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One reason I love the Iliad is that the closer you look, the more of a paradox it becomes.

For example, in parts of Iliad bronze is given as a valuable gift. In other parts, it’s thrown away on the heads of spears and arrows. So was it composed before or after the fall of the Bronze Age?

Likewise, some wedding have dowries, others have bride-prices. You can’t have both! But Homer has no problem going back and forth.

It’s almost like Homers trying to confuse future historians.

There’s actually a thesis that the Iliad was intended to be heard by clubs of war veterans on public holidays. The veterans would get the inside jokes, but the civilians would miss them.

I'm not seeing the paradox.

Gold today is considered a valuable gift.

It is also consumed at 70 tonnes per quarter in the global consumer electronics sector, much of which is later discarded.

https://www.gold.org/goldhub/research/gold-demand-trends/gol...

Both valued and wasted can be true for bronze as it is for gold.

Gold is definitely not discarded, it's usually recycled out of electronics.

Out of the electronics that are recycled, sure.

Currently thats less than 20% of the electronic waste generated.

    Annual e-waste generation:

    The world generated 53.6 Mt of e-waste in 2019. That's an average of 7.3 kg per capita.

    The amount of e-waste generated is expected to grow at about 3.5% per year and will reach 74.7 Mt by 2030.

    E-waste recycling rate: In 2019 only 17.4% of the e-waste was collected and recycled.

from: https://blog.emew.com/global-e-waste-statistics (unverified by cross check, literally a first hit on search)

Also as far as I'm aware most of the electronics recycling happens in underdeveloped countries, often by literally shoving circuit boards into vats of acid. There's money in e-recycling but it doesn't justify the expenses of doing it in a more sophisticated way than that, especially one that requires paying workers a reasonable wage and maintaining workplace safety requirements.

We aren’t “gifting” our enemies gold debris on the battlefield.

* ipsum2 has asserted that "Gold is definitely not discarded, it's usually recycled out of electronics."

* many HN comments strongly suggest that China is the sleeping enemy of the USofA (not my position, but it's a commonly held stance here).

* a great deal of US electronics is sourced from Chinese companies.

Is China gifting a country that considers China an enemy gold debris?

We are not throwing middles at China. They are a trade partner.

If we assume that both sides of historical battles were either expecting to win or desperate enough to have no other option than fight (because why would a commander field a battle they could avoid if they don't think they'd win?): neither were they "gifting" their enemies bronze debris, except incidentally.

That also ignores that historically most battles weren't fought to the bloody end because there was no point to do so once it was clear who would come out victorious. More likely, at some point the nobles would retreat or surrender and the common folk would be routed and flee to avoid being massacred.

Even as late as WW1 soldiers would often be hesitant to kill their enemies because as it turns out killing other humans actually goes against our nature. Even in WW2 German soldiers and reserve police officers tasked with carrying out massacres had to rely on peer pressure and self-deception (i.e. trying to rationalize their actions as morally good[0]). It took us decades to refine the process of dehumanization that now allows modern soldiers to calmly wipe out dozens or hundreds of targets at the push of a button.

Also with trained professional soldiers in ancient times the cost of a single soldier would easily rival or even outclass the cost of their equipment. And on the occasion that common folk would have military-grade gear available to them it would more likely be a prized artifact passed down across generations.

[0]: There's one account of a German reserve police officer who participated in the massacres in Poland and specifically asked his comrades that he would kill the children but only after they would first kill their mothers because then he would be doing the children a favor because they could not go on living after seeing their mothers killed. Yes, it's twisted logic and ethically despicable but it served him to rationalize his cruel actions as a moral good and remain the hero of his own story. In fact, after the war many of them would be appalled at being considered war criminals rather that victims of injustice for having "had to" commit the massacres despite there being no formal or legal consequences to not participating. Those refusing to participate would be considered "traitors" by their comrades for "not sharing the burden" but not face any form of punishment.

Even today there are places where both a bride-price and dowry both happen. There is no reason they cannot coexist - because they do.

