To The Ships, O Achaians

Week of November 28--December 2



Poised to Press to the End of the Iliad





Monday:  The Goal This Week is to Complete Our Reading Through Book 18

Discussion up through Book 11 (The Book of Wounds)
Overview or Preview of Book 12
Discussion of the PAPER--The Aristeia of Humanities Students in their Kleos

***Tonight:  Read Books 13 and 14***

Tuesday:  Book 12 Hektor smashes through the gates

Book 13  The Greeks rally and Poseidon encourages the Achaians
Book 14  Nestor meets wit the wounded Heroes; meanwhile, Zeus is distracted from the Trojan War

THE PAPER:  ideas, thoughts, initial plans...the brainstorming of the gates of lethargy.

***Tonight:  Read Books 15-16***

Wednesday:  Book 15  Hektor's Aristeia continues as he breaks through to the ships

Book 16  THE TURNING POINT OF THE ILIAD
What can Dr. Leithart show us?  Will he help us with our papers?

***Tonight:  With fires blazing at the very black ships, read Book 17  (or get caught up).***

Thursday:  Book 17 The Fight for the Body of Patroklos

Writing about The Iliad--Students rush in where epic poets fear to tread.

***Tonight:  With tears shed for Patroklos, read Book 18***

Friday:  Book 18      THE SHIELD OF ACHILLES

Read it, discuss it, explain it, and draw it.

We Will Finish The Iliad Next Week.

BE READY FOR A TEST ANY DAY AND EVERY DAY.

Write a brief journal entry after reading each book.  At home, on your own, to have and hold in class, for a possible grade.

"When modern readers ask what makes men and women keep reading the Iliad....Surely the answer lies in the unsparing beauty of the heroic vision that the poem perennially renews: it inspires heroic enterprises, whether the conquest of nations, explorations of consciousness or massive literary undertakings. To make the poem one's own is to enter the dimension of the heroic imagination, and the Iliad is able to issue the liberating call to such heroic possibility with less cultural or historical static than any other work one could name."

Glenn Arbery, "Soul and Image: The Single Honor of Achilles" 

Of Arms and Armaments--Battling with Spears and Rhetoric

Assignments for the week of November 14-18

This vase paints shows Diomedes (left), being aided by Athena, attacking Aeneas (right), being protected by Aprhodite.

Monday:  Discussion of The Iliad

Tuesday:  Visiting Teacher Dave Richardson:  The Greek Language--From Homer to the New Testament

Wednesday:  A wily surprise test on unsuspecting Trojans.

                     Discussion of The Iliad,

                      including the fine poetry ending Book 8

Thursday:    Words of Wisdom from Glenn Arbery concerning the Iliad, of course, and the topic of honor.

                     A pleasant retake of unpleasant tests on Book 3 and 4
               
Friday:  A Discussion of the Exemplary Rhetorical Discourses of Book 9

A Note from Agamemnon to the Achaians:

As a lion that stalks a hapless deer for days without obtaining a meal,

So we have lingered too long by the ships and have not pressed against the gates

of far-reaching Ilion, on the plains beyond the river Skamandros.

With times of feasting and respite before us in the days ahead, yet we must be armed

for dark days loom ahead and the mist of illiteracy unless we take up the ashen spear.

Meaning, folks, we will need to be on Book 18 by the end of the next week of school.

Notable Quotables:

"My own eyes are not enough for me, I will see through the eyes of others. Reality, even seen through the eyes of many, is not enough. I will see what others have invented. I regret that the brutes cannot write books. Very gladly would I learn what face things present to a mouse or a bee; more gladly still would I perceive the olfactory world charged with all the information and emotion it carries for a dog....

"But in reading great literature, I become a thousand men and yet remain myself. Like the night sky in the Greek poem, I see with a myriad eyes, but it is still I who see.  Here, as in worship, in love, in moral action, in knowing, I transcend myself, and am never more myself than when I do."
C. S. Lewis

Premiering on Friday, December 16

A

Western Christmas Corral

by

Ben House

As Written for the Humanities Class of Veritas Academy

With apologies to Mr. Charles Dickens, in hope that his heirs will not find out about this literary rustling.

Aresteia and Honor and the Bronze Ashen Spear

Assignments for the Week of November 7-11




Waging War Outside the Gates of Troy:  All in a Day's Work for Achaians



According to Homer, the Trojan War lasted ten years....It was the greatest war in history, involving at least 100,000 men in each army as well as 1,184 Greek ships....Ironically, the Iliad focuses on a pitched battle on the Trjan Plain, although most of the war was fought elsewhere and consisted of raids.  And the Iliad concentrates on only two months in the ninth year of the long conflict.

Barry Strauss, The Trojan War: A New History

Monday:
Discussion of Books 4 through 6:  The Wounding of Menelaus and the Aristeia of Diomedes.

Handout:  Key Issues from Books 3-5and Outline of Books 5 through 7

Tuesday:
 Opening Question:  What does it mean (or what might it have meant) for a mortal, like Diomedes, to wage war against not just the Trojan Army, but the Olympian gods themselves?
(How might it relate to the greater theme of the book?)

Book 6:  Key Achaian Victories and Hektor's Visit with Family

History from Spielvogel:  Survey Chapter 2, pages 30-48.  Write a one page synopsis of either Assyrians, Neo-Babylonians, or Persians.

For Tonight:  Read Book 7 of the Iliad

Wednesday: 
Synopses of Synopses:  The Ancient Near East: Peoples and Empires in Brief

Discussion of Book 7 of the Iliad. 

