EconTalk Book Club on the Iliad (with Ido Hevroni)

Ego, pride, wrath, fear, gods, superheroes, mortals, and lots of killing. Welcome to Homer's Iliad, which reads at times like a script for a Tarantino film or the latest installment of the Avengers franchise. In the first episode of the EconTalk Book Club on the Iliad, Ido Hevroni of Shalem College speaks with EconTalk's Russ Roberts about the surprising relevance of a 2800-year-old epic poem. Hevroni also provides useful background for first-time readers and what it's like to read the Iliad with combat veterans.

• 0:02Speaker 00

  Welcome to Econ Talk, Conversations for the Curious, part of the Library of Economics and Liberty. I'm your host, Russ Roberts, of Shalem College in Jerusalem and Stanford University's Hoover Institution. Go to econTalk.org where you can subscribe, comment on this episode, and find links to other information related to today's conversation. You'll also find our archives with every episode we've done going back to 2006. Our email address is [email protected]. We'd love to hear from you.

• 0:37Speaker 00

  Today is May 25, 2026, and my guest is Ido Chavroni, my colleague here at Shalem College. Ever since the college opened 13 years ago, Ido has been teaching the Iliad by Homer and the Odyssey by Homer to our students. This episode is the first episode of the Econ Talk Book Club on the Iliad. I encourage you to read the book. We'll be reading the Fagels translation, but there are many to choose from. And I want listeners who may be listening with children, that this episode will likely contain adult themes, so you may want to screen this episode accordingly. Ido, welcome to Econ Talk.

• 1:16Speaker 01

  Thank you. I'm very happy to be here.

• 1:18Speaker 00

  When did you first read the Iliad, and why did you read it?

• 1:22Speaker 01

  It didn't start from reading the Iliad itself. It started from, you know, starting to be familiar with the themes, with the stories, of course, of the Trojan War or the Trojan Horse. It started when I was a kid. My father would use, on Saturdays, to sit with me and read from an encyclopedia, an old encyclopedia, which had amazing pictures. So then I fell in love with the story, not with the books, with the story.

• 1:55Speaker 01

  It took me a lot of years to start meeting the book. Here in Israel, it is much less known, I think, at least in America or Europe.

• 2:07Speaker 01

  Nobody, I think, really read it. In Israel, at least not in high school. I just, while I know that in America, in some high schools, they do read, at least part of that.

• 2:20Speaker 01

  When I went to the university, I had an introduction. I studied literature and psychology, and I had an introduction to Western literature. So we had one meeting introducing Homer, and we read, I think, a few lines from the book. But much later, when I became familiar with liberal education, which is less known here in Israel, I started to self-educate myself. So I started reading these books. So the first time was, I assume, fifteen or sixteen years ago, a little bit, a few years before I came to Shalem.

• 3:00Speaker 00

  And what impression did you have when you read it in some, at some level of seriousness as an adult?

• 3:08Speaker 01

  It is strange, let's, let's admit it. It's hard to begin with it. It's very surprising to discover that the Iliad, which the meaning is the story of the Trojan War. Iliad is, after Iliad, which is one of the names of Troy, is not really about the Trojan War. And I'm sorry for disappointing some of our listeners, but the Trojan Horse itself does not appear in the book.

• 3:42Speaker 01

  And it, of course, it takes time to dive into it. It is strange, you have to start to understand the gods, which I was a little bit familiar from, you know, before, because I was interested in Greek mythology.

• 3:57Speaker 01

  It takes time to get into it. It takes time to understand what the book is trying to do. But the best experience I had, and the best way to study anything, I think, is to have to teach it. And when I started reading it with the students and I had to teach them, then I started, I think, to really understand the book.

• 4:21Speaker 00

  So we'll come back to the students in a little bit, but if you're just a person listening to this, you know, we have listeners all over the world. They do all kinds of things with their lives. They're not scholars. They're not classicists. They're not that interested in ancient Greek, most of our listeners. Why do you think they should read it? Why should a thoughtful, curious person read The Iliad?

