"World literature"

Invention of the term "Weltliteratur" is credited to my kinsman, Johann Wolfgang von Goethe (1749-1832, portrait left). Prolific, always hunting inspiration for his own writing, Goethe admired works that attract readers far beyond the locale where they happen to be written. He had lived through the climax of the age of discovery, and in the shrinking world of his old age, a global audience for the first time seemed within reach. Great books soon would travel everywhere, he imagined.

Goethe was right in part. The world today is awash in books, but not all of them are great. If the Tower of Babel remains unfinished, it is not for lack of babbling. (Image right: Tower of Babel, Genesis 11, portrayed by Bruegel. ) "Of making many books there is no end" (Ecclesiastes 12:12).

So which books are the great ones? What belongs on everybody's standard world reading list? What readings, if any, should be taught in schools everywhere, and what should everybody learn about them? Because there is no agreement on these basic questions, world literature anthologies are diversity-driven, and thick beyond the ability of any course to cover even a representative sample of their contents.

literature, culture and multiculturalism

What is selected for us to read is important because texts change minds. Like other arts, literature promotes like-mindedness, or imprinting of common neural memory on receptive brains. As one neuroscientist puts it, "The brain’s structure becomes the information it receives" (Ratley 54). Memory grows in synaptic strength especially as a result of repeated reading, reciting or rehearing a fixed text, such as a hymn, song, creed, scripture, pledge or ad.

Repetition to others makes memory infectious. When a neural imprint is distributed to a sufficiently large group of host brains, it can be noticed in the world as a culture, and it can compete against other cultures for additional members. Thus it is that texts inspire Muslims vs. Jews, Taoists vs. Confucians, Hindus vs. Buddhists, Platonists vs. Aristotelians, royalists vs. roundheads, creationists vs. Darwinians, Coke vs. Pepsi addicts, etc. and vice versa.

So the great books of world literature might be defined objectively as the ones with the greatest headcount--those that have been imprinted in the greatest numbers of brains. Yet the enchantment of any book fails after its culture is destroyed and superseded by other cultures. A brain deeply imprinted by Genesis, or the Qur'an, or Darwin, may be confused when confronted by once-influential but now obscure accounts of creation like the ancient Babylonian Enuma Elish or the early Greek Generations of the Gods. With a clear translation and some exertion in reading, however, any of us can gain general understanding of any text that others have learned at any time, in any place. All of us have capacity to fit different readings into the context of existing imprints in our minds. This brain-building from diverse texts is the essence of multicultural education.

Above: US Army forces south of Baghdad, Iraq, in a place anciently known as Ur of the Chaldees in Babylon. Do the troops know where they are? They have entered the ziggurat (cir. 2100 BCE) where priests went up to heaven to consult Marduk and other celestial gods about preservation of the world. Photo © 2005 U.S. Army.  

Early writing from Babylon:
 Enuma Elish

It has been known for a long time that literature promotes like-mindedness. It dawned early that literature is useful to control populations, as seen in Hammurabi's Law Code (cir. 1792-1750 BCE) from the City of Babylon (in Mesopotamia or modern Iraq, home of Marduk in the neo-Babylonian creation story). Hammurabi’s code imprints in its readers' understandings that dams will protect against flooding, that aristocrats will be advantaged over lower classes, that slaves will be denied freedom, and that wives will be restrained from extramarital sex. (Samples of this remarkable text are shown below in note 4.)

Hammurabi's code was inscribed in cuneiform, the world's oldest  surviving form of letter writing. "Cuneiform" technology was in use by the Sumerians in Mesopotamia by about 3400 BCE, though the word derives from the much later Latin word "cuneus," meaning wedge. Cuneiform writing was stamped with a wedge in wet clay bricks, which then were exposed to the sun god who baked them. Resulting law tablets thus were god-made and full of light, yet also heavy and easily breakable, as Moses demonstrates by shattering the first copy of the ten commandments (in Exodus 24:12 ff.). 

