Civilization #7: Homer's Iliad and the Birth of Greek Civilization

okay so today we start Greek civilization and it is incredible uh what Greek civilization is it is the greatest most creative most significant civilization ever in human history uh the Greeks really created western civilization and not only were the great what not only were the Greeks the greatest civilization there's really not been a second great gener civilization okay um so let's think about how incredible the Greeks were if you look at um literature the Greeks basically created literature uh with Homer okay Homer wrote two books called The Iliad and the Odyssey and he wrote these books about 3,000 years ago now last year I taught the great books to the students and we read many books and by far the favorite book was zad okay so think about this how a Greek writer writing 3,000 years ago for a Greek audience his book Still resonates Still impresses uh and still impresses um students in in China today okay so that's Homer then you have Plato philosophy Plato and even today there are many who consider Plato the greatest philosophy ER whoever lived there are many people who read the Republic by Plato and it and they say it's transforms their lives okay it makes them think very differently about the world then you have in history a man named fiddies if you are a military leader today you read faciiities okay there are still many generals today in America in Russia in Europe who believe reading forties will help them win Wars okay so not only the Greeks create civilization but their Works their books are still wi they read today and considered amazing okay so now the question I have is how does this happen how were the Greeks able to create Humanity greatest civilization in really about 200 years okay they they really were not dominant for a long time they really created all these Works in about 200 years Al together so how is this possible okay so um let's go back to last class we talked about the Bronze Age collapse right and we talked about how in about 1,00 BCE Greece was United in a place called mean Greece okay so basically the means controlled Greece and Greece was a monarchy and it was no different from any other place in the world at this point 1200 BCE the world was basically the same okay and then this Society collapsed because of the branchage collapse and three things happen okay first of all centralization the idea that you had a unified Society it went away okay so Greece became chaotic and decentralized that's the first thing that happened second thing that happened um is Greece became illiterate so Greece Lo the Greeks lost the abil ability to read and right and we call this the Dark Ages so from about a thousand to about 600 BC but for 400 years the Greeks basically lost the ability to read and write we call this the Dark Ages because we don't have any books or writing from that period it's completely dark to us okay so the second thing that happened the Greeks became illiterate the third thing that happened is the the Greeks became poor okay so before the Greeks traded with the world it was very prosperous and then because of R collapse um it started to become more isolated and became a lot poorer okay so these are the three major cone consquences of the Bron AG collapse in Greece it became decentralized it became illiterate it became poor and the amazing thing is it's because of these three things that Greece became the most creative civilization in the world okay so remember this it it is because of the destruction of old Greece it's because Greece became chaotic illiterate and poor that Greece eventually became the most civiliz the greatest civilization in the world okay so let me explain how this happened okay so there are three major reasons why Greek cation became dominant the first reason is the polus the poll is um it's hard for us to translate it we usually translate it as city state okay a city state um and this where where we get the word politics but really um what it means is community okay community and the idea of the Pol is is a community of people who discuss politics together how how to best run the town okay and because of this chaos there were thousands of policies around Greece of about a thousand people each okay so it's a very small community and this became the main political structure of Greek society okay so the polus is one factor second factor that happened is the alphabet so after the Greeks became illiterate they had to relearn literacy okay they had to relearn how to read and write in the process they adopted a new writing system called the alphabet okay which forever transformed the society the last thing is Homer Homer was a poet who introduced to the Greeks a new way of Imagining the world okay so these are the three major factors that led to the rise of Greek civilization and if you look at each factor okay so the poll is was a political Revolution it's forever transformed um Society okay the alphabet was a language Revolution it forever transformed the way people communicated with each other and Homer was really an intellectual Revolution it forever transformed how Greeks saw and imagin the world around them okay so let's go over each of these revolutions one by one okay so the polus there were three things about the polus that um allow for Innovation creativity in Greece okay the first thing about the Polish was competition okay these Poes were all spread out and they were all competing against each other for resources they were