The Human and Its Others: Nature (Unit 3)

1. The Human and Its Others: Nature (Unit 3) Zina Giannopoulou 104 HOB2 Office Hours: F. 9-10 Email: zgiannop@uci.edu

2. Unit 3 at a Glance • The last unit of the cycle brings together the course’s three thematic components—divinity, society, and nature—and examines how they interrelate and how humans relate to each of them. • It emphasizes the importance of close readings of texts that belong to different genres—epic poetry, tragedy, and philosophy—and span four centuries of the ancient Greek literary production (7th to 4th c. BCE). • It introduces students to four major authors of Classical literature—Homer, Sophocles, Euripides, Plato—and shows how their works may be read in conjunction with one another.

3. Who is Homer? The Homeric Question

4. The Iliad and the Odyssey: two epic poems set in dactylic hexameter ἄνδραμοιἔννεｹε, μοῦσα, ｹολύτροｹον, ὃςμάλαｹολλὰ ｹλάγχθη, ἐｹεὶΤροίηςἱερὸνｹτολίεθρονἔｹερσεν: ｹολλῶνδ᾽ἀνθρώｹωνἴδενἄστεακαὶνόονἔγνω, ｹολλὰδ᾽ὅγ᾽ἐνｹόντῳｹάθενἄλγεαὃνκατὰθυμόν, ἀρνύμενοςἥντεψυχὴνκαὶνόστονἑταίρων. Sing to me of the Man, Muse, the man of twists and turns Driven time and again off course, once he had plundered The hallowed heights of Troy. Many cities of men he saw and learned their minds, Many pains he suffered, heartsick on the open sea, Fighting to save his life and bring his comrades home . (Trans. R.Fagles)

6. Homeric Similes • Metaphor vs. simile • Common sources of Homeric similes: living nature and landscape • Sometimes, one part of the natural world is used to illustrate another. Eumelus’ mares are ‘swift-moving like birds’ (Iliad 2.764). Hector will soon be praying that his horses ‘might be swifter than hawks are’ (Iliad 13.819). • The gods are most often the agents of change by making one thing look like another Proteus metamorphoses into a lion, a serpent, a boar. Circe can transform humans into beasts, and back again. Athena changes Odysseus’ form. The gods even transform themselves when they visit mortals.

7. Nature in Iliad: Achilles and his Horses, Roan Beauty and Charger (Iliad 19.462-503)

8. Achilles assigns to his horses the task of bringing him back alive by shaming them: • ‘Roan Beauty and Charger, illustrious foals of Lightfoot! Try hard, do better this time—bring your charioteer back home alive to his waiting Argive comrades once we’re through with fighting. Don’t leave Achilles there on the battlefield as you left Patroclus—dead’ (473-7). • Roan Beauty acquiesces with a gesture of submission (he ‘bows his head low’ 479) and speaks assisted by Hera. • Animals are given voice by the gods and are also ‘struck dumb’ by them (495). • Achilles’ response conveys his courage and superiority: he knows he will die, and yet he ‘will never stop till [he] drives the Trojans to their bloody fill of war’ (500-1).

9. Nature in Odyssey: Scylla and Charybdis (Odyssey 12.218-282)

10. Charybdis, the Whirlpool her horrible whirlpool gulping the sea-surge down, down but when she spewed it up—like a cauldron over a raging fire— all her churning depths would seethe and heave—exploding spray showering down to splatter the peaks of both crags at once! But when she swallowed the sea-surge down her gaping maw the whole abyss lay bare and the rocks around her roared, terrible, deafening— bedrock shown down deep, boiling black with sand— and ashen terror gripped the men. (255-265)

11. Scylla, the Six-headed Sea Monster now Scylla snatched six men from our hollow ships. Just as an angler poised on a jutted rock flings his treacherous bait in the offshore swell, whips his long rod—hook sheathed in an oxhorn lure— and whisks up little fish he flips on the beach-break, writhing, gasping out their lives so now they writhed, gasping as Scylla swung them up her cliff and there at her cavern’s mouth she bolted them down raw— screaming out, flinging their arms toward me, lost in that mortal struggle. Of all the pitiful things I’ve had to witness, Suffering, searching out the pathways of the sea, This wrenched my heart the most. (266-282)