Task 3. Activities for Homer’s Odyssey
Read through the Homer Study Guide and all of the Activities below before making your selection. Make a copy of the Activity question to begin your response. Upload your Activity here. Title your entry, “Activity 3.” These Activity entries must be thoughtful; each one should be the equivalent of at least a full typed page or more in length (e.g. not less than 250 words). They may be longer if you need to say more on your topic. You will not be able to do these Activity entries properly unless you have carefully read the assigned literature.
Athena is Odysseus’ patron deity; he is her favorite human being. Look at some of the scenes in the Odyssey where they interact and describe their relationship in some detail, giving specific examples from more than one book of the Odyssey.
Look at the various warnings about what Clytemnestra did to Agamemnon, especially in Books XI and XXIV (the underworld scenes. Then review the dangers and violence of Odysseus’ homecoming, and think about how Odysseus approached Penelope and how he hanged the traitorous serving girls (Book XXII). Do you think Homer’s audience accepted that the girls deserved to be killed? How do you feel about the scene personally? Does it give you any insights into the concepts of right and wrong in Homer’s day and how those concepts might be different than in our time? Give specific examples from more than one book in the Odyssey to support your ideas.
List several of the women, mortal and divine in the Odyssey and write a brief description of each one. Finally, write a paragraph or two summing up Homer’s ideas about the roles of women in the Odyssey–what they are like and how they are treated.
Later civilizations disapproved of Homer because “he told lies about the gods.” Look in the Odyssey for some of these “lies.” List and describe several of them. Do you think Homer actually believed in gods such as he sang about? If so, do you think he was being impious to his gods? Why or why not? Support your position with specific examples from the Odyssey.
Why does Odysseus go to Hades and what does he learn there? Go into plenty of detail, using specific examples from Book 11 to support your ideas.
Compare Odysseus to a modern hero. The modern hero may be a fighter, a ruler, a leader, or an athlete; he may be real or fictional. Write a brief biography of each hero, looking at the specifics of his family life, beliefs, friendships, activities, heroic behaviors, etc. Then, explain how each hero affects the society he lives in and how people feel about him. Finally, what are the most interesting differences between your two heroes and so what?
Go to Bronze Age Images. Look through the various images and select three that might actually have existed in the world of the Odyssey. Describe each image and explain exactly where in the Odyssey you would expect to find it, who would use it, own it, live in it, etc., and what you could learn about the Odyssey from seeing the image. Support your ideas with specific examples from the Odyssey and from the images.
Go to the Homer Web Site and look at several images of the Trojan War. Select three which deal with the events of the Odyssey. Describe each image and compare it to the corresponding scene in the Odyssey. How has the artist interpreted the characters, events, etc.? Do you agree with the artist’s interpretation? Why or why not? Explain using specific examples to support your points.
Go to the Homer Web Site and scroll down to the section on the Troy Cycle. Look at the list of Troy epics and the characters and plot of the overall Troy Cycle to get a feeling for the mythic context of the Odyssey. Now think about the relations of gods and humans in the Odyssey. Select two interesting scenes where gods and humans interact. Describe each scene in some detail and explain its role in the overall story. Do you think these gods were any more or less real to Homer than the heroes? Why or why not? Support your ideas with specific examples from the Odyssey.
Go to Bulfinch’s Mythology and look up the stories of two or three major gods and/or heroes from the Odyssey. Now select one or more specific scenes in the Odyssey that can be better understood after reading about the characters’ mythological roles. Explain the way the mythology helps you to understand each scene, using specific details from both Bullfinch and the Odyssey to support your ideas.
Review the scenes in Hades in Books 11 and 24 of the Odyssey. What can you learn about Homer’s conception of life after death from reading them? Use specific examples to support your insights.
Odysseus has relationships with a number of women. List these women and then compare how he relates to different ones. Be sure to include Kirke (a witch) and Nausicaa (a nice young princess) in your list. Can you learn anything about Odysseus from how he relates to these different women? Use specific examples from the story to support your points.
Pick the character in the Odyssey that you think is the most “monstrous” and explain just what you find monstrous about him/her/it, and why. Be sure to use specific, detailed examples from the story to support your discussion.
Odysseus survives many ordeals that kill his men, such as the Kyklops, Skylla and Charybdis, and the final shipwreck. Discuss Odysseus as a leader of his men. Why do you think he survives while his followers do not? Support your discussion with examples from the story.
