly natural and reasonable to the suitors,
too. They would make no objection to Penelope's leaving with all the
women.
-
I think Penelope initiating the string the bow contest now, fits in with the idea that she unconsciously knows that the stranger is Odysseus so she is setting up the opportunity for him to intervene. But because its unconscious she has rationalized the decision to herself by saying that T. is now grown up, its time for her to leave. i don't think its coincidence that she tells the beggar of her plan first, she's giving O. an unconscious heads up. We see the clues for this in her "I almost said, bathe your master" remark and then in the next chapter her comment,
"Tonight the image of my lord came by
as I remember him with troops. O strange
exultation! I thought him real, and not a dream."
-
I agree, DANA. Penelope's instincts are telling her something her mind is totally unable to accept
just yet. After twenty years, she has accepted that Odysseus will not be coming back. She is
not going to expose herself to the pain of hoping again and being disappointed again. She 'held
the fort' until her son was old enugh to claim his heritage, which is in itself a remarkable accomplishment.
-
So you all think, consciously or unconsciously, Penelope knows THIS is Odysseus? I wonder why he doesn't tell her then? Or why she doesn't say to him, I recognize you. Just picture the scene! IF she knows it is he, what tension, they are dancing around each other. I sort of think she does, too. LOTS and lots of writing on this one, both sides equally defended. We, the "listeners" at the fire can debate this one, better than a soap opera!
I was thinking today about this father/ son combination, and how harmoniously they work. Imagine what an older resident of Greece must have thought to hear this story, here the old man (O) is treated with courtesy and respect (unlike, strangely enough,. his treatment from the son of the king and his bud in Phaecia).
Odysseus is lucky in his own son, but I keep coming back to Laertes. Is he that lucky? How OLD is he anyway? Perhaps he's soo old they don't want to worry him?
I had to laugh today at a Sirius commercial for the Weather Radio Channels they've got going now, quite a few of weather channels, Baby Zeus (I kid you not) is wanting to hear the weather when his mother keeps saying your father makes the weather, it's a hoot. Of course it jumps right out at you, having read this and hearing Zeus thunder when O strings the bow. hahahaa
So here we are, the contest is set, don't you love the two different representations of what it might have looked like in the heading? I bet there have been books written on how those ax heads were placed to get the rings, I know I've read enough for a book. All I can think of is Robin Hood. hahaha
There are so many beautiful passages in this section. I absolutely LOVE all the stuff about the locking of the doors. Penelope uses "a beautiful bronze key with an ivory handle," to get the bow.
" She quickly loosened the thong from the hook,
Drove home the key and shot back the bolts.
The doors bellowed like a bull in a meadow
And flew open before her."
That makes the point to me that these doors in this place are nothing to trifle with and Telemachus is in the process of locking up all the weapons and O tells Eumaeus that he should tell the women to lock the women's doors to the hall, and after he gives the bow to O, he tells the nurse to tell them, and she locks them herself. Now I'm not sure which doors we're talking about here because he says Telemachus says you should lock the doors, but it was O who told him? (In Edit: oh duh, he can't say O told him, now can he?) :)
Homer is playing close attention to the plot, imagine trying to memorize this thing, no wonder there are different voices as Jude says, popping out. I could never keep the details straight!
So maybe these are other doors? And O tells Philoetius to bar the courtyard gate and secure it quickly with a piece of rope. So they are locked IN and these doors are nothing to laugh at and their weapons are locked away, I'd say the trap is closing! .
Did you also notice that they apparently had shelves or "platforms" to put their chests of clothing on? This is a revelation to me. We forget no designer closets for them, chests, no closets. But these chests are on a platform and the bow is on a hook.
I love these questions:
Why does it bother Eurymachos that he cannot string the bow? (bk xxi, ln 249-255; p. 315): I don't have those lines in Lombardo but it appears E is afraid he'll be laughed at for all eternity, which, I guess has come true, actually. :) So that shows they do have SOME idea of right and wrong or their place in history and boy Penelope sure told them outright, didn't she!
The other ringleader, Antinous, when this happens, says let's put it off and oil it up and heat it up (and give me a better shot at it in the morning maybe it's cold or something) and I don't think he ever strings it at all!
But O does, and beats them to it. Don't you love these secret signals between O and Telemachus? The rising and lowering of the eyebrows? hahaha I can see George Clooney here very well.
And just when it all seems anti climactic again, and O says we'll need some music and song and entertainment--the finishing touches for a perfect banquet, he lowers his brows.
Telemachus then slings on his sword, seizes his spear and "gleaming in bronze" takes his place by his father's side!
Here it comes, are we ready for it? Talk about a cliff hanger! And it's the end of the chapter, too!
Why do you think the story is in the book about how O GOT the bow? Were you thinking "another story?"
This is good stuff! I need to find the eating references, this goes back to an earlier question about the belly thing.
-
I would have said O''s stringing the bow and shooting thru the ax holes was the climax of the plot but Spark Notes says it's not, the climax is in 22!
-
I agree. Stringing the bow and shooting through the axe holes was the
CHALLENGE! O now has the full attention of a startled, red-faced,
angry crowd.
-
I don't think Penelope knows, consciously, that the beggar is Odysseus. So she would not be able to say "I know who you are." And in fact I believe she tests him later. Why O doesn't reveal himself to her, presently I don't know. Maybe it will become clearer. Does he still doubt her? Does he want to protect her somehow?
I certainly think this chapter biulds up the tension beautifully.
I'm sitting here in LaGuardia waiting for my plane. We got little wireless things this year because we now document everything electronically (the agency I do some work for). And we don't have to carry printers any more. It all goes back and forward magically. I keep being dragged kicking and screaming into the future. Soon I may have to get a kindle and one of these fancy phones. No rush tho........!!
-
I've been under the weather and off the computer for two days. Glad to be back, but I'm behind -- off to read the chapter. but meanwhile, some odds and ends:
GINNY: you remember Mahler as heavy because he is. But his first Symphony, with cuckoos singing and klesmer music in the middle is the one featurd on the program, and I certainly understand it a lot better now. JUDE: I'm dying of envy. All those years that I lived near Baltimore, I didn't know. And now that I'm thousands of miles away ... oh well.
"the killing of the suitors as a culinary act?" Is the one who posed this question the same one who saw the Odyssey as about food? I'm having trouble thinking that way.
Has O changed? I've been thinking how much of the time in this journey has O been nin charge of what was happening to him, and how many of his adventures he was passive, and things happened to him? I'm not sure we've seen him make a plan and carry it out since he was in the cyclops cave.
I like the idea that P knew O unconsciously, but not consciously. Don't know if that's right, but it's my story and I'm sticking to it!
Several voices? What do the scholars say about this? I wonder if all these little stories that get thrown in without havinmg anything to do with the plot are Homer, or someone, gathering together all the folk stories they've heard from other people and sticking them in here. What do you think?
-
I found this chapter rather gruesome. let me quoie some lines
Line 490 : You Sluts-the suitors whores!
and then their horrible punishment: lines 494--498
"Then, as doves or thrushes beating their spread wings
against some snare rigged up in thickets-flying in
for a cozy nest but a grisly bed receives them-
so the women's head were trapped in a line,
noses yanking their necks up, one by one
so all might die a pitiful, ghastly death........
Then the death of Melanthus:
"Lopped his nose and ears with a ruthless knife
tore his genitals for the dogs to eat"
Of all the horrors that pass by in the preceding chapters this one is much too explicit and I wonder if it is becaus Odysseus is doing the damage and not being done to? Remember the active and passive of pain:being done to and doing to others.
-
Speaking for myself, DANA, I don't think Odysseus doubts Penelope. I think
he is immensely proud of her, but fears she would not be able to conceal the
truth if she knew it. How many of us would be? I'd be a nervous wreck if I
were Penelope and understood all that was happening.
The vengeance does seem excessive to the crime, doesn't it, JUDE. Tho'
perhaps not be the standards of those times. Actually, this is one of the
scenes where I can imagine a later minstrel deciding even more blood and
gore would be an audience pleaser.
But..where men make the rules (which is most everywhere).. Even as late as
the Victorian era husbands could throw wayward wives out on the street without a dime and never allow them to see their children again. And women of the upper classes had almost no way to make a living for themselves. If their
own family refused to take them in, their outlook was pretty much hopeless.
-
Penelope has played games with the suitors for many years. She is a clever woman. If she knows it is Odysseus then she knows she must allow HIM to cleanse the house of the suitors. She wouldn't mind keeping it a secret for another few days. She would have to be dense to not see SOMETHING is going on under the surface with the "beggar".
However I personally don't think the punishments of the maids or the suitors fits their crimes. Of course this was a different era but still it is almost pagan in its ferocity. It doesn't make Odysseus more of a hero in my eyes. He is acting like an avenging God. But in this book Gods act like men and men like Gods.
If it was a scene in a movie I wouldn't throw it in the audiences faces that the man's genitals were thrown to the dogs to be eaten. What does it prove? Beats me.
-
From the schedule, we start the "vengence" chapter tomorrow. (this is like the old Saturday serials at the movies: come back Saturday and find out what happens). but we all know what's going to happen. Since we read "the Iliad", I know how graphic Homer can get ("his liver landed in his lap") so I'm not looking forward to it.
