the iliad the male preview

THE ILIAD: THE MALE TOTEM

Michael M. Nikoletseas

The secrets of the hoary deep, a darkIllimitable ocean without bound,Without dimension, where length, breadth, and height,And time and place are lost; where eldest Night And Chaos, ancestors of Nature, holdEternal anarchy, amidst the noiseOf endless wars...

John Milton, Paradise Lost, 2.891-897


ISBN-13: 978-1482069006 ISBN-10: 1482069008 .

2013 Michael M. Nikoletseas All Rights ReservedHomeric text Oxford University PressAll quotations from Homers Iliad in this book come from Homeri Opera, edited by Allen & Monro (1920) the copyright of which is held by Oxford University Press. Reproduction of the Homeric text is prohibited without permission from Oxford University Press. I am grateful to Oxford University Press for the permission (January 7, 2013) to reproduce parts of The Iliad in the present book. No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form, or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without prior permission of the author.

Revised February 12, 2013

2


Contents

PREFACE p. 5 INTRODUCTION p. 9 THE SUCCEDANEUM THEORY p. 16WHAT IS THE ILIAD ABOUT p. 26SYMBOLS IN THE ILIAD p. 41

Night, Water, Fig tree Other symbols and latent content

PRINCIPLES OF TOTEMISM p. 62 Totem, Mana, Fetish,Taboo

TOTEM IN THE ILIAD p. 69The psyche, Burial rites in the Iliad,The armor - The shield of Achilles, The male agathon, Cannibalism,The mana

EPILOGUE p. 113BIBLIOGRAPHY p. 133

3


4


PREFACE

The present book has been written on the conviction that the mission of poetry is not to entertain, to indoctrinate, or conform to theoretical models of what poetry is, models that occasionally issue from excessive intellectualization in departments of literature. Not unlike science, the mission of poetry is to come up with fresh discoveries regarding the nature of things, and, like science, it must build on the past, destroy and build, and, most important, it must not isolate itself from the methodology and epistemology of science, and here I primarily mean natural science.

The starting point of this book was not a literary, philological, or analytic interest in me. I turned once more to Homer's Iliad because my own writings (poetry and prose) had led me to the outskirts of the male soul, the crude soul of man, the warrior. My book, The Iliad, Twenty Centuries of Translation (2012) looked into the problem of translating the Iliad from the perspective that my insights had offered me. Although that book is mainly concerned with historical and technical issues relating to translation, it also deals with two issues: Homer's modus cogitandi and an adumbration of an underlying principle in the behavior of the warriors. The particular perspective adopted was a mixture of my personal views on what poetry is, and concepts from ethnology, psychoanalysis and medicine, all of which I have served.

The present book is a study of Homer's modus cogitandi, and, as a necessary consequence, his art. To achieve this I have adopted the theory of significant image that I proposed in my previous book (Nikoletseas, 2012), extending it to

5


encompass not only ethological and psychoanalytic but also anthropological/ethnological concepts. The goal of this book has by no means been to exhaustively identify and list totemic or psychoanalytic objects in the Iliad.

An important tool in my search has been a fresh and persistent look into the original text1. Having grown up in Greece, I translated Homer by trusting my instinct as much as by meticulous study of relevant texts.

My views that poetry is the art of creating () worlds not yet seen, have cast me on a disorderly search not only in poetry and prose but also other disciplines such as ethnology, mythology, comparative philosophy, psycho-analysis, and the neurosciences. Even at a young age, I was possessed by the conviction, and aesthetic, that glimpses of reality in the primitive are more substantial than analyses at more formal levels. Poetry and other forms of art first shaped my aesthetic; later philosophy, psychoanalysis, and neuroscience made it possible for me to attempt to articulate my thoughts in a more cerebral mode.

That Homer employs symbolism (consciously and unconsciously) became evident to me even from my college years. With the awareness that totemism and psychoanalysis give precedence to the animal over the human2, I turned to reading Homer's Iliad as a probe into the hero's soul, an unadulterated picture of the psyche of man. In this book, I use the term man, to point to the male of our species.

Homer frequently uses images of feral animals to describe---------

1 Homer. Homeri Opera in five volumes. Oxford, Oxford University Press. 1920. All text quoted in this book comes from this edition, by kind permission of Oxford University Press2In animistic, totemic societies, animals are considered ancestors of man (Freud, S., 1919, p. 232). In such societies, it is not man that has dominion over the animal, but the animal over man (Wundt, W. M., 1916, p. 8).

6


the behavior of warriors. It has even been proposed (Griffin (1987, p. 102) that he may have referred to the core of the Iliad as acts of bestial beings (OD.11.609- 614).

All quotations from Homers Iliad in this book come from Homeri Opera, edited by Allen & Monro (1920), the copyright of which is held by Oxford University Press. I am grateful for the permission to use parts of the Homeric text.Translation of the Homeric text in the present book was done by me.

January 2013Michael M. Nikoletseas

7


8


INTRODUCTION

Anthropological and psychoanalytic work (e.g. Frazer, Wundt, Freud, and Jung) has shown that certain behaviors, practices and rituals have been, and still are manifestations of archetypal structures that are universally and diachronically present in man's psyche. In the analyses that I present here, I have found very useful the proposition that there is a developmental process, similar to the biological or cultural development that the human psyche goes through. Wundt has adopted the term psychogenesis, a term that I find inadequate since it may not discriminate between phyletic and ontogenetic time scales; it is applied to phyletic development.

In considering the development of mental culture, we may distinguish four ages: the primitive, totemic, the hero age, and lastly the age in which organized states emerge. (Wundt, W. M., 1916, p. 9).

"Folk psychology (Vlkerpsychologie)1 [...] in its investigation of various stages of mental development still exhibited by mankind, leads us along the path of a true psychogenesis. It reveals well-defined primitive conditions, with transitions leading through an almost continuous series of intermediate steps to the more developed and higher civilizations." (Wundt, W. M., 1916, p. 4).

----------

1Wundt's folk psychology (Vlkerpsychologie) has also been named genetic psychology. In this book I use term phyletic, which I think is more precise and at the same time, it makes the distinction from today's discipline of Social Psychology.

9


In the present book, I have essayed to trace occurrences of archetypal or totemic material in Homer's Iliad. I have worked on the Homeric text in ancient Greek exclusively because, as I have shown in a previous book, translations are notorious in overlooking the importance of what I called the significant image in favor of meter or other poetic embellishments. As in psychoanalysis dream images are treated as symbols so in the present book I consider Homer's images as symbols, and on some occasions at least, I venture to go a step further and consider his poetry as a dream1, an irruption of the unconscious (which after all, in the evocation of the goddess, IL 1.1, he tells us that he is after). In particular, I have dug deep into words and events that in my opinion may convey symbolic meaning of importance for a synthesis in accord with totemic theory, psychoanalysis, and primitive mental processes in general. To me primitive mental states are synonymous to symboling2. I have chosen to use this term from Ivan Pavlov's classic book (1927) because in the present book I attempt an analysis of the Iliad by adopting a multilevel conceptual schema that encompasses literary as well as natural science tools. More specifically, symboling does not simply mean creating a symbol; it extends into several reductionistic disciplines3.

While evidently all we have in this case is words, there is a distinction we must make between words and acts. Words used to describe an act, for example a battle, a duel, or body ----------

1Gods communicate messages to warriors during wakefulness and during sleep in dreams. Zeus sends Dream to Agamemnon in order to convey to him his message: ' : IL.2.6 ff. 2I have intentionally chosen symboling over symbolizing for two reasons. One, because symboling does not carry surplus meaning from usage in different contexts, and second, because it is a term used in natural science, a level of analysis that I give basic importance in the present book.3The following excerpt from Cassirer correctly makes the connection between philosophy and current neuroscience (re latency), however the thesis in this book claims that symboling is a principle that extends from molecular science to which are to be found in all animal species, we find in man (continued on next page)

10


postures, demand a pictorial reconstruction of an event, which unconditionally elicits the desired emotions, morals, or associations; "they provide something that words cannot say," (Lateiner, D., 1998, p. 31). However, single words in themselves trigger responses that may be multiple and not altogether compatible to each other. Poets, including Homer, employ these techniques (consciously and unconsciously)1, and thus create effects of moods, cognitions, and a host of other psychological states in their readers or audience.