• 4:50Speaker 01

  Hey, I can have, you know, I can give you two answers from different angles. One is, it is the DNA. The Iliad and the Odyssey are the genesis of the Western culture. So if you're interested in Western culture, if you're interested in understanding yourself better, even if you have critical view upon Western society or Western culture, this is where it all starts. Hollywood started there. Everything we know about heroes and action and a lot, a lot of our notions and understandings, they all started there.

• 5:35Speaker 01

  It's before philosophy. We have to remind the listeners that it's something like about, not the events themselves, if they were historical events, but the book itself comes something like 400 years before philosophy. So this is the first document that we have on Western culture. So that's, let's say, a reason from the outside, a rationalistic reason.

• 6:03Speaker 01

  The other reason is then when you started to read it seriously and seriously doesn't mean professionally because I have to admit I'm not a profession, I'm not a scholar of these books. My profession is in literature, but it's in Jewish literature, which is very, very much different from these kinds of literature. So I assume I have some tools which are beyond what a regular person would be, but not more than that. When you start diving into it, you discover so many truths and so many depths that can enlighten our situation even today that it was the effort.

• 6:44Speaker 00

  Yeah, I'll say I had never read it. I've read chunks of The Odyssey. I'd never picked up The Elliot because after all, it's just about mostly killing. So I thought, you know, it's not that interesting to me. You know, it's the book before The Odyssey. That's the way I've always thought about it. And I'm now about halfway through and we'll continue to read it as we continue this book club here at Econ Talk. And it's a stunning book. First of all, like The Odyssey, it's incredibly cinematic. You referenced Hollywood. There's

• 7:25Speaker 00

  so many scenes that feel like you're watching a movie. A friend of mine says it's like reading a Tarantino script because it's quite graphic. The violence isn't just, oh, and he died, or he was, this person killed this person. Homer describes in detail where the arrow went in, what the results are. Actually, you know, for my generation, it's more like Sam Peckinpah. I date myself with that illusion, but it's very, very, the violence is quite graphic. But it is, besides the language, which will try to give listeners a little

• 8:03Speaker 00

  bit of a flavor of it today, as you say, as a work of psychology, as a work of understanding the human heart. In war, but not just in war. It's actually a small part of the book. A lot of the book we'll talk about is about negotiation. It's about frailty. It's about ego. It's about pride. And you're right, it all began here. Everyone's riffing on it in a certain way. It's quite extraordinary. Now, you've read it many, many times, and you've taught it, more importantly, many, many times. How do you read it differently than from, say, when you read it 10, 15 years ago, when you came to it as an adult for the first time?

• 8:48Speaker 01

  First of all, the experience itself. From year to year, I think I understand it better, especially because the way we teach it, and I teach it, of course, in dialogue with the students. The students are reading it. I don't lecture them about the book. I don't tell them what to think about the book. They read it, they come to class. We have discussions, and every discussion where the participants are serious usually would tell me something new about the book. But, of course, we have the unique experience of teaching it now for the last three years for students who are returning from war.

• 9:31Speaker 01

  And not just the people who are warriors or participated in actual combat, but everyone here in Israel is now a part of a war, of an ongoing war. And it's really deepened the way I understand now the book and the way I can lead my students in reading it.

• 9:54Speaker 00

  I want to say something in passing about the Israeli Army, because Israeli Army, the IDF gets a lot of bad press these days. I think it's important for people who don't live here To understand and remember that Israel's army is very unusual. There is a large group of 18 and 19 and 20 year olds who serve and they are drafted, unlike in the United States, they almost, outside of the Arab Israeli community, which is they're allowed to serve, but they're not required, and outside the ultra orthodox community, where similarly they're allowed to serve but are not required, outside of

• 10:38Speaker 00

  those two communities, everyone serves in some fashion and almost all of them in the army. And you serve 18, 19 and 20, but the rest of your life, for many, many years, and some people, there's no age limit, are in what is called the reserves. And in American parlance, when you hear that phrase, the reserves, you think, well, that's the backup, you know, if they're ever needed. Well, the reserves train regularly here, meaning, once you've served in the army, you go back regularly to stay, quote, "in fighting shape" and knowledgeable shape. But more importantly, when there is a war, it's not like, oh, some of the reserves get called up. They all get called up.

