EconTalk Book Club On The Iliad With Ido Hevroni

- Today is May 25th, 2020 sixth, and my guest is io, my colleague here at Shalom College. Every year since the college opened 13 years ago, IO has been teaching the Ilead by Homer and The Odyssey by Homer to our students. This episode is the first episode of the EconTalk Book Club on the Elliot. I encourage you to read the book. We'll be reading the FALs translation, but there are many to choose from. And I want listeners who may be listening with children that this, this episode will likely contain adult themes. So you may wanna screen this episode accordingly. Io welcome to EconTalk. Thank you. I'm very happy to be here. When did you first read the Eliod, and why did you read it? It didn't start from reading the Ilead itself. It started from, you know, starting to be familiar with the themes, with the stories, of course, of the Troian War or the Trojan horse. It started when I was a kid. My father would use to on Saturdays to sit with me and read from an encyclopedia and old encyclopedia, which had amazing, amazing pictures. So then I fell in love with the story, not with the books, with the story. It took me a lot of years to start meeting the book here in Israel. It is much less known, I think, from, at least in America or Europe. Nobody, I think, really read it in Israel, at least not in high school ages. While I know that in America, in some high schools, they do read at least part of that. When I went to the university, I had an introduction. I studied literature and psychology, and I had an introduction to Western literature. So we had one meeting introducing Homer, and we read, I think a few lines from the book. But much later we, when I became familiar with liberal education, which is less known here in Israel, I started to self-educate myself. So I started reading these books. So the first time was, I assume, 15 or 16 years ago, A little bit, a few years before I came to Shalem. And what impression did you have when you read it in some, at some level of seriousness as an adult? It is strange. Let's, let's admit it. It's hard to begin with it. It's very surprising to discover that the Ilead, which the meaning is the story of the Trojan War. Iliad, is after Ilia, which is one of the names of Troy, is not really about the war. And I'm sorry for disappointing in some of our listeners, but the Trojan horse itself does not appear in the book. And it, of course, it takes time to dive into it. It is trained. You have to start to understand the Gods, which I was a little bit familiar from, you know, before, because I, I was interested in Greek mythology. It takes time to get into it, it takes time to understand what the book is trying to do. But the best experience I had, and the best way to study anything, I think, is to have to teach it. And when I started reading it with the student students and I had to teach them, then I started, I think, to really understand the book. So we'll come back to the students in a, in a little bit, but if you're just a person listening to this, you know, we have listeners all over the world. They do all kinds of things in with their lives. They're not scholars, they're not classicists, they're not that interested in ancient Greek. Most of our listeners. Why do you think they should read it? Why should a, a thoughtful, curious person read the Iliad? Hey, I can have, you know, I can give you two answers from different angles. One is, it is the DNA, eh, the ID and the Odyssey are the genesis of the Western culture. So if you are interested in Western culture, if you are interested in understanding your yourself better, even if you have critical view upon Western society or western culture, this is the pa this is the, the, this is where it all starts. Hollywood started there. Everything we know about heroes and action, and a lot, a lot of our notions and understandings, they all started there. It's, it's before philosophy. We have to remind the, the listeners that it's something like about not the events themself, if they were historical events, but the book itself comes something like 400 years before philosophy. So this is the first document that we have on western culture. So that's, let's say, a a reason from the outside, a rationalistic reason. The other reason is then when you start to read it seriously and seriously doesn't mean professionally, because I have to admit, I'm not a profession, I'm not a scholar of these books. My profession is in literature, but it's in Jewish literature, which is very, very much different from these kinds of literature. So I assume I have some tools which are beyond what a regular person would be, but not more than that. When you start diving into it, you discover so many truths and so many depths that can enlighten our situation even today, that it was the effort. Yeah, I'll say I, I had never read it. I, I've read Chunks of the Odyssey. I'd never picked up the Elliot because after all, it's just about mostly killing. So I thought, you know, it's not that interesting to me. You know, it's, it's the, it's the book before the Odyssey. That's the way I've always thought about it. And I'm now about halfway through and, and we'll continue to read it as we continue this, this book club here at EconTalk. And it's a stunning book. First of all, like the Odyssey, it's incredibly cinematic. You, you referenced Hollywood. There's so many scenes that feel like you're watching a movie. A friend of mine says like reading a Tarantino script. 'cause it's, it's quite graphic. The violence isn't just, oh, and he died, or he was, this person killed this person. They describe, Homer describes in detail where the arrow went in, what it, the results are actually, you know, for my generation it's more like Sam ppa. I, I date myself with that, that illusion. It's very, very, the violence is quite, is quite graphic, but it is, besides the language, which we'll try to give listeners a little bit of a flavor of it today, as you say, as as a work of psychology, as a work of understanding the human heart in war, but not just in war. It's only, it's actually a small part of the book. A lot of the book is we'll talk about is, is about negotiation. It's about frailty, it's about ego, it's about pride. And you're right, it all began here. This, everyone's riffing on it in a certain way. It's quite extraordinary. It now you've read it many, many times and you've taught it more importantly, many, many times. How do you read it differently than from, say, when you read it 10, 15 years ago, when you came to it as an adult for the first time? First of all, the experience itself from year to year. I think I, I understand it better, especially because the way we teach it, and I teach it, of course, in in a dialogue with the students. The students are reading it. We don't, I don't lecture them about the book. I don't tell them what to think about the book. They read it, they come to class. We have discussions and every discussion where, where the participants are serious usually would tell me something new about the book. But of course, I, we have the unique experience of teaching it now for the last three years for students who are returning from war and not just the people who are warriors or participating in actual combat. But everyone here in Israel is now a part of a war, of an ongoing war. And it really deepened the way I understand now the book and the way I can lead my students in reading it. I wanna say something in, in, in passing about the Israeli army. 