1 00:00:05,758 --> 00:00:10,120 In our earlier lecur, lectures we took a look at ideas about myth. 2 00:00:10,120 --> 00:00:13,780 We traced back from antiquity all the way up to the present time as, 3 00:00:13,780 --> 00:00:17,810 in terms of what people have thought about myth over vast stretches of time. 4 00:00:17,810 --> 00:00:20,490 In this lecture were going to turn the clock backwards and 5 00:00:20,490 --> 00:00:26,730 move from our present-day period into the, the times that are going 6 00:00:26,730 --> 00:00:30,990 to be represented in the mythic stories that we are going to be turning to next. 7 00:00:30,990 --> 00:00:33,560 A few time periods are important for us to keep in mind. 8 00:00:33,560 --> 00:00:35,850 Now, obviously is an important one. 9 00:00:35,850 --> 00:00:39,660 What's happening in the world today is going to color and influence the way we 10 00:00:39,660 --> 00:00:43,210 appropriate and read these myths and we want to pay some attention to that. 11 00:00:43,210 --> 00:00:44,360 Roman times. 12 00:00:44,360 --> 00:00:48,390 Here I've picked out the 1st century BCE as classical Rome, 13 00:00:48,390 --> 00:00:52,710 so if you hear me referring to classical Rome I mean Rome during that time period. 14 00:00:52,710 --> 00:00:55,925 Rome obviously had a lot of years before and after during which they were top 15 00:00:55,925 --> 00:00:59,675 dog in the Mediterranean, but when I talk about classical Rome, I'm going to be 16 00:00:59,675 --> 00:01:05,435 roughly referring to 1st century BCE, 1st century CE, roughly in that time period. 17 00:01:05,435 --> 00:01:09,507 Another important, moment for us, is going to be classical Athens, 18 00:01:09,507 --> 00:01:12,965 5th century BCE, so when I say classical Athens, that's what I mean. 19 00:01:12,965 --> 00:01:17,335 And then when I say Homeric times, I'm referring to the 8th century BCE. 20 00:01:17,335 --> 00:01:21,730 Homer wrote around 750, as best we can tell, so 21 00:01:21,730 --> 00:01:26,030 we say 8th century as a general target for what that date's all about. 22 00:01:26,030 --> 00:01:28,730 And Homer himself was writing many years after the fact, 23 00:01:28,730 --> 00:01:30,475 as you can see from our graph here. 24 00:01:30,475 --> 00:01:35,510 He's actually writing nearly 500 years after the topic he is covering 25 00:01:35,510 --> 00:01:39,230 the Trojan War which in, according to the legendary materials, 26 00:01:39,230 --> 00:01:44,940 took place right around in the 13th century BCE. 27 00:01:44,940 --> 00:01:49,716 Tracing back over these periods, we're going to be looking at Homer 28 00:01:49,716 --> 00:01:54,570 in the first big chunk of this course, focusing on The Odyssey. 29 00:01:54,570 --> 00:01:56,580 When we get past that, 30 00:01:56,580 --> 00:02:01,390 we'll move into some other epic poets from early time periods including Hesiod. 31 00:02:01,390 --> 00:02:06,840 We'll look at some Homeric hymns that emerge during this Homeric period. 32 00:02:06,840 --> 00:02:08,070 Moving on to classical Athens, 33 00:02:08,070 --> 00:02:10,570 we're going to look especially at the Greek tragedies. 34 00:02:10,570 --> 00:02:14,820 The tragedians remake stories that they knew from Homer and earlier poets in, 35 00:02:14,820 --> 00:02:17,555 in ways that are definitive for later time periods. 36 00:02:17,555 --> 00:02:18,307 And then we, 37 00:02:18,307 --> 00:02:22,915 when we move into the Romans we're going to be looking at Virgil and Ovid. 38 00:02:22,915 --> 00:02:24,825 The stories that we're going to see, 39 00:02:24,825 --> 00:02:30,815 populating this long arc of time have many similarities but also many differences. 40 00:02:30,815 --> 00:02:33,715 Classical Athens is not the same as Homeric Greece, and 41 00:02:33,715 --> 00:02:36,541 Homeric Greece is surely not the same as classical Rome. 42 00:02:36,541 --> 00:02:41,610 So we'll keep an eye on all of these particulars as, as, as needed. 