https:/.../2020-07-08_cc303_iliad6.mp4

- Hi, everyone, Steve here,
and I'm recording from home.

Specifically, for this version of the
course, because usually

at this point in the long semester
we would watch an interview

I recorded a couple of years ago
with professor Tom Palaima

of the Classics department.

And, I love this interview,
and you can still go and watch it,

but it's also quite long, and we're
trying to read a lot of the "Iliad"

in a short amount of time.

So I wanted to record a shorter
lecture where I'm going to talk about

this book, overview the plot,
overview some of the key

episodes and interactions and
themes.

And then, if you're still
interested, we've left

the interview with Professor Palaima
on the site, and you

can watch that, completely
optional; there are no quizzes

or instapolls attached to those
lectures specifically, but

for the time being,
we'll just focus on this.

And, where we are in this part
of the lecture series on the "Iliad"

is in "Iliad" Book 6.

And in thinking about how
to read this poem, the selections that

we wanted, we thought about
whether we would include

Book 6 or skip over it, and I think
this book is really important.

It's really important not so much from
a plot perspective, but more from

a thematic perspective and thinking
about what Homer is trying

to accomplish in the "Iliad," what
the "Iliad" is about, and where we

stand in relation to that.

And the topic of this lecture is
war and violence in the "Iliad,"

focusing specifically on that book.

So, that's what we're going to cover,
and in Book 6, we've leapt a little bit

from where we left off.

Where we left off was in the middle
of Book 2, the episode around

Agamemnon telling the troops
that he plans to take them home

and abandon the war effort, and
the upstart rebel of the Greek

army attempts to chastise
Agamemnon, publicly gets beaten.

So then, we have all that
episode, and then we have

a series of descriptions of the
ships of the Greeks.

Books 3, 4, and 5,
are then battle books,

battle narratives; there are some
memorable episodes in these,

perhaps you've had a chance
to read them yourself.

We have things like the duel between
Menelaus and Hektor, or sorry,

Menelaus and Paris, which ends in a
draw.

The Greeks and Trojans briefly truce
while that draw is going on, but then

they break out into fresh warfare.

And leading up to Book 6,
Diomedes, one of the Greek heroes,

is inspired and filled with strength
by the Goddess Athena and he is on

a rampage.

So, Achilles is now off the field,
he's withdrawn from battle, and

the Greeks at the moment are
enjoying something of an ascendancy,

and it's not going to last forever,
and when we get to Book 9,

which is our next book
we'll see that there are considerable

reversals in this regard.

But what we have in Book 6
are really two parts.

The book is split into two very
distinct movements, or acts

if you like, and in the first act
we see the Greeks rampaging

on the field of battle.

We see the opening episode is
one in which Menelaus,

Agamemnon's brother, briefly
considers sparing a Trojan

who he has at his mercy, and
Agamemnon criticizes him for

thinking about clemency, for
thinking about Mercy.

We have this interesting episode
that we're definitely going

to come back to, in which Diomedes
the Greek and Glaukos the Trojan,

exchange gifts with one another on
the battle field, and that's where

they were going to end up.

But the reason that this book
is useful for us, in this particular

sequence is that the second half
of the book takes place behind

the walls of Troy, in the city of Troy
itself, and so up until this point

the poem has been a very
Greek-centric poem.

It's been one that's focused on
the squabble between

Agamemnon and Achilles, the doings
of the Greeks on the battlefield.

There are some Trojan perspectives,
but like for example there's

a famous sequence in which Helen
is asked by Priam, King of the Trojans

to tell him about the leading fighters
of the Greek army.

So we see Priam and Helen interacting
with one another.

But in this, we get a much more
extended sequence that is really

focused on the figure of Hektor,
the leading fighter of the Trojans.

The figure who, just as Achilles
is to the Greeks, Hektor is

for the Trojans, and he is invited
by one of his cousins who is

a priest called Helenus to go and
propitiate the Gods, propitiate Athena,

and he comes inside the city walls
covered with gore and the mess,

the pollution of battle, and he's
encountered by his mother,

he's encountered by Helen and
Paris, and finally we have this

very memorable sequence, in which
he interacts with his wife Andromache,

and Astyanax, his young toddler
son.

