In the name of God, the Lord is with us, and in the name of Jesus Christ, the Lord is with us. In the name of Jesus Christ, the Lord is with us. In the name of Jesus Christ, the Lord is with us. In the name of Jesus Christ, the Lord is with us. In the name of Jesus Christ, the Lord is with us. Atreides te anoxandron, caedios achilles. Yes, do you like this? So begin Homer Iliad. So it start. Welcome Caribbean rhythm, episode 134, number one sexy show in the world. And I will explain later why I recite Greek in that way. Later on show I will do segment, recite more from this epic. In fact, I brag to you that I do it from memory, as I have the first 150 or so lines memorized, along with other favorite passages. This very personal topic for me is one of my favorite book.

And of course, my own book, tongue-in-cheek though it is, entitled Bronze Age Mindset, is in part a restatement of what I see as spirit of Homer, though I do not hide that it is through Nietzsche and such that I came to true meaning of Homer. But anyways, that is beginning of Iliad. Do you like this sound? The first word, as many point out, is menis. Manin is just another case. And yes, language does have pitch accent. I will say later why and how. But this word often translated as wrath, a kind of anger, you know. So, but it's not book report. If you want plot details of Iliad, maybe you read it or you look Wikipedia even. But here I just give you scatter observations on my own favorite moments and idea from book. And yes, but point often made is story of Achilles' anger,

a kind of anger or wrath, really how him feel slighted. He felt his honor slighted because they took his war bride away. So he set out most of the war and him sitting out the war means the Trojans get the upper hand and many grecs die. And this what Homer is referring to in opening lines here. I will read translation of the, that's basically the introduction of Iliad, what I just read and now I read a Latimore translation which I also recommend for you sing goddess I'm reading now sing goddess the anger of Peleus son Achilles and its devastation which put pains thousandfold upon the Achaeans hurled in their multitudes to the house of Hades strong souls of heroes but gave their bodies to be the delicate feasting of dogs of all birds

and the will of Zeus was accomplished since that time when first stood in division of conflict, Atreus' son, the Lord of Men, and brilliant Achilleus. Yes, you see, he chose to sit out the war out of an overwhelming sense of honor and frank, uncompromising, individualistic egotism, which, for all talk of individualism and such in our time, most of you mamzers would do well to emulate that kind of ancient egotism, since it is due, it is because of modern man's very timid very unacquisitive unselfish character that the world is now given over to evil if a single general in the Brazilian military for example during the recent commotions in that country with Bolsonaro and so forth I'm not talking about Bolsonaro himself there's nothing he could have done and the

people did all they could but if a single general had read my book and I say my book because they're not going to read Homer or Nietzsche and even if they do they will not understand those writers and they're not going to read Homer and Nietzsche, you know. But even my book is probably beyond the pale mind of such a normal fag as would have risen through the Brazilian ranks to something like general. But let's say if they had read it and took upon themselves its basic spirit, they would have said, to hell with caution, I'll reach for the brass ring, I'll overthrow this regime, I'll institute myself in a caretaker position, which they could have done very easily. I know for a fact all the soldiers at the soldier level, the captain level, would have

been 100% on board with this, would have joined whatever general did that. And most of the Brazilian population as well, including its effective part, meaning the people with properties. So a nation would have been saved by one man's feeling of honor, selfish feeling of gain, desire for distinction and renown. But Achilles is upset, I tell you, because war bride taken away from your prize girl that he took on the raid. But men today are so timid and so in awe of fear and of social censure, and I suspect of their wives. And I was thinking the other day, where is Lady Macbeth of our time, since all these men are slaves to their wives, at least if there was a Lady Macbeth, but no, not even a Lady Macbeth. Because Lady Macbeth was a woman in a man's world.

She was a monster woman, and today women are still monsters, but there are women monsters in a woman's and an old fart's world. And so you don't get Lady Macbeth, you get instead a Buhan hysteria in place of them goading on their men to reach for the ring prize, you see. But for all the bluster today and the self-help talk and motivational and such, the aims and the stakes are so small, nobody reaches for the big thing. We live in an age of unmanned timidity and of deference to public opinion or otherwise despite all the risks, at least one general there would have said, I don't care, I can die trying this. I don't care. Here's my chance to become undisputed leader of a huge nation and I will be remembered throughout all history.

By the way, once it happens in one country, if I can convince the militaries of, you know, Maybe not something like Upper Volta, right? That's the joke, Upper Volta, or Botswana, or Malawi. But if I can convince leaders of a half-civilized nation, even like Brazil, you know, I'll take FTW, fuck the world. They take power. Once it happen in one country, it will be copied in many others, but no. Well, at least it did not start in Brazil, because the generals are old fart men, like that guy, Miley, and the other in the United States. Well look, take this for introduction if you want. This show on Homer, the first of two parts. Next week I will discuss books and ideas about Homer, not quite secondary literature in usual sense as in scholarship and such,

but the ideas of Nietzsche from Homer's contest and of Dominik Wenner from a special book that my friend Blasius translated. I hope you'll get this book, the handbook. I will promote it soon. You'll go to account Blosios. He has, I've shown it to you in the past, don't make me explain. He has a handbook by Wenner, where he talk about Homer. And then there is another man, Adam Nicholson, in book The Mighty Dead, Why Homer Matters. And then also, I think I will talk, Alistair MacIntyre, who you may all know from his Christian Marxist book, After Virtue, but he also has a tack on Homer, or rather on Nietzsche's Homer, which my friend Second City Bureaucrat recently discussed on his sub-stank. You all subscribe, maybe, but that's for next week.

This episode, just my own joy at Homer, why I like him, and the first time I read him, I was not that young. I was maybe, I think, 18. I read the Latimore translation. It hit me very powerful effect in ways that maybe it wouldn't have hit my peers who had not read Nietzsche. Nietzsche did indeed prime me for understand Homer well. I had been reading Nietzsche very much so since I was about 16, or around there, and he just explodes all moral, moral fag ways of thinking and judging. So then you're ready to receive the luminous images of Homer, who is a thinker and bard beyond morality, which is why it's so stupid, for example, when critics today try to force tedious lesson or kind of sermon on his poems, as if, you know, oh, the Iliad is about men's inhumanity to men

and the terrors and sadness of war and other such. When of course it's a book about the glory and excitement of war, men love war. You know, now don't confuse that with modern drudgery police actions. I'll talk about modern fake states and their scam wars later, but men love war. They love adventure, and this is why even highly intellect men like Descartes and Nietzsche wanted to pursue career in military. And this is why, if you read about men like LaRouchefoucauld, great self-thinker and aphorist, who I will cover on future episodes, but he had a swashbuckling exciting life of politics and war and intrigue. They're all the same thing, ideally. While Reshfukou, while he was doing this swashbuckling, he was also a great philosopher and consummate

stylist. Men love the adventure of war and this image in Greek myths and poems just central understand Greek spirit, I mean they, this is idea again and again discussed, expressed in most frank and uncompromising way throughout the vital life of the Greeks, meaning the part of that people's history when they had true greatness before the time of Alexander. So for example, Pindar just casually refers to this on more than one occasion when discussing for example the voyage of the Argonauts, Jason and the Argonauts, and Jason is gathering them, you know, the way that in action movie they gather the entourage at the beginning and he just casually makes the sides like, you know, they wanted to pursue the elixir of excellence and did not want to stay by their mother's side but to find eternal

renown, you know, and Xenophon, the writer, Xenophon, the student of Socrates, please Please excuse if I occasional tongue-tied during this episode. I am still oppressed by jet lag, it doesn't stop, and overstimulation by coffees, perhaps. But Xenophon, student of Socrates, though he certainly did not need to, he embarked on great adventure that he described in a book, Anabasis, when he and many other Grek, and these were wealthy sons of patrician men, but they just decide to go seek their fortune in the Orient as mercenaries for a charming Persian prince who tries to overthrow the empire. And there are just frank references to, you know, we came here to pursue glory and a great name and adventure. What's wrong with admitting that? No, I want to pursue service, you know.

