Fall 2011 - Greek and Roman Classics
I took ENL 3425 - Greek and Roman Classics in the fall of 2011, along with two other classes, 20th Century British Literature and the second semester of beginning Spanish (I took the first one in the spring, with the Literature and Film class). Not since spring 2009 had I attempted three classes in a single semester. That time I had to drop one of them before long, but this time I managed it, even though one of the classes was at a different campus. I suppose not having a girlfriend or attending AA meetings nearly daily helps, both of which were the case 3 1/2 years ago. This class met 9:30-12:20 at the Davie campus each Tuesday. I then had to go to the Boca campus (about a 27 mile drive from Davie) for my next class from 2:00-3:20, the 20th Century Brit Lit, get lunch somewhere along the way, and deal with, shall we say, competitive student parking once on campus. Soon after the second class was my Spanish class, from 4:00-5:50. (Thursdays were the same minus going down to Davie). This was a quite hectic schedule in terms of all the driving, but I grew to like it. I realize it's nothing compared to the course loads many have taken on, but for me, along with 25 or so hours of work a week (I had it purposely cut down for the semester), it was plenty. All this running around to and fro gave me a sense of purpose I'm lacking for these days. Not to mention, a few times I was able to get Char-Hut while in Davie. Also, sometimes before my 2 pm class I'd meet up with Travis, who was taking classes there that semester, and chat and smoke cigarettes. Since in all my years at FAU (and BCC, for that matter) I never really befriended anyone in my classes, it was good to see a familiar face again.
This class was taught by one of the most energetic and entertaining professors I've ever had, Dr. John Leeds. He always made every class lively, reading the material under discussion aloud in a theatrical, though not silly or hammy way. Above all, he was forceful. He'd hammer concepts and certain important facts into us until we could finish his sentences, which he often prompted us to do. He was very friendly and approachable before and after class, and during breaks, but I wouldn't say he encouraged a lot of discussion among us. The professor seemed to treat classes as lectures during which we could occasionally ask questions or interject with comments, but he rarely opened it up to us for us to debate, unlike Dr. Hagood, the American lit professor I had multiple classes with in 2008 and 2009. But because he was so charming, and clearly knew his stuff, I didn't mind. In fact, I preferred it, because I've been in too many classes where the professor takes a more laissez-faire approach, resulting in the most thoughtless, boorish, arrogant, preening, compulsively chatty, and other varieties of annoying students doing the majority of the talking. Granted, some professors manage this better than others. Fortunately, I've shared classes with plenty of bright, competent, and inquisitive students too.
I should also mention, as an aside, that the professor was unabashedly and outspokenly liberal in his politics, and at times persuasively connected the reading material with present-day concerns, thought to his credit he openly acknowledged his liberal point of view and didn't overtly try to force it on us. I've long heard about the leftist slant of academics but til now hadn't seen it so flamboyantly in person. For the record, I myself have long been a liberal, though I didn't closely follow politics until about the last year and a half. I tend to keep quiet about it because of all the partisan vitriol in the air these days, but one day I may write something more about it.
The reading list, roughly in order: Homer - The Iliad (Robert Fagles translation), Aeschylus - Oresteia (Agamemnon, Libation Bearers, Eumenides, Lattimore translation), Plato - Phaedrus (Christopher Rowe translation), Thucydides - Funeral Oration of Pericles and Melian dialogue from History of the Peloponnesian War, Livy - excerpts from the early part of History of Rome, including the story of Coriolanus, Cicero - Against Verres, I, On Duties, III (Michael Grant translation) Plautus - The Brothers Menaechmus and The Haunted House (Erich Segal translation). I had read most of the same translation of The Iliad in a fall 2007 class I dropped, so while I read most of it again, I wasn't terribly attentive about it. Everything else I got through okay, though I found the Aeschylus a little strange and opaque until we covered it in class, and I found Livy dull. I think something caused me to be very late one day and miss much of the Livy treatment in class, so, sorry, Livy. I wish we'd gotten to read certain authors like Herodotus, who's supposed to be a riot, or the sensationalistic Suetonius, chronicler of the early Roman emperors' vices, or Plutarch or Tacitus or Julius Caesar himself, but alas, time is short and choices have to be made. Plautus was the only one I'd never heard of, and he proved to be great fun. Overall, I enjoyed both the material and the class itself. And yes, I got an A. 2011 was my annus mirabilis after years of dropped and failed classes.
