1 00:00:04,820 --> 00:00:09,259 When we get to Ovid's treatment of the Trojan War, we're moving into a different 2 00:00:09,259 --> 00:00:12,562 kind of genre. we're moving in from an epic treatment of 3 00:00:12,562 --> 00:00:17,380 the Trojan War that we've seen in seen in Homer and we've seen in Virgil, into 4 00:00:17,380 --> 00:00:21,820 something that we might call a mock epic. There's something different happening in 5 00:00:21,820 --> 00:00:25,447 Ovid's treatment of this. And he's having fun with us all the way 6 00:00:25,447 --> 00:00:28,587 through this story. If as you're reading, you find yourself 7 00:00:28,587 --> 00:00:32,756 on this long digression that seems to indenture and you're not sure what, 8 00:00:32,756 --> 00:00:36,004 how in the world that's related to the main action in the Trojan War. You're on 9 00:00:36,004 --> 00:00:40,072 to it, you've got it right. Ovid is bringing us all off into parts of 10 00:00:40,072 --> 00:00:43,056 the, the story that don't really seem quite to fit. 11 00:00:43,056 --> 00:00:47,948 we'll talk about what his message is in closing, but let's take, try to get a 12 00:00:47,948 --> 00:00:51,588 grip on what's happening in Ovid's version of the Trojan War. 13 00:00:51,588 --> 00:00:54,631 first of all, let's just do a thought experiment. 14 00:00:54,631 --> 00:00:59,404 Imagine a documentary covering World War II from the middle last century. 15 00:00:59,404 --> 00:01:04,590 And if in, imagine in that documentary that there's no mention at all of D-Day, 16 00:01:04,590 --> 00:01:07,550 there's also hardly any battle scenes at all. In fact, 17 00:01:07,550 --> 00:01:12,074 it's there's one though long bloody kind of battle-ish scene when you've got 18 00:01:12,074 --> 00:01:15,705 general George Patton, who fights someone you never heard of. 19 00:01:15,705 --> 00:01:20,173 He's got a really, he has a really hard time of it, and then he eventually pushes 20 00:01:20,173 --> 00:01:24,471 a guy over and then just strangles him and smashes him with his club. 21 00:01:24,471 --> 00:01:29,779 there's an older colonel who goes off on a long digression and starts prattling on 22 00:01:29,779 --> 00:01:34,964 and on and on, about a time when he was a young guy, and there was a pack of bears 23 00:01:34,964 --> 00:01:39,470 that came along, and they had to have long fight to fight off the pack of 24 00:01:39,470 --> 00:01:42,371 bears. And the story takes up nearly a third of 25 00:01:42,371 --> 00:01:47,452 the documentary that treats World War II, some old guy talking about when he was 26 00:01:47,452 --> 00:01:50,160 young and they fought off a pack of bears. 27 00:01:50,160 --> 00:01:52,983 That's like a third of the coverage of World War II. 28 00:01:52,983 --> 00:01:57,327 then on the Allied side, two top officers argue over who gets to keep General 29 00:01:57,327 --> 00:02:01,345 George Patton's pearl-handled pistols. Let's just say for sake of argument, 30 00:02:01,345 --> 00:02:05,689 Patton gets killed in the middle of the action and he's got these pearl-handled 31 00:02:05,689 --> 00:02:09,979 pistols, and the two great officers from the Allied side fight over who gets to 32 00:02:09,979 --> 00:02:12,694 keep them. the documentary, documentary mentions 33 00:02:12,694 --> 00:02:16,278 that the Axis countries fall, and then, we take a long look at the 34 00:02:16,278 --> 00:02:20,567 plight of the Japanese Emperor's family and all the suffering that happens, and 35 00:02:20,567 --> 00:02:23,500 we talk about how the Allies savagely firebombed Tokyo. 36 00:02:23,500 --> 00:02:26,455 And that will be the end of the treatment of World War II. 37 00:02:26,455 --> 00:02:29,967 You might say to yourself, well, that's weird, and it's focusing on certain 38 00:02:29,967 --> 00:02:32,132 pieces and making them seem really important. 39 00:02:32,132 --> 00:02:34,922 What's with that whole digression about the pack of bears? 