Cuneiform holds up very well when buried in an arid desert, but if any water goddess finds it, she muddies up the wedge marks and soon melts them down into primal ooze, where their power to impress brains is lost forever. If cuneiform writing anciently existed in flooded or wet parts of the world, we would be unlikely to have any remaining samples of it today. For this reason, it can be questioned whether Mesopotamians invented writing, or whether they first developed this form of writing, as school texts nowadays so regularly state. Damrosch (A59) for instance says that the Babylonians had writing for 1,000 years before the Jews and Greeks. This is possible, but unlikely, as technological secrets are hard to keep. All we know for sure is that there are few water goddesses in Mesopotamia, compared with much of the rest of the world, and the planet's oldest known literature has been found buried there in the dry sands.

Because our records of the ancient world are so fragmentary, we seldom can prove when or where or by whom any surviving ancient text was composed. Enuma Elish came to light in the 19th century when British archaeologists dug up the demolished palace library of Ashurbanipal, an Assyrian king of the 7th century BCE--but how much earlier than Ashurbanipal, and where and by whom was Enuma Elish composed? There is little evidence, but historians often theorize that the story must go back some five or eight centuries before Ashurbanipal to the old Babylonian Empire and a great Ziggurat temple that once must have stood in the capital. That would have been Marduk's house, where his story seems likely to have originated.

A few scholars, however, suggest that the story is very much older, that the generations of the gods in Enuma Elish represent the precession of the equinoxes, the 26,000-year cycle of earth's unnerving wobble on its axis. According to this theory, as one constellation in the heavens drives out another in the slow cycle of precession, so in Enuma Elish and other ancient literary descriptions of the skies new gods succeed older gods. Some support for this theory is found in the name changes of the ancient gods of various Eurasian cultures at approximately 2160-year intervals. (Twelve gods or heavenly signs, each reigning for an average of 2160 years, will make one complete rotation of 26,000 years.)
 

Prior to 6480 BCE (spring equinox in Cancer):
Babylonian gods: Apsu/Tiamat
Greek god (from Hesiod): Chaos
Phoenician/Canaanite god: Eliun

Prior to 4320 BCE (spring equinox in Gemini)
Babylonian god: Anshar/Kishar, then Anu
Greek gods (Hesiod): Uranos/Gaia
Phoenician/Canaanite gods: Sky/Earth

Prior to 2160 BCE (spring equinox in Taurus)
Babylonian god: Ea (Enki),
Greek god (Hesiod): Kronos
Phoenician/Canaanite god: El
Hebrew god: Elohim

After 2160 to 0 BCE (spring equinox in Aries)
Babylonian god: Enlil,
Neo-Babylonian Marduk
Greek god (Hesiod): Zeus
Phoenician/Canaanite god: Baal
Hebrew god: Yahweh
(bears son Jesus for next age?)
the bow and the scales are dominant signs

Over many thousands of years, scores of generations of astronomers may have recorded the slow apparent movement of the stars through the precession. But maybe not. The Babylonians invented the cycles of six: 12 months in the year, 24 hours in the day, 60 minutes in an hour. With their expertise in time and rotation, they probably would have been able to roll back the heavens to imagine what stars must have ruled the sky in the distant past, prior to any recorded time. Enuma Elish and other Babylonian stories could have come about as they storied those gods that formerly must have been in charge of things and how it could have happened that those old gods fell from their high places. Astronomers before the time of Marduk may have observed and written about Ea, whose stars were present in the cuneiform age, but they also may have projected back to an imagined age of Anu, and an even older time of Apsu, when there were no cuneiform records, either because cuneiform had not been invented or because the tablets had washed out.

So how old is Enuma Elish? Was it performed in public to give it broad cultural effect and, if so, when and where? These questions might seem antiquarian, but the answer still matters culturally to some extent since it affects the interpretation and understanding of the Hebrew Bible's Book of Genesis which is similarly difficult to date and to place in social context. The creation stories in Enuma Elish and Genesis are related. That one borrowed from the other is evident from comparing the two accounts. For instance, where Marduk divides the halves of watery Tiamat to separate the waters above the earth from the waters below, Elohim (god of Genesis) divides tehom, Hebrew word for "the depths." [Other parallels are indicated in note 5 below.]

