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September 29: MYCENAEAN GREECE:  HOMER AS HISTORIAN (Spear)

 "[The writing out of the Iliad and the Odyssey] was something like a thunder-clap in human history....It constituted an intrusion into culture, with results that proved irreversible.  It laid the basis for the destruction of the oral way of life and the oral modes of thought....What set in with the alphabetization of Homer was a process of erosion of "orality" extending over centuries of the European experience."  (Eric A. Havelock, Communication Arts in the Ancient World, (1978), pp. 3-4.

I.  Some preliminary comments
  Milman Parry

II.  Myth as History
  • Heinrich Schliemann (1822-1890 A.D.)  Hisarlik = Troy
  • Archaeological corroboration

  1.  Nestor's cup (discovered by Schliemann)  "It was set with golden nails, the eared handles upon it were four, and on either side there were fashioned two doves of gold, feeding, and there were double bases beneath it." (Iliad XI:632)

  2.  The boar's tusk helmet.  "...and he too put over his head a helmet fashioned of leather; on the inside the cap was cross-strung firmly with thongs of leather, and on the outer side the white teeth of a tusk-shining boar were close sewn one after another." (Iliad X:261)

  3.  The Ulu-Burun shipwreck (c.1350 B.C.).  "...and handed him murderous symbols, which he inscribed in a folding tablet, enough to destroy life." (Iliad VI:168)

  4.  Most recent archaeological evidence

  5.  Most recent linguistic evidence
   a.  from the Hittites:  Wilusa = Ilios?, Ahhiyawa = Achaioi?
   b.  from Egypt:  Danaya = Danaois?

  6.  Evidence from the Odyssey.

   The story of the Laistrygones.  Cape Taenarum on the S. coast of the Peloponnese.  "There we entered the glorious harbor, which a sky-towering cliff encloses on either side, with no break anywhere, and two projecting promontories facing each other run out toward the mouth, and there is a narrow entrance...." (Odyssey X:87)
 

III.  The Mycenaean Age
 A.  Heroic
 B.  The Fortress
 C.  Its demise--migrations of 1200 BC
 D.  Was it an empire?

October 2: Virtues of the Ancient World (Stone)

Introduction
Proto-rationality or proto-philosophy means that ancient cultures are thinking about their experience, and thinking deeply about it and they give expression to their thoughts through story telling and myths as well as their sacred, historical, poetic, prophetic, and EPIC literature
Until Greek philosophy we don't find this thought expressed in dialectic, argumentative discourse.
Reason is the part of use that tries to understand our experience, to make sense of it, to find out what is true in it.
Philosophical task is to reawaken the experiences and thoughts of these earliest thinkers
Look at the experiences and thought that produces the morality that characterizes Greek culture--the morality of human excellence or virtue.

Moral perspectives and moral experience

Moral experience of the Hebrews - moral theo-nomy (theos-God, nomos-law)
Torah as part of the covenant relationship between the children of Israel and God
Prophetic utterance of God's commands
Fathers a rule-centered understanding of morality: a system of moral rules or obligations that apply absolutely and universally  (In Amos - God's judgment falls on Israel's neighbors, Judah, and Israel)

Moral experience of early Greeks - moral bia-nomy (bia-force or violence, nomos-law)
Recall the citadels of the Mycenaeans
Stories in which the heroes wage ware, plunder, pillage, and pulverize
Simon Weil, "The Iliad: the poem of Force"

NOTE: Dr. Rutledge made the good point that the scene in Epic of Gilgamesh in which Humbaba asks for mercy but gets none follows the law of force in much the same way that the suitors pleading for mercy from Odysseus goes unheeded.  Mercy seems to be integral to the moral experience of the Hebrews.

Gives ground to a morality of human excellence, virtue, arete
Uniqueness is that this is not a morality of law; it is a morality of character
What sort of experience underlies this morality?  Action, praxis, doings of all sorts (Od. I, 337, p. 36)
Human happiness is achieved through action.

Action and evaluating action and activities
Right or Wrong? Not exactly
Doing something and doing it well: a continuum of evaluation from ok to good, better, better still, excellent
Virtue is that ability or characteristic which you put into action when you excel at something
Agent-action-goal-virtue: Each action has a goal and virtue is the character trait that enables you to reach the goal in the best way possible.

