Theme 4- war Flashcards
the romantic view; homer glorifies war
The Romantics thought Homer was interested in glorifying war rather than showing its tragedy. E.g.:
BLAKE, describing the heroes of classical epics: ‘silly Greek and Latin slaves of the sword!’
SOUTHEY dismissed the ‘book after book of butchery’ we find in the epic.
Is there any evidence to support this position?
Books 4, 16, 17: Homer’s apparent love for gory imagery.
Books 4 and 16: use of dark humour in the context of killing.
A general point: Homer’s interest in warriors and warrior virtues.
does homer actually see war as tragic
A case can be made here to challenge the Romantics. Evidence?
Book 4, Homer describes battle commencing, sympathetic to suffering.
Book 18, the shield of Achilles: war depicted as destructive, not glorious.
Book 6, Hector meeting his family; and Book 22, the grief for Hector.
Book 22, Priam’s summary of the evils of war in his first speech.
Book 4, overview of the battlefield.
Book 24, the war and its anxieties continue, despite the reconciliation.
Can we use their values and context to explain why Romantics may have overlooked this evidence?
Dislike for the Classics in general probably prejudiced them.
They lived in a time of violence (French Revolution, Napoleon). War was distasteful to them and so passages of violence caused them to react.
does homer find war glorious or tragic
The evidence supports both possibilities: see the previous slides.
How do we then account for this in a way that makes sense? Could Homer really find war both glorious and tragic at the same time?
What might the Analysts have said?
Is there another way to account for it?
Could it be simply that war can be both glorious and tragic at the same time? If so, then Homer may simply be presenting war as he sees it: a kind of paradox.
does homer find war boring
This was another theme of Romantic criticism of the epic. In particular, SOUTHEY complained about the ‘book after book of butchery’, implying that he found it monotonous. More explicitly, he said that the relentless focus on warriors and killing was ‘useless and wearying’.
key passage (book 4 homers intreat in gory details to provide entertainment)
Then Priam’s son, Antiphus of the glittering cuirass, replied with a spear-throw from the ranks. He missed Ajax, but struck Odysseus’s loyal comrade Leucus in the groin as he was hauling Simoeisius away. As he fell, the body slipped from his grasp landing beneath him. Odysseus was enraged by his death, and rushed from the ranks towards the enemy, clad in his burnished bronze. There, after an appraising glance, he hurled his bright spear, so that the Trojans shrank back from his onset. His shaft was not cast in vain, striking Democoon, Priam’s natural son, who had rallied to the cause from his stud-farm and swift-hoofed mares at Abydus. The spear, hurled in anger at a comrade’s death, struck him on one temple, the bronze point exiting through the other so that darkness dimmed his eyes, and he fell with a thudding clang of armour. Great Hector and the Trojan front gave ground, while the Greeks, shouting in triumph, dragged the bodies clear and advanced
key passage (book 16 dark humour in the battle scene)
Patroclus at bay leapt from his chariot, his spear in his left hand, a large jagged gleaming stone clutched in his right. Planting his feet firmly, his fear of his foe swiftly dispelled, he hurled it with perfect aim, and struck Hector’s charioteer, Cebriones, a natural son of great Priam, in the forehead, as he grasped the reins. The stone crushed his brow, shattering the bone, and his eyeballs fell in the dust at his feet. He plunged like a diver from the sturdy chariot, and his spirit fled his bones. Then Patroclus, tamer of horses, how you mocked him: ‘There, what an acrobat, how skilfully he dives! So perfectly executed he’d do a fine job aboard ship, fishing oysters from teeming depths, despite the weather. The Trojans it seems make good divers too.’
key passage (book 4 description of the moment when the battle is joined)
Ares urged on the Trojans, bright-eyed Athene the Greeks, and Terror, Panic, and Strife were there, Strife the sister and ally to man-killer Ares, she whose anger never ceases, who barely raises her head at first, but later lifts it to the high heavens though her feet still trample the earth. Now she brought the evil of war among them, as she sped through the ranks, filling the air with the groans of dying men.
So they met in fury with a mighty crash, with the clash of spears, shields-bosses, bronze-clad warriors, till the last moans of the fallen mingled with the victory cries of their killers, and the earth ran red with blood. Like the sound a shepherd deep in the mountains hears; the mighty clash of two wintry torrents that pour down from high sources to their valleys’ meeting place in a deep ravine; such was the tumult raised by those armies toiling together in battle.
key passage (lliad 18 description of war on the shield of achillies)
A pitched battle ensued on the banks of the river, and volleys of bronze spears were exchanged. Strife and Panic were cooperating, and there was the dreadful Demon of Death, laying her hands on a freshly-wounded man who was still alive and on another not yet wounded, and dragging a body by its foot through the crowd. The cloak on her shoulders was red with human blood; and the warriors met and fought and dragged away each other’s dead, just as real warriors do.
key passage (book 4 overview of the battlefield to emphasise tragic loss)
So, in the dirt they lay beside each other, among the host of dead, Peiros the Thracian general, and Diores leader of the bronze-clad Epeians. That was no skirmish to make light of, as some unwounded warrior might whom Pallas Athene led into battle, shielding him from the hail of missiles and all the sharp sword-thrusts, for a host of Greeks and Trojans lay there on that day, stretched out side by side, their faces in the dust.
