Ancient Tales, The Odyssey

Ancient World Now:Joseph Campbell and Myth

Podcast Episodes On Vacation…..

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Happy New Year, everyone! Here’s to another great year of Ancient World Now!

Next week I’ll rebroadcast Episode #28 which gives a general background to death & the underworld in Ancient Greece.

Joseph Campbell transformed our lives in the Bill Moyers PBS series The Power of Myth. Campbell’s  The Hero with a Thousand Faces demonstrates that the stories we tell each other in print, in song, in speech, and in memory, are richly varied, yet can be reduced to the same basic tale called the monomyth. If you’ve never heard of Joseph Campbell, rush out and get any of his books, lectures, or videos and watch your world burst wide open! YouTube has some cool stuff. Check out the Joseph Campbell Foundation for an in-depth appreciation. Enjoy!

Ancient Tales, The Writing Life

Ancient World Now:Marine Boy & Neptina

Podcast Episodes On Vacation……

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The podcast is “o’er the river and through the woods” the weekends of Christmas and New Year’s, so enjoy the peace of the holidays, everyone! The technical difficulties with last week’s episode will be worked out & I’ll rebroadcast Episode #28 on Monday, January 10, 2011. Thanks for hanging around!

And for those of you not visiting “grandmother’s house”, I give you this early Japanese anime to brighten your spirits. This holiday, I rediscovered Marine Boy, one of my favorite shows when I was a kid. Riding Splasher the dolphin is Marine Boy and his friend Neptina. The story has all the elements of what we know and love in ancient tales. Seeing my old cartoon pals made me wonder about all the little things that contribute to a life. Mythological and ancient world references stuck with me—barnacle encrustations on the barque of my life, as I moved joyously through the waters of experience. Life is an adventure that we don’t know we are living until we are old. It is a story already written, full of symbolism and meaning, and if we are really lucky, we get a chance to rewind and analyze the passages with a key to understanding. Can you rewind and “see” the barnacle encrustations that make up who you are?

Click below to enjoy Marine Boy: Land of the Strange Vikings (1966)
Episode Part I
Episode Part II

Ancient Religions

Ancient World Now: Death & the Underworld in Ancient Greece

See January 9, 2011 for corresponding audio podcast.

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The Rise of the Greek Epic, by Oxford’s famous classicist Gilbert Murray, was first published in 1907. It is one of the smoothest reads I have ever encountered and Murray’s erudition is tempered with the charm of the everyday. He is genuine. I wish I could have known him. This Australian-born Oxford scholar once taught Greek at the University of Glasgow. He refused a knighthood in 1912, and was a friend to one of my all-time favorite rebels, George Bernard Shaw. Murray’s daughter, Rosalind, was a writer and married Arnold Toynbee, the famous historian. Ah, the good old days, when the mind was more important than the toys you had….

On the right is a photo of Gilbert Murray taking a break from reading, by Alfred Eisenstaedt (whose birthday is the same as mine: December 6).

From The Rise of the Greek Epic:

“Among the pre-Greek populations the most prevailing and important worship was that of the dead….But the men of the Migrations had left their father’s graves behind them….At times like these of the Migrations it was best not to bury your dead, unless indeed you could be sure of defending their graves….(the enemy) can dig up some of your fallen comrades from their graves….There is hardly anything in Greek antiquity which is so surrounded with intense feeling as this matter of the mutilation of the dead….There was one perfect way of saving your dead from all outrage. You could burn them into ultimate dust.”

This, then, is why you have burial practices and funereal burning existing side by side in ancient Greece. This also puts into perspective the horror with which both Greeks and Trojans looked upon Achilles’s treatment of Hector’s dead body. And, gives me more reason to hold Odysseus in contempt for leaving Elpenor’s body unburied on Circe’s island! This is an outrage!

Today’s episode is all about death and the underworld in ancient Greece. Fascinating and useful info for all you ancient world groupies out there, as death abounds in Homeric epic and Athenian tragedy. Enjoy! And check out Gilbert Murray! EPISODE WILL BROADCAST ON MONDAY, JANUARY 10TH.

The Odyssey

Ancient World Now:Daughter of Son of Bride of Odysseus in the Underworld

Click here for link to audio Episode #27.

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The towering figure of Clytemnestra dwarfs all other infamous gals from the ancient world. Here she is standing over Agamemnon’s body. What was her beef? She got steamed when Agamemnon sacrificed their daughter so the guys could get a fair wind for Troy all those years ago. Clytemnestra’s skills with the battle-axe were also the death of the prophetess slave and princess of Troy, Cassandra, as shown below on this piece of pottery.

