WEBVTT 00:01.360 --> 00:05.370 Professor Donald Kagan: Our topic today is 00:05.365 --> 00:08.365 the Dark Ages and the world of Homer, 00:08.370 --> 00:12.520 and of course, you have as one of your reading 00:12.523 --> 00:18.063 assignments a problem that deals precisely with that question 00:18.061 --> 00:23.321 that asks the subordinate question: was there a real world 00:23.321 --> 00:28.451 that Homer's poems refer to? If so, what world was it? 00:28.450 --> 00:33.310 Was it the world of the Mycenaean Bronze Age? 00:33.310 --> 00:39.060 Was it the world that succeeded that Bronze Age that we call the 00:39.055 --> 00:42.805 Dark Ages? Was it the world in which 00:42.810 --> 00:48.980 tradition says Homer himself lived, the transition first to 00:48.982 --> 00:54.092 the Archaic and then to the Classical Period, 00:54.090 --> 00:57.540 the period in which we think about the dawn of the 00:57.535 --> 01:01.095 polis? That really is the question we 01:01.097 --> 01:05.277 are wrestling with and, of course, behind it all is 01:05.276 --> 01:09.706 this idea: can we seek any historical information from 01:09.706 --> 01:13.956 Homer's poems at all? It would be a terrible blow to 01:13.963 --> 01:18.063 me and everybody else in the field if the answer was "no," 01:18.060 --> 01:23.100 because just about everything we have to say about this period 01:23.103 --> 01:26.913 between the Bronze Age and the emergence of the 01:26.906 --> 01:31.206 polis--most of it involves inferences from our 01:31.205 --> 01:35.665 understanding of what the Homeric poems tell us. 01:35.670 --> 01:40.240 But I think we need to take a hard look at what we can do, 01:40.236 --> 01:44.276 and I thought it would be worthwhile reading a sentence 01:44.278 --> 01:48.698 from each of the introductory paragraphs that we provide for 01:48.695 --> 01:52.955 you in the problem packet to show you the range of opinion 01:52.962 --> 01:57.382 that is pretty representative of what scholars think or have 01:57.379 --> 02:01.249 thought on the subject. Moses Finley says, 02:01.247 --> 02:05.517 "If, then, the world of Odysseus is to be placed in time 02:05.515 --> 02:09.935 as everything we know from the comparative study of heroic 02:09.939 --> 02:14.679 poetry says it must, the most likely centuries seem 02:14.677 --> 02:20.357 to be the tenth and the ninth, that is to say what we call the 02:20.364 --> 02:23.394 Dark Ages." Anthony Andrews says, 02:23.389 --> 02:27.979 "It may be that the epic tradition had at some stage used 02:27.976 --> 02:31.166 as a model for the army before Troy, 02:31.169 --> 02:36.119 an idealized version of some of those bands of colonists who 02:36.120 --> 02:41.070 settled the coast of Asia Minor in post-Mycenaean times." 02:41.069 --> 02:44.389 And if you look at the whole story that he tells, 02:44.388 --> 02:48.468 that really means quite soon after the fall of the Mycenaean 02:48.468 --> 02:51.688 world, probably maybe a century 02:51.690 --> 02:55.380 earlier than what Finley suggests. 02:55.379 --> 02:58.299 And then A.M. Snodgrass says, 02:58.300 --> 03:03.410 "I offer this as a further argument against the existence 03:03.411 --> 03:06.881 of a historical, Homeric society." 03:06.879 --> 03:11.869 There isn't anything to be found is what Snodgrass says. 03:11.870 --> 03:15.310 Ian Morris writes, "The balance of probability 03:15.311 --> 03:19.591 seems to be in favor of a consistent basis to the society 03:19.594 --> 03:24.494 of the poems derived from Greece in the eight century B.C.," 03:24.490 --> 03:28.380 which would be at the end of the period we've been talking 03:28.377 --> 03:31.107 about, the transition to the world of the 03:31.105 --> 03:35.125 polis--Homer's own time when he lived and wrote. 03:35.129 --> 03:37.699 And finally, Barry Strauss says, 03:37.695 --> 03:40.915 "Ironically, the more Homer exaggerates, 03:40.922 --> 03:45.642 the more authentic he is as a representative of the Bronze 03:45.639 --> 03:47.619 Age." So, what do we do? 03:47.620 --> 03:51.400 Well, all of these are learned and clever men, 03:51.398 --> 03:55.678 but I don't think that they're all equally right. 03:55.680 --> 04:00.520 But what I should also report to you is that I think there is 04:00.518 --> 04:04.868 a widespread consensus among most people that study the 04:04.872 --> 04:07.022 subject. That doesn't mean that 04:07.020 --> 04:10.880 consensus is correct. Not all of these opinions are 04:10.880 --> 04:14.390 shared by the same number, by no means, 04:14.393 --> 04:17.763 of scholars. Some of them are far out. 04:17.759 --> 04:21.769 I would say the one that says you can't learn anything from 04:21.768 --> 04:25.968 this is an outlier. The notion that this is about 04:25.973 --> 04:31.103 the Mycenaean world is an outlier, and then I would say 04:31.102 --> 04:35.572 the largest consensus is something like Finley's 04:35.565 --> 04:39.745 consensus, but people verging in both 04:39.752 --> 04:44.652 directions from that. What you'll hear from me is 04:44.654 --> 04:48.134 essentially that consensus point of view. 04:48.129 --> 04:54.929 It strikes me as being better supported than the others, 04:54.930 --> 05:01.610 but we really have to keep an open mind because in this 05:01.606 --> 05:06.686 prehistoric period, you have to be very modest 05:06.687 --> 05:10.127 about what you think you know about it. 05:10.129 --> 05:13.139 Almost everything is inference and judgment, 05:13.135 --> 05:17.185 and very little is anything that you want to call proof. 05:17.189 --> 05:20.799 With those warnings, let me tell you sort of what I 05:20.799 --> 05:23.469 think most people think about this. 05:23.470 --> 05:26.500 First of all, if we want to know about the 05:26.497 --> 05:30.407 Dark Ages, what sources do we have available to us? 05:30.410 --> 05:32.980 And of course, I've already mentioned the 05:32.981 --> 05:36.971 poems of Homer turn out to be a very large source for what most 05:36.968 --> 05:40.398 people look to. Secondly, there are legends 05:40.396 --> 05:44.156 that the Greeks told about their early history, 05:44.156 --> 05:49.056 which come down to us in later sources and they are available 05:49.059 --> 05:52.829 to us to use as sources. A great question is, 05:52.831 --> 05:56.481 should we use them at all, and if we do how carefully 05:56.476 --> 06:00.146 should we use them and so on? This is a good time for me 06:00.154 --> 06:02.404 to make a confession, so that you'll know how to 06:02.403 --> 06:04.463 judge what I say all through the course. 06:09.560 --> 06:13.910 Well, prior to the late eighteenth century when German 06:13.908 --> 06:18.748 scholars began to look at the Homeric poems specifically, 06:18.750 --> 06:22.260 very, very carefully, and then really very, 06:22.263 --> 06:25.533 very skeptically, they made all sorts of 06:25.525 --> 06:30.035 suggestions that the poems we have are really not to be 06:30.042 --> 06:33.892 thought of as the work of a single poet, 06:33.889 --> 06:37.209 Homer, who had--wrote them both out together. 06:37.209 --> 06:41.299 But who began to divide them up into early and late elements, 06:41.297 --> 06:45.587 which I thought drove the field of classics insane for about 100 06:45.588 --> 06:48.148 years, while folks argued about the 06:48.150 --> 06:51.110 unity of Homer, the unity or not the unity of 06:51.105 --> 06:55.045 one of the poems and so on. But it began a critical study 06:55.052 --> 06:58.782 of the poems for the first time and critical methods were 06:58.784 --> 07:01.854 applied to history for the first time ever, 07:01.850 --> 07:06.020 really, in the early nineteenth century and thereafter. 07:06.019 --> 07:14.349 And it became common to reject any ancient story that wasn't 07:14.353 --> 07:21.983 really nailed down very, very firmly by some device. 07:21.980 --> 07:25.570 To take a skeptical view--and a very interesting 07:25.574 --> 07:29.504 example of how things changed, if you look at people, 07:29.498 --> 07:33.818 say an Englishman writing about Ancient Greece in the late 07:33.821 --> 07:37.441 eighteenth century, they tell the story of the 07:37.437 --> 07:41.477 early days based upon the legends as though the legends 07:41.483 --> 07:44.783 were reliable information to some degree. 07:44.779 --> 07:48.329 When you get to say the middle of the nineteenth century and 07:48.334 --> 07:51.954 the work of the great English historian of Ancient Greece, 07:51.949 --> 07:55.699 George Grote, he begins his story in 776 with 07:55.696 --> 07:59.236 the Olympic Games. He does tell you all about the 07:59.243 --> 08:02.013 legends first, but he puts them aside and says 08:02.009 --> 08:04.959 they're just legends--now let's talk history, 08:04.959 --> 08:08.459 and he doesn't begin that until the eight century B.C. 08:08.459 --> 08:12.259 And so there is this critical school that says, 08:12.258 --> 08:16.798 "I won't believe anything unless it is proven to me." 08:16.800 --> 08:23.350 At the other extreme, there's me, the most gullible 08:23.347 --> 08:27.867 historian imaginable. My principle is this. 08:27.870 --> 08:35.980 I believe anything written in ancient Latin or Greek unless I 08:35.978 --> 08:39.258 can't. Now, things that prevent me 08:39.264 --> 08:43.674 from believing what I read are that they are internally 08:43.672 --> 08:47.752 contradictory, or what they say is impossible, 08:47.748 --> 08:52.778 or different ones contradict each other and they can't both 08:52.779 --> 08:55.789 be right. So, in those cases I abandon 08:55.791 --> 08:59.431 the ancient evidence. Otherwise, you've got to 08:59.434 --> 09:02.494 convince me that they're not true. 09:02.490 --> 09:04.660 Now, you might think of this as, indeed, 09:04.663 --> 09:07.253 gullible. A former colleague of mine put 09:07.246 --> 09:09.066 the thing very, very