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THE_ILIAD_AND_THE_PROTESTANT

                                              July 2, 2004
The immediately striking thing
about Homer's "Iliad" is the
incessant low-level interference         (850 BC,
of the gods with the human action,        they say)       850 BC - Homer
to the point where it totally                             400 BC - Plato
kills the story.                                            4 BC - Aristotle

  There's a line about how
  the "reins of victory
  are in the hands of the          A character literally
  gods", and that pretty           can not slip in some     But then, that
  much says it.                    dung without it being    has to be an
                                   taken as a sign from     intentional joke;
      Agamemnon is a bastard,      the gods.                perhaps even
      Achilles a spoiled brat,                              intentional
      and Paris an irresponsible                            self-satire.
      fop; and the twists and
      turns of the plot depend
      entirely on the quirks of
      the gods squabbling in the
      background where Zeus
      always has the last say.


            (This was some eight centuries
            before Aristotle cautioned
            against invoking the deus
            ex machina.)




Compare this to -- to take the first
example that comes to hand --
C.S. Forrester's "The Captain from               Originally in the
Connecticut" (1941):                             "Saturday Evening Post".

   "What Providence took away in one
   fashion she restored in another,
   keeping an even balance so that a
   man's success or failure depended
   entirely on himself, as it should be."

                         p. 15, Chapter 2.

   "Peabody's philosophy was such -- illogical
    though he would have admitted it to be if he
    had happened to analyze his feelings -- that
    to him it was the most natural thing in the
    world for the wind to shift and moderate
    after his own efforts had made the change
    almost unnecessary.  To grumble at the whims
    of uncontrollable natural forces -- at the
    dictates of Providence -- was to him a
    little absurd, like a heathen beating his
    god for not responding to prayer."

                        p. 31, close of Chapter 2.



This is of course, a
Christian/Protestant          Though whether this stuff is
attitude that Forrester       strictly consistent with the
is writing about.             stated premises of Christianity
                              is a different question.
   And it is also,            The connections between
   very clearly, my           official doctrine and social
   attitude...  and           attitudes are complicated.
   I would venture
   to say, *our*                              LETTERS_FROM_EARTH
   attitude.


In comparison, the point of
view presented in the Iliad
is exceedingly strange.

  Hector complains
  about how useless         Book 3, Line 70:
  Paris is, and Paris       "Ah Hector, you criticize me fairly, yes
  essentially               nothing unfair, beyond what I deserve. ...
  responds, well,
  yeah, you're right,       "the heart inside your chest is never daunted.
  but we are what the       Still don't fling in my face the lovely gifts
  gods made us.             of golden Aphrodite.  Not to be tossed aside,
                            the gifts of the gods, those glories...
                            whatever the gods give of their own free will--
Was there every a people    how could we ever choose them for ourselves? ..."
who really had this odd
mixture of fatalism and
egotism?

A people that would go around pretending
that the gods were hovering over their
every move, and yet claim no responsibility
for any of these moves, since all is the
tinkering of the gods anyway...

It doesn't really seem possible
to me-- I expect rampant hypocrisy,
a tendency to ignore this religious
doctrine whenever it conflicts with
practicality.

But then, I can't claim that my
own notions of "responsibility"
are anything like a consistent
doctrine. It's clearly a hacked           SELF
together patch job...

And there, in the Iliad, is an
example of a different set of
hacks...

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