/lit/ - Literature

[Anonymous No.11437112]

Wait a second...were the Greeks and Romans the baddies? Who were the goodies? The barbarians???

[Anonymous No.11437123]

>>11437112
Homer is not amoral, it just doesn't have feeble woman 'morality'

[Anonymous No.11437140]

>>11437123
this. some balding faggot with glasses could never understand the ancient ethos.

[Anonymous No.11437142]

Judging the ancients by our standards is bad
Romanticizing the ancients is bad
Using the ancients to bolster a modern cause is probably bad

Both the communists and the nationalists are guilty here.

[Anonymous No.11437144]

>>11437142
>Romanticizing the ancients is bad
durrrrr

[Anonymous No.11437153]

yes, the Celts had a much more evolved and noble culture but romans and greeks suffered from a small dick complex. most of Greek philosophy were stolen from Celts which give us poor glimpses in to the knowledge the druids possessed supposedly the most wise men in the world at the time and perhaps ever, howevver they viewed writing as degenerate and never recorded their knowledge. Pythagoras got theory of the immortal soul from a gaulic slave

[Anonymous No.11437160]

>>11437140
what was the 'ancient ethos'?
what is your favorite line or passage from the iliad?

[Anonymous No.11437162]

>>11437144

We should seek models in ancient individuals.
Ancient states and institutions, on the other hand, deserve a lot of ambivalence.

[Anonymous No.11437178]

How is homer amoral? What the fuck?

[Anonymous No.11437194]

>>11437142
>Judging the ancients by our standards is bad

Stop being a postmodern cultural relativist

[Anonymous No.11437195]

Thucydides, Plato and Homer all show the Greeks (the west) being greater than the barbarians though.
Plato may have picked apart Athenian institutions, but his ideal state was closer to Sparta than Sardis.

[Anonymous No.11437212]

>>11437112
What a brainlet. A great society always criticizes itself. Hell, that's the only way a society improves. I'd be more suspicious of any society which DOESN'T criticize itself.

[Anonymous No.11437223]

>>11437112
its like saying the writer of Batman is amoral because there are bad guys that do bad things in it

[Anonymous No.11437231]

>>11437195
How exactly does Homer show the Greeks as superior to “the barbarians”? Also, viewing Ancient Greece as part of “the West” is obviously anachronistic, considering that it had more in common with, for example, the Levant or Persia than with Scandinavia at that time.

[Anonymous No.11437242]

>>11437160
>what is your favorite line or passage from the iliad?
sorry, i don't have my commonplace book with me.

>what was the 'ancient ethos'?
the opposite of a meme ideology, so you can't exactly condense it down into a few words. my best effort: harmony with reality.

[Anonymous No.11437254]

>>11437112
whoever that guy is in your pic, he's a virtue signaling contrarian-for-(You)s brainlet.

for all the suffering the great ideas of the west have caused, the Greeks were the first to criticize them and try to make something better. and to answer your question there are no good guys in politics.

[Anonymous No.11437257]

>>11437231
brainlet post. how could anyone type something like this up in earnest.

[Anonymous No.11437262]

>>11437242
>my best effort: harmony with reality

*cringe*

[Anonymous No.11437267]

>>11437153
based

[Anonymous No.11437271]

>>11437257
Not an argument

[Anonymous No.11437275]

>>11437242
where do you see this principle of harmony with reality [i read 'nature'] in Thucydides? or Sophocles? or Euripides? or Tacitus? or anyone but the Stoics?

[Anonymous No.11437295]

>>11437231
He doesn't outright call them barbarian but you can see his attitude to anyone not Greek in the Odyssey. Odysseus runs into the Cyclops, the laestrygonians (man eating giants) and lotus-eaters, and you can easily see how they are portrayed.

Also, who is talking about Scandinavia? The classic struggle between west and east has always been Greece/Rome vs Persia, Carriage, etc.

[Anonymous No.11437301]

>>11437112
The Trojans

[Anonymous No.11437304]

>>11437123
^^^WHEN THE FIRST POST IS ALSO THE BEST POTS^^^^

[Anonymous No.11437344]

>>11437275
i don't mean harmony with nature, that's newage retardation. i mean practical wisdom, with room for authentic human feeling.

why bring up Thucydides when we're talking about Homer? also the stoics are gay.