well. 09:09.070 --> 09:12.810 He spoke about, and I like to claim this 09:12.806 --> 09:18.266 approach, the position of scholarship to which we call the 09:24.409 --> 09:25.709 The way this works is, you start out, 09:27.490 --> 09:30.740 You believe everything. Next, you get a college 09:30.738 --> 09:35.798 education and you don't believe anything, and then you reach the 09:39.072 --> 09:43.162 and you know what to believe even though you can't prove it. 09:43.160 --> 09:47.890 Okay, be warned; I'm a practitioner of the 09:52.539 --> 09:57.779 with legends is to regard them as different from essentially 09:57.783 --> 10:01.253 sophisticated historical statements, 10:01.250 --> 10:06.680 but as possibly deriving from facts, which have obviously been 10:06.679 --> 10:11.099 distorted and misunderstood, misused and so on. 10:11.100 --> 10:14.040 But it would be reckless, it seems to me, 10:14.037 --> 10:18.367 to just put them aside and not ask yourself the question, 10:18.370 --> 10:22.740 "Can there be something believable at the roof of this?" 10:22.740 --> 10:25.280 And just to give you some small defense of that approach, 10:25.283 --> 10:28.513 I always like to ask students, "Suppose we didn't have a 10:28.510 --> 10:31.350 single historical record, no newspaper, 10:31.352 --> 10:34.082 no diaries. You know nothing totally 10:34.077 --> 10:37.637 reliable for what happened in the latter part of the 10:37.643 --> 10:42.103 eighteenth century in America." Would we know anything about 10:42.103 --> 10:44.733 what happened? Of course, we would. 10:44.730 --> 10:46.630 We would know that there was a revolution; 10:46.630 --> 10:49.900 it was against Great Britain. I'm sure we would know that the 10:49.902 --> 10:53.802 French assisted in that. I am certain we would know that 10:53.804 --> 10:58.484 George Washington was the commander of our forces in our 10:58.480 --> 11:00.830 battle. Those are easy. 11:00.830 --> 11:02.870 There's no getting around reading those things, 11:02.869 --> 11:05.439 and then it gets to be more interesting as we speculate. 11:05.440 --> 11:09.310 We would know as a fact that George Washington threw a silver 11:09.311 --> 11:12.731 dollar across the Rappahannock River, except that it's 11:12.732 --> 11:15.102 impossible. So, we would dismiss that one. 11:15.100 --> 11:18.750 We would be told that he was very honest and told his father 11:18.749 --> 11:22.029 he chopped down a cherry tree, which would be baloney, 11:22.027 --> 11:25.897 but we would be told that too. But I think we would be told 11:25.898 --> 11:29.118 also very many true things, which came down to us. 11:29.120 --> 11:32.880 So, the hard job would be to select among these legendary 11:32.881 --> 11:37.111 things, to see what fact can be found, and it will never be easy 11:37.112 --> 11:41.642 or deadly certain. But that's what I'm talking 11:41.643 --> 11:43.813 about here. Finally, 11:43.812 --> 11:47.942 there is the source that people who are skeptical most like to 11:47.944 --> 11:52.664 believe because it's tangible. I'm talking about archaeology, 11:52.663 --> 11:55.563 which is the discovery, examination, 11:55.561 --> 11:58.791 and evaluation of material evidence, 11:58.789 --> 12:02.599 which is not in writing, the actual remains of places 12:02.601 --> 12:05.971 where they lived, the implements that they used 12:05.973 --> 12:08.143 and so on, and so on. 12:08.139 --> 12:11.179 And the beautiful thing about that is you actually have it. 12:11.180 --> 12:13.750 It's objective. It's an object. 12:13.750 --> 12:16.050 It's not something that somebody imagined, 12:16.049 --> 12:19.359 but you shouldn't derive as much confidence from it as a lot 12:19.357 --> 12:23.517 of archaeologists like to, because it's only a thing until 12:23.516 --> 12:27.586 you say what it means, until you put a date on it, 12:27.590 --> 12:30.840 until you try to understand what it really is, 12:30.843 --> 12:34.173 what its function was, who brought it there, 12:34.170 --> 12:37.710 who left it there. All those things have to be 12:37.710 --> 12:42.090 reasoned out from all the evidence, all the information 12:42.092 --> 12:45.372 you can get. So there's an astonishing 12:45.365 --> 12:50.375 amount of speculation involved in establishing this apparently 12:50.379 --> 12:55.079 rigorous objective technique. We certainly need to use it and 12:55.078 --> 12:58.208 we need to use it as carefully, that's my point, 12:58.214 --> 13:03.484 as we use everything else. But it is indeed very valuable 13:03.481 --> 13:08.481 in studying a world before our time, always. 13:08.480 --> 13:12.970 Now, we mentioned how important the poems are. 13:12.970 --> 13:15.680 So, we need to take a look at the question of what they are, 13:15.675 --> 13:17.505 and how we know about them, and so on. 13:17.509 --> 13:22.019 I mentioned to you that the Iliad and the Odyssey 13:22.016 --> 13:26.516 were known in the Western world continuously from the time that 13:26.522 --> 13:30.272 they were made available. So they were known and they 13:30.267 --> 13:34.027 were very important in the minds of those people who knew about 13:34.026 --> 13:37.326 it, but I also mentioned last time 13:37.328 --> 13:42.318 the impact of Schliemann's excavations, which turned 13:42.323 --> 13:46.433 everything around. The hyper-skeptical point of 13:46.432 --> 13:50.912 view taken by scholars in Europe in the nineteenth century was 13:50.905 --> 13:55.075 eroded very sharply by the discovery of places that really 13:55.084 --> 13:59.414 convinced pretty much everybody that there was a Troy, 13:59.410 --> 14:03.100 and that there was a Mycenae. And so the stories couldn't 14:03.099 --> 14:07.489 have been simple inventions, and that began a new phase in 14:07.488 --> 14:10.598 the story. And, again, to repeat what I 14:10.602 --> 14:13.772 said last time, there were certain stunning 14:13.772 --> 14:18.002 physical resemblances between what Homer said and what we 14:17.998 --> 14:21.028 could see. The palaces were like the 14:21.033 --> 14:26.003 palaces that he described. The world that they lived in 14:26.000 --> 14:31.510 was a world in which bronze was used for implements, 14:31.509 --> 14:34.609 and weapons, and such, not iron, 14:34.613 --> 14:39.623 and that squared with what was found in Mycenae, 14:39.620 --> 14:44.230 what was found in the Mycenaean world, namely bronze implements 14:44.231 --> 14:48.941 and fundamentally not iron ones. Sometimes there were 14:48.942 --> 14:54.672 interesting little problems that emerged and one of those has to 14:54.670 --> 14:58.490 do with the use of chariots in warfare. 14:58.490 --> 15:05.560 Well, Homer has his heroes using chariots and we know that 15:05.560 --> 15:12.630 chariots were used in warfare in the Bronze Age around the 15:12.631 --> 15:17.901 Mediterranean Sea. We have hard evidence of that 15:17.902 --> 15:22.372 in Egypt, in Asia Minor, and in the Tigris Euphrates 15:22.373 --> 15:24.583 Valley. So, you would say, 15:24.582 --> 15:28.362 well, that's another place where Homer got it right, 15:28.356 --> 15:32.646 except for the fact that we also know how chariots are used 15:32.649 --> 15:35.609 in warfare and the closest analogy, 15:35.610 --> 15:40.640 I think, is to think of chariots as tanks. 15:40.639 --> 15:44.359 You know, one famous tactic is--if you have an infantry 15:44.363 --> 15:48.083 force coming forward, you send tanks in it to break 15:48.080 --> 15:52.050 up the line of the infantry, so that you can defeat the 15:52.047 --> 15:56.077 infantry in that way. And apparently that is the way 15:56.083 --> 15:59.723 you use chariots in ancient Bronze Age warfare. 15:59.720 --> 16:03.870 You would send the chariot racing toward the line of 16:03.868 --> 16:08.098 infantrymen and the usual outcome was the infantrymen 16:08.098 --> 16:13.058 would panic in the face of being charged by these things, 16:13.059 --> 16:18.619 and you would break their line and give the other side an 16:18.621 --> 16:23.091 opportunity to wreak havoc with their army. 16:23.090 --> 16:27.270 Well, what do the Homeric heroes do with their chariots? 16:27.270 --> 16:28.370 They use them as taxicabs. 16:31.509 --> 16:37.019 Achilles or Patroclus, or whoever is on his chariot, 16:37.016 --> 16:40.486 is driving. He is riding from the ships or 16:40.485 --> 16:43.855 wherever he is from the camp to the battlefield. 16:43.860 --> 16:49.020 He might pick up a missile of some kind, a spear typically, 16:49.020 --> 16:52.580 and fire it at somebody as he goes by. 16:52.580 --> 16:57.340 This would be a drive by killing, but then when he really 16:57.342 --> 17:02.272 gets to where the action is he hops off--now we're going to 17:02.274 --> 17:06.774 have some fighting. And so, the implication I 17:06.774 --> 17:11.514 think is that the memory of chariot warfare back in the 17:11.511 --> 17:16.231 Mycenaean days lingered; it was captured in the poetry 17:16.232 --> 17:21.022 that goes back--the bits of the poetry that goes back to the 17:21.017 --> 17:24.757 Mycenaean period. But how they were used was 17:24.759 --> 17:29.239 forgotten, and so the poets in the subsequent years then 17:29.243 --> 17:31.133 thought, "How would I use a 17:31.125 --> 17:34.295 chariot?"--never having seen a chariot fight in a battle, 17:34.300 --> 17:39.120 and that's the outcome. Finley, particularly, 17:39.119 --> 17:42.449 makes a lot of this as being rather indicative of how he 17:42.445 --> 17:46.215 pictures the poems to work. There are sort of legitimate 17:46.216 --> 17:50.476 memories, some of them going way back to the Mycenaean period, 17:50.478 --> 17:54.738 but which may be misremembered in some significant detail. 17:54.740 --> 17:56.960 And then, of course, there's lots of stuff that 17:56.963 --> 17:59.673 doesn't have anything to do with the Mycenaean period. 