(no subject)

[scrottie]

Going to try to finish reading the Iliad and Odyssey and as usual I Have Thoughts. From an Anthro perspective, it's neat to be able to read something so antique. The edition I'm reading has translation footnotes including notes about which passages were changed or omitted from the numerous copies of the complete and incomplete manuscripts found. It's unclear how long this survived in the oral tradition before being written down but depending on that span of time, it mutated to some degree. It's highly problematic in multiple ways, among them, owning people as rewards for spoils for war and glorification of war for the clear expressed motive of looting, including women. Course materials took a very different bent on it than I would have, praising it as a reflection on what it means to be human and as part of that, shunning gluttony and excess and praising hard work and suffering, ignoring that the sacrifices to the gods were just huge drunken feasts, and the gods themselves are drunk and feasting all of the time. A huge part of the storyline is the ruling elite refusing to give up slaves who just happen to be attractive women, and who themselves were kidnapped. Part of the course material is how, compared to the cyclopse, humans have laws and rules for hospitality, but a much larger story arch is just squabbling about which other city to slaughter and loot. Going from the Wikipedia article, which has fascinating anthro style excavation work, Troy was ruined many times, but kept clinging to the walls built in about the 3rd rebuild, sometimes expanding past, often concentrating within. Course materials harp on honor, but love and family and ustice factor in heavily too. The opening of the Illiad, priest dude wants whose abducted daughter back and is willing to pay a random for it, and is threatened and intimidated for even ask; his god, Apollo, takes his side and reins terror on the Greeks, forcing them to concede, but not without first resolving to take back what they think they're entitled from some other city. In some ways, this is a metaphor for the confederate union in the US. Greek democracy in Athena would come much later. This seems to be a heavily embellished recounting of actual history of twit rulers making war, and Greek over-reach ended the bronze age palace complex and rule by warmongering elites, but this does nothing but glorify the ruling elite. I've read Atlas Shrugged. The attempts to glorify the ruling class with virtue runs parallel, but a lot of things do that. In a lot of ways, it reads like propaganda.

Are the gods, drunken, feasting, making extremely bad decisions, feuding, demanding tribute and reverence, sleeping around, having demon offspring, being vain despite their enormous power, an allegory for the human leaders that could not be critiqued?