Welcome back to the new thing. My name is David Barr with me as always. As my good friend Alex, pretty, how are you Alex? Doing well David, how are you?
How's Rowan? Boy. Yeah, he's doing well. He's next to me.
He's teething and he's not going down. I try drugging him. I try over the counter drugs back alley drugs. My people had a good way of getting me down.
Well he used something akin to milk, right? No, it was a little bourbon. What's a little bourbon bourbon? How are you doing?
How are you doing? I'm great. I'm happy to see you guys. It's New York, New York, and I were just talking about how tired we are.
So we're taking a little break in May. It's going to be nice. Yeah, and actually when this recording comes out, the two of you will have already attended the ACTC conference, right? Yeah, that's right.
So we're going to try and get some recordings in while we're there. That's next week. We should tease it a little bit. We should tease it.
Josh Perin is back on. That's right. As you have undecided topic, all the ones you proposed are very juicy. Like Colleen Paul DeDuke will talk about technology and ancient critiques of technology.
Yeah, that sounds very interesting. I'm not asking about the time that Paul and I went to the Pacific Ocean at an ACTC conference. I'm sure he'll really enjoy that retelling that story. It'll be fun.
Is this the one about the prostitute that you hire? He definitely has Paul. It makes him really uncomfortable. What story is this?
Is that the one I'm thinking about? Yeah, that's it. I just went swimming in the ocean. We were in a room and started to tell twice.
So basically, anytime I encounter an ocean first time I tried the swimming, so the whole conference was all of my colleagues trying to persuade me not to go swimming in the ocean. It was like 40 degrees. I'm going to do it successfully talking out of three nights in the last night. I was like, I'm going swimming.
So I'm going to cut to the chase. It's a long day. It's a long night. Some people have given me too many alcoholic beverages.
And I finally went swimming. And I have no idea how this happened. But there was a woman standing on the beach. And she was like, what do you think you're doing?
I was like, I'm going swimming. And she's like, can I go with you? I was like, yeah sure. And so then we were swimming.
And Paul and some others came down and I'm like, what in God's name are you doing? I was like, I'm just swimming in the ocean with this nice lady. And they're like, um, that's a prostitute. I would say no.
No, they know that. That's what I want to know. I think she was just a nice lady who likes to go for swims at two o'clock in the morning. Are you naked?
No. Greg, did you ever consider becoming a Navy Seal? That is not what you just said. I was in Shilthair for a long time.
When you said you love the ocean, I just thought, I do. But I'm actually the size of apparently their new seals are pretty sort of average size people typically. I think they come in all sizes. They say sometimes the little guys are just really surprised.
Yeah. I'm going to get that nice email from that guy who was deployed with a Navy Seal team. Yes, our friend, our friend Dean, once they more. Once they more.
See you's a bomb tech and serve multiple tours. Good man. This opening is kind of all over the place. It's almost like it's a real pain.
I mean, I've got to anecdote that'll get us. Yeah, but we're talking about war. I guess. Yeah, I'm going to anecdote that'll get us back in.
I was on Twitter and I saw that there was a fragment of something or other that had in linear B, which is like this old pre Greek, but still has the grammar of Greek, but is there a whole different? I don't even know if you can call it an alphabet. I don't know enough about it, but they had the first five lines of the Iliad. Get out of here.
Yeah. So it shows that the Iliad in some form or another goes back to the second millennium. Wow. It's pretty incredible stuff.
I mean, Alex, were the lines intelligible to the... Yeah, they are linear A. They can't translate. Let me read the camera.
No, but I mean the line that you read, could you match it to the Iliad at the come down? Yeah, it's exactly. Yeah. That's interesting.
That's pretty cool. And that's what we're talking about today. We're talking about the Iliad. I can't believe you guys got me talking about swimming with a lady tonight.
Anyway, it was a Nip that was one of the daughters of Nirius. Yeah, that's right, Greg. Just like Odysseus. That is emerged from a sea leopard with seaweed and 10 years with a...
No. Keep him on David's saying all this with his baby on his lap. This is what I was supposed to do. So Alex, you mentioned that they just found some passage of the Iliad and linear B apart.
That was used to predates the Greek, which is what we have. We have the Greek addiction. Yes. Why don't you just tell us about the Iliad?
It wasn't transmitted orally. Isn't that how it originally came down? Well, this is interesting. So let me on that thing, classes are known for every 50 years or so.
Getting caught with their pants now is a dumb idea as they had. One of them being, Troy doesn't exist and then they found Troy. Then my seedy didn't exist and they found like... Look at that stuff, Eric Adler is trying to push on us all the time.
Yeah, Eric Adler's got the real... They might. Okay, it is. But, and then this one is that...