The bride-price is a sort of contract of exclusivity payment from the groom's parents to the bride's parents, and the dowry is from the bride's parents to the groom/couple in order for the bride to have a certain level of life. They serve entirely different purposes.

Thank you! I did not know that!

> the dowry is from the bride's parents to the groom/couple in order for the bride to have a certain level of life

There are actually three distinct concepts that can all occur within the same culture:

- the dowry is paid by the bride's family and can either go to the groom or the groom's family

- the bride price is paid by the groom's family and can either go to the bride or the bride's family

- the dower is paid by the groom or the groom's family to the bride

The dower specifically functions to protect the bride against poverty in the event the husband dies or becomes unfaithful or neglectful. The bride price or dowry can either function as payment for securing the bride/groom into wedlock or to fund the couple's new family.

The terms "bride price" and "dowry" seem to be only defined by who pays it and either can refer to something paid to the other side's family or to the newly wed couple. That distinction seems to be entirely down to the cultural attitudes.

IIRC there are even cultures where a bride price or dowry paid to the other side's family (as a form of "reimbursement" or "exclusivity payment" as you say) depends more on the relative status of each family, so a higher status family would be paid either way even if the amounts might differ due to the way inheritances are handled (e.g. if only the sons get to inherit their parents property, a son might be more valuable than a daughter). Keep in mind that marriages often also served to unite the two families/tribes/dynasties as a form of diplomacy.

In the Iliad, Agamemnon offers Achilles one of his daughter (whichever Achilles wants) with “no bride price, and full dowry.”

Agamemnon is the leader of the Greeks, but he is of slightly lower social standing than Achilles.

He is the leader because he agreed to sacrifice his daughter to the gods to guarantee success victory in war, but this victory will only happen if Achilles joins him.

Agamemnon has tons of daughters and no sons. He is extremely willing to expend his daughters. This may or may not be because he doesn’t want to pay their dowries.

In return, Achilles must recognize Agamemnons kingship, and agree to follow orders.

Achilles knows from divine prophecy if he accepts Agamemnons offer he will die very soon, so he doesn’t really care. The marriage isn’t happening regardless.

But Achilles wants to join the battle, and die, for personal reasons (vengeance) unrelated to Agamemnon.

So the offer of “marriage with no bride price and full dowry” is just a sad pathetic joke.

It’s a way for Agamemnon to seem like he’s in control, and to remind the Greeks why he’s king - because he’s a narcissistic psychopath who will do necessary, but horrible things nobody else will do.

The distinction between bride price and dowry only serves to show Agamemnon is making up the rules and the whole thing is a farce.

> For example, in parts of Iliad bronze is given as a valuable gift. In other parts, it’s thrown away on the heads of spears and arrows. So was it composed before or after the fall of the Bronze Age?

I'm confused by what paradox do you see there - the most useful metal you can get always gets put on spears and arrows, it's not "throwing things away", it's the most important usage for high quality metal, and it is a valuable gift exactly because it allows you to make more or better spearheads and arrowheads. What would they be saving for otherwise? Shovels are important, but your spear is literally a matter of life and death and does get priority.

Also, it's not generally destroyed or discarded, all the valuable stuff does get picked up from battlefield afterwards.

For a modern analogy: we treat gold as a luxury good we convert into prized jewelry and yet we use it to make disposable technology we carelessly throw away once no longer fit for use.

And although of course the amounts of precious metals in modern hardware are minute compared to that in luxury jewelry, we still send that hardware scrap over to underdeveloped countries where the precious metals are extracted with great harm to health and lives. If anything, picking up the arrows, spears and swords off a battlefield is a much easier, safer and more rewarding process, making the use of precious bronze for those wares much less wasteful and frivolous.

The Homeric epics in my view are about transition. The bronze age stories of glory were a thing of the past, in sharp contrast with a world emerging from centuries of chaos. Literacy was emerging again, and with it these memories were being re-shaped for a brave new world of iron. Hence the contradictions and anachronisms.

