thoughts on the classical epics
I was reading the introduction of Fitzgerald’s Iliad translation, and there was mention of something that absolutely floored me. Not because it was completely new information, rather that I had all the context and yet had never made the final conclusion.
It was the idea that the Iliad is a story of connecting the disconnected Greek peoples into one common goal and force against a common enemy. And while the concept of a disconnected Greek identity is not something that’s surprising to me, it is almost a constant in their history, the idea that the Iliad was perhaps created to counteract that surprised me.
Greek thought was highly advanced for its time. If it had not been for the numerous divisions that existed within Greek culture, Greece might have potentially rivaled that of the Roman Empire had it been unified. Lacking cultural divisions, the Romans implemented these same basic Greek ideologies allowing for them to become a dominant power in the world for many years to come. [https://owlcation.com/humanities/Greek-Influence-on-Rome]
It is a bit unfortunate that it seems like the intention of the Iliad- the desire to unify the Greek nation- was ultimately unsuccessful. But it is interesting that the Aeneid, which is modeled after these epics and was written under Augustus, who managed to unify the Roman Empire at least while he was alive, has a similar message, but was similarly ultimately a failure. It does seem valid to assume that because of the enforcement of the empire, Rome was able to hold together for longer than the democracy that existed in Greece- freedom and lack of order was unfortunately their downfall.
It also feels like the Aeneid was supposed to frame Italy in a certain way- separate from that of Greece, but taking so much influence from Homer makes it hard to really make that convincing. Also why is this enforcement of a new origin myth so late? Or so early? They’ve already been fighting with Greece at the time of Aeneid, did they only just realize that having a set of origin myths coming from Greeks was not worth it? And yet opinions of the Greeks were not the worse they had ever been. It’s so odd.
What are the intentions of national epics? And are they even successful in achieving their intentions?