As its been a little over a week since our official reading session began, its time for our first discussion. I waited a little over a week to post, both out of laziness and respect for elections as well as chimney day. But now, it is time. To recap how we are proceeding: we chose to read The Iliad over a month long period. As the story is divided into 24 chapters, or "books", our goal is to read at least 6 chapters per week. But as I mentioned before, if you didn't make the deadline, and only got to read a little, dont worry. We still want to hear your thoughts. Non members are welcome to chime in if you've read it before, or if you simply like what is being discussed. To give some background, I will link general articles that discuss the historical background of The Iliad, and that offer some interesting reading. The epic itself, as told by the poet Homer, takes place during the Mycenaean period of ancient Greek histor. Part of the Greek Bronze Age, the Mycenaean lasted from about 1600-1100BC. But Wikipedia can do a better job explaining than I do: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mycenaean_Greece Homer did not live until 400 years [i]after[/i] the events of the epic purportedly took place. The epic itself contains several overarching themes. My favorite is [i]Kleos[/i], the concept of imperishable glory. You can read more about these several themes in this general overview of The Iliad: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iliad A final point scholars have long discussed is: do the events depicted in The Iliad have any historical legitimacy? Did the Trojan War even happen? Up until the 18th century people believed the Trojan War to be purely legend. However, an ancient site discovered in present day Turkey during the late 1800s caused many to accept that the Homeric epics might have some basis in real history. In short, probably something happened, and a war was fought upon which the story is loosely based. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Historicity_of_the_Homeric_epics [b][i][u]Discussion Questions[/u][/i][/b] I'd like to begin discussion with a few basic questions. Feel free to answer one, or all of them together. No pressure. But please try to answer and talk a bit about at least one. If you dont like my questions (I'm kinda pulling them out of my ass), feel free to ask your own, or just offer some thoughts on what struck you from what we've read so far. Here they are: 1. What are your favorite characters? What aspects of their personality or actions make them compelling? 2. What themes stand out? e.g. the role of the Gods in the fate of man, individual glory, etc? 3. How "true" do you think The Iliad is? History tells us it is mostly legend. Do you ever wish stories like this were real? What I mean is, do you ever want such a story to be true, even though the facts tell you they are not? 4. The Iliad paints a picture of life that seems relatively straightforward: win renown on the field of battle, or die in the attempt. Do you think life during ancient or medieval times was less complicated than life today? Do you think social demands where more straightforward? 5. Is there a specific chapter or passage that really stood out to you? Why? My thoughts: 1. As far as books 1 - 6 go, I found Achilles and Diomedes very interesting. I thought Achilles excessive anger against king Agamemnon very compelling. On a personal level, I've seen the destructive effects that a deeply ingrained rage can have on relationships, having experienced it from my grandfather toward my mother. His rage has greatly damaged our extended family, just as Achilles anger eventually causes much sorrow for the Achaean armies. Diomedes was a bad ass. I really liked how he wounded the goddess Aphrodite in book 5, as she swooped into the battle trying to save her human son, Aeneas. Aeneas had been killed, but as Aphrodite stepped in to carry Aeneas away and heal him (which she did), Diomedes stabbed her in the wrist. Aphrodite then ran back to Olympus crying like a little bitch, where the gods basically tell her to suck it up. In certain parts of the book, it is said how it is futile to fight the gods, but Diomedes doesn't even give a -blam!-. 2. I don't know exactly how the Greeks thought of the gods, whether they were omnipresent and omniscient like the christian conception of God, or whether they understood them as more localized and fallible. As I just mentioned, the gods could be wounded by humans, and even made to change their minds. Also, the they were constantly quarreling among themselves, some favoring the Trojans, others aiding the Achaeans. This makes me wonder what "fate" as the Greeks understood it really meant. On the one hand, the alliances and intentions of the gods are constantly shifting, often due to the actions of humans, but also as a result of another god's actions. Does this mean "fate" is a thing determined by the gods? Or is "fate" a force even higher that operates upon both gods and mankind? 3. Always. This is a question I've personally wrestled with ever since I was a young adult. Some of you that have known me a long time probably know that I grew up as a young earth creationist. I believed the earth to be no older than 10,000 years, that Noah's flood encompassed the entire earth, and that evolution was untrue. I now accept the exact opposite. I still believe in God, Jesus Christ, and God's creative power. But I also believe in the existence of God's natural laws, laws that can be found in nature and that tell us just as much about reality as His spiritual laws that are found in scripture. However, by no longer accepting the historical legitimacy of these stories I've always felt that something magical had left my sense of reality. I think that magic still exists, it just does not exist in the sense I thought it did. I was taught to look in the wrong places, or perhaps at the wrong things. That being said, at times it can feel like science has a way of killing everything potentially magical about the world: no big foot, no loch ness monster, no dragons, no Atlantis. I could go on. Everything amazing we thought might be possible, turns out to be just another myth on par with Santa Claus. I think feelings like this are what drive people to believe in crazy ideas like flat earth. We want something sacred that science cannot touch or tarnish with the mundane. 4. I dont know. My guess is life at any given time was more simple in certain ways and more complicated in others. 5. Chapter (book) 6 [i]Hector Returns to Troy[/i] really stood out to me. Amid all the thunderings of war and divine intervention, the whole of book 6 felt very down to earth and strikingly real. Hector, a god like hero on par with Achilles, is suddenly seen in a vulnerable light as he searches Troy for the whereabouts of his wife. And once he finds her, he even goes as far as to share his fears, wondering if he will ever see his child again. The whole sequence is shorter than the other chapters, but gripping for how personal it felt. Most of the story I've read so far, feels very impersonal. But briefly, in the book 6, it seems as if you catch a glimpse of something very human: that we are all (even the best of us) just regular people caught up in the irregular insanity of a cruel world...