tag:theconversation.com,2011:/ca/topics/homer-9309/articlesHomer – The Conversation2024-03-01T01:15:46Ztag:theconversation.com,2011:article/2224982024-03-01T01:15:46Z2024-03-01T01:15:46Z‘An odd work that has borne the brunt of my grief’: the serenity and the grit of Stanislava Pinchuk’s The Theatre of War<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/579075/original/file-20240301-26-i9mxdb.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=8%2C0%2C1908%2C1072&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">The Theatre of War video still, Stanislava Pinchuk, image courtesy of the artist.</span> </figcaption></figure><p>Through a nuanced exploration of place, time, and memory, a new video work invites audiences to reflect on landscape and its relationship to the echoes of conflict. </p>
<p>Stanislava Pinchuk’s three-channel installation The Theatre of War uses a diverse range of performers, people and locations, interlacing the introductory passages of Homer’s <a href="https://theconversation.com/guide-to-the-classics-homers-iliad-80968">The Iliad</a> across three films which contend with grief, memory and place.</p>
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<p>
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Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/guide-to-the-classics-homers-iliad-80968">Guide to the classics: Homer's Iliad</a>
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</em>
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<h2>A compelling story</h2>
<p>Pinchuk is a Ukrainian-Australian artist who grew up in Melbourne and now resides in Sarajevo, the capital of Bosnia and Herzegovina. Her body of work traces the shifting topographic landscapes of war zones across the world. Her pieces range from large-scale <a href="https://stanislavapinchuk.com/artwork/thewinedarksea/">sculpture</a> to <a href="https://stanislavapinchuk.com/artwork/fallout/">data-maps</a> and <a href="https://stanislavapinchuk.com/artwork/sarcophagus/">tapestries</a>, and incorporate drawing, film, tattoo and installation.</p>
<p>At the launch event for this new work on display at ACMI, Pinchuk spoke compellingly of the time the work took to compose, the support she received, and the grief that surrounded it. Commissioned in 2019, the making of The Theatre of War was interrupted by the COVID pandemic, and deeply inflected by the Russian invasion of Ukraine in February 2022. </p>
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<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/579076/original/file-20240301-18-ci71uc.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="Headshot" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/579076/original/file-20240301-18-ci71uc.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/579076/original/file-20240301-18-ci71uc.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=450&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/579076/original/file-20240301-18-ci71uc.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=450&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/579076/original/file-20240301-18-ci71uc.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=450&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/579076/original/file-20240301-18-ci71uc.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=565&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/579076/original/file-20240301-18-ci71uc.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=565&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/579076/original/file-20240301-18-ci71uc.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=565&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Artist Stanislava Pinchuk.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">James Hartley</span></span>
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<p>Describing the piece as “an odd work that has borne the brunt of my grief”, Pinchuk shared memories of months in combat training with the Ukrainian army, where she and the soldiers would spend one minute of silence each day for those who had died. </p>
<h2>A carefully constructed sonic world</h2>
<p>In the darkened exhibition space, we sit facing three screens with three films in different locations and contexts. </p>
<p>In a Sarajevo theatre, six female performers in traditional costume take their seats on a stage. At the tomb of Homer on the island of Ios, a long path to a craggy isthmus overlooks the Mediterranean, where two young people perch on the rocky bluff. In a remote and destroyed village in the United Kingdom, masked and armed Ukrainian soldiers engage in very realistic combat training: boots, guns and all. </p>
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<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/579077/original/file-20240301-20-vld2g7.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="A carving of Homer." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/579077/original/file-20240301-20-vld2g7.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/579077/original/file-20240301-20-vld2g7.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=338&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/579077/original/file-20240301-20-vld2g7.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=338&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/579077/original/file-20240301-20-vld2g7.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=338&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/579077/original/file-20240301-20-vld2g7.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=424&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/579077/original/file-20240301-20-vld2g7.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=424&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/579077/original/file-20240301-20-vld2g7.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=424&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
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<span class="caption">The Theatre of War video still, Stanislava Pinchuk, image courtesy of the artist.</span>
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<p>Each film has its own discrete audio which makes for random or purposeful intersection. The soldiers, in full battle gear, run drills, shouting to clear rubble-filled rooms and firing off automatic weapon rounds as the choir’s singing swells and the wind gusts. Ammunition and cartridge cases clink as the opening lines of the Iliad – “Sing, goddess, the wrath of Achilles, Peleus’ son!” – are repeated in text and voice across the three screens: from a smiling chorister and then like a radio broadcast to the soldiers as they move through the destroyed landscape. </p>
<p>At times the films synchronise sets of still, detailed images: discarded bullet casings in the dust, a nose ring, a kneeling soldier. Long fingernails holding a mobile phone, a laughing singer, the metal discs of her head piece dangling. A shoe, a necklace, a freighter in the blue mist. The work builds to a sonic crescendo as the sounds of sirens and songs intersect with the bluster of automatic weapon fire echoing across the concrete bunker. At Homer’s grave, the scene is an azure, infinite sea.</p>
<h2>Storytelling at the heart</h2>
<p>The Theatre of War is rich, resonant and thoughtful. There is an essence of storytelling at its heart which coheres the work, reminiscent of Pinchuk’s interest in Homer’s universal, timeless themes of migration, battle, loss and yearning.</p>
<p>At times, extreme closeups of lines and wrinkles on hands and lips remind us of the resilience and the frailty of the body in war. There is a potent metaphor of landscape in the work: as a geographic descriptor, certainly, but also as a container for memory, and as a way to think about the terrain of bodies. </p>
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<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/579078/original/file-20240301-30-33gtfc.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="Women singing." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/579078/original/file-20240301-30-33gtfc.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/579078/original/file-20240301-30-33gtfc.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=338&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/579078/original/file-20240301-30-33gtfc.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=338&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/579078/original/file-20240301-30-33gtfc.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=338&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/579078/original/file-20240301-30-33gtfc.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=424&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/579078/original/file-20240301-30-33gtfc.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=424&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/579078/original/file-20240301-30-33gtfc.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=424&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
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<span class="caption">The Theatre of War video still, Stanislava Pinchuk, image courtesy of the artist.</span>
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</figure>
<p>There is something vulnerable and arresting about the faces, hands and legs in the work, which are variously marked, lipsticked, wrinkled or pierced. We are reminded of the traces that life leaves on our bodies, as well as the traces through time from ancient stories of war to modern, horrific ones: how innocent people become, as Homer describes, “the spoil for dogs and birds of every kind”. </p>
<p>I am struck by my own inadequate set of understandings as I view this work. I feel lucky, privileged, deeply moved. I notice my attention to the details, the physical bodies, the half hidden bits and pieces, but also the challenge established by the artist in the creation of three films viewed concurrently. Where do I look, and for how long? What is important? What might I miss?</p>
<p>Pinchuk has created a work which is somehow serene and gritty in equal measure. A meditation on memory and sadness, it considers, with compassion and courage, the ways in which places bear witness to history. The Theatre Of War asks us, compels us, to look.</p>
<p><em>Stanislava Pinchuk: The Theatre of War is at ACMI, Melbourne, until June 9.</em></p>
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<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/the-russia-ukraine-war-has-caused-a-staggering-amount-of-cultural-destruction-both-seen-and-unseen-221082">The Russia-Ukraine War has caused a staggering amount of cultural destruction – both seen and unseen</a>
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<img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/222498/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Kate Hunter does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Through a nuanced exploration of place, time, and memory, this new video work invites audiences to reflect on landscape and its relationship to the echoes of conflict.Kate Hunter, Senior Lecturer in Art and Performance, Deakin UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/2112792024-01-21T19:02:36Z2024-01-21T19:02:36ZEmily Wilson’s fluent new translation of the Iliad honours the epic poem’s power and beauty<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/569955/original/file-20240117-29-h4ovvh.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=0%2C0%2C5616%2C3368&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Menelaus holding the body of Patroclus – Diana Mantuana (1535-1587).</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Menelaus_Holding_the_Body_of_Patroclus.jpg">Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>A new translation of the <a href="https://wwnorton.com/books/9781324001805">Iliad of Homer</a> is cause for a general celebration, especially when the translator is <a href="https://www.emilyrcwilson.com/">Emily Wilson</a> of the University of Pennsylvania. </p>
<p>Having turned her hand to translations of other Greek and Latin texts – notably Seneca, Euripides, Oedipus Tyrannos and Homer’s Odyssey – Wilson has moved on to the Iliad, joining an exclusive club of translators of this great work that includes <a href="https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poets/richmond-lattimore">Richmond Lattimore</a> and <a href="https://dbcs.rutgers.edu/all-scholars/9310-fagles-robert">Robert Fagles</a>. </p>
<hr>
<p><em>Review: The Iliad – Homer, translated by Emily Wilson (W.W. Norton)</em></p>
<hr>
<p>This is an excellent publication where some bold decisions have been made to provide a sense of the sound and pace of the original text. As Wilson says in the translator’s note:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>I wanted to honor the poem’s oral heritage with a regular and audible rhythm, and with language that would, like the original, invite reading out loud, and come to life in the mouth.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>Thus, when reading Wilson’s Iliad one senses something of the chant of Homer’s verse, even through the written word. </p>
<p>Wilson’s book is much more than a translation. It contains a detailed introduction to the nature and dating of Homeric verse, the historical and archaeological issues of the Trojan war, the code of honour within which the Homeric heroes operate, and the broader mythical context of the war. The book could be a whole course in itself, if you wanted to make it one. </p>
<p>We are reminded, for instance, in a discrete section of the introduction, that the Iliad describes the destruction of Troy and the fate of its women, raped and abused by the conquering Greeks. Wilson writes that the “silencing, rape, subjugation, kidnapping and enslavement of women in war are essential instruments for the construction of male honor”. </p>
<p>The more one engages with the Iliad, the more one sees that it is not just a poem of immense power and beauty. It cast such a spell over antiquity that poets and artists after Homer spent much of their time engaging with it. </p>
<p>The Roman poet Vergil, for instance, whose epic poem the Aeneid (written about 700 years after the Iliad) was also focused on the Trojan war theme, may have known the Iliad off by heart. When we pick up Wilson’s translation we realise what a task that must have been.</p>
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<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/guide-to-the-classics-virgils-aeneid-85459">Guide to the Classics: Virgil’s Aeneid</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
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<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/569228/original/file-20240115-19-lc4vcu.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/569228/original/file-20240115-19-lc4vcu.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/569228/original/file-20240115-19-lc4vcu.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=899&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/569228/original/file-20240115-19-lc4vcu.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=899&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/569228/original/file-20240115-19-lc4vcu.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=899&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/569228/original/file-20240115-19-lc4vcu.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1130&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/569228/original/file-20240115-19-lc4vcu.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1130&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/569228/original/file-20240115-19-lc4vcu.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1130&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
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<span class="caption"></span>
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<p>One of the first things to note about Wilson’s translation is that it makes no attempt to offer line-by-line equivalence with the Greek text, as Lattimore does in his 1951 translation. Thus, the 24 books of the poem have both the original Greek line numbers and the line numbers of her translation. This means students of Homeric Greek will not find Wilson’s text such an easy point of reference to check up on their translations.</p>
<p>For Wilson, it was liberating to free herself from the same number of lines as the original Greek. “Once I understood that I needed more lines than the original,” she writes, “I realized I could sometimes use lovely long polysyllabic English words, echoing the original’s use of powerfully long, often compound words interspersed with many shorter connectives, verbs and particles.” </p>
<p>Inevitably, the plethora of names, and the Homeric penchant for repetition in a broader sense, caused Wilson plenty of hard thinking, not to mention the matter of the epithets – the formulaic phrases that appear throughout the poem. How would she deal with “swift-footed Achilles” rather than just “Achilles”, or “Phoebus Apollo”, or “rosy-fingered Dawn”? </p>
<p>Some of the most prominent and radical research in Homeric scholarship over the past hundred years or so (after <a href="https://dbcs.rutgers.edu/all-scholars/8998-parry-milman">Milman Parry</a>, who established that Homer’s poetry was most likely not the work of a single poet) has involved scholarly analysis of the epithets. Wilson’s response is to vary the use of Homeric repetition as determined by poetic considerations: </p>
<blockquote>
<p>Like almost all modern translators, I have sometimes varied the phrasing of certain formulaic phrases, usually for sonic or rhythmical reasons. So, for example, Zeus appears in this translation both as “cloud-gathering Zeus” and as “Zeus who gathers clouds together”. Minor variations of this kind seemed to me in keeping with the poetic techniques of the original poem, in which epithets are often chosen for metrical reasons as much as anything. </p>
</blockquote>
<p>Such a statement will inevitably provide reassurance for textual purists. The epiphany of the goddess Athena to the Greek warrior Achilles, in the midst of Achilles’ feud with Agamemnon in Book 1, gives us a sense of how this plays out and shows what a fine translator Wilson is:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>But then Athena swooped down from the sky.<br>
She had been sent forth by the white-armed goddess<br>
Hera, who loved both men. Athena stood<br>
behind Achilles, son of Peleus,<br>
and grabbed him by his chestnut hair. She was<br>
invisible to everyone but him.<br>
Achilles, startled, turned and recognized Athena. She had bright, unearthly eyes.<br>
His words flew out.<br>
“Why have you come here daughter<br>
of Zeus, the god who holds the royal aegis?<br>
Was it to see the cruel violence<br>
of Agamemnon, son of Atreus?”<br></p>
</blockquote>
<p>In such a busy scene as this, with seven individuals mentioned, both deities and mortals – Zeus, Athena, Hera, Achilles, Peleus, Agamemnon and Atreus – it might have been tempting to take out some of the names. Nothing like this happens and the translation is a lot richer for it. </p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/569771/original/file-20240117-21-vp9nh3.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/569771/original/file-20240117-21-vp9nh3.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/569771/original/file-20240117-21-vp9nh3.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=471&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/569771/original/file-20240117-21-vp9nh3.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=471&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/569771/original/file-20240117-21-vp9nh3.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=471&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/569771/original/file-20240117-21-vp9nh3.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=591&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/569771/original/file-20240117-21-vp9nh3.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=591&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/569771/original/file-20240117-21-vp9nh3.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=591&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">The Wrath of Achilles – Louis Édouard Fournier (1881)</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Fournier_La_col%C3%A8re_d%27Achille.JPG">Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Devotees of Book 6 will also note how the text flows with remarkable ease:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>When Hector finished speaking, Hecuba<br>
went in the house and shouted to her slaves<br>
to go through town and call the older women,<br>
and then she went inside her fragrant storeroom.<br>
In it, she kept her fine embroidered robes,<br>
Made by the women of Sidonia<br>
Whom godlike Paris Alexander brought<br>
to Troy across the wide back of the sea,<br>
on that same journey when he brought back Helen,<br>
the daughter of the mightiest of fathers.<br></p>
</blockquote>
<p>Book 6 is one of the more poignant books of the poem. The Trojan warrior Hector returns to the city from the fighting and talks with the women in his family: Hecuba, Andromache and Helen. It loses nothing in the Wilson translation. The reader might also note reference to Paris as “Paris Alexander” – a rather brilliant way of engaging with the fact that both names (i.e. “Paris” and “Alexander”) are used to describe him in the Iliad.</p>
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<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/569959/original/file-20240117-29-bb72gg.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/569959/original/file-20240117-29-bb72gg.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/569959/original/file-20240117-29-bb72gg.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=266&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/569959/original/file-20240117-29-bb72gg.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=266&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/569959/original/file-20240117-29-bb72gg.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=266&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/569959/original/file-20240117-29-bb72gg.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=335&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/569959/original/file-20240117-29-bb72gg.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=335&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/569959/original/file-20240117-29-bb72gg.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=335&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Hector’s body dragged behind the chariot of Achilles – John Flaxman (1895).</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Hector%27s_body_dragged_at_the_Chariot_of_Achilles.jpg">Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/guide-to-the-classics-homers-iliad-80968">Guide to the classics: Homer's Iliad</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
<hr>
<p>So on the one hand Homeric purists should not be concerned about the disappearance of certain names or traditions from the Wilson translation. But this is not always the case. </p>
<p>The final book of the poem tells of the ransom mission undertaken by the Trojan king Priam and an old attendant to retrieve the body of Hector from Achilles, who has refused to give it over. The presence of Hermes is crucial in this particular book of the Iliad, because he is the god who oversees reciprocity and exchange. He acts as guide to the two old men. </p>
<p>But more often than not in Book 24 (and elsewhere in Homer) Hermes is called “Argeïphontês” (11 times), rather than “Hermes” (nine times). The name Argeïphontês seems to mean “Slayer of Argos”. It refers to a somewhat obscure narrative set in earlier times, in which Hermes killed a monster called Argos by first putting him to sleep and then striking him. The name Argeïphontês, it seems to me, is important in various ways, and it is something of a pity that it is dropped from the poem – although Wilson does maintain the monster-killing tradition by calling Hermes “the giant-slayer”.</p>
<p>Another surprising passage from Book 24 is Hermes’s arrival at Troy and his encounter with the two old Trojan men, Priam and Idaeus:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>He reached the Hellespont and Troy. He touched down in a human guise.<br>
He looked like a young man, a magistrate,<br>
with beard first sprouting, the most handsome age.<br>
The humans drove beside the tomb of Ilus,<br>
then at the river made the mules and horses<br>
halt for a drink. Dark night already covered<br>
the earth. Idaeus looked around and noticed<br>
Hermes right next to them and said to Priam …<br></p>
</blockquote>
<p>This passage, when I read it, seemed to me a strange translation, not the least for the references to a “magistrate” (i.e. a youthful Hermes) and “the humans” who drive past the tomb of Ilus. A “magistrate” in Homer’s Iliad? I don’t think so. </p>
<p>I don’t know what Wilson was thinking at this point, but she is alert to the danger of anachronism, which needs “to be balanced against an equally pressing danger: that archaism or unidiomatic English risks suggesting that the Iliad is more alien and more simplistic in its values than it really is”.</p>
<p>My two quibbles about Book 24 don’t add up to much in the context of this big work. I offer them as something to reflect upon. What is important about Wilson as a translator is that she has an unequivocal love for the text, which dictates almost all that she does:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>I first began reading Homer in high school, early in the study of Ancient Greek. I liked the Odyssey, but I loved the Iliad with a passionate devotion. I have now lived with this poem for some 35 years.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>We may be thankful for her love for the Iliad, and the longevity of it, and her generosity in offering it up to readers with very different backgrounds.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/211279/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Chris Mackie does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Reading Wilson’s Iliad, one senses something of the chant of Homer’s verse, even through the written word.Chris Mackie, Emeritus Professor of Classics, La Trobe UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/2074242023-10-19T19:03:10Z2023-10-19T19:03:10ZFriday essay: how women writers helped me find my voice after divorce<p>When my 25-year marriage broke down in 2017, I did what I always do in my life, especially in times of crisis. I turned to books. Specifically, to books by women. </p>
<p>Many, but not all of them, were in middle age, writing about their lives post-husbands – often post-intensive mothering too. They’d arrived at an unmarked place. There were no literary or narrative models to follow, in their lives or in their art. So they were making them up as they went.</p>
<p>My hunger for women’s voices was amplified by having spent a decade reading and listening almost exclusively to men, for the <a href="https://www.allenandunwin.com/browse/book/Jane-Gleeson-White-Double-Entry-9781743311554">books</a> I <a href="https://www.allenandunwin.com/browse/book/Jane-Gleeson-White-Six-Capitals-Updated-Edition-9781760876784/">wrote</a> on accounting.</p>
<p>I had no plan; it was an impulsive, almost life-saving need. The first book I picked up was an old favourite, Jane Austen’s <a href="https://www.penguin.com.au/books/persuasion-9780141439686">Persuasion</a>. In the slow unfolding of her final novel, Austen subjects her readers to the exquisite agony of watching its heroine Anne Elliott suffer a great and apparently hopeless love for her former suitor. Anne is gentle, reserved and bookish. But when moved, she’s passionate – outspoken about the force of women’s emotions, and inequality of opportunity:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>Yes, yes, if you please, no reference to examples in books. Men have had every advantage of us in telling their own story. Education has been theirs in so much higher a degree; the pen has been in their hands.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>Persuasion acted like a tuning fork, returning me to my bookish self. The self who’d made a blog called bookishgirl in 2010, before we’d both – blog and girl – become mired in stories written by men: economics and accounting, both <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/business/2021/aug/01/what-really-counts-how-the-patriarchy-of-economics-finally-tore-me-apart">blind to the value of nature and women</a>.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/554176/original/file-20231017-27-gzvb0u.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/554176/original/file-20231017-27-gzvb0u.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/554176/original/file-20231017-27-gzvb0u.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=381&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/554176/original/file-20231017-27-gzvb0u.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=381&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/554176/original/file-20231017-27-gzvb0u.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=381&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/554176/original/file-20231017-27-gzvb0u.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=478&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/554176/original/file-20231017-27-gzvb0u.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=478&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/554176/original/file-20231017-27-gzvb0u.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=478&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">After Jane Gleeson-White’s marriage broke down, she did what she always does in times of crisis and turned to books.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Photo by Pauline Futeran</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/exes-alcohol-and-loose-historical-licence-why-netflixs-persuasion-is-jane-austen-via-fleabag-185383">Exes, alcohol and loose historical licence: why Netflix's Persuasion is Jane Austen via Fleabag</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
<hr>
<h2>Literary motherline</h2>
<p>Claiming her literary motherline is one of the impulses behind British writer Joanna Biggs’s new memoir <a href="https://www.hachette.com.au/joanna-biggs/a-life-of-ones-own-nine-women-writers-begin-again">A Life of One’s Own: Nine Women Writers Begin Again</a>. Much as I did, Biggs turned to women writers to answer the many questions thrown up by her divorce – and her book is the result of this reading. </p>
<p>In <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_Tbyhlq8DUs">an interview with Lizzie Simon</a>, Biggs says many people have asked about her decision to write in this hybrid form: part memoir, part biographical essays and part literary criticism. </p>
<p>But Biggs didn’t decide it. The form grew organically from a particular moment in her life, when she was <a href="https://www.lrb.co.uk/contributors/joanna-biggs">writing for the London Review of Books</a> and experimenting with adding more memoir to her reviews, inspired by the autofiction of writers like <a href="https://theconversation.com/a-dying-earth-and-a-lament-for-lost-fathers-sheila-heti-strips-back-the-novel-and-makes-it-new-181938">Sheila Heti</a> and <a href="https://theconversation.com/from-execrable-to-memorable-ben-lerners-essay-on-the-hatred-of-poetry-63413">Ben Lerner</a>. </p>
<figure class="align-right zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/553929/original/file-20231016-24-dgd1s0.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/553929/original/file-20231016-24-dgd1s0.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/553929/original/file-20231016-24-dgd1s0.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=960&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/553929/original/file-20231016-24-dgd1s0.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=960&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/553929/original/file-20231016-24-dgd1s0.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=960&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/553929/original/file-20231016-24-dgd1s0.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1206&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/553929/original/file-20231016-24-dgd1s0.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1206&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/553929/original/file-20231016-24-dgd1s0.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1206&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption"></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Biggs looks backwards, partly prompted by books her mother has given her and partly returning to writers she’s loved – Mary Wollstonecraft, <a href="https://theconversation.com/friday-essay-george-eliot-200-years-on-a-scandalous-life-a-brilliant-mind-and-a-huge-literary-legacy-127438">George Eliot</a>, Virginia Woolf, Sylvia Plath, Simone de Beauvoir – and reads <a href="https://www.zoranealehurston.com/">Zora Neale Hurston</a> and <a href="https://theconversation.com/the-most-influential-american-author-of-her-generation-toni-morrisons-writing-was-radically-ambiguous-121557">Toni Morrison</a> for the first time. </p>
<p>In her last chapter, she turns to the present, reading <a href="https://theconversation.com/true-writing-is-a-convulsive-act-inside-the-mind-of-elena-ferrante-180311">Elena Ferrante</a> as her novels storm the world – then rereading the Neapolitan quartet with friends.</p>
<p>Each chapter is devoted to an author, but their lives spill over into each other’s, creating themes that resonate with Biggs’s own experiences:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>I watched them try to answer some of the questions I had. This book bears the traces of their struggles as well as my own – and some of the things we all found that help.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>Biggs turns to these women not just to find new ways to live, but also to learn new modes of writing and reading. Having studied English and French literature at Oxford University, she’s trained herself out of reading with her emotions and into the “objective” reading of scholarship. Now she’s undoing that by allowing herself to read with her whole self fully engaged – the same way she’s learning to live.</p>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/my-favourite-fictional-character-ill-never-forget-these-half-wild-too-much-heroines-philip-pullmans-lyra-and-elena-ferrantes-lila-186196">My favourite fictional character: I'll never forget these half-wild, 'too much' heroines – Philip Pullman's Lyra and Elena Ferrante's Lila</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
<hr>
<h2>Women writers in flux</h2>
<p>After reading Persuasion, I realised I wasn’t interested in the past. I wanted to know how and what women were writing now, especially about themselves in flux – at a time when marriage and all the inherited structures of our lives seem as stricken and prone to collapse as the world around us.</p>
