The Road, is a movie that started as a novel in 2006 by an American writer Cormac McCarthy. The novel won the 2007 Pulitzer Prize award for Fiction. The film by the same name The Road was directed by John Hillcoat and written by Joe Penhall. The film stars Viggo Mortensen as the Man \ father and Kodi Smit-McPhee as the Boy \ son, a father and son surviving in a post-apocalyptic 2012 doomsday wasteland. Along the way, they encounter grave struggles and hardships avoiding bands of cannibals along the road. The 2012 doomsday apocalyptic event is showing the beginning of the next ice age and destruction of the northern grain belts outlined in the H2onE2 and H3onE3 books.

Within the movie common themes can be drawn between “The Road” and many other 2012 doomsday type movies, like the Pandorum movie. To truly understand this film and its deep suggestive 2012 doomsday material an understanding of the Greek Gods and Hesiod’s Theogony is a must. It is suggested that you read my write up on the Pandorum movie review first and better yet the H3onE3 book posted free online.

The first suggestive material worth mentioning is the earth quakes. The earth quakes are a verbal representation of thunder, noting the presence and work of Zeus. From Theogony Zeus the high god holds the understanding of earth’s environment and is empowered for one reason, he controls earth’s most powerful energy source, lightning and thunder. Because Zeus could control lightning he has conquered all the lesser gods in heaven. Also in Theogony it is documented that Zeus plans on destroying the current age of this population, “the Iron Age” like he destroyed all the previous ages of humanity. In the Road Cormac McCarthy is both describing, perpetuating and foretelling the destruction of earth’s current population; utilizing movie media to continue the biblical prophecy.

The biblical prophecy is important to understanding the movie the Road, it actually has a lineage that started with classical Greek mythology, and was modernized by the later Greeks with the creation of the Old Testament. This gave the classical Greek gods a more modern earthly presence. The Romans, seeing what the dyeing Greek Empire had crafted, created and promoted the works of the New Testament, designed to sacrifice the future king, Oedipus prophecy and riddle hidden in the Old Testament. The War of Religion was not over yet, because the last Greek cultural strong hold had one last card to play. John of Patmos fashioned Revelations as the final capstone of all the previous works and prophecies, which in short dooms mankind at the death of future Prometheus also known as Oedipus. Humanity is required by the prophecy to find and empower this none mythical character or they will become cannibals and on the Road of their own destruction.

When the suggestive thunder appears in the movie it is followed by an interaction with cannibals, future man. Here the movie director John Hillcoat is suggesting that Zeus has forced the environmental disaster and here the thunder / earth quake is confirming his work.  One of the thunder scenes, one that includes cannibals occurs when the young mother and child are killed by the large gang of hungry cannibals. This event is soon followed by a church scene where a painting of the Holy Grail at a Last Supper is shown. Here the movie director and writer is hinting that the Greek gods and their 2012 doomsday prophecy has been evolved into Linear Western Religion, both the Old and New Testaments. And, that the last supper and the offering of a body and blood sacrifice is in fact a cannibalistic act. This scene is telling the aware and educated members of the audience that the prophecy of the Greeks is the same prophecies in Christianity and they both end on the same road, The Road.

The second most important element in the movie pertains to the reference of Fire. In the mention of fire, here the movie takes on elements of the classical Greek story of Prometheus, who stool fire for the betterment of mankind. The boy turns out to represent a modern variation of Prometheus when his father epitomizes all of the Greek God Pathogen, in many different scenes. In the movie scene where the Man \ father swims through frigid rough water to search a partially sunken fishing boat offshore, he takes on the powers of Poseidon. The scenes where the two characters take refuge in caves the father takes on the reference of the god Hade; god of hell and the underworld. When the father picks his son up and runs from the cannibals he represents the Greek God Nike and when he is armed with an axe he represents Hephaestus, the Greek god of the Forge. Many scenes reflect back to the Man’s wife who is a representation of Aphrodite, the Greek Goddess of Love.  His wife’s death is never shown for one reason alone, because you cannot kill a god, at least not in the realm of myth and science fiction.

