Review Post 2 - The Iliad for Dummies

The famous name of Homer is, to many people now,
Best known from television shows, so I will tell you how
Just thrice one thousand years ago a poem he did write
In which were rang'd both men and gods laid bare in all their might
Nine years of brutal, bloody war had stain'd Troy's sandy beach
Where fell full legions to the ground, of pain and sadness each
Of these proud nations had their fill, the Trojans and the Greeks,
As Paris guards the golden prize whom Menelaus seeks
Apollo frowns now on the Greeks and will not heed their pleas
'Til Agamemnon fair Chrysa (as prize whom he did seize)
Returns to noble Ilion, to which he doth assent
But only if his loss is made good from another's tent
And thus takes he Briseis from Achilles' fair-won spoil
(for which upon the bloody fields of Troy did he long toil)
On hearing this the demigod retired with all his men
Forebearing help until his prize be given him again
This argument between the kings thus sets the bloody scene
Achilles' lack upsets the scale of parity between
The wrong'd Greek defenders and the house of Ilion
And causes the invaders grief the more the war draws on

Of course this famous story was described in the film Troy
(A fairly silly movie which was written just for joy)
And in the film the main place where it is so well at odds
With the poem is how it lacks all mention of the Gods
And yet The Iliad is more a story telling when
Olympus saw internal feuds than one of warlike men
The warriors are playthings for the deities above
Who plot and help their favourites (when not held back by Jove)
Thus thwarting the dear plans of the scheming heav'nly throng
While sending noble warriors to deaths retold in song
Minerva, Juno and Neptune all back the Grecian quest
While Phoebus, Mars and Venus help the Trojans foil their best
Efforts to breach the Illian walls, to regain what they lack
And end the near decade-long fight by winning Helen back
The Iliad tells but one short part of the long Trojan war
With focus on the consequence of wrath Achilles bore
Toward King Agamemnon for his regal pride and greed
Which settled death and sorrowing on many men indeed
A tale of bitter, bloody war it is, but still it sings
Of noble deeds and sacrifice for country and for kings

Although in many varied forms in English has been told
This story, I eschewed the prose and chose to be so bold
And read George Chapman's famous verse translation (as you see,
Writing fourteen full syllables per line rubbed off on me!)
His whole life's work this noble task he did decide to make
Translating Homer's famous work for posterity's sake
Believe you me, it's not as simple as you would expect
To fit ideas you wish to say (and not be indirect)
Into the chosen length of line, but Chapman used the gimick
Of squeezing awkward names in place by use of patronymic
Hence Agamemnon, King of Kings, the most important Greek
Is known as strong Atrides did poor Chapman more space seek
This can be quite confusing for a modern reader who
Unused to Grecian customs is (at times I knew not who
Was killing whom upon Troy's fields). The writer also tries
To use both Greek and Roman names his issues to disguise
With deities and syllables and keeping perfect time -
I sympathise with poor Chapman and his efforts at rhyme.
As we reflect upon the fate of these unfortunate sods
The moral of the story is DO NOT FUCK WITH THE GODS...

42 - 'The Classical World' by Robin Lane Fox

After polishing off Euripides' plays, I was keen to read some more about those troublesome Greek gods, so I picked up 'The Classical World' on one of my rare trips to Borders. Of course, if I'd bothered to read the back, I probably would have found out that it was a history book a lot sooner. Oops. Nevertheless, I decided to give it a go and have spent the last week embroiled in the tumultuous Mediterranean conflicts of the classical era, and great fun it was too.

The writer, a professor at Oxford University (and an expert on Alexander the Great, something which allowed him not only to provide research for the Oliver Stone film, but also to ride in the front of all the cavalry charges in the film!), describes the period of history from the rule of the Greek city states to the time of the Roman emperor Hadrian, some 800 years or so in all. While taking the reader through such events as Thermopylae (familiar to anyone who saw '300'), the conquests of Alexander the Great, the gradual shift from Greek to Roman dominance in the region and the rise and fall (well, it's hard to stand when you've been stabbed in the back) of Julius Caesar, Lane Fox attempts to show us exactly how people lived back then. It's one hell of a story, and very well written, but it takes a lot of doing to get through it all in one go. I think I should have approached this book a little differently and read it over a longer period as the battles and orgies tended to blur into each other after a while (not sure that makes sense, but it did in my head).