'cause it's Israeli army is the IDF gets a lot of, of bad press these days. I, I think it's important for people who don't live here to understand and remember that Israel's army is very unusual. There is a large group of 18 and 19 and 20 year olds who serve, and they are drafted, unlike in the United States, they almost outside of the Arab Israeli community, which is, they're allowed to serve, but they're not required and outside the ultra Orthodox community, where similarly they're allowed to serve but are not required outside of those two communities. Everyone serves in, in some fashion and almost all of them in the army. And you serve 18, 19, and 20, but the rest of your life for many, many years. And some people, there's no age limit, are in orders, what is called the reserves. And in, in American parlance, when you hear that phrase, the reserves, you think, well, that's the backup. You know, if they're ever needed. Well, the reserves train regularly here, meaning once you've served in the army, you go back regularly to stay, quote in fighting shape and knowledgeable shape. But more importantly, when there is a war, it's not like, oh, some of the reserves get called up. They all get called up. And here at Shalam, our students come, they're 25 years old on average when they get here, they've all served and then they've done some other things often. But when the war broke out, they had to go back into the army. It's not like, oh, they went to a, a thing in the back room where they kept the paperwork, they served in battle. And so you are dealing, until recently, we're now sort of at peace. But you have been dealing for three years with people who are coming back from war with having seen things that no human being should have to see having done things they are troubled about by definition, because they involve death and destruction. And it's an overwhelming experience that you've told me that, and you've written about it will link to some of your essays. Reading this book, having come out of Gaza or Lebanon is a therapeutic experience for them. It is a very different book than for the rest of us. Yes. And after I, I started about it, I heard a lot of reactions from veterans in in America, which have the same experience. And I know that there are book clubs for veterans in, in all places, in many places in America, which do the same thing. I would just add that I myself was serving in the reserve until I was 40. So I know the experience. I I didn't participated in actual war like our students. But I have a son-in-law that is right now in Lebanon, and last week lost a friend who was married. So the scenes from the Iliad speak to us directly. But I would also want to add, and that you, you said something about it because now the conversation sounds that it might be that the book is, fits only to people who really experienced war, but war is a place to examine humanity in a very deep way. I would just quote Milan Kra the writer, the Czech writer, he said that literature is a laboratory where you can use it in order to understand better the human condition in all kinds of ways, right? In, in only in literature. You can put people in situations where you are not allowed to do in actual life. And to think about what would happen to the values, how would they act in front of danger, in front of something that breaks everything they believe in. How would someone would treat his wife and child when he has to serve his country? And again, doesn't matter what the cause is. So war is a great laboratory for literature to examine some basic assumptions and understandings, understandings about human life. And this is why the Iliad is also, I think, important for people who are not participating. Thank God in war, The word that comes to mind when you, when you talk about it, is it's a crucible. It's a place where, you know, things get hammered out and transformed. And of course there's an extraordinary literature from from war. Everything from war and Peace. Norman Mailers, the Naked and the Dead, catch 22 by Joseph Heller, many novels by Mark Halper. And the, these are, these are places, these are fictional attempts to understand the human condition using the laboratory, the crucible of war as, as a way to see human beings under the most intense conditions. Having said that, when I lived in America, until I came here, war was something, it's the history, you know, I, I didn't love the Naked and the Dead. I I didn't love Catch 22. You know, it's kind of depressing or it's, it's obviously na unnatural. And yet when you read the id, you, you have to confront the reality that there is, violence is part of the human condition from time immemorial. It goes back to another ancient book that you, and I know Cain and Abel is, is, you know, very early on in the book of Genesis, it's about violence and, and combat. What's interesting is that it might be that people are now trying to avoid reading books about war, but maybe most of the movies we see are fool views with violence and the seriousness we watch that are fool with violence. And what they, first of all, they're more graphic than reading. Reading gives you the opportunity to be a little bit distant and think about things, but when you watch it, you cannot be distant from it. Your imagination works less and your judgment work less when you watch a movie. So when you read and when you read a deep book, you are doing a much better, I think, work than watching a movie, which involves violence. It gives you the opportunity to, to train your muscles, your moral right, let's the, the muscles of morality. You can train them much better when you read and you not watch it. So it might be even better to recommend people to read books about war than watching movies about war. It's a very interesting observation that so much of our popular culture is about violence. A friend of mine, a rabbi, was in the hospital for a procedure