For many scholars, the parallels are strong evidence that Genesis was written or revised after 587 BCE, when the conquered Jews of Jerusalem were taken as captives to Babylon.  In this interpretation, the Tower of Babel in Genesis 11 is an image of the Ziggurat of Marduk which King Nebuchadnezzar II of Babylon (604-562 BCE) was constructing when he invaded Palestine and destroyed the Temple of Solomon in Jerusalem in 587 BCE. Archaeologists have found the inscription of this Ziggurat's corner stone (cir 600 BCE):

I am Nebuchadnezzar, King of Babylon. I have paved the Babel Street with slabs from Shadu for the Procession of the great God Marduk.

Did the captive Jews in Babylon witness Marduk's procession on the Babel Street? Did they hear Enuma Elish being recited and enacted in a strange language around the great Ziggurat while it was still under construction? Did they respond by writing a counter-cultural story that showed their god Elohim to be mightier than Marduk? 

The cult of Marduk promoted by Enuma Elish also has current cultural significance outside of the world of Biblical scholarship. Allah has driven Marduk from the sky today, but some contemporary Mesopotamians still reflect with pride on the accomplishments of their neo-Babylonian ancestors under Nebuchadnezzar II, including his destruction of Jerusalem and his exile of the Jewish people from the lands that they claimed Yahweh had given them. The great neo-Babylonian king was a hero to the late Saddam Hussein of Iraq whose dream was to regain the Babylonian Empire and take Israel, Persia and other local competitors off the map once again.

Above: engraving of the great king Nebuchadnezzar II as a terrified animal  (1795, illustrating Daniel 4.33) by Christian mystic William Blake of London. This work is now in the British Museum, along with many ancient cultural artifacts taken from Mesopotamia during the time of its occupation by the British Empire. The recent Iraq War continued the long-standing culture conflict when the Anglo-American invasion resulted in the destruction of many of the antiquities of the Baghdad Museum.

Early Greek Writing:
sheep, goat and cattle skins

Our English word "literature" comes from Old French lettre, which comes from Latin littera, which ultimately comes from Greek diphtherā, meaning hide, leather, or writing surface. This etymology and other evidence indicate that our English literary heritage began with skins.  Archaeologists have not yet found any physical records of Greek writing prior to ceramics painted in about 700 BCE, but skins are not clay, and the Greek world was wet. Writing almost certainly was known to Greeks since at least the time of the Trojan War (cir. 1200 BCE). Some scholars claim that the detailed stories of that war which are preserved in the texts of Homer must have been memorized in about 1200 (before writing) and repeated orally until about 700 (when writing came in), but that theory is improbable. (Homer's Iliad in fact contains a reference to writing: see below in note 6.)

The origin of Greek writing is described by the ancient Greek historian Herodotus (484 - cir 425 BCE). Noting that the Greeks at first wrote on animal skins, Herodotus reports that he personally saw the old style letters in a temple in Thebes, Greece (see The Histories 5.58.1):

Phoenicians who came with Cadmus to Boeotia [central Greek mainland, the home of Hesiod] brought with them, among many other kinds of learning, the alphabet, which in my opinion had not been known earlier to Greek people. The sound and the shape of the letters were changed as time went on. Most of the Greeks living near these Phoenicians were Ionians [Greek speakers living by the coast and on the islands of the Aegean Sea], and after the Phoenicians taught them the letters, the Ionians used them with a few new changes of form. From ancient times they called the characters "Phoenician" since the Phoenicians had brought them into Greece. The Ionians also called sheets of papyrus "skins," since long ago they used the skins of sheep and goats due to the lack of papyrus. Even today many foreigners write on such skins.

[5.59.1] I have seen Cadmean writing in the temple of Apollo at Thebes in Boeotia. It is engraved on certain tripods. The characters look for the most part like Ionian letters.

As Herodotus saw, the Greek alphabet was derived from Phoenician. Comparison makes this borrowing clear:

So who was this Phoenician letter-giver Cadmus? His name, in Greek, simply means "from the east." His language was Phoenician, and Phoenicia (meaning the land of Phoenix, the place of sunrise from the Greek point of view) stood at the eastern end of the Mediterranean Sea, in the region of modern Israel, Lebanon and Syria.