Our only homework was the reading, and our only grades were an in-class midterm and a final, both consisting of two essays from a choice of four (or, one could write a paper and have the tests count less, but I chose just the tests). As I recall, I was quite exhausted for the midterm, having been up all night writing a paper for the other class due later that day. On the final, I was better rested, having stayed over at my sister's nearby, and better prepared, availing myself of the option to fill up an index card with notes and quotes. All of the above reading material is covered in some way in my essays, except for Plato's Phaedrus, the Melian dialogue in Thucydides, and Cicero's Against Verres, which were on the questions I chose against answering. As a whole I like these essays and count them among my better writings for school, but I'll admit that they are also notably lopsided. They are strong on Homer, Plautus, and Cicero, and weak on their counterparts Aeschylus, Thucydides (i.e. the Funeral Oration of Pericles), and Livy. The professor too noticed this but graded them well anyway. The essays were untitled but I've made up some for the purpose of the cut links.
Midterm exam - 10/11/2011
Essay 1
In both the Iliad and the Oresteia, the individual will of certain characters comes into conflict with the collective will of their respective communities. In almost every instance, when someone’s personal initiatives run counter to prevailing public opinion, undesirable and often disastrous consequences ensue. The resolution of both works’ storylines has much to do with some recalcitrant individual putting his or her wishes aside in favor of the common good.
The Iliad begins with just such a clash of interests. Agamemnon, the Argive king, has taken Chryseis, daughter of the Apollo-worshiping priest Chryses, as his mistress or concubine, and refuses to give her back to her father. Chryses, in his impotent grief and anger, appeals to Apollo, who obliges him by unleashing a deadly plague on the Argives. As the death toll rises, pressure mounts on Agamemnon to give Chryseis back. When he finally relents, the plague is lifted. However, this does not entirely count as a case of self-effacement for the community’s well-being. Agamemnon is stubborn and selfish about the matter until public outcry gives him no choice.
While these may be the first events of the story, the real engine of the plot is the “rage of Achilles,” first manifest in his quarrel with Agamemnon over Briseis, Achilles’ lover. Agamemnon has taken Briseis to demonstrate his superior power over Achilles, and this makes Achilles furious and ready to kill Agamemnon. He would have succeeded in this if Athena had not intervened and stayed his hand. His supreme power to kill thwarted, Achilles spitefully vows to stay out of the fighting against the Trojans until the need of his entrance into the fray most glorifies him. As a result of this unremitting rage and self-will, countless men on the Argive, or Achaean, side perish who might have survived. This, however, will change.
On the Trojan side, Paris, in his blithe resolve to keep Helen despite the fact that this is endangering the very existence of Troy, earns the universal opprobrium of his countrymen, and even of his own brother Hector. Ruled as he is by Aphrodite, goddess of love and sex, he feels no shred of remorse for his destructive actions, and takes Hector’s constant criticism in gallant stride. Homer often describes Paris as “magnificent like a god,” and this signals the fact that he is also as narrowly and blindly self-interested as a god. He cannot seriously entertain a perspective outside his own, and so, again like a god, he never changes. As for Helen, while she too is ruled by Aphrodite, she evinces a lacerating remorse for her actions, calling herself a “bitch” and a “whore.” She could perhaps choose to go back to Menelaus and end the war, but like Paris she still ultimately holds herself to be above the community.
The resolution (insofar as there is one) of The Iliad has to do, as did its originating conflict, with Achilles. With the war now turned irreversibly in favor of the Achaeans and the best Trojan leader Hector dead, Achilles is mourning the death of his dear friend Patroclus. Still burning with anger, he massacres countless Trojans, whom he holds responsible, and defiles the body of Hector (the one most directly responsible) by dragging it around from a chariot. Hector’s father Priam, the Trojan king, looks on distraught, for the belief was that the body had to undergo proper funeral rites for the soul to gain a favorable fate in the afterlife. Priam, in desperation, goes personally to Achilles’ camp and begs for his son’s body back. He appeals on the basis of family and communal bonds, and Achilles, for once moved by sympathy, grants his wish. Amid all the tragedy, Achilles has overcome his blind egotistical rage, if only for the moment, and reintegrates himself into his community.
