The Inferno, 26.55-63

Within, Ulysses and Diomed

are suffering in anger with each other,

just vengeance makes them march together now.

And they lament inside one flame the ambush

of the horse become the gateway that allowed

the Romans’ noble seed to issue forth.

Therein they mourn the trick that caused the grief

of Deïdamia, who still weeps for Achilles;

and there they pay for the Palladium.

Genealogy of the Greek Gods

Ages of Greece

• Mycenaean Age (1500-1200 BCE)
• Dark Age of Greece (1100-750 BCE) Hesiod and Homer compose
• Archaic Age of Greece (700-500 BCE)
• Classical Age of Greece (490-323 BCE) Sophocles, Aeschylus, Euripides, Aristophanes
• Hellenistic Age (323-31 BCE) from the death of Alexander the Great, who conquered all of Greece and much of the Middle East, to the defeat of Antony and Cleopatra by Octavian. (this is when Greek culture flourishes and reaches the Mediterranean, Near East and Asia)

In Greece it was believed that there was a pantheon of deities—many of questionable moral virtue—who, while they occasionally meddled in human affairs and were keen on seducing mortals, generally remained detached from the everyday workings of the world and were not shown any strict allegiance by humans.

Hesiod’s Theogony

Three generations of gods: Ouranos, Kronos (Titans) and Zeus (Olympians).

Problems with further generations:

As Rheia gives birth to her children, Kronos swallows them whole because he heard from his parents that a child of his would overthrow his throne. Rheia gives Kronos a stone wrapped in a cloth instead of Zeus and he swallows the stone. Zeus is secretly raised by Gaia. When Kronos hears of the trick, he spits his children back out and they give their brother Zeus lightning and thunder as a token of thanks.

The Nine Muses

Kalliope (Epic Poetry)

Kleio (History)

Erato (Love Poetry)

Euterpe (Music)

Melpomene (Tragedy)

Polymnia (Hymns)

Terpsichore (Dance)

Thaleia (Comedy)

Ourania (Astronomy)

“Where Have All the Muses Gone?” is an amusing article written in The Wall Street Journal about the Muses.

 

Hesiod’s Works and Days

The Ages of Man

The Golden race of mortal men — this race thrives under the reign of Kronos and is made by the Olympian gods (Zeus, et al.). They live like the immortals, without strife or toil.

The Silver race of mortal men — this race is inferior to the Golden one, even though they too were created by the Olympian gods. They remain children for 100 years, and then became petulant and violent adults. They commit crimes against each other and refuse to honor the gods.

The Bronze race of mortal men — this race is also made by Zeus and fashioned from the Ash tree. They are a warring race who live off of meat and use bronze tools and weapons. They are the first race to go to Hades upon their death.

The Divine race of heroes — this is the semi-divine race, the demi-gods and heroes we see in the “Odyssey” and the “Iliad.” This race wars as well, but when they die Zeus lets them dwell in the Isles of the Blessed Ones.

The Iron race of mortal men — this is Hesiod’s race (ours, as well). There is no end to their daily toil and strife because the gods bring about many troubles for them.

Buffalo in Bloom by David Goodrich

The Iliad

Homer (8^th century BCE) is the blind bard from Chios recognized by Plato and Aristotle, as well as the historian Herodotus (5^th/4^th century BCE), as the poet who composed the Iliad and the Odyssey.

Zeus starts the Trojan War to bring an end to the race of heroes by having Helen kidnapped. The Judgment of Paris (son of King Priam of Troy) begins at Thetis and Peleus’s wedding. The Iliad describes the war between the Greeks and the Trojans at Ilium (Troy), whereby the Greeks went to retrieve the gift Aphrodite gives to Paris — Menelaus’s wife Helen.

Epic or epikos (Greek) comes from the Greek word epos, ‘word, song,’ and is related to eipein ‘to say.’ This oral expression of song is about the feeling and ethical intent of the speaker rather than the form or subject matter. It is an emotive experience. An epic poem tells a story of deep feeling and ethical significance. You may see this in the stock epithets and traditional phrases.

Elements of the epic’s narrative structure:

• oral tradition, it is sung, it is a ceremonial performance (as opposed to narrated using ordinary speech)
• it has repetitive elements, uses epithets and epic similes, lists and catalogues
• it has a set meter
• it begins in medias res (into the middle of things)
• some common themes, such as revenge, recklessness, belly & consumption, hospitality, sacrifice to the gods, singers and bards (storytellers), homecoming, battle, deception, loyalty, fate, metis (cunning, wisdom, skill and craft), family, kingship, and restoration of power
• the hero is a figure of great national or even cosmic importance
• the setting is ample in scale; it may be worldwide or larger, i. e.: the Mediterranean basin, the Underworld
• the action involves extraordinary deeds in battle, or an arduous and dangerous journey
• the gods or other supernatural beings take an interest or active part in the action

Homer’s epics were sung for entertainment and in poetry contests. They were works of memory and spoken aloud even after the papyrus scroll was used to record the poems in writing.