But it's not just love of gore. Homer feels he has to record each man's death as part of his "kleos".
-
Why does it bother Eurymachos that he cannot string the bow? (bk xxi, ln 249-255; p. 315): I don't have those lines in Lombardo but it appears E is afraid he'll be laughed at for all eternity, which, I guess has come true, actually.
[/color]
I agree with you, Ginny, as my Rieu translation says..." What does grieve me is the thought that our failure with his bow proves us such weaklings compared with the godlike Odysseus. The disgrace will stick to our names forever."
-
Ginny, way, way back you mentioned something that was on the Hee Haw shows. We watch the reruns of Hee Haw on Sunday evenings. Anyways, four guys (Roy Clark is one) sitting and drinking, moonshine I am guessing, and they sing.."doom, despair and agony on me." Reminds me of Odysseus. :)
-
I really don't think Penelope is aware that this is Odysseus. Even if the
man strikes some chord of familiarity in her, she would not allow herself to
explore it. She has been waiting for twenty years and has given up hope. She
is not going to readily open herself up again to that pain.
Again the strong emphasis on the will of the gods. I suppose it is very useful for getting past any sense of guilt. When the old servant wants to shout in triumph, O’ stops her.
“Rejoice inwardly. No crowing aloud, old woman. To glory over slain men is no piety. Destiny and the gods will vanquished these, and their own hardness. They respected no one, good or bad, who came their way. For this, and folly, a bad end befell them.”
-
Ah the climax of the book at last! The entire book has built up to this moment. The main conflict, that Odysseus must return home and vanquish the suitors begins with his announcement that he's baaaack! According to Spark Notes, that's the Climax of the plot.
Like every action movie the villains get their due in a rousing finale scene, and we knew it was coming.
Bang crash, we don't have a car chase and no CGI but we have plenty of excitement and each villain dealt with according to his crimes. You can almost see the crowd of listeners drawing closer to hear what happened to this or that one.
It's 40 against 4 at this moment in the Great Hall.
Do we feel this is too gory? It was 3000 years ago, but I have to say I watched Casino Royale the other night and when this scene came, as they always do in these movies, I could barely watch the end, and that's only a couple of years old.
I absolutely loved the reaction of the suitors, each one thinking something different to save his own hide. Eurymachus saying it was all his fault, pointing as Antinous, the first one struck, is dead. Clemency IS given to the old tutor, that surprised me. A lot. This is a blood bath, mob rule, vengeance with a capital V, Revenge and yet the old Tutor is spared, I could almost not believe it, and the herald Madon who was hiding under a chair. I think that says something for O. O grew a lot in this last scene, despite Athene's pep talk, I don't think he needs her any more, just like Nanny McPhee, so she as Mentor after Mentor is addressed/ threatened by the suitors, simply flies up into the rafters and nobody notices?
Makes Harry Potter look tame.
Things were simpler then. An eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth. No death penalty protestors or forgiveness from the grieved family for the most heinous crimes. Still the idea of revenge lives on in our films, very strongly, so it's definitely not gone.
Jude says they are pagans. Yes they are, if by that we mean they are not Christians. I never will forget in a tour of the Roman city beneath the parking lot of the Vatican, and the Vatican guide explaining how "pagan" was not a derogatory term. The unmanning of Melanthuis would have carried a strong message and that's not without precedent in the 20th century unfortunately if you read history. To have parts cut off, particularly these, and fed to the dogs was the worst fate that could be given a Greek upon dying. I am sure everybody remembers Hector's father begging Achilles for the body of his son dragged behind the chariot around Troy so he could give it a proper burial.
I am impressed with O at this point, because he checks Eurycleia's response to gloat and says they need to be more pious:
Rejoice in your heart but do not cry aloud.
It is unholy to gloat over the slain. These men
Have been destroyed by diviner destiny
And their own recklessness. They honored no one,
Rich or poor, high or low, who came to them.
And so by their folly they have brought upon themselves
And ugly fate."
And then he turns around and asks about the women. Here he's going to separate the loyal from the disloyal. There are 50 women, 12 are traitors.
I was confused on what the punishment actually was, there was to be slicing which does sound awful, but it appeared there was hanging. Hexter says apparently Telemachus felt that the sword was too good for them, and hanging was felt suitable by the ancient Greeks for women, and that most women in extant Greek literature, when they kill themselves, don't fall by the sword but rather by hanging.
Hexter also points out Odysseus is careful to do some washing just in case the death of the maids and the mutilation of Melanthius might be felt to be unclean and unholy, he purifies himself away from the deeds. That's interesting.
They literally aided and abetted the suitors, sleeping with the enemy, traitors, and one of them gave away to the suitors the fact that Penelope was unraveling the tapestry at night. Their having to help remove the suitors was cruel but it fitted the crime as the old Gilbert and Sullivan musical went:
The object all sublime, I shall achieve in time, to make the punishment fit the crime, the punishment fit the crime.
This is an early version of that very thing. IS it too much? Jude says yes. What do you think?
Hexter actually has this almost as a football game, with the disparity of numbers, even keeps score as to how many each killed, the coach (Athene's) pep talk, and the quick thinking of O, when they DO find the storeroom unlocked (I wonder why) and get some weapons. O's heart sinks. :) But he's quick on his feet.
This is some book. It has humor and irony and, what? 6? Epic similes. Hexter says, "This is not the novelistic world of business, as the suitors would like to believe, but heroic epic. They wanted the honor and glory of occupying Odysseus's place in Ithaka; they will now have to pay for their ambitions in epic terms."
How do YOU feel now that we've reached the climax? How would you like to have seen it end if you don't like what you see? Penelope, does she even KNOW this is going on at this point? Has O changed NOW? How?
AJ Drake has a couple of really good questions here, what do you think:
1. Consider the intensity of the violence throughout this book - do you find it unsettling or "over the top"? Why or why not? Does the epic narrator take up an attitude towards the violence?
2. 65. As logic dictates, Antinous is the first to die. How do the remaining suitors try to appease Odysseus? Why, in view of the Odyssey's task...... would it be inappropriate for Odysseus to accept their arguments or pleas?
What do you think about 22? First comments on your own thoughts then off to find some illustrations!
I personally found this a great book and satisfying to read, am I totally out of it? If you don't like the end, how would YOU have ended it and would that be in keeping with an epic hero?
-
SandyRose! We watch the reruns of Hee Haw on Sunday evenings. I grabbed up my Dish Network guide and behold RFDTV! I am going to cheek Sunday's listings and see if it comes on, what a hoot to hear that again. I understand it's one of the most popular shows IN syndication, go figure ( I think it's the music people who appear. Still!) hahahaa
Joan K: But it's not just love of gore. Homer feels he has to record each man's death as part of his "kleos". Good point, we've got this epic winding down and we need to tie up the loose ends, the kleos, the nostos, the entire 9 yards, which Homer is doing. We've now had the bad guys get their comeuppance. Or those in the hall, anyway.
Didn't you love it when they thought the death of Antinous was a mistake!?! They were shocked and THEN he reveals himself. Nice touch.
I am loving everybody's take on whether or not P knew O was her returned husband, what good thinkers you are. I agree with Jude that P is very clever, she is more than a match for O, and since SHE has just provided the way O can GET his kleos and nostos, we have to give her her due. I liked what Jude said about O has to do this, she can't.
That was a great point, JoanK, about folk stories added on by other voices, it makes sense to me. After all you can't form a line of 50 people and whisper a secret in the first ear without it changing completely by the end of the line.
Babi made a good point about "getting past the guilt," as we see O doing the purifying washing to do just that, and avoid any taint that this was somehow impious.
But NOW what? We've got 2 books to go. He's back. He's revealed. He's avenged his house on the suitors. What's left?
-
I don't think the violence is over the top. Baddies always get their comeuppance in a rousing tale and the nastier the baddie, the nastier his/her end. Not as politically correct or civilized as life imprisonment with a chance of parole for good behaviour in a few years (can you imagine....)--but a lot more satisfying !
-
I quite liked this chapter. It reminds me of cartoonish fights or epic battles scenes like in Lord of the Rings or the "against all odds" fights our TV and movie heroes manage to win. Thoughts of a cartoon like "muttering head" (Agelaus) rolling along the pavement set me to chuckling.
Pope: "...they lopp'd away the man, Morsel for dogs!..." With all the other body parts being listed afterward, I would not have realized what Homer was talking about but rather thought it a prelude to the list following. Like I would have thought it said "lopp'd away at the man" and here is the list.
Did O have to kill all of them but two? I think not. Perhaps a few more honorable than the others, had they known he was back, would have packed up and left before they got locked in and had no choice but to defend themselves to the death. Seems like a bit of overkill, but guess it is better to remove your enemies now rather than let them off the hook only to have them come back later and reek havoc.
Does anyone have a sense of how long after someone went MIA back then that the spouse would be free to remarry? What stopped any of these guys from just taking O's property (and wife) if there was no one there to defend it? Why did Penelope allow these characters to stay so long, and why did they band together rather than connive against one another in competition to win her hand? I would have thought they would be trying to do each other in - last man standing wins the prize. How long were these guys actually there mooching off O's household? What rights to regain his property would O have had back then if his wife had remarried? Twenty years is a long time to wait for someone everyone thought dead. I suppose no one formally declared him dead.