In the Oresteia, with its much more compressed storyline, there are far fewer actions, but they nonetheless have wide-ranging significance. It is in large part an allegory of the founding of a new system of justice in the wake of the Trojan War. The prevailing system until then had been that of blood retribution, “an eye for an eye” so to speak, which encouraged an individualistic vigilantism. Clytaemestra murders Agamemnon upon his return from Troy, on account of his earlier sacrifice of their daughter, Iphigenia, and perhaps his indiscreet flaunting about of his new mistress Cassandra. With no communal justice system in place to bring Agamemnon to account, she decides for herself that he must die. Her son Orestes in turn murders her, provoking the wrathful pursuit of the Furies, who stand for the spirit of vengeance on crimes against blood kid, and especially matricides. Aided by Apollo, he flees to Athens, where Athena presides over a trial by a jury of twelve common men.
It is significant that of the gods Athena should be the judge, for she is a synthesis of the feminine and masculine principles. The trial pits Orestes and his accomplice and attorney of sorts, Apollo, who represent the masculine, against the Furies or Eumenides, who stand for the feminine and matriarchal, blood-blound, aristocratic, individualist past. Neither side exactly prevails, except that Orestes is granted his life, his freedom from exile, and his house back. The outraged Eumenides, after venting their wounded pride, agree to a new and honored place in the community as fertility goddesses. Here as in The Iliad, harmony results when violently self-assertive characters put aside their own interests and join with those of the community.
Essay 2
In The Iliad, there are essentially two kinds of compulsion, internal and external. As Homer’s conception of freedom is an internal one, so the poem overwhelmingly concerns internal compulsion. To be compelled internally in The Iliad is to be bound by one’s own nature to behave in a certain way. By contrast, in the Oresteia compulsion chiefly comes from guilt, which functions in the play not as a feeling of remorse or regret, but as an impersonal, transmissible external force, indeed a kind of disease.
The Iliad features prominent roles in the action for Zeus and the other Olympian gods. Mortals and immortals alike ultimately appeal to and abide by the will of Zeus, though some, like Hera, may try to circumvent it by seduction or distraction. The gods do not just interact with, but interfere in the affairs of humans, treating them like an immensely interesting game, but a game no less. They cause otherwise impossible things to happen, like the staying of Achilles’ hand from Agamemnon despite the former’s rage, or the whisking away of Paris to the safety of the Trojan palace when he is endangered. They place limits, with their whims, on human external freedom. Yet they themselves, narrowly bound to the particular quality or superlative which is their nature, lack internal freedom. Ares, god of war, always wants battle, and Aphrodite always promotes sex.
So too the godlike humans, compelled to do no otherwise than they do, lack internal freedom. Paris and Helen, entirely ruled by Aphrodite, are fatally bound to their destructive affair. Achilles, supreme in the craft of war and killing, is ruled almost entirely by his violent rage, though, being half man and half divine, perhaps he is partly free and partly unfree. His change of heart during his encounter with Priam would attest to this. His freedom, in a sense, makes him one of the only significant characters. The gods, being immortal, are exempt from any lasting consequences their actions may have, and this combined with their self-absorbed, predictable natures, makes them trivial in the moral realm and nearly automatons as regards freedom. Ajax recognizes as much when he declares that if the gods are against you, you must only fight harder, the perfect expression of a quixotic and very human kind of freedom.
The Oresteia includes its own fatalistic sense of compulsion, but the emphasis is more external. Evil actions such as resulted in the curse on the House of Atreus initiate a line of hereditary guilt, tied very literally to blood. To expiate guilt, according to the old code of justice, one had to be murdered and transmit it to the killer, like a virus. This mode of compulsion resulted in a chain of homicides with no end in sight. Only with the possibility of other means of erasing guilt could there be true freedom, and this meant the establishment of a new justice system founded on a rationally based court of law, consisting of community.
Final exam - 12/1/2011
Essay 1
The plays of Plautus rely on and are indebted to Greek culture, yet they display a playful and irreverent attitude toward it. In the prologue to The Brothers Menaechmus Plautus acknowledges this influence, and situates himself among other comic writers working with the same models: “Now comic poets do this thing in every play:/ ’It all takes place in Athens, folks,’ is what they say./ So that way everything will seem more Greek to you.” Then he qualifies the statement: “This story’s Greekish,” though it takes place in Syracuse. Thus he identifies the farce that is to follow as being of a Greek nature, despite its Roman setting in Sicily. Similarly in the opening to The Haunted House he has Grumio say “Keep drinking day and night, and Greek-it-up like mad!” These tales of folly and trickery, these “comedies of errors,” Plautus can then claim, are not meant to question or disparage present day Roman society, but the earlier Greek one. This is in stark contrast to the solemn, patriotic, civil-minded ideas Greeks had about themselves, as expressed in Pericles’s Funeral Oration.