40 00:02:34,922 --> 00:02:38,050 And why is that in there? that's the same kind of reaction you 41 00:02:38,050 --> 00:02:41,502 probably should have to Ovid's treatment of the Trojan War. 42 00:02:41,502 --> 00:02:46,126 Let's see a look at an outline of the main action as it happens, and then, we 43 00:02:46,126 --> 00:02:50,866 will try to figure out what he is up to. We've got a departure for Troy and in 44 00:02:50,866 --> 00:02:55,373 that departure we hear about Iphigenia, but, in Ovid's version, she is saved at 45 00:02:55,373 --> 00:02:58,650 the last minute. Diana substitutes a deer instead of her, 46 00:02:58,650 --> 00:03:03,215 there's a, change that happens. and then, we jump off and we hear about 47 00:03:03,215 --> 00:03:06,083 Achilles. The great Greek warrior, Achilles, he's a 48 00:03:06,083 --> 00:03:09,419 killing machine in Homer. He's extraordinarily good at it. 49 00:03:09,419 --> 00:03:13,833 He carries a tough eh, carries it in a way that makes it clear it's a tough 50 00:03:13,833 --> 00:03:17,302 burden for him to shoulder, but he's he knows what he's doing. 51 00:03:17,302 --> 00:03:21,327 He's kind of an elegant killer. in, in the scene that Ovid chooses to 52 00:03:21,327 --> 00:03:26,034 pull out is Achilles against Cygnus. And if you haven't heard of Cygnus as a 53 00:03:26,034 --> 00:03:29,997 famous warrior, well, it's because Cygnus is not a famous warrior. 54 00:03:29,997 --> 00:03:33,527 It's a small end battle. and we've got Achilles compared to a 55 00:03:33,527 --> 00:03:36,438 bull. There's that rich simile that talks about 56 00:03:36,438 --> 00:03:39,039 him as a bull. how does that make him look? 57 00:03:39,039 --> 00:03:43,746 And then we've got in the end, he just takes Cygnus and beats his face in with a 58 00:03:43,746 --> 00:03:46,296 shield, then finally he chokes him to death. 59 00:03:46,296 --> 00:03:50,470 Well, this is not elegant killing. It's not the kind of thing that Homer 60 00:03:50,470 --> 00:03:52,587 talks about. Achilles is able to use you know, sharp, 61 00:03:52,587 --> 00:03:58,186 [COUGH] bronze weapons to take the life of other people in dramatically efficient 62 00:03:58,186 --> 00:04:00,968 ways. I mean, here is an inefficient, cloddish, 63 00:04:00,968 --> 00:04:06,594 cumbersome, bull-like overwhelming brute force, using brute force of one guy 64 00:04:06,594 --> 00:04:11,272 against the not very famous guy. That doesn't seem very glorious, glorious or 65 00:04:11,272 --> 00:04:13,927 heroic. Then we get the battle of the Lapiths and 66 00:04:13,927 --> 00:04:18,479 the Centaurs. This is that thing that takes like, about a third of Ovid's 67 00:04:18,479 --> 00:04:22,205 recounting of the war at Troy focuses in on this. 68 00:04:22,205 --> 00:04:27,810 How do we get on to this topic? And if you don't remember that's probably 69 00:04:27,810 --> 00:04:32,480 just about fine. you are catching that Ovid has only a 70 00:04:32,480 --> 00:04:37,120 very tangential relation between this whole thing and and the Trojan War. 71 00:04:37,120 --> 00:04:41,730 In fact, it comes out of Nestor's mouth. And Nestor is traditionally a guy who 72 00:04:41,730 --> 00:04:45,023 likes to talk. He's an old man and he likes to hear his 73 00:04:45,023 --> 00:04:48,602 own voice as old people do. As I get older, I'm finding that that's 74 00:04:48,602 --> 00:04:50,967 true. My voice sounds more and more mellifluous 75 00:04:50,967 --> 00:04:53,734 as the years go by. How does Nestor get on the topic of 76 00:04:53,734 --> 00:04:57,608 telling everyone who, oh, you know, gory detail about the battle of the Lapiths 77 00:04:57,608 --> 00:05:01,131 and the Centaurs? Well, he just decides he's, wants to talk 78 00:05:01,131 --> 00:05:04,451 about Phineas. and this Phineas was once a woman and he 79 00:05:04,451 --> 00:05:08,275 wished he could be turned into a man to avoid being raped again and dah, dah, 80 00:05:08,275 --> 00:05:11,395 dah, dah, dah, dah, dah, dah, dah. And then all of a sudden, we start 81 00:05:11,395 --> 00:05:15,534 hearing about him as a Lapith and how they fought off the Centaurs. 