Transcript Document 7382236

Agenda
• Review Kleos & Timē
• Will & Agency (human autonomy)
– Excerpts from Books 5, 6
• The civilized and the savage
– Books 9 & 11
Review
Kleos & Timē
Kleos & Timē
• Kleos
– “glory,” “renown,” “fame”
– The warrior’s or hero’s
ultimate honor, that for which
he strives
– Earned by actions, by deeds
– Lives-on after the death of the
hero
– Conferred and perpetuated by
poets who sing
• klea andrōn = “fames of
men,” “stories of men”
• klea theon = “fames of gods,”
“stories of gods”
• Timē
– “honor”
– A kind of societal valuation of
a person
– Ephemeral, impermanent,
transient – can be given or
taken away arbitrarily and
cannot be taken to the grave
– The kind of honor that a king
or leader holds (e.g.,
Agamemnon is the most
honored of Achaeans because
he is their greatest king –
wealthiest and commands
largest army, not because he’s
the most prudent or the best
warrior – his honor has little or
nothing to do with his own
action; he was born into it)
Kleos & Timē
• BOTH kleos and timē are a kind of honor.
• Timē usually presupposes and often represents
an underlying kleos. E.g., a trophy or prize
money is award to the victor of a contest. The
magnificence of the award signifies the
magnitude of the victory. The prize(s) represent
the value society places upon the victory and are
intended to remind others of it. That is, they are
intended to remind people of the victory,
perpetuate its kleos. But the prize only has
value to the victor while he lives. In death, he
loses the prize, and there is only his reputation,
the story of his deeds, his kleos.
Will & Agency
In Homer and Greek Tragedy
Iliad Book 5
Pallas Athena now gave to Diomedes,
Tydeus’ son, the strength and courage
That would make him Shine
Among the Greeks and win him glory. (1-4)
Pallas Athena heard Diomedes’ prayer.
She made his body lithe and light,
Then feathered these words in his ear:
“Go after the Trojans for all you’re worth,
Diomedes. I have put into your heart
Your father’s heroic temper, the fearless
Fighting spirit of Tydeus the horseman,
Tydeus the Shield. And I have removed
The mist that has clouded our eyes
So that now you can tell god from man.
Do not fight with any immortal
Who might come to challenge you
Except Aphrodite, daughter of Zeus.
If she comes you may wound her with bronze.”
(140-50)
Lycaon to Aeneas about Diomedes:
He’s not fighting like this without some god
Standing at his side and cloaked in mist.
I swear one of the immortals turned aside
An arrow I already shot at him
Just as it struck. I wound up hitting him
In the right shoulder, clean through his
breastplate.
I thougt I had sent him down to Hades,
But I didn’t get him. Some god is sure angry.
(205-12)
Aeneas about the horses who carry himself &
Lycaon toward battle with Diomedes:
They know how to eat up the plain, and how to
Cut and turn, in pursuit of flight,
And they will get us back to the city in safety
If Zeus gives Diomedes the glory again. (241-4)
Iliad Book 6
Hector to Hecuba:
Helen to Hector:
“I will go over to summon Paris,
If he will listen to what I have to say.
I wish the earth would gape open beneath him.
Olympian Zeus has bred him as a curse
To Troy, to Primam, and all Priam’s children.
If I could see him dead and gone to Hadies,
I think my heart might be eased of its sorrow.” (192-8)
“Brother-in-law
Of a scheming, cold-blooded bitch,
I whish that on the day my mother bore me
A windstorm had swept me away to a mountain
Or into the waves of the restless sea,
Swept me away before all this could happen.
But since the gods have ordained these evils,
Why couldn’t I be the wife of a better man,
One sensitive at least to repeated reproaches?
Paris has never had an ounce of good sense
And never will. He’ll pay for it someday.
…
You bear such a burden
For my wanton ways and Paris’ witlessness.
Zeus has placed this evil fate on us so that
In time to come poets will sing of us.” (361-76)
Hector meant to shame Paris and provoke him:
“This is a fine time to be nursing your anger
You idiot! We’re dying out there defending the walls.
It’s because of you the city is in this hellish war.
If you saw someone else holding back from combat
You’d pick a fight with him yourself. Now get up
Before the whole city goes up in flames!”
And Paris, Handoms as a god:
“That’s no more than just, Hector,
But listen now to what I have to say.
