My dear, I was going to talk about comfort reading as it is January, but really Darling, you need the Greeks. EVERYONE needs Greeks all the time. It’s not all fab food, gorgeous scenery, Mamma Mia and Zorba – it’s Thálassa! Thálassa! and Thermopylae. It’s Medea stepping into her chariot after killing her children, Eurydice turning to salt, Daphne turning into a tree, Tithonus becoming a cricket. It’s Ariadne’s diadem flung into the heavens and Antigone shut into her cave. Oh we could do this all day.
Ancient Greeks knew all the hard truths about life and were happy to tell these truths in ways to help you remember them. And if you forgot, there was no help for you: Icarus falling, Deianira gifting a deadly shirt, Hecuba bringing Polymestor to her tent.
This is why every wee tot that is born among my acquaintance is given D’Aulaires’ Book of Greek Myths from moi. Then Mythology by Edith Hamilton and Norse Mythology by Neil Gaiman.
Then, oh then! Read the Iliad, do not fuss about who translates it (if you are not among the few, the blessed who can read Ancient Greek). Of course read Odyssey also but going from Iliad to Odyssey is like going from Tolkien to C. S. Lewis. I adore Narnia, Narnia is fun but it’s not as nourishing nor as helpful for epic fights in boardrooms. The Iliad is like a magical Swiss Army knife that holds everything, I mean everything, that one might ever need. Every human situation, every evil boss, every conniving underling, every love situation, every heart-breaking trauma is there is glorious, stalwart prose. Just the thing to help you through January.
And then it’s off to the flotilla of other helpful books:
- The Library of Greek Mythology – Apollodorus
- Penelopiad – Margaret Atwood
- A Thousand Ships – Natalie Haynes
And what of the Romans you ask. Darling, comparing Romans to Greeks is like comparing wombats to tigers. Romans were strong but they had no stories, no grace, no real fortitude. Who do they champion? Lucretia. She is raped, then kills herself, after which various men run around and start the Roman Republic. This would not, I repeat not, happen with Ancient Greeks. An Ancient Greek woman would have put the villain’s eyes out, then eaten his heart in the marketplace. Panache. Power.
Even the Victorians, so proud of their strength, recognized that their moral fiber was as cotton candy when compared to the valor and stoicism of Ancient Greeks.
“Ulysses,” Alfred, Lord Tennyson
It little profits that an idle king,
By this still hearth, among these barren crags,
Match’d with an aged wife, I mete and dole
Unequal laws unto a savage race,
That hoard, and sleep, and feed, and know not me.
I cannot rest from travel: I will drink
Life to the lees: All times I have enjoy’d
Greatly, have suffer’d greatly, both with those
That loved me, and alone, on shore, and when
Thro’ scudding drifts the rainy Hyades
Vext the dim sea: I am become a name;
For always roaming with a hungry heart
Much have I seen and known; cities of men
And manners, climates, councils, governments,
Myself not least, but honour’d of them all;
And drunk delight of battle with my peers,
Far on the ringing plains of windy Troy.
I am a part of all that I have met;
Yet all experience is an arch wherethro’
Gleams that untravell’d world whose margin fades
For ever and forever when I move.
How dull it is to pause, to make an end,
To rust unburnish’d, not to shine in use!
As tho’ to breathe were life! Life piled on life
Were all too little, and of one to me
Little remains: but every hour is saved
From that eternal silence, something more,
A bringer of new things; and vile it were
For some three suns to store and hoard myself,
And this gray spirit yearning in desire
To follow knowledge like a sinking star,
Beyond the utmost bound of human thought.
This is my son, mine own Telemachus,
To whom I leave the sceptre and the isle,—
Well-loved of me, discerning to fulfil
This labour, by slow prudence to make mild
A rugged people, and thro’ soft degrees
Subdue them to the useful and the good.
Most blameless is he, centred in the sphere
Of common duties, decent not to fail
In offices of tenderness, and pay
Meet adoration to my household gods,
When I am gone. He works his work, I mine.
There lies the port; the vessel puffs her sail:
There gloom the dark, broad seas. My mariners,
Souls that have toil’d, and wrought, and thought with me—
That ever with a frolic welcome took
The thunder and the sunshine, and opposed
Free hearts, free foreheads—you and I are old;
Old age hath yet his honour and his toil;
Death closes all: but something ere the end,
Some work of noble note, may yet be done,
Not unbecoming men that strove with Gods.
The lights begin to twinkle from the rocks:
The long day wanes: the slow moon climbs: the deep
Moans round with many voices. Come, my friends,
‘T is not too late to seek a newer world.
Push off, and sitting well in order smite
The sounding furrows; for my purpose holds
To sail beyond the sunset, and the baths
Of all the western stars, until I die.
It may be that the gulfs will wash us down:
It may be we shall touch the Happy Isles,
And see the great Achilles, whom we knew.
Tho’ much is taken, much abides; and tho’
We are not now that strength which in old days
Moved earth and heaven, that which we are, we are;
One equal temper of heroic hearts,
Made weak by time and fate, but strong in will
To strive, to seek, to find, and not to yield.
How To Behave - Etiquette Central 