In particular, The Brothers Menaechmus pokes fun at the heroic, Homeric heritage of the Greeks. Menaechmus II says of the old man, father of Menaechmus I’s wife, “Of course, a friend of Agamemnon.” This is a mocking reference to the old man’s feebleness and senility. His purported association with Agamemnon is meant to identify him not as venerably wise and aged, but as decrepit and irrelevant. This jibe at Greek tradition is synechdochic of Plautus’s, and perhaps much of Roman society’s disposition toward their Greek predecessors: their influence exists, but as a risible remnant of the past, not as a living, vital force.
Along the same lines, The Brothers Menaechmus flouts Greek religiosity and mysticism. Menaechmus II, while being accosted by the old man, pretends to be hearing commands from Apollo, like a Delphic oracle: “Yes Apollo, ‘Do not spare thy fists in punching her face? That’s unless she hurries out of sight and quickly goes to hell! Yes, Apollo, I’ll obey you.” The idea of divine intervention and counsel is employed not for holy or prophetic purposes, but for mischievous ones.
The plays have an anarchic atmosphere, in which individuals with self-serving ends come into conflict and resolve their disputes with deception and violence. As Menaechmus II is being carried off by slaves the old man hired, Messenio laments “Do peaceful towns allow a free-born tourist to be seized in daylight?” The only reference in the play to laws and civic structures is an ironic one. Menaechmus I, returning from the Forum, sings “We have this tradition, we have this tradition,/ An irksome tradition.” He explains the case he was involved in, then sums up: “So I was delayed, forced to give legal aid, no evading this client of mine who had found me.” He sees public service not as an honor but as a nuisance. Furthermore, this obligation has interfered with the preferred course of his day: “I wanted to do you know what - and with whom - but he bound me and tied ropes around me.” For Plautus, civic duties are an imposition on leisure and an impediment to pleasure. In civic duty there is no dignity, only inconvenience and tedium.
In light of all this, Pericles’s Funeral Oration would be, in Plautus’s mind, a laughingstock. In Thucydides’s rendering, Pericles asserts “While we give no offense in our private intercourse, in our public acts we are prevented from doing wrong by fear; we respect the authorities and the laws, especially those which are ordained for the protection of the injured as well as the unwritten laws which bring upon the transgressor admitted dishonor.” The only real authority in Plautus, far from state authority or laws written or unwritten, is individual cunning. As in most comedy, law, reason, and propriety are flouted or suspended, and this overturning of the social order may be presumed to have a liberating, cathartic effect on the audience. In identifying this tomfoolery as Greek, Plautus displaces any suspicion that he might be undermining respect for Roman society.
Essay 2
In Cicero’s treatise On Duties, he is concerned to show, following his Stoic models from centuries earlier, that what is right and what is advantageous can never be in conflict, and indeed are always the same thing. Any conflict between the two is only apparent, though he admits of situations in which it may be difficult to determine where right lies.
His basic concept of right derives from a vision of worldwide human community, united by invisible bonds. Since all people have the same interest in common, to act against another is in fact to act against oneself. “To take something away from someone else - to profit by another’s loss,” he says, “is more unnatural than death, or destitution, or pain…. To begin with, this strikes at the roots of human society and fellowship.”
Cicero uses the word “natural” in a way perhaps opposed to modern ways of thinking, especially those informed by Darwinism. For Cicero, “natural” means being in accordance with reason, harmony, order, and the divine. It is an idealistic, prescriptive notion of the way things ought to be, as opposed to a realistic, descriptive idea of the way things are. For many of us, nature means “nature red in tooth and claw,” and our concept of the divine is opposed to precisely this sort of nature. Cicero, on the other hand, does not contrast nature and the divine this way. Like his Stoic predecessors, he is something of a pantheist.
According to such a conception, then, it is a matter of course that the right (that which is in keeping with a rational, divinely given order) should be identical with the advantageous. To act rightly is to act in agreement with this order, in which humanity is united as a connected fellowship. To harm this fellowship is to harm oneself, and it can never be advantageous to harm oneself.