Cleaning up after with sulfur: Good reason for that. Disinfectant against insects and disease. Having the unfaithful household slaves to the clean up was brilliant - poetic justice.
-
Maybe Penelope was strong and crafty enough to keep them all at bay and playing off one another, I would like to think that was the reason anyway! (How I don't know--force of personality? Quiet and weepy, but a woman of steel?)) I don't know if there was any time frame after which a husband was considered dead. I would suppose not because there was no central government or church or whatever laying down the law to people. I compare Klytaemnestra who decided to marry Aegisthus whether Agamamnon was dead or not, I don't see how she could have known for sure --and then killed him and got killed for her pains. But she had reason, he killed her daughter. I think she's been given a bad rap just because the stories were written from the male point of view !
-
DANA: I agree with you that Klytaemnestra gets a bad rap. I don't think it's even mentioned in the Odyssey that Agamemnon had killed their daughter. She is held up as a contrast to fiercely loyal Penelope.
I, too, feel it stretched the imagination that the suitors would have hung around so long without a resolution. And that Penelope is still so beautiful after 20 years of doing nothing but pining for O. What a life!
The vengence scene doesn't sit well with me, but it is the only ending that fits the epic quality of the poem. It's hard to imagine anything less.
-
Perhaps a few more honorable than the others, had they known he was back, would have packed up and left before they got locked in and had no choice but to defend themselves .
I had much the same thought myself, FRYBABE. If Telemachos had approached a couple of the more honorable and well-behaved suitors and quietly advised them to leave while they could,...would they have gone? Would they think it was some trick to get them away? If they believed they were in danger, would they have been able to go without warning their best buddies?
I don't think it would have worked and would more likely have exposed
O' before he was ready. It really was up to the individual man. Any one of
them could have said, 'Enough!', and withdrawn. If he had, he would have
survived. Character bound into fate, right?
A bit of trivia... I see we have an answer now to what kind of floors the house had. Cleaning the floor after the slaughter consisted of scraping the “packed earth floor” with hoes.
-
The Book Club Online is the oldest book club on the Internet, begun in 1996, open to everyone. We offer cordial discussions of one book a month, 24/7 and enjoy the company of readers from all over the world. Everyone is welcome to join in.
Now reading:
(http://www.seniorlearn.org/bookclubs/classicsbookclub/cbc2odysseysm.jpg)
July 12-----Book XXIV: Warriors, Farewell
Discussion Schedule:
July 12: Book 24
(http://seniorlearn.org/latin/ulysses_penelope/Ulysses24Atheneconceals.jpg)
Athene conceals Odysseus' departure in a fog
17th century etching
Theodor van Thulden (1606 - 1669)
Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco
(http://seniorlearn.org/latin/ulysses_penelope/Ulysses24Hermes.jpg)
Hermes conducts the souls of the suitors to Hades
John Flaxman
1805
Tate Gallery
Discussion Leaders: Joan K (joankraft13@yahoo.com) & ginny (gvinesc@wildblue.net )
Useful Links:
1. Critical Analysis: Free SparkNotes background and analysis on the Odyssey (http://www.sparknotes.com/lit/odyssey)
2. Translations Used in This Discussion So Far: (http://www.seniorlearn.org/bookclubs/odyssey/odyssey_translations.html)
3. Initial Points to Watch For: submitted by JudeS (http://www.seniorlearn.org/bookclubs/odyssey/odyssey_points.html)
4. Maps:
Map of the Voyages of Odysseus (http://www.seniorlearn.org/latin/ulysses_penelope/Odysseusmap.jpg)
Map of Voyages in order (http://www.wesleyan.edu/~mkatz/Images/Voyages.jpg)
Map of Stops Numbered (http://www.seniorlearn.org/latin/ulysses_penelope/Odysseusmap2.jpg)
Our Map Showing Place Names in the Odyssey (http://www.seniorlearn.org/latin/graphics/AncientGreecemap.jpg)
(http://seniorlearn.org/latin/ulysses_penelope/Ulysses24Laertes.jpg)
Odysseus makes himself known to Laertes
17th century etching
Theodor van Thulden (1606 - 1669)
Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco
(http://seniorlearn.org/latin/ulysses_penelope/Ulysses24King.jpg)
Odysseus is recognised as king of Ithaka
17th century etching
Theodor van Thulden (1606 - 1669)
Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco
For Your Consideration:
Book 24
Some scholars have argued that the epic "should" end after Book 23, and that Book 24 is a later addition. What do you think? How different would the epic be without 24?
468-74 Hermes conducts the suitors souls to Hades, where Agamemnon, talking to Achilles, then praises P's fidelity. Compare the human perspective on his death with the divine one in Book 1: has the epic shifted focus from human-god relations to male-female?
475-80 O visits his father, telling him a false story before revealing himself. Why does he treat Laertes this way? Compare the different ways family members recognize O: what do these tell you about the strength of the different relationships?
481 The Ithacans, learning of the slaughter, march out to fight O. With Zeus' permission, Athena intervenes to save O, who goes to fight along with his father and son.Laertes kills Eupeithes. Athena intervenes and makes peace. Note that O still wants to fight. How does Athena discourage him? Is this ending believable in your eyes? (Temple) [/b]
Book 24
72. Describe the interaction of the suitors' shades with others in Hades. How do Agamemnon and Achilles view each other's fates?
73. How does Odysseus test his father Laertes, now living a hard life, after the slaughter has been accomplished? What's the point of testing his father?
74. What problem remains for Odysseus to deal with, even though he has rid himself of the suitors and their hangers-on? What reason do the suitors' surviving kin give for their attempt to kill Odysseus? Is it grief alone, or something different?
75. How does the reconciliation between Odysseus and the surviving kin occur? Without Athena's divine assistance, what would be the prospects for immediate or eventual reconciliation? AJ Drake
As I didn't like the extreme violence I bowdlerized the contents and wrote my own chapter 22 (I don't intend to publish).
The maids who slutted
died enmasse.
The lazy men who tried to tear
Penelope from her lair
Were slaughtered by the brave Odysseus
and his handsome son.
No suitor left alive 'cept for the aged tutor
And the herald Madon,
Safe beneath his chair.
The home now cleansed of offal
And once more filled with epic love,
Shone, as rosy fingered dawn
Lit up the scene with her radiant light.
Alright, I hear you groaning. No matter. Hope it lightened your day.
Happy holiday.
-
Didn't notice the "packed earthen floor". Seems a little plain for a house with all those slaves and gold.
-
Jude-love your little poem,
Joan-I was wondering how one would go about cleaning up
all the blood and guts and how slippery the area would have been....I was thinking if the floor were wood the colour would be hured with blood but since it was dirt.... would
one just put down a new dirt floor!!...
have been playing 'catch up' for the last couple of days, but want
to see this book thru...has been a bit of a struggle as have not
been 'enraptured' by our hero...am amazed back with the 'voices'
when he had himself tied up he would allow himself to be placed
entirely in the hands of his crew....maybe I am only seeing a 2 dimensional version of our hero...and missing that third dimension
the rest of you are viewing??
go in for my first eye cataract surgery tomorrow (apparently it takes less than 15 minutes now)--looking forward to when I can see infinitely better and don't have to keep enlarging the fonts...though am so thankful for the ease of being able to get bigger text on the computer or would not be able to enjoy a group such as this very easily!!
Deb
-
hahaah Jude! I love that, what a hoot, well done! :)
Deb, good luck with your cataract surgery tomorrow! It seems everybody here who has had it loves the result!
The cleaning up of the floor, what an interesting topic, here's what Murray says about it (he's one of the literal ones, where is Gum with hers?)
First they carried out the dead bodies and set them down beneath the portico of the well fenced court, propping them one against the other; and Odysseus himself gave them orders and hastened on the work, and they carried the bodies out perforce.
Then they cleaned the beautiful high seats and the tables with water and porous sponges. But Telemachus and the cowherd and the swine herd scraped with hoes the floor of the well built house, and the women bore the scrapings forth and threw them out of doors..
So depending on how deep that dirt floor was, that actually should have cleaned them pretty well because the blood was carried outside, and fluids would sink into the dirt, so you could hoe it till you hit a dry level. I sound like something in a Ripley mystery. hahaaha
Frybabe, Does anyone have a sense of how long after someone went MIA back then that the spouse would be free to remarry? What stopped any of these guys from just taking O's property (and wife) if there was no one there to defend it? Why did Penelope allow these characters to stay so long, and why did they band together rather than connive against one another in competition to win her hand? I would have thought they would be trying to do each other in - last man standing wins the prize. How long were these guys actually there mooching off O's household? What rights to regain his property would O have had back then if his wife had remarried? Twenty years is a long time to wait for someone everyone thought dead. I suppose no one formally declared him dead.
Good questions. The suitors have been there 10 years, they said so somewhere a while back. This is especially interesting, what do you all think here?
Why did Penelope allow these characters to stay so long, and why did they band together rather than connive against one another in competition to win her hand?
How could she stop them?