Go back to the ancient tragedians to see the full-on misery of the house of Atreus unfold, or check out the powerful trilogy of films by Michael Cacoyannis, starring the spellbinding Irene Pappas as Electra.  Electra (1962) by Michael Cacoyannis. Not to spoil the story or anything, but Electra finally gets hers when she convinces her long-lost brother Orestes to assist her in the plot to avenge their father’s death and murder Agamemnon’s killers!

Clytemnestra tries to defend Aegisthus from Orestes, while on the right of this vase Electra’s happy arms welcome the act! In desperation, Clytemnestra even bares her breast to her son, hoping to dissuade him from killing his own mother. Alas! Puts our modern tabloids to shame.

The Iliad, The Odyssey

Ancient World Now:Son of Bride of Odysseus in the Underworld

Click here for direct link to audio Episode #26.

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Where is the justice for Ajax??? These images tell the story. To the right Odysseus and Ajax quarrel over the arms of Achilles, and to the left, on the vase, they get physical with each other. After Achilles’s death, his arms were to be awarded to “the best of the best”, but as you remember, Athena fixed the voting & Odysseus got  the goods. Ajax was  driven to suicide, as shown on this British Museum vase.

Here, finally, is Tecmessa, daughter of the Phrygian king Teuthras, covering the body of her beloved Ajax. This drinking cup is at the Getty Villa. Tears me apart just to look at it…..

And after all this, Odysseus thinks he can just stroll into Hades  and everything will be right between them. I don’t think so!

The Odyssey, The Writing Life

Ancient World Now:Bride of Odysseus in the Underworld

Click here for direct link to audio Episode #25.

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Today’s episode is dedicated to my loyal listeners in Michigan! Turns out the Detroit area is home to a slew of ancient world groupies! A free autographed copy of my book to the first 5 fans from Michigan to give me a shout-out at gwen@gwenminor.com. Thanks for listening!

Today I show you how to read an epic. You’ll learn how to break it down so you can analyze it in chunks, be it for fame, fortune, or fun! Impress your friends with your newfound ability to distinguish between an aristeia and a prolegomena! Actually, these two topoi are more readily found in The Iliad, than The Odyssey, which is our epic du jour.

The “sacrifice & prayers” topoi is one of the most common of topoi, along with the “catalogue or parade” of something or other. Book XI of The Odyssey begins with both. To the right you can see Odysseus with sword in hand, the blood gushing from the sacrificial animal, and Teiresias, the famous seer, getting ready to tell Odysseus “what it is”.

And like the sweet segments of an orange, whose nectar prevents scurvy, so too, Gwen Minor will separate out the various epic segments. Let’s roll!

Ancient Religions, The Odyssey

Ancient World Now:Odysseus in the Underworld

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Click here for direct link to audio Episode #24.

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Today I begin our reading of Book XI of The Odyssey, wherein Odysseus travels to the Underworld. He is one of a number of mortals to complete a round-trip to Hades and live to buy a round of drinks in celebration-Orpheus and Aeneas being a couple of others.

Over the next five weeks we will be studying this, one of the most famous books, of the most famous adventure story ever told.

Week 1: I read from Richmond Lattimore’s translation, lines 1-384.

Week 2: commentary on the reading

Week 3: I read from Richmond Lattimore’s translation, lines 385-640.

Week 4: commentary on the reading

Week 5: Death & The Underworld in Ancient Greece

Part of my commentary will be aimed at teaching you how to approach reading and analyzing a book in any ancient epic, such as The Iliad, The Odyssey, or The Aeneid.

So, sit back and enjoy!

Ancient Tales

Ancient World Now:Medea the Warrior

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Click here for direct link to audio Episode #23.

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Did Medea have a choice? Surely, you say, she could have just killed the princess and done enough damage to Jason’s hopes and dreams. Why, you ask, did she have to go and kill her children to top it all off?

Well, the warrior class from the Golden Age of Heroes would certainly have understood the insult to Medea’s ti’me. Ti’me (pronounced tee-may) was the honor code by which the ruling class lived—and when it was insulted, there was hell to pay! Achilles and Ajax both had their ti’me insulted. The entire Iliad is about Achilles’s honor being insulted: Sing, goddess, of the wrath of Achilles!

Medea’s children would have lived the rest of their lives in danger. Travelling with their cast-off mother to Athens would have made them forever outcasts. Outsiders. Obviously, they couldn’t go back to Colchis after Medea’s dramatic exit with her then-new beau, Jason. If they would have stayed in Corinth with Jason and his new gal, the step-mom’s kids would take precedence over Medea’s kids. That’s always hard. And if you know anything about the ruling families of Imperial Rome, you know that step-children are the first to be bumped off. Their very existence threatens the power of the new wife and her brood. And the power women had over their husbands was all about providing children (READ: male) for them.