Well, it was just oral until it was written down by the piece of Stradets. Well, it's not clear that this is a manuscript or anything like that, but clearly there was writing and written versions of it almost for being the same. But, yeah, it's deemed to have been orally transmitted. We don't know as with all these things.
It's not like contrary to what that happened in that J-Lo movie, there's no first edition of the Iliad. That's available. I don't know if you guys saw that. I just saw that.
That's a deep cut. Yeah. But it's... The Iliad is of the two great epic poems that Homer wrote.
It is the first chronologically in the sort of events that it relates prior to the Odyssey. And in many ways, it is the sort of foundational poem of ancient Greek culture. Or even to the Greeks, you see this, for instance, in book 10 of Plato's Republic, you know, a soccer drawing, attention to Homer and his sort of foundational quality. It's about the Trojan War, the famous Trojan War, but there is no Trojan horse.
There's no fall of Troy. It's 51 days in the war. That's it. And it's specifically about...
Hold on, this whole thing is describing a 51 day period. A 51 day period. But the war is not in the world. It's not in the world.
It's either. The war is always 10 years. Ten years, right? Okay.
And specifically, it's 51 days, but most of the big dramatic chunk of it from book 11 to, I guess, book 18 or 19, maybe I think it's the end of 18, the day ends. That whole chunk is one day. So we're talking about the full eight books of the Iliad. That's a third of it is one day.
And then certain days are take up a good chunk of time. So... So how many books is it total? Twenty-four books.
And it's long. Fifty pages? I mean, 450 pages? I don't know.
It's about the same as a republic or something like this. Yeah. It's a little long. It's hard because it's poetry.
So the lines don't call all the way to the edge of that. Okay. And that's that. But in the Latimore translation, which I quite like, it runs to about 500 pages.
So I'm using the Latimore as well. Yeah. Very nice. I like Fagils.
But I think you can't work chatting. You can't go wrong. Eva Brand from St. John's just says, read them all.
I mean, yeah. I agree. But, you know, I have her little book by my name. I'd say it actually.
Homeric moments. I guess we're here. It's a great little book and it's sort of just two or three pages. Some of them are two or three pages.
You can just file through it or go to bed at eight forty five. So we're talking about the earlier today. This is a show where we try and do deep dives and heady philosophic texts. I think the alien, we're so familiar with it that people can say, oh, it's just mythology.
It's background. The text that is used in abused by writers and philosophers throughout history. But Alex, you would contend, I think we all would, but that this book itself is deep. It's where the philosophic study or does that go too far?
No, I think so. I mean, there are certain passages in Plato's dialogues where there's a suggestion that Homer's a kind of crypto philosopher. He's he's suggested to be in the atus, for example, a secret flexus to vicaricitis. He thinks everything's in motion.
I think some of these are tongue in cheek, but the idea that they were that Homer was more philosophically minded than he might see him at first glance. That's a fair contention. There's also this remark in Herodotus that Homer and he said took the gods from Egypt and changed them, right? They made the gods for the Greek.
So there's a kind of active, obviously creative thing being done here. While it is a kind of strange work that can be used and abused as far as that, I think at least the basic structures of the plot are absolutely intentional and clearly sort of defined as having a sort of dramatic overview. Maybe, maybe we'll do it. Yeah.
Can you do that? Maybe can you give us a quick? I know, first off, what are we going to focus on tonight? But then also, could you give us an overview of the text as a whole?
He said it's just between one days. I think a lot of people probably know it, but do you have a bit? Can you do this quickly? Could you give us a quick?
Let me read the first few lines, the first seven lines. Let's do it. And that'll sort of... Being Alex.
That's it. Yeah. Sin goddess, the anger of Pelius is thum Achilles and it's devastation, which put pains thousandfold upon the Achaeans, burled in their multitudes to the house of Hades, strong souls of heroes, but gave their bodies to be the delicate feasting of dogs of all birds. And the will of Zeus was accomplished.
Since that time, when first there stood indivision of conflict, Atreus is son, the Lord of man, and brilliant Achilles. So a couple of things, we hear that there's a conflict between Atreus is son, Agamnon, and Achilles. And the conflict is related in book one. You also hear of the will of Zeus, I would actually translate that will or plan of Zeus.
At the beginning of book two, we find that Zeus is sleepless, and then he comes up with a plan. We don't know what the plan is, but in a way the rest of the Iliad is Zeus accomplishing his plan. The plan of Zeus is a notion from the epic tradition referring to Zeus' plan to rid the earth of the demigod heroes, like Achilles and Agamnon, who are because of their greatness so beloved to the gods, and therefore their conflicts involved the gods in their conflicts. And these 51 days are remarkable because Achilles sits out, Zeus kills a whole bunch of Greeks to the point that the second string of Greeks has to come in.
