Don't despair your mother loves you. Don't be proud because she has to.
One of the more famous extra-canonical stories about Odysseus is his hesitancy to join the Greek army prior to the siege of Troy. He had a newborn son and initially he didn’t heed the call to join Agamemnon at Aulis. An expedition was sent to encourage/ force him to join up, and he pretended to... Continue Reading →
If you’re reading this, there’s a decent chance you also read portions of my series on The Book of Job and The Iliad. Welcome to my thoughts on Homer’s Odyssey. At some point in the introductory essay to these others series I inevitably find myself saying something like, “The Odyssey isn’t actually what you think... Continue Reading →
Unsurprisingly, Enkidu’s death deeply disturbs Gilgamesh. Anyone who has ever lost a close family member or friend knows the hole that is left in one’s life. There are the obvious facts of their physical absence and all that comes with it. The gestures of love and kindness that you’ve taken for granted. The idiosyncratic behaviors... Continue Reading →
Enkidu’s narrative arc in the Epic of Gilgamesh isn’t particularly subtle. A man is crafted from clay. He roams the steppe with herds of wild animals. He wears no clothes, his hair is unkempt, he eats grass, he drinks water, he knows nothing of civilization. He is tamed through sexual intercourse which appears to sap... Continue Reading →
On the evening of December 3, 1872 George Smith stood before the Society of Biblical Archeology inside The British Museum and read the text of his exciting new work: The Chaldean Account of The Deluge. His words echoed far beyond that meeting. The excitement raised that evening resulted in multiple expeditions to the Middle East... Continue Reading →
We left Achilles at rock bottom. His rage launched a sequence of events that were not only devastating for his comrades, but the person he cares about most in the world is dead. His desire for revenge then led him to slaughter untold numbers of Trojans, yet killing the man who killed his best friend... Continue Reading →
In the first half of the Iliad, Homer creates dramatic tension between the historic role every audience member knows Achilles plays in the Trojan war and the fact that he is now sitting on the sidelines with a declared intention to return home. What will entice him to return to battle? Does his rage subside?... Continue Reading →
In my last essay I explored the origins of the conflict between Achilles and Agamemnon. Hopefully I made a compelling case that the conflict was more than just the confiscation of a prize of war, but at the root of the situation were two competing visions about what it meant to be “great”. Agamemnon’s troops... Continue Reading →
I'm already 3 essays in and I haven't even cracked open the book yet. This is a bad sign. I promise we'll get moving, we might even make it all the way through Book 1 of 24 today. What makes a person great? Why should one person follow another? If someone has put their life... Continue Reading →
How do you keep a thousand ships worth of men on a foreign beach for a decade? How do you convince fathers, sons, and brothers to abandon their families, farms, duties, and other personal ambitions to risk their lives and lay siege to a city whose walls were reportedly built by Poseidon himself and would... Continue Reading →
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