From Tîmê to Time : Homer x Aeschylus

Homer's unique approach towards ancient poetry has proved to leave a lasting impression for the history of literature. While subsequent writers have often alluded to elements from Homer's work, many of them also challenged the strange worldview offered from this ancient master of literature.

Leaving the issue of narrative aside, the most contentious issue for Homer's poems, for both Classical Greece and modern audience, is the worldview known as the Homeric outlook. For today's audience, this outlook is very different from the epistemological and moral outlook of the modern era, and will certainly spark intense debate regarding their implications. Even at ancient Greece, the Pre-Socratic philosophers have already been providing critiques on the Homeric way of understanding the world, and the tragedians of the Classical Greece also questioned and challenged the Homeric moral outlook in their plays.

Starting from the values of the Homeric world, we can build up the shape of man in this distanced universe. Homeric heroes, in a sense, are simplistic when they are compared to the psychological makeup of modern humans. The most important value of the Homeric Greece was honor – which was ' tîmê ' in ancient Greek. For the men of this ancient world - bear in mind that the equality of sex was absent in ancient Greece – achieving honor was to gain respect from others and to boost one's self-esteem. Any actions taken by a Homeric hero were always motivated by the potential of achieving honor, and that was as simple as that. There were no other moral considerations, including the consideration of other's well being. Thus, one can conclude that these ancient heroes showed a strong sense of individualism, and they were so single-minded to achieve their own sense of honor, often obliviously ignoring the other factors that might become an obstacle to their final aims. To the people of today, these warriors could be seen as rather self-centered characters.

The Homeric world was a violent and physical world. Warriors, who fought in battles, were the most well-respected and success in battles would achieve the highest honor. Even the way of fighting was crucial for the categorizations – the full-contact, one-on-one sword fights represented the ultimate test for honor; other means such as archery was seen as a less esteemed form of weapon. The Homeric world prioritized so much on physical strength and prowess that other attributes such as oratory and intelligence were viewed as something secondary and they would lead to less respect from the peers.

Homeric heroes were very courageous. Because they knew that they were not immortal gods, they appreciated the fact that they only had limited chances in their lives to achieve honor. In fact, they anticipated crossing path with the threats from death from time to time. Only by winning in a battle, thus evading death for the time-being, could lead to a sense of honor. By accepting the inevitable end of mortality, they believed that they could achieve a sense of timelessness through honor, and were then remembered by future generations.

Thus, the warriors knew they always had to give their very best shot in every violent encounters. In today's language, they could not tolerate weakness. If they showed some pity or forgiveness, which were the positive attributes of humanity, they might be perceived as weak by others. As illustrated in the works from Homer, the heroes spoke out their minds, and there were no confusions or ambiguities about what they were thinking about. Because for these ancient warriors, when they said they would do something, they had to commit to it for the sake of being honorable men. The creation of a Homeric hero is thus complete.

Some readers may start to get a bit uncomfortable about such a character. Instead of a muscular, sword-wielding athlete, they may picture a self-centered, unsympathetic, narcissistic bigot instead. Homeric heroes have proved to puzzle readers of many generations, yet many scholars advise that the key to the problem is to appreciate that they are very different from us, and there is not much point to debate whether they are moral or not by today's standard.

The reason for such a difference is because in the ancient world depicted by Homer, the concept of 'polis' (city-state) has not yet been developed and therefore concepts like communal values and public interests were something alien to the Greek people from the Mycenaean era and the Dark Age. When It came to the era of Classical Greece, city states have already seen a mature development. The Athenian empire, the birthplace of Greek tragedies, was a prosperous place and they have commenced a preliminary form of democracy. The most important aspect for the citizens was the commitment to the polis, meaning that the citizens had to consider the benefits to the public when they took any actions. While the Greek tragedies took place in a mythical world, Aeschylus, Sophocles and Euripides reflected the issues of Classical Greece, including the various aspects of the polis, in their many tragedies.

