1 00:00:04,083 --> 00:00:09,028 So we leave our abode with Circe and make our way out into the wider world. 2 00:00:09,046 --> 00:00:13,045 She's given us instructions. We're going to be careful to bury Elpenor, 3 00:00:13,045 --> 00:00:17,033 of course, because of what we learned in the in the underworld. 4 00:00:17,033 --> 00:00:22,006 And we're also going to watch out for what we see when we run into the sirens and the 5 00:00:22,006 --> 00:00:24,943 Scylla and Charybdis. And we're going to be careful when we run 6 00:00:24,943 --> 00:00:29,059 in to the cattle of the sun. All of these things are information that 7 00:00:29,059 --> 00:00:33,036 Odysseus has gathered. It's making him a little bit better able 8 00:00:33,036 --> 00:00:37,046 to be prepared for, be ready to react to the stuff that he runs in to. 9 00:00:37,064 --> 00:00:42,327 Sirens, of course, are a wonderful short episode that gives us a start in this next 10 00:00:42,327 --> 00:00:47,859 sequence of stories in this very famous phase representation from the British 11 00:00:47,859 --> 00:00:51,048 museum, thanks British museum for the use of this. 12 00:00:51,250 --> 00:00:56,038 We've paid copyrights to all kinds of people for this, and some were easier to 13 00:00:56,038 --> 00:01:00,888 get than others we're very glad to be able to have this image in the and of course 14 00:01:00,888 --> 00:01:05,834 it's a wonderful image with Odysseus there, you can see him strapped to his 15 00:01:05,834 --> 00:01:11,030 mast his men are busy rowing impervious to the beautiful sounds that are coming at 16 00:01:11,030 --> 00:01:16,686 them from these figures that this artist has chosen to represent as being in 17 00:01:16,686 --> 00:01:21,664 position on either side of the vessel, and then one swooping down, right, with 18 00:01:21,664 --> 00:01:27,082 feathers galore, right next to Odysseus. And you can see him having this amazing 19 00:01:27,082 --> 00:01:33,052 sense of being glued to his mast but still some kind of craning that he's doing 20 00:01:33,052 --> 00:01:37,023 towards this beautiful sound. So what do those sirens sing? 21 00:01:37,023 --> 00:01:41,059 Well, in fact, Homer tells us. And why don't we take a quick minute and 22 00:01:41,059 --> 00:01:45,037 see what it is that is the siren song. Here's what they say. 23 00:01:45,037 --> 00:01:48,095 Come closer, famous Odysseus, Archaea's pride and glory. 24 00:01:48,095 --> 00:01:52,047 Moor your ship on our coast so you can hear our song. 25 00:01:52,047 --> 00:01:57,085 Never has any sailor passed our shores in his black craft until he has heard the 26 00:01:57,085 --> 00:02:03,036 honeyed voices pouring from our lips, and once he hears to his hearts content, sails 27 00:02:03,036 --> 00:02:07,001 on a wiser man. We know all the pains of the Greeks and 28 00:02:07,001 --> 00:02:12,025 Trojans, once endured on the spreading plain of troy when the gods willed it so. 29 00:02:12,025 --> 00:02:17,066 All that comes to pass on the fertile earth, we know it all. 30 00:02:17,066 --> 00:02:22,760 So, the sirens know everything. Odysseus is now listening to this 31 00:02:23,053 --> 00:02:29,013 melodious song where presumably everything is being sung to him. 32 00:02:29,013 --> 00:02:35,702 So, this man who's so thirsty for knowledge who is always seeking out things 33 00:02:35,702 --> 00:02:43,289 that are strange, new restless in his curiosity has now presumably achieved in 34 00:02:43,289 --> 00:02:47,043 hearing the siren's song knowledge of it all. 35 00:02:47,067 --> 00:02:52,035 Wouldn't that be amazing? No one else heard such a thing. 36 00:02:52,035 --> 00:02:56,063 We can't verify that Odysseus does indeed know it all. 37 00:02:56,323 --> 00:03:01,063 But he did indeed figure out a way to hear the siren's song. 38 00:03:01,343 --> 00:03:08,412 Next stop they have to make somehow thread the needle between two awful things. 