<p>I quickly discovered I couldn’t have had a more readily satisfied desire. In terms of my reading life, I was in the best of all possible worlds. I read everything I could find by <a href="https://theconversation.com/my-favourite-fictional-character-ill-never-forget-these-half-wild-too-much-heroines-philip-pullmans-lyra-and-elena-ferrantes-lila-186196">Elena Ferrante</a>, Maggie Nelson, <a href="https://theconversation.com/a-dying-earth-and-a-lament-for-lost-fathers-sheila-heti-strips-back-the-novel-and-makes-it-new-181938">Sheila Heti</a> and Anne Carson. I read lots of Rachel Cusk, Deborah Levy and Olivia Laing, among so many others.</p>
<p>Unlike Biggs, who in 2020 decided to read a book a week to combat her depression and created what she endearingly calls an “embarrassing spreadsheet” to keep track of it, there was no structure to my reading. But I seemed to be guided to books that spoke to my many challenges as I moved beyond my marriage. </p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/554103/original/file-20231016-27-my1l6s.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/554103/original/file-20231016-27-my1l6s.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/554103/original/file-20231016-27-my1l6s.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=360&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/554103/original/file-20231016-27-my1l6s.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=360&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/554103/original/file-20231016-27-my1l6s.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=360&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/554103/original/file-20231016-27-my1l6s.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=453&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/554103/original/file-20231016-27-my1l6s.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=453&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/554103/original/file-20231016-27-my1l6s.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=453&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">‘I read lots of Rachel Cusk, Deborah Levy and Olivia Laing.’ Pictured: Rachel Cusk.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Siemon Scamell Katz</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>In 2017, soon after my husband moved out and I was ostensibly free, I wrote on a psychologist’s form: <em>I can’t find my voice. I cannot speak.</em> </p>
<p>What is your problem? it asked. <em>I cannot say I</em>, I replied. </p>
<p>Given I was an experienced writer in midlife, it felt bewildering and shameful to have to confess this. The person I’d been had written in a cool, objective voice, which was regularly remarked upon by male correspondents:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>I have by chance come across your book and have to write to say what a marvel it is […] It is totally objective (typically, now, books often seem to remind the reader who the author is, and what he/she is experiencing – as if we care!).</p>
</blockquote>
<p>But suddenly what the author was experiencing was all I cared about. </p>
<p>In <a href="https://www.penguin.com.au/books/things-i-dont-want-to-know-9780241983089">Things I Don’t Want to Know</a>, Deborah Levy spoke straight to my turmoil. It takes repeated acts of will, as a woman, to learn to say I, she writes.</p>
<blockquote>
<p>It’s exhausting to learn how to become a subject; it’s hard enough learning how to become a writer.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>Things I Don’t Want to Know is the first iteration of Levy’s “living autobiography”, a form she invented for writing her life while still living it, catching it on the wing as she travelled through her days after ending her own long marriage. </p>
<p>Reading Levy, I began to understand that for a woman, saying “I” was not a given. It was a learned skill. I had to practise it, to will it repeatedly. Levy was not the only author who shed light on my confounding experience.</p>
<p>Anne Carson is illuminating on the leaden weight of history stacked against the female voice. In her essay <a href="https://www.goodreads.com/en/book/show/46037885">The Gender of Sound</a>, she writes:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>Madness and witchery as well as bestiality are conditions commonly associated with the use of the female voice in public, in ancient as well as modern contexts. The high pitched and horrendous voices of the ancient female furies are compared by Aeschylus to howling dogs.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>It’s as if the entire female gender “were a kind of collective bad memory of unspeakable things”, which the patriarchal order feels obliged to channel into politically correct containers. Freud believed “a thinking man” is his own legislator and obtains his own absolution. But a woman does not have </p>
<blockquote>
<p>the measure of ethics in herself. She can only act if she keeps within the limits of morality, following what society has established as fitting.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>So in ways that became very real for me, I learnt that to speak as a woman is to transgress.</p>
<h2>Transgression and transition</h2>
<p>Transgression is key to Maggie Nelson’s creative practice. In <a href="https://www.textpublishing.com.au/books/the-argonauts">The Argonauts</a>, her breakthrough work of creative nonfiction, she borrows poet Eileen Myles’s idea of a poem as a party to make a literary form mutable enough to convey transfiguration. </p>
<p>Notably, her own transition from pregnancy to new motherhood; and her partner Harry Dodge’s transition through injecting testosterone as he prepares for, undergoes and recovers from top surgery.</p>
<p>At her party on the page, Nelson gathers people who’d never be seen together in real life and sits them beside each other, so they must converse. You feel its electrifying force from the opening page, where she juxtaposes a tryst with her new lover, Dodge, with <a href="https://theconversation.com/wittgenstein-tried-to-solve-all-the-problems-of-philosophy-in-his-tractatus-logico-philosophicus-but-he-didnt-quite-succeed-181719">philosopher Ludwig Wittgenstein</a>:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>You had Molloy by your bedside and a stack of cocks in a shadowy unused shower stall. Does it get any better? What’s your pleasure? you asked, then stuck around for an answer.</p>
<p>Before we met, I had spent a lifetime devoted to Wittgenstein’s idea that the inexpressible is contained – inexpressibly! – in the expressed. This idea gets less air time than his more reverential Whereof one cannot speak thereof one must be silent, but it is, I think, the deeper idea. Its paradox is, quite literally, why I write, or how I feel able to keep writing.</p>
</blockquote>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/553947/original/file-20231016-19-pmm9h6.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/553947/original/file-20231016-19-pmm9h6.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/553947/original/file-20231016-19-pmm9h6.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/553947/original/file-20231016-19-pmm9h6.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/553947/original/file-20231016-19-pmm9h6.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/553947/original/file-20231016-19-pmm9h6.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/553947/original/file-20231016-19-pmm9h6.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/553947/original/file-20231016-19-pmm9h6.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Maggie Nelson.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.macfound.org/fellows/class-of-2016/maggie-nelson#searchresults">John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation</a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/">CC BY-SA</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Olivia Laing does something similar in her memoir-in-essays, <a href="https://www.allenandunwin.com/browse/book/Olivia-Laing-Lonely-City-9781782111252/">The Lonely City</a>, in which she charts her own season of liminality after a breakup, via conversations with the art and lives of others. </p>
<p>Suddenly alone in New York City after the man she’s moved there for changes his mind, she makes loneliness her subject. In the absence of love, she finds solace and communion in the city itself, and in the work and lives of artists. It’s here, in visual art and its associated materials (letters, manuscripts, archives) that she begins to find company in her chronic isolation.</p>
<p>I came to The Lonely City at a particularly lonely moment in my own life: April 2020, when all the casual dates, spontaneous beers, snap decisions to eat at my corner bar vanished, all suddenly forbidden by Sydney’s lockdown laws. </p>
<figure class="align-right zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/553948/original/file-20231016-25-pj8ow4.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/553948/original/file-20231016-25-pj8ow4.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/553948/original/file-20231016-25-pj8ow4.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=921&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/553948/original/file-20231016-25-pj8ow4.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=921&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/553948/original/file-20231016-25-pj8ow4.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=921&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/553948/original/file-20231016-25-pj8ow4.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1157&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/553948/original/file-20231016-25-pj8ow4.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1157&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/553948/original/file-20231016-25-pj8ow4.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1157&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption"></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Laing’s opening pages, where she introduces her subject and her own uncomfortable immersion in it, reverberate with such raw pain and fathomless need, I found them almost too distressing to read. </p>
<p>But Laing’s prose flows seamlessly as she crawls through the endless days, her mind wandering, alighting on a new theme, a new artist. And each artist brings with them a community of friends, collaborators, lovers and/or kindred spirits, and characters recur – so it weaves together like an all night party on the Lower East Side, paradoxically becoming immensely companionable.</p>
<h2>‘Searching for a missing female character’</h2>
<p>It seems important to speak of new forms now, especially for women, in life as well as art, because these conversations are everywhere. I’ve talked to an army of women in similar situations since my marriage broke down. They speak of their broken hearts, ruined futures, crushing loneliness, rage. Some are looking for work, housing, sex or love; others for reinvention, adventure, freedom, meaning. Or all of the above.</p>
<p>Most of us are working out how or who we might be beyond our relationships with others, mostly men. And some of us are wondering how to write our newly visible protean selves, entangled in a world that feels distressed in every realm.</p>
<p>Like Levy, it seems we’re all “still searching for a missing female character”. As she asks in <a href="https://www.penguin.com.au/books/real-estate-9780241993866">Real Estate</a>: </p>
<blockquote>
<p>Who is she? That is the question I was starting to ask in all my books. Not who am I, though that comes into it. How does she get along in the world that voided her?</p>
</blockquote>
<p>Despite six years of living, reading and writing since my divorce, my subject – or perhaps my subjectivity – is still not quite clear to me. In ways I can’t gloss over, my life and my writing remain uncertain. Messy.</p>
<p>In the early hours, this unknowing can still feel perilous, shameful, especially given I’m a grown woman with two adult children. Soon after I began writing this essay, I woke from a nightmare at 5am with these words in my head, spoken from the future:</p>
<p><em>What did you do as the world burned and we ran out of diesel and food?</em></p>
<p>The question was asked by my conscience, or perhaps by my children. By all the children.</p>
<figure class="align-right zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/553967/original/file-20231016-29-3amfaw.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="A naked woman sitting on a chair" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/553967/original/file-20231016-29-3amfaw.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/553967/original/file-20231016-29-3amfaw.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=800&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/553967/original/file-20231016-29-3amfaw.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=800&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/553967/original/file-20231016-29-3amfaw.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=800&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/553967/original/file-20231016-29-3amfaw.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1005&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/553967/original/file-20231016-29-3amfaw.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1005&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/553967/original/file-20231016-29-3amfaw.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1005&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">‘I painted myself naked. I was birthing myself.’</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://garystockbridge617.getarchive.net/media/emil-von-gerliczy-akt-31a7cc">Emil Von Gerliczy/Public Domain Media</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>My reply came: I painted myself naked. I was birthing myself, re-birthing myself, through my own self-regard. As hundreds of women have done before me.</p>
<p>This need to remake myself was precipitated by my mother’s death in 2015 and the end of my marriage two years later. With shocking speed, these two events radically shifted my focus in life and writing from the outside world to my inner being, which lay parched and untended, overgrown with voices that were not my own.</p>
<p>As my married life of caring for and writing about others collapsed, the work that became urgent was a grindingly slow and painful process of self-examination and reinvention. On most days, this felt (and still feels) self-indulgent, in both life and writing. Even verging on heretical – an act against the received orthodoxies of care, of motherhood, of womanhood itself? – despite the bigger questions it’s led me to. And despite its absolute necessity.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/554175/original/file-20231017-15-gziu36.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/554175/original/file-20231017-15-gziu36.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/554175/original/file-20231017-15-gziu36.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=398&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/554175/original/file-20231017-15-gziu36.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=398&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/554175/original/file-20231017-15-gziu36.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=398&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/554175/original/file-20231017-15-gziu36.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=500&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/554175/original/file-20231017-15-gziu36.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=500&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/554175/original/file-20231017-15-gziu36.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=500&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">‘This need to remake myself was precipitated by my mother’s death in 2015 and the end of my marriage two years later.’ Jane Gleeson-White is pictured with her mother in 2005.</span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>‘This sort of life can have beauty in it’</h2>
<p>Biggs asks herself a similar question at the outset of A Life of One’s Own. In the wake of her mother’s diagnosis with <a href="https://theconversation.com/explainer-what-is-alzheimers-disease-24662">Alzheimer’s</a> and the end of her marriage, Biggs is filled with questions: about love and feminism, what’s worth living for, and how you might write about this. And, importantly, </p>
<blockquote>
<p>How would this not be seen as a problem of privilege, a childish demand for definition, narcissistic self-involvement when the world was burning? Wouldn’t I be better off giving away all I have and putting down my books, my movies, my headphones and my pen?</p>
</blockquote>
<p>A large part of me still answers yes to her questions, on my own behalf. And yet the need remains. Every time I’ve fallen, however inadvertently, into the familiar grooves of my old life – from fiery affairs with distant men, to writing about the missing value of care work and the natural world in economic measures – something breaks down: me, the relationship, the man. Sometimes all three. I’m reminded again and again of this simple truth: change happens, things break down.</p>
<p>Biggs’s book is her answer to whether this need to reinvent ourselves is an indulgence. No. It’s vital work.</p>
<p>The questions felt urgent as well as overwhelming. At times I couldn’t face the page – printed or blank – at all. I needed to remind myself that starting out on my own again halfway through life is possible, has been possible for others – and that this sort of life can have beauty in it.</p>
<p>Her mother’s Alzheimer’s shakes Biggs’s world. She begins to question the life she’s made and how it fits with her becoming as a writer. In her early 30s, she’s married to a man she met at 19 who wants children as she does not, yet (or ever?). Despite how settled her life feels, she knows she must upend it. Discussions with her husband and experiments with open marriage only convince her of this. He moves out – and she removes her wedding ring and claims her freedom. All this happens by the end of the second page. </p>
<p>Questions about her marriage, lovers, and possible future partners and children are scattered through the subsequent pages; one of Biggs’s driving questions is: what sort of marriage, if any, is possible between a woman who writes and a man? </p>
<figure class="align-left zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/553962/original/file-20231016-21-6dqez8.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/553962/original/file-20231016-21-6dqez8.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/553962/original/file-20231016-21-6dqez8.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=820&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/553962/original/file-20231016-21-6dqez8.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=820&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/553962/original/file-20231016-21-6dqez8.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=820&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/553962/original/file-20231016-21-6dqez8.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1030&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/553962/original/file-20231016-21-6dqez8.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1030&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/553962/original/file-20231016-21-6dqez8.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1030&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Virginia Woolf was obsessed by her mother until she was 44.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">George Charles Beresford</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>But as its title from Virginia Woolf suggests, A Life of One’s Own is primarily about women, their lives, writing and relationships with each other. Its emotional force lies in Biggs’s portrayal of her tender and loving relationship with her mother – and in her relationships with women friends, and the authors and books she reads.</p>
<p>The threads of Biggs’s exploration – memoir, biography and literary critique – fuse with particular grace in her chapter on Woolf, which is concerned with the emotionally charged, intractable subject of mothers. Woolf wrote that she was obsessed by her mother until she was 44, when <a href="https://www.penguin.com.au/books/to-the-lighthouse-vintage-classics-woolf-series-9781784870836">To the Lighthouse</a> offered her an outlet:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>I wrote the book very quickly; and when it was written, I ceased to be obsessed by my mother. I no longer hear her voice; I do not see her.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>Biggs seamlessly combines Woolf’s work and milieu with her own experience of her mother’s deteriorating mind and the dreaded day when she no longer recognises her own daughter. </p>
<blockquote>
<p>And I remind myself still, with Woolf, that a mother is always a mystery; she has lived so much of her life before you were even born.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>And in turn, witnessing her mother’s fading mind opens her to new understandings of Woolf’s literary experiments. She now sees their aim as conveying “the workings of disordered and vulnerable minds”, or the way centuries of oppression “act on a woman when she sits down to write something”.</p>
<h2>Mothers loom large</h2>
<p>When I was 18, inspired by the tempestuous novels of <a href="https://theconversation.com/locked-down-with-d-h-lawrence-yeah-nah-196935">D.H. Lawrence</a>, I began turning my own passionate love affairs into fiction. But every attempt was derailed by the unwelcome arrival of a mother figure. This astonished my teenage self. Only after her death and the end of my marriage did I begin to accept that the hidden life of my mother was partly, mostly, my subject.</p>
<p>Mothers loom large in the books by women I read. I’m not sure why I initially found it so surprising that other women should be as preoccupied with mothers and motherhood as I am. Is it because, despite all the rhetoric, frank public discussion of mothers is taboo?</p>
<p>In ways I find almost terrifying in their candour and dispassion, Rachel Cusk’s portraits of motherhood and maternal ambivalence are among my favourite. <a href="https://www.allenandunwin.com/browse/book/Rachel-Cusk-Coventry-9780571350445">She writes</a>:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>My mother and I don’t speak to each other any more. […] The loss of a parent-child relationship is a fact. It is also a failure.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>Discussing Aeschylus’s <a href="https://www.greekmythology.com/Plays/Aeschylus/Oresteia/oresteia.html">Oresteia</a> – in which Orestes, encouraged by his sister Electra, murders their mother Clytemnestra – with a male theatre director, <a href="https://www.allenandunwin.com/browse/book/Rachel-Cusk-Coventry-9780571350445">Cusk summarises</a>:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>They hate their mother for the fact that she has disposed of their father. They have come to resent maternal power so much that they destroy it. Instead they reverence the paternal, which is all image – their father, Agamemnon, was away fighting gloriously in Troy for most of their lives – where their actual mother is all actuality. They crush and disdain that actual parent in pursuit of the imagistic father whose value is recognised out in the world. Sound familiar? I ask.</p>
</blockquote>
<figure class="align-left zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/553968/original/file-20231016-17-2p3mz9.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/553968/original/file-20231016-17-2p3mz9.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/553968/original/file-20231016-17-2p3mz9.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=921&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/553968/original/file-20231016-17-2p3mz9.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=921&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/553968/original/file-20231016-17-2p3mz9.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=921&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/553968/original/file-20231016-17-2p3mz9.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1157&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/553968/original/file-20231016-17-2p3mz9.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1157&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/553968/original/file-20231016-17-2p3mz9.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1157&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption"></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Cusk finds this attitude echoed in the conversations between her teenage daughter and her friends, who spend a surprising amount of time talking about adults they know. They contemptuously dismiss their mothers – an amorphous “she” whose status “was somewhere between a servant and family pet” – while they revere “Dad” for his worldly importance: “unlike ‘she’, their fathers are hard-working, clever, successful, cool”.</p>
<p>Women writers attempting such worldly significance seek it at their peril, especially if they’re embroiled with male lovers, even more so if they become mothers.</p>
<h2>Erasing women</h2>
<p>In a letter to a male admirer, Mary Wollstonecraft described her approach to <a href="https://www.penguin.com.au/books/a-vindication-of-the-rights-of-woman-9780099595823">A Vindication of the Rights of Women</a>:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>A book I am now writing, in which I myself, for I cannot yet attain to Homer’s dignity, shall certainly appear, head and heart.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>Ah, Homer’s dignity. I’m fond of tracing the causes of my afflictions and the ones I see around me to hypothetical origins. I now fix these on the erasure of the Sumerian priestess <a href="https://www.worldhistory.org/Enheduanna/">Enheduanna</a>, who narrated in the first-person singular – “I” – the earliest known authored text, the <a href="https://etcsl.orinst.ox.ac.uk/section4/tr4072.htm">Exhalation of Inanna</a>. Enheduanna lived in the 23rd century BCE. She is the first known named author in the world.</p>
<figure class="align-right zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/553963/original/file-20231016-15-22ul5k.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/553963/original/file-20231016-15-22ul5k.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/553963/original/file-20231016-15-22ul5k.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=573&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/553963/original/file-20231016-15-22ul5k.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=573&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/553963/original/file-20231016-15-22ul5k.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=573&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/553963/original/file-20231016-15-22ul5k.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=720&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/553963/original/file-20231016-15-22ul5k.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=720&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/553963/original/file-20231016-15-22ul5k.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=720&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Sumerian priestess Enheduanna was the first named author in the world, in the 23rd century BC. Disk of Enheduanna.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Disk_of_Enheduanna_(2).jpg">Wikimedia Commons</a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/">CC BY</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>This casts new light on Homer’s dignity. <a href="https://www.penguin.com.au/books/the-iliad-9780140444445">The Iliad</a> and the <a href="https://www.penguin.com.au/books/odyssey-9781556437281">Odyssey</a> were composed around the 8th century BCE. The historical fact of the putative “Homer” – their author or authors – is still debated by scholars. </p>
<p>What difference would it make if we learnt at school that the first named author was a woman, writing in the first person singular some 2,200 years before Homer?</p>
<p>Instead, we have Rachel Cusk in 2009 CE, <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/books/2009/dec/12/rachel-cusk-women-writing-review">writing of woman</a> as “occluded, scattered, disguised”, gone underground. “Were a woman writer to address her sex, she would not know who or what she was addressing.”</p>
<p>Or, as Sheila Heti writes at the outset of her novel <a href="https://www.penguin.com.au/books/how-should-a-person-be-9780099583561">How Should a Person Be?</a>,</p>
<blockquote>
<p>One good thing about being a woman is we haven’t too many examples yet of what a genius looks like. It could be me. There is no ideal model for how my mind should be. For the men, it’s pretty clear. That’s the reason we see them trying to talk themselves up all the time.</p>
</blockquote>
<figure class="align-left zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/553969/original/file-20231016-29-fv4f27.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/553969/original/file-20231016-29-fv4f27.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/553969/original/file-20231016-29-fv4f27.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=903&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/553969/original/file-20231016-29-fv4f27.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=903&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/553969/original/file-20231016-29-fv4f27.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=903&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/553969/original/file-20231016-29-fv4f27.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1135&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/553969/original/file-20231016-29-fv4f27.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1135&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/553969/original/file-20231016-29-fv4f27.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1135&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption"></span>
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</figure>
<p>Questions of authority and form challenge each of these writers, some to breaking point. Depression and suicide recur. Biggs touches on her own depression, so deep she required medication. I’ve certainly experienced my own. Wollstonecraft attempted suicide twice. We know how the vibrant lives of Woolf and Sylvia Plath ended.</p>
<p>My favourite chapter in Biggs’s memoir is on <a href="https://theconversation.com/true-writing-is-a-convulsive-act-inside-the-mind-of-elena-ferrante-180311">Elena Ferrante</a>, whose Neapolitan quartet makes the erasure of women its subject, while centring two bookish women who’ve been friends and rivals since childhood. It’s about the self-erasure of one, Lila, and her reclamation in writing by the other, Lenu. As Biggs puts it, quoting Ferrante, it</p>
<blockquote>
<p>is Lenu’s attempt, over months of writing, to give Lila “a form whose boundaries won’t dissolve, and defeat her, and calm her, and so in turn calm myself”.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>Despite our many differences, it’s uncanny how similar Biggs’ and my trajectories have been, from the formative role of our mothers in our reading and divorces, to the central role of books and friendships with women in our unfolding lives. </p>
<p>Most strikingly, we’re both experimenting with new ways of writing our selves. In <a href="https://www.allenandunwin.com/browse/book/Rachel-Cusk-Aftermath-9780571351640/">her own memoir on marriage and separation</a>, Cusk suggests this urge is not a pathology, but a definition of a feminist:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>And perhaps a feminist is someone who possesses this personalising trait to a larger degree: she is an autobiographer, an artist of the self.</p>
</blockquote><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/207424/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Jane Gleeson-White does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>When Jane Gleeson-White’s marriage ended two years after her mother died, she lost her voice. Books by women writers like Rachel Cusk, Olivia Laing and Maggie Nelson helped her find it again.Jane Gleeson-White, Adjunct Lecturer, English and Creative Writing, UNSW Canberra, UNSW SydneyLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/2059132023-09-21T22:33:14Z2023-09-21T22:33:14ZWhat is intelligence? For millennia, western literature has suggested it may be a liability<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/548552/original/file-20230915-21-gi9749.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=43%2C52%2C3152%2C1968&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Asking if computers will be more intelligent than humans distracts us from grasping the underlying ethical problem with the humans who create and use them. </span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">(Shutterstock)</span></span></figcaption></figure><iframe style="width: 100%; height: 100px; border: none; position: relative; z-index: 1;" allowtransparency="" allow="clipboard-read; clipboard-write" src="https://narrations.ad-auris.com/widget/the-conversation-canada/what-is-intelligence-for-millennia-western-literature-has-suggested-it-may-be-a-liability" width="100%" height="400"></iframe>
<p>In the age of <a href="https://education.nationalgeographic.org/resource/anthropocene/">the Anthropocene</a>, humanity appears poised to destroy itself. </p>
<p>Each day brings a reminder of another threat to our peace and security. War, political instability and climate change send <a href="https://www.unhcr.org/what-we-do/build-better-futures/environment-disasters-and-climate-change/climate-change-and">migrants and refugees across national borders</a>. Cybercriminals <a href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/chuckbrooks/2023/03/05/cybersecurity-trends--statistics-for-2023-more-treachery-and-risk-ahead-as-attack-surface-and-hacker-capabilities-grow/?sh=1a0179419dba">hack networks of</a> public and private institutions. Terrorists use trucks and planes <a href="https://www.wsj.com/articles/vehicles-becoming-favored-terrorist-attack-weapon-1490215358">as weapons</a>. </p>
<p>And hanging grimly above us all, like the <a href="https://www.history.com/news/what-was-the-sword-of-damocles">sword of Damocles</a>, lurks the threat of total <a href="https://thebulletin.org/doomsday-clock/current-time/">nuclear annihilation</a>.</p>
<p>At the root of these threats is a problem that is as old as humanity itself. </p>
<p>In the domain of survival and reproduction, human intelligence stands out for one specific reason. We are the only species on earth for whom intelligence is also an ethical liability. As the anthropological critic Eric Gans has argued, we are the only species for whom the <a href="https://www.sup.org/books/title/?id=10442">problem of our violence is also our greatest existential threat</a>. </p>
<p>Insights from western literature and myth point to the ethical problem at the core of human intelligence. How we understand the role of humans’ symbolic communication, including language in establishing ethical relations, has profound consequences for our society. </p>
<h2>An ethical liability</h2>
<p>For most of human history, <a href="https://www.press.jhu.edu/books/title/2986/violence-and-sacred">controlling human conflict has been the task of religion</a>.
