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

Okay, so today we start Greek civilization, and it is incredible what Greek civilization is. It is the greatest, most creative, most significant civilization ever in human history. The Greeks really created civilization, and not only were the Greeks the great civilization, there's really not been a second great civilization. Okay, so let's think about how incredible the Greeks were. If you look at literature, the Greeks basically created literature with Homer. 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 the Iliad. So think about this: a Greek writer writing 3,000 years ago for a Greek audience, his book still resonates, still impresses students in China today.

So that's Homer. Then you have Plato, philosophy. Plato, and even today there are many who consider Plato the greatest philosopher who ever lived. There are many people who read the Republic by Plato and they say it transforms their lives. It makes them think very differently about the world. Then you have in history a man, Thucydides. If you are a military leader today, you read Thucydides.

There are still many generals today in America, in Russia, in Europe who believe reading Thucydides will help them win wars. So not only did the Greeks create civilization, but their works, their books are still read today and considered amazing.

So now the question I have is, how does this happen? How were the Greeks able to create humanity's greatest civilization in really about 200 years? They really were not dominant for a long time. They really created all these works in about 200 years altogether. So how is this possible? Okay, so 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 Mycenaean Greece. So basically the Mycenaeans controlled Greece, and Greece was a monarchy, and it was no different from any other place in the world at this point. In 1200 BCE the world was basically the same. And then this society collapsed because of the Bronze Age collapse, and three things happened. First, decentralization, the idea that you had a unified society, it went away. So Greece became chaotic and decentralized. That's the first thing that happened. Second thing that happened is Greece became illiterate.

So the Greeks lost the ability to read and write, and we call this the Dark Ages. So from about a thousand to about 600 BC, 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. So the second thing that happened, the Greeks became illiterate. The third thing that happened is the Greeks became poor. Before, the Greeks traded with the world, it was very prosperous, and then because of R collapse it started to become more isolated and became a lot poorer. So these are the three major consequences of the Bronze Age 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. So remember this: it is because of the destruction of old Greece, it's because Greece became chaotic, illiterate and poor, that Greece eventually became the greatest civilization in the world.

Okay, so let me explain how this happened. There are three major reasons why Greek civilization became dominant.

The first reason is the polis. The polis, it's hard for us to translate it. We usually translate it as city-state, a city-state, and this is where we get the word politics, but really what it means is community. Community, and the idea of the polis is a community of people who discuss politics together, how to best run the town. And because of this chaos there were thousands of poleis around Greece of about a thousand people each. So it's a very small community, and this became the main political structure of Greek society. So the polis is one factor.

Second factor that happened is the alphabet. After the Greeks became illiterate they had to relearn literacy. They had to relearn how to read and write, and in the process they adopted a new writing system called the alphabet, which forever transformed society. The last thing is Homer. Homer was a poet who introduced to the Greeks a new way of imagining the world. So these are the three major factors that led to the rise of Greek civilization. And if you look at each factor, the polis was a revolution, it forever transformed society. 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 imagined the world around them.

Okay, so let's go over each of these revolutions one by one. The polis: there were three things about the polis that allowed for innovation and creativity in Greece. The first thing about the polis was competition. These poleis 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. And again remember, there's no centralized authority. Now that's the first thing. Second thing is diversity. If you look at the map of Greece, Greece has very diverse geography. It has farmland, has mountains, has plains, it has coastal land. And depending on where you were geographically in Greece, you developed a different economy and culture and society based on the geography. Does that make sense? And so you had a lot of diversity. And the last factor was the idea of democracy. Greek civilization introduced the idea of democracy, or the modern sense of democracy, to us, and the reason why is at this time Greece was very poor. If you're very poor you need everyone to participate and work hard, especially in battles against other poleis.

