WEBVTT 00:00:05.758 --> 00:00:10.120 In our earlier lecur, lectures we took a look at ideas about myth. 00:00:10.120 --> 00:00:13.780 We traced back from antiquity all the way up to the present time as, 00:00:13.780 --> 00:00:17.810 in terms of what people have thought about myth over vast stretches of time. 00:00:17.810 --> 00:00:20.490 In this lecture were going to turn the clock backwards and 00:00:20.490 --> 00:00:26.730 move from our present-day period into the, the times that are going 00:00:26.730 --> 00:00:30.990 to be represented in the mythic stories that we are going to be turning to next. 00:00:30.990 --> 00:00:33.560 A few time periods are important for us to keep in mind. 00:00:33.560 --> 00:00:35.850 Now, obviously is an important one. 00:00:35.850 --> 00:00:39.660 What's happening in the world today is going to color and influence the way we 00:00:39.660 --> 00:00:43.210 appropriate and read these myths and we want to pay some attention to that. 00:00:43.210 --> 00:00:44.360 Roman times. 00:00:44.360 --> 00:00:48.390 Here I've picked out the 1st century BCE as classical Rome, 00:00:48.390 --> 00:00:52.710 so if you hear me referring to classical Rome I mean Rome during that time period. 00:00:52.710 --> 00:00:55.925 Rome obviously had a lot of years before and after during which they were top 00:00:55.925 --> 00:00:59.675 dog in the Mediterranean, but when I talk about classical Rome, I'm going to be 00:00:59.675 --> 00:01:05.435 roughly referring to 1st century BCE, 1st century CE, roughly in that time period. 00:01:05.435 --> 00:01:09.507 Another important, moment for us, is going to be classical Athens, 00:01:09.507 --> 00:01:12.965 5th century BCE, so when I say classical Athens, that's what I mean. 00:01:12.965 --> 00:01:17.335 And then when I say Homeric times, I'm referring to the 8th century BCE. 00:01:17.335 --> 00:01:21.730 Homer wrote around 750, as best we can tell, so 00:01:21.730 --> 00:01:26.030 we say 8th century as a general target for what that date's all about. 00:01:26.030 --> 00:01:28.730 And Homer himself was writing many years after the fact, 00:01:28.730 --> 00:01:30.475 as you can see from our graph here. 00:01:30.475 --> 00:01:35.510 He's actually writing nearly 500 years after the topic he is covering 00:01:35.510 --> 00:01:39.230 the Trojan War which in, according to the legendary materials, 00:01:39.230 --> 00:01:44.940 took place right around in the 13th century BCE. 00:01:44.940 --> 00:01:49.716 Tracing back over these periods, we're going to be looking at Homer 00:01:49.716 --> 00:01:54.570 in the first big chunk of this course, focusing on The Odyssey. 00:01:54.570 --> 00:01:56.580 When we get past that, 00:01:56.580 --> 00:02:01.390 we'll move into some other epic poets from early time periods including Hesiod. 00:02:01.390 --> 00:02:06.840 We'll look at some Homeric hymns that emerge during this Homeric period. 00:02:06.840 --> 00:02:08.070 Moving on to classical Athens, 00:02:08.070 --> 00:02:10.570 we're going to look especially at the Greek tragedies. 00:02:10.570 --> 00:02:14.820 The tragedians remake stories that they knew from Homer and earlier poets in, 00:02:14.820 --> 00:02:17.555 in ways that are definitive for later time periods. 00:02:17.555 --> 00:02:18.307 And then we, 00:02:18.307 --> 00:02:22.915 when we move into the Romans we're going to be looking at Virgil and Ovid. 00:02:22.915 --> 00:02:24.825 The stories that we're going to see, 00:02:24.825 --> 00:02:30.815 populating this long arc of time have many similarities but also many differences. 