For example, among hunting and foraging societies, carefully prescribed rituals must be followed <a href="https://www.asiabookroom.com/pages/books/176465/signe-howell/society-and-cosmos-chewong-of-peninsular-malaysia">when meat is distributed after a successful hunt</a>. </p>
<p>Animals are difficult to track and kill. Meat is rare and highly valued. Consequently, the possibility of violence breaking out during distribution is more likely. Religion provides an ethical guide to the peaceful distribution of meat. </p>
<figure class="align-left ">
<img alt="Image of a mask seen on the cover of a book." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/534453/original/file-20230627-27-1summh.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/534453/original/file-20230627-27-1summh.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=900&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/534453/original/file-20230627-27-1summh.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=900&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/534453/original/file-20230627-27-1summh.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=900&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/534453/original/file-20230627-27-1summh.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1131&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/534453/original/file-20230627-27-1summh.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1131&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/534453/original/file-20230627-27-1summh.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1131&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Shakespeare and other writers examined the origins of human violence.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">(Stanford University Press)</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>The ethical problem of human violence has also been explored by literature. </p>
<p>For example, <a href="https://www.sup.org/books/title/?id=35000">my work on Shakespeare</a> examines his plays as a systematic attempt to understand the origin of human conflict. Shakespeare’s plays depict in exquisite detail humanity’s penchant for self-destruction.</p>
<p>Before Shakespeare, Homer’s epic poem the <em>Iliad</em> treated similar themes. Homer’s focus was not simply the war between Greeks and Trojans but, more precisely, Achilles’s <a href="https://anthropoetics.ucla.edu/views/vw378/">resentment of his king</a>, Agamemnon, who has used his authority to appropriate Achilles’s war captive, Briseis. </p>
<p>Achilles is by far the better fighter, but if the Greeks are to win the war, Achilles must learn to defer his resentment of his superior. </p>
<h2>Monster as metaphor</h2>
<p>In the scientific and technological revolutions of the modern era, this lesson receives a peculiar twist in science fiction, beginning with <a href="https://www.gutenberg.org/files/84/84-h/84-h.htm">Mary Shelley’s <em>Frankenstein</em></a>. </p>
<p>In Mary Shelley’s novel, the protagonist Victor Frankenstein succeeds in creating a being that is capable of thinking for itself. But Victor’s creature very quickly becomes Victor’s hated rival, which is why Victor refers to his creation as a hideous monster. Victor has what his rival wants, namely, a wife and, therefore, the prospect of children. Victor’s monster is a metaphor for the violence humans inflict on one another. </p>
<figure class="align-left ">
<img alt="Frankenstein novel seen with a clock and against printed pages." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/538337/original/file-20230719-23-uncvy.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/538337/original/file-20230719-23-uncvy.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=409&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/538337/original/file-20230719-23-uncvy.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=409&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/538337/original/file-20230719-23-uncvy.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=409&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/538337/original/file-20230719-23-uncvy.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=515&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/538337/original/file-20230719-23-uncvy.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=515&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/538337/original/file-20230719-23-uncvy.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=515&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Frankenstein’s monster is a metaphor for the violence humans inflict on one another.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">(Shutterstock)</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Of course, all animals compete for scarce resources. In this Darwinian competition, violence between rivals is inevitable. Other social animals, like chimpanzees, have well-developed pecking orders that allow conflict over disputed objects to be defused or constrained. The beta animal may challenge the alpha in a fight. If it wins, it takes the alpha position. </p>
<p>But these challenges for dominance are never <a href="https://wwnorton.co.uk/books/9780393317541-the-symbolic-species">represented symbolically</a> as existential threats to the social order. </p>
<p>Only humans represent their <a href="https://www.google.ca/books/edition/The_End_of_Culture/TZ5sQgAACAAJ?hl=en">capacity for violence symbolically in religion, myth and literature</a> because humans are the only animals for whom the greatest danger is themselves. </p>
<h2>Establishing mutual attention: an ethical task</h2>
<p>The dominant view today is that human intelligence is measured by <a href="https://www.ted.com/talks/sam_harris_can_we_build_ai_without_losing_control_over_it">how fast an individual brain can process information</a>. This picture of the human brain as an “information processor” is itself a product of the belief that the most important thing about speech <a href="https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/logical-empiricism">is to communicate facts about the world</a>. </p>
<p>But what this picture misses is a more fundamental task of language: establishing mutual attention.</p>
<figure class="align-left ">
<img alt="A mother and child seen looking at blossoms." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/548070/original/file-20230913-25-c67v1o.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/548070/original/file-20230913-25-c67v1o.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/548070/original/file-20230913-25-c67v1o.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/548070/original/file-20230913-25-c67v1o.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/548070/original/file-20230913-25-c67v1o.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/548070/original/file-20230913-25-c67v1o.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/548070/original/file-20230913-25-c67v1o.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">A fundamental task of language is establishing mutual attention.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">(Shutterstock)</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Michael Tomasello, a professor of psychology and neuroscience who specializes in social learning, notes that at around nine months of age, children engage in what he calls <a href="https://www.hup.harvard.edu/catalog.php?isbn=9780674005822">joint attentional scenes</a>. </p>
<p>The child’s mother may point to some flowers and say, “Pretty flowers!” What is significant is not merely that the mother has uttered words, but that the child is being invited to engage in joint attention with the mother. The flowers are being made present to the child as an object of shared collective and aesthetic attention.</p>
<h2>An ethical social order</h2>
<p>These insights demonstrate that establishing a human sense of the world depends on our relationships with other people. An ethical social order depends on ethical relationships. </p>
<p>In the age of social media, the rapid rise of <a href="https://theconversation.com/how-hitler-conspiracies-and-other-holocaust-disinformation-undermine-democratic-institutions-191116">extreme ideologies and conspiracy theories</a> has underscored the ineffectiveness of focusing on empirical truth alone to combat extremism. Many people remain enthralled by charged and incendiary speech or ideologies.</p>
<p>This fact ought to remind us that before we can communicate a concept, we must establish a scene of joint attention. </p>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/why-donald-trumps-words-work-and-what-to-do-about-it-147255">Why Donald Trump's words work, and what to do about it</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
<hr>
<p>The view that language is mostly about communicating concepts has consequences beyond encouraging us to underestimate the threat posed by polarizing, divisive or hate speech. This view also encourages us to see people as discrete storehouses of information, who are valuable to us for our own use, instead of in their own right.</p>
<h2>Forgetting our ethical responsibilities</h2>
<p>Increasingly, our conversations are mediated by the <a href="https://theconversation.com/the-problem-with-online-learning-it-doesnt-teach-people-to-think-161795">ubiquitous digital screen</a>. This is convenient, of course, but convenience comes with a cost. </p>
<p>The cost could be that we forget our ethical responsibility to others. </p>
<p>When technologists assert that <a href="https://apnews.com/article/ai-godfather-google-geoffery-hinton-fa98c6a6fddab1d7c27560f6fcbad0ad">computers may soon be smarter than humans</a> and that <a href="https://www.safe.ai/statement-on-ai-risk">artificial intelligence represents an existential threat to humanity</a>, they distract us from grasping the <a href="https://theconversation.com/ai-is-an-existential-threat-just-not-the-way-you-think-207680">underlying ethical problem</a>, which lies not in the computer but with the humans who create and use it.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/205913/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Richard van Oort does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Humanity is the only species on earth for whom intelligence is also an ethical liability.Richard van Oort, Professor of English, University of VictoriaLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1881722022-08-25T10:32:57Z2022-08-25T10:32:57ZFive books you’ll like if you love The Odyssey<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/479377/original/file-20220816-6097-5eioce.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=77%2C113%2C3916%2C2982&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">The Goddess Athena appearing to Odysseus to reveal the Island of Ithaca by Giuseppe Bottani.</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Athena_appearing_to_Odysseus_to_reveal_the_Island_of_Ithaca_by_Giuseppe_Bottani.jpg">Wikimedia</a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/">CC BY-SA</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>In The Odyssey, an almost 3,000-year-old epic attributed to a poet known as Homer, the soldier Odysseus narrates most adventures in retrospect. The poem, which tells of Odysseus’ return from the Trojan War, is both the origin of our concept of nostalgia (from the Greek <em>nostos</em> meaning the journey home) and one of the first travel narratives. Whether or not you’re already familiar with The Odyssey, <a href="https://www.emilyrcwilson.com/the-odyssey">Emily Wilson’s celebrated English translation</a> is a must-read (or listen).</p>
<p>The epic has inspired many writers. For anyone hungry for more, these suggested reads take Homer’s Odyssey as a springboard to expand on the myths, offering additional perspectives, especially from female characters and taking the story to new and imagined worlds.</p>
<h2>1. Ithaka by Adele Geras</h2>
<figure class="align-right ">
<img alt="Cover of book featuring a greek woman looking out to sea." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/480851/original/file-20220824-4311-pwpqn5.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/480851/original/file-20220824-4311-pwpqn5.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=923&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/480851/original/file-20220824-4311-pwpqn5.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=923&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/480851/original/file-20220824-4311-pwpqn5.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=923&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/480851/original/file-20220824-4311-pwpqn5.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1160&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/480851/original/file-20220824-4311-pwpqn5.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1160&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/480851/original/file-20220824-4311-pwpqn5.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1160&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption"></span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Penguin Random House Children's UK</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p><a href="https://www.penguin.co.uk/books/100/1005168/ithaka/9780552574150">Geras’ novel</a> tells the story of what happened to Odysseus’ family and household while he was away. Both parents and young adults can enjoy her shift of focus (featuring descriptions of the dog’s daydreams) which opens with children playing on the beach and moves among peach orchards and almond groves. Told from the perspective of Penelope, Odysseus’ son Telemachus and their friends, Geras capture “kitchen gossip” and tangible details of a place seemingly caught in limbo in Odysseus’ absence.</p>
<h2>2. Meadowlands by Louise Gluck</h2>
<figure class="align-left ">
<img alt="Cover of Meadowlands featuring an abstract island painting." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/480850/original/file-20220824-4473-dyjtgm.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/480850/original/file-20220824-4473-dyjtgm.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=860&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/480850/original/file-20220824-4473-dyjtgm.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=860&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/480850/original/file-20220824-4473-dyjtgm.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=860&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/480850/original/file-20220824-4473-dyjtgm.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1080&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/480850/original/file-20220824-4473-dyjtgm.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1080&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/480850/original/file-20220824-4473-dyjtgm.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1080&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption"></span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Ecco</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>A collection of poems, Gluck’s <a href="https://www.carcanet.co.uk/cgi-bin/indexer?product=9781857543919">Meadowlands</a> weaves a portrait of the end of a marriage with the story of The Odyssey. Timeless myth is set against everyday struggle. There are poems written from the perspective of Telemachus, Odysseus’s son, about being raised by one parent. There are also the voices of Penelope and Circe. These epic figures become knowable as Gluck makes their lives seem at times ordinary. For instance, in the poem “Quiet Evening” she writes:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>the quiet evenings in summer,<br>
the sky still light at this hour.<br>
So Penelope took the hand of Odysseus,<br>
not to hold him back but to impress<br>
this peace on his memory.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>It is a collection full of wit and humour as well as emotion. </p>
<h2>3. The Penelopiad by Margaret Atwood</h2>
<figure class="align-right ">
<img alt="Cover of book featuring mythic harpies." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/479368/original/file-20220816-25-ertrdm.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/479368/original/file-20220816-25-ertrdm.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=922&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/479368/original/file-20220816-25-ertrdm.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=922&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/479368/original/file-20220816-25-ertrdm.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=922&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/479368/original/file-20220816-25-ertrdm.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1159&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/479368/original/file-20220816-25-ertrdm.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1159&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/479368/original/file-20220816-25-ertrdm.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1159&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption"></span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Canongate Canons</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>The Odyssey ranges across wildernesses, beaches, gardens, orchards and palaces, but as the writer Madeline Miller notes, “however far afield [Odysseus] travelled, always [his stories] came back to Ithaca.” Odysseus eventually returns to his wife Penelope. In the epic poem of shifting locations and identities, Odysseus’ immoveable “here” is his marital bed, built around “an olive tree/ with delicate long leaves, full-grown and green,/ as sturdy as a pillar”.</p>
<p>Written also in the style of an epic poem, <a href="https://canongate.co.uk/books/72-the-penelopiad/">Margaret Attwood’s The Penelopiad</a> (2005) gives Odysseus’ long-suffering wife a chance to tell her side of the story. Penelope and her maids narrate Odysseus’ violent homecoming in hindsight from their afterlife location in the mythical underworld. Atwood’s retelling pioneered this approach to novels which give the perspectives of characters often marginalised in canonical ancient texts – especially the women. </p>
<h2>4. Circe by Madeline Miller</h2>
<figure class="align-left ">
<img alt="Cover of the book Circe." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/479366/original/file-20220816-14-hiye6v.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/479366/original/file-20220816-14-hiye6v.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=920&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/479366/original/file-20220816-14-hiye6v.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=920&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/479366/original/file-20220816-14-hiye6v.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=920&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/479366/original/file-20220816-14-hiye6v.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1156&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/479366/original/file-20220816-14-hiye6v.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1156&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/479366/original/file-20220816-14-hiye6v.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1156&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption"></span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Bloomsbury</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>One of Odysseus’ most memorable adventures is his sojourn with the goddess Circe, who turns Odysseus’ crew into pigs. <a href="http://madelinemiller.com/circe/">Madeline Miller’s Circe</a> powerfully re-conceives her story from several Greek myths. The daughter of the song god and titan Helios, she is an unremarkable child born into a life of luxurious tedium. But Circe wants more and seeks the companionship of humans. In trying to twist her fate and defy the will of the gods she discovers she possesses powers. For this, she is exiled. </p>
<p>This story of Circe’s life in exile on her island challenges The Odyssey’s focus on Odysseus. Miller emphasises Circe’s isolation as intended punishment that grows to become so much more. </p>
<p>In contrast to her “father’s halls”, Miller’s Circe experiences her island as “the wildest, most giddy freedom”. Circe discovers that “to swim in the tide, to walk the earth […] is what it means to be alive. […] All my life, I have been moving forward, and now I am here.”</p>
<h2>5. An Odyssey: a Father, a Son and an Epic by Daniel Mendelsohn</h2>
<figure class="align-right ">
<img alt="Book cover featuring greek artwork." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/479367/original/file-20220816-5564-z7u5be.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/479367/original/file-20220816-5564-z7u5be.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=927&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/479367/original/file-20220816-5564-z7u5be.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=927&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/479367/original/file-20220816-5564-z7u5be.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=927&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/479367/original/file-20220816-5564-z7u5be.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1164&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/479367/original/file-20220816-5564-z7u5be.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1164&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/479367/original/file-20220816-5564-z7u5be.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1164&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption"></span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Vintage</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>The critic and writer Daniel Mendelsohn’s memoir, <a href="https://www.williamcollinsbooks.co.uk/products/an-odyssey-a-father-a-son-and-an-epic-shortlisted-for-the-baillie-gifford-prize-2017-daniel-mendelsohn-9780007545124/">An Odyssey: A Father, A Son and an Epic</a>, relates his experience exploring The Odyssey with his father, first in his classroom and then as they travel around the Mediterranean recreating Odysseus’ journey. The book is part literary crash course on The Odyssey, part touching memoir and part travelogue. An informative and moving read.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/188172/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Rachel Bryant Davies does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>These books and poems give the women of the Odyssey a say and other new perspectives on the classic tale.Rachel Bryant Davies, Lecturer in Comparative Literature, Queen Mary University of LondonLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1759562022-02-01T12:21:10Z2022-02-01T12:21:10ZUlysses at 100: why Joyce was so obsessed with the perfect blue cover<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/443450/original/file-20220131-118143-cljnde.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=7%2C7%2C2620%2C1788&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">James Joyce was particular about the shade of blue that would grace the cover of Ulysses.</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ulysses_(novel)#/media/File:James_Joyce_Ulysses_1st_Edition_1922_GB.jpg">Wikimedia</a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/">CC BY-SA</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>On February 2 2022, Ulysses turns 100, James Joyce would have turned 140, and I will turn 30-something.</p>
<p>To celebrate this tripartite birthday I am popping to the chemist to collect some eye drops. Then I’m heading to the Bodleian Library in Oxford to view one of the first editions of Ulysses. I won’t read it. I won’t even venture past its covers. I am interested in seeing the exact shade of blue that Joyce specified for the book’s wrappers. He was so particular about this aesthetic feature that he got his painter friend, <a href="https://www.annexgalleries.com/artists/biography/3862/Nutting/Myron">Myron Nutting</a>, to mix up the precise tint.</p>
<p>This is where the eye drops come in. I have a chronic condition that can make my eyes sore and my vision blurry. And I want to ensure that I can see Ulysses clearly, to properly assess the blueness of its cover. The irony is that Joyce’s eyesight was far worse than mine. He experienced severe eye pain, underwent multiple ocular surgeries and, at times, could barely see at all. Why, then, was he so obsessed with his book being such a specific hue of blue?</p>
<h2>Ulysses Blue</h2>
<p>Joyce’s biographer, Richard Ellmann, tells us that the cover of Ulysses was meant to match the blue of the Greek flag, to suggest <a href="https://archive.org/details/jamesjoyce00rich/page/524/mode/2up?q=nutting">the myth of ancient Greece and Homer</a>. We know from his letters that Joyce sent a Greek flag to Nutting for him to colour-match. So, he was aiming for “Greek” blue. </p>
<p>We also know that Homer was a huge influence on Joyce. <a href="https://culturedarm.com/homeric-parallel-ulysses-joyce-nabokov-homer-maps/">The structure of Ulysses parallels the structure of Homer’s Odyssey</a>. So, it makes sense for Joyce to honour his literary hero through a subtle, yet exceedingly specific, decorative detail. But I think there’s more to it. </p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="Statues of Homer against a gloomy sky." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/443446/original/file-20220131-13-14aztav.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/443446/original/file-20220131-13-14aztav.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=337&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/443446/original/file-20220131-13-14aztav.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=337&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/443446/original/file-20220131-13-14aztav.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=337&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/443446/original/file-20220131-13-14aztav.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=424&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/443446/original/file-20220131-13-14aztav.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=424&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/443446/original/file-20220131-13-14aztav.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=424&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Homer was a great inspiration to James Joyce.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.shutterstock.com/image-photo/statue-homer-university-virginia-709661524">Timothy Harding/Shutterstock</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>I am on a research odyssey to discover the impetus and symbolism behind “Ulysses blue”. I will go to the Bodleian with my eyes wide open, ready to let my visual experience of the famous blue book dictate my avenue of research.</p>
<p>But, given Joyce’s impaired vision, perhaps this isn’t the best approach. To understand Joyce’s perspective, I must shrug off my “<a href="http://artandpopularculture.com/Ocularcentrism">ocularcentrism</a>”.</p>
<h2>Blindness in Joyce’s texts</h2>
<p>In her thoughtful new book, <a href="https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/611683/there-plant-eyes-by-m-leona-godin/">There Plant Eyes: A Personal and Cultural History of Blindness</a>, writer and educator M. Leona Godin devotes several pages to her interactions with Ulysses. She discusses the “<a href="https://drmlgodin.com/2019/10/tap-tap-tap-joyces-blind-stripling-in-honor-of-white-cane-safety-day/">blind stripling</a>” character who taps his way through Dublin, and through Ulysses, using his “slender cane”. </p>
<p>Godin praises Joyce’s ability to capture the musicality of the tapping cane and articulates the complexity of Joyce’s relationship with blindness: “Even if Joyce felt some kinship with the blind stripling, he was still a sight-oriented person who might think […] of the blind as ‘they’.”</p>
<p>Joyce would have loved Godin’s book, as he appears to have had a keen interest in blindness memoirs and advice guides written by blind people, for blind people (and their supporters). Scholars have largely glossed over Joyce’s references to blindness in his <a href="https://catalogue.nli.ie/Record/vtls000357760/HierarchyTree#page/1/mode/1up">composition notebook</a>. But I’m delving deeper to get to grips with Joyce’s thoughts on visual impairment. </p>
<p>It is fascinating to read Joyce’s depiction of the blind stripling in Ulysses, alongside one of the blindness books mentioned in his notes: <a href="https://archive.org/details/lesaveuglesparun00maur/page/n7/mode/2up"><em>Les Aveugles par un Aveugle</em> (The Blind as Seen through Blind Eyes)</a> (1899), by Maurice de la Sizeranne. </p>
<p>As I outlined in a <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HB8pOCFEp5w">public lecture</a> last Bloomsday, there are several similarities, in terms of content and focus, between the two books. </p>
<p>The observations de la Sizeranne makes about his fellow blind man parallel those made by Ulysses’ protagonist Bloom about the blind stripling. Both Bloom and de la Sizeranne discuss the intriguing relationship between colour perception and touch, in blind experience, and suggest an additional blind sense: a “kind of sense of volume” involving the “nerves of the face” or the “forehead”. In reflecting blind experience onto his blind readers, de la Sizeranne - to borrow a phrase used in Ulysses - urges us to “see ourselves as others see us”.</p>
<p>In Joyce’s notes, the name of a hitherto unidentified “Dr Staub” is scrawled next to the title of de la Sizeranne’s book. Staub was believed to be one of Joyce’s eye doctors. However, I have discovered that he is, in fact, <a href="https://www.sbs.ch/ueber-uns/portraet/geschichte/">Dr Theodor Staub</a>, the blind founder of the Swiss Library for the Blind. </p>
<p>It is unclear why Staub’s name appears next to <em>Les Aveugles par un Aveugle</em>. Whatever the precise connection, in jotting down Staub’s name Joyce, at the very least, demonstrated a desire to engage with the blind community and with books for the blind.</p>
<h2>Blind, blue bards</h2>
<p>In his final book, Finnegans Wake (1939), Joyce alludes to Ulysses. He depicts Shem, a partially sighted writer, reading a “usylessly unreadable Blue Book” in a “glaucous den”. </p>
<p>In ancient Greek, the word “glaucous” refers to blueish-green or blueish-grey. It’s also the root word of “<a href="https://www.dovepress.com/the-early-history-of-glaucoma-the-glaucous-eyenbsp800-bc-to-1050-ad-peer-reviewed-fulltext-article-OPTH">glaucoma</a>”. Joyce suffered from glaucoma, and, in one of his letters, he writes that Homer “went blind from glaucoma according to one of my doctors”.</p>
<figure class="align-right ">
<img alt="Blue cover of Ulysses." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/443257/original/file-20220129-25-13a0oil.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/443257/original/file-20220129-25-13a0oil.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=767&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/443257/original/file-20220129-25-13a0oil.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=767&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/443257/original/file-20220129-25-13a0oil.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=767&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/443257/original/file-20220129-25-13a0oil.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=964&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/443257/original/file-20220129-25-13a0oil.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=964&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/443257/original/file-20220129-25-13a0oil.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=964&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Could the blue be inspired by the colour that the word ‘glaucous’ denotes?</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/">CC BY</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>So, perhaps “Ulysses blue” is a homage to glaucoma (via ancient Greece and Homer). By insisting on Greek-flag blue, was Joyce seeking, through rather associative means, to insert himself into a canon of blind writers?</p>
<p>There is no definite answer to this question. But, by recognising Joyce as a disabled writer with a genuine interest in articulating a wide range of bodily and sensory experiences, we open up new possibilities for accessing Ulysses in its centenary year. We should feel empowered to read Joyce’s blue book through our eyes, <a href="https://podcasts.apple.com/gb/podcast/friends-of-shakespeare-and-company-read-ulysses-by/id1605756869">ears</a>, and <a href="https://www.ncbi.ie/shut-your-eyes-and-see-ncbi-and-james-joyce-cultural-centre-collaboration/">fingers</a>.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/175956/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Cleo Hanaway-Oakley does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>An ode to his hero Homer? The act of a man losing his sight? What is the story behind the famous Ulysses blue.Cleo Hanaway-Oakley, Lecturer in Liberal Arts and English, University of BristolLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1624262021-10-19T19:13:14Z2021-10-19T19:13:14ZGuide to the classics: Euripides’ The Trojan Women – an unflinching look at the brutality of war<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/426368/original/file-20211014-25-1uezvlv.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=9%2C0%2C843%2C628&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Aomawa Baker as Andromache in a production of The Trojan Woman in Los Angeles.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Wikimedia Commons</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>The story of the long struggle for the life of the city of Troy might be thought of as the pre-eminent Greek myth. Extensive narratives of the war are told in the oral traditions of myth and literature, and they also appear very significantly in the material evidence of Greek art and architecture. </p>
<p>The Trojan Women, a play by the great Athenian dramatist Euripides (485-406 BC), was produced at Athens in the early spring of 415 BC. It is set immediately after the fall of Troy and the killing of the Trojan men when the fates of the royal women and children of the city are being decided by the victorious Greeks. </p>
<p>The grim subject-matter and mood of the play in its Trojan setting have a parallel in the Peloponnesian war, which was being fought at the time between Athens and Sparta (431 to 404 BC). The Trojan Women speaks both to the renowned war at Troy, described most famously by Homer in the Iliad, and to the great military struggle taking place in Euripides’ own lifetime. </p>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/guide-to-the-classics-homers-iliad-80968">Guide to the classics: Homer's Iliad</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
<hr>
<figure class="align-left zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/426367/original/file-20211014-17-a9lwe3.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/426367/original/file-20211014-17-a9lwe3.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/426367/original/file-20211014-17-a9lwe3.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=671&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/426367/original/file-20211014-17-a9lwe3.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=671&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/426367/original/file-20211014-17-a9lwe3.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=671&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/426367/original/file-20211014-17-a9lwe3.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=844&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/426367/original/file-20211014-17-a9lwe3.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=844&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/426367/original/file-20211014-17-a9lwe3.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=844&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Bust of Euripides. Marble, Roman copy after a Greek original from circa 330 BC.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Wikimedia Commons</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>If there was a historical Trojan war it was probably fought in the late Bronze Age, perhaps in the 12th century BC at Hisarlik in north-west Turkey. Accounts of the war seem to have been passed on orally culminating in epic poems that probably date to the end of 8th century BC and after. The Iliad (c. 700BC) and the Odyssey (dated perhaps to a generation or two after the Iliad) are our two surviving early Greek epic poems on the Troy theme. </p>
<p>But we also know of a series of poems, now lost, called the “Epic Cycle”, six of which are focused on the Troy saga. All of these offered accounts of different parts of the Trojan war (which in the Greek tradition lasted for 10 years).</p>
<p>Early Greek epics made no attempt to document the historicity of the conflict in a modern sense, not the least because history hadn’t been invented when they were composed. History (a Greek word meaning “research” or “enquiry”) is a product of later (ie 6th and 5th century BC) rationalism and literacy. </p>
<h2>One of four themed plays</h2>
<p>As a late 5th century BC Athenian dramatist, Euripides is an heir both to the traditions of oral poetry and mythmaking, and to the rational enquiry of philosophy, rhetoric and history in a broad sense. Whilst Homer was greatly admired by the literati in 5th century Athens, he does represent a world long gone. (Homer’s Iliad may date up to 300 years before Euripides’ Trojan Women – as distant a period as the early 18th century is for us.)</p>
<figure class="align-right zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/426365/original/file-20211014-28-6wxtda.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/426365/original/file-20211014-28-6wxtda.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/426365/original/file-20211014-28-6wxtda.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=968&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/426365/original/file-20211014-28-6wxtda.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=968&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/426365/original/file-20211014-28-6wxtda.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=968&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/426365/original/file-20211014-28-6wxtda.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1217&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/426365/original/file-20211014-28-6wxtda.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1217&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/426365/original/file-20211014-28-6wxtda.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1217&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption"></span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">goodreads</span></span>
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<p>Euripides himself (485-406BC) was still writing into old age, not unlike his contemporary, the tragedian Sophocles (497/6-406BC), who was still producing plays at Athens into his early nineties! Euripides wrote about 90 plays, of which 18 survive, whereas the evergreen Sophocles wrote more than 120 plays, only 7 of which survive. They often competed at the dramatic festivals, with Sophocles easily the more successful. </p>
<p>Euripides wrote four plays for performance on that day in the early spring of 415BC, although only The Trojan Women has survived. We know, not the least from fragmentary evidence, that the first three plays were on the Trojan war theme, but they were not a tightly inter-connected trilogy of plays, as is Aeschylus’ <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oresteia">Oresteia</a>.</p>
<p>First was the play Alexander, which focused on the earlier life of the Trojan archer-figure Paris, or Alexander, as he is often known. In the myth of Troy it is he who judges the divine beauty contest (the Judgement of Paris), that precipitates the war between Greeks and Trojans. </p>
<p>The second play was the Palamedes, about a clever but rather obscure Greek prince at Troy. The Trojan Women was the third play presented on that day, and was followed in turn by a more light-hearted “satyr play” called the Sisyphus.</p>
<p>We learn from an ancient source that Euripides’ plays came second in the dramatic competition of 415.</p>
<h2>Cold calculation</h2>