In Livy’s story of Coriolanus, Gaius Marcius, a patrician senator, breaks away from Rome and goes to war with it after the “Secession of the Plebs” causes class unrest. Grain is being imported from Sicily, and the Senate is debating what prices to charge common people. Marcius says “If they want grain at the old price, they must give us back our old privileges. What have I done that I should see upstarts from the mob in office?” He chooses class interests over brotherly community, and when envoys are sent to him, his mother, wife, and children appear along with them, and his mother shames and rebukes him for this choice: “Have my long life and unhappy old age brought me to this, that I should see you first an exile, then the enemy of your country? Had you the heart to ravage the earth which bore and bred you? […] When Rome was before your eyes, did not the thought come to you, ‘Within these walls is my home, with the gods that watch over it - and my mother and my wife and my children?”
Cicero would have joined Marcius’s mother in this lament, for Marcius had indeed violated the bonds linking him to his family, his country, and his fellow men. In his pursuit of material advantage for himself alone, Marcius disregarded his wider connections, and this acted wrongly, ultimately harming himself as well.
After this, 20th Century British Literature and that's it!
This class was taught by one of the most energetic and entertaining professors I've ever had, Dr. John Leeds. He always made every class lively, reading the material under discussion aloud in a theatrical, though not silly or hammy way. Above all, he was forceful. He'd hammer concepts and certain important facts into us until we could finish his sentences, which he often prompted us to do. He was very friendly and approachable before and after class, and during breaks, but I wouldn't say he encouraged a lot of discussion among us. The professor seemed to treat classes as lectures during which we could occasionally ask questions or interject with comments, but he rarely opened it up to us for us to debate, unlike Dr. Hagood, the American lit professor I had multiple classes with in 2008 and 2009. But because he was so charming, and clearly knew his stuff, I didn't mind. In fact, I preferred it, because I've been in too many classes where the professor takes a more laissez-faire approach, resulting in the most thoughtless, boorish, arrogant, preening, compulsively chatty, and other varieties of annoying students doing the majority of the talking. Granted, some professors manage this better than others. Fortunately, I've shared classes with plenty of bright, competent, and inquisitive students too.
I should also mention, as an aside, that the professor was unabashedly and outspokenly liberal in his politics, and at times persuasively connected the reading material with present-day concerns, thought to his credit he openly acknowledged his liberal point of view and didn't overtly try to force it on us. I've long heard about the leftist slant of academics but til now hadn't seen it so flamboyantly in person. For the record, I myself have long been a liberal, though I didn't closely follow politics until about the last year and a half. I tend to keep quiet about it because of all the partisan vitriol in the air these days, but one day I may write something more about it.
The reading list, roughly in order: Homer - The Iliad (Robert Fagles translation), Aeschylus - Oresteia (Agamemnon, Libation Bearers, Eumenides, Lattimore translation), Plato - Phaedrus (Christopher Rowe translation), Thucydides - Funeral Oration of Pericles and Melian dialogue from History of the Peloponnesian War, Livy - excerpts from the early part of History of Rome, including the story of Coriolanus, Cicero - Against Verres, I, On Duties, III (Michael Grant translation) Plautus - The Brothers Menaechmus and The Haunted House (Erich Segal translation). I had read most of the same translation of The Iliad in a fall 2007 class I dropped, so while I read most of it again, I wasn't terribly attentive about it. Everything else I got through okay, though I found the Aeschylus a little strange and opaque until we covered it in class, and I found Livy dull. I think something caused me to be very late one day and miss much of the Livy treatment in class, so, sorry, Livy. I wish we'd gotten to read certain authors like Herodotus, who's supposed to be a riot, or the sensationalistic Suetonius, chronicler of the early Roman emperors' vices, or Plutarch or Tacitus or Julius Caesar himself, but alas, time is short and choices have to be made. Plautus was the only one I'd never heard of, and he proved to be great fun. Overall, I enjoyed both the material and the class itself. And yes, I got an A. 2011 was my annus mirabilis after years of dropped and failed classes.
Our only homework was the reading, and our only grades were an in-class midterm and a final, both consisting of two essays from a choice of four (or, one could write a paper and have the tests count less, but I chose just the tests). As I recall, I was quite exhausted for the midterm, having been up all night writing a paper for the other class due later that day. On the final, I was better rested, having stayed over at my sister's nearby, and better prepared, availing myself of the option to fill up an index card with notes and quotes. All of the above reading material is covered in some way in my essays, except for Plato's Phaedrus, the Melian dialogue in Thucydides, and Cicero's Against Verres, which were on the questions I chose against answering. As a whole I like these essays and count them among my better writings for school, but I'll admit that they are also notably lopsided. They are strong on Homer, Plautus, and Cicero, and weak on their counterparts Aeschylus, Thucydides (i.e. the Funeral Oration of Pericles), and Livy. The professor too noticed this but graded them well anyway. The essays were untitled but I've made up some for the purpose of the cut links.