In the Odyssey, what is the goal that is most worth seeking, that will lead to human happiness?  What are the virtues that enable us to achieve it?
Goal: order of the household, marriage of equals (Od. VI, 178, p. 107), Penelope as king (Od. XIX, 107, p. 285)
Virtue: Fidelity, unswerving devotion to this order

NOTE: Dr. Rutledge pointed out to further the contrast between this morality of human excellence and that of the rule-centered morality is that fidelity in the Odyssey does not mean strict marital fidelity, not sleeping with any others.  Odysseus sleeps with Kalypso and with Circe, too.  This sort of infidelity is somehow compatible with the unswerving devotion that motivates and steers his ultimate return to Ithaca

Subsidiary virtues: resourcefulness, ingenuity, sneakiness, deceit, intelligence
Happiness: Return to the marriage bed (Od. XXIII, 166 ff., p. 340, 341)

Conclusion
In Greek culture we find a morality of virtue that focuses on character and achieving human happiness.  This moral perspective contrasts sharply with the rule-centered experience of morality which we have also inherited.

October 3: Greek Epic (Menzer)

I. Medium and Message
A. Genre: Epic
Bedford handbook: "A long and formal narrative poem written in an elevated style that recounts the adventures of a hero of almost mythic proportions, who often embodies the traits of a nation or people." Invocation of muse (27), beginning in medias res
B. Composition of the text (~800 B.C.E.)
 1. "Homer": the author question
 2. Oral vs. written
  Milman Parry: noun-epithet formula

II. Homecoming: Odysseus and Penelope
A. Background
Penelope’s dilemma (pp. 286, 296)
Telemachos’s misunderstanding (pp. 36-7)
B. Crafty Odysseus (pp, 205, 147-8)
C. Circumspect Penelope’s skill with language (p. 277; also pp. 285-6, 339-41)

Their odysseys (simile on p. 341)

III. The Fluidity of the Text
A. The web of stories around and within the Odyssey
Agamemnon (pp. 28, 179)
B. Who is the storyteller? (171)

October 5: Greek Tragedy: Antigone (Menzer)

Introduction: Welcome to Athens (~450 B.C.E)
I. Tragedy
A. General characteristics
Benet's: "the spectacle of a human being of nobility, idealism, and courage in conflict either with his or her own frailty or with a hostile or indifferent universe"
high seriousness, Aristotle's idea of catharsis
B. Origins: Dionysia
C. Role of fate
 The Chorus (25, 36-7)
II. Individual/City
A. The importance of the city (10, 17, 7)
B. The city and the ruler
  1. Creon thinks the leader is the city (10, 27)
  2. Creon cannot understand dissent (12, 38)
  3. City suffers because of ruler's actions (29, 38)
C. The city and the dissident
The problem of contrary ideals (law: 20; family: 6, 35)
III. Woman/Man
A. Antigone's femininity (32, 35)
B. Women and dissent (7, 21, 22, 25, 27)

Tragedy's lack of resolution

October 6: Greek Sexual Culture: Lysistrata and Lyric (Menzer)

I. Lysistrata: Background
A.  Aristophanes, Lenaia, 411 B.C.E. (Peloponnesian War, Athenian expedition to Sicily in 413 B.C.E.--p.46)
B. Translation issues: dialect, meter (69), translators
II. Comedy – Old Comedy
A. Comic inversion
  1. Stereotypes about female sexuality (25-6, 101)
  2. Public/private (17, 57, 50-1, 53, 61, 66)
B. Restoration of order
  1. The conservative nature of comedy
  2. What is this play about? (59-60, 106, 112)
III. Sappho: Background
A. c. 600 B.C.E., Lesbos, aristocracy
B. Lyric poetry
C. Fragments
IV.  Women’s relationships in Sappho’s poetry
A. Sexuality in Greece (or why Sappho was a Lesbian, not a lesbian)
B. Women’s communities vs. men’s communities (#3, #9)

October 9: THUCYDIDES & ATHENIAN IMPERIALISM  (Spear)

  The Greek polis (plural: poleis).  Sparta, Athens.
 Athenian democracy, based on full citizen participation in the public political life (e.g. ostracism); Pericles (495-429 BC)
II.  The writing of History in Ancient Greece
 Greek: historie, an inquiry or investigation.  We might say today History is the ascertaining of chronological cause and effect.
 Homer immortalizes the Trojan War
 Herodotus chronicles the Persian War (490 BC).

III. Thucydides  (460 - 400 BC)  THU-CY-DI-DES
 His career and his work:
"My work is not a piece of writing designed to meet the taste of an immediate public, but was done to last for ever."

