Appeitive: The Original Windy City

Propertius II and I finally finished reading Iliad Book 13 this morning, mostly due to my slowness and brief interruptions where each of us were busy. I have to say, I really enjoyed the process of reading Homer in the original. I know I confessed in a previous blogpost that I did not like Homer, but the Iliad has grown on me more and more since we began three months ago (for reference, we have also been reading plato beside the Homer and taking time off). We start Book 14 this coming week after some work on the Crito.

One of the many things that I noticed in our most recent trek through the Iliad, was epithets. When reading 130 lines over two sittings, I became familiar with certain epithets often used: great-hearted (μεγάθυμος), godlike (δῖος), lord (ἄωαξ), etc. The end of Book 13 focuses on the Trojans, so there were many references to Troy (Ilion) which also bore epithets. My favorite was "Ἴλιον ἠωεμόεσσαν" (Iliad 13.724) or "windy Ilion." It amused me that Troy was the original windy city.

Reasoning: The Shield in Homer

I mentioned previously that I was interested in the many different words for shield in Homer. Propertius II found an article which is, in fact, the first thing that pops up on Google when one searches for "Homeric Sheild." The article is from 1913 and is probably out of date, but I found it quite intersting. In the article "Notes on the Homeric Shield" (JSTOR), Tayler argues that there are two main types of shield in Homer: ἀσπίς and σάκος. Almost to a person, the Trojans use ἀσπις, which Tayler posits are large Minoan-style hide covered shields, while the Achians use a combination of ἀσπίς and σάκος all though most of them prefer the smaller metal σάκος. Sometimes, the stronger of the heroes use ἀσπίς with large metal designs (usually circles). Making the large ἀσπίς entirely out of metal would be too heavy.

The "note" was short and intriguing. Tayler mentions that he is not actually an archaeologist and he is basing his evidence primarily on the literary distribution of the two words throughout the text. If anyone has more recent information on this, I would love to read it.

Appeitive: Children's Tales

For the last few months, I have been tutoring a nine year old boy in English (vocabulary, reading comprehension, etc).  Early on, I realized that the boy liked Medieval history, so we read some Arthur mythology. Unfortunately, most of my Medieval books are a little too advanced because I studied the Middle Ages in 6th grade. So the trouble remained: how can you keep the interest of a smart kid who has trouble reading?

I found a picture book on Ancient Greece to read. The boy was only interested in battles, but we talked extensively about the Greek phalanx and the Athenian battle strategy at Salamis. He plays a lot of board games with his brother and cousin which involve military strategy, so he caught on to the intricacies of Greek warfare surprisingly quickly.

I decided that we should read some Greek myths. Plato reports in the Republic that children are raised on Greek myths and Homeric poetry, so I thought I could use the stories. I remembered my love of D'Aulaires' Book of Greek Myths. The problem was that the boy got bogged down in complicated names of all the people and places. He liked the stories, but the names were too hard. One of the stories D'Aulaires sadly lacks is the story of Achilles. So I decided to write one that would not use as many confusing names. We will probably read it next week but I might post it for fun when I am finished.

More serious things to come when I finish my next passage of the Iliad.