constantly at war with each other that allowed for massive Innovation okay and again remember there's no centralized Authority now that's the first thing second thing is diversity so if you look at the map of Greece Greece has very diverse Geography okay it has um um Farmland has mountains has Plains it has Coastal land okay and depending on where you were geographically in Greece you develop a different economy and culture and Society based on the Geography okay does that make sense and so you had a lot of diversity and the last Factor was the idea of democracy okay so Greek civilization uh introduce the idea of democracy or the modern sense of democracy to us and the reason why is at this time Greece was very poor okay if you're very poor you need everyone to participate and work hard especially in battles against other polies so the rule was you could be rich or poor but if you fought for us you had the right to speak okay you could be the leader of this polus and you have the right to speak but if you you could be the poorest person in this polish and you still had the right to speak because everyone had a responsibility to defend the polus okay so this introduced the idea of democracy and what this meant was that everyone basically had to participate politically so you could be farmer but you still have to think about the political life and you still had a responsibility to speak up in front of your peers okay and this is where we get the idea of polus from and this was a major driver of innovation in Greece okay so does this make sense guys the Polish any questions so far before I move on okay so one of the major inov ations of AP polis was the introduction of the alphabet into Greek society okay so um let me explain the development of writing systems over time to you okay and this this can be comp be be a bit complicated um so make sure you're following along if if I'm seeing something unclear to you make sure you interrupt and ask me questions okay all right so writing was first developed in Europe uh in Western Society in Egypt and in Samaria and they did so to solve an economic problem okay so these societies were very wealthy and they needed people uh Farmers to help them build roads and build irrigation networks and build temples okay to do so I need to pay these workers right so writing system became a contract all right a contract so basically um the wunning system at first was a pictogram a pictograph that serve the function of a contract so for example if I do this okay two people okay so what this is saying is if you work for me I promise to give two people two bushes of wheat okay and so when you have this you can then give it to me and I have to give you the wheat does that make sense so they first start as pictograms and what they recognize is hey we can just have this as symbols right so maybe just two faces and then two v's and this could represent the same thing because everyone understood what it meant so you went to symbolism that's the next step all right but then what they recognize is hey these symbols can also represent ideas okay so here's an example all right so you have maybe a sun and a moon right okay sun and moon you can they can represent the sun and the moon but if you put them together okay Sun and the Moon you get the concept of day right so now you have a concept an idea day okay we call this an idiogram and guess what guys Chinese is an idiogram language does that make sense okay and then as they continue developing writing they they recognized that you know what it would be a lot easier for us to communicate if these idiograms represented syllables and sounds instead okay so rather than representing ideas let's get them to represent sounds so for example this is um sun right and this is Moon well now if we if we do this it becomes Moon Sun right which is English word for Monsoon which means storm okay so now this it this tells us to read it as Monsoon okay and then the final the final recog recognition is guess what we can actually just have the sound represent a consonant okay the simplest sound and this would be an M this would be an S so if I write something like this it now becomes SM or sum okay and we call this the alphabet does it make sense okay so this is the development of writing and the reason why we do this is um with each Innovation each development we're allowed more flexibility in our language to communicate our ideas does it make sense guys okay so now with the alphabet something remarkable has happened before it before um these develop these different stages of writing required a professional class of people to manage the writing system okay we call these scribes right scribes the reason why is that writing is not speaking speaking is one language but writing is a different language this is true for Chinese right what was true back then as well so to learn to read and write you had to have professional scribes to do so because it was such a complicated task okay does that make sense all right but now with the alphabet writing can become speaking and this marked a incredible revolution in human thought and the capacity to think okay so let me explain why before the invention of writing we lived in an oracle culture in or culture okay in or culture means we don't write we just speak to each other all right now now we live in a writing culture a literary culture where we don't actually speak to each other we mainly just write to each other okay so mainly through email or texting okay now