IV.  The Peloponnesian War (431-404 BC)
 Greek:  arche, empire; the Delian League;
 the Sicilian Expedition (415-14 B.C.) as the turning point
 The Melian Dialogue
 The debate between Nicias and Alcibiades (450-404)

V.  To sum up.

October 11: Plato: Forms, the Soul, and Rhetoric (Stone)

Introduction: the beginnings of western philosophy-conversation, dialogue, and treatise

Socrates (469-399 BCE) - Philosophy in the Agora - Athen's gadfly as described in Plato's Apology
Pursue moral excellence/virtue/arete rather than material wealth, power, honor
"Unexamined life is not worth living" - philosophical reflection and examination about action and belief are essential to living well
Accused of impiety and corruption and executed in 399 BCE

Plato (427-347 BCE) - Philosophy in the Academy - Dissent at a distance
Philosophy, reasoned argument, dialectic, and the love of wisdom and truth are not to be confused with rhetoric, the "knack" of persuading
In his Republic he criticizes of the law of force (bia-nomy)… recall Athenians in Melian dialogue, Socrates's execution
Advocates the pursuit of knowledge of moral excellence--for Plato this becomes a search for moral IDEALS or perfect Forms
Medium and message - Plato self-consciously selects the ideal medium for conveying truths

Phaedrus - from the Material to the Ethereal

Overview - Lysias's speech, Socrates's speech, Socrates's discourse on the soul and love, Discussion of the differences between Rhetoric and Dialectic, the Inadequacy of writing

Plato's view of the soul
Understand soul as that which moves, what animates a living body, what initiates action, what chooses
The immortality of the soul-argument
The allegory of the chariot-myth of the good horse, the bad horse, and the charioteer

Love for the Ideal - Plato's Forms or Ideas
The ascent of virtue from ok, to good, to better, to best, to perfect
Think of the perfect _________, does it exist physically or is it an ideal?
For Plato the contrast between the true nature of Beauty and the many beautiful things is a contrast between what is perfect, permanent, and absolute and what is imperfect, variable, and relative
A vision or experience of these ideals -Beauty itself, Justice itself, Courage itself - compels one to practice these virtues

Conclusion
Plato rejects Rhetoric and Writing in light of this theory, rhetoric because it does not aim to present the truth, its aim is only to persuade, writing because it cannot present this truth, one can only be led to it through conversation.  Genre of philosophical Dialogue is Plato's attempt to shape writing to this purpose.  The philosophical treatise of definition, classification, analysis, and detailed argument becomes the traditional genre of philosophical literature.

October 12: Aristotle: Greek Natural Philosophy (Stone)

Introduction: Objectivity in philosophy

Aristotle (384-322 BCE)- Philosophy in the Natural World
"Human beings desire to know by nature" - Metaphysics
Know what? Everything knowable-for each field of action and inquiry determine what we can know
Determine generally how all of the fields of action and inquiry are related to one another
Biology, Physics or Nature, Politics, Ethics, Logic, Language, Poetry, Rhetoric, Psychology, …

Rhetoric and Dialectic - the art of public speaking and the art of logical reasoning
Plato's distinction between Rhetoric and Dialectic (philosophical reasoning)-persuasion by whatever means vs persuasion by conveying the truth
For Aristotle Rhetoric should include logical reasoning but cannot be limited to it-syllogistic does not always persuade
Other elements: the character of the speaker (11), an understanding of character (13), and understanding of emotions (14)

Aristotle acknowledges a priority to speech but no sense in which writing is inadequate
Mental experience, speech, written word - sym-bol, connection is conventional and not necessary
Truth is not a vision, but an affirmation or denial in thought, speech, or words

Natural philosophy - Rejection of perfect, permanent, absolute Forms separate from the natural world
Forms serve no purpose, they're unnecessary to explain why we use a common word for many things
Worse-to suppose that they do exist involves one in unanswerable incoherence
Permanence and stability reside with the natural world
We perceive the Intelligible Form of things with our senses and minds
Contrast Aristotle's judgment that the Greek polis is the best political arrangement, the one that answers to human nature, with  Plato's search for an ideal Republic

 The scientific view of the soul (psyche) - just the facts and an analogy or two
Whass 'a this'? - the most real thing, the soul/body composite
The axe, the eye and the soul

Conclusion
 Aristotle presents philosophy as objective scientific thinking about everything knowable.  As Perry suggests he completes a break with mythological thinking that even Plato does not entirely dispense with.