The primordial awareness of a concrete object, a phenomenon, or an event is constrained even to the point of near total suppression in proportion to the sophistication of conceptual language, the latter ultimately reflecting mainly natural science knowledge of mechanism. It is the privilege of the poet, the visionary, to bring up to the surface fragments of primordial experience and, through their art, attempt to trigger these in the ordinary man. In the next few paragraphs, I quote passages that are in support of my thesis.

"Akhilleus and Priam in Iliad 24, through their bodies and unplanned motions, become clearer and more intelligible to each other and to the reader. Gestures, postures, and nonverbal sounds in the Iliad both supplement and contradict words and acts. In the Odyssey also, they provide something that words cannot say, or they undercut and render problematic both instrumental acts and words." (Lateiner, D., 1998, p. 31).

Referring to the Bible, Blake writes 'is it not because [it is] addressed to the imagination, which is spiritual sensation and ----------

(continued from previous page) a third link which we may describe as the symbolic system. [...] In the first case a direct and immediate answer is given to an outward stimulus; in the second case the answer is delayed." (Cassirer, E., Lukay, M., 2006, p. 29).1"[...] 'explanation' of the mythical phenomena becomes in the end an entire

negation of these phenomena. [...] Though myth is fictitious, it is an unconscious, not conscious fiction. The primitive mind was not aware of the meaning of its own creations." (Cassirer, 2006, p. 72-74).

11


but mediately to the understanding or reason?' (Blake, W., 1966, p. 794). Zeitlin wrote, all material objects in both the Iliad and the Odyssey are invested with psychological and cognitive resonances that go far beyond the details of their mere description to exemplify a typical and indispensable mode of charting social and mental experience. (Zeitlin, F. I., 1996, p. 19).

In the Iliad, Homer has created a work that transcends the description of events. I. S. Talmon's view that an historical or anthropological event may be used in literature not as a mere reiteration of the sensations involved, but rather a heightened and intensified representation of them, is pertinent at this point. A writer "reactualizes in the audience the reaction of the participants in the original situation". (Talmon, I. S., 1966, p. 39. This may be achieved in a state where the poet may be tapping unconscious material, in "a vision spontaneously experienced (as a so-called irruption of the unconscious", Jung, C. G. 1981, p. 158. The concept originated from Pierre Janet's Abaissement du niveau mental, Janet, P. Les Nvroses, Chapitre IV, Ltat mental psychastnique, 1909).

It becomes immediately evident that works in translation are in peril of missing or distorting the intended responses of the original. A word can be a vast ocean of meanings, explicit and implicit, and associations as well as responses, conscious and unconscious. It is therefore of the uttermost importance that translators are natives of the language of the original poem (cf. Law, L., Whyte, L. 1960).

I am aware of the problems arising from the dichotomous use of conscious/unconscious in this book; however, since my goal here is not to explore the problem of consciousness, I have decided to allow this oversimplification in order to make the material more manageable. Surely, casting the dichotomy unconscious/conscious along Cartesian modes of

12


thinking creates pseudo issues. Neuroscience has identified mechanisms of the unconscious in the material brain; however, it has also identified mechanisms of the conscious in the same organ. It is correct that within the scientific paradigm of physics (quantum and relativity) it is not possible to formulate concepts relating to consciousness that would provide a link of the anatomical, electrophysiological, and molecular known mechanisms to the old concepts of consciousness. This is not a new or unique problem, peculiar to the issue of consciousness. Old concepts must move forward with the new scientific paradigms; in the process, a concept may become obsolete, redundant, or it may be modified by operational definitions that allow for reference to the new tools, material and formal.

Concepts relating to consciousness are loosely coined at the phenomenological level or, perhaps even more problematically, at the psychological level. Psychology has been aphilosophical, has had little contact with the biological, and physical sciences, and has, until recently, been prolific in generating sterile operational definitions (Nikoletseas, M. M., 2010a, p. 9). Johnson's "Nature is no party to our phraseology" (Johnson, A.B., 1836, p. 252) echoes Galileo Galilei's dictum that the language of Nature is mathematics. [The universe] "cannot be read until we have learned the language and become familiar with the characters in which it is written. It is written in mathematical language, and the letters are triangles, circles and other geometrical figures, without which means it is humanly impossible to comprehend a single word." (Galileo Galilei, 1957, pp. 237-238).

Ever since Galileo Galilei we have learned that the formal instruments that we need to probe into the world, are more complex than triangles and circles; however, one thing has become clear, that our sensate representations of the world are inadequate in painting a picture of the world (which

13


includes our so called inner world). A concept arises as a result of focusing on a given point of a multitude of events and levels of integration available. There is a need for a multiple-level, interdisciplinary method (cf. Bohr, N., 1950: 51-54). This need does not exempt the activities of workers outside the natural sciences. On the conviction that principles underlying phenomena, mechanisms, and concepts that emerge in our effort to understand ourselves and the world run through several levels of organization (integrative levels), I present here a conceptual framework within which the Iliad may be analyzed, specifically the issue of totemic themes in the Iliad, and ultimately Homer's modus cogitandi. I baptize this theoretical framework succedaneum to indicate substitution with successively diminishing precision or intensity or magnitude. This is illustrated clearly in the New Testament:

, . , . (John 6 Greek NT).

According to this scheme the first order object, the ancestor deity is the beginning of the substitution sequence, a kind of downward fragmentation. There is a hierarchy, god, son, believer, which possesses the power of the original totem (god); however, the power diminishes with each substitution. All stages of substitution contain objects whose substance derives from the original, deity totem. In the Greek Orthodox Church liturgy, we hear:

, ; sacrificial objects that belong to you, we offer sacrifice to you (cf. Seven beads, in Nikoletseas, M. M., 2011). Paradoxically, in totemism, the sacrificial victim is substance from the agent to whom the sacrifice is made.

14


EPILOGUE

On the premise that a totem, the ancestor of a hero warrior and his clan (Freud, S., 1919, p. 232), is the power source from which, through hypostatization, warriors and warrior behavioral and social code issue, we are led to the need to identify a pattern, or, even better, a mechanism of the process. As in advanced natural science, we search for a formal system, which, if superimposed on the actual data (events), may fit the data to a considerable degree. This formal system in advanced natural sciences is mathematical, while in less advanced sciences, e.g. social sciences, we are content with employing non-quantitative, mechanistic models which are descriptive of processes observed in other sciences. In this book I have essayed to superimpose a model that I borrowed from behavioral and molecular neuroscience on events of Homers Iliad viewed from an animistic/analytic perspective, and found a considerable degree of fit. The benefit from such a reading of the Iliad is twofold: it allows for more parsimonious explanations, and it establishes conceptual bridges with natural science. In the following, concluding paragraphs, a recapitulation of the previous sections is attempted.

In the times preceding and during the heroic age, we may speculate that the original totem, which axiomatically we take to be an un-hypostatized psychic 'object', such as emotions, was concretized by man into physical objects (e.g. the sun, a mountain or a tree) or events (e.g. lightning, or wind). In the next level of psychic and cultural evolution (psychogenesis) more abstract agents such as gods,

113


demons, or souls were invented, which however were stillconceptualized in concrete terms1. The mechanism for this concretization of primitive, diffuse responses in the body of man is none other than the symboling mechanism that I described in several sections of this book. Symboling, the ability of even simple nervous systems to create substitutes, stimuli or signs that stand for an original, often phyletic stimulus that triggers a specific response or sequence of stereotypical responses, made it possible for man to think at an abstract, theoretical level, that is in the absence of the physical, endogenous, or otherwise called natural stimulus. The symboling mechanism is capable of producing not only one first-order copy, but also other, higher-order copies that follow a progressively diminishing likeness to the original object. Biological or other difficult-to-designate forces that cast men into instinctual behavioral paths, gave rise to conceptual objects that, through the processes of symboling, stood for the original object/concept. We know from natural science that this process is basically unconscious, although it may at times reach the level of consciousness (Nikoletseas, M.M., 2010a). During his life, man is incessantly confronted with agents or forces in a world the human intellect cannot penetrate. The concepts that cerebration (cf. Cassirer's intellectual reduction, Cassirer, E., Lukay, M., 2006, pp. 74-75) produces, in our effort to peek into this world, cause phenomena to dissolve into thin air, or, in the best instance, impose distortions on this obscure world.

