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Revolutionary Lessons from the Iliad · Plausibly Live - The Dave Bowman Show Podcast

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  history strange is alien and it won't give us what we would like
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  to have Some also, you know, I've been talking about going
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  through Homer this year. Specifically, The Iliad.
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  And eventually, I'll get to the Odyssey. it hasn't gone as as
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  Smoothly. As I had hoped that it would go,
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  I'm just gonna tell you that The, the homeric versions are
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  translations of course. And some of the translations are
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  Difficult. And some of them are better than
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  others. And The likes of that but I
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  followed along as best I could. But then I discovered Steve and
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  Fries version. Stephen Fry.
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  Of course, the famous. Comedian actor.
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  And now author. Who has reimagined?
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  The Greek myths from the beginning, all the way through,
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  he'll be releasing the book, The Odyssey this coming week.
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  And so, I'm looking forward to that as a parallel, when I go
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  through the Odyssey starting in the next week. as I as I wrapped
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  up The Iliad and the story of Troy and leading into the need
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  and those kinds of things. Almost simultaneously with
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  getting ready for the Liberty. 250 celebration.
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  There are a lot of lessons that Really strike home.
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  The reason they strike home of course, is because there is a
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  certain level of understanding. That the founders of this
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  country had. With Greek mythology. and their
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  understanding of those things and how that impacted Their
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  history and that's something that we need to keep in mind.
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  It's something that we need to keep in in the Forefront of what
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  we're thinking. What?
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  We simply dismissed as mythology.
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  The founders of this country in the later, framers of the
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  Constitution. Held as history.
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  Does that mean they were stupid or uneducated or whatever?
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  No, it meant that they had a different view of things that I
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  think in some ways. and we've lost, and that's to our
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  detriment because They understand things differently
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  than we understood them. In.
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  The Iliad and in the story of Troy.
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  We are presented with a lot of lessons.
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  And it wasn't until the final pages of the book that I really.
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  It was actually in the appendix of the book that I came across.
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  That wasn't the appendix. It was the Final Chapter.
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  There's a statement that's made by Odysseus.
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  Who says I was talking to Agamemnon.
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  He's talking about. Some of the things that they're
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  going to have to do. And he makes the statement that
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  sometimes what the gods have written.
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  Man has to rewrite. That's a very.
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  Profound kind of thinking and it's a very profound kind of
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  thing to think about. And when you put it in terms of
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  The American Revolution, the Declaration of Independence, the
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  idea of Liberty. You're dealing with the same
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  kind of thinking, what the gods what God had written.
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  Sometimes man has to rewrite believe me, the Kings like King
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  George. The third Louis the 13th and
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  14th in the something called the divine, right of kings.
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  They believe that God put them on the throne.
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  And that therefore anything that opposed them was against the
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  will of God. and so sometimes, What God had written.
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  Had to be Rewritten. and I wonder if maybe Jefferson Adams
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  Franklin. Kind of reached back into the
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  story of The Iliad and took that idea and said, hey look,
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  sometimes we got to rewrite these things. there's another
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  lesson from The Odyssey from The Iliad that I wanted to make sure
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  that we, we got And and while there's lots of them, I I've
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  actually written a piece that has the seven things that I
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  learned. but of that piece number five is very simply this
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  flawed Heroes. Make for real lessons.
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  The Greeks gave us Gods, who had tempers Heroes with tragic flaws
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  stories that Shimmer with both greatness and grief.
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  And in the story of Troy. We see those stories.
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  Not whitewashed. Not covered over, they're not,
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  they're none of that. It's we see these stories for
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  what they really really are. And we see these characters as
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  the flawed people, that they really are from agamemnon's.
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  Hubris in the early part to Achilles is Rage to Odysseus's
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  trickery to Helen's. Fickleness.
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  To Hector's inability to, to see the future.
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  There are all Mighty characters, but there are impulsive.
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  They're proud. They're deceitful.
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  They're doing And the granddaughter lies not in their
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  perfection, but in their Persistence of their goals and
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  their, their moral tension, rather than their moral clarity.
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  as we step into this Liberty, 250 series, Heading into the
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  250th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence.
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  really talk a lot about our own Heroes people like, you know,
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  Franklin, Adams, Jefferson Washington.
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  And we need to take that same approach with them that Homer
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  and others have taken with the heroes of The Iliad and the
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  Odyssey. And that is that they are not
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  perfect, not by a long shot. Jefferson.
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  Who will write the words? All men are created equal.
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  You know, the problems with Jefferson writing that.
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  Does it does it take anything away from the words?
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  I don't think it does. And in some ways, it makes them
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  more powerful because they were written by a man who enslaved
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  600 people. Benjamin Franklin.
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  Brilliant Bowl. but he, Struggled his entire life with
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  personal failing and shifting loyalties.
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  He lost his son, he never never saw his son again because of the
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  revolution. Alexander Hamilton.
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  Will go on to become the architect of our financial
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  stability. Boy, if we'd have modern
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  tabloids in his heir. they would have blushed at some of the
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  things that he was, he was involved with Adams, John Adams.
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  The conscience of the revolution.
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  He was much like in many ways Agamemnon, he's stubborn, he's
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  vain, he's self-destructive politically.
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  And even George Washington. The indispensable man.
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  Owned human beings and struggled with it only after the war had
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  been won. and yet, these Same men, these imperfect men.
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  Founded and created something that changed the world.
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  And how do we? Square that in our own minds.
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  How do we celebrate these flawed people without stepping into
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  idolatry or self-development of them as well?
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  I think we do it the same way, we read the early yet.
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  We understand that there are lessons here.
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  In in the book. Stephen freeze book Troy.
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  He writes in the appendix these words, it's the broken ones.
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  The broken men who make the best Legends.
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  Whole men, perfect men. Are utterly forgettable because
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  there's no conflict. There's no There's no tension.
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  It's not a celebration of failure, it's an admission that
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  virtue does not require perfection.
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  The great things can be born from the imperfect.
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  The Declaration of Independence was not written by Saints.
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  It was written by Sinners who had a vision of a better world.
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  Like Achilles who finally chooses to fight.
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  Or ha choosing to stand. These men will make choices that
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  will matter. At Great personal cost.
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  We do not honor them by pretending that their Flawless
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  and I, and I hope we don't do that.
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  We honor them by wrestling ourselves with their own
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  contradictions, much as we do in The Iliad.
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  And building on what they dared to begin.
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  We learn the lessons of Homer from Homer.
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  We learn. How?
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  Beauty destroys. How, how War turns us into
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  animals? We learn that hubris is
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  dangerous. and we, take those lessons, and we begin to build
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  On what they dared to begin. So as we head into, Dave does
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  History Liberty 250? Let's not reach for statues.
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  Let's reach for stories. Not to cleanse or cancel the
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  past, that's not what we're going to do, but we're going to
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  try to understand it as it truly was.
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  Because history. Like myth.
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  Survives not because it is pristine and perfect.
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  But because it is powerful. Check out more stories from
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  history at. Dave, does history.org.