and he didn't own a television. And so in his hospital room, there was a TV going 24 7, which is often the case in American hospitals. And I asked him what it was like to watch tv. I mean, he didn't like close his eyes. He watched it. He was a pretty, pretty morally serious person. I said, what did you think about it? He said, ah, he shrugged. He said, A lot of kissing and killing. And the, the i, there's a little bit of kissing, not much, but it's, it mostly killing. But there's a lot more than just kissing and killing. I would say. The other thought I have about popular culture is that there are many, many times in this book when I think about superheroes, it's not just, these are not normal soldiers, these are superheroes. Achilles is is Superman, he's Spider-Man, he's daredevil Hector on the Trojan side, Achilles is Greek Hector's Trojan Hector is admissible. He, he has the, or at least seems invincible, so he faces another superhero. But these are people who the normal rules of combat don't apply to them. And so, so when we watch the Avengers say, and this team of, of of gods and goddesses come into war or into battle, that all it's straight outta Homer. It's, it's just, it's a, it's, I felt like I was reading the adventures a number of times that I'm reading this book, Right? But you, you get the, the lesser version when you watch the, the, the Avengers, with all due respect. I I, of course, but many, many psychologists starting I I assume with Freud and then with Jung r May in America, we speaking about the need for myth and even the desperate need for myth after the enlightenment, after burying the big myth. Myth, right? It became a synonymous synonym, synonymous to a lie. But that was not the true in the beginning. A myth is a way to say something about the world in a very, very deep way, which sometimes you cannot say in a realistic novel. So again, if we are dealing with it anyhow, I think that these books are offering us a much serious way to think about aspects of our lives than the commercial, eh, cinema. That's a fantastic point about myths. Yeah. That's, it's so, it's so true. Let's, let's talk a little bit about a part of the book. I just, I didn't expect, I, again, my education is, is inadequate. I thought the book was about, first of all, I thought it was about the Trojan War. It's, it's not, it's about an episode in the Trojan War that takes place nine years after the war started. So it's kind of in the middle. And you don't get much about how that we got here from there. Got, yeah, got here from there. But the other fascinating piece about this, when you read the book for the first time, and I wanna alert readers to it and listeners, is the role of the gods. Now, there's one of our, one of my favorite children's books is called Something for Nothing. Something from Nothing. And it's about a family that the father's a tailor, and he is constantly salvaging and repurposing clothing. So what starts as a shirt turns out to be a, a vest, and then it's a handkerchief and then a tie, then a handkerchief, then a, I can't remember all the steps, doesn't matter. But in the version I like, under the floorboards of the house, there's a family of mice and they're leading their own while the, the humans are doing their thing in the, in this, in this situation, the mice are also trying to repurpose things. And they pick up scraps at a thread here, at a thread there. And they're doing stuff. And this book, the Elliot has the same bizarre two-tiered motif. The human beings are struggling, doing the best they can. They're fa they're failing constantly. At the same time, there's this incredible conflict going on in Olympus between the gods who are also sparring and fighting and negotiating and maneuvering like the humans are, and their fights, which are often quite petty, spill over into the pettiness of human affairs. So talk about the role of the gods in this book. I'm, I'm, of course, speaking from my point of view, it's not clear that that was exactly the point of view of the ancient Greeks. But let's start with explaining to the listeners that if they are coming to it with the expectations of monotheism, doesn't matter whether, what kind of monotheism they believe or disbelief, but they know that familiar with monotheism, this is polytheism in its best, I think. And the gods are not the creators of the world. Let's start with that. And the gods, and that's what usually is very much amazing, are not in charge of morality. They do not care for morality. On the contrary, human beings are much more interested in morality or in need for morals in order to live together. The gods are powers. They're not just natural powers. They're much beyond that. We can think about them today as psychological powers or even beyond that. And understanding that in a way, if one want to describe or even to understand better the world, one has to take into account the fact that there are powers beyond our power or beyond a, beyond a human being. This is, I think what they can give us again, back something which was the notion of every man and woman before the, the great break of the, the great religions. So let, let's take for example, Afra, right? Fraud is a very, very important character in this book. Because basically she started everything. So let's start from the beginning, right? Let's tell something about the background. The background is what is called the judgment of Paris, but it started a little bit before that. So let's start really from the beginning. So it starts with Thais, what I'm telling right now. Part of it is discovered during the book, but that's a, was a common knowledge to the readers. So Homer didn't have to put all the introductions because they knew it, they believed in it, right? That was the, the culture. So on the background, we have the upper, the Olympian guns above them all, of course, Zeus, his brother Poseidon, who is in charge of the seas and Hades, which is in, in, in charge of what beneath earth, which is of course the realm of the, of the dead. And they all fall in love with tha, which is a sea goddess, eh, but the prophecy that the son of Thais is going to be stronger from his father. And that's of course a huge threat for any ruler. So they decide among themselves to not let her marry a God, because then they will have a super God, which is not good for them, of course, but she is going to be married to a human being, to immortal, eh, another word in Greek for Gods is immortals. That's exactly what defines them as unique and not like human beings. We are mortals. They are immortals. And that of course affects everything from character to what they are looking for in the world. And they decide to take her to Pel. She's getting