With each step of substitution there is a proportional increase in estrangement with regard to the original object as more unrelated and more cerebral concepts emerge; this we may ----------

1The "heroic world is unable to visualize any achievement or relationship except in concrete terms. The gods are anthropomorphized, emotions and feelings are located in specific organs of body, even the soul was materialized. Every quality or state had to be translated into some specific symbol, marriage into gifts of cattle, honor into a trophy, friendship into treasure." (Finley, M. I. 1954, p. 122

114


call intellectualization. The process of sequential substitution I have baptized a succedaneum. We observe these principles in very primitive systems of thought such as the genealogy of gods. The primitive gods were gods of the ocean. The more cerebral Olympian gods were born later. Athena the goddess of wisdom was born even later out of the head of Zeus. It is clear that here we observe a process of successive substitution, of copy making and plurality of the archetypal agent. Similarly, the valor of warriors in the Iliad follows a hierarchical scheme (scala totemica), which indicates the distance of each warrior from the archetype.

A succedaneum is evident in the story of Achilles armor. Achilles' mother, Thetis, residing in the primeval kingdoms of Oceanus, rises to the more cerebral Olympus to order the armor of her son. Hephaestus creates the armor which must be seen as the substitute of the original totem-agent of maleness. We subsequently witness a playful transference of the totem from Achilles to Patroclus, to Hector, and back to Achilles. In the beginning, Hephaestus creates the armor for Achilles' father, Peleus, at the time of his marriage with goddess Thetis. Peleus gives it to his son Achilles' before the expedition to Troy. Patroclus wears the armor of Achilles, he stands for Achilles in battle, and as would be predicted from totemic laws (scala totemica), he is punished; he is not adequate to receive such of potent totem (cf. hybris, ). Indeed Achilles advises Patroclus not to be carried away in battle and attack Ilium because the gods may intervene and punish him: ' (IL.16.93-94).

' , ' : : IL.16.91-94

Hector, the second in the 'pecking order' of heroes, the top

115


being Achilles, kills Patroclus and gets hold of the divine armor. While Hector is high on the totemic scale (the best man in Ilium, , IL.24.67), he is not adequate to wear Achilles armor and therefore he is punished (IL.17.204-207).

Achilles without his amour is in effect not Achilles. He confines himself in his tent and calls on his mother, the goddess who lives in the ocean, close to the origin of the physical world. The process is repeated and another set of armor is made by Hephaestus on the Olympus. (The eternal order is endless; there is a need () to climb up the divine, dream-world of primary process to the next level of consciousness, to an ego-like agent.). Now we have the same totem of the same degree of potency, residing in two physical objects, the two sets of armor, worn by Hector and Achilles respectively. This is an intriguing point. This duplication of the totem in its second-order state may be seen as the incipient plurality in a long path of a struggle for individuation and consciousness. Achilles and Hector at this juncture are identical implementations of the same totem, and therefore redundant. The insightful analysis by Redfield is relevant at this point: "Achilles is less the creator of situations than their agent and victim" (Redfield, J. M., 1994, p. 17). The totem under which Achilles was, differentiated into variants: Achilles, Patroclus and Hector, all formidable fighters and worshipers of manliness, and loathers of femininity. The inexorable fate of the male totem is to fight itself to extinction once it enters plurality. This is the motive behind the expedition of the Achaeans to Troy.

In accordance with the theory of the significant image is the fact that Homer routinely deviates from the flow of his narration in order to paint a picture (Homeric similes) in which he uses stimuli and acts that are primitive, natural and universal. For example in the scene in which Achilles chases Hector, Achilles armor shines like the dawn, like a flame, or

116


like the rising sun:

: IL.22.134 -135

Homers use of the significant image often involves symbols that may be of ethological significance or they may be interpreted psychoanalytically1. In the scene of the duel in which Achilles kills Hector, Achilles charges like a hawk on a trembling female dove and Hector flees in terror.

2 IL.22.139-140)

Performance as well as pauses of behavioral acts may convey phyleticly important messages. e.g. ' ' (IL.22.5).

Homer relates his story in a way that touches the soul of his audience, at the level of symbolism or dream, since consciousness does not possess tools to understand these

-----------

1"Symbolic and significant objects and gestures are a development of those which

were originally conceived as magical and charged with supernatural power. Sometimes it is not possible to distinguish the two at all clearly"; not as just a matter of literary style, but arises from the way the Homeric poet sees the world itself." (Griffin, J., Symbolic scenes and significant objects, 1980, p. 24)."Homer is therefore profoundly literal, concrete, and imagistic. The poet's ability to create past worlds and travel through obscure regions of the cosmos associate him with the prophet and seer." (Bennett, M. J. , 1997, p.157).2Here is a more complete quotation from the chase scene: ', , : ' ' ' , , : ' . , ' , ' ' , : ' ' , ' , ' . IL.22.136-144

117


events1. He focuses mainly on the uppermost level of the maleness totem, Achilles, who is apparently the first-order succedaneum (substitution) in the world of totems.Achilles tale is about the evolution of male consciousness, the progression of man's identity away from the female. We should remind ourselves at this point that individuation begins at the time the child breaks the symbiotic stage with his mother. Homer does not permit Achilles to enter the city of Ilion. Before the duel with Hector, Achilles is led away from the city by Apollo. Achilles' fate, being the top male, is to acquire the mana of manhood, of the hero, by killing it (the mana, even god himself). God tells him however, you cannot kill me, I am a god.

, . IL.22.13

Running back inside the city is a sign of cowardice, detraction from masculinity, regressing to the symbiotic stage with mother, and ultimately to the mother's womb. Moving away from the city walls and fighting is a move forward to individuation. "The city is a maternal symbol, a woman2..." (Jung, C. G., Hinkle, B.M, 1916, p. 234, also p. 316). The paradox that may issue from the fact that in the thrust for individuation the hero may encounter death is constrained, if we cast the unfolding of these events on a phyletic scale. The final confrontation between Achilles and Hector is in fact a final confrontation of Achilles against Achilles (cf. Redfield, J. M., 1994, p. 17).

----------

1 Cf. "To traverse the fantasy in the Lacanian sense is to be more profoundly

claimed by the fantasy than ever, in the sense of being brought into an ever more intimate relation with that real core of the fantasy that transcends imaging. ", (Boothby, R., 2001, p. 275-276); see also Lacan, J., 2005).2 For more symbols of woman see Freud, S., A., 1920, Tenth Lecture. (Continued on the next page)

118


In an ingenious manner, Homer passes this across to the soul of his audience. In this final fight both men wear the armor of Achilles, the two sets that the mother of Achilles has obtained from god Hephaestus1. The totem of Achilles fights against itself. The outcome of the fight can only be one: the death of Achilles, more precisely his totemic essence. When Achilles tells his mother Thetis that he is determined to kill Hector, she replies that his fate is that he will die soon after Hector dies.

' . IL.18.96

It is therefore understandable that Homer does not continue his epic to describe the death of Achilles. The muse hasfinished her tale. The adumbration of the dark world of the shadows in the male soul is complete, as complete as it can----------

(Continued on from previous page) And it shall come to pass in that day, that Tyre shall be forgotten seventy years, according to the days of one king: after the end of seventy years shall Tyre sing as an harlot. Take an harp, go about the city, thou harlot that hast been forgotten; make sweet melody, sing many songs, that thou mayest be remembered.Isaiah 23:16, King James Version

. ( ''-.23.16, Isaiah 23, Greek OT: Septuagint). 1The potential importance of the transferring of armor has been noted by several writers, however not within the framework of mana. Achilles "who goes out in his divinely supplied second armor already fights as a dead man; and when he confronts his own armor, now carried on Hector, he kills himself a second time". (Wills, G. Homer Alive, New York Review of Books 39, no. 8, 1992). While such interpretations may have considerable literary value in the self-sustaining world of academic scholarship, they do not contribute to an understanding of Homer or his art. With the transference of Achilles' armor to Hector, transference of his power is also seen, but this is traditionally based on loose notions of symbolism and common sense (e.g. Stallybrass, P. The materiality of memory, in Finucci, V., Brownlee, K. Generation and Degeneration: Tropes of Reproduction in Literature and History from Antiquity Through Early Modern Europe. Duke University Press, 2001, p. 298).

