0:00:05.758,0:00:10.120
In our earlier lecur, lectures we[br]took a look at ideas about myth.

0:00:10.120,0:00:13.780
We traced back from antiquity all[br]the way up to the present time as,

0:00:13.780,0:00:17.810
in terms of what people have thought[br]about myth over vast stretches of time.

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In this lecture were going to[br]turn the clock backwards and

0:00:20.490,0:00:26.730
move from our present-day period into the,[br]the times that are going

0:00:26.730,0:00:30.990
to be represented in the mythic stories[br]that we are going to be turning to next.

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A few time periods are important for[br]us to keep in mind.

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Now, obviously is an important one.

0:00:35.850,0:00:39.660
What's happening in the world today is[br]going to color and influence the way we

0:00:39.660,0:00:43.210
appropriate and read these myths and[br]we want to pay some attention to that.

0:00:43.210,0:00:44.360
Roman times.

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Here I've picked out the 1st[br]century BCE as classical Rome,

0:00:48.390,0:00:52.710
so if you hear me referring to classical[br]Rome I mean Rome during that time period.

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Rome obviously had a lot of years before[br]and after during which they were top

0:00:55.925,0:00:59.675
dog in the Mediterranean, but when I talk[br]about classical Rome, I'm going to be

0:00:59.675,0:01:05.435
roughly referring to 1st century BCE, 1st[br]century CE, roughly in that time period.

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Another important, moment for us,[br]is going to be classical Athens,

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5th century BCE, so when I say[br]classical Athens, that's what I mean.

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And then when I say Homeric times,[br]I'm referring to the 8th century BCE.

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Homer wrote around 750,[br]as best we can tell, so

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we say 8th century as a general target for[br]what that date's all about.

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And Homer himself was writing[br]many years after the fact,

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as you can see from our graph here.

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He's actually writing nearly 500[br]years after the topic he is covering

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the Trojan War which in,[br]according to the legendary materials,

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took place right around[br]in the 13th century BCE.

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Tracing back over these periods,[br]we're going to be looking at Homer

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in the first big chunk of this course,[br]focusing on The Odyssey.

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When we get past that,

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we'll move into some other epic poets[br]from early time periods including Hesiod.

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We'll look at some Homeric hymns that[br]emerge during this Homeric period.

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Moving on to classical Athens,

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we're going to look especially[br]at the Greek tragedies.

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The tragedians remake stories that they[br]knew from Homer and earlier poets in,

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in ways that are definitive for[br]later time periods.

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And then we,

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when we move into the Romans we're[br]going to be looking at Virgil and Ovid.

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The stories that we're going to see,

0:02:24.825,0:02:30.815
populating this long arc of time have many[br]similarities but also many differences.

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Classical Athens is not[br]the same as Homeric Greece, and

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Homeric Greece is surely not[br]the same as classical Rome.

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So we'll keep an eye on all of these[br]particulars as, as, as needed.

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The Trojan War we go ahead and[br]say took place in the 13th century BCE,

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and the reason we go ahead and say that[br]has to do very much with this man.

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Befo, if this course were being taught 150[br]years ago, assuming there was an internet

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the professor at that time would say,[br]well, the Trojan War is a legend.

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We don't really have any evidence[br]that it actually took place.

0:03:03.220,0:03:04.894
Heinrich Schliemann was[br]curious about this.

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His dates were 1822 to 1890.

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He took a team over to the north[br]coast of Turkey Asia Minor and

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found that in the sites where there was[br]supposed to be a great citadel of Troy,

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he actually found that yes,

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indeed there were the ruins of[br]a marvelous very wealthy city.

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And it looked like that[br]city had been conquered

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over many times over[br]the course of history.

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And there was a kind of great[br]cataclysmic conquest of this citadel

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that wa, took place right around[br]roughly corresponding to the time

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that Greek legend said the whole,[br]the, the Trojan War took place.

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So after Schliemann, we know say that,[br]you know there likely was

0:03:52.020,0:03:55.880
a Trojan War about which Homer and[br]his legends are being told.