Julius Caesar’s wife Calpurnia could not bear him children, so he was played like a card by Cleopatra, who knew her trump card was giving him a son, which she did. How horrible good Calpurnia must have felt, when she heard Cleopatra was going to bear her husband a child! And what about Henry VIII? English children know the outcome of his six wives when they memorize this: Divorced-beheaded-died, Divorced-beheaded-survived. All because the king needed a male heir!

But Medea does the abhorrent because she knows it is the only way to cripple Jason. Sure, if the princess dies, he can always get a new one. But if the princess dies and Jason’s own children die, Jason has to start from Square One. Medea achieves her end. She admits that it will destroy her, too, but she believes she has no choice.

So—what do you think?
Write in to let me know your  thoughts on these great questions
of honor and justice.

And how interesting to compare the
shy, innocent maiden Medea, in the beginning of  Apollonius of Rhodes’ Argonautika,  to the warrior Medea in Euripides’ play The Medea! Check it out!

Ancient Tales

Ancient World Now:The Medea-Die Kindermorderin

Click here for direct link to audio Episode #22.

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The Medea—why does Euripides add the article “The” to his play about Medea? A play called “Medea” would simply be about the character Medea, like Euripides’s play Alcestis or Hippolytus. But a play titled The Medea elevates the story from the personal to the universal. The Medea is about the rage of woman. If you have not experienced it, consider yourself lucky! Notice I did not say “a woman”. I left out the article—and what a difference it makes, n’est pas?

Medea was a princess of the Black Sea area called Colchis. But more than that, she was a powerful sorceress and granddaughter of Helios. One day a ship called the Argo came to Colchis and its captain was a man named Jason. The Argonauts included such well-known heroes as Orpheus, Castor and Polydeuces, Peleus, and the great Herakles (Hercules). Long story short: Medea helps Jason get the fabulous Golden Fleece, runs away with him, settles down and bears his children—and when Jason dumps her and sets himself up to marry a young princess, Medea exacts vengeance. Virgil had Medea in mind when he was writing of Queen Dido in The Aeneid, but Dido turned her rage inward and destroyed herself, while Medea gave new meaning to the phrase “Come to momma”! What was that song that came out a few years ago…Carrie Underwood’s Before He Cheats: “I took a Louisville slugger to both head lights. Slashed a hole in all 4 tires. And maybe next time he’ll think before he cheats…” That guy got off lucky!

The story of Jason and the Argonauts is older than The Iliad and in Homer’s time, it was universally known. Like all these great tales, there are numerous versions and side-stories. Thanks to Apollonios Rhodios, we get the many strands woven together. Today I will read to you from the 1898 edition of Bulfinch’s Age of Fable or Beauties of Mythology, which will set us up for next week’s Episode which delves into the Euripides’s play The Medea. Bulfinch merely glosses over the revenge sequence, but Euripides takes a magnifying glass and makes us look at the dark side of humanity until it bursts into flames! Euripides is the go-to man if you want to understand the noir ways of your fellow humans. It’s all about suffering with him! Just check out the daily news stories to see how what it is is what it was.

The Iliad

Ancient World Now:Andromache & Hector

Click here for direct link to audio Episode #21.

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The parting of Hector and Andromache ranks as one of the most touching scenes in literary history, if not the most. In Book 6 of The Iliad, before going on to the battlefield for the last time, Prince Hector says goodbye to his tearful wife, Andromache, and their son Astyanax. When Hector approaches, the baby screams with fear at the sight of the bronze helmet with its horsehair crest. Both mother and father burst into laughter at the sight. The deep tragedy of their situation is cut through with this stroke of humanity.

Homer is not on the side of the Greeks or on the side of the Trojans. Homer is on the side of humanity and wants us to feel the pain of war. Andromache, for thousands of years, has been the epitome of the loving wife. Her sad plea for Hector to remain with them is for naught. He must go out to fight. Though she has lost both parents and all of her brothers to war, Andromache has two more loved ones to lose. Hector, of course, is killed in a mad rage by Achilles, and Astyanax is ripped from his mother’s arms and thrown from the walls of Troy by the Greek soldiers.

The most touching moments in The Iliad bloom up from scenes involving the Trojan royal household. Walk with me through Book 6 & Book 22 of The Iliad to sample the literary techniques Homer uses to take us to the war inside the hearts and minds of the non-soldiers, from the dutiful maidservant to playboy Prince Paris. Have tissues handy!

Stories From the Ancient World