17:59.670 --> 18:01.560 His view is much, if not most, 18:01.555 --> 18:04.735 of what we are told about the Homeric world comes, 18:04.740 --> 18:08.380 as he says, in the tenth and in the ninth centuries. 18:13.259 --> 18:17.099 One other thing that he doesn't mention but I think is 18:17.099 --> 18:20.339 worth mentioning. Many a scholar are very 18:20.336 --> 18:25.266 reluctant to admit that there's any Mycenaean stuff here, 18:25.269 --> 18:29.389 although they cannot fail to concede that some of the 18:29.390 --> 18:33.830 physical implements that are found at Mycenaean sites are 18:33.826 --> 18:38.306 precisely like what Homer says. But I think you can go a little 18:38.311 --> 18:40.961 bit beyond that. Some scholars have pointed out 18:40.958 --> 18:44.198 that in Book II of the Iliad in the section that we 18:44.204 --> 18:47.154 call, "The Catalog of Ships," the 18:47.145 --> 18:52.755 poet lays out just exactly how many warships came to Troy from 18:52.759 --> 18:56.179 Greece, and just exactly how many came 18:56.177 --> 18:59.787 from each town. And the names of the towns that 18:59.793 --> 19:03.553 are listed in that catalog of ships, first of all, 19:03.549 --> 19:08.189 are all legitimate in the sense every one of them we know did 19:08.186 --> 19:13.376 exist in the Mycenaean Period. And perhaps no less significant 19:13.377 --> 19:18.547 is that there are also towns listed there that are Mycenaean 19:18.548 --> 19:23.368 towns, which disappeared after the Mycenaean Period. 19:23.369 --> 19:25.439 In other words, they couldn't just have named 19:25.442 --> 19:27.992 towns that used to be Mycenaean, but were still around, 19:27.985 --> 19:31.375 so that's why they knew them. No, some towns had disappeared, 19:31.376 --> 19:35.046 but the names of those towns show up in the catalog of ships. 19:35.049 --> 19:39.909 There's just no way to explain that except to say that catalog 19:39.906 --> 19:43.486 of ships goes back to the Mycenaean Period. 19:43.490 --> 19:47.440 Now, the differences between what we find in the 19:47.439 --> 19:50.769 Homeric poems are also very illuminating, 19:50.769 --> 19:54.259 differences between that and what we know happened after the 19:54.263 --> 19:56.773 fall of the Mycenaean world. For instance, 19:56.772 --> 19:59.982 one of the most striking things that you find in cultures, 19:59.981 --> 20:02.911 anthropologists and archaeologists live off this, 20:02.910 --> 20:06.230 is what they do with dead bodies. 20:06.230 --> 20:12.350 Now, in Mycenae, it's obvious; they bury them in the ground as 20:12.347 --> 20:15.357 most of us do. The graves in the circle, 20:15.357 --> 20:18.437 the shaft graves, and then the beehive tombs for 20:18.436 --> 20:21.346 the big shots, and even outside in the 20:21.347 --> 20:25.717 countryside, we find graves which have bones of people in 20:25.724 --> 20:30.274 them. But we know that the Greeks in 20:30.267 --> 20:36.227 Homer don't do that. The Greeks in Homer incinerate 20:36.232 --> 20:42.632 the bodies of the dead. You remember the Iliad 20:42.630 --> 20:50.400 ends with the actual cremation of the bodies of the relevant 20:50.402 --> 20:53.682 people. So, that's a very significant 20:53.679 --> 20:57.619 difference. That memory had simply died out 20:57.616 --> 21:03.966 and it helps us to remember too that the tombs that we have seen 21:03.969 --> 21:08.949 now, they didn't see. Whoever was writing the poems 21:08.948 --> 21:14.148 of Homer, whichever poets were contributing to that over the 21:14.152 --> 21:18.932 ages after the Mycenaean Period, they hadn't seen those 21:18.926 --> 21:23.266 Mycenaean sites. They were buried. 21:23.269 --> 21:27.929 There are also differences, sometimes, in the shape of 21:27.934 --> 21:32.684 weapons that we find in the Greek World after the Mycenaean 21:32.681 --> 21:37.511 Period compared to what are described in Homer's poems. 21:37.510 --> 21:40.880 I'm sorry. Homer describes certain of 21:40.879 --> 21:44.999 these weapons, which don't fit what we find in 21:44.998 --> 21:48.518 the ground. And here's another critical 21:48.522 --> 21:50.352 element in the story. 21:53.680 --> 21:57.740 We know that the Mycenaeans, or at least some small number 21:57.737 --> 22:01.147 of them could write, because we have the Linear B 22:01.154 --> 22:06.104 script, which we can read. There is no clue that there is 22:06.100 --> 22:10.410 such a thing as writing in the Homeric poems. 22:10.410 --> 22:13.450 There's one very abstruse clue where somebody seems to know 22:13.449 --> 22:16.479 something about it, but fundamentally it's an 22:16.479 --> 22:21.109 illiterate society and that is a major difference between the 22:21.109 --> 22:24.349 world of Homer and the Mycenaean world. 22:24.349 --> 22:28.319 Some other differences: Homer's kings, 22:28.321 --> 22:33.261 if you just see how they live, what they do, 22:33.259 --> 22:37.279 what their wives do, how they are treated by their 22:37.281 --> 22:39.581 fellow noblemen, they are, 22:39.579 --> 22:44.999 in a relative sense, very weak, very short on power 22:44.996 --> 22:51.276 and really quite poor compared to these Mycenaean kings, 22:51.279 --> 22:56.459 the results of whose work and lives we see at places like 22:56.455 --> 22:58.215 Mycenae. Remember, 22:58.218 --> 23:01.568 I tried to emphasize how rich you would have to be to 23:01.570 --> 23:04.150 undertake the building of the temple, 23:04.150 --> 23:09.050 to undertake the construction of one of those beehive tombs. 23:09.049 --> 23:12.449 You had to be very confident because it was going to take a 23:12.447 --> 23:16.017 long time, a fantastic amount of labor, a tremendous amount of 23:16.019 --> 23:19.699 money to do that. There is no evidence in Homer 23:19.700 --> 23:24.770 that anybody had that kind of wealth or that kind of power. 23:24.769 --> 23:30.279 What do the queens in Homer do in their spare time? 23:30.279 --> 23:34.339 Or maybe it's not their spare time, maybe it's their regular 23:34.338 --> 23:37.218 time. Well, one of the things that 23:37.224 --> 23:42.554 they do when the Homeric heroes refer to their wives--there are 23:42.549 --> 23:47.959 really only two places that they seem to be associated with. 23:47.960 --> 23:53.760 One is the bedroom and the other is the loom. 23:53.759 --> 23:58.529 What these ladies are doing is weaving cloth. 23:58.530 --> 24:03.590 Now, that's not what queens do. I'm sure the Mycenaean queens 24:03.585 --> 24:05.845 didn't do that, but it's very, 24:05.851 --> 24:10.541 very interesting that that is what the Homeric queens do. 24:10.539 --> 24:16.259 Well, how are we to explain the discrepancies that are so great 24:16.258 --> 24:21.118 between these worlds? And the answer that almost 24:21.124 --> 24:27.144 everybody now accepts without argument is that these poems 24:27.140 --> 24:31.890 were created orally, and passed on orally. 24:31.890 --> 24:37.450 That they were not written down, so that what we have in 24:37.452 --> 24:43.122 the poems of Homer reflects centuries of bards passing on 24:43.116 --> 24:46.806 bits of the poem, or the poem in various 24:46.811 --> 24:50.501 versions, being always creative. I mean, any bard, 24:50.498 --> 24:54.638 if by analogy we know about bards in the modern world, 24:54.640 --> 24:58.720 we have some evidence on that. Millman Parry, 24:58.723 --> 25:03.743 a Harvard scholar back in the twenties, went to Yugoslavia to 25:03.737 --> 25:07.327 live in the mountains and the backwoods, 25:07.329 --> 25:12.499 and he lived with people who still had these bards around who 25:12.504 --> 25:17.424 created sort of epic narratives of considerable length, 25:17.420 --> 25:20.890 but nothing resembling Homeric length, I must say. 25:20.890 --> 25:24.420 Nothing that long, but long enough in which they 25:24.424 --> 25:28.114 would tell the same stories in verse and music, 25:28.109 --> 25:33.039 and you could recognize the story as you went from bard to 25:33.035 --> 25:36.075 bard. But every bard added and 25:36.079 --> 25:40.449 subtracted things to suit his own talents. 25:40.450 --> 25:45.570 That's the idea of the game, and then Parry demonstrated by 25:45.574 --> 25:49.114 careful scholarship of the Homeric poems, 25:49.108 --> 25:53.348 that that is the way the Homeric poems were. 25:53.349 --> 25:56.989 I want to use the word stitched together, because in the Ancient 25:56.993 --> 26:01.913 Greek world the people who sang, recited, created the poems of 26:01.908 --> 26:06.788 the Homeric epics were called rhapsodes, 26:06.789 --> 26:12.549 and that means stitchers of songs. 26:12.549 --> 26:16.789 So, what you have to imagine is sometime back, 26:16.793 --> 26:20.663 I would argue, in the Mycenaean Period, 26:20.660 --> 26:25.920 somebody began making up one of these songs, telling the story 26:25.919 --> 26:29.799 of Greeks going to attack the city of Troy. 26:29.799 --> 26:33.369 And that for centuries thereafter, different 26:33.366 --> 26:37.426 rhapsodes repeated it but elucidated it, 26:37.430 --> 26:40.020 illuminated it, extended it, 26:40.023 --> 26:45.983 changed it, tried to improve it, sometimes they added stuff. 26:45.980 --> 26:47.550 They were alive in the tenth century. 26:47.549 --> 26:50.639 Some of them were alive in the ninth and certainly some of them 26:50.638 --> 26:53.028 were alive in the time of Homer in the eighth. 