The most played episodes among Podcast App listeners.

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   Number 1: EPISODE 13 “TERRIBLE, GLORIOUS WAR”

   THE STORY: (56 minutes) As Greek and Trojan forces openly clash on the plains of Troy the goddess Athena imbues a Greek warlord – Diomedes – with fearsome, godlike powers of combat. So with the Trojan forces in disarray and on the verge of wholescale panic, Hector decides on an audacious plan to save his army. But can Hector survive his own plan? THE COMMENTARY: CAN WAR BE BOTH TERRIBLE and GLORIOUS? (17 minutes; begins at 56:00) This post-story commentary examines both the “glorious” and the “terrible” faces of the Trojan War. I first review the arestia of Diomedes, which dominates much of the story in this podcast episode. I point out that Diomedes’ arestia (or moment of supreme excellence in battle) follows the usual arestia pattern found in Homer's Iliad. The hero is first imbued with god-like powers; the hero’s armour and weapons are then imbued with god-like radiance (the helmet “burns like a fire”; the bronze spear tip “is like a gleaming star”); the hero racks up an impressive kill count against worthy opponents; the hero receives a setback or injury, but recovers quickly; and the hero goes on to even greater glories before the arestia ends, and the hero becomes “normal” again. I note that in Homer only heroes are granted an arestia – rank and file foot soldiers are never so lucky. I then observe that the arestia can be understood as a “compensatory gift” from the gods to a worthy human – the compensation being necessary because the human, no matter how worthy, is ultimately doomed to die. Finally I observe that sometimes an arestia ends with the death of the hero: when a hero forgets, at the critical moment, that he is not really a god. I then launch into an exploration of arestia in contemporary movies, noting that I could find plenty of examples of arestia in superhero or fantasy genre films, but very few arestia in movies based on real human warfare. This leads me to some hypothesizing about whether, in the 20th and 21st century, we are culturally uncomfortable celebrating “glorious war” – possibly the machine guns and poison gas of World War One dampened our enthusiasm a little? I then turn to Homer’s treatment of war in the Iliad, and observe that it is remarkably neutral and even-handed. Homer spares us none of the graphic, gory realities of the battlefield (save for a total absence in Homer of any long term, lingering, or psychological injuries), and Homer is brutally clear-eyed on the civilian price of war (rape, slavery, butchery and death). But Homer equally paints a picture of fighting men exulting in the sheer, giddy pleasure of knowing “how to step in deadly dance of hand to hand combat”. I turn the final words of my post-story commentary over to Bernard Knox, a Homer translator; because I think he says it best: "Three thousand years have not changed the human condition in this respect. We are still lovers and victims of the will to violence, and so long as we are, Homer will be read as its truest interpreter." Homer, tr. Robert Fagles, intro. Bernard Knox, The Iliad (Penguin Classics, 1991) Jeff RELATED CONTENT ANTHEM FOR DOOMED YOUTH, 1917 poem by Wilfred Owen PDF RELATED IMAGES

   August 24, 2016·1h 15min
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   Number 2: EPISODE 11 “ACHILLES DISHONORED”