Look at Book 1 of the Odyssey, where Athena and Zeus discuss human behavior, Odysseus, and justice. Now look at the Book of Job, where God and Satan arrange to test Job to satisfy Satan’s cynical curiosity about Job’s goodness. Compare divine attitudes toward human beings in Job and in The Odyssey, noting what similarities there are, if any, and what differences. Support your observations with specific examples from both narratives.
Samuel Butler and Robert Graves both believed that the Odyssey had been written by a woman. Robert Graves wrote a novel, Homer’s Daughter, about Nausicaa, the woman who composed the Odyssey. Get a copy of this novel, read it, and then write an essay explaining whether or not you agree that a woman could have written the Odyssey. Support your ideas with plenty of examples from both the novel and the Odyssey.
One of the themes explored in The Odyssey is that of the passage from adolescence to adulthood. Construct a character analysis of Telemachus with careful consideration of his development from boy to man. Consider the role of Athena (Mentor) in this development as well as the effects of his father’s long absence.
Week 5 Discussion Question
What did you know about Homer’s, The Odyssey before beginning this module? What have you learned? What stands out for you about this story?
Module 2: Reading Quiz 1
Unit 1: Reading Quiz 3: Compare/Contrast Gilgamesh and Job as heroes.
Read the Epic of Gilgamesh (Links to an external site.) and the book of Job (Links to an external site.). https://www.biblestudytools.com/job/
Compare and Contrast Gilgamesh and Odysseus as heroes.
Use the following guidelines to help you compose your answer:
– How are Gilgamesh and Odysseus similar?
– How are Gilgamesh and Odysseus different?
– What are each hero’s strengths?
– What are each hero’s weaknesses?
– Which of the two do you think is the ultimate hero?
– Good answers should be at least 250 words.
Plagiarism Reminder
Answers should be in your own words. Do not copy answers from online sources. I am interested in what you think. If you use language from the text, use quotations marks (Example: “In the land of Uz there lived a man whose name was Job.”).
Task One: Homer Study Guide
WORLD LITERATURE I
Task One: Homer Study Guide
TASK 1. Read the Homer Study Guide, which will give you background information on the Troy Cycle and Homer’s epics, the Iliad and the Odyssey. It is connected to this document.
You may choose to watch the Homer’s Odyssey Video instead. It contains the same information. http://learner.org/courses/worldlit/odyssey/ (Links to an external site.)..
Homer and Troy by Diane Thompson, NVCC, ELI
Homer is the main reason we still know about the war at Troy. He composed two magnificent epic poems about the Trojan War, the Iliad and the Odyssey, around the eighth century BCE. This was about five hundred years after the war may have taken place. Probably one reason that the Trojan War became so important to later Greeks such as Homer was that they considered the Greek victors their ancestors. Another reason was that the Trojan War, if it occurred, came at the time that the Mycenaean Bronze Age collapsed. Thus, its fall represented, at least in story, the last great victory of the Mycenaean Greeks before the collapse of their civilization. Homer lived in a less glorious age. Although Greeks had colonized Asia Minor after the Trojan War, they were no longer as prosperous (or as piratical) as during the Bronze Age. There still was a town of Troy in Homer’s day, and Homer may have lived in the vicinity, earning his living by telling stories about the glorious past of the Greek conquerors.
Homer was said to be blind, but his vivid images and stories of Troy have survived and thrived for nearly three millennia. Homer’s Troy is a mixture of some fairly accurate details of the Bronze Age, mixed with details from his own time, and bound together by poetic imagination and elegant, swift-moving language. The Iliad and Odyssey have been so frequently praised, criticized, translated, borrowed from, adapted and imitated that a study of Homer and his literary descendants can easily become a study of the history of Western literary culture, from Troy to the twenty-first century. People have continued to read and imitate Homer because he was a wonderful poet.
