Civilization #7: Homer's Iliad and the Birth of Greek Civilization

Greek civilization is incredible. It is the greatest, most creative, most significant civilization in human history. The Greeks created Western civilization, and not only were the Greeks the greatest civilization, but there has also not been a second great civilization.

Let's think about how incredible the Greeks were. If you look at literature, the Greeks basically created it with Homer. Homer wrote two books called The Iliad and The Odyssey about 3,000 years ago. When teaching great books, The Iliad is by far the favorite. Think about this: a Greek writer, writing 3,000 years ago for a Greek audience, and his book still resonates and impresses students in China today.

Then you have philosophy with Plato. Even today, many consider Plato the greatest philosopher who ever lived. Many people read The Republic by Plato and say it transforms their lives, making them think very differently about the world. In history, you have a man named Thucydides. If you are a military leader today, you read Thucydides. There are still many generals today in America, Russia, and Europe who believe reading Thucydides will help them win wars.

Not only did the Greeks create civilization, but their works and books are still widely read today and considered amazing. The question is, how does this happen? How were the Greeks able to create humanity's greatest civilization in about 200 years? They were not dominant for a long time; they created all these works in about 200 years altogether. How is this possible?

The Paradoxical Aftermath of the Bronze Age Collapse

Around 1200 BCE, Greece was united in a place called Mycenaean Greece. The Mycenaeans controlled Greece, which was a monarchy and no different from any other place in the world at this point. The world was basically the same. Then, this society collapsed because of the Bronze Age collapse, and three things happened.

First of all, centralization—the idea that you had a unified society—went away. Greece became chaotic and decentralized. That's the first thing that happened.

The second thing that happened is Greece became illiterate. The Greeks lost the ability to read and write, and we call this the Dark Ages. From about 1000 to 600 BC, for 400 years, the Greeks lost the ability to read and write. We call this the Dark Ages because we don't have any books or writing from that period; it's completely dark to us.

The third thing that happened is the Greeks became poor. Before, the Greeks traded with the world and were very prosperous. Then, because of the Bronze Age collapse, Greece started to become more isolated and a lot poorer.

These are the three major consequences of the Bronze Age collapse in Greece: it became decentralized, illiterate, and poor. The amazing thing is, it's because of these three things that Greece became the most creative civilization in the world.

It is because of the destruction of old Greece—because Greece became chaotic, illiterate, and poor—that Greece eventually became the greatest civilization in the world.

The Three Revolutions That Forged Greece

There are three major reasons why Greek civilization became dominant.

1. The first reason is the polis. It's hard for us to translate; we usually translate it as a city-state. This is where we get the word "politics," but what it really means is community. The idea of the polis is a community of people who discuss politics together—how to best run the town. Because of this chaos, there were thousands of poleis around Greece, of about a thousand people each. It was a very small community, and this became the main political structure of Greek society.
2. The second factor is the alphabet. After the Greeks became illiterate, they had to relearn literacy. They had to relearn how to read and write. In the process, they adopted a new writing system called the alphabet, which forever transformed the society.
3. The last thing is Homer. Homer was a poet who introduced to the Greeks a new way of imagining the world.

These are the three major factors that led to the rise of Greek civilization. If you look at each factor, the polis was a political revolution that forever transformed society. The alphabet was a language revolution that forever transformed the way people communicated with each other. And Homer was an intellectual revolution that forever transformed how Greeks saw and imagined the world around them.

Let's go over each of these revolutions one by one.

The Polis: A Political Revolution

There were three things about the polis that allowed for innovation and creativity in Greece.

• Competition: These poleis were all spread out and competing against each other for resources. They were constantly at war with each other, which allowed for massive innovation. Remember, there was no centralized authority.
• Diversity: If you look at the map of Greece, it has very diverse geography. It has farmland, mountains, plains, and coastal land. Depending on where you were geographically in Greece, you developed a different economy, culture, and society based on that geography.
• Democracy: Greek civilization introduced the idea of democracy, or the modern sense of democracy, to us. The reason why is that at this time, Greece was very poor. If you're very poor, you need everyone to participate and work hard, especially in battles against other poleis. The rule was, you could be rich or poor, but if you fought for us, you had the right to speak. You could be the leader of this polis and have the right to speak, or you could be the poorest person in this polis and still have the right to speak because everyone had a responsibility to defend the polis. This introduced the idea of democracy, which meant that everyone basically had to participate politically. You could be a farmer, but you still had to think about political life and had a responsibility to speak up in front of your peers. This was a major driver of innovation in Greece.