married, and of course they do not invite strife, which is a goddess to the wedding. She's, of course, you know it, I assume from the sleeping beauty. It, it recounts the same, the same basic story. And during the wedding, strife throws in, into the palace or wherever the, this wedding is taking place, a golden apple, which upon it is written to the fairest of them all. And three goddesses are at war. Who has to take the, the apple? It's Aphrodite, it's Hera, and it's Athena. And so let's say something about the three of them. So Aphrodite usually is considered to be the goddess of beauty, but she's the goddess of sex. She's the goddess in charge of the impulse that drives human beings and animals to meet and to have children. And we are familiar with this drive, right? You can call it the, the genes, right? The genes which moves us towards the other sex in order to have more children. You can see it, right? If you, if you look at the animals, you can see it everywhere. So she's in charge of this. She's this power and beauty of course serves this power. This is why she's connected to beauty, but it's not beauty for itself. Hera is the ruler, she's the wound ruler. And they could imagine a woman ruler, she's the wife of Zeus, but she's also the queen of Asia. And Athena is very unique because Athena is a woman, and this is clear, but her sexuality is a non-issue. We have almost no records of partners, of sexual partners of Athena. She's very smart. She's the goddess of, of smartness, of strategy, of living together. Yeah. So it's a good question, right? Who deserve, who is more important, right? The one who drives us to have children, the one who gives us the option to be rulers, or the one who gives us strategy, strategy and power in war, and the power to organize our homes, which is what he gives to women. So instead to judge the gods, doesn't want to, don't want to judge between them. They send Paris, who is Alexandros, who is the young prince of Troy. And this is how it starts. Every goddess offers him something because it's not a real competition. It's more about what would the young ruler choose to do with the power he got, right? Aphrodite promises him the best sex ever, which means being together with Helen, which is the most beautiful woman on earth who is married. But of course a fraud is not interested in marriage. Marriage are an arrangement. Our social arrangement, Hera is in charge of marriage because she interest, she's interested in politics, in society, in the ways society holds together. Then you need rules, right? Then you need laws of marriage. But Aphrodite is not interested in that. And again, everyone who involves with sex knows that sex doesn't know rules. So this is Aphrodite, and she promises and he choses him, which is a poor decision, right? For a young prince to choose to use his power in order to enjoy life, instead of giving something to the Soci society is going to be one day the ruler of, and he's going to visit Manel La, which lives in Sparta, right? It's across the sea. Troy is on the shores in the eastern Shor. Eastern, right? Western, no Western, western s shows, Western, Western Shor of Turkey. Today. This is the place we think they were. So if you cross the sea, you go to Sparta, which is part of the pons. And then he is a guest of man Laos the king of this place. And when Alau one day goes out of home, so Paris takes his beautiful wife, Helen, and goes back with her to Troy. And this is how the whole story begins. So when, when he brings her home, of course the Laus calls his brother and all the other kings who rules, you know, small cities all around Greece, and they go together in order to bring back the wife, eh, of, of men. And this is how the Trojan War starts. But all of these is the background, and it's not in the book itself. And the King of Troy is Priam or Priam. He has an enormous number of, of sons. He has many wives, obviously his, the most prominent sons. And their role in the book, remember this is Troy, so it's gonna be a war between the Troy, the Trojans, and the Greeks. His most prominent sons as Warriors are Hector, who's a superhero, as I suggested earlier, and, and Paris. But he has others and they play a role in the book, which we may or may not get to. But the book opens, I, let me read the, the opening of the book. Tell tell listeners what the opening of the book is called and what We got it. Yes, it It's A pro, it's a poem. It's the invocation of the muse, the poet, which is a human being presents himself, like the prophets presented themselves as just, you know, a tunnel for the godly voice. So the poem, the beginning is the introduction, but it is the calling for, it's a summoning of the muse to come and speak through the throat of the, of the poet to tell the story. And it's ProAm, P-R-O-E-M. And it's, tell me if I have this right, it's so, it's a poetic prologue. Is that a correct Right? It it pro it's before, it's before the story starts. So it's fun to read. I have many additions, but we are, as I said before, we're gonna read the translation of Robert FALs, which I find particularly grand and I enjoy very much. And I'm, I left my hard copy at home. So I'm now scrolling through my Kindle version, which is hard to find, by the way, if you buy the, if you wanna read the i on your Kindle, there's some, if you go to the als paperback or hardcover, and you go to the Kindle version, it's not always the actual ALS translation and the Kindle version. So we will put a link up to the Kindle version of the Als translation. But here's how the Elliot starts. And I just would remind listeners that Palus, as you mentioned, is the husband of Theus. Theus is a goddess. Palis is immortal, who's her husband, because that way their child will not be that dangerous, and that's going to be Achilles. So lemme just say one other thing like the Bible. There are many times in Homer where people are identified by their parents, typically their father. Zeus is often called the son of Cronus. Achilles is called the son of Palus. Emon and Manis are brothers. Their father is, I think, a treaties called, they're their Treaties because they're the sons of a tree. So again, if you're reading this for the first time, it's a little bewildering. You just keep reading folks and it eventually, it straightens out. The ALS edition, by the way, has an enormous glossary. Very frightening. How many people are in the glossary, roughly? I don't remember in the glossary, but in the book itself, there are more than thousand private names, But most of them, I think the glossary Doesn't mention all of them. So don't be alarmed by that. But it does have a bit of the, the Russian novel problem that at first, not only are people