All of them are killed or injured. And then when Achilles comes back, he destroys a bunch of Trojans, and the Trojans lose their main guy, Hector, and that accomplishes him. So in general, what you're seeing, and that's where the book ends with the burial of Hector. So what you're seeing is in these 51 days is massive amounts of death caused by Zeus using this conflict between Achilles and Agamnon to rid the earth of many of these heroes.
Now that's a kind of straightforward account, but there's actually a big wrinkle in that, which is that Zeus' plan reaches a hitch along the way. Hector finds his way up to the gates, and at that point Zeus kind of steps back. He knows that Patrick List will be called, will come out to fight Hector. Hector will kill Patrick List, that will enrage Achilles and he'll come out and kill Hector.
But as he steps away, his wife, Hera, who favors the Greeks, and is only reluctantly sitting out, now that his attention is drawn elsewhere, she encourages on the Greeks and Ajax wounds Hector. And Hector is drawn back to his mortality away from this maniacal sort of attack from the Greeks. He withdraws closer to Troy, therefore, Patrick List who does come out to fight in order to encourage him to go up towards Hector towards Troy, which he was told not to do. He is brought to kill Starkanot, Zeus' son.
So Zeus' poor planning leads to the death of his son against his will and at this moment Zeus cries tears of blood. But afterwards, Patrick List goes out to fight Hector. He's killed the plot resumes as you imagine. Now there's a lot of memorable episodes I'm leaving out here about the heroes.
I merely wanted to lay out how the first few lines show you that the rage of Achilles and the plan of Zeus are deeply bound up with one another as a matter of the plot. And even larger than the plot, the sort of epic tradition. Once Hector is dead, Achilles' fate is sealed. He is going to die and he'll die before Troy falls, so he'll never see the fruits of his own sort of sacrifice, which is part of the reason I think he's so angry.
So there aren't a number of sources of his anger. I mean, one of the end is his friend has been killed, but earlier on he's angry about something else, right? So he seems to be an angry guy. Yeah, the object of his anger shifts, but I think the same cause is underlying it.
Okay. The thing about Achilles is he knows his fate. He is there voluntarily. He's not part of the pact that would go to rescue Helen.
We don't have to go through all the details of this, but he's not. It's not a comment upon him. He's come there voluntarily. And he there to win glory.
He knows that he is destined to kill Hector and therefore reverse the fate of the Greeks in the war. And that the death of Hector, the greatest of the sons of Priyam, the great hero of Troy, will be the beginning of the end for Troy. It will eventually fall, but it will fall after Achilles dies. So what does he know?
He knows he's promised the greatest glory, but he'll know that he knows also that he'll never see the fruits of it, not even the immediate fruit of the fall of Troy to say nothing of the bounty he should get for all that he's done to say nothing of the fact that people will be reading this poem about him. Twenty-hundred years later, three thousand. I'm talking about that tablet they found many, many thousands of years later. And so he's in a weird situation.
What would we do? What would you and I do, I guess, if you knew that you would have the greatest glory, the most immortal glory, and yet you would have no evidence of it in your life. When Agamemnon, when Agamemnon pisses off Achilles by taking away his girl, Bursaeus, when Agamemnon does that, the reason it sets him off is because the gifts he wins from sacking these cities, that's all he has. That's all he has.
To be disrespected in his life for putative goods that he'll cut after his death of glory and fame. It just doesn't work. So at the core of this, you can say, is a dilemma of more virtue. Is it worth it, even for the greatest glory, the greatest hero of your civilization?
To be honored with this 500-page masterwork, and to have B's son about it for generations to come, is it worth it if you get to witness not a shred of it? And indeed, if you're even disrespected in your life. That's why he's angry. That's a hard hand.
I want to follow up on how it's moral. It seems very calculating. It's all about getting glory in the afterlife. Maybe that's moral.
Maybe not probably that. But it's connected to the glory. Someone comes back to the more fundamental question of how is this moral? And not just he's been, like he just wants what he has or something like this.
But the first question I have is, what he gets is this glory ostensibly. And one of the curiosities, and I would like to talk about this from the start, was just the name of the book, is the Iliad. In other words, the title of the book would not necessarily indicate that this is a book about Achilles and the way that the Odyssey indicates to this about Odysseus. So the first lines that would do indicate that it's about Achilles are not actually Achilles in fact, but Achilles is anger.
And so there's some separation. But it's curious to me that the book isn't called the what? Achilles, how would you even whatever you call that? Achilles, they're something like that.
I forget what he said. I'm sure that's where I picked it up. Yeah, I forget what I think it's actually, he's being, there's a work by Porphyry, the Homeric questions. If you want to read something that's got excellent reading questions, it would almost be good to be interesting to assign it with the Iliad if you're teaching it to undergrads.
