Week8
☆Gods’ names review
|
Greek Name |
Position(description, keywords) |
Roman Name |
|
Aphrodite |
The golden goddess of Love and beauty |
Venus |
|
Ares |
The god of war |
Mars |
|
Athena |
The virgin goddess of wisdom and invention. |
Minerva |
|
Demeter |
The goddess of harvest |
Ceres |
|
Hades |
The god of the underworld |
Pluto |
|
Hephaistos |
The god of the blacksmith, husband of Venus |
Vulcan |
|
Persephone |
The queen of the underworld |
Cora |
|
Poseidon |
The lord of the Sea |
Neptune |
|
Artemis |
The virgin goddess of hunting/moon, Apollo’s twin sister |
Diana, Selene |
|
Zeus |
The lord of the sky |
Jupiter |
☆Term explanation
1. Homeric epithet: Homer uses adjective tags/ phrases to indicate the characters and polish the people or places in his poems.
2. epic poetry: It is a lengthy narrative poem, ordinarily concerning a serious subject containing details ofheroic deeds and events significant to a culture or nation. It always has interaction with god and mythology. This kind of works form the basis of the epic genre in Western literature.
3. Achilles' heel: It is a weakness in spite of overall strength, which can actually or potentially lead to downfall. While the mythological origin refers to a physical vulnerability, idiomatic references to other attributes or qualities that can lead to downfall are common.
4. invocation: It is to call on god or goddess. When a person calls upon God, a god, or goddess to ask for something or simply for worship, this can be done in a pre-established form or with the invoker's own words or actions. An example is the Lord's Prayer.
☆Essay
1. What role does fate play in the emotional and psychological effect of The Iliad? Why does Homer make his characters aware of their impending dooms?
Homer’s original audience would already have been intimately familiar with the story The Iliad tells. Making his characters cognizant of their fates merely puts them on par with the epic’s audience. In deciding to make his characters knowledgeable about their own futures, he loses the effect of dramatic irony, in which the audience watches characters stumble toward ends that it alone knows in advance. But Homer doesn’t sacrifice drama; in fact, this technique renders the characters more compelling. They do not fall to ruin out of ignorance, but instead become tragic figures who go knowingly to their doom because they have no real choice. In the case of Hector and Achilles, their willing submission to a fate they recognize but cannot evade renders them not only tragic but emphatically heroic.
2. How does Homer portray the relationship between gods and men in the Odyssey? What roles do the gods play in human life? How does this portrayal differ from that found in the Iliad?
In the Iliad, the gods relate to human beings either as external powers that influence the lives of mortals from without, as when Apollo unleashes plague upon the Achaeans, or from within, as when Aphrodite incites Helen to make love to Paris or when Athena gives Diomedes courage in battle. In the Odyssey, the gods are often much less grand. They function more as spiritual guides and supporters for their human subjects, sometimes assuming mortal disguises in order to do so. The actions of the gods sometimes remain otherworldly, as when Poseidon decides to wreck the ship of the Phaeacians, but generally they grant direct aid to particular individuals. In a sense, the change in the behavior of the gods is wholly appropriate to the shift in focus between the two epics. TheIliad depicts a violent and glorious war, and the gods act as frighteningly powerful, supernatural forces. The Odyssey, in contrast, chronicles a long journey, and the gods frequently act to guide and advise the wandering hero.
3.To what extent is the Aeneid a political poem? Is it propaganda?
The Aeneid’s main purpose is to create a myth of origins that consolidates Rome’s historical and cultural identity. This search for origins of a race or culture is a political endeavor, in that it seeks to justify the Roman Empire’s existence and to glorify the empire through the poem’s greatness. Yet the Aeneid is also an artistic endeavor, and therefore to dismiss the poem as mere propaganda is to ignore its obvious artistic merit.