1
00:00:04,800 --> 00:00:10,638
There is a famous struggle that emerges 
out of mythological tradition after 

2
00:00:10,638 --> 00:00:14,596
Achilles is killed tragically. 
he has these heroic arms. 

3
00:00:14,596 --> 00:00:17,831
They're divine. 
Whoever has them is going to have an 

4
00:00:17,831 --> 00:00:23,377
impenetrable, except for that who's 
healed, an impenetrable shield around 

5
00:00:23,377 --> 00:00:26,348
them. 
So, of course, these are hot property and 

6
00:00:26,348 --> 00:00:31,101
the Greek heroes think, each of them, 
thinks they should have the arms of 

7
00:00:31,101 --> 00:00:34,732
Achilles. 
Well, the two that emerge as the best 

8
00:00:34,732 --> 00:00:40,212
best candidates to get the arms of 
Achilles are Ajax and Odysseus known as 

9
00:00:40,212 --> 00:00:44,239
Ulysses in our treatment here. 
So, we have Ajax versus Ulysses. 

10
00:00:44,239 --> 00:00:48,339
And famously in the tradition, 
the two of them have a verbal battle. 

11
00:00:48,339 --> 00:00:51,768
they have a verbal struggle over who 
should have the arms. 

12
00:00:51,768 --> 00:00:56,735
each of them gives a speech that says why 
they should be the one that gets the arms 

13
00:00:56,735 --> 00:00:59,692
of Achilles. 
Rather than focus on any of their own 

14
00:00:59,692 --> 00:01:04,126
good qualities, they mention their own 
good qualities, but they usually just, 

15
00:01:04,126 --> 00:01:07,733
they mostly just in the tradition 
criticize the other person. 

16
00:01:07,733 --> 00:01:12,346
So, Ajax will say nasty things about 
Ulysses and Ulysses will say nasty things 

17
00:01:12,346 --> 00:01:15,420
about Ajax. 
In the version that Ovid gives us Ajax's 

18
00:01:15,420 --> 00:01:20,028
opening statement talks about Ulysses 
doing the night raid, a famously nasty 

19
00:01:20,028 --> 00:01:24,039
bit of work that Ulysses did in in the 
Iliad book 11. 

20
00:01:24,039 --> 00:01:28,786
we talked about how Ulysses faked madness 
in order to dodge the draft. 

21
00:01:28,786 --> 00:01:32,597
That's true. 
He tried to avoid going to Troy by faking 

22
00:01:32,597 --> 00:01:35,739
the madness. 
We hear about Philoctetes, who is a 

23
00:01:35,739 --> 00:01:38,614
warrior who was wounded on the way to 
Troy. 

24
00:01:38,614 --> 00:01:44,832
and gets this, has this awful condition 
that is so nasty it makes all the all the 

25
00:01:44,832 --> 00:01:49,476
other Greek warriors disgusted. 
So, they have to kind of nastily get rid 

26
00:01:49,476 --> 00:01:54,138
of Philoctetes and they just stow him off 
on an island and let him kind of rot on 

27
00:01:54,138 --> 00:01:56,867
his own. 
well, Ulysses is the one that spearheads 

28
00:01:56,867 --> 00:02:01,132
that little nasty business as well. 
He's a crafty talker and a liar Ajax 

29
00:02:01,132 --> 00:02:03,747
says. 
And he's parasitical on Diomedes, this 

30
00:02:03,747 --> 00:02:07,215
other great warrior who Ajax says does 
all the hard fighting. 

31
00:02:07,215 --> 00:02:11,821
Then Odysseus jumps in and says, well he 
certainly diffuses this issue of himself 

32
00:02:11,821 --> 00:02:15,346
as a crafty talker. 
He says please don't hold it against me 

33
00:02:15,346 --> 00:02:19,894
that I can speak well as long as, and I 
hope that you don't hold it against Ajax 

34
00:02:19,894 --> 00:02:23,617
that he's really stupid. 
jumps into to some nastiness right off 

35
00:02:23,617 --> 00:02:26,164
the bat. 
We have a flattering opening, and he's 

36
00:02:26,164 --> 00:02:29,597
especially careful to flatter Agamemnon 
throughout the speech. 

37
00:02:29,597 --> 00:02:33,031
So, as a good rhetorician, he makes sure 
his audience likes him. 

38
00:02:33,031 --> 00:02:37,073
And then, he recounts all his own 
victories and successes and talks about 

39
00:02:37,073 --> 00:02:39,842
how stupid Ajax is. 
That's Odeysseus' whole speech. 