The Iliad is the poem of Troy; it takes place in the Greek camp, below the walls of Troy, and within the city itself. It is the ninth year of a ten year siege. Achilles, a Greek leader and hero, quarrels with Agamemnon, the high king of the Greek army. They fight over women war-prizes—Chryseis and Briseis. Achilles pushes Agamemnon to return his war-prize woman, Chryseis, to her father, a priest of Apollo, in order to stop plague in the Greek camp. Agamemnon, furious, takes Achilles’ war-prize woman, Briseis, as his compensation. Achilles, even more furious, vows to stop fighting until the Trojan warriors push through the Greek camp up to their ships at the shore. Achilles also gets his goddess mother, Thetis, to petition Zeus to keep the Trojans killing the Greeks until this happens. Zeus agrees and the game is set. Many Greeks are killed, Achilles sulks in his tent, finally Achilles’ best friend Patroclus is killed and then at last Achilles rampages, slaughtering Trojans. Even the gods get into the battle, fighting one another until Zeus declares a stop to the chaos. The poem ends rather peacefully with two funerals, one for Hector, who killed Achilles’ friend Patroclus, and one for Patroclus. Soon Achilles will die; next year Troy will fall.
Clearly, Achilles and Agamemnon are not suitable role models for more civilized societies, and this became a problem for later generations. Even worse, stories of the gods quarreling and even engaging in wild battles, became unacceptable to more pious generations. And Homer’s vision of the relationship of mortals to gods is chilling—to Zeus, human beings are like the poppies of the field, they bloom briefly and die. The gods are rather like spectators betting on a violent football game that gets out of hand until Zeus finally calls an end to it. But Homer’s language, the power of the narrative, and Achilles’ heroic character are unforgettable, and have not only survived, but flourished, carrying memories of Troy into the twenty-first century.
Homer’s Greeks are winners; his Trojans, losers, yet the Trojans and Greeks share many traits, such as the love of warfare, excellence, gold, adventure, trade, women, and horses. In the Iliad, Trojans often seem more civilized than the Greeks. Priam is a better king and father than Agamemnon; Hector a kinder man than Achilles; Andromache a far better wife than Helen. Nonetheless, Homer’s Troy is not Greek. Priam is an oriental ruler who has fifty sons and twelve daughters, some by his wife, Hecuba, and many by his concubines in an oriental harem.
There is something exotic and decadent about Troy. The Trojans are not as politically astute, nor as aggressive, as the Greeks. Paris is a no-brain fop, but the Trojans allow him to act in ways that are disastrous for their city. Helen is pure trouble, yet the Trojans let her stay, even though her presence dooms them. Hector is the finest Trojan warrior, yet in his final test of will against Achilles, Hector breaks and tries to run away. Troy is rich, ancient, past its prime, even effete, an oriental kingdom to admire and plunder.
Even the gods have decided that Troy is ripe to fall. Zeus is ultimately on the side of the Greeks. Elsewhere in the Troy Cycle, there are stories of Priam’s father, King Laomedon, who was mean spirited and politically foolish. He tried to avoid paying his debt to the gods and refused hospitality to Jason and Hercules. Troy, for all its power and elegance, has smudges on its reputation. Excellence, and therefore victory, is clearly on the side of the Greeks.
However, the Trojans must display sufficient excellence to provide glory to their conquerors. And so they do. Indeed, they are good enough to inspire later civilizations to make them into their ancestral heroes. This is a wonderful irony of the Troy stories–the winners become transmuted into losers, the losers into winners, in the great culture wars of later civilizations.
The Story of the Troy Cycle by Diane Thompson, NVCC, ELI
There were two Trojan Wars: 1) when Laomedon was king of Troy, and 2) when his son Priam was king of Troy. The first occurred when Jason, Hercules and the Argonauts were seeking the Golden Fleece. They stopped off at Troy for rest and refueling, but King Laomedon refused them hospitality and forced them to leave. Some versions say that Laomedon tried to cheat Hercules out of promised pay for contracted heroic deeds. After successfully completing the Golden Fleece quest, Jason and Hercules gathered an army of Greeks, returned, and destroyed Troy to punish King Laomedon. Priam, Laomedon’s son, survived and rebuilt Troy.
The underlying cause of Homer’s Trojan War is told in the Cypria, of which only fragments remain. The burden of too many human beings disturbed the earth and Zeus conceived of the Trojan War to lower the population and relieve the earth. He did this by allowing Eris (Strife) to attend the wedding banquet of Peleus and Thetis, where Eris stirred up conflict between the goddesses Hera, Athena and Aphrodite over who was the most beautiful.