43 00:02:41,610 --> 00:02:46,930 The Trojan War we go ahead and say took place in the 13th century BCE, 44 00:02:46,930 --> 00:02:51,205 and the reason we go ahead and say that has to do very much with this man. 45 00:02:51,205 --> 00:02:56,540 Befo, if this course were being taught 150 years ago, assuming there was an internet 46 00:02:56,540 --> 00:02:59,372 the professor at that time would say, well, the Trojan War is a legend. 47 00:02:59,372 --> 00:03:03,220 We don't really have any evidence that it actually took place. 48 00:03:03,220 --> 00:03:04,894 Heinrich Schliemann was curious about this. 49 00:03:04,894 --> 00:03:08,280 His dates were 1822 to 1890. 50 00:03:08,280 --> 00:03:12,730 He took a team over to the north coast of Turkey Asia Minor and 51 00:03:12,730 --> 00:03:17,280 found that in the sites where there was supposed to be a great citadel of Troy, 52 00:03:17,280 --> 00:03:18,340 he actually found that yes, 53 00:03:18,340 --> 00:03:24,120 indeed there were the ruins of a marvelous very wealthy city. 54 00:03:24,120 --> 00:03:28,280 And it looked like that city had been conquered 55 00:03:29,310 --> 00:03:33,120 over many times over the course of history. 56 00:03:33,120 --> 00:03:38,820 And there was a kind of great cataclysmic conquest of this citadel 57 00:03:38,820 --> 00:03:42,780 that wa, took place right around roughly corresponding to the time 58 00:03:42,780 --> 00:03:46,750 that Greek legend said the whole, the, the Trojan War took place. 59 00:03:46,750 --> 00:03:52,020 So after Schliemann, we know say that, you know there likely was 60 00:03:52,020 --> 00:03:55,880 a Trojan War about which Homer and his legends are being told. 61 00:03:55,880 --> 00:03:58,300 Now Schliemann never found anything that said, you know, 62 00:03:58,300 --> 00:04:03,800 this shield belongs to Agamemnon or here lieth the sword of Achilles. 63 00:04:03,800 --> 00:04:07,760 We don't have anything that got recovered in the archeological evidence that 64 00:04:07,760 --> 00:04:12,680 verifies any of the details, including characters, personages, events, any of 65 00:04:12,680 --> 00:04:17,094 the details that are recorded in the Homeric legends and in later materials. 66 00:04:17,094 --> 00:04:20,495 But we can go ahead and say that there was a Trojan War. 67 00:04:20,495 --> 00:04:22,410 And Homer's version of it may or 68 00:04:22,410 --> 00:04:27,470 may not correlate to any historical event that actually took place. 69 00:04:27,470 --> 00:04:32,220 Now, diving into Homer's world is something that we need to do with 70 00:04:32,220 --> 00:04:35,887 a bit of perhaps warning. 71 00:04:35,887 --> 00:04:38,570 It's, it's a dark world, and 72 00:04:38,570 --> 00:04:44,640 a world built on the coursing energy of war, the coursing negative energy of war. 73 00:04:44,640 --> 00:04:50,110 It's a very stark place where things that need to be dealt with get dealt with, 74 00:04:50,110 --> 00:04:52,670 sometimes very abruptly and summarily, 75 00:04:52,670 --> 00:04:57,000 and oftentimes with violent and quick kinds of endings. 76 00:04:57,000 --> 00:04:59,920 We're talking about a place that's going to be 77 00:05:00,980 --> 00:05:06,410 where human the exhibition of human talents are typically taking place 78 00:05:06,410 --> 00:05:09,520 in the field of one dimension of human experience. 79 00:05:09,520 --> 00:05:11,910 That's the field of conflict. 80 00:05:11,910 --> 00:05:16,820 Now all of us are going to think about the, the, the, whether, 81 00:05:16,820 --> 00:05:21,520 was Homer's epic an anti-war epic or, or a pro-war epic? 82 00:05:21,520 --> 00:05:24,545 It actually doesn't answer to any of those kind of categories. 