40
00:02:39,842 --> 00:02:44,161
And Ovid spends a lot of time in his 
treatment of the Trojan War dealing with 

41
00:02:44,161 --> 00:02:47,373
these two arguing back and forth talking 
about each other. 

42
00:02:47,373 --> 00:02:51,360
Well, the nastiness here is this kind of, 
there's in the end here, a kind of 

43
00:02:51,360 --> 00:02:55,347
victory of chattering over heroism. 
These two are saying in a rhetorical 

44
00:02:55,347 --> 00:02:59,736
debate, that's not as glorious as a 
debate using marshal weapons of arms, 

45
00:02:59,736 --> 00:03:03,979
they're on the same side so it has a kind 
of aspect of civil war to it. 

46
00:03:03,979 --> 00:03:08,580
Where has the glory gone? as we saw in 
our earlier lecture, Ovid is kind of 

47
00:03:08,580 --> 00:03:13,300
taking the, the typical glorious moments 
out of this story and instead, focusing 

48
00:03:13,300 --> 00:03:17,961
on inglorious ones and in the case here 
of a famous one of taking Ajax and 

49
00:03:17,961 --> 00:03:22,861
Ulysses taking the stuffing out of each 
other saying nasty things about one 

50
00:03:22,861 --> 00:03:27,641
another, running each other down in order 
to try to get the arms of Achilles for 

51
00:03:27,641 --> 00:03:30,683
themselves. 
this story is not always so quite so 

52
00:03:30,683 --> 00:03:35,423
negative in valance, Ovid has really 
quite made it like that so the two really 

53
00:03:35,423 --> 00:03:39,007
run each other down. 
it's also, I think, probably significant 

54
00:03:39,007 --> 00:03:43,516
for us to point out one quick footnote on 
the education system in Ovid's time. 

55
00:03:43,516 --> 00:03:48,372
Remember, we talked about him as having 
great training to be a good spokesman and 

56
00:03:48,372 --> 00:03:53,228
wonderfully skilled in the verbal arts. 
This is a way to get ahead in his time 

57
00:03:53,228 --> 00:03:56,812
its equivalent to what contemporary 
lawyers training would be. 

58
00:03:56,812 --> 00:04:00,916
So, Ovid has gotten this great training. 
Well, one of the ways, one of the 

59
00:04:00,916 --> 00:04:05,753
standard ways that people practiced, in 
their education system in ancient Rome 

60
00:04:07,462 --> 00:04:13,195
practiced and sharpened their verbal arts 
was to take set pieces from ancient 

61
00:04:13,195 --> 00:04:17,526
mythology and then produce them up on 
stage for their peers. 

62
00:04:17,526 --> 00:04:22,399
And the set pieces they take would be 
where one character from mythology would 

63
00:04:22,399 --> 00:04:27,951
argue against another and those arguments 
would be kind of nasty verbal back and 

64
00:04:27,951 --> 00:04:32,269
forths against each other. 
so, Ovid surely must have seen many times 

65
00:04:32,269 --> 00:04:37,388
and probably himself participated in lots 
of arguments of Ajax and Achilles and 

66
00:04:37,388 --> 00:04:40,966
arguments with Ajax and Ulysses over the 
arms of Achilles. 

67
00:04:40,966 --> 00:04:45,900
he knew this as an exercise as a school 
boy and here, he is putting it in his 

68
00:04:45,900 --> 00:04:50,771
epic in a way that I think is meant to 
reflect back for the Romans to reflect 

69
00:04:50,771 --> 00:04:54,286
back on themselves. 
He has presented mythic poetry as if it's 

70
00:04:54,286 --> 00:04:56,606
a school boy's exercise. 
Well, guess what, 

71
00:04:56,606 --> 00:05:01,725
that's exactly how his teachers used it 
in the training that he got as a lawyer. 

72
00:05:01,725 --> 00:05:06,957
this grand mythological tradition with 
all of its heroism has been reformulated 

73
00:05:06,957 --> 00:05:12,441
and repackaged into a tight little 
discrete school boy exercise to train you 

74
00:05:12,441 --> 00:05:17,106
up in verbal arts, to rip down your 
friend, who is also your countryman who 

75
00:05:17,106 --> 00:05:21,015
happens to be your opponent in some 
political or legal battle. 

76
00:05:21,015 --> 00:05:24,734
its a wonderfully subtle satirical move 
on Ovid's part. 

77
00:05:24,734 --> 00:05:29,256
It shows his careful satirical eye, 
his, his, his savage wit and his 

78
00:05:29,256 --> 00:05:32,580
brilliant skill at bringing those two 
things together.