We've read The Iliad and the Odyssey, so Homer becomes the
basis for Greek civilization, meaning that all educated
Greeks, they memorize the Iliad in the Odyssey.
They don't, they don't read them right now, at this point.
They speak and they listen in front of an audience.
And so Homer becomes basically the infrastructure of their
mental world view. And this leads to the greatest
civilization in human history. But eventually the Romans will
conquer the Greeks, the Romans will conquer the entire
Mediterranean, and they will create the Roman Empire.
The Romans are nothing like the Greeks.
The Greeks are very open, very curious.
They believe in the idea of irritate, sorry, irritate, and
eudaimonia. Irritate means excellence, to be
the best at what you can. Eudaimonia means flourishing.
You can only achieve human happiness if you achieve your
irritate, OK, you become your irritate.
So think of Odysseus, who is great speaker that is his
irritate and he uses his speech in order to fulfill his destiny
and to save his family, OK, And that achieves eudaimonia.
The Romans are very different. The Romans believe in the idea
of piety, OK, And piety just means obedience to your
father's, to history and to tradition.
And so the Romans are extremely conservative people, but they're
very good at fighting wars and that's why they become the
empire. But after the empire is
established, what the Romans recognize is that Greek culture
is vastly superior and many well educated Romans begin to drift
towards Greek culture, which in the Roman perspective leads to
the corruption of the Roman soul.
And so Augustus Caesar, who is really considered the first
emperor of Rome, he recognizes that in the long term, even
though the Romans have conquered the Greeks physically,
spiritually the Greeks will conquer the the Romans.
And the main issue is Homer. So his solution is to destroy
Homer. You can't burn books because
there there aren't many books and also people have memorized
Homer. So you need to corrupt Homer and
the solution that he devises is called the iniad and we can
consider the iniad as the anti Homer.
OK or the inversion of Homer taking the ideas of Homer and
inverting them. OK, so this becomes the Bible of
the Roman Empire, meaning that if you're a schoolboy, you have
to memorize the iniad. And this is the main way that
you learn Latin, the official language of the Roman Empire.
And so whereas Homer will give us Greek civilization and the
birth of Western civilization, the iniad will create the Dark
Ages about 1000 years when Western creativity ends.
And then someone will emerge who will recognize the evil that is
the in the AD. And he will create a anecdote to
the poison that is the in the AD.
And this person, of course, is called Dante.
OK? And So what we'll do is we will
read the iniad for next two weeks and understand how it
poisons and corrupts Homer. And then this will lead us to
the Divine Comedy, which is really the liberation of the
human soul from the poison that is the iniad.
OK All right, so some basic background about the iniad.
So the Iniad, what it does is it replicates both the Odyssey and
the Iliad. The Iniad is 24 books, the 1st
12 books models of the Odyssey, the last 12 books models of the
Iliad. So the story begins when Ineus,
he is one of the survivors of the fall of Troy.
Okay, and so he takes his father and his child to go off to the
Italian peninsula because the gods have told him that he he is
fated. He is destined to found the
Roman Empire and that's why the gods had to destroy Troy in
order to create the Roman Empire.
But as he sails to an Italian peninsula, there's a shipwreck
and he lands in Carthage. OK Carthage.
And there he meets the Queen Dill.
And the Carthaginians and Ditto are extremely hospitable to NES.
And so they have this huge banquet.
And NES is telling her of the story of the fall of Troy, how
Troy fell. Remember, Remember that Homer
doesn't actually discuss the fall of Troy, but NES will
discuss the fall of Troy. And by discussing the four of
toy, his main purpose is to show how duplicitous, manipulative,
deceptive the Greeks are. OK, he's he's also going to tell
us why the values of Homer are evil, why love is evil, why love
will lead you into tragedy. And then by telling the story,
what will happen is that Inez will seduce Ditto.
Ditto will fall in love with him, not because not only is he
brave and handsome, but he's also a great poet.
He's able to tell the story in a beautiful manner.
And so they fall in love. OK, All right, So this is the
beginning of the in the act. And So what we're going to read
first is, and it's a story of the fall of Troy.
It begins when the Greeks pretend to leave the beaches of
Troy, and they leave behind a wooden horse, OK?
