 Hello fellow followers of Christ and welcome to the show that introduces you to the men and women behind history's greatest works of literature. Come along every week as we explore these renowned authors, the times and genre in which they wrote, why scholars praise their writing and how we as Catholics should read and understand their works. I'm Joseph Pierce and this is The Authority. Welcome to the first of the series of podcasts The Authority looking at the great authors and I'm going to begin by talking about how we actually read. We're going to talk about reading, reading authors, reading the great works of literature, perhaps a few words about how we read and there's two ways of reading as there's two ways of actually thinking objectively and subjectively. We need to we need to sort of get get our own pride and prejudice out of the way and try to see what the author is doing with the work to not take our prejudice to it but to allow ourselves to grow in the presence of the author. That's why the author is the authority. That's the rationale. So each episode we're going to be looking at the authors of the work and their importance before discussing the work themselves. That's the way we're going to be progressing and we're going to go through chronologically from the earliest times, the sort of the foundations of Western civilization and then move through time, at least for the first episodes and then at some point we'll mix things up. So we're going to begin with what who might be called the father of Western literature in many ways and that's the great Homer, the great Greek author. And you know, I say the authorial authority, we need to know as much as we can about the author. Well, when you go that far back in time, there's a problem because we don't know much about Homer at all. The general view is he might have been blind and that's based upon the fact that there's a poet who appears in the Odyssey, Demodocus, who is blind and some people see that as a Homer signing his own work, his signature. But really, we don't know much about him. We don't even know exactly when he lived, but it was sometimes in 850 and 700 BC. So, you know, between 700 and 850 years before the birth of Christ. So a long time ago and he's writing two great epics, the Iliad and the Odyssey, Concern, the Trojan War and it's aftermath. So, the next thing we need to know is when was the Trojan War? And again, historians, the Siege of Troy, historians, you know, are divided, but generally speaking, it was sometime between 1334 and 1150 BC. So between 1150 years before the birth of Christ or maybe as early as 1334 years before the birth of Christ. So the important thing here is that there is, depending on the range, something like a four or five hundred year time lag from the event that's being talked about in the Iliad and the Odyssey and Homer's actually writing about it. So, the Iliad and the Odyssey are, I feel like, historical fiction. For Homer, the Siege of Troy is also, by this time, the stuff of legend. So, you know, he's using poetic license to tell a good story. We can't see it as a work of history, although it's a work of historical fiction. Another thing I think we need to know about Homer and the Iliad and the Odyssey is how, where does it fit into the golden age of Greek philosophy? You know, the foundations of Christian philosophy are part of course from the theology which comes from the Bible and the teachings of Christ. Philosophically speaking, St. Augustine baptizes Plato and St. Thomas Aquinas baptizes Aristotle. So these figures are huge as regards the foundations of faith and reason upon which the Catholic faith is built. Well, Homer predates that. So the golden age of Greek philosophy is between 450 BC and 350 BC. So Homer's writing about 300 or 400 years earlier than that. But, and this is important, it's quite clear that Homer is living in a very philosophical culture. He asks all sorts of deep questions in the two epics that take us deeper into an understanding of ourselves, our understanding of nature, our understanding of our neighbor, our understanding of human sin and wickedness and suffering. And even, although of course he's a pagan, something about our understanding of our relationship with God, which we'll talk about when we get to discuss in the works which we'll be doing imminently. But the important thing is that the history is like a jigsaw puzzle in which many pieces of the jigsaw puzzle are missing. And it's perilous if we assume that the missing pieces of the jigsaw puzzle don't exist. On the contrary, to understand history, you have to understand there are there are missing pieces of the puzzle. So this would be an example. We don't know of any philosophers who are around the same time as Homer, but it's quite clear from reading the Iliad and the Odyssey, there's a philosophical culture. So they were philosophers. And we can deduce the fact that they were philosophers, even though we don't