Ancient Epics Textbook PDF Spring 2025

Ancient Epics/Textbook/DEmilio/Spring 2025/1 GENRES AND MEDIA: ANCIENT EPICS HUM 4890 Dr. James D'Emilio SPRING 2025 TEXTBOOK I begin (pp. 1-8) with the same introduction to the subject matter of the...

Ancient Epics/Textbook/DEmilio/Spring 2025/1 GENRES AND MEDIA: ANCIENT EPICS HUM 4890 Dr. James D'Emilio SPRING 2025 TEXTBOOK I begin (pp. 1-8) with the same introduction to the subject matter of the course that I provided in the Course Documents). I follow that (pp. 9-10) with a note on how to use the textbook and (from p. 11) the material for our introductory Week 1.1 on Homeric epic. The Long Afterlife of the Trojan Legends From the Trojan horse to the Sirens' song, from Helen's beauty to the giant, man-eating, one-eyed Cyclops, legends of the Trojan War have filled the cultural memory of Europe and the Americas with images and characters; given words and expressions to modern languages; inspired countless works in European and American literature, art, and music; and contributed to the global popular culture and new media of the modern and contemporary era, from films and gaming to theme parks and advertising.... "I've been reading books of old, the legends and the myths, Achilles and his gold...” If you ever heard that and didn't know what it meant, you will soon. In ancient Greece and Rome, stories and characters related to the legends of the Trojan War appeared in diverse forms of literature, from epic and lyric poetry to tragic drama. Paintings and sculpture displayed these subjects on public monuments, household objects and decoration, and even on tombs. Choosing to represent Penelope, Achilleus, or Scylla on your urn or coffin surely says something about how intimately you identified with their stories and how you found them relevant to your own life. The Trojan War was a point of departure or comparison in the works of the Greek historians Herodotus and Thucydides. At his trial in Athens, the philosopher Socrates compared himself to the Greek hero Achilleus. In the Republic, Plato specifically cited Homer's Iliad as an example of poetry teaching dangerous lessons about the gods that might corrupt the youth. Rome hailed the Trojan hero Aeneas as its distant ancestor. In fact, the aristocratic family to which Julius Caesar belonged took its name (what we call the "Julian" family or lineage) from their supposed forefather Iulus, the son of Aeneas. Among all such examples of the role of the Trojan legends and their impact in ancient times (and there are many, many more!), the Greek epics of Homer (the Iliad and the Odyssey) and the Roman epic by Vergil (the Aeneid) stand out as the most ample, best-known, and most influential works in which we find important parts of the story of the Trojan War and its consequences. An "Epic" Course?...or a Course on Ancient Epics: Form, Content, Contexts Epics were not the only works of Greek and Roman literature or art to present stories and characters from the Trojan legends. Nor were they the only works through which ancient Greeks and Romans addressed ethical, political, and religious questions. The epics are one type of literature: a genre. As we read them, we will learn to recognize what makes a poem an epic, how poets used the form and style of the epic to shape its content, and how the epic tradition built on earlier works and entered into a dialogue with other genres of literature and art. Today, just about anything "big", from an airline delay or a snowstorm to a hard-fought game, may be called "epic". That does capture something important about epic poetry. Yes, these are long poems: whether they're too long, you'll have to decide for yourselves! In the strictest  Ancient Epics/Textbook/DEmilio/Spring 2025/2 sense, length alone does not make a work of literature an epic. Novels are long, but we do not call the epics "novels" (and please don't!). The ancient epics in Greek or in Latin (the language of the Romans) were composed with a specific meter or rhythm that marked them as a distinctive genre of poetry. This will not be "visible" to you in an English translation, but you will see literary features that were also recognizable traits of the genre: long extended similes (comparisons), descriptions of works of art (ekphrases), catalogues of characters or combats, recurring scenes (type-scenes), characteristic phrasing and expressions, stories within the story (embedded narratives), and the careful staging of dueling speeches as contests of words. More than size makes an epic, but epics were also "big" in ways beyond the wordcount. The literary features I just catalogued expanded the scope of the epic. Similes compared scenes on the battlefield to domestic life, crafts, and, most often, the world of nature. Embedded narratives mirrored and commented on the main plot, connecting it to other heroic legends. Dramatic speeches and dialogues staged the story like a play. Ekphrases invited listeners to visualize action and reflect on the ways words and images tell stories. Devices like these laid a foundation for dramatists, painters, and sculptors to respond to the epics in their own genres. With this repertory of sophisticated literary tools, epic poets created compelling stories with vivid descriptions, suspenseful plots, bitter conflicts, dramatic action, powerful speeches, strong emotions, and memorable characters. The epics did more than entertain: they made these stories foundational ones for a whole culture. The legendary past of the Trojan War was the shared cultural heritage of the ancient Greeks. Ancient heroes were claimed as ancestors of noble lineages. Towns jealously guarded their place in these venerable tales and their fame as sites of a hero's exploits. Later, the Trojan War was grafted onto the legends of Rome's origins and became the unlikely starting point for Rome's rise to greatness and imperial domination over the Mediterranean world. In that sense, the epics were histories that forged the identities of ancient peoples. They told grand stories, often of conflict and endurance, with larger-than-life heroes. We may compare them with collective experiences that, today, shape the ways people in the United States may think of themselves and what it means to be an "American": the American Revolution and creation of the republic; the Civil War; the westward expansion—a triumph for some, an unspeakable tragedy for others; the long and ongoing struggles for workers' rights and for civil rights for women, African-Americans, and other communities marginalized in one way or another; the mass immigration of the late nineteenth and early twentieth century (the saga of my own grandparents) and the continuing arrival of women and men who become American and often achieve undreamed of success. Like these deliberately diverse (and often controversial) examples I've chosen to cite from United States history, the epics could be "contested": in other words, communities in ancient Greece or Rome could read or listen to them in the light of their own experiences and draw very different, even opposing, lessons. More than just stories, the epics presented their audiences with a world-view and an ideology, a way of understanding the world, human society, and ourselves. In societies without sacred scriptures (like the Bible or Qur'an) or a prominent priestly class, the poets and their epic poems were an important and even authoritative source for their audiences' knowledge of the gods and goddesses, their relationship to human beings, and their interventions in human affairs. Through the dilemmas their characters faced and the decisions they made, the epics addressed  Ancient Epics/Textbook/DEmilio/Spring 2025/3 moral and ethical issues about virtues and values, proper conduct, and social relations. They taught lessons about political power and violence, about social status and hierarchies, and about gender roles and personal identity. In this way, they offer us an all-encompassing view of the culture, thought, values, and beliefs of ancient Greece and Rome, and they address moral, social, political, and intellectual issues that we still debate today, sometimes with echoes of their formulation, ages ago, in these epics. The poetic form of the epics, the fame of their legends and heroes, and the importance of the issues they raised made them a prestigious form of ancient Greek and Roman literature and a cornerstone of ancient education. When we bring together epics from both ancient Greece and Rome, we can read them as part of an "epic tradition". This is one of the larger contexts in which we will read the individual poems, particularly the later ones. How do the epic poets respond critically and creatively to their predecessors? And, how did dramatists and artists retell these stories in other genres in ways that challenged the authority of the epics, the values they presented, and the literary standards they set? With questions like these, we gradually widen the framework of our readings. Our first readings in the Iliad and the Odyssey introduce the forms of epic poetry, the stories of the Trojan legends, and the characteristic content of these poems. When we turn to the Roman epics and to examples of Greek tragedy, we will see the epic poems within a tradition and in relation to other forms of literature. Throughout the course, we will have opportunities to compare the ways these stories were told in the visual arts, in ancient times and in later periods. Let's take a closer look at how this will unfold in our set of readings... Our Course Structure: A Conversation among Epic Poems from Greece to Rome 1. The Iliad and the Odyssey (Units 1 and 2) Let me outline the epics we will read and introduce one key theme: the "conversation" among these successive poems. Our course centers on four epic poems that we read in chronological order (earliest to latest). We start with the Iliad and the Odyssey, poems attributed to the Greek poet Homer and probably composed in something like the form we have them by the late eighth century BC. Because these poems stem from an oral tradition of composing and performing poems without writing, the matter of authorship and origins is more complex than we expect, as we'll soon see in this first week and in later discussions when we begin to read the poems themselves. The Iliad tells a story of the anger of the Greek warrior Achilleus and its deadly consequences against the backdrop of the larger story of the Trojan War. This is a very short episode within the ten-year war, but it involves most of the leading characters (including several of the Trojan king Priam's fifty [!] sons). Importantly, it mirrors many of the issues and conflicts that surface in the war itself. As we follow Achilleus' explosive rage, we are forced to face profound questions about the gods and fate, power and rulership, violence and suffering, individual choices and social responsibilities, that arise throughout the larger story of the war. The Odyssey is far more wide-ranging in its time span, geography (both real and imagined), and the diversity of characters and communities it portrays. It tells the story of the adventurous and perilous return from Troy of the Greek warrior Odysseus whose homecoming climaxed in his bloody triumph over the men—the suitors—seeking to marry his loyal wife Penelope.  