So the rule was you could be rich or poor, but if you fought for us you had the right to speak. You could be the leader of this polis and you have the right to speak, but you could be the poorest person in this polis and you still had the right to speak, because everyone had a responsibility to defend the polis. So this introduced the idea of democracy, and what this meant was that everyone basically had to politically so you could be a 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. And this is where we get the idea of polis from, and this was a major driver of innovation in Greece. Okay, so does this make sense, guys? The polis, any questions so far?

Before I go on, okay, so one of the major innovations of a polis was the introduction of the alphabet into Greek society. So let me explain the development of writing systems over time to you. This can be a bit complicated, so make sure you're following along. If I'm saying something unclear to you, make sure you interrupt and ask me questions.

Okay, all right. So writing was first developed in Europe, in Western society, in Egypt and in Sumeria, and they did so to solve an economic problem. These societies were very wealthy and they needed people, farmers, to help them build roads and build irrigation networks and build temples. To do so I need to pay these workers, right? So the writing system became a contract. All right, a contract. So basically the writing system at first was a pictogram, a pictograph, that served the function of a contract. So for example, if I do this, two people, okay, what this is saying is, if you work for me, I promise to give two people two bushels of wheat. 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.

So here's an example. All right, so you have maybe a sun and a moon, right? Sun and moon, they can represent the sun and the moon, but if you put them together, sun and the moon, you get the concept of day, right? So now you have a concept, an idea, day. We call this an ideogram, and guess what, guys, Chinese is an ideogram language. Does that make sense?

And then as they continued developing writing, they recognized that, you know what, it would be a lot easier for us to communicate if these ideograms represented syllables and sounds instead. So rather than representing ideas, let's get them to represent sounds. So for example, this is sun, right, and this is moon. Well, now if we do this it becomes moon sun, right, which is the English word for monsoon, which means storm. So now this tells us to read it as monsoon. And then the final recognition is, guess what, we can actually just have the sound represent a consonant, 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.

And we call this the alphabet. Does it make sense? So this is the development of writing, and the reason why we do this is, 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, these different stages of writing required a professional class of people to manage the writing system. 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, and 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. Does that make sense? All right, but now with the alphabet, writing can become speaking, and this marked a revolution in human thought and the capacity to think. Okay, so let me explain why. Before the invention of writing we lived in an oral culture. Oral culture means we don't write, we just speak to each other. All right, 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, mainly through email or texting.

Now there are certain advantages to cultures with oral culture. The first major advantage is it's very emotional. 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 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 say "sayak," okay, that means nothing, 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 there's room for innovation and imagination in oral culture. Does that make sense? Okay, the third thing about oral culture is it forces everyone to have a really strong memory. The reason why is, when I speak 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 oral 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 oral culture: it's a very emotional language, it's very innovative, and it forces you to have a really strong memory.

But there's also a lot of advantages to writing culture as well that oral 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. So that's a first major advantage. Second major advantage is it's very disciplined, meaning okay, I can't make up words, I have to use words we are. Okay, the third major advantage 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 before, we were in an oral culture and that had certain advantages. Now we are in a literate culture and we've lost the oral culture. But when the Greeks discovered the alphabet, what happened was they combined the advantages of both cultures. Most of the time they were speaking, they were living in an oral culture, but they also had the opportunity to write down their thoughts, which allowed them the advantages of the literate culture, to have a more disciplined, focused, logical mind. Okay, does that make sense? And this marked an incredible revolution in the capacity for human beings to think. Okay, any questions so far? Okay, this is a very complicated concept, I want to make sure you're following along. Any questions about what I just said before I move on?

All right, now let's move on to Homer. So we discussed the polis 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 along comes Homer, and Homer is a poet, and back then there were many poets who went around and told stories about the world.

Okay, legends, mythologies. And the very best poets are usually hired by kings, rich people, because kings need poets to solve three problems. Kings usually hire poets to solve three problems. The first is legitimate authority. 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. 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, they need to legitimize their authority. So what they tell people is usually, 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, a divine message, 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 born of a god, the gods want me to become king, then I must be divine myself.

