User:Aouligian/sandbox

Gods[edit | edit source]
In the literary Trojan War of the Iliad, the Olympian gods, goddesses, and minor deities fight and play great roles in human warfare. Unlike practical Greek religious observance, Homer's portrayals of them suited his narrative purpose, being very different from the polytheistic ideals Greek society used. To wit, the Classical-era historian Herodotus says that Homer, and his contemporary, the poet Hesiod, were the first artists to name and describe their appearance and characters.

In Greek Gods Human Lives: What We Can Learn From Myths, Mary Lefkowitz discusses the relevance of divine action in the Iliad, attempting to answer the question of whether or not divine intervention is a discrete occurrence (for its own sake), or if such godly behaviors are mere human character metaphors. The intellectual interest of Classic-era authors, such as Thucydides and Plato, was limited to their utility as "a way of talking about human life rather than a description or a truth", because, if the gods remain religious figures, rather than human metaphors, their "existence"—without the foundation of either dogma or a bible of faiths—then allowed Greek culture the intellectual breadth and freedom to conjure gods fitting any religious function they required as a people.

In The Origin of Consciousness in the Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind, psychologist Julian Jaynes uses the Iliad as a major supporting evidence for his theory of Bicameralism, which posits that until about the time described in the Iliad, humans had a much different mentality than present day humans, essentially lacking in what we call consciousness. He suggests that humans heard and obeyed commands from what they identified as gods, until the change in human mentality that incorporated the motivating force into the conscious self. He points out that almost every action in the Iliad is directed, caused, or influenced by a god, and that earlier translations show an astonishing lack of words suggesting thought, planning, or introspection. Those that do appear, he argues, are misinterpretations made by translators imposing a modern mentality on the characters.

Divine Intervention

-show examples of divine intervention

-also show different reasons behind divine intervention, show my reasons as well as opposing reasons to why they may intervene

-Why these gods supported the side that they did
 * The major deities:
 * Zeus (Neutral)
 * Hera (Achaeans)
 * Artemis (Trojans)
 * Apollo (Trojans)
 * Hades (Neutral)
 * Aphrodite (Trojans)
 * Ares (Achaeans, then Trojans)
 * Athena (Achaeans)
 * Hermes (Neutral/Achaeans)
 * Poseidon (Achaeans)
 * Hephaestus (Achaeans)
 * The minor deities:
 * Eris (Trojans)
 * Iris (Neutral)
 * Thetis (Achaeans)
 * Leto (Trojans)
 * Proteus (Achaeans)
 * Scamander (Trojans)
 * Phobos (Trojans)
 * Deimos (Trojans)
 * Hypnos (Achaeans)

Presentation: 5 min introduce topic, which wikipedia page ur editing, what goals were, what challenges were, how u met goals, and how u dealt with challenges, how do u feel about the goals, what was missing that u added,