Ancient Epics/Textbook/DEmilio/Spring 2025/4 These two poems will introduce us to the Trojan legends and their heroic figures; the poetic techniques and formal elements of the epic poets; the broad scope of epic poetry; and the range of philosophical, religious, political and ethical issues—highlighted here and in some of the "questions" I include in the Course Schedule—the epics tackle. We will also begin to see how painters and sculptors represented stories related specifically to the Homeric epics. Together, the Iliad and the Odyssey also introduce an important theme that holds the course and sequence of readings together: the "dialogue" or conversation among works of literature. When we read the Odyssey, we'll see many similarities with the Iliad: it shares notable characters, both human and divine; it refers to the same events surrounding the Trojan War; and it uses the features of style and structure characteristic of epic poetry. At the same time, it is remarkably and, perhaps, deliberately different. It's not just that it tells a different story in different settings. The Odyssey has a much more complex structure. It moves back and forth in time, takes us from one place to another across the known world (and beyond!), and lets many narrators tell their own stories—true ones and false ones (...but can you tell which is which???). With this complexity, it makes us think about poetry and storytelling, and makes us more aware of the powerful role of storytellers in choosing and crafting the tales they tell, and of audiences in responding to and interpreting them. It's as if the poet wants the audience to compare the Odyssey with the Iliad, reflect on their differences, and perhaps decide that the Odyssey is the superior and more mature work. Like the Iliad, the Odyssey centers on a hero, Odysseus, introduced in the opening lines. That similarity is quickly overshadowed by the differences between the short-lived Achilleus and Odysseus, the determined survivor. The contrast between "brains and brawn", "wit and strength", is only part of that: Odysseus, after all, is certainly a strong warrior and Achilleus could more than hold his own in debates and arguments, "battling with words", as the epic poets might say. By "asking" us to compare the two heroes, the Odyssey poses questions about what makes a hero and, more specifically, what makes a man. But, the Odyssey doesn’t stop there... The Odyssey looks far beyond the narrow world of male warrior aristocrats (whom some might today see as bullies and braggarts). We meet prominent and powerful women, young and old people, enslaved men and women telling their own stories, and remarkable figures who occupy a strange, magical, seductive, sometimes violent world between the human and the divine. We are drawn to explore different identities and the boundaries between them, and to reflect on what it means to share a common humanity. Finally, the Odyssey proposes a moral order that guides divine and human action. This is a world more clearly governed by, even obsessed by, distinctions between proper and improper conduct, from violent competition to basic table manners (Protip: don't eat your guests!). It is a poem more conscious of the idea of justice. Much more than the Iliad, the Odyssey suggests that people may get what they deserve in this world or the next (especially, perhaps, if they have earned punishment!). These differences between the two poems add up to more than a comparison that we might happen to make between any two stories or films, for example, with contrasting styles, characters, or points of view. I choose the term "dialogue" to refer to these "intertextual" (=between one text and another) relations between the Iliad and the Odyssey, because you'll see how the Odyssey appears to prompt and tease us, quite purposefully, to think back to the Iliad  Ancient Epics/Textbook/DEmilio/Spring 2025/5 and to contrast its poetry, its values and heroes, the society it depicts, and the moral world it describes. In other words, we are not the ones choosing arbitrarily to compare these works: within their own culture, these works confronted audiences with competing visions, and pushed them to compare and debate them. These comparisons even lead us to question the claims the epics make, as stories told or inspired by the divine Muses, to be authoritative accounts of the past, of the gods, and of the qualities to admire in the men and women of a heroic age. After all, we see sharp contrasts between the two poems, their heroes, and their values. Within the Odyssey, we hear different voices and different versions of the same stories. These debates are also a vital part of their legacy: they helped set in motion long and ongoing discussions in the cultures of Europe, the Mediterranean, and the Near East—and eventually the Americas—about literature, about human nature and values, about society and politics, and about mankind's place in the world and relationship to nature and to the divine. 2. Vergil's Aeneid: A Roman Epic and the Art of Empire (Unit 3) This vigorous and self-conscious conversation between works becomes even more evident and explicit when we jump ahead seven hundred years and read Vergil’s Aeneid, our third work, in Unit 3. In this epic written in Latin, the Roman poet Vergil describes the flight of Aeneas, a Trojan warrior, from the burning city of Troy as it is sacked by the Greeks. Aeneas is fated to be the father of the Romans. Driven by destiny and given prophecies of future greatness, he wanders like Odysseus, experiencing many adventures, until he arrives in Italy. There, war breaks out and, victorious, he stakes his claim to settle his people in their new promised land. For the Aeneid, there are no doubts about authorship and, as you'll see, we know a lot about the Roman social, cultural, and political context in which Vergil wrote the poem between 30 and 19 BC. In a sense, Vergil is "rewriting" the Homeric epics and adapting the Greek legends of the Trojan War to create a specifically Roman epic poem, to showcase a hero who embodies Roman social and political virtues, and to reflect on Rome's history, destiny, and greatness, and the sacrifices—for victors and victims—needed to achieve it. There is no question that Vergil is purposefully imitating the Homeric epics and inviting at least his most educated readers to compare his work with the Iliad and the Odyssey (and a wider range of Greek literary works). We are witnessing an act of what we may call "cultural appropriation". Vergil is "borrowing" the cultural heritage of the Greeks, and most specifically their epic tradition. He adapts it to his own purposes and transforms it into something quintessentially Roman. One may consider it as one facet of the Roman conquest of the Greek world and a sign of the tension between Rome's military and political power and the prodigious cultural and intellectual legacy—and perceived superiority---of Greece and the "Hellenized" lands (=Greek culture blended with indigenous traditions) of the Near East that it subdued and ruled. In addition, it is an example—relevant to us as we read these ancient works today—of the reception of earlier literary works and of how a cultural past can be made useful. The ancient Greek legends of the Trojan War and their poetic expression in the epics of Homer become a pillar of Roman history, culture, and identity.  Ancient Epics/Textbook/DEmilio/Spring 2025/6 3. Where Have All the Heroes Gone? Critique and Caricature (Unit 4) In our fourth and last module, we step outside the epics—and backtrack in time—to read two plays by the Greek dramatist Euripides, one of the leading writers of tragedy in Athens at the end of the fifth century BC. I have chosen two plays, Hecuba and Rhesus, with subjects from the Trojan legends. Hecuba stages the tragic story of the queen of Troy enslaved by the Greeks after their victory and made to witness the terrible fate of two of her children. The play Rhesus retells—from the Trojan perspective—a gory story told in book 10 of the Iliad of a night- time raid on the Trojan camp and the doomed mission of a Trojan spy. We end with the Metamorphoses, a complex work by the Roman poet Ovid written about a generation after Vergil’s Aeneid. This poem is most famous as a repository of countless mythological stories. But the Metamorphoses is more than a handbook of mythology. All of Ovid's tales involve metamorphoses or transformations of one form into another. The biggest transformation of all may be the poetic transformation worked by Ovid. He adopts the characteristic form of an epic, but he includes stories, subjects, and literary techniques drawn from a wide variety of literary genres. As his work draws to its close, he focuses several of the last books on his retelling of the story of the Trojan War and of the journey of Aeneas to Italy. In effect, this is his biting commentary (and critical it is!) on the epics of Homer and Vergil. It makes an appropriate ending for our course and might even make you want to read Homer and Vergil again, wondering how you ever took them seriously. Together, the three works in this final unit conclude this important thread in the course: the dialogue, debate, or conversation among the epic poems and the ways in which poets re- use, appropriate, read critically, and reinterpret earlier works, sometimes forcing us to rethink our own readings of those "classic" epics. We're not just talking about one poem "influencing" a later one, or one poet adapting an earlier work. We're talking about a genuine conversation that makes us read earlier works with a fresh eye, by seeing them critically through the eyes of different authors and audiences. Euripides' portrayal of the Greek and Trojan heroes of the Trojan War is not a flattering one. Euripides' cold, conniving, and deceptive Odysseus seems an ugly caricature and distortion compared to the hero's boastful self-presentation in the Odyssey. With such portraits, Euripides overturns the epic ideals of heroism and the manly virtues of the warrior. He contrasts figures like Odysseus and Agamemnon with the desperate courage of enslaved women whose nobility cannot be crushed by fate. With such striking changes, he challenges the status of epics like the Iliad and the Odyssey as "authoritative" works celebrating a shared heritage and advancing certain cultural, moral, and political values. Ovid's Metamorphoses goes still further, retelling epic stories in ways that turn into burlesque parodies populated by puffed-up cartoonish buffoons (perhaps I'm doing some exaggerated reinterpreting of my own?). I can't promise you'll split your sides, or whatever, with hilarious laughter (=LMAO), but if you've been paying close attention along the way, you'll be rewarded. You should at least crack a smile or two (and perhaps a smile of admiration), or maybe you'll crack up altogether when you see what Ovid does to the stories the epic poets told, the ways they told them, the "heroes" they showcased, and the lessons they claimed to teach. Ovid pulls away the curtain and shows us the Wizard of Oz, as he really is.  