• عنوان المشاركة: Prepare yourself for ....The Illiad....by Homer
مرسل: الأربعاء تشرين الأول 31, 2007 1:09 ص
آرتيني مؤسس
اشترك في: 01 آذار 2007
المواضيع: 133
المشاركات: 837
المكان: حماة
لا يوجد لدي مواضيع بعد
[englishtext]About the Poem Introduction to the Poem
The Iliad deals with only a small portion of the Trojan War; in fact, it covers only a few months during the tenth year of that war. The ancient Greek audience, however, would have been familiar with all the events leading up to this tenth year, and during the course of the Iliad, Homer makes many references to various past events. The story of the Iliad has its actual beginning in the creation of the great wall at Troy. The Trojans enlisted the aid of the sea god, Poseidon, to help build the wall. However, after the wall was constructed, Poseidon demanded his just compensation, but the Trojans reneged. Consequently, Troy was without divine protection and, in fact, Poseidon became its enemy. At the time of the Trojan war, Troy was ruled by King Priam, who was married to Hekuba. According to legend, Priam and Hekuba had forty-nine children, including the warrior Hektor, the prophetess Cassandra, and the young lover, Paris (also known as Alexandros). Deiphobus is also one of the children of Priam and Hekuba. When Hekuba was pregnant with Paris, she had a dream that Paris would be the cause of the destruction of Troy. An oracle and a seer confirmed that this son would indeed be the cause of the total destruction of the noble city of Troy. Therefore, for the sake of the city, Hekuba agreed to abandon her newborn infant to die by exposure on Mount Ida, but Paris was saved by shepherds and grew up as a shepherd, ignorant of his royal birth.
About the Poem The Iliad begins: The Judgement of Paris
On the Greek side, the story of the Iliad begins with the wedding of Peleus, a mortal, and Thetis, a goddess. These two become the parents of Achilles. At their wedding, Eris, the goddess of strife, throws down a golden apple with the message, “For the Fairest.” Hera, Athena, and Aphrodite all try to claim the prize, and no god, including Zeus, is willing to resolve the dispute. After a long conference on Mount Ida, Paris, the poor but royal shepherd is chosen to be the judge of the dispute between the three goddesses. They all offer bribes to Paris. Hera offers him rule over all of Asia. Athena offers victory in battle and supreme wisdom. But Aphrodite, knowing her man, offers the most beautiful woman in the world, Helen, wife of Menelaos, the ruler of Sparta. Paris proclaims Aphrodite the fairest of all and anticipates his prize. The initiation of strife, in the form of Eris and her apple, at the wedding of Peleus and Thetis, introduces an idea that runs throughout the Iliad. Strife, metaphorically embodied in a goddess in the legend, is the motivating factor in most of the major events in the epic. Strife provokes the war. Strife with Agamemnon over a slave girl causes Achilles to withdraw from battle. Strife between various groups and individuals sharpens the action of the poem. Finally, the resolution of strife provides an ending for the poem. Eris is rarely mentioned in the Iliad, but her presence is almost palpable. Before going to the court of Menelaos to secure Helen, Paris establishes his legitimacy as a son of King Priam of Troy. Only then does Paris travel to Sparta, where for ten days he is treated royally as the guest of Menelaos and Helen. After ten days, Menelaos has to travel to Crete to conduct business. In Menelaos’ absence, Paris abducts Helen and returns with her to Troy. Various accounts of this event make Helen either a willing accomplice to Paris’ scheme or a resisting victim of kidnapping. In the Iliad, Helen’s constant references to herself as a bitch and prostitute leave little doubt that Homer sees her as a culpable accomplice in the abduction. Word of Helen’s abduction reaches Menelaos in Crete. He immediately goes to his brother, Agamemnon, the great ruler of Mycenae. At first the two brothers try diplomacy with Troy to secure the return of Helen. When that fails, they determine to enlist the aid of many other rulers of small Greek kingdoms. Nestor of Pylos, an old friend of the family, accompanies Menelaos as he goes to each state seeking support. The Greek army that Menelaos and Nestor help assemble represents the Greek or Mycenaean notion of reciprocity. Actions were performed with the expectation of a reciprocal action. According to some accounts, the various Greek rulers had all courted Helen and felt an obligation to Menelaos. But, even so, they go on the raid with an understanding that they will receive a share of the booty that will come from the