The Song of Achilles by Madeline Miller

For many, many years, I have loved and admired Homer’s Odyssey. Lately, I have experienced a growing admiration for his Iliad. I recently reviewed The War that Killed Achilles by Caroline Alexander. And now, a new entry onto my “desert island shelf” will take its place with these foundations of western literature. The Song of Achilles by Madeline Miller tells the story of the greatest warrior of the ancient world from the point of view of Patroclus, his companion.

Even though I knew exactly how the story would end, I reveled in every page of this enthralling story. Miller has a tinge of the voice of Homer, with a couple of epithets thrown in for good measure. Rosy-fingered dawn even gets a mention.

Patroclus accidentally killed a boy who bullied him relentlessly. Clysonomous was the son of a noble family, and the penalty for such a killing was death or exile. Patroclus lacked the physical and mental strengths required of the son of a king, and his father’s disdain appeared evident to everyone – even the young Patroclus. The verdict was exile.

Peleus, King of Phthia, and father of Achilles by the divine nymph, Thetis, routinely accepted such exiles for the treasure that came along with the unfortunate individual. Patroclus became a close friend and companion to Achilles, destined to become “Aristos Achaion. Best of the Greeks” (176), “the greatest warrior of his generation” (160).

When Achilles turns thirteen, he is sent to study with the centaur, Chiron, to learn the arts of war and medicine. Patroclus is left behind, but by this time, he has developed a deep and abiding relationship with Achilles. He wheedles Achilles location from Peleus, and Patroclus immediately runs after his friend. The bond with Achilles is mutual. He says, “I hoped you would come” (70).

Years pass and the boys grow closer. When Achilles is 16, Odysseus, King of Ithaca, the “man of twists and turns” comes to seek Achilles’ help in rescuing Helen of Greece, wife of Menelaus, King of Sparta. But Peleus knows of the prophecy and the flimsy bond drawing all these heroes together for the Trojan War. Achilles and his father were not present when Agamemnon and his brother Menelaus extracted a promise from the disappointed suitors to swear allegiance to Helen and her chosen husband, Menelaus. Peleus spirits him away – again without Patroclus -- to an obscure, poor kingdom famous for its dancing women, led by the daughter of the king. But Patroclus and Odysseus find him again. Odysseus convinces Achilles to raise and lead the best army in the ancient world – the Myrmidons.

Patroclus realizes he will lose Achilles to this adventure. Miller writes, “If he was nervous, even I could not tell. I watched as he greeted them, spoke ringing words that made them stand up straighter. They grinned, loving every inch of their miraculous prince: his gleaming hair, his deadly hands, his nimble feet. They leaned towards him, like flowers in the sun, drinking in his luster. It was as Odysseus had said: he had light enough to make heroes of them all” (186).

Thus, they set sail for that fateful battle before the walls of Troy. Hector, Ajax, Achilles, Odysseus, Menelaus, and countless others -- all players in one of the greatest stories ever sung, recited, read, studied, and loved. Read The Song of Achilles. As soon as you can. You, too, will be captivated and enthralled. 5 stars

--Chiron, 6/24/12

The War That Killed Achilles: The True Story of Homer's Iliad and the Trojan War by Caroline Alexander

For many years, I have loved and admired Homer’s Odyssey. I never spent much time soaking up The Iliad, because the war and violence depicted never held much interest for me. However, Alexander’s excellent commentary on The Iliad, has completely changed my view of this great epic.

A professor once said, “There is only one story, and that is The Odyssey. All other stories flow from it.” At first, I thought this implausible, but the more I read, the more parallels I began to notice. Joseph Campbell’s monumental work The Hero with a Thousand Faces enlightened me further – not only to The Odyssey, but to many other pieces of literature from all cultures and time periods.

My world lit class took up Iliad this semester, and I decided to read this book to add something to the discussion. Not only did I completely enjoy this well-written and thoroughly documented book, but I greatly increased my knowledge of The Iliad and The Odyssey. I now see these two foundations of western literature as mirror images of each other, as well as complimentary windows into the worlds of the Achaeans and Trojans.

The Odyssey focuses on one main male character with a host of interesting, alluring, and powerful women. I have always loved the stories of Kalypso, Circe, and Nausicaa – not to forget “the grey-eyed Goddess," Athena. Iliad, on the other hand centers on three women – Helen of Greece, Andromache, the wife of Hector, and Breseis, cousin of Hector. The rest of the women are all in the background, and Achilles and many warriors and kings provide important elements that move the plot.