How is Demotic Greek made up? I thought it's a name for common modern Greek.

I'm going to guess GP specifically meant katharevousa demotic Greek, or similar. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Katharevousa

The standardised register has some Katharevousa features that perhaps aren’t very common in ordinary speech.

The "demotic Greek" in the translation I was taught (by Kazantzakis and Kakridis) is a language made up by the translators and not the modern Greek spoken by everdyay people, not even the translators' contemporaries. As far as I understand it (you will struggle to find a clear discussion of this on the English-speaking internet, and possibly not in the Greek-speaking one, also) it is a language created for political reasons, from bits and pieces of the speech of farmers in the countryside, but without being a specific local dialect, just a patchwork of local dialects; it is the language that proletarians would speak, at least in the confused imagination of the translators. Incidentally, the same translators destroyed my attempt to read Dante's Inferno, in high school, when I asked for a translation and was given one of their own (or I think it was just Kakridis) in the same style.

Just to be clear, I grew up reading Katharevousa because my family was right-leaning and my father considered Katharevousa to be a "correct" Greek, closer to the ancient Greek. Which of the ancient Greek dialects, I never asked, but that was also a fake, made-up, politically-motivated langauge that nobody spoke in everyday life, and never will.

There are plenty of very silly people in Greece that carry around unrealistic ideas about what "proper Greek" means, for example I've seen folks use the polytonic system in internet posts, which uses accents inherited from Koine Greek meant to teach barbarians proper Gerek pronounciation... that we no longer use.

It's all a bit like the French Academy's attempt to control how French is spoken: a futile, misguided and ill-thought out attempt, entirely politically motivated, that will never work. Ηuman language is an expression of the freedom of the human spirit and no idiot can control it, try as they might.

Btw, this is the translation of the Iliad I was taught at school:

https://www.alfavita.gr/sites/default/files/attachments/omir...

And here's a short excerpt (my transcription, and [sic]'s)):

  Του Δία και της Λητώς τους έσπρωξεν [sic] ο γιος που με το ρήγα [sic]
  χολιάζοντας [sic] κακιά εξεσήκωσεν [sic] αρρώστια και πέθαιναν [sic] 
  στρατός πολύς' τι [sic] δε σεβάστηκεν [sic] ο γιος [sic[ του Ατρεά το Χρύση,
  του θεού το λειτουργό· στ' Αργίτικα γοργά καράβια είχε έρθει
  με λύτρα αρίφνητα [sic], την κόρη του να ξαγοράσει πίσω [sic],
  του μακροσαγιτάρη [sic] Απόλλωνα κρατώντας τα στεφάνια
  πα [sic] στο χρυσό ραβδί, και πρόσπεφτε μπρος στους Αγίτες όλους,
  ξεχωριστά στους δυο πολέμαρχους υγιους [sic] του Ατρέα γυρνώντας"

Sorry about the sics, but it's that kind of language that pissed me off as a high-schooler: nobody. Nobody speaks that way in modern Greek. No. Body.

There was an older version by Iakovos Polylas, in katharevousa, or katharevousa-like demotic, not sure. I think the two books have been used interchangeably at differen times. Why? Why can't we have an ordinary, easy-to-read translation for school kids? Is it any wonder they prefer to watch One Piece and read Spider Μan than this incomprehensible nonsense?

> I grew up in Greece and we were taught the Iliad and the Odyssey at school

I grew up in Texas and we covered the Illiad and Odyssey in High School.

I grew up in Germany and I don't remember any mention of mythologic literature outside things like "this, but the way, is when the Iliad is set". The optional religion classes of course were full of mythologic literature, but no Iliad there either (geographically it wasn't that far off).

There was a series of youth entertainment books that retold the stories, that were very widely read. Think Lord of the Rings, but kids would then talk of Achilles instead of Aragorn. Fallen out of favor I think, because the good/evil dichotomy, where it appeared, was almost as seeped in racist ideas as in LotR, just without being able to hide behind "yeah, this is middle earth, where wildly different hominid species just exist and look how good some of them can get along anyways"

Great to know. I watched a bunch of Western movies that were at least set in Teas when I was growing up.