destruction of Troy and other nearby states. In fact, the opening dispute between Agamemnon and Achilles is over what they each see as inequity in the distribution of their war prizes. Some of the Greek leaders were anxious to sack Troy; but two, Odysseus and Achilles, were warned by the oracles of their fates if they participated in the war. Odysseus was warned that his journey home would last twenty years, and thus he feigned madness; but his ruse was quickly discovered and he finally agreed to go to war. The Greeks knew that they could never capture Troy without the help of Achilles, who was the greatest warrior in the world. He was practically invulnerable as a fighter, because at birth his mother dipped him in the River Styx, rendering him immortal everywhere except in the heel, where she held him. (Later, Paris discovers this vulnerability and shoots a poisoned arrow into Achilles’ heel—thus, we have the term “Achilles’ heel,” meaning one’s vulnerability.) Achilles was warned that if he went to war he would gain great glory, but he would die young. His mother then disguised him in women’s clothing, but the sly Odysseus discovered the trick and Achilles finally consented to go. After a few months, the Greek army gathers at Aulis in Euboea. According to some accounts, they immediately launch an attack on Teuthrania, an ally of Troy, are defeated, and are driven back. Much of the army disperses. During this same period, the prophet Kalchas predicts that ten years will pass before the walls of Troy will fall. The Greeks, or Achaians as they called themselves, do not try a mass attack on Troy again for about eight years. They have not, as many imagine, spent nine years beneath the walls of Troy, as when the Iliad opens. Some scholars consider this first expedition story to be a variant account of the more common story, but many others think that the expedition against Troy was actually made up of two widely separated expeditions. The story of the second (or possibly first) assembly at Aulis is the more famous account. At this assembly of the Achaian forces, they are unable to sail because of onshore winds. This time Kalchas reports that Artemis, Goddess of the Hunt, is offended because Agamemnon killed a deer sacred to her. The only way the Achaians can leave is by Agamemnon’s sacrifice of his daughter, Iphigeneia, to Artemis. Agamemnon tricks Iphigeneia by telling her that she is to wed Achilles. When she arrives for her wedding, she is gagged so that she cannot pronounce a dying curse, and sacrificed to Artemis. The winds shift, and the Achaians (Greeks) sail for Troy. The Achaians land at a protected shore near Troy. They build a wall of earth, stone, and timber to protect their ships. This wall is the focus of the Trojan attack in Books XII and XIII. After the construction of the wall, the Achaians begin their siege of Troy. Some of their forces raid nearby states. Achilles attacks cities to the south while Telamonian Aias (Ajax) takes Teuthrania. A year later, the tenth year since the original prediction by Kalchas, all of the Achaians assemble near Troy to begin what they hope will be the final assault. Here is where the Iliad begins as a feud develops between Achilles and Agamemnon. The poem recounts the events of this feud as they take place over several days. The epic ends with the death and burial of the Trojan warrior, Hektor.[/englishtext]
The events after the Iliad that lead to the fall of Troy are not a part of the poem. After the burial of Hektor, the Trojans call on outside forces for help, and the Greeks lose many warriors. In one battle, Achilles encounters Paris, who shoots an arrow that, guided by Apollo, strikes Achilles in the right heel, the only place where he is vulnerable. Aias (Ajax) and Odysseus are able, with great difficulty, to rescue Achilles’ body, and immediately there arises a dispute over who should receive Achilles’ splendid armor. When it is awarded to Odysseus, Aias (Ajax) becomes so furious that he threatens to kill some of the Greek leaders. When he realizes the lack of honor in his threats, he commits suicide.
With the death of their two greatest and most valiant warriors, Aias and Achilles, the Greeks become anxious about ever taking Troy. After consulting various seers and oracles, they are instructed to secure the bow and arrows of Heracles, which are in the hands of Prince Philoctetes, a Greek who was abandoned earlier because of a loathsome wound that would not heal. Odysseus and Diomedes are sent to Philoctetes, and they convince him to return with the bow and arrows. In his first encounter in battle, he is able to kill Paris. This death, however, does not affect the course of the war.
