Figure from Greek mythology
POPULARITY
8 episodes with king agamemnon
3 episodes with king agamemnon
2 episodes with king agamemnon
2 episodes with king agamemnon
2 episodes with king agamemnon
2 episodes with king agamemnon
Kristin Atherton delivers a powerhouse performance of the final volume in Booker Prize novelist Pat Barker's trilogy reimagining the Trojan War from a female perspective. Host Jo Reed and AudioFile's Kendra Winchester discuss this story of Ritsa, a Trojan healer who is enslaved to Cassandra, who is herself the slave-concubine of King Agamemnon. The war is over, the seas perilous, egos fragile, prophesies unkind, and in Mycenae Clytemnestra plots revenge. Atherton, who won Earphones Awards for the previous books, again demonstrates exquisite timing that reinforces the drama. Read our review of the audiobook at our website. Published by Random House Audio. Discover thousands of audiobook reviews and more at AudioFile's website. Today's episode is brought to you by Brilliance Publishing. The Sound of Storytelling. Discover your next great listen at https://www.brilliancepublishing.com/ Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
Kevin is a young boy fascinated by history, particularly that of Ancient Greece. His parents ignore his activities, having become obsessed with buying the latest household gadgets. One night, as Kevin is sleeping, an armoured knight on a horse bursts out of his wardrobe. Kevin hides under the covers as the knight rides off into a forest where his bedroom wall was; when Kevin looks again, the room is back to normal and he finds one of his photos on the wall similar to the forest he saw. The next night he prepares a satchel with supplies and a Polaroid camera but is surprised when six dwarfs spill out of the wardrobe. Kevin quickly learns the group has stolen a map and is looking for an exit from his room before they are discovered. They find that the bedroom wall leads to a portal. Kevin is hesitant to join until the apparition of a floating, menacing head—the Supreme Being—appears behind them, demanding the return of the map. Kevin and the dwarves find an empty void at the end of the hallway. They land in Italy during the Battle of Castiglione. As they recover, Kevin learns that Randall is the lead dwarf of the group, which also includes Fidgit, Strutter, Og, Wally, and Vermin. They were once employed by the Supreme Being to repair holes in the spacetime fabric, but realised the potential to use the map that identifies these holes to steal riches and escape via time/space travel. With Kevin's help, they visit several locations in spacetime and meet figures such as Napoleon Bonaparte and Robin Hood. Kevin uses his camera to document their visits. However, they are unaware that their activities are being monitored by Evil, a malevolent being who is able to manipulate reality and is attempting to acquire the map. Kevin becomes separated from the group and ends up in Mycenaean Greece, meeting King Agamemnon. After Kevin inadvertently helps Agamemnon kill a Minotaur,[4] the king adopts him. Randall and the others soon locate Kevin and abduct him, much to his resentment, and escape through another hole, arriving on the RMS Titanic. After it sinks, they tread water while arguing with each other. Evil manipulates the group and transports them to his realm, the Time of Legends. After surviving encounters with ogres and a giant, Kevin and the dwarfs locate the Fortress of Ultimate Darkness and are led to believe that "The Most Fabulous Object in the World" awaits them, luring them into Evil's trap. Evil takes the map and locks the group in a cage over a bottomless pit. While looking through the Polaroids he took, Kevin finds one that includes the map, and the group realises that there is a hole near them. They escape from the cage and Kevin distracts their pursuers while the others go through the hole. Evil confronts Kevin and takes the map from him. The dwarfs return with various warriors and fighting machines from across time, but Evil effortlessly and comically defeats them all. As Kevin and the dwarfs cower, Evil prepares to unleash his ultimate power. Suddenly, he is engulfed in flames and burned into charcoal; from the smoke, a besuited elderly man emerges, revealed as the Supreme Being. He reveals that he allowed the dwarfs to borrow his map and the whole adventure had been a test. He orders the dwarfs to collect the pieces of concentrated Evil, warning that they can be deadly if not contained. After recovering the map he allows the dwarfs to rejoin him in his creation duties. The Supreme Being disappears with the dwarfs, leaving Kevin behind as a missed piece of Evil begins to smoulder. Kevin awakes in his bedroom to find it filled with smoke. Firefighters break down the door and rescue him as they put out a fire in his house. One of the firemen finds that his parents' new toaster oven caused the fire. As Kevin recovers, he finds one of the firemen resembles Agamemnon and discovers that he still has the photos from his adventure. Kevin's parents discover a smouldering rock in the toaster oven. Recognising it as a piece of Evil, Kevin warns them not to touch it, but they ignore him, do so and explode, leaving only their shoes. As the Agamemnon-firefighter winks at the boy before leaving, Kevin approaches the smoking shoes and is seen from above as his figure grows smaller, revealing the planet and then outer space, before being rolled up in the map by the Supreme Being.
THE FACE THAT LAUNCHED A THOUSAND SHIPS!! Save Money & Cancel Unwanted Subscriptions By Going To https://rocketmoney.com/rejects Troy Full Movie Reaction Watch Along: https://www.patreon.com/thereelrejects Tuesday means it's time for another Historical Drama with a hearty dose of Ancient Greek Mythology as Tara Erickson & Aaron Alexander give their First Time Reaction, Commentary, Breakdown, & Spoiler Review for the Epic Tale directed by Wolfgang Petersen (Das Boot, The NeverEnding Story, Air Force One, Poseidon) based on Homer's Iliad as well as Posthomerica by Quintus Smyrnaeus. Troy stars Brad Pitt (Fight Club, Mr. & Mrs. Smith, Once Upon a Time In Hollywood) as the demigod Achilles, Eric Bana (Hulk, Star Trek, Black Hawk Down) as Hector, Orlando Bloom (Pirates of the caribbean, The Lord of the Rings) as Paris, Diane Kruger (Inglourious Basterds, National Treasure) as Helen of Troy, Brian Cox (Succession, Adaptation, X2 X-Men United) as King Agamemnon, Brendan Gleeson (In Bruges, The Banshees on Inisherin, Paddington 2) as Menelaus, & Sean Bean (Goldeneye, Equilibrium, The Fellowship of the Ring) as Odysseus, along with Peter O'Toole (Lawrence of Arabia), Julie Christie (Doctor Zhivago), Rose Byrne (Insidious, Neighbors, Bridesmaids), Saffron Burrows (Deep Blue Sea, Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D.), Nathan Jones (Mad Max: Fury Road), Garrett Hedlund (Tron: Legacy), & MORE! Tara & Aaron react to all the Best Scenes & Most Epic Battles including the Trojan Horse, Achilles' Revenge, (Achilles vs. Boagrius), Hector vs. Achilles, Is There No One Else? , Hector vs. Ajax, Hector Saves Paris, Hector Kills Achilles? , Achilles saves Briseis, the Ending Scene, & Beyond! Follow Tara Erickson: Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/@TaraErickson Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/taraerickson/ Twitter: https://twitter.com/thetaraerickson Follow Aaron On Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/therealaaronalexander/?hl=en Support The Channel By Getting Some REEL REJECTS Apparel! https://www.rejectnationshop.com/ Music Used In Manscaped Ad: Hat the Jazz by Twin Musicom is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 license. https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ POWERED BY @GFUEL Visit https://gfuel.ly/3wD5Ygo and use code REJECTNATION for 20% off select tubs!! Head Editor: https://www.instagram.com/praperhq/?hl=en Co-Editor: Greg Alba Co-Editor: John Humphrey Music In Video: Airport Lounge - Disco Ultralounge by Kevin MacLeod is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 license. https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ Ask Us A QUESTION On CAMEO: https://www.cameo.com/thereelrejects Follow TheReelRejects On FACEBOOK, TWITTER, & INSTAGRAM: FB: https://www.facebook.com/TheReelRejects/ INSTAGRAM: https://www.instagram.com/reelrejects/ TWITTER: https://twitter.com/thereelrejects Follow GREG ON INSTAGRAM & TWITTER: INSTAGRAM: https://www.instagram.com/thegregalba/ TWITTER: https://twitter.com/thegregalba Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
This podcast, Myths and Movies, is about Greek myths and select movie(s) that have been based upon them. In this first episode, I discuss the myth of Iphigenia, the daughter of King Agamemnon of Argos. The literature I draw from is called Iphigenia At Aulis, an unfinished play by Euripides, and the movie that I draw from is the 1977 Greek film Iphigenia.
Deacon Harrison Garlick and Adam Minihan sit down to talk about the embassy to Achilles in Book 9.In this episode we will discuss:What happens in book nine?Who is Phoenix?What is the relationship between Achilles and Patroclus?What effect does the embassy have on Achilles?What else should be noted in the embassy to Achilles?Want our whole guide to The Iliad? Download it for free.Book NineThe Embassy to AchillesBut now at last, stop, Achilles—let your heart-devouring anger go!Odysseus (9.307)47. What happens in book nine?Night has fallen. As the Trojans set their watch, the Achaeans are distraught and panicked (9.02). King Agamemnon despairs and tells his men to sail home (9.31). After a long silence, Diomedes tells Agamemnon to “sail away” (9.49), but Diomedes and company will stay and fight until the “fixed doom of Troy” occurs (9.56). Nestor, the old Achaean war chief, exhorts Agamemnon to have the night sentries take their posts (9.76) and to throw a feast of “grand hospitality” for his senior chieftains (9.80). Agamemnon obeys and, at the feast, Nestor appeals to Agamemnon to make peace with Achilles (9.122). Agamemnon again follows Nestor's lead. He sends Odysseus, Ajax, and Phoenix (9.201) with the promise that Agamemnon will return Briseis to Achilles along with hordes of treasure and more treasure to come when Troy falls (9.146).The embassy finds Achilles playing the lyre by his ships (9.222). Achilles greets them warmly and each member of delegation attempts to convince Achilles to return to the war and save the Argives. But Achilles still harbors an undying rage against Agamemnon, stating: “I hate that man like the very Gates of Death” (9.379). Agamemnon has wounded the honor of Achilles and no gifts can undo that fact (9.470). Achilles even tells Odysseus that Agamemnon can keep and enjoy Briseis (9.407). The heart of Achilles “still heaves with rage” (9.789), and he will not even think of “arming for bloody war again” until Hector has slaughtered the Argives all the way to his own ship (9.795). The embassy reports back to Agamemnon and, as they were all “struck dumb,” Diomedes rallies the chieftains and tells Agamemnon to fight on the front lines tomorrow (9.865). The Achaeans, who are stirred by the speech, make their offerings to Zeus and go to sleep awaiting the dawn (9.866).48. Who is Phoenix? Phoenix, an Achaean, was charged by Peleus, Achilles' father, to train Achilles in war and rhetoric (9.533). Regarding his own background, Phoenix tells the story of sleeping with his father's concubine, at his mother's request, and his father finding out (9.549). Phoenix runs away from home, and Peleus welcomes him into his home as a son (9.583). One may observe the similarity that Phoenix's past and Achilles' present both hinge on a concubine or slave-girl. Phoenix claims to Achilles: “I made you what you are—strong as the gods… I loved you from the heart” (9.587). He expresses his love for Achilles, as a man who knew he'd never have his own son (9.595). In fact, he leverages this into an argument stating: “I made you my son, I tried, so someday you might fight disaster off my back” (9.600). He then gives an explanation of the Prayers of Zeus, personified, who “heal the wounds of mankind” (6.117). The explicit appeal to family and then to the gods (to save his people) invites another comparison between Achilles and Hector—whose piety toward family, polis, and the gods was on display in book six. Phoenix's appeal to the ancient story of Meleager is...
Deacon Harrison Garlick and Adam Minihan sit down to talk about the tide of battle turns in Book 8.In this episode we will discuss:What happens in book eight?Do the Achaeans actually need Achillies?What is the relationship between Athena and Zeus?What else should be observed in book eight?Want our whole guide to The Iliad? Download it for free.Book EightThe Tide of Battle TurnsMany attempts have been made to reconcile these two ideas, to assert the overriding power of Zeus's will on the one hand, or that of a nameless destiny on the other. - Knox43. What happens in book eight?Zeus issues a new, “strict decree” that the gods are no longer to help the Achaeans or the Trojans in order that Zeus may “bring this violent business to an end” (8.08). The gods are in “stunned silence” when Athena acknowledges Father Zeus' command but also provides the caveat that she'll “simply offer the Argives tactics” (8.42). As the fighting begins anew, Zeus holds out his “sacred golden scales” of fate, and they show a “day of doom” for the Achaeans, the Greeks (8.85). Zeus makes known this judgment by letting loose his lightning and thunder against the Argives (8.89), and as they retreat, Nestor is left behind—because Prince Paris shoots his horse (8.97). Diomedes charges the front lines by himself and saves Nestor using the horses he took from Aeneas (8.116); but then he also decides to charge Troy alone in an attempt to kill Hector (8.129). Diomedes turns around, however, due to the advice of Nestor and the lightning and thunder of Zeus (8.163). Hector, bolstered by Zeus' favor, leads Troy in an onslaught against the Argives (8.197). The goddess Hera, who is raging in Olympus, first tempts Poseidon to intervene against Zeus' decree, but Poseidon wisely declines to fight Zeus (8.239). Hera inspires Agamemnon (8.250), the Achaean high chieftain inspires his men and cries out to Zeus for mercy (8.271). Zeus, moved by the weeping of Agamemnon (8.280), sends an eagle as an omen that the Argives may turn and fight (8.282). Zeus, however, favors the Trojans, and Hector leads an assault with eyes blazing like the war god, Ares (8.383, 398). Having failed to tempt Poseidon, Hera tempts Athena to intervene against Zeus' decree, and Athena acquiesces and prepares for war (8.401). Zeus sends Iris, the messenger goddess, to Hera and Athena, and the two goddesses, not wanting to war with Zeus, call off their return to the battlefield (8.490). On Olympus, Zeus partially reveals his plan to Hera and Athena, the so-called “doom of Zeus” (8.551)—that there will be a battle over the body of Patroclus, friend of Achilles. Hector pushes the advance against the Greeks until nightfall, and the Trojans, the Achaeans, and the gods all wait for “Dawn to mount her glowing throne” (8.654). 44. Do the Achaeans actually need Achilles?The movement of book eight is largely structured by Zeus' promise to Thetis—that the Trojans would prosper until King Agamemnon sees his need for Achilles (8.423). Often times, however, this is read as a self-fulfilling prophecy. In other words, that the lack of Achilles on the battlefield will inevitably lead to a Trojan advancement; yet, in contrast, it would seem that Homer presents a situation in which Zeus must bless the Trojans or the Argives will win even without Achilles. For example, examine the role of Diomedes. First, the Trojans have already stated they fear Diomedes more than they even did Achilles. Second, when Diomedes charges the Trojans to kill Hector while...