The Alphabet: A Language Revolution

One of the major innovations of the polis was the introduction of the alphabet into Greek society. Let me explain the development of writing systems over time.

Writing was first developed in Western society in Egypt and in Sumeria, and they did so to solve an economic problem. These societies were very wealthy and needed farmers to help them build roads, irrigation networks, and temples. To do so, they needed to pay these workers, so the writing system became a contract.

At first, the writing system was a pictograph that served the function of a contract. For example, a drawing of two people and two bushels of wheat would say, "If you work for me, I promise to give two people two bushels of wheat." When you presented this, I would have to give you the wheat.

They first started as pictograms, and then they recognized they could just use symbols. Maybe two faces and two 'V's could represent the same thing because everyone understood what it meant. So, writing went to symbolism.

But then, they recognized that these symbols could also represent ideas. For example, you might have a sun and a moon. They can represent the sun and the moon, but if you put them together, you get the concept of "day." Now you have a concept, an idea. We call this an ideogram. Chinese is an ideogram language.

As they continued developing writing, they recognized that it would be a lot easier to communicate if these ideograms represented syllables and sounds instead. For example, if "sun" and "moon" are the symbols, putting them together now becomes "moon-sun," which is the English word for "monsoon," meaning storm. Now, this tells us to read it as "monsoon."

The final recognition was that the sound could represent a consonant, the simplest sound. This would be an 'M,' this would be an 'S.' So if I write something like this, it now becomes 'SM' or 'sum.' We call this the alphabet.

With each innovation, we are allowed more flexibility in our language to communicate our ideas. With the alphabet, something remarkable happened. Before, these different stages of writing required a professional class of people to manage the writing system. We call these scribes. Writing was not speaking; speaking was one language, but writing was a different language. This is true for Chinese, and it was true back then as well. To learn to read and write, you had to have professional scribes because it was such a complicated task.

But now, with the alphabet, writing can become speaking. This marked an incredible revolution in human thought and the capacity to think.

Before the invention of writing, we lived in an oral culture. In an oral culture, we don't write; we just speak to each other. Now, we live in a writing culture, a literary culture, where we don't actually speak to each other as much; we mainly write through email or texting.

There are certain advantages to both cultures.

• Oral culture is very emotional. When I'm speaking to you, I'm trying to get you excited and to pay attention, so I'm thinking about how to rouse your emotions.
• It's also very innovative and open. I can create words when I speak. I can say "blablabla," which means nothing, but I can create it, and when we're speaking, you can figure out what I mean. There's room for innovation and imagination in oral culture.
• Finally, oral culture forces everyone to have a really strong memory. When I speak, I have to remember my speech, and then you have to remember my speech to respond to it. These speeches could go on for hours. Back then, during oral culture, everyone had a photographic memory. They were a lot smarter than we are today. It's the same as during the hunter-gatherer stage; they were a lot stronger, faster, and healthier than we are today because today all we do is sit around.

There are also a lot of advantages to writing culture that oral culture doesn't have.

• Rather than emotional, it has to be logical. It has to make sense by itself. I can't trick you with rhetoric; I have to use reason and logic to persuade you because you can read it at your own time.
• It's very disciplined. I can't make up words; I have to use words we already have.
• Even though it decreases my memory, it stores up brain space for me to think deeply about the argument, to reflect on your argument, and find logical problems in it.

Before, they were in an oral culture. Now, we are in a literary culture, and we've lost the oral culture. But when the Greeks discovered the alphabet, they combined the advantages of both cultures. Most of the time they were speaking, living in an oral culture, but they also had the opportunity to write down their thoughts, which allowed them the advantages of the literary culture to have a more disciplined, focused, logical mind. This marked an incredible revolution in the capacity for human beings to think.