What rights to regain his property would O have had back then if his wife had remarried? That's another good one! She apparently would leave, with her new husband, she says so, so T, having come of age, would have inherited. It would have been an interesting scenario had he done that, O could hardly kill him. Would O then retire to the mountain like Laertes?
Here are some more questions: from http://www.enotes.com/odyssey/book-22-questions-answers
6. Why are the suitors’ spears unable to find their marks?
7. Why does Odysseus ignore Leodes’ plea?
from: http://mockingbird.creighton.edu/english/fajardo/teaching/eng120/homer2.htm
Book 22
What do you think of Odysseus' killing of the suitors? Is it justified? What do you think of his killing of those who embraced his knees and begged for mercy? What is the significance of his slaying of the prophet Leodes? Notice the description of the victorious Odysseus as "spattered and caked with blood like a mountain lion" (line 453). Compare this description to that referring to the Kyklops (Book 9, line 317). What are the implications of this similarity? What do you think of Telemakhos' hanging of the maids and his mutilation of the goatherd Melanthios? Do you see some similarities of character and behavior not only between Odysseus and the Kyklops but also between Odysseus and Telemakhos?
These two sets seem to focus on mercy for some and not all and Leodes. Do you all see any difference in his decision about Leodes and the others? Why I wonder did he choose death for Leodes? And what IS the significance?
I keep forgetting also (and this pertains to the second set of questions) that it's also Telemachus' journey here.
I agree with Dana and Joan K on Clytemestra, but it does show you what they could resort to in the name of vengeance.
Dana, that's probably IT on Penelope: she's kept them there by her sheer force of intelligence and plotting, despite her apparently Loretta Young appearance without botox. (Maybe she was a very young bride and is only now in her late 30's. I suppose it could happen? It does today?)
I agree with Babi that any of the suitors could have withdrawn and apparently some were not present on this day as the count (by those who have taken that trouble is 40 suitors present) and we know there were a lot more than that. One wonders if the ones who were not there that day were sought out, doesn't say so. Looks like they had gotten in the habit of daily eating and party going. And they apparently were young, did she have a dowry stored somewhere? We know she was beautiful. That part is not clear to me.
What do you think about anything, now that we're almost at the end. I keep waiting for Laertes to come in. Somewhere in the very beginning, Hexter says that the separation of Laertes indicates the extent to which the family is in disarray, so I assume he'll make an entrance sometime to tie ends up. But first we've got the Odysseus- Penelope ends to tie up and two chapters left!
That's a good question, Deb, on how many dimensions in Odysseus's character we're actually seeing? Are we seeing anything different from the Man of Constant Sorrows (I missed Hee Haw last night, Sandy, as we shot off fireworks here!) we met initially?
IS he different now or not? What do you think? And why?
And then of course we've got all these epic similes, what's the main theme of them, do you think?
Penny for your thoughts! I've got the Fitzgerald locked and loaded on my i phone so I can read this wherever I am on my trip. :)
-
I notice that the goatherd had a fate not unlike that of a woman. the suitors deaths, although horrible, were those of warriors. But women, and the goatherd were not considered worthy of this. Apparently there are status differences even in death. What do you all think of that?
Somewhere back a ways was a reference to a "hawser made of papyrus". Landlubber that I am, I didn't know what a hawser is, but PatH says its a rope. I think they used it to tie the doors closed.
I've been wondering ever since if papyrus is strong enough to make a hawser, and if that, indeed is how they made them. I don't think the greeks used it for paper, as the Egyptians did.
-
Why does Odysseus ignore Leodes’ plea?
O blamed him for giving bad counsel to the suitors, thus encouraging them to continue press for Penelope's hand, not to mention the possibility of taking the prize for himself.
Pope: "Priest as thou art! for that detested band
Thy lying prophesies deceived the land,
Against Ulysses have thy vows been made,
For them thy daily orisons were paid;
Yet more, e'en to our bed thy pride aspires.
One common crime one common fate requires."
-
Loved, it, JUDE. You even remembered the ubiquitous rose-fingered dawn.
FRYBABE, I think the fact that there were so many contenders is what kept any one
of them from just taking Penelope and the property. Which may explain why our clever
Penelope endured them. Not to mention, as GINNY says, how could she stop them?
Perhaps the fact that the suitors waited ten years is an indication of when O
might have been considered legally dead?
-
Ooo I like that, Pope sure has a way with words, that's clear as a bell, thank you.
Joan K, good point on the deaths, status everywhere. What a good question!!
Melanthius did get cut while the women were not even worthy of that; I bet they were glad! How graphic this is.
I hadn't thought about the 10 years being some kind of statute of limitations, Babi but now that you mention it, it does seem Penelope is ready to deal, hence the axes. Unless of course she recognizes him. 10 years IS a long time, especially sea travel then had no guarantees, you sail off and that may be it.
I looked up papyrus because I didn't know about the Greeks and their use of it, tho I do know about the Villa of the Papyri, and it seems the Greeks did use papyrus, we seem to have more Egyptian because of that climate of preservation, but the earliest book was the Persae of Timotheus, from around 4 BC. The ruins of the Villa of the Papyri contain many Greek papyri, but since they looked like lumps of coal, many were destroyed, can you imagine? before they started using the new imaging technology which allows them to unroll them electronically, it's fascinating and new. There was much less Roman use of papyrus.
I don't know about papyrus hawsers! Do the rest of you have that? My book has "twisted sheep gut" in book 21 on 408 but there were many different references to the closing and securing of those doors. I had remembered them slamming shut, but I was wrong, that was when Penelope opened O's treasure hideout and it made the noise of a bull.
Golly we move on in two days! Does it actually say anywhere where you all have read that O, in revealing himself to the suitors, also changed in appearance? Seems like all through this he's changed but now in the Moment of Revelation, nothing! Or am I not reading it correctly? Where IS Athena, anyway? I assume she's the one deflecting the spears of the suitors or their swords? She's definitely taking a back seat, tho? Or is she?
I loved his own armor: "he put about a fourfold shield, and set upon his stalwart head a well-wrought helmet with horsehair plume and terribly did the plume wave above him."
I'd like to see that fourfold shield but the plume seems very vivid:
(http://seniorlearn.org/latin/graphics/Iliad/Iliadend.jpg)
What else struck you all in this Book?
-
"What else struck you all in this Book?"
The detail. We go to detail about the battle to detail about the housekeeping afterward. detail about the layout of the house (eeven if it doesn't all fit together -- another indication that homer drew from various sources?). There's something very workmanlike about Homer -- he doesn't leave edges hanging.
-
That's true and the details are fascinating, I'd love to see that foursquare armor!
I can't imagine, however, trying to memorize it. :)
The new issue of Time Magazine has the 48 books you must read this summer and I guess nobody is surprised to see The Odyssey front and center (the person suggesting it, Harold Bloom, actually said "Homer,"), and Ulysses by James Joyce. I was inordinately proud of us reading it here, we're always so au courant in our book discussions!
And tomorrow we begin with the next to last chapter, and what a chapter it IS! And then we have Book 24, which probably has some of the most provocative questions I've ever seen in a book, can't wait to see what you all think of them.
For 23 to start us out, here are a few (23 is for tomorrow, but am unsure of the weather so thought I better chime in ahead of time, better early than not. :)
Book 23
69. Why does the text refrain from making Penelope recognize Odysseus outright? Why does Penelope insist on testing Odysseus even after all that he has done in the hall?
70. Why is it appropriate that the couple's bed should be involved in the main test of Odysseus' identity?
71. Around line 300, Odysseus recounts the prophecy that Tiresias had made about the King's further adventure and death in old age? Why would Homer remind us of this prophecy, just as the poem achieves its goal of bringing Odysseus home and reestablishing him successfully as master of Ithaca? (from AJ Drake)
Book 23
455-6 Eurycleia tells the incredulous P of O's actions; to what, exactly, does she finally respond? She enters the main hall. T is impatient with her, but O supports her reasoning. O takes precautions to keep the slaughter secret.
458-67 O, now royally dressed, convinces P he really is her husband. How does he do it? How does she test him? Think back to what O told Nausicaa about marriage; do those words apply here? He tells her about his adventures and they spend the night together. Consider P's reactions throughout this episode: are they believable? How does she "out-Odysseus" Odysseus here? (From Temple)
-
Yes, tomorrow O and P are finally reunited as we read Chapter 23. And we find that O has one more job to do!?! What do you all think of this chapter?
-
I love it! I absolutely love it. Home at last. There's a new series on TV about returning soldiers, and here we are, 3000 years ago, at the end.
Or what should be the end. We've had the secret test, I don't blame Penelope for doing it, I think I was impatient with her the first time we read this, but no longer. I loved her move the bed out of the master bedroom as the last test. Just loved it. I am having a problem picturing this bed, tho, could you describe it? There's a tree trunk with...the tree trunk makes a post? So there's one post? Or is that the headboard?
I wish I could see this bed!
Dancing! Music and dancing! I am not sure why, when O leaves to go see his father (Laertes at LAST! Tying up all the ends is our Homer), that she's supposed to stay IN her rooms as the report of the slaughter will be about the land and HE and his few men, dressed in armor, set out but Athene (here she is again, manipulating his appearance: NOW he looks like O. P says she knows what O looks like!?!)...but she was pretty much not mentioned in the fight scene. Does that mean it's all to his credit (except for the suitors's missing the mark?)