Ancient Epics/Textbook/DEmilio/Spring 2025/7 Stories and Poems: Reality and Representation At the start of this introduction, I emphasized that the epics tell great stories with great characters. And they do. For some of you, an interest in these stories and others that are part of Greek and Roman mythology may have brought you to the course. Naturally, I hope your enjoyment of these stories makes the readings something you're motivated to do, and not just another dreary chore (in the dreaded Canvas calendar which I avoid using). But, (don't leave now!!) the stories are just the lure. Outside the poems in which we read them, they have no existence we can profitably discuss. Be careful about this: we're focusing primarily on the epics, their poetry, and their meaning, not on the "backstory" of the Trojan War or its characters. Of course, ancient audiences did know more about these stories and could compare other versions they had heard, seen, or read. We'll look for clues about what poets expected their audiences to know. We'll see examples of other versions of the stories or related ones in the visual arts. At the same time, please don't approach these epics as if their characters were "real" ones with a life of their own that you can bring to bear on our interpretations. We have to focus on what the poets said, how they said it, and the ways the formal features of the epic provided a language and a structure for telling stories and addressing complex issues. Only with care can we also interpret their silences, and we can't make easy assumptions about the epics based on today's retellings or summaries of these tales. Simply put, understanding how these stories are told is a vital part of reading these stories. This means, first and foremost, that we read these poems closely and pay careful attention to their words, phrases, and structures, even through the filter of our English translations (hence my insistence that we all use one and the same translation). One thing you’ll learn quickly (and may already be figuring out) about me is this: I love words and their uses. Words matter. Language is a big part of how we make sense of our world and communicate that to others. I also believe deeply in the importance of evidence and working one's way up from bits of evidence to larger conclusions. We'll seldom start with or dwell on generalizations, "The ancient Greeks believed..." "Achilleus was..." "The Greek gods were..." Occasionally, generalizations are well-founded, but I will emphasize how we get there: how we build interpretations, reach conclusions, and arrive at generalizations from the close analysis of texts and, in some cases, the imagery of painting and sculpture. Methods and Goals: Details, Artistry, Conversations, Big Issues Our goal is not to know all about the stories of Troy. Our goal is to get closer to reading these poems as if we knew their authors, or were in the audiences they were recited to. The poems are the point of the course. Our close reading will achieve three larger goals. First, I want you to appreciate the sophistication, complexity, and artistry of these poems, and how their poets creatively use the "rules" of their genre and the tradition of earlier epics. These poets are artists of the highest caliber. The more you get to know them, the more you can appreciate that reading these works is like watching an unforgettable performance or hearing the concert of your life. Second, appreciating these poems and the power of their language is important, but also a means to an end. Throughout this introduction, I have emphasized the "conversation" among these works. To join and understand that conversation, you have to hear the distinctive voices in each epic. Our close reading brings us a little closer to how Vergil and his audiences read Homer,  Ancient Epics/Textbook/DEmilio/Spring 2025/8 or how Ovid and his public read the earlier epics. Lastly—and maybe most important, what on earth are they talking about??? Yes, I suspect you've begun to wonder about your instructor and this "conversation" among books he claims to hear. I've said that these poems address big political, moral, religious, and intellectual issues that we still debate today. I've included such broad questions in the Course Schedule. What do I mean? You’re not going to find Homer or Vergil dictating a Ten Commandments or drafting a political constitution or set of laws. Nor will Ovid hit you with a philosophical treatise neatly divided by subject and subheading. He most certainly won't, although the philosopher Pythagoras gets to make a short speech. To hear this conversation, you must hear the small things: the well-chosen adjective, the simile, the echo of an earlier description, the contrasting or parallel passages and structures that give form to an endless narrative...all these specific features are tools of communication. Recognizing how these poets use language with supreme skill to tell and structure their stories and to give voice to multiple characters points us towards bigger ideas. Every picture is made of countless brushstrokes (or pixels). I hope these issues—still deeply relevant today—will excite you. Some may feel it ruins a good story to overanalyze and overinterpret, and to turn a tale into a treatise. I'm not one of those people. If you are, I just hope you'll give this a chance. Often it's these bigger issues, whether we recognize them immediately or not, that create the bonds we feel with the characters and events in the epics. These universal themes help make their stories memorable and relevant. The challenge, for you and certainly for me as an instructor, is to combine careful attention to detail with a productive engagement with big questions we all ask at some points in our lives. And, yes, that's another thing about your instructor...besides obsessing over detail, I do always dig for more and more meaning, searching for patterns, behind the things I see and read. Finally (OMG, it's not over yet..., where's the exit? the course schedule? what's still open???), there's one last thing (really!) I'll say to all of you, whether you're a major in a humanities-related discipline (History, Languages, Art, English etc.), whether you're already interested in mythology and ancient times, or coming here from a totally different track and encountering this for the first time, or for the first time in the peculiar ways I may present it. In all my classes, I stress and try to model for you core skills of close reading and observation, careful selection of evidence based on the recognition of significant details, the construction of arguments leading to well-founded conclusions, and a skillful use of words throughout. Whatever your major or future career, those critical skills may be the most valuable product of the course. Words, facts, details, and evidence, and how we use them, matter. Recognizing the significance of the smallest anomaly in a medical diagnostic can save a life, seeing the importance of one piece of evidence can solve a crime or acquit an innocent person, the tiniest detail opens the door to a vaccine or cure. Your choice of words and ability to use them well may decide the fate of a job application, sway your fellow jurors, or make a letter to an editor or politician stand out from the others and have an impact. I look forward to the course, to rereading these epics with all of you, and to hearing your thoughts on the works we read and the issues we discuss.  Ancient Epics/Textbook/DEmilio/Spring 2025/9 WHAT IS THE TEXTBOOK? HOW SHOULD YOU USE IT? In this textbook, I offer my introductions and commentaries on our readings. I post it in weekly installments. Think of it as the material you might get with both lectures and a textbook in a face-to-face class. I start our discussions of the Iliad, Odyssey, and Aeneid with a basic outline and a key to principal characters, as well as a more in-depth introduction. For sections of these poems, I write commentaries with more detailed analysis and interpretation. In these, I address major issues and help you connect the parts of each poem. As we move on to the Odyssey, Aeneid, and Metamorphoses, I highlight what I call, in the Introduction, the “conversation” among the poems. Closely based upon the texts, these commentaries are not meant just to give you a ready- made interpretation. I show you, by example, how we read closely to develop and support interpretations. In selected cases, I give more explicit models of close reading, going through shorter passages and calling attention to features of language, style, and structure that are easy to overlook when the poems are new to you (and when you’re reading a lot of pages!). You could think of those as invitations to read the text, line by line, with me. In all my online courses, I have produced my textbooks from what were, at first, “study guides” that I wrote over the years (decades?) for face-to-face courses. Now, I’ve put these together as “textbooks” to present core material of the online courses and give the course “a narrative”. The textbook “evolves”, year by year, as I read current scholarship, see and explore new connections among the works we read, choose different sections of the works, and emphasize new topics and themes. Most of all, I see how all of you, in each class, read and respond to course materials. As a result, I regularly expand, revise, or replace sections and add entirely new topics and commentaries. I often write new sections during the semester: that’s one reason I post it in weekly installments or sometimes clusters of two or three weeks’ material. In that respect, the textbook is a living document and always a “work-in-progress.” It is an opportunity for me to be a learner as well as a teacher. That keeps me engaged with the materials and should be a benefit to all of you. Week by week, I urge you to prioritize the week’s section of the textbook. It will usually be an important part of the quizzes. It also helps you prepare for the parts of the quizzes focused on the texts of the epics by "training" you in how to read them closely and what to look for. And, it will help you select your forum topics and better understand how to respond. In the forums, I’m not looking for you simply to repeat what I’ve said! But, use the textbook commentaries, where appropriate, as a starting point and show that you’re aware of them. It is not good to show that you are unaware of material, relevant to your topic, that I’ve written to help you! Strive to use my textbook creatively as a guide to reading the epics thoughtfully and writing your own responses. Each of you will have a different way of using it to help you through our weekly readings. I suggest that you look it over near the start of our week (Thursdays) to see the main sections and topics. It will help you decide what sections of each epic to read, and what to read closely. You may want to read through the week’s section of the textbook before beginning the readings in the epic. Or you may find it works better to go back and forth between shorter sections of the textbook and the parts of the epics I am analyzing.  Ancient Epics/Textbook/DEmilio/Spring 2025/10 I don’t want to end on a sour note, but there is something to add here. The internet is full of material, much of it truly lousy, on these works. And now there’s AI as well—which I am addressing separately in another Course Document. To me, it seems like common sense to rely on the ample commentaries written and supplied by your professor (=the guy who’s giving you the grades). That doesn’t always happen. I’m not looking for external sources (beyond the textbook). I’m not trying to “hide” information that’s out there, or prevent you from finding the “right answers”. The “right answers”, a set of pre-packaged facts, or, worst of all, sweeping, meaningless and pretentious-sounding generalities, are simply not what I’m looking for in our discussion forums or in our course. A key goal of the course, as I explain in the Introduction, is to help you develop the skill of building up an interpretation from evidence. It’s less about a “right” or “wrong” answer, than a reasonable, well-argued response and interpretation, based upon evidence that demonstrates your close reading of the texts, your understanding of them, and your ability to identify, select, and put together related passages to support an answer. So, I very strongly discourage your reliance on online “study guides” and essays (or the Chatbots I discuss elsewhere). If you do it because it seems easier, you are underestimating your own ability to do what I’m asking and to develop these skills. I believe you can do this! If you use any outside material for a posting, it must be cited (and using such material may not help you, if, as often happens, it’s a bit off topic, not directly addressing the questions in the prompt, or not doing so in the ways that I'm asking for). If, however, you copy, paraphrase, or heavily rely on material found on the web or in printed materials, and you do so without citation, it’s plagiarism. Since that is not what my guidelines ask for in the discussion forums, it cannot earn credit and it will result in a zero for the week (or the conversion of a grade to a zero if I discover it later).......And now, to happier topics! Here we go...  