39 00:03:08,412 --> 00:03:13,703 The, the Scylla and Charybdis. Here the Scylla is represented as Homer 40 00:03:13,703 --> 00:03:20,217 talks about a, a, a monstrous woman with horrible mouths and this kind of snakelike 41 00:03:20,217 --> 00:03:23,930 underneath. That these horrible mouths going, they can 42 00:03:23,930 --> 00:03:26,887 chomp on the men. They're hungry for them. 43 00:03:26,887 --> 00:03:33,404 Now Odysseus in making his way through the Scylla and the Charybdis, he has some 44 00:03:33,672 --> 00:03:40,255 advice that he relies on from Searcy, but he also faces just kind of awful 45 00:03:40,255 --> 00:03:43,678 situation. There is no way he's gonna get through 46 00:03:43,678 --> 00:03:48,549 here without losing some people. If he goes too close to Charybdis, he is 47 00:03:48,549 --> 00:03:53,698 going to lose all his men, so he decides. To do the opposite and get a little too 48 00:03:53,698 --> 00:03:57,157 close to the Scylla. And when he gets too close to the Scylla, 49 00:03:57,157 --> 00:04:04,321 he knows he's going to lose some men. This is leading us to universal law number 50 00:04:04,321 --> 00:04:10,501 four in the class, which is that, usually making leadership decisions means choosing 51 00:04:10,501 --> 00:04:14,915 between two bad things. Usually making leadership decisions means 52 00:04:14,915 --> 00:04:20,156 choosing between two bad things. And when a person's put into a position of 53 00:04:20,156 --> 00:04:25,992 leadership, they have to make those calls. Now you can, you can see that there's a 54 00:04:25,992 --> 00:04:31,905 logic to what Odysseus has decided to do, but in being the decider here, he is the 55 00:04:31,905 --> 00:04:38,155 one who decides that some of his men are going to die, and they get eaten by this 56 00:04:38,589 --> 00:04:43,139 creature right here. Awful kind of thing he has to run into. 57 00:04:43,139 --> 00:04:48,678 So, this is now having known all things, having made the tough call that is 58 00:04:48,678 --> 00:04:55,377 required for him to get his ship through intact through these awful, too awful 59 00:04:55,377 --> 00:05:00,072 things, runs into his final adventure. His cattle of the sun. 60 00:05:00,297 --> 00:05:06,041 He is told to steer clear of this they want to make sure that they stay away from 61 00:05:06,041 --> 00:05:11,093 this awful potential problem but Odysseus's men prevail and they land on 62 00:05:11,093 --> 00:05:17,059 the cattle of the sun, when the winds blow in the wrong direction they're stuck and 63 00:05:17,059 --> 00:05:22,000 they are stuck without food. Now we need to look a little bit about 64 00:05:22,000 --> 00:05:25,028 cattle and the role they played in ancient Greece. 65 00:05:25,219 --> 00:05:28,077 The first thing we should talk about is sacrifice. 66 00:05:28,077 --> 00:05:32,870 Cattle are what we do when we want to give a gift to the gods. 67 00:05:32,870 --> 00:05:39,244 Cattle are the most luscious and most appropriate kind of gift a person can 68 00:05:39,497 --> 00:05:46,712 give, and therefore they're the thing that you and I as human beings can muster that 69 00:05:46,712 --> 00:05:53,047 is grand enough to be a gift to the gods. Greeks sacrifice other things too, if 70 00:05:53,047 --> 00:05:59,319 they're less prominent, if they're less wealthy it's perfectly fine to sacrifice a 71 00:05:59,319 --> 00:06:03,010 pig to the gods or a chicken or whatever you have around. 72 00:06:03,010 --> 00:06:08,078 They don't usually sacrifice fish but they do sacrifice these normal kind of eating 73 00:06:08,078 --> 00:06:14,002 animals after the god gets the sacrifice, human beings usually partake of, of the 74 00:06:14,002 --> 00:06:18,534 killed animal and eat the flesh. And that's understood as a kind of share a 75 00:06:18,534 --> 00:06:22,075 meal with the god. The gods usually only want just the smoke, 76 00:06:22,075 --> 00:06:27,078 and a few other things we'll learn about this when we read some pieces of Heisedon 77 00:06:27,078 --> 00:06:30,783 Prometheus story. But