[Music] it happened long ago and it happened far away the moral of the story has been lost until today i feel we shouldn't let the past complicated now we'll have a stack of artifacts that help us show us how we want our hopes and soggy dreams because wow [Music] [Music] is [Music] go okay folks so good morning i want to briefly review the different periods of time in greek history that we have been talking about uh if you were to go back not to the beginning of time not the beginning of civilization but if you were to go back about 3 600 years you would be in greece in what we call the mycenaean period or the mycenaean age going from about 1600 to 1100 bc all the dates here will be bc this is a period where greece is organized not as a single state a single nation there is never a point where great greece is a united country in the ancient world in the mighty name period you have what we call interdependent kingdoms meaning there are many small kingdoms in greece and each king is ruler of his own territory so you'll have a king of sparta rules his territory king of thieves rules his territory but one of them the king of the city of mycenae is dominant he's not an emperor the other kings are true rulers of their kingdoms he's not the king of mighty cannot give an order to the king of sparta or the king of fifia but the king of mice and naked exercise pressure all right so he is uh maybe a first among equals in in that time it's a time of great wealth and great international importance there are very complex networks of international trade at the time and mycenae and greece who they call themselves the achaeans or the danaeans these people are at the center of that trade the prominent city of mycenae uh in in one of our readings about that the chapter was called mycenae rich in gold it's a very wealthy place but it's not a place with many many gold artifacts found and yet it's not a place that sits on top of many many gold mines which is a sign that this complex international trade is going on they were illiterate people but a people who produced no literature they wrote and we can read their writings but what were all their writings gracie it was like um records of trade and all that kind of thing it wasn't poetry or anything i guess i don't know what i'm looking for but yeah yeah yeah so you open up something that comes to us from the mycenaean period from these akans or and it says karina got 16 liters of olive oil and matthew got 14 liters of olive oil not not the kind of stuff you get tattooed on your arm because it inspires you the mycenaean era came to an end the akan or danaean culture who we call mycenaeans for them mycenae is just one city these people their civilization collapsed just like all of the other big civilizations of the period except for egypt egypt held on but all the other great societies came to an end right around 1100 bc greece enters a dark age the dark age you've got the collapse of all these mycenaean kingdoms you've got a total end to literacy they forget how to read and write no one is left who can read and write great reduction in wealth in power and in social stability much of the wealth was built up because of these super complex international trade networks and when we can no longer do that then we're no longer in the business of amassing wealth we're in the business of staying alive survival becomes the number one priority it's a time of a great simplification in art and architecture so they can no longer build the massive structures that they could in the mycenaean period this i want to be clear this is not from the dark age it's art about the dark age if you were to see art from the dark age it will be very very simple rudimentary almost childlike there is a mythologization of memory a mythologization of their history now when i do that when i take the word myth and i turn it into a verb what is it you think i'm claiming when i say there's a mythologization of it so as the as the stories of the period are handed down from mouth to mouth the stories grow the stories expand and the stories take on all of these mythical elements to the point where there is now no way to separate myth from that in any of the stories from the period next we move on to the archaic age we didn't stay in the darkness i say we even though i'm not rika they didn't stay in the darkness the archaic age running from about 750 to about 480. you see the reinvention of writing the greeks borrow an alphabet from the phoenicians and then adapt it to fit their language all through these periods the same language is being spoken different dialects same language as being spoken what happens here is they reinvent an alphabet so now that they can write in their language this is the period where the polis emerges the city-state as the central feature of the social structure and the two largest poli are sparta are two most prominent polite or sparta and athens which we will look at more closely after we talk homer it's a period of colonization greece is not especially somebody playing music turn it off grievous grease is not especially fertile to survive to support a big population they've got to move overseas so we start colonizing the western coast of asia modern-day turkey they also move that's to their east to the west they start colonizing sicily italy compared to pan hellenism what was panhellenism pan hellenism well hello matthew yes all greeks should be united in police that's like one city's negative thing okay okay one group a political body sure it's not quite that extreme although that that would be where panhellenism is going so hellas means greece that's their word oh crazy was it that like they're all connected through the fact that they are greek yes yes so i guess the