sometimes identified by their, their father's name, which is also very Russian, by the way, they're patron, but they have multiple names. But it's not that complicated. You figure it out pretty quickly. And I'll just mention this now to have it, the Greeks are called the Ians, they're called the archives, they're called the Dan Nuns. They're all the same. They're the people besieging Troy trying to get Helen back from having been stolen, kidnapped, and taken by by Paris. Okay, now here's the opening rage goddess sing, the rage of pal's son Achilles, murderous doomed that cost the acha, countless losses hurling down to the house of death. So many sturdy souls, great fighter souls, but made their bodies carrying feasts for the dogs and birds. And the will of Zeus was moving toward its end. Begin Muse when the two first broke and clashed Nan Lord of men and brilliant Achilles end a quote. Why is that important, that opening? I assume that for the original audience, the background is known, the story is known, and it's very important for the bard, right? For the singer, for the person who is enacting right now, the poem, because it was a tradition of enacting it in front of audiences, and of course remembering it by heart, but also putting modifications into it when the snow, right, it's no, no, not one bird who thinks like the other. So it starts with telling us exactly what is he going to focus on. And this is a small part, as you said, from the whole big story. So the background is a background. The Trojan War is the background of the story itself. But here we are going to focus, and the focus is the first word, rage. This book is going to deal with rage and a specific rage, the rage of Achilles. This is the beginning. And the whole book is about what happens, how it starts, and how it hands and what happens during the time that Achilles is angry. And we know from the beginning what happened. A lot of people were killed, his brothers, he doesn't speak about the Trojans, which are dying because of his anger. It is about his brothers in arms who are dying because of his anger. So it's more about what happens within the Greek army when one of the most important fellows is going out because he's very angry. What happens to them? And especially what happens to him again, what breaks the anger and what would eventually bring him back to fight with his partners? But again, not until the end, the end doesn't matter. In this book how it ends, you will have to read the Odyssey, which would recount backwards what happened before Ody Cs went to his journey home. So before we talk a little bit more about the his rage, and, and this is a very outdated concept, but you cannot understand the book without it, haven't you And I having talked about it elsewhere, the role of women in, in this culture, it's a warrior culture, is it's very hard for us to understand, but you can't really understand the book without understanding their role. There is love, there's lust, women have power, but they also play a very, a role as an as objects that's very, very uncomfortable for the modern, for the modern readers. So talk about that. Women are part of the trophies. When you sack a city, you're taking everything they're in, right? You will kill the combatants, the men, because there are threat to you. But you will use the women as slaves sometime, even sex slaves, eh? So it's very hard for us to understand. But this is at the heart of the quarrel that initiate ignites the whole book, the whole plot of this book. So I wanted to take us one step forward with another plot development. I hope this isn't too complicated for listeners, but basically in a previous engagement, Achilles has, remember he's a superhero. He is, he's Greek, he's on the Greek side. He, he's in a war. He, he takes a woman. Bryce is now Bryce. As she kills Achilles kills her husband, kills her brothers, takes her as a war prize. And so when the story opens, EU is belongs to Achilles and Agamemnon. This we don't have to go into, but he's, he has a war prize also. And he has to give her up. So he decides because he deserves it. He's the, he is the king. He takes braces from Achilles. And this is what causes Achilles to be angry and strangely, perhaps as we'll see, when we look at some other decisions people make, he, he refuses to fight. And more than that, he watches his comrades be slaughtered by Hector. Sometimes by the gods in their intervention, the Gods intervene constantly in the, in pursuit of their own political economy goals. And I, I, I, I wanna read, I wanna read the passage where Agamemnon justifies stealing Achilles compensation. He says, the following about Braus, no, excuse me, about the woman he lost Chris, yes, Christus, the woman he lost. He says, this is gonna be a very costly speech for him. Or you're, you're gonna get, you're gonna talk about it. He says the following, I prefer her by far the girl herself. I want her mind in my own house. I rank her higher than Clay. Tim Nestra, my weighted wife. She's nothing less in build or breeding in mind or works of hand. But I, I'm willing to give her back even. So, if that is best for all, what I really want is to keep my people safe. Not see them dying, but fetch me another prize. And straight off to else I alone of the archives go without my honor, that would be a disgrace. You were all witnesses. Look, my prize is snatched away. So he's basically saying, you know, I, I, I'm an altruist. Sure, I'll, I wanna do the right thing, but surely I deserve what I'm entitled to. And then Homer continues, which, which is an unbelievable speech from an economist's point of view. He says, but the swift runner, and this is a common adjective for Achilles, he's often called the swift runner, but the swift runner, Achilles answered him at once. Just how agam non great field Marshall, most grasping man alive. How can these generous archives give you prizes? Now I know of no troves of treasure piled, lying idle anywhere. Whatever we dragged from towns, we plundered, all's been portioned out, but collected, call it back from the rank and file that would be the disgrace to return the girl to the God, at least for now, we at Cannes, we'll pay you back three, four times over. IFUs will grant us the gift somehow, someday to raise Troy's massive ramparts to the ground. So this is a scene, and we're gonna see another version of it a little bit later that I hope we'll get to today. It's a negotiation, basically Emon saying, you know, you know, I'm sorry, this woman I got, it's causing so much trouble. I'll give her back, but you gotta compensate me. And I want what you've got. Achilles and Achilles. He says, you'll get something else. And he says, well, where am I gonna get