83 00:05:24,545 --> 00:05:28,005 Homer's epic I think floats above all of them. 84 00:05:28,005 --> 00:05:30,705 Instead what he looks at is, is a real human experience, that is, 85 00:05:30,705 --> 00:05:34,855 the experience of armed conflict between groups of our species that 86 00:05:34,855 --> 00:05:37,425 decide to launch that kind of thing against each other, and 87 00:05:37,425 --> 00:05:40,095 then tries to figure out what is the human experience of this? 88 00:05:40,095 --> 00:05:42,590 What does it mean for us in our humanity? 89 00:05:42,590 --> 00:05:46,200 Looking at the Trojan War we're going to meet lots of people who are coursing 90 00:05:46,200 --> 00:05:50,910 around in the background of it especially in our engagement with the Odyssey. 91 00:05:50,910 --> 00:05:51,590 And it's important for 92 00:05:51,590 --> 00:05:55,200 us to know some of these characters that emerge in Homer's Iliad. 93 00:05:55,200 --> 00:05:56,910 This is his account of the Trojan War. 94 00:05:58,100 --> 00:06:01,300 The Iliad is a poem about rage. 95 00:06:01,300 --> 00:06:02,452 And thinking about rage, 96 00:06:02,452 --> 00:06:08,420 it's obviously fronted in this epic that is about the war. 97 00:06:08,420 --> 00:06:12,410 But what's interesting is that Homer talks about rage of a specific kind. 98 00:06:12,410 --> 00:06:15,890 It is the rage of Achilles that he is most interested in. 99 00:06:15,890 --> 00:06:20,410 Achilles, yes, is having war, as a Greek is having war rage against his Trojan 100 00:06:20,410 --> 00:06:25,750 foes, but the rage that really drives the epic is actually an inter-Greek one. 101 00:06:25,750 --> 00:06:28,130 It's Achilles versus Agamemnon. 102 00:06:28,130 --> 00:06:32,580 Achilles and Agamemnon have an argument that starts off The Iliad. 103 00:06:32,580 --> 00:06:36,030 And these two great Greek warriors, Agamemnon the older general and 104 00:06:36,030 --> 00:06:40,950 Achilles the younger, extremely talented warrior have words. 105 00:06:40,950 --> 00:06:43,710 They can't quite settle them in the appropriate way. 106 00:06:43,710 --> 00:06:49,530 Agamemnon's leadership is not up to snuff to handle this situation. 107 00:06:49,530 --> 00:06:54,510 And so he loses, Agamemnon loses his greatest warrior because he 108 00:06:54,510 --> 00:06:58,890 decides to go ahead and insult Achilles in front of all of his peers. 109 00:06:58,890 --> 00:07:02,600 And when that happens, Achilles decides to withdraw. 110 00:07:02,600 --> 00:07:05,680 Achilles sits out most of the action of the epic in his tent, and 111 00:07:05,680 --> 00:07:10,310 when he does he wishes death upon his own Greek comrades. 112 00:07:11,590 --> 00:07:17,000 His rage is a rage that is so bitter and so awful, he now hates Agamemnon, 113 00:07:17,000 --> 00:07:23,430 his own Greek leader, and so wishes that all of his compad, 114 00:07:23,430 --> 00:07:28,150 compatriots should pay the price of Agamemnon's stupidity. 115 00:07:28,150 --> 00:07:31,033 His rage then is directed against one of his own. 116 00:07:31,033 --> 00:07:35,570 And the business end of that rage gets worked out 117 00:07:35,570 --> 00:07:39,990 on all of the Greek warriors as they suffer under the onslaught of the Trojans. 118 00:07:39,990 --> 00:07:44,330 We see great characters in this fighting. 119 00:07:44,330 --> 00:07:47,990 Again, Achilles is in his tent, but in his place arise other 120 00:07:47,990 --> 00:07:51,930 great Greek warriors to take the place of top dog among, among the fighters. 121 00:07:51,930 --> 00:07:56,800 We have people whose names are Ajax, Diomedes on the Greek side. 122 00:07:56,800 --> 00:08:00,330 We're going to meet another of these figures called Odysseus pretty soon. 123 00:08:00,330 --> 00:08:06,130 On the Trojan side, the princes and kings that marshal the forces there are led by 124 00:08:06,130 --> 00:08:11,700 King Priam with his sons Hector and Paris as the leaders of the other side. 125 00:08:11,700 --> 00:08:15,480 The war is dark, it's nasty, death on every page, 126 00:08:15,480 --> 00:08:19,820 and it's also unbelievably a beautiful piece of epic poetry. 