It’s not out of anger or spite toward the Trojans
I’ve been here in my room. I only wanted
To recover from my pain. My wife was just now
Encouraging me to get up an fight,
And that seems the better thing to do.” (341-55)
Hector replies:
“Don’t ask me to sit
…
My hearrt is out there with our fighting me.
…
I’m going to my house now
To see my family, my wife and my boy. I don’t know
Whether I’ll ever be back to see them again, or if
The gods will destroy me at the hands of the Greeks.”
Iliad Book 6
Hector replies to Andromache’s plea that he not leave
the safety of Troy’s walls:
“Yes, Andromache, I worry about all this myself,
But my shame before the Trojans and their wives,
With their long robes trailing, would be too terrible
If I hung back from battle like a coward.
And my heart won’t let me. I have learned to be
One of the best, to fight in Troy’s first ranks,
Defending my father’s honor and my own.
Deep in my heart I know too well
There will come a day when holy Ilion will perish,
And Priam and the people under Priam’s ash spear.
But the pain I will feel for the Trojans then,
…
All that pain is nothing to what I will feel
For you, when some bronze-armored Greek
Leads you away in tears, on your first day of slavery.
…
But may I be dead
And the earth heaped up above me
Before I hear your cry as you are dragged away.” (46390)
With these words, resplendent Hector
Reached for his child, who shrank back screaming
Into his nurse’s bosom, terrified of his father’s
Bronze-encased face and the horsehair plume
He saw nodding down from the helmet's crest.
This forced a laugh from his father and mother,
And Hector removed the helmet from his head
And set it on the ground all shimmering with light.
Then he kissed his dear son and swung him up gently
And said a prayer to Zeus and the other immortals (491500).
Hector to Andromache:
“You worry too much about me, Andromache.
No one is going to send me to Hades before my time,
And no man has ever escaped his fate, rich or poor
Coward or hero, once born into this world. (511-14).
Vernant, Jean-Pierre. “Intimation of the Will in Greek Tragedy."
Myth and Tragedy in Ancient Greece. Trans. Janet Lloyd. New
York: Zone Books, 1990. 49-84.
The tragic treatment of will in agency is the focus of this essay. The agent's will, like his psychological
character, cannot be analyzed in modern terms for much the same reason. Deliberation of or by the
tragic agent does not equate to autonomy; it means the agent is aware of the "impasse" that he has
come to in the action of the play (52). This "impasse" is the psychological space where the agent is
aware of his inability to dictate his own desire and/or action. The agent's deliberation, which modern
psychological assessments tend to equate with a free will, does nothing more than "make him aware
of the aporia” or impasse of his situation; his deliberation "has no power to motivate one option rather
than another" (52). As was the case with Eteocles in the previous essay, the tragic agent is subject to
"religious" or daemonic influences. Even more foreboding is the ultimate "necessity" in tragedy that
forces the agent to act, or recognize his action, in a particular light. Tragic man "recognizes that there
is only one way open before him," that of necessity, based on his circumstances, presumably
governed by the gods (52).
A decision is necessarily the result of volition, but the inverse is not true: volition, voluntary action,
does not hinge upon a decision. Proairesis is the rational decision, belonging to the "practical domain"
and can operate apart from the domain of action (57). Ultimately, "deliberation and decision only take
place with regard to things that 'lie within our power'" (57). In tragedy, agency is not within the agent's
power; it is something done necessarily. Where a modern reader tends to attribute will to the tragic
agent, he should more accurately attribute knowledge or awareness (62).
Tragedy marks a turning point in the Greek conception of will because it causes, especially in
Aeschylus and Sophocles, the spectator to question the relationships between will, agency and guilt.
The constituents of these relationships are markedly different between the legal domain and the
religious domain. The very nature of tragic action is that the divine and the (conscious?) subject are
present in the act. If this is the case, the question then becomes: How is man related to his own
actions? (79). "For the Greeks, to act meant to [be] swept along in the current of human life [which
was] illusory, vain, and impotent without the help of the gods" (83).
Iliad Book 9
The Embassy to Achilles
Embassy to Achilles
• Odysseus, Phoenix, Ajax are sent by
Agamemnon to entreat Achilles to rejoin the
army.
• Odysseus presents the gifts that Agamemnon
offers Achilles if he returns
They cam to the Myrmidon’s ships and huts
And found him plucking clear notes on a lyreA beautiful instrument with a silver bridge
He had taken when he ansacked Eetion’s townAccompanying himself as he sang the glories
Of heroes in war. (Book 9.189-93).