"Hero" has a different meaning in modern times compared to Ancient Greece. Most heroes in Greek Mythology actually commit some pretty terrible acts. Today we're looking at one of the famous Greek Heroes of the Trojan War, King Agamemnon. Why do I dislike him so much? Mainly because it's fun to do so and I'm a silly billy but he makes it so easy! But I do go into a bit more detail...and get about as angry as my shy British self can get.Follow me!Twitter/X: @GreeksGeeksPodTiktok: @SabrinaSalisburyWriter Sources:The OdysseyThe IliadThe OrestiaMy own blind hatred
Deacon Harrison Garlick welcomes Dr. Karl Schudt to Ascend to discuss Book 3 of the Iliad - Helen Reviews the ChampionsIn this episode Dcn. Garlick and Dr. Karl Schudt will discuss:What happens in the third book of the Iliad?What is the story of Helen and Paris?What are Trojan politics concerning Helen and Paris?What is guest-friendship?What else should be noted in book 3?Book ThreeHelen Reviews the ChampionsParis' spirit shook, backing into his friendly ranks he cringed from death…dreading Atrides—magnificent, brave Paris.Iliad 3.35, 4121. What happens in the third book of the Iliad?The Achaean and Trojan armies line up against one another, and Paris, son of Priam and brother of Hector, struts out and challenges the best of the Argives (i.e., the Achaeans) to single combat (3.21). Menelaus, King of Sparta, answers the call, and Paris, upon seeing Menelaus, “cringed from death” and hides back amongst the Trojans (3.36). Hector chastises Paris, and Paris then agrees to single combat against Menelaus (3.84). The “challenge of Paris” is issued and accepted with the terms being that Helen and her treasures go to the victor, and friendship will be sealed in blood between the Achaeans and the Trojans (3.105). King Agamemnon and King Priam seal the challenge with an oath and sacrifice to Zeus (3.129). When it is clear that Paris has lost the duel, Aphrodite swoops in and transports Paris to his “bedroom full of scent” (3.439). Aphrodite coerces Helen to go to Paris, and Helen, at the longings of Paris, makes love to him (3.460, 517). Meanwhile, Menelaus, Helen's former (or actual) husband, is outside Troy “like a wild beast,” and his brother, Agamemnon, declares Menelaus the winner (3.527, 536). Helen and her treasures should go to Menelaus and the Achaeans; friendship should be bound in blood between Troy and the ancient Greeks; and the war should be over.22. What is the story of Helen and Paris?Homer continues to unravel slowly the narratives that brought about the Trojan war. As noted above (Question 18), Menelaus was now the king of Sparta and husband to Helen, daughter of Zeus. Paris and a contingency of Trojans visited Sparta and were welcomed warmly by Menelaus. Menelaus left his guests in good care to visit Crete, and in his absence Paris absconded with Helen to Troy. Given the oath secured by King Tyndareus (Question 18), Menelaus turned to all of ancient Greece to help him return Helen to Sparta. Homer presents several references to Helen departing with Paris: Paris “carried off a woman” (3.55); why Menelaus will not trust the oaths of the princes of Troy (3.129); Helen's emotions for Menelaus, her “husband long ago” (3.169); and Paris' own account of sweeping Helen away from the “lovely hills of Lacedaemon,” i.e., ancient Sparta (3.520). Notably, Homer introduces Helen in book three weaving a “growing web, a dark red folding robe” as a clear analogue of the war (3.151).23. What are Trojan politics concerning Helen and Paris? As book one revealed the complexities of Achaean politics, so too does book three reveal the internal politics of the Trojans. In short, almost no one likes Paris. After Paris hides from Menelaus, Hector chastises him saying, among other things, that it be better if Paris had never been born (3.45), he's a “curse” to his father, and a “joy” to the enemies of Troy (3.57-8). Moreover, the people of Troy seem to want to give his new bride, Helen, back the Achaeans (3.191). Helen...
Troy is an ancient city and archaeological site in modern-day Turkey, but is also famously the setting for the legendary Trojan War in Homer's epic poems the "Iliad" and the "Odyssey." In legend, the city of Troy was besieged for 10 years and eventually conquered by a Greek army led by King Agamemnon. Coffee Collab With The Lore Lodge COFFEE Travel to Peru with me here Travel to Italy With Me here Bonus episodes as well as ad-free episodes on Patreon. Find us on Instagram. Join us on Discord. Submit your relatives on our website Podcast Youtube Channel Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
Relax and find comfort in this ancient history story of King Agamemnon and his brother Menelaus. Follow their lives from childhood in the Greek countryside to his quest to reunite his brother with the beautiful Helen of Troy during the epic Trojan War.
"The Iliad is an epic poem in dactylic hexameters, traditionally attributed to Homer. Set in the Trojan War, the ten-year siege of Ilium, by a coalition of Greek States, it tells of the battles and events during the weeks of a quarrel between King Agamemnon and the warrior Achilles. Although the story covers only a few weeks in the final year of the war, the Iliad mentions or alludes to many of the Greek legends about the siege" --- Support this podcast: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/librivox1/support
Join Filmmaker Nathan Blackwell (Voyage Trekkers, the Last Movie Ever Made) and Comedian Improviser Krissy Lenz (the Neighborhood Comedy Theatre), plus Pete Wright (TruStory FM, The Next Reel Film Podcast) as they explore the times of legend and the plastic wrapped fortress of ultimate darkness in Time Bandits (1981).Letterboxd says, "ALL THE DREAMS YOU'VE EVER HAD AND NOT JUST THE GOOD ONES. Young history buff Kevin can scarcely believe it when six dwarfs emerge from his closet one night. Former employees of the Supreme Being, they've purloined a map charting all of the holes in the fabric of time and are using it to steal treasures from different historical eras. Taking Kevin with them, they variously drop in on Napoleon, Robin Hood and King Agamemnon before the Supreme Being catches up with them."Pete is a big fan of this movie, Nathan loves it, and Krissy has never seen it! Get their review, ratings and Deep Cut Recommendations!
The Iliad is an ancient Greek epic poem by Homer, written down around the 8th century BC, and among the oldest works of Western literature along with the Odyssey.Set during the Trojan War, the ten-year siege of the city of Troy (Ilium) by a coalition of Mycenaean Greek states (Achaeans), it tells of the battles and events during the weeks of a quarrel between King Agamemnon and the warrior Achilles.Although the story covers only a few weeks in the final year of the war, the Iliad mentions or alludes to many of the Greek legends about the siege; the earlier events, such as the gathering of warriors for the siege, the cause of the war, and related concerns, tend to appear near the beginning. Then the epic narrative takes up events prophesied for the future, such as Achilles's imminent death and the fall of Troy, although the narrative ends before these events take place. However, as these events are prefigured and alluded to more and more vividly, when it reaches an end, the poem has told a more or less complete tale of the Trojan War. (From Wikipedia).Advertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brandsPrivacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy
The Iliad is an ancient Greek epic poem by Homer, written down around the 8th century BC, and among the oldest works of Western literature along with the Odyssey.Set during the Trojan War, the ten-year siege of the city of Troy (Ilium) by a coalition of Mycenaean Greek states (Achaeans), it tells of the battles and events during the weeks of a quarrel between King Agamemnon and the warrior Achilles.Although the story covers only a few weeks in the final year of the war, the Iliad mentions or alludes to many of the Greek legends about the siege; the earlier events, such as the gathering of warriors for the siege, the cause of the war, and related concerns, tend to appear near the beginning. Then the epic narrative takes up events prophesied for the future, such as Achilles's imminent death and the fall of Troy, although the narrative ends before these events take place. However, as these events are prefigured and alluded to more and more vividly, when it reaches an end, the poem has told a more or less complete tale of the Trojan War. (From Wikipedia).Advertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brandsPrivacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy
The Iliad is an ancient Greek epic poem by Homer, written down around the 8th century BC, and among the oldest works of Western literature along with the Odyssey.Set during the Trojan War, the ten-year siege of the city of Troy (Ilium) by a coalition of Mycenaean Greek states (Achaeans), it tells of the battles and events during the weeks of a quarrel between King Agamemnon and the warrior Achilles.Although the story covers only a few weeks in the final year of the war, the Iliad mentions or alludes to many of the Greek legends about the siege; the earlier events, such as the gathering of warriors for the siege, the cause of the war, and related concerns, tend to appear near the beginning. Then the epic narrative takes up events prophesied for the future, such as Achilles's imminent death and the fall of Troy, although the narrative ends before these events take place. However, as these events are prefigured and alluded to more and more vividly, when it reaches an end, the poem has told a more or less complete tale of the Trojan War. (From Wikipedia).Advertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brandsPrivacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy
The Iliad is an ancient Greek epic poem by Homer, written down around the 8th century BC, and among the oldest works of Western literature along with the Odyssey.Set during the Trojan War, the ten-year siege of the city of Troy (Ilium) by a coalition of Mycenaean Greek states (Achaeans), it tells of the battles and events during the weeks of a quarrel between King Agamemnon and the warrior Achilles.Although the story covers only a few weeks in the final year of the war, the Iliad mentions or alludes to many of the Greek legends about the siege; the earlier events, such as the gathering of warriors for the siege, the cause of the war, and related concerns, tend to appear near the beginning. Then the epic narrative takes up events prophesied for the future, such as Achilles's imminent death and the fall of Troy, although the narrative ends before these events take place. However, as these events are prefigured and alluded to more and more vividly, when it reaches an end, the poem has told a more or less complete tale of the Trojan War. (From Wikipedia).Advertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brandsPrivacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy
The Iliad is an ancient Greek epic poem by Homer, written down around the 8th century BC, and among the oldest works of Western literature along with the Odyssey.Set during the Trojan War, the ten-year siege of the city of Troy (Ilium) by a coalition of Mycenaean Greek states (Achaeans), it tells of the battles and events during the weeks of a quarrel between King Agamemnon and the warrior Achilles.Although the story covers only a few weeks in the final year of the war, the Iliad mentions or alludes to many of the Greek legends about the siege; the earlier events, such as the gathering of warriors for the siege, the cause of the war, and related concerns, tend to appear near the beginning. Then the epic narrative takes up events prophesied for the future, such as Achilles's imminent death and the fall of Troy, although the narrative ends before these events take place. However, as these events are prefigured and alluded to more and more vividly, when it reaches an end, the poem has told a more or less complete tale of the Trojan War. (From Wikipedia).Advertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brandsPrivacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy
The Iliad is an ancient Greek epic poem by Homer, written down around the 8th century BC, and among the oldest works of Western literature along with the Odyssey.Set during the Trojan War, the ten-year siege of the city of Troy (Ilium) by a coalition of Mycenaean Greek states (Achaeans), it tells of the battles and events during the weeks of a quarrel between King Agamemnon and the warrior Achilles.Although the story covers only a few weeks in the final year of the war, the Iliad mentions or alludes to many of the Greek legends about the siege; the earlier events, such as the gathering of warriors for the siege, the cause of the war, and related concerns, tend to appear near the beginning. Then the epic narrative takes up events prophesied for the future, such as Achilles's imminent death and the fall of Troy, although the narrative ends before these events take place. However, as these events are prefigured and alluded to more and more vividly, when it reaches an end, the poem has told a more or less complete tale of the Trojan War. (From Wikipedia).Advertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brandsPrivacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy
The Iliad is an ancient Greek epic poem by Homer, written down around the 8th century BC, and among the oldest works of Western literature along with the Odyssey.Set during the Trojan War, the ten-year siege of the city of Troy (Ilium) by a coalition of Mycenaean Greek states (Achaeans), it tells of the battles and events during the weeks of a quarrel between King Agamemnon and the warrior Achilles.Although the story covers only a few weeks in the final year of the war, the Iliad mentions or alludes to many of the Greek legends about the siege; the earlier events, such as the gathering of warriors for the siege, the cause of the war, and related concerns, tend to appear near the beginning. Then the epic narrative takes up events prophesied for the future, such as Achilles's imminent death and the fall of Troy, although the narrative ends before these events take place. However, as these events are prefigured and alluded to more and more vividly, when it reaches an end, the poem has told a more or less complete tale of the Trojan War. (From Wikipedia).Advertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brandsPrivacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy
The Iliad is an ancient Greek epic poem by Homer, written down around the 8th century BC, and among the oldest works of Western literature along with the Odyssey.Set during the Trojan War, the ten-year siege of the city of Troy (Ilium) by a coalition of Mycenaean Greek states (Achaeans), it tells of the battles and events during the weeks of a quarrel between King Agamemnon and the warrior Achilles.Although the story covers only a few weeks in the final year of the war, the Iliad mentions or alludes to many of the Greek legends about the siege; the earlier events, such as the gathering of warriors for the siege, the cause of the war, and related concerns, tend to appear near the beginning. Then the epic narrative takes up events prophesied for the future, such as Achilles's imminent death and the fall of Troy, although the narrative ends before these events take place. However, as these events are prefigured and alluded to more and more vividly, when it reaches an end, the poem has told a more or less complete tale of the Trojan War. (From Wikipedia).Advertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brandsPrivacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy
Clytemnestra, the wife of King Agamemnon, has a troubling past with her poor daughter, Iphigenia, being sacrificed in order for her husband to go to war. As she waits ten long years for her husband to return, all that is on her mind is how she will get his revenge. Come and join me as we discover what happens when we hold on to a grudge and how we can learn to let go of them. --- This episode is sponsored by · Anchor: The easiest way to make a podcast. https://anchor.fm/app
Homer - The Odyssey - Episode 4 - The Importance Of "Oikos" And Why Odysseus Pursues It! Hi, I'm Christy Shriver and we're here to discuss books that have changed the world and have changed us. And I'm Garry Shriver, and this is the How to Love Lit Podcast. This is our third episode in our discussion of this influential classic, however else you might like to call it. In the first episode we started our discussion introducing just a few of the issues surrounding Homer, the poet himself, the Mycenean people and the semi-mythical age in which the story is set. Both of which are full of mystery. Archeology just does not fully answer questions like if Homer was a real person, or even if Ithaca existed. So, we are left with complicated pieces of a strange large game of sudoku, if you want to look at it as a puzzle. We tried to clearly portray that the Homeric poems are not historical accounts but creative pieces. This of course becomes very obvious in the chapters about the wanderings. Six-headed monsters and glamorous witches are obviously imaginative. But even the parts that seem to reflect “real life”, they still cannot possibly represent the reality of the Bronze age or the Dark age. Homer didn't know those realities. We did suggest that there likely was a Trojan war of some sorts, and perhaps King Agamemnon was a real person, but that's just about as far as we can extrapolate with any certainty. So, the Odyssey, nor the Iliad for that matter, was NOT trying to be a paint a picture of the current society of the period, but they do reflect the values and in episodes 2 and 3 we looked at a few of these values. So true- In the second episode, we tried to give an overview and a discussion of books 1-4, the Telemachy. That coming of age story where Telemachus, who was a baby when Odysseus left, arrives at a moment where he wants to embrace adulthood- or manhood as they called it. And yet, for Telemachus, as for every other teenager that has lived on this planet, that transition is not smooth. He's awkward, he's confrontational with his mother, he cries in public, but ultimately he leaves home and takes chances in the outside world. And although, he doesn't come back a hero, he does develop or maybe grow up a little as we see in his homecoming in chapter 15. He learns what a “real man” is, to use their term. He learns how to talk to adults and practice proper xenia. He sees relationships between men and women that are functional and relationships that are dysfunctional. We even see him at the end of the Telemachy, asserting some agency by giving shelter to a homeless man himself. And of course, last episode, we spent almost the entire time talking about Xenia, or hospitality. We talked about the examples of good xenia, like we saw in the Telemachy, but we also saw examples of bad xenia, most notably, in book nine through both the character of Polyphemus but even Odysseus really. We finished last episode leaving the island of the winds or Aeolia and arriving at the house of Circe. Christy, this is not the first woman we have met in the Odyssey, but she is one of your favorites, so before we get to Circe and why you seem to like her, as a woman, what do you see in general how we should understand these female characters? Or should men and women see these characters similarly. Ha! Well, that's an interesting question to raise, as today we look at the role of gender in the book as well as in ancient Greek life. But we must remember that gender roles are not isolated things. They are not simple things as we clearly see in these wandering chapters. We also have to be honest with ourselves and admit that when we read texts from other cultures, we have trouble understanding what things mean in the broader context of society as a whole. Even something as seemingly straightforward as sexism cannot be just read into a text, although there's a temptation to do just that. One aspect of this narrative that I find fascinating is that Homer in the Odyssey does explore the very raw and honest reality that no matter how patriarchial you may think a society is. What do you mean by that? Sure, so, if you want to, you could say this this is simply an old story about a man who leaves his family to fight for another man's woman because she's the most beautiful woman in the world and his friend wants his woman back back, so he dumps his own wife and son for twenty years, then wanders around sleeping with a bunch of evil women who are all madly in love with him until he finally comes back to an objectified wife who has been perfectly faithful. This said hero swoops in, kills all the bad guys and lives happily ever after. That's a brazen really uninteresting story, especially for women, especially for modern educated women. But we know highly educated modern women DO like the Odyssey, as well as other classics, and how do we know that- currently over half of students who study and teach classical studies are highly educated modern women. But beyond that, nothing that survives 3000 years survives because it's uninteresting. So, obviously, that's not the right way to approach the story- even if you want to focus on the dynamic between men and women in the