>>11437295
>you can see his attitude to anyone not Greek in the Odyssey. Odysseus runs into the Cyclops
wow, great example. how dare homer dehumanize non-humans.

[Anonymous No.11437371]

Jesús Christ this thread is full of retarded larpers

[Anonymous No.11437419]

>>11437112
Jesus Christ, this might be the single worst fucking take I've seen of 'the ancients by ancients' discourse on the internet, and I routinely browse /his/.
Absolutely disgusting.

[Anonymous No.11437434]

>>11437344
homer wasn't the only 'ancient'. tacitus, an historian, is mentioned in the op. thucydides, also an historian, lived through and wrote extensively on the peloponnesian war. if you want an account of the 'ancient ethos' of classical greece, he's a good place to start.
and if you don't mean 'nature', what do you mean by 'reality'? what other reality was there for the ancient greeks?

[Anonymous No.11437464]

>>11437344
>wow, great example. how dare homer dehumanize non-humans
The point is that homer likely wasn't well traveled and that's the way he portrayed the people /creatures you meet once you venture out of the know world (i.e Greece).

[Anonymous No.11437495]

>>11437464
Yeah, I’m pretty sure that Homer considered all non-Greeks to be Cyclops.

[Anonymous No.11437735]

Jews hate Rome for destroying Jerusalem and annihilating their nation. Jews do not share in the Western inherentance from Ancient Greece and Rome, the opposite: it's their old enemy they still seek revenge against.

[Anonymous No.11437748]

>>11437112
>it's another women can't understand the Iliad episode
color me surprised

[Anonymous No.11437760]

>>11437140
>some balding faggot with glasses could never understand the ancient ethos.
wouldn't that describe a large amount of experts on ancient ethos, like do you assume Greek culture professors in their 90s have chad hair?

[Anonymous No.11437771]

>>11437142
>Both the communists and the nationalists are guilty here.
oh yeah the centrists and libertarians have never drooled out some horseshit about Athenian debates they think they read once

[Anonymous No.11437817]

>>11437112
dumb onions, violence is part of the greatness of the west.

[Anonymous No.11437870]

>>11437160
>what was the 'ancient ethos'?

Strength through strife (ἀγών)

[Anonymous No.11437872]

>>11437434
>thucydides, also an historian, lived through and wrote extensively on the peloponnesian war. if you want an account of the 'ancient ethos' of classical greece, he's a good place to start.
i know who he is moron, and he's writing centuries after homer. tacitus is even later. tacitus was as close to homer's world as petrarch was to tacitus'.

they werent faggot environmentalists. they were virile and moral. they dealt with the world itself, not a conceptual model of it.

[Anonymous No.11437894]

>>11437112
Jesus Christ.

[Anonymous No.11437907]

>>11437894
Nevermind I just read all the posts in this thread. Time for take 2.

[Anonymous No.11437918]

>>11437907
>yikesing your own post

[Anonymous No.11437925]

>>11437872
>they werent faggot environmentalists

Indeed, and that is the problem with these historical correctives. They displace "myths" of graeco-roman glory only to replace them with anachronistic distortions in a pathetic bid to reinforce their personal prejudices.

[Anonymous No.11438129]

>>11437112
this is a dumb man

[Anonymous No.11438133]

>Homer is nearly amoral

Fucking what?

[Anonymous No.11438152]

>>11437140
>>11437760
Everyone knows the ancient Greek intellectuals were mullet wearing chads, some boring old white man with boring adult male hair could never comprehend

[Anonymous No.11438163]

>>11437153
>this is what scottniggers and potatofags actually believe

[Anonymous No.11438176]

>>11437271
Not him but he doesn't need one. Everyone sees what a brainlet you are.

[Anonymous No.11438177]

>>11437295
>The classic struggle between west and east has always been Greece/Rome vs Persia, Carriage, etc.
That was mostly fabricated by later European civilizations that cannibalized the Greeks and no gave shits about anyone east of them. The ancient Greeks had more in common with the ancient Persians than they did basically everyone west of them.

