• 3 months ago
Transcript
00:00Sing to me, oh Muse of the Man of Twists and Turns.
00:11Driven time and again off course, once he had plundered the hallowed heights of Troy.
00:15Muse?
00:16Hey, Muse, I could use a little help here.
00:20Gee, thanks.
00:28Dear Tim and Moby, Who was Homer from Zen?
00:33According to legend, Homer was a Greek poet who lived around 800 BCE.
00:38He is credited with writing the Iliad and the Odyssey, two epic poems.
00:44An epic poem is a long poem that tells a story of a heroic achievement.
00:48In ancient Greece, that meant warfare, feuds between royal houses, and lots of interference
00:53by the gods and goddesses.
00:56Well, there's no record that a guy named Homer really existed.
01:02Back then, poetry was an oral tradition, not a written one.
01:06Poems were passed from generation to generation, and they change a little based on who was
01:10telling them.
01:12So really, no one knows who wrote Homer's poems.
01:16They may indeed have been written by one person, or they could have been assembled gradually
01:21over the years through thousands of tellings.
01:24But whether or not he was a real guy, the ancient Greeks regarded Homer as the greatest
01:28poet of all time.
01:29Traditionally, he's represented as an old, blind man with a gray beard.
01:35Well, the Iliad tells the story of the Trojan War.
01:40It begins with hundreds of Greek ships sailing across the Aegean Sea to fight against Troy,
01:45an ancient city-state in modern-day Turkey.
01:48The Greeks are angry, because the Trojans have kidnapped Helen, the beautiful wife of
01:52the king of Sparta.
01:53She was stolen away by Paris, a Trojan prince.
01:57Homer introduces us to the characters on each side.
02:00Achilles, the Greeks' greatest warrior, Hector, the hot-headed Trojan prince and commander,
02:06Agamemnon, the emotional, stubborn leader of the Greek forces, and Priam, the wise old
02:13king of Troy.
02:15These guys don't just fight with their enemies.
02:16They bicker a lot with each other, too.
02:19They win glory on the battlefield, and also wrestle with concepts like friendship, loyalty,
02:23and mourning.
02:25Well, that one's pretty violent.
02:30The Odyssey tells the story of Odysseus, a Greek fighter in the Trojan War.
02:35After fighting in Troy for ten years, it takes him another ten to get back to his home island
02:39of Ithaca.
02:40Why'd it take so long?
02:43Well, Odysseus angered Poseidon, the god of the sea, so Poseidon wouldn't let him go
02:47home.
02:48Instead, Odysseus and his men embark on a series of wild adventures.
02:53They get captured by a one-eyed giant cyclops, get turned into pigs by a witch called Circe,
02:59avoid the sirens whose beautiful song leads men to their deaths, and deal with shipwrecks,
03:04sea monsters, and other problems.
03:06Meanwhile, back in Ithaca, everyone thinks he's dead, except for his son, Telemachus,
03:11and his wife, Penelope.
03:13Telemachus tries to protect Penelope from all these other men who want to marry her
03:17and take over Odysseus' home.
03:21Someone eventually wrote down the stories of the Iliad and the Odyssey.
03:25The version of the Odyssey that we know today has been around since the 7th or 8th century
03:29BCE, and it's been studied, referenced, and discussed pretty much ever since then.
03:35It's inspired works by artists, poets, authors, and playwrights for thousands of years.
03:40More recently, Homer's works have served as the basis of films, cartoons, and even
03:44video games.
03:47The poetry can be tough to understand, but you get used to it.
03:50Now, where was I?
03:53Right.
03:54Many cities of men he saw and learned their minds, many pains he suffered, heartsick on
03:58the open sea, fighting to save his life.
04:01Oh come on!