The three goddesses asked Paris, a rather foolish, lady-loving son of King Priam of Troy, to judge which of them was the most beautiful. Each goddess offered her own special bribe. Paris chose Aphrodite’s bribe, possession of Helen, the most beautiful woman in the world. Helen happened to be married to King Menelaus, one of the regional Greek kings, so Paris set off to Greece with a war party, seized her (perhaps with her cooperation), and brought her back to Troy, where they were married.
Menelaus then went to his brother Agamemnon, the High King of the Greeks, and asked for help retrieving his wife from Troy. Agamemnon assembled warriors and ships from all over Greece Divinely controlled unfavorable winds prevented the Greek fleet from sailing for Troy until Agamemnon sacrificed his daughter Iphigenia. The Greek army then besieged Troy for ten years.
During the ninth year of the siege, Achilles, the best of the Greek warriors, and Agamemnon quarreled bitterly over who got to keep Achilles’ woman war-prize, Briseis. Feeling shamefully dishonored, Achilles withdrew his men, the Myrmidons, from the fighting, resulting in the deaths of many Greeks, including Achilles’ dearest friend, Patroclus. Achilles and Agamemnon finally reconciled and Achilles reentered the battle, killing Hector, the greatest Trojan warrior, although Achilles knew that he himself would die shortly after Hector’s death. The story of Achilles’ wrath is told in Homer’s Iliad.
In the tenth year of the siege, the Trojans were deceived by the hollow Trojan Horse (its wooden belly full of soldiers) into letting Greeks inside their walls, and Troy fell. The city was burned, many Trojans slaughtered, and the women and children taken away as slaves.
The victorious Greeks began returning home, some quickly, some less so. Helen returned to Greece and resumed her marriage with Menelaus. We meet them living comfortably together when Odysseus’ son Telemachus visits their palace in the Odyssey. Agamemnon returned to his wife, Clytemnestra, who conspired with her lover, Aegisthus, to trap Agamemnon in a net and kill him. Odysseus was the last Greek warrior to return home from Troy. The Odyssey tells the story of his amazing voyage as well as his victory over the wicked suitors who were camped in his palace, devouring his supplies and intimidating his virtuous wife, Penelope.
There were also stories about Odysseus’ later adventures in the Telegonia, a sequel to the Odyssey composed by Eugammon of Cyrene in the sixth century BC. The Odyssey ends with the implication that Odysseus’ worst troubles are over; not so according to the Telegonia. Odysseus continues his infidelities and wanderings until Telegonus, his son by Circe, kills him.
The Story of the Odyssey, Briefly Retold by Diane Thompson, NVCC, ELI
Books 1-4: When Odysseus sailed for Troy, he left behind his clever wife Penelope and his infant son Telemachus. A few years before Odysseus returns, a large group of suitors try to force Penelope to marry one of them by moving into her palace for an endless party devouring the food and drink belonging to Odysseus.
Shortly before Odysseus returns, Athena, disguised as Mentor, shows up on Ithaka and arranges for Telemachus to travel to the mainland seeking word of his father Odysseus. Telemachus hears that Odysseus is alive, but stuck on Kalypso’s island. The suitors try to ambush and kill Telemachus as he returns to Ithaka, but Athena arranges for him to get home safely.
Books 5-8: Meanwhile, Athena has also arranged with Zeus to release Odysseus from Kalypso’s island and allow him to return home. Odysseus leaves the island on a raft, which Poseidon wrecks in a storm as a final act of vengeance because Odysseus blinded his son, the cyclops Polyphemos. Nearly dead with exhaustion, Odysseus washes up on Scheria, land of the Phaiakians, and collapses in a bed of leaves to sleep. In the morning he encounters the princess Nausicaa and her girl friends who (inspired by Athena) have come to the beach to wash their linen. Nausicaa tells Odysseus the way to her parents’ palace, where he is nobly hosted.
Books 9-12: While feasting at the palace, Odysseus retells the stories of the fall of Troy and his amazing adventures since he left Troy. These are stories from the ancient oral tradition of sailors’ adventures to strange places, often beyond the boundaries of the real world.
Task 2. Read the Odyssey.
TASK 2. Read the Odyssey at https://www.mbci.mb.ca/site/assets/files/1626/homer_sodyssey.pdf (Links to an external site.).
This is, by far, the longest reading assignment you will have for this course, but it is a delightful story. Just allow yourself plenty of time. If you find it unbearably long, you may select an activity below and then focus your reading on the section of the Odyssey that deals with that question.