127 00:08:20,820 --> 00:08:27,630 When we close out this story Achilles does finally put away his rage. 128 00:08:27,630 --> 00:08:32,680 He can't quite bring himself to make up with the old, old man in his life, 129 00:08:32,680 --> 00:08:34,960 the authoritative Greek figure. 130 00:08:34,960 --> 00:08:37,820 He never does quite reconcile with Agamemnon and 131 00:08:37,820 --> 00:08:41,900 the awful things that Agamemnon had done to him to publicly humiliate him. 132 00:08:41,900 --> 00:08:45,130 But instead there's a moment that Achilles gets at the end of the epic 133 00:08:45,130 --> 00:08:49,300 in order to reconcile himself in a certain way and put away some of his rage. 134 00:08:49,300 --> 00:08:54,040 And when he does, it is not with his superior Agamemnon. 135 00:08:54,040 --> 00:08:59,161 Instead, and strangely, Achilles has a moment 136 00:08:59,161 --> 00:09:05,090 to express other dimensions of his humanity than his 137 00:09:05,090 --> 00:09:11,060 warp spasm war rage with the greatest of the Trojans. 138 00:09:11,060 --> 00:09:13,790 Priam has a moment with Achilles 139 00:09:13,790 --> 00:09:18,235 where he has a chance to ransom back the body of his beloved son Hector, 140 00:09:18,235 --> 00:09:22,740 whom Achilles has treated with all the vengeance of his war rage. 141 00:09:22,740 --> 00:09:28,760 And Priam comes over to Achilles's tent, kisses the hands that killed his own son, 142 00:09:28,760 --> 00:09:33,640 and begs Achilles to show some mercy. 143 00:09:33,640 --> 00:09:38,640 Achilles decides that there's his, his own Greeks, and particularly Agamemnon, 144 00:09:38,640 --> 00:09:40,540 are not worthy of it. 145 00:09:40,540 --> 00:09:43,720 But Priam, the Trojan general, Trojan king, 146 00:09:43,720 --> 00:09:46,580 actually happens to be worthy of Achilles's mercy. 147 00:09:46,580 --> 00:09:52,340 So he does relent with the kiss of the hands gives back the body and 148 00:09:52,340 --> 00:09:59,540 Priam can bury Hector, and so ends the Trojan War according to Homer's Iliad. 149 00:09:59,540 --> 00:10:03,150 Now you'll see here that it seems like I've glossed over some things. 150 00:10:03,150 --> 00:10:06,410 You might say to yourself, well, what happened to the Trojan horse? 151 00:10:06,410 --> 00:10:11,570 There's stories that we have about Odysseus and his involvement in the war. 152 00:10:11,570 --> 00:10:14,418 There's other kinds of stratagems that come in. 153 00:10:14,418 --> 00:10:17,605 It's a ten-year war and we've only talked about one little part of it. 154 00:10:17,605 --> 00:10:23,370 Well, it's true Homer's Iliad focuses on only a very short period of time. 155 00:10:23,370 --> 00:10:27,520 Most of the epic has to do with just three days of action out on the battlefield. 156 00:10:27,520 --> 00:10:31,620 And it does not talk about a synoptic overview of the whole Trojan War. 157 00:10:31,620 --> 00:10:37,580 Instead, that filling in of the story comes from other epic poets 158 00:10:37,580 --> 00:10:44,160 around Homer who dig into this story and start to tell the further pieces of it. 159 00:10:44,160 --> 00:10:46,280 And in fact there's a back story. 160 00:10:46,280 --> 00:10:48,700 We're going to find in myth there's always a back story. 161 00:10:48,700 --> 00:10:51,530 And if you want to use the language of contemporary cinema, we're talking about, 162 00:10:51,530 --> 00:10:56,800 you know, prequels that, that show up after the kind of main one appears. 