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Comment by pyuser583 | Hacker News Reader

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.

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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.

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.

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.

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