Task 3. Activities for Homer’s Odyssey
Read through the Homer Study Guide and all of the Activities below before making your selection. Make a copy of the Activity question to begin your response. Upload your Activity here. Title your entry, “Activity 3.” These Activity entries must be thoughtful; each one should be the equivalent of at least a full typed page or more in length (e.g. not less than 250 words). They may be longer if you need to say more on your topic. You will not be able to do these Activity entries properly unless you have carefully read the assigned literature.
Athena is Odysseus’ patron deity; he is her favorite human being. Look at some of the scenes in the Odyssey where they interact and describe their relationship in some detail, giving specific examples from more than one book of the Odyssey.
Look at the various warnings about what Clytemnestra did to Agamemnon, especially in Books XI and XXIV (the underworld scenes. Then review the dangers and violence of Odysseus’ homecoming, and think about how Odysseus approached Penelope and how he hanged the traitorous serving girls (Book XXII). Do you think Homer’s audience accepted that the girls deserved to be killed? How do you feel about the scene personally? Does it give you any insights into the concepts of right and wrong in Homer’s day and how those concepts might be different than in our time? Give specific examples from more than one book in the Odyssey to support your ideas.
List several of the women, mortal and divine in the Odyssey and write a brief description of each one. Finally, write a paragraph or two summing up Homer’s ideas about the roles of women in the Odyssey–what they are like and how they are treated.
Later civilizations disapproved of Homer because “he told lies about the gods.” Look in the Odyssey for some of these “lies.” List and describe several of them. Do you think Homer actually believed in gods such as he sang about? If so, do you think he was being impious to his gods? Why or why not? Support your position with specific examples from the Odyssey.
Why does Odysseus go to Hades and what does he learn there? Go into plenty of detail, using specific examples from Book 11 to support your ideas.
Compare Odysseus to a modern hero. The modern hero may be a fighter, a ruler, a leader, or an athlete; he may be real or fictional. Write a brief biography of each hero, looking at the specifics of his family life, beliefs, friendships, activities, heroic behaviors, etc. Then, explain how each hero affects the society he lives in and how people feel about him. Finally, what are the most interesting differences between your two heroes and so what?
Go to Bronze Age Images. Look through the various images and select three that might actually have existed in the world of the Odyssey. Describe each image and explain exactly where in the Odyssey you would expect to find it, who would use it, own it, live in it, etc., and what you could learn about the Odyssey from seeing the image. Support your ideas with specific examples from the Odyssey and from the images.
Go to the Homer Web Site and look at several images of the Trojan War. Select three which deal with the events of the Odyssey. Describe each image and compare it to the corresponding scene in the Odyssey. How has the artist interpreted the characters, events, etc.? Do you agree with the artist’s interpretation? Why or why not? Explain using specific examples to support your points.
Go to the Homer Web Site and scroll down to the section on the Troy Cycle. Look at the list of Troy epics and the characters and plot of the overall Troy Cycle to get a feeling for the mythic context of the Odyssey. Now think about the relations of gods and humans in the Odyssey. Select two interesting scenes where gods and humans interact. Describe each scene in some detail and explain its role in the overall story. Do you think these gods were any more or less real to Homer than the heroes? Why or why not? Support your ideas with specific examples from the Odyssey.
Go to Bulfinch’s Mythology and look up the stories of two or three major gods and/or heroes from the Odyssey. Now select one or more specific scenes in the Odyssey that can be better understood after reading about the characters’ mythological roles. Explain the way the mythology helps you to understand each scene, using specific details from both Bullfinch and the Odyssey to support your ideas.
Review the scenes in Hades in Books 11 and 24 of the Odyssey. What can you learn about Homer’s conception of life after death from reading them? Use specific examples to support your insights.
Odysseus has relationships with a number of women. List these women and then compare how he relates to different ones. Be sure to include Kirke (a witch) and Nausicaa (a nice young princess) in your list. Can you learn anything about Odysseus from how he relates to these different women? Use specific examples from the story to support your points.
Pick the character in the Odyssey that you think is the most “monstrous” and explain just what you find monstrous about him/her/it, and why. Be sure to use specific, detailed examples from the story to support your discussion.
Odysseus survives many ordeals that kill his men, such as the Kyklops, Skylla and Charybdis, and the final shipwreck. Discuss Odysseus as a leader of his men. Why do you think he survives while his followers do not? Support your discussion with examples from the story.