Midterm exam - 10/11/2011
Essay 1
In both the Iliad and the Oresteia, the individual will of certain characters comes into conflict with the collective will of their respective communities. In almost every instance, when someone’s personal initiatives run counter to prevailing public opinion, undesirable and often disastrous consequences ensue. The resolution of both works’ storylines has much to do with some recalcitrant individual putting his or her wishes aside in favor of the common good.
The Iliad begins with just such a clash of interests. Agamemnon, the Argive king, has taken Chryseis, daughter of the Apollo-worshiping priest Chryses, as his mistress or concubine, and refuses to give her back to her father. Chryses, in his impotent grief and anger, appeals to Apollo, who obliges him by unleashing a deadly plague on the Argives. As the death toll rises, pressure mounts on Agamemnon to give Chryseis back. When he finally relents, the plague is lifted. However, this does not entirely count as a case of self-effacement for the community’s well-being. Agamemnon is stubborn and selfish about the matter until public outcry gives him no choice.
While these may be the first events of the story, the real engine of the plot is the “rage of Achilles,” first manifest in his quarrel with Agamemnon over Briseis, Achilles’ lover. Agamemnon has taken Briseis to demonstrate his superior power over Achilles, and this makes Achilles furious and ready to kill Agamemnon. He would have succeeded in this if Athena had not intervened and stayed his hand. His supreme power to kill thwarted, Achilles spitefully vows to stay out of the fighting against the Trojans until the need of his entrance into the fray most glorifies him. As a result of this unremitting rage and self-will, countless men on the Argive, or Achaean, side perish who might have survived. This, however, will change.
On the Trojan side, Paris, in his blithe resolve to keep Helen despite the fact that this is endangering the very existence of Troy, earns the universal opprobrium of his countrymen, and even of his own brother Hector. Ruled as he is by Aphrodite, goddess of love and sex, he feels no shred of remorse for his destructive actions, and takes Hector’s constant criticism in gallant stride. Homer often describes Paris as “magnificent like a god,” and this signals the fact that he is also as narrowly and blindly self-interested as a god. He cannot seriously entertain a perspective outside his own, and so, again like a god, he never changes. As for Helen, while she too is ruled by Aphrodite, she evinces a lacerating remorse for her actions, calling herself a “bitch” and a “whore.” She could perhaps choose to go back to Menelaus and end the war, but like Paris she still ultimately holds herself to be above the community.
The resolution (insofar as there is one) of The Iliad has to do, as did its originating conflict, with Achilles. With the war now turned irreversibly in favor of the Achaeans and the best Trojan leader Hector dead, Achilles is mourning the death of his dear friend Patroclus. Still burning with anger, he massacres countless Trojans, whom he holds responsible, and defiles the body of Hector (the one most directly responsible) by dragging it around from a chariot. Hector’s father Priam, the Trojan king, looks on distraught, for the belief was that the body had to undergo proper funeral rites for the soul to gain a favorable fate in the afterlife. Priam, in desperation, goes personally to Achilles’ camp and begs for his son’s body back. He appeals on the basis of family and communal bonds, and Achilles, for once moved by sympathy, grants his wish. Amid all the tragedy, Achilles has overcome his blind egotistical rage, if only for the moment, and reintegrates himself into his community.
In the Oresteia, with its much more compressed storyline, there are far fewer actions, but they nonetheless have wide-ranging significance. It is in large part an allegory of the founding of a new system of justice in the wake of the Trojan War. The prevailing system until then had been that of blood retribution, “an eye for an eye” so to speak, which encouraged an individualistic vigilantism. Clytaemestra murders Agamemnon upon his return from Troy, on account of his earlier sacrifice of their daughter, Iphigenia, and perhaps his indiscreet flaunting about of his new mistress Cassandra. With no communal justice system in place to bring Agamemnon to account, she decides for herself that he must die. Her son Orestes in turn murders her, provoking the wrathful pursuit of the Furies, who stand for the spirit of vengeance on crimes against blood kid, and especially matricides. Aided by Apollo, he flees to Athens, where Athena presides over a trial by a jury of twelve common men.