that from? Where, where, where's the stuff laying around that hasn't been handed out yet? Everything's been parceled out, baby. We've already handed out all the booty. So that's not gonna work. You'll get your someday, you know, if we win, there'll be other spoils down the road. So that's where they're at in the negotiation. But of course, Agamemnon does not find that persuasive and talk, talk about what happens. Qui doesn't found it Persuasive. So just one remark about the dirty talk of Agamemnon, which might be a dirty talk of soldiers, of course, about women. You, you can hear soldiers speaking about wives and women in this way. But again, this is not the major topic. The major issue is that this is not a writing society. They do not write, the only way to understand who's more important than the other is to watch. And again, this is the same as today. If you're going to visit a, a high-tech company and you enter through the garage, right? The common garage, you would immediately know where the head of the company parks, right? It would be nearest to the elevator, of course. And he will have the newest model of whatever car they give the workers. So it is still very, very important. This is hierarchy. And we still think through hierarchy, and still hierarchy is very important. And let's think right now that the head of the company has a leaking roof in his beautiful office, and he has to evacuate the office. So do you think he's going to sit in the kitchen? He's not going to sit in the kitchen, right? He's going to evacuate the next in line from his office in order to have the best office available right now. So if you think about it like that, you understand that this is very rational. As, as, as you, you talked about it, Aon knows how to present his case, right? He makes it even much. He, right? He raises the price of what he's giving up on in order to convince the others that he's really justified that you will take another one instead as long as his was taken from him. So it's still, I think, important even today. So just bring in my favorite Smith quote, man naturally desires, and not only to be loved, but to be lovely and to be loved is to be honored, respected, admired. And in this society, the beauty of your wife is the sign that you are a high achiever and that you are loved by people who look up to you and wanna know what you're thinking and what you're doing. And Aga Mamon wants the best one. And, and Manon is a kind of an insecure leader because again, he's not the king of all the others. He was just chosen to lead this, this battle. So he is basically, you know, first among equals and he's insecure and he's very much afraid of the fact that he, he will give up on his very, very important prize or car or an office. People would look at him and will see that Achilles or OIS or ias or, or the other important commanders has better women in their tense than him, and they will disrespect him. So he's very much afraid of the way people are treating him. And this is very important when you're part of war. We spend a lot of time in economics talking about rationality, and people act in their own self-interest and cost benefit analysis. And as I've gotten older, I'm, I'm a little more tolerant of imperfection. So almost halfway through the book, through the story of the Iliad, the, the Greeks are taking a, a, a terrible beating leading the Trojans, and people are dying. And it looks like they might have to head home with total failure and humiliation. So Agamemnon finally decides he's gotta get Achilles into the fight. Now it's book 10, I think so, or nine, but, and there's 24 9. So we're pretty sure it's not gonna work. 'cause then the story would be pretty much over. So, but it's hard to imagine how it's not gonna work. So I'm gonna read what Agamemnon says and what he's gonna offer Achilles to get him back into the fight and to, to appearing appears to offer a submissive offer. So Agamemnon concedes that, that he was wrong. He says the following mad blind, I was not even, I would deny it. Well, look, that man is worth an entire army. The fighters Zeus holds dear with all his heart, how he exalts him now and Mals Akia forces. But since I was blinded, lost in my own inhuman rage, now at last I am bent on setting things to write. I'll give a priceless ransom paid for friendship. And pausing here, I, which just wanna mention, this is what he's going to give Achilles to get him to forgive him for stealing his woman. And to get it back in the fight here before you all, I'll name in full the splendid gifts I offer. Seven tripods never touched by fire. 10 bars of gold, 20 burnish cauldrons, a dozen massive stallions racers who earn me trophies with their speed. He is no poor man who owns what they have won, not strapped for goods with all that lovely gold. What trophies, those high strung horses carried off for me. Seven women, I'll give him flawless, skilled in crafts women of SBOs, the ones I chose, my privilege that day. He captured the SBOs citadel himself. They outclassed the tribes of women and their beauty. These I will give and along with them will go, the one I took away at first, Bryce's daughter and I'll squirrel solem oath, binding oath in the bargain. I never mounted her bed, never once made love with her, the natural thing for mankind. Men and women join now, all these gifts will be handed to him at once. And it goes on and on at the end. He says he offers him sheep special land with sheeps and ca sheep and cattle. And he says he'll be honor him like a God with hoards of gifts. And beneath his scepter, sway live out his laws in sleek and shining peace. All this I would extend to him if he will end his anger. So you're reading this, you think, well, this is the ultimate offer you cannot refuse. It's everything you were, it's compensation. You, you, you get back what I took plus an unimaginable cornucopia of women, wells, cattle cities, his own daughter. And Achilles turns it down. Why? Let's just make clear what happened in, in the beginning again, after Aon, eh, decided to take the prize, precise from Achilles, then he swore that he won't come back to war. And he's going to ask his mother to ask Zeus to help the Trojans, eh, win the war in order for his friends come, you know, upon their knees to ask for his return, right? He feels that they dishonor him. Nobody is coming to help him against like amendment. So he feels alone, eh, all the promises, everything he believed in is, is broken right now, that's a crisis for a person who were trained only for this moment. Were trained to be the best, to be the best warrior in order to get the best honor. And now, even though he was the best warrior, he doesn't get the best honor because