While Aeschylus has certainly admired Homer and Homeric influence could be observed in his tragedies, the tragedian from Classical Greece also questions the Homeric outlook, in terms of its epistemology and morality.

Aeschylus's plays questioned the moral implications offered from the Homeric outlook and the danger of staunch individualism from the heroes. In Homer's epic poems, it was the gods and goddesses who drove the action of humanity by influencing the human characters. As these divine figures often had conflicts in interest, that led to all the folly in the human world. Thus in a moral point of view, a Homeric character could always explain something by attributing it to the action of gods, and though the explanation of divine will they could shift the responsibility to other factors.

While the intervention of the divine was still evident in the Aeschylean plays (and indeed, also the plays by Sophocles and Euripides), these plays had a tendency towards a more naturalistic outlook and stressed man's action and responsibility as much as the divine will itself. While the actions taken by the human characters reflected the divine will – which was the worldview of this particular framework, the tragedians since Aeschylus allowed more room for the human characters to commit to the moral choices, and face the consequences of the choices they have made.

Even for the same incident, a Homeric outlook and a Classical outlook can point to different moral conclusions. For example, Orestes's murder of his mother, for cuckolding and killing King Agamemnon, is totally justified by a Homeric ethical perspective, as it is a matter of honor. Indeed in Homer's 'Odyssey', the incident was seen as a benchmark for Telemachus, Odysseus' son. That suggested Telemachus had to do something as significant as that to become a 'real man'. Yet in Aeschylus's 'Oresteia', the murder led to the anger of the Furies, the guarantor of justice. The matricide had to be examined from a legal perspective through the trial endorsed by Athene. Aeschylus placed a more rational and analytical lens onto the issue, which fit well with the rational inquiry demanded by both Pre-Socratic and Classical Greek Philosophy.

From that, a fantastic art form has transformed! 

by Ed Law

Conatus Classics

Homer : The First Man of Literature

The various forms of art of Classical Greece, which laid the foundation of the aesthetic considerations for the Western culture, placed emphasis on two criteria – the expression of eternal ideals and and the expression of unity. The former concern found its elaboration in Plato's philosophy and the latter was stressed in particular by Aristotle in his theories of drama. The great tragedies of Aeschylus, Sophocles and Euripides effectively demonstrated the above values, which in fact was already evident from the epic poems of Homer.

Homer was an epic poet from ancient Greece, who was considered one of the first practitioners of Western Literature. Though there are theories suggesting that 'Homer' was a name that designated a collective effort of various poets, most people agree with the consensus that Homer was a single person who was responsible for the authorship of two ancient epic poems, 'The Iliad' and 'The Odyssey'. The First Man of literature has proved to have a long-lasting influence in the world of art. Not only Homer has influenced the great tragedians of Classical Greece, the power of Homeric style could be felt in Virgil, John Milton, James Joyce and many others. The name '2001: A Space Odyssey' points to Homer's 'The Odyssey', so is Homer Simpson – we are going a bit too far here!

In this article I will describe the general style of the epic poems by Homer. With the exception of one specific example, I will leave the discussion of the worldview and moral outlook of Homer in the next article. The rationale is that I want to compare the idea of honor – the key value of the Homeric era - with the diverse values of Classical Greece.

It is important to stress a few aspects where modern audience will find alien regarding Homer's work. The first aspect is the nature of Homer's epic poems itself. While the poems are just as poetic as any poems from subsequent eras itself, these epic poems were intended as oral poetry - meaning that they were performed through some ancient form of singing to the audience. While there were controversies as to whether Homer or the other authors have written out any part of these poems - given the tremendous length of the poems, the whole experience is very different from reading, say, a collection of William Blake's work. Because for later poems, the reader can have the liberty to read it in his minds, so that is a different way of perception. The oral poetry of ancient Greece had a performative aspect, and that was why I maintained that these poems from the Homeric era were more similar to drama and films than modern poetry itself. One can easily feel the influence of Homer on subsequent Greek dramatists, who in turn inspired later theater and eventually film art itself.