For Tonight:  Read Book 8 of the Iliad
& Read Leithart's Discussion of Books 1--8 from Heros.

Thursday:
Role Playing:  The Class as Peter Leithart, discussing Books 1--8.

Into the History of Greece:  A Race Across Spielvogel, Chapter 3, "The Civilization of the Greeks."

A Chart:  10 Defining Statements About Greek Civilization

For Tonight:  Read Book 9 of the Iliad

Friday: 
The Epitome of Rhetoric:  The Envoy to Achilleus

More About Greek Civilization


Warning:  All Readers of The Iliad of Homer are subject to being given a test over the more recent readings, themes, ideas, notes, or discussions.  Read, think, listen, take notes, reflect, remember.

Agamemnon, Leader of Men, forward into battle

The Best and the Bravest Fighting Men

Assignments for October 31--November 4

"Homer is the poet of all ages, all races, and all moods. To the Greeks, the epics were not only the best romances, the richest poetry; not only their oldest documents about their own history--they were also their Bible, their treasury of religious traditions and moral teaching.   With the Bible and Shakespeare, the Homeric poems are the best training for life."
from Andrew Lang's essay, "Homeric and the Study of Greek"

Monday
Thoughts taken from Homeric Greek: A Book for Beginners by Clyde Pharr
Characteristics of Epic Poetry
Questions and Discussion Points about Book 2
Discussion of Thersites

Tuesday
Continuation of the Discussion of Book 2
Discussion of Book 3
By Now, You Should Know Nearly All the Main Characters
Characteristics of Epic Poetry Quiz

Wednesday
Book 4


Thursday
Book 5

Friday
Book 6

 

When First There Stood in Division of Conflict...Achilles and Agamemnon

Assignments for the Week of October 24-28




And the will of Zeus was accomplished since that time when first there stood in division of conflict Atreus' son the lord of men and brilliant Achilleus.



 Painting above is by William Page, 1811-1885

http://americangallery.wordpress.com/2010/08/01/william-page-1811-1885/

"By the general consent of criticks, the first praise of genius is due to the writer of an epick poem, as it reqireds an assemblage of all the powers which are singly sufficient for other compositions."

Dr. Samuel Johnson

Monday:  Scholarly insights from an insightful scholar.

The Trojan War as a Whole--As Told by Edith Hamilton and Others

Glenn Arbery on The Iliad

Close Reading of Book One

Tuesday:  Scholarly insights from an insightful scholar.

Continue with the Trojan War

Finish with Book One and yet....

Wednesday:  Scholarly insights from an insightful scholar.

Test over Book One

Begin Discussion and Close Reading of Book Two

Thursday:  Scholarly insights from an insightful scholar.

Further exploration of Book Two

Preview of Book Three

Friday:  Scholarly insights from an insightful scholar.

Short, but formal and brilliant, paper containing a character sketch from Book One.

Readings for the Week:

Homer's Iliad--Books 2--3

Edith Hamilton's Mythology--Part Four--The Trojan War

Peter Leithart--Heroes of the City of Man--Ancient Epic, pages 43--51

How to Experience Poetic Beauty

Flee techno-gimickry and distraction.

Find a setting both aesthetic and comfortable.

Find a beverage that is robust and caffeinated.

Read with a desire to find what Allen Tate called "Knowledge carried to the heart."

Read aloud, re-read.

Supplement the assignments with other readings.

Notable and Quotable

The French poet and novelist Raymond Queneau (1903-1978) opined, "Every great work of literature is either The Iliad, that is, a story of conflict, strife, battle and war,  or The Odyssey, that is, a story of a journey or exile and, after much wandering, a homecoming."

The extraordinary power of The Iliad, Alberto Manguel says, comes from the fact that it holds in tension two truths: our fascination with war and our abhorrence of its cruelty: "Homer fully understood our ambiguous relationship to violence, our desire for it and our hatred of it, the beauty we ascribe to it and the horror it makes us feel."

From an Amazon reviewer on Alberto Manguel's Homer's the Iliad and the Odyssey: A Biography.

Robert Fagels' translations of Homer's epics.

Meet Homer...and Tremble

Assignments for the Week of October 17-21

The Father of Epic Poetry

Seven cities warred for Homer, being dead,
Who, living, had no roof to shroud his head.

Thomas Heywood in The Hierarchy of the Blessed Angels, 1635.

Monday
Book Reviews and Updates
Leitharts and Heavy Thoughts on Hesiod's Theogony
The Search for the Trojan War
A Visitor from our extension campus--Wheaton College

Readings: 
Student's Guide and Hesiod are now past due.
Get Leithart's introduction finished tonight.
Background materials for The Iliad

Tuesday
Guest Lecturer:  Martin Rizley
Genesis 10 and Background to the Nations
Read Book 1 of The Iliad for Thursday

Wednesday
No School Today in Honor of Veritas 2000 Graduate Zachary Ramsey
"Mr. House, how are you going to teach literature after we graduate?"
I have been trying to answer that question since 2000.

Thursday
Book One of The Iliad

wRATH!

Friday
Further efforts to unpack Book One of The Iliad

Read Books Two and Three by Tuesday of Next Week

But how did you come to have this skill about Homer only, and not about Hesiod or the other poets? Does not Homer speak of the same themes which all other poets handle? Is not war his great argument? and does he not speak of human society and of intercourse of men, good and bad, skilled and unskilled, and of the gods conversing with one another and with mankind, and about what happens in heaven and in the world below, and the generations of gods and heroes? Are not these the themes of which Homer sings?

Socrates, quoted in The Dialoges of Plato