119


be for the seer (see also Bennett, M. J. , 1997, p.157).

Achilles and Hector know that they will die. The gods know, after all it is they that have made these decisions. In spite of this, they are all present watching the fight. The demonic question is what would happen, if Achilles were to turn coward and run away. What poet, what god, can imagine the scene of Hector chasing Achilles and Achilles pleading for his life? The reader can see that the foundations of the Iliad would be shuttered; the collective soul of males would be thrown into existential turmoil. The splendor and power of the Iliad that has fascinated man across centuries depends upon the theme of the male leader, the king, the super warrior that the male soul seeks and follows.

For Homer the Iliad completes its mission with the death of Hector, the shadow of Achilles. The scene in the last book in which Achilles undergoes a radical change in response to Priam's supplication is as shocking as the cruel killing of Hector; in this scene Achilles is not Achilles. Achilles has died with the killing of Hector and the fulfillment of his promises to Patroclus to give him a proper burial. Support for this proposition comes from line IL.22.382-385, in which Achilles appears to have lost his instinctive desire to fight and has turned into calculation and introspection.

' ' , , ' . IL.22.382- 384

Achilles himself is surprised at this change:

; IL.22.385But why is my dear heart arguing with me about these things?

120


In essence, there is no Achilles1 or Hector, there is no Troy, no Priam. Are Achilles, Hector, Patroclus and the rest of the warriors in the Iliad material expressions of an incorporeal or ? Is the Iliad only the staging of a play of the eternal battle of the singular male soul, in a world thatno one can penetrate? This soul is one and it perpetually enters plurality battles for its actualization. It is turned on to itself, totally narcissistic, mainly concerned with staying close to its allotted path. In the Iliad the outstanding goal is to achieve manliness and rid itself of the feminine. The ultimate horror for a warrior, even in death is to be infected by the female mana (horror feminae).

Although in the heroic age, consciousness may be seen as less accomplished when compared to ours, we cannot deny that heroes have already attained a high degree of individuation. What does their preoccupation with war and manliness tend to? A higher degree of differentiation, consciousness, self, away from the lagoon of the collective, dark, undifferentiated psyche, or a regressive, even nostalgic move to the primeval reality? If we judge by the dramatic events leading up to Hectors death, fighting is a struggle to individuation while supplication is a ceremony relating to the

----------

1Homer speaks through Patroclus: ,then, the horseman Peleus was never your father : ' nor Thetis was your mother; the blue sea gave birth to you (IL.16.33 -34).Nicholas of Cusas writings (15th century) bear an intimate relation to this paragraph: "In the boundless multiplicity and variety of mythical images, or religious dogmas, of linguistic forms, of works of art, philosophic thought reveals the unity of a general function by which all these creations are held together. Myths, religion, art, language, even science, are now looked upon as so many variations on a common theme - and it is the task of philosophy to make this theme audible and understandable. [...]The religious symbols change incessantly, but the underlying principle, the symbolic activity as such, remains the same: una est religio in rituum varietate." (Nicholas of Cusa, De conjecturis, 1.13 written between 1440 and 1444; Cassirer, E., Lukay, M., 2006, p. 70-71).

121


child's dependence on the parent (Nagy, G. in Crotty, K., 1994). However, the trip to individuation ends with a plunge (endytic mana?) into the darkness of oneness.

The impact and merit of the Iliad does not depend upon interpretations and other scholastic work by critics. As all great works of art, it stands on its own, arrogant and enigmatic, stirring the souls of men across millennia. From this perspective, probing by scholars carries an element of absurdity and sacrilege. From times immemorial, the spirit of the Iliad has been burning and howling in the innermostspaces of men of all time, howling over the pyre of Patroclus, ' , raging with Achilles as he piles freshly slain cattle, horses, and men into the primordial flames. The spirit of the Iliad and the spirit of all great art is impervious to analysis.

Yet, thousands of books and critiques have been written attempting to explain, explicate, teach, and often to decompose the Iliad into its presumed nuts and bolts. Beyond the personal satisfaction of the 'mechanic' and the mentor, which includes his forethought of earning his daily bread, there is little justification for this kind of activity. Are we to hope that in pursuing these mechanistic contacts with the Iliad we may teach young men to write new, better Iliads?

In discussing individuation with reference to the totem, concepts akin to those of evolutionary theory emerge. In evolution, memory possesses a different meaning as compared to ontogenic memory. If we tentatively accept the proposition that concepts like totem may be successful in organizing the phenomena observed in the behavior of warriors, the absurdity of their behavior may fit into the schema and, therefore, we may claim that it can be explained. From an evolutionary perspective, phyletic memory is of far greater importance than ontogenic memory.

122


In the Iliad, warriors are concerned with the way they are remembered after their death. The issue of individuation is not a simple one. Individuation is bivalent: a growing of the unconscious domain that can only be conceived of as relating to phylogeny, but also a growing of a psychological domain (ontogenic individuation), which must be conceived of as attainment of goals and expectations that are set by environmental (natural and cultural) contingencies of a given era. The primitive, in my thinking, is not to be considered merely as a domain, which includes objects and processes that took place at a point in time that is past, a domain the contents of which have survived in men of today. This constraint would make sense only if we were to submit to an a priory that excludes the probability that consciousness, universally conceived, operates at sampling rates of time scales close to ours.

The movement forward to individuation is a struggle to distance oneself from regression1 to the unconscious, the pool of undifferentiated collective psyche, the mother of all, the Lamia. In ontogenic terms, the fear of regressing to the protection of one's mother is the libido, the energy that powers the thrust to go forward in a perilous and unpredictable world. For man this world is the company of fellow warriors, friends as well as enemies, a march forward even to death.

In considering the emergence of conscious life, a paradox may emerge. Either choice, to go forward into a world of pain and danger or to regress to the protected world of the mother and beyond to the world of fantasy and imaginal instant gratification, leads to death, the termination of the

----------

1"The hero's main feat is to overcome the monster of darkness: it is the long-

hoped-for and expected triumph of consciousness over the unconscious. [...] the "child" distinguishes itself by deeds which point to the conquest of the dark." Jung. C. G., 1981, p. 167.

123


identity of the individual. If we tentatively accept that a language (however vague and difficult as it may be), which would allow us to conceptualize phenomena in the present stage of cultural development, is possible, that language is likely to be closer to primitive mental functions (primary process rather than natural science or the domain of logic). This may sound absurd, however it is supported by many in the arts and philosophy. Is, then, the emergence of conscious life adjunctive to phenomena we fail grasp? Humanities and comparative natural science can lay out in more or less clear terms the path of development of mental complexity and consciousness; but they are helpless in probing the domain behind the start line of the road to consciousness. The partial explanation for this may be easy to formulate, if we admit that our biological and cognitive apparatus has developed in order to solve problems of survival in the particular environment of our planet.

Ontological questions are therefore distorted by a tool that is meant for utilitarian purposes and not for conceptualizing phenomena outside this perspective. The synthesis required in concept and theory formation must not necessarily be bound to a particular mechanism like the human brain, neither to a specific range of sampling rates. For example, while it has been possible for us to use sampling rates faster than our neurons permit, by using digital equipment, it is difficult to do the same with much slower sampling rates. Paradoxically these faster sampling rates have allowed us to look into the beginnings of emergence of consciousness that is in the direction of the unconscious. We can see today that unconscious processes are part of a continuum that extends from basic phenomena in physics and chemistry to biology, and, some would argue, to psychology (Nikoletseas, M. M., 2010a).

Mythology and the use of symbols that seem to tell us a story

124


that complements our efforts to understand ourselves lend themselves to an analysis within the natural sciences, and by this I do not mean psychoanalysis. Mechanisms for symbolizing, the ability for one thing to stand for another, have already been described at the neuronal, and even the molecular level. Behavioral scientists have given us a detailed picture of these phenomena only recently, a century ago (see Pavlov, also Nikoletseas M. M. 2010a). It is therefore to be expected, indeed necessary, that we notice a deficit, an alienation from things in our attempts to report phenomena intimate to our condition; the concepts that we use are removed by several orders, in a hierarchical representational scheme (symboling), from things themselves1.