26:53.029 --> 26:58.459 So that what we have before us, is that kind of product and 26:58.457 --> 27:02.757 that will explain both the similarities and the 27:02.762 --> 27:06.592 differences, and that is what underlies our 27:06.591 --> 27:11.101 interpretation of how the poems got to be what they were. 27:11.099 --> 27:16.859 So, what is this world like that emerges from the world of 27:16.855 --> 27:19.465 Homer? We don't have to make up our 27:19.473 --> 27:23.403 minds in advance whether it was a real world or a completely 27:23.398 --> 27:26.508 fantastic one, but at least let's see if we 27:26.510 --> 27:29.270 can describe what world it looks like. 27:29.269 --> 27:34.939 And I'm going to focus my attention on what you might call 27:34.943 --> 27:40.623 the political side of that society as it reveals itself in 27:40.616 --> 27:45.356 the poems. We hear about key individuals, 27:45.357 --> 27:50.487 and the last time I mentioned to you two words, 27:50.490 --> 27:55.070 I think I did, but I'll mention them again 27:55.066 --> 27:59.226 this time. The head of the expedition to 27:59.226 --> 28:01.536 Troy, Agamemnon, the sort of 28:01.541 --> 28:05.661 generalissimo of that expedition is called 28:05.656 --> 28:10.406 wanax. When you drop the "w" as later 28:10.406 --> 28:15.106 Greek dialects did, it becomes anax. 28:15.109 --> 28:19.939 He, so far as I know, and I think I'm not forgetting, 28:19.935 --> 28:25.315 he is the only human being referred to in the poems in that 28:25.317 --> 28:27.847 way. There are, however, 28:27.849 --> 28:32.839 many an individual in the poem who is referred to as a 28:32.840 --> 28:37.580 basileus, the plural is basileis, 28:37.575 --> 28:42.675 which is normally and regularly translated as king, 28:42.680 --> 28:44.720 and that's right. For instance, 28:44.715 --> 28:48.655 in historical times when the Greeks referred to the great 28:48.661 --> 28:51.661 King of Persia, who was a real king and a 28:51.664 --> 28:54.304 powerful figure, a king in every sense, 28:54.300 --> 28:57.770 the word they used for him was basileus. 28:57.769 --> 29:02.229 But we quickly see that the people referred to as 29:02.234 --> 29:08.284 basileus in Homer are not like the great King of Persia. 29:08.280 --> 29:16.670 They are much lesser figures. I'll come back to that in just 29:16.670 --> 29:19.020 a moment. The Mycenaean kings we 29:19.021 --> 29:22.881 know, thanks to the Linear B tablets, were referred to, 29:22.880 --> 29:26.250 the singular once again is wanax, 29:26.249 --> 29:29.359 and the plural is wanaktes. 29:29.359 --> 29:34.229 But in Homer the term is reserved for Agamemnon or for 29:34.230 --> 29:38.090 gods, but not for any other human being. 29:38.089 --> 29:43.949 And that raises the question, why is Agamemnon wanax? 29:43.950 --> 29:47.770 And that, I think, we have to understand as being 29:47.768 --> 29:51.188 because of his function in the situation, 29:51.190 --> 29:56.780 namely there is a multi-city invasion of Troy being carried 29:56.781 --> 30:02.081 on by these Mycenaean Greeks. Agamemnon has been chosen as 30:02.077 --> 30:06.277 the generalissimo and that is what gives him, 30:06.279 --> 30:09.739 temporarily, the title of wanax. 30:09.740 --> 30:13.990 I would imagine and I'm very confident that after the war of 30:13.994 --> 30:18.184 Troy, if Agamemnon had been allowed by his wife to live for 30:18.176 --> 30:22.066 more than a few minutes after he set foot at home, 30:22.069 --> 30:25.129 he would no longer be called wanax, 30:25.128 --> 30:28.778 but would be called basileus like the other 30:28.783 --> 30:33.423 rulers of their local towns. You remember I suggested that 30:33.424 --> 30:37.624 in the Linear B tablets when there was a reference to a 30:37.622 --> 30:41.232 basileus, he's clearly well below the 30:41.229 --> 30:46.039 wanax and some scholars suggest, in a persuasive way, 30:46.039 --> 30:49.609 I think, that these basileus may have been 30:49.611 --> 30:53.481 village chieftains but that's as high as they got. 30:53.480 --> 30:58.100 But it's very interesting that when you get to historical 30:58.096 --> 31:02.186 Greece, as we shall see, there are no wanaktes 31:02.185 --> 31:04.615 but there are, at least according to 31:04.616 --> 31:07.716 tradition, basileis. 31:07.720 --> 31:13.830 But no basileus has anything like the clout that the 31:13.831 --> 31:17.781 Mycenaean kings did, and of course we don't hear of 31:17.782 --> 31:20.882 any of them who have even the temporary special power that 31:20.884 --> 31:24.304 Agamemnon has. No human being is referred to 31:24.301 --> 31:28.771 as wanax in the period of historical Greece. 31:28.769 --> 31:32.859 And of course, the kings when we see them in 31:32.861 --> 31:37.651 Homer do not have a bureaucracy, do not have scribes. 31:37.650 --> 31:40.700 How could there be scribes? They didn't know how to write. 31:40.700 --> 31:44.880 There are no inventories. These are not rich guys with 31:44.875 --> 31:49.865 fantastic quantities of stuff that has to be cataloged and 31:49.874 --> 31:53.594 inventoried. The kings, by our standards for 31:53.592 --> 31:58.172 kings, are really very poor. What do they do in their spare 31:58.169 --> 32:00.809 time or in their time in general? 32:00.809 --> 32:03.399 They, themselves, engage in agriculture. 32:03.400 --> 32:06.800 I don't mean they dig in the ground, but they supervise it; 32:06.800 --> 32:11.020 they think about it. They are like people who are in 32:11.021 --> 32:14.611 charge of a plantation, their own plantation, 32:14.613 --> 32:16.703 I mean. So, that's one of their 32:16.698 --> 32:19.318 activities. You cannot imagine the great 32:19.315 --> 32:23.295 kings of Mycenae doing that. They would've had all kinds of 32:23.296 --> 32:26.096 subordinate officials taking care of that. 32:26.099 --> 32:28.899 Another thing that these kings are seen to do, 32:28.901 --> 32:32.701 which is in a way even at a lower level, is to be herdsmen. 32:32.700 --> 32:36.700 Again, not themselves out there with the goats and the sheep, 32:36.700 --> 32:40.630 but they are referred to as having these herds and having to 32:40.633 --> 32:44.193 cope with them. Another very popular, 32:44.193 --> 32:49.063 I would say the most popular activity among the kings, 32:49.055 --> 32:53.195 was piracy. That's what they brag about. 32:53.200 --> 32:55.550 Achilles, my God, what a king he is! 32:55.550 --> 33:00.370 He sacked 24 cities. Why do you sack a city? 33:00.369 --> 33:05.129 To steal what they have and, well, there are all kinds of 33:05.130 --> 33:10.060 wonderful examples of people in the Iliad and the 33:10.059 --> 33:13.209 Odyssey. Some stranger comes, 33:13.205 --> 33:17.395 this is in the Odyssey, and they ask him, 33:17.400 --> 33:20.780 "Sir, are you a pirate?" And he says, 33:20.779 --> 33:24.659 "No, no, I'm not a pirate," just like they asked, 33:24.658 --> 33:27.728 I mean, "Do you come from Chicago?" 33:27.730 --> 33:30.740 He wasn't insulted. "No, I'm not a pirate, 33:30.740 --> 33:32.240 but I could've been, of course. 33:32.240 --> 33:32.660 We understand that." 33:36.059 --> 33:39.889 And then later on in the story that Homer tells in the 33:39.893 --> 33:42.863 Odyssey, Odysseus himself is such a 33:42.859 --> 33:46.069 newcomer. He's taken to the beautiful 33:46.067 --> 33:51.017 city on the island of Scheria, Phaiacia, and is treated with 33:51.022 --> 33:56.232 great respect as you're supposed to in the Mycenaean world. 33:56.230 --> 34:00.390 But after dinner, they do what they do to amuse 34:00.385 --> 34:03.605 themselves. They have athletic contests and 34:03.610 --> 34:05.860 they ask Odysseus to participate. 34:05.859 --> 34:09.489 And he says, "No, no, I'm too miserable and 34:09.493 --> 34:14.603 wretched," and the guy says, "Oh, you must be some kind of a 34:14.598 --> 34:21.398 merchant." And Odysseus says that that was 34:21.396 --> 34:26.356 a black remark. Those are fighting words. 34:26.360 --> 34:29.540 You can't call--we know Odysseus himself is a 34:29.541 --> 34:33.971 basileus--him a merchant. Pirate, sure, but merchant, no. 34:38.159 --> 34:41.839 Another thing that is interesting is that when you 34:41.842 --> 34:46.082 look at the burials of Greeks in the post-Mycenaean period, 34:46.079 --> 34:49.779 in the Dark Ages, there's nothing resembling 34:49.778 --> 34:55.028 those grand tombs and the wealth that's buried in them for the 34:55.025 --> 34:58.015 dead. You find that the tombs of 34:58.023 --> 35:02.303 noblemen are very much the same one as the other. 35:02.300 --> 35:08.140 You're struck by the equality from the standpoint of riches of 35:08.143 --> 35:12.453 the dead nobility. No great distinction and no 35:12.450 --> 35:16.520 great riches either. You're dealing with a poorer 35:16.521 --> 35:21.181 world and a world that doesn't have this kind of outstanding 35:21.182 --> 35:25.132 monarchy. So, one of the things I think 35:25.126 --> 35:30.186 we learn is that the Homeric world of the kings, 35:30.190 --> 35:32.860 the role of the kings, the wealth of the kings, 35:32.864 --> 35:35.894 the power of the kings, the place of the kings is not 35:35.887 --> 35:40.197 taken from the Mycenaean period. If it's describing anything 35:40.199 --> 35:44.889 that's real, it's describing very clearly a post-Mycenaean 35:44.886 --> 35:49.816 world in those Dark Ages that we have been talking about. 