Homer’s Iliad and Children’s Ministry

Took a break during the past week to read Homer’s The Iliad (Robert Fagles translation) and am amazed at how, 2700 years ago, the world has NOT changed!

Blind Homer would TELL this story to audiences that had to have been made up of children as well as adults. It is the bloody tale of “the rage of Achilles” as the Achaens (Greeks) waged war on Troy. I read its 615 pages knowing that it was rated “R” in a rough world contemporary with the time of King David (by one reckoning of Old Testament dating). Kids heard the graphic language of battle after battle, armies taking the offensive and then backing down against a formidable enemy. Did their parents cup their ears or banish them to their chores?

All the while the gods are both reverred (worshipped, sought out) and feared (they are, after all a petty inbred family) for their capriciousness. Fate features prominently and Helen of Troy (really, she belongs to Menelaus who is Greek) is the whole reason the “black hulls” of Achaeas ships line the beach of modern Turkey near the Hellispont which begs the question, “what was she thinking?” But I think about a culture that gave rise to our modern-western world view and see in its fascination with the mysterious and the bloody a strikingly modern-sounding culture! Things have not changed much! Plus ca change, plus c’est le meme chose! The more things change, the more they stay the same.  Modern video games, movies and epic stories of battle, friendship and mystery all feature prominently today as much as it did when this story took shape and again as it was told to audiences over and over again (memorizing 615 pages of cadenced greek in 24 chapters–originally papyrus rolls couldn’t be too long, thus chapters were really “books”–was AMAZING)!

Now on to Robert Fagles new translation of the Anead by Viril and how the sole survivor of Troy whom the Romans adopted as their own foundation legend of the imperial city of Rome.