It is significant that of the gods Athena should be the judge, for she is a synthesis of the feminine and masculine principles. The trial pits Orestes and his accomplice and attorney of sorts, Apollo, who represent the masculine, against the Furies or Eumenides, who stand for the feminine and matriarchal, blood-blound, aristocratic, individualist past. Neither side exactly prevails, except that Orestes is granted his life, his freedom from exile, and his house back. The outraged Eumenides, after venting their wounded pride, agree to a new and honored place in the community as fertility goddesses. Here as in The Iliad, harmony results when violently self-assertive characters put aside their own interests and join with those of the community.
Essay 2
In The Iliad, there are essentially two kinds of compulsion, internal and external. As Homer’s conception of freedom is an internal one, so the poem overwhelmingly concerns internal compulsion. To be compelled internally in The Iliad is to be bound by one’s own nature to behave in a certain way. By contrast, in the Oresteia compulsion chiefly comes from guilt, which functions in the play not as a feeling of remorse or regret, but as an impersonal, transmissible external force, indeed a kind of disease.
The Iliad features prominent roles in the action for Zeus and the other Olympian gods. Mortals and immortals alike ultimately appeal to and abide by the will of Zeus, though some, like Hera, may try to circumvent it by seduction or distraction. The gods do not just interact with, but interfere in the affairs of humans, treating them like an immensely interesting game, but a game no less. They cause otherwise impossible things to happen, like the staying of Achilles’ hand from Agamemnon despite the former’s rage, or the whisking away of Paris to the safety of the Trojan palace when he is endangered. They place limits, with their whims, on human external freedom. Yet they themselves, narrowly bound to the particular quality or superlative which is their nature, lack internal freedom. Ares, god of war, always wants battle, and Aphrodite always promotes sex.
So too the godlike humans, compelled to do no otherwise than they do, lack internal freedom. Paris and Helen, entirely ruled by Aphrodite, are fatally bound to their destructive affair. Achilles, supreme in the craft of war and killing, is ruled almost entirely by his violent rage, though, being half man and half divine, perhaps he is partly free and partly unfree. His change of heart during his encounter with Priam would attest to this. His freedom, in a sense, makes him one of the only significant characters. The gods, being immortal, are exempt from any lasting consequences their actions may have, and this combined with their self-absorbed, predictable natures, makes them trivial in the moral realm and nearly automatons as regards freedom. Ajax recognizes as much when he declares that if the gods are against you, you must only fight harder, the perfect expression of a quixotic and very human kind of freedom.
The Oresteia includes its own fatalistic sense of compulsion, but the emphasis is more external. Evil actions such as resulted in the curse on the House of Atreus initiate a line of hereditary guilt, tied very literally to blood. To expiate guilt, according to the old code of justice, one had to be murdered and transmit it to the killer, like a virus. This mode of compulsion resulted in a chain of homicides with no end in sight. Only with the possibility of other means of erasing guilt could there be true freedom, and this meant the establishment of a new justice system founded on a rationally based court of law, consisting of community.
Final exam - 12/1/2011
Essay 1
The plays of Plautus rely on and are indebted to Greek culture, yet they display a playful and irreverent attitude toward it. In the prologue to The Brothers Menaechmus Plautus acknowledges this influence, and situates himself among other comic writers working with the same models: “Now comic poets do this thing in every play:/ ’It all takes place in Athens, folks,’ is what they say./ So that way everything will seem more Greek to you.” Then he qualifies the statement: “This story’s Greekish,” though it takes place in Syracuse. Thus he identifies the farce that is to follow as being of a Greek nature, despite its Roman setting in Sicily. Similarly in the opening to The Haunted House he has Grumio say “Keep drinking day and night, and Greek-it-up like mad!” These tales of folly and trickery, these “comedies of errors,” Plautus can then claim, are not meant to question or disparage present day Roman society, but the earlier Greek one. This is in stark contrast to the solemn, patriotic, civil-minded ideas Greeks had about themselves, as expressed in Pericles’s Funeral Oration.
In particular, The Brothers Menaechmus pokes fun at the heroic, Homeric heritage of the Greeks. Menaechmus II says of the old man, father of Menaechmus I’s wife, “Of course, a friend of Agamemnon.” This is a mocking reference to the old man’s feebleness and senility. His purported association with Agamemnon is meant to identify him not as venerably wise and aged, but as decrepit and irrelevant. This jibe at Greek tradition is synechdochic of Plautus’s, and perhaps much of Roman society’s disposition toward their Greek predecessors: their influence exists, but as a risible remnant of the past, not as a living, vital force.
