Minutes for Dialogue 08

scriba Robert McGrath

Keywords: sêma & psukhê

Andromache & Hector

• Hector & Andromache separate (to Troy & Battlefield)
• Final farewell - Andromache's embarrassment to keep looking back
  • Emotions: Pitty & Terror (centralized in Iliad)
• Maenad - that is what Andromache looks like, according to the Iliad, when she gets the news of Hector's death
  • hair comes undone (symbol of imperfection, full of terror & pity while simultaneously erotic)
  • Sappho (so labeled) playing on stringed instrument = concert lyre, hair comes undone, stylish cascading of hair
• Hector's horsehair helmet, recall he removes to kiss his son during final farewell
  • Boar’s tusk helmet - tusks of boars with horse hair extending from rear
    • Many boars required for a single helmet - dangerous to hunt boar
  • Production of such helmets said ceased around 1500
• Hittites - mighty empire 2nd millennium BC from which many items were borrowed by the Greeks - their graffiti too show early Greeks with their horsehair helmets
• Universalism of Human Emotion - taps into fears and sorrows of one another (beautifully exemplified in Iliad scroll 6, which is integral to understanding the 23 Chariot race)

Vases with figures of Chariot Racing

• Motion of getting on and off a Chariot
• Baby on shoulder
• Athletic Events – Panathenaia
  • apobates: designation of an athlete who participates
    • Involves 4-horse Chariot racing and running
    • Hoplite armor: breastplate, shield, sword, shin guards, helmet
    • apobates means "one who gets off" - as rounding a turning point (most dangerous point during chariot race) the driver jumps off chariot run alongside, and jump back on after turn - phrase "hit the ground running"
    • Event is directly relevant to the way Athenians understood Iliad scroll 23
  • Performance of epic song - performed at such events
  • Symbiotic relationship between what a hero does in war with what an athlete does as a competitor (Panathenaic festival)
    • Is it really the ancient hero who is a model for what the athletes will do (where they're reenacting the ordeal of the hero)? Or is it the athlete himself?
• Vase painting - 520 bce, at which point the Iliad was slightly different form the version today - ending was simpler - Priam going to Achilles
  • About end of Iliad, compensation for the death of Patroklos
  • Achilles is the apobates in this vase, running alongside the 4-horse chariot
  • Horses heads facing left and right (in midst of radical left turn)
  • Tomb of hero rising out of earth (sêma), which a lion is guarding
  • In black figure painting, white skin is applied to females, black to males
  • Figures on vase:
    • Zeus himself holding thunderbolt
    • Athena
    • Dionysus
    • Hermes carrying the caduceus (symbol of eternal cycling)
    • Female figure (who is it? – see below…)
  • Miniature version of warrior running alongside the chariot. Letters appear:
    • Ph, S, U, Kh, E --> psukhê
  • Achilles is obsessed with the psukhê of Patroklos
    • Recall scene while Achilles is sleeping and should have had total recall of Patroklos
  • White against a background of red - focuses attention - surface meaning and beneath
  • Frame - effect of looking through a window
    • every time you look through, you see hero of Achilles going around the sêma
    • As I look through the window, am I on the outside looking into the world of the Hero? Prof. Nagy sees it as: I'm on the inside of my own world and I'm looking out through this window into the panorama of the heroic world, which is larger than life.
  • Pictures with Parallel Themes
    • Chariot driver - often have stars on costume
    • Snake guarding sêma
    • Epithet of Achilles - his swiftness of foot
  • Sêma - alternate definition: device on shield
  • Scene: body of Hector being mutilated - dragging corpse of Hector
    • Is scene Epic or Athletic? Achilles' agenda: hurt Hector even after death. This "killer instinct" is reenacted by athletes.
  • Themes line up on vase: psukhê, code of animals that symbolizes the future of the hero's existence, or the actual body (question of identity of the hero)
  • Who is the lady stopping the chariot? What is the agenda?
    • She's carrying the caduceus - Iris - female messenger of the Gods
• Another vase:
  • Achilles' shield - triple leg (contrast with shield of psukhê)
  • Iris' gesture:
  • Achilles gets off chariot - breaking momentum of rage
  • Intensifying & letting go
  • Priam saying goodbye to Hector (tear)
  • Vergil: sunt lacrimae rerum et mentem mortalia tangent
    • "there are tears that connect with the universe and things mortal touch the mind"
• Vase: slaughtered ram - sacrificial death of a hero (Patrolkos)

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