October 13: Greek Religion  (Rutledge)

  Prelude:  the modern academy and religion
I.   Introduction:      the modern fascination with classical Greece
        Stages of Greek thought:     -Minoan (c. 1600 bce) - “mythical”; art, commerce, palaces
                    -Mycenean (c. 1300 bce) - "warrior"; period of Trojan war
           -Homeric (c. 700 bce)  - "heroic"; looking back from ‘Dark Ages’
           -Classical /dramatists (c. 400 bce) - "visionary"
           -Classical /philosophers (c. 400 bce) - "rational"
           -Hellenistic (after 336 bce) - "sectarian"
II. Greek Religion
- the basic divine attribute:  immortality; the divine functions:  sovereignty, war, fertility;
 -religion in Homer:  -divine prerogative; moral duties of humans:  hospitality; sacred oaths;
      dike; importance of ritual; a ‘frontier’ religion
 -religion after Homer:  -a pan-Hellenic consciousness develops:  common sanctuaries;
   pan-Hellenic games & festivals; temples now in city center; veneration of heroes
-the Olympian Twelve, and marginal groups (Dionysios, Orpheus, Hercules, etc.)
       aside:   religion as ‘social cement,’ (Apollo) and religion as ‘social critic’ (Dionysos)
 -expressions of Greek religion:  myth, ritual, images;   moira:  the importance of limits
 -ambivalence toward women:   -virginity and fertility both valued in women, but conflict
        -women ‘invisible’ in society, yet omnipresent in art, drama
        -women subordinate, yet goddesses active, independent
        -the divine could be female, yet women excluded from democracy
Afterwords:    humanism and religion - in Greece they were usually in harmony

October 18: THE EMPIRE OF AUGUSTUS (Spear)

"The Roman Empire is fascinating as the longest period of political unity in Western Civilization."--Chester G. Starr

Early Rome
   Roman character, imperium, paternalism
   Roman Republic:  The Res Publica was "the public thing".  The SPQR was emphatically not a kingship

Empire Building
       Successes and techniques
          Cicero:  "By defending our allies, our people have come to dominate the whole world."
       Problems and failures
           Case Study:  the Punic Wars, Rome vs. Carthage
                First Punic war (253-241 BC)
                Second Punic War (218-202 BC): Hannibal, B. of Cannae 216; B. of Zama 202, harsh peace treaty
                Third Punic War (149-146 BC): Role of Cato the Elder:  "Carthago delenda est"

The Emperor Augustus.
 A.  Background is a century of civil war (See Perry, pp. 95-100 for details).
 B.  The Aeneid (Book VI: 1058 ff) as a plea for peace under Augustus.
 C  Augustus the person
  named Octavian
  defeated Marc Antony & Cleopatra
 D  the Augustan constitutional settlement
  princeps senatus; pontifex maximus
 E  the Augustan Empire; begins 200 years of Pax Romana
civis Romanus sum

The Roman Empire:  an Assessment
   Ideology
   Some Judgments

"Roman, remember by your strength to rule Earth's peoples--for your arts are to be these:  To pacify, to impose the rule of law, To spare the conquered, battle down the proud." (Aeneid, VI, 1151-1154).
vs.

"To robbery, butchery,and rapine they give the lying name of empire; they make a desert and call it peace."--(Calgac, a British chieftain, from Tacitus's Germania).

October 19: The Aenied (Menzer)
I. Emily Dickinson and Latin epic meter
Terms: quantitative meter, long and short syllables, foot, dactylic hexameter, dactyl, spondee

II. Background/Genre (Publius Vergilius Maro)
A. Aeneid left unfinished 19 B.C.E.; The Messianic Eclogue; Virgil's debt to Homer
B. Epic: long, narrative, poem in elevated style; hero, great deeds, supernatural forces
    Three epic "tendencies":  invoking the muse (3);  in medias res and  . . .

III.  Foundation (or origin) myth: The Aeneid and the Roman Empire
First seven lines; Carthage (119); The Underworld (186-91)

IV. The epic hero: duty-bound Aeneas (pietas)
A. Duty to the gods (165-6)
B. Duty to the family (= male lineage) (52, 53, 58 & 60, 108)

V.  The trouble with duty:
How Virgil makes Dido sympathetic and . . . (110, 97-8, 99, 175-6)
Why it doesn't matter

October 20: Roman Religion (Rutledge)