there are certain advantages to both cultures with oral culture the first major advantage is it's very emotional okay when I'm speaking to you I'm trying to get you excited I'm trying to get you to pay attention so I'm trying to think about how to Rouse your emotions so so oral culture it's very emotional Focus that's the first major advantage second major advantage is it's very Innovative and open and what this means is I can create words when I speak right I can sayak okay that means nothing okay but I can create it and when we're speaking you can figure out what I mean so when I'm speaking I can create all these different words so so there's room for Innovation and Imagination in oral culture does that make sense Okay the third thing is the thing about oral culture is it forces everyone to have a really strong memory the reason why is when I speak I C I have to remember my speech right and then you have to remember my speech in order to respond to my speech and these speeches go on for like hours and hours so back then during or culture everyone had a photographic memory okay does that make sense so back then they were a lot smarter than we are today and it's the same as remember during the hunter gatherer stage right when we were out in the field guess what guys they were a lot stronger faster and healthier than we are today because today all we do is sit around right does that make sense so back then they were a lot smarter than us so these are the three major advantages of em of or culture it's very emotional language it's very Innovative and it forces you to have a really strong memory okay but there's also a lot of advantages to writing culture as well that or culture doesn't have so for example the first major advantage is rather than emotional it has to be logical right it has to make sense by itself I can't trick you with rhetoric all right I have to use reason and logic to persuade you because you can read it at your own time okay so that's a first major advantage second major advantage is it's very disciplined okay meaning okay I can't make up words I have to use words we we are okay the third major advantage um is even though it decreases my memory it stores up brain space for me to think deeply about the argument for me to reflect on your argument and find logical problems in your argument okay does that make sense all right so we are basically before they were in oral culture um and that had certain advantages now we are in a liter culture and we've lost the oral culture okay but when the Greeks discovered the alphabet what happened was they combined the advantage of both cultures okay they were most of the time they were speaking they were living in a roal culture but they also had the opportunity to write down their thoughts which allowed them the advantages of the litter culture to have a more disciplined focused logical mind okay does that make sense and this marked an incredible Revolution the capacity for human beings to think okay any questions so far okay this is very complicated concept I I I want to make sure you're following along okay any questions about what I just said before I move on all right now let's move on to Homer okay homer so we discussed the polus and how it is a new political structure which allows for freedom and democracy we discussed the alphabet which marks a revolution in our capacity to think okay now it comes along Homer and Homer is a poet and back then there were many poets who went around and and told stories about the world okay Legends mythologies and the very best poets are usually hired by Kings okay rich people because Kings need poets to solve three problems okay Kings usually hire poets to solve three problems the first problem is legitimate Authority okay what this means is you have to answer the question if you're King why are you king now we know that most Kings get power by killing a lot of people okay that's how they become king by fighting Wars and by winning wars so when they become king they need to clean up their image okay they need to legit legitimize their Authority so what they tell people is usually what why why am I King why exactly God chose me and how do I prove God chose me how do I prove that because there's a poet who sings a beautiful song about me and this song can only come from divine inspiration right the poet is a vessel for divine um message mes right does that make sense this poem this song is so beautiful it must be divine and if this Divine song is saying I am the I am born of a God the gods want me to become king then I must be divine myself doesn't make sense okay so that's the first major function of poets in these Society to legitimate legitimize Authority second function is to create a cultural identity so you know in China you have books like sang okay Ro Romans are three kingdoms you have the Bible all these literary Works their function is to create a common cultural identity okay it tells us what it means to be Chinese does that make sense because then you unify the people who then obey the king who unifies them right that's the second function the third function is the idea of culture differentiation to know who you are you must also know who you are not we're Chinese so therefore we are not Japanese we're not Korean we're not American okay doesn't make sense so most literary works that we have were sponsored by leaders Kings to to to solve these three problems okay so uh in the future we will read uh the inad uh which is what the Romans had will read