35:49.820 --> 35:54.170 But another thing that crops up is that in the 35:54.165 --> 35:57.085 Iliad and the Odyssey, 35:57.090 --> 36:02.560 you get a very clear picture, really of what is the political 36:02.558 --> 36:05.958 structure of each society. And by the way, 36:05.956 --> 36:09.106 you must keep in mind a very important difference between 36:09.114 --> 36:11.544 the Iliad and the Odyssey; 36:11.539 --> 36:14.049 the Iliad takes place at Troy. 36:14.050 --> 36:17.290 None of these noblemen, none of these kings, 36:17.293 --> 36:21.973 none of these heroes is back home in his own town ruling it. 36:21.969 --> 36:25.199 He is at war and he is serving under a commander, 36:25.200 --> 36:29.040 and so the behavior of these people towards one another is 36:29.037 --> 36:31.727 not precisely like what it would be. 36:31.730 --> 36:34.890 And here you see in the Odyssey is what it would 36:34.892 --> 36:38.292 likely be, and the place where you see it is back in Ithaca 36:38.289 --> 36:41.859 when Odysseus is there or when we're taken to see what's going 36:41.862 --> 36:44.492 on. I think that's a very important 36:44.485 --> 36:47.795 distinction to make, but even when they're at Troy 36:47.797 --> 36:50.837 and in this sort of non-typical situation, 36:50.840 --> 36:54.100 we still see the same institutions working, 36:54.095 --> 36:58.585 the same relationships being present as would be present at 36:58.592 --> 37:01.012 home, although you have to watch out 37:01.012 --> 37:03.932 for the difference. What do I mean? 37:03.930 --> 37:09.320 How are decisions made? Does the king simply say, 37:09.315 --> 37:13.615 "Do it," and it gets done? Nothing like that. 37:13.619 --> 37:17.839 The king has got important powers. 37:17.840 --> 37:21.030 Agamemnon as the chief out there in the Iliad, 37:21.027 --> 37:23.477 he can call a meeting of the assembly, 37:26.840 --> 37:30.130 I should say of the council, but he's not the only one who 37:30.133 --> 37:32.503 can. Any nobleman who wants to can 37:32.498 --> 37:36.328 say, "We ought to have a council," and then that council 37:36.325 --> 37:40.145 will come together and do whatever business they wish to 37:40.153 --> 37:42.253 do. The council, 37:42.254 --> 37:46.124 however, is limited to noblemen, to these 37:46.115 --> 37:49.885 basileis. Ordinary soldiers do not 37:49.885 --> 37:54.475 attend, and that's one of the things I think we must grasp 37:54.480 --> 37:59.550 immediately. The key line in the society of 37:59.550 --> 38:06.890 the Dark Ages appears to be certainly not between monarchy 38:06.885 --> 38:12.415 and everybody else, but between nobility and 38:12.419 --> 38:17.199 commoners. That's the really important, 38:17.202 --> 38:22.812 serious line--certainly politically and in other ways as 38:22.805 --> 38:25.445 well. There is, however, 38:25.445 --> 38:30.105 in Homer, an assembly that consists of the men, 38:30.110 --> 38:36.600 in the case of Troy of course the fighting men who are there, 38:36.600 --> 38:41.650 but who are not basileus. But also in the home, 38:41.646 --> 38:46.276 at home, the men of fighting age and condition. 38:46.280 --> 38:48.410 They are the only ones who matter. 38:48.409 --> 38:51.979 Of course, as in all of the rest of Greek history, 38:51.979 --> 38:55.109 women are excluded from the political realm, 38:55.111 --> 38:58.101 and of course, well, I'll just leave it at 38:58.098 --> 39:00.408 that. But so, too, 39:00.413 --> 39:06.523 there's obviously an age limit. You have to be of an age to be 39:06.523 --> 39:09.333 a fighting man. It's not necessarily defined 39:09.325 --> 39:11.965 for us. It depends, could have been 18, 39:11.973 --> 39:15.363 could have been 20. In Athens, in classical times 39:15.356 --> 39:16.106 it was 20. 39:19.750 --> 39:24.520 Well, let me just remind you of some events that show you 39:24.521 --> 39:28.311 how these things work. Remember, the Iliad 39:28.312 --> 39:32.582 starts because of a quarrel and the quarrel emerges from the 39:32.583 --> 39:36.713 fact that the Greeks are busily being killed by a terrible 39:36.710 --> 39:40.190 plague that has struck them. They say, "We got to find out 39:40.193 --> 39:42.623 what's happening?" They always assume that if 39:42.621 --> 39:46.571 something like that happened, it was some god or gods who was 39:46.569 --> 39:50.439 angry with them. So, they get a seer who goes 39:50.435 --> 39:55.475 and is persuaded to try to find out what's happening. 39:55.480 --> 40:02.070 And he finally does ascertain that Apollo is angry with the 40:02.071 --> 40:08.551 Greeks because Agamemnon took a maiden from her father, 40:08.550 --> 40:13.030 and that father was a priest of Apollo. 40:13.030 --> 40:17.610 And so when this is ascertained, Achilles, 40:17.608 --> 40:21.068 the biggest, bravest, strongest, 40:21.071 --> 40:26.381 fastest hero on the Greek side, intervenes and says, 40:26.381 --> 40:29.111 "Well, look, why don't you give back the 40:29.114 --> 40:33.324 girl and then Apollo will stop killing us and everything will 40:33.318 --> 40:36.378 be okay?" Agamemnon gets furious with 40:36.375 --> 40:40.065 Achilles and he says, "No, I'm not giving back my 40:40.065 --> 40:43.925 girl. I'm the boss here," as Edward 40:43.934 --> 40:46.744 G. Robinson used to say. 40:46.739 --> 40:48.559 How many of you ever heard of Edward G. 40:48.562 --> 40:50.802 Robinson? Just raise your hand, please. 40:50.800 --> 40:53.420 Good, put me in my place. It gets worse every year for me. 40:57.289 --> 41:02.629 And Achilles then speaks up and really lets him have it, 41:02.630 --> 41:06.430 chews him out, tells him what a bozo he is, 41:06.432 --> 41:10.142 and, you know, the very important thing is 41:10.144 --> 41:12.524 this. How can you do that if this is 41:12.521 --> 41:14.341 a king? And the answer is: 41:14.341 --> 41:17.811 you can do that because you're both kings. 41:17.809 --> 41:24.019 There is nothing out of line in the sense of violating some kind 41:24.017 --> 41:28.887 of a real rule of the society, but it's not typical, 41:28.893 --> 41:33.983 and especially since Agamemnon has this position as the boss, 41:33.980 --> 41:37.540 the most kingly of the kings. That's a word that Homer uses 41:37.537 --> 41:40.887 of him, basileutatos, the most kingly, 41:40.887 --> 41:43.777 and that's because of his position. 41:43.780 --> 41:47.310 So, Achilles is not doing anything sort of illegal or 41:47.306 --> 41:50.556 unconstitutional, but he's doing something that's 41:50.561 --> 41:54.021 really out of line from a normal point of view. 41:54.019 --> 41:55.879 And finally Agamemnon says, "No, I'm not going to give back 41:55.879 --> 41:56.969 my girl, but I'll tell you what, 42:00.519 --> 42:07.009 I will give back my girl if I am given the girl you took from 42:07.008 --> 42:10.298 a different Trojan, and that'll be fine. 42:10.300 --> 42:13.830 I'll have your girl and you won't have any." 42:13.829 --> 42:18.439 So now, Achilles really blows his top and from the quarrel, 42:18.435 --> 42:22.265 and finally when he says, "Okay, if that's what you're 42:22.269 --> 42:24.979 going to do to me, I'm taking my armor and I'm 42:24.984 --> 42:27.264 going home." And off he goes, 42:27.264 --> 42:31.394 and he sulks in his tent for the next nine books, 42:31.386 --> 42:36.106 and this turns out to be a serious problem for them. 42:36.110 --> 42:40.540 But, what you learn from that is that the way decisions 42:40.544 --> 42:43.684 are made, important decisions are made, 42:43.679 --> 42:47.729 even in this army, is by discussion among the 42:47.725 --> 42:51.215 basileis, among the noblemen, 42:51.219 --> 42:55.459 and you will try to reach a consensus about these things, 42:55.459 --> 42:58.789 and in an extreme odd situation like this, 42:58.789 --> 43:01.119 it would have to be that they would have to do what the 43:01.124 --> 43:04.114 commander says. And probably back home there 43:04.105 --> 43:09.155 would be the implication that if you can't work things out among 43:09.158 --> 43:12.848 them with consensus, probably the king has some 43:12.847 --> 43:15.687 weight. But what we have to remember is 43:15.690 --> 43:19.330 he can't give orders to anybody typically, although Agamemnon 43:19.331 --> 43:21.941 can get away with it on this expedition. 43:21.940 --> 43:24.770 Well, that's one story. Another story that we're 43:24.772 --> 43:28.022 told is that soon afterwards also in that same place in 43:28.018 --> 43:30.608 the Iliad, a dream comes to Agamemnon, 43:30.614 --> 43:32.944 because, you know, this is their tenth year. 43:32.940 --> 43:35.290 They've been trying to take this city for nine years. 43:35.289 --> 43:41.179 It's almost as bad as Iraq and the soldiers are tired of all of 43:41.184 --> 43:43.814 this. If we can't take the city, 43:43.811 --> 43:48.261 we ought to go home and there's a lot of spirit that says we 43:48.261 --> 43:53.211 ought to go home. And so a dream comes to 43:53.213 --> 43:56.023 Agamemnon. The god says to him, 43:56.019 --> 44:00.469 "Here's what you need to do. You need to try the spirit of 44:00.474 --> 44:06.124 your men, and in that way to inspirit them to carry on until 44:06.117 --> 44:09.387 victory. So, what you should do is to 44:09.389 --> 44:13.589 get up and speak to your soldiers, and say that you're 44:13.590 --> 44:17.530 never going to take Troy. You might as well pack up and 44:17.529 --> 44:20.139 go home, and then they'll say, 'No, king, no, 44:20.137 --> 44:23.177 we receive to do that. We insist on staying. 