know their names. So now I'm now going to talk about the two epics of Homer, the Iliad and the Odyssey. And we'll begin with the Iliad. And first of all, it's an inaccurate title. You know, some titles are better than others. The Iliad means basically Troy. It's a work about Troy. And it isn't because the action of the Iliad takes place only over a period of very few weeks, right at the end of the siege. The siege has been going on for years. And we get a little bit of the backstory, but basically it's taking place just over a few weeks towards the end of the siege. And we don't even see the end of the siege. That's also off camera. The epic ends with the death of Hector and not even with the death of Achilles, which we know is going to come afterwards. So it's a snapshot of one part of the siege of Troy and that war. So it's really not about Troy per se. It's an inaccurate title. But it's historical fiction, as we've said. It's also a cautionary tale, which means it has a model. It teaches us about morality and it has a theological dimension. It teaches us about man's relationship with the gods, so with the divine. So all these things are going on in the Iliad. One thing I want to say also is the difference between, shall we say, classical literature in a sense of the Greek classics and romantic literature, which really comes in the 19th century. The difference is that romantic literature is all about feeling and often we're taken into the head and the heart of the characters in a romantic novel. So we know what they're thinking. We know what they're feeling. We're being told. It's almost as if we're God. We have this omniscience, this knowledge of everything that's going on including people's thoughts and emotions. The Greeks, actually the classical model, you don't see that. All you see is what people do and what people say. We don't see what they're feeling except in so far as we can tell what they're feeling by what they're saying or what they're doing. So in many respects, classical literature is more realistic, because of course, we, in real life, we can't read what someone else is thinking. We can't know exactly what they're feeling. We have to make a judgment call on those by how they're behaving or what they're saying. So the Greek approach, this classical approach is actually much more realistic in the sense of it's how we experience reality in observing others in order to understand the truth rather than having this omniscient, godlike divine power of seeing inside their heads. So how does the epic begin, the Iliad? Well, it begins with a prayer. It begins with seeing goddess. And the goddess is the muse. The muse is the creative power, the creative talent. So obviously, we don't believe in a goddess who's this muse that allows epic poetry to be written. But we do believe that that creativity is a gift of grace that it's given to us. Moments of inspiration are somehow divine. So it's appropriate for a Christian writer, before writing anything to begin with a prayer, that our words might be his words, that we are doing his will in what we're writing, that somehow or other he would inspire our words and our works, that they may be a true reflection of him. So we should begin our own writing with a prayer to God. So it's appropriate that Homer begins the writing of the Iliad with a prayer to the creative gift and the creative giver of the gift. Sing muse. Now what does the goddess sing goddess? What does the goddess, what does he ask the goddess to help him do? He helps, he asks her to help him tell a good story. And the story you must tell is, sing goddess of the anger of Achilles and its destructiveness and the will of Zeus, which is accomplished. So what Homer does is what you'll be told if you go to an MFA program, do an MFA program in creative writing, one of the things you'll be told is don't give away the plot of the story in the first page on the first page. And that's exactly what Homer does, one of the greatest writers ever tells us exactly what it's going to be about. It's going to be about Achilles. It's going to be about Achilles's anger. It's going to be about the destructive consequences of Achilles's anger. And it's going to be about how that anger and the destruction that it causes, in other words, the sin, and the destruction causes somehow through that the will of God is accomplished. So there's a theological dimension. So it's a course you tell first of all, it's the old story pride precedes a fall. It's Achilles's pride, which is the root of his anger. And that anger is destructive, not just of Achilles's enemies, but also of his friends, his best friend, Petroclas as well, and ultimately self destructive. It ends in Achilles basically destroying himself his own death. So the the moral is that pride and the anger which is its bitter fruit is destructive. But and even deeper, the lessons that we learn from the negative consequences of pride and the sin is something that God wants