The story well outlines the two primary characters from the H3onE3 book; H3one3 Universal Facilitator, Universal Sacrifice and Holy Pi. The two hidden and prophesied characters in all media aka (music, literature, plays and movies) are both shown as Homeric Heroes and sometimes Sacrifices. It could be said that there is no Zeus or UF without a Prometheus a US, as in the understanding that a classical comedy plays against and with the understanding of a tragedy and vice versa. The two primary characters uncovered in the H3onE3 work are divine figures, mixed and blended in all Homeric media as a mechanism of population control. In the Road the Man represents the Universal Facilitator and the boy the Universal Sacrifice.

The Road references to fire as being in the hart, maybe the hart of humanity and being human and humane, when in contrast the opposing group, the cannibals are suggested as more animal; solely thinking of themselves. The mission of the boy and man turns out to be a mission of humanity, to carry the fire to the coast, symbolized in the Statue of Liberty in New York Harbor.

An interesting character appears in the movie called Eli or Ely played by, I believe an artificially aged Robert Duvall. Eli is a Hebrew name, which means High Priest and last of the Judges. (1 Samuel chapters 1-4) Eli served as the judge and high priest of Israel when The Ark Of The Covenant, contained the Ten Commandments. Although Eli was a good and righteous servant of God, he was unwilling to remove his “two” (UF and US) corrupt sons from the priesthood and this brought about his doom.

When the US and UF meet Eli an interesting geological formation is shown in the background. Clearly this geological rock formation demonstrates three erosional layers showing natures ability to end civilization but also the ages of man already ended by Zeus. Eli calls the US an angel and then later on, even more interesting a god.  Here the writer is playing both sides of the coin with an angel reference catering to Christianity and as a god respecting the original, evolved Greek pathogen. It is when Eli refuses to talk about his own child where his real identity is uncovered. Eli turns out to represent of a high god either Coronus or Zeus himself. Eli’s refusal to talk about his own child, this is the key to uncovering him as the high god, both Coronus and Zeus in Theogony are noted for eating their children. It is possible here the writer is suggesting that Eli representing Zeus destroys himself when he ends the Iron Age.

The Man the UF carries binoculars near his hart, this is because he has the ability to see the future and at his death the binoculars are taken or even passed on to his son the US. The binoculars are a metaphor to the ROAD humanity is on and being able to seeing the future, the end of the Iron Age. The prophecy will be forced upon humanity as a Revelation. Many references in the movie regurgitate a need to stay off the road, meaning that humanity survives by not continuing down the road, the same road, the road humanity is on.
(Click on a picture to enlarge it.)

The Da Vinci secret code is Pi represented as either 3.14 or in its spiritual value as the number three. This Pi number is the key to unravel all western media, art, story and religion both in its ancient and modern derivative. Pi holds duality expressed as both a symbol to solving the secret code and identity to the three elements of the Holy Trinity; father, son and Holy Spirit. The date when Pi was discovered exposes the time when the media began to implement the “fully” Trinity. The first element is the Sacrificial Hero which will be called the Universal Sacrifice “US”, next his creator, father the Universal Facilitator “UF” and completing the triplet rhythm the ghost or the unknown prophecy. The ghost gives purpose and empowers the two main or primary characters into the media and storyline.

Religion reduced from its spiritual importance can be thought of as an expression of art, implemented for the sole purpose of population or political control to define social status and community conduct. Religion was the first formalized form of a social government within a defined group and most importantly outlined who rules the system and enslaves the population.

The population is psychologically controlled by broadcasting in all media a Hero and, or Sacrifice which will come in the future. Homer the writer of the Iliad and Odyssey 3000 years ago, is the first documentable writer of this type of genera, so it is termed Homeric. When a population is exposed to Homeric media they tend to be easier to control and have their wealth removed by the rulers of the society. The populace becomes docile like caged animals, unable to free themselves from their bondage and ever increasing repressive government. Instead they hold on to the false hope that someday a Hero or Sacrifice will come in the future and free them of their troubles and tribulations.

The Old master artists, like Da Vinci and Michelangelo reproduced Pi in their paintings as the key to solving the Holy Trinity and uncovering religion as a form of population control absent of a real higher power. This study will briefly cover both art and written media freeing the enslaved population. Everyone will now be able to locate the universal secret code and understand why it is implemented.

Da Vinci used two forms of expressing Pi as a secret code within his paintings. The first can be described as contorting or arranging the painted elements “body, animal or structure” into the Pi symbol or the Greek number three which resembles a twisted ribbon or cursive letter “L”. The second method Da Vinci utilized demonstrates the characters posing their fingers to note the number three or 3.14, as seen in The Last Supper painting.