No ancient Phoenician literature survives from that area. On the Greek mainland, however, according to the lore of legend, Cadmus founded the Phoenician colony of Thebes, tragic Thebes that would become home to Oedipus (portrayed right) and Antigone, doomed Thebes that would be destroyed by the Argives at almost the same time as the sack of Troy. It appears that we have these famous old Theban legends today only because some Theban literature survived the fall of the city, and it was copied or rewritten by later Greek writers, fragments of whose writings still remain today for us to read.

Phoenicians were prominent among those whom the ancient Hebrew scriptures call "Canaanites." Some of their descendants today are called Palestinians.  No ancient Phoenician literature remains for us to read, but are there traces of it to be detected in early Greek texts? In Homer's Iliad, Achilles' teacher at Troy is an old eastern exile named Phoenix. Could this Phoenician have been the original author of the Trojan War story, The Iliad by Phoenix? The claim is often made that "western literature" begins with Homer, but were Homer's poems based on Phoenician sources? Ancient literary history is full of such questions.

The early Greeks must have had writing, though the physical remains have disappeared. From later references, we infer that they had satiric literature written on smelly goatskins, pastoral literature on sheepskins, and heroic literature on cattle hides. All the old skins vanished as water goddesses rotted them or sun gods baked them to dust, so there had to have been early Greek traditions of copying the old stories, scribal traditions perhaps similar to the monastic preservation of old manuscripts on parchment in medieval Europe. In this transmission by frequent copying, decades-old texts are likely to have been modernized or garbled by scribes who disliked or misunderstood the meanings of old words. Given the adverse physical conditions for written records in Greece, and later plunderings of Greece by Romans and other enemies, the survival of early Greek literature in any form today is a wonder.

Above: rendering based on an archaic Greek statuette of Zeus. Altars of Zeus were placed on mountain tops so that, in the event of an eruption, the god would bring his lightning bolts to destroy the rising "titan."  Extremely intense lightning-like flashes and sonic booms can accompany the clouds of dust and ash above an active volcano.  The impression is that a tremendous thunder storm is fighting to extinguish the eruption. In Greek mythology many-armed gods assisted Zeus against the infernal enemies by pouring out rocks to bury them as securely deep as possible.
 

Relax with music
while the earth burns, boils and shakes!

Why do people, even some seemingly sensible ones, expose their brains to imprinting by literature? An obvious answer lies in cultural conformity, the common desire to think as others think, or follow the herd, but that's not the whole answer. Literature attracts host brains with the prospect of escape, relaxation, mental relief. It offers a way out, though the sky may be falling or earth erupting (and the Ionian region is among the most active in the world for volcanism). The pastoral Theogony or Generations of the Gods is a case in point, addressing huge geophysical disasters from the point of view of a simple country swain raising sheep on the slopes of potentially dangerous Mount Helicon in rural Boeotia. (Right: Greek good shepherd cir. 235 AD.)

As a narrator, Hesiod is pleasant, sometimes crude or humorous; his tales wondrous or fanciful and tall. A naive shepherd may not be able to comprehend the problem of volcanism, but at least he can make light of it. Atop Helicon, where if prayers come true Zeus will put down any future volcanic eruption, there is beside the god's altar a place of amusement. There, whether or not they tell the truth, the lovely Muses make Hesiod and other listeners forget all heaviness and sorrows.  The music provides a soothing illusion that the dangerous powers within the earth are more or less under control of Zeus and the rest of the Olympian gods, who are just like everybody else we know--moody, vain, vengeful, lusting, silly, and yet well-meaning, sometimes remorseful, frequently caring and approachable. These erratic but often friendly Olympians have bound the vicious titans deep underground, so that once-terrifying volcanoes seem likely to remain inactive, especially if praise is lavished on the gods for their helpful deeds.

Literature and preservation of the World:
the third purpose of literature

There's at least one further purpose of literature, beyond its cultural and entertainment purposes. It can stimulate creativity. A frightening problem in astronomy is solved imaginatively with the Marduk-concept, a cosmological warrior that can keep order in the sky, no matter what disruptions may arise up there. A terrifying problem in earth science is resolved similarly, with Zeus, a thrower of lightning bolts capable of holding the surface of earth together when it is being forced apart by gigantic forces attempting to emerge from beneath.