44:23.179 --> 44:25.829 We're going to re-up and do another term, 44:25.834 --> 44:28.294 and we're going to take the city.'" 44:28.289 --> 44:30.939 So, Agamemnon says, "Great, I'll do that," and he 44:30.942 --> 44:34.202 calls the troops together to battle, and he makes his little 44:34.202 --> 44:36.432 speech. I wish I could reproduce the 44:36.434 --> 44:39.484 Homer. I didn't take it along with me, 44:39.482 --> 44:44.432 but the essence of it is a great roar and rumble emerged as 44:44.425 --> 44:49.365 the troops turned and began racing back to the ships to get 44:49.368 --> 44:53.388 the hell out of there. Just to carry on some of 44:53.390 --> 44:56.090 the highlights, that tells us a lot about the 44:56.094 --> 44:59.004 society. So, as they're roaring back, 44:59.002 --> 45:02.512 suddenly Odysseus, the slyest, the cleverest, 45:02.510 --> 45:05.460 the smartest of all of the Greeks, 45:05.460 --> 45:09.200 he goes racing among the troops who are heading back and he 45:09.199 --> 45:12.809 grabs one, and Homer says when he came to a gentleman, 45:12.809 --> 45:14.449 a basileus, he would say, 45:14.452 --> 45:17.692 "Sir, you are making a mistake. You don't understand the game 45:17.685 --> 45:20.395 that Agamemnon is playing," and he explains it to him, 45:20.400 --> 45:22.040 and the guy says, "Oh, okay." 45:22.039 --> 45:24.879 When he comes to one of the common sort, he says, 45:24.881 --> 45:27.901 "You bloody imbecile, get the hell back to where you 45:27.899 --> 45:31.259 belong." That's a rough translation and 45:31.262 --> 45:36.302 everybody finally grabs enough of them and the thing turns 45:36.301 --> 45:40.281 around, everybody goes back and sits down. 45:40.280 --> 45:45.630 And up steps one man. 45:48.809 --> 45:53.499 Homer describes him as the ugliest man in the entire army. 45:53.500 --> 45:57.060 So you get a clue as to what we're supposed to think about 45:57.056 --> 46:00.296 him, and he makes a speech which denounces all of the 46:00.301 --> 46:05.261 basileus, Agamemnon ahead of any of them. 46:05.260 --> 46:08.720 He says, "We ordinary soldiers have had enough and we would 46:08.724 --> 46:12.634 like to go home." And up steps Odysseus and 46:12.631 --> 46:19.061 blasts him with his scepter, smashes him across the back, 46:19.059 --> 46:23.259 leaving a welt that could be seen by the entire army, 46:23.264 --> 46:26.584 and tears came to the eyes of this guy. 46:26.579 --> 46:29.079 Are we supposed to feel sorry for him? 46:29.079 --> 46:32.929 Well, the next lines in Homer say that one soldier popped up 46:32.929 --> 46:36.709 and said, "Of all the great things Odysseus has done for us 46:36.712 --> 46:39.962 here, that was the greatest, 46:39.962 --> 46:45.532 to shut up a big mouth idiot like Thersites." 46:45.530 --> 46:49.740 Well, what Thersites had done that was wrong, 46:49.743 --> 46:54.823 of course the poet and Odysseus didn't like his policy 46:54.819 --> 46:59.799 suggestion, but he had no right to speak at all. 46:59.800 --> 47:04.550 The only people who could speak in the council or in an assembly 47:04.549 --> 47:07.639 were the noblemen, the basileis. 47:07.639 --> 47:12.409 So, he had crossed the line as an ordinary soldier. 47:12.409 --> 47:16.539 To rise and to say anything was a violation of the culture, 47:16.535 --> 47:20.655 and that's one of the places where you see where this sharp 47:20.661 --> 47:23.851 line exists. They just take orders, 47:23.848 --> 47:27.758 but the gentlemen don't just take orders. 47:27.760 --> 47:31.850 They can argue and sometimes they can win the argument. 47:31.849 --> 47:35.819 So, what you see in this very brief and inadequate account 47:35.822 --> 47:38.612 that I've given you is that we really, 47:38.610 --> 47:42.410 in spite of the fact that we have basileis, 47:42.413 --> 47:45.443 and even in this case an anax, 47:45.440 --> 47:49.500 we really don't have a proper monarchical tradition. 47:49.500 --> 47:53.000 When we think of monarchs, single rulers, 47:53.003 --> 47:57.543 we think of Hammurabi and we think of the kings of Persia, 47:57.541 --> 48:02.311 and we think of Louis XIV. We do not think of what we have 48:02.309 --> 48:06.379 here, which is a bunch of noblemen who are essentially 48:06.379 --> 48:08.789 equal, and the differences between 48:08.785 --> 48:12.085 them don't come from birth or rank as between them, 48:12.090 --> 48:16.610 but from wealth and power that they happen to possess. 48:16.610 --> 48:20.270 It is, rather, not a royal society but an 48:20.267 --> 48:25.367 aristocratic society. I think that's the main message 48:25.372 --> 48:30.512 and it is the matrix of all future political ideas and 48:30.505 --> 48:36.215 arguments in the Greek world that comes after this time. 48:36.219 --> 48:41.529 I think you need to understand that what the Greeks in the 48:41.533 --> 48:47.223 historical period--once we start having written records by the 48:47.219 --> 48:51.579 Greeks themselves, the thing that is the standard 48:51.579 --> 48:56.349 position--what is this thing on the computer when you fall back 48:56.351 --> 48:58.291 to a position? What do you call that position? 49:06.550 --> 49:09.680 What is it? Default, that's right. 49:09.679 --> 49:15.509 Good, the default position in Greek political theory is 49:15.508 --> 49:19.578 aristocracy; that is the normal thing. 49:25.150 --> 49:28.960 A very good example of that is what I've been telling you; 49:28.960 --> 49:32.100 that's really what happens. And here's another thing, 49:32.098 --> 49:35.298 if you go to the end of the Greek story, when you think 49:35.299 --> 49:37.889 about political theory, there's Plato, 49:37.886 --> 49:41.626 and when he lays out the ideal society in his view, 49:41.625 --> 49:48.155 in the Republic, we find there are multiple 49:48.158 --> 49:51.288 rulers. And these, of course, 49:51.290 --> 49:56.290 turn out to be the winners of the Jeopardy contest playoffs. 49:56.290 --> 50:00.000 But it doesn't matter. There's never one king. 50:00.000 --> 50:04.340 It's always a group of people that is the best government, 50:04.338 --> 50:08.878 and they will be the best. In this case defined chiefly by 50:08.882 --> 50:12.152 their intelligence, but other things too. 50:12.150 --> 50:17.500 Well, anyway in this case, in Greek political thinking the 50:17.499 --> 50:21.909 aristocracy of birth is the default position. 50:21.909 --> 50:25.829 Anybody who wants to argue for a different kind of political 50:25.825 --> 50:29.535 arrangement will have to make the case uphill against all 50:29.541 --> 50:31.881 tradition. I hope that you'll have that in 50:31.875 --> 50:34.545 the back of your head when we get to the story of Athens and 50:34.550 --> 50:37.950 the invention of democracy, because it was off the wall 50:37.950 --> 50:41.050 from the perspective of Greek tradition. 50:41.050 --> 50:43.110 And of course, anybody from time to time, 50:43.109 --> 50:45.779 there are individuals who thought that monarchy might be a 50:45.777 --> 50:50.567 fine thing. They ran against something that 50:50.569 --> 50:57.559 was regarded with much more hostility by the Greeks. 50:57.559 --> 51:01.529 When they're through and had reached their peak, 51:01.525 --> 51:06.245 their notion of monarchy is something fit for barbarians, 51:06.249 --> 51:10.869 but not for Greeks. A free man may not live under a 51:10.872 --> 51:16.412 monarchy, and the roots of that, I think, are visible in Homer. 51:16.409 --> 51:20.899 In passing, I just want to say that Homer, of course, 51:20.898 --> 51:24.698 is the basic text, the basic document for all 51:24.695 --> 51:29.785 Greek thinking in every area that you can imagine throughout 51:29.788 --> 51:34.618 the rest of Greek history. Over time, it becomes not the 51:34.623 --> 51:38.203 only one, but it never ceases to be the best known, 51:38.199 --> 51:41.559 the most influential, and the most powerful. 51:41.559 --> 51:46.809 If it were a religious document primarily we would speak of it 51:46.808 --> 51:49.818 as the Greek Bible, but it isn't. 51:49.820 --> 51:53.690 Well, some examples, later on in history there's a 51:53.685 --> 51:58.015 quarrel between Athens and Megara as to who controls the 51:58.024 --> 52:01.904 island of Salamis. They decide to call in an 52:01.901 --> 52:04.841 arbitrator. So, they call in the Spartans, 52:04.835 --> 52:08.065 and the Spartans say, "Okay, we'll decide," and they 52:08.073 --> 52:10.363 decide that it belongs to Athens. 52:10.360 --> 52:12.680 Why? Well, if you look at the 52:12.679 --> 52:14.909 catalog of ships in Homer's Iliad, 52:14.912 --> 52:17.982 the island of Salamis had its ships lined up next to the 52:17.982 --> 52:19.672 island of Athens. Ballgame. 52:24.199 --> 52:27.559 You have to realize how potent this is. 52:27.559 --> 52:33.409 Well, let me turn to another aspect of the story of 52:33.406 --> 52:38.816 Homer and how the poems play into Greek society. 52:38.820 --> 52:43.130 I want to talk to you about the ethics and values that emerge 52:43.129 --> 52:46.429 from the reading of the Iliad and the 52:46.434 --> 52:50.464 Odyssey. I mentioned religion and so we should take a 52:50.456 --> 52:54.316 look first at the gods. We are talking, 52:54.320 --> 52:58.240 first of all, and remember about a 52:58.239 --> 53:02.629 multi-deity society. Polytheism is what we're 53:02.625 --> 53:06.485 talking about. That is true of all of human 53:06.488 --> 53:12.248 societies that we know anything about down to the earliest 53:12.246 --> 53:15.576 possible exception, I suppose; 53:15.579 --> 53:17.319 well, it depends what you think is earliest. 53:17.320 --> 53:19.770 You could say the Hebrews are the earliest, 53:19.773 --> 53:22.403 pure and simple, but depending on how you date 53:22.401 --> 53:26.601 biblical things, there's an outside chance that 53:26.603 --> 53:31.763 an Egyptian pharaoh in the sixteenth century B.C., 53:31.760 --> 53:35.720 I think, might have claim to have some such state. 53:35.719 --> 53:38.509 But otherwise, there is no such thing. 53:38.510 --> 53:42.570 So, this is a polytheistic society with heroic 53:42.567 --> 53:46.407 characteristics. That is, this kind of 53:46.410 --> 53:50.740 aristocratic outfit, aristocracy of birth, 53:50.744 --> 53:57.304 which is legitimized by heroic behavior on the battlefield. 53:57.300 --> 54:00.110 Now, one of the things the Greeks believed, 54:00.105 --> 54:03.455 as we discover from a poem written by one of their major 54:03.460 --> 54:07.330 poets, is something so far as I know 54:07.328 --> 54:12.838 unique to the Greeks. They claimed that they were of 54:12.838 --> 54:18.098 the same race as the gods, and I really don't know of 54:18.104 --> 54:21.754 anybody else who made that claim. 