Our first book this year was Homer’s The Odyssey followed by Aeschylus’ The Oresteia which we are currently finishing up. These books are good to read because they show the progression of the Greek opinion concerning order, chaos, reason, the supernatural, etc.
In The Odyssey the Greek ideal is given form in the hero of the story, Odysseus. The hero is strong, handsome, clever, loved by the gods, and he knows what really matters: being where you belong and being with the people who you love and are loved by. His fate is to live in Ithaca with his wife and son and to rid his home of his wife’s suitors. The Odyssey is the story of how he overcomes all of the obstacles that the gods put in his way as he journeys home to his family. What The Odyssey expresses is the idea that being where you belong (i.e. your home, following your fate) and being with people that love you is the most precious thing in the world. The view of the gods in The Odyssey is that the immortals are more like super men than divinities. They hold grudges, they are prone to violent reaction when angered (i.e. typhoons, earthquakes, etc.), and do not seem to be very concerned about the ordering of the world, which is what they are supposed to do.
The Oresteia shows the Greek mind taking another step forward. The story depicts the victorious return of king Agamemnon from the Trojan War to his home in Argos where he is received by his treacherous wife Clytemnestra, who has been secretly plotting his death; once she has him washed and bathed and seated at a “welcome home” feast, she kills him. The story is also of Orestes who is the son of Agamemnon and Clytemnestra. Orestes avenges his father by killing his mother and is then chased by the Furies, who are the goddesses that avenge “inter-family” killing, until Apollo (god of Reason) and Athena (goddess of Wisdom) have to intervene to save the young man’s life. The two gods demand that Orestes be tried in a court of law and end up saving the day using the combination of Wisdom and Reason, which is Rhetoric. What this story depicts is the movement of Greece into an age where its people begin to question barbaric tradition and replace it with well ordered and well reasoned ideals. The story shows the first court of law and how Reason and Wisdom overcome the bloodlust of barbarism. At one point in the book Zeus himself is questioned and the speaker wonders if Zeus is really what the people have always thought him to be. The speaker wonders if Zeus is even the god’s correct name. The amazing thing about this view of the gods is that it does not negate the idea that there is a supernatural being ordering the cosmos, it just questions whether the gods are really what they have always been taken as, which are super men, or whether the gods are much more than man had ever thought them to be; more omnipotent, omniscient, and omnipresent.
These two stories show the state of man where he simply believes in what he has been told exists and does not question it, but also the state of man where he begins to wonder about absolute truth and question what he has been told is true. The remarkable thing about ancient civilizations similar to the Greeks is how they assumed that there must be a god who orchestrates the universe. This and the fact that the Greeks took it a step further by searching for absolute truth, and determining that it must be with god(s) is astounding. The culmination of this search for absolute truth came through Plato. As a Greek he knew the ancient stories, and reasoned that for the gods to be the ordering principles of the universe, they must be perfect. The gods must know or be absolute truth. Eventually he deduced that there must only be one god who is absolute truth, goodness, and beauty. This is an astounding insight, since Plato came to this conclusion without the specific revelation of the bible. Plato’s reasoning only furthers the glory that is the Christian God’s alone. The Triune God is a god of order and even a pagan, like Plato, can pick up on that. The Odyssey and the Oresteia show the transition from barbarism to order and Plato lays a foundation that thinkers like Aristotle, the Romans, the medieval Christians, and our modern philosophers have built upon as they have continued to ask the question, what is the truth?
In The Odyssey the Greek ideal is given form in the hero of the story, Odysseus. The hero is strong, handsome, clever, loved by the gods, and he knows what really matters: being where you belong and being with the people who you love and are loved by. His fate is to live in Ithaca with his wife and son and to rid his home of his wife’s suitors. The Odyssey is the story of how he overcomes all of the obstacles that the gods put in his way as he journeys home to his family. What The Odyssey expresses is the idea that being where you belong (i.e. your home, following your fate) and being with people that love you is the most precious thing in the world. The view of the gods in The Odyssey is that the immortals are more like super men than divinities. They hold grudges, they are prone to violent reaction when angered (i.e. typhoons, earthquakes, etc.), and do not seem to be very concerned about the ordering of the world, which is what they are supposed to do.
The Oresteia shows the Greek mind taking another step forward. The story depicts the victorious return of king Agamemnon from the Trojan War to his home in Argos where he is received by his treacherous wife Clytemnestra, who has been secretly plotting his death; once she has him washed and bathed and seated at a “welcome home” feast, she kills him. The story is also of Orestes who is the son of Agamemnon and Clytemnestra. Orestes avenges his father by killing his mother and is then chased by the Furies, who are the goddesses that avenge “inter-family” killing, until Apollo (god of Reason) and Athena (goddess of Wisdom) have to intervene to save the young man’s life. The two gods demand that Orestes be tried in a court of law and end up saving the day using the combination of Wisdom and Reason, which is Rhetoric. What this story depicts is the movement of Greece into an age where its people begin to question barbaric tradition and replace it with well ordered and well reasoned ideals. The story shows the first court of law and how Reason and Wisdom overcome the bloodlust of barbarism. At one point in the book Zeus himself is questioned and the speaker wonders if Zeus is really what the people have always thought him to be. The speaker wonders if Zeus is even the god’s correct name. The amazing thing about this view of the gods is that it does not negate the idea that there is a supernatural being ordering the cosmos, it just questions whether the gods are really what they have always been taken as, which are super men, or whether the gods are much more than man had ever thought them to be; more omnipotent, omniscient, and omnipresent.
These two stories show the state of man where he simply believes in what he has been told exists and does not question it, but also the state of man where he begins to wonder about absolute truth and question what he has been told is true. The remarkable thing about ancient civilizations similar to the Greeks is how they assumed that there must be a god who orchestrates the universe. This and the fact that the Greeks took it a step further by searching for absolute truth, and determining that it must be with god(s) is astounding. The culmination of this search for absolute truth came through Plato. As a Greek he knew the ancient stories, and reasoned that for the gods to be the ordering principles of the universe, they must be perfect. The gods must know or be absolute truth. Eventually he deduced that there must only be one god who is absolute truth, goodness, and beauty. This is an astounding insight, since Plato came to this conclusion without the specific revelation of the bible. Plato’s reasoning only furthers the glory that is the Christian God’s alone. The Triune God is a god of order and even a pagan, like Plato, can pick up on that. The Odyssey and the Oresteia show the transition from barbarism to order and Plato lays a foundation that thinkers like Aristotle, the Romans, the medieval Christians, and our modern philosophers have built upon as they have continued to ask the question, what is the truth?