January 18th - Day 18

Iliad - pages 354-396 (43 pages)

Goal - 2 books 150 pages

Total - 2 books 72 pages

Result - 78 pages to reach goal

Woohoo, celebrate the small victories! I read a little more than my daily goal yesterday so slowly catching up.

Today I will talk about the violence in the Iliad. It's intense! These people back then, they were direct, they were funny, they were all about honour, they were wishy-washy (gods always changing their minds, the mortal men keep getting scared and running away then going back into battle over and over) and they definitely loved a good description of a brutal death. There's probably been more than a hundred gruesome descriptions so far. Some involved eyes falling out and such, but here's what I think is the most gruesome one so far:

Idomeneus stabbed Erymas in the mouth with the pitiless

bronze, so that the brazen spearhead smashed its way clean through

below the brain in an upward stroke, and the white bones splintered,

and the teeth were shaken out with the stroke and both eyes filled up

with blood, and gaping he blew a spray of blood through the nostrils

and through his mouth, and death in a dark mist closed in about him.

Yuck! It's funny, sometimes we think of some modern society entertainment (action movies, video games, etc.) as ultraviolent. But really, it seems to have always had a place in societies judging by this.