And there's a huge debate among the Trojans as to what to do
with this horse. And they decide, basically, you
know, we can't take a risk. Let's just destroy this horse,
throw it into the sea. And then what happens is that a
Greek soldier emerges and he's a prisoner.
He's he was caught by some shepherds.
And he tells the story of the children's horse and why it's
really not a threat to the Trojans.
In fact, it's a gift from the Greeks to the gods.
So because it's a gift to the gods, you cannot destroy it
because then you piss off the gods.
OK. And what this is going to show
us is that the Greek culture, philosophy, theater, rhetoric,
it's all one of deception. The real children horse is Greek
culture. You cannot let Greek culture
into Rome because then it will corrupt and poison the empire
from within. OK, so that that.
So again, this is propaganda. So it's very blatant what
they're doing. OK, It's very blatant what
Virgil is doing. And OK, something I I need to
explain is like virtual is considered the poet who composed
this in the ad, but it was actually Augustus Caesar who
wrote this. Basically, Augustus Caesar was
one who provided Virgil with a framework and then Virgil
composed it into Latin poetry. And actually, at the end of his
life, Virgil actually want to burn this down, burn this.
And the reason why is that if you're a poet, what you believe
is that your gift comes from the gods.
And so you represent the gods. But if you actually work for the
empire, if you actually use your gift for the emperor, then maybe
the gods will punish you, right? So Virgil Virgil was very much
afraid and wanted to like burn the in the end, but Augustus
Caesar would not let him. And so this became the Bible of
the Roman Empire. It is a evil, evil piece of
work. OK, and it is the anti Homer.
So we're going to study it because it's in a shape
westernization throughout the Middle Ages until the coming of
Dante. OK, so all right, so Ivory, can
you read please? Yeah, suddenly, in the thick of
it all, a young soldier, hands shackled behind his back with
much shouting, Trojan shepherds were hauling him toward the
king. He'd come on demand by chance, a
total stranger. He'd given himself up with one
goal in mind, to open Troy to the Greeks and lay her waist.
He trusted to courage nerved for either end, to weave his lies or
face a certain death. Young Trojan recruits, keen to
have a look, came scurrying up from all sides, crowding round,
outdoing each other to make a mockery of the captive.
Now hear the treachery of the Greeks, and learn from a single
crime the nature of the beast. Haggard, helpless there in our
midst he stood, all eyes revision on him now, and turning
a weary glance at the lines of the of Trojan troops, he groaned
and spoke. Where can I find some refuge?
We're on land, on sea. What's left for me now, a man of
so much misery? Nothing among the Greeks, no
place at all. And worse, I see my Trojan
enemies crying for my blood, His groans convince us, cutting all
our show of violence short. OK, so this time in history and
this this about about 30 BCE, Greek theatre is very, very
popular. The women's love Greek theatre,
and Greek theatre is really the very paragon of Greek
civilization. And what this is telling us is
that no Greek theater is evil. It's meant to deceive us.
OK, so this soldier, this Greek soldier, he is trained in
theater. He's trained in philosophy, he's
trained in rhetoric. And he's using all his craft,
all his skills in order to ultimately deceive the good but
naive Trojans. OK, All right.
So he tells the story of how he came to be left behind in Troy.
And the story is that he pissed off Odysseus.
This is plotted against him. So.
So when it came time for the Greeks to leave Troy and sell
home, they need they need to sacrifice a person.
And that person was this guy. But somehow this guy ran off.
OK. OK.
Can you read Ivory? The day of infamy soon came.
The sacred rites were all performed for the victim, the
salted meals strewn, the bands tied around my head.
But I broke free of death, I tell you.
Burst my shackles, yes, and hid all night in the wreaths of a
marshy lake, waiting for them to sail, if only they would sail
well. No hope now of seeing the land
where I was born, or my sweet children, the father I longed
for all these years. Maybe they'll reign from them
the price of for my escape. Avenge my guilt with my loved
ones. Blood.
Poor things. I beg.
I beg you, King, by the powers who know the truth, by any trust
still uncorrupt in the world of men.
Pity a man whose torment knows no bounds.