Obviously these literary creations are not working solutions, but nevertheless they may be prototypes. Science fiction has often imagined devices that later were produced by inspired inventors (cell phones from Star Trek, for example, or the atom bomb from H.G Wells). To keep the earth habitable in spite of supermassive attacks from above and below, we could use Marduk and Zeus. They could in fact save the world, if anyone is ingenious enough to realize them. Below: Marduk battles Tiamat.

The anxieties of ancient peoples often led to religious superstitions, such as Marduk-worship and Zeus-worship. Yet they also created a Ziggurat devoted to astronomy in Babylon and a mountain lookout devoted to volcano watch on Helicon. Literature was associated not only with the temples but also with hopeful efforts to control the environment.

Above: the sleeping titan, Mount Helicon, in Boeotia, central Greece.
 Do you see him? Let's hope he stays asleep!

Suggested journal ideas

and further readings

1. How it all began: the readings for this lesson tell how our world began and developed. How are these stories similar to and different from a story that you might tell about the origin and early phases of the world?

2. Identity: if literature promotes like-mindedness, then you and I are shaped by the literature we have experienced. What literature has been most influential in your life? How has it influenced your identity? How are you different because of it?

3. Course texts: Readings typically included in world literature courses may be texts that have begotten or provoked other texts (many call these "classics"), or they may possess outstanding merit of some kind in the teacher's opinion ("masterpieces"), or they may provide special insight into local affairs ("windows on the world"). In any case, there are far too many world class books to be sampled in any given course or set of courses. The standard multicultural world literature textbooks in use in America today are not just Great Books. They are Giant Books: 3,000 pages in the "condensed" versions, and at least twice that many pages in the six-volume standard editions! They are wonderful reads if you have a year or two to devote to them.

Three 3-volume sets currently available in the USA include:

• Bedford Anthology of World Literature. ed. Paul Davis, et al. Boston: Bedford/St.Martin's, 2004

• Longman Anthology of World Literature. ed. David Damrosch. New York: Pearson/Longman, 2nd ed. 2008

• Norton Anthology of World Literature. 2nd edition. ed. Sarah Lawall. New York: W.W. Norton 2002

For a "condensed" textbook see The Longman Anthology of World Literature, Compact Edition. ed. David Damrosch et al. New York: Pearson/Longman 2007.

4. Hammurabi's Code (a selection translated by L. W. King (1915):  Anu and Bel named me, Hammurabi, the exalted prince, who feared God, to bring about the rule of righteousness in the land, to destroy the wicked and the evil-doers; so that the strong should not harm the weak; so that I should rule over the black-headed people like Shamash, and enlighten the land, to further the well-being of mankind. . . .

15. If any one take a male or female slave of the court, or a male or female slave of a freed man, outside the city gates [to escape], he shall be put to death.

16. If any one receive into his house a runaway male or female slave of the court, or of a freedman, and does not bring it out at the public proclamation of the [police], the master of the house shall be put to death. . .

53. If any one be too lazy to keep his dam in proper condition, and does not so keep it; if then the dam break and all the fields be flooded, then shall he in whose dam the break occurred be sold for money, and the money shall replace the [grain] which he has caused to be ruined.

54. If he be not able to replace the [grain], then he and his possessions shall be divided among the farmers whose corn he has flooded. . .

108. If a [female barkeeper] does not accept [grain] according to gross weight in payment of drink, but takes money, and the price of the drink is less than that of the corn, she shall be convicted and thrown into the water [This is a form of trial by ordeal. It was believed that the Euphrates River would act as judge of people accused of various crimes. If, when thrown into the river, the accused floated, she was considered innocent; but if she sank, the river had found her guilty. For a Hebrew parallel, see Numbers 5:11 31.]

109. If conspirators meet in the house of a [female barkeeper], and these conspirators are not captured and delivered to the court, she shall be put to death.

110. If a "sister of a god" [nun] opens a tavern, or enters a tavern to drink, then shall this woman be burned to death. . .

129. If a man's wife be surprised [having intercourse] with another man, both shall be tied and thrown into the water, but the husband may pardon his wife and the king his slaves.

130. If a man violates the wife (betrothed or child-wife) of another man, who has never known a man, and still lives in her father's house, and sleeps with her and is surprised [caught], this man shall be put to death, but the wife is blameless.