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Now Schliemann never found[br]anything that said, you know,

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this shield belongs to Agamemnon or[br]here lieth the sword of Achilles.

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We don't have anything that got recovered[br]in the archeological evidence that

0:04:07.760,0:04:12.680
verifies any of the details, including[br]characters, personages, events, any of

0:04:12.680,0:04:17.094
the details that are recorded in the[br]Homeric legends and in later materials.

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But we can go ahead and[br]say that there was a Trojan War.

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And Homer's version of it may or

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may not correlate to any historical[br]event that actually took place.

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Now, diving into Homer's world is[br]something that we need to do with

0:04:32.220,0:04:35.887
a bit of perhaps warning.

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It's, it's a dark world, and

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a world built on the coursing energy of[br]war, the coursing negative energy of war.

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It's a very stark place where things that[br]need to be dealt with get dealt with,

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sometimes very abruptly and summarily,

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and oftentimes with violent and[br]quick kinds of endings.

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We're talking about[br]a place that's going to be

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where human the exhibition of human[br]talents are typically taking place

0:05:06.410,0:05:09.520
in the field of one dimension[br]of human experience.

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That's the field of conflict.

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Now all of us are going to think[br]about the, the, the, whether,

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was Homer's epic an anti-war epic or,[br]or a pro-war epic?

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It actually doesn't answer to[br]any of those kind of categories.

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Homer's epic I think[br]floats above all of them.

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Instead what he looks at is,[br]is a real human experience, that is,

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the experience of armed conflict[br]between groups of our species that

0:05:34.855,0:05:37.425
decide to launch that kind of[br]thing against each other, and

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then tries to figure out what[br]is the human experience of this?

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What does it mean for us in our humanity?

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Looking at the Trojan War we're going to[br]meet lots of people who are coursing

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around in the background of it especially[br]in our engagement with the Odyssey.

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And it's important for

0:05:51.590,0:05:55.200
us to know some of these characters[br]that emerge in Homer's Iliad.

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This is his account of the Trojan War.

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The Iliad is a poem about rage.

0:06:01.300,0:06:02.452
And thinking about rage,

0:06:02.452,0:06:08.420
it's obviously fronted in this[br]epic that is about the war.

0:06:08.420,0:06:12.410
But what's interesting is that Homer[br]talks about rage of a specific kind.

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It is the rage of Achilles[br]that he is most interested in.

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Achilles, yes, is having war, as a Greek[br]is having war rage against his Trojan

0:06:20.410,0:06:25.750
foes, but the rage that really drives[br]the epic is actually an inter-Greek one.

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It's Achilles versus Agamemnon.

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Achilles and Agamemnon have[br]an argument that starts off The Iliad.

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And these two great Greek warriors,[br]Agamemnon the older general and

0:06:36.030,0:06:40.950
Achilles the younger,[br]extremely talented warrior have words.

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They can't quite settle them[br]in the appropriate way.

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Agamemnon's leadership is not up[br]to snuff to handle this situation.

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And so he loses, Agamemnon loses[br]his greatest warrior because he

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decides to go ahead and insult[br]Achilles in front of all of his peers.

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And when that happens,[br]Achilles decides to withdraw.

0:07:02.600,0:07:05.680
Achilles sits out most of the action[br]of the epic in his tent, and

0:07:05.680,0:07:10.310
when he does he wishes death[br]upon his own Greek comrades.

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His rage is a rage that is so bitter and[br]so awful, he now hates Agamemnon,

0:07:17.000,0:07:23.430
his own Greek leader, and so[br]wishes that all of his compad,

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compatriots should pay the price[br]of Agamemnon's stupidity.

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His rage then is directed[br]against one of his own.

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And the business end of[br]that rage gets worked out

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on all of the Greek warriors as they[br]suffer under the onslaught of the Trojans.

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We see great characters in this fighting.

0:07:44.330,0:07:47.990
Again, Achilles is in his tent,[br]but in his place arise other

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great Greek warriors to take the place[br]of top dog among, among the fighters.