Does that make sense? Okay, so that's the first major function of poets in these societies, to legitimize authority.

Second function is to create a cultural identity. So you know, in China you have books like the Romance of the Three Kingdoms, you have the Bible, all these literary works. Their function is to create a common cultural identity. 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 cultural 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, does that make sense? So most literary works that we have were sponsored by leaders, kings, to solve these three problems. So in the future we will read the Iliad, which is what the Romans had, we will read the Bible. In China you have the Romance of the Three Kingdoms, and all these literary works were designed to serve the powers that existed 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 lived, maybe about 800 to 600 BC, around then, we don't actually know, 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. He had to appeal to poorer people. And so the question then is, if you're a poet, how do you get people who are poor to pay you money? Why would they want to pay you to sing songs for them? Okay, well, there are reasons. The first is just entertainment. Today we listen to songs, we go to movies. Well, back then their source of entertainment was to pay people like Homer to sing songs to them. That's what they 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 polis system they had to speak in front of their peers. So how did you learn to speak? Well, 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.

So second reason is educational. Basically Homer was a teacher as well as a poet. Now the third reason, and what made Homer special, is what we call edification. Edification means to be a better you, to be a higher you. Edification. The way that Homer did 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 I continue, are there any questions about this so far? Anything you are not clear about, 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 most popular story at that time was something called the Trojan War. So the main story of the Trojan War is this. 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."

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. The first goddess is Hera, who is the queen god. Second goddess is Athena, who is the goddess of wisdom. The third goddess is Aphrodite, 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. So this human, his name is Paris. His job is to pick who is the most beautiful goddess in the universe. Is it gonna be Hera, Athena or Aphrodite? 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. Hera 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 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 he says, hey, "I will give you the most beautiful woman in the world to marry," and Paris is like, I want that. Okay, and so Paris. 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. And the war ends when a Greek general named Odysseus comes up with this idea called the Wooden Horse. Okay, so the Greeks pretend they give up, they're going to go home because they're homesick, and as a present 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 Trojans are slaughtered. Okay, and this is the story of the Trojan 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's story, it's called The Iliad and we will read this next semester, is that there are three things that Homer does in The Iliad that's really never been done before. And so with the Iliad 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 the Iliad 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 empathy. Empathy, the ability to see the world from the perspective of other people. And before, in human civilization, this didn't really exist. But Homer creates this in the Iliad.

The second thing that is new and unique to the Iliad is human psychology. So for the first time Homer discusses what motivates the characters in the Iliad. Why are you fighting this war? And so the story is between two individuals, Achilles and King Priam. Achilles is the greatest warrior of the Greeks.

Priam is the king of the Trojans, and they hate each other because they're enemies. Achilles is trying to kill Priam, Priam is trying to defend his family and his home. So the Iliad starts like this. Achilles at the beginning gets in a fight with Agamemnon, who is the king of the Greeks. They get in a fight and they curse each other, and Achilles says, "You're a dog, Agamemnon, I'm never going to fight for you again," and Agamemnon the king says, "I don't need you, man." So Achilles refuses to fight. The problem is Achilles is the greatest warrior of the Greeks, and the Trojans, led by Hector, who is a son of Priam, he sees an opportunity because Achilles refuses to fight. Hector leads the Trojan 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 Agamemnon, 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 Patroclus, Patroclus 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 Patroclus, and this angers Achilles. Achilles is so angry that he jumps into the battle and he kills Hector. Once he kills Hector he does something very odd. Usually when you kill someone, 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 afterlife. But Achilles is so angry at Hector that he's torturing Hector's body, which is Priam's son. But even after Achilles does this he can't sleep and he feels tremendous sadness, even though he's avenged the death of Patroclus. And the reason why is in his heart Achilles knows he was the one responsible for killing Patroclus, right? Because if he didn't get into the stupid fight with Agamemnon, and if he did not refuse the Greeks when they requested help, Patroclus wouldn't have died. So it's because Achilles was so stubborn and so proud that his friend Patroclus 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 the body. Then what happens is Priam, King Priam, 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 Achilles 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 Priam doesn't do that. Priam 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 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 Priam as compensation. And that's how the Iliad ends.