131. If a man bring a charge against his wife, but she is not surprised with another man, she must take an oath, and then she may return to her house.

132: If the "finger is pointed" at a man's wife about another man, but she is not caught sleeping with the other man, she shall jump in the river [to prove her innocence] for the sake of her husband

133. If a man wishes to separate from his wife who has borne him no children, he shall give her the amount of her purchase money and the dowry which she brought from her father's house, and let her go. . .

141. If a man's wife, who lives in his house, wishes to leave it, plunges into debt [to go into business], tries to ruin her house, neglects her husband, and is judicially convicted: if her husband offer her release, she may go on her way, and he gives her nothing as a gift of release. If her husband does not wish to release her, and if he take another wife, she shall remain as servant in her husband's house.

142. If a woman quarrel with her husband, and say: "You are not congenial to me," the reasons for her prejudice must be presented. If she is guiltless, and there is no fault on her part, but he leaves and neglects her, then no guilt attaches to this woman, and she shall take her dowry and go back to her father's house. [The right of women to initiate divorce proceedings is extremely rare in ancient civilizations.]

143. If she is not innocent, but leaves her husband, and ruins her house, neglecting her husband, this woman shall be cast into the water. . .

195. If a son strike his father, his hands shall be taken off. [Hebrew law prescribed the death penalty for such an act (Exodus 21:15) and extended its scope to protect mothers.]

196. If a nobleman puts out the eye of another nobleman, his eye shall be put out.

197. If he break another [noble-]man's bone, his bone shall be broken.

198. If he put out the eye of a [commoner], or break the bone of a [commoner], he shall pay one [silver] mina.

199. If he put out the eye of a man's slave, or break the bone of a man's slave, he shall pay one-half of its value.

200. If a man knock out the teeth of his equal, his teeth shall be knocked out.

201: If he knock out the teeth of a [commoner], he shall pay one-third of a [silver] mina. . .

In future time, through all coming generations, let the king, who may be in the land, observe the words of righteousness which I have written on my monument; let him not alter the law of the land which I have given, the edicts which I have enacted; my monument let him not mar. If such a ruler have wisdom, and be able to keep his land in order, he shall observe the words which I have written in this inscription; the rule, statute, and law of the land which I have given; the decisions which I have made will this inscription show him; let him rule his subjects accordingly, speak justice to them, give right decisions, root out the miscreants and criminals from this land, and grant prosperity to his subjects.

Hammurabi, the king of righteousness, on whom Shamash has conferred right (or law) am I. My words are well considered; my deeds are not equaled; to bring low those that were high; to humble the proud, to expel insolence.

5. Enuma Elish and Genesis. Scholars have noted that the six days of creation in Genesis generally parallel the six generations of gods in the Enuma Elish. The type of god that is created in Enuma Elish (e.g., a god of land) generally compares to what is created or happens on the corresponding day in Genesis (i.e. the waters are gathered together to expose dry land).

• Day 1. Apsu and Tiamat (1st generation gods) are waters above and below. On Day 1 in Genesis 1:1-2, darkness covers the face of the deep (the watery chaos, tehowm) while a wind from Elohim sweeps over the face of the waters. Elohim has the upper position of Apsu but is alone.

• Anshar and Kishar (3rd generation gods) are sky above the horizon and sky below it. On the second day in Gen 1:6-7, God separates the waters from the waters, the metaphor being that the heavens are a great sea, in the middle of which a bubble is being made for the earth and sky overhead. Elohim's slicing the waters from the waters also parallels Marduk slicing Tiamat (Tehowm in Genesis).

• Lahmu and Lahumu (2nd generation) are Mr. and Mrs. Mud, representing the river silt from which life eventually will grow. On Day 3 in Genesis 1:9-10, Elohim turns attention to earth and separates dry land from the seas. 

• Anu (4th generation god) is a sky god who takes the place of his father.  In Day 4, Genesis 1:16, Elohim sets out the sun and moon and stars.

• Ea (5th generation god) is the god of all things of the Earth and also of magical incantations. When he speaks things are made, much as Elohim creates things by speaking. In Day 5 of Genesis,  Elohim creates the animals.

