Perhaps black and white, or sepia rather, photography can make one think that color is a new invention and that stiff faces are vacant faces. Or maybe it’s my Protestant upbringing that made me think that Jews and pagans were too dumb to believe in Christ, and so the Church only lived one generation until Martin Luther saw the light and resurrected it only 1500 years later.

I’ve heard that Socrates, Plato and Aristotle were smart, but Galileo was apparently waaay smarter than they (I wont get into how telescopic technology is really the mark of advanced placement), so evolutionary advancement must be a fact, right? How then can The Iliad, written in 800 B.C. be such an impressive work?

I am working through it pretty slowly and only read one page today in the dentist’s waiting room, which last week was decorated in brown, red and orange, and this week is decorated in green and red (see this Logismoi post for inspiration to put off decorating for Christmas). I’ll try to remember to bring a canned good when I go next week, and the next week I’ll probably just drop the older kids off, no wait, the fifteen year old is having a cavity filled so I better go in. Hopefully that wont be the next time I read from The Iliad.

I am impressed with how the motivations and tide turnings in the battle are brought out. A lot of the momentum has to do not only with the waxing and waning interventions and fickleness of the gods, but with the rhetorical, as well as the sword wielding, skills of the heroes, the former of which doesn’t always work. I am in deep suspense about when, and I’ll say if  (though I’ve seen Troy, but it was a while back and it seems different) the sulking Achilles will join the fight. I guess I’m used to one mighty though simplistic skirmish and then a clear victor is declared. Or at least a clearly defined good guy and bad guy. I think I’ve already mentioned how the Trojans aren’t vilified, even though Paris, who sometimes comes out and shoots an arrow or two, is a coward. Hector isn’t. It’s clear who Homer is rooting for, but that’s okay as long as he presents a worthy opponent. Now I see how more modern great authors like Shakespeare, Jane Austen, Elizabeth Barrett Browning, C.S. Lewis, and even J.K. Rowling undoubtedly benefited from their classical educations. (Here’s a good explanation of why)

From today’s page,

So long as Hector lived and Achilles nursed his anger and so long as the city of Priam remained untaken, the great wall of the Achaeans stood firm; but when the bravest of the Trojans were no more, and many also of the Argives, though some were yet left alive – when, moreover, the city was sacked in the tenth year, and the Argives had gone back with their ships to their own country – then Poseidon and Apollo took counsel to destroy the wall, and they turned on to it the streams of all the rivers from Mount Ida into the sea, Rhesus, Heptaporus, Caresus, Rhodius, Grenicus, Aesopus, and goodly Scamander, with Simois, where many a shield and helm had fallen, and many a hero of the race of demigods had bitten the dust [please forgive this parenthetical: "Freddie Mercury was born Farrokh Bulsara on Thursday September 5th 1946 on the small spice island of Zanzibar. His parents, Bomi and Jer Bulsara, were both Parsee (Persian). His father, Bomi, was a civil servant, working as a High Court cashier for the British Government. Freddie's sister, Kashmira, was born in 1952. In 1954, at the age of eight, Freddie was shipped to St Peter's English boarding school in Panchgani, about fifty miles outside Bombay. It was there his friends began to call him Freddie, a name the family also adopted." where would we be without Queen's lead's classical education?], Phoebus Apollo turned the mouths of all these rivers together and made them flow for nine days against the wall, while Zeus rained the whole time that he might wash it sooner into the sea. Poseidon himself, trident in hand, surveyed the work and threw into the sea all the foundations of beams and stones which the Achaeans had laid with so much toil. He made all level by the mighty stream of the Hellespont, and then when he had swept athe wall away he spread a great beach of sand over the place where it had been. This done he turned the rivers back into their old courses.

This was what Poseidon and Apollo were to do in after time; but as yet battle and turmoil were still raging round the wall till its timbers rang under the blows that rained upon them. The Argives, cowed by the scourge of Zeus, were hemmed in at their ships in fear of Hector, the mighty minister of Rout, who as heretofore fought with the force and fury of a whirlwind. As a lion or wild boar turns fiercely on the dogs and men that attack him, while these form a solid wall and shower their javelins as they face him – his courage is all undaunted, but his high spirit will be [I'd better stop here].

It’s not just might, and speech, and the favor of the gods either, it’s also how a fighter’s comrades and his enemies regard him and his connections that determines a person’s just rewards. It’s much more complex than I expected.