54:21.750 --> 54:26.450 And so you will hear Homeric characters referred to by 54:26.446 --> 54:29.986 epithets, Homer, part of the technique of 54:29.991 --> 54:35.221 passing on oral poetry is by having epithets attached to the 54:35.219 --> 54:40.929 rulers to help with the meter. Some hero will be called 54:40.925 --> 54:46.475 dios, meaning godly, god-like, diotrephes, 54:46.480 --> 54:50.630 reared as a god, isothesos, 54:50.633 --> 54:55.993 equal unto a god, and there are others as well. 54:55.989 --> 55:00.529 Now, mind you, notice these are not people 55:00.527 --> 55:05.287 referred to as god-fearing or lovers of god, 55:05.285 --> 55:09.105 no. They are just about equal to 55:09.108 --> 55:12.918 the gods according to these terms. 55:12.920 --> 55:17.750 Now, that on the one hand is this extraordinary claim that 55:17.753 --> 55:21.303 the Greeks make. They did make amazingly 55:21.301 --> 55:26.131 powerful claims for human beings as opposed to divinity, 55:26.134 --> 55:30.884 compared to any society that I know anything about. 55:30.880 --> 55:35.380 This is part of the arrogance that is characteristic of the 55:35.382 --> 55:38.412 Ancient Greeks, but at the same time, 55:38.409 --> 55:42.899 and right away at the beginning we're getting to such a very 55:42.904 --> 55:45.804 Greek thing, a Greek characteristic. 55:45.800 --> 55:50.740 At the same time that he is this great thing almost like a 55:50.741 --> 55:56.031 god, he is also not a god in the most crucial way possible. 55:56.030 --> 56:01.630 Gods do not die. Men die. 56:01.630 --> 56:07.180 The mortality of the human being is a reality and it's of 56:07.181 --> 56:11.161 the greatest significance and importance, 56:11.159 --> 56:15.919 and of course men are not as strong and as powerful as the 56:15.915 --> 56:18.385 gods. And indeed, as we shall see, 56:18.393 --> 56:22.253 well, the tragic view of life, which the Greeks invent and 56:22.247 --> 56:24.747 which characterizes their culture, 56:24.750 --> 56:29.320 is there right at the beginning in the Iliad and the 56:29.317 --> 56:33.287 Odyssey. It says that at the same time as man is a 56:33.286 --> 56:37.226 remarkable, marvelous creature capable of 56:37.225 --> 56:42.945 all sorts of amazing things, even unto being almost like the 56:42.953 --> 56:46.313 gods, he is nonetheless mortal and 56:46.308 --> 56:51.278 dies, and he doesn't have the power that the gods do. 56:51.280 --> 56:54.090 And what do you do about that? 56:54.090 --> 56:57.200 Well, it's interesting, I think, to compare the Greek 56:57.202 --> 57:00.492 way of dealing with this human problem that we all have, 57:00.493 --> 57:04.213 the problem of death. How do we deal with the fact 57:04.211 --> 57:07.711 that we will die? Well, there's what I like to 57:07.706 --> 57:11.906 call the Eastern solution that you find in many an Eastern 57:11.913 --> 57:15.533 religion and philosophy that says that man is, 57:15.530 --> 57:19.840 in fact, nothing. He is dust. 57:19.840 --> 57:23.950 He is dung depending on which story you listen to. 57:23.949 --> 57:26.919 So, of course you're going to die. 57:26.920 --> 57:30.520 Who cares? Why should you care? 57:30.520 --> 57:33.170 You were nothing to begin with; you'll be nothing when you're 57:33.168 --> 57:36.038 finished. Relax. 57:36.039 --> 57:41.539 Then there is what I would characterize as the Christian 57:41.539 --> 57:44.279 solution. You're worried about dying? 57:44.280 --> 57:49.580 You need not die. If you are a good Christian and 57:49.582 --> 57:53.952 you do all the things that you need to do to be a good 57:53.947 --> 57:59.177 Christian, you will not die. You will have personal 57:59.184 --> 58:02.644 immortality. So that's how you get around 58:02.643 --> 58:04.923 that problem. No need to worry if you're 58:04.919 --> 58:07.239 doing things right. Well, somehow Christians 58:07.236 --> 58:10.606 continued to worry and we have a millennium of them killing each 58:10.613 --> 58:13.993 other about how you're supposed to worry about these things. 58:13.989 --> 58:18.589 But if you can accept the purity of the statement I just 58:18.592 --> 58:23.532 made, it is at the root of the thing you have a solution. 58:23.530 --> 58:28.310 But the Greek tragic view does not take either of these 58:28.310 --> 58:33.090 routes, which I regard as a relatively easy escape from the 58:33.091 --> 58:37.461 problem compared to the way the Greeks got stuck. 58:37.460 --> 58:41.630 Man is great and they keep saying so. 58:41.630 --> 58:46.430 He is important. He is capable of great things. 58:46.429 --> 58:52.459 He is of the same race as the gods, and at the same time his 58:52.461 --> 58:57.881 life is short and death is final, and death is bad. 58:57.880 --> 59:00.650 I ought to say a word about death, in order to comprehend 59:00.652 --> 59:03.112 what the Greeks thought. You know, different peoples 59:03.112 --> 59:04.722 have had different ideas about them. 59:04.719 --> 59:08.229 Sometimes the notion is that it is just terrible for everybody 59:08.230 --> 59:12.580 with actual pain and suffering, and others have a notion of a 59:12.575 --> 59:17.715 wonderful kind of a heaven in which marvelous things happen to 59:17.719 --> 59:19.449 you, sometimes spiritual, 59:19.446 --> 59:22.056 sometimes physical depending on the religion. 59:25.369 --> 59:29.869 But for the Greeks, as I think for quite a few 59:29.869 --> 59:35.669 other people in the ancient world, death was nothing in the 59:35.670 --> 59:41.020 worst sense of the word. You just went somewhere and 59:41.023 --> 59:44.553 there was nothing. There was darkness. 59:44.550 --> 59:49.850 There was nothing at all. Some few people who had 59:49.846 --> 59:53.736 sinned terribly and earned the wrath of the gods would, 59:53.739 --> 59:59.039 indeed, be tortured in some special and typically Greek, 59:59.036 --> 1:00:03.406 interesting way. You remember Tantalus. 1:00:03.409 --> 1:00:07.989 He had done a terrible thing and there he stood forever with 1:00:07.990 --> 1:00:13.230 his feet in the water below, and above him a tree with 1:00:13.234 --> 1:00:18.134 grapes hanging down, and dying of thirst. 1:00:18.130 --> 1:00:22.320 And every time he went down to try to sip some of the water, 1:00:22.315 --> 1:00:25.645 the water receded, and anytime he reached up for 1:00:25.648 --> 1:00:28.768 the grapes, the grapes were pulled back. 1:00:28.769 --> 1:00:34.609 That is a Greek idea of hell, where you got to keep trying 1:00:34.614 --> 1:00:40.774 and you always lose. So, that's the picture and you 1:00:40.765 --> 1:00:46.345 have to realize that death is a bad thing. 1:00:46.349 --> 1:00:51.979 In the Odyssey, Odysseus has reason to go down 1:00:51.983 --> 1:00:58.593 to Hades, and while he's down there he comes upon Achilles who 1:00:58.591 --> 1:01:00.631 has died. And he says, 1:01:00.625 --> 1:01:02.655 "Well, it's good to see you, Achilles. 1:01:02.660 --> 1:01:05.980 Say, you look fine. You must really be doing okay 1:01:05.976 --> 1:01:08.766 down here. I know that you are a judge 1:01:08.768 --> 1:01:13.158 down here and much respected. So, looks like you've beaten 1:01:13.157 --> 1:01:15.657 the rap." And Achilles says, 1:01:15.659 --> 1:01:21.859 "Odysseus, don't say a word to me about the virtues of death. 1:01:21.860 --> 1:01:29.990 Better to be a serf, the lowest serf on the earth, 1:01:29.985 --> 1:01:37.335 than to be a king in Hades." Now, that's as bad as it can 1:01:37.343 --> 1:01:39.783 possibly be. The great Achilles, 1:01:39.780 --> 1:01:43.280 respected still in the afterworld would immediately 1:01:43.280 --> 1:01:46.570 turn it in to be a complete nobody on earth. 1:01:46.570 --> 1:01:51.440 So, it's very important. They faced without any real 1:01:51.441 --> 1:01:57.631 retreat the reality and the negative character of death, 1:01:57.630 --> 1:02:02.820 even as they refused to reject the significance of life or of 1:02:02.824 --> 1:02:05.344 mankind. That is what I mean when I 1:02:05.337 --> 1:02:08.567 speak of the tragic view, and it's very important. 1:02:08.570 --> 1:02:13.310 Now, it seems to me we can eliminate that a little bit by 1:02:13.312 --> 1:02:18.292 comparing it with various modern approaches to the same sorts of 1:02:18.292 --> 1:02:21.722 problems. We haven't gotten rid of those 1:02:21.719 --> 1:02:25.159 problems yet, in spite of modern medicine. 1:02:25.159 --> 1:02:29.099 We live, still, I think in what might be called 1:02:29.096 --> 1:02:34.016 the Age of the Enlightenment. That is the dominant sort of 1:02:34.018 --> 1:02:38.718 paradigm of what life is all about, at least in the Western 1:02:38.717 --> 1:02:43.327 world and a good deal more of it where the West has had an 1:02:43.334 --> 1:02:46.764 influence. At the core of it is a belief 1:02:46.763 --> 1:02:51.343 in progress, something that was essentially not present among 1:02:51.341 --> 1:02:52.411 the Greeks. 1:02:55.449 --> 1:02:58.969 Progress in the eyes of the philosophers of the eighteenth 1:02:58.973 --> 1:03:02.743 century, though they would have been very angry to hear me say 1:03:02.743 --> 1:03:04.773 this, was something like the 1:03:04.769 --> 1:03:08.109 equivalent of the Christian hope for immortality. 1:03:08.110 --> 1:03:11.720 The hope of the Voltaires of this world was that they could 1:03:11.716 --> 1:03:14.946 make the world better constantly by their efforts, 1:03:14.949 --> 1:03:18.909 and this would be rewarded in a kind of a way, 1:03:18.911 --> 1:03:23.841 because progress in the future after they were gone would 1:03:23.840 --> 1:03:28.770 redound to their credit for having brought it about. 1:03:28.769 --> 1:03:33.589 And that in some sense they would live on in this society 1:03:33.593 --> 1:03:37.903 which they had improved and made a better thing. 1:03:37.900 --> 1:03:42.750 Another aspect that is very important in this sort of 1:03:42.751 --> 1:03:46.391 enlightenment approach is individualism, 1:03:46.389 --> 1:03:52.959 that the core of everything is the single individual person. 