Aiskhylos — Agammemnon. The Khoros recalls how the war began, then watches Queen Klytaimnestra enter

Note: For more, please see Aiskhylos — Agamemnon.

Agamemnon

The Khoros recalls how the war began, then watches Queen Klytaimnestra enter
(lines 40-103)

by Aiskhylos (Aeschylus)

Translated by William P. Coleman

Khoros

It’s ten years since Priam’s
great adversary
Lord Menelaos and Agamemnon —
on twin thrones by the will of Zeus, twin scepters
yoked firmly by honor — raised
a force of Argive sons of Atreus
to go from this country
with a thousand ships, as armed help.

The soldiers yelped great Ares from their hearts —
as vultures do at extreme of pain for
their children stolen from their beds. They eddy
round in the heights
and row the oars of their wings,
the care they’ve given their nesting chicks
destroyed.
Highest of all, Apollo — or Pan or Zeus —
sensing their visitors’ shrill,
howling bird cries
sends an avenging Fury
to go with them.

Aiskhylos — Agammemnon. Watchman’s Prologue: Ten years of waiting and now, finally, victory so the King can return

Note: For more, please see Aiskhylos — Agamemnon.

Agamemnon

Watchman’s Prologue: Ten years of waiting and now, finally, victory so the King can return
(lines 1-39)

by Aiskhylos (Aeschylus)

Translated by William P. Coleman

Watchman

I ask this of the gods — release from pain, from
years of watching — so many sleepy years
on the Atreids’ roofs, chin on my hands, the way a dog lies;
I learned by heart the assembly of nightly stars
as they’ve brought winter and summer too to mortals,
brilliant lords, shining stars clear in the
skies — the times they set — and their rising.

Courteous, vigorous debate

Note: this was posted in 1997 to an early internet
experiment. For more of my posts, please see
The Hyperforum on Sustainability.

This post was a reply I made to a post by another member, David, but I think it stands alone.

I’m tempted not to post this particular response — because it may sound to some people superficially like the message now popularized by Senator Barack Obama — and people might thereby think I’m a partisan of his against Senator Hillary Clinton in the Democratic Primary. I wouldn’t like to sound that way, precisely because I’m dismayed at how fiercely partisan the election has become and I don’t want to add to intolerance on either side. The only two things I will say, in the interest of fairness, are (1) that I didn’t vote for Senator Obama in the primary, and (2) I will support the Democratic nominee, whoever he or she may be, in the general election against any conceivable Republican.

If you read more carefully, you’ll realize that I wrote the following in 1997, before Senator Obama was much heard of, and that my message isn’t the actually same as his. If you’re interested in history, you may recognize that I learned these ideas by reading The History of the Peloponnesian War, by Thucydides — a book about Ancient Greece that I think is very relevant to our times.

When you speak of “courteous, vigorous debate,” you make me think we may be saying much the same thing with differing emphasis.

I was trying to say that citizens need have to have enough sophistication to work for two contradictory-seeming things at the same time.

Plato and Protagoras: “. . . of things that are, how they are . . .”

How can we know what Plato really thought?

He never (almost never) spoke for himself. He wrote “dialogues” in which the only voices belong to the characters. We know what Meno, Protagoras, Theaitetos, and the others say — but what does Plato say?

. . . every thing would appear to man as it is, infinite

A post in the ongoing series Poetry in the Arts.

In The Marriage of Heaven and Hell, William Blake wrote about the “doors of perception.”

The ancient tradition that the world will be consumed in fire at the end of six thousand years is true, as I have heard from Hell.

For the cherub with his flaming sword is hereby commanded to leave his guard at tree of life, and when he does, the whole creation will be consumed, and appear infinite, and holy whereas it now appears finite & corrupt.

This will come to pass by an improvement of sensual enjoyment.

But first the notion that man has a body distinct from his soul, is to be expunged: this I shall do, by printing in the infernal method, by corrosives, which in Hell are salutary and medicinal, melting apparent surfaces away, and displaying the infinite which was hid.

If the doors of perception were cleansed every thing would appear to man as it is, infinite.

For man has closed himself up, till he sees all things thro’ narrow chinks of his cavern.

What does Blake mean when he says that if “the doors of perception were cleansed, every thing would appear to man as it is, infinite?”

Why is the world “infinite?” And if it is, what does perception have to do with it?

I’m not sure about what Blake thought, but I have my own personal theories.

Politics, the Polis, aloofness, and involvement

Parthenon, North Frieze

J. J. Pollitt’s The Art of Ancient Greece is a book that I’ve learned much from — and plan to write several entries about. I’m grateful to Pollitt.

In one place in this book, though, he makes some remarks about the relation of Greek philosophers to the political scene around them that I can’t agree with.

The Schools in the Academy and the Lyceum were private, voluntary associations, unsubsidized and unsupervised by the state. Within them political questions might often be examined and data about governmental institutions were collected, but such activities were engaged in primarily for the private satisfaction of the members of the schools, not as a service to society in general.

Socrates — running his hand through Phaedo’s hair

Plato’s Phaedo is one of the hardest dialogues for me to understand. The way some commentators present it seems uncompromisingly, patronizingly self-righteous. Yet, I think there are more humanistic ways to understand it.

Herakleitos, 1

κόσμον τόνδε, τὸν αὐτὸν ἁπάντων, οὔτε τις θεῶν οὐτε ἀνθρώπων ἐποίησεν, ἀλλ’ ἦν ἀεὶ καὶ ἔστιν καὶ ἔσται πῦρ ἀείζωον, ἁπτόμενον μέτρα καὶ ἀποσβεννύμενον μέτρα.The ordered world, common to all, was not made by a god or a man; rather, it always was — and it is and will be an ever-living fire, lighting by measures and going out by measures.

– Herakleitos of Ephesos

This is the first in a series of posts about the philosophy of Herakleitos the Ephesian — and later about other ancient Greek philosophers as well. I write them in order to work out certain ideas for myself.