Lecture 1 — Introduction & Greek Culture HOT
Two epics by
Homer:
The Iliad and
The Odyssey (possibly
Gilgamesh). Homer's works =
cornerstone of western literature.
Setting Late Bronze Age,
c. 1200 BCE (Mycenaean palaces, chariots, Troy).
Composition c.
750–800 BCE.
Why it matters: Bronze Age warriors with
Iron Age values — a shift from warrior-aristocracy to family-centred civic life.
THE FOUR GREEK TERMS — the most transferable material in the course
KLEOS glory/fame → ACHILLES. Life is short; the only immortality is song.
XENIA guest-friendship → a sacred law under Zeus. Paris broke it → the war. The Odyssey tests it at every stop.
NOSTOS homecoming → ODYSSEUS; the theme of the Odyssey.
HUBRIS vs SOPHROSYNE excessive pride → a fall; moderation/self-control → balance.
Religion polytheistic,
no holy texts, myths instead.
Anthropomorphism: gods look and act like humans, immortal but
emotionally volatile — they act
personally, not morally.
MOIRA (fate): even Zeus cannot change it.
Oral style: a
bard, not a writer •
dactylic hexameter aids memory •
formulaic epithets (“rosy-fingered Dawn”, “wine-dark sea”, “swift-footed Achilles”) are
mnemonic devices, not decoration • repetition lets the audience catch up.
Women: confined to the domestic sphere but powerful through
manipulation and endurance.
Penelope = wisdom & endurance;
Helen = desire & trouble, “a beautiful disaster”.
Troy rediscovered by
Heinrich Schliemann, late 19th c., in
north-western Turkey. Most accept the site; many still doubt Homer's war happened.
Lecture 2 — Mythology, Gods, Death, Monsters HOTTEST
Myth = not a false story but a
sacred narrative explaining the world. Four functions:
explanation, morality, ritual, identity. Gods invented as
an attempt at explaining natural phenomena.
Creation chain: CHAOS → GAIA + URANUS → TITANS → OLYMPIANS.
Cronus (Saturn) devoured his children;
Zeus defeated the Titans and founded order on Olympus.
Twelve Olympians.
Prometheus — a
Titan who stole
fire for humanity; punished by an eagle eating his
liver. “The Modern Prometheus” =
Frankenstein.
THE AFTERLIFE — four places
HADES the realm as a whole • ELYSIUM paradise for heroes • ASPHODEL grey plain for ordinary souls (no pain, no joy) • TARTARUS pit of torment for the gods' enemies.
River STYX → CHARON the ferryman → paid with a COIN in the mouth or eyes. Without it, the soul wanders forever.
Heroes = middle ground between men and gods, often
demigods, performing deeds to earn
kleos.
Odysseus metis/cunning •
Achilles short glorious life •
Oedipus Freud's complex •
Heracles twelve labours •
Aeneas pietas/duty •
Theseus the Minotaur & the Ship paradox.
Idioms that survive: “
Achilles' heel”, “
Pandora's box”. Freud's
Oedipus Complex. Planets & medical terms.
Lecture 3 — The Epic Form & The Homeric Question warm
Epic: a long narrative poem, serious subject in
elevated style, a
quasi-divine hero, and a scope where his acts decide a nation's fate. Metre:
dactylic hexameter.
24 books each; Iliad
15,693 lines.
NOT epic features: romantic love as a key theme; shortness. (Both are “false” in the handout's own quiz.)
Epics across cultures: Greek
Homer (honour, the sorrow of war) • Mesopotamian
Gilgamesh (friendship, death) • Roman
Virgil / Aeneid (Rome linked to Troy) • Anglo-Saxon
Beowulf (pagan + Christian) • Chinese (ordinary life, social harmony).
THE HOMERIC QUESTION. No contemporary evidence; a shadowy figure. Legend: a blind bard from Ionia (modern Turkey) — modern scholars call this legendary. Composed late 8th / early 7th c. BC. It is generally accepted that the two epics had different authors, and the Greeks themselves doubted Homer existed by the 3rd–2nd c. BC.
