Redemption and Return

Recently, at the Friends School of Portland, I watched a performance of the Iliad that was remarkable; horrid and harrowing, vast and engaging, a testimony to the power of theatre. 

The Fig Tree Committee, a group of Quakers from Portland, Oregon presents “An Iliad” to correctional facilities and the communities that surround them. Over 3,500 people, most of whom were incarcerated, have seen the production.  In the Quaker vernacular, their work is a “leading” as it “…knits together audiences on both sides of the prison walls by using one of the world’s oldest stories to examine the cycles of violence, trauma, displacement, and hope for healing that unite us all.”  https://www.figtreecommittee.org/

The Iliad, central to Classical literature, stands at the apex of Epic Poetry.  Homer, the bard, is said to have written the poem circa 800 BC, retelling stories from the late Bronze Age circa 1,000 BC.  The story revolves around Paris, a Trojan Prince, who abducted Helen, the wife of Meneleus, the Greek King.  Extraordinary was Helen’s beauty, her’s “the face that launched 1,000 ships.”  The poet sagely never describes her face, leaving that to the reader’s imagination.  

For 10 long years the Greeks battled the Trojans, always to a standstill, which test of endurance is indeed the stuff of legend.  The story – hypermasculinity and the alpha males’ dominance – is remarkably relevant to the world today.  The Access Hollywood tapes seem but a modern day retelling of Paris abducting Helen. 

The Fig Tree’s production used metadrama to connect the classic to the contemporary through the epic catalog of the 1,000 ships.  The bard made plain such breadth by listing the many young men killed, but from American, rather than Greek towns, including Evanston, Illinois where long ago I read the Iliad in the Greek. That catalog foreshadowed what was to come, and what is playing out in America today.  

Building to the play’s climax, the bard recited a brutally long catalog of wars – Ancient Greece through Europe to modern day Middle East and Gaza – 3,000 years summarized that took us ever deeper into the maze, to face the Minotaur; not half man half beast, but rather the vain beastial side of Aristotle’s “political animal.”  

The Peloponnesian War – Sparta versus Athens, 431-404 BC – centered on the issue that “might makes right.”  Thucydides, the Greek Historian, in 410BC wrote, “… right, as the world goes, is only in question between equals in power, while the strong do what they can and the weak suffer what they must.”  “Might makes right” is the moral antithesis of the path to compassion.  

Plato, the Athenian philosopher, wrote the Republic, 375 BC, arguing that democracy was unworkable, “Until philosophers are kings, or the kings and princes of this world have the spirit and power of philosophy … cities will never have rest from their evils,—no, nor the human race, as I believe,—and then only will this our State have a possibility of life and behold the light of day.”  

The polite phrase is “Philosopher King” but the literal translation is “Benevolent Dictator.”  The authoritarian strongman does seem ascendant now.  Many say Victor Orbán is a modern day exemplar of the Philosopher King but his is an illiberal democracy, rule by the minority not “we the people.”  Might makes right remains the macho battle cry and let’s be honest: hypermasculine alpha males have run the table for more than 3,000 years.  

To my mind, the deeper long-term trend is that the Divine Feminine is ascendant, while the alphas, like dinosaurs, will fight to the bottom to preserve their long enjoyed patriarchy.  I speak of masculine traits, not gender, and write this not to condemn but with compassion to decry so many generations of boys raised to be men who fight more than forgive, for whom “making a killing in the market” is a red badge of courage.  Radical, indeed, was the street preacher, 2000 years ago, who dared say, “the meek shall inherit the earth.”

At the end of the March from Selma, Martin Luther King stood on the steps of the Alabama State Capital, and said, “The arc of the moral universe is long, but it tends toward justice.”  The Iliad tells the same story.  This masterpiece of literature is ultimately a story of redemption, the release of anger and hubristic pride.  

At the Iliad’s end, Achilles speaks to Priam, the last King of the Trojans, and releases to him the body of Hektor, his son, whom Achilles had slain in battle.  Each having lost everything, Achilles – the greatest among the Greek heroes, which is to say the paragon of the alpha male – found within himself redemption and gave back to Priam the body of his son, to be buried, returned to his native soil. 