story. This last week I wanted to explore that perspective a little more, so I read the analysis and commentary by Dr. Emily Wilson of the University of Pennsylvania, who, in my humble view, is perhaps the most famous expert on gender in the Odyssey. Oh wow, you rarely give these kinds of shout-outs. What should we know about Dr. Wilson. Dr. Emily Wilson, in 2017, became the first woman to ever translate the Odyssey into English. She is not the first woman to translate the Odyssey it's been translated by women into other languages, just not English. To put that in perspective, how many English translations are there? Oh my goodness, a lot, well over 60 and we keep translating it, but the translators had all been men. So obviously, I was interested in the idea if Dr. Wilson thought her gender made any difference at all as to how she translated the ancient Greek. I mean, as a higly respected translator, she was not trying to interpret the text but literally just translate it as faithfully to the original as possible. What did she say on the topic after all She literally thought about every single word in the entire text. Exactly, and I was surprised that everyone asked her that same question- which seemed a little odd, honestly. I mean over and over again, “As a woman, how did you translate blah blah blah” I mean you could suggest it makes no difference, I mean after all, Google translate doesn't have a gender. Ha! I assume that was not Dr. Wilson's perspective. No, it isn't. She makes a very convincing argument that, unless translators are reading each other and copying each others ideas, no two people will or should see things the same for a variety of reasons- not just gender. Our experiences and personal culture absolutely cannot help but color our lives and this affects even how we translate words from one language to another. One example she gives that we've already seen, but I didn't pay attention to from the part we've already read is in how you translate the word “maid” in section one. Fagles and other translators have used the word “women” or “maids” to reference these women. Wilson points out the word in the Greek clearly expresses that these women were slaves- and for her that is an important point not to gloss over- they were not maids- they were slaves. They were not free- and since in the end they are killed, the understanding of this nuance of text can influence how one interprets their role in the stories and ultimately how you understand what happens to them in the end, which we'll save for next episode. The way we understand who Circe and Calypso are can also be influenced by certain word choices. In her view, Homer, is neutral in his descriptions of these women and does not judge Circe or Calypso negatively but some translations do use heavy-handed negative language in English that just isn't connotated the same in the Greek, from her view. So, understanding that our biases and perspectives are always part of our interpretation doesn't make one person's translation necessarily better or worse, but just something to take into consideration- something to think about. So, let's think about it. What do you make of a story about a man who wanders around the ocean and pretty much all of his antagonists or impediments to getting home are female? HA! Well, for starters, for me that tells you a lot about female power. There are few societies today that are as patriarchal as the societies of 3000 years ago, and yet…look at the emphasis placed on navigating a world of women! If we assume that this is a story written by a man and the audiences were primarily male, which I think we can assume both fairly easily- at the very least the first statement of fact is that women cannot nor will not be overlooked- regardless of any formalized power arrangement. To simplify it, perhaps Homer is saying something as simple as, to underestimate women is to be destroyed by them. HA! I think that's a good starting point- because of course that goes without saying. But obviously, there's more to it than that. So, let's begin by looking at the power arrangement or social structure in The Odyssey? Last week we talked about the Greek concept of xenia, today let's introduce a new term. Develop for us this Greek concept of the “oikos”..or the household- the basic unit of community life. Life in the Greek world centered around a man building his oikos, a man with no oikos was no man at all. Exactly, so word “oikos” means household- a person's oikos is everyone and every THING within his orbit of influence- and oikos were led by strong men. One way to think of it maybe like the godfather in the godfather movies, without the crime element, of course- the head of the family. Remember this is a pre-city world, as we understand cities today. A man of means, a good word may be an aristocratic man or a noble man would build his oikos, his home, his household- he would have his wife, his children, but that's just the beginning, he would also have his slaves- of all sorts. And even these slaves, as we see in the Odyssey had levels in the hierarchy. So, in a social sense, home, or oikos, is much more than a physical space, although obviously, it contains physical space, but it is a place within personal relationships, the father/son, husband-wife, master-slave, king-competitors- and of course, in this society, the man of the household would be the leader, but the household or the home is a collection of relationships. An oikos is an economic unit as well as a social one, and since men were often at war, a lot of the economy or the business of running the oikos would be run by women. Notice all the weaving that goes on, just as one example- weaving is an economic industry. This is industry in a pre-industrial society. But it's not just weaving, there is agriculture, as we'll see when Odysseus gets back to Ithaca. Archeological evidence shows these households were running olive presses, building furniture, doing all kinds of self-sustaining and maybe even commercial ventures. So, a nobleman of means is absolutely defined by how he governs his household. The bigger the household: more slaves, more land, more live stock, more gifts he accumulates, the more successful he is as a man- a more respected oikos. Okay, so, let's go back to page one, what do we know about Odysseus, well if we go by the Wilson translation, this is a story about a complicated man, but what is he trying to do, he wants to get back to his wife. Odysseus has proved his manhood by winning at war. He got lots of glory on the battlefield which he is very proud to talk about with King Alcinous, but that is not enough- in fact, maybe it's only half enough. Penelope is central to the entire storyline because she is at the center of his oikos. She is at the heart of the story because Homer is suggesting a man without a good wife will struggle in building a good oikos. Odysseus' manhood is not complete; his glory is not complete if he does not have a well-ordered oikos that will outlive him. What does a man have if he loses his oikos? A man with no oikos is not a nobleman anymore- if we want to say it that way. In Book 11, which we're going to get to in a second, Odysseus goes down to Hades and runs into all sorts of people, one of which is Achilles and he calls Achilles blessed- he says there is no one more blest than him, that there never has been nor ever was, and Achilles responds protesting. Let's read his response.. “No winning words about death to me, shining Odysseus! By god, I'd rather slave on earth for another man- some dirt-poor tenant farmer who scrapes to Keep alive- than rule down here over all the breathless dead.” So, in other words, I hate it so much down here, I'd rather be a person without an oikos than be down here. Which suggests to me that a man without an oikos is as low as a man can go- regardless of glory. Yeah- Achilles doesn't seem to be that impressed with his Hades lifestyle. So, getting back to Odysseus, we might assume that since he wants to get home, it's because he's so in love with his wife and their marriage is so ideal- we might also assume that on her side that's exactly what Penelope wants as well- that their love story is at the heart of this story. But THAT is never stated- and that is what Dr. Wilson means by being careful about the complexities of the text and drawing conclusions based on our time period. Odysseus' return to Penelope is wrapped up in his return to his household, his little kingdom. There is no doubt that Penelope is a part of that, but Odysseus' does not to go to the grave without reclaiming and establishing his oikos. Yes- I think so. Another thing to notice is that all these noble women, the ones we're supposed to respect- are identified through their relationship with their male oikos. Arete is Wife of Alcinous the king, daughter of King Rhexenor- no one of merit can exist outside this oikos system- and the head of the oikos is always going to be a male. Circe and Calypso are independent women and unattached, BUT they only exist in the mythological world- and that is part of why they are dangerous. The Sirens are mythological and definitely dangerous. The monsters Scylla and Chrarybdis are mythological and nothing but lethal. To live well in humanity is to live well in community. Men must express success within the oikos system and so must women. At the end of the day, not even if you are endlessly spectacularly gorgeous, powerful, and sexually seductive; if you are unattached, it appears you are dangerous and you function outside the normal order of things. In some ways, you are incomplete. To be honest, there are those that would say that's true even today-maybe even me- I would word it differently, we would say something like balancing career and personal life- but it's not all that different, especially if we take the gendered terms out of the equation. Maybe, that's slightly controversial, and something worth thinking about, or if you're listening to this with a class, discussing, but let's talk about these “dangerous women”. Well, Circe is independent, and she does turn men into pigs, but she is not unkind. I guess that's why I like her. Last episode, we left Odysseus upset because he'd been blown back to King Aeolus and was told he wasn't getting another bag of winds. At this point, Odysseus still has quite a large group of men he's responsible for. They leave King Aeolus as a group of 12 ships, and they row for a week only to have a nasty encounter with a disagreeable Laestrygonian woman, one described as being “huge as a mountain crag” and who filled them with horror. Like Polyphemus, the Laestrygonian people, instead of feeding guests, eat them. They also fling rocks at Odysseus' crew, spear them like fish, and kill most of them. Unfortunately, eleven of the 12 ships go down. ONLY Odysseus' ship survives this onslaught. So by the time, he meets Circe, he's down to one ship and about 45 men. When they get to her island, they split up in two groups. Eurylochus, one of his crewmen, takes 22 men and they find her palace. But when they find it, they see it's surrounded by all these wild animals that should be wild but are actually tame: wolves and lions. We ultimately understand that they are tame because they are not animals at all, but men she's turned into animals. Anyway, when we. Meet Circe she's playing the part of a good woman, she's weaving- these women and their weaving, they all do it. Anyway, Circe invites them in, like a good hostess gives them wine, cheese, barley, all the good stuff…but in the wine she put a drug, then she struck her wand and turns them into pigs. Only the leader, Eurylochus, who didn't drink the wine escapes to warn the others. HA!! You know Circe is magical. She's a witch, an enchantress, a goddess, otherworldly, and yet she's also very much expressed as a woman. Perhaps that's what makes her so dangerous to Odysseus. Even her weaving is described as divine. There are two sides to Circe. She's the sexual temptress or evil witch, but she also excels at the art of being a woman in the traditional or domestic sense. Either way, She is too much for Odysseus, to the point that Hermes, the messenger of the gods intervenes and helps him. Let's read what Hermes tells Odysseus. Page 239 So, is the goal to trick or subjugate Circe? I don't think so. We'll see later that Circe's oath is conceded from a position of honor. Odysseus' asks for it; he doesn't demand it. She's always above him, she's a goddess- he's not. Hermes helps him get on Circe's good side, and when he does, she speaks to him with a human voice and uses her magic for good. She turns the men back into men from pigs, but look what she does, she makes them better versions of their former selves. That's nice and she treats them really well, after the small issue of exposing them as the pigs they were got resolved. At the end, even though, she really wants Odysseus to stay, she not only lets him go, but she also tells him how to get home. He's got to go to Hades. But the broader point is that he needs to WANT to go home. Life with Circe would be really nice, but to stay there would be a distraction- it would keep him from his goal of building his oikos. It would be getting away from the main thing. And as my daddy has repeated to all of us kids all my life, “You gotta keep the main thing the main thing.” Well, if the main thing is to get home, they have to go through Hades to get there. We've seen that before. Yes, your buddy Carl Jung would say it's inevitable. Let's read where Odysseus delivers the bad news to his men. “You think we are headed home, our own dear land? Well, Circe sets us a rather different course…down to the House of Death and the awesome one Persephone, there to consult the ghost of Tiresias, seer of Thebes.” So I said and it broke my shipmates' hearts. They sank down on the ground, moaning, tore their hair. But it gained us nothing- what good can come of grief? Back to the swift ship at the water's edge we went, our spirits deep in anguish, faces wet with tears. But Circe got to the dark hull before us, tethered a ram and black ewe close by- slipping past unseen. Who can glimpse a god who wants to be invisible gliding here and there?” And of course, off they go. Persephone, btw, is Hades wife, queen of the Underworld. The Underworld itself is a place you can sail to, in the Homeric world. It is located beyond the river that encircles the world. In other places of Greek mythology, we see it as being split up and really not just one place, with some levels being way better than others. However, in this story, it doesn't seem that awesome, at least we don't see Achilles liking it very much. But they go, Odysseus meets quite a few people including his mother Anticleia, Agamemnon, Hercules, Ajax, Jocasta, Oedipus' mom, as well as quite a long list of other women. We really don't have time to focus on all the little stories about Hades. Suffice it to say, that Tiresias tells him what to do and what NOT to do to get home. Let's read the advice. Page 252 In other words, stay focused!! Keep the main thing the main thing. Don't listen to the voices that can distract and seduce you. It seems, the difference between the one man who makes it versus the 44 men, who die, in large part has to do with their ability to stay focused. And so, it happens pretty much like he said. They go back by Circe's, they go by Sirens, those temptresses who sing and coax men to come close but to come near them is to to be lured men to their deaths. They avoid that pitfall but Odysseus putting wax into the ears of his men, and then tying himself up with ropes. But then there are the female monsters Scylla and Charybdis- Scylla is a six-headed sea monster who rapidly and unexpectedly snatches six men at a time as they go by. Charybdis is an enormous whirlpool that swallows Odysseus' ship. Charybdis swallows her victims slowly while Scylla gets them by surprise. I guess you can interpret those metaphors any number of ways. Either way, by the time Odysseus gets to the end of chapter 12 he is literally hanging to a fig tree trunk for dear life- alone. Everyone else is dead. Odysseus has resisted all the temptations of the mythological world, but he has one more temptation. Calypso will keep him for seven years, there's an archetypal number, and he's tempted with the most tempting thing anyone could ever be offered- eternal life. What is the value of an oikos? Is an oikos worth that? Odysseus has a long time to sit around and think about that, and in the end, he is unequivocal. He wants to go home. With Zeus' permission, he drifts back to the world of men- of humans, he's made it. He's resisted all the challenges, the temptations, the darkness; he's made his personal journey. He's found the king who will help him finally restore his own oikos, not just get home, but restore his oikos. And there is one person who is not happy about that. Let's hear Poseidon's complaint to Zeus. Page 290 Poseidon is outraged not that Odysseus is alive, but that his oikos will be restored. He punishes the Phaeacians by turning their boat to stone and by building a mountain ridge around their home, but we don't seem to care all that much about them, poor things, because our attention is now redirected to Ithaca. What's it going to be like when he gets there. You know I've heard that a lot of servicemen can really identify with conundrum expressed here in Odysseus' homecoming. After all, what is Odysseus if not a veteran combatant. Yes, Odysseus is home, but home isn't how he left it. In fact, when he looks at it, he doesn't even recognize it. It must be reclaimed. Homecomings as anyone knows who's been away for a long time, aren't always as we have imagined them in our heads. We're different people; the people we left are different. And if Odysseus is going to restore his world, reclaim or perhaps recreate his oikos, he will have to listen to the voice of wisdom, Athena. When we started the book, we met two other nobles who came back from war. In many ways Penelope has been compared to Helen. Now Odysseus' homecoming will be compared to Agamemnon's (who we met in Hades), to Menelaus and Nestor. It's interesting to notice, if we're going to look at it this way that Odysseus wanderings are expressed through a series of female aggressions- distractions, traps, sexuality, deceitful voices, apparently all kinds of things we've seen displayed in this world of imagination- and personified by female monsters, in large part. And so now, he's made it…maybe…and the nature of the aggression changes as well. I was actually surprised to see that only a portion of the story is about the wanderings and it's told in a backstory- the wanderings is really what we think of the story being about. But we're only in book 12 and there are literally 12 more to go. The climax is not getting home- not really. It's the external homecoming versus the internal homecoming. He's home externally, but that doesn't mean much at this point- it's just the halfway point. Things have to be ordered for relationships to be right. There must be a second homecoming; it's a little unsettling really- it ain't over. Oh, and there's one more thing- because we're talking gender today- let's not forget- what about Penelope? Interestingly enough, Homer NEVER let's us see inside Penelope's head, and in fact, he very intentionally conceals from the reader any insight into what Penelope really wants. What will this homecoming mean for her? Penelope has spent 20 years weaving- now think about this- that is before headphones and podcasts. The time she spends weaving is time she's spending primarily thinking and Penelope, if she is described as anything in this story, is described as a person who thinks carefully. In that she is her husbands well-suited mate- she matches him with her cunning. Except in her case, her options have been much more reduced. She has needed way more cunning to navigate her world of men, then Odysseus has needed to navigate the wild sea and the assortment of female dangers. So, where do you think that will leave these two when they meet up? The short answer is- in different places. And that's where we are going to pick up next episode. The Grand finale will consist of all these recognition scenes that lead us to Homer's vision of the promise that no matter how far out of sorts your life has gotten, there's always home—not just a physical place, but an established and recognized place within meaningful relationships- that each of us can restore our oikos. And although, what we call an oikos today isn't the same as the Greeks, the good Lord knows our households have more configurations than even Odysseus could imagine- it's a nice idea- this idea that hope of building ours is always alive- no matter how far away it feels, so lost, so screwed up we think we've made out of our world- if we just hang on to the fig tree over the whilepool trying to kill us- we too can restore our oikos- and build a home once again. Yes, and that is regardless of our gender! For sure- Thanks for listening, we hope you are enjoying this Odyssey. If you have are, please support us by sharing an episode with a friend either via text, via twitter, Instagram, facebook or how you share your favorite things! Also, take a second a give us a five star rating on your podcast app. And of course, always feel free to communicate with us! We are always hear and ready to hear your ideas on our favorite classics. Peace out!