> I decided that Achilles is a bloodthirsty assshole and fuck him and his μήνις

In the French translation I have, the translator mentions that "wrath" is used once or so in the book, only to describe Zeus's behavior.

I believe the key is to interpret the text in a theistic setting: it's not "rage" in the human sense: Agamemnon is going against Apollo by disrespecting his priest, Achilles helps Agamemnon to solve the issue, and instead of being thankful, Agamemnon punishes Achilles.

Achilles would have slayed him, but he didn't because Athena told him not to.

That's a key difference between Agamemnon and Achilles: the latter is much more respectful of the Gods than the other. In theistic societies, you don't pick heretical heroes.

Agamemnon is motivated by this blind human rage when he punishes Achilles. Achilles isn't.

I believe we could make similar comments regarding the act of killing back then: in a setting where people firmly believe in immortality of the soul, the moral rules are probably way different that in today's essentially atheistic setting.

>> In the French translation I have, the translator mentions that "wrath" is used once or so in the book, only to describe Zeus's behavior.

It's the very first word of the very first verse:

  μῆνιν ἄειδε θεὰ Πηληϊάδεω Ἀχιλῆος

Literal translation:

  μῆνιν      ἄειδε  θεὰ       Πηληϊάδεω        Ἀχιλῆος
  [The rage] [sing] [goddess] [of Peleus' son] [Achilles]

More grammatically: "Sing, o goddess, the rage of Achilles, son of Peleus".

It really is all about Achilles having a hissy fit, throwing a tantrum, stamping his little feet, chucking his toys out of the pram and holding his breath until he's blue in the face. The analysis of the translator in your book is over-engineered, I would say.

(I'm seeing this quite late, my bad).

Let me rephrase this: the observation is the translator's; the analysis is mine.

Why would anyone chose to celebrate so highly such a childish behavior? That's preposterous. People weren't stupid. Teaching people to show respect to virtuous people, I barely see how over-engineered of an interpretation this is: it's basic common sense.

Thanks for the clarification. You're quite right about the childish behaviour, yet I don't think it was celebrated, as such. I think the Illiad makes more sense in the context of the ancients' notion of hubris. I think they enjoyed the Illiad as a cautionary tale, of what happens when success goes to peoples' heads and they think they're invincible.

Many Greek myths and legends have similar themes: Icarus, Phaethon, Arachne, anyone who put on airs and defied the gods, or acted above their station.

Exactly!

I believe those myths, like the Bible's and others, were used in part to teach people a few basic things, so as to ensure some amount of social stability, hence allowing societies to persist.

"Controlling the masses via fear and tall tales" is unfortunately too common of a caricature: we're probably making a sizable mistake by discarding them, and replacing them with whatever's trending on TikTok, or whoever's agendas.

For example, the definition of "courage" exemplified by Herakles's behavior has nothing to do with the "courage" of a man showing off his breast implants on TV: using the same word to qualify both behaviors is ill-suited (regardless of any opinions, positive or negative, on the latter case; I'm merely pointing that distinct words would be more appropriate to qualify fundamentally distinct behaviors) (it's a real example, but I won't be able to source it).

> I liked the Odyssey

You can get quite a few good bedtime stories out of it, if you tone down the gore so the kids don't get nightmares - Circe, Polyphemus, Aeolus, Scylla and Charybdis, the sirens, the Trojan horse ...

> good bedtime stories

May I suggest this? https://garethhinds.com/wp/the-odyssey/

Excellent graphic novel adaptation. The gore is mostly a set of a dozen pages towards the end, when Odysseus kills the suitors, that can easily be skipped.

There's another graphic novel too. https://bigheadpress.com/otr?page=1

There’s a picture book of Greek myths my dad would read to me from when I was a kid. It toned down the gore and rape stuff (it was still there just implied so a kid won’t get it), and made for great listening as a kid before bed.