The Greeks are then given a series of tasks that they must accomplish to secure victory: They must bring the bones of Pelops back to Greece from Asia, bring Achilles’ son into the war, and steal the sacred image of Athena from the Trojan sanctuary. These tasks are accomplished, but none of them changes the course of the war. Then Odysseus conceives a plan whereby the Greeks can get inside the walls of Troy: A great horse of wood is constructed with a hollow belly that can hold many warriors. In the darkness of night, the horse is brought to the Trojan plain. Odysseus and some of his men are hidden inside the horse. The rest of the Achaians burn their camps and sail off behind a nearby island.
The next morning, the Trojans find the Greeks gone and the huge, mysterious horse sitting before Troy. They also discover a Greek named Sinon, whom they take captive. Odysseus provided Sinon with plausible stories about the Greek departure, the wooden horse, and his own presence there to tell the Trojans. Sinon tells Priam and the others that Athena deserted the Greeks because of the theft of her image from her temple. Without her help, they were lost and so they departed. But to get home safely, they had to have a human sacrifice. Sinon was chosen, but he escaped and hid. The horse was left to placate the angry goddess, and the Greeks hoped the Trojans would desecrate it, earning Athena’s hatred. These lies convince Priam and many other Trojans, so they pull the gigantic horse inside the gates to honor Athena.
That night, the soldiers creep out of the horse, kill the sentries, and open the gates to let the Achaian army in. The Achaians set fires throughout the city, massacre the inhabitants, and loot the city. The Trojan resistance is ineffectual. King Priam is killed, and by morning all but a few Trojans are dead. Only Aeneas, with his old father, his young son, and a small band of Trojans, escape. Hektor’s young son, Astyanax, is thrown from the walls of the city. The women who are left are given to the Greek leaders as war prizes, to be used as slaves or as concubines. Troy is devastated. Hera and Athena have their revenge upon Paris and upon his city.
Brief Synopsis
The Achaians, under King Agamemnon, have been fighting the Trojans off and on for nine years, trying to retrieve Helen, the wife of Menelaos, and thus Agamemnon’s sister-in-law. Paris, a son of the king of Troy, kidnaps Helen, who becomes the legendary “Helen of Troy” and “the woman with the face that launched a thousand ships.”
Yet, after years of Achaian attacks, Troy remains intact, and the Trojan army remains undefeated. The same cannot be said for the Achaian army. At present, the Achaian troops are dying from a mysterious plague. Hundreds of funeral pyres burn nightly. Finally, Achilles, the Achaians’ most honored soldier, calls for an assembly to determine the cause of the plague.
A soothsayer reveals to the army that King Agamemnon’s arrogance caused the deadly plague; he refused to return a woman who was captured and awarded to him as a “war prize.” Reluctantly, Agamemnon agrees to return the woman, but, as compensation, he says that he will take the woman who was awarded to Achilles, his best warrior.
Achilles is furious, and he refuses to fight any longer for the Achaians. He and his forces retreat to the beach beside their ships, and Achilles asks his mother, the goddess Thetis, if she will ask Zeus, king of the gods, to help the Trojans defeat his former comrades, the Achaians. Zeus agrees to do so.
The two armies prepare for battle, and Paris (the warrior who kidnapped Menelaos’ wife, Helen) leaps out and challenges any of the Achaians to a duel. Menelaos challenges him and beats him, but before Paris is killed, the goddess Aphrodite whisks him away to the safety of his bedroom in Troy.
A short truce is called, but it is broken when an over-zealous soldier wounds Menelaos. During the battle that follows, Diomedes, an Achaian, dominates the action, killing innumerable Trojans and wounding Aphrodite, a goddess.
The Trojans seem to be losing, so Hektor returns to Troy to ask his mother to offer sacrifices to Athena. She performs the rituals, but Athena refuses to accept them. Meanwhile, Hektor discovers Paris safe in his bedroom with Helen, and shames him into returning to battle. Then Hektor visits with his wife and their baby son. It is clear that Hektor is deeply devoted to his family, yet feels the terrible weight of his responsibility as commander-in-chief of the Trojan army.
During the fighting that continues, the Achaians begin to falter, and at one point Athena, Zeus’ daughter, fears that the entire Achaian army may be slaughtered. Thus, she and Apollo decide to have Hektor challenge one of the Achaian’ warriors to a duel in order to settle the war. Telamonian Aias (Ajax) battles Hektor so valiantly that the contest ends in a draw, and a truce is called.