1:03:52.960 --> 1:03:56.280 As we shall see, this is very different from the 1:03:56.275 --> 1:03:59.445 Greeks. Now, the Greeks were very much 1:03:59.451 --> 1:04:04.111 concerned individuals and this is especially true of the 1:04:04.111 --> 1:04:08.741 democrats in Athens. But even their most potent 1:04:08.738 --> 1:04:14.608 spokesman and leader placed the goals, and achievements, 1:04:14.610 --> 1:04:18.820 and everything else of an individual behind something that 1:04:18.819 --> 1:04:23.589 they thought was more important, which was the community at 1:04:23.593 --> 1:04:27.083 large, which, in historical times was the 1:04:27.076 --> 1:04:30.616 polis. Well, that's not the way it is 1:04:30.618 --> 1:04:35.128 with the modern world and that's not the way it comes out of the 1:04:35.130 --> 1:04:38.640 enlightenment, the individual is the ultimate. 1:04:38.639 --> 1:04:42.309 The enlightenment, if you go back to its routes in 1:04:42.311 --> 1:04:47.031 the seventeenth century with the likes of Hobbes and Locke--what 1:04:47.032 --> 1:04:53.972 is the ultimate place you go to? It is the rights of individuals. 1:04:53.969 --> 1:04:58.289 You may not stamp out the rights of individuals. 1:04:58.290 --> 1:05:03.210 They are inherent in everything. Either you believe, 1:05:03.214 --> 1:05:09.054 as our founding father said that we were endowed with them 1:05:09.047 --> 1:05:12.267 by our creator. They didn't say God because, 1:05:12.268 --> 1:05:15.118 of course, the Enlightenment thinkers were not so sure they 1:05:15.124 --> 1:05:17.834 believed in God, but they still seemed to 1:05:17.825 --> 1:05:21.645 believe in something they wanted to call a creator. 1:05:21.650 --> 1:05:25.590 Or if you didn't believe in God, this was just a natural 1:05:25.587 --> 1:05:29.407 right. Nature gave each individual the 1:05:29.412 --> 1:05:32.772 right to life, liberty, property, 1:05:32.769 --> 1:05:37.909 and nobody could take these away legitimately. 1:05:37.909 --> 1:05:42.649 Well, the Greeks had no concept of natural rights, 1:05:42.645 --> 1:05:47.645 or of rights that human beings were given by the gods. 1:05:47.650 --> 1:05:52.070 That is a very important difference that was, 1:05:52.069 --> 1:05:57.699 you had to act in such a way as to make life possible and 1:05:57.695 --> 1:06:01.065 decent, and for the Greeks that always 1:06:01.067 --> 1:06:05.447 meant being part of a decent community, the polis. 1:06:05.449 --> 1:06:07.869 But the modern world, to get back to that, 1:06:07.869 --> 1:06:11.289 to this Enlightenment world, individualism and a key aspect 1:06:11.293 --> 1:06:13.943 to that is hedonism. That is to say, 1:06:13.936 --> 1:06:18.016 it is legitimate and proper to search for pleasure, 1:06:18.023 --> 1:06:22.763 for each individual to attempt to please himself however he 1:06:22.764 --> 1:06:25.724 can. And it turns out that if you 1:06:25.719 --> 1:06:30.479 could take it to our own day, there are no limits pretty much 1:06:30.477 --> 1:06:33.487 to what he can do to gain pleasure. 1:06:33.489 --> 1:06:37.049 I would argue that there is a direct line from the 1:06:37.053 --> 1:06:39.893 Enlightenment philosophy to nihilism, 1:06:39.889 --> 1:06:45.769 that is to say a philosophy that says there are no limits to 1:06:45.769 --> 1:06:50.669 what human beings may do. What turns out to be the 1:06:50.674 --> 1:06:56.304 practical fact is that he who has the power and the will to do 1:06:56.301 --> 1:06:59.901 what he wants will be able to do so, 1:06:59.900 --> 1:07:04.070 and he who has not will be forced to suffer whatever the 1:07:04.073 --> 1:07:07.923 powerful impose on him. And this is seen by the 1:07:07.923 --> 1:07:10.983 original nihilists as a good thing. 1:07:10.980 --> 1:07:13.520 What's his name, Nietzsche, of course, 1:07:13.519 --> 1:07:16.469 said, "Some of us are better than others. 1:07:16.469 --> 1:07:19.079 Some of us are supermen, and it is quite wrong and 1:07:19.083 --> 1:07:22.553 wicked for us to be treated as though we were ordinary fellows, 1:07:22.550 --> 1:07:25.940 and therefore do not tie us down with these ridiculous codes 1:07:25.940 --> 1:07:29.150 of ethics, and morals, and other things which are 1:07:29.152 --> 1:07:33.382 simply the weapons by which the weak hold down the strong." 1:07:33.380 --> 1:07:35.410 This was an interesting idea, but it wasn't new. 1:07:35.409 --> 1:07:40.399 There's a Greek in the fifth century who says the same thing. 1:07:40.400 --> 1:07:44.230 There is no definition of goodness for this modern 1:07:44.230 --> 1:07:47.050 approach, no definition of happiness. 1:07:47.050 --> 1:07:51.100 Each individual decides for himself what is good, 1:07:51.099 --> 1:07:55.319 what is happy. What it really does is to evade 1:07:55.322 --> 1:07:58.752 the question that I'm talking about. 1:07:58.750 --> 1:08:02.360 Is this all okay? If we're all going to die then 1:08:02.357 --> 1:08:05.907 does it really mean that we should just do the best we can 1:08:05.905 --> 1:08:08.515 at anybody's expense while we're alive? 1:08:08.520 --> 1:08:11.890 Is that a satisfactory outcome? Will we indeed be happier, 1:08:11.885 --> 1:08:14.605 better off while we're alive? If we do that, 1:08:14.613 --> 1:08:18.073 the Greeks would have said, "That is stupid and absurd to 1:08:18.066 --> 1:08:21.516 think for ten seconds you'll realize that's no good." 1:08:25.649 --> 1:08:31.519 Now, the Greeks on the other hand had a powerful belief 1:08:31.523 --> 1:08:35.653 in the dominance of chance. They accepted, 1:08:35.648 --> 1:08:40.658 again, what is a very modern idea now, that in fact there is 1:08:40.655 --> 1:08:45.655 no divine force or divine forces who oversee what happens to 1:08:45.662 --> 1:08:48.662 mankind on earth. But, rather, 1:08:48.659 --> 1:08:53.459 things happen simply in a random way according to no 1:08:53.459 --> 1:08:57.599 particular rule and that's the way it is. 1:08:57.600 --> 1:09:03.580 It is not virtue or merit that determine the quality of your 1:09:03.580 --> 1:09:05.530 life. It is chance, 1:09:05.531 --> 1:09:11.071 and there are several places in the Iliad and the 1:09:11.073 --> 1:09:14.993 Odyssey that emphasize that point. 1:09:14.989 --> 1:09:19.159 Well, that leaves the Greeks with something like this 1:09:19.160 --> 1:09:22.160 question. In the light of human 1:09:22.160 --> 1:09:27.970 mortality, the disinterest of the gods, the chanciness of 1:09:27.973 --> 1:09:34.413 life, what can man do to achieve happiness and immortality? 1:09:34.409 --> 1:09:38.789 Because he still doesn't feel happy about his mortality. 1:09:38.789 --> 1:09:43.389 Though he accepts that this is a problem, it's something that 1:09:43.392 --> 1:09:47.442 he still hankers after. It's inevitable that people 1:09:47.441 --> 1:09:51.231 should, and part of the answer is very Homeric. 1:09:51.230 --> 1:09:56.670 It is the heroic ethic. At a certain place, 1:09:56.671 --> 1:10:00.671 I think a couple of places in the Iliad, 1:10:00.670 --> 1:10:05.970 Achilles answers the question, "Why did you come here to fight 1:10:05.972 --> 1:10:09.612 at Troy?" We know the legend says that 1:10:09.606 --> 1:10:14.866 Achilles was told before he came that if he did not go to Troy 1:10:14.872 --> 1:10:19.732 and fight in that war, because his mother was a 1:10:19.733 --> 1:10:26.833 goddess, he had partial divinity in him, he would be immortal. 1:10:26.830 --> 1:10:30.360 He would never die. But, on the other hand, 1:10:30.358 --> 1:10:32.188 he would not be great and famous. 1:10:32.189 --> 1:10:36.529 His memory would not be carried forward into the future. 1:10:36.529 --> 1:10:39.619 If he went to Troy, he would die, 1:10:39.616 --> 1:10:44.816 but his memory as the greatest of the Achaeans would be 1:10:44.824 --> 1:10:48.534 immortal forever. Well, you know the choice he 1:10:48.526 --> 1:10:51.516 took and you know that it turned out to be right. 1:10:51.520 --> 1:10:54.150 We still know about Achilles, don't we? 1:10:54.149 --> 1:10:56.639 And when we're all gone, people will know about 1:10:56.643 --> 1:10:59.633 Achilles. So, we should take the Greeks 1:10:59.628 --> 1:11:03.228 very seriously on that score. Well, anyway, 1:11:03.228 --> 1:11:06.418 sometimes he's asked, "What made you come here in 1:11:06.415 --> 1:11:08.715 spite of that?" and his answer was, 1:11:08.724 --> 1:11:12.074 "Well, when my father sent me here, he told me a number of 1:11:12.066 --> 1:11:16.576 things that I'm supposed to do, but the most important of these 1:11:16.581 --> 1:11:20.731 was the Greek words, aien aristeioi, 1:11:20.730 --> 1:11:27.130 always be the Best. The best doesn't mean morally 1:11:27.131 --> 1:11:30.121 the best in anything like our sense. 1:11:30.119 --> 1:11:33.459 It means the greatest, the strongest, 1:11:33.462 --> 1:11:38.662 the ablest, the most admired. That is what you want to be. 1:11:38.659 --> 1:11:42.269 Well, you can only do that if you are in a contest. 1:11:42.270 --> 1:11:46.600 You can only be the best if somebody is not as good, 1:11:46.604 --> 1:11:50.604 and the Greek word for that kind of a contest is 1:11:50.600 --> 1:11:53.900 agon, and so it's fair to think about 1:11:53.895 --> 1:11:57.455 the Greeks, I think it's very necessary to think about the 1:11:57.455 --> 1:12:00.885 Greeks as having a particular agonal society, 1:12:00.890 --> 1:12:05.590 a society filled with competition, in which if not 1:12:05.590 --> 1:12:11.060 everybody, lots and lots of people are constantly striving 1:12:11.057 --> 1:12:16.057 to be the very best, whatever the definition of best 1:12:16.056 --> 1:12:19.096 is in the context that's relevant. 1:12:19.100 --> 1:12:24.670 Now, I guess I'm out of time. So, I'll pick up the story next 1:12:24.674 --> 1:12:28.384 time with the story about this heroic ethic and the impact that 1:12:28.384 --> 1:12:30.004 it has on Greek society.