AUGUST 29/30: INTRODUCTION: HOMER'S ILIAD : ORAL POETRY, MYTH, LEGEND AND HISTORY
READING: Iliad, pp. 11-27, 37-45 (introduction)
Summary: The opening class will introduce you to the legends of the Trojan War, the characteristics of oral poetry, and the place of Homer’s Iliad in history. Our discussion of the legends of the Trojan War will help you understand and enjoy the plot of the Iliad, and our discussion of oral poetry will explain odd features of the structure and language of the poem. We will end by looking forwards and backwards from Homer’s work along a long historical timeline: what is the history of Homer’s poems and what kind of history do the poems preserve? how was the Iliad was passed down to our own time? how did it lead modern archaeologists to rediscover the earliest period of Greek history?

The stories behind the plot of the Iliad: why the Trojan War took place
     ...Paris, the son of the Trojan king, Priam, was appointed by Zeus to judge which of three goddesses, Hera, Athene or Aphrodite, was the most beautiful.  In this contest, known as the JUDGMENT OF PARIS, each goddess tried to bribe him, and Paris named Aphrodite, the goddess of love, as the most beautiful. In return, she promised him Helen, the most beautiful mortal woman, but there was a slight problem: Helen was the wife of Menelaos, king of Sparta. When Paris visited Menelaos, he left with Helen. After the Trojans refused to return Helen, Menelaos and his older brother, Agamemnon, king of Mykenai and the most powerful king of the Greek clans, organized a huge expedition of Greeks against Troy (Ilion). When the Iliad opens, the Greeks have been besieging Troy for nine years...

LECTURE OUTLINE

1. STORIES, MYTHS AND LEGENDS (Introduction to the Iliad, pp. 11-17, 20-27)
-What is an EPIC?
-What are the PLOTS of the Iliad and the Odyssey and how do they relate to the story of the Trojan War?
-What is the story of the Trojan War?  (Key parts of the "background" to the war include: the prophecies concerning Thetis's son; the WEDDING OF PELEUS AND THETIS; the GOLDEN APPLE, and the Judgment of Paris.)
-How do we know about the story of the Trojan War and other Greek myths and legends?
-What is the relationship of Homer's Iliad and Odyssey and the story of the Trojan War to other Greek myths and legends?
-Should we consider the Greek myths and legends to be part of Greek literature or part of Greek religion?  Would the difference be important to the Greeks?  How is Greek religion different from other religions that are based on sacred scriptures?

2. ORAL POETRY (Introduction to the Iliad, pp. 37-40)
-How was the text of the Iliad passed down from ancient times to our own?
-How are methods of oral composition and oral performance reflected in the ancient Greek text of the Iliad?
-The building blocks of the Greek oral epic are repeated phrases, lines or longer sections.  These are known as HOMERIC FORMULAS.  Here are examples:
     -name + EPITHET (descriptive adjective): swift-footed Achilleus; grey-eyed Athene; bronze-armoured Achaians; bronze-pointed spear
     -lines: "So he spoke in prayer, and Phoibos Apollo heard him." (1.43, 457); "But when they had put away their desire for eating and drinking..." (1.469, 9.92)
     -longer passages: description of a sacrifice and feast (1.458-71, 2.421-32)
-The development and use of Homeric formulas was shaped by several factors:
-the METER of ancient Greek poetry was based on the length of syllables as determined by  the length of their vowels; in this respect, the meter is comparable to the quantity of musical  notes (e.g., whole notes, half notes etc.).  In the original Greek, the meter of Homer's poems was DACTYLIC HEXAMETER , consisting of six feet (parts) in which each foot was either a DACTYL (one long + two short syllables) or a SPONDEE (two long syllables).  The final foot was either a spondee or a trochee (one long + one short syllable). These are examples of the meter of typical lines:

| L  L  | L s s  | L s s | L  L  | L s s  | L s |    (L = long syllable, s = short syllable)
| L s s | L s s  | L L | L s s  | L s s  | L L |
  -ancient Greek was a highly inflected language; the endings of Greek words change according to their use
  -ancient Greek had several regional dialects, and the artificial, poetic language of Homer combines forms from these dialects
-The set of Homeric formulas is characterized by scope and economy.  This met the needs of the oral poet.
     -scope: the poet had a formula for every need
     -economy: the poetic tradition eliminated redundant formulas

3. WRITING, THE AUTHOR AND THE TEXT OF THE ILIAD: HOMER’S POEMS IN HISTORY
-What is the role of an individual author in the oral poem?
-How did writing and the invention of the GREEK ALPHABET affect the oral tradition?

4. HISTORY IN THE HOMERIC POEMS
-What is "historical" about Homer's poems?  To what periods do these historical elements refer?
-rediscovery of the BRONZE AGE civilizations of Greece and the Aegean region
     -CRETE: the MINOAN CIVILIZATION , palace complex at KNOSSOS excavated by ARTHUR EVANS
     -mainland Greece: the MYCENAEAN CIVILIZATION , important sites include MYKENAI, PYLOS and TIRYNS ; excavators include HEINRICH SCHLIEMANN and Carl Blegen
     -LINEAR A (Minoan) and LINEAR B (Mycenaean Greek/deciphered by Michael Ventris): Bronze Age syllabic writing
-How are different "layers" of history preserved in the Homeric poems?

IMAGES: images no. 1-4 are from the website of the Greek Ministry of Culture: http://www.culture.gr

-IMAGE no. 1 : Grave stele (monument) from Mykenai with a charioteer and a hunting or battle scene
-IMAGE no. 2 : so-called "Mask of Agamemnon", a gold mask from one of shaft graves at Mykenai
-IMAGE no. 3 : bronze dagger with inlaid gold and silver decoration, found in one of the shaft graves at Mykenai
-IMAGE no. 4 : restored architectural elements of the palace at Knossos
Images no. 5 and 6 are from the Perseus Digital Library, Tufts University:

- IMAGE no. 5 : the Lion Gate at Mykenai
- IMAGE no. 6 : detail of relief over the Lion Gate at Mykenai
-ILLUSTRATED DESCRIPTION OF MYKENAI (from the Greek Ministry of Culture)
For maps and well-illustrated essays on Minoan culture and Mycenaean culture, check out Professor David Fredrick's Greek and Roman mythology website at the University of Arkansas.
For maps of Bronze Age Greece and brief descriptions of Minoan and Mycenaean culture, check out the Archaeopaedia site at Stanford University.  You'll also find other information on the archaeology of Greece there.

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FOOD FOR THOUGHT:  Consider how the computer and the internet change how we read and write.  Do you think these changes are having an effect that is like the way writing affected the oral epics of ancient Greece?
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Note: A good reference source for Greek mythology is: The Dictionary of Classical Mythology by P. Grimal.  It is available in the reference room of the USF library (BL715.G713 1986).

Next class: September 5/6
SCHEDULE OF READINGS (Monday/Wednesday)
SCHEDULE OF READINGS (Tuesday night)
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