During this break in the fighting, the dead of both armies are buried and given appropriate funeral rites, and the Achaians fortify their defenses with a strong wall and a moat-like ditch.
The fighting resumes, and so many Achaians are slaughtered that Agamemnon suggests that his troops sail for home, but finally he is convinced that he must return to the fighting. Messengers are sent to Achilles, asking him to return to battle, but Achilles is still sulking beside his ships and refuses to fight.
Soon Agamemnon, Diomedes, Odysseus, and old Nestor are all seriously wounded, and Achilles realizes that the Achaians are in danger of imminent defeat. Therefore, he sends his warrior-companion, Patroklos, to find out who the seriously wounded are.
Patroklos talks with old Nestor, one of the wisest of the Achaian soldiers. Nestor asks Patroklos to dress in Achilles’ armor and return to battle. The Achaians, he says, will rejoice and have new faith in their death struggle against the Trojans when they think that they see Achilles returning to the battle. In addition, the Trojans will so fear the wrath of the mighty Achilles that they will be easily defeated. Patroklos promises to ask Achilles for permission to use his armor and ride into battle disguised as the mighty warrior.
Meanwhile, Hektor leads a massive Trojan surge against the Achaian wall that stands between the Trojans and the Achaian fleet of ships, and the wall is successfully smashed. The tumult is so deafening that hell itself seems unloosed.
Achilles is watching and realizes that his wish may be granted: The Achaians are about to be annihilated. He sends Patroklos into the fighting, disguised as Achilles himself. The Achaian army rejoices at what they think is the return of Achilles to the fighting, and the Trojans are so terrified that they are quickly swept back to the walls of Troy.
Patroklos’ valor seems superhuman. He has killed nine Trojans in a single charge when Apollo strikes him with such fury that Hektor is able to catch him off-guard and thrust a spear through his body. Then some of the most intense fighting of the war follows in a battle to claim Patroklos’ body. Finally, the Achaians rescue Patroklos’ corpse, and Hektor captures Achilles’ armor. Then the Achaians return to the beach, guarding their ships as best they can.
Achilles is filled with overwhelming grief and rage when he learns that his warrior-companion, Patroklos, has been slaughtered. His mother, Thetis, comes to him and advises him that it is fated that he will die if he tries to revenge Patroklos’ death. But she says that if Achilles decides to revenge Patroklos’ death, she will outfit him in a suit of new armor, made by one of the gods.
Achilles chooses: He will defy certain death and the Trojans in an attempt to punish them for what they (and he) did to Patroklos. Thus, he returns to battle in his new armor and is so successful that he and the Achaians rout the Trojans. He savagely kills Hektor, the Trojans’ mightiest warrior. Achilles’ anger is not sated, however. He ties Hektor’s corpse to his chariot and circles Patroklos’ burial mound every day for nine days.
Hektor’s parents are so grieved at the barbaric treatment given to their son’s corpse that Priam, Hektor’s father, goes to Achilles and begs for his son’s body. Achilles is moved by Priam’s pleas and by the memory of his own father. Consequently, he agrees to cleanse and return Hektor’s body.
Hektor’s body is given the appropriate cremation rites, and then with mourning and weeping for the noble warrior, the Trojans place his remains in a golden casket and place it in a burial barrow.[/englishtext]
Chronicling the deeds of great heroes from the past who helped form a society, the Iliad is an epic poem. As such the epic stands as a bridge between history and literature. As was the tradition in epic poetry, the Iliad opens in medias res, meaning “in the middle of things,” although the action is always preceded by the poet’s invocation to the muse (the goddess) of poetry. In this invocation, Homer states his theme—the wrath, or the anger, of Achilles and its effects—and requests the aid of the muse so that he can properly recount the story. The reader is then carried to the point where the trouble originally arose, which is where the story of the Iliad actually begins: in the middle of war.
During one of the Achaian (Greek) army’s many raids on the cities located near Troy, the Achaians captured two beautiful enemy maidens, Chryseis and Briseis. The troops awarded these girls to Agamemnon, the commander-in-chief of the army, and to Achilles, the Achaians’ greatest warrior.
