ILS 203 - The Iliad terms

Cyclic Poems

Cyclic Poems

Oral poems which cover the events of the Trojan war before the beginning of the Iliad. All of the poems are now lost but they completed the "cycle" of the Trojan war.

Heinrich Schliemann

Discovered Troy in Turkey. He ravaged the site so that he could prove it was Troy. He also found Mycenae in 1876.

Hissarlik

The location where Heinrich Schliemann excavated Troy. Frank Calvert discovered it and Schliemann about it. There are 9 layers of "Troy", where Priam's treasure was discovered.

Moira

fate, literally means portion in Ancient Greek

Atê

disaster resulting from reckless behavior - "blindness"

Timê

honor, reputation - determined through your prowess in war and the "geras" (prizes) you receive

Alexandrian Vulgate

The "modern" text of Homer used for today's translations, compiled at Alexandria, librarians sought to find the most authentic texts

Unitarian view

Developed by Milman Parry, through research with illiterate bards, he developed a theory that a single individual could sing/tell the story of the Iliad on the fly which would then be written down later

Euboea

Island just off central/northern Greece; area where Greece first emerged from the Dark Age. Thought to be the homeland of Homer

Aioidos

Bards who would sing and tell stories while playing the lyre, they would entertain royalty and aristocrats

Rhapsode

a person who recites epic poems, especially one of a group in ancient Greece whose profession it was to recite the Homeric poems from memory. Inaccurately thought of as meaning "song-stitchers"

Palamades

The supposed adaptor of Homer into writing, he knew West Semitic writing (which can only be read by Native speakers) and redesigned the West Semitic writing into a system with vowels and consonants in order to transcribe a poem (the Iliad) which relied on meter

The Sea Peoples

Unknown group who devastated the entire Mediterranean, brought an end to Minoan/Mycenean civilization and brought an end to Linear B writing

The Myceneans

Proto-Greeks who arrived in ~2,300 BCE, used the writing system Linear B on clay tablets for palace administration (the tablets contained the names of later Olympians), traded with Egypt, Africa, and other Middle Eastern civilizations, Agamemnon and Menelaus' homeland

The Minoans

A non-Greek people who lived in Crete ~2000-1400 BCE, a matriarchal society, used the writing system Linear A persevered in clay tablets, there civilization and writing was lost when they were conquered by the Myceneans, discovered by Arthur Evans in 1899

Dactylic Hexameter

A meter in which a line consists of six feel in the pattern stressed, unstressed, unstressed, etc - used by Homer

Milman Parry

Developed the Unitarian viewpoint through his studies with illiterate bards, believed a single person was capable of telling the Iliad through the use of song

Venetus A

The oldest complete manuscript of the Iliad, it comes from 1000 AD

Friedrich Wolf

Created classical philology, noticed there was no reference to writing in Homer, developed the viewpoint of Analysis - the idea that the poems were created by different poems at different times and were stitched together later by editors

Boustrophedon

an ancient method of writing in which the lines run alternately from right to left and from left to right.

Hittites

Indo-European Bronze Age warrior people in central Anatolia; their capital was Hattusas, they discovered Hittite writing at Hissarlik, the ancient name for Troy was possibly mentioned in some of their writing

Luvian Hieroglyphics

The writing system of the Hittites, some of it was discovered on a seal in Hissarlik

Pithekoussai

Widely believed to be the first Greek colony located in Italy, a primary trading center for the Greeks

Chryses

A priest of Apollo in a Trojan-allied town; the father of Chryseis, whom Agamemnon takes as a war prize.

Chryseïs

Agamemnon's war prize demanded back by Apollo for Chryses, his priest and father of the girl.

Geras

War prizes distributed by the people to the best in battle. It kept order in society. Kleos reflected Geras.

Kleos

Undying fame, glory

Epithet

an adjective or descriptive phrase expressing a quality characteristic of the person or thing mentioned. Ex.) Swift-footed Achilles, Pallas Athena, Cow-Eyed Hera

Phoenician Alphabet

A series of 22 written symbols that represented sounds which represented a consonant, with an implied vowel to be implied by the speaker

Agamemnon

King of Mycenae, brother of Menelaus, leader of the Acheans

Hector

Son of Priam and Hekabê, the strongest of the Trojan fighters, husband to Andromache and father to Astyanax

Priam

King of Troy, father of Paris and Hector, husband of Hekabê

Hephaistos

The god of blacksmiths, son of Zeus and Hera, creator of Achille's second pair of armor

Bellerophon

Corinthian hero, grandson of Sisyphus, tamed Pegasus and killed the Chimera, Proitos' wife Anteia wanted to sleep with him but he didn't want to violate xenia so he refused, she told Proitos he tried to rape her

Thetis

Sea nymph and mother of Achilles, forced to marry Peleus after it was prophesized that her son would be greater than his father

Patroklos

Achilles most beloved companion, he wears Achilles armor and takes his place while Achilles refuses to fight, is killed through the combined effort of Apollo, Euphorbus, and Hector