Unity and plurality of the male totem does not necessarily lead to contradiction. The totem, through substitution2 and at the same time substantiation, is vested on individual men of a given status in the form of an object (armor, clothing or scepter). In post totemic, more advanced cultural stages, the totem animal becomes the coat of arms (Wundt, W. M., 1916, p 140). This is first-order substitution, a basic capacity (mechanism) of all living creatures possessing a nervous system. The objects that are used as substitutes we may call symbols. Not all instances of substitution result in the creation of symbols; substitution is a basic process that ----------

1"subjective and objective, symbol and symbolic were meaningless distinctions.

In this mode of thought, reality is proven by appearance; wakefulness is no more real than dreams;" (Bennett, M. J. Belted Heroes and Bound Women: The Myth of the Homeric Warrior-King. Rowman & Littlefield, 1997, p.157)2Substitution (symboling), in the sense of making a copy of an original, presents a degree of concordance with Platonic philosophy. The copy is inferior (in some dimension, e.g. exactness, intensity or magnitude); however, it is the copy that can be manipulated by men, and not the prototype. In order to achieve an effect a substitute (a symbol) of the idea has to be invented. In order to spy on the Achaeans, Dolon copies the image of the wolf and Odysseus creates a copy of the horse ( ) in order to conquer Troy. Assuming that the original (Continued on next page)

125


operates at relatively simple levels on the scale of integrative levels, a scale that extends from molecules to whole organisms (Nikoletseas, M. M., 2010a). In man higher-order substitution results in the totem been symbolized by animate and inanimate objects and natural phenomena such as sounds (e.g. the bullroarer" used by Australian aborigines; see Howitt, A.W. 1880) and even abstractions, and concepts.In the analysis I offer in the present book, the hero warriors are under the male totem, the potency of which can be pictured as a down-sloping gradient (a succedaneum) as a function of successive copying (cf. IL.14.381-382). Themale warrior totem may be conceptualized as divine, archetypal in nature, which undergoes successive stages of hypostatization, a series of copies progressively diminishing in precision and strength. Achilles may be thought of as the first-order substitution, Hector second-order, while Patroclusand the other warriors may be considered as higher-order substitutions on a progressively diminishing function. All warriors are struggling to reach the top, and thus unite with the archetypal totem itself, the male insubstantial totem. This can be achieved in various ways: being physically close to the male above them, acquiring objects that belong to him, incorporating characteristics of him, killing him, and even eating his flesh. This process may be termed ontogenic individuation, for there is also phyletic individuation, a process not readily accessible to the scrutiny of man. Both ontogenic and phyletic individuation tends to Unity, a vector seen in concepts related to a theory of totemism, for examplecannibalism, taboo, mana. ----------

(Continued from previous page) represents truth, it follows that successive copies of the original represent falsehood, or more precisely, deception. In the story of Dolon, we have successive deception. Hector deceives Dolon by telling him he would give him the chariot and horses of Achilles, Dolon resorts to deception by dressing as a wolf, Odysseus deceives Dolon promising to spare his life if he gives information on the Trojan camp; he kills him after he reveals the information.

126


In the Iliad, it is through a series of killings that progression to the totem unfolds. Patroclus is brought close to Achilles because he (Patroclus) killed a boy. Patroclus death, of which Achilles is indirectly the cause, sets in motion the transference of the totemic armor, from Achilles, to Patroclus, to Hector, and back to Achilles, bringing death to all that lie below the top, first-order substitution. After Hector is killed, the second in the totemic hierarchy after Achilles, the drama is over. Achilles is not Achilles any longer, he is waiting for his death, and he turns compassionate. The male totem has finished this cycle of the savage drama. In the next cycle the protagonists will be the same only with different names: Leonidas, Alexander. Men will always follow these strong men according to the inexorable rules of totemism.

It may have become apparent from the present analysis, that myth and symbols may be understood as natural phenomena. Lacking the appropriate tools, we find that it is still more

----------

1By phyletic individuation I do not mean evolution of adaptive anatomical structures, behaviors or mental abilities that increase the probability of survival. As I have alluded elsewhere in this book, the concepts we have in our arsenal are peculiar to our current zeitgeist, which is largely constrained by culture as well as the concepts of Physics of our times. Phyletic individuation is a presumed progression toward understanding man qua man. Strange as it may appear, it involves a de-differentiation of conceptual tools acquired through conscious, logical process. Cf. Cassirer's views:"Yet there is no remedy against this reversal of the natural order. [..] No longer in a merely physical universe, man lives in a symbolic universe. Language, myth, art, and religion are parts of this universe. [...] All human progress in thought and experience refines upon and strengthens this net. No longer can man confront reality immediately; he cannot see it, as it were, face to face. Physical reality seems to recede in proportion as man's symbolic activity advances. Instead of dealing with the things themselves, man is in a sense constantly conversing with himself. He has so enveloped himself in linguistic forms, in artistic images, in mythical symbols or religious rites that he cannot see or know anything except by the interposition of this artificial medium." (Cassirer, E., Lukay, M., 2006, p. 25).

127


profitable to deal with them in disciplines outside natural science. Ontological questions, however, have eluded a natural science analysis so far. I believe that with a new Physics new concepts will emerge, perhaps in line with my theory of sampling rate ontology (pp. 35, 130, 123).

Taking Achilles not as an individual, a warrior in the Trojan War, but a symbol that stands for man, we then begin looking for universal knowledge. This view is akin to Compte's thesis of for a historical psychology, (Course de philosophie positive, Comte, A. 1835).

"Reason is a very inadequate term with which to comprehend the forms of man's cultural life in all their richness and variety. But all of these forms are symbolic forms. Hence, instead of defining man as an animal rationale we should define him as an animal symbolicum." (Cassirer, E., Lukay, M., 2006, p. 31).

The historical fact that Achilles and Alexander the Macedon have captured the souls of men for centuries, cannot be explained by action potential patterns, neuropeptides or PET-scans. Yet Achilles and Alexander are symbols that have triggered immense storms in the psyche of men of all epochs. Understanding what men yearn for lies not at the lectic level, not even at conscious levels.

It is surprising that no painting measuring up to the grandeur, complexity and drama of the scene in which Achilles is chasing Hector around the walls of Troy. It is equally surprising that minds like Freud's, Jung's or Frazer's did pass by this scene of infinite proportions. This scene is a treasure-cave for the psychoanalyst of the male soul. No account could surpass Homer's art in painting this scene. The muse communicated to Homer a reality, a terrible, dark and

128


unspeakable ()1 reality of the male soul by means of words and the images they evoke diachronically. Hectors mother, Hecuba, is calling Hector from the city walls back into the city as she is exhibiting her breast to him, a call for Hector to regress back to the oral stage, and, consequently, total disintegration of his personality. Hector chooses to go ahead and fight with Achilles. The temptation to rid himself of the hero's self (totem) and avoid fighting is rejected as something loathsome: femininity. "The original penetration and stimulating organ is the mother's nipple" (Schaeffe, J., 2011, p.118).

A speculative model of the individual, based on biology, paints a picture of man as consisting of two parts, one primeval and diachronic which resists changes, and the other manipulative, ever changing, capable of adapting to environmental contingencies of a particular place and time. This second part, evolved as the laborer2 and provider of the needs of the primeval. The particular logic and capacity of consciousness, which are tautologous to the concept of self, are constrained strictly by the structures and mechanisms that matter succeeded in devising in order to prevent or postpone annihilation of a living being. It would be difficult ----------

1Cf. Pascals toute religion qui ne dit pas que Dieu est cach nest pas vritable Dieu sest voulu cacher.Sil ny avait quune religion Dieu y serait bien manifeste.Sil ny avait des martyrs quen notre religion de mme.Dieu tant ainsi cach toute religion qui ne dit pas que Dieu est cach nest pas vritable, et toute religion qui nen rend pas la raison nest pas instruisante. La ntre fait tout cela. Vere tu es deus absconditus.Pascal, B. Fragment, Fondement 20 (Laf. 242, Sel. 275)2Cf. ' , ' . ' , , , ' , , , . ' , , , ' , , , . Epictetus, Manuale .... , In aedibvs Palatinis, typis Bodonianis, 1793.Lacan views on The Real is an expanded and certainly poetical extension of Freuds ego differentiation from the id. Lacan speaks of an alienation from the primitive self, nature, with the introduction of language. (Lacan, J., 2005).