And there's the famous reference, you know, in the Odyssey when Odysseus is talking about his life as a pirate, which as Thucydides later explains the Greeks of this time, meaning of let's say 900-800 BC when the Iliad, let's say the Bardic tradition of the Iliad was already in full height, and it describes in part the Greece of that time, Homer, I mean although he says that he described the Greeks of the Bronze Age, or rather the end of the Bronze Age, but it's really the Greeks of let's say 900-800 BC or so, but the audience of that time, as Thucydides says, did not see piracy as anything bad at all, but it it was even honorable. And Odysseus, speaking in character of a pirate, he has a beautiful line. Something like, work was never a pleasure for me,

nor homekeeping thrift which nourishes good children. But for me, old ships were always a pleasure, and wars, and well-polished spears and arrows. Well, I think that kind of mindset, attractive to almost any man, complete forbidden today, I think, but it lies, I think, heart of Greek adventuring spirit. And there are many similar instances in the Iliad. Of course, their Bible, the Iliad was the Bible of the ancient Greeks. And so I give you now, for example, this is from book 13. Okay, I will read a slightly longer passage, Latimore translation again. Ios, the son of Telamon, spoke to him in answer. So for me also now, the invincible hands my spear shaft are furious, my strength is rising, and both feet beneath me are sweeping

me onward, so that I long even more for single combat with Hector, Priam's son, the forever avid of battle. Now as these two were saying such things to each other, joyful in the delight of battle the god had put into their spirits, meanwhile the earth and circular stirred up the Achaeans behind them." So, you know, the delight of battle that the god had put into their spirits. And then the contrast between safe, stay-at-home domesticity and this delight in battle and adventure is made very plainly at what some consider to be the early height or climax of the Iliad, the rousing passages right before the catalog of ships, which is when the catalog of ships is in book two, when Homer lists the entire order of battle

of the Greek army, all the captains, their ships where they were from, their lineage. It is maybe the most biblical part of the Iliad and would have been very important for ancient Greeks as many of the heroes listed there were the founders of their own dynasties or states or so forth. So when Agamemnon and Nestor are rousing the Achaeans and arranging them in battle and And Homer says of Athena, And they, the god-supported kings, about Agamemnon, ran marshalling the men, and among them grey-eyed Athena, holding the dear-treasured Aegis, ageless, immortal, from whose edges float a hundred old golden tassels, each one carefully woven, and each worth a hundred oxen. With this fluttering she swept through the host of the Achaeans, urging them to go forward.

She kindled the strength in each man's heart to take the battle without respite and to keep on fighting. And now battle became sweeter to them than to go back in their hollow ships to the beloved land of their fathers. And the words used here, patri da gaia, and literally fatherland, you know, it meant something quite different for this audience. It meant the land of your fathers in which their graves are, which was a big reason as I might be repeating a big reason for private property because the graves of your ancestors were on your land if you were a man of property, but it had a real as opposed to a fantastical and propagandistic meaning as the word fatherland has for fake modern states. But such people who loved their fatherlands, literally the land your father was from, maybe

that was more important than the land your mother was from, but actually they often gave honor to lineages of both mother and father, but even such people who loved their homelands, they didn't take kindly idea of you stay home and not have adventures of war and such, which in European history proper also, in knightly history and its immediate offspring of knightly history, meaning in the Renaissance in 17th and 18th century when, let's say, aristocratic A nightly enterprising spirit was carried forward and changed in various ways. And then even until recently, the woman-led house husband was a figure of ridicule, seen much like you see the cuck now. He's in fact a cuck, whether he's actually cucked or not.

And the PUA, all due respect to my PUA artiste friends, was also seen as kind of a cuck. For example Paris was, Paris is what would be called in modern PUA language the alpha male. He's a seducer of women and the other men in the Iliad don't really have a lot of respect for him. They say he's just a despoiler of virgins and such which, well that admirer of the rosy cheek of a virgin is that, do you like that? I mean probably Achilles' war bride herself was a teenage girl. Am I allowed to say that on the air? It's just a fact of life from Iliad is also in the Bible, if I may, if I may. But finally, there is the plot of the Iliad itself, which is the story of Achilles who deliberately knowingly chooses a short and glorious life because his mother is a goddess

and tells him he has this choice to make. You make a short and glorious life if you go and you avenge your friend and you go to to fight, or one that is long, will have prosperity and domestic tranquility at home, but you will have no glory and renown. And that thing, renown, fame in the real sense of everlasting fame through the ages, deification by a great bard and poet. This is what Achilles, of course, he chooses this, Achilles being, let's say, the most admired men by all Greek aristocrats throughout Greek history, again at least through their vital period. But it's not just Greek, it's what all Aryan society, whether it be Greek or Rig Vedas or the Irish or Icelandic epics and many other such, this is what they thought as highest thing ever flowing fame among mortals.

And this, although I was not aware of all this history at the time, when I first read this book. This is what impressed me the most, you know, although when I first read the Iliad, it was, it's not even right to call it that it present a new and different moral code. It's just another way entirely of looking at the world and of looking at life that is so alien to our Chinese time with its Chinese fake morals and Chinese type fake self-effacing men. And it's, I suppose you could call it a secularized post-Christian morality, a distortion even of Christianity, although Machiavelli already in his time, when I guess there was no secularization yet I suppose, but he blames a false interpretation of Christianity for having made the world

weak, of having made it forget striving after greatness of the great Greek and Roman men. He seeks to revive that and he says it is compatible with Christianity but it has to be reformed. But he blames what was the Christianity of the priests of having ruined the preconditions for freedom and for having given the world over to evil men who can rule unopposed because of the lack of manhood and defiance in most others. So especially, you know, I mean again the corruption of the priests and such and the things they affect in the spirits of men. But look to the conflict between the Guelphs and Ghibellines in Italy and elsewhere, which Which in our time, can you say there is a Ghibelline faction anymore at all?

But the priests in our time are the secularized version of crystal Judean so-called morality that you find in the ethics of socialism and of the type of rule described by Auguste Comte. So it's a complete victory of Judea over Rome, as Nietzsche says, after the French revolution. Such a cloying, egalitarian, moralistic, anti-natural prison of the mind and of the body. But anyways, this bracing new fresh air, I felt something entirely new that Nietzsche was talking about, reading Homer, in particular the Iliad, this so-called alternative morality. It doesn't just appear in large movements of the plot, by the way, or in large themes of the book, but most of all in particular scenes. For example, in the self-assertive trash-talking that you see just before duels and such, and

also in many of the battle scenes themselves, the graphic, brutal, prehistoric, gruesome scenes. Let me read you a few examples because sometimes, you know, they make me chuckle, you know, but in a good way, as in, what is this? It's so unusual to say civilities and presented so frankly and naively that it is refreshing. So here is example not of trash talk so much as it's a battle scene interlude, an interlude in the middle of a big chaotic battle where somebody gives advice to somebody else. I am reading now. Now Menelaus of the great warcry captured Adrestos alive, for his two horses bolting over the level land got entangled in a tamarisk growth and shattered the curving chariot at the tip of the pole. So they broken free went on toward the city where many besides stampeded in terror.

So Adrestos was whirled beside the wheel from the chariot, headlong into the dust on his face. The son of Atreus, Menelaus, with the far-shadowed spear in his hand, stood over him. But Adrestus, catching him by the knees, supplicated. Take me alive, son of Atreus, and take appropriate ransom. In my rich father's house the treasures lie piled in abundance, bronzes there, and gold, and difficultly wrought iron. And my father would make you glad with abundant repayment. So were he to hear that I am alive by the ships of the Achaeans. So he spoke and moved the spirit inside Menelaus. And now he was on the point of handing him to a henchman to lead back to the fast Achaean ships. But Agamemnon came on the run to join him and spoke his word of argument.

Dear brother, O Menelaus, are you so concerned, so tenderly with these people? Did you in your house get the best of treatment from the Trojans? No let not one of them go free of sudden death in our hands. Not the young man-child that the mother carries still in her body, not even he, but let all of Ileon's people perish, utterly blotted out and unmourned for. The hero spoke like this, and bent the heart of his brother since he urged justice. Menelaus shoved with his hand Adrestos the warrior back from him, and powerful Agamemnon stabbed him in the side, and as he writhed over Atreides, setting his heel upon the midriff, wrenched out the ash-spear. Nestor, in a great voice, cried out to the men of Argos. O beloved Danaan fighters, henchmen of Ares,

let no man anymore hang back with his eye on the plunder designing to take all the spoil he can gather back to the vessels. Let us kill the men now, and afterwards at your leisure all along the plain you can plunder the perished corpses. So he spoke and stirred the spirit and strength in each man. Okay, now isn't that great? I'm not a sadist, but such a jarring and frank statement, you know of the matter of fact it's not presented none of this is presented as anything other than just normal and just as for the trash talking it's also one of the best parts to see warriors face off and present their lineage and then they attack each other in words again without any concession to our effeminate morality but in full embrace of their self aggrandizement and lust for fame

and for violence for example I mean scenes like this are throughout the But just an example or two, this isn't even more the most representative, it's just one of my favorites for its shameless bluster and cruelty. I am reading now. There Idomeneus, graying though he was, called on the Danaians and charged in upon the Trojans and drove panic among them. For he killed Othrinnaeus, a man who had lived in Cabezos and who was newly come in the wake of rumor of war, and had asked Priam for the hand of the loveliest of his daughters, Cassandra, without bride-price, but had promised a great work for her, to drive back the unwilling sons of the Achaeans from Troy land. An aged Priam had bent his head in assent and promised to give her. So Othryoneus fought in the faith of his promises.

