Achaeans

Rage, the first word in The Iliad, is defined as a violent or uncontrolled anger. Homer fills this epic poem with the theme of rage. Correspondingly, it is Achilles’ rage in the ninth year of the Trojan War that sets the action of this epic. As Simone Weil expresses in the essay The Iliad or the Poem of Force, the “center” of the epic is the force or violence that dehumanizes both parties involved in the war. That force, which is the sun of the poem, is orbited by rage: Achilles’ incentive that…

Merwin gives Paris a sympathetic back story in order to fully harness the tragedy of Paris’ choice when her omniscient narrator describes the thoughts of the goddesses and the description of how his choice will ultimately bring him only pain. The decision to use Paris as the judge is completely unfair to him; placing the burden of angering two goddesses on one weak mortal man is a great injustice, but because they are gods, they have no real concept of human justice. The thoughts of the…

For my final project, I will compare two pieces of art and show the comparisons and differences that they have in the Greek ancient period and the modern period of the same theme “the representation of the Trojan war”. The visual work art is a bilingual art because it was made with the participation of two artists, Andokides (Red figure) and the Lysippides (Black figure) and it is titled “Achilles and Ajax Playing a Dice a Game”. It was painted in 525–520 B.C in Greece and it represents the…

Essay During Odysseus journey back to Ithaca, he encounters many different challenges along the way. Odysseus approach to these numerous conflicts tells a lot about his character. Odysseus is a confident, skillful, intelligent and an arrogant man when he faces some difficult situations. When he visits the Cyclops, to learn if he was friendly or hostile, Odysseus showed confidence when the Cyclops ask who had intruded in his cave. “ We felt a pressure on our hearts, in dread of that deep…

and the sole legacy of their ancestors. One such story from the early Ancient Greek civilization is Homer’s Iliad, an epic originally performed orally before it was written down centuries later. The Iliad provides account of the war between the Achaeans and the Trojans, also known as the Trojan War, and the fates of the heroes who fought and died on both sides. Without writing, memorized epics like the Iliad were the only cultural and historical legacy available for many…

In the story of “The Iliad” by Homer’s, Agamemnon is a king and a warrior. Priam is also a king, but is not a warrior. Agamemnon has a bit more power than Priam only because he can get a little taste of what both experiences of being a king and a warrior is like. In my opinion, Agamemnon may have more power but is his strength as strong as Priam strength. If Priam strength is stronger, there is a slight chance that Priam can destroy Agamemnon. For example, Smart vs. Strong. It is most likely the…

The religion of ancient Greece is unlike most religions that we have in modern society today, especially American society. This country was built on Christianity, and so imagining how the Greeks worked can be difficult. They had no sacred religious texts; the descriptions of their gods came from Homer’s and Hesiod’s works (Schironi, September 29). They were polytheistic and the lack of sacred texts led to syncretism, adding more gods from different places. The gods were immortal beings that…

Helen of Troy will always be a notable character from ancient Greek literature. From the moment Homer first spoke of her, certain things about her will be forever more written in stone. She will always be female, the wife of Menalaus, cause of the Trojan War, beautiful, and the daughter of Zeus. These are things that very few orators and authors dare to meddle with and those who do come out perhaps not as well of on the other end of things. There are however, the reactions and the inferences to…

merely a subcategory of fate and Weil alleviated from that perspective. There is one character within the Iliad who most clearly demonstrates the subject of fate and the recognition of humanity. Achilles, a superhuman and the mightiest of all the Achaeans, is the son of Thetis, a sea nymph, and Peleus, the mortal king of the Myrmidons. His emotions are uncontrollable as the sea. He is full of endless pride and rage that stretches as far…

When reading this paper, it is important to keep in mind that many of the sources that were used were written after the events had already occurred. With saying that, one should still take into consideration that these pieces of written history are valuable and can shed some light on Roman history, culture, ideologies, and beliefs. Most of the information in this paper comes from the works of Polybius, who lived between 200 and 118 BCE, Livy, who lived between 59 and 17 BCE, and the Twelve…