Homer - The Odyssey - Episode 1 - Greek Gods, Greek Heroes And One of The Oldest Epic Poems Of All Time! Hi, I'm Christy Shriver and we're here to discuss books that have changed the world and have changed us. And I'm Garry Shriver and this is the How to Love Lit Podcast. This week we embark on a seafaring adventure across the seas and through time to the ancient world of the Greeks to meet someone who some have said is the greatest poet to have ever lived- Homer- and his second epic- The Odyssey. To be honest, I think I agree with that assessment. That's high praise. How does one get to that level? I know. It really is. I guess, one way of looking at it may be attrition- how many poets do we still read from 3000 years ago. That's not a large club. We certainly don't have anyone in the English language canon that is competitive, but it's more than Homer basically invented the coming of age novel with the Telemachaie; he invented the flawed hero, as I choose to understand Odysseus. In many ways, his epics, although they are poems, are pre-runners to modern day novels. They are pre-cursors to fantasy. Heck, even the success of the Marvel movies to me suggest a thinly veiled nod to Homer. What is Superman or Wonder Woman if not demi-gods? Well, if I may weigh in, although I don't feel even remotely qualified to suggest someone is the greatest poet to have ever lived, but what impresses me the most is the level of psychological and archetypal insights into the nature of man that crosses through culture. Of course, I've heard of a lot of the characters and several of the stories, but I was impressed by how relatable Odysseus is. And although so many of his adventures at sea are fantastical- they feel like hyperbolic expressions of what I go through- For example, what is Scylla and Charybdis if not being caught between a rock and a hard place? Another thing that fascinates me is the order he wrote them in- at least the order as we think them- the first one, The Iliad, and then some years later, as an older man, The Odyssey. That's also psychologically interesting- The Iliad has its version of a hero- Achilles is idealistic, proud in large and obvious way, self-righteous, vindictive even. It's young man's idea of heroism versus The Odyssey and its version of heroism- a much more nuanced. He also gets revenge, but it's slow and not very reactionary- he plots, he lies, he bides his time- things we learn by life beating the hound out of us. I think that is well said. Studying Homer for me is also very intimidating historically. There is so much history and culture- beyond just the language differences just between my world and Homer's- 2600 years- give or take. The language is different. The culture is different. The geography and the religion are literally worlds and worlds away, and I'm not very confident I can understand the context. And if that weren't scary enough, when you realize that Homer may have been describing events that may have preceded him by perhaps another 400- 1000 years or so, depending on who you believe- I just get lost in the math. I might as well be saying, “A long time ago in a galaxy far, far away…”. It's foreign and mysterious. Lizzy asked me today as I was sitting on my computer reading some research on the Mycenaens what book I was working on and I said, “Research for ‘Homer's The Odyssey'” – to which she replied, “Sounds boring.” And Lizzy listens to our podcasts!! But on the screen of my computer were broken pieces of pottery and archeological data, not super-man and wonderwoman. Ha! Well, if you can't guilt-trip your family members into listening to you, even if you are boring, what hope do you have? But, I totally understand where she's coming from, over the years, I've taught a lot of history from US to Europe to World, and the Ancient World, and I love it. I will admit, though, even though a lot can be fascinating with the ancients, there's no doubt the farther back in time you go, it can be very difficult to conceptualize. It is also a lot more guesswork. Ancient Greece feels far away because it IS far away, and often we don't know what we're looking at when we see it. I hate to keep coming back to the arrogance of the present, but we really have to guard against looking at ancient peoples as primitive thinkers just because their technologies were not advanced. I mean, honestly, which of us could survive one week on an island? I think Survivor has proven that that's not happening. Ha! Those people always lose so much weight! Survivor also proves that the most cunning and deceptive you are- Odysseus style, the more likely you are to survive, but getting back to the historical side of it. Did the Trojan war really happen? And if it did, what was it? That's a great question. For years and years, even centuries- the greatest minds said no. If Troy existed, we would know it. And just for context, in case you are unfamiliar with the story, the story goes that there was a woman, today we call her Helen of Troy, but she wasn't Trojan, she was Greek, and she ran away with a young lover- named Paris- to a city called Troy across the ocean. Her sister's husband, King Agamemnon, launched 1000 ships and all the Greek kings and heroes to get her back for her husband Menelaus. The war to get Helen back took ten years before the Greeks were finally able to penetrate the wall, theoretically using a gigantic horse and a gimmick devised by Odysseus. The story goes that Odysseus and a few others hid inside this gigantic horse. Everyone else hid and pretended to return to Greece. They left the horse there claiming that it was a gift to the god, Poseidon. The Trojans brought the horse inside the gate, Odesseus came out, unlocked the gate and the Greeks sacked the city. For forever, no one thought this place even existed with any real certainty. We couldn't find it. Until an outrageous and bombastic but exceedingly wealthy amateur self-proclaimed archeologist by the name of Heinrich Schliemann set out to find it in the 1860s and actually did. Outrageous and bombastic sounds kind of like code for a schmuck? Well, he did have a few personal issues as well as professional ones. For one thing, he wasn't trained in archeology, so he just went around blasting everything he saw – to the point that- Historian Kenneth Harl has said that Schliemann's excavations did to Troy what the Greeks couldn't do, destroy and level the city walls to the ground. Oh no, that's terrible. Well, it really is and he destroyed a lot of history. He wanted so badly to get to the jewels belonging to Helen of Troy that he actually blasted through the actual walls of the city. But, that being said, there is something to the fact, that he actually found the walls of the city and was something no one had done before him. He found tons of gold and all kinds of very important things- he claimed his loot belonged to people like King Priam and Agamemnon including a very important solid gold. One of the most famous is still called The Mask of Agamennon. This, of course, has mostly been debunked by actual archeologists who know how to properly date archeological finds, but that being said, he found stuff that is real and validated many of the events referenced by Homer, albeit in myth form. And if you ever have the opportunity to visit Athens, you can see the mask of Agamennon in the National Archeological Museum. Anyway, The best historical sources we have suggest that the Trojan war actually happened and took place around 1183 BC. Not everyone is willing to say it lasted ten years or that was fought on the scale the Homer describes with thousands of ships, but we now believe it did happen. Well, we are less likely to believe it was sparked by petty gods and goddesses and fought by demi-gods fathered by goddesses who dip their children in magical rivers that make them mostly immortal. But I will say, I wish they would find a mask of Helen. I would love to see what the uncontested most beautiful woman in human history, daughter of Zeus. True, Christy, there is so much I don't know about all the myths of the gods and goddesses, and before I started researching for this podcast seris, honestly, I thought the story of the Illiad was the story of the Greeks sacking Troy. I have to admit I got my information from the movie Brad Pitt made called Troy. There are so many gods and goddesses and furies and nymphs and creatures and shapeshifters. It's overwhelming. True, the Illiad ends with the death and funeral of the Trojan hero, Hector, and his father very sadly begging for his body and returning it home- not the sack of Troy. In other words, the Greeks haven't won. That's a story you get from other places. The Odyssey references the Trojan horse when Telemachus goes to visit his father's old war buddies, but there is not a Homeric version of the Brad Pitt movie. I was disappointed to find that out myself. Speaking of things that have proven disappointing about Homer, One of those things is that we don't know him or even if there IS a him. I know this is controversial and not universally accepted, but I will say from the get-go, that I am of the persuasion that Homer was an actual person who actually composed both pieces. Although I'm sure there was a collection of traditional myths, like we saw with the Iroquois confederacy that were passed down orally from generation to generation, I believe that there was a man named Homer who drew from the myths kind of like Shakespeare did in our English tradition from popular stories he knew people recognized, and he composed his own pieces- one being the Iliad- where he doesn't retell the entire story of the war, but focuses on one hero and one aspect of it- and the other being the Odyssey- where he again focuses on one person. Obviously I'm not an archeologist or a university professor with a degree in classical studies and I'm not prepared or qualified to argue with anyone who is. But, I've read enough from those who are to convince me of that. Do we know anything about Homer at all, assuming as you do, that he existed? Not really- to be honest. Most traditions claim that he was blind, although I can't find any real compelling reason for that belief except there's a blind poet named Demodacus in the Odyssey that sings at the court of the Phaeacian king- which I wouldn't think means anything at all, except that the ancients themselves took it for something- so if they believed it, maybe it was so. Oh, This is interesting, there is one tradition that believes Homer was a woman- based in large part to the prominence Homer gives women in the text- that's my favorite theory, but a minority view for sure. No ancient scholars were making that claim. Tradition, and by tradition, we're talking about a couple thousand of years- so that's a long time for a tradition to develop- but traditional views consider him to have been a male bard, or what today we call a professional singer/songwriter. No one really knows where he's from. Although, at least seven different places claim him; the most convincing arguments, at least for me, suggest he came from islands that are actually closer to Turkey then mainland Greece- more specifically the island Chios which is in the Aegean sea but close to Smyrna, modern day Izmir. But maybe he came from Ios or Cyme. If you are not all that well acquainted with the geography of the Mediterranean Sea or the Aegean ocean, I'll try to create a mini-map in your mind's eye. Think of the big Mediterranean sea being a like a giant lake, and mainland Greece jets kind of halfway between Turkey and Italy with all of these scattered islands everywhere that go with it. So, the part of the water that is between Greece and Turkey we call the Aegean Sea. I don't want to oversimplify to people who know their maps, but, I've learned over the last couple of years, it's harder for those of us who use GPS all the time to see the world in terms of maps, the way we old-schoolers used to have to do all the time- no disrespect. I definitely love my GPS over a paper map- but there's the trade-off. I guess a good linked-in question might be, do we need maps anymore? Anyway, Ancient Troy or modern day Hissarlik is on the north side of this inlet. If you go down about 120 towards the Mediterranean you run into Chios and Smyrna. Both of these places are about 158 miles across the ocean from Athens. So, today, by modern standards they don't take long to get from one to the other, but obviously if you make the gods make, like Odysseus did, it can take up to 10 years. But, Garry, beyond the geography of Greece being so different from other parts of the world because it's so based around a culture of the sea, I have trouble understanding the different periods- the Bronze Age, the Iron Age, all that stuff. Can you give us a two minute crash course? Sure, well we usually call what you're talking about this age of the early Greek glory years where they built the big palaces with the gigantic walls with the gods and heroes that were larger than life- the Mycenaean civilization- and the dates for that, generally speaking, are between 1650-1200 BC. We really don't think of the Myceans as having a writing system like we think of today- they likely had some ways of using script perhaps to mark things for business, but the culture and stories were passed down by an oral tradition. The most important city-states, at least this is what we think today, were some of the ones we see in the Odyssey for example Mycenae was home to the legendary King Agamemnon and Pylos was the home of King Nestor. All of these city states worshiped the same gods and spoke the same language, but politically, they had different kings. Kings had to be strong. Piracy was a way of life and not even considered immoral. We think today that these people were highly aggressive and warlike amongst themselves as well as against outsiders. They also made their armor out of Bronze- hence the Bronze Age. So, back to the Iliad, Helen, the most beautiful woman in the world, was the queen of Sparta. If we referring back to your little mental map- Sparta, Mycenae and Pylos are on the other side of mainland Greece- the side closer to Italy. The ruins from those cities show big walls and lots of wealth. Sparta is about 300 or so miles across the sea, pass the mainland and into the Aegean Ocean. This would have been the warpath to Troy but honestly, we really don't know what happened and that is not even just about this particular war. We don't know for sure what happened to any of these towns. What we do know is something devastasted all of these beautiful city states. They were burned to the ground and whatever happened caused this area to fall into a period called the Dark Age- because we know nothing about it. Almost the only thing we really know is that during the Dark Age, there was a transition from Bronze weapons to the much stronger Iron ones. The big changes and the big cultural movement that shaped the world- at least the Western world- like we think of today comes out of the next period- the one following the Dark Age. We call this one the Archaic period which we consider to be from 800-500BC. This era as well as the next are where we get things we're familiar with like the Olympics, the new sophisticated writing system- the Greek alphabet- democracy- like we associate with Athens. And to make things even more confusing, the big Greek guys that we think of- like Plato and Aristotle and the “Golden Age” do not coincide with Homer- they come much later. So, it's a lot of history- for us on the American continent who are mostly immigrants from other parts of the world- be it Europe, Africa or Asia, it's more than we can really even conceptualize- our entire nation as we understand it as a nation is less than 250 years old. If we add what we know of the Indigenous people like the Iroquois confederacy into our timeline -we still fall short by thousands of years- Dekcadeakoah wasn't born til 1200 AD, at least that's our best guess. So- there's your historical context in the two minute nutshell. Does that work? Well of course, so- to summarize even more Homer, a man who comes this Archaic period 8th century BC, was writing about people who claimed lived during the Mycenaean civilization a full 400 before his life time- so if we want to give Odysseus, the man, an age- he's like 3000 plus years old- Like I said before- for me it is basically “A long time ago in an galaxy far far away”...and yet…it's not… I want to start out by reading the first page of Fagle's translation- and then let's jump into the story itself- because for me-and I mean to disrespect to history- you know I love history- but I think you will agree with me- that it's not the history of this story that has kept it around for 3000 years. It's not the religion; it's not the culture. Homer writes the story of our lives- all of our lives- and we keep coming back to it generation after generation for that reason. Read page 77 Okay- Christy- I think there's one more thing I think we need to clarify- there are so many translations. Does it matter? Well, I think the answer to that is the same if you ask that question about translations of the Bible- whichever you like personally-- which I may add- if you want to compare when Odysseus lived with Biblical characters, Moses arguably lived about 200 years before Odysseus-my best guess from my looking at the most respected timelines for each of these guys – but I stand to be corrected -if you have an article that parallels the two histories, I'd love to see it- email it over. The more important point- and in some sense this is true for any text- but it is especially true for ancient texts- it's not the nuance of the language that matters really at all. It's the essence of the ideas of the stories- the universal truths. Most of the millions who read these stories every year can't read the original Greek. And although those that can really talk about the beauty of all that- that part is lost on us. It's not the translation that is going to make or break the story. The Rouse translation, which, by the way, is the one we used when I taught this text to freshmen in Wynne Arkansas, was the first one I knew and the only one I knew for a really long time. I