The Iliad, Homer (Emily Wilson translation)

Preface

• “Those who are the greatest winners can be damaged most by any loss. Privilege entails terrible vulnerability.”
  • Those with highest status in the Trojan war would hurl the most insults as they attempt to defend their social standing, for they have the most to lose.
• “The collective desire to see a lone warrior act with glorious courage puts everyone at risk.” It leads the warrior to unnecessarily risk his life for personal gain (glory) which consequently puts his group at risk, ironically estranging the warrior from the group.

• “Even the wisest people are roused to rage, which trickles into you sweeter than honey, and inside your body it swells like smoke…” (18.135-139)

• Very similar to the Buddha quote: Anger is like a honey-tipped arrow with a poison root.

• “Anger turn pain outward, against others; grief turns it inward, to the self. […] The enraged want to humiliate, hurt, or kill; the grief-stricken want to be dead and inhabit the perspective of the dead.”
• But grief is different from anger. “Anger drives community apart; grief brings them together, over a shared acknowledgement of irredeemable loss.”
  • Disagree. Collective outward expressions of hatred and bitterness is a powerful uniting force for groups. As Eric Hoffer put it: mass movements can be formed without belief of a god, but never without belief of a devil.
• Aphrodite (goddess of lust) and Ares (god of war) cause the Trojan war: Aphrodite starts it by causing one dude to abduct the wife of another dude, and Ares fuels the conflict that ensues. Interestingly, both are wounded in battle and respond with ridiculous self-pity at their trivial injuries. But their laments are treated with appropriate disinterest, as they lack honor by associating themselves with the basest and most simplistic human motivations.
• In Greek mythology, “the destruction of human lives and human cities is the price paid for the divine world order.” The costs of divine quarrels are always shouldered by mortals. Why? Because society, of whom the gods represent, demands its constituents to bear the burdens of the group so that the group, and thus the gods, can flourish and remain eternal. Perpetuity of a larger whole demands the sacrifice and suffering of its parts.
  • White blood cells destroy themselves to leave behind an acidic cloud that kills parasites. The white blood cell suffers with dignity. On the other hand, a cell that doesn’t suffer, and furthers itself at the expense of the whole, is called cancer. What happens when we leave it be? The God that rules over it, i.e., the body, dies.

The Poem

• Lilaea: to long for
• “All these men were now too old for war, but good in council, just as cicadas settle in the trees and fill the woods with sound as sweet as lilies.”
• “She brushed [the arrow] from his skin—as light a gesture as when a mother strokes away a fly to keep it from her baby, sweetly sleeping.”
• Waves disgorging briny foam
• When shot, a man hung his head in heavy helmet like a garden poppy “weighted with seed and springtime showers of rain.”
• Heaven high above: effort (takes effort to rise) + light + perspective = far-sightedness. Hell deep below: idleness (it’s easy to roll downhill) + dark + narrowness = near-sightedness.
• “Delusion has great strength and sturdy feet, and runs out ahead of [the Prayers of Atonement, daughters of Zeus], and sprints across the world, and trips us humans. The Prayers come after [Delusion] and heal the damage.”
  • Delusion causes humans to make mistakes. Prayers of atonement heal the wounds caused by those mistakes.
• Like a tall oak tree, “which, day after day, withstand the wind and rain because their roots are thick and planted deeply in the earth.”
• “These two gods tugged the rope of cruel conflict, pulling it tight to one side and the other. This rope, which could not be untied or broken, untied the limbs of many living men.”
• Cronus had three sons, of whom the three were given dominion of three domains: Zeus the sky, Poseidon the sea, and Hades the underworld. But they were all to share the earth and Mount Olympus
• “A mind that can be changed is always best.”
• The winds “clash in mountain glens and batter forest trees—the oak, the ash, the smooth-barked cornel tree strike one another with their slim, sharp branches and snap with creaks and otherworldly groans, so did the Greeks and Trojans sweep together and kill each other.”
• “Deadly Delusion ruins and deludes all men. She is the eldest child of Zeus. Her feet are soft—she never walks the earth. She passes through the minds of human beings and damages them all, and puts in shackles one man in two.”
  • The first child of Zeus, the almighty god, is delusion. Interesting. Also similar to Ravana’s eldest son, Indrajit, who is characterized by delusion.
  • Pride, or excessive self-love, is delusion, the fruit of ignorance. The firstborn child of the god was delusion, and we are delusional (proud) by nature. Something profound here.
• “Using the lamentation for Patroclus, each of the women wept for their own troubles.”
  • Rings true.
• Eddying streams of a river bringing water down to the sea’s broad lap