And all of this is very important for us
because the "Iliad" becomes in this

book a poem not simply about
the Greeks and their attempts to

conquer the city of Troy, but a poem
that has very much two focuses,

that doesn't want to leave us solely
from that one dimensional perspective

of the invaders, and their cause,
but looks at the defendants,

Trojans in their desperate attempts
to survive, not to conquer, not to

win spoils, but just to live.

And as such, we get an entirely
different perspective.

We get the perspective of women
importantly.

We notice that up until this point,
in the selections that we've read

we haven't had any speaking female
characters.

A lot of the action of Book 1 is
of course about female characters,

the slave women, Briseis
and Chryseis, but they don't

speak at all.

We have goddesses who speak,
but here we'll have mortal women

Hektor's mother, and his wife,
Andromache.

The heart of this sequence, is
the interactions between Hektor

and his wife.

And we learn about their relationship
of course, and we also learn about

Hektor and I think that it's unfortunate
about the abbreviation, the

abbreviated version of the poem that
we're reading, that we're not reading

the entire thing, that we don't get as
much of Hektor as is in the poem

as a whole.

And Hektor is really one of the
central characters, that, especially

with Achilles being off the field,
for much of the first half

of the poem, he's off sulking in
his tent, not participating in

the war, Hektor really comes to
the fore, such that if we think

about who the main character of the
"Iliad" is, you could say it's Achilles,

of course the opening line draws us
directly to Achilles, the wrath of

Achilles is the topic of the poem,
but Hektor is... stands shoulder

to shoulder with Achilles, and his
story in this poem is

as equally important and more
important in some parts than

whatever is going on with
Achilles and the other Greek fighters.

And we really get that first sight of
what's going on for Hektor,

and what his arc is about is very
much informed by this interaction

he has with his wife, when he sees
his wife, she pleads with him

to remain behind the city walls
and not to go back out to fight,

where she worries that he is
going to meet his death.

And it's very pathetic scene,
as in filled with pathos,

filled with pity, we feel a
tremendous amount of

sympathy with I think both
Andromache and Hektor.

And particularly we see the
way that Hektor is torn apart

by what he sees as kind of
conflicting duties between what

he owes to his city, to his
community, which, as

the greatest fighter of the Trojans,
he is duty bound to protect them.

Not only as the greatest fighter,
but also as the son of the king.

But also to his family, to whom we
get a real sense of deep love

and affection.

And this quote here really sums it up.

Andromoche says to Hektor:
"I have none but you!

Be merciful! Stay here upon
the tower!

Do not bereave your child and
widow me!"

And Hektor, in his response
says that he is compelled to go

back out and fight, and not so much
in recognition of his duty to the

community as on its own but also
in his duty to protect Andromache

and their son.

He says: "Not by the Trojans' anguish
on that day am I so overborne in mind

"as by your own grief, when some armed
Akhaian takes you in tears,

your free life stripped away."

And what he's saying is that he doesn't
worry so much about his own death,

as he does worry about what that death
will mean for the fate of his city.

He knows that without him as the leader,
without him as the greatest fighter,

Troy is doomed.

But that raises a terrible paradox at
the heart of Hektor's personal struggle

that we'll see all the way through the
poem.

Particularly as we reach the end of
Hektor's story in Book 22, a fair ways

from where we are now.

What Hektor struggles with
is that he knows that his only

possible course of action as a
dutiful Trojan is to go out and fight.

But he also knows that that
decision entails eventually

the destruction of Troy, because
his fighting probably means his death,

and we as audience members in the poem,
probably know if we know

the story of Troy,
that that's going to come.

I mean even if we don't know about
Hektor's fate, then we know that

Troy will fall.

Troy is going to fall, and Troy is
going to fall in some part because

of Hektor.

And so, his duty is also going to
entail his destruction

and the destruction of everything
that he loves, sooner or later.