A powerful example of Pi appearing in the written word can be found in the Oedipus story as the real answer to the riddle of the Sphinx. The riddle is “What is the creature that walks on four legs in the morning, two legs at noon, and three in the evening? To this Oedipus replied, “Man” (who crawls on all fours as an infant, walks upright later, and needs a walking stick in old age. With Oedipus solving the riddle, the distraught Sphinx throws herself off the Cliffside. He is rewarded for freeing the kingdom of Thebes from the Sphinx’s curse with kingship of the region and the hand of queen Jocasta, his biological mother. Every story where the main character kills his father takes root in Oedipus, including Star Wars.

In the story, Oedipus did not solve the riddle correctly and the real answer is Pi which is represented as 3.14. The riddle is a basic and simple mathematical word problem. The three elements are taken to represent the number three in Pi, its spiritual value. The legs are described in the riddle as 4, 2 and 3. The legs reference corresponds to the number two, which is the common denominator. In algebraic geometry the fractional common denominator is removed, which will leave 4, 1 and 3 as the remaining expression. Although in a fraction 4 can be reduced by the number 2, here in the riddle it is represented as its own individual element and not a numerical number, so not divisible.

Michelangelo applied the same code along with modern artists. Pi is continually regurgitated and is the embodiment of a ghost or mystery that will or will not be solved in the future. The future holds no guaranties and its final outcome is a ghost or mystery. The fully Trinity includes the a Sacrificial Hero called the Universal Sacrifice (US), a figure which is a close family member designed to create the US, called the Universal Facilitator (UF) and the last component of a prophecy. The ghost prophecy is essentially the reason why these two main characters are mythologically created and what their position, purpose and curse entails. The prophecy element requires a much larger explanation which is well outlined in the H2onE2 and H3onE3 book.

The genesis of the Sacrificial Hero is first documented in Greek Mythology, at this early stage the UF was still a heavenly entity and not an earthly profit. Judaic Christian scripture was created or evolved to transport the UF from the universe to earth as a profit. Abraham and Moses are good examples of the Homeric UF. One of the earliest and most profound examples of the US can be found in the story of Prometheus. This story dates to the Eighth-century BCE, 2,800 years ago to Hesiod the Greek oral poet, in his work called Theogony.

Prometheus, a lesser god stole fire from the high god Zeus, in the form of a burning fennel-stalk, for the betterment of mankind; so man could have fire and cook food. Prometheus is eternal punished for this act and chained to a rock, where his liver is eaten daily by an eagle. Prometheus was dragged into Christianity as an earthly profit but in this variation he is nailed to a cross. Modern sacrificial references of Prometheus can be seen in the Statue of Liberty and his actions are played out when the burning torch is carried to the Olympic Games.

Countless ancient Greek stories outline a sacrificial hero, someone who challenges Zeus the high god, for rule and is punished for their righteous deeds. To defeat the high god “Zeus” you have to steal his godly power and Zeus controls the most powerful force on earth, the lightning bolt. Section two of the H3onE3 book describes how to steal Zeus’s lightning for the electrification of mankind. This is how future Prometheus escapes the rock/cross and defeats the ruling powers and removes himself from this curse.

Pi has a long history which will reveal when the full trinity was connected to the current form of population control and uncover who was the real writer that compiled the Judaic Christian religion. Exploring Pi, 3.14 for a relationship to the Trinity is important to building the Greek origins. Pi is known as a transcendental number not able to be represented in a fraction and is only an approximate number that goes to infinity. This is why Pi is represented as a letter, the first letter in the Greek alphabet. Since Greek math consisted of representing numbers less than one as fractions and Pi could not be represented as a fractional number, the Greeks were confronted with an incalculable riddle.

Pi has an interesting history and its origins go back almost 4000 years. A brief history of finding Pi will locate it initially in ancient Babylon, which used the number three to approximate the area of a circle, by taking 3 times the square of its radius. Note the square is also surrounding Leonardo Davinci’s Vitruvian Man along with a circle. This gave a value of pi to equal three which denotes its symbolic value, not the origins to the formation of the full trinity and linear western religion. One Babylonian tablet (ca. 1900–1680 BC) indicates a value of 3.125 for pi, which is a closer approximation but not the sacred 3.14. In the Egyptian Rhind Papyrus (ca.1650 BC), there is evidence that the Egyptians calculated the area of a circle by a formula that gave the approximate value of 3.1605 for pi.