ultimate culmination of that would be uniting in a single nation that's not what happens for ages and ages and ages so panhellenism means all greek you have two forces in tension one is the independence the rugged independence of each polis you're not a citizen of greece you're a citizen of sparta or athens or court or thieves and they're all independent the other tension in the other direction is a growing understanding that despite the fact that we're all from different independent city-states there are things we have in common we are all greeks we speak the same language different dialects we worship the same gods we compete in the same religious slash athletic festivals such as the olympics and we have a shared history a sense that what happened in the age of heroes because as far as we're concerned the myths about the mycenaean era are just what our history is what happened in the age of heroes happened to all of our ancestors and we're in this together so panhellenism and independence are intention pulling against each other the shared history we owe especially to this fellow homer homer who flourished means he was active around 750 bc his epic poems the iliad and the odyssey are the oldest literature of greece therefore of all of europe and therefore of western civilization despite being written sometime around 750 the stories they tell are set 500 years earlier at the at the height of the mycenaean period and the stories tell of a massive conflict between a league of a canaan kings a canyons that's what they call themselves at the time a league of the can kings and the and the city of willoughsa across the sea in western asia walloosa which is known to the greeks as ilios or troy the iliad just means about illios and you'll see you won't see butloos that's their own name for their city you'll see ilios and troy used alternately in both documents they both contained and this we talked about when we were introduced to epic poetry they both contain material that has been handed out for generations and generations and generations that homer is expertly remixing and stitching together with his own original contributions to hold it all together homer is the only narrative account we have in this period because they wrote receipts and not stories so homer is and there are moments now you'll see when we get into it i'll ask you after we read a book or so like what why is it hard to separate fat from fiction in the iliad and it will be pretty clear to you why that is so difficult and yet there is real information contained in the iliad that archaeologist schliemann he basically was able to discover troy by opening the iliad and going where it told him to go and then digging like no she was right it was there only narrative account of the mycenaean period i want to introduce a new term for you before we move forward the term is hermeneutics hermeneutics means a method of interpretation the hermeneutic that you use is your tool that you use to help you understand data what kind of data a written text it could be events in history it could be the meaning of the behavior of people in your life any time when data alone is not enough you need to make meaning not just memorize a list of facts but build a story you apply a hermeneutic that is your method of interpretation when when the events to be interpreted involve major transitions cultural transitions here from one period to the next in our own life we have major transitions some of you here in just a few short months will graduate high school that's a major transition point in your life on that day the next day when you wake up your life is going to be very different the two hermeneutics that stand in tension when we're trying to understand transition points are the hermeneutic of rupture and the hermeneutic of continuity a hermeneutic of rupture encourages us to focus on what's different how today is unlike yesterday the day after you graduate you begin a new life the hermeneutic of rupture would say the hermeneutical continuity wants us to focus on what remains the same the hermeneutic continuity will say the day after you graduate yes things have changed but you are still you and you are still continuing in the same story in periods of cultural transition a hermeneutic of rupture would say that you know this each of these eras is a new civilization right some something new is happening in the world and a hermeneutical continuity would say no it's the same people it's the same people it's the same story being told and just different chapters in the same story i would i would recommend as we think about these two ways of viewing historical transition rupture versus continuity that we try to hold that tension hold them both in our minds and not lean too heavily to one side or the other it's in the archaic period that we get literature we look at hesi we're about to look at homer and we've said already that literature both preserves and takes over the older orator when i say literature takes over orature what does that mean [Music] meaning like when you um when you write it all down it's kind of like putting what's already known in keeping it there but by that it's also like erasing everything that came before it so it's keeping some of it like stone hard facts not facts but like it's keeping it the way it is but it erases everything else that kind of like changed with orature sure your story is stories exist in a living tradition and they grow and they develop the written word is not like that give me an led iliad comes out iliad becomes the version because literature once it becomes popular takes over all the alternate versions in our mind which is part of the key to homer's influence homer both witnesses to and dictates greek values for the