mostly what they want is the smoke and 78 00:06:30,783 --> 00:06:35,066 then you and I eat the meat. Well if you're a really wealthy person the 79 00:06:35,066 --> 00:06:40,335 most appropriate sacrifice you can give is you're going to be able to afford the most 80 00:06:40,335 --> 00:06:45,593 appropriate sacrifice which is cattle, a gods love cow meat and that's something 81 00:06:45,593 --> 00:06:51,395 that the Greeks, spent a lot of time trying to figure out how to get more of. 82 00:06:51,395 --> 00:06:57,683 They were, in fact, in certain ways almost obsessed with this little creature down 83 00:06:57,683 --> 00:07:01,099 here. They were fascinated by cows, cattle, oxen 84 00:07:01,305 --> 00:07:06,449 and they, we, we find these representations, of cattle in prominent 85 00:07:06,449 --> 00:07:11,020 places. In the artistic record we see, for example 86 00:07:11,326 --> 00:07:18,403 these, these, beautiful golden cups that were recovered at the site of Vaphio in 87 00:07:18,403 --> 00:07:22,032 southern Greece their representative of a very old time. 88 00:07:22,032 --> 00:07:25,028 The cups probably date from around 1500 B.C.E. 89 00:07:25,028 --> 00:07:30,042 In other words, well into you know, well into the past, far enough to be in the 90 00:07:30,042 --> 00:07:34,021 time that Homer is representing, and even earlier than that. 91 00:07:34,233 --> 00:07:38,631 We see examples in artistic representations from this time, examples 92 00:07:38,631 --> 00:07:43,445 on these Vaphio cups, and then also, on the island of Crete, and in other 93 00:07:43,445 --> 00:07:49,025 archaeological finds from the Mycenaean and Minoan period, known as a high heroic 94 00:07:49,025 --> 00:07:55,687 age, where bulls are this kind of central subject matter for the most lavish 95 00:07:55,687 --> 00:07:59,385 beautiful artistic representations we can find. 96 00:07:59,592 --> 00:08:05,688 This is true in Fresco's, in wall paintings, and here in these amazing cups 97 00:08:05,688 --> 00:08:12,156 made of gold, so already a luxury item. What's the appropriate decoration for a 98 00:08:12,156 --> 00:08:16,619 luxury item? A similarly luxurious mode of food, here 99 00:08:16,619 --> 00:08:23,249 doing wonderful dances around impaling poor human beings at the time they're 100 00:08:23,249 --> 00:08:29,499 doing it, but the, the interest in these cattle as shown through these artistic 101 00:08:29,499 --> 00:08:33,735 representation was almost borders on a kind of obsession. 102 00:08:33,735 --> 00:08:39,677 Now there's further discussion to be had about the social and cultural role of 103 00:08:39,677 --> 00:08:42,538 meat. We've talked a little about it's religious 104 00:08:42,538 --> 00:08:48,081 significance and a little about it's artistic representations but also, in it's 105 00:08:48,081 --> 00:08:54,289 social and cultural dimension. Meat especially cattle meat is extremely 106 00:08:54,289 --> 00:08:58,050 important. Eating beef is an experience, for those 107 00:08:58,050 --> 00:09:01,666 who have had it of overwhelmingly rich protein. 108 00:09:01,892 --> 00:09:08,098 There is just no question that what is being ingested into a body that's eating 109 00:09:08,098 --> 00:09:14,036 meat is scratching some kind of itch. Now, vegetarians and those that for 110 00:09:14,036 --> 00:09:20,523 whatever reason don't eat meat may poo, poo this and yet there is enough anecdotal 111 00:09:20,523 --> 00:09:26,401 evidence out there of the kind of rapturous effect that the ating of 112 00:09:26,401 --> 00:09:33,287 high-protein food in does to people for us to recognize that having a strongly, super 113 00:09:33,287 --> 00:09:38,572 hyper protein-rich food source is something that, that sometimes find at 114 00:09:38,572 --> 00:09:43,277 least sometimes find thrilling. Beef is the most expensive form of this 115 00:09:43,277 --> 00:09:46,661 super rich protein to be found in antiquity. 