us to learn that the will of Zeus is accomplished in the lessons taught by the consequences of evil. So you can see how the even these very old ancient classic epics reflect dovetail with the Christian understanding of morality. We need to understand that the Greeks in their philosophy were laying the foundations of reason, but also in their stories, they are also laying the foundation of Western art and literature, which is taken up by Christian authors, following Christ. The other thing about the the the idea is very interesting is the relationship of Zeus, the father of the gods to the other gods. So obviously, we're talking about a polytheistic cosmos, not a monotheistic cosmos that the Christians believe in where there's one God, but polytheistic cosmos where there are many gods. But what's interesting is that Zeus appears to be more powerful than all the other gods and not just more powerful than all the other gods individually, more powerful than all the other gods put together. So he says that if there was a tug of war and Zeus was holding one end of the rope and all the other gods were holding the other end of the rope and he's saying this to all the gods that they gathered together. He said that if we had that tug of war and I was at one end and all of you are the other, I would win. And the other gods don't dispute it. They don't argue with him. They don't they don't certainly don't say, Well, let's try it. So it's as if the other gods know that ultimately, there's nothing any of them to do can do either individually or collectively to to thwart the will of Zeus, they may delay it, they may they may get from Zeus, some sort of reluctant promise on his part to let them do things that are not ultimately Zeus's will, but ultimately, Zeus's will will be done. So there's this relationship between God versus the gods. And in some sense, that's not hugely different from a Christian understanding. We believe in one God, who's all powerful. But we also believe in supernatural beings who are not God. They're angelic. And some of the some of those angelic beings are good, the angels and some of them are bad, the demons. And there's a war on this supernatural level that's going on in the fabric of the cosmos that we are only in our natural way of understanding things because we don't live fully in that supernatural space until we get to heaven. But we don't fully know what's going on, but it's going on. We know there's a war going on between the angels and the demons. And that impacts our own lives, the impacts of our own hearts, the battle between good and evil takes place in every human heart. And that's a battle between angels and demons as well as our own will. So we see here, you know, harmony even in parts of the epic, we might not think would be the case, even on the level of theology or divinity up to a point. Another important part of the Iliad and the Odyssey is the Greek word of Xenia, X-E-N-I-A Xenia. Xeno, it means foreigner. So something like xenophobia is a fear of foreigners. But the law of Xenia was the obligation on the part of people to be courteous and hospitable to strangers. The idea is that, you know, the stranger at your door could be a god or a goddess in disguise. And if you don't treat the stranger with hospitality, you might be insulting a god and that of course would be would be destructive. So the onus is upon the host to be hospitable to the stranger. Of course, the other side of that is the stranger, the guest has a moral obligation to behave responsibly and courteously towards the host. It's a two-way relationship here of responsibility. So Zeus is known amongst his many titles as the guest god. He's the god of guests. So the original sin, if you like, that sets up the Siege of Troy, which is the backdrop to the war that's that's that's the background of the of the poem was when Menelaus hosts Paris, a Trojan, a stranger, a guest in his house. And Paris betrays that law of Xenia by eloping with Menelaus's wife, Helen, and also taking some Menelaus's possessions with him. So theft, so adultery, theft, elopement. So Paris breaks that divine law of Xenia and that's what sets the war in motion and that's why the Greeks morally are in the right because they're demanding the return of of of Helen and it's the refusal of that return which causes the war and so the Greeks are morally in the right. There's no doubt about that. But then we have Hector. Hector, Paris's brother, he finds himself in a position he has no real choice but to defend his country, his people, his wife, his son. And there's some wonderful scenes of domestic scenes with Paris, you know, with his wife and an infant son and that love that they have for each other. He's defending his homeland, his people, his family, his wife, his son from this attack. That's why Hector is sometimes called a blameless, blameless Hector. He's the innocent victim of the sin of Paris and Helen and in that sense, in some sense, we can see