entire period in which he is the dominant cultural voice so he witnesses too he's a product of his time so his values the things that he cherishes the things he thinks are important are largely the values of his culture greece at the early arcade king period but culture is a living thing cultural values change and adapt to meet the needs of the people who live in the culture someone comes along and does this freezes freezes the values of the culture into riding and once that riding spreads all over and becomes highly respected highly valued then all of a sudden he's not just reflecting these were what our values were in 750 bc he is saying without coming right out and saying it these are what your values should be and he becomes the dictator of values on a host of questions what makes a man great whenever homer says what does loyalty require what justifies violence what are the relative dignity and value of us versus them who counts us and who counts as them to whom do i owe it to be honest and tell the truth what are the relative places of men and women in society what rights do beach have how should we express romance and our sexuality what's the structure of the family what's the role of family and society what's the role of man and woman in family what is good storytelling what is the nature of the gods what do we owe the gods and what do the gods owe us for the whole time that homer is number one bestseller the answers to these questions in the west are homer's answers so he witnesses to and dictates greek values i i'm pretty sure that if if we're to say what are the three biggest stories in our culture today which and we when we say three biggest stories but we're not going to talk religious stories say well harry potter star wars and marvel probably the three biggest stories in our culture today and harry potter is still not very old a little over 20 years i think we're just kind of entering the second generation uh harry potter storytelling um star wars is older than me and i'm you know i'm in my 40s uh you see here's the cast of star wars in 1977. so here's a story that's being told for four generations now and is still relevant to our culture so this is a story star wars has proven it has staying power that it can hold the attention the hearts and minds of our people marvel even more so there's a very first marvel story ever actually from a comic book entitled marvel comics number one and that's in 1939 the marvel story has been being told since my late grandfather was 10 years old since 17 years before my father's birth so the marvel story has really demonstrated continuing cultural relevance for multiple generations it has staying power i would be surprised if either of these stories disappear any time during my life i'd be very surprised if there comes if i live to see a day when nobody knows nobody talks about marvel nobody reads the comics no one makes movies nobody watches star wars anymore i'd be very surprised if that happens my lifetime homer was the dominant storyteller for 1200 years he was the dominant source of education first in greece then throughout the hellenistic world what's the hellenistic world matthew the greek cities and states combined just like that area pretty much no just like areas of greece right now it's exactly not just areas of greece all right okay the areas that greece has affected throughout the world like to this day pretty much anywhere that has adopted greece way of thought or belief or just parts of british philly so specifically alexander people prepare for this maybe you're still on his early life when alexander conquers half the world well that's what we mean by the hellenistic world hellas is greece and alexander the reason he matters as he brings greek culture east to half of the world all right half of the world greek ideas become the world's ideas that's hellenism that's the hellenistic world and its successor to the west is the roman empire all told for 12 centuries the marvel the star wars the harry potter is homer number one bestseller no close second homer dominates the mind not for 43 years 44 years like star wars not for oh i gotta do math on my feet what seventy two years like marvel but twelve hundred years yeah it really is children let me do it again children learn to read by reading homer and then you would continue to study homer for the duration of your education in greece in the hellenistic kingdoms and in the roman empire each year your study of homer would get more and more in depth more and more advanced you'd study other things but homer was always at the center of any educated greek or roman education for 1200 years the other creators poets novelists playwrights are constantly doing homer fan fiction they're constantly exploring his things expanding on his characters retelling his stories artists take continual inspiration from homer in pottery in paint and sculpture my vase painting folks how many vase painting project people do i have here i've got idea i've got victoria i've got aidan well you're looking at two things in greek based painting one is the daily life of women and the others the trojan war that means homer because he's the only narrative source for the trojan war his impact is massive and he ain't done yet because on top of all of that if you're an ancient greek ancient hellenist ancient roman you also believe he's divinely so you don't just think that this is fun you don't just think that it's true that it's history you also think it reveals wisdom straight from the mouth of the gods so the closest picture i can paint for you at the impact that homer had for 12 centuries straight is this imagine if monday through friday you came to school and you studied harry potter then then on saturday for