00:02:30.815 --> 00:02:33.715 Classical Athens is not the same as Homeric Greece, and 00:02:33.715 --> 00:02:36.541 Homeric Greece is surely not the same as classical Rome. 00:02:36.541 --> 00:02:41.610 So we'll keep an eye on all of these particulars as, as, as needed. 00:02:41.610 --> 00:02:46.930 The Trojan War we go ahead and say took place in the 13th century BCE, 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. 00:02:51.205 --> 00:02:56.540 Befo, if this course were being taught 150 years ago, assuming there was an internet 00:02:56.540 --> 00:02:59.372 the professor at that time would say, well, the Trojan War is a legend. 00:02:59.372 --> 00:03:03.220 We don't really have any evidence that it actually took place. 00:03:03.220 --> 00:03:04.894 Heinrich Schliemann was curious about this. 00:03:04.894 --> 00:03:08.280 His dates were 1822 to 1890. 00:03:08.280 --> 00:03:12.730 He took a team over to the north coast of Turkey Asia Minor and 00:03:12.730 --> 00:03:17.280 found that in the sites where there was supposed to be a great citadel of Troy, 00:03:17.280 --> 00:03:18.340 he actually found that yes, 00:03:18.340 --> 00:03:24.120 indeed there were the ruins of a marvelous very wealthy city. 00:03:24.120 --> 00:03:28.280 And it looked like that city had been conquered 00:03:29.310 --> 00:03:33.120 over many times over the course of history. 00:03:33.120 --> 00:03:38.820 And there was a kind of great cataclysmic conquest of this citadel 00:03:38.820 --> 00:03:42.780 that wa, took place right around roughly corresponding to the time 00:03:42.780 --> 00:03:46.750 that Greek legend said the whole, the, the Trojan War took place. 00:03:46.750 --> 00:03:52.020 So after Schliemann, we know say that, you know there likely was 00:03:52.020 --> 00:03:55.880 a Trojan War about which Homer and his legends are being told. 00:03:55.880 --> 00:03:58.300 Now Schliemann never found anything that said, you know, 00:03:58.300 --> 00:04:03.800 this shield belongs to Agamemnon or here lieth the sword of Achilles. 00:04:03.800 --> 00:04:07.760 We don't have anything that got recovered in the archeological evidence that 00:04:07.760 --> 00:04:12.680 verifies any of the details, including characters, personages, events, any of 00:04:12.680 --> 00:04:17.094 the details that are recorded in the Homeric legends and in later materials. 00:04:17.094 --> 00:04:20.495 But we can go ahead and say that there was a Trojan War. 00:04:20.495 --> 00:04:22.410 And Homer's version of it may or 00:04:22.410 --> 00:04:27.470 may not correlate to any historical event that actually took place. 00:04:27.470 --> 00:04:32.220 Now, diving into Homer's world is something that we need to do with 00:04:32.220 --> 00:04:35.887 a bit of perhaps warning. 00:04:35.887 --> 00:04:38.570 It's, it's a dark world, and 00:04:38.570 --> 00:04:44.640 a world built on the coursing energy of war, the coursing negative energy of war. 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, 00:04:50.110 --> 00:04:52.670 sometimes very abruptly and summarily, 00:04:52.670 --> 00:04:57.000 and oftentimes with violent and quick kinds of endings. 00:04:57.000 --> 00:04:59.920 We're talking about a place that's going to be 00:05:00.980 --> 00:05:06.410 where human the exhibition of human talents are typically taking place 00:05:06.410 --> 00:05:09.520 in the field of one dimension of human experience. 00:05:09.520 --> 00:05:11.910 That's the field of conflict. 00:05:11.910 --> 00:05:16.820 Now all of us are going to think about the, the, the, whether, 00:05:16.820 --> 00:05:21.520 was Homer's epic an anti-war epic or, or a pro-war epic? 00:05:21.520 --> 00:05:24.545 It actually doesn't answer to any of those kind of categories. 