The Iliad

Article

The Iliad is a recurring book in the Astral Codex Ten archive, appearing 2 times across 2 issues between November 07, 2023 and November 17, 2023. The archive places it in contexts such as “A POETIC FORM FROM THE ILIAD WHICH IS WIDELY CONSIDERED IMPOSSIBLE TO IMITATE IN ENGLISH”; “the Iliad”. It most often appears alongside America, Cronus, Israel.

Metadata

  • Category: Books
  • Mention count: 2
  • Issue count: 2
  • First seen: November 07, 2023
  • Last seen: November 17, 2023

Appears In

Source Context

Recovered passages from the original issue text. When the raw archive preserved outbound links inside the source passage, they are listed directly under the quote.

November 07, 2023 · Original source
[On the bottom of the TV screen, we see the phrase “SECOND ROUND CONSTRAINT: ANSWERS MUST BE SPOKEN ENTIRELY IN HEROIC HEXAMETER, A POETIC FORM FROM THE ILIAD WHICH IS WIDELY CONSIDERED IMPOSSIBLE TO IMITATE IN ENGLISH”]
November 17, 2023 · Original source
But Girard lost me with the part about the myths. Most pagan myths have nothing to do with the single-victim process (eg labors of Hercules, Jason and the Golden Fleece, rape of Persephone, the Iliad, the Trojan Horse, the Odyssey, etc, etc, etc). The same with most Bible stories (Adam and Eve, Noah’s Flood, the Tower of Babel, the Ten Plagues, the Ten Commandments, etc). It kind of seems like the sort of thing where Freud can claim all myths are about castration. There are lots of myths, and they’re about lots of things. “Person does bad thing, the gods collectively punish humanity, then once we get rid of him the collective punishment stops” is certainly one trope. But it’s not hard to fathom why a primitive community stricken by a plague might think God was punishing them for some iniquity. And if I haven’t committed iniquity lately, and you haven’t committed iniquity lately, it must be some particular bad guy who needs to be stopped.