really like it because I know it. But, the knock on it is that it's prose and the Odyssey was not written in prose. It's by far one of the lesser respected ones today. A lot of people today prefer Robert Fagle's translation because his book is really easy to read but he tries to make it sound like poetry. Well, for the record, I am using Rouse's translation. I picked up Fagles, but I ended up preferring Rouse's because I wanted to read the story in prose instead of verse, for me that's easier. But just so I know, Christy, assuming we were Greek and could understand this as it was originally composed what would it be like. Good question- not that anyone knows for sure- but the general understanding is that it was written in meter- dactylic hexameter to be exact. DAH -duh-duh- One accented syllable with two unaccented syllables in a row and then each line would have six of these. Now, this is just me, but I really compare these ancient bards to modern day rap artists. The Bards that would go around singing these stories- would improvise- but would use the beat to kind of keep them on course- obviously it didn't sound like rap, but it's the same skill that we see rap artists do when they improvise and you wonder- how can they think of all those rhymes? Well, the trick is to already have little phrases in your mind that you know will make your lines work. In the case of the Greek bards, they would have these epithets, or phrases they would use to describe the names of different gods- these lines that keep repeating throughout- would help them keep up with the demands of the meter. So what does that mean- that means when you hear them say, as we will “Bright-eyed Athena”- he's adding syllables to make the meter work. If that makes sense. So, the descriptions don't necessarily mean that her eyes are the most important thing about her- it's just to make the music work? That's it exactly. The thinking is we aren't supposed to read too much into those kinds of things. Also, the bards themselves used a very specialized vocabulary which was a mixture of different Greek dialects in order to make it all work. This is a tangent, but it's kind of interesting, there was a classical linguist named Milman Parry who really wanted to figure out how in the world Homer could memorize so many lines. You know the Odyssey has over 12,000 lines. Well, Parry, by studying modern day illiterate singer/songwriters in Bosnia. He came to believe that Homer didn't memorize anything- he had these patterns, these phrases and names of the gods that he knew rhymed well and fit the pattern and he would just tell the story and improvise the language for every different audience- he'd end the lines with the phrases and patterns that rhymed. Maybe like professional comedians who do comedy improv in “Who's line is it anyway?” So, in my mind, a Greek bard is something between a cross between a rap artist and modern day improv comedian. HA! Well, there's some creative analogies, but I get it. Honestly, the idea of improvising makes it cooler than if Homer just wrote a piece of writing and then just read/chanted/sang the same thing over and over again. As a musician, it reminds me of what Jazz musicians do or even bands in general. You know, and this is really going to sound nerdy, but every once in a while, I have some buddies that I've known from years ago- we all went to the same church at one time- but many have moved out of Memphis- but we get together about once a year and do something like this. We'll go to a friend's house with our instruments, bring up some good ole' rock and roll music that we like and just improvise. We all know the songs, but the specific variations, solos- that sort of thing- will be just be stuff that we make up. Parry thought a Homer show was exactly that- every time he performed The Odyssey it was totally new. But again, this is all total speculation- no one knows. It's just too long ago. So- having said that, back to the question you asked, for most of our purposes none of this stuff really matters- the translation doesn't matter, that Homer may or may not even have been a person, or a male or a person with vision who wrote with letters at all- or that the text itself may not even have been a fixed text or a story with improvised performances- all of those things- all though interesting- are really not the reason we love these stories and teach them in the ninth grade- at least around here. It's this Homeric universe- this fantastical story- this hyperbolic creation that has magnified the human experience. Homer gave us a new way to conceptualize our world- and a way to feel about the events- both controllable and uncontrollable that plague our lives. Every once in a while, someone shows up in the world that can produce such a space. In some ways we could say that Tolkien did this with Middle Earth, that JK Rowling did it, that CS Lewis did it, even George Lucas did it- each of those artists conceptualize entirely new and different universes- and when we spend time in their work- whatever medium we use- can inhabit that universe. We can understand our world better through their world- it's fantasy. So, Homer was the first that we know of to do this at the scale in which he did. This is not to say that there are not legends and stories that predate him- there most certainly are- but they don't exist, that I know of, in this full length single unit form- not like what we have with Homer. But yet, there is more to it than even that, although that is quite a feat. Homer defined reality for a large number of people for centuries- maybe even still- and I'm not sure those other writers that I just listed out can say that. The Greeks for hundreds of years, were able to ground their reality on the backs of the principles, morals, the world view that was laid out in his work- The Illiad and The Odyssey. It helped people answer basic questions like- how do I conduct myself in the world. Let's look at those first lines again and go through them- “Sing to me of the man, Muse, the man of twists and turns driven time and again off course, once he had plundered the hallowed heights of Troy.” Christy, is Homer telling us his entire story in the first lines. Yes- of course he is- first of all, I do want to point out that Homer does not take credit for his story. He is going to say it was given to him from a Muse. That's interesting and really Jungian- so, I'll let you speak to that since that's your cup of tea- Ha! Well, he's basically saying, it's not that he made up the story- but he found the story or the story found him-the Muse is the originator- the idea being that the story existed before him in some larger context- that there is something here greater than he is. And of course, all religious traditions speak to this reality, but since you referenced Jung, so does psychology. There is something greater… and that is his starting point. Exactly, and then he brings up why we love Odysseus- he was a man of twist and turns. You know James Joyce who wrote that incredibly complicated masterpiece Ulysses was asked why he wrote his masterpiece about Odysseus- Ulysses is the Roman way to say Odysseus- and he famously responded that he was the only complete man in literature. Odysseus, as we are going to see is a different kind of hero. In the Iliad which is the book that came first, the Achilles is a demi-god. He's perfect. He is totally beautiful, totally powerful, totally honest- that is something he took pride in. He never had to lie, he never had to back down- he was bigger and stronger and could overpower anyone. That's not Odysseus- he was amazing- for sure. But he wasn't the absolute biggest- he had to rely on lies- he sacked cities but he also got sacked himself- he had twist and turns- and for two reasons- on the one hand, the gods had agendas that had nothing to do with him that affected his world, but also he, himself, made choices that steered him way off course. Odysseus is a hero- for sure- he definitely gets all the women- haha- if you want to look at it that way- but he's the kind of hero- we as mere mortals might aspire to be. His life didn't turn out the way he wanted it, but he still wins at life- and actually he gets to make choices that allow him to live the kind of life he ultimately figures out he wants for himself. Exactly- and Homer shows us how to make that happen. In this Homeric universe that is safely far away- full of monsters and goddesses and magic- we can test drive some of the things we'd like to do if we could. In this magical place we see consequences for things like running your mouth when maybe you shouldn't. But we can get some good ideas at how to get back when we're being exploited- ways that are smarter than just running our mouth. Maybe by watching Odysseus we can get ideas about how to correct the course of our personal odyssey, we can figure out success that looks like for ourselves in our mundane realities. At least, that's the idea. And yet, Christy, it is magical and otherworldly with characters we don't know. I'll just be honest, as a person who doesn't know a lot about mythology, am I going to get confused the farther into this I read? So far, so good, but I'll admit I haven't finished the whole thing yet. Again, back to Homer's brilliance- the answer is NO. Homer is going to build a pantheon of gods that is manageable and knowable. And this is brilliant. Just like other polytheistic faiths there are hundreds of gods in the Greek pantheon- but how do you wrap your brain around 600 or so? Homer is going to reduce it to a few- the Olympians. He's going to create a hierarchy we can understand and he's going to personalize the gods so that we can know them. As we read the story, we meet them little by little. We learn who they are, what they value, how they operate- and of course- how we appease them and stay out of trouble. First and foremost- we meet Zeus- he's the chief, the god of the sky- protector and father of all the other gods and humans. We're also going to learn an important principle, that will explain a lot about life- both to us and the ancients- there are things that are in the hands of the gods, but there are also things that are in our control. We can control what we can control but then there are times we can strive hard and still meet disaster. Sometimes, we have offended the gods; sometimes they just like us- sometimes we are just victims of happenstance. Yes- exactly- and how do we account for that? Let's keep reading… Page 78 So, we met Zeus- he's the god of the sky- now we get to meet Poseidon- he's the god of the sea- he's Zeus' brother, but he is way more unpredictable and volatile- hence the behavior of the sea. The big three are Zeus, Poseidon and Hades- God of the Sky, God of the Sea and God of the underworld. We meet all three in the Odyssey- and in some sense, this brings order to a universe. There are powers out there- things we can't see but that determine our fate- but are also arbiters of justice. There is also a spiritual battlefield- spirits- invisible forces, however you want to understand the world- energy forces larger than our own humanity can see through our natural senses- there is a story that is larger than our story, but we play a part. Sometimes we are just a speck in humanity, but other times we are not invisible, even to these larger forces. Of course, as we think through this, although, not many of us adopt Greek mythology as our spiritual worldview, there is a lot there, that most of the world still accepts as truth- even if you're a monotheist. Exactly- those are the major big boys- but there are a few others that we're going to meet. We meet Hermes pretty quickly and we quickly understand his role in the role- he is a messenger. He's Zeus' son, but not with his wife, Hera. Zeus is always getting in trouble with his wife because he has fidelity issues. But Hermes, as we will quickly learn is in charge of messages. After we meet the men, we will slowly meet some of the important women of Olympus. The first one here is probably my favorite goddess- Athena, she might be everyone's favorite goddess. She's a virgin, not controlled by a man, ha- but a goddess of both wisdom and war. She's awesome. I don't know that she's everybodies- Aphrodite has fans. Yeah- you're right- but she's a trouble-maker. Aphrodite makes you like fall madly in love with someone you know is no good for you- or be sexually compelled to do behave improperly. Some would say that's low impulse control. Yes- but those would not be the ancient Greeks. They would say it's Aphrodite's fault- you are listening to her- that was Helen of Troy's problem. But back to Athena Athena seems she likes Odysseus. She DOES!! And that's how Odysseus wins. Someone is watching over him and he is sensitive to her leading. Athena is the goddess of wisdom, and Odysseus is attuned to this sense of wisdom in the universe. She speaks to him, guides him, and most importantly, Athena enables Odysseus to always keep his cool. Odysseus, we will see, with a few exceptions, is led by wisdom- not by lust, not by uncontrollable rage- by god-given wisdom. Seeing people as being visited by outside forces that inspire them one way or the other is not a bad way of understanding why people are the way they are- even if you don't believe in gods and goddesses- which for the record, I don't personally, but this is my understanding of the ancient Greek worldview. In the Homeric Universe, men and women are led by one god or goddess for the most part- not by a variety of different ones. We mentioned that Helen of Troy is attune to Aphrodite, the goddess of sexual love- that's who's giving her direction. But Odysseus is attuned and sensitive to Athena. Athena takes credit not for Odysseus' strength, although he is strong, not for his ability with a bow and arrow, which we'll see he's pretty good at that too, but she takes credit for his wisdom. The Odyssey is a story of this collaboration- there are things that we can't control, but there are things we can, and if we control the things we can, the universe, a goddess or someone outside of ourselves can and will intervene on our behalf with grace and kindness. It's a way to organize our thinking about how the universe works- a very old way of thinking about how the universe works. Let's quote Zeus here- again from the Fagles translation- as he explains the responsibility of humans- at this point in the story- Poseidon is out of town, so to speak- he's off in Ethiopia receiving offerings by the hundreds. And with him away, Athena will make her play to save Odysseus' life, but we also see this philosophy of the Greeks explained here in the beginning of how and why things work out the way they do. Page 78 But now let me read what Athena says back to her father= here she demonstrates the role the gods play in the destinies of man page 79- And so we have our narrative hook. The gods will intervene in the destinies of men. Calypso has been holding Odysseus hostage. Hermes is being sent with a message from the gods forcing Calypso to release Odysseus. At the same time this is happening, Athena will visit Telemachus' Odysseus' son back in their hometown, Ithaca. Telemachus was a newborn when Odysseus' left. He is now 20 years old. For ten years Odysseus fought in Troy. Then after angering Poseidon, he spent the next ten years wandering lost at sea. Telemachus has been left to be raised by his mother and a man named Mentor (guess where got that word). Anyway, there is trouble in Ithaca which we'll find out about next episode, but more importantly than that, it is time for Telemachus to take his own journey and go out into the world on his own. The Odyssey can easily be divided into three parts- the first four books are about Telemachus' journey to visit all of his father's war buddies. The second part is Odysseus wandering around the magical seas, and the third is what he finds when he gets back to Ithaca, how he finds his beautiful and faithful wife and what he sees in his palace estate. The first part, which we'll tackle. Next episode is about the coming of age from a boy to a man. After that we'll look at what all these seas trials are all about and then finally, we'll discuss some ideas about the famous finale in our finale. Well, it sounds like we have a plan. You know, the Iliad is a pretty straight forward narrative- a linear timeline and a kind of tragic ending. The Odyssey is written in circles. It's winding with endless setbacks but it has a happy ending. I think that's exactly the right way to look at it. They are both charming and enduring books but for different reasons, my book club recently just finished reading the latest take on the Iliad. Madeline Miller wrote a novel called The Song of Achilles from the perspective of Patroclus that we read and really liked, but it was sad too. If we ever analyze the Iliad, we'll get into the appeal of that book- it certainly is there- but if we just look at what's appealing the Odyssey – I think the ending is definitely a factor- many of us know what it's like to offend the gods, experience the wrath of Poseidon, maybe even the lures of Aphrodite or Circe – we've also likely been jilted by suitors or friend-enemies- as we call them nowadays- we can live vicariously through this steady under pressure goddess led hero- and maybe be inspired to face down our monsters- maybe we can even do a little listening for Athena and learn to bide our time and wreck havoc on our foes if we need to. But mostly, we all want that heart-warming reunion after a long absence with our loved-ones and own home- we want to rest in the prophecy that old Greek prophet Tiresias gave Odysseus during his visit to the underworld- that when our time comes death will steal upon us a gentle painless death, far from the seas it comes to take you down, borne down with the years in ripe old age with all your people there in blessed peace around you.”
We return to Die Not Ingloriously! Four brave vassals of King Agamemnon, seek to discover who is behind this catastrophe at the Greek camp. In part two - doom comes for each - but in far different ways than they expect. This scenario is an original work by Rina Haenze for The Old Ways Podcast.