Homer: An Intellectual Revolution

Now we come to Homer. Homer was a poet, and back then, there were many poets who went around and told stories about the world—legends and mythologies. The very best poets were usually hired by kings and rich people because kings needed poets to solve three problems.

1. Legitimate Authority: You have to answer the question, "If you're king, why are you king?" We know that most kings get power by killing a lot of people, by fighting and winning wars. When they become king, they need to clean up their image and legitimize their authority. So, what they tell people is that God chose them. How do they prove God chose them? Because there's a poet who sings a beautiful song about them, and this song can only come from divine inspiration. The poet is a vessel for a divine message. This poem, this song is so beautiful it must be divine. And if this divine song is saying I am born of a god and the gods want me to become king, then I must be divine myself.
2. Create a Cultural Identity: In China, you have books like Romance of the Three Kingdoms. You have the Bible. All these literary works function to create a common cultural identity. It tells us what it means to be Chinese. This unifies the people who then obey the king who unifies them.
3. Cultural Differentiation: To know who you are, you must also know who you are not. We're Chinese, so therefore we are not Japanese, we're not Korean, we're not American. Most literary works that we have were sponsored by leaders and kings to solve these three problems. In the future, we will read the Aeneid, which is what the Romans had, and we'll read the Bible. All these literary works were designed to serve the powers that existed at that time.

The problem with Homer is that when he was around—and we don't know when he was alive, maybe about 800 to 600 BC—there was no king. There was no one to pay him. Therefore, he could only make his living by appealing to the people around him. He had to appeal to ordinary people.

If you're a poet, how do you get poor people to pay you money? Why would they want to pay you to sing songs for them? There are three reasons.

• The first is just entertainment. Today we listen to songs and go to movies. Back then, their source of entertainment was to pay people like Homer to sing songs to them. That was what they thought was fun to do.
• The second reason is education. Remember that back then, Greece was poor; they didn't have schools. But because of the polis system, they had to speak in front of their peers. How did you learn to speak well? You did so by imitating people who speak well, who are usually poets. You listen to Homer speak and give speeches, and you can imitate him and copy what he does to make your own speech in front of your peers. Homer was a teacher as well as a poet.
• The third reason, and what made Homer special, is what we call edification. Edification means to be a better you, to be a higher you. The way that Homer accomplished edification was by changing the way that you saw, felt about, and imagined the world around you.

The Unprecedented Genius of The Iliad

Homer was a poet who told stories, and the most popular story at that time was the Trojan War. The main story is this: there was a Greek goddess named Nemesis who liked to create problems. She was always thinking of ways to get the gods to fight against each other. One day, she creates a golden apple, and on it, it says, "To the most beautiful goddess in the world." It doesn't say who; it just says, "To the most beautiful goddess in the world." She puts it on Mount Olympus for the gods to find.

Three goddesses find this apple and fight over it: Hera, who is the queen god; Athena, who is the goddess of wisdom; and Aphrodite, who is the goddess of love. They're fighting over this apple all the time and creating a huge ruckus. The king god, Zeus, gets tired of all their fighting and finds a human stupid enough to be the judge. This human, his name is Paris, has the job of picking who is the most beautiful goddess in the universe. He's stupid enough to want to piss off two goddesses.

When he's making his decision, all the goddesses try to bribe Paris. Hera says to Paris, "If you pick me, I will give you your own kingdom. I will make you king of the world." Paris is like, "Oh, that's pretty good." Athena says to Paris, "I will make you the wisest man in the world. I will give you all the knowledge of the world." And Paris is like, "Oh, that's pretty good." Then Aphrodite says, "Hey, I will give you the most beautiful woman in the world to marry." And Paris is like, "I want that."

The problem is, the most beautiful woman in the world is Helen, queen of Sparta. She's a Greek who's married to a Greek king. Paris steals Helen, takes her back to Troy, and then the Greeks get angry. They raise this huge army, and for 10 years, they attack Troy, which is a walled city. The war ends when a Greek general named Odysseus comes up with the idea of the wooden horse. The Greeks pretend they give up and are going home because they're homesick. As a present to the Trojans, they leave behind a wooden horse. The Trojans take the wooden horse into the city. At night, the Greeks jump out of the wooden horse, open the gates, and the Trojans are slaughtered.