Idomeneus aimed at him with the shining spear and threw it, and hit him as he came onward with high stride. And the corselet of bronze he wore could not hold, the spear fixed in the middle belly. He fell thunderously, and he Domineus, vaunting, cried out, Ostrilneus, I congratulate you beyond all others, if it is here that you will bring to pass what you promised to Dardanian Priam, who in turn promised you his daughter. See now, we also would make you a promise, and we would fulfill it. We would give you the loveliest of Atreides' daughters, and bring her here from Argos to be your wife if you joined us and helped us storm the strong-founded city of Ileon. Come then with me so we can meet by our seafaring vessels about marriage. We here are not bad matchmakers for you."

The hero Idomeneus spoke and dragged him through the strong encounter caught by the foot. But now Asios came to stand by him, dismounted ahead of the horses whom his henchmen held ever behind him so that they breathed on his shoulders. He was striving in all his fury to strike Idomeneus, but he too quick with a spear cast struck him in the gorge underneath the chin and drove the bronze clean through. He fell as when an oak tree goes down, or a white poplar, or like a towering pine tree which in the mountains the carpenters have hewn down with their wetted axes to make a ship timber. So he lay there, felled in front of his horses in chariot, roaring and clawed with his hands at the bloody dirt." Okay, end quote. Do you like this? You know, in fact, the deaths of warriors are frequently

compared to the feeling of beautiful trees. I will talk about this on the next segment. It's some of the most beautiful part of Iliad. I love the battle scenes. It's also a very graphic, brutal, uncompromising. This is from Book 5. First to Diomedes, called out the shining sun of Lycaon. Valiant and strong-spirited, oh son of proud Tadeus. He's calling out to Diomedes now, the son of Tadeus. You were not beaten then by the bitter arrow, my swift shot. Now I will try with the throwing spear to see if I can hit you." So he spoke, and balanced the spear, far shadowed, and threw it, and struck the son of Tydeus in the shield, and the flying bronze spearhead was driven clean through and into the corselet. And the shining son of Lycaon cried aloud in a great voice,

Now you are struck clean through the middle, and I think that you will not hold up for much longer. You have given me great claim to glory. Then strong Diomedes answered, not frightened before him, You did not hit me, you missed, but I do not think that you too will go free until one or the other of you has fallen to glut with his blood, Ares, the god who fights under the shield's guard. He spoke and threw, and Pallas Athena guided the weapon to the nose next to the eye and cut on through the white teeth, and the bronze-wearyless shore all the way through the tong's base, so that the spearhead came out underneath the jawbone. He dropped them from the chariot, and his armor clattered upon him, dazzling armor and shining, while those fast-running horses shied away,

and there his life and his strength were scattered. But here it is in this last passage I read for you, and all of such shocking, well, to a modern or moral so-called orientation, and to an effeminate, docile, oriental, self-effacing culture such as ours, it's shocking. But I mean shocking and refreshing statements in the Iliad regarding the hero's unashamed, frank desire, not only for plunder and adventure, but for immortal fame, undying fame. Which, you know, when I've mentioned it on Twitter and such, I was given certain lectures and finger-wagging by serious, traditional men. Now, you know, serious men does not pursue fame. No, no, no, you are good, you are above that. But tell me what this attitude, what has it added to mankind?

Because it hasn't made men better, you know, this moralism. because men will continue to desire these kinds of things Homer and other writers talk about but then they just lie to themselves and they lie to others about it and they force such instincts then to become subterranean and then they seek satisfaction in ever more loathsome and passive-aggressive forms, mendacious forms, of which the denatured lust for power of the priestly types, they're always hiding behind sweet sounding moralisms, that's the most loathsome of all, and you are just blasted with it now non-stop if you are surrounded by this kind of moralistic leftist culture, the Reddit culture. But how refreshing then to hear all this.

And this is one of my favorite parts of the Iliad, what I will read for you now, the beginning of Book Five. One of my favorite parts, this is Diomedes' Aristea. Diomedes, a Greek hero, the Aristea, his moment of glory. let me read actually here I will recite the first short stanza lines the intro of the book five I will recite first in Greek Yes, and now I will read for you a translation. There to Tydeus' son, Diomedes, Pallas Athena, granted strength and daring that he might be conspicuous among all the archives, and win the glory of valor." That's not really a correct translation, I think. Cleos est lon aroito is more like, win himself a noble fame, or a true and noble fame. But anyway, I continue.

She granted him strength in daring that he might become conspicuous among all the archives and win himself a noble fame. She made weariless the fire blaze from his shield and helmet, like that star of the waning summer who beyond all stars rises, bathed in the ocean stream to glitter and brilliance. Such was the fire she made blaze from his head and his shoulders, and urged him into the middle fighting where the most were struggling. And the same image, but bigger, is repeated at the moment of Achilles' own Aristea, or height of glory, when later in the Iliad he come out of retirement to avenge his friend Patroclus, which really is the theme of the book, the real theme, the demonstration and exhibition of Achilles' superiority as the best of the Achaeans.

Whereas the wrath, the menace, the first word, which I will talk about on the final segment of this episode, I think, but that is just a part of the story of his distinction as the best of the Achaeans. But I like how straightforward such desires and longings are presented without apology and fussing, without dissimulation and moralism and false piety. It's not false piety, there is real piety. They are not afraid to pray to the gods for concrete gifts and to arrange an exchange of gifts with their gods. It's very different from Asiatic conception of one god, which the dissimulator and the false actor Plato tries to introduce. Plato was also wrong about many other things, such as the soul. You will see, perhaps even from passages I have already read, when he talks about heroes

dying in battle and he says, their armor clantered, clangered upon them, clanged upon them. And now I am like that Korean woman in the subway who cannot say mental retard, and she fumbles mentally retard at the word. I don't know if you remember this hero woman, the Korean. But Plato was wrong when Homer talked about the heroes dying and they fall with a thud with their armor clangering about them. And he frequently says, a mist came over their eyes. And you can see similar sentiment in the opening stanza, the opening, the introduction that I read for you at the beginning where their souls, whatever, their bodies became carrion, bodies became food for dogs and birds. But their souls, whatever, you know, and he had some other lines like, you know, the soul went chattering away to Hades.

It didn't really matter, this so-called thing, the soul is not actually what is animating your body and who you are. It's not important to understand who you are. And so this vision of body and of what men is that is different both from modern and from the platonic Jewish-Christian type of thing, you know, but more on that later. I break now and I come back to discuss my other favorite aspect of the Iliad, which is what transfigures this, what might sound as a terrible, uncompromising, violent world, but it's very vivid, prophetic even similes. My other part of the favorite part of the Iliad that made such an impression on me is simile, and I come back to discuss that. One moment, please. Before discussing simile, luminous similes in Homer, I think I will recite for you the

first 50 lines or so in ancient Greek. Let me say a word about why I pronounce the way I do. Ancient Greek had a pitch accent. It also did not pronounce the vowels in the way that modern Greek does. For example, you may know the letter Phi, and in modern Greek it's pronounced F, like F. But when the ancient Romans transcribed the Greek word for philosophy into Latin, they did not use their letter F, they used PH. And this is not the only evidence there's much other evidence that the letters like theta which is today phi and phi were phi and phi they were aspirated consonants so-called and so also many other thing pronounced different than you might expect the meter relies on quantity not so much on stress so this way it might sound a a little bit like Japanese, which also uses quantity.

Quantity means length of a syllable, whether it's, and it goes long, short, short, you know, the Dactylic exam, and to look it up. I don't want to give long lecture on such. Also, I encourage those of you who are uninterested in hearing me recite Greek, you can simply fast forward that, okay, I'm not offended. I decide to do a segment just on this recitation so that people can easily go past it if they don't want to, but, but, but, the other aspect, the pitch, some say I exaggerated too much. There are different schools of thinking of how you should pronounce it. That ancient Greek use the pitch is indisputable. The markings that you see on an ancient Greek text, the accent that goes in the direction of the text, the accent, I mean that rises in the direction of the text, the accent that

as you're reading the text seems to fall, right, in French they're called accent de gue, accent grave, then there is, you know, the twirly thing, I don't even know what that's called, you put it over a letter in Spanish, I do not know the technical name for it, it escape me at the moment, but they actually are a visual representation of how you should pronounce the pitch. They didn't exist in original Greek. They were designed later when Greek became international Hellenistic language under Alexander and they had to put these markings to teach non-Greeks how to pronounce it. But I have a friend who, he is a Greek scholar and teacher, he disagrees with me. He says I over exaggerate the pitch and not me, I'm following a certain school of reconstructed Attic pronunciation.

And he says these people who I copy over exaggerate the pitch, he says it is used much less. But you know, I like this sound. It sounds like some kind of space-faring language mix between Norwegian, Japanese, something unusual like that. I believe, actually, perhaps, original Aryan language, Proto-Indo-European so-called, sounded maybe a little bit like this, and it had absolutely the original Aryan language. I refuse to call it Proto-Indo-European or Indo-European. It's a scholarly term to not have to use the word Aryan, which is really an appropriate word to use. We do not know what name the original people in question used for themselves, but Aryan is as good as any other term, and certainly they use that word for themselves in the Vedas. It is still used in Iran.