Take a journey through time, and the wild mind of Terry Gilliam in Time Bandits! 40 years ago, this film captured imaginations and created a fantasy time travel tale like nothing you've ever seen. Let's search for the most fabulous object in the world as we Enjoy Stuff! Grab the map before the Supreme Being catches up with us! We are off on the original time heist with Kevin, the unsuspecting kid that gets swept up in the excitement of history while trying to talk some sense into God's wayward assistants. This is Terry Gilliam's Time Bandits. News -Boston Dynamics Teaches Spot to Dance like Mick Jagger -Golden Grahams Creamer? Absolutely -Arthur Fonzerelli's Jacket, from Happy Days, is up for Auction -If you haven't checked out the trailer for Lightyear, do it! It's awesome! What we're Enjoying Prithee, have thou heardst of Ian Doesher's book, Get Thee Back to the Future? It's another in the Shakespearian series of pop culture presented in the language of the Bard. Shua has been enjoying the full casted audio presentation of the classic story of Marty, Doc, and the Delorean. Jay's classic earworm has been working overtime as he has been enjoying listening to the iconic Fleetwood Mac album Rumours. It's great music, but it's also amazingly deep. Enjoy Movies In 1981 Terry Gilliam directed his third film. Penned by Monty Python partner Michael Palin, the idea was to present a story told from the point of view of a kid. Literally. A low-angle point of view. But Gilliam believed a child couldn't hold the movie alone, so he cast a troupe of little people to be the greedy bandits. They were certainly no slouches either. David Rappaport (Randall), Malcolm Dixon (Strutter), Mike Edmunds (Og), Jack Purvis (Wally), R2-D2's Kenny Baker (Fidgit), and more! Many were alumni of the Star Wars movies, and all had fun personalities for this crazy ride. Plus, the historical figures were talented actors in their own right. Ian Holme plays Napolean at the end of the French Revolution. Michael Palin and Shelly Duvall play star crossed lovers across time periods. John Cleese plays Robin Hood, the leader of Merry Men you would't expect. And the legendary Sean Connery plays King Agamemnon. In an appropriate bit of casting, the very British Ralph Richardson reveals himself as God. And TRON's nasty villain Sark, played by David Warner, gets to antagonize all of them as the Evil Genius. With a strong cast, you already have a foundation for a great performance, but the story was so original and fun as well. It's really more of an interesting coming-of-age story more than a time travel one. And with a surprisingly dark and mysterious ending, it will keep you thinking too. Have you experienced Time Bandits? Talk to us in the Discord channel or send us an email to podcast@enjoystuff.com
Hi, my name is Clayton Mills. Welcome to ‘A Short Walk through our Long History' - a podcast where we look at the events of history, and try to see how those events shaped our modern world. Welcome to Episode 6 - The Iliad and the Trojan War. One of the most famous events of the ancient world is war between the Greeks and the Trojans, which is told in the epic novel the Iliad, and then finished in the Odyssey. Funny thing is, we don't know for sure if this war really happened! Regardless of whether the battle really happened, the stories of the Iliad and the Odyssey are two of the most important and famous written works in all of human history. So today we're going to look at the stories, their author, their historical background, and the impact they had on Greek society, and on history. Last week, we looked at the city-states and geography of ancient Greece. As we mentioned, the Greeks were sailors, adventurers, explorers and warriors. To the east of the Greek peninsula is the Aegean Sea, and across the Aegean was one of the rival cities to the cities of Greece - the city-state of Troy. The ancient Greeks called the city 'Ilium,' and it was one of the chief rivals for control of the Aegean Sea and the trade routes from Asia.The Iliad tells the story of a Greek fleet that has already landed on the shores of the city of Troy, and the battles between the Greek heroes and the Trojan heroes. We'll talk about the story itself in a bit, but let's look at the background of it first. The Iliad and the Odyssey were to the Greeks what the Bible is to Christianity. These are the works with which the Greeks identify with their gods, and their mythology. Even though it is mythology, that does not necessarily mean that the stories are untrue. It is most likely that there was a war at Troy fought with great heroes, but that the story was embellished and made into legend over hundreds of years until it was eventually written down.The Iliad was supposedly written around 800 BC, by the Greek poet Homer. The thing is, we really don't know much about Homer. Scholars aren't sure he even really existed. There are lots of later legends about him, but there are no surviving records of him from around his own time. So it's possible he's just a myth - but there are really no other people who are mentioned as the possible author of the Iliad and the Odyssey, so it still makes sense to just go ahead and attribute them to Homer. The evidence about his authorship is a bit suspect, BUT, it's the only account we have of the author of these two amazing stories, so let's just go ahead an go with it. Homer supposedly lived either in Ionia, which is in present-day Turkey, or he lived on Chios, one of the islands in the north part of the Aegean Sea. It depends on which legend you refer to. The legends all suggest that he was blind, and that he was a poet who recited his works orally. It wasn't until a good bit later that his works were written down. And on top of that, our oldest surviving copies of the Iliad aren't until much later than that. Our oldest fragments of the story date to around 200 BC, and our oldest full copy of the Iliad dates to around 900 AD! But scholars who study these things have dated the language used in the Iliad to around 700 or 800 BC. I said we don't know all that much about the author, Homer, though his authorship of the Iliad and the Odyssey are attested to by the historian Herodotus, who lived only 400 years later. Many scholars think that the stories were originally preserved as oral legends, and the finally written down by Homer, who put them into his own poetic style. The language and poetry of both stories is exceptional, and deeply influenced Greek writers and thinkers for many generations. In fact, it is hard to overstate how important these two works were to the development of the scholarship and philosophy of ancient Greece. Any ancient Greek scholar would have memorized the entirety of both books (which was nearly 30,000 lines of poetry total)The story talks about a battle that happened during the Mycenaean period of Greek history, when the Greeks were led by the king of Mycenaea, which was the biggest city in Greece at the time. And the Iliad gets that part right - the Greek army is led by King Agamemnon from Mycenaea. Historians for a long time thought that this epic battle story between Greece and Troy was just a myth, but in 1870 AD, a German archaeologist named Heinrich Schliemann found, in what is now Turkey, an ancient city that might have been Troy. Since then, more and more evidence has been found, so today experts are pretty sure that Troy really did exist. And apparently, in around 1250 BC, there was a battle between the Greeks and the city of Troy. We don't know if this was the battle that inspired the Iliad and the Odyssey, but at least we know that there is some legit historical evidence behind the stories. The Iliad tells the story of the Trojan War, why it happened, and the heroes and gods that were involved. The gods are heavily involved in the action of the story. In fact, as the story opens, the Greeks are facing a plague on their army, sent by the god Apollo. There was a major temple to Apollo at Troy, and the Greeks captured the daughter of one of the temple priests. Apollo shows his displeasure by sending the plague on the Greeks. Throughout the story, the gods have a direct effect on the outcome of battles, and direct influence on the thoughts and dreams of the heroes. It is in part from the descriptions of the desires and motivations of the gods in the Iliad and the Odyssey that ancient Greek theology and mythology develop. The things that are shown as valuable to the gods and the heroes are honor, bravery, and loyalty. Both gods and heroes are shown to be fallible, selfish, and prone to anger, indignation, and pouting. The stories also give details about the relative importance of each god. For example, Zeus is the king of the gods, and Hera is his jealous wife. In fact, much of the trouble that led to the war is attributed to Hera. Hera consistently helps the Greeks, because she is mad at a Trojan prince named Paris. Besides valuing honor, loyalty, and bravery, the Iliad and the Odyssey also show the dangers of uncontrolled anger and unchecked pride. These stories of the gods and the heroes became the most important sources of inspiration for later Greek mythology, theology, and philosophy. It is said that Alexander the Great, a Greek who conquered most of the known world, whom we talk about later, slept with a copy of the Iliad under his pillow. The Iliad and the Odyssey are two of the oldest written stories, and are two of the greatest works of literature and poetry in all of literature. They influence writers, theologians, and thinkers throughout all of western history. They are truly epic stories, full of great characters, and they explore some deep topics, including the questions of honor, bravery, duty, how men interact with the gods, and the afterlife. So how does the story go? In the Iliad, it is very clear that Agamemnon, king of Mycenaea, is the chieftain among all the Greek kings: they all defer to him. Mycenaea was the largest and most powerful of all the city-states at the time, and thus Agamemnon was the most powerful of all the Greek kings. In addition to this, all the other Greek kings had sworn fealty to him and his brother Menelaus under the terms of what was called the Oath of Tyndareus. Well before the Trojan War, Tyndareus was a wise old man, and all the Greek kings came to him asking who could have the right to marry Helen, the most beautiful woman on earth. Tyndareus proclaimed that they should hold a series of contests to see who was worthy to win Helen. He further declared that all the kings must swear an oath to uphold the marriage of Helen to whoever the victor in the contests was. Menelaus won, and thus all the kings of Greece were bound to honor and protect his marriage to Helen. Paris was asked by the goddesses Hera, Aphrodite, and Athena to choose which goddess was the most beautiful. They all offer him gifts, but Aphrodite offers him the most beautiful woman in the world, a Greek woman named Helen. Paris picks Aphrodite as the most beautiful goddess, and takes Helen back to Troy with him. Besides making Hera furious at him and all of Troy, Paris also has infuriated the Greeks, because Helen was already married to Menelaus.Thus, when the Trojan prince Paris stole Helen away, all the Greek kings were bound to help Menelaus win her back, and fight in the Trojan War. Menelaus appeals to the main Greek king, Agamemnon, and they rally all the warriors of Greece to sail to Troy and take Helen back. Apollo sides with the Trojans, Hera sides with the Greeks, and many other gods and goddess influence what happens in the story. The Greeks camp on the shore near Troy, and begin to battle with the Trojans on the plains outside the city. The Trojans have a great warrior, Hector, who is Paris's older brother, and Hector defeats many Greeks. But the Greeks have one of the greatest warriors in history - Achilles. When he was a baby, Achilles' mother dipped him in the River Styx, which runs through the underworld. This made him invulnerable to any weapon (except where his mother held him - his heel). The Iliad ends after a battle between Achilles and Hector. Achilles and Hector fight an epic battle before the gates of Troy, and Achilles eventually defeats Hector. In his anger, Achilles ties Hector's body to his chariot, and drags him around the battlefield in front of the city, as the horrified Trojans look on. It was an incredible dishonor done by Achilles, and even the gods are mad at him. Hector's father, King Priam, comes to Achilles later in the Greek camp, and begs for his son's body. Achilles is moved to tears, and gives Hector's body back to Priam. That is the end of the Iliad, as a story, but there's a bit of unresolved tension here. There's still a war going on, and the story just kind of ends with the war unresolved. Some of that story is recounted in the Odyssey, some of it in other, later epics. So to continue the narrative of the Trojan war, we have to pick up bits and pieces from other places besides Homer. After Achilles gives back Hector's body, apparently the Greeks and Trojans went back to fighting. Achilles, being invulnerable, kills a lot of Trojans. But the gods are still not happy with Achilles.So Apollo incites Paris to shoot an arrow, and guides the arrow to Achilles' one weak point - his heel. The arrow pierces him there, and Achilles bleeds to death in front of Troy. Interestingly, that part of the story, where Achilles is shot in the heel, is NOT found in the Iliad or the Odyssey, but it does show up in other, later epics. So both heroes are dead, and the Greeks still have not captured the city. Let's call it a draw. The Iliad ends with the battle still a stalemate, but the story continues in the Odyssey. The Odyssey is mostly a story about the hero Odysseus, and his ill-fated journey back to his home island of Ithaca. But the Odyssey starts just after the battle has ended, but later in the Odyssey, Odysseus has a blind singer named Demodocus tell the story of what happened.The real trick of what happened to Troy is actually also recorded in a later epic poem, the Aeneid. The Aeneid tells the story of a Trojan warrior named Aeneas, who ends up going on his own journey. More on that in a moment. But the Aeneid also explains how the Greeks defeated the Trojans.Odysseus thinks of a trick, and the Greeks implement it. They build a giant wooden horse, and leave it in front of the city gates. Then the Greeks all get in their ships and leave. But they have a trick up their sleeves - they've left some of their best soldiers, including Odysseus, inside the wooden horse. The Trojans wake up one morning, and the Greek army and navy are gone, but there's this huge wooden horse. The Trojans think that it's an offering to the goddess Athena, so they wheel the horse inside the city, to Athena's temple. Then that night, the city begins a celebration, because the Greeks have left. Ah, but beware of Greeks bearing gifts, right? This is where the saying comes from. The Greek soldiers inside the horse sneak out, and open the city gates. The Greek navy has come back and all the Greek soldiers are waiting. The Greek army storms the city, and destroys it. That is the end of the story of the Trojan war. After the war is over, the Odyssey begins.The Odyssey tells the story of Odysseus' wanderings across the Mediterranean, as he tries to get back home. He runs into the Cyclops, the goddess Calypso, the witch Circe, the Sirens, and to Scylla and Charybdis, among other troubles, before he finally gets home. When he gets home, his own house is full of suitors, trying to woo his wife, because everyone thinks him dead. Odysseus goes full John Wick on them all, of course, and the story ends with him at home with his family. So back to the the story of Aeneas, one of the princes of Troy. There's not a whole lot said about him in the Iliad or the Odyssey, but later, a Roman poet named Virgil writes a Latin epic poem to rival Homer's Greek epic poems. Virgil's story is called the Aeneid, and tells the story of Aeneas wandering the Mediterranean (yes, a lot like Odysseys, nothing is new under the sun), and then landing in Italy. According to Virgil, Aeneas becomes the founder of a small tribe who eventually become a good bit bigger, and eventually come to play a big part in the history of the Mediterranean and the western world. You might have heard of this tribe. They were known as the Romans. As I mentioned in Episode 5, after the height of the Mycenaean culture and its decline, there's a bit of time where Greece doesn't produce much history or literature. This is knows as the Greek Dark Ages, and lasts from about 1100 BC, to around 800 BC. But somewhere around 800 BC, there's this guy born, named Homer, and he wrote these two epic poems. So you could say that's the beginning of the end of the Greek Dark Ages, and the beginning of the Golden Age of Greece. Next time, before we come back to Greek's golden age, we're going to hop back over to Israel for a bit, and look at their own short-lived golden age, and their two great kings: David and Solomon. https://www.openculture.com/2018/07/archaeologists-think-theyve-discovered-oldest-greek-copy-homers-odyssey-13-verses-clay-tablet.html Usborne Encyclopedia of Ancient History
The Trojan horse was a lovely nod to Brian Cox's King Agamemnon from Troy. Stewie preferred to send a head, but complications. Kendall tried to get his sister and brothers on team Troy, but they're sticking with Logan's Sparta baby. And poor Gregg, trying to avoid being meretricious as ever. Grandpa doesn't like dirty family laundry being aired in public, and takes Gregg the Egg under his wing. Time to LAWYER UP BRO! That'll do… Find me on TWITTER @sarawankenobi
Welcome to Episode 5 - Early Greece and the first City-States. Last time, we looked at one of the great civilizations of the ancient world - Egypt. Our modern culture was not all that directly influenced by Egypt, though you could say our modern culture was very influenced by the Israelites that came out from Egypt. It's interesting to me that a small, relatively powerless, backwater nation as Israel was for most of its existence, had such a profound effect on the western world. One could argue that it was one of the 3 most influential ancient cultures, at least as far as influencing the modern world. One of the others, not surprisingly, was Rome. We will get to Rome in due time. The other major influence on the western world was Ancient Greece. It's hard to overstate how important ancient Greece was in terms of influencing the western world. Art, government and politics, literature, philosophy, athletics, math, architecture, and worldview - all of these were hugely influenced by ancient Greece. Who is the most influential philosopher of all time? Well, it's either Socrates, Plato, or Aristotle. They were all Greek. Where did democracy originate? Greece. You could maybe argue that Rome was more influential for a longer period, but you could also argue that Rome was simply spreading Greek learning and values. Rome had its own valuable contributions, as we will see, but Greece was incredibly influential to the western world. So let's take a quick look at how it got that way. Do you where the first civilization in Europe started? It was on the island of Crete - one of the islands of the Greek archipelago. A civilization known as the Minoans began to arise there, around 2000 BC. This is just a little before Abram makes his journey out of Ur, and also just a bit before King Hammurabi of Babylon. Not much is known about the Minoan civilization, but archaeologists have found large cities, lots of fresco paintings, and lots of pottery. Archeologists have also found Minoan writing, including hieroglyphs, and a system of script writing called ‘Linear A.' So far, no one has been able to translate any of the Minoan writing, which is one reason we don't know too much about the Minoan culture. The Minoan culture seems to have begun to decline around 1600 BC, which is just about the same time that we begin to see civilization develop on mainland Greece. [recorded to here] The earliest civilization on the mainland of Greece was known as the Mycenaeans. This culture is named after one of their important cities, Mycenae. Mycenaean culture is important for a couple of reasons. Big reasons, actually. The Mycenaeans developed a culture of city-states. Why did their culture develop this way? Some of it has to do with geography.There are two distinctive features to the geography of Greece that influenced its development. First, it is a peninsula, surrounded by water on three sides, and with thousands of small islands all around it. So it was natural that the Greeks would become sailors, explorers, and traders. The inland parts of Greece, however, are rocky and mountainous, and so it was harder to develop a continuous, connected civilization. Each region developed its own government, usually centered around a main port city. These regions were called city-states. A city-state is a small nation, centered around a main central city. Each city ruled the region around it, and developed its own type of government and culture. Some of the major city-states, besides Mycenae, were Athens, Sparta, Corinth, and Argos. Each city-state had its own way of doing things, but all the Greek city-states did have some things in common: They all spoke the same language, worshipped the same gods (though each city had its patron god), and they usually banded together to fight off outsiders. They also fought each other at times.This fighting is the other reason that the Myceneans are important. One of the most famous books of all time tells the story of a great Mycenean battle. You might have heard of this one: It's called the Iliad. We're going to look at that story next time, but for now, I'll just mention that the king of Mycenaea plays a big role in that story. That was King Agamemnon, the leader of the Greek army. The Mycenaean culture was a very well-developed culture, with large cities, art, and their own form of writing. The Myceneans, in addition to being famous soldiers, were also great sailors, and their trading ships travelled all around the eastern Mediterranean Sea. They established colonies and trading posts in what is now Turkey, Lebanon, Crete, Sicily, and Italy. They were the first pan-mediterranean trading culture. In other words, they travelled all over the Mediterranean. Why is this important? They Mycenaeans were the first culture that really had contact with a lot of other cultures. They traded with cultures in Europe, including even Scandinavian cultures; they traded with Egypt, with other African cultures, with several different cultures in Asia, and maybe even Babylon. It was the beginning of all of these cultures being aware of each other, and establishing regular trade between them. But around 1200 BC, things started to fall apart. There was a long period of poor harvests, which led to famine and starvation. As the Mycenaeans got more and more desperate, they began to raid other places. There are Egyptian records of migrations and raids from a group called the Sea People. We don't know exactly who these Sea People were, but migrating Mycenaeans are the leading suspects. It's also possible that the migrating Mycenaeans became the Philistines, who ruled a sea-side culture on the coast east and north of the kingdom of Israel. In any case, Mycenaean culture seems to have petered out about 1100 BC. Many of their cities were abandoned, including Mycenaea. From about 1100 BC until about 800 BC, Greek culture went through a period where very little of written records, artifacts, or history was preserved. This is known as the Greek Dark Ages, but after about 800 BC, Greece begins a monumental comeback, which will produce one of the richest, most influential cultures of all time, and some of the most famous people the world has ever known. Next time, in episode 6, we will look more closely at the Iliad, and the story of the Trojan war.1. Usborne encyclopedia of the ancient world
As part of our Backer selected Side Quest series, we are on the hunt for glory and honor! Join us we play four vassals of our King Agamemnon, the Lord of Men, tallest of the Greeks! In the tenth year of the Trojan War, disaster stalks the Greek camp. Plague runs rampant. Servants and soldiers have begun mysteriously disappearing. It is up to four brave vassals of King Agamemnon, to find who is behind this catastrophe. This scenario is an original work by Rina Haenze for The Old Ways Podcast.
