Book Club Madeleine Miller: The Song of Achilles

[Peyton Stafford]

I learned a bit at the bookclub meeting yesterday. However, I felt like a pygmy in a land of giants.

I imagined joining a bookclub would address my lack of reading. There's always time to catch up, right? Yet the more I read, the farther behind I get. You guys were referencing authors and works I've never heard of.

I came into reading Song of Achilles with a highschool knowledge of the Iliad. It wasn't enough. I feel a broader context is required to analyze and appreciate works like this, and I don't have it.

I know what you mean. So many books, so little time, and trying to fill in all the missing background about literature in general... aargh! I look at Litopia as a support group and school for writers. If I can learn a little, then I'm grateful for that, even if I usually feel in over my head.

 

[Hannah F]

One more thought about the ending--since Achilles was a hero, would he not have gone to the Elysian Fields, rather than Hades, after death?

They all still had to go to Hades first. After a bit of journeying through Hades, they came to a fork in the road. The heroes took one fork and went to Elysium. The rest went to Tartarus. The ones who went to Elysium were allowed to return to Earth, but it was so nice there, I don't think any of them did. Can't think of any who did anyway.
If you weren't one the Greek Gods deemed a hero but had performed many noble acts, you were allowed into Elysium as well. So, I'd say Patroclus earned his right to go there. Briseis too. I don't think of Achilles as a hero, but enough Gods hailed him as such because he felled Hector who they didn't like. And, of course, Thetis would call him a hero. So, Peyton, your ending definitely works for me.
. . . So many figs to juggle for eternity.

 

[Pamela Jo]

One more thought about the ending--since Achilles was a hero, would he not have gone to the Elysian Fields, rather than Hades, after death?

In the time Illiad was written everyone went to Hades. This is why when Ulysses visits the shades in Hades he brings blood for them to drink so they can speak to him. He sees his friends killed in the Trojan War and his mother. Elysian Fields was a later addition to Greek religion. (It was a very long-lived civilisation.) The idea of the Elysian Fields was invented as a sort of evangelical movement that said all Greek Gods and Ancient Greek hero's had to be perfect. This created a problem because Helen especially was not an ideal woman. So it was invented that the Helen that betrayed her husband and started the war was a doppleganger and the real one was whisked away to the "Elysian Fields" where she stayed pure.
The idea betrayed most of the ideals of the greatest Greek tragedies and doesn't it sound familiar?
The idea of heaven and hell is really a Christian invention in collaboration with Greek theologians as is the idea of the Holy Trinity. The Greeks had to take ideas to their logical conclusion. Judaism doesn't have that idea of reward for the good , punishment for the bad. All souls are worthy.
The Romans who were more Laissez Faire Capitalist really took the idea of Elysian Fields and added it to their own version of the Greek religion. It's fascinating to me that the Greek philosophers became the slave conscience and intellect of the Romans.

 

[Peyton Stafford]

@Pamela Jo, This is interesting. Can you refer me to some books where I can learn more?

 

[Pamela Jo]

@Pamela Jo, This is interesting. Can you refer me to some books where I can learn more?

I've had a lifelong fascination with ancient Greeks and most of the information on the Elysian Fields came from the best university class I've ever taken, taught by an archaeologist and entitled Greek Religion-rather than mythology. Let me check around I'll see what I can find. But if you understand that part of the Olympics was a huge competition for theatrical play that creates the best religious feeling (ie catharsis) then you have context to understanding Greek drama.
You might find what you want here. Ancient Greek History - Audio by Yale University on Apple Podcasts

I'd also recommend this production of Trojan Women. Trojan Women was written after a devastating war where the Greeks committed atrocities that were against everything they believed defined them.

Helen and Clymenestra were sisters born out of eggs after Zeus in the form of a swan raped their mother, Leda. They were half divine and so entangled all of Olympus in the war that followed. Clymenestra - Agamemnon's wife who has him killed by a stranger on his return from war. But in all Greek stories a stranger is not just a stranger.
That story is told in the Orestia which ends with Athena bringing law and justice to humanity to replace the old vengeance and punishment where none can be redeemed.

 

[Hannah F]

It's all made up anyway. Just because the ancient Greeks didn't invent Elysium doesn't mean ancient Greeks can't go there in a re-telling. I like the idea of Achilles and Patroclus sitting on an Elysian field, a bowl of figs beside them, Achilles strumming the lyre while Patroclus varnishes his toenails.