<p>The Trojan Women focuses on a small group of women of the royal house of Troy who await their fate in Greece – Hecuba, the widow of king Priam; Cassandra, the prophetess daughter of Priam and Hecuba; Andromache, widow of Hector and mother of the boy Astyanax; and Helen of Sparta, who has to plead for her life from Menelaus, her former husband. The chorus of the play are captive Trojan women. </p>
<p>The only Greek prince to feature as a character is Menelaus himself whose task is to decide on Helen’s fate now that she has been captured. The cruel decisions of the departing Greek forces occur with Odysseus as a key player, but these are enunciated to the women by Talthybius, a Greek herald. </p>
<p>The women are dispersed as slaves to particular princes throughout the Greek world who have led contingents within the Greek army. The obvious cruelty of this process is added to by the cold calculation as to who will go where. </p>
<p>Thus, the girl Polyxena, daughter of Priam and Hecuba, was supposed to go to Achilles after the war; but seeing Achilles is now dead, she is sacrificed at his tomb. </p>
<p>Hector’s wife Andromache goes to Achilles’ son Neoptolemus because Hector and Achilles were rivals and had a major single combat in battle (told in Book 22 of the Iliad). Hecuba herself is to go to Odysseus – a terrible fate, upon which she laments her ill-fortune: “it is my lot to be slave to a vile and treacherous man”. </p>
<p>Cassandra will go as a sex slave to the lascivious and repulsive figure of Agamemnon, whilst Helen – the face that launched a thousand ships – is given back to Menelaus. </p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/426369/original/file-20211014-16-mhgsri.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/426369/original/file-20211014-16-mhgsri.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/426369/original/file-20211014-16-mhgsri.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=475&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/426369/original/file-20211014-16-mhgsri.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=475&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/426369/original/file-20211014-16-mhgsri.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=475&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/426369/original/file-20211014-16-mhgsri.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=597&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/426369/original/file-20211014-16-mhgsri.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=597&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/426369/original/file-20211014-16-mhgsri.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=597&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Attic plate depicting Ajax and Cassandra, circa 440-430 BCE.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Wikimedia Commons</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Cassandra is murdered with Agamemnon upon their return to Mycenae, whereas Helen is a remarkable survivor upon her return to Greece. We encounter Helen again most especially in Homer’s Odyssey Book 4, where she has a kind of “normal” life and marriage with her former husband Menelaus in Sparta. </p>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/guide-to-the-classics-homers-odyssey-82911">Guide to the Classics: Homer's Odyssey</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
<hr>
<p>It is important to remember that the extended story of the Trojan war is a genocide narrative, and that this comes through very emphatically within the play itself (as it does in other Greek literature). </p>
<p>The Greeks did not shrink from describing Greek atrocities perpetrated on the defeated Trojans. Indeed it is a feature of their narratives to focus on Greek cruelty. In the Iliad, for instance, Agamemnon urges his brother Menelaus on the battlefield to kill all Trojans, “even the boy that is carried in a mother’s womb”.</p>
<figure class="align-left zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/426370/original/file-20211014-23-1pned6v.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/426370/original/file-20211014-23-1pned6v.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/426370/original/file-20211014-23-1pned6v.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=584&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/426370/original/file-20211014-23-1pned6v.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=584&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/426370/original/file-20211014-23-1pned6v.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=584&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/426370/original/file-20211014-23-1pned6v.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=734&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/426370/original/file-20211014-23-1pned6v.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=734&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/426370/original/file-20211014-23-1pned6v.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=734&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Hector’s last visit to his family before his duel with Achilles: Astyanax is on Andromache’s knees. Apulian red-figure column-crater, ca. 370–360 BC.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Wikimedia Commons</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>The horrific culmination of the cruelty in the Trojan Women is the killing of the boy Astyanax, the very young son of Hector and Andromache. This occurs within the course of the play itself (off stage, of course). Odysseus comes up with the idea of throwing him from the battlements of the city, and the Greeks even threaten to refuse the burial of his body if the Trojan women don’t co-operate with the decision to execute the boy.</p>
<p>Astyanax is a silent character in Homer and in Euripides, but his fate in the aftermath of the war speaks to us about infanticide, much as the fates of the Trojan women do with regard to rape and murder and the enslavement of women in war. </p>
<h2>Women’s suffering</h2>
<p>It does seem to be significant too that the only compassion for the women coming from Greek male characters in the play belongs to Talthybius, the (non-aristocratic) herald of the Greeks. </p>
<p>The Athenian audience in 415 BC knew very well the main mythical narratives of the aftermath of the Trojan war and the return home. They would know all about the death of Astyanax and about the return of Helen to Sparta to live again with her husband. They would also know, not the least from the prologue of Euripides’ play itself, that the Greek fleet will be hit by storms on the journey home on account of the rape of Cassandra by <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Locris">Locrian Ajax</a> at the altar of Athena – an unpunished act which occurred prior to the opening of the play. </p>
<p>So the Trojan Women deals with the sharp end of Greek brutality in the war for Troy – the enslavement of women, human sacrifice, rape and infanticide. </p>
<p>The graphic violence dealt with in the play speaks to us about the absence of heroism in the narrative of Troy, despite what Homer and the epic poets provided in their earlier accounts.</p>
<p>The focus on women’s suffering in the war is in keeping with other works by Euripides, many of whose plays focused on female lives and female suffering in relentlessly male dominated environments.</p>
<figure class="align-right zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/426366/original/file-20211014-13-hexjy2.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/426366/original/file-20211014-13-hexjy2.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/426366/original/file-20211014-13-hexjy2.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=914&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/426366/original/file-20211014-13-hexjy2.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=914&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/426366/original/file-20211014-13-hexjy2.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=914&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/426366/original/file-20211014-13-hexjy2.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1149&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/426366/original/file-20211014-13-hexjy2.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1149&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/426366/original/file-20211014-13-hexjy2.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1149&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption"></span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">goodreads</span></span>
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</figure>
<p>Inevitably, Euripides’ play has inspired many later treatments of the Trojan women theme. Two modern conscious responses to the Greek poets are novels by English author Pat Barker, who was moved to write The Silence of the Girls, based around the Iliad, and (most recently) The Women of Troy: A Novel, to hear the voices of the women themselves from Euripides’ play. </p>
<p>Lucy Hughes-Hallett’s <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/books/2021/aug/20/the-women-of-troy-by-pat-barker-review-bleak-and-impressive">review of The Women of Troy in the Guardian</a> reiterates the violence of the language in Barker’s version: “clearly and simply told, with no obscurities of vocabulary or allusion, this novel reads sometimes like a retelling for children of the legend of Troy, but its conclusions are for adults - merciless, stripped of consoling, impressively bleak”.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/162426/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Chris Mackie does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>The Trojan Women is a genocide narrative. In this play, the great Athenian dramatist Euripides explores the enslavement of women, human sacrifice, rape and infanticide.Chris Mackie, Professor of Classics, La Trobe UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1670252021-09-02T12:24:25Z2021-09-02T12:24:25Z‘Work with hope’ – a poet and classics scholar on facing the flood of bad news<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/418667/original/file-20210831-13-nuut28.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=5%2C0%2C3828%2C2149&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">What, more depressing news?</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/photo/young-african-woman-reacting-to-loss-on-laptop-in-royalty-free-image/1223385393?adppopup=true">Rolling Camera/ iStock / Getty Images Plus</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>Patience is wearing thin. Not only are we all bone-weary of the pandemic; rising hopes have made the current precarious state of confusion and fear, vigorous variants and stubborn vaccine rejection all the more frustrating. </p>
<p>We thought we were almost out of the woods, but there’s no clear end in sight to this forest. And there’s no shortage of other bad and worsening news too, notably the dramatic daily evidence of the <a href="https://theconversation.com/ipcc-climate-report-profound-changes-are-underway-in-earths-oceans-and-ice-a-lead-author-explains-what-the-warnings-mean-165588">catastrophic results of climate change</a>.</p>
<p>How do we weather this welter of bad news? How do we adapt?</p>
<p>The same ways human beings always have adapted – grudgingly or stoically, fearfully or fatalistically or frantically. We’re in a prolonged period of maddeningly, scarily bad news – and if we follow the 24-hour news cycle, we’re in it up to our chins.</p>
<p>But how good has the news ever been? Precisely when or what was the Golden Age? <a href="https://www.goodreads.com/author/quotes/46110.Randall_Jarrell">Poet Randall Jarrell wrote,</a> with tongue in cheek, that it’s when people went around complaining how yellow everything looked. </p>
<h2>Keep on keeping on</h2>
<p>Even under dire conditions, most people go on doing what they do for as long as they can. </p>
<p>The Homeric epics, which date from the eighth century B.C., are preoccupied with both grief and survival. Late in the Iliad, speaking of Achilles’ inconsolable grief after the loss of his beloved Patroklos, who was not a blood relative, <a href="https://www.harpercollins.com/products/the-iliad-homercaroline-alexander?variant=32199389052962">the god Apollo reminds the other Olympians</a> that things could always be worse: </p>
<blockquote>
<p>“A man surely is likely to lose someone even dearer- <br>
A brother born of the same womb, or his own son; <br>
but having wept and mourned, he lets it go; <br>
for the Fates placed an enduring heart within mankind.” </p>
</blockquote>
<figure class="align-right zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/418668/original/file-20210831-25-b19zay.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="A pile of newspaper headlines with bad news." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/418668/original/file-20210831-25-b19zay.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/418668/original/file-20210831-25-b19zay.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=808&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/418668/original/file-20210831-25-b19zay.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=808&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/418668/original/file-20210831-25-b19zay.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=808&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/418668/original/file-20210831-25-b19zay.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1016&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/418668/original/file-20210831-25-b19zay.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1016&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/418668/original/file-20210831-25-b19zay.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1016&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">The news is bad now – but hasn’t it always been?</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/photo/coronavirus-newspaper-headline-montage-royalty-free-image/1214266712?adppopup=true">belterz/E+/Getty Images</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Human beings are more enduring, more adaptable, than we give ourselves credit for. <a href="https://english.columbia.edu/content/andrew-delbanco">Scholar and author Andrew Delbanco</a> <a href="https://www.ft.com/content/27e3fc2a-1542-4a3c-964b-506dbe9c8ee2">observed in July 2020</a>: “Four months ago, I thought ‘zoom’ meant the sound of a motorcycle. Then coronavirus struck, the students were sent home, and we faculty were given a few days to learn how to teach by Zoom for the rest of the semester.”</p>
<p>Zoom videoconferencing lasted a lot longer than the rest of the spring semester of 2020, and the need for it has not gone away. But as Delbanco also notes, “Having scattered around the world, my students were grateful to reconnect, even if they felt that ‘virtual’ classes were weak simulation of the real thing.”</p>
<p>Many of us adapted to virtual, only to be told this past spring and summer that we could begin to ease out of the remote mode – a change which brought its own anxieties. I’m reminded of <a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20190119174211/https://bacchicstage.wordpress.com/plato/the-cave/">Plato’s allegory of the cave</a>. Socrates suggests that any prisoner dragged forcibly out of the cave would feel pain and rage until he became acclimatized to the shadows, reflections, the stars and moon, and finally the light of the sun.</p>
<p>In the same way, perhaps the nonvirtual world, the world of in-person classes, will feel strange to some people. But they will adapt. And perhaps, as the delta variant and other variants in the making continue to spread, it won’t be necessary to adapt so soon. More useful concepts for the period we’re in now than the provocative and recently <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2021/08/02/us/politics/covid-pandemic-guidelines.html">omnipresent trope of whiplash</a> are patience and hope.</p>
<h2>‘The thing with feathers’</h2>
<p>Hesiod, Homer’s contemporary, <a href="https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/541694/works-and-days-by-hesiod-translated-with-an-introduction-and-notes-by-a-e-stallings/">tells us in his poem “Works and Days”</a> that when Pandora, a seductive figure who is the gods’ deceitful gift to mankind, opens her jar and releases all the evils that plague the world, including pestilence, Hope alone stays behind. Thank goodness for hope – what would we do without “<a href="https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/42889/hope-is-the-thing-with-feathers-314">the thing with feathers/that perches on the soul</a>,” as Emily Dickinson famously describes it. </p>
<p>In the absence of hope, it’s hard to summon the energy to endure. It helps to remember <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2021/07/12/magazine/jane-goodall-interview.html">Jane Goodall’s words, spoken in the context of climate change</a> and extinction but equally applicable, surely, to any dire situation: “We absolutely need to know all the doom and gloom because we are approaching a crossroads. But traveling the world I’d see animal and plant species being rescued from the brink of extinction, people tackling what seemed impossible.” These positive stories need more attention, says Goodall, because “they’re what give people hope.” </p>
<p>Yes, hope can be mocking, frustrated and frustrating, when it’s disappointed, when it turns out to have been premature, as happened this summer. But a year ago, who would have dared to hope that the <a href="https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-020-03626-1">vaccines would be developed so swiftly</a>? What was our hope then? We forget so quickly.</p>
<p>We must try to find a balance between hope, which looks ahead, and the tasks of the present. Samuel Taylor Coleridge, the 19th-century English poet who knew a good deal about dejection, captures such a balance perfectly at the close of his sonnet “<a href="https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/43999/work-without-hope">Work without Hope</a>”:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>“Work without Hope draws nectar in a sieve, <br>
And Hope without an object cannot live.” </p>
</blockquote>
<h2>At sea with ‘broken oars’</h2>
<p>We can take the long view and look and hope beyond what can feel like an endless glum horizon. </p>
<p>But we can also focus on the small things, the countless occasions for gratitude we might not even have dared to envision at this time last year. The seasons keep turning, and now it’s early autumn, with its large and small changes. Henry David Thoreau <a href="https://www.google.com/books/edition/A_Year_in_Thoreau_s_Journal/aPgr7k_MYPkC?hl=en&gbpv=1&dq=%E2%80%9CThe+days+for+some+time+have+been+sensibly+shorter%3B+there+is+time+for+music+in+the+evening.%E2%80%9D&pg=PA156&printsec=frontcover">wrote in his journal on Aug. 12, 1851</a>: “The days for some time have been sensibly shorter; there is time for music in the evening.” Thoreau was well aware of the Mexican War, slavery, the pervasive sense of approaching crisis. But he also paid attention to each day as it passed.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/418683/original/file-20210831-17-olimgh.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="Rough waters, with foamy, breaking waves" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/418683/original/file-20210831-17-olimgh.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/418683/original/file-20210831-17-olimgh.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=399&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/418683/original/file-20210831-17-olimgh.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=399&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/418683/original/file-20210831-17-olimgh.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=399&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/418683/original/file-20210831-17-olimgh.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=502&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/418683/original/file-20210831-17-olimgh.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=502&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/418683/original/file-20210831-17-olimgh.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=502&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
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<span class="caption">Can broken oars still power us through rough seas?</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/photo/wandering-albatross-in-flight-over-rough-sea-royalty-free-image/96324823?adppopup=true">Mike Hill/Stone/Getty Images</a></span>
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<p>The Greek poet and Nobel laureate <a href="https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/51457/mythistorema">George Seferis wrote a long poetic sequence, Mythistorema</a>, which recounts a timeless version of the Odyssey. The line that sticks with me now is “We put to sea again with our broken oars.” </p>
<p>That phrase meant one thing to Seferis, writing in 1935, and to his generations of readers; it means something else now, in 2021, to me and to my students. <a href="https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/348265/walking-a-sacred-path-by-lauren-artress/">As the Reverend Lauren Artress wrote</a> in her 1995 study of “the labyrinth as spiritual practice” – a different context, but with widely applicable truth – “The experience is different for everyone because each of us brings different raw material to the labyrinth.”</p>
<p>The Age of Iron. The cave dwellers resisting the scary sunlight. The enduring human heart. The challenges that lie in wait even after, like Odysseus, you’ve landed on your Ithaca. The broken oars. And the vitality of hope. </p>
<p>I’m grateful that – in person, remotely or some confusing combination of the two – I have a chance to keep on teaching literature. To revise Coleridge’s bleak formulation: Work with hope. Hope with an object.</p>
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<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Rachel Hadas does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Rachel Hadas says that despite the cascade of scary news, humans will adapt, as they always have – and provides evidence of that resilience in the literature she loves and teaches.Rachel Hadas, Professor of English, Rutgers University - NewarkLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1590362021-04-22T12:24:28Z2021-04-22T12:24:28ZWhat Homer’s ‘Odyssey’ can teach us about reentering the world after a year of isolation<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/396138/original/file-20210420-19-1fwzqkr.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=66%2C22%2C4807%2C3259&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Greek hero Odysseus reunites with his wife, Penelope, upon his return to Ithaca, in an illustration from Homer's epic.</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/homer-the-odyssey-ulysses-returns-to-ithaca-after-ten-years-news-photo/588182060?adppopup=true">Culture Club/Getty Images</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>In the ancient Greek epic “The Odyssey,” Homer’s hero, Odysseus, describes the wild land of the Cyclops as a place where people don’t gather together in public, where each person makes decisions for their own family and “<a href="http://www.perseus.tufts.edu/hopper/text?doc=Perseus%3Atext%3A1999.01.0136%3Abook%3D9%3Acard%3D82">care nothing for one another</a>.” </p>
<p>For Odysseus – and his audiences – these words mark the Cyclops and his people as inhuman. The passage also communicates how people should live: together, in cooperation, with concern for the common good. </p>
<p>Over the past year, we witnessed police violence, increasingly partisan politics and the continued American legacy of racism during a generation-defining pandemic. And for many, this was observed, at times, in isolation at home. I have worried about how we can heal from our collective trauma. </p>
<p>As a <a href="https://www.brandeis.edu/facultyguide/person.html?emplid=1be7ee967d45605afddf7da9ad4ca2c049a26c0b">teacher of Greek literature</a>, I am inclined to turn to the past to understand the present. I found solace in the Homeric epic “The Iliad” and its complex views about violence after the 9/11 attacks. And I found comfort in the Odyssey after my father’s unexpected death at 61, in 2011.</p>
<p>Similarly, Homer can help guide us as we return back to our normal worlds after a year of minimizing social contact. He can also, I believe, offer guidance on how people can heal.</p>
<h2>Conversation and recognition</h2>
<p>When Odysseus, a Trojan war hero who returns home after 10 years, first appears in the epic, <a href="http://www.perseus.tufts.edu/hopper/text?doc=Hom.+Od.+5.80&fromdoc=Perseus%3Atext%3A1999.01.0136">he is weeping on the shore of an isolated island</a>, watched over by the goddess Calypso, whose name, meaning “one who hides,” further emphasizes his isolation and separation. To make it from this barren shore to his family hearth, Odysseus needs to risk his life at sea again. But, in the process, he also rediscovers who he is in the world by reuniting with his family and his home, Ithaca.</p>
<p>Conversation is central to its plot. While Odysseus’ arrival on Ithaca is packed with action – he dons a disguise, investigates crimes and murders wrongdoers – in reality, the epic’s second half unfolds slowly. And much of it proceeds through the conversations among the characters. </p>
<p>When Odysseus, disguised as a beggar, is given refuge by his unknowing servant, Eumaios, the two of them speak at length, telling true stories and false ones to reveal who they are. Eumaios invites Odysseus with the following words: “<a href="http://www.perseus.tufts.edu/hopper/text?doc=Hom.+Od.+15.399&fromdoc=Perseus%3Atext%3A1999.01.0136">Let us take pleasure in our terrible pains</a>: for after time a person finds joy even in pain, after they have wandered and suffered much.” </p>
<p>It might seem strange to think that recalling pain could give pleasure. But what “The Odyssey” shows us is the power of telling our stories. Pleasure comes from knowing pain is behind us, but it also comes from understanding where we fit in the world. This <a href="https://www.mayoclinichealthsystem.org/hometown-health/speaking-of-health/is-having-a-sense-of-belonging-important">sense of belonging</a> comes in part from other people knowing what we have experienced. </p>
<p>When Odysseus finally reunites with his wife, Penelope, after 20 years, they make love, but then Athena, Odysseus’ patron and goddess of wisdom and war, lengthens the night so they can <a href="http://www.perseus.tufts.edu/hopper/text?doc=Perseus%3Atext%3A1999.01.0136%3Abook%3D23%3Acard%3D310">take pleasure in telling each other everything they have suffered</a>. The pleasure lies in the moments of sharing.</p>
<h2>Healing words</h2>
<p>In this past year, I fantasized about moments of reunion as the pandemic dragged on. And I have returned to the reunion of Odysseus and Penelope, contemplating why this conversation is important and what function it serves. </p>
<p>Talk therapy has been an important part of psychology for a century, but conversation and storytelling shape people all the time. The modern psychological approach of narrative therapy as pioneered by psychotherapists <a href="https://www.goodtherapy.org/famous-psychologists/michael-white.html">Michael White</a> and <a href="https://www.taosinstitute.net/about-us/people/honorary-associates/david-epston">David Epston</a> can help us understand this better. </p>
<p>Narrative therapy argues that so <a href="https://www.goodtherapy.org/famous-psychologists/michael-white.html">much of what we suffer emotionally and psychologically</a> comes from the stories we believe about our place in the world and our ability to influence it. White shows how addiction, mental illness or trauma prevents some people from returning to their lives. Narrative therapy can help in these situations and others. It has people <a href="https://wwnorton.com/books/9780393705164">retell their own stories</a> until they understand them differently. Once people can reframe who they were in the past, they can have a better chance of charting their course in the future.</p>
<p>“The Odyssey,” I believe, is aware of this too. As I argue in my recent book, “<a href="https://www.cornellpress.cornell.edu/book/9781501752346/the-many-minded-man/">The Many-Minded Man</a>,” Odysseus has to tell his own story to articulate for himself and his audiences his experiences and how they changed him.</p>
<p>It takes Odysseus one long evening but four books of poetry to tell the story of his journey, <a href="https://muse.jhu.edu/article/692867/pdf">focusing especially on the decisions he made and the pain he and his men suffered</a>. Recasting the past and understanding his place in it, prepares the hero to face the future. When Odysseus retells his own story, he traces his suffering to the moment he blinded the one-eyed giant Polyphemos and bragged about it. </p>
<p>By centering his own action at the beginning of his tale, Odysseus rearms himself with a sense of control – the hope that he can shape the events still to come.</p>
<h2>Returning to the world</h2>
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<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/396390/original/file-20210421-17-1hwfpk5.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="Inside Oculus mall at World Trade Center, New York, which is closed due to pandemic lockdown." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/396390/original/file-20210421-17-1hwfpk5.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/396390/original/file-20210421-17-1hwfpk5.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/396390/original/file-20210421-17-1hwfpk5.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/396390/original/file-20210421-17-1hwfpk5.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/396390/original/file-20210421-17-1hwfpk5.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/396390/original/file-20210421-17-1hwfpk5.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/396390/original/file-20210421-17-1hwfpk5.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
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<span class="caption">Malls have remained empty for the past year as many parts of the world went into a lockdown.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/all-stores-are-closed-because-of-covid-19-pandemic-inside-news-photo/1210622798?adppopup=true">Lev Radin/Pacific Press/LightRocket via Getty Images</a></span>
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<p>There’s an important echo here of ideas found elsewhere in Greek poetry: <a href="https://sententiaeantiquae.com/2017/06/03/medicine-for-the-soul-conversations-with-friends/">We need doctors for ailments of the body and conversation for sickness in the soul</a>.</p>
<p>After the past year, some of us may find it hard to express optimism. Indeed, I’ve been through <a href="https://theconversation.com/plagues-follow-bad-leadership-in-ancient-greek-tales-133139">this bleakness in my own life</a> when I had to attend a virtual funeral for my grandmother last year and felt that we were not properly honoring our dead. But this spring, as we welcomed our third child into the world, my story shifted to one of hope when I looked into her eyes. </p>
<p>At this moment, I believe that, like Odysseus, we need to take the time to tell each other our stories and listen in turn. If we can communicate what happened to us during this past year, we can better understand what we need, to move toward a better future.</p>
<p>[<em>Understand new developments in science, health and technology, each week.</em> <a href="https://theconversation.com/us/newsletters/science-editors-picks-71/?utm_source=TCUS&utm_medium=inline-link&utm_campaign=newsletter-text&utm_content=science-understand">Subscribe to The Conversation’s science newsletter</a>.]</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/159036/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Joel Christensen does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>A scholar of Greek literature writes why we need to turn to the past to understand the present – and the lessons that Homer’s hero, Odysseus, holds for us.Joel Christensen, Professor of Classical Studies, Brandeis UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1545162021-02-10T13:40:42Z2021-02-10T13:40:42ZDisney Pixar’s Soul: how the moviemakers took Plato’s view of existence and added a modern twist<p>Ideas about the soul have been powerful throughout the history of religion and philosophy. Until the 19th-century, most people took the existence of souls for granted. With the rise of modern psychology, this belief lost its plausibility, and today it is largely absent from academic philosophical and even theological writing. </p>
<p>Many now deny the existence of a soul, considering human emotions and motives simply a function of neurons firing. Disney Pixar’s new film <a href="https://disney.co.uk/movies/soul">Soul</a> seems to go against the grain of this development. </p>
<p>It presents its viewers with two realms of being. The first is the realm of human activity, where life occurs. The second realm is of the soul – where life has yet to begin, the great before, and where it ends, the great beyond. In their conception of the soul, the producers hark back to some of the most influential ideas of western intellectual history but in an unmistakably 21st-century way.</p>
<h2>Souls, bodies and death</h2>
<p>The film follows Joe Gardner, an aspiring jazz pianist who is stuck in the rut of his daily life as a part-time middle school music teacher. At the beginning of the film, Joe suffers an accident which leaves him hovering between life and death. The viewer observes Joe’s soul separate from its body as it journeys to the great beyond. </p>
<p>This starting point accurately mirrors the historical origins of western ideas about the soul. The Greek word for soul – psyche – was originally restricted in its use to the context of <a href="https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/ancient-soul/#1">dying</a>. Homer describes death as the soul’s departure from its body. At the beginning of its history in the west, the soul was evident primarily in its absence from a dead body.</p>
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<p>With the rise of Greek philosophy in the 6th century BC, the soul was also seen as the force animating the <a href="https://www.jstor.org/stable/4181870">living body</a>. Meanwhile, the idea of death as the separation of body and soul remained generally accepted. </p>
<p>This created tension. If souls were supposed to enliven a particular body, they had to interact closely with the body and arguably form a unity with it. But then how could the soul survive the body’s decay or even exist separately? </p>
<p>A further difficulty arose from the widely shared belief in reincarnation. Could human souls be born again into the bodies of animals or even plants? And if so, how could they then constitute the operational centre, so to speak, of their current host?</p>
<p>Plato and Aristotle parted ways over these questions. For <a href="https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/ancient-soul/#3.1">Plato</a>, the soul’s connection with the body was only accidental. The hero of Plato’s dialogues, Socrates, explained to his friends, hours before his execution, that the philosopher yearns for his <a href="https://iep.utm.edu/phaedo/#SH3a">death</a> because it marks the liberation of the soul into its true existence. </p>
<p>Plato’s student <a href="https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/ancient-soul/#4">Aristotle</a>, by contrast, denied that there even was a proper afterlife for the soul. Insofar as the soul was simply the life of the body, he urged, the two formed an indissoluble unity, which death brought to an end.</p>
<p>Things took a further turn with the rise of Christianity. Overall, Christians were more sympathetic to the Platonist view than to its alternatives, because they believed in a <a href="https://www.britannica.com/topic/Christianity/The-immortality-of-the-soul">life after death</a>. But they rejected the idea of an accidental connection between soul and body. The classical Christian view of the soul as found in <a href="https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/aquinas/">Thomas Aquinas</a> fused Platonic with Aristotelian ideas: the <a href="https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/aquinas/#BodSou">soul</a> is immortal but tied in eternity to the identity of a body-soul compound. As such, it will be brought back to life at the end of time.</p>
<h2>Pixar’s Platonist conception of the soul</h2>
<p>Against this rough sketch of the western history of the soul, Pixar’s position comes closest to the Platonic view. Souls depart from the dying person and travel to the great beyond. Souls also pre-exist their earthly incarnation, and some of them at least don’t seem overly keen to embark on this journey into life. Souls are immaterial - another tenet of Platonic philosophy - although in the movie they are understandably not invisible. Finally, reincarnation seems possible, even across species as Joe finds out when, for a while, he enters the body of a cat.</p>
<p>Yet the parallels only go so far. </p>
<p>Joe Gardner is unwilling to accept his departure from earthly life, and much of the movie deals with his attempts to return to his previous existence. For Plato, this would indicate that Joe was a bad person unable to detach himself from material pleasures. In the film, however, it is this desire that makes Joe remarkable. </p>
<p>His companion, a not-yet-born soul introduced only as number 22, learns more from Joe, due to his unbending will to return to Earth, than she did from the souls of Gandhi, Einstein and Jung, who had previously tutored her in preparation for her birth. In the world of 21st-century New York, into which the two enter through an extraordinary series of events, number 22 suddenly develops a lust for life after experiencing the simple pleasures of living — from eating pizza to watching the leaves fall from a tree.</p>
<p>None of this would have made much sense to Plato. Rather, the film relies on distinctly modern ideas about the affirmation of the present life as worth living on its own terms. The ultimate “purpose” of the soul is to be the “spark” that imparts the simple gift of life. </p>
<p>Joe’s conclusion from his experience as a disembodied soul is to savour every remaining moment of the earthly life he regains at the end of the film. And even number 22 comes to embrace the value of an embodied existence, despite its risks and limitations. </p>
<p>These are ideas well known from romantic and existentialist philosophers of the 19th and 20th centuries. <a href="https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/schleiermacher/">Friedrich Schleiermacher</a> (1768-1834) sneered at the notion of personal immortality as the ridiculous wish to perpetuate one’s own <a href="https://spiritual-minds.com/religion/philosophy/Schleiermacher%20-%20Speeches%20On%20Religion.pdf">miserable existence</a>. Instead, he posited the idea of “immortality in this moment”. The lesson Joe learns, and wants us to learn, from his unusual experience is rather similar, and points to the thoroughly modern cast into which traditional ideas about the soul have been moulded by the makers of this film.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/154516/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>The authors do not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and have disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>If you still haven’t seen this movie about a jazz pianist whose soul goes on a great adventure, it’s about time you did.Lydia Schumacher, Reader in Historical and Philosophical Theology, King's College LondonJohannes Zachhuber, Professor of Historical and Systematic Theology, University of OxfordLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1532212021-01-22T12:41:55Z2021-01-22T12:41:55ZThe spellbinding history of cheese and witchcraft<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/379982/original/file-20210121-21-q98tpt.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=0%2C0%2C8243%2C5499&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Cheese and witches: a potent combination.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">apolonia via Shutterstock</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>As I was scrolling through Twitter recently, a viral tweet caught my attention. It was an image from a book of spells claiming that: “You may fascinate a woman by giving her a piece of cheese.” The spell comes from Kathryn Paulsen’s 1971 book, <a href="https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/2155384.The_Complete_Book_of_Magic_And_Witchcraft">The Complete Book of Magic and Witchcraft</a> – and, while proffering a lump of cheddar may seem like an unusual way of attracting a possible mate, Paulsen’s book draws on a long history of magic. It’s a history that has quite a lot of cheese in it.</p>