Ancient Epics/Textbook/DEmilio/Spring 2025/11 HOMERIC EPIC: ORAL POETRY, MYTH, AND HISTORY (Week 1.1) INTRODUCTION The Iliad and the Odyssey are the two great epic poems of ancient Greece, probably composed in the eighth century BC. and associated with the poet Homer. The Iliad takes place during just a few weeks near the end of the ten-year Trojan War, a siege of the city of Troy by the Greeks. As the poem tells us in its opening lines, it charts the causes and consequences of the explosive anger of the Greek warrior Achilleus. A quarrel with Agamemnon, the head of the Greek forces, first sparks Achilleus’ anger, but the killing of his closest companion, Patroklos, by the leading Trojan warrior, Hektor, turns Achilleus’ vengeful fury on the Trojans. The Odyssey covers a much longer time span describing the adventures of another Greek warrior, Odysseus, on his return journey from Troy. Its climax is the hero’s homecoming to Ithaca where he slaughtered the suitors who were pressuring his wife Penelope to remarry. Both poems have many elements we associate with great stories: heroic characters, vivid descriptions, suspenseful plots, surprising twists, dramatic action, conflicts, and strong emotions. They set the standard for what we think of today in literature or film as an epic: a narrative on a vast scale, presented with artful language and techniques that rise above the “ordinary”, often centered on a larger-than-life character (a “hero” or “heroine”), and addressing issues that transcend the story of one character or set of events and have deeper relevance for larger audiences and communities. Poems like the Iliad and the Odyssey (or the Aeneid, Beowulf...) that we regard today as epics have typically achieved an elevated status as works considered to be representative or foundational for a particular culture. Despite their antiquity, the Iliad and Odyssey are great stories that we can enjoy today. The battlefields and seaports of the Homeric world may be strange to us, but we will recognize the emotions and feelings of anger, pride, and passion; the bonds of friendship, love, and loyalty; the virtues of patience and cunning; and the ties that bind families. At the same time, these were more than stories and entertainment. They lay a foundation for ancient Greek ideas about war, social status and gender roles, justice and morality, the gods’ role in human affairs, personal identity and social responsibility, what it means to be human, and how we can endure suffering and loss. Both poems also invite us to reflect on the uses of poetry itself. Although these debates have echoed in European and American thought for centuries, the poems may seem foreign to us. To appreciate and interpret them in their context, we need to start with a basic understanding of three key aspects of these epics: 1. Their subjects: What is the story of the Trojan War that lies behind the Iliad and the Odyssey? How do we know it? 2. Their peculiar form: Although we read them as written texts in English translation, the Iliad and the Odyssey were sung and performed publicly. Over several centuries, oral transmission and performance shaped their language and structure in specific ways. The oral tradition challenges our notions of “authorship” and raises questions about how the poems took the form we have today. 3. History: We can ask about both the history of the poems and the history in the poems: How do we understand the role of authors in poems that developed over centuries? When and how were the poems “fixed” in writing and preserved? Questions like these about the history of  Ancient Epics/Textbook/DEmilio/Spring 2025/12 the poems invite us to think about history in the poems. Put simply, did any of this really happen? What “history” lies behind characters, places, and events in the Iliad and the Odyssey? SUBJECT MATTER: THE TROJAN WAR AND GREEK MYTHOLOGY Although the Iliad and the Odyssey each center on one Greek warrior, they both take place against the backdrop of the larger story of the Trojan War; other legends about Greek heroes and heroines, gods and goddesses; and the historical stage of the eastern Mediterranean. Famous figures like Heracles, Oedipus of Thebes, the centaurs, and Jason (of Argonauts fame) are mentioned. Historical places outside mainland Greece, like Crete, Egypt, and Phoenicia, belong to the world of both epics and show us the wider horizons of their audiences. Here is a bare outline of how the Trojan war began. Paris, one of fifty sons (!!) of King Priam of Troy, was picked by Zeus, king of the gods, to judge which of three goddesses, Hera, Athene, or Aphrodite, was the most beautiful. In this contest (the Judgment of Paris), each goddess tried to bribe him. Paris chose Aphrodite, goddess of love, who had promised him Helen, the most beautiful mortal woman. However, there was a slight problem: Helen was already married to Menelaos, the Greek king of Sparta. Paris visited Menelaos; he left with Helen. After the Trojans refused to return Helen, Menelaos’ older brother, Agamemnon, king of Mykenai (Mycenae) and the most powerful king of the Greek clans, organized a huge expedition of Greeks against Troy (also known as Ilion, hence the “Iliad”). When the Iliad opens, the Greeks have been besieging Troy for nine years... Even this short summary explains specific aspects of the war that you’ll soon see in the Iliad, although the poet may not explain them fully to an audience expected to be familiar with the larger story. Because of the Judgment of Paris, the “losing” goddesses, Hera and Athene, hated the Trojans. Throughout the Iliad, they support the Greeks and are the most unrelenting divine enemies of Troy. Because Menelaos’ wife, Helen, was taken to Troy, it is Menelaos’ older and more powerful brother, Agamemnon, who leads the campaign to recover her. My short summary, though, may raise more questions than it answers. Why did the Judgment of Paris happen in the first place? Why did other Greek warriors bother to join the expedition against Troy? Answering questions like these shows us how Greek legends unlock a web of interrelated stories. The Judgment of Paris was the outcome of the wedding of Peleus and Thetis. Thetis was a sea nymph, one of countless minor goddesses or gods that Greeks acknowledged. The king of the Olympian gods, Zeus, was attracted to her—as he was to so many mortal and immortal women (and sometimes young men), but the gods received a prophecy that Thetis’ son would be stronger than his father. Hearing this, they feared that any affair between Thetis and Zeus (or another god) could produce a son powerful enough to overthrow them all. To prevent this, they arranged for her to marry Peleus, a mortal man. All the gods and goddesses were invited to the wedding of Peleus and Thetis, except the minor goddess of Strife (Eris). True to character, Eris crashed the party and created conflict by tossing a golden apple among the guests: it was to be awarded to the most beautiful of them. The principal goddesses argued over who deserved that title—and the apple. These goddesses were Hera, the queen of the gods and the wife (and sister—yeah, that’s odd) of Zeus; Athene, a warrior goddess of wisdom, weaving, and other crafts, who was daughter of Zeus (sprung fully  Ancient Epics/Textbook/DEmilio/Spring 2025/13 formed from his head! — that’s even odder); and Aphrodite, goddess of love and passion, who was also called a daughter of Zeus in the Iliad (but, in other stories, born from the foam produced on the sea when Zeus’ father, Kronus, sliced off his own father’s genitals.. wow, that’s the oddest of all). Zeus refused to decide among them. Instead, he delegated the task to Paris. The wedding of Peleus and Thetis was crucial to the Trojan War—and the Iliad—for another reason: their son was Achilleus, a most powerful man—as the prophecy had predicted—with an immortal mother, but still only a man. As we will see, his “mix” of divine and mortal parents and his great strength are key elements in the Iliad. Another story explained why the Greek warriors all joined Agamemnon’s campaign to recover Helen. Helen and Klytaimestra were raised as daughters of the Spartan king Tyndareus. They were married to two brothers: Menelaos and Agamemnon. In the Iliad, Helen is described as Zeus’ daughter. Legends claimed that Zeus appeared to Leda, the wife of Tyndareus, as a swan, deceived and raped her. Some pottery paintings double down by showing Helen hatched from an egg! Whatever her origins, Helen’s beauty and Tyndareus’s status brought her many suitors. Fearing that the rejected ones would quarrel, Tyndareus made them all swear an oath (Oath of Tyndareus) to uphold the marriage to the man he chose for his daughter. He picked Menelaos and the other Greeks fulfilled their pledge after Helen fled with Paris to Troy. The legends surrounding the Trojan war, the participants, the city of Troy, and the gods and goddesses are nearly endless. If you are interested, the Wikipedia article on the Trojan War gives an excellent outline and summary, from the causes of the Trojan war to the returns of the warriors. In the latest edition of Lattimore’s translation, Richard Martin offers a fuller summary of the “story” of Troy (pp. 9-17). But, I also cite these sources to introduce a word of caution and to highlight the difference between the story of Troy and the plot of the Iliad (or of other epics)! What you read in these versions or in other handbooks of mythology, or here in my outline, are modern summaries, combining stories from different times and a wide range of sources. In ancient Greece, legends were not preserved or normally told in such a “neat” and systematic form. Some “details” certainly circulated at the time of the Iliad and the Odyssey, but we can’t always be sure which ones. Others may have developed centuries later to explain “loose ends”, expand the stories, highlight the history of a family or city, or serve the cult of a god or goddess. Poets and bards embellished stories and introduced new plots. Some surviving stories—even those within the Iliad or the Odyssey—contradict each other. There was no “one” universally accepted story: don’t assume, as you read the Iliad or Odyssey, that the poet or their audience knew or accepted all of the intricate details you may find in a modern summary, but they surely knew some elements. Part of our challenge in understanding how the Iliad and the Odyssey relate to a larger body of legend is to figure out how different parts—including contradictory versions—of the story of Troy developed and how these two great poems used them, alluded to them, or took them in new directions. As you read the Iliad (and later the Odyssey), be on the lookout for explicit references to other stories or echoes of other parts of the Trojan story. Notice how the poet assumes his audience has some wider knowledge of characters, places, and events. Sometimes, when you feel confused in the reading, it’s because the poet has no need to explain everything to an ancient audience—unlike you—already familiar with these characters and  Ancient Epics/Textbook/DEmilio/Spring 2025/14 events. In both the Iliad and the Odyssey, the poet uses the audience’s knowledge of the bigger story of the Trojan War—and of other Greek legends—to comment, reflect on, and enlarge his own plot, by creating contrasts and comparisons, beneath the surface of the narrative. ORAL POETRY Understanding the web of stories that surround the Iliad and the Odyssey helps us see one way in which both poems are the products of oral traditions: no single author could have invented all of these traditional stories in all their detail. When we say, though, that the two epics represent a form of oral poetry, we are not just talking about legends and subject matter that circulated orally and evolved over time. Nor are we just talking about public performance of the poems, in the way you might hear a poem recited today or see a play on stage. The Iliad and the Odyssey developed during a period when there was no writing in Greece. They probably took their present form around the time the Greek alphabet was developed in the eighth century BC, but the relationship between the introduction of writing and the final form of the poems is much debated. What is clear is that poets composed, performed, and preserved long, complex stories in verse without the aid of writing. To do so, they developed a highly specialized language and technique, as a memory aid and tool for composition. This poetic language allowed them to compose while performing, and it