While taking us through the events of the classical era, the writer also repeatedly returns to three crucial concepts and how they are affected by events: justice, freedom and luxury. You would expect that each of these ideas had progressed over the eight centuries covered, but on the whole that is not the case. Luxury did become more obtainable as new worlds and unknown products became available, but the Romans frowned upon private consumption of luxury items, preferring to have their wealthy citizens spread their wealth (and festivals) around. Justice was obtainable for some in the democracy of the city state of Athens but was only really an option for the rich by the time of Hadrian. And as for freedom; let's just say that the citizens of the Roman Empire had to revise their views of what freedom actually meant. Freedon to continue breathing was about as far as it went for some people...

There are some lovely maps of various areas of the Med, and the Middle-East, and I kept getting a nagging feeling that they, and the book as a whole, reminded me of another epic work. And then it came to me: Lord of the Rings. Looking at the various maps from different periods, with different countries under the control of new rulers, was exactly like poring over Tolkien's maps of Middle-Earth in both 'The Silmarillion' and the later trilogy of novels (Tolkien actually considered it as one book, but that's another story...). Even the constant introduction of new tribes, heroes, villains and wizards (alright, philosophers, but they're both old with beards), was reminiscent of the fictional version. Still not convinced? What huge unknown animals did the Greeks face in their battles in the Middle-East and India, later to be used in Europe? That's right, elephants. I rest my case.

Ancient history? Yes. Irrelevant? Not quite. Just as Alexander and (later) the Romans marched on Babylon, so too have the United States and their allies invaded Iraq. Just as the invading forces realised later that it was actually too much trouble to administer the province themselves, leaving the 'barbarians' under the control of a puppet king, so have the Allied forces in Iraq and Afghanistan allowed a local leader, friendly to their aims, to start the rebuilding and regoverning process. Those who fail to learn their history are doomed to repeat its mistakes, something the leaders of the world, hopefully, understand. The centuries of empire building and epic wars are over, not (with a bit of luck) to be repeated; let's hope that these kinds of stories are only to be read in history books in the future.

Except for the elephants: you can never have enough elephants.

41 - 'Medea, Hecabe, Electra and Heracles' by Euripides

If you're sitting at home depressed, feeling that things just aren't going the way you want them to, there's nothing like reading some Greek tragedies to make you think that life's not that bad after all. Euripides, one of the three great tragedians of ancient Greek literature, wrote almost a hundred plays during his life (of which not that many remain as he didn't save any soft copies), and these four are among his most famous.

The plays are connected by a common theme of murder as revenge for betrayal, with three of them involving a particularly horrid kind of murder; let's just say that they kept it in the family... Unlike many Greek plays where the gods are seen as omniscient and controlling, Euripides has a slightly more sceptical (almost proto-atheist?) view of the residents of Mount Olympus. Basically, you can't trust the gods to do anything, so you might as well rely on yourself. Unfortunately, that can be difficult if they decide to smite you (but I digress).

In 'Medea', the title character, deserted by her husband Jason (he of the Argonauts' fame), decides that revenge is not a dish best served cold, but an excuse to murder her faithless husband's new wife, his new wife's father and her own two sons. Euripides does a good job of making Medea as sympathetic as possible, painting the ambitious Jason as a success-chasing sycophant who is ashamed of his non-Greek wife, but, by today's standards, Medea does take the revenge thing a bit too far, what with all the murders and then taunting Jason from the air while hovering in a dragon-drawn chariot (which, by the way, is exactly what I want for my birthday).

By contrast, 'Hecabe', widow of the defeated and killed Priam, King of Troy, has slightly more cause for revenge when she learns that not only is her daughter Polyxena to be sacrificed to honour the death of Achilles (whose mentions in the play always conjure up the image of Brad Pitt - stupid film), but that her last remaining son, Polydorus, who was sent away from Troy for his safety, has been murdered by his guardian, Polymestor. It's unfortunate that in addition to blinding her son's murderer, she also gets her handmaidens to do away with his young sons, but that's Ancient Greece for you. If you don't get them when they're young, you may live to regret it when two young strangers hack your head off twenty years later.

Which brings us to 'Electra', daughter of the betrayed Greek hero king Agamemnon, and her brother Orestes. While Orestes is not really convinced about his duty to shed lots of blood, little sis is very keen, promising to top their treacherous mother, Clytmnestra, if Orestes gets rid of her new husband, the usurping Aegisthus. Unfortunately, Electra losses her nerve at the last minute, leaving big brother to do away with his mother, putting himself in big trouble with the gods (there are very detailed divine rules about who you can and can't kill; it can all get a bit confusing at times...).