Because the epic poems were delivered in an oral way, it resembled a music performance. Thus, Homer would have to adopt aesthetic considerations that not only made his stories a grand scale, but also fit to the rhythms and meters required for oral delivery. The epic poets in Homer's era adopted the dactylic hexameter style, and in order to be flexible to this requirement, Homer used a lot of repetition in words and even phrases, to the point that it might appear ritualistic to some audience. The effect of this repetitive style is profound, because it served as an imprinting effect to the audience in a psychological way. You start to associate certain personality traits to a character, much like President Trump did when he labeled his political opponents in his Tweets (just kidding!)

Homer has established the appropriate tone for his epic poems, by not immersing himself into the story itself. Homer's epic poems took an impersonal and objective stance, and it was even more distanced for modern audience, not only because of span of time, but also the alienating content for the audience to encounter. Yet his poems were able to pull the audience back, through their exploration of the eternal qualities of Man.

Homer, like other known epic poets, were interested in the epic cycle of the characters in Greek mythologies. Yet, Homer's caliber came from his intense dramatic focus. He would choose the important parts of the hero's story to enhance the narrative impact he wished to exert. Thus work like 'Iliad' and 'Odyssey' were focused only on a defined period of time of the hero's life, which proved to be juiciest moments of their life stories. Though Homer was a poet from antiquity, one will be impressed by the power of his words, and depth of his characterization and plot development.

While Homer lived in a primitive era, he already possessed a gift to hype up the dramatic impact of his words. Not only his words were poetic, he played with the temporal aspects of his epic long poems by the juxtaposition of past and present. Homer's poems possessed an elegant formalism, and the way he fit all the mythological and humanistic aspects in the same story has reached a pleasant harmony. Homer's poems were long because the plot tended to branch out into side-stories, and as a testament to his clarity, these subplots served nicely as self-containing episodes and they did not divert the dramatic focus Homer has carefully planned.

Homer played with contrasting themes in his poems, and this style has certainly influenced numerous dramatists, artists and filmmakers. Not only Homer mingled with reality and fantasy or identity, his most fascinating characters were also very multi-faceted. Odysseus, the man who just wanted to go back home, is the prime example. Though any audience will easily side with Odysseus due to the sympathy to his plight, he is more of an antihero in most cases, and indeed one may conclude he is an amoral character by today's standard. Odysseus could easily use deceptions, tricks and fake identities as means to his own end throughout his ordeal, if he felt that would contribute to his ultimate aim of returning home. True, one can argue Odysseus was not observing a strict Homeric moral code (which is the focus of the next article), yet that is the reason why Odysseus has left such a lasting impression for literature. Odysseus is a realistic character that many readers can be easily identified with. Though Homer was no psychologist, he certainly understood how to capture the audience's heart through strong characterization. One can still learn from the old master Homer when creating his own masterpiece! 

by Ed Law 

Conatus Classics

Greek Dramatists vs. Filmmakers : Prelude

D. W. Griffith, Akira Kurosawa, Sam Peckinpah

 

'I portray men as they should be, but Euripides portrays them as they are.'

-Sophocles on Euripides, quoted by Aristotle in 'Poetics'

'I want to make Western like Kurosawa makes Western'.

-Sam Peckinpah's opinion on Akira Kurosawa

If there is a creative force that has passed through the history of humanity, that is the power of drama. Humans have always been moved and inspired by stories that shed light on the different issues around them. From the most primitive forms of oral delivery of stories to the most sophisticated visual presentations, the benchmark for great drama has not really changed. Yet the more we try to compare great dramatists from different eras, the more similarities we will be able to discover. Through the apparatus available at the dramatist's disposal are very different due to technological or cultural factors, they are also capable of addressing the eternal themes humans have been always been concerned about. The three great dramatists of Classical Greece – Aeschylus, Sophocles and Euripides – have written some of the most beautiful tragedies of the Western culture, and we are still in awe of their artistic caliber and their insightful perspectives regarding the human condition. The dramas from the Classical Greece have influenced many subsequent art forms, not limiting to theater, poetry and novels. The dawn of the 20^th century saw the emergence of the Seventh Art – cinema. The greatest filmmakers of our age have just exerted as much influence to us like the ancient dramatists to the people of ancient Greece. David W. Griffith, Akira Kurosawa, and Sam Peckinpah have made landmark films through the different parts of the 20^th century. Though they have long passed away, their films have continued to leave lasting impressions to the audience nowadays. If we take the trio of Greek tragedians and the trio of filmmakers together, wouldn't it be fun to see how their masterpieces may interact with each other? 

