Tea at Trianon: The Iliad in a Nutshell

John Wilson Croker on Marie-Antoinette

"We have followed the history of Marie Antoinette with the greatest diligence and scrupulosity. We have lived in those times. We have talked with some of her friends and some of her enemies; we have read, certainly not all, but hundreds of the libels written against her; and we have, in short, examined her life with– if we may be allowed to say so of ourselves– something of the accuracy of contemporaries, the diligence of inquirers, and the impartiality of historians, all combined; and we feel it our duty to declare, in as a solemn a manner as literature admits of, our well-matured opinion that every reproach against the morals of the queen was a gross calumny– that she was, as we have said, one of the purest of human beings."

~from History of the Guillotine by John Wilson Croker, 1844

Edmund Burke on Marie-Antoinette

"It is now sixteen or seventeen years since I saw the queen of France, then dauphiness, at Versailles; and surely there never lighted on this orb, which she hardly seemed to touch, a more delightful vision. I saw her just above the horizon, decorating and cheering the elevated sphere she had just begun to move in, glittering like a morning star full of life and splendor and joy. Oh, what a revolution....Little did I dream that I should have lived to see such disasters fall upon her, in a nation of gallant men, in a nation of men of honor and of cavaliers! I thought ten thousand swords must have leaped from their scabbards, to avenge even a look which threatened her with insult. But the age of chivalry is gone; that of sophisters, economists, and calculators has succeeded...."

~Edmund Burke, October 1790

Sunday, April 4, 2021

The Iliad in a Nutshell

From Crisis:

The theology that underpins Homer’s epic is of course pagan. It is intriguing, however, that Homer’s polytheism seems to be drifting in a monotheistic direction. The power of Zeus does not merely exceed the power of all the other gods, taken individually, it exceeds the power of all the other gods combined. When he makes this claim to effective omnipotence to the assembly of gods, none contradicts him. This does not stop the gods conspiring against Zeus’ will but, irrespective of such ultimately futile efforts, it is his will and not theirs which comes to pass. There are even hints of Zeus’ omniscience when he informs Hera, after she had beguiled him to sleep in the hope of circumventing his will, of all that will happen in the future of the war, his prophetic words becoming reality as the story unfolds. If Zeus knows the future as fact, his knowledge is not constrained by time but transcends it.
Homer waxes metaphorical in the penultimate book of the epic, revealing his overarching moral in the events surrounding the disputed outcome of the chariot race, the resolution of which displays a magnanimity of spirit sorely lacking in the actions of the war. The disputes arising over the alleged immoral actions during the race are analogous with the immoral actions of the key characters in the epic as a whole, the chariot race serving metaphorically as a microcosmic representation of the war itself. The message is clear enough. If Paris, Helen, Agamemnon, Achilles, and others had displayed the same honest and magnanimous spirit as that displayed in the resolution of the disputes after the race, the war could have been avoided and the injustices resolved without the hatred and the bloodshed. (Read more.)