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We have people whose names are Ajax,[br]Diomedes on the Greek side.

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We're going to meet another of these[br]figures called Odysseus pretty soon.

0:08:00.330,0:08:06.130
On the Trojan side, the princes and kings[br]that marshal the forces there are led by

0:08:06.130,0:08:11.700
King Priam with his sons Hector and[br]Paris as the leaders of the other side.

0:08:11.700,0:08:15.480
The war is dark, it's nasty,[br]death on every page,

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and it's also unbelievably[br]a beautiful piece of epic poetry.

0:08:20.820,0:08:27.630
When we close out this story Achilles[br]does finally put away his rage.

0:08:27.630,0:08:32.679
He can't quite bring himself to make[br]up with the old, old man in his life,

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the authoritative Greek figure.

0:08:34.960,0:08:37.820
He never does quite[br]reconcile with Agamemnon and

0:08:37.820,0:08:41.900
the awful things that Agamemnon had[br]done to him to publicly humiliate him.

0:08:41.900,0:08:45.130
But instead there's a moment that[br]Achilles gets at the end of the epic

0:08:45.130,0:08:49.300
in order to reconcile himself in a certain[br]way and put away some of his rage.

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And when he does,[br]it is not with his superior Agamemnon.

0:08:54.040,0:08:59.161
Instead, and strangely,[br]Achilles has a moment

0:08:59.161,0:09:05.090
to express other dimensions[br]of his humanity than his

0:09:05.090,0:09:11.060
warp spasm war rage with[br]the greatest of the Trojans.

0:09:11.060,0:09:13.790
Priam has a moment with Achilles

0:09:13.790,0:09:18.235
where he has a chance to ransom back[br]the body of his beloved son Hector,

0:09:18.235,0:09:22.740
whom Achilles has treated with all[br]the vengeance of his war rage.

0:09:22.740,0:09:28.760
And Priam comes over to Achilles's tent,[br]kisses the hands that killed his own son,

0:09:28.760,0:09:33.640
and begs Achilles to show some mercy.

0:09:33.640,0:09:38.640
Achilles decides that there's his, his[br]own Greeks, and particularly Agamemnon,

0:09:38.640,0:09:40.540
are not worthy of it.

0:09:40.540,0:09:43.720
But Priam, the Trojan general,[br]Trojan king,

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actually happens to be[br]worthy of Achilles's mercy.

0:09:46.580,0:09:52.340
So he does relent with the kiss of[br]the hands gives back the body and

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Priam can bury Hector, and so ends[br]the Trojan War according to Homer's Iliad.

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Now you'll see here that it seems[br]like I've glossed over some things.

0:10:03.150,0:10:06.410
You might say to yourself, well,[br]what happened to the Trojan horse?

0:10:06.410,0:10:11.570
There's stories that we have about[br]Odysseus and his involvement in the war.

0:10:11.570,0:10:14.418
There's other kinds of[br]stratagems that come in.

0:10:14.418,0:10:17.605
It's a ten-year war and we've only[br]talked about one little part of it.

0:10:17.605,0:10:23.370
Well, it's true Homer's Iliad focuses[br]on only a very short period of time.

0:10:23.370,0:10:27.520
Most of the epic has to do with just three[br]days of action out on the battlefield.

0:10:27.520,0:10:31.620
And it does not talk about a synoptic[br]overview of the whole Trojan War.

0:10:31.620,0:10:37.580
Instead, that filling in of the story[br]comes from other epic poets

0:10:37.580,0:10:44.160
around Homer who dig into this story and[br]start to tell the further pieces of it.

0:10:44.160,0:10:46.280
And in fact there's a back story.

0:10:46.280,0:10:48.700
We're going to find in myth[br]there's always a back story.

0:10:48.700,0:10:51.530
And if you want to use the language of[br]contemporary cinema, we're talking about,

0:10:51.530,0:10:56.800
you know, prequels that, that show up[br]after the kind of main one appears.

