I’ve been reading classic Greek literature lately, trying to improve myself. So far, I’ve covered the cycle of stories around the Trojan War – the Iliad, the Odyssey, the Orestia and the Aeneid. I read some of these stories when I was young. I remembered them as being about heroes and battles; extraordinary feats of strength and courage, glory and valor.
It’s odd how a story written thousands of years ago could change so much in the 25 years since I first read it. This time when I cracked open the Iliad, it was not about courage and valor, but about pettiness and vanity. The poem opens with the pouting of Achilles, the original spoiled brat. His mother was an immortal and his father was a king. Almost invulnerable, he is the strongest and most capable of all the Greek warriors – and yet he sulks in his tent, because a slave girl, a person he won as a prize, was taken away from him.
Hardly a sympathetic character, but when that same pouting leads to the death of his best friend Patroclus, Achilles becomes more human, as grief is the great leveler. Along the way, we learn Achilles had been given a choice before he came to Troy; either he could live a long and happy life of obscurity or he could fight at Troy, die young and his fame would live forever. We know which choice he made, and in the Odyssey, we meet the ghost of Achilles. In one breath he bitterly regrets his choice, but in the next tells Odysseus he hopes his son also became a great warrior, so apparently Mr. Achilles learned nothing, even in death.
Other stories are even more grim and twisted. Agamemnon, the leader of the Greek forces, is told by an oracle that the gods are displeased by the notion of an army of warriors attacking the city of Troy, where the lives of innocent non-combatants will be lost. To appease the gods, Agamemnon sacrifices his innocent daughter before sailing off. As you might imagine, Agamemnon’s wife, Klytemnestra, is not happy about this. She and her lover spend the entire Trojan War plotting the murder of Agamemnon, which they carry out when Agamemnon returns. Klytemnestra and her lover are in turn murdered by Agamemnon’s son Orestes.
Far from being so much soap opera, the Orestia is a meditation on vengeance, justice and mercy. At what point does the need for the killing to stop outweigh the desire to even the score?
I can’t get those stories out of my head, because every morning I pick up the newspaper and see the same scenes played out again. Whether it’s a Palestinian father desperately trying and finally failing to protect his 12-year-old boy from the bullets of soldiers clad in body armor or the newly-wed reluctant conscript who makes a wrong turn and is beaten to death and his body is dragged through the streets of Ramallah.
When Achilles killed Hector, he tied the body behind his chariot and dragged it around and around the city of Troy. Now we have cell phones and the internal combustion engine, but little else has changed. Technical innovation does not equal civilization.
Then there are the 17 faces of the sailors of the USS Cole I saw in the newspaper. They didn’t look like warriors, the looked like kids. I doubt any of them joined the Navy to win glory. I think they were just looking for a good job.
All across the middle east, not so far from Greece or Troy, the need for the killing to stop should far outweigh the desire to even the score.
The Need to Stop Killing
I’ve been reading classic Greek literature lately, trying to improve myself. So far, I’ve covered the cycle of stories around the Trojan War – the Iliad, the Odyssey, the Orestia and the Aeneid. I read some of these stories when I was young. I remembered them as being about heroes and battles; extraordinary feats of strength and courage, glory and valor.
It’s odd how a story written thousands of years ago could change so much in the 25 years since I first read it. This time when I cracked open the Iliad, it was not about courage and valor, but about pettiness and vanity. The poem opens with the pouting of Achilles, the original spoiled brat. His mother was an immortal and his father was a king. Almost invulnerable, he is the strongest and most capable of all the Greek warriors – and yet he sulks in his tent, because a slave girl, a person he won as a prize, was taken away from him.
Hardly a sympathetic character, but when that same pouting leads to the death of his best friend Patroclus, Achilles becomes more human, as grief is the great leveler. Along the way, we learn Achilles had been given a choice before he came to Troy; either he could live a long and happy life of obscurity or he could fight at Troy, die young and his fame would live forever. We know which choice he made, and in the Odyssey, we meet the ghost of Achilles. In one breath he bitterly regrets his choice, but in the next tells Odysseus he hopes his son also became a great warrior, so apparently Mr. Achilles learned nothing, even in death.
Other stories are even more grim and twisted. Agamemnon, the leader of the Greek forces, is told by an oracle that the gods are displeased by the notion of an army of warriors attacking the city of Troy, where the lives of innocent non-combatants will be lost. To appease the gods, Agamemnon sacrifices his innocent daughter before sailing off. As you might imagine, Agamemnon’s wife, Klytemnestra, is not happy about this. She and her lover spend the entire Trojan War plotting the murder of Agamemnon, which they carry out when Agamemnon returns. Klytemnestra and her lover are in turn murdered by Agamemnon’s son Orestes.
Far from being so much soap opera, the Orestia is a meditation on vengeance, justice and mercy. At what point does the need for the killing to stop outweigh the desire to even the score?
I can’t get those stories out of my head, because every morning I pick up the newspaper and see the same scenes played out again. Whether it’s a Palestinian father desperately trying and finally failing to protect his 12-year-old boy from the bullets of soldiers clad in body armor or the newly-wed reluctant conscript who makes a wrong turn and is beaten to death and his body is dragged through the streets of Ramallah.
When Achilles killed Hector, he tied the body behind his chariot and dragged it around and around the city of Troy. Now we have cell phones and the internal combustion engine, but little else has changed. Technical innovation does not equal civilization.
Then there are the 17 faces of the sailors of the USS Cole I saw in the newspaper. They didn’t look like warriors, the looked like kids. I doubt any of them joined the Navy to win glory. I think they were just looking for a good job.
All across the middle east, not so far from Greece or Troy, the need for the killing to stop should far outweigh the desire to even the score.