Okay, the main message of the Iliad is it's not war that creates civilization, it is love that creates civilization. It is Priam's love for Hector that gives him the courage to Achilles in battle, and in this defeat Achilles becomes a better person because he's able to forgive himself and he's able to do what is right and just and return Hector to his father. Okay, that's the Iliad. As you can imagine, this is extremely complicated psychology and it forces you to think deeply about who we are as, okay?

Does that make sense? The third thing that is shocking about the Iliad is the use of metaphors. So what are metaphors? Metaphors are connections between things that were unseen. 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 Iliad. So essentially metaphors teach you how to think. They are the tools for thought.

So these are the three distinct characteristics of the Iliad that make it unique in the world. 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. If you put these three things together, what this is ultimately is a theory of human, a theory of what it means to be a human being. Before, we thought human beings thought over land, they thought over a woman like Helen, they struggled for power. What Homer is saying is what it means to be a human is someone who has empathy and the willingness to think.

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 believed the founder of the civilization was not a general, it was not a king, it was a poet named Homer. And it's because of the Iliad that they all read and memorized and could recite, because again this is an oral culture where you're trained to have a very strong memory, and because they memorized the Iliad it forever transformed them as humans. 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 polis, the alphabet and Homer, that we have Western 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. And this will help you better understand Western civilization. So the first question is, why is it the Greeks developed the alphabet, okay, the alphabet, and the Chinese did not develop the alphabet?

The answer is this. The answer is Greece was not an isolated culture. So the people who actually developed the alphabet were the Egyptians, okay, Egyptians. And the reason why is Egypt was constantly in contact and communication with many different societies and cultures, including the Sumerians and the Greeks, and they could adopt new practices to advance their language. So it was Egyptians who developed the alphabet. The Phoenicians were traders, and the Phoenicians connected the Egyptian culture to everyone else. 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 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, it was stable for most of its history, because for most of China's history China was run by a class of people called scholar officials, right? Scholars. What was their power? What was their secret power? It was the ability to read and write. That's what differentiated 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 called classical Chinese, literally Chinese. Okay, does that make sense? That's why there was this divergence between Greece and China at the time, because in China literacy was monopolized by an elite who benefited from this monopoly, and therefore they made this monopoly much more effective by introducing a new language called classical Chinese that only they mastered. Okay, does that make sense, guys? Because the scholar officials, they were in charge of the bureaucracy, right? If you're running a bureaucracy you need the ability to read and write. You need the ability to basically transport information from one place to the next, right? That's through reading and writing. Does that make sense? So only they could. Okay, does that make sense? Okay, any questions?

Okay, second question is, why is it the Greeks had Homer and the Chinese never had Homer? And again, the problem are the scholar officials. If you look at Confucian thought, there's a hierarchy in Confucian thought.

In Confucian thought, right, at the very top are scholar officials. They're the most virtuous, they're the most well educated, the most cultivated, okay? They're the best people. Next, below the scholar officials, are 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. So when Plato was writing the Republic, he was trying to become Homer. He was trying to become a teacher of civilization, an inspirer of civilization, a big G of civilization. That's what Plato wanted. But guess what, Thucydides, when he wrote the Peloponnesian War, he was trying to do the same thing. He was trying to inspire civilization, he was trying to inspire ideas, because they all wanted to become Homer. 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 this society put poets first and foremost at the top, and no other society did so.

Okay, in China it was the complete opposite, because if you're a scholar official, what you're most afraid of is independent thinking. So censorship was their main role, controlling how people thought through censorship, and that's why China never really produced a Homer or a great, okay? Does that make sense, right?

And so this is going to be strange, but it's only because Greece got destroyed 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. 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