the Bible okay um in China you have like um the Romans of the three kingdom and all these literary Works were designed to serve the powers that exist at that time okay does that make sense the problem with Homer is when he was around and we don't know actually when he was live maybe about 6 uh 800 to 600 BC okay around then we don't know actually know okay but there was no King there's no one to pay him therefore he could only make his living by appealing to the people around him okay he had to appeal to orer people and so the question then is if you're a poet how do you get H people who are poor to pay you money why would they want to pay you to sing songs for them okay well there are three reasons the first is just entertainment today we listen to songs we go to movies well back then their entertainment their source of entertainment was to pay people like Homer to sing songs to them okay that was that was what they were thought was fun to do that was their source of entertainment second reason is education so remember that back then Greece was poor they didn't have schools but because of the Pol system they had to speak in front of their peers so how did you learn to speak well well you learn you do so by imitating people who do speak well who are usually poets right so you listen to Homer speak and give speeches you can imitate him and copy what he does to make your own speech in front of your peers okay so second reason is educational basically Homer was a teacher as well as a poet okay now the third reason and what made Homer special is what we call edification edification edification means to be a better you to be a higher you okay and edification the way that Homer accomplish edification is by changing the way that you saw the world around you the way you felt about the world the way you imagined the world okay so let me explain how he did so but first of all before before I continue are there any questions about this so far anything anything you are not clear about any anything I've said that you are not clear about or you're confused by before I continue okay so Homer was a poet who told stories and the the most popular story at that time was something called the children War so the main story of the children war is this okay so there was a Greek goddess named Nemesis and Nemesis likes to create problems she's always thinking of ways to get the gods to fight against each other so one day she creates this apple it's a golden apple and the golden apple says to the most beautiful goddess in the world okay it doesn't say who it just says to the most beautiful goddess in the world and then she just puts it on Mount Olympus for the gods to find three goddesses find this apple and they fight over it okay the first goddess is Hera who is the um Queen God okay second goddess is Athena who is the goddess of wisdom the third goddess is apod who is the goddess of love they're fighting over this apple all the time and they're creating a huge Ruckus and so the king God Zeus gets tired of all their fighting and he finds a human stupid enough to be the judge okay so this human uh his name is Paris his job is to pick who is the most beautiful goddess in the universe okay is it gonna be Hera apina or Aphrodite okay and again he's stupid enough to want to piss off two goddesses right so when he's making his decision all the goddesses try to bribe Paris Paris says to Paris Paris if you pick me I will give you your own kingdom I will make you king of the world Paris is like oh that's that's pretty good Athena says to Paris I will make you the wisest man in the world I will give you all the knowledge of the world and Paris is like oh that's pretty good and then after after he says hey I will give you the most beautiful woman in the world to marry and then is like I want that okay and so par but the problem is the most beautiful woman in the world is Helen queen of Sparta she's a Greek who's married to a Greek king Paris steals Helen takes her back to Troy and then the Greeks get angry and they raise this huge Army and for 10 years they attack Troy which is a walled City okay and the war ends when a Greek General named o disas he comes up with this idea called The Wooden horse Okay so the Greeks pretend they give up they they're going to go home because they're homesick and and as a present uh to the Trojans they leave behind a wooden horse the Trojans take the wooden horse into the city at night the Greeks jump out of the wooden horse open the gates and the children are slaughtered okay and this is the story of the uh children War and the Greeks love the story because it's really the Greeks being Heroes right the Greeks have this great Victory people love to win battles what's amazing about Homer story okay it's called The Iliad and we will read this next semester that there are three things that Homer does in The Iliad that's really never been done before okay and so with the ilad we have the invention of literature the first thing that Homer does is rather than telling the story from the Greek side he tells the story from both the Greek and Trojan side in fact when you read thead you'll discover that the Trojans are actually more heroic more courageous and more Brave than the Greeks okay that's pretty amazing and by switching perspective a new idea comes into being that never really existed before and we call this idea empathy okay empathy the ability to see the world from the perspective of other people and before in human civilization this didn't really exist