But he has, he feels, no other
choice.

And, so we see, in this poem,
the desperate straits

that the Trojans are put into
day after day.

And Andromache is really an
extraordinary character

in this regard.

Andromache gives something of
her own story, her own autobiography.

We find out that she was someone
who lived outside the city, and her

community was the victim of the
early phases of the Greek invasion.

And her family was completely
destroyed by the Greeks,

that she says: "My father, great Achilles
killed, when he besieged and

"plundered Thebe, our high town,
citadel, of Kilikians.

"He killed him, but reverent at last
in this, did not despoil him.

"Body, gear and weapons forged
so handsomely, he burned, and

heaped a barrow over the ashes."

I give you this quote because what
I want to say about this book

and what I want to do in
the next part, and I look over

the rest of the book
and think about its analysis

is look at the ways that
what Homer is doing in this book,

by showing us the Trojans,
by showing us behind the walls

of the Trojans, by giving us this
community who are the defenders,

who are fighting for their survival,
wants to show us what the cost

of this war is.

And the cost is partly the human toll,
is the deaths of the people who were

involved in it.

Andromache's father.

Andromache's own trauma in seeing
the death of her father, and being

forced behind the walls of Troy,
out of her home, where she is

solely dependent on Hektor,
who himself is faced with

a terrible choice, a terrible
duty that he has to face.

But also, there is a social cost.
There is a destruction of the things

that make society work.

The rituals, the relationships,
the way of being that war destroys,

that it perverts, that it debases,
and Homer wants to ask us

if there is anything left
in those social relationships

and the very human dignity that
it confers.

And what's interesting about this
quotation in particular, is that it

ties up both of these things
and leaves us lingering.

That Andromache asks,
Andromache says:

"My father was killed by Achilles."

Her town was destroyed,
her society doesn't exist anymore

in some sense, even though she's
a Trojan, she was a part of the smaller

village or town community,
Kilikians.

But then she also gives us the
detail that Achilles didn't

despoil her father;
he didn't subject her father to

the indignity of pillaging
his body and leaving him

a naked corpse on the
battlefield.

Something held Achilles back,
something gave him that

sense of reservation that we'll
see in other parts of the book

war does not allow.

So, let's look at the way that
Homer leads us through this

ebb and flow of seeing the horrors
of war and seeing places

where people can choose a different
path, where even though they are

tempted towards violence and
destruction, they still might

have something different
at their disposal.

So first of all I think it's worth
just lingering there, thinking

about the destruction of war and
the destruction of social relationships.

Again, we have this idea of just
human loss.

The relationships are literally destroyed,
because humans die and and that

impacts those around them.

But we also have the kind of
desecration of human relationships

as well, the way that categories of
relationships, so parent, child

sister, husband, brother, wife,
become something entirely

different.

We see that earlier in the book when
Hektor first enters the city and

his mother Hecuba, even though he's
an adult male, she tends to him

desperately as though a mother
would to any child, from a

position of caring, of tenderness,
wanting to take care of him,

and Hektor has to kind of shrug
that off and say not now, I have other

things to do.

He's also covered with gore from
the battlefield.

But we have this funny - I say
funny - it's kind of funny almost

"ha ha" but it's curious in that
Hektor and Andromache at the

end of their conversation turn to
Astyanax, their child, and

this is what happens: "as he said
that Hektor held out his arms to

take his baby, but the child squirmed
around on the nurse's bosom, and

began to wail, terrified by his father's
great war helm -- the flashing bronze,

the crust with horsehair plume,
tossed like a living thing at every nod.

His father began laughing, and his
mother laughed as well."

So it is a little sweet sequence, and by
the way this is one of the very few

moments in the entire "Iliad"
where people laugh.

So it's worth paying attention to.
But what it's about is that

Astyanax, who's a baby, who's a
tiny child, is terrified of his father,

that his father is unrecognizable,
as a soldier.

And so that relationship is
made impossible in some sense

by what Hektor has to do.