I love this chapter. I find it interesting that even tho the entire book is ABOUT this chapter, the art you can find is pretty much Thulden and Flaxman, and Thulden is one of the few doing the events of the last two chapters. Most of the art is about the exciting things that happened previously and the two in bed. (Why does Homer summarize all the previous adventures O has been thru for P? Of course SHE does not know them. That's some recitation, and for me it helps to bring the entire epic to full circle).
And now ONE more task, I love it. I had forgotten it but Homer hasn't. So many great lines in this book, I stopped dead on this one:
When someone kills just one man,
Even a man who has few to avenge him,
He goes into exile, leaving country and kin.
Well we have killed a city of young men,
The flower of Ithaca. Think about that.
That's interesting. What does it mean? Is this what your book says?
I love the complication in this chapter which seems on the surface to be about beds.
I think Homer might deserve the term "wily." hahahaa
What do you think? Do we have any crew left here at the end of our epic adventure, ourselves? Ollie ollie oxen freeee! :)
-
Re the difference between the means of death for the women and the men. Last night we were watching the second series of "Garrow's Law".(just available on DVD.) Its based on the real cases of a real lawyer in 18th century London. Is terrific. BUT anyway, a man and a woman were convicted of theft. The man was sentenced to death by hanging. The woman by burning. There was a difference in mode of execution at the time. Can you believe it? Not that long ago really.
Re the bed. Fitzgerald translates it as one bedpost being the olive tree trunk. But I was a bit puzzled because all the olive trees I have seen are relatively small and I don't see how a trunk would be tall enough to go up to an upstairs bedroom. Penelope always went upstairs to sleep........is the main bedroom on the ground floor, need to read it again....
-
Good get, DANA! Yes, her bedroom is definately upstairs. And it seems that his bed is definately downstairs. We,ve been assuming that they would have slept in the same berdroom when he was there, and she would continue to do so. But who knows greek custom on that point. Maybe they always had separate bedrooms. They refer to the bed as HIS bed.
Well, tomorrow, our Ginny goes on her way, her silver sandals flashing in the sunlight! Have a great trip, we'll see you when you get back. Will you all help me see us to the end of this adventure, without our Athena?
-
Speaking of Athena, I haven't seen her post lately. What has she been up to?
My Kindle goes with me on a day trip tomorrow so I can get book 23 read.
-
Here's a link showing some really ancient olive trees. The trunks are
massive, but not very tall. I imagined myself standing against one of them,
and I believe the the top of the trunk might have extended high enough for
the second story. Depends on how high the ceilings were. Probably not all
that high, in those days. Homer made such a big thing of the olive trunk
bed, and he must have known how big they were.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Olive#Old_olive_trees
Speaking of Athena, It does seem to me that it would have been much more helpful to Penelope if Athena had not chosen to make Odysseus bigger, taller, with a mass of red-gold curls that he may or may not have been born with. Penelope is looking at this glowing figure and trying to match it up with the young man who sailed away twenty years ago. Way to go, Athena!
-
Whoah! Those are some tree trunks! I can't imagine one as a bedpost, can you?
BABI: "Odysseus bigger, taller, with a mass of red-gold curls that he may or may not have been born with"
I hope Athena keeps it up. It might be a bit of a shock to P when he reverts to his real self.
FRY: Ginny told me where she was going, but with my senior memory ..... She'll tell us all about it when she gets back I'm sure. That will be after we finish The Odyssey.
-
JoanK, yes I was wondering where Ginny was off to this year, but I was speaking of our "Athena" from Atlanta. I haven't seen her post in a while.
-
:D I knew you were speaking of a different Athena, FRYBABE; it just happened that I wanted
to post something about Homer's Athena immediately after. I don't actually remember posts
from someone named Athena. You'd think I'd remember that, considering our topic.
-
Sorry, Babi. I was addressing JoanK's comment. Yes, I knew you were referring to Homer's Athena. The SeniorLearn Athena spent a lot of time in the Latin language and Classics Bulletinboard forums. It may be that she in only posting to the Latin language class which I haven't been able to join this last year or so. In that case, I wouldn't see her comments.
-
Looks like we have a lot of Athenas here. That's good, we need all the wisdom we can get.
I love the picture of O and P's marraige given her. In spite of all the differences in culture, some things remain the same.
-
For the first time I am outraged with Odysseus. How dare he approach that
grieving old man, his Father, and decide to 'interrogate and test him’. For what?!!
Honestly, I wanted to smack him! >:(
-
Whew! I missed a week and a half with travel and guests, and now it's taken me another week to catch up, you are all saying so much. What a good discussion!
I know we're on Chapter 23, but I have some comments on chapter 22. Jude points out that not all the chapters are written in the same manner, and this is certainly an example. It's cruder, and has almost a low comedy air to it. And it's very brutal. The punishment of Melanthius is disgusting torture, and the hanging of the unfaithful servants after making them clean up is pretty bad too.
There's an out-of-mood section in the Iliad, too. It's a slapstick story of a horse-stealing raid by the Greeks on the Trojan camp that doesn't fit, and is inconsistent with other part.
-
The battle is kind of odd too. They keep standing around, planning their next move while the other side waits paitently, then a burst of fighting, then more conferring.
The suitors don't show much strategic sense. As soon as Odysseus had the bow aimed at them, they should have all rushed him en masse. O wouldn't have had time to shoot more than one or two before they were all on top of him and could have brought him down by sheer weight. Much better than standing around watching him shoot you one by one. Maybe Athena clouded their thinking process.
Was O standing when stringing the bow? Lombardo says (line 447, at the end of book 21) that
"....still in his chair,"
he drew the bow and shot his arrow through the holes in the axeheads, so I guess he was seated.
-
"standing around watching him shoot you one by one. Maybe Athena clouded their thinking process".
It sounds exactly like those professional wrestling matches my son watches. One person does something, then stands there waiting while the other one prepares for some dramatic move. Looks phony as all get out.
Apparently, scholars feel that Chapter 23 was the orruiginal end of the story, and Chapter 24 was added on later. Does it makke a satisfactory end, do you think?
-
Your reference to slapstick made me think of something, PATH. Shakespeare always included some low comedy in his plays, apparently to appeal to a broader audience. Perhaps that is what is going on here, too. Some people like lots of blood and gore and some like crude humor. Like the play/song.."Something for Everyone.."
-
Pat H.--from line 420--Lattimore
...and from the very chair where he sat, bending the bow before him, let the arrow fly, nor missed any axes from the first...arrow passed through all..
wonder why various edition translations are numbered differently; was the initial book translated and numbered or who started numbering --do some translations enlarge and are more 'wordy' therefore are numbered differently
anyway i really have enjoyed my 'Lattimore' translation...
love the human input of...Babi--where you want to 'smack Odysseus' for his treatment of his dad--letting a guy who has been put on a pedestal occasionally fall off
love that
Deb
-
Apparently, scholars feel that Chapter 23 was the original end of the story, and Chapter 24 was added on later. Does it make a satisfactory end, do you think?
Not really. We haven't yet figured out how to handle the coming revenge of the suitors' relatives, and O is just going off to see his father, who doesn't yet know he's back. Too many loose ends.
-
Greetings from London where the weather is perfect!
This is my best trip ever or so far at least, and I am so glad to see such a great group here for the last two books. How CAN it be the 11th?
Deb, how did your surgery go?
Am having some connectivity problems in the hotel but have 4 bars now, so hope it will last.
Tomorrow on to Book 24. All I have here is Alexander Pope! I thought it was Fitzgerald on the iPhone but it's Pope!!
Can barely understand what is happening, but I agree with PatH 24 does a nice job tying stuff up.
I won't be able to get on tomorrow so need to start 24 a bit now. I liked it very much. Ties up all the endings including the disposal of the body of Achilles. That was not in the Aeneid.
I also liked the comparison of Agamemnon and Odysseus seen thru the asking of the same questions O originally asked HIM when he went to the Underworld. That's neat.
And the suitors who did NOT go to war had an ignominius end
The gods come back in parlay. Babi, Pope (as near as I can tell, and that's not much. Hahaha) does not have the tests but seems to be building up the reunion with his father for dramatic effect. Truly with Pope it's hard to tell.
Ulysses was just the answer on a Spanish Quiz show here on TV. You can't get away from it.
But here we enter the last week. What do you think? Has it been worth it?
Let me see if this will post. Have loved all the great thoughts here!!
-
Babi, I can't edit that post in iPhone but I've read on now if you can call it that and apparently (Hexter to the rescue), you've hit on a big controversy in the thing.
Why DID O "test" LAertes? What do you all think?
I've stuck my neck out which wasn't hard because with Pope (how do you do it, frybabe, can't get a lot except poetry out of it.). Heck, I just realized who Dolius is! I thought it was an epithet for Laertes!!
Where is Lombardo when you need him?
-
JoanK just called me. Her keyboard isn't working, so she can read but not post. I will fill in and be her typist until she solves the problem.
"Our Athena is in London. No wonder Prince William left me in LA and flew back to her. Sigh. :)"
-
I didn't think it much of a test, PatH. But I was puzzled why O had to go and start in on one of his tales again.
