+++
title = "Ἰλιάς"
author = ["George M Jones"]
publishDate = 2022-02-13T00:00:00-05:00
lastmod = 2023-12-06T05:46:07-05:00
tags = ["life", "100DaysToOffload", "history", "snark"]
categories = ["blog"]
draft = false
+++
The Iliad and Dr Seuss have nothing to say to us today. "One fish, two
fish"? Really. Recent translations of liner-A tablets reveal that it
was a faceBOOK post that launched 1000 ships.
{{< figure src="/ox-hugo/delphi.jpg" caption="Figure 1: [\"Oracle headquarters, Delphi, Greece AUC MMDCCXLII\" by George Jones](http://curious.galthub.com/ox-hugo/delphi.jpg) is licenced under [CC SA 4.0](http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/)" width="600px" >}}
I recently finished re-listening to the Iliad (20 hours) and was struck by how
little has changed in 3000 years:
- The Olympian gods still enter directly into human battles.
- The Hittites still rule Anatolia (Turkey).
- Slavery is still a thing in the Mediterranean.
- Raiding and plundering coastal towns is a perfectly acceptable career path.
- Augery (reading the livers of animals) and portents (birds flying to
the right or left) are still seen as valid ways making important
decisions.
- Political leaders are valued for their bravery in battle, leading from
the front, risking their own lives and leading by example.
And there is even new evidence, deciphered form Liner-A tablets, that
they were deeply concerned about issues of climate change, social justice
and COIVD-19 vaccines. It seems that the oracle at Delphi read a
Facebook post and clued them in that the people of the early 21st
century (21st century from what?) would be rightly obsessed with these
issues and that these people and their views would be the pinnacle
of moral development for all of human history, and that the opinions and
concerns of twitter mobs in that era were fixed, immutable and correct
for all time.
In fact, the Trojan war was launched because the Trojans were on the wrong
side of history on all these issues. So Agamemnon and the boys showed up
and did the right thing. They administered social justice and burned it
all down. For millennia we've referred to "The face [Helen] that launched
1000 ships", but that was due to an incorrect textual variant in the source
documents. It was a "faceBOOK" post that launched 1000 ships. Unfortunately,
this lead directly to Aeneas founding Rome. They were also on the wrong
side of history. What can you do?
There are some themes that Homer dealt with at length. Things change. These
are no longer issues for humanity:
- Wrath
- Jealousy
- Hatred
- War
- Death
- Greed
- Pride
- Fate
- Joy
- Sorrow
- Glory
- Destiny
- Companionship
- Loyalty
- Retribution
- Pathos
- Grief
- Treachery
- Mortality
It's a good thing nobody has to read Homer any more. Or Dr Seuss.
That stuff is problematic, and longer that 140 characters!
\#7 of #100DaysToOffload take 2,