
The Long Haired Achaians
We’ll begin with the very beginning, the discrimination that finally separated in the popular consciousness of the Greeks the East from the West. We’re beginning with Homer; we’re beginning with the Iliad, the first work of what can be termed a Western Literature. And while I could talk about the dramatic elements evident in the Homeric texts so utterly unlike its eastern contemporaries, I’m going to focus merely on the development of humanism. Homer’s works were always popular fiction, not the cultic practices of priests for religious performances, but being popular fiction they reflected the popular interpretation of the nature of the gods. And these gods were nothing like the god of the bible; in fact, they possessed human, that is anthropomorphic, qualities and they had a direct influence on human invents in which they seemed particularly invested. Furthermore, the warriors on the field behaved with human pathos to the events they endured. Indeed, it seemed finally that the poet found a subject in himself.