0:10:56.800,0:11:00.740
And may have already been, there have been[br]versions of prequels that were floating

0:11:00.740,0:11:05.780
around before Homer, but much of[br]the legend that we know starts to fill

0:11:05.780,0:11:10.110
in the blanks after a great poet like[br]Homer makes his or her statement.

0:11:10.110,0:11:14.710
Then the others come in round and fill in[br]all the details that need to be filled in.

0:11:14.710,0:11:18.280
For example, how in the world[br]did this whole Trojan War start?

0:11:18.280,0:11:21.110
Well, we wind up with a,[br]a legend that actually predates Homer.

0:11:21.110,0:11:24.816
It gets encoded in his epic, but[br]it's not one that he concentrates on.

0:11:24.816,0:11:26.290
There is this figure, Paris.

0:11:26.290,0:11:31.470
You'll know him from the previous slide[br]as a prince and a, a son of Priam.

0:11:31.470,0:11:34.050
He's also a little bit[br]of an embarrassment.

0:11:34.050,0:11:35.930
He's not such a great warrior.

0:11:35.930,0:11:40.140
He's more of a master of the arts of[br]love than he is of the arts of war.

0:11:40.140,0:11:43.430
And in fact, he goes over and decides[br]that it would be the right thing for

0:11:43.430,0:11:47.200
him to do to steal the wife of Menelaus.

0:11:47.200,0:11:49.350
The wife of Menelaus[br]just happens to be Helen,

0:11:49.350,0:11:51.610
who's the most beautiful[br]woman in the world.

0:11:51.610,0:11:55.700
And when he does that, he upsets the[br]greatest of the Greek generals, Agamemnon,

0:11:55.700,0:11:58.920
who just so[br]happens to be the brother of Menelaus.

0:11:58.920,0:12:03.380
When Paris kidnaps Helen and[br]takes her back to Troy, well,

0:12:03.380,0:12:04.890
that's the end of things.

0:12:04.890,0:12:07.080
Off we go into the Trojan War.

0:12:07.080,0:12:12.740
The shame that is visited on Menelaus is[br]visited by proxy on his brother Agamemnon,

0:12:12.740,0:12:15.557
and Agamemnon at that time[br]calls in all of his chits.

0:12:15.557,0:12:20.599
He's the most powerful of the Greek kings[br]of the day, pulls in all of his chits and

0:12:20.599,0:12:24.610
says to all of his local fellow[br]leaders that it's time for

0:12:24.610,0:12:27.170
us to go clobber those Trojans.

0:12:27.170,0:12:27.940
And off they go.

0:12:29.370,0:12:31.190
Helen, in case you may[br]well have heard this,

0:12:31.190,0:12:33.860
is indeed the face that[br]launched a thousand ships.

0:12:33.860,0:12:38.306
A medieval rendering of what one of[br]these ships might have looked like.

0:12:38.306,0:12:38.990
Pretty good actually.

0:12:38.990,0:12:43.070
We've got archeological evidence that[br]confirms what a Greek war ship looks like,

0:12:43.070,0:12:44.316
and it's not so bad.

0:12:44.316,0:12:48.280
And so Helen is the face that[br]launches a thousand ships.

0:12:48.280,0:12:53.860
In the legend that's the number of ships[br]that are needed to contain the grandeur,

0:12:53.860,0:12:56.240
the hugeness of Agamemnon's army.

0:12:56.240,0:12:59.560
Thanks to parts of The Iliad, the detail,[br]all of the people that are involved,

0:12:59.560,0:13:01.840
the famous catalogue[br]of ships of The Iliad,

0:13:01.840,0:13:06.860
we can count up roughly the number of[br]people involved and it's about 100,000.

0:13:06.860,0:13:10.650
Homer's claim is that an army of[br]100,000 leaves the shores of Greece and

0:13:10.650,0:13:14.250
goes over to Troy to do[br]the dirty work over there.

0:13:14.250,0:13:18.435
Now some people then walk into[br]the picture, those interested in myth, and

0:13:18.435,0:13:19.210
say, well, wait a minute!

0:13:19.210,0:13:21.260
There must be a back story to this one.