00:05:24.545 --> 00:05:28.005 Homer's epic I think floats above all of them. 00:05:28.005 --> 00:05:30.705 Instead what he looks at is, is a real human experience, that is, 00:05:30.705 --> 00:05:34.855 the experience of armed conflict between groups of our species that 00:05:34.855 --> 00:05:37.425 decide to launch that kind of thing against each other, and 00:05:37.425 --> 00:05:40.095 then tries to figure out what is the human experience of this? 00:05:40.095 --> 00:05:42.590 What does it mean for us in our humanity? 00:05:42.590 --> 00:05:46.200 Looking at the Trojan War we're going to meet lots of people who are coursing 00:05:46.200 --> 00:05:50.910 around in the background of it especially in our engagement with the Odyssey. 00:05:50.910 --> 00:05:51.590 And it's important for 00:05:51.590 --> 00:05:55.200 us to know some of these characters that emerge in Homer's Iliad. 00:05:55.200 --> 00:05:56.910 This is his account of the Trojan War. 00:05:58.100 --> 00:06:01.300 The Iliad is a poem about rage. 00:06:01.300 --> 00:06:02.452 And thinking about rage, 00:06:02.452 --> 00:06:08.420 it's obviously fronted in this epic that is about the war. 00:06:08.420 --> 00:06:12.410 But what's interesting is that Homer talks about rage of a specific kind. 00:06:12.410 --> 00:06:15.890 It is the rage of Achilles that he is most interested in. 00:06:15.890 --> 00:06:20.410 Achilles, yes, is having war, as a Greek is having war rage against his Trojan 00:06:20.410 --> 00:06:25.750 foes, but the rage that really drives the epic is actually an inter-Greek one. 00:06:25.750 --> 00:06:28.130 It's Achilles versus Agamemnon. 00:06:28.130 --> 00:06:32.580 Achilles and Agamemnon have an argument that starts off The Iliad. 00:06:32.580 --> 00:06:36.030 And these two great Greek warriors, Agamemnon the older general and 00:06:36.030 --> 00:06:40.950 Achilles the younger, extremely talented warrior have words. 00:06:40.950 --> 00:06:43.710 They can't quite settle them in the appropriate way. 00:06:43.710 --> 00:06:49.530 Agamemnon's leadership is not up to snuff to handle this situation. 00:06:49.530 --> 00:06:54.510 And so he loses, Agamemnon loses his greatest warrior because he 00:06:54.510 --> 00:06:58.890 decides to go ahead and insult Achilles in front of all of his peers. 00:06:58.890 --> 00:07:02.600 And when that happens, Achilles decides to withdraw. 00:07:02.600 --> 00:07:05.680 Achilles sits out most of the action of the epic in his tent, and 00:07:05.680 --> 00:07:10.310 when he does he wishes death upon his own Greek comrades. 00:07:11.590 --> 00:07:17.000 His rage is a rage that is so bitter and so awful, he now hates Agamemnon, 00:07:17.000 --> 00:07:23.430 his own Greek leader, and so wishes that all of his compad, 00:07:23.430 --> 00:07:28.150 compatriots should pay the price of Agamemnon's stupidity. 00:07:28.150 --> 00:07:31.033 His rage then is directed against one of his own. 00:07:31.033 --> 00:07:35.570 And the business end of that rage gets worked out 00:07:35.570 --> 00:07:39.990 on all of the Greek warriors as they suffer under the onslaught of the Trojans. 00:07:39.990 --> 00:07:44.330 We see great characters in this fighting. 00:07:44.330 --> 00:07:47.990 Again, Achilles is in his tent, but in his place arise other 00:07:47.990 --> 00:07:51.930 great Greek warriors to take the place of top dog among, among the fighters. 