The ancient cultures mentioned above found their approximations by making a circle and measuring the distance to create their value for Pi. The first real calculation of pi was done by Archimedes of Syracuse (287–212 BC), one of the greatest Greek mathematicians, physicist, engineer, astronomer and inventor. Archimedes approximated the area of a circle by using the Pythagorean Theorem (a² + b² = c²) to find the areas of two regular polygons: “a square” the polygon inscribed within the circle and the polygon within which the circle was circumscribed.

Since the actual area of the circle lies between the areas of the inscribed and circumscribed polygons, the areas of the polygons gave the upper and lower boundaries for the area of the circle. Archimedes knew that he had not found the value of Pi but could make an approximation of its limits. In this way, Archimedes showed that pi is a mystery, ghost number with a value between 3 1/7 = (3.1428) and 3 10/71 (3.1408).

Although, solving the Sphinx riddle in Oedipus proves that Greek builders used 3.14 as their Pi number 200 years before Archimedes. The Athenian tragedy was written by Sophocles and first performed 2,400 years ago. Oedipus the King in Greek, often known by the Latin title Oedipus Rex is regarded by many as the Greek tragedy par excellence primarily because it reveals the oldest documentation to the divine 3.14 number.

Archimedes was the perfect character to outline and write the Judaic Christian religion because he lived in Syracuse, the Sicilian island fort. This was a major coastal seafaring trading power of the Mediterranean Sea, which gave Archimedes access to the world’s creation myth’s and climatic survival stories. War broke out between the Roman Republic and the Kingdom of Syracuse in 214 BC, the last stronghold of the Greek culture. This is part of the Second Punic War, also referred to as The Hannibalic War. Syracuse allied with Carthage and Archimedes commanded the defenses and Hippocrates was the governor.

A Roman force led by the General Marcus Claudius Marcellus consequently laid siege to the port city by sea and land. The city of Syracuse, located on the eastern coast of Sicily was renowned for its significant fortifications and great walls that protected the city from attack. Archimedes seeing the fall of the Greek empire to Rome updated and evolved the Greek gods into earthly profits and established the full Trinity into his created Judaic Christian religion.

When Syracuse fell to Roman, Archimedes was the only civilian killed by Roman despite orders by Marcus Claudius Marcellus that he should not be harmed. This could in fact be a political cover-up, and perhaps, further suggest that Archimedes was killed for fashioning a new religion. This would also explain why most of the oldest Judaic Christian scripture is written in Greek not Aramaic. Cicero describes visiting the tomb of Archimedes, whereby a sphere is inscribed within a cylinder. The cylinder in the profile would be viewed as a square which is well demonstrated in the Vitruvian man image.

Title:  The Book Thief

Author:  Markus Zusak

Paperback:  354 pages

Publisher:  Transworld Publishers (div of Random House)

Publish Date:  2005

ISBN:  9780552773898

Miscellaneous: Don’t forget to check out this review’s companion post. It includes info on The Book Thief’s future as a movie, and several quotes from the book I wasn’t able to work into this review.

On June 23, 1942, there was a group of French Jews in a German prison, on Polish soil.  The first person I took was close to the door, his mind racing, then reduced to pacing, then slowing down, slowing down…

Please believe me when I tell you that I picked up each soul that day as if it were newly born.  I even kissed a few weary, poisoned cheeks.  I listened to their last, gasping cries.  Their French words.  I watched their love-visions and freed them from their fear.

I took them all away, and if ever there was a time I needed distraction, this was it.  In complete desolation, I looked at the world above.  I watched the sky as it turned from silver to grey to the colour of rain.  Even the clouds tried to look the other way.

Sometimes, I imagined how everything appeared above those clouds, knowing without question that the sun was blond, and the endless atmosphere was a giant blue eye.

They were French, they were Jews, and they were you.

-The Book Thief by Markus Zusak, page 358

I finished The Book Thief  by Markus Zasuk on Tuesday, but have not been able to stop thinking about it since.  Normally, I sit down and write the review as soon as I finish a book, then pick up the next book and move on.  However, when I read the last words of The Book Thief :

A LAST NOTE FROM YOUR NARRATOR:  I am haunted by humans.

