GEE 301 Great Books

(Second Semester S.Y. 2021 – 2022)

Name: Lim, Glady Mae B. Class Schedule: TH, F 9:30 – 11:00

AM

Instructor: Jose D. Suzon Date: March 24, 2022

Great Books of the Ancient Greeks 1

Instruction: Discuss great books of the ancient Greeks 1.

Ancient Greece's legacy can be seen all around us, including in our political system — but many
of us don't know that much about it. Fortunately, we have someone who has devoted his life to
studying this remote time and place to give us a reading list. Chris Pelling, Emeritus Regius
Professor of Greek at Oxford, recommends his top five books on Ancient Greece.

The Iliad
by Homer

The story covered in “The Iliad” begins nearly ten years into the siege of Troy by the
Greek forces, led by Agamemnon, King of Mycenae. The Greeks are quarrelling about whether
or not to return Chryseis, a Trojan captive of King Agamemnon, to her father, Chryses, a priest
of Apollo. Agamemnon wins the argument and refuses to give her up and threatens to ransom
the girl to her father. In turn, Chryses pleads Apollo to help him, so the offended god plagues
the Greek camp with a pestilence. At the warrior-hero Achilles orders, the Greek soldiers force
Agamemnon to return Chryseis in order to appease Apollo and end the pestilence. But, when
Agamemnon eventually reluctantly agrees to give her back, he takes in her stead Briseis,
Achilles ‘s own war-prize concubine. Feeling dishonored, Achilles wrathfully withdraws both
himself and his Myrmidon warriors from the Trojan War. Testing the loyalty of the remaining
Greeks, Agamemnon pretends to order them to abandon the war, but Odysseus encourages the
Greeks to pursue the fight. During a brief truce in the hostilities between the Trojan and Greek
 GEE 301 Great Books

(Second Semester S.Y. 2021 – 2022)

troops, Paris and Menelaus meet in single combat over Helen, while she and old King Priam of
Troy watch from the city walls. Despite the goddess Aphrodite’s intervention on behalf of the
over-matched Paris, Menelaus wins. After the fight is over, the goddess Athena who favors the
Greeks provokes the Trojans to break the truce, and another battle begins.

Achilles steadfastly refuses to give in to pleas for help from Agamemnon, Odysseus,
Ajax, Phoenix and Nestor, declining the offered honors and riches; even Agamemnon ‘s belated
offer to return Briseis to him. In the meantime, Diomedes and Odysseus sneak into the Trojan
camp and wreak havoc. But, with Achilles and his warriors out of battle, the tide appears to
begin to turn in favour of the Trojans. Agamemnon is injured in the battle and, despite Ajax ‘s
efforts, Hector successfully breaches the fortified Greek camp, wounding Odysseus and
Diomedes in the process, and threatens to set the Greek ships on fire.

Distraught at the death of his companion, Achilles then reconciles with Agamemnon and rejoins
the battle, destroying all the Trojans before him in his fury. As the ten-year war reaches its
climax, even the gods join in the battle and the earth shakes with the clamour of the combat.

Dressed in new armour fashioned specially for him by Hephaestus, Achilles takes
revenge for his friend Patroclus by slaying Hector in single combat, but then defiles and
desecrates the Trojan prince’s corpse for several days. Now, at last, Patroclus’ funeral can be
celebrated in what Achilles sees as a fitting manner. Hector ‘s father, King Priam, emboldened
by his grief and aided by Hermes, recovers Hector ‘s corpse from Achilles, and “The Iliad” ends
with Hector ‘s funeral during a twelve-day truce granted by Achilles.
 GEE 301 Great Books

(Second Semester S.Y. 2021 – 2022)

The Histories
by Herodotus

Herodotus, “the Father of History,” researched and wrote the Histories in the middle of
the 5th century BCE. Composed in the Ionic dialect of ancient Greek, this expansive account of
the Greco-Persian war that occurred during the first two decades of the 5th century is the first
prose masterpiece in European literature. The work traces the conflict between the Greek city-
states and the Persian empire from its origins in the conquest of the Hellenic settlements of
western Asia Minor to the successful repulse of the Persian invasions of mainland Greece in 490
and 480 BCE by a small and quarrelsome alliance of cities led by Athens and Sparta.

The heroic drama of Greek freedom triumphing over oriental despotism forms the main
theme of Herodotus’ narrative, but he supplements this story with dozens of digressions
treating the geography, zoology, botany, religion, and ethnography of the many lands and
cultures encompassed in the broad sweep of his history. The ambitious breadth of his subject,
concern with rationally explaining the causes of human action, and critical and empirical
attitude he displays toward his sources of information have led to the distinction Herodotus
enjoys of being considered the pioneer of the historical method. At the same time, Herodotus is
also a master storyteller. The Histories incorporate folklore, legend, mythic motifs, and literary
patterns in a grand narrative that reveals the influence of fate and the divine, as well as
individual agency, in human affairs and emphasizes the instability of human happiness and
fortune.

Medea
by Euripides

Greek audiences would have known the story of the ill-fated marriage between Jason,
hero of the Golden Fleece, and Medea, barbarian witch and princess of Colchis. The modern
 GEE 301 Great Books

(Second Semester S.Y. 2021 – 2022)

reader, to fully understand the events of Medea, needs to be familiar with the legends and
myths on which the play is based.