If the greatest of Greek heroes could find forgiveness and compassion, then certainly, so too, can we the people.  

Work is to be done.  

Let us be about it.  

Now.   

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I quote here from the Richmond Lattimore translation, Prius supplicating Achilles, the response of Achilles, the anointing of Hektor’s body, and the slaying of the “gleaming sheep” for a shared meal of Thanksgiving:

“Achilleus like the gods, remember your father, one who

is of years like mine, and on the door-sill of sorrowful old age.

And they who dwell nearby encompass him and afflict him,

nor is there any to defend him against the wrath, the destruction.

Yet surely he, when he hears of you and that you are still living,

is gladdened within his heart and all his days he is hopeful

that he will see his beloved son come home from the Troad.

But for me, my destiny was evil.  I have had the noblest

of sons in Troy, but I say not one of them is left to me. (24.486-94)

“So he spoke, and stirred in the other a passion of grieving

for his own father. He took the old man’s hand and pushed him

gently away, and the two remembered, as Priam sat huddled

at the feet of Achilleus and wept close for manslaughtering Hektor

and Achilleus wept now for his own father, now again

for Patroklos. The sound of their mourning moved in the house. Then

when great Achilleus had taken full satisfaction in sorrow

and the passion for it had gone from his mind and body, thereafter

he rose from his chair, and took the old man by the hand, and set him

on his feet again, in pity for the grey head and the grey beard,

and spoke to him and addressed him in winged words: ‘Ah, unlucky, 

surely you have had much evil to endure in your spirit.

How could you dare to come alone to the ships of the Achaians

and before my eyes when I am one who have killed in such numbers 

such brave sons of yours? The heart in you is iron. Come, then,

and sit down upon this chair, and you and I will even let

our sorrows lie still in the heart for all our grieving. There is not

any advantage to be won from grim lamentation.  (24.507-24)

“Then when the serving-maids had washed the corpse and anointed it 

with olive oil, they threw a fair great cloak and a tunic 

about him, and Achilleus himself lifted him and laid him 

on a litter, and his friends helped him lift it to the smooth-polished 

mule wagon. He groaned then, and called by name on his beloved

companion: ‘Be not angry with me, Patroklos, if you discover, 

though you be in the house of Hades, that I gave back great Hektor 

to his loved father, for the ransom he gave me was not unworthy. 

I will give you yourshare of the spoils, as much as is fitting.’

“So spoke great Achilleus and went back into the shelter 

and sat down on the elaborate couch from which he had risen, 

against the inward wall, and now spoke his word to Priam: 

‘Your son is given back to you, aged sir, as you asked it. 

He lies on a bier. When dawn shows you yourself shall see him 

as you take him away. Now you and I must remember our supper. (24.587-602)

“So spoke fleet Achilleus and sprang to his feet and slaughtered 

a gleaming sheep, and his friends skinned it and butchered it fairly, 

and cut up the meat expertly into small pieces, and spitted them, 

and roasted all carefully and took off the pieces. 

Automedon took the bread and set it out on the table 

in fair baskets, while Achilleus served the meats. And thereon 

they put their hands to the good things that lay ready before them. 

But when they had put aside their desire for eating and drinking, 

Priam, son of Dardanos, gazed upon Achilleus, wondering

at his size and beauty, for he seemed like an outright vision 

of gods. Achilleus in turn gazed on Dardanian Priam 

and wondered, as he saw his brave looks and listened to him talking. 

But when they had taken their fill of gazing one on the other, 

first of the two to speak was the aged man, Priam the godlike: 

‘Give me, beloved of Zeus, a place to sleep presently, so that 

we may even go to bed and take the pleasure of sweet sleep. 

For my eyes have not closed underneath my lids since that time 

when my son lost his life beneath your hands, but always 

I have been grieving and brooding over my numberless sorrows 

and wallowed in the muck about my courtyard’s enclosure. 

Now I have tasted food again and have let the gleaming 

wine go down my throat. Before, I had tasted nothing.’

He spoke, and Achilleus ordered his serving-maids and companions 

to make a bed in the porch’s shelter and to lay upon it 

fine underbedding of purple, and spread blankets above it 

and fleecy robes to be an over-all covering.”  (24.620-646)