him only up to a point but as a Christ figure, the blameless victim of the sins of others who lays down his life for his for his friends and countrymen and wife and child. One thing we see him in the Iliad and the Odyssey is what the Greeks understand about death and this is a very big difference between a Christian understanding and a pagan understanding that there's a vision of Petroclos Achilles' friend after he's killed who visits him as a ghost. He's died, he's been killed as a consequence of Achilles' anger but he's like a shadow. He's no real substance to him. You can't hug him. It's like, you know, something that's less real, a shadow of his form itself, the word used for a ghost sometimes is a shade, right? Something which is only a shadow. Now, that means that, you know, when we die, according to the Greeks, we enter the shadow lands where this is the real world of flesh and blood and when we die, we become less real, we become shadows of our former selves. Now, from a Christian perspective, as C.S. Lewis tells us, it's the other way around that this is the shadow lands where we live as the shadow lands. This is not the fullness of reality. The fullness of reality comes when we find ourselves in the presence of Jesus Christ in heaven with a beatific vision and when we become the perfect human persons we're meant to be through being sanctified and going to heaven. The real world begins, the real world of eternity, eternal flesh and blood on a much more realistic level with the real presence of Christ and a much more real sense than in the sacrament. That happens after death where we see him face to face. This is the shadow land. So, there's a very big difference there between the two which we see in the way that the afterlife is presented in Homer's works. A very important thing to remember about the Iliad is that the moral is given very subtly in book 23 which is the penultimate books right near the end. We have this battle going on. We know that the destructive consequences of Achilles' anger. We see that Hector being the blameless victim, defending his country. But at the end there's a chariot race and the chariot race in book 23 is resolved. Someone cheats and because someone cheats there's going to be a fine and bloodshed because of someone cheating due to chariot race and instead of being allowed to descend into that bloodshed they through magnanimity, through generosity, through contrition, through confession that pieces restored. There's no need for war and it's as if Homer is saying it didn't need to be like this. That this 10-year siege and war could have been averted if people had shown generosity of spirit, magnanimity, contrition to confess the sin, make things right and then be forgiven. War could have been avoided. So we do have a very Christian, a proto-Christian, a quasi-Christian model at the heart of the Iliad. And the other very interesting about the Iliad, it does not, it begins with Achilles and you know normally you think about balance, symmetry in a work of literature. It begins with Achilles, you think would end with Achilles, right? Sing news of the anger of Achilles and its destructiveness and the will of Zeus is accomplished, perhaps we should end with the death of Achilles. That would be balanced but that's not what Homer does. Homer ends with the death of Hector. So it ends with, you know, to Hector be the glory. The focus, it does not end with Achilles, the cause of the problem within the epic. It ends with the blameless victim who lays down his life for his friends, family and countrymen. Let's now move on to the Odyssey, the other great epic. And the big difference between the Odyssey and the Iliad is the Iliad takes place in a very small space just between Troy and the waterfront, the beach and the battlefield in between the two camps. So you know just a few hundred yards and over a very short period of time. The Odyssey wanders all over the known world and indeed to mysterious places that are not part of the known world over a period of 10 years. So it moves much further geographically and moves much further through time. So it's very different in that sense. Again, the Morrid is given to us at the beginning. The whole Odyssey is about Odysseus' efforts to get home to his wife, son and family after the Trojan war. And he takes him so long because of his recklessness, his pride and the recklessness and pride of others. So at the beginning we're given them all by Zeus. Zeus says to the other gods that mortals blame us for their suffering when it is their own recklessness that causes suffering beyond that which is given. And this is actually a profound meditation upon the mystery of suffering that most suffering is certainly caused by our own sinfulness, by our own selfishness. We harm ourselves and we harm others including the innocent through our sinful actions. So it's really not appropriate for us to blame God for those bad things that happen to us and to others