Pity me in my pain. I know in my soul I don't
deserve to suffer. He wept and won his life.
Our pity, too. Priam takes command, has him
freed from the ropes and chains that bind him fast, and hails
him warmly. Whoever you are, from now on
you've lost the Greeks. Put them out of your mind and
you'll be one of us. But answer my questions.
Tell me the whole truth. Why did they raise up this giant
monstrous horse? Who conceived it?
What's it for? It's purpose?
A gift to the gods? A great engine of battle.
OK, so again, this reminds us of the Iliad, where Priam, the king
of the Trojans, is known for being a very generous,
magnificent, sorry, benevolent, open person.
But this will lead to the doom of Choi.
So remember, in the Iliad, it is because of Prime's generosity,
his ability to forgive Achilles, that leads to the great
friendship between Prime and Achilles.
OK. And again, Virgil's trying to
reverse this, and he's trying to show us that no, you think that
generosity will lead to goodness.
No, generosity will lead to evil.
You see how Prime is too trusting, too generous.
And so he believes this Greek soldier.
And then he will allow the Trojans to bring the horse into
Troy. And at night, the Greek soldiers
will escape from the horse, open the gates of Troy.
And now the Greeks are rushing in to kill everyone, OK.
And Ineos hears this slaughter, and he tries to save as many
people as he can. And his first thought is, where
is my king? How do I save my king?
OK, so as the Greeks are ravaging the city, killing as
many people as they can, Indians is rushing to save his king
prior. All right, all right.
So can you read Ivory? Perhaps you wonder how prayer
met his end when he saw his city, stormed and seized his
gates, wrenched apart the enemy, camped in his Palestinians.
The old man donned his armour, long unused.
He clamps it round his shoulders, shaking with age and
all for nothing, straps his useless sword to his hip, then
makes for the thick of battle out to meet his death.
At the heart of the house, an ample altar stood naked under
the skies, an ancient Laurel bending over the shrine,
embracing our household gods within the shade.
Here, flocking the altar, Hakuba and her daughters huddled, blown
headlong down like doves by a black storm, clutching all for
nothing, the figures of their gods.
Same preem, decked in the arms he'd warn as a young man.
Are you insane? He, she cries.
Poor husband. What impels you to strap that
sword on now? Where are you rushing?
Too late for such defense, such help.
Not even to my for my own. Not even my own Hector, if he
came to the rescue. Now come to me, Priam.
This altar will shield us all, or else you'll die with us.
With those wars. Drawing him towards her, there
she made a place for the old man beside the holy shrine.
OK, let's continue. Suddenly look, a son of Priam
Polities just just escaped from Slaughter at Pyrus's hands.
So Pyrus is a son of Achilles. OK, so this is a rewriting of
the ending of the Iliad where Priam and Achilles have this
great emotional battle where they forgive each other and
Prime's love for Hector and Achilles love for his father
unifies their soul. OK, this is going to be a
rewriting of that battle. So Achilles is dead and now his
son is seeking to kill Priam. Come on away.
Comes racing through spheres, through enemy fighters, fleeing
down the long arcades and deserted hallways, badly
wounded, Paris hot on his heels, a weapon poised for the kill,
about to seize him, about to run him through and pressing home as
politics reaches his parents and collapses, vomiting out his
lifeblood before their eyes. And that.
So again, this is a rewriting of the iliac where now Politis
becomes Hector, right? Please remember Achilles kills
Hector at the gates of Troy and prime Hegibah are on the walls
watching this. And then Achilles commits a war
crime by basically tying Hector to his church.
And then dragging Hector all around the the wasatch.
OK, so this is what we reimagining of that scene.
OK, keep, keep on going. At that, Priam, trapped in the
grip, grip of death, not holding back, not checking his words,
his rage. You, he cries.
You and your vicious crimes. If any power on Heil recoils as
such an outrage, let the gods repay you for all your reckless
work, grant you the things the rich reward you the the ritual
reward you've earned. You've made me see my son's
death with my own eyes defiled the father's sight with his
son's lifeblood. You say you're Achilles, the
son. You lie.
