2/12/12

Last week made me think about the Iliad. I'm pretty sure I read the story back in high school, but I don't really remember it now. What did make me interested was the talk of Greek gods and goddesses. When I think of the word god, I think of an omnipotent being who can bend reality at whim. In Greek mythology on the other hand, the gods weren't omnipotent and had so many flaws.

The idea itself about how a guy named Chronos created the titans which were his children and tried to eat them. Then Zeus stopped him and now all the gods live on Mount Olympus. Each god has some sort of trait or traits that the people would prey for. For example, if someone wanted to pray for a glorious war, they would pray to Ares. Or if they wanted to hear a prophecy or to lift a plague, people would pray to Apollo.

This talk of Greek gods actually started to remind me of the Disney movie Hercules. How he was a demi-god and that he was a hero to the people trying to get back to his family on Mount Olympus. Now I'm pretty sure that the movie wasn't really that close to what happened in Greek mythology, but I believe it got kids interested into learning more about the gods. The Greeks had so great epics like The Odyssey or The Iliad that it was fun to imagine that these men could interact or even try to work against the gods and show how mighty the human spirit is. There probably movies that were created depicting the Odyssey or the Iliad, but it may be nice to see them in HD and CGI monsters.

But to what we read in the class, I thought book 1 of the Iliad was quite interesting. Achilles loses his trophy girl to Agamemnon so that Apollo can stop a plague and Achilles cries to his mom and makes her convince Zeus to be on her side so that the Trojans would lose the war. I think it seems petty what Achilles did. Just because he lost a girl he got during a raiding of a city and losing her to another guy, it's done right pathetic. I say if he was a real man, he should suck it up and understand it's because of that sacrifice a plague would be lifted and many lives would've been saved. But no, what does he do? He prays to his mom so that the Greeks would win and steps out of the army just so he can watch Agamemnon and the other Trojans die. Very pathetic.

WC: 445