[Anonymous No.11438443]

>>11438177
Plato and Aristotle both thought Greeks were superior to the barbarians and all of Greece hated when Alexander tried to unify the east with them.
You can easily see Europe vs Asia in most ancient authors since the Greco-persian war.

[Anonymous No.11438450]

>>11438177
Also, forget everything west of them that wasn't even part of the world for the Greeks

[Anonymous No.11438471]

>>11437112
>Homer is violent and nearly amoral

God I can't even imagine being this much of a pleb

[Anonymous No.11438495]

even as an atheist I can thank god for the introduction of Christian morality instead of the selfish barbarism of the Greco-Romans

[Anonymous No.11438501]

>>11438177
>The ancient Greeks had more in common with the ancient Persians than they did basically everyone west of them.
i think you fundamentally misunderstand the concept of 'the west'

[Anonymous No.11438529]

>>11437242
>t. Has never read the Iliad

[Anonymous No.11438551]

>>11438529
speak for yourself

[Anonymous No.11438553]

>>11437112
Tbh, a civilisation that has the self-awareness to be able to critique itself is arguably the moniker of a great civilisation.

[Anonymous No.11438557]

>>11437907
This is postpostmodernism

[Anonymous No.11438617]

Not to hijack this thread, but I'm trying to learn Koine so I can read the New Testament in its original form. With that being said, I heard that an individual who learns either Koine or Attic could mostly understand each others dialog. Is this true? I'd like to be able to read a lot of Greek literature in its original form if possible. If anything, just to help me become proficient in the language. Does anyone have any experience with this? Thanks

[Anonymous No.11438643]

>>11438617
>Is this true?
no. learn attic, dumbass.

[Anonymous No.11438861]

>>11438177

>Make the definition of the west as broad as possible in contemporary thought to cumulate the maximum amount of guilt possible unto westerners for ''past actions''
>Make the definition of the west as narrow as possible when referring to antiquity or the middle-ages to make sure none of the achievements of those civilizations which are OBVIOUSLY western cannot be attributed to modern day westerners

Brilliant. You probably also think that the Greeks and Romans weren't white, right?

[Anonymous No.11438868]

>>11437112

The point of the guy in OP's post is fucking retarded. One defining characteristic of ''intellectuals'' across time is that they are critical ; and typically critical of their own countries, nations, societies, time...

You can't say that an author that is critical of his own nation disproves the claims of superiority it could have over other nations, given that the object of the intellectual could literally be said to be critical in general.

[Anonymous No.11438876]

>>11438861
>You probably also think that the Greeks and Romans weren't white, right?
They weren't, though.

[Anonymous No.11438938]

>>11438876

They were, though.

''R. Peterson’s fine study, The Classical World (1985), which includes an analysis of 43 Greek, and 32 Roman figures, is persuasive. Dr. Peterson explains that the Romans painted their death masks to preserve the color, as well as the shape, of their ancestors’ faces. Blue eyes, fair hair, and light complexions are common. A good example of racial type is the famous portrait bust of Lucius Junius Brutus, the founder of the Roman Republic, which dates from the fourth century BC. Brutus’ face is identifiably Germanic, and so is the color of his eyes. The sculptor used ivory for the whites and blue glass for the pupils. Or take the famous marble head of a patrician woman from the late first century AD, which is often included in illustrated surveys of imperial Rome to demonstrate the fashion for curled hair. Her features are typically northern European: a delicate, aquiline nose, high cheekbones, and a face angular and long rather than round. Another classic example is the famous fresco from the Villa of the Mysteries in Pompeii, which shows four women undergoing ritual flagellation. They are tall, light-skinned, and brown-haired''

Not that blond hair and blue eyes are the only feature you'd associate with white people, but we have no reason to believe that the Greeks and Romans were anything but white caucasoids with occasionally tanned skin due to the sun.

[Anonymous No.11438960]

>>11438553
This is what I was thinking as well.

[Anonymous No.11439382]

>>11438938
Taleb told me that ancient greeks were based tanned meds just like him so gtfo.