Achilles never treated his enemy pre and so no, he honored us
appliances, right? He blessed to betray my my
trust. He restored my Hector's
bloodless corpse for for burial, sent me safely home to the land
I rule. OK, so again, he is reminding us
of the ending of the Iliac, where in this Great War, peace
and love comes to universe when Achilles and Priam are able to
become friends. OK.
And he's saying your father, you've you've destroyed the
legacy of your father. You've destroyed the friendship
between us. OK, All right, keep on reading.
With that, and with all his might, the old man flings his
spear, but too important now to Pierce, it merely grazes Pyrus's
brazen shield that blocks his way and cleans their dangling
limb from the boss. All for nothing?
Pyrus shouts back. Well then, down you go, A
messenger to my father Peleus's son.
Tell him about my vicious work. How Neil niab Tolemus degrades
his. Neo Tolemus is actually another
name for pirates. OK, the same person.
Keep on going. Degrades his father's name.
Don't you forget. Now die that side.
He drags the old man straight to the altar, quaking Slytherin on
through slicks of his son's blood and twisting preempts his
hair in his left hand, his right hand sweeping forth his sword.
A flash of steel. He buries his hilt deep in the
King's flank. Such was the fate of of Priam,
his death, his law on earth. With Troy blazing before his
eyes, her ramparts down the monarch who once had ruled in
all his glory the many lands of Asia, Asia's many tribes.
A powerful trunk is lying on the shore, the head wrenched from
the shoulders. A corpse without a name.
OK, so this is the difference between the Greeks and the
Romans, OK? The Greeks very cultured people.
They enjoy going to theatre and watching a tragedy and crying
together to rejuvenate their sense of humanity.
OK, that was a Greek culture. The Romans go to the Colosseum
and watch gladiator fights, OK? They like blood, they like
violence. And so the iniad is an extremely
violent poetry. In fact, you can say it's almost
pornographic in the violence that it depicts, all right.
And the Romans just love this because they are a bloodthirsty
people, all right, All right, So prime is dead.
And with its death, what it is doing is negating the more or
lesson of the Iliac to forgive one's enemy.
OK, so the Romans read this and they remember reading the e-mail
and saying, Oh my God, I was wrong to think that Prime was
heroic in forgiving Achilles. What I should be really thinking
is what a foolish old man who deserves to die for thinking
that his enemy should be forgiven.
That for thinking that his enemy has a good soul in him.
OK, so again, this is negating the Iliad.
It's actually poisoning and corrupting the Iliad.
All right, so now Elias is talking about his reaction,
watching his king die. OK, keep on reading, Ivory.
Then, for the first time, the full horror came home, and came
home to me at last. I froze, the thought of my own
dear father filled filled my mind when I saw the old king
gasping out his life with that rot wound.
Both men were the same age and the thought of my Crusa alone
abandoned our house, plundered our little Elias's fate.
I look back, what forces still stood by me?
None totally spent in war. They'd all deserted down from
the roofs, they flung themselves to earth or hold their broken
bodies in the flames. So at just that moment I was the
one man left. And then I saw her, clinging to
Vestas threshold, hiding in silence, tucked away.
Helen of Argos glare of the fires lit my view as I looked
down, scanning the city left and right.
And there she was, Terrified of the Trojans hate.
Now Troy was overpowered, terrified of the Greeks revenge,
her deserted husband's rage. That universal fury accursed
Troy and her native land, and here she lurked, skulking a
thing of of loathing, cowering at the altar.
Helen, out it flared the fire inside my soul, my rage of blaze
to avenge our, our fallen country.
Pay Helen back. Crime for crime.
OK, so Inez is watching his entire civilization being
destroyed, and he knows that his family will be destroyed as
well. And he is taken aback.
He's sort of like paralysed by his anger and his hatred and his
fear. And then he sees Helen and he's
like, this is her fault, OK? This is why we are we are
destroying the civilization because of this whore, OK?
And so this is telling us what the lesson from this is, that
love is a source of evil in the world.
OK, Love is a source of evil in this world.
Remember the Odyssey, what is the what is the main lesson of
the Odyssey? Love is the redemptive force of
the world, right? If you are shattered as a
person, it is love that will lead you home and heal you as a
person. And what the Ineat is saying
instead is that love is what destroys civilization.