   THE STORY: (46 minutes) Ten years into the siege of Troy a priest of Apollo arrives at the command tent of Agamemnon, Commander in Chief of the Greeks. The priest makes a simple request of Agamemnon. Agamemnon refuses, and Greek soldiers die in the thousands. And then things turn truly ugly… THE COMMENTARY: DID A GUY NAMED HOMER EXIST, & DID HE WRITE THE ILIAD? (16 minutes; begins at 46:00) This particular episode of Trojan War: The Podcast brings our story arc into Homer’s Iliad itself. I use the post-story commentary to discuss “all things Iliad” including: who was/was there a Homer; how was the Iliad composed; and why do we have copies of the Iliad today? I begin by reminding listeners that the first ten episodes of Trojan War: The Podcast are not found in Homer’s Iliad. Rather, they are part of what scholars refer to as the Trojan War Epic Cycle: a jambalaya of stories, bits of stories, accounts of bits of stories, and references to accounts of bits of stories, that have managed to survive, some from as early as the Bronze Age, up to now. Those stories collectively “set the stage” for the events accounted in Homer’s Iliad: events which only last a matter of months in this multi-decade war. I then remind readers that - some episodes from now - our story will leave the Iliad, and continue on with more episodes drawn from the Trojan War Epic Cycle. I then turn our conversation to the current academic consensus that there was no Homer, in the sense of a solitary author who created an original artistic work drawn completely from his own imagination. The current consensus is that events recounted in the Iliad are drawn from centuries of oral storytelling tradition that predates Homer. So “Homer”, it turns out, was either a brilliant compiler, editor and re-teller of existing stories from the oral tradition, which he then assembled into an artistic masterwork titled the Iliad (a group of Homeric scholars called “unitarians” subscribe to this view), or alternately, “Homers” was a collection of less-than-brilliant compiler(s) who assembled existing stories from the oral tradition into a great (but flawed) work titled the Iliad (the view held by Homeric scholars called “separatists” or “analysts”). I confess to finding the arguments of unitarians and separatists/analysts equally compelling, depending on what section of the Iliad I am reading when I think about the question. Then I get on with detailing how the Iliad managed to survive intact from creation (c. 700 B.C.E.) to the present day. Finally, I confess to some trepidation in beginning to tell episodes drawn directly from the Iliad: one of the masterworks of Western literature. I conclude by encouraging you to go read the Iliad for yourself – it’s a pretty good story! Jeff RELATED CONTENT UNDERSTANDING BRONZE AGE HONOR: KLEOS, GERAS & TIME (PDF) RELATED LINKS GREEK MYTH COMIX (the Trojan War as a brilliant comic strip!) RELATED IMAGES

   August 26, 2016·1h 3min
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   Number 3: EPISODE 12 “PARIS: PRINCE OF TROY”

   THE STORY: (58 minutes) Hector proposes an audacious “exit strategy” to Agamemnon: a deal to end the war with just one man dead. Intense diplomatic negotiations follow. And just when it appears that Greek and Trojan have agreed to terms, a third, more powerful party, enters the conversation. THE COMMENTARY: EVERYTHING YOU NEED TO KNOW ABOUT OLYMPIAN GODS, IN UNDER 13 MINUTES! (12 minutes; begins at 58:00) I dedicate all of this post-story commentary to the Olympian Gods: Zeus, Hera, Athena, Aphrodite, Apollo and the lot. The gods require our consideration because, though they have clearly been players since Episode One: The Apple of Discord, they now begin to aggressively assert themselves into the plot. I start with a reminder that the Olympian gods are a fundamentally different sort of deity than are the god(s) worshipped in the 21st century. The Olympian deities are not the authors of creation, but are instead - like humans, animals, and plants - just another sort of life inside of creation. The Olympian deities did not create humanity, and as a consequence, they have no particular love, concern or sense of responsibility for us. In fact, the Olympian deities mostly view humans as poor, mortal wretches: “For there is nothing as miserable as humans among all the creatures that live and breathe on the earth” (Iliad Book 17, 443) is how Zeus sums us up. Which is possibly why the Olympian deities spend most of their eternal time treating human life with cavalier disregard: our lives, our families, our cities and our great conflicts are, from the perspective of a god’s timeless/ageless immortality, simply inconsequential. But on occasion we humans do provide splendid “entertainment” for the Olympians: “But now I (Zeus) will sit here at ease on a ridge of Olympus where I can watch, to my heart’s delight…” the human carnage on the battlefield below. (Book 20, 22). Not simply content to watch of course, the gods sometimes go “down to the fighting, on different sides” (Book 20, 31), and do their very best to manipulate the outcome of our inconsequential human wars. After my (and I think, Homer’s) indictment of the gods, I briefly explore three differing contemporary “storyteller” approaches to dealing with these gods inside of the Trojan War Epic story. Some modern tellers choose to redact the gods from the storyline entirely, and present listeners with a Trojan War Epic grounded exclusively in human agency. In these versions, the Trojan War becomes simply another story of human geopolitics. Other tellers choose to include the gods in the story, but only as stand-in manifestations of human psychological conditions. So, for example, when the angry Achilles is ordered by Athena to not kill Agamemnon, tellers from this school explain that Athena, the Goddess of Wisdom, isn’t “really there” speaking to Achilles. Rather, Achilles’ own “wisdom” causes him to reconsider his plan to kill Agamemnon. And Helen isn’t “actually hit” by an erotic arrow shot by Aphrodite: she’s just a teenage girl overwhelmed by horniness for a really hot guy! Finally, some storytellers opt for an approach called over-determinism. These tellers attempt to explain every event in the story through two different sorts of causation: human agency, and, deific agency. So the plague in the Greek camp is caused by 100,000 men living in close quarters without adequate sanitation facilities, but is also caused because Apollo is shooting plague arrows into the camp. I confess that this is my preferred approach. I find that it allows me to keep the story contemporary and engaging for a modern listener (by grounding it in human geopolitics), but also allows me to include the agency of the gods, at places in the plot where the story makes no sense without them. Let me know what you think. Do the gods add to, or detract from, the power of the story? Jeff RELATED IMAGES