I thought the suitor's trip to the underworld rather, hmmm, pleasant might fit. They were admonished, yes, but it didn't seem harsh. Me thinks Pope's poetry smoothed their trip over a bit. In fact, the whole wrap up was rather smooth. I really liked the description of Laertes' rustic manor, orchard, and his labors.
-
I thought it was mean of O to test his father like that. He comes on Laertes, alone, shabby, dirty, and sorrowful, and is moved.
"Odysseus, who had borne much, saw him like this,
Worn with age and a grieving heart,
And wept as he watched from the pear tree's shade.
He thought it over. Should he just throw his arms
Around his father, kiss him and tell him all he had done,
And how he'd returned to his homeland again--
Or should he question him and feel him out first?
Better that way he thought, to feel him out first
With a few pointed remarks...."
What's to feel out? He knows from Telemachus all that's gone on, he can see his father's grief, but off he goes into another long rigmarole. And as you point out, Frybabe, it isn't even much of a test.
-
They all seem to be hard-wired to be constantly testing each other. In book 22, when Athena is helping O, as she had agreed to,
"Athena spoke these words, but she did not yet
Give Odysseus the strength to turn the tide.
She was still testing him, and his glorious son,
To see what they were made of."
She's been watching O for 20 years. By now she knows what he's made of. I wonder if everyone then thought they were always being tested by gods?
-
Hooray! My son got my keyboard working again. It'ss late: back tomorrow.
-
A thing that puzzled me on this trip to the underworld, is the long speech dedicated to talking
about Achilles, retelling his story. It seems totally irrelevent. It's as though the minstrel's
audience was demanding a story of their great favorite, so this 'sidebar' was added.
The comparison of Odysseus fate to that of Agamemnon is fine. That makes sense.
Since you're reading the story as Pope wrote it, FRYBABE, I'll summarize Fitzgerald's version. The suitors were greeted by Agamemnon and Achilles, who were surprised to see so many
entering at once. Some were recognized and greeted as "picked men, and so young? One could not better choose the kingdom's pride." Amphimedon tells the story, right through their death at Odysseus' hands, with the help of "some god, his familiar". Agamemnon responds by praising Odysseus good fortune in having Penelope as a wife. Seeing what he suffered at the hands of his wife, that's understandable.
There is no comment as to the behavior and fate of the suitors, which seems a bit odd. I
suppose I am looking at it from the modern tradition of 'facing judgment', and there was none.
-
Yes, Babi, that speech puzzled me a bit too. It's not only irrelevant, but why is Agamemnon just now telling Achilles what Achilles's funeral was like? They've been in Hades for quite a while, and this isn't the first time they've met, they were together when O saw them. I think you're right, the audience wanted all their favorite bits, and also it was important to tie up all the loose ends.
-
I really enjoyed this last chapter (as indeed the whole poem)...I thought Odysseus was just staying true to character --always cautious, always testing,right to the end, even when he doesn't need to. I am more puzzled why Laertes abdicated--or whatever he did, in favour of Odysseus. If O. was in his early twenties when he departed for Troy, Laertes must have been in his 40s--how did O become king? Its not addressed by Hechter. It must be addressed someplace, just have to look
There is an absolutely wonderful commentary by Fitzgerald at the end of his translation where among other things, he makes a beautiful case for Penelope's knowingly (ie that O. is the beggar) setting up the contest of the bow.
I have enjoyed slowly reading the book as we have done, I think I'll have to get The Iliad translated by Fitzgerald and do the same with that. I read Lombardo once, but I do like Firzgerald.
-
I did a double take on the Achilles and Agamemnon bit too, but then I decided that the newbies were just giving their preceding dead heroes a salute of sorts. It was a bit confusing though. As far as I am concerned, the suitors didn't get chastised enough. The only comment I saw was to the effect that it would have been better for them to die on the battlefields of Troy rather than the way they did go.
-
Ginny--thank you for asking, it was amazingly easy, everyone was so niceand helpful--and this from a former O.R. nurse--it took less than 15 minutes and next week I go for the other eye's cataract--
Deb
-
The Book Club Online is the oldest book club on the Internet, begun in 1996, open to everyone. We offer cordial discussions of one book a month, 24/7 and enjoy the company of readers from all over the world. Everyone is welcome to join in.
Now reading:
(http://www.seniorlearn.org/bookclubs/classicsbookclub/cbc2odysseysm.jpg)
July 12-----Book XXIV: Warriors, Farewell
Discussion Schedule:
July 12: Book 24
(http://seniorlearn.org/latin/ulysses_penelope/Ulysses24Atheneconceals.jpg)
Athene conceals Odysseus' departure in a fog
17th century etching
Theodor van Thulden (1606 - 1669)
Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco
(http://seniorlearn.org/latin/ulysses_penelope/Ulysses24Hermes.jpg)
Hermes conducts the souls of the suitors to Hades
John Flaxman
1805
Tate Gallery
Discussion Leaders: Joan K (joankraft13@yahoo.com) & ginny (gvinesc@wildblue.net )
Useful Links:
1. Critical Analysis: Free SparkNotes background and analysis on the Odyssey (http://www.sparknotes.com/lit/odyssey)
2. Translations Used in This Discussion So Far: (http://www.seniorlearn.org/bookclubs/odyssey/odyssey_translations.html)
3. Initial Points to Watch For: submitted by JudeS (http://www.seniorlearn.org/bookclubs/odyssey/odyssey_points.html)
4. Maps:
Map of the Voyages of Odysseus (http://www.seniorlearn.org/latin/ulysses_penelope/Odysseusmap.jpg)
Map of Voyages in order (http://www.wesleyan.edu/~mkatz/Images/Voyages.jpg)
Map of Stops Numbered (http://www.seniorlearn.org/latin/ulysses_penelope/Odysseusmap2.jpg)
Our Map Showing Place Names in the Odyssey (http://www.seniorlearn.org/latin/graphics/AncientGreecemap.jpg)
(http://seniorlearn.org/latin/ulysses_penelope/Ulysses24Laertes.jpg)
Odysseus makes himself known to Laertes
17th century etching
Theodor van Thulden (1606 - 1669)
Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco
(http://seniorlearn.org/latin/ulysses_penelope/Ulysses24King.jpg)
Odysseus is recognised as king of Ithaka
17th century etching
Theodor van Thulden (1606 - 1669)
Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco
For Your Consideration:
Book 24
Some scholars have argued that the epic "should" end after Book 23, and that Book 24 is a later addition. What do you think? How different would the epic be without 24?
468-74 Hermes conducts the suitors souls to Hades, where Agamemnon, talking to Achilles, then praises P's fidelity. Compare the human perspective on his death with the divine one in Book 1: has the epic shifted focus from human-god relations to male-female?
475-80 O visits his father, telling him a false story before revealing himself. Why does he treat Laertes this way? Compare the different ways family members recognize O: what do these tell you about the strength of the different relationships?
481 The Ithacans, learning of the slaughter, march out to fight O. With Zeus' permission, Athena intervenes to save O, who goes to fight along with his father and son.Laertes kills Eupeithes. Athena intervenes and makes peace. Note that O still wants to fight. How does Athena discourage him? Is this ending believable in your eyes? (Temple) [/b]
Book 24
72. Describe the interaction of the suitors' shades with others in Hades. How do Agamemnon and Achilles view each other's fates?
73. How does Odysseus test his father Laertes, now living a hard life, after the slaughter has been accomplished? What's the point of testing his father?
74. What problem remains for Odysseus to deal with, even though he has rid himself of the suitors and their hangers-on? What reason do the suitors' surviving kin give for their attempt to kill Odysseus? Is it grief alone, or something different?
75. How does the reconciliation between Odysseus and the surviving kin occur? Without Athena's divine assistance, what would be the prospects for immediate or eventual reconciliation? AJ Drake
-
BOOKAD: that's great! Let us know, but now you know what to expect.
What a grabbag of a book!! Clearly, it was meanty to tie up all the loose ends. So why do we get yet ANOTHER version of O's stories about who he is, complete with who his father is, of course. I wonder if these were real people that Homer knew about, that he had to fit into the story somehow.
Here's an idea. You know how renaissance painters painted their patrons into their pictures? Maybe these names that show up in O's false stories about who he is are patrons of Homers, whose name he gets into his poem in return for support? Wild guess, but I like thinking it's true.
I think the suitors were dragged down to Hades purely so Agammemnon can give us the hundredth reminder comparing Penelope and Clytemnestra. We know, we know!!! I'll bet these stories were thrown up to every wife whose husband went away.
Aned another lame battle scene. Boy I'm in a picky mood today. Sorry -- I guess I expected a grand summing up, not this ragbag of loose ends.
Never mind, we've had enough grandeur on this trip. When I look back, how far we've come. Do you all feel that? Relief and sorrow at the end of a long, long journey? Not quite the end. Let's take the next 4 days to chew over this chapter and anything else we want to. At the end of the journey, what have we learned? Where have we been? Where would we like to go next?
-
Don't miss the new pictures that Ginny found for us, and a kind goddess put in the heading.