Look at Book 1 of the Odyssey, where Athena and Zeus discuss human behavior, Odysseus, and justice. Now look at the Book of Job, where God and Satan arrange to test Job to satisfy Satan’s cynical curiosity about Job’s goodness. Compare divine attitudes toward human beings in Job and in The Odyssey, noting what similarities there are, if any, and what differences. Support your observations with specific examples from both narratives.
Samuel Butler and Robert Graves both believed that the Odyssey had been written by a woman. Robert Graves wrote a novel, Homer’s Daughter, about Nausicaa, the woman who composed the Odyssey. Get a copy of this novel, read it, and then write an essay explaining whether or not you agree that a woman could have written the Odyssey. Support your ideas with plenty of examples from both the novel and the Odyssey.
One of the themes explored in The Odyssey is that of the passage from adolescence to adulthood. Construct a character analysis of Telemachus with careful consideration of his development from boy to man. Consider the role of Athena (Mentor) in this development as well as the effects of his father’s long absence.
Week 5 Discussion Question
What did you know about Homer’s, The Odyssey before beginning this module? What have you learned? What stands out for you about this story?
Module 2: Reading Quiz 1
Unit 1: Reading Quiz 3: Compare/Contrast Gilgamesh and Job as heroes.
Read the Epic of Gilgamesh (Links to an external site.) and the book of Job (Links to an external site.). https://www.biblestudytools.com/job/
Compare and Contrast Gilgamesh and Odysseus as heroes.
Use the following guidelines to help you compose your answer:
– How are Gilgamesh and Odysseus similar?
– How are Gilgamesh and Odysseus different?
– What are each hero’s strengths?
– What are each hero’s weaknesses?
– Which of the two do you think is the ultimate hero?
– Good answers should be at least 250 words.
Plagiarism Reminder
Answers should be in your own words. Do not copy answers from online sources. I am interested in what you think. If you use language from the text, use quotations marks (Example: “In the land of Uz there lived a man whose name was Job.”).
Task One: Homer Study Guide
WORLD LITERATURE I
Task One: Homer Study Guide
TASK 1. Read the Homer Study Guide, which will give you background information on the Troy Cycle and Homer’s epics, the Iliad and the Odyssey. It is connected to this document.
You may choose to watch the Homer’s Odyssey Video instead. It contains the same information. http://learner.org/courses/worldlit/odyssey/ (Links to an external site.)..
Homer and Troy by Diane Thompson, NVCC, ELI
Homer is the main reason we still know about the war at Troy. He composed two magnificent epic poems about the Trojan War, the Iliad and the Odyssey, around the eighth century BCE. This was about five hundred years after the war may have taken place. Probably one reason that the Trojan War became so important to later Greeks such as Homer was that they considered the Greek victors their ancestors. Another reason was that the Trojan War, if it occurred, came at the time that the Mycenaean Bronze Age collapsed. Thus, its fall represented, at least in story, the last great victory of the Mycenaean Greeks before the collapse of their civilization. Homer lived in a less glorious age. Although Greeks had colonized Asia Minor after the Trojan War, they were no longer as prosperous (or as piratical) as during the Bronze Age. There still was a town of Troy in Homer’s day, and Homer may have lived in the vicinity, earning his living by telling stories about the glorious past of the Greek conquerors.
Homer was said to be blind, but his vivid images and stories of Troy have survived and thrived for nearly three millennia. Homer’s Troy is a mixture of some fairly accurate details of the Bronze Age, mixed with details from his own time, and bound together by poetic imagination and elegant, swift-moving language. The Iliad and Odyssey have been so frequently praised, criticized, translated, borrowed from, adapted and imitated that a study of Homer and his literary descendants can easily become a study of the history of Western literary culture, from Troy to the twenty-first century. People have continued to read and imitate Homer because he was a wonderful poet.