This week, the Dropped Culture fellas bring you the first film in Terry Gilliam's Trilogy of Imagination, Time Bandits!Join us on the journey of a boy abducted (twice!) by a band of time travelling diminutive thieves who plan to pillage their way through history! On their adventure, they meet Napoleon, Robin Hood, King Agamemnon and more while being manipulated by Evil, a malevolent and powerful being who wants something that they have!So sit back, relax, and let us fill your earholes with the greatness that is Gilliam!Like what you hear? Have something to say?You can message us on our website: www.droppedculture.com and poke around a bit while you're there. You can find all of our episodes, art, mixtapes, merch and more than a few easter eggs!You can also interact with us on the social medias: @DroppedCulture on Twitter and @droppedculturepodcast on Facebook and Instagram.
Natalie Haynes stands up for Homer's Iliad, in an extraordinary tour-de-force performance recorded in the BBC's Radio Theatre in Broadcasting House. The original epic story would most probably have been performed from memory, and Natalie does the same: her only prompt is the voice of Dr Adam Rutherford to number the twenty-four books. It's a vivid, cinematic tapestry of extraordinary stories: of gods, Greeks and Trojans, men and women, mothers and fathers and lovers. There's fighting and trickery, and touching domestic detail (when Hector's wife Andromache and son Astynax bid a final goodbye to him). The great Greek hero Achilles spends quite a lot of time in a sulk, refusing to fight, because King Agamemnon forces him to give up his trophy girlfriend, Briseis. But his vengeance is merciless when he hears of the death of his beloved Patroclus at Hector's hands. There's a child frightened by the plumes on his father's helmet; a magic bra, which Hera uses to seduce Zeus (unnecessary encouragement, to be honest) and there's the reason why the phrase 'rosy-fingered dawn' is so-often repeated. It's a breathtaking story that echoes down the centuries, inspiring each generation with new interpretations of this epic work. Natalie is a reformed comedian who is a little bit obsessive about Ancient Greece and Rome. Each week she takes a different figure from the ancient world and tells their story through a mix of stand-up comedy, extremely well-informed analysis, and conversation. Natalie picks out hilarious details and universal truths, as well as finding parallels with modern life, or those parts of life which are still influenced by ancient thought. Producer...Mary Ward-Lowery
Welcome back to Spartan History Podcast, in this episode we set out to describe the predominant bronze age, Greek civilisation. According to modern scholarship Agamemnon was a Mycenaean, or as Homer would put it an Achaean and we take a look at this culture in detail. Special attention being paid to their architecture, religious and burial practices. Finishing with the doomed return of King Agamemnon from Troy this episode is designed to round off my differentiation of bronze and classical Greece.
The Iliad is an ancient Greek epic poem in dactylic hexameter, traditionally attributed to Homer. Set during the Trojan War, the ten-year siege of the city of Troy by a coalition of Greek states, it tells of the battles and events during the weeks of a quarrel between King Agamemnon and the warrior Achilles.Support the show (https://www.patreon.com/anthologyofhorror)
Part 1 of 2: An exploration of how Briseis played a central role in the civil war between Achilles and King Agamemnon. Taken as a war prize, she rose in status to become the wife of Achilles’ heart. The Wonder Women of Greek Mythology series focuses on the female characters of the Trojan War era.
Part 1 of 2: An exploration of how Briseis played a central role in the civil war between Achilles and King Agamemnon. Taken as a war prize, she rose in status to become the wife of Achilles’ heart. The Wonder Women of Greek Mythology series focuses on the female characters of the Trojan War era.
Watch the video here. ''His generation's most gifted writer of love's complicated, contradictory power'' (Los Angeles Times), Colm Tóibín is the author of an impressive list of novels, short stories, essays, plays, poetry, and criticism. His novels The Master (2004) and The Testament of Mary (2013) were shortlisted for the Man Booker Prize, and Brooklyn (2009) was adapted into the popular BAFTA Award-winning film of the same name. The Silverman Professor of the Humanities at Columbia University, in 2011 Toibin received an Irish PEN Award. In House of Names, Tóibín brings a modern sensibility and sympathy to the story of Clytemnestra, the vengeful wife of Ancient Greece's King Agamemnon. (recorded 5/17/2017)
Colm Tóibín in conversation with Scott Timberg at Live Talks Los Angeles, May 22, 2017, discussing the writing life and his upcoming novel, House of Names. The talk took place at the Moss Theatre in Santa Monica, CA. Colm Tóibín is the author of seven novels, including The Master, winner of the Los Angeles Times Book Prize; Brooklyn, winner of the Costa Book Award; The Testament of Mary, and Nora Webster, as well as two story collections. Three times shortlisted for the Man Booker Prize, Tóibín lives in Dublin and New York. He previously appeared at Live Talks Los Angeles to discuss James Baldwin’s Giovanni’s Room. Watch the video. In House of Names, Colm Tóibín brings a modern sensibility and language to an ancient classic, and gives this extraordinary character new life, so that we not only believe Clytemnestra’s thirst for revenge, but applaud it. He brilliantly inhabits the mind of one of Greek myth’s most powerful villains to reveal the love, lust, and pain she feels. Told in fours parts, this is a fiercely dramatic portrait of a murderess, who will herself be murdered by her own son, Orestes. It is Orestes’ story, too: his capture by the forces of his mother’s lover Aegisthus, his escape and his exile. And it is the story of the vengeful Electra, who watches over her mother and Aegisthus with cold anger and slow calculation, until, on the return of her brother, she has the fates of both of them in her hands. “I have been acquainted with the smell of death.” So begins Clytemnestra’s tale of her own life in ancient Mycenae, the legendary Greek city from which her husband King Agamemnon left when he set sail with his army for Troy. Clytemnestra rules Mycenae now, along with her new lover Aegisthus, and together they plot the bloody murder of Agamemnon on the day of his return after nine years at war. Judged, despised, cursed by gods she has long since lost faith in, Clytemnestra reveals the tragic saga that led to these bloody actions: how her husband deceived her eldest daughter Iphigeneia with a promise of marriage to Achilles, only to sacrifice her because that is what he was told would make the winds blow in his favor and take him to Troy; how she seduced and collaborated with the prisoner Aegisthus, who shared her bed in the dark and could kill; how Agamemnon came back with a lover himself; and how Clytemnestra finally achieved her vengeance for his stunning betrayal—his quest for victory, greater than his love for his child. Scott Timberg is a Los Angeles-based arts and culture writer. A former Los Angeles Times and Salon staffer, he writes these days for The Los Angeles Review of Books, The Paris Review online, LMU Magazine, and the New York Times. Timberg edited, with Dana Gioia, the anthology The Misread City: New Literary Los Angeles (Red Hen). He’s the author, most recently, of Culture Crash: The Killing of the Creative Class (Yale University Press), and runs the accompanying ArtsJournal blog CultureCrash. Follow him on Twitter at @TheMisreadCity.
Embarking on a White Poppies for Remembrance Day series, Dave reads the role of King Agamemnon from the Oresteia by Aeschylus written in the 6th century BC. The King returns to Argos by chariot, with a captured royal concubine in tow, and tales of plunder and pillage after defeating Troy… and is then met by … Continue reading Vanquishing Grecian Warlords – Postcard #39 →
sermon transcript Introduction When you think of eternity, what comes to mind? It is hard for us finite creatures to get our thoughts around eternity. Some time ago, I read a survey of history from a secular writer who was grappling with eternity. He came up with an analogy of a mountain in a vast plain. Once a day, a sparrow came from a horizon far away, and would take away from this huge mountain a single pebble and drop it into the ocean. The next day, it would do the same. When the mountain had been leveled to the the plain, that was one day of eternity. That is a secular writer trying to grapple with the infinitude of time. The Bible talks about God as an eternal God. Our text says that Abraham called on Yahweh, or the Lord, El Olam, the God of eternity. What an incredible title that is for God. The text speaks in a very plain and simple way of a covenant, an agreement, a treaty between two persons, between Abimelech and Abraham concerning a well and the relations that they would have in an ongoing sense. We have this immense, eternal God, and this rather mundane interaction between two people in every day life. That is the mystery of life for us as Christians — eternity into time. In our everyday business, tasks, relationships, work here in this world, we call on Yahweh, El Olam, the eternal God. The connection of the two in this passage is in another verse, Hebrews 13:20: “May the God of peace, who through the blood of the eternal covenant brought back from the dead our Lord Jesus, that great Shepherd of the sheep, equip you with everything good for doing his will…” This text in Genesis 21 is about a temporal covenant made in the eyes of an eternal God, but it is a picture of the blood of the one eternal covenant that saves our souls. The Father and the Son made this agreement before time began, from eternity past, before there was a sun or a moon or stars, by which we set time. Before any of that happened, there was an agreement between the Father and the Son — that is the eternal covenant — that if the Father would give the beloved ones to the Son, the Son would pour out His blood for them. He would die in their place, and make for them an eternal resting place. Simply put, the eternal covenant benefits aliens and strangers and pilgrims. Abraham lived in Abimelech’s land. The king wanted to remind Abraham that Abraham was living on his land by temporary covenant, that Abraham dwelt in the land of the Philistines as an alien and a stranger, passing through. But the covenant made on your behalf to give you a resting place is eternal, if you are a believer in Christ. Jesus said [John 14:20-3], “My Father’s house has many rooms; if that were not so, would I have told you that I am going there to prepare a place for you? And if I go and prepare a place for you, I will come back and take you to be with me that you also may be where I am.” That is what the eternal covenant is all about. The seven ewe lambs were a sign or a witness between Abraham and Abimelech that the well belonged to Abraham. So also the blood of Christ is a sign and witness to us that God eternally has determined to bring believers in Christ to Himself, that we would have an eternal resting place. All the rest is details which are interesting, but it is the eternal covenant that I trust in for my salvation, that I am resting in. The tamarisk tree that Abraham planted and the well that they bickered over are gone. Life is flying by; time is moving on. Every week brings us closer to Judgment Day. Every week, we age, we see material things around us become old and decrepit and we have to replace them. Trees that are planted die, but there is an eternal God who has made for us an eternal covenant in Christ, and He is saying that some day we will be with Him in paradise. I look forward to that. Abraham’s Mixed Witness Abimelech’s Spiritual Observation The context in Genesis 21 is of God’s faithfulness in keeping His word to Abraham and Sarah. At the beginning of the chapter, God fulfilled this promise at last, and little miracle baby Isaac was born. God also fulfilled His promise to Ishmael, that He would protect him and care for him, even though he was cast out from the family at God’s command. He and his mother Hagar went out into the desert where God provided and protected Ishmael. Isaac and Ishmael had different promises, but we see in both cases, God faithful to fulfill His promise — He is faithful to His word. However, even the best of God’s people are not faithful to their word. The Scripture says, “All men are liars.” Abraham was now eating the fruit of his past behavior with Abimelech. He had told him a lie. He had a mixed witness to him. Abimelech could look at his life and see God’s hand of blessing on it, but he also remembered how Abraham behaved when he lied about Sarah, saying she was his sister. That almost got Abimelech killed. God in Genesis 20 spoke to Abimelech who was considering taking Sarah to be his wife based on the word that Abraham had given him that she was his sister. He was going to take her, but already God’s hand of curse was on Abimelech and his household. They were physically ill with physical problems such that the women could not conceive and bear children. God warned Abimelech in a dream saying, “You’re as good as a dead man because of this woman that you have taken because she is another man’s wife.” Then Abimelech called Abraham in and said, “What is this you have done to me? You have done things to me that ought not to have been done, you lied to me.” As he sought to make a treaty, the mixed witness and the results of it here are having their effect. Verse 22 says, “At that time Abimelech and Phicol the commander of his forces said to Abraham, ‘God is with you in everything you do.’” That is the good part. Abimelech’s Painful Memory But then he says in verse 23, “Now swear to me here before God that you will not deal falsely with me or my children or my descendants.” That is the bad part. Abimelech was asking Abraham not to lie to him anymore, to deal well with him. Abimelech feared Abraham, and he knew that God was with him and could wipe Abimelech out. Abimelech knew He is a powerful, eternal God. He did not trust Abraham, but he saw God’s hand of blessing. That is a mixed witness. What did he mean when he said, “God is with you in everything that you do?” Isaac had been born already. This must have been a very striking testimony to Abimelech who knew Abraham’s family well, that they had no child, that Sarah was an aged woman at this point, 90 years old and beyond, and Abraham 100 years old. They had had no children all those many years, and now here was miracle baby Isaac. Abimelech recognized that this could not happen except that God was with Abraham in everything that he did. He also saw at a lesser level the material prosperity of Abraham’s life — the cattle and sheep, the possessions, the silver and gold. Abraham was a wealthy man, and there was the principle of blessing. We do not have record of Abraham’s conversations with Abimelech, but perhaps they had time to talk about the visions and the promises that God had made to Abraham. When Abimelech said God was with Abraham in everything he did, there was a history there. That is the good witness that Abraham presented. “My God is a powerful God — He is a promise-making God, and He is a promise-keeping God.” Now he had a baby to prove it, after waiting for 25 years since God first called him to that land to roam. Abimelech saw God’s hand in everything, but he also remembered his problem with Abraham and asked him not to deal falsely, to deceive, to lie to him anymore, but to deal well with him. Abimelech’s Desire Abimelech desired a treaty of covenant with Abraham. Verse 24 says, “Show to me and the country where you are living as an alien the same kindness I have shown to you.” He reminded Abraham of the kindness he had shown in letting him live in his land, that he was a guest there. At the same time, he introduced Abraham to Phicol, the commander of his army. Was he there only as a friend and witness to the covenant? No, most likely it was to give Abraham the sense that Abimelech was not bargaining from an inferior position. There was a concern there. Abraham is reminded once again, as Stephen said to the Sanhedrin concerning the land and concerning Abraham in Acts 7:5: “[God] gave him no inheritance here, not even a foot of ground. But God promised him that he and his descendants after him would possess the land.” He gave Abraham nothing. Everywhere he went, he lived in tents. He roamed through the land, a stranger and an alien in Philistine land. It says concerning Abraham, Isaac and Jacob in Hebrews 11:13-16: “All these people were still living by faith when they died. They did not receive the things promised; they only saw them and welcomed them from a distance. And they admitted that they were aliens and strangers on earth. People who say such things show that they are looking for a country of their own. If they had been thinking of the country they had left, they would have had opportunity to return. Instead, they were longing for a better country — a heavenly one. Therefore God is not ashamed to be called their God, for he has prepared a city for them.” Abraham’s Oath of Friendship Abimelech was saying, “Please do not forget that you are here at my leave, as my guest. Show me the same kindness that I showed to you and swear an oath or a treaty of covenant friendship with me.” Abraham said simply, “I swear it.” He made a covenant oath, which was sacred to both Abimelech and to Abraham, performed in a solemn ceremony of covenant oath-taking. Hebrews 6:16 says, “…the oath confirms what is said and puts an end to all argument.” Abraham’s Complaint An Alien with a Grievance However, there was still a matter to be discussed. Abraham brought a complaint to Abimelech — even though he was an alien and a stranger, he still had a grievance: “Then Abraham complained to Abimelech about a well of water that Abimelech's servants had seized.” This well Abraham had commissioned was his by rights, and when Abraham made this treaty with Abimelech, he testified to this very fact when he said, “Accept