00:07:51.930 --> 00:07:56.800 We have people whose names are Ajax, Diomedes on the Greek side. 00:07:56.800 --> 00:08:00.330 We're going to meet another of these figures called Odysseus pretty soon. 00:08:00.330 --> 00:08:06.130 On the Trojan side, the princes and kings that marshal the forces there are led by 00:08:06.130 --> 00:08:11.700 King Priam with his sons Hector and Paris as the leaders of the other side. 00:08:11.700 --> 00:08:15.480 The war is dark, it's nasty, death on every page, 00:08:15.480 --> 00:08:19.820 and it's also unbelievably a beautiful piece of epic poetry. 00:08:20.820 --> 00:08:27.630 When we close out this story Achilles does finally put away his rage. 00:08:27.630 --> 00:08:32.679 He can't quite bring himself to make up with the old, old man in his life, 00:08:32.679 --> 00:08:34.960 the authoritative Greek figure. 00:08:34.960 --> 00:08:37.820 He never does quite reconcile with Agamemnon and 00:08:37.820 --> 00:08:41.900 the awful things that Agamemnon had done to him to publicly humiliate him. 00:08:41.900 --> 00:08:45.130 But instead there's a moment that Achilles gets at the end of the epic 00:08:45.130 --> 00:08:49.300 in order to reconcile himself in a certain way and put away some of his rage. 00:08:49.300 --> 00:08:54.040 And when he does, it is not with his superior Agamemnon. 00:08:54.040 --> 00:08:59.161 Instead, and strangely, Achilles has a moment 00:08:59.161 --> 00:09:05.090 to express other dimensions of his humanity than his 00:09:05.090 --> 00:09:11.060 warp spasm war rage with the greatest of the Trojans. 00:09:11.060 --> 00:09:13.790 Priam has a moment with Achilles 00:09:13.790 --> 00:09:18.235 where he has a chance to ransom back the body of his beloved son Hector, 00:09:18.235 --> 00:09:22.740 whom Achilles has treated with all the vengeance of his war rage. 00:09:22.740 --> 00:09:28.760 And Priam comes over to Achilles's tent, kisses the hands that killed his own son, 00:09:28.760 --> 00:09:33.640 and begs Achilles to show some mercy. 00:09:33.640 --> 00:09:38.640 Achilles decides that there's his, his own Greeks, and particularly Agamemnon, 00:09:38.640 --> 00:09:40.540 are not worthy of it. 00:09:40.540 --> 00:09:43.720 But Priam, the Trojan general, Trojan king, 00:09:43.720 --> 00:09:46.580 actually happens to be worthy of Achilles's mercy. 00:09:46.580 --> 00:09:52.340 So he does relent with the kiss of the hands gives back the body and 00:09:52.340 --> 00:09:59.540 Priam can bury Hector, and so ends the Trojan War according to Homer's Iliad. 00:09:59.540 --> 00:10:03.150 Now you'll see here that it seems like I've glossed over some things. 00:10:03.150 --> 00:10:06.410 You might say to yourself, well, what happened to the Trojan horse? 00:10:06.410 --> 00:10:11.570 There's stories that we have about Odysseus and his involvement in the war. 00:10:11.570 --> 00:10:14.418 There's other kinds of stratagems that come in. 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. 00:10:17.605 --> 00:10:23.370 Well, it's true Homer's Iliad focuses on only a very short period of time. 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. 00:10:27.520 --> 00:10:31.620 And it does not talk about a synoptic overview of the whole Trojan War. 00:10:31.620 --> 00:10:37.580 Instead, that filling in of the story comes from other epic poets 00:10:37.580 --> 00:10:44.160 around Homer who dig into this story and start to tell the further pieces of it. 00:10:44.160 --> 00:10:46.280 And in fact there's a back story. 00:10:46.280 --> 00:10:48.700 We're going to find in myth there's always a back story. 00:10:48.700 --> 00:10:51.530 And if you want to use the language of contemporary cinema, we're talking about, 00:10:51.530 --> 00:10:56.800 you know, prequels that, that show up after the kind of main one appears. 