   August 25, 2016·1h 10min
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   Number 4: EPISODE 14 “DEADLY DESTINY”

   THE STORY: (57 minutes) This episode, pivotal to the entire Trojan War Epic, features philosophy, bedroom farce, and genuine tragedy -- all in equal measure. Temptation plays the lead: Agamemnon tempts Achilles; Hera tempts Zeus; and Patroclus tempts Deadly Destiny. THE COMMENTARY: WERE ACHILLES & PATROCLUS LOVERS? (20 minutes; begins at 57:00) I dedicate this entire post-story commentary to the Achilles/Patroclus relationship: a relationship which has confounded scholars, storytellers, and listeners for the past 3500 years. The central question up for debate is whether the relationship between Achilles and Patroclus had a sexual component. I begin my conversation by stating the fact that all scholars, tellers and listeners agree on: Achilles and Patroclus were exceedingly close - best friends, dearest of companions, soul mates, brothers in arms – use what terms you will. Of that there is no doubt. And when Patroclus is killed by Hector, everybody agrees that Achilles’ response to that death is the pivotal turning point in the epic. Then I turn to a question on which scholars, tellers and listeners quite disagree. Following are the three contending theories on the Achilles/Patroclus relationship. Most Homeric and Bronze Age scholars argue that the Achilles/Patroclus relationship was asexual. They point to the text of the Iliad, which offers not a single reference or even allusion to a sexual relationship between the two men. They further point to the Iliad to show that Achilles and Patroclus clearly have heterosexual relations with women. The scholars in this camp suggest that what causes some readers to “infer” a sexual element to Achilles/Patroclus is the written language of Homer’s Iliad. By our contemporary standards (and clearly by the standards of other time periods too), the verbal communication when Achilles and Patroclus speak to, or about each other, is romantic, florid, passionate and intimate – in a way that most societies reserve exclusively for communications between lovers. But, scholars argue, many Bronze Age works are characterized by similar language and depths of passion between males, especially between male comrades in arms. In the Hebrew story of David and Jonathan (2 Samuel 1:26), David claims that the love he had for Jonathan surpassed even the love of women. It is our contemporary sensibilities, scholars argue, that erroneously grafts a sexual meaning onto David’s claim, but there is nothing in the text to support such an interpretation. But Classical Greek scholars and readers disagree. They argue that the Achilles/Patroclus relationship was pederastic. This way of seeing the Achilles/Patroclus relationship originated (or at least was popularized) during the Classical and Hellenistic Greek period (c. 480-146 BCE) when pederasty was socially accepted and possibly even commonplace amongst upper class Greeks. Pederasty involved an older man entering into a relationship with a young man in his teens. The older man served as a “mentor” to the younger man, introducing him into adult male society. The relationship lasted for a few years, until the younger man came of age, at which point the relationship would end. Both men either had, or would go on to have, wives and children. The pederastic relationship sometimes included a sexual element, in which the older man achieved sexual pleasure by rubbing his erect penis between the thighs of the younger man. Anal penetration does not appear to have been common in these relationships. Scholars who argue that Achilles and Patroclus were pederasts include: the philosopher Plato (in the Symposium); the playwrite Aeschylus (in The Myrmidons) and many other prominent Greek and later Roman historians. Replying to the objection that Achilles and Patroclus are never actually depicted in the Iliad engaged in sexual activity, these proponents argue that a pederastic relationship is clearly implied and obvious to anyone who examines the text. Finally some readers argue that the Achilles/Patroclus relationship was homosexual: that the two men were gay lovers, much in the sense that we would understand such a relationship today. In Shakespeare’s play Troilus and Cressida Achilles and Patroclus are clearly depicted as gay lovers (though the term “gay” does not belong to Shakespeare’s time). I note that while Shakespeare’s play certainly does not celebrate the homosexual relationship, that is a consequence of the political, religious and social constraints of Elizabethan society – not necessarily a reflection of Shakespeare’s personal views. But I then suggest that if one wishes to see a fully celebrated and unabashedly gay interpretation of the Achilles and Patroclus story, a reader needs to move into the 21st century. Madeline Miller’s The Song of Achilles (2011) offers just such a treatment, and does so, in my view, quite nicely. I conclude by asking (rhetorically) whether or not it “matters” that we get the Achilles/Patroclus relationship “right” in our telling of the story. And I argue that, save for academics and scholars, who need to worry about such things, the rest of us (storytellers and story listeners), are free to graft on to the Achilles/Patroclus relationship the “interpretation” that our communities, our cultures, our agendas, and our aspirations demand. But at all times, it is imperative to remember the central, uncontested fact of the story: when Patroclus is killed, Achilles loses the love of his life. And the grief that Achilles experiences in that moment of loss is a universal human experience that transcends all matters of mere sexuality. Jeff RELATED IMAGES