This is the story of the Trojan War, and the Greeks love this story because it's really the Greeks being heroes. The Greeks have this great victory, and people love to win battles. What's amazing about Homer's story, The Iliad, is that there are three things Homer does that have really never been done before. With The Iliad, we have the invention of literature.

1. Empathy

The first thing Homer does is, rather than telling the story from the Greek side, he tells the story from both the Greek and Trojan sides. In fact, when you read The Iliad, you'll discover that the Trojans are actually more heroic, more courageous, and more brave than the Greeks. That's pretty amazing. By switching perspective, a new idea comes into being that never really existed before. We call this idea empathy: the ability to see the world from the perspective of other people. Before, in human civilization, this didn't really exist. Homer creates this for The Iliad.

2. Human Psychology

The second thing that is new and unique to The Iliad is human psychology. For the first time, Homer discusses what motivates the characters. Why are you fighting this war? The story is between two individuals: Achilles and King Priam. Achilles is the greatest warrior of the Greeks; Priam is the king of the Trojans, and they hate each other because they're enemies.

The Iliad starts like this: Achilles gets in a fight with Agamemnon, who is the king of the Greeks. They get in a fight, they curse each other, and Achilles says, "You're a dog, Agamemnon. I'm never going to fight for you again." And Agamemnon, the king, says, "I don't need you, man." So Achilles refuses to fight. The problem is, Achilles is the greatest warrior of the Greeks. The Trojans, led by Hector, who is a son of Priam, see an opportunity because Achilles refuses to fight. Hector leads the Trojan army out of Troy, and they're destroying the Greeks. The Trojans are about to crush the Greek army.

The Greek generals say to Agamemnon, "Could you please beg Achilles to return to the battlefield?" They go and talk to Achilles, and Achilles basically says, "Screw off, I'm not helping you guys." His friend, Patroclus, who is basically like his younger brother, feels sorry for the Greeks. He pretends to be Achilles and goes off to battle against Hector. Hector kills Patroclus, and this angers Achilles.

Achilles is so angry that he jumps into the battle and kills Hector. Once he kills Hector, he does something very odd. Usually, when you kill someone, you return their body to your enemy for a ransom because the belief back then was that only if you bury your dead can the dead find peace in the afterworld. But Achilles is so angry at Hector that he's torturing Hector's body, which is torturing Priam.

Even after Achilles does this, he can't sleep. He feels tremendous sadness, even though he's avenged the death of Patroclus. The reason why is that in his heart, Achilles knows he was the one responsible for killing Patroclus. If he didn't get into the stupid fight with Agamemnon and if he did not refuse the Greeks when they requested help, Patroclus wouldn't have died. It's because Achilles was so stubborn and so proud that his friend Patroclus died. He feels tremendous guilt for what happened, and his guilt turns into an intense hatred for Hector. That's why he's torturing Hector's body.

Then what happens is Priam, King Priam, who can't sleep either because his son is being tortured—his son is dead, but his soul is still being tortured by Achilles—sneaks into Achilles's tent. He's right behind Achilles while Achilles is talking to his generals. At this point, Achilles doesn't see him. He could take his knife and stab Achilles in the neck, and that's what most people would do. But Priam doesn't do that. Instead, he kneels down and kisses the hand of Achilles, which forces Achilles to be in awe of this king who has knelt down before him. He admires Priam's courage and love for his son so much that he feels tremendous shame and remorse for what he's done to Hector. He returns Hector's body to Priam as compensation, and that's how The Iliad ends.

The main message of The Iliad is it's not war that creates civilization; it is love that creates civilization. It is Priam's love for Hector that gives him the courage to defeat Achilles in battle. And in this defeat, Achilles becomes a better person because he's able to forgive himself and do what is right and just by returning Hector to his father. As you can imagine, this is extremely complicated psychology, and it forces you to think deeply about who we are as humans.