It is the root of the word for Ireland, and in a few other cases, you know, unfortunately, this is an interesting fact that I like to spar with with some poster friends is that in the Finno-Ugric languages, Oria means slave. And so that's possibly an ancient encounter between the Finno-Ugrics who lived in the forests of the far north and the tundra and perhaps they came to the south on slave raids in the steppe and took Aryans and so for them the word aurea means slave. It's very possible that actually it is the word they use for themselves and how stupid for political reasons let's get rid of it and use this thing Indo-European which doesn't even make sense because it's not like the Indo-Indic languages and the European languages are the fundamental cleft.

It doesn't make sense to use Indo-European. Just say Aryan, you know. But the original Aryan languages absolutely had pitch accent, and of the modern languages today that have maintained it, I think Lithuanian is the only one that has maintained the pitch accent. There are other European languages with a pitch accent, for example Norwegian, but it's not the one inherited directly from the Aryan language. It was lost and then it was regained in Norwegian for other reasons. This frequently happens in analogous ways with many other things, with population movements. For example, the present-day location of Armenia around Lake Van is very likely one of the staging grounds of Aryan adventures, at least of one branch of this people.

The ones who invaded, let us say, Greece, India, which they reached through Mesopotamia, and a few other places. They likely resided for a time, at least, just south of the Caucasus Mountains. Robert Drills makes this case, and he revised it in a recent book, but I still think he maintains that that is one of the staging locations for some of the Aryan invasions. Well, it's presently occupied by the Armenians, I mean that in a positive sense, occupied and inhabited by the Armenians, but just because they live there doesn't mean that they are the direct descendants of the Aryans who live there, you know, they speak an Aryan language, But the Armenians actually came in much later from the west, from Anatolia. That area was completely depopulated.

There is evidence that the Aryan people or whatever people lived there around Lake Van simply decided to pack up and leave wholesale, leave as a people. Very interesting why they do this. They did it because they knew through trade routes and other legends and traditions where there is this rich land for the taking and we're going to go and take it and so forth. And yes, so they had this pitch accent language and many other archaic things were preserved in Greek. For example, the w sound, which is represented by the letter digama, it looks somewhat like an F, it's like a gamma with a line through it, and it's a w sound. And you never hear it in pronunciation of historical Greek, but it was used in Mycenaean and probably right before Homer time let's say before 800 BC or so so the

word for anax or King is actually one ox and in the the first line and I'm not going to use pitch accent whatever man in Aida it was actually a man in a way they so it it sound even stranger with the die gamma worse sound if you were to include it but but I I will not include this because in fact later scholarship saved that by historical let's say 800 700 BC or so the digamma was no longer used in pronunciation so now that I've given you somewhat long introduction on why I pronounce it as a way I do I will recite the first 50 lines or so 52 and And the action told here is that crises, cruces, and that's another thing, the vowels are pronounced differently than you might think. So the oopsilon is not an oo, but an oo, like in, you might think some Germanic or in French language, oo, oo.

And then the hater is pronounced a mix between a and e, so it's a long a, something like that and actually in Dorian dialect it turns completely into an R but anyway anyway the priest of Apollo crisis comes to beg the Caean princes to let his daughter go they had captured her as a war prize and Agamemnon turns him away very rudely dishonors him and crisis goes and prays to Apollo and Apollo in anger descends and with a twang of his evil bow he starts to throw it at the Greeks. He starts to spread epidemic among the Greeks and this is how the first 52 or so lines ends with the Greek fire of the pyres of the funeral pyres burning. Okay so after this now I will recite for you. Ollominnan he myriakai oys alge ithake Polas dipti muspsukassa i di proyapsen Herroonautus de Hyloria teu kikunessin

Oyonoi sitepas i dios di teleitobule Exudetaprota diaste tennerisante Atre ides te anaxandron, caedios a chileus, distars poete un meridixi di ikke makestai. Latus caedios eos sogar basilei colotes, nous sonanastraton orse kakan holikon todelaoui,

In the first half of the story, we see a man who was a man who was a man who was a man who was a man who was a man who was a man who was a man who was a man who was a man who was a man who was a man who was a man who was a man who was a man who was a man who was a man who was a man who was a man who was a man who was a man who was a man who was a man who was a man who was a man who was a man who was a man who was a man who was a man who was a man who was a man who was a man who was a man who was a man who was a man who was a man who was a man who was a man who was a man who was a man who was a man who was a man who was a man who was a man who was a man who was a man who was a man who was a man who was a man who was a man who was a man who was a man who was a man who was a

I am a human being, I am a human being, I am a human being, I am a human being. The first time I saw you, I saw you in the sky. I saw you in the sky, and I saw you in the sky. I saw you in the sky, and I saw you in the sky. I saw you in the sky, and I saw you in the sky. I saw you in the sky, and I saw you in the sky. I saw you in the sky, and I saw you in the sky. Al laka ko sappi ei krateron depi mut honi telle. Maa segeron ko lau sine go para nau siki keo. An un detunante hus teron ao tisi onta. Maa nu toi uk raisme scaetron kai stemba te oyo. Ten dego uluso, prin min kai ge recipe sin. Heh meteroi ini oiko in arge ite luti patres. He's the new boy coming in. I am on the cause and the ocean. I'll lead him. I'm ready to sell. Oh, so skinny. Oh, the party they send. Oh, get on. Okay.

Peter to me too. But the key on paratina. Paul is boy. Oh, tell us. Paul. The people do to key on the rat. Oh, get up. Oh, pull on the anak. is the most important thing. The most important thing is that the crew of the Pimbebakas, which is located in the area of Pianassus, will be able to carry out their final reps. And they will be able to carry out their final reps. They will be able to carry out their final reps. And they will be able to carry out their final reps. And today, I would like to say a big thank you to all of you who made this video possible. I hope you have enjoyed it, and if you haven't, please like, share and subscribe to my channel. I hope you have enjoyed it, and if you haven't, please like, share and subscribe to my channel.

Yes, we are back, and the other part of the Iliad I A great enjoy on first reading is the simile, style of the simile. Besides I mean that the Iliad jolted out of modern moralism complacency, ultimately it can jolt you out of your probable misunderstanding of human nature and it does so not through any pedantic argumentative means but simply showing you free life at its height so you You recognize it, yes, that is a natural man. In the same way that you see perfect Greek physique sculpture, you say, yes, that there's an a priori thing inside you, say, you recognize that is what good looks like, at least if you have good taste. And men, like myself, of good taste should be ideally running a eugenic council for the

future where we determine, yes, this man will breed at such and such a time of the year, will breed two to three hundred nubile girls and such and such people will be born with. This is a possible model for utopia for the future, better than AI, but this is a free man and so forth. This is what appears in luminous cinematic vivid detail in Homer. But besides this, the Iliad is wonderful to me, literally fill me with wonder still at its similes that are so, again, vivid, striking, cinematic. Lattimore himself remarks on this in the very simple introduction he makes. He lists a few of his favorite similes. This particular one is very nice. It's also one of my favorites I am reading now. As when some Mayonian woman or carrion with purple colors ivory to make it a cheekpiece for horses.

It lies away in an inner room, and many a rider longs to have it. But it is laid up to be a king's treasure, two things, to be the beauty of the horse, the pride of the horseman. So Menelaus, your shapely thighs were stained with the color of blood, and your legs also, and the ankles beneath them. And it's just something so lush about the white of the ivory and the white of Menelaus' legs stained with the purple of the blood. The image language burns itself into your head. And of all the things that I've ever read, this made the most stylistic impression on me. I've always wondered how it is Homer able to find just such appropriate imagery that sears itself into the dream cinema in your daydream brain. And often in very unexpected ways where it just shocks and jolts you with contrast of

imagery and feeling. Here is another example Lattimore gives. the beaches, and the surf that breaks against it is stilled, and all things elsewhere it shrouds from above with the burden of Zeus' reign heavy upon it. So numerous and incessant were the stones volleyed from both sides, some thrown on Trojans, others flung against the Achaeans by Trojans, so the whole length of the wall thundered beneath them." And you know, the contrast between extreme beauty, silence of snow falling and the falling of the rocks. What is being compared is the number and that they are falling from above, but the contrast between them is genius imagery. And the Iliad, you can see, is in some ways a very modernist field book, or rather opposite parts of modernism, are attempts to recover

what the Iliad is doing. It starts, for example, in the middle of action. It jumps around in time through stories within stories, and it then tells these similes that are the literary equal to the best special effects of any movie, I think. And what is the simile? The Iliad is a form of the bard and it's very, obviously it's very long, but it makes use of various other traditional song and poetry forms, lower forms, and I don't mean lower output, I don't mean lower as in less good, but of lesser scope, shorter, more limited instances of poetic folkways that the bard then picks up and weaves into his longer tale. This is well known by scholars of epic. For example, the bard who would improvise during performance would weave in where appropriate