Now the flip side of this is what we
see on the Greek side, and we know

that this threat is very real, because
outside the city walls we see the

behavior of the Greeks in the first
half of the poem, and this is no

place better summed up, than what
happens when Menelaus is confronted

by a Trojan who he has at his mercy,
and the Trojan attempts to ransom

his life.

He says, if you spare me, you can hold
me hostage, my father is fabulously

wealthy, he'll pay you, give you lots of
pillage and plunder.

And Agamemnon embarrasses,
humiliates his brother, as he is

considering this, and what he says,
the king of the Greeks, says

something that is so brutally
violent, we can't help but see

what is on the other side of
this tender family moment

between Andromache, Hektor,
and Astyanax.

He says "what now soft heart."
He's saying this to his brother

Menelaus, "were you so kindly
served at home by Trojans?"

Referring to the fact that Menelaus'
wife Helen was abducted or went

away with the Trojans to Paris.

"Why give a curse for them?
Oh, Menelaus, once in our hands

"not one should squirm away
from death's hard fall!

"No fugitive, not even the manchild
carried in a woman's belly!

"Let them all without distinction
perish, every last man of Ilion,

without a tear, without a trace."

And Agamemnon's unbelievable
cruelty, his unbelievable violence

which extends all the way to an
unborn child, is something that

punctuates that experience of
family tenderness we see behind

the walls.

And so, we have these two aspects of
violence and war that Homer wants to

show us, we see the actual destruction
of relationships, we see in the

relationship between Hektor and
Astyanax his son, the way that

a relationship that in peacetime would
have ben experienced with intimacy

joy, tenderness, is twisted into something
that for Astyanax is terrifying.

But then also we see something in
the way that these relationships

and the social rituals that undergird them
are impacted,

and the book opens with this character
called Axylos Teuthranides, that's a bit

of a mouthful, and it describes his death
via the hands of the Greek hero Ajax,

or Aias.

So I'm going to read this to you:
"Aias then slew Axylos Teuthranides

from the walled town Arisbe.
A rich man and kindly, he befriended

all who passed his manor by the road.
But none of those could come between him

and destruction now, as the Akhaian
killed him, killing with him Kalesios,

his aide and charioteer --
leaving two men dead to be choked

in earth."

And, I'll lead you to the interview
with Professor Palaima in this because

he talks a lot about this and how
fundamental it is.

Because what it draws attention to
just on the surface of the poem

is this character who's described in
very flattering terms.

He's kindly, he befriended all who
passed his manor by the road.

But none of them could help him
now. No one was available.

Or maybe if they were, they were too
terrified to stand in between

him and his death.

And what it particularly refers to is
a Greek concept of friendship that

is maybe little bit obscured in
translation, but this idea of

he befriended all who passed
his manor.

Everyone who came past,
he made friends with.

This refers in Greek to the concept of
Xenia, of being a Xenos, which is the idea

of friendship towards strangers,
towards people you don't know.

We get the English word from it
Xenophobia, which is a Greek phrase

meaning the fear of strangers.

But it's actually more than that, because
it ties up not only the idea of

the relationship between insiders and
outsiders, but the very possibility

of host and guest relationships.
We can translate Xenophobia

as something also like
"guest-fear," or "host-fear"

or "hospitality-fear."

Because it ties up all of these ideas,
this fundamental, social mechanism

in antiquity, in the Greek world,
that you owe to people you don't know

an elementary level of
respect, dignity and hospitality.

And this character cultivated that
throughout his life, but in war,

it was absolutely meaningless,
and the possibility of hospitality

towards a stranger as a social good
is completely wiped out.

So, we have three ways in which
the war destroys society.

Again, summing up, we have
the destruction of people,

the destruction of, the perversion
of relationships,

and the destruction of the possibility of
quasi-ritualized social interaction

under this idea of guest-friendship.

So, you might look at this, and think,
"Well this is terribly pessimistic.