The Iliad is the poem of Troy; it takes place in the Greek camp, below the walls of Troy, and within the city itself. It is the ninth year of a ten year siege. Achilles, a Greek leader and hero, quarrels with Agamemnon, the high king of the Greek army. They fight over women war-prizes—Chryseis and Briseis. Achilles pushes Agamemnon to return his war-prize woman, Chryseis, to her father, a priest of Apollo, in order to stop plague in the Greek camp. Agamemnon, furious, takes Achilles’ war-prize woman, Briseis, as his compensation. Achilles, even more furious, vows to stop fighting until the Trojan warriors push through the Greek camp up to their ships at the shore. Achilles also gets his goddess mother, Thetis, to petition Zeus to keep the Trojans killing the Greeks until this happens. Zeus agrees and the game is set. Many Greeks are killed, Achilles sulks in his tent, finally Achilles’ best friend Patroclus is killed and then at last Achilles rampages, slaughtering Trojans. Even the gods get into the battle, fighting one another until Zeus declares a stop to the chaos. The poem ends rather peacefully with two funerals, one for Hector, who killed Achilles’ friend Patroclus, and one for Patroclus. Soon Achilles will die; next year Troy will fall.
Clearly, Achilles and Agamemnon are not suitable role models for more civilized societies, and this became a problem for later generations. Even worse, stories of the gods quarreling and even engaging in wild battles, became unacceptable to more pious generations. And Homer’s vision of the relationship of mortals to gods is chilling—to Zeus, human beings are like the poppies of the field, they bloom briefly and die. The gods are rather like spectators betting on a violent football game that gets out of hand until Zeus finally calls an end to it. But Homer’s language, the power of the narrative, and Achilles’ heroic character are unforgettable, and have not only survived, but flourished, carrying memories of Troy into the twenty-first century.
Homer’s Greeks are winners; his Trojans, losers, yet the Trojans and Greeks share many traits, such as the love of warfare, excellence, gold, adventure, trade, women, and horses. In the Iliad, Trojans often seem more civilized than the Greeks. Priam is a better king and father than Agamemnon; Hector a kinder man than Achilles; Andromache a far better wife than Helen. Nonetheless, Homer’s Troy is not Greek. Priam is an oriental ruler who has fifty sons and twelve daughters, some by his wife, Hecuba, and many by his concubines in an oriental harem.
There is something exotic and decadent about Troy. The Trojans are not as politically astute, nor as aggressive, as the Greeks. Paris is a no-brain fop, but the Trojans allow him to act in ways that are disastrous for their city. Helen is pure trouble, yet the Trojans let her stay, even though her presence dooms them. Hector is the finest Trojan warrior, yet in his final test of will against Achilles, Hector breaks and tries to run away. Troy is rich, ancient, past its prime, even effete, an oriental kingdom to admire and plunder.
Even the gods have decided that Troy is ripe to fall. Zeus is ultimately on the side of the Greeks. Elsewhere in the Troy Cycle, there are stories of Priam’s father, King Laomedon, who was mean spirited and politically foolish. He tried to avoid paying his debt to the gods and refused hospitality to Jason and Hercules. Troy, for all its power and elegance, has smudges on its reputation. Excellence, and therefore victory, is clearly on the side of the Greeks.
However, the Trojans must display sufficient excellence to provide glory to their conquerors. And so they do. Indeed, they are good enough to inspire later civilizations to make them into their ancestral heroes. This is a wonderful irony of the Troy stories–the winners become transmuted into losers, the losers into winners, in the great culture wars of later civilizations.
The Story of the Troy Cycle by Diane Thompson, NVCC, ELI
There were two Trojan Wars: 1) when Laomedon was king of Troy, and 2) when his son Priam was king of Troy. The first occurred when Jason, Hercules and the Argonauts were seeking the Golden Fleece. They stopped off at Troy for rest and refueling, but King Laomedon refused them hospitality and forced them to leave. Some versions say that Laomedon tried to cheat Hercules out of promised pay for contracted heroic deeds. After successfully completing the Golden Fleece quest, Jason and Hercules gathered an army of Greeks, returned, and destroyed Troy to punish King Laomedon. Priam, Laomedon’s son, survived and rebuilt Troy.
The underlying cause of Homer’s Trojan War is told in the Cypria, of which only fragments remain. The burden of too many human beings disturbed the earth and Zeus conceived of the Trojan War to lower the population and relieve the earth. He did this by allowing Eris (Strife) to attend the wedding banquet of Peleus and Thetis, where Eris stirred up conflict between the goddesses Hera, Athena and Aphrodite over who was the most beautiful.