Read Porphyry and Homer. But one of the first, I think it's the very first question he asked is about why it's not called the Iliad. And Ben or Denny's answer to this question is that Achilles is like a perfect type of the hero, perfect cast of which everyone else is a kind of pale sort of or slightly impure sort of model built off of that. Which would be clear that after the city, I don't know.
Yeah, so that means to be clear that Iliad, the title is Song of Troy or Ilius or something, whatever. So the song of Troy, speaking of Ben or Denny, I was reading, you know, this because I've been sort of texting you about it, but I've been reading that I was a reflections and conversations that was called. Encounters and reflections. Yeah.
And one of the things he says, I don't want to take a too far field from the round show, but one of the things he says is that he realized at some point that the Iliad was the symposium. Yeah, that's one of those remarkable. Yes. I don't even know what that does.
I think there's a, I think it responds to it. These are conversations between Seth and our daddy with his students, Michael Davis, Robert Berman, and I think Ronis was just what? Exactly. It's just great.
He's one of those no-make better daddy insights. And then he goes on to lay it, but I lay it out. I just don't. I see it a little bit, but I'm not sure I'm convinced.
But you know, the love for one versus the love for one. You can kind of see the latter of love moving, but it's not clear how it keeps going. Yeah. In any event.
Okay. So what we're doing, I guess book one and book two, is that right? We already talked a little bit. I'm sorry.
Everything to the catalog. Good. Cause I have some notes on my margin. Maybe you can clarify things for me.
So you already mentioned the Achilles rage and you already sort of hinted at what he gets angry about in the beginning versus what he gets angry about later on is that he has a girl taken from him. So what's the role? I mean, there's some drama that probably needs to be laid out. I mean, isn't there a priest involved in some way to gensually to the problem with the girl?
As well. That's the other girl. Yeah. It's an interesting.
Yeah. Chris Davis and his father, Chris Davis, which also happens to be the priest of Apollo. If you're gonna steal somebody's daughter, that's probably not making a priest daughter. Yeah.
So what's interesting is there's a lot native the rage of Achilles. Yeah. Let me, sorry. You brought up a rally.
I want to go. Oh, yeah. Right. Sorry.
I mean, the question Achilles is asking is is moral sacrifice worth it? Oh, I see. He's given the whole kid brutal. I guess that was my problem was that it's not really sacrifice if you get this sort of a trombo ory, but okay.
Yeah. He's given what you lose your life. And it's a sort of dilemma. Yeah.
It's a dilemma of calculation versus morality. Right. And from the Odyssey, what you see when it disses encounters him in the afterlife and Achilles that I'd rather just be a simple monster. Yeah.
Yeah. Okay. Yeah. So one of the interesting things about the beginning that's easy to skip over because it's so brief is that the rage of Achilles and a command on sort of indignation early on in book one are initiated by a priest.
Right. Right. Right. So where's his come from?
It comes from first the power of an elderly priest, Crusades, who just wants his young sort of daughter, Crusades back, who's been taken from and is weeping. Right. One one theme readers of the alien ship keep in mind is crime. This book one specifically, which, you know, we don't know if the books were really homers, but it's clear that book to begins a new topic.
So this episode that is contained in the book begins and ends with tears. Anyway, right. The tears of a priest and then you get towards the end the tears of Achilles, leading to his mother. And both of these tears are connected with a sense of their own inability to rectify their situation and asking a God or goddess of Achilles case for help.
Right. And so we have really powerful images of human frailty, both from, you know, a week old priest and from the greatest of heroes, which suggests a kind of very human horizon that encapsulates even the peak of excellence. Right. That despite the fact that heroes attain a kind of semi divine status on the battlefield, a great renown, they are still necessarily within the horizon of the human and therefore distinguished from God's.
And there's this necessary inability or weakness. I think necessary because otherwise, you know, what is what is excellence that there isn't and sort of potentially, you know, immovable objects in your way that you have to struggle. So how much of this is how much of the drama or the plot is put in put into sort of motion because I can on steals a girl. And then, I don't know where you want to go with this, but you mentioned the cries right so like the priest comes and says please give my daughter back.
The men all Friday, right. And so what do we make of this? I mean, just reading my ability of this, but sort of the way that the the ruler so he basically ignores what the priest is demanding. That's what brings out to me like, you can't just like a men would lose some kind of enthusiasm for what's going on.
Yeah, I think I think I remember not we were talking about this before, but I think I remember on is his rule is in peril. Right. Okay. It's nine years.
It's tough. Right. People want to go home. The beginning of book two, Agamemnon's, Zeus and Agamemnon's deceptive dream telling him he'll win today.
He tests his men's resolve saying, Oh, we should leave, you know, the all get up and split. Achilles is out. He's not fighting anymore. He's refusing.
