Quote:
Originally Posted by 6charlong
There are lots of odd things in the poem. For example, the girls are always called "pink cheeked" or "red cheeked." It sounds like they're blushing but I can't think why that's so important Homer doesn't tell us anything else about them. Modern writers describe a character's appearance if they men are about to go to war over them. Blushing might show something about the girl's character but I think any girl would blush if she found herself in a situation like those poor girls were in.
Also, people are always taking hold of someone's knees when they want something. What's with that anyway? For example at line 500 Homer has Thetis hitting Zeus up to whack the Greeks for the way they dissed her boy Achilleus:
"She came and sat beside him with her left hand embracing
his knees, but took him underneath the chin with her right hand
and spoke in supplication to lord Zeus son of Kronos..."
Now if Zeus is the Big Kahuna how is it Thetis gets away with that? We don't know much about monarchs in America but I can't imagine someone going up to Queen Elizabeth and grabbing hold of her like that to ask for something.
And why does he always say who the guy's father was? How many Zeuses are there anyway? Only one I think. Is he doing it just to make it rhyme? You can't tell from the translation.
Shoot, I'm only on Book 1. This thing is a pretty wild ride.
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The Iliad was born of a loooooong tradition of oral poetry. So long, in fact, that certain phrases used by Homer (such as 'immortal fame') can be found in Indian epic literature as well. Stock phrases are often re-used in certain phrases, as are epithets. The original Greek did not rhyme, rather it was written in dactylic hexameter which followed a specific pattern; often the stock phrases were used to keep the hexameter flowing as well. I'm probably not doing a great job of explaining this, am I? There are some great books on the subject of Indo-European poetics; I warmly recommend "How to Kill a Dragon" by Calvert Watkins.