Chryses, the father of Chryseis, pleads for her return but Agamemnon denies the plea. Consequently, Chryses prays to Apollo who brings a plague on the Achaian camp. On the tenth day of the plague, Achilles can wait no longer for King Agamemnon to act to end the plague. Usurping Agamemnon’s authority, Achilles calls an assembly of the army, and he suggests that a soothsayer be called upon to determine the cause of Apollo’s anger. Kalchas, an Achaian soothsayer, volunteers to explain the cause of the pestilence, but only if he is guaranteed personal protection. Achilles agrees to this condition.
When the soothsayer reveals that the plague is the result of Agamemnon’s refusal to return Chryseis to her father, Agamemnon is furious that he has been publicly named as being responsible for the plague. He insists that if he is forced to surrender Chryseis, his rightful war prize, then he must be repaid with Achilles’ war prize, Briseis.
However, Achilles is stunned by the public disgrace of having Agamemnon demand Briseis, and he refuses to accept the indignity that he feels Agamemnon has made him undergo in full view of all the soldiers. Thus, he announces that he is withdrawing all of his troops from battle. He will not fight, and, furthermore, he and his men will return to their own country as soon as possible.
Nevertheless, Agamemnon decides to appease Apollo; he will return Chryseis, his war prize. He sends her safely aboard a ship heading home, and then he sends his heralds to collect Briseis (Achilles’ war prize) for him. Surprisingly, Achilles surrenders the girl without any difficulty.
Achilles, in despair, prays to his mother, Thetis, the sea-goddess asking her to use her influence with Zeus to ensure that the Trojan armies defeat his fellow Achaian soldiers. Achilles hopes that this result will cause disgrace for Agamemnon and so repay the wrong that the King did to Achilles.
Thetis visits Zeus on Olympos, and the king of the gods agrees to aid the Trojans, although he expresses a fear that his wife, Hera, will be annoyed because she is jealous of Thetis and hates the Trojans and hence cannot bear to see them win the war. Readers discover that Hera does indeed hate the Trojans, but she fears Zeus’ wrath even more, and so she quiets her protests. The first book ends with a banquet of the gods in Zeus’ palace.
commentary:
In Book I, the initial quarrel between Agamemnon and Achilles, mediated by Nestor, is paralleled at the end of the book by the quarrel between Zeus and Hera, mediated by Hephaistos. The quarrel among the gods breaks down into a humorous scene that ironically accentuates the seriousness of the human quarrel. Homer’s technique of repeating an earlier scene with a later one is used throughout the Iliad. In fact, this structural technique is a basis for the entire work. However, Book I essentially sets up the tension for the rest of the poem. The wrath of Achilles seems justified from Book I to Book IX. Achilles’ wrath is held up for criticism from Book IX to Book XVIII. And finally there is reconciliation in Books XVIII and XIX. This pattern repeats in Books XIX through XXIV. Achilles wrath is justifiable in Book XIX to Book XXII. His wrath is criticized in Books XXII to Book XXIV. And finally, there is reconciliation in Book XXIV when Achilles and Priam meet.
Book I opens with the words, “Rage—Goddess, sing the rage of Peleus’ son Achilles.” Homer invokes the muse (“Goddess”) of epic poetry to aid him in telling the story of Achilles’ anger and the great war for Helen and Troy. He further introduces in the word “rage” one of the human qualities, along with pride and honor, that will make up a major theme of the work as a whole. Initially, Achilles’ anger seems a reasonable response to the arrogance of Agamemnon, but as the poem progresses, it becomes clear that righteous anger can degenerate into petty resentment or escalate into uncontrollable rage. The necessity for reason and self-control over emotions becomes an overriding idea in the Iliad.
Similarly, the related concepts of pride and honor are introduced in Book I. Both Agamemnon and Achilles believe that their honor is compromised in the decisions involving the female captives, Chryseis and Briseis. Pride and honor were important principles to the Greeks, particularly because those traits involved public perception. Agamemnon thinks that Achilles, by calling the council and demanding that Chryseis be returned to Chryses, has challenged his leadership and impugned his honor. Likewise, Achilles feels that Agamemnon’s decision to take Briseis as a replacement for Chryseis is an affront to his honor and a public show of disrespect by the Achaian leader. Individual senses of pride and honor here blind the two warriors to the greater good. Their hubris—overweening pride—requires them to react in foolish ways, Agamemnon in taking Achilles’ captive Briseis and Achilles in withdrawing himself and his troops from battle. Homer once again shows that a noble human trait can be subverted by emotion into pettiness and irrationality.