'Heracles', on the other hand, is a real tragedy. Having returned from the underworld just in time to save his family from the usurping king Lycus (yes, it's not often you use 'usurping' in consecutive paragraphs), the famous hero falls foul of the petty jealousy of his father's wife. Unfortunately for him, his father is Zeus, which makes the woman he has annoyed Hera, Queen of the Gods. As you can imagine, she is not the sort to settle for strategically-placed banana skins or two flat tyres on his chariot, instead sending poor Heracles mad and making him kill his wife and three kids.

Joking aside, 'Heracles' is extremely touching. Euripides sets a scene where the reader is prepared for Lycus to kill Heracles' wife, father and children, and when Heracles appears in the nick of time, the reader experiences the same sense of relief that the characters do. Of course, for those watching the play in the era it was written, this was a part of the shared cultural knowledge, and everyone would know exactly what was going to happen next. In a way, that would make the scene even sadder.


These four plays are centred around the way insults in ancient times demanded revenge, often embroiling families (or, in the case of the Trojan War, whole countries) in situations where blood was inevitably shed. It was easy to blame the gods, but Euripides' view was that men should help themselves - not an easy thing to do if you've got a goddess with a grudge on your back, though.

When reading these plays, for the first time, it was surprising how many names and events (and even plots) were familiar (as were the plays in Sophocles' Oedipus trilogy which I read earlier in the year). The legends of Ancient Greece were not only relevant at the time of their performance, but also today; for anyone of European or Anglo-Saxon heritage, these tales are part of our cultural background, and it's important to revisit these stories to see how to deal with adversity in life. Or not, as the case may be.

Now, I'm off to see a man about a dragon...

10 - 'The Theban Plays' by Sophocles

Sophocles, the great Greek playwright, not to be confused with Socrates, the great Greek philosopher (or Socrates, the Brazilian world cup star), was obviously enamoured with the story of Oedipus, the Theban king with serious family issues, and wrote three plays (that we know of) about the world's first dysfunctional family over the course of his life. 'King Oedipus', 'Oedipus at Colonus' and 'Antigone' are three snapshots from the rambling saga of poor Oedipus and his rather unfortunate family, and provide a useful introduction to Greek theatre for the uninitiated among us (like me).

Having read Murakami's 'Kafka on the Shore', which takes the Oedipal story as one of its main themes, I wanted to know a bit more about the classic story and learn a little of the setting of Greek drama. One of the things I was surprised to learn was that there was more than one variation on the tale and that it was a story from oral tradition which many playwrights saw fit to cover and adapt. These plays were also very different from our modern entertainment in the sense that nearly everyone knew the story before going to see the play; the interest was in seeing how the playwright (and actors) portrayed the characters in their rush towards a fate the audience knew was coming. This allowed the spectators (or listeners) to analyse the words of the characters in light of their later fates (alright, I admit this is probably obvious if you're a big fan of classical theatre, but it was fairly new to me!).

So what about the story itself? Well, 'King Oedipus' concentrates on the discovery of the title character's identity and the rather bloody consequences; you know what's coming, but the way in which it is unfolded, and Oedipus' enthusiastic promises to do nasty things to whoever killed his father (who would have thought it would turn out to be him...), make it poignantly tragic.

'Oedipus at Colonus' sees the now blind Oedipus seeking refuge in Colonus, near Athens, as he prepares to die. However, the gods aren't finished with him yet, and as a result of a prophecy decreeing his importance to the success of future battles involving his home city of Thebes, he is sought by both his son/brother and uncle/brother-in-law (it's best not to get bogged down with family issues where Oedipus is concerned). After Theseus, King of Athens, prevents the kidnapping of his daughters (sisters...), Oedipus is finally ready to die in a very ascension-like ending. I wonder if the writers of the Bible had seen this first...

'Antigone' tells of the fate of one of Oedipus' daugh.. sis... (you know); anyway, in a scene reminiscent of 'King Oedipus' (which was actually written much later), she ignores her uncle's command not to bury the body of her dead brother, and he fulfils his promise to put her to death, which brings on a lot more bloodshed and tragedy.

Conclusions?

1 - Don't ignore Greek gods; it never turns out well.
2 - Some family secrets are better left well alone.
3 - Never vow to put a criminal to death unless you're absoulutely positively sure that the culprit is not one of your nearest and dearest (or yourself).
4 - It is much better to be part of the chorus in a Greek play than to have a named role.
5 - It may be a good idea to beware Greeks bearing gifts, but I would be more concerned about those who bring prophecies from the gods. If you ever see a blind old man with a message from Apollo, run away, and keep running until you cross the Greek border.

Now, I'm just going off to double- and triple-check my family tree...