Iliad-General
General Remarks on the Iliad
Reading the deaths of Patroclus and Hector (and much else in the
poem), it may be useful to bear in mind these words of E. R. Dodds, in
The Greeks and the Irrational (Berkeley, 1951), p. 7:
"To ask whether Homer's people are determinists or
libertarians [by which Dodds means believers in free will] is a fantastic
anachronism: the question has never occurred to them, and if it were put
to them it would be very difficult to make them understand what it meant.
What they do recognize is the distinction between normal actions and
actions performed in a state of ate [blind, destructive
thoughtlessness]. Actions of the latter sort they can trace indifferently
either to their moira [personal destiny] or to the will of a
god, according as they look at the matter from a subjective or an
objective point of view. In the same way Patroclus attributes his death
directly to the immediate agent, the man Euphorbus, and indirectly to the
mythological agent, Apollo, but from a subjective standpoint to his bad
moira. It is, as psychologists say,
'overdetermined.'"
In a recent book, David Denby describes taking a break from his
professional life as a film critic and going back to school to take the
'Great Books' course at Columbia. He admired in Homer,
"The brute vitality of the air, the magnificence of the
ships, winds and fires, the raging battles, the plains charged with
terrified horses... the ravaged longing for home and family and ... the
rituals of peace leading at last to an instant of reconciliation."
How well does this match your own experience of the poem?
(Bonus question: How does Mr. Denby's style in the above attempt to mimic
or suggest the style of Homer?)
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