Whenever a question asks about the circumstances of composition, the key is UNCERTAIN / VAGUE AND DEBATED.
Three epics compared: conflict =
war / homecoming / existential quest; themes =
honour & mortality / loyalty & cleverness / friendship & meaning; tone =
tragic-solemn / ironic-adventurous / philosophical-mournful; climax =
Hector's death / the suitors' defeat / accepting mortality. Both Homeric epics:
in medias res.
Campbell's monomyth (
The Hero with a Thousand Faces,
1949):
Separation → Initiation → Return.
Lecture 4 — The Iliad: context & plot HOT
Ilium = Troy. Fall of Troy
1184 BCE, Mycenaean Age; ~
400 years oral before composition.
Cause: Paris (= Alexandros), son of
Priam, took
Helen from
Menelaus of Sparta.
Agamemnon led
1,000 black ships. Poem covers
52 days of the 10th year.
Heroism = hand-to-hand fighting; reputation before family.
Moses Hadas: the hero's loyalty is
to himself, not family, nation or gods.
Shame culture = public honour is everything.
Epic conventions: invocation to the Muse •
in medias res •
epic similes (Ajax = a swollen river) •
catalogues (Catalogue of Ships, Bk 2) •
elevated style. Tone: awe-inspired, ironic, lamenting,
serious.
THE CHAIN — learn this and you have half the paper.
CHRYSES → APOLLO'S PLAGUE → CALCHAS → BRISEIS TAKEN → ACHILLES WITHDRAWS → THETIS → ZEUS → GREEKS LOSE → PATROCLUS DIES → ACHILLES RETURNS → HECTOR DIES → PRIAM → FUNERAL
Key books: 1 quarrel • 2 Catalogue of Ships • 3 Paris v Menelaus • 5 Diomedes wounds two gods • 6 Hector & Andromache • 7 Hector v Ajax (draw) • 9 embassy refused • 14 Hera deceives Zeus •
16 death of Patroclus •
18 Shield of Achilles •
22 death of Hector • 23 funeral games •
24 ransom of Hector.
THE POEM ENDS WITH HECTOR'S FUNERAL — not the horse, not the fall of Troy, not Achilles' death.
Lectures 5–6 — Characters, Themes, Symbols HOT
Homeric characters DO NOT DEVELOP — Achilles' rage changes
direction (Agamemnon → Hector) but not until Priam does it end.
THE FOUR THEMES
1. The glory of war — but the poem does not hide its horror, and never calls it a waste.
2. Military glory OVER family life — NOT the reverse. (The 2024 paper asks which is not a theme and keys the reversal.)
3. Impermanence — Troy will fall, walls will fall; only words and deeds survive.
4. Fate — inescapable, yet Achilles genuinely chooses between two fates.
Symbols: Achaean ships = the way back home / the future of the Greek race •
Shield of Achilles = peacetime life, the world beyond the battlefield •
armour = status & transfer of identity (both who wear it die) •
fire = destruction •
burial rites = shared humanity.
AFTERMATH (outside the poem but on the syllabus): Paris kills Achilles with an arrow to the
heel • the armour goes to
Odysseus, so
Ajax kills himself •
Odysseus devises the
Trojan Horse;
Sinon tricks the Trojans; the
Palladium is stolen • Troy is sacked;
Aeneas alone escapes •
Agamemnon is murdered by
Clytemnestra for sacrificing
Iphigenia.
Lecture 7 — The Iliad: gods, fate, quotations warm
The Judgment of Paris explains everything: Zeus made Paris judge Hera, Athena, Aphrodite; Aphrodite bribed him with Helen. The two rejected goddesses back the Greeks for the rest of the war.
Gods act three ways: disguised as men whispering counsel; as metaphors for surges of courage; and directly and miraculously.