old women's dirges over the deaths of young warriors, or the songs of young women at fertility festivals and such, or the drinking songs of young men. And the simile itself is not just a literary device of a literary fag, let's say. It was its own traditional form of song. It was the song of the mantis, the mantic, the prophet or seer. It's the special second sight of the augur, translated into literary or poetic form. I think this has been established, it's literally a form of prophecy if done right, but to see see these kinds of juxtaposed phenomena and liken them in the most appropriate way to see a hidden connection between them expressed visually. And the visual or cinematic aspect is very important because, okay, I give you a couple

more examples of my favorite similes, but what I can't translate for you on this episode, but what you might get from reading this book yourself, and maybe I tried now to express this in my own brief performance in Greg just in previous segment but the experience of the epic which is performed by a bard it would have been combination of repetitive meter it has a rhythm and it's repetitive and the accompaniment would have been also an instrument a repetitive drone like string instrument and the repetition then also of the formulas that the bard improvises. I mean, he improvises that location in the actual performance, but the repetition of these ancient formulas, for example, loud resounding seals, swift-footed Achilles and

such, they're ritual formulas. And the Latimore translation, I think, does a decent job of conveying the brutish prehistoric feel of these. I mean, in part the meter, although he cannot produce dactylic hexameter in English, but he captures nevertheless some of the feel of the original beater and does much better on the repetition of the formulas which he preserves which somebody like Fagles totally misses by the way. But in these elements I just named for you would have already been transported, if you were in the audience, you would be transported after a while in a kind of trance-like hypnotic state. The rhythm, the formulas, the repetition, the drone-like music. And then the cinematic activation of the dream eye in the similes occurs at certain times

in the context of that, you know, so it has a much more powerful effect than if you just take the simile out of context. And this support idea that these epics are a kind, consummate Apollonian style, and the Apollonian style being not what some might think from ways misused by many online now, but you know, it's not about logic and reason, moderation as such. It's about achieving calm, trance-like, hypnotic dream state in which you can see perhaps the the future and the past and hidden connections of things that are in which you are also able to witness the most terrible things, the kind of murder scenes and such that I read on some previous segments, and to have them be completely transfigured so that you are not affected

emotionally by them, that even the most violent thing can become beautiful. It's an aesthetic transfiguration of the world in a trans state of imagery that again makes Morality and moralism, I think, a moot point. The world of the Greeks prior to Homer and other bards like Homer, it was a brutish dark age, total violence, might makes right, piracy, genocide, and it was Homer who brought the light-filled gods out of their hiding. And I'm being a bit poetic myself now, but I really do mean that men like Homer and Pindar literally as seer prophets, not just bards, they were emissaries of Apollo or founders of a new kind of religion maybe you can say, re-establishes maybe of the ancient Aryan religion that is only approximated in other extant epics, say for example the Norse and

the Vedas and such. But nowhere else are the gods born to the dream eye of your mind in such luminous power or the world transfigured by this eye of the artist, which really to say it's the mantic, the mantic as you see here is behind the simile. And if you want to see a lineage of what a seer is, you read Pindar 6th Pythian Ode where he tells the story of the birth of Iamis, he's a seer, a prophet, and how Apollo gave him the second sight and prophecy and I may quote it later. But here then is another favorite example of simile from end of book 8, a famous simile and another favorite. So with hearts made high, these sat night long by the outworks of battle, and their watchfires blazed numerous about them, as when in the sky the stars about the moons

shining are seen in all their glory, when the air has fallen to stillness, and all the high places of the hills are clear and the shoulders outjutting, and the deep ravines, as endless bright air spills from the heavens and all the stars are seen to make glad the heart of the shepherd. Such in their numbers blaze the watchfires the Trojans were burning between the waters of Xanthos and the ships before Ileon. A thousand fires were burning there in the plain, and besides each one set fifty men in the flare of the blazing firelight, and standing each beside his chariot, champing white barley and oats, the horses waited for the dawn to mount to her high place. Against it, something much exhilarating. If you have ever been alone on a field,

an open field at night, about the comparison of the vastness of nature of a Whelming lone shepherd in sublime way Comparison of that to the number of fires of army camping at night is both supreme calm exhilarating imagistic it remind me a feel of if you see Star War or Dune the best moments where they seem to achieve a kind of Futuristic mythic feel I think they are going for this idiot feel I I think it tells the story of something that happened originally an outer space yes I think this but the comparison of the armies to natural phenomenon is frequent and always just so appropriate I mean here is a rousing set of similes I'm going to read for you a rousing set of similes right before the catalog of ships in book two I'm reading now as obliterating

fire lights up a vast forest along the crests of a mountain and the flare shows far off. So as they march from the magnificent bronze the gleam went dazzling all about through the upper air to the heaven. These as the multitudinous nations of birds winged, of geese and of cranes and of swans long-throated, in the Asian meadow besides the Caistrian waters, this way and that way they make their flights in the pride of their wings. Then they settle in clashing swarms and the whole meadow echoes with them. So of these the multitudinous tribes from the ships and shelters poured to the plain of Scamandros, and the earth beneath their feet and under the feet of their horses thundered horribly. They took position in the blossoming meadow of Scamandros, thousands of them, as leaves

and flowers appeared in their season, like the multitudinous nations of swarming insects, who drive hither and thither about the stalls of a sheepfold in the season of spring when the milk splashes in the milk pails. In such numbers the flowing-haired Achaean stood up through the plain against the Trojans, hearts burning to break them. These as men who are goat-herds among the white goat-flocks easily separate them in order as they take to the pasture. Thus the leaders separated them this way and that toward the encounter, and among them powerful like Memnon, with eyes and head like Zeus who delights in thunder, like Ares for girth with the chest of Poseidon, like some ox of the herd preeminent among the others, a bull, who stands conspicuous in the huddling cattle.

Such was the son of Atreus, as Zeus made him that day, conspicuous among men and foremost among the fighters. Tell me now, you muses, who have your homes on Olympus, for you who are goddesses are there and you know all things, and we have heard only the rumor of it and know nothing. Who then of those who were the chief men and the lords of the Danaeans? I could not tell over the multitude of them nor name them." Anyway, he continues this, but how you feel this? I think again the contrast is always so appropriate, it inspires such expansive, calm vision of nature in the reader. This affected me immediately when I read it, whereas the Bible did not. The Bible is Arabic feel, if you listen to rhetoric of Osama bin Laden, it's very similar

to Bible rhetoric in the sense that it has very good and emotional poetry often and maybe at times even more grand and ostentatious than what you find in Greek poetry like this, But it's very rare to find this kind of searing imagery in the Bible that are sometimes nice emotional metaphors, but rarely simile and cinematic imagery of this kind. And there is beautiful poetry, but there is no visual luminous transfiguration of the world. I do think the similes in Homer are driving at some type deep understanding of what it is that underlies nature. But it's presented implicitly without priestly doctrine, because the seer, the seer is a He's a seer, he's not a priest, he's not a handler of legalisms and laws and rituals necessarily. He's a seer, he has a gift of second sight.

So to continue, for example, at the end of the last similes I read, the comparison was made between Anemol and the leaders of the Greeks, in particular Agamemnon, who is maybe you can say he's not a good guy in the Iliad, he's a still magnificent king and this is his greatest moment of glory. In other words, even an inadequate king as such is transformed into a magnificent king, transfigured by the gods in moment of battle, and stands in a position to draw others around him in a kind of natural orbit, and his animal nature as a bull among the herd comes out. This is a big point, I think, in comparison to animal are not coincidence. Consider in fifth book, this is the Aristea, the moment of glory of Diomedes, where he

again is compared to any mole. It's a nice longer passage that I will read. And this come after Diomedes has just been wounded by an arrow. So I'm reading now. Come dear friend, son of Capaneus, step down from the chariot. This is his charioteer friend. Come dear friend, son of Capaneus, step down from the chariot so that you may pull out from my shoulder this bitter arrow. So he spoke, and Sthenelos sprang to the ground from his chariot, and standing beside him pulled the sharp arrow clean through his shoulder, and the blood shut up spurting through the delicate tunic. Now Diomedes of the great war-cry spoke aloud, praying, Hear me now, Atritone, daughter of Zeus and of the ages. If ever before in kindliness you stood by my father through the terror of fighting,

be my friend now also, Athena. Grant me that I may kill this man and come with spear cast, who shot me before I could see him, and now boasts over me, saying that I cannot live to look much longer on the shining sunlight. So he spoke in prayer, and Pallas Athena heard him. She made his limbs light again, and his feet and his hands above them, and standing close beside him she spoke and addressed him in winged words. Be of good courage now, Diomedes, to fight with the Trojans, since I have put inside your chest the strength of your father, untremulous, such as the horseman Tydeus of the great shield had. I have taken away the mist from your eyes, that before now was there, so that you may well recognize the god and the mortal.