<p>It’s not entirely clear why cheese is seen to have magical properties. It might be to do with the fact it’s made from milk, a powerful substance in itself, with the ability to give life and strength to the young. It might also be because the process by which cheese is made is a little bit magical. The 12th-century mystic, <a href="https://www.britannica.com/biography/Saint-Hildegard">Hildegard von Bingen</a>, compared cheese making to the <a href="https://core.ac.uk/download/pdf/7943846.pdf">miracle of life</a> in the way that it forms curds (or solid matter) from something insubstantial. </p>
<p>In the early modern period (roughly 1450-1750) the creation of the universe was also thought of by some <a href="https://openlibrary.org/books/OL4266213M/The_cheese_and_the_worms">in terms of cheesemaking</a>: “all was chaos, that is, earth, air, water, and fire were mixed together; and out of that bulk a mass formed – just as cheese is made out of milk – and worms appeared in it, and these were the angels.” The connection with life and the mysterious way that cheese is made, therefore, puts it in a good position to claim magical properties.</p>
<p>Cheese magic stretches back long before Hildegard and the medieval period. The 2nd-century diviner, Artemidorus, mentions “<a href="https://occult-world.com/tyromancy/">tyromancy</a>” – cheese divination – as a method of discovering the future in his treatise <a href="https://www.the-tls.co.uk/articles/artemidorus-interpretation-of-dreams-review/">Oneirocritica</a>. Ironically, given our later association of cheese with vivid dreams, Artemidorus claims that cheese fortune-telling is among the most unreliable. </p>
<p>This didn’t stop later generations from interpreting cheese dreams, though. The Interpretation of Dreams, a 17th-century English manual, advised that: “[to dream of] cakes without cheese is good; those which have both signifie deceit and treason by a Welshman.”</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/379979/original/file-20210121-15-1i5km3m.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="A finger points at a line from a book of spells." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/379979/original/file-20210121-15-1i5km3m.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/379979/original/file-20210121-15-1i5km3m.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=409&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/379979/original/file-20210121-15-1i5km3m.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=409&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/379979/original/file-20210121-15-1i5km3m.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=409&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/379979/original/file-20210121-15-1i5km3m.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=514&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/379979/original/file-20210121-15-1i5km3m.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=514&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/379979/original/file-20210121-15-1i5km3m.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=514&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Unusual advice for the lovelorn.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Kathryn Paulsen: The Complete Book of Magic and Witchcraft</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>One of the most common uses for magic cheese in the medieval and early modern periods was to identify thieves and murderers. The method could be quite simple. First bless cheese with a prayer. <a href="https://bd.b-ok.com/book/3502484/f3326a?dsource=recommend">For example, you might say</a>:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>May his mouth be cursed and full of bitterness, under his tongue pain and labour. If he is guilty, he will eat in the name of the devil. If he is not guilty, he will eat in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>Then feed a small piece to each of your suspects. The culprit will be unable to swallow their piece of cheese, thus admitting their guilt. </p>
<h2>Mischievous magic</h2>
<p>Even if you’re not a thief, you should be wary around cheese when there’s a witch in the room. In The Odyssey, the sorceress Circe turns Odysseus’ companions into animals by feeding them a magic potion mixed into a drink made of cheese, barley meal, honey and wine. The fourth century Christian theologian, St Augustine of Hippo, <a href="https://archive.org/details/witchcraftinoldn00kitt_0/page/184/">agreed</a> that such things might be possible, though unlikely. </p>
<p>William of Malmesbury seemed convinced that enchanted cheese was a genuine risk, though, and in his 12th-century writings William explained that female Italian innkeepers were especially prone to using enchanted cheese to turn their customers into beasts of burden.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="Medieval depiction of Circe, the witch from Homer's Odyssey." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/379988/original/file-20210121-21-qe85ij.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/379988/original/file-20210121-21-qe85ij.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=417&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/379988/original/file-20210121-21-qe85ij.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=417&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/379988/original/file-20210121-21-qe85ij.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=417&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/379988/original/file-20210121-21-qe85ij.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=525&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/379988/original/file-20210121-21-qe85ij.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=525&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/379988/original/file-20210121-21-qe85ij.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=525&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Making Circe angry meant it was ‘hard cheese’ for the companions of Odysseus.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Creator:Giovanni Benedetto Castiglione/Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Malevolent witches were also thought to meddle with milk and cheese: in fact, spoiling milk was one of the most common curses associated with witches in early modern Europe. Around 1650, the dairymaid Isabel Maine was convinced her milk was cursed, as it wouldn’t turn into cheese. Only after a <a href="https://theconversation.com/in-medieval-england-magic-was-a-service-industry-used-by-rich-and-poor-alike-124009">service magician</a> named <a href="http://www.witchtrials.co.uk/person.html">Margaret Stothard</a> performed a counter-curse would the milk curdle properly. Margaret advised Isabel to carry a stick of rowan wood when she milked the cows in future, to protect the milk from “evil eyes”.</p>
<p>On a more playful side, though still a serious annoyance for their neighbours, witches were also thought to magically steal milk directly from cows’ udders. A 14th century morality manual tells a story about a woman with an <a href="https://archive.org/details/witchcraftinoldn00kitt_0/page/164/">enchanted leather bag</a>. On her command, the bag would leap up and run to her neighbours’ cattle herd, where it would secretly steal milk and bring it back to her.</p>
<h2>Charming cheese</h2>
<p>The idea that cheese is seductive also has a long history. Writing in the 13th century, the moralist and theologian <a href="https://www.jstor.org/stable/2850446">Odo of Cheriton</a> used the alluring smell of grilled cheese to <a href="https://www.jstor.org/stable/30035100">explain adultery</a>:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>Cheese is toasted and placed in a trap; when the rat smells it, it enters the trap, seizes the cheese, and is caught by the trap. So it is with all sin. Cheese is toasted when a woman is dressed up and adorned so that she entices and catches the foolish rats: take a woman in adultery and the Devil will catch you.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>The link between cheese and love magic doesn’t stop at seduction, though. In 14th-century Germany, biting a piece of bread and cheese and throwing it over your shoulder was meant to ensure fertility in a relationship. Cheese could also cure <a href="https://societasmagica.org/userfiles/files/Newsletters/docs/SMN_Fall_2004_Issue_13.pdf">male impotence</a>: if a pesky witch had cursed a man’s genitals, a medieval Italian cure was for the man’s wife to bore a hole in cheese, and feed him the resulting pieces.</p>
<p>Given Europeans’ longstanding attraction to cheese, perhaps it’s no wonder that Kathryn Paulsen’s spell is so short and why it needed no further elaboration.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/153221/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Tabitha Stanmore received funding from the Arts and Humanities Research Council (AHRC) for her PhD research.</span></em></p>For hundreds of years, magicians believed cheese could help them foretell the future or identify a criminal.Tabitha Stanmore, Honorary Research Fellow, Early Modern Studies, Department of History, University of BristolLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1503502020-12-15T13:19:54Z2020-12-15T13:19:54ZAncient Greek desire to resolve civil strife resonates today – but Athenian justice would be a ‘bitter pill’ in modern America<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/374918/original/file-20201214-21-14j3bhu.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Increasingly, Americans seem to have irreconcilable differences over the pandemic, the economy – even the result of the 2020 election.</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/trump-supporter-yells-at-counter-protesters-outside-of-the-news-photo/1229622858?adppopup=true">Caroline Brehman/CQ-Roll Call, Inc via Getty Images</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>America’s divisions are old. Politically and socially, they are rooted in grudges and ideological vengeance that goes back generations, to the <a href="https://www.the-american-interest.com/2019/03/27/the-end-of-the-new-deal-era-and-the-coming-realignment/">New Deal</a> era, when government vastly expanded its role in people’s lives. Economically and morally, the nation was founded on the sins of slavery and Indigenous genocide. </p>
<p>The consequences of this past are still present: The COVID-19 pandemic has been far harder on <a href="https://www.usatoday.com/in-depth/news/nation/2020/10/20/native-american-navajo-nation-coronavirus-deaths-underfunded-health-care/5883514002/">Native populations</a>, <a href="https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7375320/">Black communities</a> and <a href="https://www.wired.com/story/the-pre-existing-conditions-of-the-coronavirus-pandemic/">the poor</a>.</p>
<p>Long-lasting civil strife isn’t new. Greek mythology, <a href="https://www.cornellpress.cornell.edu/book/9781501752353/the-many-minded-man/#bookTabs=1">my field of academic scholarship</a>, is rife with cycles of vengeance that threaten to obliterate society. Two of the most famous works of Greek literature, “The Odyssey” and the “Oresteia,” are stories of seemingly eternal divisions that end with opposing factions coming together. </p>
<p>In the anxiety of the postelection period, I am <a href="https://youtu.be/zCkWZCx1x-g">turning to these stories</a> in hopes that the ancient Greeks have wisdom to share, <a href="https://theconversation.com/plagues-follow-bad-leadership-in-ancient-greek-tales-133139">as they have on plagues</a>, <a href="https://theconversation.com/what-the-greek-classics-tell-us-about-grief-and-the-importance-of-mourning-the-dead-145827">mourning the dead</a> and “<a href="https://theconversation.com/the-ancient-greeks-had-alternative-facts-too-they-were-just-more-chill-about-it-131815">alternative facts</a>.”</p>
<p>How did the conflict-filled Greek society find its way forward? </p>
<h2>Forgetting and forgiving?</h2>
<p>One of the poems I looked to is <a href="https://us.macmillan.com/books/9780374525743">Homer’s “Odyssey</a>.” This epic poem, composed before the fifth century B.C., tells the story of a Trojan War veteran, Odysseus, whose return home takes 10 years. When his journey finally ends, he finds his wife, Penelope, besieged by suitors hoping to wed her and take over his position as ruler of the city of Ithaca.</p>
<p>Most people who read the “Odyssey” usually remember it as ending with the joyous reunion of Odysseus and Penelope, but the epic’s final book actually ends with bloodshed: Odysseus kills his wife’s suitors. </p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/374893/original/file-20201214-17-cqlquh.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="Oil panting of a shirtless man in armed battle with other men" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/374893/original/file-20201214-17-cqlquh.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/374893/original/file-20201214-17-cqlquh.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=470&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/374893/original/file-20201214-17-cqlquh.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=470&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/374893/original/file-20201214-17-cqlquh.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=470&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/374893/original/file-20201214-17-cqlquh.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=591&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/374893/original/file-20201214-17-cqlquh.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=591&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/374893/original/file-20201214-17-cqlquh.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=591&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Odysseus and his son Telemachus kill the suitors, as painted by Thomas Degeorge in 1812.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/8/84/Thomas_Degeorge_Ulysse.jpg">Thomas Degeorge via Wikimedia Commons</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>After the slaughter, their survivors gather to <a href="https://sententiaeantiquae.com/2015/12/09/the-trial-of-odysseus-the-ithacan-assembly-in-odyssey-24/">debate whether they should kill Odysseus in return</a>. Slightly more than half the family members decide not to pursue vengeance, but the rest arm to face Odysseus. </p>
<p>Just as the sides are about to clash, Zeus sends the goddess Athena to stop them. She declares they should forget the slaughter, recognize Odysseus as king, and “let wealth and peace be enough.” </p>
<p>No one in this scene questions the ancient custom of vengeance; people expect that the murder of a loved one must be paid back with murder. The poem’s ending implies the only way to stop cyclical violence is for those on one side to simply forget how they’ve been wronged in exchange for the promise of peace and prosperity. </p>
<h2>A split vote</h2>
<p>The Greek playwright Aeschylus also recognizes vengeance as a human institution in “Eumenides,” the final play of his three-part “<a href="https://us.macmillan.com/books/9780374527051">Oresteia</a>” – but sees a different way to resolve it.</p>
<p>The “Oresteia” tells the story of Orestes, whose father, Agamemnon, returned home after the Trojan War and was murdered by his mother and her lover. The god Apollo orders Orestes to avenge his father’s death by killing his mother. He does this, but the Furies – earthbound goddesses of vengeance – curse him with madness for the murder. They pursue him until he takes sanctuary in Athens.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/374896/original/file-20201214-13-k96c1i.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="Painting of a man assaulted by flying beings" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/374896/original/file-20201214-13-k96c1i.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/374896/original/file-20201214-13-k96c1i.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=476&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/374896/original/file-20201214-13-k96c1i.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=476&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/374896/original/file-20201214-13-k96c1i.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=476&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/374896/original/file-20201214-13-k96c1i.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=598&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/374896/original/file-20201214-13-k96c1i.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=598&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/374896/original/file-20201214-13-k96c1i.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=598&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Orestes pursued by the Furies, as painted by artist William Adolphe Bouguereau in 1900.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://picryl.com/media/orestes-pursued-by-the-furies-1862">PICRYL/Detroit Publishing Co.</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>This is where Aeschylus’ “Eumenides” picks up Orestes’ story. In Athens, in an effort to resolve this cycle of vengeance, Athena establishes a trial by jury. After both the Furies and Apollo make their cases about whether or not Orestes should be punished, the <a href="https://ecommons.luc.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?referer=https://www.google.com/&httpsredir=1&article=1102&context=classicalstudies_facpubs">12-member jury comes up deadlocked</a> – a split representing the divided opinions of the <a href="https://doi.org/10.1353/lit.2014.0017">Athenian people</a>. </p>
<p>Again it is Athena who resolves this strife. <a href="http://www.perseus.tufts.edu/hopper/text?doc=Perseus%3Atext%3A1999.01.0006%3Acard%3D744">She casts a tie-breaking vote for Orestes’ acquittal</a>. </p>
<p>The play finishes with Athena negotiating with the angry Furies. The Furies will be allowed ritual worship and a home within the boundaries of the city, Athena decides, but they can no longer enforce vengeance. That job belongs to the state, not its citizens. </p>
<p>Athena finds a place for the Furies, even if what they represent is no longer welcome. Today that compromise might be <a href="http://restorativejustice.org/restorative-justice/about-restorative-justice/tutorial-intro-to-restorative-justice/lesson-1-what-is-restorative-justice/#sthash.RsSPkwsO.dpbs">called restorative justice</a>, a process aimed at bringing perpetrators* back into the fold but ensuring they respect the prevailing values of that society.</p>
<h2>Stasis</h2>
<p>Aeschylus’ “Oresteia” anticipated a real-world challenge Athens would face a century later, after war with Sparta and <a href="https://www.jstor.org/stable/27564181">the restoration of democracy in 403 B.C.</a> </p>
<p>The year before, Sparta had conquered Athens and instituted an oligarchy – literally, the “reign of the thirty” – during which many citizens harmed one another. When the Sparta-supported tyrants were expelled, Athenians swore an oath “<a href="http://www.perseus.tufts.edu/hopper/text?doc=Perseus%3Atext%3A1999.01.0018%3Aspeech%3D1%3Asection%3D81">not to speak ill to anyone of the things that had happened</a>.” </p>
<p>Bad memories were not erased, of course, but the losers were granted amnesty and the public airing of past grievances was forbidden. For Athens’ leaders, stability depended on integrating formerly warring factions back into the same society. They demanded that residents prize peace over vengeance, and perhaps even over justice. </p>
<p>That’s a bitter pill to swallow. So is Homer’s solution to cyclical violence: One side overpowers the other, then demands the survivors forget the harms they suffered. </p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/374895/original/file-20201214-16-1s4plc2.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="A god and a man wearing a mask speak in front of a columned building" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/374895/original/file-20201214-16-1s4plc2.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/374895/original/file-20201214-16-1s4plc2.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=338&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/374895/original/file-20201214-16-1s4plc2.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=338&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/374895/original/file-20201214-16-1s4plc2.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=338&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/374895/original/file-20201214-16-1s4plc2.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=424&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/374895/original/file-20201214-16-1s4plc2.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=424&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/374895/original/file-20201214-16-1s4plc2.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=424&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Orestes seeks Apollo’s help in the 2014 MacMillan Films production of the ‘Oresteia.’</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:ORESTEIA_Staging_-_Orestes_seeks_Apollo%27s_help_at_Delphi.jpg">MacMillan Films</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>These are two different strategies for resolving conflict, but in the ancient Greek language, the same word describes the endings to both the “Eumenides” and the “Odyssey”: stasis. </p>
<p>In English translation this noun is commonly used to mean “standing still” or “balance,” but in ancient texts – not just the “Odyssey” and the “Oresteia” but also in Plato, Thucydides and beyond – the most common meaning of “stasis” is “civil strife.” </p>
<p>The modern United States, like ancient Greece, is defined by stasis. On issue after issue, a stubborn subsistence of equal and opposite factions arises: the pandemic, climate change, the result of the 2020 election. </p>
<p>Greek myth and history teach that societal divisions such as these perpetuate themselves, and will continue, violently, unless something dramatic happens. This, I finally understand after a half-century of studying Greek, is why stasis means both “balance” and “strife.” </p>
<p>It’s a revelation that brings no solace. Homer and Aeschylus have the divine Athena to write their endings for them. No gods are conspiring above to free American society from its painful paralysis.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/150350/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Joel Christensen does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Homer and Aeschylus turned to the divine to write their happy endings. But no gods are conspiring above the US, ready to swoop down and save humankind from itself.Joel Christensen, Associate Professor of Classical Studies, Brandeis UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1458272020-09-21T12:14:36Z2020-09-21T12:14:36ZWhat the Greek classics tell us about grief and the importance of mourning the dead<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/358867/original/file-20200918-22-1viwdci.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=73%2C0%2C4010%2C3206&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Greek hero Achilles with the body of Hector, his main opponent in the Trojan War.</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/2/25/Achilles_Displaying_the_Body_of_Hector_at_the_Feet_of_Patroclus%2C_by_Jean_Joseph_Taillason%2C_1769%2C_oil_on_canvas_-_Krannert_Art_Museum%2C_UIUC_-_DSC06264.jpg/4096px-Achilles_Displaying_the_Body_of_Hector_at_the_Feet_of_Patroclus%2C_by_Jean_Joseph_Taillason%2C_1769%2C_oil_on_canvas_-_Krannert_Art_Museum%2C_UIUC_-_DSC06264.jpg">Jean-Joseph Taillasson/Krannert Art Museum</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>As the coronavirus pandemic hit New York in March, the death toll quickly went up with few chances for families and communities to perform traditional rites for their loved ones.</p>
<p>A reporter for <a href="https://time.com/5839056/new-york-city-burials-coronavirus/">Time magazine described</a> how bodies were put on a ramp, then onto a loading dock and stacked on wooden racks. Emergency morgues were set up to handle the large number of dead. By official count, New York City alone had <a href="https://www.npr.org/sections/health-shots/2020/05/28/863710050/reckoning-with-the-dead-journalist-goes-inside-an-nyc-covid-19-disaster-morgue">20,000 dead</a> over a period of two months. </p>
<p>Months later, our ability to mourn and process death remains disrupted due to the ever-present fear of the threat of the coronavirus and the need to observe social distancing.</p>
<p>As a <a href="https://www.brandeis.edu/facultyguide/person.html?emplid=1be7ee967d45605afddf7da9ad4ca2c049a26c0b">scholar of classical studies</a>, I tend to look to the past to help understand the present. Ancient literature, especially ancient Greek epics, explore what it means to be human and part of a community. </p>
<p>In the Greek classic “The Iliad,” Homer specifies few universal rights, but one that emerges clearly is the expectation of proper lamentation, burial and memorial. </p>
<h2>Valuing life in death</h2>
<p>Homer’s “Iliad” explores the themes of 10 years of war – the Trojan War – over a narrative that lasts around 50 days. It shows the internal strife and the struggles of the Greeks as they try to defend themselves against the Trojans.</p>
<p>It humanizes the city of Troy by emphasizing the scale of loss and suffering and not just the boastful nature of its kings and warlords. </p>
<p>The epic <a href="http://www.perseus.tufts.edu/hopper/text?doc=Perseus:text:1999.01.0134">begins with the recognition</a> that the rage of its main character, Achilles, on account of a slight to his honor, “created myriad griefs” for the Greeks and “sent many strong heroes to the underworld.” </p>
<p>The epic’s conflict <a href="http://www.perseus.tufts.edu/hopper/text?doc=Hom.+Il.+1.100&fromdoc=Perseus%3Atext%3A1999.01.0134">starts</a> when king Agamemnon, leader of the Greek army, deprives the semi-divine hero Achilles of Briseis, an enslaved woman he was awarded as a prize earlier in the war. </p>
<p>Briseis is said to be Achilles’ “geras,” a physical token indicating the esteem his fellow Greeks have for him. The meaning of the word “geras” develops as the poem progresses. But as readers learn alongside Achilles, physical objects are essentially meaningless when one is going to die anyway.</p>
<p>By the end of the epic, physical tokens of honor are replaced in importance by burial rites. Zeus accepts that his mortal son Sarpedon can at best receive “the geras of the dead” when he is <a href="http://www.perseus.tufts.edu/hopper/text?doc=Perseus%3Atext%3A1999.01.0134%3Abook%3D16%3Acard%3D394">buried and mourned</a>. Achilles too insists that mourning is “the geras of the dead” when he gathers the Greeks to <a href="http://www.perseus.tufts.edu/hopper/text?doc=Perseus%3Atext%3A1999.01.0134%3Abook%3D23%3Acard%3D1">honor his fallen comrade, Patroklos</a>.</p>
<p>The epic ends with a justification for the burial of Achilles’ opponent, Hector, the greatest of the Trojan warriors and another victim of Achilles’ rage.</p>
<p>For Hector’s funerary rites, the Greeks and the Trojans agree to an armistice. The Trojans gather and clean Hector’s body, cremate him, and bury his remains below a monumental tomb. The women of the city tell the story of the brave hero <a href="https://chs.harvard.edu/CHS/article/display/6668">in their laments</a>. </p>
<p>This is its foundational narrative – that burial rites are essential to the collective work of communities. Failure to observe burial provokes crisis. In the Iliad, the gods meet to resolve <a href="http://www.perseus.tufts.edu/hopper/text?doc=Perseus%3Atext%3A1999.01.0134%3Abook%3D24%3Acard%3D22">the problem of Hector’s unburied body</a>: Achilles must quit his rage and give Hector’s body back to his family. </p>
<h2>A divine right</h2>
<p>This narrative is repeated in other ancient Greek myths. Best known, perhaps, is Sophocles’ “Antigone,” a Greek tragedy dating from the 440s B.C. In this play, two brothers, Eteocles and Polynices, are killed in their fight for control of the city.</p>
<p>Creon, their uncle, who takes over the city, <a href="http://philosophyfaculty.ucsd.edu/faculty/ewatkins/Phil107S13/Sophocles-Antigone.pdf">forbids burial of one</a>. The play’s conflict centers around their sister Antigone, who buries her brother against the new king’s wishes, consigning herself to death. </p>
<p>In opposing this basic right, Creon is shown to suffer in turn, losing his wife and son to suicide in the process. In response to the capital punishment of Antigone for performing the rites due to her brother, his son Haemon takes his life and his mother Eurydice follows him.</p>
<p>Properly honoring the dead – especially those who have died serving their people – is from this perspective a divinely sanctioned right. Furthermore, mistreatment of the dead brings infamy on the city and pollution. Plague often curses cities and peoples who fail to honor their fallen. </p>
<p>This is central to the plot of “<a href="http://classics.mit.edu/Euripides/suppliants.html">The Suppliants</a>,” another Greek play telling us the story of the conflict between the sons of Oedipus, king of the Greek city of Thebes. In this play by Euripides, the Thebans refuse to bury any of the warriors who fought against their city. The crisis is resolved only when the Athenian hero Theseus leads an army to force them to honor the dead.</p>
<p>One of the most famous examples of classical rhetoric shares in the tradition of honoring the dead as a public duty. Greek historian Thucydides writes about the funeral oration of Pericles, who was a popular leader in Athens during the 430s B.C.</p>
<p>On the occasion of offering the “<a href="https://oxfordre.com/classics/view/10.1093/acrefore/9780199381135.001.0001/acrefore-9780199381135-e-2461">epitaphios</a>,” a speech over the fallen war dead, Pericles articulates his vision of the Athenians as standing against foreign threats in the past.</p>
<p>Memories of the past were an important guide to the future. This is in part why the funeral oration became so important in Athenian life: It provided an opportunity to explain why those lives were sacrificed in service of a shared civic mission and identity.</p>
<h2>Communities of memory</h2>
<p>Even today, memories are shaped by stories. From local communities to nations, the stories we tell will shape what we will remember about the past. </p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/358875/original/file-20200918-24-1004252.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/358875/original/file-20200918-24-1004252.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/358875/original/file-20200918-24-1004252.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/358875/original/file-20200918-24-1004252.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/358875/original/file-20200918-24-1004252.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/358875/original/file-20200918-24-1004252.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/358875/original/file-20200918-24-1004252.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">A body being loaded onto a refrigerated container truck used as a temporary morgue in New York in March.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://newsroom.ap.org/detail/VirusOutbreakNewYork/cdc500f7a9a1401bbb7f3c2b3ba773e0/photo?Query=covid%20refrigerated%20trucks&mediaType=photo&sortBy=&dateRange=Anytime&totalCount=26&currentItemNo=14">AP Photo/John Minchillo</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Researchers from the Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation predict that an estimated 200,000 people in the U.S. will have died from the coronavirus <a href="https://www.cbsnews.com/news/covid-19-united-states-coronavirus-deaths-projection-400000-by-end-of-year/">by Sept. 26</a> and some 400,000 by the year-end. </p>
<p>Many people who see loved ones die will deal with unresolved loss, or “<a href="https://www.mayoclinic.org/diseases-conditions/complicated-grief/symptoms-causes/syc-20360374">complicated grief</a>” – grief that results from not knowing what happened to one’s loved ones or without having the social structures to process their loss. That grief has been compounded by the current isolation. It has prevented many from carrying out those very rites that help us learn to live with our grief. </p>
<p>Just recently, I lost my 91-year-old grandmother, <a href="https://www.rivertowns.net/obituaries/obits/6665780-Beverly-Jean-Mjolsness">Beverly Mjolsness</a>, to a non-coronavirus death. My family made the hard decision not to travel across the country to bury her. Instead, we gathered for a video memorial of a celebration of a life well-lived. As we did so, I could see my family struggling to know how to proceed without the rituals and the comfort of being together. </p>
<p>[<em>You’re smart and curious about the world. So are The Conversation’s authors and editors.</em> <a href="https://theconversation.com/us/newsletters/the-daily-3?utm_source=TCUS&utm_medium=inline-link&utm_campaign=newsletter-text&utm_content=youresmart">You can read us daily by subscribing to our newsletter</a>.]</p>
<p>Such grief that does not allow for collective in-person memorialization can turn into <a href="https://www.apa.org/news/apa/2020/04/grief-covid-19">debilitating trauma</a>. Our public discourse, however, when it has not tried to minimize the number of the dead or the continuing threat, has not sought to <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/outlook/national-mourning-coronavirus/2020/05/15/b47fc670-9577-11ea-82b4-c8db161ff6e5_story.html">provide any plan for memorials</a>, now or in the future. </p>
<p>What Homer and Sophocles demonstrate is that the rites we give to the dead help us understand what it takes to go on living. I believe we need to start honoring those we have lost to this epidemic. It will not just bring comfort to the living, but remind us that we share a community in which our lives – and deaths – have meaning.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/145827/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Joel Christensen does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Families who lost their loved ones during the pandemic could not even properly grieve. Greek epics show why lamentation and memorial are so important and what we can learn in these times.Joel Christensen, Associate Professor of Classical Studies, Brandeis UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1374962020-05-01T04:10:41Z2020-05-01T04:10:41ZDying old, dying young – death and ageism in the times of Greek myth and coronavirus<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/331677/original/file-20200430-42962-f0wj7s.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=44%2C36%2C4876%2C2648&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">
</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://images.unsplash.com/photo-1505599942851-eb61ad08d9e2?ixlib=rb-1.2.1&ixid=eyJhcHBfaWQiOjEyMDd9&auto=format&fit=crop&w=2716&q=80">Dominik Scythe/Unsplash</a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/">CC BY</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>The loss of life from the spread of coronavirus has been on an enormous scale. In the USA more Americans have now died <a href="https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/meet-the-press/coronavirus-death-toll-surpasses-u-s-casualties-vietnam-war-just-n1195176">from COVID-19 than in the entire Vietnam war</a>. </p>
<p>Notwithstanding some poignant and passionate speeches by particular individuals (notably <a href="https://www.governor.ny.gov/news/video-audio-rush-transcript-governor-cuomo-amid-ongoing-covid-19-pandemic-being-first-responder">New York Governor Andrew Cuomo</a>), much of the discourse has focused on the economic, political and policy division, rather than grief for the victims.</p>
<p>This broadly sanguine response might be due to perceptions that it is mostly older people dying from coronavirus, although <a href="https://www.abc.net.au/news/2020-04-04/more-younger-people-dying-and-in-icu-from-coronavirus-covid-19/12121772">experts warn</a> younger people can die too. Witness the relief at <a href="https://www.theage.com.au/world/europe/experts-fail-to-find-a-single-case-of-children-passing-virus-to-adults-20200430-p54ohi.html">new reports</a> that children under 10 have not accounted for a single transmission of the virus. The deaths of older people have been <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2020/03/22/opinion/coronavirus-elderly.html">comparatively discounted</a>, not the least because many were socially isolated even before the pandemic. </p>
<p>The Greeks of antiquity reflected on the death of the young and the old in some very creative mythical narratives. Greek myth reflects on and reminds us of some of the less attractive characteristics of human life and society, such as sickness, old age, death and war. In the ancient Greek world this made it harder to put old age and death into a corner and forget about it, which <a href="https://www.timescolonist.com/opinion/columnists/column-discomfort-with-death-and-grief-is-a-modern-ailment-1.20744186">we tend to do</a>.</p>
<h2>Choosing when</h2>
<p>Achilles, the hero of <a href="http://classics.mit.edu/Homer/iliad.html">Homer’s Iliad</a>, actually has a choice in the timing of his life and death. </p>
<p>He can have a long life without heroic glory, back on the farm, or he can have a short life with undying fame and renown from his fighting at Troy. The fact that he chooses the latter makes him different from ordinary people like us. </p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/331683/original/file-20200430-42918-1nohnfj.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/331683/original/file-20200430-42918-1nohnfj.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/331683/original/file-20200430-42918-1nohnfj.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=414&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/331683/original/file-20200430-42918-1nohnfj.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=414&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/331683/original/file-20200430-42918-1nohnfj.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=414&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/331683/original/file-20200430-42918-1nohnfj.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=520&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/331683/original/file-20200430-42918-1nohnfj.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=520&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/331683/original/file-20200430-42918-1nohnfj.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=520&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Achilles has a choice of when he dies, young or old. Ernst Herter’s 1884 sculpture Dying Achilles, Achilleion Palace, Corfu Island, Greece.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://image.shutterstock.com/image-photo/sculpture-achilles-dying-gardens-achilleon-600w-593267657.jpg">Shutterstock/FURMANCHUK LARISA</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Achilles’ heroism is fundamentally linked to his own personal choice of an early death. But it also means his desperate mother, the goddess Thetis, will have to mourn him eternally after seeing him for such a short time in life. Such is the pain for the loss of a child in war.</p>
<p>A play by the master Athenian dramatist <a href="https://www.ancient.eu/Euripides/">Euripides</a> is even more focused on young and old death. The play <a href="http://classics.mit.edu/Euripides/alcestis.html">Alcestis</a> was produced in Athens in 438 BC, making it the earliest surviving Euripidean play (about ten years before the <a href="https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/19787658">plague at Athens</a>).</p>
<hr>
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<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/thucydides-and-the-plague-of-athens-what-it-can-teach-us-now-133155">Thucydides and the plague of Athens - what it can teach us now</a>
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<p>In the play, the king of Thessaly – an appallingly self-interested person called Admetus – has previously done the god Apollo a favour, and so Apollo does Admetus a favour in return. He arranges for him to extend his life and avoid death in the short term, if he can find someone to take his place and die in his stead.</p>