right? Pol politics is sometimes even stronger than war. But he's, he's not a good politician, right? He is just a warrior. He thought that would be enough. So that's the plan of Zeus that was mentioned in the prime. The plan of Zeus is of course, to have the Trojans, but not because he thinks the Trojans should win the war. But in order to make the AAN come to ask Aris and to compensate him like we see here, and that happens at the night after the second battle day. The whole book deals with four days of battle. The first one is, the end is pretty equal, both sides. But the second one is very, very dramatic. I i it's flips the powers the, it's the first time where the ake are sleeping behind the wall near the ships. And the Trojans are parking outside, which they have never done for the last nine years. So this is very dramatic. And when ano sees that, and he understands that he disappoints the whole army because he promised them to win the war, right? He led them to this war. He promised them it's not enough that nine years have passed and are away from home, away from the wives and the property, et cetera. And now he made Achilles retreat, and they're losing the war like they have never lost. That I think explains how far he is willing to go in order to persuade Achilles to return. So it worth a lot. It was much more than what he took from him. And of course, this is a lesson for any manager or a leader. Sometimes you will have to compensate so much for a very small mistake you have done in the past, which is connected straight to your ego. So this is very important. Achilles says no. And that's of course a great surprise to everyone because that's exactly what he was asking for. But he asked for it a week ago, something like a week ago, because sometime passed between the days of battle. But what we learn now, when we see how he reacts to this very, very generous offer is that he has been changed. And this is again, something we know today, especially again in combat. When you are in a combat, you have to trust and believe the structure, right? You have a, a, a set of beliefs that drives you to be willing to risk your love for. But sometimes if you take a break out, you, you timeout and you're going out. And we know it from our soldiers. One, one of our students told me that while in Gaza, they could be there for weeks together and nobody would break down, but when they would go out for a vacation, even, you know, sometimes for a weekend, a few people would not return. Because the moment you're taking, you're going back and you're looking about it. You can say, for what it doesn't, why should I do it? And that's a moment which is very, very important for us as readers and both for the society within the book. Because Achi is, for the first time, is looking from the outside about the basic values that motivates his society. And he says, well, there are alternatives we don't have just to be here, involved in war, killed or killed and get the honor. We might have a different life. We might go a to tell you usually, you know, to Australia and live in a caravan where nobody will ever know about us. We won't have honor, we won't have huge property, but we can live in peace. And that's, you know, that's amazing. That's a huge surprise for all the others or for the last 10 years, we're totally invested in war. So one of our students told me that, you know, when he came outta Gaza and he went into, walked into Tel Aviv, and he sees people sitting, drinking coffee, having wine, and he is thinking, what the hell are they doing? I mean, what is this life? It's so simple. It's so different. It's so alien to him. He couldn't relate to it. He said, I just, I, I couldn't process it. And then he, the way he processed it was he said, well, that's why I'm fighting. So people can sit and drink coffee and have conversations and connect with each other. But it, the, the gap between the warrior's life and the home front is it can't be thought about. And when it is thought about it, all of a sudden you're thinking, what am I doing? This is too painful. I'm doing things and seeing things I don't wanna do. Even at the same time that they're proud to serve their country and they want to be next to their comrades and, and to their, their, their brothers in arms. But we're as insane. There's no, there's no way around it. So here's the thing, Achilles comes across. You just made a nice defense of him. I, I like that. But to me, as the first time reader, he, he seems a bit petty. He seems a bit self-absorbed. Do you respect him? Do you like him? Who do you like in this book, if anyone that, that we're watching human beings under, as you say, they're enmeshed in a, a system, a war machine that is unforgiving and choose them up. And this one extraordinary words gets to step out and sit in his tent for a while and think about it a little bit for the first time and realize the way you've at least portrayed it. But he doesn't come across that admirably. Is is there anybody in this book you respect or that we respect as readers, or you think Hoover wants us to respect? First of all, a great work of art is not judgmental. It gives you a lot, a lot of material to be the judge yourself. This is why it is a great training for a moral judgment. We can watch, we can understand the characters more than that. What's beautiful with oer and polytheism, it's not splitted into darkness and lightness and light. It's not that the Trojans are all bad and the Greeks are all good. We see now Achilles, which is not so admirable for many years before the war, our students hated Achilles, I think more than any other character in the book. But since the beginning of the war, they think about it differently because the breakdown of the soldier, and again, his commander betrayed him, his commander, the person he should have walked, you know, with closed eyes behind his back, knowing that can, he can fully trust this person to bring him into war and to take him out of war. This person betrayed his trust. This person broke down all the rules, everything he believed, every respect he had was lost because of the ego of Aon. So you can understand him. I don't say identify, I don't say admire him, but I think we can understand him. I learned a lot about it. And I learned to understand a kid is better from the book that was written by Jonathan. She, Jonathan, she, he wrote a book called Achilles in Vietnam. He is a psychiatrist who worked for many years with veterans of Vietnam. And he reads the ilead through the perspective of the soldier. And that's very important to say because again, one can approach the ilead and the ODC as classics, right? As something which is interesting, but very foreign from us. But