I found myself not wanting to let the book go.  I told myself I wanted to wait to review it so it could sink in and ruminate.  I had already posted it on BookMooch figuring, like most books, I wouldn’t want to reread it, and it was mooched up right away, but now I don’t want to give it up.  I have put off starting Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince because I don’t want to put anything else in there ever again.  All of this is utterly baffling to me because I have never had an attachment or a reaction to any book like this.

The book itself, plot-wise and such, is easy to sum up.  It is the story of Liesel Meminger, the book thief, who comes to live the Hubermann’s at age nine as their foster daughter.  On the way to Molching, where the Hubermann’s live, Liesel’s younger brother dies and is buried in a cemetery at the next stop.  It is in this place she “steals” her first book, The Gravedigger’s Handbook, after it falls out of the pocket of the apprentice gravedigger.  As the novel progresses, Liesel makes friends with other children on Himmel (a word that means “heaven”) Street, the Hubermann’s take in and hide a Jew, and Liesel discovers the awe-inspiring private library of the mayor’s wife, from which she liberates a book now and then.  All this is told by the book’s narrator, Death.

Summarizing the book is simple.  Explaining and conveying how it effected me, the reader, is anything but.  First of all, Zusak writes with a poetic beauty that captures the way children take in the world around them.  He often crosses the communication of the five senses:

At times, in that basement, she woke up tasting the sound of the accordion in her hears.  She could feel the sweet burn of champagne on her tongue. -p. 365

One line I remember but was unable to find said something like “The smell of the sound of my footsteps,”   and there are so many more lines like these in the book.

Another concept Zusak descriptively conveys is the power of words.</p>

Once, words had rendered Liesel useless, but now, when she sat on the floor, with the mayor’s wife at her husband’s desk, she felt an innate sense of power.  It happened every time she deciphered a new word or pieced together a sentence. -p. 154

She couldn’t tell exactly where the words came from.  What mattered was that they reached her.  They arrived and kneeled next to the bed. -p. 246

After a miscarriaged pause, the mayor’s wife edged forward and picked up the book.  She was battered and beaten up, and not from smiling this time.  Liesel could see it on her face.  Blood leaked from her nose and licked at her lips.  Her eyes had blackened.  Cuts had opened up and a series of wounds were rising to the surface of her skin.  All from words.  From Liesel’s words. -p. 273

Yes, the Fuhrer decided that he would rule the world with words. “I will never fire a gun,” he said.  “I will not have to…”  His first plan of attack was to plant the words in as many areas of his homeland as possible…  He watched them grow, until eventually, great forests of words had risen throughout Germany.  It was a nation of Farmed thoughts. -p. 451

Frighteningly, it was exactly through the power of words and a healthy dose of charisma that Hitler was able to accomplish all the evil that was done in his name.  He himself didn’t do the physical work, that would have required him to be in several places at once making that impossible, but through the words of his speeches and policies others took up his cause.  Even more frightening is that his words are still used and followed to this day by some.

Also, through the use of Death, the ultimate impartial onlooker, as narrator Zusak is able to make epiphanic observations about human beings:

In years to come, he would be a giver of bread, not a stealer – proof again of the contradictory human being.  So much good, so much evil.  Just add water. -p. 171

I’ve seen so many young men over the years who think they’re running at other young men.  They are not.  They’re running at me. -p. 182

Death also points out that, beginning with houses of cards and sandcastles, humans “watch everything that was so carefully planned collapse and… smile at the beauty of destruction.”  And he states a couple of times that the human child is much cannier than the adult.

By far, however, the most important observation Death makes, the concept that sets the tenor of the entire book is this:

AN OBSERVATION
A pair of train guards.
A pair of gravediggers.
When it came down to it, one
of them called the shots. The
other did what he was told.The
question is, what if the
other is a lot more than one?
-p. 30

What happens when there are a lot more people who simply do as there told, without question?  What happens to a society when a madman can rule through eloquent speeches, expressing ideals of hatred, and inspiring others to carry out morally reprehensible acts of violence and wickedness?