made it easier for audiences to follow the stories they heard. Even in modern English translations, the poems preserve peculiar features that show us how this system of oral poetry worked in a culture without writing. As you begin to read the poems, you may find them long-winded and repetitious. The poet takes a lot of time to say what he wants to say. He also repeats himself...word for word. These are basic features of Homeric oral epic: the poet buys time to compose “on his feet” by drawing out the story and descriptions and using repeated stock phrases; audiences can follow the story without having to hear and catch every word, and they will recognize the familiar phrases and descriptions that were part of heroic poetry. These are the building blocks of the Greek epic: repeated phrases, lines, or longer sections that we refer to as Homeric formulas. They certainly developed over several generations. They were the tools that allowed the poet to compose a complex poem without thinking about each and every word. They also helped an audience, familiar with the genre, to understand the poem during its oral performance, even if they didn’t catch every word. Lattimore’s English translation preserves this repetition (some English translations do not). Here are examples, beginning with the simplest types of formulas: 1) the shortest formulas are made up of a noun (a name of something) and epithet (a descriptive adjective or phrase): swift-footed Achilleus; grey-eyed Athene; bronze-pointed spear 2) many formulas fill a whole line to describe a common action (speaking, eating, prayer...) and mark a transition. They are used over and over again, easily adapted to different scenes simply by changing the name of a character, or shifting from singular to plural: “So he spoke in prayer, and Phoibos Apollo heard him.” (1.43, 457) [In my references, I use book.line numbers, so “1.43, 457" means “book one, line 43 and line 457”] “But when they had put away their desire for eating and drinking...” (1.469, 9.92) “He spoke thus and sat down again, and among them stood up...”, “He spoke and sent them forth with this strong order upon them...”  Ancient Epics/Textbook/DEmilio/Spring 2025/15 3) other formulas are made of longer passages that describe common events like a sacrifice to the gods or a feast (1.458-471, 2.421-432), using almost exactly the same words and lines each time. On a still larger scale, the oral poet composes with “type-scenes”, so that commonly occurring events, like the arming of a warrior, an encounter in battle, or the reception of a guest, will have a recurring structure which the poet can shorten, lengthen, and vary by choosing formulas suitable for particular characters and circumstances. Now things get a bit complicated, but hang in there...The development and use of Homeric formulas was linked with the meter or rhythm of oral poetry and the characteristics of the ancient Greek language. Of course, you won’t “see” or hear these features in the English translation, but they are important for understanding how this unusual system worked. The meter of ancient Greek poetry was based on the length of syllables as determined by the length of their vowels. This differs from English poetry in which meter is typically based on stressed/accented and unstressed/unaccented syllables. Greek meter is more like the “quantity” of musical notes (whole notes, half notes etc.) and the way they fill a measure or bar on a musical score. In fact, the Greek epics—and later lyric poems or the choruses in Greek tragedy—were sung or chanted. In the original Greek, the meter of Homer's poems—and later epics—was dactylic hexameter. A line of hexameter consists of six feet (=parts). The English word “hexameter” is based on the Greek words for “six measures”. In dactylic hexameter, each foot was either a dactyl (a long syllable followed by two short ones) or a spondee (two long syllables). The final foot was either a spondee or a trochee (a long syllable followed by one short syllable). These are examples of the meter of typical lines: | L L | L s s | L s s | L L | L s s | L s | (L = long syllable, s = short syllable) |Lss|Lss |LL|Lss |Lss |LL| Note the six parts of each line (between the vertical bars I’ve put in), and the use of dactyls (L s s) or spondees (L L). In the spondee, the second long syllable (L) has the same length as the two short syllables (s s) ending the dactyl. Those are just two of the possible combinations of spondees (LL = long/long) and dactyls (Lss = long/short/short) which can create many rhythmic patterns. Some lines (as in songs) can be fast- paced and bouncy, others slow and somber, depending on the mood the poet wants to convey. Over time, epic poets repeated and passed down formulas that “worked” because they fit the rhythm of dactylic hexameter. The poets’ efforts were helped by two features of the Greek language. First, ancient Greek was a highly inflected language: the endings of Greek words changed according to their use (as they do today in some languages like German, far more than in English). A noun might be singular or plural: in Homeric Greek, there was even a dual form to refer to two of something. Nouns had different endings depending on their role in the sentence: as subject, object, object of a preposition etc. Verbs were even more complex. Different endings affected the place of the word within the metrical system, because they might change the length of vowels or the number of syllables. Poets developed different formulas for key characters or common elements of the epic poems (ships, shields, horses...) depending on how they were used in the sentence and where in the line they appeared. Besides this, ancient Greek had strong regional dialects. The length of vowels might vary from one dialect to another—much like the pronunciation of vowels differs today in regional American speech. As a  Ancient Epics/Textbook/DEmilio/Spring 2025/16 result, the poetic language of the Greek epics mixed forms from different dialects and preserved archaic forms that remained useful because they fit the meter. The result was an artificial, “layered” language serving the needs of highly skilled poets and specifically associated with epic poetry. It remained understandable to audiences (like the King James Bible today) because of the wide circulation and popularity of these poems. Scholars who have studied these poems describe this poetic language and the set of Homeric formulas as characterized by two key features that make it work: “economy” and “scope”. “Economy” means that the poetic tradition was streamlined or "economical" (=not wasteful): redundant formulas were eliminated. The poet did not have to choose among several possibilities: there was normally only one way of referring to a common character (Achilleus, Odysseus etc.) or a common noun (ships, shields, horses) when used in a particular grammatical way in a particular place in the line. As the poet composed his poem in performance, he had ready-made phrases and did not have to think about every word, or about how to “fit” these words and phrases to his meter. At the same time, this was a system of vast “scope” or range, because, over time, the poets’ language had accumulated traditional phrases for a wide range of grammatical possibilities and places in the line. The poet had a formula ready to cover every need: he could, for example, describe Achilleus at the beginning or end of line, and characterize him as a subject, object, or indirect object of a sentence. I know that has all been complicated and dry reading (especially for Week 1!), but let’s get to the “so what” question. What does all this detail mean for us as we read these poems thousands of years later in another language? We have to read them a little differently than we might read other texts. First, be patient with the poet’s repetition. Understand its purpose in the oral format. Secondly, be attentive to forumlas, but don’t “overinterpret” them. Modern poets may choose each descriptive adjective very carefully, but the epic poet relies on ready-made formulas, plugging them in like pieces of a puzzle. In the Iliad, Achilleus is repeatedly called “swift-footed”. Achilleus was a fast runner: the phrase may remind listeners of his deadly chase of Hektor around Troy’s walls. But, be careful: the poet is not making a specific point every time (and there are lots of them!) he calls Achilleus “swift-footed” or describes Agamemnon as “leader of the people” or says someone’s words were “winged”. There are also things the poet cannot say. Agamemnon is one of the most important characters in the Iliad. As the brother of Menelaos, he is the king who leads the Greeks against Troy. Agamemnon’s name starts with two short vowels. In dactylic hexameter, a line cannot begin with a short vowel. So, no matter how important Agamemnon may be, his name cannot begin a line. How does the poet solve that problem? If he wants to give Agamemnon that privileged place of emphasis at the start of a line, he can call him the “son of Atreus”, a common way of referring to a warrior in the epic by using his father’s name. The Greek term for “son of Atreus” is Atreides, beginning with a long vowel. This system may seem hopelessly complicated and restrictive, but for accomplished poets, it was as natural as our own languages of speech are to us. Do any of us spend much time thinking about all of the rules of pronunciation, grammar, and meaning behind the things we say? Epic poets used their language skillfully and creatively. The poet who relies on a familiar and traditional language can have an impact by subtle disruptions or startling juxtapositions of formulas the audience expects to hear. In his introduction to the Lattimore translation, Richard  Ancient Epics/Textbook/DEmilio/Spring 2025/17 Martin discusses the formulaic language (pp. 51-52) from a literary standpoint, and he sums it up this way: “The formulaic system is neither mechanical nor empty. It simply embodies an unfamiliar aesthetic: rather than the exquisite, right word, specially selected for each passage (a Romantic requirement), epic style creates audience expectations by consistent depiction—and then, for maximum effect, at key moments, violates that norm” (p. 51). HISTORY OF—AND IN—THE POEMS At the beginning, I described the Iliad and the Odyssey as poems “associated with the poet Homer”. The ancient Greeks regarded Homer as the author of the two poems; our texts name him; and we call the formulas of oral poetry “Homeric formulas”. Nonetheless, we have no reliable historical information about Homer: well-known stories—that he was blind, for example, or from the Greek island of Chios—come from sources centuries later than the epics. They are only legends. More important, modern understanding of oral traditions, Greek legends, and the formulaic language of the Iliad and the Odyssey complicates the effort to identify any author and to determine their precise role in creating the poems we read today. What does it mean to call Homer the author of the Iliad and the Odyssey, if these poems preserve stories that developed over centuries, and if they tell those stories in an artificial, formulaic language to which many poets contributed? What exactly is Homer being credited for in the long process of composing, performing, and passing down songs about the Trojan War and other legends? Is he one outstanding oral poet whose works were so highly regarded that they were preserved and widely performed by others? Did Homer distinguish himself by adapting traditional stories to produce poems—the Iliad and the Odyssey—of unprecedented length and complexity? Was Homer the one who finally committed the poems to writing? How were the written poems preserved in ancient times and how reliable are our modern editions? These questions about the history OF the poems—their development and authorship and the relationship between their written texts and a long oral tradition—are referred to as the Homeric question: How and by whom were the Iliad and Odyssey composed and preserved? This debate has