• Marduk (6th generation god) makes man as a slave so the gods can rest. On day 6 in Genesis, 1:26, Elohim makes humankind in his image, and on Day 7 he rests from his work. 

Further parallels with Genesis are found in other very early Mesopotamian literature. The account of the Flood in tablet 11 of the Babylonian Epic or Gilgamesh (pages A122-A127 in Damrosch) is very similar to the Noah story of Genesis 6-9.

6. Homer's story of Bellerophon and the baneful letters, composed sometime between 1200 BCE and 700 BCE, is one of the earliest surviving references to writing . . .  In this story, writing on wax tablets serves as a secret code that is used to control those who cannot read. Homer's moral is unsurpassed on two counts: (1) if you don't read, it could kill you; (2) if you do read, don't kill a stranger because of what it says. Left: Homer is unusual among ancients in skepticism, a quality he bequeathed to later Greeks.

THE ILIAD of Homer

translated by Samuel Butler,
revised by Timothy Power and Gregory Nagy

from SCROLL 6

[149] There is a city in the heart of Argos [southern Greece], pasture land of horses, called Ephyra, where Sisyphus once lived, who was the craftiest of all humankind. He was the son of Aeolus [god of winds], and he had a son named Glaukos, who was father to Bellerophon, whom heaven endowed with the most surpassing comeliness and beauty. But Proetus devised Bellerophon's ruin, and being more powerful, drove him from the district of the Argives, over which Zeus had made him ruler. For Antaea, wife of Proetus, lusted after Bellerophon, and she would have had him lie with her in secret; but Bellerophon was an honorable man and refused her, so she told lies about him to Proetus.

‘Proetus,’ she said, ‘kill Bellerophon or let me die! He would have had conjoined with me against my will!’

The king was angered, but shrank from killing, so he sent Bellerophon to Lycia bearing baneful signs [sêmata], written inside a covered tablet and containing much ill against the bearer. To have the man killed, he directed Bellerophon to show these signs to his father-in-law in Lycia. So Bellerophon set out, and the gods conveyed him safely.

[172] He reached the river Xanthos in Lycia. The king received him with all goodwill, feasted him nine days, and killed nine heifers in his honor, but when rosy-fingered morning appeared upon the tenth day, he questioned him and desired to see the written signs [sêmata] from his son-in-law Proetus. When he had received the wicked written signs [sêmata] he first commanded Bellerophon to kill that savage monster, the Chimaera, who was not a human being, but a goddess, for she had the head of a lion and the tail of a serpent, while her body was that of a goat, and she breathed forth flames of fire; but Bellerophon slew her, for he was guided by signs from heaven. He next fought the far-famed Solymoi, and this, he said, was the hardest of all his battles. [186] Thirdly, he killed the Amazons, women who were the peers of fighting men, and as he was returning from thence the king devised yet another plan for his destruction; he picked the bravest warriors in all Lycia, and placed them in ambush, but not a man ever came back, for Bellerophon killed every one of them.

Then the king knew that this must be the valiant offspring of a god, so he kept him in Lycia, gave him his daughter in marriage, and made him of equal honor in the kingdom with himself; and the Lycians gave him a piece of land, the best in all the country, fair with vineyards and tilled fields, to have and to hold.

7. The thunderbird and the whale. A huge earthquake along the Cascade fault measuring .9 on the Richter scale recently has been postulated as the cause of the giant tsunami that devastated the American northwest coast and that also struck Japan on January 26, 1700. Quilleute, Hoh and other native Americans tribes from Alaska to Oregon appear to have described this catastrophe in various stories of the thunderbird and whale. 

Tens of millions of Americans continue to live in the Cascade disaster area today, despite the thunderbird warnings AND despite the new scientific explanation of the region's unstable geology. Ancient and modern stories say it is only a matter of time before Microsoft and the rest of Seattle is destroyed. That could be the end of our web course, folks! Is anybody paying attention to the stories old or new? If not, then what has happened to the classic power of literature to create like-mindedness?

8. Clay and Skin. On this page I've discussed a few aspects of clay and  skin as writing materials. What writing materials are we using today, and how do they compare? Does it matter whether or not our literature will be read by anybody 3,000 years from now?

Instructor: gutchess@englishare.net 
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