The Iliad XXIII-XXIV on Core Curriculum
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Giovanni Maria Benzoni, Hector Lying on his Funeral Pyre
This is a melancholy day—the final episode of the Core Curriculum series on the Iliad dropped this morning. In this episode, host Michial Farmer talks with Coyle Neal and me about the two final books of the poem, XXIII and XXIV.
In this episode we cover the funeral games for Patroclus and the incredibly moving penultimate episode of the poem, Priam’s trip to Achilles to beg for the return of Hector’s body. Along the way we discuss mercy and its role—or absence—in the Iliad and ancient pagan society; the “breather episode” of Patroclus’s funeral games, in which things that would ordinarily seem to call for violent retribution are given a pass; and we spend a lot of time talking about Priam and Achilles and what their encounter at the end of the poem tells us.
We conclude by reflecting on the rather small question of what the Iliad means and what it can teach us today. This was perhaps my favorite part of any of the episodes I got to participate in. We reflect on things like the fleeting glory of victory, the inevitability of death, and especially the appreciation the Iliad can give us for the loser’s side in human conflicts. A quotation I didn’t think of at the time, but wish I had, is this from Richard Weaver, which I actually used as an epigraph to Griswoldville:
“It is good for everyone to ally himself at one time with the defeated and to look at the ‘progress’ of history through the eyes of those who were left behind.”
You can access this episode’s exceptionally thorough and detailed shownotes here. The shownotes include a lot of the allusions we make as well as full blockquotes of some of the passages from other writers that we talk about, including those from CS Lewis’s Preface to Paradise Lost and Chesterton’s Everlasting Man. In the episode I also mention writing a blog post about one of Chesterton’s reflections on the Iliad. You can read that post here.
You can listen to Core Curriculum on iTunes, Stitcher, and other fine podcasting services, or via the embedded player in this post.
I was honored to participate in this series and have enjoyed this deep read back through Homer’s masterpiece. The Core Curriculum will return with a second series on Plato’s Republic, a series I’m looking forward to listening to. Thanks as always for listening! I hope y’all have enjoyed this as much as I have.