The Iliad (1.1-21) 

In classical hexameter, the six feet follow these rules:

• A foot can be made up of two long syllables (– –), a spondee; or a long and two short syllables, a dactyl (– υ υ).
• The first four feet can contain either one of them.
• The fifth is almost always a dactyl, and last must be a spondee. 

I begin | my song with | the Heli | konian | Muses whose | domain

dactyl |         dactyl         |   dactyl    | dactyl  |       dactyl          | spondee

Beowulf is a pagan epic poem passed down orally from the southern Swedes to the English in the 5^th century when the Anglo-Saxons and Jutes invaded Britain. Its Christian allusions were added when it was written down sometime between the 8^th and 10^th centuries.

Beowulf Manuscript (c. 1000)

The poem’s written text:

• Two scribes, A and B, working around the year 1000 CE transcribed the poem. They weren’t considered poets, but rather editors.
• The only manuscript survived a fire in 1731 and came to us as the text we have now.

The Beowulf-poet:

• The term “author” does not convey the same static quality in the Anglo-Saxon period as it does in the modern day. Beowulf could have existed in multiple versions, depending on how many Anglo-Saxon poets, scops (pronounced “shops” and related to the word “to shape”) were around to interpret and retell the tale, much like the many interpretations of Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet.
• Every performance and reading reshapes the poem and how we approach it, even the modern day versions. The Beowulf-poet, in a sense, is more of a collective noun than an individual author.
• The poet takes poetic license (his own embellishments) with Beowulf’s character, and invites the audience to consider the complex role of oral poetry, and how the audience—both Anglo-Saxon and modern—should interpret this work. He uses terms such as “I heard” or “I have learned” to separate himself from the narrative.

The poem’s hero:

• Beowulf is mortal, but like other epic heroes (Gilgamesh, Odysseus, Achilles) he is stronger and more brave than most men. The last line of the poem tells us that “Beowulf was keenest to win fame.” Immortality in this culture means to win fame in stories and reputation.
• Beowulf fights monsters, as Gilgamesh fights Humbaba and Odysseus fights the Cyclopes, and we may glean the values of a Germanic leader, its culture, through its hero. Tacitus (56-120 CE) claims that warfare is a standard way of life for the Germanic people to survive and prosper. For example, a good king is a “ring-giver.”

Characteristics of the poem:

• It has Christian elements: Grendel is a descendant of Cain, the flood story is inscribed on the sword that Beowulf uses to kill Grendel’s mother, and in the mead hall the scop sings a song that recounts a creation story similar to the one in Genesis.
• J. R. R. Tolkien’s reading: the troll, the sea-woman, the dragon are from Norse and Germanic mythology—they represent coldness, darkness, wilderness, and are enemies of human values and reflections. The mead hall is a circle of light, which ultimately calls Grendel into existence. Tolkien’s criticism of the poem treats it as a poem, not as a historical document or an ethnographic study of the Germanic people.
• The poem begins with a funeral and ends with a funeral—nothing lasts.
• The three fights only take up 500 out of 3200 lines, and so community is more the driving point of the epic—it begins with Shield Sheafson. At the end of the epic, we know the Geats will eventually disappear because they fail to help Beowulf against the dragon.
• The poem contains understatements, such as “he’s feeling no pain” when someone is drunk; instead of saying “I’m happy,” they say “I wouldn’t want you to think that I’m not happy;” and “that was no good place” insinuates part of the darkness and vision of these people.

Beowulf read in Old English

From J.R.R. Tolkien’s “Beowulf: The Monsters and the Critics”

It is just because the main foes in Beowulf are inhuman that the story is larger and more significant than this imaginary poem of a great king’s fall. It glimpses the cosmic and moves with the thought of all men concerning the fate of human life and efforts; it stands amid but above the petty wars of princes, and surpasses the dates and limits of historical periods, however important. At the beginning, and during its process, and most of all at the end, we look down as if from a visionary height upon the house of man in the valley of the world. A light starts—lixte se leoma ofer landa fela [“its gold-hammered roofs shone over the land”]—and there is a sound of music; but the outer darkness and its hostile offspring lie ever in wait for the torches to fail and the voices to cease. Grendel is maddened by the sound of harps.

An 1847 illustration of “The Scorpion and the Turtle” from the Persian Kalilah and Dimna, an ancient fable which might have inspired The Scorpion and the Frog.

Wikipedia Entry

The Scorpion and the Frog

  A scorpion and a frog meet on the bank of a stream and the 
scorpion asks the frog to carry him across on its back. The 
frog asks, "How do I know you won't sting me?" The scorpion 
says, "Because if I do, I will die too."

  The frog is satisfied, and they set out, but in midstream,
the scorpion stings the frog. The frog feels the onset of 
paralysis and starts to sink, knowing they both will drown, but has just enough time to gasp "Why?" 

		Replies the scorpion: "Its my nature..."

The Fall of the Rebel Angels (1562)

by Pieter Bruegel the Elder

Dante’s Inferno (15th c.)

by Sandro Botticelli

See also here.

Spendthrifts running through the wood of the suicides (1855-61)

See more images here.