00:10:56.800 --> 00:11:00.740 And may have already been, there have been versions of prequels that were floating 00:11:00.740 --> 00:11:05.780 around before Homer, but much of the legend that we know starts to fill 00:11:05.780 --> 00:11:10.110 in the blanks after a great poet like Homer makes his or her statement. 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. 00:11:14.710 --> 00:11:18.280 For example, how in the world did this whole Trojan War start? 00:11:18.280 --> 00:11:21.110 Well, we wind up with a, a legend that actually predates Homer. 00:11:21.110 --> 00:11:24.816 It gets encoded in his epic, but it's not one that he concentrates on. 00:11:24.816 --> 00:11:26.290 There is this figure, Paris. 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. 00:11:31.470 --> 00:11:34.050 He's also a little bit of an embarrassment. 00:11:34.050 --> 00:11:35.930 He's not such a great warrior. 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. 00:11:40.140 --> 00:11:43.430 And in fact, he goes over and decides that it would be the right thing for 00:11:43.430 --> 00:11:47.200 him to do to steal the wife of Menelaus. 00:11:47.200 --> 00:11:49.350 The wife of Menelaus just happens to be Helen, 00:11:49.350 --> 00:11:51.610 who's the most beautiful woman in the world. 00:11:51.610 --> 00:11:55.700 And when he does that, he upsets the greatest of the Greek generals, Agamemnon, 00:11:55.700 --> 00:11:58.920 who just so happens to be the brother of Menelaus. 00:11:58.920 --> 00:12:03.380 When Paris kidnaps Helen and takes her back to Troy, well, 00:12:03.380 --> 00:12:04.890 that's the end of things. 00:12:04.890 --> 00:12:07.080 Off we go into the Trojan War. 00:12:07.080 --> 00:12:12.740 The shame that is visited on Menelaus is visited by proxy on his brother Agamemnon, 00:12:12.740 --> 00:12:15.557 and Agamemnon at that time calls in all of his chits. 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 00:12:20.599 --> 00:12:24.610 says to all of his local fellow leaders that it's time for 00:12:24.610 --> 00:12:27.170 us to go clobber those Trojans. 00:12:27.170 --> 00:12:27.940 And off they go. 00:12:29.370 --> 00:12:31.190 Helen, in case you may well have heard this, 00:12:31.190 --> 00:12:33.860 is indeed the face that launched a thousand ships. 00:12:33.860 --> 00:12:38.306 A medieval rendering of what one of these ships might have looked like. 00:12:38.306 --> 00:12:38.990 Pretty good actually. 00:12:38.990 --> 00:12:43.070 We've got archeological evidence that confirms what a Greek war ship looks like, 00:12:43.070 --> 00:12:44.316 and it's not so bad. 00:12:44.316 --> 00:12:48.280 And so Helen is the face that launches a thousand ships. 00:12:48.280 --> 00:12:53.860 In the legend that's the number of ships that are needed to contain the grandeur, 00:12:53.860 --> 00:12:56.240 the hugeness of Agamemnon's army. 00:12:56.240 --> 00:12:59.560 Thanks to parts of The Iliad, the detail, all of the people that are involved, 00:12:59.560 --> 00:13:01.840 the famous catalogue of ships of The Iliad, 00:13:01.840 --> 00:13:06.860 we can count up roughly the number of people involved and it's about 100,000. 00:13:06.860 --> 00:13:10.650 Homer's claim is that an army of 100,000 leaves the shores of Greece and 00:13:10.650 --> 00:13:14.250 goes over to Troy to do the dirty work over there. 00:13:14.250 --> 00:13:18.435 Now some people then walk into the picture, those interested in myth, and 00:13:18.435 --> 00:13:19.210 say, well, wait a minute! 