fun you and your friends went to the theater and you watched harry potter movies then on sunday you and your parents went to the temple and you prayed to dumbledore that is how how omnipresent palmer is in every facet of society in the west for 12 centuries the man is a big deal so much so that plato my humanities people know that plato is the most influential educator of the west but plato said no homer is the educator of greece plato's about 300 years after homer 400 even if plato doesn't like this fact plato wants to get rid of poetry and art as influential as plato is so much so that so his school is the academy our word academics which is you know means learning we've named we've named everything that has to do with organized learning after the guy's school that's what a big deal he was but this was his least influential he lost this fight when he said ah let's get rid of the poets let's get rid of art let's not listen to homer homer won that battle number one as he should as he should alexander sometimes i cry when i say this next part alexander carried a copy of the iliad with handwritten notes by aristotle and he may even have been buried with it let me tell you something my friends i want that i want alexander's iliad with handwritten notes from aristotle okay like there's only two things in this world i want and one is the infinity gauntlet to be master of time space reality the mind the soul and the other is alexander's copy of the iliad with handwritten notes from aristotle so i will make you this deal if you can find it and give it to me enduring mystery somewhere in egypt probably and they lost the spot if you can find alexander's copy of the iliad with handwritten notes by aristotle and give it to me i will give you half a point extra credit on any assignment you would like yes so let's go let's go that's true i find this um in all of alexander's exploits his campaigns his conquest alexander as you're you're learning those of you who are doing the alexander project image is very important to him being for how he is perceived is seriously is his number one priority and he intentionally imitated achilles the hero of the iliad he patterns his life on achilles when he gets to the ruins of troy the first thing he does and that's what's what's represented in this artwork is he prays and offers sacrifice at the tomb of achilles outside troy now tomb of achilles does that mean achilles was real nah maybe but it doesn't mean that because by the time alexander gets detroit it's 900 years later it's 900 years after the war all this means is there was a monument 900 years after the war that claimed to be the tomb of achilles but but alexander's fate was eerily similar to faith i think achilles it is it is the roman poet virgil's aeneid is a fan fiction sequel to the iliad and odyssey written 800 years later and written thirteen hundred years after the events of the the trojan war aenead's vision carrying on homer's ideas and tradition is central to roman identity because the aeneid is going to tell the story almost certainly not historical but it's going to tell the story of rome's founding by refugees from troy roman romans have trojans as their ancestors and that shapes how the empire the roman empire views itself and the roman empire then shapes all the rest of the west we still define the regions of the world in terms like western civilization based on the boundaries of the roman empire palmer's impact is deep and it gets even deeper scholar dennis mcdonald argues pretty compellingly that there is a deep influence of homer and virgil on the way many of the scriptures of the christian new testament were written he sees many parallels especially in the gospels and acts of the apostles between those writers and homer and virgil in western europe in the middle ages that's a period after the fall of roman 476 for a thousand years europe western europe they lost command of the greek language so we could no longer read homer if you were in king arthur's day you couldn't read actually there was a thing you couldn't read homer but the educated people could still read virgil because they read latin and they both wrote and read and distributed latin adaptations of homer's story so his stories are still being told and they're impacting the newer stories of the middle ages things like king arthur and robin hood and don quixote are all are all very victorian in medieval eastern europe the empire never collapsed well it lasted another thousand years if you ever hear reference to the byzantine empire that's just the eastern part of the roman empire and it survived until 1453. and over there greek was still the language of the educated people there was no break in the transmission from homer's day to our own in eastern europe homer is studied by the educated and same in the islamic world in the middle ages while these well the western europe is going through our dark ages our own dark ages uh the islamic world is experiencing a golden age of education and science and study and the golden age muslims are including homer in the body of work that they commonly study through contact with the islamic world western europe rediscovers the classics the literature of greece and rome this begins about the year 1100 with a movement known as scholasticism my humanities folks we talked about this in great death death the the scholastic movement is what founds the first universities the main figures of scholasticism are peter abellard peter abelard so he fell in love with the student her family was not very happy with that so they gave him the kronos treatment and he became a monk that's the peter avalarde story say now for the grades he thomas aquinas wouldn't back him others are our main scholastic figures