Along the same lines, The Brothers Menaechmus flouts Greek religiosity and mysticism. Menaechmus II, while being accosted by the old man, pretends to be hearing commands from Apollo, like a Delphic oracle: “Yes Apollo, ‘Do not spare thy fists in punching her face? That’s unless she hurries out of sight and quickly goes to hell! Yes, Apollo, I’ll obey you.” The idea of divine intervention and counsel is employed not for holy or prophetic purposes, but for mischievous ones.
The plays have an anarchic atmosphere, in which individuals with self-serving ends come into conflict and resolve their disputes with deception and violence. As Menaechmus II is being carried off by slaves the old man hired, Messenio laments “Do peaceful towns allow a free-born tourist to be seized in daylight?” The only reference in the play to laws and civic structures is an ironic one. Menaechmus I, returning from the Forum, sings “We have this tradition, we have this tradition,/ An irksome tradition.” He explains the case he was involved in, then sums up: “So I was delayed, forced to give legal aid, no evading this client of mine who had found me.” He sees public service not as an honor but as a nuisance. Furthermore, this obligation has interfered with the preferred course of his day: “I wanted to do you know what - and with whom - but he bound me and tied ropes around me.” For Plautus, civic duties are an imposition on leisure and an impediment to pleasure. In civic duty there is no dignity, only inconvenience and tedium.
In light of all this, Pericles’s Funeral Oration would be, in Plautus’s mind, a laughingstock. In Thucydides’s rendering, Pericles asserts “While we give no offense in our private intercourse, in our public acts we are prevented from doing wrong by fear; we respect the authorities and the laws, especially those which are ordained for the protection of the injured as well as the unwritten laws which bring upon the transgressor admitted dishonor.” The only real authority in Plautus, far from state authority or laws written or unwritten, is individual cunning. As in most comedy, law, reason, and propriety are flouted or suspended, and this overturning of the social order may be presumed to have a liberating, cathartic effect on the audience. In identifying this tomfoolery as Greek, Plautus displaces any suspicion that he might be undermining respect for Roman society.
Essay 2
In Cicero’s treatise On Duties, he is concerned to show, following his Stoic models from centuries earlier, that what is right and what is advantageous can never be in conflict, and indeed are always the same thing. Any conflict between the two is only apparent, though he admits of situations in which it may be difficult to determine where right lies.
His basic concept of right derives from a vision of worldwide human community, united by invisible bonds. Since all people have the same interest in common, to act against another is in fact to act against oneself. “To take something away from someone else - to profit by another’s loss,” he says, “is more unnatural than death, or destitution, or pain…. To begin with, this strikes at the roots of human society and fellowship.”
Cicero uses the word “natural” in a way perhaps opposed to modern ways of thinking, especially those informed by Darwinism. For Cicero, “natural” means being in accordance with reason, harmony, order, and the divine. It is an idealistic, prescriptive notion of the way things ought to be, as opposed to a realistic, descriptive idea of the way things are. For many of us, nature means “nature red in tooth and claw,” and our concept of the divine is opposed to precisely this sort of nature. Cicero, on the other hand, does not contrast nature and the divine this way. Like his Stoic predecessors, he is something of a pantheist.
According to such a conception, then, it is a matter of course that the right (that which is in keeping with a rational, divinely given order) should be identical with the advantageous. To act rightly is to act in agreement with this order, in which humanity is united as a connected fellowship. To harm this fellowship is to harm oneself, and it can never be advantageous to harm oneself.
In Livy’s story of Coriolanus, Gaius Marcius, a patrician senator, breaks away from Rome and goes to war with it after the “Secession of the Plebs” causes class unrest. Grain is being imported from Sicily, and the Senate is debating what prices to charge common people. Marcius says “If they want grain at the old price, they must give us back our old privileges. What have I done that I should see upstarts from the mob in office?” He chooses class interests over brotherly community, and when envoys are sent to him, his mother, wife, and children appear along with them, and his mother shames and rebukes him for this choice: “Have my long life and unhappy old age brought me to this, that I should see you first an exile, then the enemy of your country? Had you the heart to ravage the earth which bore and bred you? […] When Rome was before your eyes, did not the thought come to you, ‘Within these walls is my home, with the gods that watch over it - and my mother and my wife and my children?”
Cicero would have joined Marcius’s mother in this lament, for Marcius had indeed violated the bonds linking him to his family, his country, and his fellow men. In his pursuit of material advantage for himself alone, Marcius disregarded his wider connections, and this acted wrongly, ultimately harming himself as well.
After this, 20th Century British Literature and that's it!