<p>Admetus immediately asks his father or mother to die for him, based on the assumption that they are old and will presumably die soon anyway. But the father, Pheres, and his wife turn down Admetus, and so he has to prevail on his own wife, Alcestis, to die for him, which she agrees to do. </p>
<p>The story of the play is based around the day of her death and descent to the Underworld, with some rather comic twists and turns along the way. Death (Greek Thanatos) is a character in the play, and he is delighted to have a young victim, in Alcestis, rather than an old one. “They who die young yield me a greater prize,” he says. </p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/331680/original/file-20200430-42935-1rz8njt.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/331680/original/file-20200430-42935-1rz8njt.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/331680/original/file-20200430-42935-1rz8njt.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/331680/original/file-20200430-42935-1rz8njt.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/331680/original/file-20200430-42935-1rz8njt.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/331680/original/file-20200430-42935-1rz8njt.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/331680/original/file-20200430-42935-1rz8njt.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/331680/original/file-20200430-42935-1rz8njt.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">The light catches the Acropolis, Athens.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://images.unsplash.com/photo-1522787345986-d5c7885a889e?ixlib=rb-1.2.1&auto=format&fit=crop&w=2700&q=80">Cristina Gottardi/Unsplash</a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/">CC BY</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>The light of day</h2>
<p>There is a particularly spiteful encounter between Admetus and his father on the subject of young and old death:</p>
<p>Admetus: </p>
<blockquote>
<p>Yet it would have been a beautiful deed for you to die for your son, and short indeed was the time left for you to live. My wife and I would have lived out our lives, and I should not now be here alone lamenting my misery.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>Father: </p>
<blockquote>
<p>I indeed begot you, and bred you up to be lord of this land, but I am not bound to die for you. It is not a law of our ancestors or of Hellas that fathers should die for their children! … You love to look upon the light of day – do you think your father hates it? I tell myself that we are a long time underground and that life is short, but sweet.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>The Alcestis of Euripides, and other Greek myths, remind us, should we ever forget, that love of looking upon the light of day is a characteristic of human existence, both for the young and the very old.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/137496/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Chris Mackie does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Perceptions about coronavirus “only killing old people” highlight the ageist way we sometimes refer to death and dying. Greek myth shows this isn’t new and ancient plays laid out the distinction.Chris Mackie, Professor of Classics, La Trobe UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1335722020-03-16T13:18:58Z2020-03-16T13:18:58ZPandemics from Homer to Stephen King: what we can learn from literary history<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/320393/original/file-20200313-108852-hg7xwg.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=0%2C0%2C1917%2C1126&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">The Banquet in the Pine Forest, one of a number of pictures derived from tales in Boccaccio's Decameron.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Sandro Botticelli</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>From Homer’s Iliad and Boccaccio’s Decameron to Stephen King’s The Stand and Ling Ma’s Severance, stories about pandemics have – over the history of Western literature such as it is – offered much in the way of catharsis, ways of processing strong emotion, and political commentary on how human beings respond to public health crises. </p>
<p>Literature has a vital role to play in framing our responses to the COVID-19 pandemic. It is worth turning to some of these texts to better understand our reactions and how we might mitigate <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/culture/2020/mar/12/samantha-bee-coronavirus-stephen-colbert-seth-meyers-trevor-noah">racism</a>, <a href="https://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2020/03/coronavirus-covid19-xenophobia-racism/607816/">xenophobia</a> and <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2020/mar/11/coronavirus-ill-disabled-people">ableism</a> (discrimination against anyone with disabilities) in the narratives that surround the spread of this coronavirus. </p>
<p>Ranging from the classics to contemporary novels, this reading list of pandemic literature offers something in the way of an uncertain comfort, and a guide for what happens next. </p>
<p>Homer’s Iliad, as the Cambridge classicist <a href="https://www.the-tls.co.uk/articles/the-first-pandemic-in-western-literature/">Mary Beard has reminded us</a>, opens with a plague visited upon the Greek camp at Troy to punish the Greeks for Agamemnon’s enslavement of Chryseis. US academic Daniel R Blickman <a href="https://ca.ucpress.edu/content/6/1/1">has argued</a> that the drama of Agamemnon and Achilles’ quarrel “should not blind us to the role of the plague in setting the tone for what follows, nor, more importantly, in providing an ethical pattern which lies near the heart of the story”. In other words, The Iliad presents a narrative framing device of disaster that results from ill-judged behaviour on the part of all of the characters involved. </p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/320419/original/file-20200313-115088-pc2rjj.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/320419/original/file-20200313-115088-pc2rjj.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=323&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/320419/original/file-20200313-115088-pc2rjj.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=323&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/320419/original/file-20200313-115088-pc2rjj.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=323&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/320419/original/file-20200313-115088-pc2rjj.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=406&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/320419/original/file-20200313-115088-pc2rjj.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=406&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/320419/original/file-20200313-115088-pc2rjj.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=406&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Western literature begins with a plague: the Iliad.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Wikimedia Commons</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>COVID-19 is certain to shake up economic systems and entrenched institutional processes, as we’re seeing with the <a href="https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-tyne-51857142">shift towards remote learning in universities</a> around the world, to give just one example. These texts give us an opportunity to think through how similar crises have been managed previously, as well as ideas about how we might structure our societies more equitably in their aftermath. </p>
<p>The <a href="https://www.britannica.com/topic/Decameron">Decameron (1353)</a> by Giovanni Boccaccio, set during the Black Death, reveals the vital role of storytelling in a time of disaster. Ten people self-isolate in a villa outside Florence for two weeks during the Black Death. In the course of their isolation, the characters take turns to tell stories of morality, love, sexual politics, trade and power. </p>
<p>In this collection of novellas, storytelling functions as a method of discussing social structures and interaction during the earliest days of the Renaissance. The stories offer the listeners (and Boccaccio’s readers) ways through which to restructure their “normal” everyday lives, which have been suspended due to the epidemic. </p>
<h2>Authority’s failure to respond</h2>
<p>The normality of everyday life is also the focus of Mary Shelley’s apocalypse novel <a href="https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/author-frankenstein-also-wrote-post-apocalyptic-plague-novel-180964641/">The Last Man</a> (1826). Set in a futuristic Britain between the years 2070 and 2100, the novel – which was made into a movie in 2008 – details the life of Lionel Verney, who becomes the “last man” following a devastating global plague.</p>
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<p>Shelley’s novel dwells on the value of friendship, and concludes with Verney accompanied on his wanderings by a sheep dog (a reminder that pets may be a source of comfort and stability in times of crisis). The novel is particularly scathing on the topic of institutional responses to the plague. It satirises revolutionary utopianism and the in-fighting that breaks out among surviving groups, before these also succumb. </p>
<p>Edgar Allen Poe’s short story <a href="https://www.poemuseum.org/the-masque-of-the-red-death">The Masque of the Red Death</a> (1842) also depicts the failures of authority figures to adequately and humanely respond to such a disaster. The Red Death causes fatal bleeding from the pores. In response, Prince Prospero gathers a thousand courtiers into a secluded but luxurious abbey, welds the gates closed and hosts a masked ball:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>The external world could take care of itself. In the meantime it was folly to grieve or to think. The prince had provided all the appliances of pleasure.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>Poe details the sumptuous festivities, concluding with the incorporeal arrival of the Red Death as a human-like guest at the ball. The plague personified takes the prince’s life and then those of his courtiers: </p>
<blockquote>
<p>And one by one dropped the revellers in the blood-bedewed halls of their revel, and died each in the despairing posture of his fall.</p>
</blockquote>
<h2>Modern and contemporary literature</h2>
<p>In the 20th century, Albert Camus’ The Plague (1942) and Stephen King’s The Stand (1978) brought readers’ attentions to the social implications of plague-like pandemics – particularly isolation and failures of the state to either contain the disease or moderate the ensuing panic. The self-isolation in Camus’ novel creates an anxious awareness of the value of human contact and relationships in the citizens of the plague-stricken Algerian city of Oran: </p>
<blockquote>
<p>This drastic, clean-cut deprivation and our complete ignorance of what the future held in store had taken us unawares; we were unable to react against the mute appeal of presences, still so near and already so far, which haunted us daylong.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>In King’s The Stand, a bioengineered superflu named “Project Blue” leaks out of an American military base. Pandemonium ensues. King recently stated on Twitter that COVID-19 is certainly not as serious as his fictional pandemic, urging the public to take reasonable precautions. </p>
<p><div data-react-class="Tweet" data-react-props="{"tweetId":"1236782826911150080"}"></div></p>
<p>Similarly, in his <a href="https://www.kirkusreviews.com/book-reviews/deon-meyer/fever-meyer/">2016 novel Fever</a>, South African author Deon Meyer details the apocalyptic fallout of a weaponised, bioengineered virus that results in enclaves of survivors besieging one another for resources. </p>
<p>In <a href="https://www.newyorker.com/books/under-review/ling-ma-severance-captures-the-bleak-fatalistic-mood-of-2018">Severance (2018)</a>, Ling Ma provides a contemporary take on the zombie novel as the fictional “Shen Fever” renders people repetitive automatons until their deaths. In a thinly veiled metaphor for the capitalist cog-in-the-machine, the protagonist Candace drifts daily in to her place of work in a future New York that is slowly falling apart. She eventually joins a survival group, assimilating culturally and morally to their violent attitudes towards the zombies, “embodying the atomisation of late-capitalist humans in a society stripped to its bones”, as <a href="https://www.newyorker.com/books/under-review/ling-ma-severance-captures-the-bleak-fatalistic-mood-of-2018">reviewer Jiayang Fang suggests</a>.</p>
<h2>For some the end has already come</h2>
<p>Consider also that “indigenous futurisms” – a term coined by First Nations cultural and race studies theorist <a href="https://www.pdx.edu/nas/grace-l-dillon-2">Grace L Dillon</a> to refer to speculative fictions by indigenous peoples and writers of colour such as <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2018/aug/24/the-guardian-view-on-science-fiction-the-broken-earth-deserves-its-hugo">NK Jemisin’s Broken Earth series</a>, <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/books/australia-books-blog/2017/aug/22/speculative-fiction-is-a-powerful-political-tool-from-war-of-the-worlds-to-terra-nullius">Claire G. Coleman’s Terra Nullius</a>, and <a href="https://lithub.com/inventory/">Carmen Maria Machado’s short story Inventory</a> – have long since treated colonialism and the diseases spread by the colonisers as the source of what is currently experienced as an ongoing apocalypse. For many people in formerly colonised places, the apocalypse has already come – pandemics (both literal and metaphorical) have already obliterated their populations. </p>
<p>The catharsis that some of the above-mentioned texts may offer is troubled by the realities of pandemic and apocalypse conditions depicted in much fiction by indigenous peoples. If we used our own likely forthcoming periods of self-isolation to theorise alternative social structures, to tell one another stories about how we live, what stories might we tell?</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/133572/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Chelsea Haith does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Western literature began with a plague and ever since, writers have been using pandemics to comment on society.Chelsea Haith, DPhil Candidate in Contemporary English Literature, University of OxfordLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1331392020-03-12T12:05:01Z2020-03-12T12:05:01ZPlagues follow bad leadership in ancient Greek tales<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/319710/original/file-20200310-61120-982775.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=26%2C0%2C3543%2C2026&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">A scene from a 1911 staging of the ancient Greek classic 'Oedipus Rex.'</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/alexander-moissi-as-k-nig-dipus-von-sophokles-photograph-news-photo/82093906">Imagno/Getty Images</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>In the fifth century B.C., the playwright Sophocles begins “<a href="http://www.perseus.tufts.edu/hopper/text?doc=Perseus:text:1999.01.0192">Oedipus Tyrannos</a>” with the title character struggling to identify the cause of a plague striking his city, Thebes. (Spoiler alert: It’s his own bad leadership.)</p>
<p>As someone who writes about early Greek poetry, I spend a lot of time thinking about why its performance was so crucial to ancient life. One answer is that epic and tragedy helped ancient storytellers and audiences try to make sense of human suffering. </p>
<p>From this perspective, plagues functioned as a setup for an even more crucial theme in ancient myth: a leader’s intelligence. At the beginning of the “Iliad,” for instance, the prophet Calchas – who knows the cause of a <a href="http://www.perseus.tufts.edu/hopper/text?doc=Perseus%3Atext%3A1999.01.0134%3Abook%3D1%3Acard%3D33">nine-day plague</a> – is praised as someone “<a href="http://www.perseus.tufts.edu/hopper/text?doc=Perseus%3Atext%3A1999.01.0134%3Abook%3D1%3Acard%3D68">who knows what is, what will be and what happened before</a>.” </p>
<p>This language anticipates a chief criticism of Homer’s legendary King Agamemnon: He does not know “<a href="http://www.perseus.tufts.edu/hopper/text?doc=Hom.+Il.+1.343&fromdoc=Perseus%3Atext%3A1999.01.0134">the before and the after</a>.”</p>
<p>The epics remind their audiences that leaders need to be able to plan for the future based on what has happened in the past. They need to understand cause and effect. What caused the plague? Could it have been prevented?</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/319711/original/file-20200310-61127-2i3unk.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/319711/original/file-20200310-61127-2i3unk.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/319711/original/file-20200310-61127-2i3unk.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=450&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/319711/original/file-20200310-61127-2i3unk.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=450&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/319711/original/file-20200310-61127-2i3unk.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=450&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/319711/original/file-20200310-61127-2i3unk.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=566&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/319711/original/file-20200310-61127-2i3unk.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=566&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/319711/original/file-20200310-61127-2i3unk.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=566&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Zeus, the head Greek god, who lamented humans’ tendency to bring suffering upon themselves.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.flickr.com/photos/carolemage/8644050593">Carole Raddato/Flickr</a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/">CC BY-SA</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>People’s recklessness</h2>
<p>Myths help their audiences understand the causes of things. As narrative theorists like <a href="http://markturner.org/lm.html">Mark Turner</a> and specialists in memory like <a href="https://www.harpercollins.com/9780062237903/pieces-of-light/">Charles Fernyhough</a> emphasize, people learn how to behave from stories and concepts of cause and effect in childhood. The linear sequence of before, now and after communicates the relationships between things and how we, as human beings, understand our own responsibility in the world.</p>
<p>Plague stories provide settings where fate pushes human organization to the limit. Human leaders are almost always crucial to the causal sequence, as Zeus observes in Homer’s “Odyssey,” saying, as I’ve translated it, “Humans are always blaming the gods for their suffering / but they experience pain beyond their fate because of their own recklessness.”</p>
<p>The problems humans create go beyond just plagues: The poet Hesiod writes that the top Greek god, Zeus, showed his disapproval for bad leaders by burdening them with <a href="http://www.perseus.tufts.edu/hopper/text?doc=Hes.+WD+240&fromdoc=Perseus%3Atext%3A1999.01.0132">military failures as well as pandemics</a>. The consequences of human failings are a refrain in the ancient critique of leaders, with or without plagues: The “Iliad,” for instance, describes rulers who “<a href="http://www.perseus.tufts.edu/hopper/text?doc=Hom.+Il.+22.104&fromdoc=Perseus%3Atext%3A1999.01.0134">ruin their people through recklessness</a>.” The “Odyssey” phrases it as “<a href="https://sententiaeantiquae.com/2017/02/22/shepherd-of-the-host/">bad shepherds ruin their flocks</a>.”</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/319713/original/file-20200310-61120-18dydq8.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/319713/original/file-20200310-61120-18dydq8.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/319713/original/file-20200310-61120-18dydq8.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=419&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/319713/original/file-20200310-61120-18dydq8.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=419&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/319713/original/file-20200310-61120-18dydq8.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=419&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/319713/original/file-20200310-61120-18dydq8.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=526&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/319713/original/file-20200310-61120-18dydq8.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=526&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/319713/original/file-20200310-61120-18dydq8.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=526&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">A plague in Athens.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/b/b8/The_plague_of_Athens._Line_engraving_by_J._Fittler_after_M._Wellcome_L0004078.jpg">J. Fittler after M. Sweerts/Wellcome Images/Wikimedia Commons</a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/">CC BY</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>Devastating illness</h2>
<p>Plagues were common in the ancient world, but not all of them were blamed on leaders. Like other natural disasters, they were frequently blamed on the gods. </p>
<p>But historians, like Polybius in the second century B.C. and Livy in the first century B.C., also frequently recount epidemics striking armies and people in swamps or cities with poor sanitation. Philosophers and physicians also searched for rational approaches – <a href="http://www.perseus.tufts.edu/hopper/text?doc=Perseus:text:1999.01.0248:text=Aer.:section=2&highlight=epidemic">blaming the climate</a>, or <a href="http://www.perseus.tufts.edu/hopper/text?doc=Perseus:text:1999.01.0084:book=12:chapter=45&highlight=plague">pollution</a>.</p>
<p>When the historian Thucydides recounts how a plague with alleged origins in Ethiopia hit Athens in 430 B.C., he <a href="http://www.perseus.tufts.edu/hopper/text?doc=Perseus%3Atext%3A1999.01.0200%3Abook%3D2%3Achapter%3D49">vividly describes patients suffering a sudden high fever</a>, shortness of breath and an array of sickly discharges. Those who survived the sickness had endured such delirious fevers that they might have no memory of it all. </p>
<p>Athens as a state was unprepared to meet the challenge of that plague. Thucydides describes the futility of any human response: Appeals to the gods and the work of doctors – who died in droves – <a href="http://www.perseus.tufts.edu/hopper/text?doc=Perseus%3Atext%3A1999.01.0200%3Abook%3D2%3Achapter%3D47">were equally useless</a>. The disease wreaked havoc because the Athenians were massed within the city walls to wait out the Spartan armies during the Peloponnesian War.</p>
<p>Yet despite the plague’s terrible nature, Thucydides insists that the worst part was the despair people felt from fear and the “<a href="http://www.perseus.tufts.edu/hopper/text?doc=Perseus%3Atext%3A1999.01.0200%3Abook%3D2%3Achapter%3D51">horror of human beings dying like sheep</a>.”</p>
<p>Sick people died of neglect, of the lack of proper shelter and of disease spreading from improper burials in an unprepared and overcrowded city, followed by looting and lawlessness. </p>
<p>Athens, set up as a fortress against its enemies, brought ruin upon itself.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/320020/original/file-20200311-116240-ycgpqo.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/320020/original/file-20200311-116240-ycgpqo.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/320020/original/file-20200311-116240-ycgpqo.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=510&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/320020/original/file-20200311-116240-ycgpqo.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=510&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/320020/original/file-20200311-116240-ycgpqo.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=510&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/320020/original/file-20200311-116240-ycgpqo.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=641&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/320020/original/file-20200311-116240-ycgpqo.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=641&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/320020/original/file-20200311-116240-ycgpqo.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=641&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">The Spartan general Lysander orders the walls of Athens be destroyed, as part of the Athenian capitulation to Sparta.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Lysander_has_the_walls_of_Athens_demolished.jpg">The Illustrated History of the World/Wikimedia Commons</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>Making sense out of human flaws</h2>
<p>Left out of plague accounts are the names of the multitudes who died in them. Homer, Sophocles and Thucydides tell us that masses died. But plagues in ancient narratives are usually the beginning, not the end of the story. A plague didn’t stop the Trojan War, prevent Oedipus’ sons from waging civil war or give the Athenians enough reasons to make peace. </p>
<p>For years after the ravages of the plague, Athens still suffered from in-fighting, toxic politics and selfish leaders. Popular politics led to the disastrous <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sicilian_Expedition">Sicilian Expedition</a> of 415 B.C., killing thousands of Athenians – but still Athens survived.</p>
<p>A decade later, the Athenians again broke into civil factions and eventually prosecuted their own generals after a naval victory in <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Arginusae">406 B.C. at Arginusae</a>. In 404 B.C., after a siege, Sparta defeated Athens. But, as we learn from Greek myth, it was – again – really Athens’ leaders and people who defeated themselves.</p>
<p>[<em>You’re too busy to read everything. We get it. That’s why we’ve got a weekly newsletter.</em> <a href="https://theconversation.com/us/newsletters/weekly-highlights-61?utm_source=TCUS&utm_medium=inline-link&utm_campaign=newsletter-text&utm_content=weeklybusy">Sign up for good Sunday reading.</a> ]</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/133139/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Joel Christensen does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Greek epics remind audiences that leaders need to be able to plan for the future based on what has happened in the past. They need to understand cause and effect.Joel Christensen, Associate Professor of Classical Studies, Brandeis UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1043432018-10-04T07:32:55Z2018-10-04T07:32:55ZWarrior women: despite what gamers might believe, the ancient world was full of female fighters<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/239141/original/file-20181003-52660-zntrut.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Zenobia addressing her troops.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Giambattista Tiepolo (National Gallery)</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>One of the great things about computer games is that anything is possible in the almost endless array of situations on offer, whether they are realistic or fantasy worlds. But <a href="https://www.telegraph.co.uk/technology/2018/09/27/gamers-ditch-total-war-rome-2-female-generals-appear/">it has been reported</a> that gamers are boycotting <a href="https://www.pcgamer.com/uk/total-war-rome-2-is-getting-review-bombed-on-steam-because-of-women-generals/">Total War: Rome II</a> on the grounds of historical accuracy after developers introduced women generals, apparently to please “feminists”.</p>
<p>But while it’s true that the Romans would not have had female soldiers in their armies, they certainly encountered women in battle – and when they did it created quite a stir. The historians of the ancient world recorded tales of impressive female military commanders from across many cultures.</p>
<p>In the ancient world, when women did go to war, it was usually reported as a complete reversal of the natural order of things. The ancients believed, as Homer’s Iliad claimed, that “<a href="https://www.spectator.co.uk/2012/12/a-womans-place-in-homer/">war will be men’s business</a>”. In the eyes of the (male) contemporary historians, female warriors were aberrations and often remembered as embodiments of the <a href="https://www.greeka.com/greece-myths/amazons.htm">mythical one-breasted Amazons</a>. These legendary warriors were usually portrayed as slightly unhinged women who behaved unnaturally, and symbolised – to ancient men at least – a world turned on its head.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/239136/original/file-20181003-52695-15cbpum.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/239136/original/file-20181003-52695-15cbpum.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=763&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/239136/original/file-20181003-52695-15cbpum.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=763&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/239136/original/file-20181003-52695-15cbpum.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=763&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/239136/original/file-20181003-52695-15cbpum.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=959&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/239136/original/file-20181003-52695-15cbpum.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=959&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/239136/original/file-20181003-52695-15cbpum.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=959&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Achilles slaying Amazon queen Penthesilea in combat.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">British Museum</span>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/">CC BY-NC</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Yet the star-crossed tale of Achilles and the Amazon warrior queen Penthesilea fascinated the ancient chroniclers. Penthesilea, who led her troops to the support of Troy, was the mythical daughter of Ares, the god of war. She was killed in combat by Achilles who then mourned her, falling in love with the warrior queen for her beauty and valour. The moment is captured on a famous 6th-century BC vase now in the British Museum and was <a href="http://www.theoi.com/Heroine/AmazonPenthesileia.html">represented in text and imagery</a> across classical Greece and Rome.</p>
<p>When <a href="http://www.stoa.org/diotima/anthology/artemisia.shtml">Artemisia of Caria</a> commanded ships on the side of Persians at the battle of Salamis in 480BC she fought so well that the Persian king Xerxes exclaimed: “My men have become women and my women men.” It was a world turned upside down according to the Greek historian Herodotus – but the soldiers who willingly followed Artemisia into battle could not have thought that way. She must have been skilled and competent and inspired those she commanded. </p>
<h2>Cleopatra’s warlike family</h2>
<p>In the <a href="https://www.ancient.eu/Hellenistic_Period/">Hellenistic period</a> – which is generally held to be the period between the death of Alexander the Great in 323BC and the conquest of Egypt by Rome in 31BC – women with real power and agency appear in numerous kingdoms across the Eastern Mediterranean. These extraordinary and influential queens often held the keys to power, had personal armies and would not hesitate to go to war. </p>
<p>They were the mothers, daughters and sisters of the kings and generals who succeeded Alexander the Great. The fabulous <a href="https://www.biography.com/people/cleopatra-vii-9250984">Cleopatra VII</a> – best known for her affair with Julius Caesar and marriage to Marc Anthony – was the last of a long line of impressive Egyptian queens who went to war. The role of fighting queen had already been well established by her namesakes including <a href="http://www.livius.org/articles/person/cleopatra-thea/">Cleopatra Thea</a> and <a href="http://www.tyndalehouse.com/egypt/ptolemies/cleopatra_iv_fr.htm">Cleopatra IV</a>. </p>
<p>The indomitable Cleopatra Thea held her own in the ruthless world of Hellenistic dynastic chaos as the queen to three Hellenistic kings, while Cleopatra IV, when divorced from one husband, took a personal army with her to her next husband as dowry.</p>
<h2>Palmyra’s warrior queen</h2>
<p>Centuries later, <a href="https://www.nationalgeographic.com/archaeology-and-history/magazine/2017/11-12/history-queen-zenobia-defied-rome/">Zenobia</a>, queen of Palmyra, took advantage of a period of upheaval in the Near East in the late 3rd century AD to carve a kingdom for herself and her city – and it was no coincidence that she connected her ancestry back to the fighting traditions of the Hellenistic Cleopatras. </p>
<p>When <a href="http://judithweingarten.blogspot.com/2017/05/zenobia-visionary-queen-of-ancient.html">Zenobia led her armies</a> she did so in the name of her son and took on the <a href="https://www.britannica.com/biography/Aurelian">Roman emperor Aurelian</a> to protect her city, her region and the interests of her realm. According to the <a href="https://www.jstor.org/stable/1858706">Greek historian Zosimus</a>, Zenobia <a href="http://www.livius.org/sources/content/zosimus/zosimus-new-history-1/zosimus-new-history-1.50/">commanded her troops in battle</a> and people from across the region flocked to her side. Ancient writers were scandalised at the idea of a woman dominating Roman power but she remained a legend across the Middle East in Classical and early Islamic histories. </p>
<h2>Boudica: Britain’s greatest warrior queen</h2>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/239142/original/file-20181003-52674-ntfiv5.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/239142/original/file-20181003-52674-ntfiv5.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=398&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/239142/original/file-20181003-52674-ntfiv5.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=398&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/239142/original/file-20181003-52674-ntfiv5.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=398&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/239142/original/file-20181003-52674-ntfiv5.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=500&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/239142/original/file-20181003-52674-ntfiv5.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=500&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/239142/original/file-20181003-52674-ntfiv5.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=500&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Boudica statue on the Thames Embankment in London.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Thomas Thornycroft</span>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/">CC BY-SA</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>The most iconic of the female warriors from antiquity has to be the Iceni queen Boudica. When Boudica led her rebellion against the Roman occupation of her land in c. AD60, the historian Cassius Dio <a href="http://penelope.uchicago.edu/Thayer/E/Roman/Texts/Cassius_Dio/62*.html">remembered it thus</a>:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>All this ruin was brought upon the Romans by a woman, the fact which in itself caused them the greatest shame. </p>
</blockquote>
<p>There is a visceral image that accompanies her name, with long red hair (although Dio says she was blonde) flowing behind as she charges forth in her war chariot. The ancient writers speak of her terrorising the Roman occupants of newly conquered Britannia with her tall stature and fierce eyes. Boudica was viewed by the Roman men who recorded her history as a woman wronged and hell-bent on vengeance. </p>
<p>Tacitus, <a href="http://www.athenapub.com/tacitus1.htm">our best source</a> for Boudica’s rebellion, claims that the Celtic women of the British Isles and Ireland frequently fought alongside their men. And when wars were about the survival of a kingdom, a family or a home and children, women would fight if they had to, especially when the only other option was slavery or death.</p>
<p>So when women took to the field in battle in antiquity it was both astonishing and terrifying for the men who recorded the events and shameful to lose to them. It almost always occurred at times of political chaos and dynastic upheaval, when society’s structures loosened and women had to, and could, stand up for themselves. Ancient men did not like to think about having to fight women or having women fight – and it still seems to irk some people today.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/104343/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Eve MacDonald does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Anything is possible in the world of computers games – except women who fight, apparently.Eve MacDonald, Lecturer in Ancient History, Cardiff UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1033062018-09-21T14:56:03Z2018-09-21T14:56:03ZBodyguard: there are accounts of PTSD in warfare from Homer to the Middle Ages<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/236852/original/file-20180918-158243-23r5td.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Achilles mourning the death of his nephew Patroclus.</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Achilles,_frantic_for_the_loss_of_Patroclus,_rejecting_the_consolation_of_Thetis_1803_United_Kingdom_by_George_Dawe._Gift_of_the_New_Zealand_Academy_of_Fine_Arts,_1936._Te_Papa_(1936-0012-83)MA_I12.jpg">George Dawe (1803)</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>In the BBC’s Bodyguard, Richard Madden plays a police protection officer and veteran soldier who is <a href="https://www.express.co.uk/showbiz/tv-radio/1009114/Bodyguard-bbc-tv-series-david-budd-richard-madden-what-is-ptsd-symptoms-treatment">exhibiting signs of PTSD</a>. In episode three he tries to strangle the woman he is supposed to be safeguarding. Later, a friend suggests he seek counselling. This image of the suffering veteran dominates modern views of the soldier experience, but was this the case in ancient and medieval warfare?</p>
<p>Achilles, hero of the Trojan war, is commonly held to be an ancient sufferer of PTSD, thanks largely to <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2008/01/13/us/13shay-interview.html">Jonathan Shay’s Achilles in Vietnam</a> about the psychological damage caused by war, while Epizelus’ spontaneous blindness at the <a href="https://www.jstor.org/stable/4436293">Battle of Marathon</a> (490BC) is <a href="https://books.google.co.uk/books?id=JneX52Op-s8C&pg=PA299&lpg=PA299&dq=Epizelus%E2%80%99+spontaneous+blindness&source=bl&ots=zMr_tQUmls&sig=wAEgs6HCFq7O35UMRSNqQe7nbcI&hl=en&sa=X&ved=2ahUKEwivib37ocndAhXDCMAKHYxAA9MQ6AEwCnoECDAQAQ#v=onepage&q=Epizelus%E2%80%99%20spontaneous%20blindness&f=false">often cited</a> as another example. </p>
<p>So popular is the contemporary idea that <a href="https://www.newyorker.com/culture/culture-desk/theatre-of-war-sophocles-message-for-american-veterans">PTSD was common in the ancient world</a> that ancient plays are now being used to help modern veterans. In May 2017, more than 100 servicemen and veterans <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2017/05/26/opinion/us-veterans-use-greek-tragedy-to-tell-us-about-war.html">watched extracts from Sophochles’ plays</a> which portray what many see as ancient examples of PTSD, as a way of getting them to talk about their own experiences. </p>
<p>More recently, researchers at Anglia Ruskin University in Cambridge <a href="https://www.anglia.ac.uk/news/research-detects-ptsd-3000-years-ago">claimed that</a> the earliest examples of PTSD can be found in ancient Mesopotamia (present-day Iraq) 3,000 years ago. The sources they looked at described how the King of Elam’s “mind changed” after years of fighting. Soldiers there had to go on campaign every three years after which they had flashbacks and dreams about their dead comrades, symptoms now commonly ascribed to PTSD. </p>
<p>But there is another school of thought that says the experience of the ancient soldier was not universal. His experience was a product of his culture, and therefore he was more able to deal with the traumas of war because he was <a href="https://theconversation.com/combat-trauma-is-nothing-like-in-classical-antiquity-so-why-are-we-still-treating-it-as-such-30955">conditioned to fight</a>. Killing enemies was a glorious thing – and rather than going against what society expected, ancient warriors were fulfilling a clearly defined role. </p>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/why-war-evolved-to-be-a-mans-game-and-why-thats-only-now-changing-101473">Why war evolved to be a man's game – and why that's only now changing</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