0:13:21.260,0:13:26.830
How is it that Menelaus lost his[br]bride Helen to this guy Paris?

0:13:26.830,0:13:28.710
Why did Paris think it[br]was okay to go over and

0:13:28.710,0:13:33.092
steal the wife of the brother[br]of the greatest of the Greeks?

0:13:33.092,0:13:37.370
Well, a story starts to percolate in[br]to fill in that kind of question and

0:13:37.370,0:13:41.140
we have a story about[br]the Apple of Discord.

0:13:41.140,0:13:42.760
Some of you all will have heard this.

0:13:42.760,0:13:46.410
You can see here in a, a lovely painting[br]giving us the whole background.

0:13:46.410,0:13:48.980
Peleus and Thetis have a wedding.

0:13:48.980,0:13:56.800
Peleus is a great mortal a well-known and[br]prominent man.

0:13:56.800,0:14:00.560
He actually gets to have[br]a wedding to a goddess, Thetis.

0:14:00.560,0:14:02.430
And the two of them get together,[br]Peleus and

0:14:02.430,0:14:07.470
Thetis and when they do, they have[br]a party and they invite everybody.

0:14:07.470,0:14:10.580
This is one of those times when gods and[br]humans could actually live face to face,

0:14:10.580,0:14:11.950
so the gods came,

0:14:11.950,0:14:16.450
the humans came, and they all had a great[br]party together in this very early time.

0:14:16.450,0:14:20.770
Peleus and Thetis,[br]all are invited except this goddess, Eris.

0:14:20.770,0:14:26.606
Who is the god of discord,[br]who is upset about not being invited.

0:14:26.606,0:14:31.115
She is not allowed to come, so she decides[br]to take an apple and inscribe on it

0:14:31.115,0:14:35.354
a single Greek word that translates[br]into the English for the fairest.

0:14:35.354,0:14:38.367
Tosses it into the middle[br]of the wedding and Athena,

0:14:38.367,0:14:42.380
Hera and Aphrodite instantly[br]think the apple must be for them.

0:14:42.380,0:14:43.610
They start to argue.

0:14:43.610,0:14:46.990
They look around and say, here is a human.

0:14:46.990,0:14:49.690
Let's make him solve the dilemma for us.

0:14:49.690,0:14:50.990
Paris agrees.

0:14:50.990,0:14:52.330
Again, not a very smart thing to do.

0:14:52.330,0:14:55.910
A more clever man would have probably[br]put off that judgment on someone else.

0:14:55.910,0:15:00.750
And Paris makes his judgment,[br]his famous judgment, saying that well,

0:15:00.750,0:15:04.010
looking at the three of you,[br]yes, you're all beautiful.

0:15:04.010,0:15:06.790
Hera, you have offered me[br]great power across the earth.

0:15:06.790,0:15:08.980
Athena, you've offered me infinite wisdom.

0:15:08.980,0:15:13.290
Aphrodite, though, you've offered me[br]the most beautiful woman in the world, and

0:15:13.290,0:15:17.080
I'm going to make you now the winner[br]of this apple, and you need to

0:15:17.080,0:15:20.470
give me my prize, which is going to be[br]the most beautiful woman in the world.

0:15:20.470,0:15:24.530
So at that point,[br]Paris thinks Helen's all mine.

0:15:24.530,0:15:27.200
Off he goes in starting[br]this whole thing off.

0:15:27.200,0:15:29.990
So the whole Trojan War,

0:15:29.990,0:15:35.565
the grandeur of this magnificent event[br]all boils down to an affair of the heart.

0:15:35.565,0:15:38.760
A small thing that

0:15:38.760,0:15:42.334
you can imagine the heartstrings[br]being plucked of one human being.

0:15:42.334,0:15:47.423
That's the passion that moves[br]this whole grandeur that

0:15:47.423,0:15:52.599
winds up being exhibited in war[br]rage that really is definitive

0:15:52.599,0:15:57.975
of what the Greek experience is[br]going to be of their mythic past.