Right. They think they're done for one suggestion. Now his idea, I think is test them and they go into battle and they win that day and then everybody realizes that's great. Right.
And so Achilles absence and in his victory with steel to deal with that, he is the deal and all and he'll make Achilles look like a fool. There's all these suggestions there for. There's a kind of weakness or Agamemnon's rule is not a good position. Right.
And so having to give this girl back to the priest, I think has a kind of symbolic. Yeah, it's symbolic for him. Like I give up this girl. It's a sign of my inability to rule and I need to make sure that I have the highest prerogatives that my authority is making.
Now, I think you're right. It's foolish what he does. Right. Yeah.
It looks impious. Even this fear is scared. Right. And so it comes off as heuristic.
But I think he's scrambling to certain stuff. So it's one of the questions we have here. What I mean, who ought to rule is the question sort of, I mean, is Agamemnon the ruler? Is the, what's the relationship between religious power and human rule?
And then I don't want to skip too far ahead in that. I mean, is Achilles should he be the ruler and so far as he seems to possess this outstanding natural virtue? But then of course there's this early on is already in books one and two where Odysseus and Agamemnon have this argument is that later on? Oh, with the troops scattered.
That's a book to that's really okay. I thought that was in book to you. Yeah. Yeah.
I mean, there's, I think one way to read books one or two is as is the very question right? You have a priest. You have Agamemnon who holds the center that comes from Zeus. So it's kind of rule based in tradition or in Sellsville, Causim.
All of the all of the martial virtue. Yeah, which would be Achilles, who is obviously the best on the battlefield. And then you get Odysseus and book to who turns out to be able to pick up the pieces of Agamemnon's stupid trick of telling them they'll go home, which turns out everybody just starts leaving. It's all chaotic and he's not in a position to do it.
So one thing about Agamemnon in book two, we hear about his scepter, how it comes down from Zeus, of all the Greek heroes here, especially the ones that are leading their troops. They're referred to with the word bazoleus, which means something like King in Greek, but specifically, especially in like the Mycenaeira, they were kind of regional kings of just that. Was that like a chief or something like that? Yeah, the dude who like their little city town, whatever.
Yeah. And then but Agamnon is referred to with the name Anox, which specifically refers to the name of the king. Specifically refers to the lord of the Mycenaean sort of civilization. The only other people are the only other entities that are referred to as on octaes or lords are the gods.
Right. So this is a very privileged term that refers to his, I think is more specifically defyingly ordained rule coming from church. So you're talking about the scepter. So we're talking about book two around line 185 or so.
Is that where you had in mind? This is what I was referring to just a moment ago about Odysseus, who wants rule. So if you don't mind, I'll just read a few of these already maybe 20 lines beginning at like 180, 181. Maybe you can situate it for us in just a moment, but there's been some fighting as you mentioned.
So she spoke and he knew the voice of the goddess speaking and went on the run throwing aside his cloak, which was caught up by your babies, the herald of Ithaca who followed him. He came face to face with Agamnon son of atreus. By the way, the herald of Ithaca. So this is Odysseus, right?
And took from him the scepter of his father's immortal forever. So Odysseus has taken the scepter from Agamnon. I think is that with this, he went beside the ships of the bronze art Achaeans when he encountered some king, Vasaleus that were dimension or some man of influence. He would stand beside him with soft words to restrain him, quote, excellency.
It is not a come you to be frightened like any coward rather hold fast and check the rest of the people. You do not yet clearly understand the purpose of a treatise. Now he makes trial, but soon he will bear hard on the sons of the Achaeans. Did we not all hear what he was saying in council?
May he not an anger do some harm to the son of the Achaeans, where the anger of God supported kings is a big matter to whom honor and love are given from Zeus of the Councils, end quote. So that's what he says to the kings. And then in the next section, apparently this is how Odysseus would address someone, not a king. When he saw some man of the people who was shouting, he would strike at him with his staff and approve him also.
So the interesting question about Odyssean rule is that Agamnon sort of gave this very imprudent sort of, let's just go home blah blah blah. And then Odysseus is tasked with getting them back. But what he does is Odysseus treats different people differently. And when he's ruling the kings or when he's trying to rule the kings, he appeals to what their sense of honor, their nobility, their morality.
But when he's trying to get the typical everyday soldier, you know, David Barr, the Greg Breyer, when he's trying to get that soldier on board, he just smacks him to the head and says, get your button line, basically. And then Odysseus is supposed to sort of be assigned to get them into work. I didn't read that passage, but that's the distinction there, right? Yeah.
And so does Odysseus sort of reveal himself there. I mean, I hate to jump, we're doing the whole entire, nearly only the first two books. It doesn't Odysseus reveal himself there to be something of the more serious ruler. Absolutely.
