Wednesday, April 5, 2017

TFBT: Quotes and Links, Part XXI




"The rule is to know and keep silent.  Even if there is foul play, without the rule there is no game."  The Club Dumas by Reverte

"The requirements of the hero's death...is dictated not so much by the narrative traditions of epic but by the ritual traditions of cult."

"The principle…that a god's wrath against mortals takes precedence over a god's protection of those same mortals." Tobias Anthony Myers

"The pig persists in spite of every effort to give him wings". Apparently Adam Gopnik doesn't know about the mythic giant Chrysaor

"The person whose calls you always take? That's the relationship you're in. I hope you two are very happy together."  The Devil Wears Prada

"The most startling silence in the voluble divine community...is the absence of any reproach made to Thetis for her...intervention” Slatkin

"The most common (Homeric) verb root...for "answer, reply" ...is ameib-, which means "exchange". http://t.co/GPIx0AzoEN


"The modest lover in his dread of saying too much, very often says too little.” Casanova, Giacomo. “Memoirs of Casanova"

"The logic of the myth is cumulative, not reversible."    Leonard Muellner in the Anger of Achilles.

"The immortal gods have put between them and us the sweat that goes with virtue.” Works and Days 289"

"The Iliad is a whole world!" My friend Maya M

"The Iliad is a ritual that simultaneously honors Troy in the distant past and wipes it out in the performances moment." Tobias Myers

"The heroes stood out among them (the crowd) like bright stars among clouds." Argonauica 1.238-240

"The heart of the wise inclines to the right, but the heart of the fool to the left." Ecc 10:2  Hence conservative/right, liberal/left.

"The hair of Menelaus, xanthos/xanthe ‘golden’, is a marker of the hero’s future immortalization." https://t.co/yYMJTqUgIX
 
"The gods shall find there, wondrous fair, the golden tables amid the grass."  The Hauksbok"

"The god at Delphi doesn't speak.  He doesn't hide.  He speaks in signs."  Heraclitus

"The genius behind our Iliad's artistic unity is in large part the Greek epic tradition itself." Best of the Achaeans" Gregory Nagy

"The exclusion of Odysseus in the dual greeting would...remind ...of the enmity between him and Achilles" Best of the Achaeans  Chapter 3.19

"The Embassy Scene serves as the ultimate eye-opener for Achilles...Agamemnon, severely hard-pressed wants to buy him out" Stamatia Dova

"The dual constructions of IX 196-198 express a pointed exclusion of Odysseus from those who are most dear to Achilles" Gregory Nagy

"The difference between men and gods is conceived of more as a difference in degree rather than a difference in kind. " Lorenzo F. Garcia Jr.

"The difference between fiction and lying." she says irritably, "is the difference between imagination and laziness."  Diana Abu-Jaber

"The cloud-born...grow hot w/wine deep-drained...overthrowing their tables they start up...the affray" Thebaid 5.260 http://t.co/aR7XsUiE1L

"The bronze sky is beyond his reach forever, but he has found all the happiness our mortal race can come to."  Pythian 10, Pindar

"The arrows of Artemis hunt down Tityus, so that men might learn to yearn for things that are with their grasp." Pythian 3, Pindar

"The act of picking up a rock...always marked a decisive turn of the tide of battle in favour of the rock-wielder." https://t.co/XD1kiK85BP

"The absence of yes + time = no." The Good Wife


"Straight up, like the smoke from a sacrifice in the calm of dawn." The Club Dumas by Reverte

"Stop! Abandon your anger" Iliad IX 260

"Sophocles drew men as they ought to be; Euripides, as they were.”-Aristotle, Poetics 1460b35

"Son of Peleus had cast aside his wrath and had chosen friendliness; and each man gazed about to see how he might escape" Iliad 16.281-3

"So that the blessed gods...as before may have their way of life and their accustomed places apart from men" Hesiod frag. 204.102-103MW

"Slate-gray eyes...about as warm as a Scandinavian fjord at three in the morning."  The Club Dumas by Reverte

"Singing, eating garlic, smoking bad tobacco...most noxious, and drinking wine of their own country, as black as ink" http://t.co/cwp0uukP0u

 "She looked like the statue of Pandora before it had been quickened by the divine flame.”The Memoirs of Jacques Casanova de Seingalt,

3 comments:

  1. I think that the Embassy could have been an eye-opener for Achilles, but he kept his eyes shut. He was so obsessed about Agamemnon that he forgot to think of himself. He received a warning, failed to heed it and so made himself subject to tisis.

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  2. Maya,

    There is a lot of argument that Achilles understood the Embassy perfectly; Agamemnon was trying to buy him off and that snake Odysseus so proud of his "metis" finally admitted his needed Achilles "bie". But, it was too late.

    Achilles could have sailed home with Phoenix and Myrmidons the next today. He had not sworn the Oath Tyndareus But it was too late, he'd already chosen "unfailing glory" unaware that it would require his death and that of his therapon Patroclus.

    Bill

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  3. Bill,

    Achilles was perfectly aware that his unfailing glory would require his death. But he never contemplated the death of Patroclus until it became a fact. He took chances with the life of a philos.

    I think you are underestimating Odysseus and his metis. Both were needed to win the war (outside the Iliad's plot). I think also that Achilles is not so hostile to Odysseus as it seems to you. Some interpret the dual form used by Odysseus as excluding Phoenix rather than Odysseus, because Phoenix is one of Achilles' own people and so not a member of the Embassy.

    Of course, Agamemnon was trying to buy Achilles off. What should the poor king have done instead, resign and give his position to Achilles or introduce democracy :-) ? The problem of Achilles was that he centered his thoughts on Agamemnon, instead of caring himself and his loved ones. You say it was too late - it became so, for Achilles. Revenge is self-destructive. I do not subscribe to "Love your enemies", but I recognize the kernel of wisdom in it.

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