116 00:09:46,661 --> 00:09:51,898 Only the most aristocratic and most wealthy people could have afforded it. 117 00:09:51,898 --> 00:09:56,819 It was the luxury food item. Remember what happens when Telemachus goes 118 00:09:56,819 --> 00:10:00,901 to see Nestor and there's this demonstration of wealth. 119 00:10:00,901 --> 00:10:05,859 How is that wealth demonstrated when we first arrive on the shore? 120 00:10:05,859 --> 00:10:10,578 81 bulls are being sacrificed. That's an extraordinarily conspicuous 121 00:10:10,766 --> 00:10:15,193 consumption of meat. Now, in addition to talking about just the 122 00:10:15,193 --> 00:10:20,892 meat itself and maybe the experience of, of eating it we should also make reference 123 00:10:20,892 --> 00:10:26,711 to what it takes to raise cattle. Most ancient temple sights where cattle 124 00:10:26,711 --> 00:10:29,348 are being slaughtered in a kind of regular way. 125 00:10:29,348 --> 00:10:34,550 Also, needed to control huge lands around them in order to raise the meat that they 126 00:10:34,550 --> 00:10:39,865 needed to sacrifice at the temple sight. For example, you've, example the famous 127 00:10:39,865 --> 00:10:45,093 temple sight of Delphi required control of thirteen square kilometers in order to 128 00:10:45,093 --> 00:10:50,163 provide enough grazing land for the cattle that they needed to raise to slaughter at 129 00:10:50,163 --> 00:10:53,940 that temple sight. So, just in order to have cattle a person 130 00:10:53,940 --> 00:10:58,636 needs to have control of land. This is not true of every single food 131 00:10:58,636 --> 00:11:01,534 source. Oh, but it is definitely true of cattle. 132 00:11:01,534 --> 00:11:07,189 So another impediment to just running into this in, in a usual way, with any person 133 00:11:07,189 --> 00:11:12,055 that you might run into on the street is, is the land required to do it. 134 00:11:12,055 --> 00:11:16,601 It is something that is specifically for very wealthy people. 135 00:11:16,601 --> 00:11:23,150 Now when we do run into that this source of extremely attractive protein on the 136 00:11:23,150 --> 00:11:29,231 Cattle, the Island of the Cattle of the Sun, we might ask ourselves well my 137 00:11:29,231 --> 00:11:35,223 goodness these poor starving men. Here are these glistening examples of the 138 00:11:35,223 --> 00:11:41,592 most luxurious kind of foods Greeks can imagine and yet these men are prohibited 139 00:11:41,592 --> 00:11:45,910 from eating them. Now why in the world would a god be so 140 00:11:45,910 --> 00:11:53,020 cruel to prohibit them from eating this? Who in the world could prevent this kind 141 00:11:53,020 --> 00:11:59,026 of thing from happening? Well, there's an important declaration 142 00:11:59,026 --> 00:12:04,799 that has been made. Helios has declared that these cattle are 143 00:12:04,799 --> 00:12:09,487 scared to him. When Helios declares these cattle are 144 00:12:09,487 --> 00:12:16,188 sacred to him, he immediately takes them out of being a normal, authorized food 145 00:12:16,188 --> 00:12:21,093 source for human beings. When he takes them out of being a normal, 146 00:12:21,093 --> 00:12:25,042 authorized food source for being human beings. 147 00:12:25,042 --> 00:12:31,050 When Odysseus' men cross that line, what they've done is much more than eat some 148 00:12:31,050 --> 00:12:34,091 cows. What they've done is eat something that 149 00:12:34,091 --> 00:12:39,526 they've been told, by a religious authority counts not as food. 150 00:12:39,526 --> 00:12:45,771 They have crossed very strong and nearly indelible line in most all cultural 151 00:12:45,771 --> 00:12:52,076 formations between what counts as being something authorized to eat and what is 152 00:12:52,076 --> 00:12:58,159 something that is not authorized to eat. When they do that, they've committed a 153 00:12:58,159 --> 00:13:04,330 very grave crime indeed. We're going talk about some of the details 154 00:13:04,330 --> 00:13:09,067 of what this crime is all about in upcoming next segment.