20 years later I’m in grad school and I meet some classicists. It seems basically every one of them had that book as a kid. Maybe I missed my calling

> I have heard the opinion voiced that works like the Iliad are too daunting or too boring even for university students.

I grew up in India and we studied abridged versions of the Illiad and Odessy in high school. I have a hard time believing that people actually think these epics are boring.

I am coincidentally reading the Iliad right now. Which of the warriors exactly weren't bloodthirsty assholes? Odysseus goes on a raid with Diomedes in book 10 and stands by while Diomedes kills a bunch of sleeping soldiers. They also murder a Trojan they easily could have taken hostage. And what about the part of the Odyssey when he comes home and murders the suitors until the goddess steps in?

The Iliad is particularly challenging when we project our current values back onto this ancient story. If we can suspend that, it contains timeless human questions, particularly on the role of fate and the forces that drive us. I feel that we lose the thread if we focus too much on whether the characters are likable.

Also, why are you so certain that the bards would have found the analysis boring? Truly great works can operate on multiple levels.

The target audience was like that -- warriors. They like warrior things. Like detailed depictions of strikes and injuries.

The general public likes warrior things too. To think the iliad was 'written' ( or sung ) for warriors is naive and simplistic.

Would you change your opinion if I say that it's not my words, I just cited a professional archeologist?

From this myth-busting movie review (sorry not in English I should probably make a translation) at 17:45

https://youtu.be/f77h_-wFYGo

Interesting take: Thats because at the time people had not developed consciousness yet.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Origin_of_Consciousness_...

The book it's bit bullshit once you read about the Sumer or Chinese civilisations.

That's a strange offhand comment. The Mesopotamian civilizations are explicitly addressed by Jaynes, and China is at least mentioned, although not talked about. However, Shang dynasty China had many of the features that Jaynes' hypothesis would expect to see in a civilization when the bicameral mind is breaking down - in particular, lots and lots of augury.

What about Sumerian or Chinese history makes the book "bullshit" according to you?

Gilgamesh has heroes. Someone to be reflected at.

Well, so does the Illiad. It's Jaynes's entire argument that having a personal identity does not imply having consciousness.

I think this mostly hinges on whether you interpret Jaynes' argument of the origin of consciousness as being a cultural artifact or an evolutionary trait. We usually think of it as the latter and tying it to a certain recent point in history in the West suggests a perspective of people outside that sphere as "less human" based on how we usually think about consciousness.

I think Jaynes' actually seems to argue for consciousness as a cultural construct. While this makes sense in a way, it largely conflicts with how consciousness is commonly understood, especially in the context of moral, ethical or religious arguments.

I'm also not sure to what degree the "bicameral mind" would have been a universal experience. While self-talk is extremely understudied we now at least know that some people have inner dialogues (which we usually consider a form of hallucination or schizophrenia), most have inner monologues and some have no active inner voice whatsoever (if we ignore subvocalizations and only focus on internal "thought"). In religious contexts we still often treat ancient stories of people "hearing the gods" at face value even if it is no longer culturally acceptable to claim the same today (i.e. you'd rightfully be considered to be suffering from hallucinations). I'm unconvinced the examples Jaynes gives are more than just artifacts of cultures that treated hallucinations as a meaningful part of the human experience the same way some cultures (including people as recent as Freud and Jung) treat dreams as meaningful parts of the human experience or religious practice.

Also externalization of intrusive thoughts or emotions is actually part of therapeutical approaches to disorders like depression. Even meditation and mindfulness often involves viewing the inner mind as a detached observer. I'm not convinced attributing these uncontrolled experiences to an internal "id" (with full acknowledgement of the caveats that come with referring to Freud in the context of modern psychology) is much more sophisticated than attributing them to external "gods" or demons. So in a way the "bicameral mind" still seems to exist, except that we have changed our cultural narrative around it to one that favors the fiction of individual responsibility over the fiction of supernatural forces outside our control.

