Andromache draws a hot bath, for Hector to slip into when he comes home from the war. Actually she has her maids heat the water, while she herself weaves flowers into a tapestry.
Mouth of stream forming border between Balıkesir and İzmir
All the Trojans managed to slip into the safety of Troy, while Achilles was distracted in Book XXI of the Iliad. Only Hector and Deiphobus have stayed outside. Hector is really glad to have his brother along to confront Achilles.
Jove allowed the gods to aid whom they would, in the previous book of the Iliad; now, in Book XXI, they fight with one another. The god of fire attacks a river god; the god of war, the goddess of wisdom. This calls into question the notion of gods as personifications of abstract concepts.
One may say that of course fire is at war with water, and war with wisdom. I would say rather that we can be at war with one another, because none of us is simply one thing distinct from any other.
No man is an island, entire of itself; every man is a piece of the continent, a part of the main.
We have similarities and differences, and so do the gods. We can all do many things.
The Wikipedia article “Superhero” traces the word itself to “at least 1917,” giving “such folkloric heroes as Robin Hood” as “Antecedents of the archetype.” I don’t know why Achilles should not be considered as an antecedent. According to the opening description,
A superhero is a type of heroic stock character, usually possessing supernatural or superhuman powers, who is dedicated to fighting the evil of their universe, protecting the public, and usually battling super-villains.
Achilles has superhuman powers; he has supernatural powers, when aided by the gods; and now in Book XX of the Iliad, as far as the Greeks are concerned, he is fighting the evil of their universe. However, the Trojans are not evil in Homer’s universe. Here there is no Manichaean principle of evil, and much less is Achilles personally devoted to fighting it.
Nonetheless, Book XX would seem to be a battle of the superheroes.
The scene from where I read as the sun went down
Book XIX of the Iliad consists mostly of speeches.
Do not grieve so, Achilles. It was a god who killed your friend, and the will of god is law. However, a god has also provided this new armor.
That’s jolly good armor. I’ll use it, but I’m worried about the flies on this corpse.
I analyze Book XVIII of the Iliad into seven scenes.
Achilles receives from Antilochus the news of Patroclus’s death, and Thetis receives the news from Achilles. She tells him not to fight till she has brought new arms from Mulciber (Chapman’s lines 1–136).
Book XVI of the Iliad ended with the death of Patroclus; Book XVIII will begin with Achilles’s learning of the death. Book XVII gives us the fight over the body.
Dogs in the shade on the beach in the waning summer
Why is a body so important? I can only observe that a belief in its importance is something that keeps warriors fighting.
It is the story of Icarus. A man gets wings, flies too high, and is burned. Icarus is Patroclus, the wings are Achilles’s armaments, and flying too high is assaulting the very walls of Troy.
Kocabey Mosque, Şavşat, Artvin
That is the simple story of Book XVI of the Iliad. The book also contains a puzzle: why does Achilles let Patroclus to fight in his place?
After a year, I return to reading the Iliad on the Asian mainland of Turkey. I am opposite Lesbos, south of Mount Ida, where in the last episode, Juno seduced Jove, so that he would not see Neptune’s interference on behalf of the Greeks, in the war down at Troy.
We were here in Altınova (in the province of Balıkesir) in July, but my mind then was on mathematics, including mathematics coming out of my April post here, “Elliptical Affinity.” I went on to speak of this mathematics in two other countries, one of these the homeland of Medea. In the other country, I was moved to write a post concerning the book I had already blogged a lot about. Now Ayşe and other Peace Academics are being cleared of charges, our fall semester does not begin till October, and we can spend time at the beach.
Twelve Apostles, a former Armenian church, now a mosque, in Kars
This concludes the series that began with “An Indictment” and continued with “A Defense.”
Ayşe and Meriç her lawyer
A human being was once a man. A female of the species was a wife; a male, a were. The latter appeared in werewolf, but also were-eld, which became our world. Our woman comes from wife-man.
That is roughly the history, which I shall review later in a bit more detail. It would be a fallacy to think the history told us how we must use the words “woman” and “man” today. The history does suggest what may happen again: in a world dominated by men, a word like “person,” intended for any human being, may come to have its own meaning dominated by men. Yet again, this is no reason not to try to make our language better.