been central to the study of the Homeric epics for over two centuries. At first, scholars posed questions about “Homer”. Was there a “Homer”, a single author of the Iliad and Odyssey? Did the Iliad and Odyssey have different authors? Is each a patchwork of short poems stitched together? These questions set the stage for discoveries by twentieth-century scholars which shifted the discussion to an investigation of the oral tradition in the poems (if you are interested, there are sound, accessible “overviews” in the Wikipedia articles, “Homeric Question” and “Homeric Scholarship”). In modern times, this debate was launched by Friedrich August Wolf, a German philologist (a specialist in languages, their histories, and their interrelationships), who published his Prolegomena ad Homerum in 1795, arguing that the Iliad and the Odyssey were put together from poems composed orally by different authors at different dates. His work launched the debate between Analysts (who sought to analyze and separate the different components of the poems) and Unitarians (who argued for the basic artistic unity and coherent overall design of each poem). In the early 1930s, the debate was transformed by the conclusions of a young American, Milman Parry, about the formulaic language of oral poetry based on fieldwork  Ancient Epics/Textbook/DEmilio/Spring 2025/18 among contemporary bards in the southern part of what was then Yugoslavia. Although formulaic repetition in the Homeric poems had long been recognized, it was Parry who argued that these formulas constituted a specialized language, characterized by economy and scope, which had developed over centuries—sometimes preserving archaic language, sometimes incorporating dialectical forms more suited to the rhythm of the lines. Parry died prematurely in 1935, but his research was developed and widely disseminated through Albert Lord’s work (The Singer of Tales, 1960). Later scholars have made comparisons with contemporary oral traditions across the world. As a result of such studies, it is now generally accepted that the Iliad and Odyssey belong to a long oral tradition dependent on a traditional repertory of stories and the highly sophisticated language of metrical formulas described above. That tradition made it possible for poets to compose orally as they performed their work. More recent scholars, like Gregory Nagy (The Best of the Achaeans: Concepts of the Hero in Archaic Greek Poetry, rev. ed., 1999), have stressed how an accomplished poet may use formulaic language and oral traditions creatively in composition-in-performance. The recognition of the oral formulaic character of the Homeric poems completely changed the terms of the old debate between Unitarians (one author) and Analysts (many authors) and even bridged the gap between their approaches. On the one hand, the formulaic language of oral poetry gave poets a tool that might indeed enable an individual poet (let’s call him, “Homer”) to compose and perform works of this scale and complexity without the aid of writing—lending support to the old Unitarian vision of the role of a great poet. On the other hand, the long process through which the formulaic language developed meant that such a poem would rely upon traditional language and incorporate elements that had entered the tradition through different paths. As a result, it would appear less homogeneous than the work of poets composing in writing. This heterogeneity of the “layered” language and stories of the epics encouraged continuing “analysis” of the layers of tradition within the poem. Today, one school of Homeric criticism—Neoanalysis—looks for echoes and allusions of other poems and stories in the Iliad and the Odyssey, just as we will see in this course how later authors, from Greek playwrights to the Roman poets Virgil and Ovid, made use of the Homeric poems in their own works. In other words, Neoanalysts analyze and dissect the Iliad and the Odyssey, not to find shorter poems stitched together, but to recognize how the poet alludes to other poems—now lost—and relies on his audience’s recognition of these references to enrich his own story. Laura Slatkin (The Power of Thetis, 1991), for example, showed how the portrayal of Thetis, Achilleus’ divine mother, is informed by the poet’s allusions to—and the audience’s familiarity with—a variety of stories on the margins of the Iliad or outside the poem. Jonathan Burgess (The Tradition of the Trojan War in Homer and the Epic Cycle, 2001; The Death and Afterlife of Achilles, 2009) has explored the importance of the Epic Cycle in relation to the Homeric epics. Some scholars go further afield and seek more wide-ranging parallels in the epic and religious traditions of other Indo-European peoples—from Celtic sagas to Hindu mythology. M.L. West was a major proponent of these studies (Indo-European Poetry and Myth, 2007) as well as of the impact of Near Eastern cultures on early Greek literature and thought (The East Face of Helicon: West Asiatic Elements in Greek Poetry and Myth, 1997)  Ancient Epics/Textbook/DEmilio/Spring 2025/19 When we refer to the Epic Cycle, we are speaking specifically about a set of lost ancient epics concerning the causes, events, and consequences of the Trojan War. They are known today only from ancient references, quotations, and short summaries (for a concise discussion, see Ken Dowden, “The Epic Tradition in Greece,” The Cambridge Companion to Homer, 188- 205). The principal ones were: -the Cypria: on the causes and first part of the Trojan War, including the wedding of Peleus and Thetis, the Judgment of Paris, the elopement of Helen, the gathering and launching of the expedition against Troy, and the first nine years of the War -the Aithiopis of Arktinos of Miletos: on the events after the Iliad that lead up to and climax in the death and funeral of Achilleus; these include the arrival of the Amazon queen Penthesilea and the Ethiopian king Memnon, son of the Dawn, to help the Trojans; the slaying of Penthesilea by Achilleus; the slaying of Nestor’s son Antilochos by Memnon; the killing of Memnon by Achilleus; the death of Achilleus at the hands of Paris and Apollo; the recovery of his body and Achilleus’ funeral; and the dispute between Ajax and Odysseus over the arms of Achilleus -the Little Iliad of Lesches of Mytilene: on the events leading up to and including the Sack of Troy (after Achilleus' death), including the suicide of the Greek warrior Ajax; the arrival of the Greek warriors Philoctetes and Neoptolemos (son of Achilleus); the preparation and making of the Trojan Horse -the Sack of Troy by Arktinos: on the sack of Troy and its aftermath -the Returns (Nostoi) by Hagias of Troezen: on the return of the Greek warriors from Troy and the adventures and tragedies which befell them -the Telegony of Eugammon of Cyrene: a kind of (truly wacky!) sequel to the Odyssey in which Odysseus embarks on another journey and remarries and returns to Ithaka where he is killed by Telegonos—his son by Circe with whom he had affair during his travels. Ironically, Telegonus had come to Ithaka in search of his father. In this odd story, Telegonos takes Odysseus' wife Penelope and Telemachus, the son of Odysseus and Penelope, back to Circe’s island: Telegonos marries Penelope and Telemachus marries Circe, and—I guess—they live happily ever after. Try drawing that family tree. This “summary” of the Epic Cycle—based on the ancient writer Proclus, probably of the second century AD—makes it seem as if each one picked up right where the other left off, and none overlapped with the Iliad or the Odyssey. There is much debate, however, about whether that neat scheme is the result of later editors cropping, altering, and filling out the poems to create a continuous story to complement and frame the Iliad and the Odyssey. Our understanding of the oral tradition has also shifted the terms of the Homeric question to focus more specifically on the relationship between the written texts that we have and the oral tradition of composition in performance which, by its constantly changing nature, precludes a stable or “fixed” text, much less a text of the length of the Iliad or Odyssey. What circumstances led to the “writing” of the Iliad and the Odyssey? What impact did writing have upon the oral tradition? Did writing influence the poets and the shape of the poems, or was it just a tool for “recording” and preserving an oral tradition? Barry Powell (Homer and the Origin of the Greek Alphabet, 1991) has offered one of the more provocative responses by arguing that the cultural importance of epic poetry in Greece in the 8th century BC led to and shaped the Greek adaptation of the Phoenician alphabet, including the addition of symbols for the Greek vowels which were  Ancient Epics/Textbook/DEmilio/Spring 2025/20 essential to the meter of oral poetry. It is a bold—but unproven claim: rather than thinking of the technology of writing as making possible a great leap forward culturally in the composition and preservation of a monumental poem, Powell is suggesting that culture and the desire to give epic poetry more permanence drove technological change. While the precise origins of the written texts remain shrouded in mystery, there is wider agreement that some editing of the texts took place in sixth-century Athens where the poems were performed at festivals, and at the library of Alexandria in Egypt during the Hellenistic period (especially in the third and second century BC) where editions of ancient Greek texts were prepared and studied based on numerous manuscript copies. This work essentially finalized the texts that were passed down to us through manuscripts. Ancient works quote the Iliad and Odyssey, and verses or sections survive in papyri or early manuscripts. The earliest complete surviving manuscript of the Iliad is known as Venetus A, a tenth-century Greek manuscript with extensive scholia (marginal commentaries), mainly on the language of the text. HISTORY IN THE POEMS As philologists and literary scholars tried to reconstruct the history OF the poems, others looked for the history IN the poems. Do these poems preserve the memory of “real” people, places, and events? Was there a Trojan War? That question led a colorful figure, Heinrich Schliemann, a German and amateur archaeologist, to undertake explorations and investigations in the 1870s. His work uncovered the remains of a civilization—what we now know as the Mycenaean civilization of the Bronze Age—that flourished long before the 8th and 7th centuries BC which were as far back in Greek history as written texts and surviving monuments had been able to document until then. Schliemann had explicitly set out to demonstrate the historical basis for the stories of the Trojan War and other Greek legends. His discoveries at Troy and at Mykenai (the city ruled by King Agamemnon) gave credence to the idea that the Greek legends of the historical period—from the eighth and seventh century BC onwards—preserved kernels of historical truth about places, events, and characters from a much earlier period of Greek civilization. Schliemann’s work was complemented by that of Arthur Evans on the island of Crete—another site of great importance in Greek mythology. On Crete, findings at Knossos revealed what became known (after the name of the legendary Cretan king, Minos) as the Minoan civilization of the Bronze Age. As a result, historians now knew of a civilization that arose on Crete in the third millennium BC, flourished roughly between 2000-1200 BC, and contributed to the development of the Mycenaean civilization on mainland Greece after 1700 BC. By about 1400 BC, the tables had turned and the mainlanders dominated Crete. At Troy, excavations continued throughout the twentieth century, carried out more systematically and scientifically under Carl Blegen and Manfred Korfmann. The excavated remains of the city reveal several layers and phases of construction, destruction, and reconstruction, spanning centuries of history, including seven major Bronze Age cities (each on the ruins or foundations of an