Chris Doss wrote:
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> The "nature" of the Greeks consisted of a god living under every rock and in every tree and river, and divine beings spinning around the earth, that you worshipped and had to appease or they would kick your ass.
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> For Homer, something is good if it is powerful and noble and inspiring respect, not because it is harmless.
I don't have the energy just now to debate this, but this is absolutely wrong. The very term, "good," makes no sense at all in this context. Something that was powerful was powerful, PERIOD. It is absurd to add "good" or "bad" to this proposition. The nearest Homer comes to applying such a judgment (and only implicitly, since I doubt that the appropriate abstraction existed in his vocabulary) is in an episode that I have not reread recently and can't be specific or not, but the gods begin to laugh uncontrollably. The gods are powerful and must be respected, or elese, but there is essentially nothinng "good" about them. Because they cannot die, they cannot have the dignity nor the greatness of an Achilles knowing he is going to die, and acting under that knowledge.
You and I look at the same evidence and come to opposite conclusions, so I don't know what can resolve the debate.
Carrol