The Book Thief by Markus Zasuk is haunting and breath-taking, poetically beautiful and filled with truth.  Death often expresses sardonic, almost bitter, statements of irony, all the while telling the reader he is impartial.  He points out both the evil and the good of humans, expresses both disappointment and admiration of the species among whom he walks and collects.  It is a Homeric work that is full of joy and sorrow, anger and forgiveness, love and loss.  It is the story of a handful of people in Nazi Germany during 1939-1945; adults, children, Catholic, Nazi, and Jew, the “free” (was anyone truly free then?) and the hidden, the epitome of the “master race” and the persecuted and annihilated.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

If you’ll take a look to the right, you’ll notice I’ve added a new widget in the sidebar labelled ”Mt. TBR Hall of Fame.”  This is my Top 10 favorite books of all-time.  This, honestly, is an imprecise feat, as I know I’ll think of a book that I liked better but forgot, or I’ll read a book that will replace a book on here, and that is okay because I can always edit it.  When I added the widget, I was in the middle of reading The Book Thief, but it had already impressed me enough to be listed in 6th place… and I hadn’t even finished it yet.  And after finishing it and digesting it and writing this review, it has moved up to first place.

Obviously, as The Book Thief by Markus Zasuk is now my all-time favorite book, I give it 5 out of 5 stars.  It should be included in school curriculum alongside The Diary of Anne Frank and Elie Wiesel’s Night.  The Book Thief has both historicity and literary eloquence, and will undoubtedly become a classic.

Again, don’t forget to check out this review’s companion post.

Occasionally I come across a word or phrase that people will insist on using incessantly despite the complete inappropriate setting for which the word is used.  The biggest issue I have with this is that there is no reason to repeatedly use  the same word over and over again in any situation you think it sounds good especially considering the incredible breadth and depth of the English language.

The Second Edition of the Oxford English Dictionary contains 218,632 separate entries along with about 9,500 derivative words added as sub-entries.  This does not take into account multiple senses for the same word (the entry for set alone has 47 different senses).  If senses were included than the number of words in the English language would probably approach three quarters of a million.

With all those options at ones disposal why would anyone want to limit themselves?

The current word of the day is “epic.”  As in, “That party was so epic,” or, “That dress your wearing is epic,” or when saying goodbye, “Stay epic.”  Don’t get me wrong, I love the word epic.  It conjures images of battles lasting decades, heroes who can literally carry the world on their back, heroines who would put Angelina Jolie to shame, and monsters barely within the realm of imagination.  Your dress, on the other hand, does not inspire this in me no matter how flattering it is.

Epic has the following meanings:

1.	noting or pertaining to a long poetic composition, usually centered upon a hero, in which a series of great achievements or events is narrated in elevated style: Homer’s Iliad is an epic poem.

2.	resembling or suggesting such poetry: an epic novel on the founding of the country.

3.	heroic; majestic; impressively great: the epic events of the war.

4.	of unusually great size or extent: a crime wave of epic proportions.

–noun

5.	an epic poem.

6.	epic poetry.

7.	any composition resembling an epic.

8.	something worthy to form the subject of an epic: The defense of the Alamo is an American epic.

9.	(initial capital letter) Also called Old Ionic. the Greek dialect represented in the Iliad and the Odyssey,apparently Aeolic modified by Ionic.

 

And so, as you can see, although your dress is really, really nice it is by no means epic.  And I’m not even sure what “stay epic” even really means.  Do you want me to stay in some sort of poem form?  Stay impressively great?  That’s a tall order and I’ll try but you’ve really put me under a lot of pressure to perform.  Or do you want me to stay in Old Ionic form?  Because I don’t even know what that is.

I understand that like all fads of language, this too shall pass and no amount of my soapbox speeches is going to speed up the process.  So what I’ve decided to do is to create my own version of epic; Homeric.  As in, “Stay Homeric” or, “That dress is really Homeric” (especially if it resembles a toga), or, “That party was so Homeric” (but only if it was a bunch of people sitting around reciting incredibly long, lyrical poems to each other.

So far it hasn’t really caught on but I’m optimistic and so until next time,

Stay Homeric

~kbshea

 (The walls of Troy, Present day, unearthed and partially reconstructed)

In the English speaking world, Homer is probably second only to Shakespeare for pure gravitas in any mention. Homer has become a part of our culture, a shared language of poetic allusion to inform any discussion. But was there actually a Trojan War? Did the Heroes really stand and fight and die at Ilium? WTF is Ilium anyhow?

When one begins to look into this absolute mess of literary tradition, one discovers that a lot has been written on it, much of it contradictory, most of it apocryphal. For example, it is claimed that ‘Homer’ did not in fact exist, and that the entire thing was written by a completely different guy who happened to be named Homer. A great deal of ink is spilled arguing such minutia, which I will not bother to repeat here.

