[lbo-talk] The Greatest of All Time

Carrol Cox cbcox at ilstu.edu
Sun May 14 20:30:15 PDT 2006


Gar Lipow wrote:
>
> Achilles (in the Illiad) the ultimate
> atomistic warrior - fighting for personal honor, personal gain -
> walking out on his fellow warriors in the face of unfair division of
> loot.

You don't know a fucking thing about it. You read it as though it had been written in the 19th c.


> (As much offended pride as disappointed greed/lust.)

Utter nonsense!


> Returning
> to battle to avenge the dealth of his lover. I can't help wonder if
> Homer's Odyssey

The Odyssey is a fine poem, but it is childish in comparison to the Iliad.


> did not represent a transition in the view of heroism
> - from Achilles to Odyeseus as the perfect warrior.

In Achilles Homer enacts humanity's discovery of what it means to be human.

I read the Iliad -- Lattimore's translation -- to each of my three kids at about 10 or 11. Nothing, not anything, in prose or verse, is the equal of the Iliad. The great sadness of my life is that I never learned Greek and can only read it in translation. See the following posts I wrote a couple years ago on it.

http://mailman.lbo-talk.org/2004/2004-October/023277.html

http://mailman.lbo-talk.org/2004/2004-October/023300.html

http://mailman.lbo-talk.org/2004/2004-October/023306.html

Carrol



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