Reading guide for intro to The Iliad

1
Reading guide for intro to The Iliad

• Homer
• Blindness/insight
• Bards/rhapsodes
• Trojan War legend
• Beauty contest To The Fairest
• 3 goddesses
• An interesting dilemma for the males?
• Paris/Helen/Menelaus/Agamemnon

2

• Epic Conventions (Purpose?)
• Invocation of the Muse
• In Medias Res
• Epic simile
• Dactylic hexameter
• Stock epithet
• Material Possessions and honor (p.228)

3
AreteBeing the best you can be

• Homers epics celebrate arete in the form of his
  most honored human characters Odysseus,
  Penelope, Telemachus, Achilles, Hector. The sense
  of arete is of honor, of strength, of mobility
  and moral correctness, of courage and bravery, of
  intellect.
• If we value arete, then we value the actions of
  human beings and measure our actions against
  those of other human beings.

4
What is the value of arete?

• How does such a commitment to excellence bind a
  culture together?
• Do we Americans value arete in any form?
• Is this a cultural value whose time has passed?
• Do any subcultures that you are aware of practice
  the values of arete?