And he knows how to use the scepter, right? When to use it or when not. And how to speak to different souls or different ranks of people. And he says, by the way, I forgot, I didn't want to skip my favorite line here.
It says, let there be one ruler, one king to whom the son of devius defies and chronoscis the scepter and right of judgment to watch over his people. And he says, here's Odysseus beating the men saying, you have to obey the man with the scepter, which is ostensibly a commandon. But of course, let there be one king. Another way to read that is Odysseus is talking about Odysseus.
I'm the real king here, but he's willing to give it away. Right. You know, it's interesting. That's a line that Aristotle quotes the end of metaphysics lambda.
Right. You got it. It's pretty remarkable that he just quotes the end of the peak of the metaphysics. Let me go back a little bit to line 100 where we're introducing the scepter to give you a sense of story.
One stood up holding the scepter who feist us, had brought him carefully. If feist us gave it to Zeus the king, the son of Cronus, and Zeus and turn gave it to the career, a grave font is, and Lord Hermes gave it. The grave font is being permeased and Lord Hermes gave it to pillops to drive our forces and pillops again gave it to atrias, the shepherd of the people. Atrias dying left it to the SDs of the rich flocks and the SDs left it in turn to Agamemnon to carry and be Lord of many islands over all our ghosts.
I have the Greek. I haven't looked this up right here. I'm assuming that Lord there is on us. Right.
So what makes him Lord is the scepter that comes from Zeus. He doesn't know how to use the scepter. He immediately posts with this question of Achilles is better in battle and ought to have the scepter into rule. Agamemnon does.
Agamemnon doesn't know how to use it, but this is not how to use it. So who should get it? The question now, at the end of book one, Nestor gives a speech trying to resolve the deal. And it's actually quite feeble.
Nestor is really usually a pretty good speaker, but it's quite feeble here because he states the dilemma. And the question is, the way that he puts it is, is who should rule effectively, right? Should be the man with the largest sway over the most territory Agamemnon, or should it be the person who does the most in war? We admit is Achilles, right?
So you have greatest of battle, so military virtue, greatest extent of the world, and knowledge. And it's pretty clear that the only one who's actually capable of ruling is Odysseus, right? If Achilles principles conceded, it's just all our work is all to see. It's like the greatest.
Right? And that's not a healthy political principle. Of course, one thing we Democrats in this story, one thing that's not even raised is a possibility, which is a stimulus you want to recommend, this would be that the demost of people are not the rulers, that they should not rule. Maybe it could be in some strange way, they have to be sort of factored into the rule, like Odysseus actually figures out a deal with them, but they don't rule.
And by the way, you mentioned the aerosol quotes this line at the end of the metaphysics. As Zenithin quotes this line in the first book of memorabilia, and he says that people used to, well, particularly single man criticized Socrates for citing this passage of scripture and saying it's licensed to beat up poor people. That's funny. Now, one thing I'll say is in the calendar.
So in other words, the joke there, of course, is what I was just saying seriously, that Homer is anti-democratic therefore, and what that means for Athens, you know, what could follow the implications. One thing I'll note is in the calendar of ships, there are 29 groups mentioned. Central 15 is Odysseus. With the fewest number of ships in every service, right?
That might be right. You remember, but he's the middle one is Odysseus and he's equidistant in the enumeration from Achilles and Agamadon. In case you think it might be fanciful to see the sequence of rule, there's a suggestion here that the resolution to the problem of who should rule the most naturally powerful or the traditional ruler is the knowing ruler. I think it's pretty clearly indicated.
And that's not enough. Look, the second hope is the Odyssey. It examines Odysseus' knowledge and the problems of knowing rule, right? Odysseus who is cunning and therefore deceptive and hard to figure out what he wants to be known for it, right, or famous for it.
Like, it has its own problems. Smart people are always wanting to be known for being smart. The tragedy ends up picking up on this to a certain extent too. I was rereading the Ajax recently and Odysseus has this conversation with Athena where she basically says, like, you hear the Y system among all the Greeks.
And this comes up again in other tragedies that Odysseus takes part in. I think that's right. Sorry, I've been out because of that. The damn kid is crying.
It's not stopping. Sorry. I was wrong about the number of ships. It's just that he has less than Agamadon and Achilles.
I think there are a couple of people that have fewer ships than any of us. But yeah, you guys might not do it. I do remember. Obviously from a broke place.
Yeah. Yeah. But he only has 12, which is relatively few. So where we go from here, fellas?
I don't know. Maybe one thing I could talk about that I think is kind of interesting about Achilles is that Achilles does actually get a chance to war at one point, which is in the funeral games of Patrons. I think the most interesting thing around this is in Ben and Dettys book, which was his talk to a total dissertation. But he talks about, I mean, there's a strange thing Achilles says, I wish I could compete, but I can't.