[Anonymous No.11439411]

>>11437142
damn... this must be what it feels like to be a baddie. life really makes you turn around and just think sometimes huh?

[Anonymous No.11439424]

>>11437153
>Celts
celts in those texts are known for
>swords that bend, so they sometimes fistfight motherfuckers before --straightening out their swords-- to stab motherfuckers
>being homo because their women are scarier than that
>after fisticuffs and stabbing people who are their enemies, they ask the other side if they noticed they like them during the stabbing, and would they like to go for drinks and blowjobs before more fisticuffs
>painting themselves blue because armour is for pussies
>only decapitate you if they really value your skills (probably because they have to get an axe, see point one)
i think they transcend the good/bad dichotomy which "more evolved" implies. they're just magical fairies

[Anonymous No.11439431]

>>11438617
Koine's like Attic for retards. Attic can get very baroque, but you can reason out the greater compounds from Koine. Word of warning though, there's very few NT authors with competent Greek, and most of them are directly quoting 5th C BC Attic.

[Anonymous No.11439437]

>>11437153
This. also the Irish race was founded by coming together of the fleeing Atlantians, the lost tribes of Israel, the Trojans, twelve direct descendants of Julius Ceasar, and five Joseph of Arimathea's

[Anonymous No.11439440]

>>11439437
You forgot about the protoIberians.

[Anonymous No.11439441]

>>11439424
>actually believing roman gay propaganda

the romans even wrote texts about how much better looking the Celts and their women were, the Celts continually btfo the big nosed romans and greeks for centuries but unfortunately their valiant ways stopped them from geocoding the romans whenever they had the chance, even then the Gaels of Ireland and Picts of Scotland were never beaten, and not a roman foot returned from Irish soil with its head attached

[Anonymous No.11439444]

>>11437153
honestly this, Plato, Aristotle and so on couldn't even hold a candle to a one druid, they were far more well skilled, educated, disciplined, Plato's need for philosophy was simply a symptom of how bad and degenerate the Greek culture was

[Anonymous No.11439488]

>>11439441
>gay propaganda
by the middle ages, bands of kerns were still a scourge across Europe, only by that time the accounts add that they were mad that people hadn't heard they were homo yet, and were acting like it was a new thing to be propositioned after a fight with a Celt. imagine someone in the 15th Century demanding to know why you hadn't read Tertullian on homo tribes of Europe when you knew you were going to get beaten up and drunk today near mercenaries of international renown.

most of the irish myths also have bisexual heroes and whether your wife is jealous or not decides whether you wind up in a triple fronted war that day (she usually cares more if there's money in it for her). irish saints were forever writing gay poetry to each other too.

their entire social set up is different, so being gay or faithful doesn't make sense. marriages are termed contracts, so some of them end after a year's trial period and split the assets according to what you brought into the marriage. they have a fostering system which means that soldiers of different households grow up together as joint hostages so they might find it harder to kill each other later. they kick all the teenagers out for half the year and expect them to make their living from being a mercenary or hunter or bandit or anything except on their family land, and expect them to bring back booty for winter. they vote in temporary kingship and heads of households by seeing who the relatives think will make the most profit.

>they kill all romans
romans just didn't colonise there, but they did trade with ireland and their ships made it back, which is better than how england or spain fared with their trading ships which were not even bound for ireland during the middle ages and renaissance. relations with the romans were pretty good up until rome was sacked, since they traded with them instead of just killing on sight/robbing them blind.
>tl;dr: ireland might be upset you're not listening to their gay propaganda

[Anonymous No.11439532]

>>11439488
clearly ignorant, name one fag in Irish myth? theres none you're thinking of Greek


Romans did trade with them because they had no other choice, any romans who landed on Ireland were decapitated

[Anonymous No.11439564]

>>11437123
This. Homer was extremely moral for his time, they always make the mistake of judging him by using modenr morality standars, which is folly.
Also they seem to forget that while he was faithful to the heroic morals of his time, what he did with Peneolpe was downright feminist, considering that the wife was supposed to marry again after her husband's death. The women didn't have a say in choosing to abstain from suitors. Even ancient critics pinpointed this out and modern ones seem to only focus on his "amoral" fightan values.