3. Metaphors

The third thing that is shocking about The Iliad is the use of metaphors. Metaphors are connections between things that were unseen. For example, if I say, "The sky is a snail," you're like, "Oh, I didn't know that." That's what a metaphor is. A metaphor is connecting two things that before were not connected. If you think about it, that is a new thought. There are lots of metaphors in The Iliad. Essentially, metaphors teach you how to think. They are the tools for thought.

These are the three distinct characteristics of The Iliad that make it unique in the world. It's switching perspectives all the time, which creates empathy. It talks about human psychology all the time, which creates imagination. And it uses metaphors, which enable you to think much more deeply about the world.

If you put these three things together, what this ultimately is is a theory of human. It's a theory of what it means to be a human being. Before, we thought human beings fought over land or over women like Helen. They struggled for power. What Homer is saying is that what it means to be a human is someone who has empathy, imagination, and the willingness to think. Only if you're willing to see, feel, and think are you human.

This is a new theory of humanity that becomes the basis for Greek civilization. That's why the Greeks believe the founder of their civilization was not a general or a king; it was a poet named Homer. It's because of The Iliad, which they all read and memorized and could recite. Because this was an oral culture where you're trained to have a very strong memory, and because they memorized The Iliad, it forever transformed them as humans. This becomes the basis for Greek civilization, which then becomes the basis for Western civilization. It's because of these three reasons—the polis, the alphabet, and Homer—that we have Western civilization as we know it today.

A Comparative Look: Why Greece and Not China?

Why did the Greeks develop the alphabet while the Chinese did not?

The answer is that Greece was not an isolated culture. The people who actually developed the alphabet were the Egyptians. The reason why is that Egypt was constantly in contact and communication with many different societies and cultures, including the Sumerians and the Greeks, and they could adopt new practices to advance their language. The Phoenicians were traders, and they connected Egyptian culture to everyone else. It was the Phoenicians who brought the alphabet to the Greeks, who, because they became illiterate, were looking for a new language system.

Why didn't China develop the alphabet? The answer is that China, for most of its history, was isolated from the rest of the world. But not only was China isolated, it was stable for most of its history because it was run by a class of people called scholar-officials—Confucian scholars. What was their secret power? It was the ability to read and write. That's what differentiated them from everyone else. That's what made them indispensable to the emperor and why they were so powerful.

When you have a monopoly over literacy, you don't want to give it up; you want to increase it. The way they did so was by creating a new language called classical Chinese that only they could master. That's why there was this divergence between Greece and China at this time. In China, literacy was monopolized by an elite who benefited from this monopoly.

Why did the Greeks have Homer, while the Chinese never had a Homer?

Again, the problem was the scholar-officials. If you look at Confucian thought, there's a hierarchy. At the very top are scholar-officials. They're the most virtuous, the most well-educated, the most cultivated. They're the best people. Below the scholar-officials are the farmers and the artisans because they produce wealth for society. Below them are the merchants. And then at the very bottom are the artists—the poets.

In Greece, this was the complete opposite. They placed Homer at the very top of their society. Everyone wanted to be a poet like Homer. When Plato was writing The Republic, he was trying to become Homer. He was trying to become a teacher of civilization, an inspirer of civilization. When Thucydides wrote about the Peloponnesian War, he was trying to do the same thing. He was trying to inspire civilization and new ideas because they all wanted to become Homer. They all knew Homer was the father of civilization, and they wanted to continue his legacy.

That's what made the Greeks unique in human history. Only this society put poets first and foremost at the top, and no other society did so. In China, it was the complete opposite because if you're a scholar-official, what you're most afraid of is independent thinking. Censorship was their main role—controlling how people thought through censorship. That's why China never really produced a Homer or a great thinker.

This is going to be strange, but it's only because Greece was destroyed at the end of the Bronze Age, became decentralized, and lived in poverty that they could then become a great civilization. It was only through destruction that they could have the polis, the alphabet, and Homer. That's the main message of human history: it's through destruction that we have innovation, and it's only through this process that human beings are able to rejuvenate their society.