And that's I think it's a kind of rule over play, but there's all sorts of competitions. There's rules set out to be getting a competition. Sometimes the better person loses. Achilles wants to go against that, obviously, but people have complaints.
And so you have to adjudicate in these situations all these sort of particularities, what's going on. And he says specifically, I wish I could compete, but I can't because he's presiding over the games. And that's like there's a sort of observation that he's made that he's not, I think, fully aware of, which is that look at the end of the day, whoever is over things needs to sort of not be part of the competition. The competition is decidedly of a lower level than the question of who should rule, right?
The preeminent in battle cannot take over, right? Otherwise, it's a constant war between ruler and world. And you don't actually have a rule. It's interesting how long it takes for Achilles to realize something, a version of this observation.
So one of the things that strikes me having, I'm only taught this once. I'm fully aware that you know this book much rather than I do, but it seems to me that the book is ultimately a critique of Achilles and a critique of this sort of wrath. And it's trying to moderate that. And we've already pointed that in the direction that Odysseus is actually a real hero or something like that.
But what I find so much fascinating, you don't quite fully understand, is that it strikes me that that's not how the typical Greek read this, that most people came away from this thing. Achilles was the guy. He was the hero. He is to be admired.
That is the best life. Maybe there's something tragic about it, but the glory is good. It's glory for Greece. Like he's, I mean, not with that, but sort of impressive battlefield.
He was something to be admired and imitated. And he seems to have been an object of imitation for the young Greeks men. No. Well, what happens when, yeah, until they read the account of Achilles conversation with Odysseus in the underworld?
Yeah. Yeah. No, for sure. But I think Greg, I think so if you look at like Plato's Hapius Minor, right?
Yeah. It's Hapius and Socrates having a conversation, but they're at the home of Eunuchus. And Socrates mentions that Eunuchus's father, Appomantis, said that the Iliad is a better poem than the Odyssey because Achilles is a better man than Odysseus, right? Yeah, right.
So I think this is a normal thing. You ever meet somebody who says, I don't like that show. And you say, why? And they're like, I don't like the main character.
You bother, right? Right. And it's like, who's the other thing that's in the outside of this podcast called the New Century? There's nobody worth the invitation here.
That's for sure. Yeah. That's right. But that is, I think, a sort of a tendency we have, right?
If we don't like the main character. Now, obviously we're all used to reading like cautionary tales or complex relationships. That takes a bit more sophistication, right? I think the ten, often when you watch a movie or, you know, read a piece of literature and go to pick some kind of theater.
I think the most relatable experience is probably film nowadays. But if you really like want to imitate the main character, you will like the work more. In fact, you really, really like the work. Like the Fast and Furious franchise.
I remember the first one, Keene Hanne, I went to see it. And every idiot in like a souped up Honda Civic was just peeling out of the fork. Trying to be a vieventiesel. But like you just, you just inclined, I'm a man just like that.
And that's the whole principle of the moral education in the Republic, right? We haven't talked about this yet. We're going to, they talk about it soon. But the idea there is that the poets in their poems create models of conduct that the young just tend to imitate.
And so as much as I think there is a sort of deeper sort of level and philosophic level, you know, you can be read as I think a work almost of political thought. Let's say political philosophy that perhaps I think for the average Greek it would have been like Achilles is a man like, you know, he stood up for himself against, you know, the trick, I can then on. Yeah, yeah. So my question is what's the political ed up?
I mean, like if that's right, if we think that Homer really was wise in some ways, he must have known that most people would not have gotten to this deeper level. And so to what degree is the exaltation of Achilles salutary? How is that? And so to understand why that's good.
Like, why is it good that the young men of Greece actually look at Achilles as someone to be admired? You know, who helps with that exaltation though, it's all after the fact or the tragedy is because I think it's in the lower side. It's not a revisionary history, but it shades in a lot of a lot of the background of Agamemnon. And you start to see reasons why Achilles's wrath may have been well placed.
So it's appraisal. It's an conversation second time. I'm going to stop bringing up the tragedy. No, it's okay.
This is a third time of work, David. I'm sure. My brain is fast. We're about to see the wrath of Bar.
Yeah, directly to the infant. No, I think the way in which it works, right, is that Achilles, what is the sort of story? Achilles has a choice of lives, right? And he chooses to die.
He's been wrong. He doesn't, you know, then he comes back in and he does it for his friend, Patrick. And he dies for friendship. And then there's this long, you know, you see him heroic.
Now, there's ways to complicate that, right? The only time he mentions the choice of lives is when he's under pressure to justify abstaining for battle. All right. Every other bit of testimony is that he's fated to die by a young man, right?
On top of that, Patrick says at one point before going to battle Achilles, you don't have to have some kind of prophecy or anything. Do you? He was, no, no, not at all. So Achilles is not, he's not, we all know that he's like, he says he's going to leave, but then he doesn't leave.