129


to support the contention that consciousness is possible onlyin the particular device of ours that we call brain. Neither that it is bound by a necessity to exist in the temporal order of magnitude of the earthly nervous system, which at the neurophysiological level is milliseconds. This fact and other constraints resulting from the particular structure of the basic unit of our brain, the neuron, impose a limit on the sampling rate possible. If we assume that understanding the world and ourselves necessitates more and more grossness (complexity) in our concepts, our current awareness and concepts are products of sampling rates too fast1 to grasp the meaning we are chasing (e.g. phyletic individuation).

Before Platonic discourse walled off a primitive ethic of happiness, was it war, then, the road to ? It is tell-tale that on the road to individuation, as a result of moralistic constraints, has lost contact with reality, a reality akin to such concepts as the Bergsonian lan vital or Schopenhauers Will (Schopenhauer, A., 1958). Later and current concepts are vague and have lost contact with the primitive core2. What, indeed, do we mean by fortuna happiness, bonheur or ? Certainly not . In a real sense, we have evicted the demons from the concept, and, unfortunately have killed our chance to actualize as men. The demon has deserted Antonius, 3 cannot be heard any longer, but they are still there, in the dark streets of Alexandria, on the planes of Troy, on the banks of the Eurotas, where the eternal male struts in The Dream.

----------

1In a moment that I could characterize as "irruption of the unconscious", I became aware, in a confused and murky way, of this possibility, while writing my poem "Slow my God" (Far Pitched Tents, 2011).2"Language is part of the effort necessary for establishing contact between two

human beings separated by individuation" (Luquet 1998).3 the exquisite music of the mystic theater (my translation). A, Cavafy, C., 2002

130


Achilles is not the son of his parents, he is the offspring of the grey sea (IL.16.33-34). Achilles is born in the dreams of men who are eagerly searching for the man, the leader. In the dreams of men, in a battlefield somewhere in the world, Patroclus meets Achilles again amidst the noise of endless Warrs1

as on the first timestench of blood and war cries

in far pitched tents2.

----------

1Milton, J., 1674, Book 2, 891-8982Nikoletseas, M. M., 2011

131


132


BIBLIOGRAPHY

Aeschylus. Aeschylus, with an English translation by Herbert Weir Smyth, Ph. D. in two volumes. 2. Libation Bearers. Cambridge. Cambridge, Mass., Harvard University Press; London, William Heinemann, Ltd., 1926

Aischulos. schylus, recens. J. Scholefield. Aeschylus, 1828

Alexiou, M. Dimitrios Yatromanolakis, D., Roilos, P. The ritual lament in Greek tradition. Rowman & Littlefield, 2002

Anthon, C, A Classical Dictionary:Containing an Account of the Principal Proper Names Harper & Brothers, 1855

Apollonius Rhodius. Argonautica. Translated by Seaton, R. C. Loeb Classical Library. London, William Heinemann Ltd., 1912

Aristotle. ed. R. Kassel, Aristotle's Ars Poetica. Oxford, Clarendon Press, 1966

Aristotle. Aristotle in 23 Volumes, Vol. 23, translated by W.H. Fyfe. Cambridge, MA, Harvard University Press; London, William Heinemann Ltd., 1932

Arnold, M. The Study of Poetry, 1880

Arrian, J. Davis. Arrian's History of the expedition of Alexander the Great, 1813

Athenaeus, The Deipnosophists, ed. and tr. C. B. Gulick.

133


Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1927-41

Autenrieth, G. A Homeric Dictionary for Schools and Colleges. New York. Harper and Brothers, 1891

Baudelaire, C. Les Fleurs Du Mal, David R. Godine Publisher, 1983

Baudrillard, J. Simulacra and Simulation, University of Michigan Press, 1995

Bayley H. Lost Language of Symbolism. Kessinger Publishing, 2003

Barkeri, E. H., Bekkeri, I., Kulencampii, L., Peyroni, A. Etymologicum graecae linguae Gudianum et alia grammaticorum scripta, e codicibus manuscriptis nunc primum edita. Accedunt notae ad etymologycon magnum ineditae E. H. Barkeri, Imm. Bekkeri, Lud. Kulencampii, Amad. Peyroni, edidit Frider. Gul. Sturzius...Friedrich Wilhelm Sturz, Kulenkamp, apud J. A. G. Weigel, 1818.

Bekker, I. Scholia in Homeri Iliadem: Scholia in Homeri Iliadem, typis et impensis Ge. Reimeri, 1825

Bekeri, I. Suidae Lexicon, Reimer, 1854

Benardete, S. Plato's "Laws": the discovery of being, University of Chicago Press, 2000

Bennett, M. J. Belted Heroes and Bound Women: The Myth of the Homeric Warrior-King. Rowman & Littlefield, 1997Berg, C. The Unconscious Significance of Hair. London, 1951

Betegh, G. The Derveni Papyrus: Cosmology, Theology and Interpretation. Cambridge University Press, 2007

134


Bethge, P. Europes Medicinal Cannibalism: the Healing Power of Death, Spiegel (On Line Version), January 30, 2009

Blake, W. Annotations to Boyd's Historical Notes on Dante. Dublin, 1785. In The Complete Poetry and Prose of William Blake. William Blake, David V. Erdman, Harold Bloom, University of California Press, 1982

Blake, W. The Complete Writings of William Blake, ed. Geoffrey Keynes, 1966

Blake, W., 1785. In William Blake, David V. Erdman, Harold Bloom, 1982

Bloom, H. Ruin the Sacred Truths: Poetry and Belief from the Bible to the Present. Harvard University Press, 1991

Bloom, H. Homer. Infobase Publishing, 2006

Bohr, N. On the Notions of Causality and Complementarity, Science: 20, 1950: 51-54

Boardman, J., Griffin, J. and Murray, O. The Oxford history of Greece and the Hellenistic World, Oxford U.P., 1991

Boothby, R., Freud as Philosopher, New York: Routledge, 2001

Bremmer, J. N. Heroes, Rituals and the Trojan War, Studi Storico Religiosi, 2, 5-38, 1978

Brenk, F. E., Relighting the Souls. Franz Steiner Verlag, 1998

Cassirer, E., Lukay, M., An Essay on Man: An Introduction to a Philosophy of Human Culture, Meiner Verlag, 2006

135


Calepino, Ambrogio: Ambrosii Calepini Bergomatis Lexicon Parisiis, 1539

Calepino, Ambrogio: Ambrosii Calepini Bergomatis Lexicon nunc demum a mendis exactissime repurgatum ,Colonia, 1534

Cavafy, C. , , 2002

Ceulemans, R. Ritual mutilation in Apollonius Rhodius "Argonautica": A contextual analysis of IV, 477-479. In search of the motive of the . Kernos, 20, 2007, pp. 97-112

Clemens (Alexandrinus), Opera que Extant (Ta heuriskomena), Stahel, 1778

Clement of Alexandria. G.W. Butterworth. Clement of Alexandria, with an English Translation by G.W. Butterworth. William Heinemann Ltd; G.P. Putnam's Sons. London; New York, 1919

Codrington, R. H. The Melanesians: studies in their anthropology and folklore, Oxford, Clarendon Press, 1891

Collins, D. Possession, Armor, and the Death of Patroklos. In Bloom, H., Homer's The Iliad, Infobase Publishing, 2007

Comte, A. Cours de philosophie positive: La philosophie astronomique et la philosophie de la physique. Bachelier, 1835

Cook, A, B. Zeus: A Study in Ancient Religion, Volume 2, Part 2, Cambridge University Press 2010

Crain, C. Lovers of Human Flesh: Homosexuality and

136


Cannibalism in Melville's Novels. American Literature, 1994. 66(1), 25-53.