   August 23, 2016·1h 18min
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   Number 5: EPISODE 15 “THE WRATH OF ACHILLES”

   THE STORY (65 minutes) Homer’s Iliad opens with the storyteller’s invocation to the Muse: “The wrath of Achilles – sing it now, goddess, sing through me ….” When Achilles learns that his beloved Patroclus is dead – at the hands of Hector –Achilles “snaps”. What follows is a powerful, disturbing and truly horrifying podcast episode. THE COMMENTARY: WHAT HAPPENS TO US AFTER WE DIE? (25 minutes; begins at 1:05) This post story commentary is dedicated to Bronze Age beliefs about death and the afterlife. I explore what warlords like Hector, Achilles, Agamemnon and Odysseus would have believed about death, about funeral rites and burial, and about what was waiting for them “on the other side”. To do so I follow the psyche (soul, spirit) of a man from the moment of imminent death (when the living man gains the gift of prophesy), through the dying man’s final breath (when the psyche is exhaled through the mouth), and then on to the psyche’s journey to the entrance to Hades – the land of the dead. I provide a bit of mythological back story on Hades the deity, who rules over Hades the place. I offer a caution to my listeners raised in the Judeo- Christian tradition -- Hades the deity is not Satan, Mephistopheles, or any other form of malevolent horned demon – we need to take care to not graft onto one mythology the beliefs of another. Once at the gates of Hades, we follow the dead man’s psyche across the river (Styx or Acheron: sources vary, and we are regrettably short on empirical evidence) via the assistance of the able ferryman Charon. Our dead man’s psyche then enters the Fields of Asphodel, where it spends eternity in the company of every other human being who has ever lived. I note that the Bronze Age Greeks did not believe in any sort of post-life judgement by a god, followed by some sort of eternal reward or punishment. All psyches spend eternity on the Fields of Asphodel, a grey place of eternal blandness. I do note that some psyches (usually humans whose parent was a god) get to travel instead to a place called Elysium, which, apparently, offers a significant upgrade in post-death accommodations from those offered in Asphodel. But very, very few individuals every make it there: even the greatest of Homer’s warlords were ultimately destined to the Fields of Asphodel. I then discuss the other afterlife option: a place of eternal torment and suffering called Tartarus. But I again warn my Judeo-Christian listeners that this is not Hell (a place for people who are particularly bad or unrepentant on Earth). Rather, Tartarus is reserved as a series of personal, customized “hells”, designed by Zeus for particular individuals who personally annoyed Him. I provide examples of such individuals - Tantalus, Sisyphus and Prometheus – and describe their various customized “hells”. Finally, I discuss the Bronze Age Greek belief that a dead man’s psyche could not depart from the land of the living and travel to the land of the dead, unless the dead man’s body had been provided with the appropriate funeral rites (cremation first, followed by internment of the bones). A man mutilated and killed in battle, or killed and then mutilated, was doomed to spend eternity “trapped” in the land of the living in ghost form, wounds and all, until the appropriate funeral rites were performed. Which, I conclude, explains why the threat, or the actual deed, of desecrating corpses and refusing to allow appropriate funeral rites for those corpses, was of such deep concern to men like Hector and Patroclus. Jeff RELATED IMAGES

   August 22, 2016·1h 31min
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