they launched the first universities including our own cambridge and this sparks the renaissance what sparks the renaissance the rediscovery of classical literature greek and roman literature at the center of the corpus the body of greek and roman literature is who homer homer all the founding fathers of the united states were educated in classical studies they received a classical education who is central to a classical education homer homer so the founding visionaries of our own country were formed in large part educated in large part by their study of homer the most important and influential storytellers of today so who do we have here this is j.r.r tolkien what's his story lord of the rings c.s lewis chronicles of narnia stan lee marvel george lucas star wars jk rowling harry potter all of them are utterly steeped in homer and the homeric tradition so much so that it is almost utterly impossible to exaggerate the impact of homer on our culture and yet take out some paper take out something now right now right here we'll pick up in just a minute people on youtube would love to see everyone taking out their pictures also i got my paperwork it's it's nearly it's nearly impossible it's nearly impossible to exaggerate the impact of homer on our culture and yet everything everything that is known about him is contained in the following slide everything that is that is known for certain about homer is contained in the following slide that's why i've got your paper out because you want to get this done everything it is it is a loosely paper wasted feast it is not even universally agreed by scholars it is not even universally agreed by scholars that he existed they don't even all agree that he is real i will say the majority say he existed and i'm i'm with the majority but there are credible arguments that no he himself is is made up and that the works are just anonymous traditional works i don't think that's true but uh there is no consensus about when he lived general consensus that's where the 750 bc comes from but ancient riders were actually placing him far earlier that seems impossible because they were placing him in a time where there's no evidence where it's before the greek alphabet and he writes in greek but the ancient writers think that he either witnessed or came right after the trojan war 500 years earlier than we put him some people don't think it was the same guy who wrote billion and odyssey so as much impact as he's had he himself is lost he's not like hesiod hessian writes about himself because you know oh once upon a time hessian was tending his sheep on mount helicon and the muses did sing to him well homer doesn't do that homer don't play that nobody's going to get that joke but i assure you it's a very good joke palmer don't play that homer is utterly absent from the pages except maybe one part in odyssey that i think he might have stuck himself in but that's very silky we'll get there yeah how can you forget it if i haven't told you it yet that's the thing i don't know i'm not gonna forget it okay so here's what comes next here's what comes next but we despite not knowing anything about the man there's legends many scholars say he was blind but again this is what we actually know this is what we actually do so despite that the impact of these texts whether they were written by one homer or two people or a a combination of many many voices over centuries whether they magically wrote themselves whether it was monkeys stepping on keyboards running it through spell check whatever produced the iliad in the odyssey everything we have said so far today about the impact of homer is about those texts and the texts their influence cannot be exaggerated homer is a convenient if you don't believe he's real i do and i think he wrote them both but if you don't accept that that's okay use homer as a convenient shorthand for the process that produced the iliad and the odyssey here's what comes next remember the term in media res in the middle of things epics start in the middle of the story just like star wars starts with uh you know uh uh um you know already blasting um so we will spend a couple days talking about the back story what happens before page one of the iliad we'll spend much of that in a video documentary more than i usually you know i usually will play like a 10 minute video and i'll pause it every 30 seconds to talk we'll watch a lot more straight through video of the next two days than we usually do only because the documentary series i found is so good it's just a really good introduction to what happens you know what is book zero of the iliad what happens before page one so that's tomorrow and the next day and then we actually dive into the iliad next week questions thoughts objections this is a fork that has been rendered unusable by the application of pink duct tape by some of the nonsense people who are my students yes this is me not conveniently getting to enjoy my lunch today that's what it is leah you had your hand up oh yeah yeah really yeah not like pills i have coffee i have instant coffee do you want some coffee yeah would you happen to want to share do you want to watch i just said this you're not giving you're not taking selfie lessons so this is this is hey liam's selfie what what poor liam you're not you're not even on today and by the way because i hate being on camera yeah and you're also i haven't seen manny's work so far you were the most skilled video recorder no offense anyone actually was taking me in here but he's got you've got to steady his hand or your neck and neck with troy cooper anyway both of you are very skilled um what you know none of i i just thought what i stopped teaching like 20 minutes ago this [Music] is [Music] today [Music]