Cramer, J. A, Oxoniensium, Volume 1, e Typographeo academico, 1835

Crotty, K. The Poetics of Supplication: Homers Iliad and Odyssey. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1994

Cusa, Nicholas of, De conjecturis, 1.13, written between 1440 and 1444

Derderian, K. Leaving words to remember: Greek mourning and the advent of literacy, BRILL, 2001

Dumesnil, Jean-Baptiste Gardin, Synonymes latins et leurs diffrentes significations, A. Delalain, 1827

Duncan, J. M., Novo lexicon graecum etymologicum et reale. Glasgua, 1833

Duncan, J. M. Novum Lexicon Graecum ex Christiani Tobiae Dammii Lexico-Homerico-Pindarico, Baumgaertner, 1836

Durkheim, E. Les formes elementaires de la vie religieuse; Le systeme totemique en Australie, 1912

Eustathius (Thessalonicensis), Stallbaum, G., Devarius, M. Commentarii ad Homeri Odysseam: T. 2, vol. 6, Weigel, 1826

Eustathius (Thessalonicensis), Commentarii ad Homeri Iliadem et Odysseam: Commentarii ad Homeri Odysseam, Gottfried Stallbaum, Matthaeus Devarius, Weigel, 1825

Estienne, H. Thsauros ts hellniks glsss: Valpianis, 1821

137


Finley, M. I. The World of Odysseus, 1954

Fishbane, M. The well of living water: a biblical motif and its ancient transformations, in Sha'arei Talmon: Studies in the Bible, Qumran, and the Ancient Near East, Presented to S Michael A. Fishbane, Emanuel Tov. Eisenbrauns, 1992

Fortenbaugh, W. W. Theophrastean Studies, 2003

Frazer, J., Sir. The Golden Bough, a study of magic and religion, 1993

Frazer. J. G. Totemism and Exogamy. Routledge, 2000

Freud, S. On the sexual theories of children, 1908. S.E., 9. London, Hogarth, 1959

Freud, S. Totem and Taboo, resemblances between the psychic lives of savages and neurotics. New York, 1919

Freud, S., A General Introduction to Psychoanalysis, 1920

Freud, S. The ego and the id. Standard edition, 1923

Gaius Julius Caesar Commentaries on the Gallic War, Book VI: 19, translated by W.A. McDevitte and W.S. Bohn, New York: Harper & Brothers, 1869

Galileo Galilei, Assayer in Discoveries and Opinions of Galileo, trans. Stillman Drake, New York, 1957

Gennep, A. V., The Rites Of Passage, Routledge, 2004

Gennep, A. van. Les rites de passage: tude systmatique des rites. . Nourry, 1909

Griffin, J. Homer on Life and Death, Oxford, 1980

138


Griffin, J., Symbolic scenes and significant objects, 1980

Guest, K. Eating their words: cannibalism and the boundaries of cultural identity. SUNY Press, 2001

Guthrie, W. K. C. Orpheus and Greek religion: a study of the Orphic movement. Princeton University Press, 1993

Haddon, A. C. The study of man. New York, G.P. Putnam's Sons; London, Bliss, Sands, & Co., 1898

Hedreen, G. "The Cult of Achilles in the Euxine" Hesperia 60.3, 1991, pp. 313330

Herodotus, Historiarum, Lipsie, 1839

Herodotus, The History of Herodotus, translated by. G. C. Macaulay, 1890

Hesychius (of Alexandria), Maurice Schmidt Hesychii Alexandrini Lexicon: ailiou Diogeneianou Periergomenetes, Sumptibus Hermanni Dufftii, 1867

Heslin P. J., The transvestite Achilles: gender and genre in Statius' Achilleid, Cambridge University Press, 2005

Heyne, C. G. Homeros, Carmina cum brevi annotatione, Libr. Weidmannia, 1802

Homre, Dugas-Montbel, Didot, F. L'Iliade d'Homre, 1830

Homer, Homeri Ilias kai eis auten scholia ton palaion; Homeri Ilias et veterum in eam scholia, quae vulgo appellantur Didymi. Totum opus cum plurimis, vetustiss. & optimis edit. collatum, et luculenter ex earum fide restitutum, 1689

139


Howitt, A.W. in Kamilaroi and Kurnai, 1880Available edition: L. Fison, A. W. Howitt, Kamilaroi and Kurnai: Group Marriage Customs and Relationship, and Marriage by Elopement, 1991

Hughes, D. D. Human sacrifice in ancient Greece, 1991

Hume, D., An inquiry concerning human understanding. J. Williams, 1825

Ioulianou autokratoros Ta szomena kai tou en hagiois Kyrillou archiepiskopou Alexandreias pros ta tou en atheois Ioulianou logoi deka, Vol. 2, Julianus (empereur romain, dit l'Apostat), Ezechiel Spanheim, Denis Petau, Cyrillus (Alexandrinus), sumptibus haeredum M.G. Weidmanni et Joh. Ludovici Gleditschii, 1696

Izbicki, Th. M., Nicholas of Cusa. Writings on Church and Reform, in The I Tatti Renaissance Library, 33, Cambridge Mass., London, 2008

Janet, P. Les Nvroses, Paris, 1909

Johnson, A.B., A treatise on language: or, The relation which words bear to things, in four parts. Harper & brothers, 1836

Jung, C. G., Hinkle, B.M. Psychology of the unconscious, New York, 1916

Jung, C. (ed.) Man and His Symbols, Doubleday Anchor Books, 1964

Jung, C. G. Approaching the Unconscious, in: Daniel Lazar, Jung, C. G. Man and His Symbols, 1964

Jung. C. G. The archetypes and the collective unconscious,

140


Vol. 9, Princeton University Press, 1981

Kahn, C. H., Pythagoras and the Pythagoreans: A Brief History, Hackett, 2001

, . . , 2002

Kirk, G. S., Edwards, M. W., Janko, R., Hainsworth, J. B., Richardson. N. J. The Iliad: A Commentary, Cambridge University Press, 1985

Kittel, G., Friedrich, G. Theological Dictionary of the New Testament, 1964-1976

Kuhn, T. S., The Structure of Scientific Revolutions, 1962

Lacan, J., Le symbolique, l'imaginaire et le rel (1953), in Des noms-du-pre ditions du seuil, Paris, 2005

Lang, A, Custom and Myth, Kessinger Publishing, 2004

Lateiner, D. Probe and Survey: Nonverbal Behaviors in Iliad 24. in Sardonic Smile: Nonverbal Behavior in Homeric Epic, University of Michigan Press, 1998

Lattimore, R. The Iliad of Homer, 1962

Law, L., Whyte, L. The Unconscious Before Freud. New York: Basic Books, Inc., 1960

Layton B. The Gnostic Scriptures, New York, 1989

Lazar, D. Carl Gustav Jung - Man and His Symbols, 1964

Leaf, W. The Iliad, edited, with apparatus criticus, prolegomena, notes, and appendices. London. Macmillan, 1900

141


Le Magnen, J., Hunger, CUP Archive, 1986

Lessing, G. E. Laocon: An Essay on the Limits of Painting and Poetry. Longman, Brown, Green, and Longmans, 1853

Linforth, L.M. The Arts of Orpheus. Berkeley: University of California, 1941

Lovejoy, A. O. The Great Chain of Being: A Study of the History of an Idea, Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press, 1964. (First published in 1936)

Marett, R. R. The threshold of religion, London, Methuen & co, 1909

Michelakis, P. Achilles in Greek Tragedy. Cambridge University Press, 2007

Milton, J. Paradise Lost, A Poem in twelve books, London 1674, Book 2, 891-898

Morello, T., Maltby, E., Cadell, T., Lexicon Graeco-prosodiacum, 1815

Murray, G. Five Stages of Greek Religion. Courier Dover Publications, 2003, originally published in 1912

Ngelsbach, K. F. von, Georg Autenrieth, Carl Friedrich von Naegelsbach's anmerkungen zur Ilias (A. Bl-483.r.) Nebst einigen Excursen: ein Hlfsbuch fr das Verstndniss des Dichters berhaupt, Geiger, 1864

Nagy, G. Lyric and Greek Myth, http://chs.harvard.edu/publications, Center for Hellenic Studies, Washington, DC, 2009

Nicholas Cusa De pace fidei, in Nicholas of Cusa, Writings

142


on Church and Reform, 1453

Nicholas of Cusa, De deo abscondito (1444/1445), in Complete Philosophical and Theological Treatises of Nicholas of Cusa, vol. 1, pp. 162-297