these seven lambs from my hand as a witness that I dug this well.” This was a significant issue to Abraham. In my opinion, it was the issue that brought Abimelech and Phicol there to begin with, even though Abimelech said in verse 26, “I don’t know who has done this. You did not tell me, and I heard about it only today.” Whether Abimelech was lying to Abraham or had only heard that specifically who had done it and what the issues were, this was a very serious matter. In the Negev, in the desert, where they were living, water was life. Wars have been fought between desert tribes over wells of water, so this was a brewing conflict between Abraham and Abimelech. Phicol the commander of the Philistine army was there, but Abraham had his army too. He had defeated undefeated Kedorlaomer and had 318 men he could put on a horse at that point. But those 318 men did not mean a thing. What mattered was that God was with Abraham in everything he did, and Abimelech saw the promise of blessing in Abraham’s life. Abimelech was saying he did not want to fight Abraham over the well and wanted instead to make a treaty — a covenant and a friendship. A Serious Matter The search for water is a fascinating one. Historically, diviners have used rods, sticks in the shape of an upside down capital Y. They walk around holding the top of the Y in both hands, and where the stick bends down, supposedly there is water underground. Joseph Smith, the founder of Mormonism, was a water diviner before he found a better line of work founding a mythological religion called Mormonism. He sold his services to search for water. One can never be quite sure where subterranean water is, and it is difficult and expensive to dig or drill a well. Once water is found, it is life itself — better than finding hidden gold in the desert, because gold cannot sustain life. It seems that Abimelech’s servants — his soldiers or some of his men — had taken over this well and were not letting Abraham use it. This was a very serious matter. I read recently about a French scientist named Alain Gaché working in the desert of Chad. He uses space age technology, a certain kind of radar that reads 60 feet below the surface of the earth which can find subterranean water. The space shuttle has made a topological map for him, and he has put the coordinates in his GPS. He has found water with 100% accuracy and dug six wells. This is important because right now in the Darfur region of Sudan, there is a terrible civil war, and there are 200,000 refugees out there in that desert in Chad. This is literally life for those refugees, many of whom are our brothers and sisters in Christ. They are suffering and dying because of the conflict in Sudan. About 300 years before the time of Christ, there was an oft-forgotten kingdom called the Nabataean empire, Arab in descent. They traveled through the desert and whenever threatened, for example by the Romans or the Greeks, they could retreat into the Negev, the desert region we are looking at today. No one could follow them there, because they had a genius for finding subterranean water and digging wells and cisterns to collect rain. They would then cover them over so that they could not be detected. They had certain signs and symbols that they alone knew so that they could water their animals and themselves to survive, but no one following them into the desert could survive. Water is life in the desert. Abimelech’s Declaration of Ignorance As before, Abimelech declared ignorance. Verse 26: “But Abimelech said, ‘I don't know who has done this. You did not tell me, and I heard about it only today.’” Abimelech took it very seriously, and he dealt with it seriously, which is why he wanted a treaty of friendship with Abraham, for he feared the God of Abraham. The Treaty at Beersheba A Covenant and a Return Gift In verses 27-32, the two seal the treaty of Beersheba: “So Abraham brought sheep and cattle and gave them to Abimelech, and the two men made a treaty. Abraham set apart seven ewe lambs from the flock, and Abimelech asked Abraham, ‘What is the meaning of these seven ewe lambs you have set apart by themselves?’ He replied, ‘Accept these seven lambs from my hand as a witness that I dug this well.’ So that place was called Beersheba, because the two men swore an oath there. After the treaty had been made at Beersheba, Abimelech and Phicol the commander of his forces returned to the land of the Philistines.” So this matter was sealed with a covenant. The covenant was a binding solemn agreement between two or more parties. Baptists, unlike Presbyterians, do not think a lot about covenants, but we should. Hebrews 13:20 says that we were saved by the blood of an eternal covenant, an agreement between the Father and the Son. No matter what we believe about infant baptism or the covenant theology, we are saved by that covenant, the eternal covenant. Throughout the Old Testament especially, we see covenants coming in again and again. This was more of an everyday covenant concerning the well and the relationship that there would be between Abraham and Abimelech. To seal it, Abraham gave a return gift of livestock, seven ewe lambs. They were probably part of the original gift that Abimelech had given to Abraham, and he was willing to give back some of it, so that there would be a good relationship between the two. It was a seven-fold witness — the seven lambs were set off as a special sign, to say that every time Abimelech looked at these lambs or their offspring, he would remember that Abraham dug the well. The meaning of the name of the place, Beersheba, is slightly unclear — either “well of the seven” or “well of the oath”, but either way, the name commemorated the covenant of friendship between Abraham and Abimelech. The Future of Beersheba In Genesis 26, the exact same thing will happen again over the same well, but between Isaac and Abimelech and Phicol. Beyond that, it would be included in the land that Joshua conquers, and would become part of the Promised Land. Some day, Abraham’s descendants would own Beersheba. 1 Samuel 3:20 says, “And all Israel from Dan to Beersheba recognized that Samuel was attested as a prophet of the LORD.” From Dan to Beersheba, all the Jews assembled and made David their king. Dan was the furthest north, and Beersheba, on the Negev, the furthest south. This well was part of the Promised Land. Having made the covenant, Abraham planted a tamarisk tree. Genesis 21:32-34 says, “After the treaty had been made at Beersheba, Abimelech and Phicol the commander of his forces returned to the land of the Philistines. Abraham planted a tamarisk tree in Beersheba, and there he called upon the name of the LORD, the Eternal God.” This would be an oasis of rest for a weary pilgrim like Abraham and his household. The tamarisk is a desert dwelling tree with narrow leaves; it does not have much surface area, so not a lot of water evaporates off, and it can stay green 365 days a year. It is a great desert dwelling tree, and it provided shade in a shadeless place for Abraham. The tree was a symbol of permanence in an impermanent world for Abraham, so it symbolized Abraham’s sense of rest and peace and security in his pilgrim life. Finally, verse 34 says, “And Abraham stayed in the land of the Philistines for a long time.” He lived there for a long time, but it was still the land of the Philistines. The Future of Abimelech and the Philistines Who Were the Philistines? This encounter with Abraham and Abimelech is the first time we meet the Philistines in the Bible. The Philistines are a major player in the book of Judges, and then in the books of Samuel, with David, with Saul and with Samuel. Originally the Philistines came from a place called Caphtor. Amos 9:7 says, “‘Are not you Israelites the same to me as the Cushites?' declares the LORD. ‘Did I not bring Israel up from Egypt and the Philistines from Caphtor?’” Archaeology has shown that Caphtor is probably the Island of Crete in the Eastern Mediterranean, but also that the pattern of lifestyle of the Philistines — the way they made pottery, their language and their entire system — was similar to the Mycenaeans and the Peloponnesos. Mycenae is where the wars with Troy originated. King Agamemnon and Helen of Troy and Achilles were Mycenaean. It is fascinating that they would fight battles in the same way. When they faced another army, they would send out their champion, and the other side would send out their champion, and the two of them would fight it out. Whoever won would seal victory for their entire army — it was all down to the two champions. In 1 Samuel 17:4-10, “Goliath stood and shouted to the ranks of Israel, ‘Why do you come out and line up for battle? Am I not a Philistine, and are you not the servants of Saul? Choose a man and have him come down to me. If he is able to fight and kill me, we will become your subjects; but if I overcome him and kill him, you will become our subjects and serve us.’ Then the Philistine said, ‘This day I defy the ranks of Israel! Give me a man and let us fight each other.’” It all came down to hand-to-hand combat between two individuals. That is very Mycenaean, very Greek. That is what the Philistines were. Praise God for David, who came out in the name of the Lord and took a sling and down went Goliath. Unlike Achilles and Hector, he did not drag his body around. He beheaded him and kept the head as a symbol of his victory. Philistines Could Have Been Blessed This is significant because the Philistines were constant enemies of the people of God, but it need not have been that way. In Genesis 15, God listed the names of the nations that would be wiped out to a person by the Israelites when they came in and took the land. The Philistines were not included among them. The Philistines could have lived in peace and under the blessing of the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob. God said when He called Abraham, “I will bless those who bless you, and whoever curses you, I will curse.” Abimelech and Phicol blessed Abraham, and as a result, they received a blessing. The blessing was that while Abraham’s family was still around — Isaac’s twin sons, Jacob and Esau, were 12 years old in Genesis 26 — they would have long life, long rain, peace and security. That is what God did for those Philistines. God Keeps His Promises... and His Warnings But at some point, they became enemies of the people of God, and came under the judgment of God as a result. Jeremiah 47:4 says, “The LORD is about to destroy the Philistines, the remnant from the coasts of Caphtor.” God means what he says. That is what Genesis 21 is all about. What God says, He means. He keeps the promises he makes and He upholds the warnings he gives. If you make a treaty of friendship with Him through faith in Jesus Christ, He will give you eternal life, but woe to you if you oppose his Son. Our God is a promise-making and a promise-keeping God. The Eternal God The final note in this text is this issue of the eternal God. Genesis 21:33 says, “Abraham planted a tamarisk tree in Beersheba, and there he called upon the name of the LORD, the Eternal God.” Yahweh El Olam, “our God is an eternal God.” That means He is timeless. He is changeless. What God’s omnipresence is to Him concerning the boundary of space, His eternity is concerning the boundary of time. He never changes. He never dies. He lives forever and ever. He is the eternal God. Therefore, the name Yahweh is The Great I Am. He says, I AM. Jesus said, “Before Abraham was born, I AM.” It says in the book of Revelation, “He is the God who is, and who was, and who is to come.” He is the Almighty. This is the eternal God. Humanity is bound by time, just as we are bound by space. We cannot be in more than one place at one time, and we cannot see what will happen even the next instant. We do not know anything about the future. But God sees the beginning from the end and the end from the beginning. He is the eternal God. We mark time by the passing of events, but God does not. About 500 years later, a descendant of Abraham named Moses wrote a beautiful Psalm. Psalm 90:1-4 says, “Lord, you have been our dwelling place throughout all generations. Before the mountains were born or you brought forth the earth and the world, from everlasting to everlasting you are God. You turn men back to dust, saying, ‘Return to dust, O sons of men.’ For a thousand years in your sight are like a day that has just gone by, or like a watch in the night.” Moses traveled from place to place with the people of God before they entered the Promised Land. Like Abraham, Isaac and Jacob before him, he was a pilgrim, a stranger, a wanderer on this earth. And so are we. You may think you have a permanent home, that the things you possess are really yours, that situations that you are in are lasting and permanent, but nothing that you can see with your eyes or hear with your ears or experience in this physical world is eternal. Nothing, including the human relationships that you treasure on earth will last, but spiritual things are forever. Our God, in His eternal nature, is our only hope. Therefore, we trust in a God who, before anything was created, made a blood covenant with Jesus that we would be saved. Applications A Life of Integrity First, in a very simple way, live a life of integrity before a watching world. Jesus Christ came to bring a kingdom. He is the King of Heaven, and he came to testify to a kingdom. When he was standing in front of Pontius Pilate, Pilate said, “So you are a king?” Jesus said, “You are right in saying that I am a king. For this reason, I came into the world. For this I was born and for this I came into the world to testify to the truth. All on the side of the truth listen to me.” So Jesus’ kingdom is a kingdom of truth. How can we witness to the world if we lie? How can we present to the Abimelechs of our world, the people who are observing our life, any kind of a witness at all, if we are not living up to the calling that we have received, if we are dishonest, if we are deceptive as Abraham was? In John 14:6 Jesus said, “I am the way and the truth and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me.” The Gospel that we preach is a message of truth. Christians are called to love and obey the truth. Consistency therefore, is key to our witness that we present to the watching world. Paul says in 2 Corinthians 4:2, “We have renounced secret and shameful ways; we do not use deception, nor do we distort the word of God. On the contrary, by setting forth the truth plainly we commend ourselves to every man's conscience in the sight of God.” Live carefully in this world. Mean what you say and say what you mean. Wives, do not lie to your husbands, and husbands, do not lie to your wives. Children, do not learn the habits of telling falsehoods to your parents. It is hard to undo that habit. Lingering Poison of Lies It is also hard to undo the poison and the impact of a lie in a relationship. What is on Abimelech’s mind as he comes to Abraham at this point? You lied to me. How can I trust you? When a lie has come into a significant relationship — husband-wife, parent-child, friend-friend — it is difficult to undo that lie. You can only hope that as in Abimelech’s case, grace will cover the transgression and the relationship can continue to flourish. Say, “I was deceptive. I am a liar in my heart, but God is transforming me, and thank you for being gracious. Thank you for believing the covenant that I am making with you that we will have a good relationship between the two of us.” A lie can be difficult, and therefore, on the front end before sin, do not do it. On the back side, grace can cover, but do not lie — it is a poison in a relationship. Dealing with conflict Third, we see from this account how to deal with conflict. The world is full of sinners, and therefore the world is full of conflict. It makes sense. There could have been a war over this well; there could have been a big problem, but both of them rose above that and made a treaty of friendship. Those treaties are only as good as the characters of those that make them. You know how many treaties Hitler made before World War II and broke? How many promises he made and broke? You can make a treaty, but it is not worth the paper it is printed on if you are a liar and a deceiver. But we can see here the efforts, as it says in Scripture, to live at peace with all men as far as it depends on you, and that is what this text calls us to. Spring of Living Water Finally, I cannot end except with Jesus Christ. Some time later, Jesus was sitting by another well that Jacob had given to his descendants that was still being used. A Samaritan woman came, and Jesus wanted to talk to her about a different kind of water, so he enticed her into a discussion. “Yes, you come here every day to draw water because you need it to live, but I want to talk to you about something else.” “‘If you knew the gift of God and who it is that asks you for a drink, you would have asked him and he would have given you living water.’ ‘Sir,’ the woman said, ‘you have nothing to draw with and the well is deep. Where can you get this living water? Are you greater than our father Jacob, who gave us the well and drank from it himself, as did also his sons and his flocks and herds?’ Jesus answered, ‘Everyone who drinks this water will be thirsty again, but whoever drinks the water I give him will never thirst. Indeed, the water I give him will become in him a spring of water welling up to eternal life.’” [John 4:10-14] Do you know that? Have you experienced that? Are you experiencing it right now? Are you satisfied with Jesus? There are all kinds of muddy wells around that seem to promise satisfaction, but which do not. When you drink from them, you will thirst again. Material prosperity, popularity, worldly success, human relationships, or any one of a number of other counterfeits are all wells that will not satisfy, but Jesus has come to give you life and give it to you abundantly and eternally. Are you drinking from him as a deer pants for water? Are you hungering, are you thirsting for fellowship with God? Jesus Christ came to give you that very thing. He is the Lord, the eternal God. He came to give you eternal life.
© 2020-2025 Ivy Podcast Discovery LLC
