Homer, The Odyssey: A long journey home

The Story
Odysseus has not returned to his home in Ithaca, 10 years after the end of the Trojan war. His wife is surrounded by many suitors who want her hand. His son, Telemachus, is sick and tired of the suitors and sends them away before going to look for his father. The suitors plot to kill Telemachus on his return.
Odysseus is being held on a small island by the nymph Calypso. Athena convinces Calypso to let him go. But he ends up in another storm, as Poseidon is still angry with him. He eventually washes up on Scheria, the land of the Phaeacians. They almost don't believe he is the Odysseus that fought in Troy but they promise him a ship home, if he tells them his story.
Odysseus tells of leaving Troy, of visiting the land of the lotus eaters and of how he had to drag his men away from there. He tells the stories of:

• Meeting a cyclops, being captured by him and how he used cunning to blind the cyclops and escape
• Circe's turning his men into pigs and how he got her to release them
• Killing the sun gods cattle and Zeus causing a storm that killed all his men
• How he washed up on the shore of Calypso's island.

Odysseus returns to Ithaca and is reunited with his son, who had returned when Athena sent him home. His wife puts a test to The Suitors to string Odysseus' bow and shoot an arrow through 12 axe heads, which none of  The Suitors can do. A disguised Odysseus does it with ease. Odysseus and his son then slay The Suitors. He then reveals himself to his wife and they travel to his fathers estate. The families of The Suitors come for vengeance, for the slaughter at the palace, but are turned away by Athena, disguised as Mentor.

Reflections
The story of the Odyssey is not told in chronological order. It instead starts in the middle of the story, with Odysseus trapped on Calypso's island. And later, the back story is finally filled in, as Odysseus tells his story to the king at Scheria. This creates the odd situation, where you know that Poseidon is angry with him for blinding a cyclops, but you have no idea why this happened.
Odysseus never escapes a situation by using his brawn, but rather always through cunning, or in one case the gods intervention. Although he is known for his cunning, it interests me that he never seems to run out of tricks or when he does, a god tells him what to do to prevail.
Telemachus' coming of age story is scattered throughout the story of Odysseus. He starts the story as a boy who is angry with The Suitors but does not have the agency to do anything about it, and ends helping his father slay those very suitors. In between, he has traveled around the Greek world on his own mini-quest, to find out what has become of his father.

Comparisons
The Odyssey is profoundly easier to read than the Iliad, as it has only a handful of named characters to keep track of, compared to the preponderance in the Iliad. That being said, there seems to be less character development in Odysseus than Achilles.
The Odyssey approaches its story in a scattered way, filling in its own backstory with Odysseus telling the story to others. By contrast the Iliad is very focused and very chronological, following through the consequences of the opening actions.
The two texts have such a different feel to them that I wonder if they were truly written by the same author. If they were they were written at very different times.

Have you read the The Odyssey? If so what did you think?
Does this inspire you to read the The Odyssey? If so tell me what you think when your done!

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Read my post on The Iliad

Homer, The Iliad: A great war

The Story
The Iliad, or The Song of Ilium, starts with the arrival of the Argives on Trojan land. They are there to recapture Helen, the wife of Menelaus, that had been stolen away by the sons of Priam. Agamemnon, the leading king, insults Achilles by taking one of Achilles' captured prizes, a young woman. Achilles then refuses, as a point of honour, to join the Argives in battle and even goes so far as to petition the gods for the Argives to lose without him. Then the battle ensues and is going against the Argives, the Trojans are having their way with the battle. The battle reaches the ships and Achilles friend is killed by Hector. Achilles joins the battle, vowing to take down Hector, and has a great impact on the state of the fighting. He eventually kills Hector, in single combat, but is not happy with that as revenge and proceeds to desecrate his body, while putting on elaborate funeral games for his friend. He does eventually return Hectors body to his father, who the buries him with dignity.

Reflections
One of the things that struck me is that Homer has clearly never seen a chariot in use: their use in the poem is nonsensical. They are only there to take the combatants to each other and then to be dismounted to fight. In reality, they would have fought from the chariot and only dismounted if the chariot was damaged, much more damage could be done this way. This suggests that the text was written down much later, when the phalanx had taken over, as the most powerful formation for war; with their long spears, chariots could not get close and fell out of common usage in the Greek world.
Homer also uses a preponderance of names. Minor characters that are just there to get killed are named. Every prince, of every nation involved, and all divisions in the boats, all are named. George RR Martin didn't uses as many names even in the Song of Ice and Fire.
Achilles is seen as the righteous hero, breaking faith with Agamemnon, when he was betrayed by him, and yet avenging his friend when his is killed by Hector. Nothing Agamemnon did could bring Achilles back into the fight but after his friends death, nothing would keep him from his revenge or from honoring his friend with a games.

Comparisons
The Iliad is the second epic poem on the list, which surprised me a little; when originally writing the list, I had expected it to be the first. The Iliad is harder to read than The Epic of Gilgamesh.
In the Iliad it is about who did what, it is focused on the people and who they are. By contrast the Epic of Gilgamesh focuses on what was done, focusing on the events that the characters went through.
Both texts began life as oral stories, but they filled different roles societally. The Iliad played the part of a common past for the Panhellenic tribes and is a literal who's who. At the time is was written down, it would have been used as a touchstone of a common past for all Greeks. Both texts speak of a heroic past, where the men were stronger and the gods intervened more readily.

Have you read the The Iliad? If so what did you think?
Does this inspire you to read the The Iliad? If so tell me what you think when your done!