Therefore now, if a god making trial of you comes hither to you, do you not battle head on with the gods immortal, not with the rest, but only if Aphrodite, Zeus' daughter, comes to fighting, her at least you may stab with the sharp bronze. She spoke thus, grey-eyed Athena, and went while Tydeus' son closed once again with the champions, taking his place there. Raging as he had been before to fight with the Trojans, now the strong rage triple took hold of him, as of a lion, whom the shepherd among his fleecy flocks in the wild lands grazed as he leapt the fence of the fold, but has not killed him, but only stirred up the lion's strength, and can no more fight him off, but hides in the steading, and the The frightened sheep are forsaken, and these are piled pell-mell on each other in heaps

while the lion raging still leaps out again over the fence of the deep yard. Such was the rage of strong Diomedes as he closed to the Trojans. Next he killed Astinos and Hyperion, excuse me, not Hyperion, Hyperion, shepherd of the people, striking one with the bronze-heeled spear above the nipple, and cutting the other beside the shoulder through the collarbone. I stop reading now. You get the comparison to lion, which, by the way, lions lived in this part of the world in Greece and the Balkans during this time. There's a kind of lion. But there is book, I think, written about just this, the comparisons to animals, a bit of a pedantic book, I think, but trying to make an evolutionary Darwinist case for why

these kinds of likeliness to animal matter and to situate Homeric heroes and their struggle for fame and women and plunder in a Darwinist model, but I think that is a bit of a kind of literal reductionist distortion, a downgrade, given that the main character chooses a young death knowingly. You know, I haven't read this book, I'm talking about the evolutionary understanding of the Homeric heroes, but it may be worthwhile anyway. But animal comparison, very important in Homer. Another one of the most striking similes were Achilles' warriors and his companions, his Myrmidons, as he arouses them to battle finally and they are compared to a pack of wolves. But Achilleus went meanwhile to the Myrmidons and arrayed them all in their war gear along

the shelters, and they, as wolves who tear flesh raw, in whose hearts the battle-fury is tireless, who have brought down a great horned stag in the mountains and then feed on him till the jowls of every wolf run blood, and then go all in a pack to drink from a spring of dark running water, lapping with their lean tongues along the black edge of the surface and belching up the clotted blood. In the heart of each one is a spirit untremulous, but their bellies are full and groaning. As such the lords of the Myrmidons and their men of council around the brave henchmen of swift-footed Ayakidas swarmed, and among them was standing warlike Achilleus and urged on the fighting men with their shields and the horses. Yes, the wolf society of Apollo, the Mannerbund, you see here in ferocious glory.

What is Sir Homer trying to say when he see this or he compare them to angry chimp out wild boar in whose chest churns an engine of undying combat and defiance? I was afraid I would run into wild boar. I was walking not long ago in North Spain and I wrote immediately hiker friend. You may know him, weirdhiker on Twitter, and I ask him, can I challenge boar if I see him to make him run? And he say, no, you stay very wide from boar. If you try to challenge, they are one of the most easily angered animals, and they will chimp out and kill. Be careful. But what this means in Homer, I cannot give you some glib, quick answer. I think truth lies in the images themselves. I give you a clue what I think it means by read something unrelated and end this segment with one of the most

beautiful, touching similes, the death of Euphorbis. And remember what I say, that a modern would shudder if they understood how the Greeks themselves experienced the death scenes in the Iliad. And here is the death of Euphorbis, which so affected Pythagoras that he believed he was a reincarnation of this hero I'm about to talk about, Euphorbis. And indeed, Pythagoras was able to find, through the memory of this past life, he was able to know what was hidden behind the euphorbous shield before anyone had looked. And when they looked on the back, they found, yes, Pythagoras was saying the truth. This is famous story. But anyway, here is death of euphorbous for more homeric comparison between hero and animal, or rather in this case, a beautiful tree. He's getting killed by Menelaus, okay?

So it's a little bit longer passage. Then, lordly Menelaus, you must now pay the penalty for my brother whom you killed, and boast that you did it, and made his wife a widow in the depth of a young, bright chamber, and left to his parents the curse of lamentation and sorrow. Yet I might stop the mourning of these unhappy people if I could carry back to them your head and your armor, and toss them to Panto's hands and to Frontus the lovely. No, this struggle shall not go long untested between us, nor yet unfought, whether it prove our strength or our terror. He spoke and stabbed Menelaus' shield in its perfect circle, nor did the bronze break its way through, but the spear had bent back in the strong shield. And after him, Atreus' son, Menelaus, made his prayer to Father Zeus

and lunged with the bronze spear as he was drawing back, caught him in the pit of the gullet, and leaned in on the stroke in the confidence of his strong hand, and clean through the soft part of the neck the spear point was driven. He fell thunderously, and his armor clattered upon him, and his hair, lovely as the graces, was splattered with blood, those braided locks caught wasp-wise in gold and silver, as some slip of an olive tree, strong growing that a man raises in a lonely place, and drenched it with generous water, so that it blossoms into beauty, and the blasts of winds from all quarters tremble it, and it bursts into pale blossoming. But then a wind suddenly in a great tempest descending upon it, who wrenches it out of its stand, and lays it at length on the ground.

Such was Iphorbis of the strong ash-spear, the son of Pantheus, whom Menelaus atraid is killed, and was stripping his armor. As when in the confidence of his strength some lion, hill-reared, snatches the finest cow in a herd as it pastures, first the lion breaks her neck caught fast in the strong teeth, that gulps down the blood and all the guts that are inward savagely, as the dogs and herdsmen raise a commotion loudly about him, but from a distance, and are not willing to go in and face him, since the hard green fear has hold of them. So no heart in the breast of any Trojan had courage to go in and face glorious Mennelaus. Yes, do you like this? And if you think such scene is both tragic and exhilarating and also highly eroticized a beautiful death, you would be right on all counts.

But what maybe this means, if anything else, I will be right back to discuss the opening scene of the alien, where the body is extolled but the psuke, the soul or the spirit in our language is seen as something unimportant, but that already is such a big clue about what life mean and how Homer saw meaning of life force of cosmos and of why it is of a higher and alien intelligence that can only appear to us transfigured in something we might recognize as aesthetic trance. I will be right back. I suppose I should say a word about Ricky Vaughn. I know him as Ricky Vaughn. I like to call people by the code names under which I first knew them. But the Douglas Mackie case where he was recently convicted, what is there to say other than

the United States now shows itself as a shithole communist country. Many people have made these observations that in the same week, Trump ex-president is indicted. guy is convicted for a funny meme, and then they celebrate Trans Day celebration on the same week that a troon shoots up a school. So it's this situation, but I think if you can, you should donate to Douglas Mackey Defense Fund because he has good lawyers. This case was, we wanted to remain hopeful, but it was long shot because it was in Brooklyn. They put the case in Brooklyn because the fiber optic cables went through Brooklyn, if you can believe that. And that's how they were able to choose this kind of jury that would convict. And they were convicted based on a very vague law that if it doesn't get overturned by extreme

Court can be used not just against any frog, but any American at all. So if you can, please donate to his legal defense fund. He will take to Supreme Court. He will win. I wish him power, and I know that he will not go to jail for this idiocy. However, the damage to free speech is already done. In fact, it was done simply by this going to trial, because as you know, the process this is the punishment, and so on. But now the conviction is very bad situation, even if it get reverse Supreme Court, which it has to be, you know. But even if it does, it's already so much damage, so much intimidation already on anyone looking at this will think twice, do I make fun of this politician? Can they use this law against me? Like I say, everything they allege about Russia

is true about United States, but in some way much worse, as I say, shithole communist country. That's all I have to say. I prefer to talk about Iliad. Iliad, story of armies and war and adventure, but its universe is so different from our own that it makes me quite annoyed when modern neo-con and other libtards, they try to pervert it and to use it to promote their own wars or service to the nation to these rickety sham states, service to rickety sham. Agamemnon, who is commander-in-chief, you can say, of the Greek, and it's not really an army, it's more like a confederation of highly individualistic, ambitious warlords, similar maybe to Afghan warlords or Saxon chiefs, who may temporarily unite under one leader, a commander-in-chief who happens to have the most men.

It's interesting in this question of most men, why did that give you some title to rule? It's very interesting because one of constant concerns of Iliad, where the Greeks had many different names for who is stronger, who is better, they had many words for this, to distinguish between different kinds of better. And the most important was who is Aristos, Aristos Achaeon, who is the best of the Achaeans. That is a question of the most excellent by nature, so to speak, whereas Agamemnon only has the leadership of the Greek Confederation because he is perteros, meaning he is the one who leads the most men and most ships. But I say this because this word perteros, the root is p-h-e-r, but it's the same one

that in Germanic languages is barren, so you know, he's more baronial, he has the strength in size army. But for, you know, baron just means warlord, okay? But for a culture really obsessed on who is stronger, mightier, better, and so forth. Such concerns, I say, lead to many fine distinctions on this point. That's really the story of Iliad, the story of Achilles, wrath, or menace, yes. But really, his wrath in sitting out the war is just one of the demonstrations of his natural superiority and excellence. He sits out the war and demonstrates that they will fail without him, you know, which Which on a much lower, less artistic scale, you can see what Ayn Rand tried to show in Atlas Shrugged maybe, I think.