163 00:10:56,800 --> 00:11:00,740 And may have already been, there have been versions of prequels that were floating 164 00:11:00,740 --> 00:11:05,780 around before Homer, but much of the legend that we know starts to fill 165 00:11:05,780 --> 00:11:10,110 in the blanks after a great poet like Homer makes his or her statement. 166 00:11:10,110 --> 00:11:14,710 Then the others come in round and fill in all the details that need to be filled in. 167 00:11:14,710 --> 00:11:18,280 For example, how in the world did this whole Trojan War start? 168 00:11:18,280 --> 00:11:21,110 Well, we wind up with a, a legend that actually predates Homer. 169 00:11:21,110 --> 00:11:24,816 It gets encoded in his epic, but it's not one that he concentrates on. 170 00:11:24,816 --> 00:11:26,290 There is this figure, Paris. 171 00:11:26,290 --> 00:11:31,470 You'll know him from the previous slide as a prince and a, a son of Priam. 172 00:11:31,470 --> 00:11:34,050 He's also a little bit of an embarrassment. 173 00:11:34,050 --> 00:11:35,930 He's not such a great warrior. 174 00:11:35,930 --> 00:11:40,140 He's more of a master of the arts of love than he is of the arts of war. 175 00:11:40,140 --> 00:11:43,430 And in fact, he goes over and decides that it would be the right thing for 176 00:11:43,430 --> 00:11:47,200 him to do to steal the wife of Menelaus. 177 00:11:47,200 --> 00:11:49,350 The wife of Menelaus just happens to be Helen, 178 00:11:49,350 --> 00:11:51,610 who's the most beautiful woman in the world. 179 00:11:51,610 --> 00:11:55,700 And when he does that, he upsets the greatest of the Greek generals, Agamemnon, 180 00:11:55,700 --> 00:11:58,920 who just so happens to be the brother of Menelaus. 181 00:11:58,920 --> 00:12:03,380 When Paris kidnaps Helen and takes her back to Troy, well, 182 00:12:03,380 --> 00:12:04,890 that's the end of things. 183 00:12:04,890 --> 00:12:07,080 Off we go into the Trojan War. 184 00:12:07,080 --> 00:12:12,740 The shame that is visited on Menelaus is visited by proxy on his brother Agamemnon, 185 00:12:12,740 --> 00:12:15,557 and Agamemnon at that time calls in all of his chits. 186 00:12:15,557 --> 00:12:20,599 He's the most powerful of the Greek kings of the day, pulls in all of his chits and 187 00:12:20,599 --> 00:12:24,610 says to all of his local fellow leaders that it's time for 188 00:12:24,610 --> 00:12:27,170 us to go clobber those Trojans. 189 00:12:27,170 --> 00:12:27,940 And off they go. 190 00:12:29,370 --> 00:12:31,190 Helen, in case you may well have heard this, 191 00:12:31,190 --> 00:12:33,860 is indeed the face that launched a thousand ships. 192 00:12:33,860 --> 00:12:38,306 A medieval rendering of what one of these ships might have looked like. 193 00:12:38,306 --> 00:12:38,990 Pretty good actually. 194 00:12:38,990 --> 00:12:43,070 We've got archeological evidence that confirms what a Greek war ship looks like, 195 00:12:43,070 --> 00:12:44,316 and it's not so bad. 196 00:12:44,316 --> 00:12:48,280 And so Helen is the face that launches a thousand ships. 197 00:12:48,280 --> 00:12:53,860 In the legend that's the number of ships that are needed to contain the grandeur, 198 00:12:53,860 --> 00:12:56,240 the hugeness of Agamemnon's army. 199 00:12:56,240 --> 00:12:59,560 Thanks to parts of The Iliad, the detail, all of the people that are involved, 200 00:12:59,560 --> 00:13:01,840 the famous catalogue of ships of The Iliad, 201 00:13:01,840 --> 00:13:06,860 we can count up roughly the number of people involved and it's about 100,000. 202 00:13:06,860 --> 00:13:10,650 Homer's claim is that an army of 100,000 leaves the shores of Greece and 203 00:13:10,650 --> 00:13:14,250 goes over to Troy to do the dirty work over there. 204 00:13:14,250 --> 00:13:18,435 Now some people then walk into the picture, those interested in myth, and 205 00:13:18,435 --> 00:13:19,210 say, well, wait a minute! 