earlier one) from the early third millennium BC through the end of the second millennium. If there was a historical expedition from mainland Greece against Troy, it probably involved the city known as Troy VII (Troy 7) and took place in the last years of the Mycenaean civilization, roughly between 1300 and 1150 BC, or during the period of disorders  Ancient Epics/Textbook/DEmilio/Spring 2025/21 and upheavals that brought it to an end. In fact, these general dates correspond with the period to which later Greek writers of historical times (like the fifth-century historian Herodotus or the Hellenistic scholar Eratosthenes) assigned the Trojan War. The discovery of these Bronze Age civilizations—together with the work of the “Analysts”—encouraged a search for different layers of “history” in the poem. What bits of the poem—place names, material artifacts, methods of warfare, social practices—could be traced back five hundred yeas or more to the distant Bronze Age? What aspects of the poem mirrored the society, culture, and thought of the eighth century BC when the poems took more or less their final form? What aspects of the poems reflected the period in between, often known as the “Dark Ages”, largely because of its relative material poverty and the lack of written sources, compared with the earlier Bronze Age and the later civilization of Archaic Greece. What has emerged is an understanding of the poems as presenting a “layered” history, similar to the “layered” language of oral poetry. The society and material culture of the poems cannot be fixed in any one period, but they combine elements from a five hundred year period of transmission and elaboration. Finding some connections—even limited ones—between the poems and the civilizations that flourished five hundred years earlier has also contributed to our understanding of the evolution of oral poetry and the development of the poems themselves. In the latest edition of Lattimore’s translation of the Iliad, Richard Martin’s introduction provides a helpful and concise discussion of the historical background, the broader legend, and the layers of history represented in the poem (pp. 1-8, 28-36), if you’re interested in learning more about this.  Ancient Epics/Textbook/DEmilio/Spring 2025/22 AN OUTLINE OF THE ILIAD AND CAST OF CHARACTERS (FOR REFERENCE THROUGHOUT OUR READING) Read over this Outline and the Cast of Characters. Use it throughout Unit #1 to familiarize yourself with the overall plot of the Iliad including sections not assigned for reading. OUTLINE OF THE ILIAD The “Cast of Characters” below lists human and divine characters that are most important throughout the Iliad. Other characters, episodes, or terms of importance are highlighted here. When the poem begins, the Greeks, led by King Agamemnon, have been besieging Troy, ruled by King Priam, for nine years. The war had begun after the Trojan, Paris, took Helen, the wife of Menelaos, a Greek warrior and the brother of Agamemnon, to Troy... Book 1: Achilleus and Agamemnon quarrel, Achilleus withdraws from battle 1-7: Homer calls on the goddess of poetry and inspiration (the MUSE) to sing of Achilleus’ anger. 8-52: Chryses, priest of Apollo, comes to the Greek camp to ransom his daughter Chryseis, held captive by Agamemnon. He is insulted and sent away, and Apollo sends a plague on the Greeks. 53-305: Inspired by the goddess, Hera, Achilleus calls an assembly to deal with the plague. The prophet Kalchas reveals that Apollo was angered by Agamemnon’s refusal to return the daughter of his priest. Agamemnon reluctantly agrees to give her back, but demands compensation. This provokes Achilleus’ anger. After they exchange threats and angry words, Agamemnon decides to take Achilleus’ “prize,” the captive woman Briseis. The goddess Athene prevents Achilleus from killing Agamemnon by promising that he will one day be compensated with three times as many prizes. Nestor, an old, wise Greek king, tries to mediate, but fails. 306-430: Agamemnon’s men take Briseis from Achilleus. Achilleus prays to his divine mother, Thetis, for help. He says he will not fight, and he asks her to persuade Zeus to make the battle go badly for the Greeks so they will see that they should not have dishonored him. 430-87: Odysseus leads a group of Greeks to Chryse (the place!) to return Chryseis (the daughter!) to Chryses (the priest!). Meanwhile, Achilleus isolates himself from the other Greeks. 488-611: Thetis begs Zeus to honor her son Achilleus by turning the battle against the Greeks so they will see that they need him. Zeus agrees. Afterwards, his wife Hera bickers with him over his plan. The lame god, Hephaistos, tries to make peace among them. Book 2: Zeus’ plan to honor Achilleus; battle begins with the Catalog of the Ships To fulfill his promise to Thetis, Zeus begins to carry out his plan to bring honor to Achilleus. First, he deceives Agamemnon with a dream that promises victory. Agamemnon calls the Greek leaders together to tell them his dream. He proposes to test the soldiers by saying that they are going home. When he does this, the soldiers run for the ships; only Odysseus is able to rally them and shame them into staying. A common soldier, THERSITES, protests and urges his fellow Greeks to go home, but Odysseus beats him down and reminds the Greeks that they had been promised victory when they set out. The troops assemble and Homer lists all of the contingents in “the CATALOG OF THE SHIPS.” The Trojans arm to meet the Greeks, and Homer names their warriors and troops as well. With this Catalog and the events of books 3 and 4, the poet appears to take us back to the beginning of the war...  Ancient Epics/Textbook/DEmilio/Spring 2025/23 Book 3: The duel of Paris and Menelaos; Helen is introduced Paris challenges Menelaos to a duel; Helen is to be awarded to the winner. Helen joins Priam on the walls of Troy and names the Greek warriors for him. Then, Priam goes to the battlefield to swear an oath with Agamemnon to respect the results. Menelaos and Paris fight, but Aphrodite, the goddess of love, snatches Paris away, deposits him in his bedroom, and brings Helen to him. Book 4: The gods interfere, the Trojans break the truce, and battle begins At a council of the gods on MOUNT OLYMPOS, Zeus considers ending the Trojan War and sparing the city of Troy. Hera angrily objects, and Zeus sends Athene to break the truce. Athene persuades PANDAROS, a Trojan, to shoot an arrow at Menelaos. Menelaos is wounded, the truce is broken and, as Agamemnon rallies the troops, fighting breaks out. Book 5: Diomedes runs wild This book is dedicated to Diomedes’ exploits on the battlefield (the ARISTEIA or “excellence” of Diomedes). After he wounds Aphrodite, Ares, the god of war, intervenes to help the Trojans. The goddesses, Hera and Athene, join in on the Greek side. Book 6: Hektor returns to Troy and bids farewell to his wife, Andromache Diomedes and GLAUKOS , an ally of the Trojans, meet, but, after trading stories, they do not fight because they discover they are “GUEST-FRIENDS”: their grandfathers had visited each other and exchanged gifts. Hektor returns to Troy to ask the Trojan women to make a sacrifice to Athene in a fruitless effort to win her pity. He visits Helen and scolds his brother Paris for abandoning the battlefield. In a moving scene, Hektor’s wife, Andromache, appeals to him to be cautious and she reminds him of how she lost her whole family in the war, mainly at the hands of Achilleus. He explains his duty to fight, and says an emotional good-bye to Andromache, and their baby, ASTYANAX, before returning to battle. Book 7: Hektor and Aias have an inconclusive duel and the Greeks fortify their camp Hektor proposes a duel with one of the Greeks. Aias is chosen by lot, but the duel ends in a draw as night falls. Both sides agree to a truce to bury the dead, and the Greeks fortify their camp. Book 8: Zeus allows the Trojans to drive the Greeks back to their camp The battle resumes. Zeus orders the gods to stay out, and the Trojans gain the advantage according to his plan. Hera and Athene try to help the Greeks, but are stopped by Zeus who foretells Patroklos’ death and Achilleus’ return to the fighting. At nightfall, Hektor persuades the Trojans to camp outside of the city in the hope of decisively defeating the Greeks the next day. Book 9: The embassies to Achilleus: Achilleus rejects Agamemnon’s offer of compensation This is a crucial turning point in the poem. The Greek leaders hold an assembly. Dispirited, Agamemnon proposes to go home, but Diomedes and Nestor dissuade him. The aged king Nestor convinces him to return Briseis to Achilleus and offer him gifts in reconciliation. Odysseus, Aias, and Phoinix, Achilleus’ tutor, go to Achilleus’ tent, convey Agamemnon’s offer, and appeal to him to return to battle. Achilleus rejects their appeals and describes his two fates: he can fight at Troy, win glory and die; or he can return home and live a long life without fame. Book 10: The night raid of Diomedes and Odysseus on the Trojan camp Diomedes and Odysseus volunteer to spy on the Trojan camp. They meet DOLON, a Trojan spy, and kill him, after he gives them information. They sneak into the Trojan camp, brutally murder the Thracian king RHESOS and twelve of his warriors, allies of the Trojans, and lead off their horses as spoils.  Ancient Epics/Textbook/DEmilio/Spring 2025/24 Book 11: Battle resumes, Agamemnon is wounded, Nestor urges Patroklos to fight When battle resumes, several prominent Greek warriors are wounded and must leave the fighting. Achilleus watches and sends Patroklos to find out who was wounded. Nestor urges him to persuade Achilleus to return to battle or at least let Patroklos and his men fight for the Greeks. Books 12-15: The Trojans drive back the Greeks and try to set their ships on fire Hektor and the Trojans storm the fortifications surrounding the Greek camp. The sea-god Poseidon rallies the Greeks, and Telamonian Aias and Aias Oileus defend the Greek ships. The wounded Greek warriors go back to the fighting. Hera seduces her husband, Zeus, to distract him and allow Poseidon to continue helping the Greeks. As the Greeks rally, Hektor is wounded. Zeus wakes up and threatens the other gods, forcing them to stop helping the Greeks. Then, Zeus outlines the future course of the battle and sends Apollo to revive Hektor. Hektor returns to the battle, drives the Greeks back to their ships, and tries to set the ships on fire. Books 16-17: Achilleus’ friend, Patroklos, enters battle and is killed by Hektor and Apollo Book 16 is another crucial turning point redirecting Achilleus’ fury against Hektor and the Trojans. Following Nestor’s advice, Patroklos persuades Achilleus to let him wear his armor and lead their troops, the Myrmidons, into battle. Achilleus warns him to return once he has driven the Trojans from the ships. The Trojans are routed, and Patroklos kills one of their great allies, Sarpedon, a mortal son of Zeus. Zeus is persuaded by Hera not to intervene to save his son. Patroklos ignores Achilleus’ warning and is killed by Hektor with Apollo’s help, after being struck by a minor warrior, EUPHORBOS. In book 17, the two sides battle over Patroklos’ corpse, after Hektor strips it of Achilleus’ armor. Book 18: Achilleus mourns Patroklos’ death, decides to fight, and receives divine armor Achilleus learns of Patroklos’ death, and Thetis, his mother, consoles him. He wants to join the battle, but Thetis reminds him that he has no armor. She promises to get new armor from the smith of the gods, Hephaistos. Achilleus’ warcry drives the Trojans away, and the Greeks finally recover Patroklos’ body. In the Trojan camp, Hektor rejects the advice of POULYDAMAS, a counsellor, to withdraw to Troy. While Achilleus mourns over Patroklos, Thetis asks Hephaistos to forge new armor for Achilleus. The poet describes the elaborate decoration of the shield: a well-known examples of an ekphrasis, a verbal description of a work of art. Book 19: Achilleus announces his return to battle Achilleus calls an assembly, puts aside his quarrel with Agamemnon, and announces his return to battle. Agamemnon blames Zeus for their quarrel, presents gifts to Achilleus, and returns Briseis to him. They mourn for Patroklos, and Achilleus, who refuses to eat, is fed by the gods. Before he enters the battle, Achilleus’ immortal horses prophesy his death. Book 20: Achilleus enters battle in a raging fury Zeus urges the gods into the fighting to stop Achilleus from storming Troy “against destiny”. On his rampage, Achilleus fights the Trojan Aineias, son of Aphrodite, who is saved by the gods. Book 21: Achilleus does battle with the rivers of Troy and the gods battle one another Achilleus brutally slaughters many Trojans in the Xanthos river. In anger, the rivers of Troy attempt to drown him. The gods rescue him and battle one another, while Zeus looks on. The Trojans are routed and flee to the city, seeking protection within its walls. Book 22: Achilleus kills Hektor and abuses his body Priam and Hekabe beg their son Hektor to return to the city, but he prepares to fight Achilleus.  