(A bust of Homer. His name means “blind” in Greek)

Here it is merely my intention to cut through the overgrowth and get to the basics, which will mostly involve my choosing between various strands of long traditions.

The Power of Oral Tradition

There is a great tradition in preliterate societies of people being able to carry a massive amount of information in their heads. The recitation of huge passages of epic tales is common, in fact de rigeur in almost every society in the world that does not possess a strong written tradition. . An interesting feature of these Oral Traditions is that the entire passage can in fact be memorized without error. This has now been proven substantially in widely surveyed surviving traditions such as the Irish Celtictradition in which their ‘bards’ can still recite long passages of old epics. They use various tricks and mnemonics to achieve these feats of memory. Oral poems, or passages based on oral tradition, tend to be highly repetitive, rhythmic and highly patterned. Poetry, it turns out, has a special place in human tradition in that it was our trick to remember long strands of data. The poetic form is usually the earliest form available because it is the form in which people were able to memorize the work.

(Oral Tradition was strong all over the world in pre-literate societies)

It is due to this long Oral Tradition, which was very strongly present in the Greek society, that we owe such a long preservation of the Homeric Epics. It is in part due to this preservation ability of poetry that we are able to be reasonably certain that at least part of the Epics legacy dates back to roughly the time they claim to speak of.

Homer was faithfully repeating what he heard, and what the hearer heard, down through the ages.

Can we trust Homer?

There are other techniques too, which scholars use to date material. One of these is word choice. In the Homeric Epics, there is much talk of Bronze Age technology, whereas the Greeks were well into the Iron Age when the poems were finally written down (and frozen forever). Archaeology then not being nearly what it is today, any authors creating new passages would have unconsciously included mostly iron age references.

Likewise, cities and lands are mentioned in the Bronze Age epics which had long since ceased to be inhabited by the Iron Age. In fact, MOST of the information in the Iliad (Homers work on the Trojan War) should have been lost because after the Trojan war (as we shall see) the Greeks lost a great deal of their culture and aspects of civilization.

So, we can be reasonably certain that at very least the story itself dates back in its kernel form to the events it purports to describe.

A dirty little trade war

Much of the information scholars can glean about the Trojan war places the actual event at around the 12th Century B.C.E., or perhaps in 1250 B.C.E. if we believe Herodotus (there are worse mistakes one could make than believing Herodotus, The father of History). And it was probably fought not as a battle to save a petulant princess as Homer describes (every good story needs a princess in distress?) but rather as a trade war against a power that was blocking the expansion of a Greek Empire. The City of Ilium sat near the modern day Bosporus in Asia Minor, the passage between the Aegean sea (that of the Greeks) and the Black Sea. The areas to the north of the Black Sea held a lot of trade value that the Greeks would have wanted access too. In fact we find records of their actively trading with the northern Black Sea area.

Ilium, called Troy, was a Hittite outpost that guarded the passage way and probably either extracted a large toll, or prevented Greek seafaring traders from going there altogether.

(A map showing the relative locations of Troy, the Hittites, and Greece (or Mycenae)

The primary Greek Kingdom at this time was known as Mycenae. They had, some time previously, cast off the shackles of another Kingdom (based in Crete) and were expanding in power and trade all along the coasts of the Aegean Sea. As the above map demonstrates, the only trade route through the narrow passage in the north of modern day Turkey was directly past Troy (also known as Ilias or Ilium). It becomes necessary then, for further expansion, for the Mycenaeansto get through to the rich trade lands in what is now the Crimea of Russia.

There are other echoes of this Greek desire to trade in the north, recorded in mythical form in the Epic of Jason and the Argonauts, who go searching for the golden fleece (rich wool trade) in the same area.

The Trojan War was probably fought for economic purposes, not for the dramatic one used by Homer to build a story.

Hienrich Schliemanns Destructive Search for Troy

When Heinrich Schliemann, a man recognized widely as the Father of modern Archaeology, went looking for the historic Troy, he used Homers Epic as his guide. He was looking for a massive, well defended city situated at or close to the narrows. Schliemann could not have found his city, however, were it not for the (again oral) traditions of the people in the area.