But the libertarian understanding of human gradations and individual superiority, I think leaves out usually the physical and military strength and superiority. That's why libertarian ideologies may be deficient. But still I think people who attack Ayn Rand, that's become right now on the so-called dissident right, a kind of Norwood trait. What is Norwood? He's a short, balding guy with, you know, he's mad. He's mad and balding, you know, and he's into traditional socialism. Yeah, Ayn Rand, you know, it's easy to attack Ayn Rand, but it's a Norwood trait, because to go back to this, why the Libertardian ideology, however, is deficient, fundamentally a society that is, let's be funny here, but I think even some libertarians recognize that ultimately the full expression of their

beliefs appears in something like Somalia or Afghanistan, with competing warlords. Or if you want to look at the non-degenerate version of that, because these are racially degenerate examples, but the non-degenerate examples would be something like the world of the Iliad, or the Icelandic Free State, where you had competing warlords, or rather warlord judges, warlord judge priest, who would compete for clients, you know, for basically security company, to put it, you know, competing for clients. So something like what appeared provisionally in the theories of Hans Hermann Hoppe, although there it appears in a spur-like version, academic spur-like version, but really, you know, this something critics of the might is right world view, they miss this when they attack might

is right, they think Nietzsche, for example, or the ancient versions of Nietzsche as appears in might-makes-right theories of Kritias or other sophists, and some people foolishly believe these are moral justifications for submission to government authority or the authority of any elite so-called whatsoever, when in fact that misses whole point. They are not arguments for social stability, but for social flux and instability, and societies that held this belief look something very much like the Iliad or the Icelandic Free State who is very weak to no central authority and constant warfare and strife and competing strongmen who are always challenging each other's right to rule by means of the duel or some other kind of contest.

Whether that's good or bad or whether it can be refined or updated into a form acceptable in modern circumstances or something more advanced and less brutish is another question, But don't confuse it with Confucianism or such, please, which, you know, many traditionalists and actually also liberal and leftist critics of might and right, they always make that confusion, as if Nietzsche would support any elite that happens to be in power at any time whatsoever anywhere. That makes no sense. I think Achilles' example is very good role model for modern man, by the way, and a very good immunization against the kind of moral cant that wants you to sacrifice your own benefit for that of degenerate modern states and degenerate nations and peoples.

Kilny sits out the war because his war prize girl is taken from him and he does not join back until restitution and apology is made, but really until his friend is killed. So you know, when a Fentard or Libtard or Conservacock tries to shame you for not serving your country and such, remind them that you owe absolutely nothing to modern states until they offer you concrete benefits, women, gold, many such things, you know, you owe them nothing at all. Nor is it correct to make a comparison to classical Greece, you may have heard this dishonest argument, they say well the heroes of the Iliad and those like Achilles may have been individualistic and over-focused on displaying their personal battle prowess to win their

own glory on the battlefield, but by classical times, the Greek phalanx of the hoplites didn't appreciate such behavior. So in fact, Sparta punished any man who stepped out of line. If they tried to chimp out in Homeric fashion, there are famous cases of this as well, where to regain honor, a Spartan would step out of line and go on a chimp out against the enemy and they were rebuked even if they won. And this is all true, but what these people miss is that these societies look to the Iliad as their Bible, and to Achilles as the shining exemplar of the most excellent man. In the same way, maybe that Christian societies look to Jesus even if they didn't demand that men emulate every aspect of Jesus' life.

But it's a big misunderstanding of the Feilang spirit to try to cram it into your own new Chinese socialistic understanding of the collective or the group. Because what you had in the Feilangs, and yes, they demanded the line be held as a tactic. So for example, I think at Plataea, the decisive land battle in the Persian Wars, famously a Spartan commander comes and drops a big anchor chained to his leg to show that he will not budge. All true, wonderful, but these were men who literally owned their states. It was a proprietary state of the citizens, the hoplite spirit that this kind of line describes. And by the way, the hoplite also began as an individual adventurer, warrior, and mercenary, a kind of military entrepreneur, he did not begin as a soldier in the phalanx, they formed

the phalanx later and what I'm saying, it was done for tactical and practical reasons and the ideology behind it is, you're overstating your case if you think it was some type of egalitarian collectivist theology like you have in mind, it was a version of the Mannerbund or the Brotherhood of Men in Arms, the Homoyoi, so called by the, not by, this is the name of the Spartan citizenry, but they viewed themselves as a brotherhood apart from others, superior to others. So really, the phalanx described the patrician aristocracy by modern words. They owned the state, they derived all the benefits from this ownership and citizenship. They were getting something concrete for it, in other words. Land, yes, women, wealth, ownership in the state, which in the case of Sparta meant a big plot of land

plus slaves of serfs to work it, and a woman, your wife, to manage it when you were away at war. Okay, they were not modern, peon, faceless soldiers that you are asked to be now, getting nothing in return but pat on the head from a Fentard or a Libtard neocon as a moral benefit of some kind. There is this man, Andrew Bacevich, I think I do not read him, I know of what he says. I think his son died in Iraq. He's a veteran himself and a professor. He has a book on this matter about how America's performative jingoism, when it comes to this kind of thank you for your service, in fact, it's a way to erase and anonymize the soldier. It's just a piece of sentimental moralism to get men to sacrifice themselves for nothing. My friend Samuel Finley, I should ask him to come on show again.

He was much beloved, but he has this book, "'Breakfast with the Dirt Coat.'" It make all this point that he's combat veteran. So, sorry I go on this tangent, it seems relevant. The Iliad is not about the anonymity of war and of service to a so-called fatherland or a group or a people. In fact, the heroes in it frequently ignore their supposed duties when friendship or booty or personal glory are at stake. Most famously is when a Greek and a Trojan hero meet on battlefield but realize their fathers or grandfathers, I forget, were in a relationship of guest friendship, so they They exchange gifts and depart without fighting. I mean, can you imagine soldiers in a filthy modern democratic struggle doing this?

But what's interesting is how do they realize they are related in this matter is because the way warriors in the Iliad fight, they face each other, get off chariot, they recite family lineage and they trash talk and then they fight. And it's all again presented in this extreme straightforward, naive, egotistic way. It's glorious and it's refreshing. It's actually similar to how early Japanese fought. It's also, by the way, in the Norse epics. They have a similar word, I forget what it is in Norse, but in Greek, the word is neikos for feud or vendetta, and there's almost, I forget the word, but it's almost exactly the same in Norse for feud. There's a similar trash talk where, you know, one Viking tells another, you know, you're

a pathetic and the bishop of so-and-so fucked you in the ass and got you pregnant in the ass and so on. It's a very wild thing. It's very dominated by dug literature. You see, can I say this on family show, but this is what epic heroic culture was like. And there is a Japanese chronicle that recounts their victory over the invading Mongols, but at first the Japanese experienced some reverses because as these chronicles say, we are used to fighting, a man comes on horseback, comes out of the arranged horse on horseback, Shouts out his family lineage and calls out his preferred opponent from the enemy army to challenge a duel with Then the other kai guns and you know They do the alien thing and the Japanese were just taken aback that the Mongols didn't respect this at all

But we're just swarming them with step chimp tactics, you know, but eventually they pushed back the Mongols They were saved by divine windstorm kamikaze which you know if the Japanese honor their spirits again And kamikaze could help them in our time as well. I believe this. This was Shintaro Ishihara, I cannot get into that. But in animism and in Greek religion, or let's say Greek religion of very primeval times, the relationship you had with spirits and gods was also individualistic and aristocratic. It was reciprocal. I shouldn't say just primeval times, it was this way through classical Greek times too. The Greek men, which is to say, really the aristocracy as those who were the real Greeks, saw themselves in relation to their gods as, let's say, lower nobility sees itself in relation

to dukes and kings and such. And so in a feudal relation of this kind, there is a reciprocity. You know, this is how the Bard understood himself. You make a prayer to a god in the form of a very innovative poem that's beautiful and that brings honor and glory to that god, the art of reverence and glorification of another basically is lost today, aside from myself. But this gift to the god obligated that god in turn to bestow on you or your patron good fortune or health and wealth, good form, many other such things that are prayed for. And in the Iliad, to return to basic idea of Iliad, you see that again, it's not really story of Achilles' wrath, but of his godlike, the exhibition of a kind of godlike inner

power that he has, of his arete, of his excellence by nature, excuse the attack, which in its sudden eruption, the arete, this nature, it's sudden eruption into the world is the manifestation of truth and awesome beauty and so really the wrath he displays in the beginning is just a setup for his moment of Aristea of his wrath on the battlefield later in the epic and both are presented simultaneously divine phenomena and akin to natural events of great power like Like might of river, many such thing. So one of the big themes running through book is Achilles' likeness to the god Apollo. You can see this in many ways, but it appeared very early, including in passage I recited for you, and when Apollo come very angry and spread disease among the Greek army.

