So I've already walked today (and as I did I finished The Zookeeper's Wife by Diane Ackerman). But I've got the day off work, and I'm roasting some vegetables to eat at work over the next few days, which means peeling and chopping which = boring.
Perfect time to get started on my epic summer! (Especially because I've gotta be at work by 8 the next two days, and I generally can't get up early enough to walk on my 8 a.m. workdays.)
So I began listening to The Iliad.
First off, this thing doesn't start with an explanation of what's going on. I don't know if they'll go back and discuss it, but it starts off with Achilles and Agamemnon fighting about Agamemnon's refusal to give a priest his daughter back. (The daughter was captured as a sort of P.O.W., and Agamemnon wants to get busy with her. He says he likes her better than his wife, Clytemnestra, which...is mid-life-crisisy?) Anyway, because Agamemnon didn't give back the priest's daughter (even though the priest came and offered a nice ransom for her) the god Apollo is PISSED OFF and starts smiting the Greeks with shiny silver arrows and pestilence. Bad news bears. Achilles points out how Agamemnon is stupid, and Agamemnon says "Fine, I'll give the priest his daughter back, but I'm taking YOUR slave girl instead." Achilles is all slack-jawed and says, "Fine, see if I fight in YOUR war anymore jackass!"
Achilles, like an asshat, then asks his goddess mother Thetis to ask Zeus to side with the Trojans in the war. Teaching Agamemnon a lesson! (And killing a bunch of people, which Achilles doesn't seem to mind so much.) Thetis does this, even though it pisses off Hera, and when Hera starts complaining to Zeus about it he basically says he's going to smack her around, which pretty disturbing in terms of modern day gender relations, and her son Hephaesteus?* tries to make her see reason by pointing out that last time HE got in Zeus' way the top dawg of Olympus threw him out of heaven by his heel, wherein he fell to earth, which took a LONG TIME.
Currently, Zeus is fulfilling his pledge to Thetis (who is a sea-nymph, which is pretty cool) by sending Agamemnon a dream telling him to attack the city.
He does this by saying "Hey, dream, come here!" And then a dream comes to him and he tells it what to say, and then it goes to Agamemnon to repeat the message. Being a god must be mega-convenient.
* - These names, guys, they are hard to figure out when you're listening to
it, but I'm pretty sure I remember that name from reading the Percy
Jackson books. Yeah, I get my Greek mythology from pre-teen lit.
Watcha gonna do about it? Actually I also got some of it from a recent
reading of Song of Achilles which is a book detailing the love of
Achilles and Patroclus, imagining that instead of just being friends
they are, you know...FRIENDS. Anyway, it's amazing how much of this
story is just part of our cultural conversation even after a lot of
centuries.
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