Right? And in the hippiest minor soccer, he makes a lot of this. But in general, there is a kind of tendency to fudge the truth. I think Michael Davis suggests that Achilles lies to Patrick was, right?
Because he needs him to die. So he can ever. Oh my gosh. That would be, I don't know, maybe that's true.
Maybe that's not, it's a difficult sort of case to sell. It's one of the best short pieces written on the iliad. But if that's true, then you see how the surface reading dies for the figure's friends. Much more complicated.
It's like something Barra would do, set his friend up to die for him so that he could have entered stuff. Well, I'm just thinking of my predecessor, the Hebrew Bible. All right. Yeah, that's a very good one for sure.
Yeah. I've always thought this one as I mentioned, and we didn't, we're really our folks and books one and book two, but my students, and you've taught it, I assume more than that. My students were, seem to be more drawn to Hector, that he's sort of the most admirable figure in the world. You're in the entire book.
I have the eighth one. Okay. Yeah. Yeah.
Little, still reminded, noble, free of complications. Right. But I see that like he's a fan, but he's also, when he's with his son, that's the One X, and he's got his helmet on in book six, and in book six. It's a funny scene.
He cries, and he takes out the helmet and laughs. Like, who would be afraid of armor. Right. But the theme of armor runs through the iliad.
Farmers is interesting. Armor, on the one hand, is a great recognition of your mortality. I need to protect this on the other hand. It's a desire to it bears witness to the desire to be more than you nearly are by nature to be to sort of transcend your humanity.
And one of the big themes in this is Achilles armor, which he got from his father, Pilius. He gives to Patriclas. Patriclas then is stripped of the armor by Hector. And then when Achilles kills Hector, Homer says, and he knew where to strike him because it was his own armor.
So there's this strange sort of shifting of armor and a symbol of arrogance. Hector originally sends the armor back and then Glauka says, why aren't you out there fighting? You need to go fight. And he immediately gets his get me to kill his armor.
I'm going to fight. Right. So at that point, he's had a shift. In addition, when he breaks down the gates to the wall, protecting the Greek ships, Homer says, all you could see was his armor and his eyes shining like fire.
So there's a kind of, I think, hubris in Hector's sort of defensive strategy. I'm just going to defend my homeland and my family, right? And stand back. I don't think he realizes the extent to which he's susceptible to the love of Lori.
To the point that when he's breaking down the walls, he says, I'd love to live with Zeus and Hera as my sibling, something along those lines. He's immediately overtaken by the same passion. So though he has that, I think it's conceivable that this longing or to defeat Achilles and to take his glory for his own, right? To have that same sort of thing is what needs to be the downfall of his own city.
So I think the question ends up being really, really complicated about how admirable Hector actually is. Though, obviously, his sobriety or parrot sobriety, at least it's obviously more attractive than Achilles' tantrums. Yeah. He mystified Hector there for sure.
Bump out. There's no one to admire in it. Yeah. Yeah.
That's why exactly it's. I guess Odysseus is the one who comes out the other side with his own poems. There's something to remind. He's more complicated than that.
But he's pretty complicated. He likes to kill a lot of people instead of very end. And he's also arguably, I think, in certain ways, less self-aware than Achilles. No.
I think Achilles is, it has a way more self-aware relationship to glory than Odysseus does. You think Odysseus has that by the end of the Odyssey? Yeah, maybe I guess. This is, I think this is a suggestion.
Probably, maybe we should do an episode on Hippys Minor. But sure. Go read Christopher Buell's chapter in honest to chronic education. He has some really interesting insights into the extent to which Odysseus or Achilles is a good model for understanding Socrates.
And I think he sides with Achilles as close to Socrates. I think because he's more aware of his, I don't want to butcher this. Go read it and able to do an episode on it. The Minor?
The Minor. Does that come before the Major? After. Probably not.
Was he a champion? He has his standalone? Oh, yeah, for sure. I think he's a couple of things.
But yeah, it has, you learn a lot on it. I'm not for sure. I'm tapped. That's all the questions I got.
And we should come back and do some more episodes on the Elliot. And then we should do an episode on Hector. We should do an episode on the GameX. Can't wait to listen to this episode in March.
Yeah. Let us know if you guys want us to do us another episode on the end. We will do the Odyssey. But let us know Homer, Hesiod, and maybe just generally any charges.
But let's, if you want us to do something else in the Elliot, let us know. I like the, the Embassy to Achilles is really interesting. There's a really interesting rhetoric there. As well as the, the Dolan Aida tonight.
The two nightbooks, looks nine and ten. I think they're really fast. Yeah. That's a teach.
We can do an episode. We can do an episode. Sounds good. Sounds good.