Nicholas of Cusa, De conjecturis, 1.13 written between 1440 and 1444

Nigel, D., Human Sacrifice, 1981

Nikoletseas, M. M. Behavioral and Neural Plasticity, 2010a

Nikoletseas, M. M. Far Pitched Tents, 2011

Nikoletseas, M. M. Statistics for College Students and Researchers, 2010b

Nikoletseas, M. M. The Iliad, Twenty Centuries of Translation, 2012

Ogden, D. A. Companion to Greek Religion, 2010

Oikonomos, K. Opyt o blizhaishem srodstvi e i azyka slavi ano-rossiiskago s grecheskim, part 2, vol.3, 1828

Oldfield, A. The Aborigines of Australia, Transactions of the Ethnological Society of London, iii., 1865

,

, 1817

Padilla, M. W. Rites of Passage in Ancient Greece:Literature, Religion, Society. Bucknell University Press, 1999

Papaioannou, S., Redesigning Achilles: "Recycling" the Epic

143


Cycle in the "Little Iliad": (Ovid, Metamorphoses 12.1-13.622). Walter de Gruyter, 2009

Patrick, S. Stratford, D. The parable of the pilgrim. Written to a friend. London, R. White for F. Tyton, 1667

Pavlov. I. Conditioned reflexes; an investigation of the physiological activity of the cerebral cortex. Oxford University Press: Humphrey Milford, 1927

Pindar. The Odes of Pindar including the Principal Fragments with an Introduction and an English Translation by Sir John Sandys, Litt.D., FBA. Cambridge, MA., Harvard University Press; London, William Heinemann Ltd., 1937

Pindar. Odes. Diane Arnson Svarlien, 1990

Planche, J. Dictionnaire grec-franais: compos sur l'ouvrage intitul Thesaurus linguae graecae de Henri tienne, Le Nornant, 1817

Polwhele, R., The idyllia, epigrams, and fragments, of Theocritus, Bion, and Moschus, with the elegies of Tyrtus, tr. into Engl. verse, to which are added, dissertations and notes,vol 2, 1792

Pope, A., The Iliad of Homer, 1813

Prescott, F C. The poetic mind, New York, 1922

Prescott. F.C. Poetry and Myth, New York, 1927

Prier, R.A., Thauma Idesthai: The Phenomenology of Sight and Appearance in Archaic Greek. University Press of Florida, 1989

Redfield, J. M., Nature and Culture in the Iliad: The Tragedy

144


of Hector. Duke University Press, 1994

Reiner, E. Die rituelle Totenklage der Griechen:nach den schriftlichen und bildlichen Quellen dargestellt.W. Kohlhammer, 1938

Ridgeway, W, Sir. The early age of Greece. Cambridge: The University press, 1901

Robertson W. Religion of the Semites, 2nd Edition, 1907

Rooke, J., Arrian's History of Alexander's Expedition, London, 1729

Schfer, G. H. Etymologikon to mega: Etymologicon magnum, Vol. 1 Gottfried Heinrich, 1816

Schaeffer, J., The Universal Refusal: A Psychoanalytic Exploration of the Feminine Sphere, 2011

Schopenhauer, A. The world as will and representation, transl. by E. F. J. Payne. Indian Hills, Colorado: The Falcons Wing, 1958

Snell. B. The Discovery of the Mind: In Greek Philosophy and Literature. Courier Dover Publications, 1960

Sophocles: The Plays and Fragments, with critical notes, commentary, and translation in English prose. Part VI: The Electra. Sir Richard C. Jebb. Cambridge. Cambridge University Press. 1894

Stallybrass, P. The materiality of memory, in Finucci, V., Brownlee, K. Generation and Degeneration: Tropes of Reproduction in Literature and History from Antiquity Through Early Modern Europe. Duke University Press, 2001

145


Stephano, H. Thsauros ts Hellniks glsss = Thesaurus graecae linguae, 1816

Stephano, H. Thsauros ts hellniks glsss =Thesaurus graecae linguae. Post editionem anglicam novis additamentis auctum, ordineque alphabetico digestum tertio ediderunt, Carolus Benedictus Hase, Guilielmus Dindorfius et Ludovicus Dindorfius, 1831

Stratford, P. S. The parable of the pilgrim. Written to a friend. London, R. White for F. Tyton, 1667

Strong, J. Strong's Greek and Hebrew Dictionaries, 1890

Sturtevant, W. C. Handbook of North American Indians: Northwest Coast, 1978

Suidae Lexicon, Graece et latine, Aemilii Porti, 1705

Suidae Lexicon, Suidas, Thomas Gaisford, Ludolf Kster, 1834

Suidae Lexicon, Immanuelis Bekkeri, 1854

Tacitus, C., Taylor, Walton, and Maberly, The Germania of Tacitus, 1851

Tacitus Cornelius, The Agricola and Germania of Tacitus,Macmillan and Co., 1893

Talmon, I. S. The 'Desert Motif' in the Bible and in Qumran Literature, in Biblical Motifs, ed. A. Altman, Cambridge, MA, 1966

Tsagalis, C. Epic grief: personal laments in Homer's Iliad.Walter de Gruyter, 2004

146


Tylor, E. B. Primitive culture: researches into the development of mythology, philosophy, religion, language, art, and custom. London, Murray, 1920

Tyrtaeus, in Elegy and Iambus, with an English Translation by. J. M. Edmonds. Cambridge, MA. Harvard University Press. London. William Heinemann Ltd., 1931

Wagner, R. Opera and Drama, U of Nebraska Press, 1995

Wallis, W. D. "Reviewed Work(s): 'The Doctrine of Survivals' by Margaret T. Hodgen", The Journal of American Folklore, Vol. 49, No. 193, 1936

Weil, S., Holoka, J. P. Simone Weil's The Iliad, Or, The Poem of Force: A Critical Edition. Peter Lang, 2003

West, M. L. The Orphic Poems. Oxford: Claredon, 1983

Whyte, L., L. The Unconscious Before Freud, New York: Basic Books, Inc., 1960

Woods, M. "Conquistadors", p. 114, BBC Worldwide, 2001;

Wundt, W. M., Elements of folk psychology: outlines of a psychological history of the development of mankind. G. Allen & Unwin, London, 1916

Wundt, W.M., Story of the development of mankind, G. Allen - Unwin ltd., 1928

Zeitlin, F. I. Playing the Other: Gender and Society in Classical Greek Literature, University of Chicago Press, 1996

147


148


Biographical

Michael M. Nikoletseas was born in 1943 in Androussa(), a small town on the Peloponnese, which still maintained elements of its glorious Ottoman past: roads, homes, daily life, fortress, language and music. After completing his Gymnasium education in the Classics, he continued his college, graduate and postdoctoral education in the USA. He has done research and has taught in American colleges and medical schools. In addition to his research papers, he has published books in Psychology, Neuroscience, Mathematics and Medicine. Here is a partial list of his literary books:

Dirfyan Elegy: Poems of Passage (2010) Far Pitched Tents: Poems of War (2011) Rape in Ahmetaga: A sacrifice (2011) The Iliad - Twenty Centuries of Translation (2012)

Some of these titles exist in other languages, e.g. French, Greek, Spanish, and Hebrew.

149


150


Credits

Cover page image: Zeus with eagle. Medallion from a black-figured Laconian cup, ca. 560 BC. Louvre Museum. By: Naucratis Painter (User:Bibi Saint-Pol, own work, 2007-06-01) [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons, January, 2013

Europa and the bull (Zeus). Terracotta figurine from Athens, c. 460480 BCE, Staatliche Antikensammlungen. Munich. Wikimedia Commons. January, 2013

Thetis gives her son Achilles his weapons newly forged by Hephaestus, detail of an Attic black-figure hydria, ca. 575 BC550 BC. Artist: Near the Tyrrhenian Group. Louvre Museum. Wikimedia Commons, January, 2013

Peleus and Thetis, Boeotian black-figure dish, ca. 500 BC475 BC. Artist: Unknown. Louvre Museum.Wikimedia Commons, January, 2013

Peleus (left) entrusts his son Achilles (center) to Centaur Chiron (right). White-ground black-figured lekythos, ca. 500 BC. From Eretria. National Archaeological Museum in Athens, 1150. Auteur: Marsyas. Wikipedia , January, 2013

151


152


153


154


155

the iliad the male preview

Documents