<hr>
<h2>Medieval warfare</h2>
<p>The same has been said of knights in the Middle Ages who were trained to fight from a young age, a factor which arguably made them more resilient to the psychological impact of warfare, as did the fact that medieval society was more used to death and brutality. In 15th-century France, people certainly believed that warfare caused a kind of madness, but they differentiated between the good and the bad. Soldiers traumatised by war who went “beserk” were celebrated – while noncombatants traumatised by war were pitied or ridiculed.</p>
<p>But killing was a sinful act, and in the Christian Middle Ages, writers wrestled with the issue of exactly when and how it was morally acceptable. They also thought about how homecoming fighters could make amends. A few years after the Battle of Hastings (1066) William the Conqueror faced rebellion from some of his own men, in part perhaps because they found the violence of his conquest had gone too far. Certainly, contemporary descriptions of the <a href="https://www.historytoday.com/james-aitcheson/harrying-north">Harrying of the North</a>, when William’s troops ravaged northern England, suggest that it was particularly brutal. </p>
<p>Indeed, the effort medieval churchmen put into thinking about ways to atone for killing in warfare suggests that there was a real awareness of the need to ritualise the return to normal life. Penances were imposed on the men who fought at Hastings in 1066. The philosopher <a href="http://files.libertyfund.org/pll/quotes/130.html">Thomas Aquinas warned</a> that warfare had the potential to be sinful as in battle soldiers could get carried away and engage in savage murder which needed to be forgiven. </p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/237455/original/file-20180921-129850-e6jddr.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/237455/original/file-20180921-129850-e6jddr.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=744&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/237455/original/file-20180921-129850-e6jddr.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=744&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/237455/original/file-20180921-129850-e6jddr.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=744&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/237455/original/file-20180921-129850-e6jddr.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=935&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/237455/original/file-20180921-129850-e6jddr.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=935&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/237455/original/file-20180921-129850-e6jddr.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=935&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">The violence of the medieval crusades may have left some soldiers traumatised.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Gustav Dore</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Even during the crusades – wars believed to be sanctioned by God and fought on his behalf – some knights came home changed by their experiences. When <a href="https://www.routledge.com/The-Chronicle-of-the-Third-Crusade-The-Itinerarium-Peregrinorum-et-Gesta/Nicholson/p/book/9780754605812">one chronicler described</a> the crusaders coming home from the Third Crusade (1189-92), he <a href="http://www.historyofwar.org/articles/wars_crusade3rd.html">told his readers</a> that though these men “survived unharmed … their hearts were pierced by swords of sorrows from different sorts of suffering”.</p>
<p>Some knights warned about the dangers of warfare and the toll it could take on those who fought. Geoffrey de Charny, a French knight who fought in the Hundred Years War, warned other knights in his <a href="https://muse.jhu.edu/article/474084/summary">Book of Chivalry</a> that they would face lack of food and water, have to fight through the night and suffer many dangers. He cautioned that “when they would be secure from danger, they will be beset by great terrors”, suggesting that though they were trained for war they could be terrified by it. </p>
<p>Fighters in the past were clearly affected by their experiences, expressed feelings of fear, shame, or anger, or otherwise suffered as a result of the psychological traumas of war, whatever those traumas might be. </p>
<p>This does not mean that their experiences or responses were universal, or that we can judge the trauma of a 14th-century knight by the same standards as a 21st-century soldier. But it does show that trauma and distress have followed as long as humans have waged war on one another.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/103306/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Kathryn Hurlock does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>PTSD is a relatively modern term, but the symptoms are as old as civilisation itself.Kathryn Hurlock, Senior Lecturer in Medieval History, Manchester Metropolitan UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1023022018-09-03T04:46:21Z2018-09-03T04:46:21ZHow we showed Homer’s Odyssey is not pure fiction, with a little help from Facebook<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/234096/original/file-20180829-195298-hcn2rl.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Thar she blows!</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.shutterstock.com/image-illustration/odysseus-his-companions-stormy-sea-computer-772680487?src=dzfdIuB73gsIZqmJM6I06A-1-0">Michael Rosskothen</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>When you look at <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aOzhXc6PCHA">networks</a> of people, whether it’s architects or table tennis players or a regular bunch of Facebook friends, they will have certain similarities. They <a href="https://mathinsight.org/small_world_network">tend to</a> confirm the “six degrees of separation” idea that most people are connected in a few very short steps. Each person tends to have <a href="https://mathinsight.org/scale_free_network">large numbers of connections</a> and <a href="http://psychology.iresearchnet.com/social-psychology/social-cognition/associative-networks/">to associate</a> with people who are similar to them. The networks are also usually organised into hierarchies. </p>
<p>In fiction – the Marvel universe or Lord of the Rings, say – networks of people <a href="https://arxiv.org/abs/1007.3254">usually differ</a> in certain ways to the real thing. People don’t only associate with similar people and have smaller numbers of associates, for example. And unlike real networks, you can remove people from the fictional equivalent without undermining the number of connections the remaining people are statistically likely to make. These differences raise an interesting possibility: testing works of fiction to see how far they deviate from reality. </p>
<p>An <a href="http://iopscience.iop.org/article/10.1209/0295-5075/99/28002/meta">English study</a> in 2012 did exactly this with three classic texts – <a href="http://classics.mit.edu/Homer/iliad.html">The Iliad</a>, <a href="https://www.poetryfoundation.org/a%20poemas/50114/beowulf-modern-english-translation">Beowulf</a> and the Irish epic <a href="https://archive.org/stream/cattleraidcualn01faragoog/cattleraidcualn01faragoog_djvu.txt">Táin Bó Cúailnge</a>. The network of people in The Iliad, the oldest known work of Western fiction, came out as the most similar to real life. This backed up <a href="https://www.researchgate.net/publication/249520889_Harbor_areas_at_ancient_Troy_Sedimentology_and_geomorphology_complement_Homer%27s_Iliad">several</a> archaeological <a href="https://archive.archaeology.org/0405/etc/troy.html">papers</a> that had found evidence that certain events in Homer’s landmark work, such as the Trojan War between Greece and Troy, actually happened in ancient times. </p>
<figure class="align-right zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/234097/original/file-20180829-195301-zxiv11.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/234097/original/file-20180829-195301-zxiv11.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/234097/original/file-20180829-195301-zxiv11.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=862&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/234097/original/file-20180829-195301-zxiv11.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=862&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/234097/original/file-20180829-195301-zxiv11.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=862&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/234097/original/file-20180829-195301-zxiv11.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1083&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/234097/original/file-20180829-195301-zxiv11.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1083&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/234097/original/file-20180829-195301-zxiv11.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1083&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Homer run.</span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>In a <a href="http://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0200703">new paper</a> that we have published in collaboration with Pedro Miranda of the University of Ponta Grossa in Brazil, we used a similar approach to look at the society portrayed in Homer’s other classic poem, <a href="http://classics.mit.edu/Homer/odyssey.10.x.html">The Odyssey</a>. Homer was a poet in ancient Greece in the eighth century BC. The Odyssey, which is partly a sequel to The Iliad, tells of an ingenious hero called Odysseus who has fought in the Trojan War. After his victory along with the Greeks, he is cursed by the gods due to his pride. He is forced to spend ten years of his life trying to return home, confronting a cast of monsters, witches, beasts and cannibals; and his own terrible sense of desolation.</p>
<p>Like The Iliad, The Odyssey <a href="https://searchworks.stanford.edu/view/5592437">is a synthesis</a> of the most relevant and ubiquitous oral stories and tales told by Homer’s civilisation. We developed a method of extracting the social information from the story based on the interactions of the characters with one another – this was quite an effort because in many cases, it’s not clear in the story who is talking to whom; we looked at various translations to make sure we weren’t being misled in our interpretations. </p>
<p>From this we were able to identify a total of 342 characters with 1,747 connections between them, illustrated in the diagram below. We analysed this material using several tools derived from <a href="http://www.oxfordscholarship.com/view/10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199591756.001.0001/acprof-9780199591756">complex networks</a> theory: statistical methods to produce data about the characteristics of the network, and <a href="https://arxiv.org/abs/1301.0803">insights</a> about the tendency for people to form cliques that are fully connected. We also compared its characteristics to networks on Facebook. </p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/234298/original/file-20180830-195325-u3lce7.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/234298/original/file-20180830-195325-u3lce7.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/234298/original/file-20180830-195325-u3lce7.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=427&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/234298/original/file-20180830-195325-u3lce7.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=427&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/234298/original/file-20180830-195325-u3lce7.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=427&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/234298/original/file-20180830-195325-u3lce7.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=537&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/234298/original/file-20180830-195325-u3lce7.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=537&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/234298/original/file-20180830-195325-u3lce7.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=537&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">The Odyssey’s cast of 342 – colours correspond to different cliques.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Miranda/Baptista/Pinto</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>What we found</h2>
<p>We found substantial evidence of a “real-life” social structure in The Odyssey. Notably, the characters in each chapter or scene described in the poem’s <a href="https://study.com/academy/lesson/how-many-books-are-in-the-odyssey.html">24 books</a> corresponded almost precisely to cliques in real-life networks. It led us to wonder: did Homer have a profound understanding of networks, or did he copy key details about his characters and their interactions from elsewhere? </p>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/school-networks-will-help-plan-for-the-next-flu-pandemic-22023">School networks will help plan for the next flu pandemic</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
<hr>
<p>To examine this more closely, we reran the analysis, this time excluding mythological characters like gods and monsters. The remaining network was even more similar to what you would expect in real life. On the other hand, we ran an analysis that excluded the human characters and kept the mythological ones, and were left with an entirely fictional network. The obvious conclusion is that The Odyssey is an amalgam of real and fictional characters. </p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/234101/original/file-20180829-195328-f578b3.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/234101/original/file-20180829-195328-f578b3.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/234101/original/file-20180829-195328-f578b3.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=371&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/234101/original/file-20180829-195328-f578b3.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=371&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/234101/original/file-20180829-195328-f578b3.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=371&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/234101/original/file-20180829-195328-f578b3.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=466&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/234101/original/file-20180829-195328-f578b3.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=466&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/234101/original/file-20180829-195328-f578b3.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=466&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Gustav Schwab, Odysseus returns to fight the suitors (1892).</span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>We also looked at to what extent certain characters in the story make connections in the way <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2012/09/09/opinion/sunday/the-social-networks-of-myths.html">you would expect</a> in the real world. Again, the networking of the mythological gods, heroes and beasts that form the story’s assembly of the gods was not in line with how people make contacts. For example, they tended to interact with an abnormally large number of characters in other communities – displaying the sort of omnipresence we might associate with a god. In contrast, the human characters in The Odyssey made connections in ways comparable to people on Facebook today. </p>
<p>As is often the case in fiction, it seems that Homer was not just telling stories but reflecting events and characters that existed in ancient Greece. It underlines the historical importance of his writings, and also raises the possibility of using the same technique to evaluate other historical works. It is surely only a matter of time, for instance, before someone uses complex networks theory on the Bible.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/102302/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Murilo Da Silva Baptista has received funding from the EPSRC. </span></em></p><p class="fine-print"><em><span>Pedro Jeferson Miranda received PhD funding from CAPES. </span></em></p><p class="fine-print"><em><span>Sandro Ely de Souza Pinto receives funding from the National Council for Scientific and Technological Development, CNPq. </span></em></p>Analyse the great quest of Odysseus with a little 21st-century know how and it’s fascinating what you find out.Murilo Da Silva Baptista, Reader, Physics, University of AberdeenPedro Jeferson Miranda, Doctoral Researcher, Physics, Universidade Estadual de Ponta Grossa (UEPG)Sandro Ely de Souza Pinto, Associate Professor, Physics, Universidade Estadual de Ponta Grossa (UEPG)Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/942852018-04-05T01:59:28Z2018-04-05T01:59:28ZMary Beard and the long tradition of women being told to shut up<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/213318/original/file-20180405-189827-9hdw7c.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Penelope and the Suitors, by J.W. Waterhouse (1912).</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Wikimedia Commons</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>Professor Mary Beard’s latest book <a href="https://profilebooks.com/women-and-power.html">Women & Power: A Manifesto</a> is a short, sharp analysis of women in the West and their ongoing struggles for a voice in the public domain. Based on two lectures delivered in 2014 and 2017, Beard chronicles some of the major obstacles women continue to face, framing her analysis through the lens of the legacies of ancient Greece and Rome.</p>
<p>In her first essay, Beard provides some examples from antiquity to illustrate the social and gender dynamics inherited in the West. In short, she traces the long heritage of women being told to shut up.</p>
<figure class="align-right ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/212891/original/file-20180403-189795-mgkddk.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/212891/original/file-20180403-189795-mgkddk.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=973&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/212891/original/file-20180403-189795-mgkddk.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=973&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/212891/original/file-20180403-189795-mgkddk.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=973&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/212891/original/file-20180403-189795-mgkddk.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1222&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/212891/original/file-20180403-189795-mgkddk.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1222&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/212891/original/file-20180403-189795-mgkddk.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1222&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
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<span class="caption"></span>
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</figure>
<p>Beard’s first example is <a href="https://www.britannica.com/topic/Penelope-Greek-mythology">Penelope</a>. A main character in Homer’s <a href="https://theconversation.com/guide-to-the-classics-homers-odyssey-82911">Odyssey</a>, Penelope is the faithful wife of the epic’s eponymous hero <a href="https://www.greekmythology.com/Myths/Heroes/Odysseus/odysseus.html">Odysseus</a>. A hero of the Trojan War, Odysseus spends 10 years at Troy and then another 10 years trying to return to his home in Ithaca, where Penelope and their adolescent son <a href="https://www.greekmythology.com/Myths/Mortals/Telemachus/telemachus.html">Telemachus</a> wait.</p>
<p>In a scene from Odyssey Book One, Penelope enters the communal (read male) space of her husband’s palace and complains about a song that is being performed by one of the entertainers. Telemachus immediately orders her to return to her chambers and resume women’s work. He further reminds her that stories are the preserve of men. Men engage in public discourse. Women face exclusion from it.</p>
<p>This is not the only example of silencing women in the Homeric epics. In Book One of the <a href="https://theconversation.com/guide-to-the-classics-homers-iliad-80968">Iliad</a>, thought to be composed at least a generation earlier than the Odyssey, Zeus is confronted by his wife Hera who challenges him on a matter concerning the course of the Trojan War. In an assertion of his divine authority, Zeus demands Hera’s silence and threatens her with violence if she persists in opposing him.</p>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/guide-to-the-classics-homers-odyssey-82911">Guide to the Classics: Homer's Odyssey</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
<hr>
<p>In both instances, the message is clear. As Beard observes, “right where written evidence for Western culture starts, women’s voices are not being heard in the public sphere”. On Telemachus telling his mum to “zip it”, Beard points out that “as Homer has it, an integral part of growing up, as a man, is learning to take control of public utterance and to silence the female of the species”.</p>
<p>It may seem incredible that some 2,500 years since the Homeric epics, women are still silenced in public. But the myths of Archaic Greece continue to maintain relevance to modern reality. Even when women occupy a public platform, they are regularly met with verbal and written ripostes.</p>
<h2>We’re still being silenced</h2>
<p>In 2017, Tony Abbott told Ray Hadley on 2GB that Australia’s Sex Discrimination Commissioner Kate Jenkins should “<a href="https://www.sbs.com.au/news/sex-discrimination-commissioner-hits-back-over-draconian-gender-measures-report">pull her head in”</a> after her organisation recommended that Commonwealth Government contractors aim for at least 40% of female employees as part of a strategy to address workplace gender imbalance. </p>
<figure class="align-left zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/213042/original/file-20180404-189824-r42amx.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/213042/original/file-20180404-189824-r42amx.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/213042/original/file-20180404-189824-r42amx.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=900&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/213042/original/file-20180404-189824-r42amx.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=900&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/213042/original/file-20180404-189824-r42amx.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=900&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/213042/original/file-20180404-189824-r42amx.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1131&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/213042/original/file-20180404-189824-r42amx.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1131&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/213042/original/file-20180404-189824-r42amx.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1131&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Tony Abbott in 2017.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Lukas Coch/AAP</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>“Pull your head in” means, essentially, shut up and mind your own business. Abbott’s reprimand mirrors Telemachus’ command to Penelope to pull her head in and retreat to the private (female) sphere.</p>
<p>In Scotland, meanwhile, in 2016, then UK Independence Party leadership candidate, Raheem Kassam, <a href="https://www.independent.co.uk/voices/ukip-raheem-kassam-destroying-ukip-a7388026.html">tweeted</a> about the First Minister, Nicola Sturgeon: ‘Can someone just, like … tape Nicola Sturgeon’s mouth shut? And her legs, so she can’t reproduce’. </p>
<figure class="align-right zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/213043/original/file-20180404-189810-1ja9lnr.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/213043/original/file-20180404-189810-1ja9lnr.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/213043/original/file-20180404-189810-1ja9lnr.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=887&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/213043/original/file-20180404-189810-1ja9lnr.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=887&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/213043/original/file-20180404-189810-1ja9lnr.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=887&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/213043/original/file-20180404-189810-1ja9lnr.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1115&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/213043/original/file-20180404-189810-1ja9lnr.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1115&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/213043/original/file-20180404-189810-1ja9lnr.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1115&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Nicola Sturgeon in 2018.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Will Oliver/EPA</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>In Canada, in the same year, MP Michelle Rempel <a href="http://nationalpost.com/opinion/michelle-rempel-confront-your-sexism">described</a> how a male parliamentary colleague had once asked that she refrain from speaking until she was “less emotional”.</p>
<p>Beard also recounts the myths of Ovid’s <a href="https://theconversation.com/guide-to-the-classics-ovids-metamorphoses-and-reading-rape-65316">Metamorphoses</a>, including the tales of <a href="http://www.theoi.com/Heroine/Io.html">Io</a> “turned by the god Jupiter into a cow, so she can cannot talk but only moo”, “the chatty nymph” <a href="https://www.greekmythology.com/Other_Gods/Minor_Gods/Echo/echo.html">Echo</a> “punished so that her voice is never her own, merely an instrument for repeating the words of others” and <a href="https://www.britannica.com/topic/Tereus#ref97077">Philomela</a>, who is raped and silenced by her violator, who cuts out her tongue after she tries to scream out the crime. </p>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/guide-to-the-classics-ovids-metamorphoses-and-reading-rape-65316">Guide to the classics: Ovid's Metamorphoses and reading rape</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
<hr>
<p>These may seem like frivolous tales of make-believe. But like all myths, legends and fairy tales, they contain subtle layers of meaning both for the ancients who invented them and for those today who experience their content in new forms. </p>
<p>Beard, no stranger to virtual threats similar to those meted out to Philomela, has opened a public space for women to name and to challenge their silencing. By detailing examples from the past to illuminate the present, she has shown us how far women in the West have come. But compellingly, she has also shown us how close we are at times to the ancient Greeks and Romans.</p>
<p>Women & Power’s most important contribution to the current advances and failures of feminism in the West is its encouragement of contemplation and understanding. To reflect on the silencing of women addresses urgent feminist issues of the 21st century, including the low number of cases of domestic violence, sexual harassment and assault that are reported to authorities, the opposition to the public voice of the <a href="http://www.chicagotribune.com/lifestyles/ct-me-too-timeline-20171208-htmlstory.html">#MeToo</a> movement and the vileness of trolling. </p>
<p>Beard reminds us that women need to claim the public space and speak. To scream, yell and rewrite the script we have been assigned to deliver since the mythical age of Penelope.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/94285/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Marguerite Johnson does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>It may seem incredible that some 2,500 years since the Homeric epics, women are still silenced in public. But the myths of Archaic Greece resonate today in disturbing ways.Marguerite Johnson, Professor of Classics, University of NewcastleLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/929252018-03-07T00:46:13Z2018-03-07T00:46:13ZMemorial is a shattering excavation of the scars of war through poetry, dance and mind-blowing score<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/209219/original/file-20180306-146694-19pqrtk.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Helen Morse lends her voice to the poetry of Memorial. </span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Shane Reid</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>Arthur Danto, in his Analytic Philosophy of History, calls the common noun “scar” a “past-referring term”. In this way, language acknowledges the passing of time, representing verbally what happens to us physically. The mystery of appearance and disappearance in the world – the cycle of life and death – is caught in the warp and weft of how we speak, the soul made manifest by the word.</p>
<p>Memorial is a large-scale performance piece drenched in a sense of time passed. Based on <a href="https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/12841067-memorial">Alice Oswald’s poetic exploration of the Iliad</a> (the precise, and again temporally charged, descriptor is “excavation”), it brings together a transcendent score by composer Jocelyn Pook, deft movement of 150 supernumeraries by Yaron Lifschitz, and a charged narration by actor Helen Morse, a voice born to convey feelings of love, loss and grief.</p>
<p>Chris Drummond, whose work has headed towards a new synthesis of refinement and ambition for some time, writes in his director’s note:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>The idea of translating a work’s atmosphere is a compelling one, but coupled with the notion of enargeia (“bright, unbearable reality”), Memorial offered the possibility of being an immensely theatrical proposition. In the theatre, gods (and ghosts) are manifest, real, physical presences and in the right context, at its greatest, theatre can conjure a living communion with our immortal selves.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>Just so. In essence, Oswald’s poem is a 90-minute-long casualty list. It names and details the deaths of the ancient combatants on both sides of the ten-year Trojan war – that distant struggle that has become the universal index for all war.</p>
<p>No Australian has to be told of the significance of blood-soaked beaches in the Dardanelles, of savage death under perfect blue skies. From the opening image of a stage covered in prostrate bodies all of whom slowly raise one arm, Memorial occupies a register of high pathos that is both personally familiar and nationally confronting.</p>
<p>Here we go: the long itemisation of those who have lost their lives in causes that now seem so much hazier than the deaths they engendered. Things are much easier – and shorter – when enumerated rather than enunciated: one reason governments prefer statistics to vivid description.</p>
<p>The brilliance of Oswald’s writing lies in its combination of unrelenting singular focus with endless poetic invention, of simile and metaphor drawing on the natural world to capture a repetitive and eventually routine outcome (the deaths of combatants). Watching, I felt a visceral tug to memorise the text, to ingest its words into my mind. Hurriedly, I wrote down snatches afterwards:</p>
<p>“He opened a door in the earth and an entire generation vanishes.” “This whole river is a grave.” “Grief is black; it is made of earth.” “The works of men pass away.” “Thousands of names, thousands of leaves.” “… and is gone.”</p>
<p>The stage of the Dunstan Playhouse in Adelaide is a forgiving one, but, even so, moving 150 people on it requires outstanding choreographic skill. Three of Memorial’s “soldier chorus” are listed as dancers; the remainder are drawn from South Australian choirs and opera companies. Choreographer Lifschitz’s approach is to keep the physical text in motion most of the time, then still the picture, or clear it, leaving Morse alone, in the gloom.</p>
<p>Sometimes this works with startling power, sometimes it feels a little overdone; movement for movement’s sake. The great benefit of such massification, however, is that it acts not only as a reminder of scale, but that a non-professional chorus cannot hide its polyglot humanity – the mad variety of visages and elbows, walks and hairstyles, eye-lines and auras. It is this difference that war kills, returning everything to the sameness of the grave, of <em>gone.</em></p>
<p>Pook’s score is a golden stream of soft, devastating sadness: the sinuous reediness of oboe, shawm and clarinet; the pong and chime of bells; the wail and keen of counter tenor and Bulgarian and Macedonian vocals. The musicians are suspended on an illuminated bridge above the stage, like demi-gods. At its most climactic, Memorial’s music is almost literally mind-blowing. I thought, “If death is like this, it might not be too bad.”</p>
<p>But that’s life talking. In truth, when people die we have no idea what happens to them next, and that goes equally for the Archbishop of Canterbury and Richard Dawkins. De-heroicizing violent death, which has been part of the English literary tradition since the War Poets a hundred years ago, is surely also Oswald’s intent here. Many of her vignettes include the paralytic sorrow of those left behind – bereaved lovers, wives, brothers; crippled parents and children; lives torn apart and torn up. War looks sort of OK in the movies. But it really, really, really isn’t.</p>
<p>In bringing this piece into existence, director Chris Drummond shows two things. First, that his ability to handle the outsize tools of epic performance, previously on show in Night Letters and When the Rain Stops Falling, is now approaching the definitive. Second, that his interest in the human condition, in vulnerability, in drama, remains squarely at the centre of his vision. </p>
<p>Plays always have to be entertaining, one of my students said to me the other day. Well, yes. But they also have to be much more than that. Memorial is full of the death that life is full of. It is deeply compassionate, a quality emanating not only from Oswald’s poetry, but from every artist involved in the production.</p>
<p>Most compellingly from Helen Morse, who vibrates with feeling like a musical instrument herself. Her command of the text is total, her delivery shattering. She keeps herself on a short leash, emotion never spilling over structure, bleeding heart shielded by dry eyes. But then if we started weeping, would we ever stop?</p>
<hr>
<p><em><a href="https://www.adelaidefestival.com.au/2018/memorial">Memorial</a> was staged as part of the Adelaide Festival.</em></p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/92925/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Julian Meyrick does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Memorial brings Alice Oswald’s poetic retelling of the Iliad to the stage, with its furious indictment of war and its aftermath.Julian Meyrick, Professor of Creative Arts, Flinders UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/926252018-03-01T10:49:10Z2018-03-01T10:49:10ZFall of Troy: the legend and the facts<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/208268/original/file-20180228-36680-13a8bch.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">
</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Graham Bartholomew/BBC/Wild Mercury Productions</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>The legendary ancient city of Troy is very much in the limelight this year: a big budget co-production between the BBC and Netflix: <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/tv-and-radio/2018/jan/27/troy-fall-of-city-west-against-east-lovers-siege-homer-bbc-netfllix">Troy, Fall of a City</a>, recently launched, while Turkey designated 2018 the “<a href="http://eu.greekreporter.com/2017/09/26/turkey-to-declare-2018-year-of-troy/">Year of Troy</a>” and plans a year of celebration, including the opening of a new museum on the presumed site.</p>
<p>So what do we know about the city, ruins of which have been painstakingly excavated over the past 150 years? The television series is set around 1300-1200BC, at the height of the Late Bronze Age. During this period Mycenaean city states based in modern-day Greece were competing with the larger Hittite empire (located in modern-day Turkey) to control the trade routes leading towards the Eastern Mediterranean and the Black Sea. </p>
<p>Troy (in ancient Greek, Ἴλιος or Ilios), was located in western Turkey – not far from the modern city of Canakkale (better known as Gallipoli), at the mouth of the Dardarnelles strait. Its position was crucial in controlling the trade routes towards the Black Sea and, as the Trojan prince Paris mentions to the Spartan king Menelaus in Homer’s epic tale, the Iliad, the city controlled access to Indian silks and spices.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/208313/original/file-20180228-36706-1kfg4mb.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/208313/original/file-20180228-36706-1kfg4mb.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/208313/original/file-20180228-36706-1kfg4mb.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=351&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/208313/original/file-20180228-36706-1kfg4mb.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=351&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/208313/original/file-20180228-36706-1kfg4mb.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=351&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/208313/original/file-20180228-36706-1kfg4mb.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=441&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/208313/original/file-20180228-36706-1kfg4mb.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=441&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/208313/original/file-20180228-36706-1kfg4mb.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=441&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">The probable location of the ancient city of Troy.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="license">Author provided</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>The Late Bronze Age was an era of powerful kingdoms and city states, centred around fortified walled palaces. Commerce was based on a complex gift exchange system between the different political states. The trade system was mainly controlled by the kings and evidence referring to private merchants is very rare. These kingdoms exchanged not only silks and spices, but also gold, silver, copper, grain, craftsmanship and slaves.</p>
<h2>Bronze Age politics</h2>
<p>The Hittites were an ancient Anatolian people whose empire was centred in north and central Anatolia from around 1600-1200BC. The Hittite empire, at its high point, included modern Lebanon, Syria and Turkey. The city of Troy was part of a small <a href="https://ipfs.io/ipfs/QmXoypizjW3WknFiJnKLwHCnL72vedxjQkDDP1mXWo6uco/wiki/Assuwa_league.html">independent confederation named Assuwa</a> that tried to resist the Hittite expansion but which eventually yielded and became a sort of vassal state to the Hittite empire. </p>
<p>Archaeologists working in Greece and Turkey have discovered a great deal of evidence of this complex political system, of the kind that might have inspired Homer’s epic. Political treaties discovered in the <a href="http://whc.unesco.org/en/list/377">Hittite capital city, Hattusha</a> dating back to the Late Bronze Age confirm the existence of a very powerful city not far from the Dardanelles strait called Wilusa (Greek Ilios/Troy) ruled by a king called Alaksandu (maybe the Trojan prince Paris – whose birth name, according to Homer, was Alexander). And archaeologists working in Troy have discovered skeletons, arrowheads and traces of destruction which point to us a violent end for <a href="https://ir.lib.uwo.ca/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?referer=https://www.google.co.uk/&httpsredir=1&article=1151&context=totem">Troy Level VII</a> – as the late Bronze Age city has been designated by archaeologists (so far <a href="http://cerhas.uc.edu/troy/explore.html">levels I to IX have been excavated</a>).</p>