When asked where Troy was, they pointed him towards a giant hill that was somewhat further inland than one would expect. It turns out that the coastline had gone out quite a bit since the time of the Trojan war, mostly due to deposition of soil over the centuries. Nevertheless it was there, right where tradition said it would be. Schliemann, who was basically making up archaeology as he went along, managed to slice right THROUGH most of the layers of Troy including the one we now suspect as being contemporary to the Trojan War story. In finding Troy, he managed to destroy much of it.

 (Several layers of Troy, superimposed)

It turns out that there had been and continued to be continuous occupation of the site for quite a long time. Sites dated from before Homeric Troy, straight through the Greek period and into the Romans. The last occupation of the site was a Roman town, also named Ilium.

The site seems to have been routinely sacked, at various points in its history. A fate not uncommon for a rich city.

Schliemann discovered not one, but many Troys built on top of each other. In discovering them, he managed to wreck much of the city he was looking for.

After the Trojan War

The aftermath of the Trojan war was not kind to the people of Mycenae, or to Greeks in general. It would seem from records (Homer himself records huge tallies of the number of ships and supplies each Greek Kingdom sent to aid the cause) that the Greeks over extended themselves. Immediately after the fall of Troy (a war that took many years to completely, the Greek kingdoms begin to fall into disrepair. A vast dark age begins to settle over the once prosperous Greeks.

A dark age so deep that they actually forget how to write, ceased living in cities, and almost (except for homer) forget that the whole thing happened at all. A blackness fell on western civilization (at the time, the Greeks were pretty much it).There are Egyptian, and some Greek, records of raider sea barbarians ravishing the Mediterranean at this time. Some scholars have suggested that these “sea people” are the dispossessed Greeks, seeking treasure as their home cities collapse under the economic strain of a long and unproductive war.

Luckily for them, and for the west in general, many centuries later the Greeks managed to pull themselves out of this collapse and ignite a new torch for civilization. The period before the Greek Dark Age is usually referred to as Archaic Greece, the period after is the Classical when much of what we now think of as Greece became fruitful. In the later, Classical period, was Periclean Athens, the works of the great philosophers, and the eventual writing down of the surviving Homeric Epics. It is interesting to note that what we have of the Homeric Epics is not the complete ’set’. Much was lost and either not written down, or did not survive.

As far as ‘written down’ goes, the Greeks were the only known people to have invented a written language twice. The second time at the beginning of the classical period.

The Mycenaeans, for their efforts, were eventually conquered and enslaved by the Spartans. The Spartans being a tribe of Doric Greeks who had survived during the dark ages in the hinterlands of Greece and finally invaded the now crumbled remains of an ancient Mycenaean Kingdom, whose Oral Epics they then began to venerate and call their own.

Sparta then, centuries later, itself fell to an even more backwater cities inspired by the Greeks to Empire, the Romans.  And so it goes.

(Sparta in ruins)

Although they eventually sacked the city, the War with Troy proved to be too much for the fledgling Greek Kingdoms, and they fell into catastrophic decline.

Okay, so the title to this post has no real relation to what I am going to write, but as I was reading volume two last night, this little rhyme continually amused me during, well let’s call them the slow parts.

To that end, I have to admit that I found my mind wandering a bit more in Vol. 2 than it was in Vol. 1. But rest assured that while I may not have been giving the book my full attention, my wandering thoughts were all somewhat Shandy-related. My favorite reading past time was imagining good ol’ Tristram as the narrator of different types of books. Here were my favorites:

The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Cowboy:

“I reckon to tell y’all the true as true can be story of my rearin’ and raisin’, but to give the tale its proper colorin’ I must beg your pardon as my story will mosey from here to there and there to here and here to there. While it may see a bit meanderin’ and move slower than a pack mule after a 3 day trip down the Pecos, in the end, I’d be willin’ to wager a month’s wages that y’all be plenty pleased with the yarn.”

(For some reason, in my mind cowboys say “y’all” quite frequently and never pronounce the “g” in a gerund. My imaginings are far from accurate.)

The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Homeric Poet:

Oh Muse, I sing you the song of my nascence
But first I must beg of you a moment of patience
First I must sing to thee of moments somewhat related
Mention of my birth, must therefore, be somewhat belated.

In my mind Tristram would be a sucker for the couplet.

What do you think? I tried to imagine Tristram into being the narrator of a cat-sleuthing mystery, but this is all I could come up with him to say:

“Meow, meow meow. Meow meow meow meow! Meow?”

Perhaps it would be best if I focused a bit more on the book from now on.