[Anonymous No.11439571]

>>11437195
>his ideal state was closer to Sparta
Which is why plato was a brainlet I mean holy fuck really

[Anonymous No.11439593]

>>11437344
>harmony with nature, that's newage retardation.
*snap*

[Anonymous No.11439603]

>>11438938
The mark of a true brainlet is the attempt to portray the Greeks or the Romans as Nords.

[Anonymous No.11439606]

>>11438938
>confirmation bias:the post

[Anonymous No.11439877]

>>11437112
> he thinks there are goodies and baddies rather than winners and losers

[Anonymous No.11439922]

>>11439431
> you can reason out the greater compounds from Koine

Really? Is it mostly similar, with the exception of a few "evolved" words? While I certainly would love to learn Attic so I can read Greek literature, my main reason for learning it is so I can competently read and understand the New Testament in its original form.

Did you learn Attic? If so, how long did it take you to begin grasping it? What kind of program did you learn from? I see a few online programs, but am unsure about which one to use.

Thanks for the help.

[Anonymous No.11440052]

>>11439564
>for his time
*groan*

[Anonymous No.11440056]

>>11439593
compost yourself

[Anonymous No.11440065]

>>11437112
these things aren't mutually exclusive. also, no one ever frames ancient writers as teaching us about the greatness of the west. if anything, they just cite their writings as an example of it.

[Anonymous No.11440072]

>I mean, sure, maybe Thucydides was a "leftist postmodernist" for outlining the faults and failures of Athenian leadership.

this guy is a fucking moron.

[Anonymous No.11440105]

>>11440056
Harmony with nature is not an ancient idea, you brainlet.

[Anonymous No.11440139]

>A really, really good sign that someone has read neither Thucydides, Tacitus, Homer, nor Plato is when that person talks about how Greek and Roman literature teach us about the Greatness of the West.

How do these things negate each other? All of the people he referenced were extremely chauvinistic. The fact that they thought their cultures decadent (which presumably the straw conservative he's build up in his head would as well) doesn't change that. There's no coherent logical thread in anything he's said.

[Anonymous No.11440158]

dude is really reaching. i don't know what triggered this. i can only imagine he's self-conscious about certain types characterizing his area of interest as inherently fascist or something.

[Anonymous No.11440182]

>>11437194
BUT IF FUCKING IS BAD.
Postmodern or not, moral standards differ from era to era , society to society, that's fucking commonsense

[Anonymous No.11440185]

>>11437112
>t.

[Anonymous No.11440197]

>>11440105
>>11439593
*rolls eyes all the way back*

[Anonymous No.11440201]

>>11437735
There literally no fucking reason to drag a Jew hate post on an already toxic thread, but this is 4chan, so why stop , let's just fuck shit up

[Anonymous No.11440215]

>>11437112

[Anonymous No.11440217]

>>11438557
What the fuck is postpostmordernism

[Anonymous No.11440253]

>>11438876
>>11439382
>>11439603
This shit is so stupid. Ancient Romans/Greeks were Mediterranean white people. You can look at statues, paintings, reconstructions, etc. and get a sense of what they looked like. Basically they looked like modern Meds (Italians, Greeks, French, Spaniards, etc.).

[Anonymous No.11440258]

>>11440253
>modern Meds
>white

[Anonymous No.11440264]

>>11440258

[Anonymous No.11440269]

>>11440139
>Homer
>extremely chauvinistic

You clearly haven’t understood the Iliad

[Anonymous No.11440311]

>>11440201
>*hebraic screeching*

[Anonymous No.11440377]

>>11438163
>Scotts and Irishs are actually Celts

[Anonymous No.11440404]

>>11440258
Yeah man, they were all Nords for tens of thousands of years down there but only somehow managed to become mixed in the past thousand years. :)

[Anonymous No.11440456]

>>11440404
why is it so hard for you sanctimonious retards to understand that t*rks raped their way through anatolia up to vienna?

[Anonymous No.11440479]

>>11440456
Why is it hard for you Nordicist retards to understand that Early Neolithic Farmers left a huge genetic trace in Southern Europe as opposed to Northern Europe? Why is it so hard for you Nordicist retards to understand that DNA is plastic to the environment? Why is it so hard for you Nordicist retards to understand that the phenotype is selective?

