CLASS 130 Lecture Notes - Lecture 4: Chryses, Iliad, Calchas
Document Summary
Begs for agamemnon to return his daughter in exchange for a great gift. Agamemnon later feels obligated to give captive back to chryses because he is sending disease upon the people (chryses has the power to do this because he"s a priest) Hephaestus tells a story (son of zeus and hera) Homeric laughter situation #1 - feast on olympus. Some tension is felt btwn the chief god zeus and his wife hera. Their son hephaestus relieves the tension by telling the story of how he once intervened in a quarrel between their parents on his mother"s behalf, and zeus punished him behalf, and zeus punished him. But among the blessed immortals uncontrollable laughter went up as they saw hephaestus bustling about the place" (iliad 1. 600) Superiority: gods feel superior to hephaestus because of his handicap. Hephaestus is the only of the immortals that is crippled and not good-looking. Hephaestus raised tension and then there was a relief.