In addition to Achilles strong anti-war stance, his anger at Agamemnon’s seizure of Breseis – a prize he won in the initial battle before the walls of Troy -- provides the dramatic conflict which threatens the invading army of Acheans.

Alexander also draws some interesting parallels with the 20th century. Achilles says,

“I for my part did not come here for the sake of the Trojan
spearmen to fight against them, since to me they have done nothing.
Never yet have they driven away my cattle or my horses,
never in Phthia where the soil is rich and men grow great did they
spoil my harvest, since indeed there is much that lies between us,
the shadowy mountains and the echoing sea” (20).

Alexander then quotes the words of Muhammad Ali when he refused to submit to the draft, claiming the Viet Cong had never done him any harm (21).

Throughout the book, Alexander highlights the absurdity of war, and even though the men fight for glory, Homer tells us there is no glory in dying. She brings home the real lessons of war. She describes what Achilles believes, “Life is more precious than glory; this is the unheroic truth disclosed by the greatest warrior at Troy… glory…is achieved through heroic poetry, in other words, through epic” (98).

This book belongs on my desert island shelf along with my copies of The Iliad and The Odyssey. 5 stars

--Chiron, 3/2/12

The Moral Landscape by Sam Harris

I first encountered Sam Harris in a review of The End of Faith in The New York Times a little over six years ago in September of 2004. My journey to rationalism covered many years, much reading, over a difficult path. Sam Harris became the first of the “new atheists” who explicated my mental turmoil in a logical and common sense manner. A little over two years later, he followed this work with Letter to a Christian Nation. In this book, he answered many of the criticisms leveled at End of Faith. Many of his critics had not even the slightest taint of rationalism. Since then, I have followed Harris through his blog, www.SamHarris.org, which provides e-mail updates of publications and appearances. I knew Harris spent much of his time working on a dissertation in neuroscience from UCLA. This book is an off shoot of that dissertation.

Harris’ thesis runs like this: “…the split between facts and values – and, therefore, between science and morality – is an illusion” (179). He posits that human morality arose because it provided a value to early hominids. “…values actually are – the set of attitudes, choices, and behaviors that potentially affect our well-being, as well as that of other conscious minds” (22). The contradictions among religions arose because of narrow interests of small tribes in conflict with neighboring groups. Thus, the commandments proscribe murder and theft, yet the God of Moses directed the Israelites to kill every man, woman, and child in the way of this particular group’s takeover of large areas of the Middle East. Belief enables individuals to bridge the gap between facts and values.

Harris states, “Science can, in principle, help us understand what we should do and should want – and therefore, what other people should do and should want in order to live the best lives possible” (28). Imagine what the world would be like if everyone lived by the “Golden Rule.”

The idea of a “moral Landscape guarantees that many people will have flawed conceptions of morality, just as many people have flawed conceptions of physics” (53). Recent polls have shown that an astounding number of people in the US believe the universe is only about 7,000 years old, and therefore expect, that if evolution were true, we should be able to see monkeys evolving into humans before our eyes. Harris adds, “the fact that millions of people use the term “morality” as a synonym for religious dogmatism, racism, sexism, or other failures of insight and compassion should not oblige us to merely accept their terminology until the end of time” (53).

The chapters entitled “Belief” and “Religion” offer particularly complicated lines of reasoning, but the conclusion remains the same: “For nearly a century, the moral relativism of science has given faith-based religion -- that great engine of ignorance and bigotry – a nearly uncontested claim to being the only universal framework for moral wisdom. As a result, the most powerful societies on earth spend their time debating issues like gay marriage when they should be focused on problems like nuclear proliferation, genocide, energy security, climate change, poverty, and failing schools” (191).

At times, The Moral Landscape is not an easy read. I found myself going back over some key passages in order to fully digest Harris’ lines of reasoning. However, the challenge is extremely worthwhile in the long run. The author devoted nearly 100 pages – one-third of the book – to detailed footnotes, references, and an index. This work represents scholarship of the first order. This book belongs on the shelf of every person concerned with rationalism and the moral and ethical problems of the dangerous world in which we live. (5 stars)

--Chiron, 10/16/10