Love is what corrupts you. Love is what leads you to hell.
OK, All right, so he wants to kill Helen as revenge for the
destruction of Troy. But then what happens is that
Ineos's mother, Venus. OK so Venus is his mother, steps
in, appears before him, says no, you can't do this, you have to
go home and save your wife and your child.
OK so Alias goes home and what he does is he say he takes his
family and takes them to the ship to escape Troy.
But as they are running through the streets of Troy, what in his
does is he puts his father on his back, OK, And he holds his
son, his young son Elias, and the and creates the wife has to
follow them. OK, So that that's a Roman
priority, OK. The most important person in the
family is the patriarch. The father then is the son who
inherits. And the wife is just someone who
follows, OK, but her job is to serve rather than being equal in
the relationship. And this is, again, it's very
different from the Odyssey, where in many ways Penelope and
audiences are equal to each other.
OK, All right. So what happens is that Inez
gets to the ship and he and he puts his father and his son on
the ship, ready to escape. But he recognizes at the at the
very last minute his wife is missing.
So he goes back and tries to save his wife, but his wife is
dead. And why is she dead?
Because she killed herself. Why does she kill herself?
She killed herself because it is her duty not to burden her
husband, because her husband is destined for great things.
He's destined to found an empire.
So he must marry into a new lineage, a new old family.
And therefore she has to kill herself to free him.
But knowing that but if she were to become a slave to the Greeks,
it would cost him embarrassment for the rest of his life, right?
OK, so that is the woman perception of a wifely duty.
OK, If you're not useful to your husband, just kill yourself.
OK? Can you read?
Creusa. Nothing.
No reply. And again Creusa, but then as I
madly rushed from house to house, no one insight.
Abruptly, right before my eyes, I saw her stricken ghost.
My own crew says his shade but larger than life, the life I
known so well. I froze, my hackles bristled,
voice choked in my throat, and my wife spoke out to ease me of
my anguish. My dear husband, why so eager to
give yourselves to such mad flights of grief is not without
the will of the gods. These things have come to pass,
but the gods forbid you to take Creusa with you bound from Troy
together. The king of lofty Olympus won't
allow it along. Exile is your fate.
The vast plains of the sea are yours to plow when you reach
Hesperian land, where Lydian Tiber flows with a smooth March
through rich and loamy fields. A land of Hardy people.
Their Greyjoy and the Kingdom are yours to claim, and the
queen to make your wife. Dispel your tears for Creusa,
whom you loved. I will never behold the high and
mighty pride of their palaces, the Murmidons, the Dilopians, or
go as a slave to some Greek matron.
No, not I, daughter of Dardanus, that I am the wife of Venus's
son, The great Mother of God detains me on these shores.
And now farewell hold you, the son we share, we love together.
Again, this is very different from the Odyssey where the
Aussie is really about a journey of two people, Penelope and
artists is to find each other again because love is the
greatest force in the universe, OK?
Love is what compels the two to reunite and define each other
amidst all the chaos surrounding them.
In the in the ad, the idea is that love is hell.
So what is heaven? OK is love is hell?
What is heaven? Heaven is piety.
Piety just means obedience to the prophecy of the gods, right?
It is still with the gods that Troy be destroyed so that Rome
can be created. It's a it is the prophecy of the
gods that Ineos will be the one to lead the Trojans to found
this Rome. And therefore, what is good,
what is divine, is obedience to this prophecy.
OK? So Allah acts out.
Is your fate all right? The king of lofty Olympus won't
allow Zeus or Jupiter demands this of us.
If Jupiter demands us to sacrifice ourselves, then we
must do so. OK.
And so this reverses the Odyssey, right?
Where the gods willeth that Penelope and Odysseus reunite,
but here the gods willeth that Krissa and it is separate.
All right, OK, so from our eyes, this doesn't sound that
influential. But the reality is, remember,
this becomes a basis of Roman civilization, All right?
And what is civilization but a set of values, a set of ideas
that guide you in your life, OK. And what this is doing is
inverting Homer, poisoning, corrupting Homer.
All right. OK, any questions, guys?
OK. So we'll we'll continue this
next week, OK.