Introduction:  Apollonian & Dionysian
I. A Civic Religion:   happiness of the gods = well-being of the state
     -public worship:
 -divination/ augury (Aeneid, Bk. VI, l. 272ff.)
  -complex priesthood - pontifex maximus; Vestal Virgins; Augures, etc., supported by state
 -importance of proper burial, and veneration of the dead (Aeneid, Bk. VI, l. 300 ff.)
 -sacrifice - of animals, of grains and fruits, occasionally of humans
II. Cult of the Emperor
 -apotheosis (deification) a formal act of the Senate; precedence in eastern, Greek world
 -emperor divine in proportion to his distance from citizens – the further away, the more sanctified
 -opposed by some (esp. Jews & Christians), but a widespread tendency in western history;
  line between veneration and worship [e.g., Elvis at Graceland?  Princess Diana?]
III. The Future in the Aeneid  (Eschatology)
 -focus on the future, on the final goal of history (ex:  Jewish Daniel; Christian Revelation;
    Virgil’s Fourth Eclogue - below)
 -in Aeneid, see Bk I, p. 12ff.;  Bk. VI, pp. 161ff.
-features:  journeys to heaven/underworld; visions of a new future; division of history into periods;
     coded messages from God; sending of a redeemer figure; renewal of the world; cosmic battle
     between good & evil; divine judgement; a reign of peace (the millenium)
IV. Mystery Religions
-became important after the Republic; required initiation, instruction in secret doctrines, rituals
 -satisfied a need for personal faith, immortality, when civil religion waned
-Cybele (Magna Mater, or “Great Mother”) - female, vegetation goddess; < Asia Minor
 -Isis - female, goddess of rebirth (Osiris, Horus) < Egypt
 -Mithras - male, solar deity, became favorite of soldiers; the taurobolium
 -placed in the same group by Romans were Judaism & (later) Christianity

Excerpt from Virgil, Eclogue IV (written in 40 bce):

   Muses of Sicily, lift a nobler strain!
Some love not shrubs and lowly tamarisks.
If woods we sing, let woods be worth a prince.
   The last age told by Cumae’s seer is come,
A mighty roll of generations new
Is now arising.  Justice now returns
And Saturn’s realm, and from high heaven descends
A worthier race of men.  Only do thou
Smile, chaste Lucina, on the infant boy,
With whom the iron age will pass away.
The golden age in all the earth be born;
For thine Apollo reigns.  Under thy rule,
Thine, Pollio, shall this glorious era spring,
And the great progress of the months begin.
Under thy rule all footprints of our guilt
Shall perish, and the peaceful earth be freed
From everlasting fear.  Thou, child, shalt know
The life of gods, and see commingled choirs
Of gods and heroes, and be seen of them,
And rule a world by righteous father tamed….

October 23: Stoicism (Stone)

Introduction
Closing the Future
Destiny (fatum) in the Aeneid,book I, 384-398, pp. 13-4 and book VI, 1058-1072, pp. 187-8
Fate in Cicero - the idle argument (argos logos)
Turn to subjective experience

Greek Origins of Stoicism
Founded 315 bce by Zeno in Athens
Name derives from the Stoa Poikile (painted porch) where Zeno gave his lectures on philosophy - Early, Middle, Late Stoicism
From the beginning Stoicism includes three distinct studies
Logic and correct reasoning - knowledge based on sense perception
Nature and the universal laws of nature - strict material determinism
Ethics and the principles of human conduct - conscious acceptance of events through change of attitude
"Live according to nature." - Happiness is the end, virtue is the means - but virtue now means doing what is right, avoiding what is wrong and happiness means freedom from conflict

Roman Stoicism - Seneca (4 bce-65 ce), Epictetus (c. 58 -138 ce), Marcus Aurelius (161-180 ce)

Seneca - "Fate leads the willing, drags the unwilling", "Philosophy is nothing else than living rightly by means of reason"

Epictetus-Enchiridion or Handbook, put together by Epictetus's friend Flavius Arrianus
Veneration of Socrates and Zeno, especially Socrates and his moral character
Destiny, Duty, and Tranquility (DDT)
Part of the background is the idea of Fate, material determinism and the question: Is anything within my power (Cicero - De Fato)
Reason enables us to distinguish between what is within our power and what is not
Analysis of desire - conclusion desiring and wishing are better left alone if one seeks freedom and happiness/tranquillity
Proper conduct, universal duties are determined by the relations we have to others - parent/child, child/parent, neighbor, friend, ruler/citizen, master/slave, patron/client
These roles are determined by the divine principle, the Author of this human play
Death, the end of life - the door is always open (the enchridion - the dagger)

Marcus Aurelius - Meditations

What peculiar distinction remains for someone wise and good, but to be easy and contented under every event of human life?  Not to offend the divine Principle that resides in his soul, nor to disturb the tranquillity of his mind by a variety of fantastical pursuits, but to observe a strict regard to truth in his words and justice in his actions; and though everyone should conspire to question his integrity and modesty … he is not offended at their incredulity, nor yet deviates from the path which leads him to the true end of life, at which everyone should endeavor to arrive with a clear conscience, undaunted and prepared for his dissolution, resigned to his fate without murmuring or reluctance.