Honour: the ability to fight is the greatest source of worth; “hero” meant something stricter than today — military glory could make a man nearly a god. Modern readers find Hector nobler; ancient Greeks ranked Achilles higher simply because he fought better.
Fate: the poem is framed from the start as a completed story — “the will of Zeus moving toward its end”. Zeus tips the scales in Bk VIII. But Zeus is not all-powerful, and the gods can deceive him. The relation of fate to free will remains unclear — and an option that says so is probably the key.
Lecture 8 (FINAL) — The Odyssey HOT
Opens
20 years after he left,
10 into the voyage,
in medias res: Odysseus held by
Calypso (
7 years), the
suitors consuming his estate.
Athena sends
Hermes to free him and rouses
Telemachus (→ Pylos/Nestor, no news; Sparta/Menelaus, news via
Proteus). Sails
17 days to the Phaeacians;
Nausicaa finds him; he tells the whole story to
Alcinous & Arete.
THE WANDERINGS IN ORDER
CICONES → LOTUS EATERS → CYCLOPS → AEOLUS' BAG → LAESTRYGONIANS → CIRCE → THE DEAD (Tiresias) → SIRENS → SCYLLA & CHARYBDIS → CATTLE OF THE SUN → CALYPSO
The crew dies at the Cattle of the Sun — killed while he slept, then destroyed by Zeus' lightning. He alone survives.
Return: disguised as a
beggar →
Eumaeus the swineherd → recognised by the dog
Argos and by
Eurycleia from the
scar → the
bow and axes contest → the slaughter → reunion.
Zeus stops the feud; Odysseus must still appease
Poseidon.
THE THREE THEMES
1. Cunning, disguise, self-restraint — disguise separates inside from outside, as self-restraint separates feeling from action. The Sirens scene is the emblem: he binds himself in advance.
2. Memory & grief — memory guides action through desire; so Lotus, Circe and the Sirens are all the same threat: forgetting home. Desire for home is noble; desire for food and drink is bestial (hence pigs).
3. Glory vs honour — glory is won by strength and cunning; honour by just, lawful behaviour. They conflict: blinding the Cyclops is honourable vengeance, but shouting his name for glory costs him ten years. By the end, honour replaces glory as the guide to action.
The twelve sentences that answer the most marks — if you memorise nothing else
- The Iliad is the story of the WRATH OF ACHILLES; the war lasted ten years; the poem covers 52 days of the final year and ends with Hector's funeral.
- STOPS fighting = Agamemnon took Briseis. RETURNS to fighting = Patroclus is killed. Same options, opposite keys.
- The war was caused by Paris taking Helen from Menelaus — a violation of xenia. Agamemnon (his brother) led 1,000 ships.
- Chryses, priest of APOLLO → the plague. Hephaestus makes the armour. Priam pleads for the body. Hermes escorts him.
- Odysseus: 10 years voyaging, 20 years away in total, 7 with Calypso. Name = Son of Pain, given by Autolycus.
- He escapes the Cyclops by calling himself Nobody — then ruins it by shouting his real name, earning Poseidon's ten-year grudge.
- Sirens → tied to the mast. Lotus → forget home. Circe → pigs. Scylla & Charybdis → the lesser of two evils. Cerberus → three-headed dog.
- The Minotaur, Hydra and Sphinx belong to Theseus, Heracles and Oedipus — never to Odysseus.
- Homeric characters do not develop. The Greeks were polytheists. The epics are epic poems, composed orally, and their authorship is uncertain.
- Gods: Greeks = Athena, Hera, Poseidon; Trojans = Apollo, Aphrodite, Ares. Because of the Judgment of Paris. Fate outranks Zeus.
- The Achaean ships = the way back home / the future of the Greek race. The Shield = life beyond the battlefield. Achilles' heel = a metaphorical weakness.
- The Iliad seeks KLEOS; the Odyssey seeks NOSTOS. Achilles chooses a short glorious life; Odysseus chooses home. That is the whole course in one line.