Why Ancient Greeks Kick A-s

I love Ancient Greek poetry. They wrote such embodied, dramatic stuff. The best fiction is about matters of life and death, to paraphrase Tobias Wolff. And the Greeks totally nailed the life-and-death thing. Homer, or some guy with the same name, composed the Blockbusters of his day.

The Illiad Gets Real
The Iliad, for example, starts with the tale of two men fighting over one woman. What's at stake: HONOR: one warrior's wounded pride & what he's going to do about it. READ: ACTION is character. Achilles refuses to fight for the Achaeans (Greeks) because his mistress/spoil from war was taken from him, and given to a lesser warrior and not-altogether competent leader.

Starting to understand why kids don't read the Iliad in Public High Schools? Almost impossible to give the Iliad a Victorian or Right-Wing Christian White-Wash. Kids might really get into the story. And that would be terrible. What if they learn something inappropriate?

But seriously, Doesn't the basic Iliad story transcend time and place? Who hasn't been in a situation(s) where the Guy in Charge is a moron who gets the biggest salary/perks while you're out in the field dealing with real-world problems, kicking and busting your a-s for The Company?.

And when there are cutbacks, who gets hit the hardest? The competent guys doing the actual work, right?

So, Mr. Mediocre, Agamemnon, has to give up his slave-girl, Chryseis, who happens to be a Mighty Priest's daughter, for the good of the Achaean Legion. Agamemnon can't get out of doing his part; he's got to give Chryseis up, or take it up with the Gods, who have been raining fire & brimstone on the Greeks for weeks. And what does Agamemnon do? Mr. Mediocre turns around and demands the woman of Achilles, aka BEST WARRIOR of ALL TIME.

BUT, Achilles has grown fond of his slave woman, Briseis, whom he won in a fair fight. Well, fair by the standards of the time. Agamemnon already has a wife, and if he gets Briseis, he'll have two key women, and Achilles will have none. Furthermore, what a show of disrespect in front of the troops!

So Achilles says: Fine, Agamemnon, take my woman. But, I'm done with you. I'm leaving the battlefield, and I'll be "working" on the Pleasure Principle. Granted, Homer says it more gracefully. Read for yourself...

Wikicommons: L'ira di Achille, 1819, di Jacques-Louis David, Fort Worth, Kimbell Art Museum

The Iliad IGNITES...

"Sing, O goddess, the anger of Achilles son of Peleus, that brought
countless ills upon the Achaeans. Many a brave soul did it send
hurrying down to Hades, and many a hero did it yield a prey to dogs and
vultures...

...Achilles scowled at [Agamemnon] and answered, "You are steeped in insolence and
lust of gain. With what heart can any of the Achaeans do your bidding,
either on foray or in open fighting? I came not warring here for any
ill the Trojans had done me. I have no quarrel with them. They have not
raided my cattle nor my horses, nor cut down my harvests on the rich
plains of Phthia; for between me and them there is a great space, both
mountain and sounding sea. We have followed you, Sir Insolence! for
your pleasure, not ours--to gain satisfaction from the Trojans for your
shameless self and for Menelaus. You forget this, and threaten to rob
me of the prize for which I have toiled, and which the sons of the
Achaeans have given me. Never when the Achaeans sack any rich city of
the Trojans do I receive so good a prize as you do, though it is my
hands that do the better part of the fighting. When the sharing comes,
your share is far the largest, and I, forsooth, must go back to my
ships, take what I can get and be thankful, when my labour of fighting
is done. Now, therefore, I shall go back to Phthia; it will be much
better for me to return home with my ships, for I will not stay here
dishonoured to gather gold and substance for you."

And Agamemnon answered, "Fly if you will, I shall make you no prayers
to stay you. I have others here who will do me honour, and above all
Jove, the lord of counsel. There is no king here so hateful to me as
you are, for you are ever quarrelsome and ill-affected. What though you
be brave? Was it not heaven that made you so? Go home, then, with your
ships and comrades to lord it over the Myrmidons. I care neither for
you nor for your anger; and thus will I do: since Phoebus Apollo is
taking Chryseis from me, I shall send her with my ship and my
followers, but I shall come to your tent and take your own prize
Briseis, that you may learn how much stronger I am than you are, and
that another may fear to set himself up as equal or comparable with me."