-
JOANK, that's an interesting idea, about flattering Homer's patrons. And
considering the realities for an entertainer in making a living, it's even
plausible.
Considering how much responsibility Athena has for all that has happened, I
think she definitely owes it to Odysseus to intervene when all those angry Ithacans
showed up. It was bound to happen, and only the certain assurance that those
deaths were the will of the gods could have prevented them killing O.
-
I am reading The Monk by Matthew Lewis as recommended on the Novel Bookstore website. Found this at the back of the book - a Penquin Classic.
Before 1946: Classics are mainly the domain of academics and students, without readable editions for everyone else. This all changes when a little-known classicist, E. V. Rieu, presents Penquin founder Allen Lane with the translation of Homer's Odyssey that he has been working on and reading to his wife Nelly in his spare time.
1946: The Odyssey becomes the first Penguin Classic published, and promptly sells three million copies. Suddenly, classic books are no longer for the privileged few.
-
Oh i like that, Sally. I like that it was Rieu too. Good on your eyes Deb!!
I've been looking at Athene all day in the British Library. And quite a few representTions of O too.
The end does seem repetitive Joan K. I guess like any closing argument he wants to sum it all up and it's a first in some ways for us to learn about how Achilles died.
And of course you are right and we have the comparisons. I wonder idly if it's Penelope being compared or Agamemnon and O , and if O then what? That hero might not get his glory OR his homecoming due to his own actions, maybe??
I agree Dana, what caused LAertes to give up the kingdo
? These was a big section in the Brigish museum on Greek marriage which I dutifully read but nothing on divorce or fathers and kingdoms.
I agree Joank it has been a long journey. After the reaction to the kiing of the suitors may e it's better NOT to have another blood bath.
As part of our last few days JoanK , why not put up the funm
Interactive quiz on the Odyssey from Spark Notes and let's laugh over what we got out of it??
Or didn't. Hahaha
I love that question in the beading about how each person recognized him differently. due to how close they were to him. Ever the psychologist, our Homer.
This is the first time I can tell this was written after The Iliad. Because of the death if Achilles. I never understood how they figured that.
Well " the game is done, I've won, I've won, quoth she, and whistled thrice."
Parting shots?
If you read The Iliad, how does this match up?
Which one has the more memorable scenes?
What IS your favorite scene in the Odyssey?
What, for your money could he have left out?
-
I do apogize for the errors in the above but am unable on the iPhone to edit the post. That's one disadvantage of this tiny keyboard. Now what would O
do about this? I must think of something wily!! Hahaha
-
Ginny, perhaps if Dante were writing now he would have a minor outer circle of Hell where people were condemned to read difficult iambic hexameters on a two inch screen and type thoughtful answers on a teeny keyboard with no chance of editing. ;)
-
kidsal: how cool your posting about E.V Rieu, I have been using that book mainly because while in Rockport, Texas, it was one of 2 copies of the 'Odyssey' I could find, the other being Lattimore...and I think I lucked out, as E.V. Rieu made it so easy to follow the story, and Lattimore brought more prose to my second reading plus the advantage of paragraphs being numbered so i could follow many postings. I read the E.V. Rieu used to translate this to his family while waiting for the sirens to cease during the second world war when the bombers where flying over...and then his son went on to translate the same book again in the 90's, I believe.
even found a web site that seems to post online books made easier to follow i.e. Shakespeare, or 'The Scarlet Letter' which i had been trying to read since initially coming across it as a cassette recorder book in Brownsvile, Texas
how wonderful this computer/web browser thing is--and the main reason i am having trouble deciding whether to buy a e-book reader or a nook like tablet so can pursue right away things that ingrigue me about a read or a follow up on some point of interest.
so many decisions and choices, and hense indecision
Deb
-
The last chapter proved very interesting and posed some moral questions for me.
The most important one was the grief of the suitors parents over their deaths and the retort that if the parents hadn't encouraged their sons to court Penelope they would not be dead now. Could the parents really have influenced their twenty something or thirty something sons not to join the party at Penelopes? I doubt it.
However the fact that the grieving parents were mentioned at all perhaps shows us that someones concious was tingling over the brutal deaths of these men. Wether it was the author or Odysseus or Athena we will never know.
Also the teasing of Laertes was a bit much for me and hard to understand. O said he was testing his father. But it ended up another paen to the wonders of O himself. Did someone pay to stick on these strange last chapters? it might very well be.
Advertising and putting your name out there for posterity are not inventions of the twentieth century.
I really liked the first 22 chapters I can't say the same for chapt. 23 & 24.
In Fagles last footnote he tells this story: In a later epic poem,the "Cypria" we are told that O. , unwilling to leave his wife and baby son feigned madness to escape the summons to war against Troy.He drove his plow sowing salt in the furrows. Palamedes put the baby son in the path of the plow. Odysseus reigned the plow animals in, his deceit exposed. But once at war the the concientous objector became a warrior.
-
O as a concientious objector: I love it!
In the Iliad discussion, someone commented on how much respect Homer had given to a slave girl in the story, and lombardo said that Homer respects everyone. Even though the suitors are the bad guys, we see the grief of their parents and remember that they were humans too.
-
One of the joys of reading classics as an adult is that there is no test at the end. But for those of you who miss this, here is the spark Notes quizz. (no one need know whether you took it or what score you got).
http://www.sparknotes.com/lit/odyssey/quiz.html
(http://www.sparknotes.com/lit/odyssey/quiz.html)
-
and promptly sells three million copies.
KIDSAL, I can't tell you how thrilled and delighted I was to read that. It
seems nowadays I keep hearing how few people read books anymore. I find that
hard to imagine and can only hope it's not accurate.
Nope, JOANK, I don't miss that final exam at all. 8)
As a parting 'shot', perhaps Odysseus' words would be most appropriate.
“All men owe honor to the poets--honor and awe, for they are dearest to the Muse who puts upon their lips the ways of life.”
-
OOPS, how did this salesperson get in here.. MARCIE!!!
-
I'm removing those posts now, Babi.
-
Babi and Jane, ever vigilant. Thanks.
JoanK is having computer problems again. :(
-
I decided not to read the introduction to my copy, or the Spark notes, or any other critiques until I'd finished the poem, as I wanted to form my own opinion without any outside input. Now I've read the introduction in my book, Lombardo, it's interesting and helpful.
An example: she (Sheila Murnaghan, who wrote the intro) describes a breakthrough that helped clarify the role of oral poetry. In the 1920s-30s, Milman Parry studied oral poets in the Balkans, where such was still practiced, and saw that many of their techniques corresponded to the conventions of Homeric style. Some of the inconsistencies that were used as arguments for several authors of Odyssey are common to the oral tradition.
-
what a book--don't think I would have read it without being a part of this group though--the main character Odysseus i didn't really empathize with--he really was a man of contrasts though he bemoaned his being in Calypso's clutches (oh woe is me) and then when in charge constantly testing people...why would he need to test his father of all people, maybe his wife...as 20 years after all is a long time to reasonably be faithful without any evidence of his survival....why wouldn't O. have given his men an explanation as to why they weren't to eat the animals, or open the bag (of wind) and then they could make decisions based on knowledge not just trust of Odysseus word 'not to do something...'...sounds like their faith in him was not very strong!!
--the dog had my empathy --what a sweetheart, sad that his master who had been away for so long, felt unable to acknowledge his dog
Ginny & Joan --thank you for all your work thru this, pulling everything together and summarizing ...hard to believe we have been involved in this book for about 6 months...I really enjoyed reading everyone's thoughts, articles, bits looked up ....this has been a wonderful experience
and thank you everyone
Deb
-
Any thoughts on what to tackle next?
-
Any thoughts on what to tackle next?
Which brings up the question, for me,... Is "Classics" to be defined, for the purpose of these
discussions, as the ancient Greek and Roman classics? Or does it extend to other 'classics'?
-
Any of the Greek plays would do. I only ever remember reading Oedipus Rex long, long ago, so I am way overdue to reacquaint myself with them.
Alternatively, if we want to a Roman thing this time, how about The Golden Ass by Lucius Apuleius. I've just discovered that Apuleius, a Romanized Berber, was born in what is now Algeria.
Does anyone want to try an ancient Indian or Chinese text?
Babi, I vaguely remember that the consensus was to start out with the ancients and expand from there later. There are a lot in the more modern classic category I have yet to read.
-
I've just put Romance of the Three Kingdoms (or just Three Kingdoms),attributed to Luo Guanzhong, the Moss Roberts unabridged version, on my hunt down and buy list. I believe the Kindle version is abridged. It is a semi-fictionalized account of the fall of the Han Dynasty and listed as one of the four great Chinese classic novels. One reviewer said the set he got was four volumens and covered 3,000 pages. I see only two volumes for the unabridged version, covering a little over 1,100 pages. Hopefully that means larger pages and/or smaller type.
-
My computer keyboard id on again, thanks to my brilliant daughter.
Some great questions. The classic Club will continue. My thought is that we could archive this discussion in a few days, so anyone new coming in won't be buried in posts, and start a new board to talk about classics we have read of would like to. In the middle of August, we csan vote on what we'd like to read next.
That's just my idea. What does anyone think?