The series of 'Greek Dramatists vs. Filmmakers' will include:

Greek Dramatists vs. Filmmakers : Prelude

From tīmḗ to Time : Homer and Aeschylus

Aeschylus vs. Griffith

Sophocles vs. Kurosawa

Euripides vs. Peckinpah

A common consensus is that Western Literature originated from the work of the ancient Greek poet Homer, who was believed to live in the late eighth and early seventh century BC. 'The Iliad' and 'The Odyssey' were the first two poems by Homer that appeared in Western Literature. These are known as epic poems – they are very long and have a consistent theme and narrative through the poems. The setting of these poems were in the Mycenaean period of ancient Greece (1600-1200 BC), when the iconic battle at Troy took place. Though Homer did have some information of historical facts from his ancestors, he has used his own imagination to provide a fictional account of the stories in this period, involving both mortal heroes and gods. In Homer's era, these epic poems were delivered as oral poetry, meaning that poet would recite his own poems in front of the audience, so that these poems also resembled music and drama. The performative aspect of a narrative was already evident in the earliest days of literature.

Since the time of Homer, the ancient Greece has seen a more organized development and poleis (singular : polis) were formed. The poleis were city-states that possessed infrastructure for organizing the public life of the residents. Eventually at the 5^th century, the city Athens stood out as the most prosperous city in ancient Greece, signifying the dawn of the era of 'Classical Greece'. Athens was successful both in terms of political power and cultural strength. In each spring, there was a festival known as 'City Dionysia', in which there were a number of cultural activities to celebrate Dionysus, the god of wine. One of the most popular programmes in City Dionysia was the tragedy competition, which not only served as a testament to the legacy of Athens in history, but also led to the emergence of 3 of the most wonderful playwrights in the history of drama.

Greek tragedy was believed to be evolved out of dithyrambs, which were choral songs that celebrated Dionysus. The Greek tragedy, while heavily influenced subsequent work in theater and cinema, were not really hard-core drama. They more resembled a combination of poetry, music and drama. Because the words spoken by characters were important for the plot and the audience's understanding, the tragedians concentrated on the lyrical aspects of these lines and the quotes were all formalized and stylized like those found in poems, and were not naturalistic like colloquial speech.

For the annual tragedy competition in City Dionysia, 3 finalists would be chosen to compete in this '3-way Mexican standoff'. Each playwright would have to submit and perform a series of 3 tragedies, and an additional satyr play which was tragicomedic in nature. The 3 tragedies might not necessarily be related in terms of plots, and because much of the work for these ancient playwrights have been lost through time, we were not able to map out the combinations of the play and understood if there was any reasons or motivations why a playwright would put together any three plays in a given year.

Anyone who started reading a Greek tragedy will find the experience strange and a bit alienating. That is because a lot of assumptions commonplace in ancient Greece are different from the modern world, and it is worth appreciating these curious points before getting into the content of the tragedies itself.

Through the influence of Homer, the plot of almost all the Greek tragedies of the Classical Greece took place in the Mycenaean era, though the playwrights did take liberty in changing some of the plots of the myths passed down from the predecessors. It was not uncommon for different playwrights to write about the same character yet with different plots and outcomes. Thus, it is crucial to note that the poems and plays from these Greek poets playwrights were fictional work, and they did not necessarily represent the historical reality.