I think the only reason the book has been so influential is that people misread the argument as an evolutionary one rather than a cultural one and conflate Jaynes' meaning of the word "consciousness" with the popular and religious concepts of it. I also think this mistake is particularly appealing to those already looking for reasons to justify treating "Europeans" (i.e. white people) as biologically superior to others as it neatly fits into the colonial era racist idea of the "industrious Asians" only being intellectually superior by having a "hive mind" mentality and being individually empty and lacking original thought (and likewise Black people being too primitive for complex thought and thus stronger and more violent). I'm not saying Jaynes would agree with any of these ideas, I'm just saying people looking to justify these ideas (whether or not they're willing to openly state them in public) will happily misinterpret Jaynes' work to do so.

Asians and hive mind? I doub't it, Southern Europe has been making contact with the Japanese for centuries. Heck, we even have in Spain a town with people surnamed "Japón" for obvious reasons.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coria_del_R%C3%ADo

The Anglo-Saxon mindset it's really outdated then...

I didn't say Asians have a hive mind. It used to be a widespread racist stereotypes of Chinese, Japanese and other East Asian people. Luckily it seems to have fallen out of favor but it's hardly ancient.

Too bad your comment got buried so far down, I think it's a very interesting critique of the Jaynes fandom here on HN. Of course, the point that Jaynes's arguments are unconvincing because his examples could also be interpreted differently is hardly sophisticated, especially since not all of his examples from, say, the Illiad, even mention hallucinations explicitly (instead, Gods sometimes just suddenly disappear, leaving those who were following their commands confused - Jaynes argues this is exactly because the God had been a hallucination all along), and he spends some time on showing that the very concept of an internal mind-space didn't exist in early Greek civilization.

Your point on the Jaynes fandom is interesting, though. I'll make sure to keep the in mind the next time the topic comes up here.

I'm a bit confused, the quoted article says that the Iliad doesn't discuss mental activity, and that might be true since I haven't read it, but I have read Homer's Odyssey, which certainly does...

You're accusing Odysseus of being a bloodthirsty asshole because he "stood by" while someone else killed a bunch of sleeping soldiers and because he, himself, killed the suitors who ganged up against him yelling "he's just one man, guys, let's get him" (liberally translated)? Clearly, we do not have the same definition of "bloodthirsty".

Which of the warriors were not bloodthirsty? Ajax, for example, was not bloodthirsty, who stood strong with his shield and without the help of the gods, a defensive bullwark for the Acheans. Hector, was not bloodthristy, who was just trying to defend his city and his people from the calamity brought on by his idiot brother who couldn't keep it in his pants. Aeneas was not bloodthirsty, who escaped the burning Troy to found Rome. Patroklus was not bloodthirsty but was just trying to save his friend's honour (by killing people, no doubt, but in the middle of a war).

Achilles killed Hector and dragged his dead body behind his chariot to desecrate it. He refused to hand it over to Priam, Hector's father, the king of Troy, when he, an old man, came begging on his knees in grief asking for Achilles to do the right thing by the gods. Achilles was an asshole. It is a disgrace that an entire epic poem was written for his "rage". Screw his rage.

Edit: remember also that Achilles was the only one of the Achean lords that didn't have to fight, because he hadn't taken the oath at Menelaus' and Helen's wedding (he was living as a girl at the time). He accepted the invitation to go to the war for glory- the glory of killing men. What a glory. Unlike the rest, he did not leave behind wife and children, and loyal dogs and slaves, because he had none to leave (though he did have a wife, I think). Not to mention: he was invulnerable (mostly) so he could cover himself in guts and glory without fear. Yeah, what a great hero.

On Achilles, wasn’t he told he a god / oracle that he can choose between going and having his name remembered as a hero for all time at the cost of dying young or staying home, living a happy life, and nobody remembering him after he passed in old age?

Well I don't remember that. I remember the prhophecy given to Thetis, his mom, that he was going to be killed in battle, I believe- hence her dunking him in the Styx to become invulnerable.

There's a lot of mythology around the Iliad and you're probably right and I just don't remember it.

You might enjoy “The Odyssey” by Symphony X.