-
Even though I was not able to participate often in this discussion, I did enjoy it and learned alot. This is probably the first "classic" I have read, and would not have read The Odyssey if not for this discussion. Thank you Ginny and Joan and those behind the scenes, for all you do here.
Kidsal, thank you for your note on E.V. Rieu. And thank you Deb for recommending it. I read his son's revised translation and I loved it.
To me, the story ended in Book 23 ---"And blissfully they lay down on their own familiar bed." The rest of the story seemed just added on.
Thanks to all for your wonderful and very interesting posts.
Now I hope to give the Sparknotes quiz a try.
-
I understand that JoanK has computer problems and I just found out today that the connection I am using here is meant to be a wireless you pay for. So it's something of a miracle I guess that I am here at all.
However will be in Rome tomorrow so perhaps things will pick up.
Have loved all your comments here. So glad you enjoyed the experience Deb. Laughed out loud at your great assessment of the new Inferno, Dana.
I loved the quiz and missed two, so feel like even tho I hit the wrong keys I may have gotten more our of it this time. Hahaha. Must be the company. :)
I wish I could see your posts as I type like normal but many thanks to all of you for all you each contributed to the discussion and thus enhanced our own understanding of it.
I've been toying with the notion of which: the Iliad or Odyssey has more depth. I's interesting when you compare any literature what you see.
Yes when we first started this it was to be about the writings of the ancient Greeks and Romans. You might like to define what you'd like it to include next time. The papers here are full of Roman and Greek references. I've got a folder full of them to bring home.
So O is home and the cycle is complete at last. He's done with the help of the gods what he set out to do. I persist as seeing him somewhat changed. I see less of the braggart and a wiser man. But perhaps age might do that, too.
I think we gave it a good shot in different ways and I picked up a lot of new knowledge on things like boats I never knew.
PatH, did you find that reading the Introduction after the book which I usually do, too, if for no other reason that I have more to relate to, did you feel it was something you needed or could have done without it just as well?
Do you all think the next step might be to decide what parameters are needed to get up a ballot for a next read?
-
JoanK, your idea is fine with me. I've got plenty to read in the meantime. I downloaded 12 more books from ManyBook.org last night. My kindle library is beginning to look like my print library. I am up to eight pages of listings now.
-
Ginny&Joan K
Thank you so much for all the hard work you put into the site. I am so lit up about the "Classics" that I'd really like to go for another work. I found a copy of The Aenid on my shelf . Couldn't read it on my own.
Don't know if anyone wants to try such a daunting work.
Is the Illiad as diffucult?
Wherever you great leaders decide to go I will follow.
I meet quotes about The Odyssey whereever I go. In "Get Thee To A Punnery"' abook on humor by Richard Lederer I just read the following : "In the 9th book of the Odyssey , composed around 800 BC., the wily O. is trapped in the cave of Polyphemus, the one eyed giant with the 20\ vision. To fool the Cyclops O gives his name as OUTIS, Greek for "NoMan".
When O. attacks the giant he calls to his fellow monsters for help, crying,"No man is killing me!" His colleagues take him literally and thus the Cyclops falls victim to one of the first puns in European Literature.
Hope we meet again on this site.
-
Ginny and Joan - You handled this story wonderfully. Long may you reign, thanks to you and the many contributors/interpreters I have learned so much.
-
I meet quotes about The Odyssey wherever I go.
Indeed; in my f2f Sci-fi discussion group, someone said about our book "It"s like ending the Odyssey just when he's sailing back to Troy."
-
As part of my windup, I watched (again) O Brother, Where Art Thou, the movie by the Coen brothers, loosely based on the Odyssey. I was hoping to catch a lot more references this time, but I guess I got many the first time around.
In the opening, we start with written lines:
O Muse!
Sing with me, and through me tell the story
Of that man skilled in all ways contending
A wanderer, harried for years on end---
Then we are in depression-era Mississippi, where Ulysses Everett T. McGill (George Clooney) is escaping from a chain gang, and away we go, sirens washing their clothes in the river, Polyphemus (a greedy Bible salesman), local politics, McGill and his fellow escapees recording a hit popular tune, the ku klux klan, and finally a flooding as part of the TVA.
It's a good job of everything, music, acting, story. I'm a bit surprised that the Coens got away with some of their brutal southern caricatures, though.
All in all, not a bad way to decompress.
-
JudeS, I'm with you about all lit up to go for another classic. We did the Iliad on the old site 5 or 6 years ago, probably too soon to do it again. I would say it was a bit harder than the Odyssey, not a lot. But there's a wealth of good books waiting for us to pick one.
-
Good luck on your search, FRYBABE. When I see a phrase like "one of the four
great ____ classics", I am always intrigued. Nevertheless, 3,000, or even
1100 pages sounds like a major challenge. Especially as I get older and time
gets shorter. ;)
Oh, definitely, JOAN. It would be much simpler to archive this discussion and
start with a new slate for the next. It would be terribly confusing for a
newcomer, otherwise.
-
Thank you all for your great comments. It's been such a pleasure to enjoy our own Odyssey with such a hardy crew!! We did it!!
Am sitting in Rome in the Termini train station waiting to go to Naples. I love that coda on the Coen brothers movie Pat. Here's another. Just saw a bearded old guy dumpster diving. He was finishing off somebody's Sprite. He had a backpack on which said ZEUS.
Was quite struck by the modern implications.
You can't get away from the classics references it seems.
Let's ask Jane to set us up a nominating discussion for the next read!
Thank you all so much for making it so memorable. I'd love to see us do something Roman next, myself, but we'll vote on it.
-
I'm looking forward to it. Roman sounds good. I remember we considered
Plutarch's Lives; I still like that idea.
-
I'll set up the new Suggestions for Classics Book Club discussion out on the main menu. Everyone can put his/her suggestions there then. I'll post the link when the job is done.
jane
-
http://seniorlearn.org/forum/index.php?topic=2395.msg124420#msg124420
for nominations for the next Classics book to be read together.
-
In answer to Ginny's question, yes, the introduction to Lombardo was well worth reading, and added some insights. Maybe I'll even read the Spark Notes.
I'm not sure if I already said this or not: Thank you so much, Ginny and JoanK, our fearless leaders. I can't even begin to imagine how much work went into digging up all that material, finding the pictures that added so much, and thinking of all the provocative questions and penetrating analyses.
And what a bunch of fellow discussers! We really did it well, talking about everything imaginable, and putting all the characters under a microscope. We can truly feel now that we have made The Odyssey ours.
-
It was GINNY who did all the digging and found the wonderful pictures and quotes. I was just along for the ride. And what a ride it'd been!! I'm sure I'll remember this discussion for years. You all have been wonderful!!
Now it's time to pull up our chairs around the pool (the fire for those of us South of the equator) and talk and dream about our next journey.
-
Hey, wait for me ... I've just made it through the posts. Sorry I wasn't able to participate much - life imploded round me half way - Luckily I have read it before so although I didn't read it all this time the brilliant discussion brought it all back to me and made me rethink lots of stuff...thanks everyone.
I do want to say special thanks to our great leaders Ginny and JoanK - super job as 'youknowwho' would say.
-
So glad you caught up with us, GUM. Any thoughts to share? Let's transfer over to the new site now:
http://seniorlearn.org/forum/index.php?topic=2395.msg124420#msg124420 (http://seniorlearn.org/forum/index.php?topic=2395.msg124420#msg124420)
-
I really want to echo JoanK in thanking all of you who participated in this new venture: reading the works of the ancient Greeks and Romans in translation. I won't mention each of you by name but it was such a joy to look in and see your thoughtful and great posts on each topic as we came to it.
I wonder what we'll take with us from it? I found that Ulysses is everywhere, even when he's not attributed. You can stand in some of the finest museums in the world of antiquities and there he is, tied to the mast in yet another rendition from literally thousands of years ago. What a thrill to look and know who that is before you even read the tag, and what he's doing and why he's there, and how many ways he's represented and has been represented through the ages. He literally is everywhere. I wonder if we've asked ourselves WHY? What IS it about him that perpetuates him through the modern age?
I thought we gave him a great go and really got a lot out of it, and I particularly appreciate those of you who made it to the end, our own Odyssey, but you stuck the course and we ended up with more crew than he did hahaha (perhaps with less physical challenge), but we all got the prize.
I liked the end. I liked Homer's subtle reminder that no matter what you gain on earth, death is waiting, and in the case of the ancient Greeks, it's not the end, note the shades coming forward, I just loved it. I don't think it's a later added on feature but is necessary as a reminder and summing up of the entire plot. There's so much in Homer and I think we really did a super job with him and left no stone unturned.
I note some great nominations also for coming books in Joan's link. While I can't help lead during the school year (I think 9 classes of Latin, two in person and a 4 year old during the week are going to be time consuming enough) I can and will participate in whatever you choose as I want to read them all anyway. So hopefully some of us can step forward and help the cause, so we can say we've read them. I do think it's important to at least know what's been said and usually makes for better reading than the modern stuff.
So thank you SO much for each of your posts! Each one added so much to the all over experience and what we'll take with us as we close the cover for the last time. I just this morning put my Odyssey texts away in the back bedroom with some sadness. Hopefully we can do this again, and sail together into the past.
:)
-
This discussion will be archived in a few days.