Odysseus
Is it not true, my friend, that your father Peleus
Told you as he sent you off with Agamemnon:
‘My son, as for strengh, Hera and Athena
Will bless you if they wish, but it is up to you
To control your proud spirit. A friendly heart
Is far better. Steer clear of scheming strife,
So that Greeks young and old will honor you.’
You have forgotten what the old man said,
But you can still let go of your anger, right now.
(255-63)
Achilles’ reply to Odysseus
“It doesn’t matter if you stay in camp or fightIn the end, everybody comes out the same.
Coward and hero get the same reward:
You die whether you slack off or work.
And what do I have for all my suffering,
Constantly putting my life on the line?
…
What the others did get they at least got to keep.
They all have their prizes, everone but meI’m the only Greek from whom he took
something back.
….
Every decent, sane man
Loves his woman and cares for her, as I did,
Loved her from my hear. It doesn’t matter
That I won her with my spear. He took her,
Took her right out of my hands, cheated me,
And now he thinks he’s going to win me back?
He can forget it. I know how things stand.
….
He cheated me, wronged me. Never again.
He’s had it. He can go to hell in peace,
The half-wit that Zeus has made him.
His gifts? His gifts mean nothing to me.
Not even if he offered me ten or twenty times
All the trade Orchomenus does in a year,
All the wealth laid up in Egyptian Thebes,
The wealthiest city in all the world,
Where they drive two hundred teams of horses
Out through each of its hundred gates.
Not even if Agamemnon gave me gifts
As numberless as grains of sand or dust,
Would he persuade me or touch my heartNot until he’s paid in full for all m grief. (385-400)
Phoenix
“Peleus sent me with you
On that day you left Phthia to go to Agamemnon,
A child still, knowing nothing of warfare
Or assemblies where men distinguish themselves.
He sent me to you to teach you this –
To be a speaker of words and a doer of deeds.
[tells the story of Meleger who refused to defend his city until it was too late]
Don’t be like that. Don’t think that way,
And don’t let your spirit turn that way.
The ships will be harder to save when they’re burning.
Come while there are gifts, while the Achaeans
Will still honor you as if you were a god.
But if you go into battle without any gifts,
Your honor will be less, save us or not.” (450-622)
Achilles’ reply to Phoenix
“I don’t need that kind of honor, Poenix.
My honor comes from Zeus, and I will have it
Among these beaked ships as long as my breath
Still remains and my knees still move.” (624-7)
Ajax
Achilles
Has made his great heart savage.
He is a cruel man, and has no regard
For the love that his friends honored him with,
Beyond anyone else who camps with the ships.
Pitiless. A man accepts compensation
For a murdered brother, a dead son.
The killer goes on living in the same t own
After paying blood money, and the bereaved
Restrains his proud spirit and broken heart
Because he has received payment. But you,
The gods have replaced your heart
With flint and malice, because of one girl,
One single girl, while we are offering you
Seven of the finest women to be found
And many other gifts.” (647-662)
Achilles’ reply to Ajax
“Ajax, son of Telamon in the line of Zeus,
Everything you say is after my own heart.
But I swell with rage when I think of how
The son of Atreus treated me like dirt
In public, as if I were some worthless tramp.
War turns savage
Agamemnon comes across two Trojan princes
on the battlefield:
Achilles once
Had bound these two with willow branches,
Surprising them as they watched their sheep
On Ida’s hills, and later released them for a
ransom.
Now Agamemnon, Atreus’ wide-ruling son,
Hit Isus with his spear above the nipple
And Antiphus with his sword beside his ear
(11.108-11)
Agamemnon corners two Lycian princes:
“Take us alive, son of Atreus, for ransom.
Antimachus’ palace is piled high with treasure,
Gold and bronze and wrought iron or father
Would give you past counting once he found out
We were alive and well among the Greek ships.”
Sweet words, and they salted them with tears.
But the voice they heard was anything but sweet:
“Your father Antimachus – if you really are
His sons – once urged the Trojan assembly
To kill Menelaus on the spot
Whenhe came with Odysseus on an embassy.
Now you will pay for his heinous offense.”
***There is no more room for ransom. To lose on the battlefield means not only
to die and be stripped of your armor, humiliating in itself, but to have your body
mutilated, become carion for vultures and dogs, denying the warrior his proper
burial.***