<p>At that stage, the political and economic system in the Mediterranean was disintegrating. A series of factors – states’ internal turmoil, mass refugee migrations, displacement of people, trade disruption and war – led to the <a href="http://www.netours.com/content/view/198/1/">collapse of the political system</a> and to a new era. Because of new technology being adopted by the powers of the time, this has become known as the Iron Age.</p>
<p>The beginning of this new era witnessed destruction throughout the Mediterranean basin. Wealthy cities such as Troy as well as <a href="http://etheses.dur.ac.uk/2900/1/2900_730-vol1.pdf">Mycenae</a> and <a href="http://ancient-greece.org/archaeology/tiryns.html">Tiryns</a> in Greece were destroyed and abandoned. These events were so significant that the memory lasted for centuries. In Greek mythology, the tale of the fall of Troy was recorded in two epics, the Iliad and the Odyssey, traditionally attributed to Homer and written about 400 years after these events.</p>
<h2>What history tells us</h2>
<p>More than a century of archaeological and historical research in the eastern Mediterranean basin appears to confirm that there was a war on Troy when Homer says there was. His account centres around the affair between Paris and the Spartan queen Helen, that is said to have triggered the conflict.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/208270/original/file-20180228-36693-19ak4fs.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/208270/original/file-20180228-36693-19ak4fs.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=401&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/208270/original/file-20180228-36693-19ak4fs.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=401&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/208270/original/file-20180228-36693-19ak4fs.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=401&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/208270/original/file-20180228-36693-19ak4fs.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/208270/original/file-20180228-36693-19ak4fs.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/208270/original/file-20180228-36693-19ak4fs.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Fatal attraction: Louis Hunter as Paris and Bella Dayne as Helen.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Graham Bartholomew/BBC/Wild Mercury Productions</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>But contemporary sources from <a href="https://www.britishmuseum.org/pdf/Hawkins.pdf">the Hittite archives in Hattusha</a> tell a different story. Greek kingdoms conducted a number of military campaigns in western Turkey. Hittite records mention raids and mass kidnapping of people to be sold as slaves. There is a record of a peace treaty between <a href="http://cerhas.uc.edu/troy/q404.html">Greeks and Hittites over the city of Troy</a>. These records do not in themselves confirm the accuracy of Homer’s account – but they suggest that something important happened in the area at some point around 1200BC.</p>
<h2>Outstanding value</h2>
<p>The location of Troy, at the crossroad between the East and the West, is not only a centre of challenge (embodied by the Troyan war), but also of dialogue. Troy, in the past, was a bridge between cultures and its importance to the world has been confirmed by UNESCO. The site of Troy was enlisted in the World Cultural Heritage List in 1998 and it is considered a site of “<a href="http://whc.unesco.org/en/list/849">Outstanding Universal Value</a>”.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/208273/original/file-20180228-36693-1maeaj5.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/208273/original/file-20180228-36693-1maeaj5.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=402&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/208273/original/file-20180228-36693-1maeaj5.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=402&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/208273/original/file-20180228-36693-1maeaj5.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=402&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/208273/original/file-20180228-36693-1maeaj5.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=505&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/208273/original/file-20180228-36693-1maeaj5.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=505&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/208273/original/file-20180228-36693-1maeaj5.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=505&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">How the ruins of Troy look today.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Ruins_of_Troy.jpg">David Spender via Flickr</a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/">CC BY</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Excavations on the site of Troy started more than 150 years ago. The site was <a href="http://semiramis-speaks.com/frank-calvert-the-man-behind-the-discovery-of-troy/">discovered in 1863 by Frank Calvert</a> but it really became famous thanks to the excavations conducted by the German archaeologist Heinrich Schliemann in 1870. The work of Schliemann <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/cities/2016/aug/09/lost-cities-2-search-real-troy-hisarlik-turkey-mythology-homer-iliad">made the story come true and resulted in</a> renewed interest in Troy and its history. Some 24 excavations spread over 150 years have now revealed many levels of occupation of the site – from the Early Bronze Age (Troy Level I, about 3500BC) to the Roman era (Troy IX, about 500AD).</p>
<p>An award-winning project “<a href="http://www.2018troia.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/07/2018Troia_Y%C4%B1l%C4%B1_KitapEng.pdf">Troia Museum</a>” will open this year as part of Turkey’s 2018 year of Troy. Turkey’s culture ministry has <a href="https://aawsat.com/english/home/article/1152181/turkey-open-troy-museum-participation-hollywood-stars">invited some of the actors</a> from the 2004 epic Hollywood movie Troy to lend the event some star power. </p>
<p>We’ll probably never know if Helen’s beauty really did launch a thousand ships, but in decades to come Troy will continue to yield up its fascinating and romantic history and millions of people will thrill to retellings of Homer’s epic fables of the long-passed Age of Heroes.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/92625/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Mariacarmela Montesanto does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>A new BBC series has put Troy back on the map. But how much do we know about this city of legend?Mariacarmela Montesanto, PhD Candidate, University of LiverpoolLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/919972018-02-27T09:06:37Z2018-02-27T09:06:37ZWhat today’s anti-immigrant populists could learn from Homer about kindness to strangers<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/207643/original/file-20180223-108116-wvhvch.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Odysseus and the Cyclops Polyphemus: how not to treat strangers. </span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File%3AArnold_B%C3%B6cklin_-_Odysseus_and_Polyphemus.jpg">Arnold Böcklin, via Wikimedia Commons</a></span></figcaption></figure><p><a href="http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b09szdtr">Troy</a>, a new BBC adaptation of Homer’s Iliad, shows the enduring interest we have in Ancient Greek myths. Today, Homer’s epic works remain both politically and ethically relevant. The Greek poet’s insight into why law and legality matter is particularly enlightening in the context of contemporary debates about immigration, which loom large amid the rise of right-wing populism on both sides of the Atlantic. </p>
<p>Those who object to immigration and demonise immigrants argue that the West’s legal traditions are endangered by <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/media/2013/aug/08/daily-mail-express-illegal-immigrants">lawless migrants</a> who are <a href="http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2016/06/04/nigel-farage-migrants-could-pose-sex-attack-threat-to-britain/">incapable of peaceful integration</a>. </p>
<p>But Homer helps us see that the <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/world/2018/feb/05/berlusconi-pledges-to-deport-600000-illegal-immigrants-italy-election">politicians</a> and <a href="http://www.sub-scribe.co.uk/2016/09/the-press-and-immigration-reporting.html">tabloid press</a> who repeat and <a href="http://www.sub-scribe2015.co.uk/whitetops-immigration.html#.Wo2cIiXFLct">reinforce this narrative</a> suffer from a bad case of political illiteracy. Kindness to strangers is a cornerstone of the West’s tradition of <a href="http://digitalcommons.law.yale.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1451&context=yjlh">political thought about legality</a>. </p>
<p>Although legality and justice <a href="http://digitalcommons.law.yale.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1451&context=yjlh">are not necessarily the same</a>, the prevalent view in the West has always been – at least until recently – that justice is the main reason why laws matter at all. For example, at the time of the French Revolution, the French were well aware of law’s failures of justice when it came to protecting their freedom and equality. Yet, <a href="https://www.britannica.com/topic/Napoleonic-Code">the post-revolutionary recipe</a> to achieve greater justice was not less law, but clearer, more general, better administered laws. </p>
<h2>Hospitality in the Odyssey</h2>
<figure class="align-right ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/207645/original/file-20180223-108110-hbvbn9.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/207645/original/file-20180223-108110-hbvbn9.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=756&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/207645/original/file-20180223-108110-hbvbn9.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=756&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/207645/original/file-20180223-108110-hbvbn9.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=756&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/207645/original/file-20180223-108110-hbvbn9.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=950&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/207645/original/file-20180223-108110-hbvbn9.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=950&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/207645/original/file-20180223-108110-hbvbn9.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=950&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Homer: big on hospitality.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/1/1c/Homer_British_Museum.jpg">British Museum, via Wikimedia Commons</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>This same association between legality and justice can be found all the way back to the origins of Western political thought about the rule of law. In the Odyssey, Homer’s second epic poem, legality is centred around <a href="http://digitalcommons.law.yale.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1451&context=yjlh">fulfilling the duties of hospitality towards strangers</a>. Odysseus, tossed from shore to shore on his eventful journey back to his home, Ithaca, constantly asks himself where he has landed. He wonders if the inhabitants of each land he reaches are lawless, violent, savage; or rather god-fearing and friendly to strangers. For Homer, lawlessness is the opposite of kindness to strangers. </p>
<p>In the Odyssey, having laws and being civilised means taking seriously the duties of hospitality, through giving assistance and gifts to strangers. In contrast, being lawless and savage means refusing strangers the rites of hospitality, or, worse, abusing them. In the poem, the starkest example of this lawless savagery is the Cyclops Polyphemus. When Odysseus’s companions land on an unknown island and become trapped inside the Cyclops’s cave when they go exploring, he feasts upon them. Odysseus himself, with a few of his men, escapes this fate: he blinds Polyphemus and manages to leave the cave when the Cyclops lets out his flock of sheep.</p>
<p>It is not by accident that managing the relationship between host and stranger well is the most significant test of justice in the Odyssey, and that Zeus himself – the Greek world’s top deity – was the protector of strangers. There is a profound asymmetry in social power between host and stranger. A host is embedded in a community, which brings with it material and intangible advantages. A vulnerable stranger isn’t. </p>
<p>The message that justice and legality are measured by how you treat strangers is reinforced at every turn in the Odyssey, including at its end. When Odysseus finally makes it back to Ithaca against overwhelming odds, Athena disguises him as an old and frail stranger. But he is shamelessly abused by royal pretenders, who have been camping out in his royal palace and wooing Penelope, the Queen, in an attempt to seize power. They make fun of the old supplicant, throw a stool at him, and encourage another homeless beggar to turn against him for their own amusement. Odysseus, with the help of his son Telemachus, exacts bloody revenge upon them. </p>
<h2>The opposite of xenophobia</h2>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/207646/original/file-20180223-108119-1t6p913.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/207646/original/file-20180223-108119-1t6p913.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=316&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/207646/original/file-20180223-108119-1t6p913.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=316&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/207646/original/file-20180223-108119-1t6p913.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=316&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/207646/original/file-20180223-108119-1t6p913.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=397&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/207646/original/file-20180223-108119-1t6p913.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=397&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/207646/original/file-20180223-108119-1t6p913.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=397&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Nigel Farage was widely condemned for UKIP’s ‘Breaking Point’ poster ahead of the UK’s EU referendum.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Philip Toscano/PA Archive</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>By depicting foreigners in general – and certain ethno-religious groups such as <a href="http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/ukip-leader-nigel-farage-puts-threat-of-immigrant-crime-wave-at-centre-stage-for-european-elections-8827685.html">Romanians</a>, <a href="https://www.ft.com/content/967daaae-2412-11e7-8691-d5f7e0cd0a16">Muslims</a> or <a href="http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/av/world-us-canada-37230916/drug-dealers-criminals-rapists-what-trump-thinks-of-mexicans">Mexicans</a> in particular – as a <a href="https://www.law.ox.ac.uk/research-subject-groups/centre-criminology/centreborder-criminologies/blog/2016/04/excluding">threat to the West’s tradition of legality</a>, populist anti-immigration rhetoric betrays the very foundations of that tradition. It obscures that tradition’s roots in an aspiration to justice, whose centrepiece must be – as it was in Homer – kindness to strangers, not xenophobia.</p>
<p>The Homeric universe is a curious place. Gods can be fickle and petty; heroes owe their superhuman status less to magnanimity than magnificence. But some of the ways in which Homer challenges our convictions are serious, not quaint. Read today, the Odyssey turns on its head the contemporary belief – taken to its extreme by the logic of right-wing populism – that hospitality is purely a matter of charity, rather than a duty required by justice. For Homer there are no outsiders to justice. He reminds us that kindness to strangers lies at the very heart of our faith in the value of having laws.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/91997/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Aleardo Zanghellini does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Why right-wing populism gets the tradition of legality and justice exactly the wrong way round.Aleardo Zanghellini, University of ReadingLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/889212017-12-13T11:24:03Z2017-12-13T11:24:03ZWhat ‘Last Tango in Paris’ teaches my students about sexual ethics<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/198853/original/file-20171212-9451-pqxrp0.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Director Bernardo Bertolucci, left, discusses a scene from "Last Tango in Paris" with leading actor Marlon Brando and actress Maria Schneider.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">AP Photo</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>Today’s news is awash with accounts of behind-the-scenes sexual assaults involving such prominent <a href="https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/news/seth-macfarlane-family-guy-called-weinstein-spacey-ratner-rose-before-tidal-wave-allegations-1060966">figures</a> as producer Harvey Weinstein, director Brett Ratner and actor Kevin Spacey. In some cases, colleagues and friends of the accused have expressed disbelief, as in the cases of popular news <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2017/11/29/arts/television/matt-lauer-charlie-rose.html">personalities</a> Charlie Rose and Matt Lauer. </p>
<p>In my teaching of ethics at Indiana University, my students and I devote a great deal of attention to classic works in philosophy, such as the ethical <a href="http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/book/10.1002/9781444367072">writings</a> of Plato, Aristotle and Tolstoy. But far more recent events provide ample opportunity for ethical reflection and conversation.</p>
<p>One of the most notorious cases of sexual manipulation took place not off screen but right in front of the camera. Its stark visibility provides an opportunity to explore darker sides of human relationships that are usually hidden from view.</p>
<h2>‘Last Tango in Paris’</h2>
<p>The manipulation in question took place during the filming of one of the 1970s most widely discussed and debated films, “Last Tango in Paris.” </p>
<p>The 1972 <a href="http://www.imsdb.com/scripts/Last-Tango-in-Paris.html">film</a> recounts the story of a middle-aged American hotelier whose wife has recently taken her own life. The man (portrayed by Marlon Brando) meets a young French woman (Maria Schneider), and the two begin a sexual relationship that he insists must remain anonymous. </p>
<p>One day, the young woman returns to the site of their encounters only to discover that he has packed his things and departed unannounced. Later he returns, tells that he loves her and asks her name. She pulls a gun from a drawer, tells him her name and then shoots him. As the film ends, she is planning her testimony as a victim of attempted rape by a stranger.</p>
<figure class="align-left ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/198854/original/file-20171212-9410-ilautl.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/198854/original/file-20171212-9410-ilautl.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=931&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/198854/original/file-20171212-9410-ilautl.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=931&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/198854/original/file-20171212-9410-ilautl.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=931&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/198854/original/file-20171212-9410-ilautl.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1169&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/198854/original/file-20171212-9410-ilautl.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1169&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/198854/original/file-20171212-9410-ilautl.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1169&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Bernardo Bertolucci.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">AP Photo.</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>The manipulation involved a simulated on-screen sexual <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/arts-and-entertainment/wp/2016/12/05/why-the-last-tango-in-paris-rape-scene-is-generating-such-an-outcry-now/?utm_term=.3728713c4112">encounter</a> that proved all too real, in large part because Schneider was not informed about it in advance, and which she – as expected by Bertolucci and Brando – found unbearably degrading.</p>
<p>The film achieved notoriety in part because of its remarkably explicit portrayal of sex and sexual violence. Attempts were made in countries such as the U.K. and the U.S. to <a href="http://www.bbc.com/news/entertainment-arts-38219888">censor</a> the film. Director Bernardo Bertolucci’s native Italy initiated <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/1973/02/16/archives/italy-lifts-last-tango-ban.html">criminal</a> proceedings against him.</p>
<p>Not only was the film banned, but prints in Italy were seized, all copies were ordered destroyed and Bertolucci received a suspended prison <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/film/Century_Of_Films/Story/0,4135,368319,00.html">sentence</a>.</p>
<h2>Manipulation</h2>
<p>The relationship between actors Schneider and Brando was marked by a great imbalance of power. Schneider was 19 when the movie was filmed, while Brando was 48. He was an international star, while she was an unknown. Brando was paid US$3 million, but Schneider received <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2016/12/05/movies/revisted-last-tango-in-paris-rape-scene-causes-internet-outcry.html">$4,000</a>. </p>
<p>Years after the film was released, Schneider revealed that she felt manipulated by Bertolucci. Reflecting on the experience in 2007, she told the <a href="http://www.dailymail.co.uk/tvshowbiz/article-469646/I-felt-raped-Brando.html">London Daily Mail</a>:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>“Some mornings on set Bertolucci would say hello and on other days, he wouldn’t say anything at all. I was too young to know better. Marlon later said he [too] felt manipulated, and he was Marlon Brando, so you can imagine how I felt. People thought I was the girl in the movie, but that wasn’t me.” </p>
</blockquote>
<p>In retrospect, she said, “I should have called my agent or had my lawyer come to the set, because you can’t force someone to do something that isn’t in the script, but at the time, I didn’t know that. Marlon said, ‘Maria, don’t worry, it’s just a movie,’ but I was crying real tears.”</p>
<h2>The aftermath</h2>
<p>Life after the film was difficult for Schneider. </p>
<blockquote>
<p>“I felt very sad because I was treated like a sex symbol but I wanted to be recognized as an actress. The whole scandal and aftermath of the film turned me a little crazy and I had a breakdown.” </p>
</blockquote>
<p>Though she starred in other films, including 1975’s “The Passenger” with Jack Nicholson, she struggled with depression and drug addiction and even attempted <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2011/02/04/movies/04schneider.html">suicide</a> on at least one occasion.</p>
<p>Throughout her subsequent <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2011/02/04/movies/04schneider.html">career</a>, Schneider served as an advocate for improving the experience of women in the film industry. She worked for an organization that aims to assist aging actors and directors who are down on their luck. After a career that included approximately 50 films, she died in 2011 at the age of 58. </p>
<h2>Enduring ethical insights</h2>
<p>Schneider’s story reveals several important lessons that deserve particular attention today, when so many reported cases of sexual manipulation occur behind the scenes. </p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/198857/original/file-20171212-9426-1y0nkgr.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/198857/original/file-20171212-9426-1y0nkgr.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=447&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/198857/original/file-20171212-9426-1y0nkgr.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=447&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/198857/original/file-20171212-9426-1y0nkgr.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=447&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/198857/original/file-20171212-9426-1y0nkgr.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=562&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/198857/original/file-20171212-9426-1y0nkgr.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=562&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/198857/original/file-20171212-9426-1y0nkgr.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=562&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">There are important lessons in Maria Schneider’s story.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">AP Photo/files</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>First, although the world of screenplays, cameras and big screens may seem pure make-believe, the actors whose bodies and feelings are portrayed on film remain real. What transpires in front of the camera, as in the case of Schneider, can have enduring and sometimes devastating consequences.</p>
<p>Second, everyone – perhaps especially those involved in the production of news and entertainment – needs to be reminded to take personal responsibility for the protection of human dignity. The mere fact that some individuals happen to be famous, powerful or wealthy in no way absolves them of the responsibility to respect the humanity of others. </p>
<p>In fact, the sense of being above others is one of the most important risk factors for inhumane conduct in any sphere of life, which is why great writers since <a href="https://www.owleyes.org/text/iliad/read/book-i">Homer</a> have been highlighting the common humanity of people of all cultures and walks of life. Philosophers such as <a href="http://classics.mit.edu/Plato/symposium.html">Plato</a> recognized thousands of years ago how problematic it is to treat any person as a tool for another’s gratification.</p>
<p>As my students and I discover in our study of philosophers, the double life of Brando’s character – apparently shared by many of today’s accused abusers – is an intrinsically dangerous one, at least morally speaking. Integrity means more than observing a code of behavior. It means being the same person in all spheres of life, whether in front of the camera or behind it, in a room full of people or one-on-one. </p>
<p>The instant we begin to think that it is acceptable to treat people as <a href="http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/j.1088-4963.1995.tb00032.x/abstract">objects</a> – in any setting, ever – is the moment we begin to lose our moral bearings. An object is a thing, not a person, and treating someone as an object stunts the humanity of everyone involved.</p>
<h2>Dangers of objectification</h2>
<p>Schneider longed to revisit her <a href="http://articles.latimes.com/2011/feb/04/local/la-me-maria-schneider-20110204">decision</a> to star in “Last Tango in Paris,” declaring that if she had the opportunity to do it over again, “I would have said no.” </p>
<p>Both Schneider’s experience as an actor in helping to create the film and the viewer’s experience of watching it provide powerful warnings against the dangers of objectification. Though each of us is biologically human, there is another dimension of our being that must be protected and enriched if we are to realize the full measure of our humanity.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/88921/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Richard Gunderman does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>The important lessons from one of the most notorious cases of sexual manipulation took place not off-screen but right in front of the camera.Richard Gunderman, Chancellor's Professor of Medicine, Liberal Arts, and Philanthropy, Indiana UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/881182017-11-28T23:23:33Z2017-11-28T23:23:33ZToxic masculinity fostered by misreadings of the classics<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/196791/original/file-20171128-28913-x4ldq.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Scene from the movie, Troy, loosely based on Homer's Iliad. </span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">(Troy)</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>Homer’s <em>Iliad</em> has been used by some men to hail the virtues of traditional masculinity in the 21st century. Typically, the famous work of literature serves as a sort of <a href="https://www.artofmanliness.com/2016/11/14/hector-achilles-two-paths-manliness">manual of manliness</a>.</p>
<p>Scholars are not immune to this tendency to privilege a certain vision of manhood. For example, in a now infamous <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dL3Hrwg3A3w">YouTube clip</a> from October 2017, Jordan Peterson, the controversial University of Toronto psychology professor and darling of the right’s “free speech” brigade, laments that men can’t “control crazy women” because, if dialogue fails between a man and woman, the man is “forbidden” to settle the dispute with physical violence. </p>
<p>This sentiment of control is representative of Peterson’s views of gender roles. <a href="http://www.chatelaine.com/opinion/jordan-peterson-gender/">More recently</a>, he has blamed the rise of sexual misconduct allegations against prominent figures such as Louis CK on the breakdown of marriage since it’s the primary institution within which sex takes place. </p>
<p>It sounds as if Peterson is advocating for state-sanctioned sexual assault within marriage (given the true history of marriage and gender relations). Let’s be charitable and assume that what he has in mind is the kind of marital relationship on display in the classics: Heroic men and their wives, based on love, yes, but also depictions of the man as a selfless champion warding off threats from other males and providing for his family in the midst of daily dangers. </p>
<p>A quick glance at Peterson’s lavishly funded <a href="https://www.patreon.com/jordanbpeterson">Patreon</a> account makes it clear that reclaiming the traditional Western humanities, and their attendant moral lessons, is one of his chief aims. He aims to start by listing 100 “great books of the world,” concentrating on “the classics of the Western canon.” Whether he is qualified to do so is open to debate; a recent <a href="https://thewalrus.ca/the-professor-of-piffle/">article in <em>The Walrus</em></a> accuses Peterson of quackery. </p>
<h2>Co-opting the classics for white supremacy</h2>
<p>As a classics professor, I am haunted by this co-optation of my discipline by the so-called “alt-right” and other self-styled “defenders of Western civilization.” My fellow classicist <a href="https://eidolon.pub/how-to-be-a-good-classicist-under-a-bad-emperor-6b848df6e54a">Donna Zuckerberg has eloquently argued</a> that we scholars have a lot of responsibility when it comes to tackling the demons of our discipline that “for many …is the study of one elite white man after another.” </p>
<p>Aside from longing for the (grossly misunderstood) glory days of a triumphantly Christian Europe that traced its heritage to the Greeks and Romans, the new champions of the West obsess over an idealized version of the past that bears little resemblance to the real Greece and Rome. </p>
<p>Another colleague, Sarah Bond, has done a marvellous job of pointing out the racism and white supremacy inherent in continuing to <a href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/drsarahbond/2017/04/27/whitewashing-ancient-statues-whiteness-racism-and-color-in-the-ancient-world/#2bb94aea75ad">highlight the white marble of ancient sculptures and denying their multi-hued reality</a>.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/196814/original/file-20171128-28866-1bcy5su.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/196814/original/file-20171128-28866-1bcy5su.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=800&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/196814/original/file-20171128-28866-1bcy5su.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=800&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/196814/original/file-20171128-28866-1bcy5su.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=800&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/196814/original/file-20171128-28866-1bcy5su.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1005&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/196814/original/file-20171128-28866-1bcy5su.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1005&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/196814/original/file-20171128-28866-1bcy5su.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1005&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Head of a Young Man. Centrale Montemartini, Rome, Italy. Colour and gilding is still visible uncovered in the area of Piazza Dante.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/">CC BY</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>The classical world furnishes us with examples of manhood, masculinity and heroism that have inspired some men to react against the supposed feminizing of Western culture, especially in the university setting. </p>
<p>The Greeks and Romans must really have known what it meant to be a man, and they celebrated manliness unabashedly. When I challenge traditional notions of Western manhood or Western civilization, I regularly receive <a href="https://twitter.com/vegard_sowilo/status/933481732963229696">Twitter responses</a> calling into question my own masculinity and fitness to teach the classical world. </p>
<p>Yet even the most classic and Western of all works, Homer’s <em>Iliad</em>, paints a far more nuanced picture of manhood than men like Peterson do. The <em>Iliad</em>, which also drew heavily on Eastern precursors, is a story that is largely at odds with today’s toxic masculinity.</p>
<h2>The Iliad: An epic, complex tale</h2>
<p>When as an undergraduate I first read the <em>Iliad</em>, an epic tale about the Trojan War, I found the final showdown between the opposing heroes Hector and Achilles an utter letdown. Hector, in fact, runs away rather than face his opponent. </p>
<p>Only after Achilles has chased Hector around the walls of Troy three full times does Hector turn to fight, and only then because the goddess Athena tricks Hector into thinking that a Trojan ally would be by his side. What a wimp, and so unlike the movie version with Eric Bana! At 21, I figured the ancients must not have been into the same things as modern moviegoers.</p>
<p>I have now read the <em>Iliad</em> many times since that first pass. Teaching the poem this term, in the original Greek to a class full of bright upper-level students, I am appreciating anew the depth of Hector’s portrayal at the hands of a poet who worked more than two-and-a-half millennia ago. </p>
<p>I don’t think readers of the <em>Iliad</em> are meant to feel uncritical sympathy for or defend the excessive masculinity of Achilles (though some would <a href="http://www.newagedman.com/4-lessons-in-manhood-from-achilles/">disagree</a>), who responded to an insult by Agamemnon with murderous wrath.</p>
<p>By using different Greek words for manliness, <a href="https://www.jstor.org/stable/3246260?seq=1#page_scan_tab_contents">Homer distinguished between Achilles’ toxic masculinity and appropriate expressions of manliness</a>. </p>
<p>Readers do, however, tend to recognize in Hector, the greatest Trojan warrior, a far more sympathetic figure, embodying classical manhood by fighting bravely and selflessly for his city and family against impossible odds and an implacable enemy.</p>
<p>Wolfgang Petersen’s 2004 film <a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0332452/"><em>Troy</em></a>, loosely based on the <em>Iliad</em>, misses the complexity of masculinity portrayed in the original. In the movie, Hector is the real hero of the Trojan War story. For all the movie’s flaws and distortions of its source material, audiences cannot fail to root for the gallant Hector, especially as portrayed by Bana. </p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/196789/original/file-20171128-28869-5gpe07.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/196789/original/file-20171128-28869-5gpe07.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/196789/original/file-20171128-28869-5gpe07.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/196789/original/file-20171128-28869-5gpe07.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/196789/original/file-20171128-28869-5gpe07.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/196789/original/file-20171128-28869-5gpe07.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/196789/original/file-20171128-28869-5gpe07.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Eric Bana in Troy.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">(Troy)</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>When Hector duels with Achilles (Brad Pitt), we know he will lose, but we feel for him much more than for the violent and enraged Achilles, and we admire his principled stand in front of Troy’s walls. </p>
<p>Hector tries to come to an understanding with Achilles that the victor will allow the vanquished the proper burial rites, only to be coldly rebuffed by the Greek champion. Yet Hector fights anyway, as his honour dictates he must. </p>
<p>This, after all, is how men settle problems, isn’t it? </p>
<h2>A complicated hero</h2>
<p>Homer’s Hector, though, is far more complex than Peterson’s caricature, and is a poor model for the new champions of “traditional” masculinity. </p>
<p>Not only does Hector’s nerve fail him at Achilles’ final approach, the Greek blazing in his armour like a bright and deadly star, the Trojan prince waits outside the safety of the walls not because of any higher principle or courage. </p>
<p>Rather, he waits because he has made the mistake of not ushering his soldiers into the city much earlier, which would have spared countless men a grisly death at Achilles’ hands. Hector must therefore save face lest some lesser man chide him. Some principled stand.</p>
<p>Before fleeing, Hector also ponders whether he should lay down his arms and attempt to strike a deal. Instead of fighting to the death, Hector considers offering Achilles not only Helen and the treasures she brought to Troy, but every last ounce of treasure in every last household in the city, effectively selling out all the Trojans instead of facing death himself. </p>
<p>Only after deliberating over these two options does he turn to run, perhaps dashing the expectations of undergraduates everywhere. </p>
<p>It’s taken me a few years, but I now see in Hector a profound and relatable humanity. Don’t we all act out of self-interest more often than we care to admit? Aren’t we all guilty of taking a stand when it’s easy and when we’re among friends, yet balk at the chance to speak out when there might be real repercussions? </p>
<p>Last summer, yet another darling of the masculine free-speechers, James Damore, made headlines. He <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2017/nov/16/james-damore-google-memo-interview-autism-regrets">was fired</a> from Google for circulating a 10-page memo in which he argued that women with their “higher levels of neuroticism” are less suited to tech fields than cold, calculating, rational men. </p>
<p>The <a href="https://www.wired.com/story/the-pernicious-science-of-james-damores-google-memo/">science behind Damore’s screed has been debunked</a>. </p>
<p>To add to this: The <em>Iliad</em> would be a poor choice to provide evidence in Damore’s favour. From the gut-wrenching fear and indecision in Hector’s breast, to the plaintive laments of his father, Priam, as he begs his son to come inside the city walls, and even to Achilles’ tearful and hyper-emotional response to Agamemnon’s insult, the heroes of Greek epic are terrible fodder to use to justify the toxic masculinity asserted by Peterson, Damore and their fans.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/88118/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Matthew A. Sears does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>A classics professor is haunted by the co-optation of his discipline by the so-called “alt-right,” toxic masculinity and other self-styled “defenders of Western civilization.”Matthew A. Sears, Associate Professor of Classics & Ancient History, University of New BrunswickLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.