Medea was of a people at the far edge of the Black Sea; for the Greeks of Euripides'
time, this was the edge of the known world. She was a powerful sorceress, princess of Colchis,
and a granddaughter of the sun god Helias. Jason, a great Greek hero and captain of the
Argonauts, led his crew to Colchis in search of the Golden Fleece. King Aeetes, lord of Colchis
and Medea's father, kept the Fleece under guard. A sorcerer himself, he was a formidable
opponent. This legend takes place quite early in the chronology of Greek myth. The story is set
after the ascent of Zeus, King of the gods, but is still near the beginning of his reign; Helias, the
ancient sun god before Apollo's coming, is Medea's grandfather. Jason's voyage with the
Argonauts predates the Trojan War, and represents the first naval assault by the Greeks against
an Eastern people.

The traps set by Aeetes made the Golden Fleece all but impossible to obtain. By
Medea's aid, Jason overcame these obstacles, and Medea herself killed the giant serpent that
guarded the Fleece. Then, to buy time during their escape, Medea killed her own brother and
tossed the pieces of his corpse behind the Argo as they sailed for Greece. Her father, grief-
stricken by his son's death and his daughter's treachery, had to slow his pursuit of the Argo so
he could collect the pieces of his son's body for burial.

Medea and Jason returned to his hereditary kingdom of Iolcus. Jason's father had died,
and his uncle Pelias sat, without right, on the throne. Medea, to help Jason, convinced Pelias'
daughters that she knew a way to restore the old king's youth. He would have to be killed, cut
into pieces, and then put together and restored to youth by Medea's magic. The unwitting
daughters did as Medea asked, but the sorceress then explained that she couldn't really bring
Pelias back to life. Rather than win Jason his throne, this moves forced Jason, Medea, and their
 GEE 301 Great Books

(Second Semester S.Y. 2021 – 2022)

children into exile. Finally, they settled in Corinth, where Jason eventually took a new bride. The
action of the play begins here, soon after Medea learns of Jason's treachery.

now prepares to kill her children. She rushes into the house with a shriek. We hear the
children's screams from inside the house; the Chorus considers interfering, but in the end does
nothing. Jason re-enters with soldiers. He fears for the children's safety, because he knows
Creon's friends will seek revenge; he has come to take the children under guard. The Chorus
sorrowfully informs Jason that his children are dead. Jason now orders his guards to break the
doors down, so that he can take his revenge against his wife for these atrocities.

Medea appears above the palace, in a chariot drawn by dragons. She has the children's
corpses with her. She mocks Jason pitilessly, foretelling an embarrassing death for him; she also
refuses to give him the bodies. Jason bickers with his wife one last time, each blaming the other
for what has happened. There is nothing Jason can do; with the aid of her chariot, Medea will
escape to Athens. The Chorus closes the play, musing on the terrible unpredictability of fate.

Democracy: A Life
by Paul Cartledge

Democracy: A Life traces the story of the emergence, dominance and decline of
democracy in Athens and in the rest of Greece. Scouring the work of poets Homer and Hesiod,
historians Herodotus and Thucydides, playwrights Aeschylus and Aristophanes, apart from
usual suspects Plato and Aristotle, Paul Cartledge traces the fragmentariness and uncertainties
of the idea of democracy, given that most articulate opinion-makers of Greece at the time were
ideologically undemocratic. So, democracy thrived in Greece despite the intellectuals of the day
opposing it.
 GEE 301 Great Books

(Second Semester S.Y. 2021 – 2022)

The author drives home the purely political nature of the Greek demokratia. 'Demos'
referred to people and also implied 'majority of poor citizens', while kratos denoted 'power' or
'control'. So, it is control exerted by people through the city governing bodies, directed most
probably against the oligoi or 'few', the minority rich. It was ambitious aristocrats like Solon,
Peisistratus, Cleisthenes and Alcibiades, and even the famous Pericles, it turns out, who played
the democracy game to outflank their aristocratic rivals. It is ironic twists of this kind that
makes the story of democracy in Greece so riveting, and goes to show that politicians at the
time were as nasty and power-obsessed as their counterparts today. If they displayed any
nobility or idealism in words and actions, it was only to score a brownie point.

Cartledge also notes that religion was part of the political culture in Athens and
elsewhere and religious festivals, including games – the Olympics being one of them – were
used to create a civic bonding. This part of the Greek story should be unsettling for modern
secularists in Europe, who argue against the dominance of the Roman Catholic Church in
'secular' government by harking back to Greece and Rome and they’re apparently this-worldly
political traditions. Indian secularists must read this too and ponder their position and
arguments on the separation of state and religion – the two, even in the cradle of democracy,
were closely fused.

Greek Fire
by Oliver Taplin

He himself draw the analogy of Orpheus going down into the underworld. As you
burrow into Ancient Greece, you’re in a sea with all the interest and knowledge and ideas that
you have gained, but you can’t stay there and you can’t bring it all with you. All you can do is be
different from the experience. It’s a very good analogy.
 GEE 301 Great Books

(Second Semester S.Y. 2021 – 2022)

He talks about many things – aesthetics, tragedy (he’s an expert on tragedy) politics,
ideas, architecture, art. It’s very rich and beautifully written. He’s also extremely good at giving
an idea of what travelling through modern Greece is like. It’s an almost poetic response to the
great response to the great landscape and Greece as it is now. He clearly loves Greece and
knows it very well. There’s a feeling of some sort of contact, a very filtered and distilled contact,
that you might still get when you’re there.

It's also interesting on the ideas. An example that struck me is where he is talking about
the difference between what Plato called the Sophists – the philosophical thinkers who are
particularly interested in rhetoric and what Plato taught about truth and truthfulness. It’s a
balance between what was later called ‘homo rhetoricus,’ the rhetorical man, who is interested
in persuasion, and ‘homo philosophicus,’ the man who cares about wisdom and truth. It’s the
clash between persuasiveness, what you can get away with saying, and truthfulness, what is
actually true. It’s a book written in the early nineties but this may have even more relevance
today, with post – truth societies.