And the second mention of the word menace or wrath I believe is in the mouth of the prophet or mantic or shaman Kalkas, who refers to Apollo's menace in this punishment of Greek army for, because Agamemnon had dishonored, remember, the priest, the local priest of Apollo, Chryseis, you know. But if you listen to my brief recitation, maybe the beginning of the Iliad, I read this part of the scene. It's toward the end of what I recited, where De nae, terrible, was the clang of Apollo's bow with which he shot disease at the army host. But yes, you see that Apollo is called the mouse god, Zminteus. And I think because, right, why would a rodent be the sign of such a magnificent god? Because Apollo, god of health, is also god of epidemics. And they saw that mice, rats, spread disease.

So Apollo becomes also a mouse god, among many other things. This is why Chryse invokes him as Zminteus. But Homer, quite explicit about this, immediately after the first stanza, which I began show with, he asks, who was it who set the two great men of the Greeks, Achilles and Agamemnon, against each other? You know, the son of Leto and Zeus, Apollo. And his wrath, which is the natural phenomena of pestilence on the Greek army that leads to pyres of corpses, this is a divine copy of Achilles' own wrath that leads throughout the book to exactly the same thing, merely by sitting out the war. And then the second connection to the word menace, which by the way has direct parallels in both old Iranian Avistan and in Rig Vedas, in words that sound something like my new,

and it refers there to a god of war and fire, although you always have to be careful about using Zoroastrianism as a guide to understanding the mental universe of the ancient Aryans. Zoroastrianism already is a reform religion that actually very much went against the original Aryan spirit on purpose. It attempted to ban, for example, the Manerbund, the Society of Warriors, and to taboo and demonize not only this as an institution, the Society of Warriors, but also its spiritual presuppositions. But it's clear from general usage in other Indo-European language, and especially in the Vedas, that this word, menace, with which the Iliad starts, a kind of anger, isn't just some random word for anger or wrath, it has cosmic significance, and in fact, more closely related

to forms of perception than emotion. I mean, in Greek, the root word would be something like me, having to do with remembrance and perception and with mind, mind, right? I believe same root word. It's something that vague to us today, but refers to the general activation of some type of superhuman mind. And this is why, as Calvert Watkin point out, mortals in the Iliad almost never refer to their own menace. When they talk about their own anger casually, they use several other words, but this particular one, menace, is very rarely used. Not never, but very rarely. It is obviously a taboo word. And Watkin's explained it as a taboo deformation, so-called, of a more general world for the activated mind or mindfulness that somehow

reflect one of vital life forces of the world, which is why in Greek it's often associated, this word menis, with Zeus and his fiery thunderbolt. Just as in the Vedas, it's associated with Indra himself, maybe you can say a divine version of Achilles. It's not blind rage. It's not moral indignation. Heraclitus in a quite different setting but refers to the thunderbolt of Zeus has a certain intelligence. It is a kind of directed guide. It's a kind of cosmic, intelligent, directed mindfulness akin to wrath maybe, but that brings doom on entire peoples and nations. And I don't know if the word for mantis, the prophet or seer, is related even indirectly, But it's worth saying now that Achilles first appeared in a plot of Iliad as the defender

and the introducer, stupid word, but he introduces the mantis, the seer, the shaman Calchas, who like the Trojan priest trying to free his daughter, Calchas is also a man of Apollo. This is what I was saying, Homer very explicit on Apollo-Achilles connection in this book. Achilles, when he appears first, he's aroused to anger when Agamemnon dismisses Calchas, mistreats him. You know, Calchas is saying you have to give the daughter back to the priest to make restitution and make, you know, but Agamemnon mistreats him. So you know, Achilles always in beginning appears as a kind of defender and champion of the god Apollo and of his priests and in particular of his seers and prophets because Apollo is god of farseeing prophecy.

And so when Kalkas, the shaman, is first introduced, Homer refers to him as he who sees the things that are, that were, and that will be, and who by his divine madness given to him by Apollo led the Greeks to Ileon. In other words, the art of navigation across the seas. At least in this case, it was through divine inspiration that this shaman led the Greeks over the seas to their target. In Pindar Olympian Ode 6, I may have mentioned it earlier, there is also a reference to this words for prophetic madness, mantosune, which Apollo gave to his son, Iamis. It's a beautiful passage. Should I read it? I will read it. Why not? It's a very Homerican feel, and this is about Iamis, a prophetic man, and when he had attained

the delightful fruit of golden crowned youth, he went down into the middle of the Alfeus and called on wide ruling Poseidon, that's a river, and called on wide ruling Poseidon, grandfather and on the archer, his father, who watches over God-built Delos, he's talking about Apollo, praying that the honor of caring for the people be on his head under the clear night sky. His father's voice responded in clear speech and sought him out, rise my son, follow my voice here to a place that welcomes all. They came to the steep rock of the lofty cliff of Cronus. There the god gave him a double treasure of prophecy. There and then, to hear a voice that did not know how to lie, and on bold plotting Herakles came, the sacred scion of the Alkidai, and founded for his father a festival frequented

by mortals and the greatest ritual of contests, he's talking about the Olympics. Then he commanded him to establish an oracle on the highest altar of Zeus. Since then, the race of the sons of Yamuz has been very famous throughout Greece, he means as prophets. Prosperity attended them, and by honoring excellence they walk along a bright path." And I found it interesting that character in this ode says earlier, he says, I long for the eye of my army, a man who was good both as a prophet and at fighting with the spear. But this what I just read for you now is very common sentiment, that is the eye of the army is a man who possesses both strong spear and the art of prophecy, which, you know, many of you might be acquainted from, if you had read about Indo-European scholar, George Dumasil,

he came up with supposedly famous, supposedly tripartite division of ancient Aryan society, saying that all Aryan societies were divided into warriors, priests, and the common men or the common people. And in some cases, there's evidence for this. For example, even in the Japanese, and the Japanese are not Aryan, but they inherited this from some Aryan invaders who came in the 400s AD and so. But if you look at Japanese imperial treasures, their three treasures are a sword, a mirror, and a jewel, which are supposed to correspond to this tripartite division, the sword for the warriors, the mirror for the priestly class, and then the jewel for the fertility of the people, and yes, again, Japan was invaded at one point by a steppe confederation that

had Scythian leadership around the 400s AD, I think. And it's assumed that the samurai class existing separately in Japan, which is somewhat of a unique institution in Asia, that it was also inherited from this invasion. And of course this pattern of tripartite division exists in other so-called Aryan societies, even societies that were, let's say, touched by Aryan influence. But that said, I think Dumezil overstates case because in many Aryan societies the ideal was a warrior who was also a priest, or more precisely, a seer. And so you see now in line, I just read from Pindar who preserves some say, the scholar Calvert Watkins I mentioned earlier, he say that Pindar preserves extremely ancient beliefs more than Homer does, although Pindar innovates much more linguistically.

But this is not a unique case, it's throughout many different Indo-European or Aryan cultures call it what you will. It is an ancient idea that the great men should exist both as priests and warriors. In the Iliad, for whatever reason, they are separated or secularized. So you have Nestor in the secularized version of it, he's described both as great in battle but also the most capable of the Greeks at giving counsel. So the priestly or the mind function of the seer is secularized here to giving good advice in General Assembly, but Nestor possesses both of them. Or on the other hand, you have the case of Odysseus, who is both a great warrior and famously also a wise man and wise-cracking wise man at that, a trickster.

But there is a very nice element in Iliad where he and Diomedes infest the – infest, what am I saying? You see, they try to put false words in my head. They infiltrate Trojan camp and they do it wearing wolf, they wear wolf thing on head. Again a replay of Manarbon, unrelated to what I'm saying now, but I find the episode interesting. But in case of Achilles, some say, where Calcas again is his counterpart in the story, Calcas being the seer of Apollo, the shaman Calcas. The function of the warrior and prophet is for whatever reason separated, so it's cleft into these two characters that are nevertheless very closely related in the Iliad. But in many other cases you see, as again in Pindarai, the line I read, the ideal was

– or even in the case of Julius Caesar, in many other instances in Roman history – the ideal was that the functions of the priest and the warrior are united, in fact. So it's not really given that these are separate classes. I have no special ending for you today, no lesson, I have no point to make, Achilles is the mirror of Apollo. I hope you enjoy my scattered observations and why I like this poem. Next week I return for part 2 to discuss various nice modern books on Homer. Until next time, Bear out!