Because of these influences, almost all Greek tragedies were non-secular. They always included some supernatural and mythological elements in the plots (and the action of the divine indeed drove much of the development of the plot itself), and were seldom naturalistic as in the literature and drama of the modern world. This aspect is in particular alienating to the modern readers, who believes in the existence of an objective reality based on reason and science. What is even stranger is that the religious beliefs in ancient Greece pointed to a polytheistic system of the Divine (many gods), as opposed to the monotheistic (one god) system in most religion nowadays. The Divine of the Greek religion was a family of gods and goddesses, led by the patriarch Zeus and his wife Hera. These gods were anthropomorphic – meaning they took human forms – and behaved quite like humans. While Zeus was the leader and he demanded respect from his family members, they might not obey him, and in many cases this led to the influence of the human affairs in the Greek tragedies. Zeus, for example, often could not get complete obedience from Hera, who often did things her own way (and Zeus's infidelity to Hera did not help the issue neither). The gods not only interacted and conflicted with each other, they also interacted with mortal humans. It was totally common, say, for the goddess Athene sitting next to you and started talking to you in the plays. The human and the divine was mingled up in the ancient Greek plays, giving them a strange sense of coherence of the mythical world they were attempting to portray.

I would like to elaborate on this point as it is the aspect that makes the Greek plays weird for the modern readers. In the context of the history of ancient Greece, the supernatural plot made a lot more sense to the ancient Greek people than the modern people, because ancient Greek culture had a strong religious aspect. The ancient Greek people believed in gods and often used the myths and its derivatives – like prophecies and oracles – as a framework for them to understand their world and influenced their moral outlook. What motivated their actions and behaviors were often related to their perceptions of the Divine and how they made sense of the these cultural artifacts. The fact is that the ancient Greeks have had a very different worldview from ours. Indeed, one can start to see that it is not very different from the modern world. While the modern world is secular and rational, it is still okay to have faith and become religious (or superstitious), and one can take a preference and attribute to fate rather than free-will for his personal outlook.

An explanation more relevant to the the context of tragedy itself is the universalizing effect the Divine has given to the action or narrative of the plays. The affairs of the gods provided a background to influence the human action and drove the plot forward. It also served as a contrast to the human world. The playwrights wished to reflect the limitations of human knowledge and a tragic view of world, consumed by mortality and suffering. The action of the individuals in the human world were seen as insignificant for the Divine world, let alone for the whole universe. Such a cautious tone demonstrated the worldly wisdom of these ancient artists.

Though the tragedies always possessed a supernatural dimension, they have inspired the future generations because of the humanistic dimensions they have successfully illustrated. The stories itself often reflected the concerns of the Athenian age, such as personality, family, civilization, and social and political issues. For Aeschylus, Sophocles and Euripides, while they followed the framework of the Homeric myth, engineered the plots of their plays to explore problems faced by human existence. For our chosen filmmakers – Griffith, Kurosawa, Peckinpah – they focused on ability of human beings to shape history and influence nature. While they all rigorously criticized human folly and weakness, they were just as enthusiastic to celebrate the tremendous potential offered by Man.

The great Greek tragedians provided the future playwrights the benchmark of a brilliant drama – humanity's struggle against forces they cannot understand or control, such as the dark side of their minds, the State and Fate itself. The playwrights stressed human choices and responsibilities as much as god-ordained experiences in these struggles – a story only determined by co-incidences or tragic fate alone would not make a great story, because that would suggest a completely meaningless existence. The psychological character inherent in the protagonist would lead him to commit a hamartia (a tragic error), leading to his downfall. The death, self-sacrifice or ultimate failure of the protagonist can generate catharsis in the audience, resulting in an intense and emotional response to the plight of the characters in the play. The final spiritual victory achieved by the protagonist suggested there was a point to endure all these sufferings, to 'go through hell' through the plays. This aspect of the tragedy is a testament to the highest power of drama available to mankind. 

by Ed Law 

Conatus Classics