82 00:05:15,534 --> 00:05:19,765 Otherwise, there's really no connection. Nestor's just kind of prattling. 83 00:05:19,765 --> 00:05:24,855 and all of a sudden we jump on into this long battle-like scene where Lapiths, who 84 00:05:24,855 --> 00:05:29,455 we don't necessarily care that much about, are killing Centaurs who we care 85 00:05:29,455 --> 00:05:33,257 nothing about. what we've got in the way he frames 86 00:05:33,257 --> 00:05:36,139 things, the way Ovid frames things is a kind of 87 00:05:36,139 --> 00:05:40,562 triumph of gruesomeness and gore for gore's sake over heroism. 88 00:05:40,562 --> 00:05:46,439 he focuses in on these nasty beasts getting ripped apart and there's gory 89 00:05:46,439 --> 00:05:51,434 detail after gory detail. Homer himself spends a lot of time with 90 00:05:51,434 --> 00:05:54,709 gory detail, but, and by contrast, in most of the cases 91 00:05:54,709 --> 00:05:58,738 that Homer does that, we care about the person that's getting ripped up. 92 00:05:58,738 --> 00:06:03,163 Here, the Centaurs, they play a role that's kind of like the role that zombies 93 00:06:03,163 --> 00:06:07,362 play in contemporary horror movies. Zombies are there in order to just get 94 00:06:07,362 --> 00:06:11,844 ripped up and you watch their green gooey gore blood splatter everywhere. the 95 00:06:11,844 --> 00:06:16,576 Centaurs are a little bit like that, you're just going to watch them get sort 96 00:06:16,576 --> 00:06:20,447 of sliced to bits and you say, oh, well, look at that, that's sort of exciting. 97 00:06:20,447 --> 00:06:25,609 so a famous case of old they're debauched creatures, these Centaurs, the men, 98 00:06:25,609 --> 00:06:29,910 they're man and beast together. We don't really admire them. What we've 99 00:06:29,910 --> 00:06:34,911 got instead of a grand, heroic scene with people on one side and people on another 100 00:06:34,911 --> 00:06:38,483 fighting over a great cause, we've got gore for gore's sake. 101 00:06:38,483 --> 00:06:42,176 It's just gruesomeness. and then, we jump back and all of a 102 00:06:42,176 --> 00:06:46,738 sudden get back to our digressive moment of [INAUDIBLE] and oh, yeah, he was there 103 00:06:46,738 --> 00:06:48,098 too. We hear about that. 104 00:06:48,098 --> 00:06:51,350 Oh, okay. All of a sudden Ovid has brought us 105 00:06:51,350 --> 00:06:55,843 through this long gory detail that doesn't really have much at all to do 106 00:06:55,843 --> 00:06:59,450 with the Trojan War, then we hear about the death of Achilles. 107 00:06:59,450 --> 00:07:03,814 Yes indeed, we just hear about it, he dies. And the, the way he dies is, is by 108 00:07:03,814 --> 00:07:08,765 a cheap shot from a peanut gallery. [COUGH] you've got Paris who is not very, 109 00:07:08,765 --> 00:07:13,586 of all of the Trojan princes, Paris is not the greatest of warriors and he 110 00:07:13,586 --> 00:07:18,342 fights with bow and arrow, that's never coded as being a very brave thing. 111 00:07:18,342 --> 00:07:23,553 Bow and arrow fighters fight from far away and they kind of ping and then they 112 00:07:23,553 --> 00:07:26,485 run off. well, so this arrow flies and it hits 113 00:07:26,485 --> 00:07:31,696 Achilles and poor Achilles who's depicted here on this vase dead Achilles being 114 00:07:31,696 --> 00:07:35,713 dragged along, he gets pushed aside. But it's just a small, tiny mention. 115 00:07:35,713 --> 00:07:39,461 It's not as though there's anything, grand and grandiose that has happened. 116 00:07:39,461 --> 00:07:43,361 in our next lecture, we'll look at another piece of how this Trojan war is 117 00:07:43,361 --> 00:07:45,590 framed. After Achilles is dead, there's going to 118 00:07:45,590 --> 00:07:47,920 be an argument over who gets to keep his arms.