¶ … Iliad is the tale of two male warriors, Hector and Achilles. Hector, a Trojan prince, fights nobly to defend his doomed city, even though the most powerful gods stand against him. Meanwhile Achilles, the Achaian warrior who knows he is fated to die in battle, must fight his own nature as well as his enemies. Women appear only in minor roles; there are no fully developed female characters among mortals or gods in The Iliad. When female characters do appear, they are typically portrayed in one of three ways: as property, as betrayers of men, and as devoted wives and mothers. The idea of women as property lies at the very center of the Trojan War. The Achaians are fighting to reclaim Helen, wife of Menelaos, from Paris, son of Priam of Troy. Paris, in turn, believes it is his right to have Helen, pointing out that she was a "gift" to him from the goddess Aphrodite. Helen also seems to believe herself a pawn among powerful men and gods, with no hand in her own fate. "I know your heart is most heavy with this world of trouble about us -- all for my shame and his infatuation," she tells Hector (Book...
Disputes over the "ownership" of women also cause trouble within the Achaian camp. As The Iliad opens, the Achaians are suffering a plague because Agamemnon has taken Chryseus, the daughter of a priest of Apollo, as a war prize and is refusing to ransom her back to her father. When Achilles insists that Agamemnon return Chryseus to her father, Agamemnon takes Achilles' female war prize, Briseis, to make up for his loss. Achilles immediately withdraws himself and his army from the war. Later, when Agamemnon realizes his mistake and tries to apologize, he not only offers to return Briseis to Achilles, he also offers him, "seven women skillful in women's work" (Book IX, 105). Clearly, these warriors see women as chattel.
Homer's Iliad is an epic poem that is set in Ancient Greece. The story is meant to be an historical account of the Trojan War. The Trojan Prince Hector is eager to help lead his men to victory but Andromache, Hector's wife, is terribly worried about losing him and their son and breaking up their family. The "Ceres & Proserpina" of Ovid's Metamorphoses a poem that is also set
Both Spartan men and women exercised together in the nude, and both were "encouraged to improve their intellectual skills" ("Women in Ancient Greece"). Being a woman in Sparta certainly ensured a greater sense of gender equality -- but that does not necessarily mean Sparta was the preferred residence of women in Greece. After all, Sparta did without a lot of the creature comforts that other city-states like Athens took
Odyssey Throughout the text of the Odyssey, Odysseus finds recourse to rely on his inner resource to surmount incredible odds in order to finish his journey home. Indeed, often we think of epic heroes using their enormous physical strength to solve a problem, and certainly, Odysseus does have recourse to physical means on more than one occasion. Nonetheless, it is more often that he uses his cleverness and mental agility to
Moral Perfidy in the Odyssey In The Odyssey, Homer utilizes the lie as a motif, and in so doing, he establishes a moral dichotomy. The Odyssey is populated with lies and with liars, but the liars operate differently from one another. Indeed, when vocalized by some liars, the lies become virtuous necessities or demonstrate superior intelligence. Other liars prove themselves to be base and without morals as they lie to manipulate,
Varnava (2012) commented on the multifaceted intelligence attributes that went into making the construct of British Intelligence gathering in Cyprus, a successful vocation in World War II. This review aims to explore the implications of the role played by local, civil populace in thwarting attempts by military in allowing intelligence inputs through counter-espionage on British and Middle East territories. The review revisits some work on the First World War British
For Aristotle, true freedom and liberty consists in ruling and being ruled in turn and not always insisting on fulfilling one's own personal desires at the cost of others. Thus, for Odysseus, true freedom can only come about when one is allowed to contribute to society for the betterment of everyone involved, a sure sign of moral correctness and rational thinking. In addition, Aristotle stressed the importance of justice and goodness,
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