However, Achilles’ decision to withdraw appears much more reasonable in Book I than it will later in the poem. From Book I to Book IX, Achilles’ anger and withdrawal from battle seem to have some justification. He retains the reader’s sympathy even though his decisions seem to be overreactions.
A second theme introduced in Book I is the nature of the relationship between the gods and men. When Agamemnon refuses to give up Chryseis, Chryses prays to Apollo, who comes down to devastate the Achaians with his arrows, a symbolic representation of plague. Later, angered by Agamemnon, Achilles starts to draw his sword to kill the Achaian leader. Athena intervenes and calms the overwrought Achilles, a symbolic representation of reason controlling the will. Finally, Thetis, Achilles’ goddess mother, goes to Zeus to ask for punishment on Agamemnon and the Achaians for their actions against her son. Zeus nods in agreement, thereby initiating the series of Trojan triumphs that make up much of the first half of the work. Zeus’ decision leads to a quarrel among the gods that humorously reflects the quarrel among the Greeks.
Homer shows the gods in a variety of relationships with humans. First, in the instances of the destruction caused by Apollo and the forbearance produced by Athena, Homer is using the gods as dramatic, almost allegoric causes for natural events and actions. Second, just as clearly, he also shows that the gods take an active role in human affairs. Apollo and Zeus both mete out a kind of rough justice, a justice that seems in both cases much harsher than the offense warranted. Third, the intervention of the gods also suggests an interrelationship between humans and gods that is related to the fate of humans. At times, characters such as Achilles seem to have free will. At other times, the gods seem to control the destiny of humans. And, at other times, neither gods nor men seem to be in control of human fate—it simply is what it is.
In the past few decades, some psychological studies have suggested a different approach to the god/human relationships in the Iliad. An entirely different approach to the god and human relationship has been offered by psychologist Julian Jaynes in The Origin of Consciousness in the Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind (Houghton Mifflin, 1990). Jaynes presents the idea that modern consciousness is of relatively recent origin and that earlier man had a bicameral mind, one chamber of which literally spoke to the other when decisions or thoughtful action was needed. Jaynes sees the Iliad as a book dealing with pre-modern minds. Therefore, when Athena tells Achilles not to draw his sword to kill Agamemnon, the speaker is actually one side of Achilles’ brain. Jaynes idea accounts for the intervention of the gods as a way in which these early men accounted for the voices they heard within their own brains.
Glossary:
Kalchas Greek prophet or seer. Originally told Agamemnon that he must sacrifice Iphigeneia for Greeks to be able to sail to Troy. Tells Agamemnon that Chryseis must be returned to her father.
Hephaistos Greek God of Fire and Forge; compare to Vulcan in Roman mythology.
Muses nine goddesses, daughters of Zeus, who preside over various art forms. Homer invokes the Muse of Epic Poetry.
Ocean River the Greeks conceived of the ocean as a river rising in the west and encircling the world.
Peleus father of Achilles; King of the Myrmidons.
Phoebus One of several names of Apollo.
scepter a rod or staff, highly ornamented, held by rulers on ceremonial occasions as a symbol of sovereignty. The passing of the scepter to a person by the herald indicated permission to speak.
Smintheus another name, or epithet, for Apollo. This title is often translated as “Mouse God” and relates to Apollo’s role in the plague in Book I.
Thetis sea goddess, daughter of Nereus; immortal mother of Achilles.[/englishtext]
لا تستطيع كتابة مواضيع جديدة في هذا المنتدى لا تستطيع كتابة ردود في هذا المنتدى لا تستطيع تعديل مشاركاتك في هذا المنتدى لا تستطيع حذف مشاركاتك في هذا المنتدى لا تستطيع إرفاق ملف في هذا المنتدى
يمكنك أن تستفيد من الصلاحيات الإضافية للعضو و المشاركة في المنتدى بالتسجيل من هنا , كما يشرفنا أن ينضم إلينا الأساتذة و المعلمون 
تسجيل الدخول
تصفح جوال
الأسئلة المتكررة
بحث
::
::