[Anonymous No.11440536]

>>11440377
only the highlanders in Scotland and Catholics in Ireland

[Anonymous No.11440567]

>>11437112
>Homer is violent and amoral
True, but not to the detriment of either Homer or his works
>Plato criticizes Athenian institutions
True, but Plato was the pupil of a "corrupter of the youth" and probably a Lacedaemonian sympathizer too
>Thucydides and the failure of the poleis
Nowhere does Thucydides suggest this failure is necessary, and often civil strife has clear causes in the breakdown of traditional political safeguards (like how justice transforms from a way of moderating and mitigating a victory [as in Pericles's usual policy of clemency to a revolting tributary] into an excuse for the capable to do what they will [as the Athenians come to believe after Pericles's death, as in the Melian debate]. The breakdown of traditional political safeguards itself has clear causes in certain tendencies of human nature that Thucydides demonstrates [will to power, lust for distinction, etc.]
>Tacitus
Never actually read him, Romans a shit

[Anonymous No.11440834]

>>11440479
dude idk what you're talking about but i'm not arguing that greeks were autistic swedes

[Anonymous No.11441118]

>>11437907
genius

[Anonymous No.11442203]

>>11437112
The Persians were the goodies.

[Anonymous No.11442223]

>>11437112
Imagine actually fighting in wars only for millennia's later have a onions boy inchtellechtual trash talk you

fucking faggot

[Anonymous No.11442235]

>>11442223
But Homer didn't fight in the nonexistent Trojan war.

[Anonymous No.11442238]

>>11437112
Isn't he right? Homer is violent and amoral, and that's good.

[Anonymous No.11442249]

>>11442203

Go back to your οἶkος Xenophon.

[Anonymous No.11442250]

>>11442238

Was Homer, dare I say it, Nietzschean?

[Anonymous No.11442258]

>>11442250
No, master-morality is not Nietzschean.

[Anonymous No.11442261]

>>11442249
Silence, you Ahriman.

[Anonymous No.11442300]

Can we stop for a moment and ask ourselves the following hard question?:

Why do female classicists masturbate at the thought of Brutus???

[Anonymous No.11442305]

>PhD in medieval studies
>"Homer is violent and nearly amoral"
Bad things happened in literary works about war and a king's quest to reconquer power? No way!
My bachelor degree in Disney studies from the Wattle and Daub University never prepared me to this.

[Anonymous No.11442348]

>>11437212
Per usual the strongest, most sensible post is completely ignored. Kudos (pronounced correctly), anon.

[Jeff Mangum Died For Your Sins !rAl8Mz2mp2 No.11442733]

>>11437112
When people talk about how great the West is they're referring to those thinkers and the culture that gave rise to them, not to the institutions they were criticizing. How much of a retard do you have to be to not realize this?

[Anonymous No.11442770]

Wait, isn't the fact that the West has a strong tradition of self-criticism a perfect example of what makes it exceptional?

[Anonymous No.11442772]

what were the ancients opinions on virtue signalers? were they virtue signalers?

[Anonymous No.11442777]

>>11442770
Yes.

[Anonymous No.11442779]

>>11437295
>>11438177

and wtf do the ancient persians have to do with modern the islamic iran or "east"...

[Anonymous No.11442840]

>>11442300
because women are depraved
>>11442772
go back to >>>/pol/

[Anonymous No.11443018]

>>11442779

There is some continuity between ancient Persia and modern Iran. The connective tissue is tenuous, but it is there.

[Anonymous No.11443025]

>>11437123
fpbp

[Anonymous No.11443043]

>>11437153
THIS

[Anonymous No.11443058]

>>11437153
This brothers speaks the truth here

[Anonymous No.11443163]

>>11439488
>>11439424
Any good books about the celts?

[Anonymous No.11443286]

Homer is probably them most moral and touchy read for the Greeks. Does anyone remember the end of the Iliad or was it only me that cared for the funeral of Hector?

[Anonymous No.11444284]

>>11443286
What about fucking Argos in the Odyssey