This is miserable," and think that
what Homer's presenting to us

is the idea of war, not only as
something that is destructive

in its own terms, but maybe even
is terrifying because it reveals

what we fear we are, that stripped
of all of our social inhibitions,

social relationships, and customs,
and institutions, there's nothing

but violence and cruelty and
destruction.

But there's one other part of this,
and I'll leave you with this,

this last little bit of the poem,
of Book 6, that's right in the middle,

right at the turning point between
when we see the Greek world

and the Trojan world, and that's this
interaction between

Diamedes and Glaukus.

Diamedes is a Greek, and he's
been infused with the strength

of Athena, so he's rampaging.
He's at the apex of his warrior

heroism, and he meets Glaukus, who's
a Trojan, and normally Glaukus would

die immediately.

But what happens instead is
that Diamedes asks

Glaukus who he is and who his
family is, and Glaukus stands out

on the battlefield, he has magnificent
armor and Diamedes is curious

about this, so Glaukus tells his
story.

And it turns out that he's descended
from a hero called Bellerophon.

And he tells the story of
Bellerophon, this mythical hero,

who has his own stories that
we can read about outside of the "Iliad."

And Diamedes realizes that his
ancestors were guest friends

with Bellerophon as well, that they
were bound by this institution

of Xenia, that this institution that
so terribly failed Axylos

at the beginning of the book, and
Diamedes doesn't decide

to violate that, but instead says,
well since our ancestors were

bound by this institution, we should
not be enemies, but we should

exchange gifts and respect the
fact that at one time, our families

were at peace.

So they exchange armor as a
sign of this friendship.

And what's interesting is that
if Homer had left us with that,

maybe we'd have a different poem,
maybe we'd have a poem that

was a little bit optimistic, but even
here Homer says something that

is a little bit curious, he says that
"both men jumped down to confirm

the pact, taking each other's hands.
But Zeus had stolen Glaukus' wits away

the young man gave up golden gear
for bronze, took nine bulls' worth

of armor worth a hundred."

And so, he even in this moment where
we think maybe there is some hope,

Homer kind of pulls away and says that
actually Glaukus was fooled, that he

got really shabby armor in exchange
for giving away his really fancy

golden gear.

It's not quite at this level, but in terms
of modern warfare, if like Glaukus

gave away his automatic rifle, his
automatic weapon and in exchange

got from Diamedes like a pea shooter
or water pistol, or something like that.

Like that's the joke, that Homer is
trying to say.

And I think that's what's so interesting
about this, is that all the way through

the poem, Homer isn't trying to say
he's optimistic or pessimistic,

or that he's pro war or anti war.

The war is just a fact of life, but it
really falls to us, by showing us

the Greeks and the Trojans,
both sides, by showing us

Xenia, its collapse. Guest friendship,
its collapse, its restitution.

And also showing in this one
particular transaction, that there

is a kind of a twist here too, that
Diamedes got away with something

that he wouldn't have done if he
hadn't stopped, and we have to

wonder to ourselves, what Homer
means by this.

What does it mean that Zeus had
stolen Glaukus' wits away?

Does it mean that Glaukus should
have stayed and fought?

Probably meeting his death?

Does it mean that Glaukus should
have found some other way to

resolve this conflict?

Who knows?

And I think that the point is
we get to have our own reactions

to this, and we can have different
responses at different points

that we read the poem. It's kind of
a mark of where we are.

So I invite you to think about what's
your response.

Maybe you just reject Zeus altogether,
or maybe Zeus is the fault here.

Maybe Diamedes did establish
something meaningful.

And what does that say about
us?

How are we reacting to the violence?
To the tenderness?

To the comedy? To the possibility
of social relationships

existing in some form even amidst
all this violence?

So, that's Book 6, I do think it's an
extraordinary book.

I do think that the poem would
be very different without it.

And if you're interested, I do invite
you to contemplate Tom Palaima's

perspective, he's a historian of war,
he's a great scholar on the "Iliad"

and of recent representations of
war as well.

So, if you are curious, then very much
do take a look.

But otherwise, this has been Book 6,
and now we'll jump along to Book 9.