because of our sins and the sins of others, human sin. However, as Zeus also says, you know that it's by their own recklessness the suffering comes beyond that which is given. In other words, that some suffering is a gift that it's given to us that we might learn lessons thereby. And so once we're told that upfront, we know that's the model we should be looking for and this journey home takes so long because of the sin of the recklessness and sinfulness and selfishness of Deces's men and in consequence they are all killed, none of them make it home. And Deces would have got home expeditiously within weeks except for his own sin of pride. So he uses his wit, we know he's very resourceful, he's very smart. He uses wit to get his men to escape from the Cyclops who's going to Polyphemus who's going to eat them. So he uses his wit to escape. He tells Polyphemus and Polyphemus asks his name that I am nobody. And while Deces is nobody, he outwits the evil and escapes with his men. But when he's escaped he can't resist pridefully shouting back to the Cyclops, I'm not nobody, I am somebody and I'll tell you the somebody I am and he gives his name and address. And in direct consequence of that Polyphemus then prays to Poseidon and says make Deces's journey home long, suffering, may he never return home. But if it's the will of Zeus that he returns home, so everybody knows that you can't contradict the will of Zeus, then make it hard and make it take a long while. And Poseidon answers that prayer and subject to Zeus who wills Adesius to get home eventually. But Zeus allows Adesius to suffer in consequence of his sin. Now I want to talk about the two other characters apart from Adesius before we end here. Because Adesius begins as wicked, as a pirate, as someone who's killing people for no reason whatsoever, breaking the law of Xenia and then he grows in virtue as the journey goes on. So when he returns home, he returns home not in glory, not leading his men in a Trumpful march back home, he returns as a beggar and has to endure insults from the very wicked suitors who are besieging his wife hoping to force his wife into marrying one of them. So he learns his lesson and in various ways we don't have time to talk about, he does that. The other two principal characters in it are Telemachus, that's Adesius's son, and there's a rite of passage. He begins powerless to do anything about these wicked suitors because he's a boy, but he grows up throughout the course of the epic and by the end of it he's a man. There's a rite of passage and he shows himself to be as strong as his father. And finally we have to talk about Penelope because Penelope, Adesius's wife, is one of the great icons of femininity in the whole of Western literature and she deserves to be honoured as such. She doesn't have many words, she doesn't have much to say, she's in some sense a passive figure. She's besieged, so there's a parallel between the Siege of Troy and the Siege of Penelope, the Siege of Ithaca. But here we have the innocent victim whereas Helen was guilty and eloping with Paris. Penelope just wants to, doesn't want to marry anybody, she's waiting for the return hoping against hope that one day her husband will return home to her and she's pious, she's virtuous, she's wise, she's smart, she's probably more intelligent than any other character in the Iliad, so in the Odyssey. She reminds me very much of other characters who are passive yet wise in Shakespeare such as Cordelia. So we're going to conclude now by saying something about what we can learn from Homer in relation to Western civilizations as a whole. He's the father of Western literature. What we see is that the Pagans, as C.S. Lewis said, and I think I can't think of many better ways of finishing this discussion of Homer than to bring in the great C.S. Lewis, he says that the Pagans, the Greek Pagans such as Homer and the philosophers were like a virgin awaiting the coming of the bridegroom. In other words, the stories that the Greeks told and the philosophy, the reason they were using, were ripening them, ripening the gentle world for the coming of Christ. So the Pagans as a virgin awaiting the coming of the bridegroom. So Homer in some sense is a virgin muse and Lewis talks about the big difference between this virginity of the Greeks with the neo-Pagans of today. He says that the whereas the Greeks were the virgin awaiting the coming of the bridegroom, the neo-Pagans of today are the divorcee who walks away from the marriage. And needless to say there's a huge difference between the purity of the virgin, awaiting fulfillment in the marriage and the disillusioned divorcee who walks away from the bridegroom. So on that note and with with due deference and thanks to C.S. Lewis will end our discussion of Homer in the first of our series on the authority. This has been an episode of The Authority with Joseph Pierce brought to you by Tan. 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