before okay but Homer creates this for the ilad the second thing that is new and unique to the ilad is human psychology so for the first time Homer discusses what motivates the characters in the in in in the ilad okay why are you fighting this war and so the story is between two individuals Achilles and King prome okay so Achilles is The Greatest Warrior of the Greeks prum is the king of the Trojans and they hate hate each other okay because they're enemies Achilles is trying to kill pram Prime is trying to defend his family and his home so um the ilot starts like this Achilles at the beginning gets in a fight with egam Manon who is the king of the Greeks okay they get in a fight and they curse each other and achilles says you're your dog eanon I'm never going to fight for you again and aanon the King says I don't need you man so Achilles refuses to fight okay the problem is Achilles is The Greatest Warrior of the Greeks and the Trojans um led by Hector who is a son of Priam he sees an opportunity because Achilles refuses to fight and Hector leads the children Army out of Troy and they're destroying the Greeks and the Trojans are about to crush the Greek army so the Greek generals say to Egon could you please beg Achilles to return to the battlefield and they go and they talk to Achilles and achilles basically says screw off I'm not helping you guys okay his friend Petrus okay Petrus is basically like his younger brother he feels sorry for the Greeks so he pretends to be Achilles and goes off to battle against Hector Hector kills Petras and this angers Achilles okay Achilles is so angry that he jumps into the battle and he kills Hector once he kills Hector he does something very odd okay usually when you kill someone's body you return that body to your enemy for a ransom because the belief back then is only if you bury your dead can the dead find peace in the in the after World okay but Achilles is so angry at Hector that he's torturing Hector's body which is torturing prium but even after Achilles does this he can't sleep and he feels tremendous sadness even though he's Avenged the death of fas and the reason why is in his heart Achilles knows he was the one responsible for killing Petrus right because if he didn't get into the stupid fight with ag Manon and if he did not refuse the Greeks when they requested help and petas wouldn't have died so it's because achillus was so stubborn and so proud that his friend petas died so he feels tremendous guilt for what happened and his guilt turns into an intense hatred for Hector that's why he's torturing Hector's body then what happens is pram King pram who can't sleep either because his son is being tortured okay his son is dead but his soul is still being tortured by Achilles he sneaks into Achilles tent okay and he's right behind Achilles while ailles is talking to his generals and at this point remember Achilles doesn't see him he's standing behind Achilles he could take his knife and stab Achilles in the neck right and that's what most people would do but Prim doesn't do that Prime instead kneels down and kisses the hand of Achilles which forces Achilles to be in awe of this king who has knelt down before him and he admires PR's courage and love for his son so much that he feels tremendous shame and remorse for what he's done to Hector and he returns Hector's body to prum as compensation and that's how the ilad ends okay the main message of the ilad is it's not war that creates civilization it is love that creates civilization it is Prime's love for Hector that gives him the courage to defeat Achilles in battle and in this defeat Achilles becomes a better person because he's able to forgive himself and he's is able to do what is right and just and return um Hector to his father okay that's the that's the ilc as as you can imagine this is extremely complicated psychology and it forces you to think deeply about who we are as humans okay okay does that make sense the third thing that is shocking about daad is the use of metaphors so what are metaphors metaphors are connections between things that were unseen okay so for example if I say the sky is a snail you're like oh I didn't know that okay do you understand that's what a metaphor is a metaphor is connecting two things that before were not connected if you think about it what is is a new thought and there are lots of metaphors in the ilad okay so essentially metaphors teach you how to think okay they are the tools for thought so these are the three distinct characteristics of the ilad that make it um unique in the world okay it's switching perspectives all the time which creates empathy right it talks about human psychology all the time which creates imagination and it uses metaphors which enables you to think much more deeply about the world okay if you put these three things together what this is ultimately is a theory of human okay it's a theory of what it means to be a human being before we thought human beings thought over land they thought over uh woman like Helen okay they struggle for power what Homer is saying is what it means to be a human is someone who has empathy imagination and the willingness to think okay only if you're willing to see feel and think are you human this is a new Theory of human that becomes the basis for Greek civilization and that's why the Greeks believe the founder of the Civ civilization was not a general it was not a king it was a poet named Homer okay and it's because of the ilad that they all read and memorized