From Gilgamesh to Homer

Gilgameshbin

Ninsun

Cyclops

State of the art revenge

Deadly seduction - the Sirens

CVSP-exposure to a variety of modes of communicating insight into what

gives meaning to human life…

• ALL FORMS of art and literature, socio-economic-political life, science, technology, human relations, philosophical, religious, and spiritual experience…

• CVSP201 exposes us to polytheistic experience expressedvia poetry, myth, tragic, and scientific-rationalistic visions of our human life…

• CVSP202 introduces us into the worlds of monotheism …

• CVSP203-204 into the modern and contemporary…

Homer: ‘educator’ of the Hellenes(+)

• All subsequent Greek cultural productivity influenced by his aesthetic vision of the cosmos in which humans participate : tragicpoets, rationalistic philosopher-scientists, legal theoreticians…

• Rome conquered Greece militarily / Greece conquered Rome culturally

• Christian and Islamic worlds absorbed basic elements of his legacy

The Homeric Cosmos

“Homer and Hesiod created the genealogy of the gods by providing the gods with epithets assigning them their functions and honors and clarifying their shapes”.

(Herodotus II:53)

ZeusHades

Poseidon

The Shared Cosmos

The Shared Cosmos/The Moirai

“No, no, great though he (Zeus) is, this that he has said is too much, if he will force me against my will, me, who am his equal in rank. Since we are three brothers born by Rheia and Kronos, Zeus and I (Poseidon), and the third is Hades, lord of the dead men. ALL was divided among us three ways, each given his DOMAIN…

The Shared Cosmos/The Moirai (continued)

… I (Poseidon), when the LOTS were shaken drew the grey sea to live in forever; Hades drew the lot of the mists and darkness, and Zeus was allotted the wide sky, in the cloud and the bright air, but earth and high Olympus are common to all three. Therefore I am no part of the mind of Zeus. Let him in tranquility and powerful as he is, stay satisfied with his third SHARE.”

(Iliad, Book XV, lines: 184-195)

Athene Aphrodite

Minotaur

Odyssey illustrations

• The gods : Athene and Poseidon (13:340, p207);Poseidon, Cyclops, and Odysseus (1:76-79, p29; 9:530-535,p151); Kalypso and Odysseus (p91)

• Refusal of immortality : Odysseus as the hero of homecoming (nostos): being where he belongs (order/beauty) (comp Gilgamesh!!!)

• Problematic ending (deus ex machina): restoration of order ; blood-revenge

some themes…

• heroic code /name-fame: somebody / nobody ;(BUT : Achilles in Hades !?!)

• Free / determined ? (1:33-34, et al…)

• truth: aletheia : hidden, concealed , ambiguous

• appearance-reality gap : disguise as fundamental challenge (hospitality/may be a god…) ; the stuff of tragedy

• Odysseus as hero of the explorative mind; the stuff of rationalism