The three goddesses asked Paris, a rather foolish, lady-loving son of King Priam of Troy, to judge which of them was the most beautiful. Each goddess offered her own special bribe. Paris chose Aphrodite’s bribe, possession of Helen, the most beautiful woman in the world. Helen happened to be married to King Menelaus, one of the regional Greek kings, so Paris set off to Greece with a war party, seized her (perhaps with her cooperation), and brought her back to Troy, where they were married.
Menelaus then went to his brother Agamemnon, the High King of the Greeks, and asked for help retrieving his wife from Troy. Agamemnon assembled warriors and ships from all over Greece Divinely controlled unfavorable winds prevented the Greek fleet from sailing for Troy until Agamemnon sacrificed his daughter Iphigenia. The Greek army then besieged Troy for ten years.
During the ninth year of the siege, Achilles, the best of the Greek warriors, and Agamemnon quarreled bitterly over who got to keep Achilles’ woman war-prize, Briseis. Feeling shamefully dishonored, Achilles withdrew his men, the Myrmidons, from the fighting, resulting in the deaths of many Greeks, including Achilles’ dearest friend, Patroclus. Achilles and Agamemnon finally reconciled and Achilles reentered the battle, killing Hector, the greatest Trojan warrior, although Achilles knew that he himself would die shortly after Hector’s death. The story of Achilles’ wrath is told in Homer’s Iliad.
In the tenth year of the siege, the Trojans were deceived by the hollow Trojan Horse (its wooden belly full of soldiers) into letting Greeks inside their walls, and Troy fell. The city was burned, many Trojans slaughtered, and the women and children taken away as slaves.
The victorious Greeks began returning home, some quickly, some less so. Helen returned to Greece and resumed her marriage with Menelaus. We meet them living comfortably together when Odysseus’ son Telemachus visits their palace in the Odyssey. Agamemnon returned to his wife, Clytemnestra, who conspired with her lover, Aegisthus, to trap Agamemnon in a net and kill him. Odysseus was the last Greek warrior to return home from Troy. The Odyssey tells the story of his amazing voyage as well as his victory over the wicked suitors who were camped in his palace, devouring his supplies and intimidating his virtuous wife, Penelope.
There were also stories about Odysseus’ later adventures in the Telegonia, a sequel to the Odyssey composed by Eugammon of Cyrene in the sixth century BC. The Odyssey ends with the implication that Odysseus’ worst troubles are over; not so according to the Telegonia. Odysseus continues his infidelities and wanderings until Telegonus, his son by Circe, kills him.
The Story of the Odyssey, Briefly Retold by Diane Thompson, NVCC, ELI
Books 1-4: When Odysseus sailed for Troy, he left behind his clever wife Penelope and his infant son Telemachus. A few years before Odysseus returns, a large group of suitors try to force Penelope to marry one of them by moving into her palace for an endless party devouring the food and drink belonging to Odysseus.
Shortly before Odysseus returns, Athena, disguised as Mentor, shows up on Ithaka and arranges for Telemachus to travel to the mainland seeking word of his father Odysseus. Telemachus hears that Odysseus is alive, but stuck on Kalypso’s island. The suitors try to ambush and kill Telemachus as he returns to Ithaka, but Athena arranges for him to get home safely.
Books 5-8: Meanwhile, Athena has also arranged with Zeus to release Odysseus from Kalypso’s island and allow him to return home. Odysseus leaves the island on a raft, which Poseidon wrecks in a storm as a final act of vengeance because Odysseus blinded his son, the cyclops Polyphemos. Nearly dead with exhaustion, Odysseus washes up on Scheria, land of the Phaiakians, and collapses in a bed of leaves to sleep. In the morning he encounters the princess Nausicaa and her girl friends who (inspired by Athena) have come to the beach to wash their linen. Nausicaa tells Odysseus the way to her parents’ palace, where he is nobly hosted.
Books 9-12: While feasting at the palace, Odysseus retells the stories of the fall of Troy and his amazing adventures since he left Troy. These are stories from the ancient oral tradition of sailors’ adventures to strange places, often beyond the boundaries of the real world.
Task 2. Read the Odyssey.
TASK 2. Read the Odyssey at https://www.mbci.mb.ca/site/assets/files/1626/homer_sodyssey.pdf (Links to an external site.).
This is, by far, the longest reading assignment you will have for this course, but it is a delightful story. Just allow yourself plenty of time. If you find it unbearably long, you may select an activity below and then focus your reading on the section of the Odyssey that deals with that question.