Ancient Epics/Textbook/DEmilio/Spring 2025/25 Hektor panics and Achilleus chases him around the walls of Troy. He makes a stand when Athene tricks him into thinking that one of his brothers, DEIPHOBOS, is with him. Achilleus kills Hektor and abuses his body by hitching it to his chariot and dragging it around the walls of Troy. Hektor’s parents and wife look on and mourn his death and Troy’s inevitable destruction. Book 23: Achilleus holds funeral games for Patroklos Patroklos appears to Achilleus in a dream and urges him to hold a funeral for him so that his shade can enter Hades, the realm of the dead. Achilleus hosts splendid funeral games in Patroklos’ honor and distributes prizes to the competitors in the different athletic events. Book 24: Priam ransoms Hektor’s body from Achilleus; Hektor’s funeral is held The gods are outraged that Achilleus continues to mistreat the body of Hektor by dragging it around the Greek camp every day. They decide that Priam must be allowed to ransom the body of his son. Thetis tells Achilleus, and the gods inspire Priam to visit Achilleus’ tent. There, he begs him to accept a splendid ransom for the body. Priam and Achilleus grieve together, and Achilleus consoles him with the stories of the urns of Zeus and of Niobe’s loss of her children. Hektor’s body is returned to Troy for a funeral, and the Trojans mourn Hektor’s death, led by the three women, Andromache, Hekabe, and Helen, who get the last word. THE ILIAD: CAST OF CHARACTERS (These descriptions are based on the principal roles of these characters in the Iliad. When I refer to later legends or alternative stories that are not explicitly cited in the Iliad, I make that clear. Names may be spelt differently in different translations [Aias/Ajax, Achilleus/Achilles, Mykenai/Mycenae...] because of the different ways of “transliterating” the Greek alphabet into the Latin alphabet used in English) PRINCIPAL GODS AND GODDESSES (The main Greek gods and goddesses were led by Zeus and lived on Mt. Olympos; countless minor gods and goddesses were associated with natural features and specific places.) APHRODITE: goddess of love, partisan of the Trojans, and, in the Iliad, daughter of Zeus. In later legends, she was said to have been born from the foam that bubbled up from the sea when Kronos (Zeus’ father) castrated his own father, the sky god, Ouranos. She arranged for Helen to elope with Paris, as his prize for naming her the most beautiful of the goddesses in the Judgment of Paris, a story only alluded to in the Iliad (bk. 24.28-30). Aphrodite protected Helen, to whom she gave great beauty. In book 3, she rescues Paris from Menelaos, and brings him to Helen. She is also the mother of Aineias, the Trojan warrior and hero of Virgil’s Roman epic, the Aeneid. APOLLO: known as Phoibos Apollo, the archer god, cause of plagues, god of prophecy and a divine singer; the son of Zeus and Leto; a partisan of the Trojans. At the beginning of the Iliad, he is identified as the god who triggers the conflict between Agamemnon and Achilleus. In the opening scene, he sends a plague upon the Achaians because Agamemnon has dishonored his priest, Chryses. Later, he helps Hektor in the killing of Patroklos, foreshadowing his role in the death of Achilleus (outside the Iliad). In the final book, his complaint about the treatment of Hektor’s corpse leads the gods to arrange the ransom of the body by Priam. ARES: god of war, son of Zeus, and Aphrodite’s lover. He supports the Trojans, and Zeus calls him “the most hateful of all gods who hold Olympos” (5.890), after he has been stabbed and driven from the battlefield by Athene. The bard, Demodocus, tells the comic story of his affair with Aphrodite in book 8 of the Odyssey.  Ancient Epics/Textbook/DEmilio/Spring 2025/26 ARTEMIS: sister of Apollo, goddess of the hunt. In later legends, it was said that Agamemnon sacrificed his daughter, Iphigeneia, to appease her anger and enable the Greeks to sail to Troy with a favorable wind. In book 21, Hera beats her in the battle of the gods, and she is a vengeful protagonist in two stories told by warriors: Phoinix’ story of Meleagros (bk. 9), and Achilleus’ story of Niobe (bk. 24). ATHENE: known as Pallas Athene, Zeus’ daughter, a warrior goddess, goddess of wisdom, patroness of the women’s craft of weaving, a powerful ally of the Greeks and protectress of Odysseus. She hated the Trojans because of the judgment of Paris. She restrains Achilleus from killing Agamemnon in book 1; inspires Odysseus to rally the Greek troops in book 2; tricks the Trojan warrior, Pandaros, into breaking the truce in book 4; and intervenes in support of the Greeks throughout the poem. In book 22, she tricks Hektor into facing Achilleus. HADES: god of the underworld, the realm assigned to him when the sky, sea, and underworld were divided among the three sons of Kronos. As a figure of unyielding death, he is described as “most hateful to mortals among all the gods” (9.159). HEPHAISTOS: the divine smith and god of fire, son of Zeus and Hera. In book 1, he urges Hera not to provoke Zeus’ anger. In book 18, he makes marvelous armor for Achilleus at Thetis’ request, and, in book 21, he uses his fire to help rescue Achilleus in his battle with the river. The god is crippled and different stories are told in the Iliad to explain this: 1.590-594; 18.394-399. HERA: jealous wife—and sister—of Zeus; like Athene, she is a vigorous patron of the Greeks because of her anger at the Trojans over the judgment of Paris. She repeatedly bickers with her husband Zeus over his sympathy for the Trojans. In book 1, she inspires Achilleus to call an assembly to deal with the plague. In book 14, she seduces her husband Zeus to distract him while the god of the sea, Poseidon, aids the Greeks on the battlefield. HERMES: son of Zeus who guides souls to the Underworld; he is sent to guide Priam on his risky trip to the tent of Achilleus for the ransom of the body of his son, Hektor (bk. 24). KRONOS: father of Zeus, Poseidon, Hades and Hera; later legends describe how he was overthrown by Zeus. POSEIDON: son of Kronos, brother of Zeus and lord of the sea. Though a supporter of the Greeks who fights actively on their behalf (bks. 13-15), he intervenes in book 20 (288-339) to save the Trojan hero, Aineias, lest he be killed by Achilleus against destiny. THETIS: a sea goddess, wife of the warrior, Peleus, and divine mother of Achilleus. She foretold Achilleus’fate, intervened with Zeus on his behalf (bk. 1), led the sea nymphs in a mournful dirge over the death of Patroklos (bk. 18), and brought her son divine armor made by the god, Hephaistos (bk. 18). The Iliad briefly refers to other stories in which she assisted diverse gods: Zeus (1.396-406), Dionysos (6.130-140), and Hephaistos (18.394-409). ZEUS: the son of Kronos and most powerful of the gods; brother of Poseidon, Hades and the goddess Hera, his wife; as lord of the sky, the thunderbolt is his most potent weapon. He responds to Thetis’ appeal by turning the battle against the Greeks, so that they will honor Achilleus. Throughout the Iliad, he acts as an overseer: he ensures that fated events, like the deaths of Patroklos and Hektor, take place, and he prevents Troy from falling at the hands of Achilleus against fate (bk. 20). At Hera’s insistence, he even allows his own mortal son, Sarpedon, to die, so that fate will not be overturned (bk. 16).  Ancient Epics/Textbook/DEmilio/Spring 2025/27 MORTALS Greeks (called Argives, Danaans, and Achaians by Homer) ACHILLEUS: leader of the Myrmidons and central character of the Iliad; son of the goddess Thetis and the warrior Peleus. Achilleus’ wrath is presented in the first line as the Iliad’s subject. AGAMEMNON: son of Atreus, king of Mykenai (Mycenae), brother of Menelaos and most powerful Greek king. He leads the expedition against Troy and holds a divinely made scepter as a symbol of his special authority (2.100-109). His quarrel with Achilleus (bk. 1) sparks Achilleus’ anger and sets in motion the plot of the Iliad. In book 2, Zeus deceives him with a dream that persuades him to attack the Trojans, and sets the stage for a Greek defeat. Achilleus spurns his offer of compensation in book 9, but the two men are reconciled—in a way—when Achilleus renounces his quarrel in book 19 and honors Agamemnon at the end of the funeral games for Patroklos in book 23. Throughout the book, Agamemon’s strengths and weaknesses, and his testy relationships with other warriors provide a critical commentary on kingship. AIAS (Telamonian Aias = Ajax): after Achilleus, the strongest Greek warrior. He duels with Hektor (bk. 7), forms part of the embassy to Achilleus (bk. 9), defends the ships (bk. 15), and leads the effort to recover Patroklos’ body (bk. 17). After Achilleus’ death, he committed suicide when the Greeks awarded Odysseus—and not Aias—Achilleus’ armor (Odyssey, bk 11). AIAS OILEUS (also spelled “Ajax”): the lesser of the two men named Aias, leader of the Lokrians, warriors famed as archers. Later authors tell the story of how he seized and raped Cassandra, a prophetess and daughter of Priam, during the sack of Troy. As a result, Poseidon and Athene destroyed his ship and drowned him on his return from Troy (Odyssey, bk. 4) DIOMEDES: son of Tydeus, great warrior whose exploits form the subject of book 5. Choosing Odysseus as a companion, he also undertakes a bloody nighttime spying mission into the Trojan camp. He slays the Trojan spy Dolon as well as the Thracian king Rhesos and his men, on the mission (bk. 10). At Patroklos’ funeral games, he wins the chariot race with Athene’s help.. HELEN: daughter of Zeus and Leda, step-daughter of Tyndareus. She was the wife of Menelaos, but she eloped with Paris, causing the Trojan war. Through the gifts of the goddess, Aphrodite, she was said to be the most beautiful of all women. She reflects on her actions in books 3 and 6, and she concludes the lament for Hektor at the end of the Iliad. KALCHAS: the seer or prophet of the Greeks; he identifies Agamemnon as the cause of the plague sent by Apollo in book 1. In book 2, Odysseus describes how he had interpreted omens and predicted victory—after nine years—when the Greeks set out for Troy. MENELAOS: brother of Agamemnon, lord of Lakedaimon (Sparta), and husband of Helen. He duels with Paris in book 3 to decide the fate of Helen, but Aphrodite rescues Paris from him. Incited by Athene, the Trojan, Pandaros, wounds him in book 4, breaking the truce and causing the battle to resume. NESTOR: aged king of Pylos and a wise counsellor who often uses stories from the past to advise, instruct (and bore?) the Greek warriors. He tries unsuccessfully to make peace between Achilleus and Agamemnon in book 1, urges the Greeks to defend their camp with a wall in book 7, and helps persuade Agamemnon to offer Achilleus compensation Achilleus in book 9. In book 11, he urges Patroklos to ask Achilleus to let him lead his men into battle, the plan that results in Patroklos’ death.  Ancient Epics/Textbook/DEmilio/Spring 2025/28 ODYSSEUS: son of Laertes, lor