Jonathan Shea and the real experience I had here taught me to treat it as real human beings, like human beings like me and you, and the situations to think about in them not as classical, right? Operatic, even though sometimes it is very operatic the way it is written, but as real actual life situations. And Achilles is losing every trust he had. He's young, he's young, he's very good, he's young, he and he is betrayed. His trust is broken. So I think we can understand him. I don't think we can identify, I wish I would act in a different way if I were instead of him in his place, but I think we can understand him. But are you arguing that Achilles refusal of aga nan's incredibly generous offer, which I took in my quick first time reading to be ego and pride. You think it's more than that Again? I think he, he, he lost, he lost the trust in the cause, right? The moral of the soldiers is falling down when they lose trust. And we see it, you know, in every war. Usually it starts, well, the, the soldiers are enthusiastic, they truly believe they follow their commanders. But with time passing, with being in the trenches, right in the mud in Vietnam and having more friends killed or wounded, you're losing it. You're losing it, you're losing trust. And it happened in Vietnam, right? The most of the soldiers and the public in America lost trust in the leadership. And when you're losing trust in your leadership, it's very, very hard to fight for it and to be willing to sacrifice your life. Well then let's talk maybe in closing about Hector. So Hector is the superhero on the Trojan side. He's also Paris's half brother. They share a father, which is the king of Troy pri pram. And he despises Paris. Hector does, he is constantly blaming him for the war because he stole Helen from mental ais. And worse than that, he is critiquing his courage, his honor. He treats him with disdain and says so, and Paris often agrees with him, which is also incredibly one aspect of how people respond to that kind of criticism. But Hector sees his duty through talk about Hector. Hector is probably the most tragic and beloved character of the book. And again, this is the genius of Homer. Even though Homer is on the side of the Greeks, he can describe a wonderful character on the other side, which is not all darkness. And it might be that the tragic aspect of Hector is exactly the source of his power. His power, his source of power is his loyalty. He is loyal, he's loyal to the laws of the city. He is loyal to his father, the king. And he will follow the orders of his father, even though he does not believe in the cause of the war. He would've been, he would give Helen back because he thinks that's not right to do. But his father, which is a weak leader, he's old, he's weak, and he's following Paris, his father. It's a kind of maybe Jacob and Joseph, right? The beautiful youngest son who moves his father and he causes his father to lose his understanding about the situation, the whole situation and his loyalty to the others. So Priam is following Paris and Paris is following, let's not, you know, mention here what exactly he's following, but it's not his brain. And Hector is angry and he's critical about it. But he will continue fulfilling his duty. He will never break. He will fulfill his duty until his tragic end. And there's an extraordinary scene, you've written about it and we've talked about it, where he, he's on a mission, takes him back to Troy away from the battle for a bit, and he takes the opportunity to visit his wife. And Andy and his infant son and his wife says basically, don't go back, stay here. There's no reason to go back. You're gonna be killed. What's the point? You're going to be killed. And of course she's right. He's going to be killed. So why does Hector go back? He answers her. He starts with saying, I identify with you, I totally understand you. I think like you. Which is again amazing because she, he, she gives him strategic options where to stand in order to be more protected where he can see and command the army without being in danger. Again, that's not for a woman to say, but he accepts it. He does not disagree with her. But he says, I could not look into the eyes of the other women, which I send their husbands and sons and fathers to war. And I am loyal. I was raised to take this position. This is my position. I am the commander-in-chief of the army. I have my duties. I'm loyal to the laws of the city. Even in the cost of losing my life and losing you and my son as the acts, which is present in this amazing scene. It, it's a fascinating reason. He doesn't say the standard brothers in arms argument, I can't let my comrades down. He says, I couldn't respect my he's ba the way I take it. Tell if you agree, you know better than I do. I couldn't respect myself if I walked through this town and saw the wives of the men that I abandoned to their death and took the easy way out. Right? And the continuation of this amazing scene, when he speaks with her, he's fully armored, especially with the helmet, which covers half of his face. And then he speaks like he should speak, but then he moves to say goodbye to his son, to his little son. And the boy is of course, afraid of this appearance. Again, a story I heard again and again from our students when they would come return home, right? And would go to visit their young niece or nephew, they would, you know, run away from this person who now looks like a stranger after not being at home for a month or two months. And you know, the face is a little bit changed by, by the war and the look of the battle dress. Then he removes the helmet and he smiles at the baby and then the baby smiles back and then he speaks in another in different way. He speaks in a more hopeful way. And that's again, a very very deep moment because Homer can depict this very complicated situation where Hector is torn from within. He decides he knows exactly what to do, but that doesn't say that he's not a robot. He's not a blind follower of the laws. He decides to follow the laws because he believes that this is the right way to do it. He's a great father. He's a man of his family. He loves his family. He loves civilian life. He would not choose to be a soldier. He was raised to be a soldier. A soldier in order to protect the city. And now when duty calls, he will go even though he knows the price he pays for. But Homer have this ability to picture this in a very complicated and very touching to the heart way. I hope everyone will join us in reading this book and we'll have some additional episodes down the road with some different guests with their take. My guest today is Benita CVaR. Ito, thanks for being part of EconTalk. Thank you very much.