206 00:13:19,210 --> 00:13:21,260 There must be a back story to this one. 207 00:13:21,260 --> 00:13:26,830 How is it that Menelaus lost his bride Helen to this guy Paris? 208 00:13:26,830 --> 00:13:28,710 Why did Paris think it was okay to go over and 209 00:13:28,710 --> 00:13:33,092 steal the wife of the brother of the greatest of the Greeks? 210 00:13:33,092 --> 00:13:37,370 Well, a story starts to percolate in to fill in that kind of question and 211 00:13:37,370 --> 00:13:41,140 we have a story about the Apple of Discord. 212 00:13:41,140 --> 00:13:42,760 Some of you all will have heard this. 213 00:13:42,760 --> 00:13:46,410 You can see here in a, a lovely painting giving us the whole background. 214 00:13:46,410 --> 00:13:48,980 Peleus and Thetis have a wedding. 215 00:13:48,980 --> 00:13:56,800 Peleus is a great mortal a well-known and prominent man. 216 00:13:56,800 --> 00:14:00,560 He actually gets to have a wedding to a goddess, Thetis. 217 00:14:00,560 --> 00:14:02,430 And the two of them get together, Peleus and 218 00:14:02,430 --> 00:14:07,470 Thetis and when they do, they have a party and they invite everybody. 219 00:14:07,470 --> 00:14:10,580 This is one of those times when gods and humans could actually live face to face, 220 00:14:10,580 --> 00:14:11,950 so the gods came, 221 00:14:11,950 --> 00:14:16,450 the humans came, and they all had a great party together in this very early time. 222 00:14:16,450 --> 00:14:20,770 Peleus and Thetis, all are invited except this goddess, Eris. 223 00:14:20,770 --> 00:14:26,606 Who is the god of discord, who is upset about not being invited. 224 00:14:26,606 --> 00:14:31,115 She is not allowed to come, so she decides to take an apple and inscribe on it 225 00:14:31,115 --> 00:14:35,354 a single Greek word that translates into the English for the fairest. 226 00:14:35,354 --> 00:14:38,367 Tosses it into the middle of the wedding and Athena, 227 00:14:38,367 --> 00:14:42,380 Hera and Aphrodite instantly think the apple must be for them. 228 00:14:42,380 --> 00:14:43,610 They start to argue. 229 00:14:43,610 --> 00:14:46,990 They look around and say, here is a human. 230 00:14:46,990 --> 00:14:49,690 Let's make him solve the dilemma for us. 231 00:14:49,690 --> 00:14:50,990 Paris agrees. 232 00:14:50,990 --> 00:14:52,330 Again, not a very smart thing to do. 233 00:14:52,330 --> 00:14:55,910 A more clever man would have probably put off that judgment on someone else. 234 00:14:55,910 --> 00:15:00,750 And Paris makes his judgment, his famous judgment, saying that well, 235 00:15:00,750 --> 00:15:04,010 looking at the three of you, yes, you're all beautiful. 236 00:15:04,010 --> 00:15:06,790 Hera, you have offered me great power across the earth. 237 00:15:06,790 --> 00:15:08,980 Athena, you've offered me infinite wisdom. 238 00:15:08,980 --> 00:15:13,290 Aphrodite, though, you've offered me the most beautiful woman in the world, and 239 00:15:13,290 --> 00:15:17,080 I'm going to make you now the winner of this apple, and you need to 240 00:15:17,080 --> 00:15:20,470 give me my prize, which is going to be the most beautiful woman in the world. 241 00:15:20,470 --> 00:15:24,530 So at that point, Paris thinks Helen's all mine. 242 00:15:24,530 --> 00:15:27,200 Off he goes in starting this whole thing off. 243 00:15:27,200 --> 00:15:29,990 So the whole Trojan War, 244 00:15:29,990 --> 00:15:35,565 the grandeur of this magnificent event all boils down to an affair of the heart. 245 00:15:35,565 --> 00:15:38,760 A small thing that 246 00:15:38,760 --> 00:15:42,334 you can imagine the heartstrings being plucked of one human being. 247 00:15:42,334 --> 00:15:47,423 That's the passion that moves this whole grandeur that 248 00:15:47,423 --> 00:15:52,599 winds up being exhibited in war rage that really is definitive 249 00:15:52,599 --> 00:15:57,975 of what the Greek experience is going to be of their mythic past.