....
[Achilles draws his sword to kill Agamemnon, but is stopped by goddess Minerva.]

The son of Peleus again began railing at the son of Atreus, for he
was still in a rage. "Wine-bibber," he cried, "with the face of a dog
and the heart of a hind, you never dare to go out with the host in
fight, nor yet with our chosen men in ambuscade. You shun this as you
do death itself. You had rather go round and rob his prizes from any
man who contradicts you. You devour your people, for you are king over
a feeble folk; otherwise, son of Atreus, henceforward you would insult
no man. Therefore I say, and swear it with a great oath--nay, by this
my sceptre which shalt sprout neither leaf nor shoot, nor bud anew from
the day on which it left its parent stem upon the mountains--for the
axe stripped it of leaf and bark, and now the sons of the Achaeans bear
it as judges and guardians of the decrees of heaven--so surely and
solemnly do I swear that hereafter they shall look fondly for Achilles
and shall not find him. In the day of your distress, when your men fall
dying by the murderous hand of Hector, you shall not know how to help
them, and shall rend your heart with rage for the hour when you offered
insult to the bravest of the Achaeans."

Click to read the Iliad online, via the Project Gutenberg

Don't worry. Agamemnon gets "his due" when he returns home to Greece, but that's a whole other epic! Did I mention that Agamemnon had his daughter sacrificed to the Goddess of Hunting? They don't make Patriarchs like they used to. Thank God. The Atreus Dynasty is seriously messed up. SEEK: Clytemnestra -- One Tough Mother

1974: Big Father lingers...

For more, See Post: Revolution & its Discontents

My parents grew up under a repressive regime that valued OBEDIENCE to authority above all. And Antonio Salazar [left] was the Grand Patriarch, the ultimate AUTHORITY. His right-wing state effectively kept Portugal out of the Modern Age.

My maternal cousin, an anthropologist, once told me, "If you want to know what life was like during the Middle Ages, just ask our parents. It was like something out of the Canterbury Tales."

Approximately 90% of the population was illiterate. My parents were the first generation in our family to go to public schools. My paternal grandmother was illiterate. And my father's siblings, who hadn't finished primary school, were functionally illiterate as young adults.

Jeronimo Vazao: family scholar

My dad was the family scholar. He completed the fourth grade. And he continued his education by joining the Army. My father got teased for his "intellectualism."

"My first year in school," my dad tells me. "The teacher asked us questions. And I answered them. After school, the boys were waiting for me. They beat me up. I learned not to answer questions."

But there were consequences. "If you didn't know an answer, the teacher would smack you with a ruler. But the boys hit harder," says Father. So he learned the Art of Silence.

Church & State, Yes. Civil Liberties, No.

The STATE was allied with the Roman Catholic hierarchy. What Portuguese Catholic bishops said, effectively, became the law of the land. As long as priests remained obedient to Salazar. See how Portuguese rural life paralleled life in the Middle Ages?

Life under a police state, sanctioned by the moral authority of the Catholic Church, was the only political reality my parents had ever known. That is, before we came to America.

I don't take American Civil Liberties for granted. I grew up watching and learning re: What Happens to People schooled in Repression.

My dad was a bit of a rebel, intellectually, if not openly. In the 1960s, he used a short-wave radio to pick up a Communist radio station that broadcast from abroad.

Says my father, "It was the only way to find out what was really happening in the country."

wikicommons: Symbol of PIDE, Polícia Internacional e de Defesa do Estado, the International Police for the Defense of the State. They were rumored to have secret informants in even the smallest villages.

There was no freedom of the press. Or freedom of assembly. The "press" would never announce where Salazar was scheduled to appear. They feared protesters, says my Dad. The News only reported where Salazar had been, and how "welcomed" he was by the Portuguese people.

Mother: Someone is Always Watching

My mother's case, however, is different. She fears the secret police. Even today. And has a generalized fear of neighbors, who could report you to the authorities. THEY would come and get you at night. And, if you didn't have well-connected patrons, you would, quite simply, disappear.

When I was a teenager, my political activism, as minor as it was, terrified my mother. Even today, she acts as though Someone is Always Watching You.

"Life is theater," she says, "and you have to be seen doing the right thing."

My take: you have to act as though you are "right in the head." And, how do people know whether you are thinking the right things, if you don't say the right things? Old cultural beliefs die hard.