and they could recite okay because again this is an oral culture where you're trained to have a very strong memory and because they memorize the Iliad it forever transform them as humans okay this is a new theory of what it means to be human and this becomes the basis for Greek civilization which then becomes the basis for western civilization and it's because of these three reasons the polus um the alphabet and Homer that we have W civilization as we know it today okay any questions so far any questions so far guys all right now I'm going to spend some time and discuss okay why is Greek civilization different from Chinese civilization okay and this will help you better understand um Western Civilization so the first question is why is it the Greeks developed alphabet okay the alphabet and the Chinese did not develop the alphabet okay the answer is this the answer is um Greece was not an isolated culture okay so the people who actually developed the alphabet were the Egyptians okay Egyptians and the reason why is egyp was constantly in contact and communication with many different societies and cultures including the samarians and the Greeks and they could adopt new practices to advance their language okay so it was a Greeks it was Egyptians who develop um the alphabet um the Phoenicians were traitors and the the phans connected the Egyptian culture to everyone else okay so it's the Phoenicians who brought the alphabet to the Greeks who because they became illiterate were looking for a new language system okay does that make sense that's why that's how the Greeks got the alphabet again the question is why didn't China develop the alphabet and the answer is this China for most of its history was isolated from the rest of the world but not only was China isolated but it was stable for most of its history because for most of China's history China was running by a class of people called scholar officials right confusion Scholars what was their power what what was their secret power it was the ability to read and write that's what differentiate them from everyone else right that's what made them indispensable to the emperor that's why they were so powerful and so when you have a monopoly over literacy you don't want to give it up you want to increase it and the way they did so is by creating a new language call classical Chinese literally Chinese okay does that make sense that's why there was this Divergence between Greece and China at this time because China the PO literacy was monopolized by an elite who benefited from from this Monopoly and therefore they made this Monopoly much more effective by introducing a new language called classical Chinese that only they could Master okay does that make sense guys EXC me because um the schull officials they were in charge of bureaucracy right if you're if you're running a bureaucracy you need the ability to read and write you need the ability to tr to to basically um transport information from one place to to the next right that's through reading and writing through literacy doesn't make sense so only they could become bureaucrats okay so does that make sense okay any more questions okay second question is why is it the Greeks had Homer and the Chinese we Chinese we never had Homer okay and again the problem are the scholar officials um if you look at confusion thought um there's a hierarchy in confusion thought in confusion thought right at the very top are scholar officials they're the most virtuous they they're the most well educated the most cultivated okay they're the best people next to the below the SCH officials are uh the farmers and The Artisans right because they produce wealth for society below them are the merchants right and then at the very bottom are who the artists right The Poets now guess what guys in Greece this was the complete opposite they placed Homer at the very top of the society everyone wanted to be a poet like Homer okay so when Plato was running the Republic he was trying to become Homer he was trying to become a teacher of civilization an in an inspirer of civilization ation okay a big G of civilization that's what Plato wanted but guess what forties when he wrote the pipan war he was trying to do the same thing he was trying to inspire civilization he was trying to inspire new ideas because they all wanted to become Homer okay because they all knew Homer was the father of civilization and they wanted to continue his legacy and that's what made the Greeks unique in human history because only the society put poets first and foremost at the top and no other Society did so okay in China was the complete opposite because if you're a small official what you're most afraid of is independent thinking okay so censorship censorship was their main role okay controlling how people thought through censorship and that's why China never really produced a homer or a great thinker okay doesn't make sense right but and so this is going to be strange but it's only because Greece got destroyed by the at the at the end of the Bronze Age it became decentralized it lived in poor that they could then become a great civilization it was only through destruction that they could have the polis the alphabet and Homer okay and that's the main message of human history it's through destruction that we have Innovation and it's only through this process that human beings are able to rejuvenate the society okay does that make sense any questions was this clear to you guys okay so we'll continue the Greeks okay