00:13:19.210 --> 00:13:21.260 There must be a back story to this one. 00:13:21.260 --> 00:13:26.830 How is it that Menelaus lost his bride Helen to this guy Paris? 00:13:26.830 --> 00:13:28.710 Why did Paris think it was okay to go over and 00:13:28.710 --> 00:13:33.092 steal the wife of the brother of the greatest of the Greeks? 00:13:33.092 --> 00:13:37.370 Well, a story starts to percolate in to fill in that kind of question and 00:13:37.370 --> 00:13:41.140 we have a story about the Apple of Discord. 00:13:41.140 --> 00:13:42.760 Some of you all will have heard this. 00:13:42.760 --> 00:13:46.410 You can see here in a, a lovely painting giving us the whole background. 00:13:46.410 --> 00:13:48.980 Peleus and Thetis have a wedding. 00:13:48.980 --> 00:13:56.800 Peleus is a great mortal a well-known and prominent man. 00:13:56.800 --> 00:14:00.560 He actually gets to have a wedding to a goddess, Thetis. 00:14:00.560 --> 00:14:02.430 And the two of them get together, Peleus and 00:14:02.430 --> 00:14:07.470 Thetis and when they do, they have a party and they invite everybody. 00:14:07.470 --> 00:14:10.580 This is one of those times when gods and humans could actually live face to face, 00:14:10.580 --> 00:14:11.950 so the gods came, 00:14:11.950 --> 00:14:16.450 the humans came, and they all had a great party together in this very early time. 00:14:16.450 --> 00:14:20.770 Peleus and Thetis, all are invited except this goddess, Eris. 00:14:20.770 --> 00:14:26.606 Who is the god of discord, who is upset about not being invited. 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 00:14:31.115 --> 00:14:35.354 a single Greek word that translates into the English for the fairest. 00:14:35.354 --> 00:14:38.367 Tosses it into the middle of the wedding and Athena, 00:14:38.367 --> 00:14:42.380 Hera and Aphrodite instantly think the apple must be for them. 00:14:42.380 --> 00:14:43.610 They start to argue. 00:14:43.610 --> 00:14:46.990 They look around and say, here is a human. 00:14:46.990 --> 00:14:49.690 Let's make him solve the dilemma for us. 00:14:49.690 --> 00:14:50.990 Paris agrees. 00:14:50.990 --> 00:14:52.330 Again, not a very smart thing to do. 00:14:52.330 --> 00:14:55.910 A more clever man would have probably put off that judgment on someone else. 00:14:55.910 --> 00:15:00.750 And Paris makes his judgment, his famous judgment, saying that well, 00:15:00.750 --> 00:15:04.010 looking at the three of you, yes, you're all beautiful. 00:15:04.010 --> 00:15:06.790 Hera, you have offered me great power across the earth. 00:15:06.790 --> 00:15:08.980 Athena, you've offered me infinite wisdom. 00:15:08.980 --> 00:15:13.290 Aphrodite, though, you've offered me the most beautiful woman in the world, and 00:15:13.290 --> 00:15:17.080 I'm going to make you now the winner of this apple, and you need to 00:15:17.080 --> 00:15:20.470 give me my prize, which is going to be the most beautiful woman in the world. 00:15:20.470 --> 00:15:24.530 So at that point, Paris thinks Helen's all mine. 00:15:24.530 --> 00:15:27.200 Off he goes in starting this whole thing off. 00:15:27.200 --> 00:15:29.990 So the whole Trojan War, 00:15:29.990 --> 00:15:35.565 the grandeur of this magnificent event all boils down to an affair of the heart. 00:15:35.565 --> 00:15:38.760 A small thing that 00:15:38.760 --> 00:15:42.334 you can imagine the heartstrings being plucked of one human being. 00:15:42.334 --> 00:15:47.423 That's the passion that moves this whole grandeur that 00:15:47.423 --> 00:15:52.599 winds up being exhibited in war rage that really is definitive 00:15:52.599 --> 00:15:57.975 of what the Greek experience is going to be of their mythic past.