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Read my post on The Epic of Gilgamesh

The Epic of Gilgamesh: Even the Babylonians had a flood myth

The Story
Gilgamesh was a man without equal, king of Uruk. But as a king he abused his power with excessive force so the gods created Enkidu, the wild man, to rival his strength and to stop his excesses. Enkidu is a wild man and lives in the forest, at peace with the animals. Until, he encounters a temple prostitute, who convinces him to lie with her. Because of this the forest no longer welcomes him, so she teaches him to be a civilised man and tells him of Gilgamesh's excesses. Enkidu stops Gilgamesh from entering a bridal chamber and they wrestle. Gilgamesh wins but they become friends and go on to make a name for themselves.
They head to the forest of cedar, fight and vanquish Humbaba, with the help of the god Shamash. They cut down the forest and float a city gate down the river to Uruk.
The goddess Ishtar propositions Gilgamesh, who turns her down. So, she petitions her father for the the bull of heaven, to be sent to cause problems. Gilgamesh and Enkidu wrestle the bull of heaven into submission and killed it. The gods are angry and kill Enkidu with an illness.
Gilgamesh morns for Enkidu and wrestles with his mortality. He goes to find Utnapishtim, the one who survived the flood, and gets the story of the flood from him. He asks how to gain immortality and Utnapishtim asks him to stay awake for a week: which he fails at. Utnapishtim's wife tells Gilgamesh of a plant that can give him eternal life. He trys to take it back with him but the serpent steals it. He returns to Uruk empty-handed but is now comfortable with his mortality.

Reflections
The flood story in the Gilgamesh Epic has similarities and differences to the biblical account. They agree that mankind is saved by going aboard a boat with animals. But, the biblical account has God choosing to save mankind, rather than the Epic, where one god warns the survivors, but the rest of the gods, morn the loss of mankind which they had caused.
Gilgamesh is a great and strong man but he has the faults of many a strong man. He abuses that strength and his people groan under the strain. Even with this he, is described as a great and beautiful man and after Enkidu arrives he begins to act as such.
The Aurochs was a very large, very aggressive now extinct Bovine. It is the most likely to have been the bull of heaven (Find out more here). There has been nothing else in the fossil and historical record that has been the right size and with the "right" temper to have given the pair much of a fight.


Have you heard of the Aurochs?
Have you read the The Epic of Gilgamesh? If so what did you think?
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Find out more about the Aurochs.

Beowulf: More than expected

Which Edition Matters
For this project, I like to buy a paperback edition of the book. I look for second hand when I can; if I can't get it second hand I'll look for a Penguin Classics edition. But for some of the more obscure works I have to look at other editions. I like the penguin classics, I like their looks, I like their price point, and I like that I'll almost always get a good translation without having to do a lot of research.
With Beowulf, Penguin Classics does two editions a glossed text and a verse translation. I had a quick look at both of them, on book depository. I thought that the glossed text would be a bit like a bible with Strongs numbers, that is to say a modern English text with references to all the Old English words.
I decided that the glossed text was for me: I was wrong. If I had done a little more research I would have found that the glossed text would be an Old English text with reference to the modern English words, which was, in a word, unreadable, I'm sure it is great for in depth study but not for my purposes. So, I ordered the verse text and found this much more amenable to reading.

Misconceptions
I had quite a few misconceptions going into this book, some of the more obvious are,

• I thought the whole book was about Beowulf and Grendel.
  Actually, Beowulf defeats Grendel within the first third of the book.
• I thought Grendel was the dragon.
  Actually, Grendel is the first opponent and the dragon is Beowulf's final adversary.
• I thought Beowulf slayed the dragon alone.
  Actually the dragon kills Beowulf and is killed by Beowulf with the help of Wiglaf, a young companion.

The Story

Beowulf travels to the Danish Court and quickly learns of Grendel, a monster who has come into the mead hall and killed Danish warriors. He agrees to fight the monster with his bare hands. He is successful in the fight. But that night, as they sleep after celebration, Grendel's mother comes in and kills warriors where they sleep. Beowulf pursues Grendel's mother into the swamp land and fights her, first bare handed and the kills her with a giant sword he finds. The Danes honour him but he chooses to go home to Geatland. Over time he becomes king of the Geats. A dragon causes some issues, so old Beowulf leads a group of warriors to fight it. Beowulf chooses to fight the dragon alone and is killed. In one last breath, Beowulf kills the dragon after Wiglaf has distracted it. Beowulf is then burried in a barrow for all to see, with all the riches of the dragon.

Reflection

Having the Christian writers perspective overlaying the pagan Germanic perspective was jarring in places. The incompatible nature of these two worldviews makes for quite disjointed juxtapositions. You could feel the Christian perspective is getting in the way of the narrative at times and confuses some of the reasons for the actions. Some commentators say this is due to the mixture of the two religions at the time, but I feel the other possibility is more likely. Beowulf was an oral story first from the Germanic worldview, then later written down by a Christian who couldn't help but re-interpret it.

One of the great things about most epic poems, and Beowulf is no exception, is how they view the past as a time of great heroics, (greater than the modern day). Their ancestors may have done great deeds and there may have been more conflict for them to distinguish themselves in. Beowulf's super human strength is a great example of this, while historians think that Beowulf is not an actual historical figure, let us suppose for a minute he is. We cannot help but decide that, while Beowulf was great at solo deeds, the chances that he actually ripped the limb off whatever kind of beast Grendel was is implausible.However you cannot deny that it cuts a great heroic figure. Something for those later generations to aspire to.

Have you read Beowulf? If so what did you think of it?

Want to read Beowulf but haven't? Hopefully this inspires you to take the time to do so.
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