• 11:21Speaker 00

  And here at Shalem, our students come, they're 25 years old on average when they get here. They've all served, and then they've done some other things often. But when the war broke out, they had to go back into the army. It's not like, oh, they went to a thing in the back room where they kept the paperwork. They served in battle. And so you are dealing, until recently, we're now sort of at peace, but you have been dealing for three years with people who are coming back from war, with having seen things that no human being should have to see, having done things they are troubled about by definition because they involve death and destruction.

• 12:04Speaker 00

  And it's an overwhelming experience that you've told me, and you've written about it, we'll link to some of your essays, reading this book, having come out of Gaza or Lebanon, is a therapeutic experience for them. It is a very different book than for the rest of us.

• 12:22Speaker 01

  Yes, and after I started publishing about it, I heard a lot of reactions from veterans in America, which have the same experience. And I know that there are book clubs for veterans in all places, in many places in America, which do the same thing. I would just add that I myself was serving in the reserve until I was 40, so I know the experience. I didn't participate in actual war, like our students, but I have a son-in-law that is right now in Lebanon and last week lost a friend who was married. So the scenes from The Iliad speak to us directly.

• 13:07Speaker 01

  But I would also want to add that you said something about it, because now the conversation sounds that it might be that the book fits only to people who really experienced war. But war is a place to examine humanity in a very deep way. I would just quote Milan Kundera, the writer, the Czech writer. He said that literature is a laboratory, where you can use it in order to understand better the human condition in all kinds of ways, right? Only in literature you can put people

• 13:48Speaker 01

  in situations where you are not allowed to do in actual life and to think about what would happen to the values, how would they act in front of danger, in front of something that breaks everything they believe in? How would someone would treat his wife and child when he has to serve his country? And again, doesn't matter what the cause is. So war is a great laboratory for literature to examine some basic assumptions and understandings about human life. And this is why The Iliad is also, I think, important for people who are not participating, thank God, in war.

• 14:33Speaker 00

  The word that comes to mind when you talk about it is it's a crucible. It's a place where, you know, things get hammered out and transformed. And of course, there's extraordinary literature from war. Everything from War and Peace, Norman Mailer's The Naked and the Dead, Catch 22 by Joseph Heller, many novels by Mark Halperin. These are places, these are fictional attempts to understand the human condition using the laboratory, the crucible of war as a way to see human beings under the most intense conditions.

• 15:14Speaker 00

  Having said that, when I lived in America until I came here, war was something, it's in the history, you know. I didn't love The Naked and the Dead. I didn't love Catch 22. You know, it's kind of depressing war. It's obviously unnatural. And yet, when you read the Eliad, you have to confront the reality that there is, violence is part of the human condition from time immemorial. Goes back to another ancient book that you and I know. Cain and Abel is, you know, very early on in the Book of Genesis. It's about violence and combat.

• 15:58Speaker 01

  What's interesting is that it might be that people are now trying to avoid reading books about war, but maybe most of the movies we see are full with violence. And the series we watch, they are full with violence. And what they lack, first of all, they are more graphic than reading. Reading gives you the opportunity to be a little bit distant and think about things. But when you watch it, you cannot be distant from it. Your imagination works less and your judgment work less when you watch a movie. So when you read, and when you read a deep book, you are doing.

• 16:43Speaker 01

  A much better, I think, work than watching a movie which involves violence. It gives you the opportunity to, eh, to train your muscles, your moral, right? Let's, the, the muscles of morality, you can train them much better when you read and you not watch it. So it might be even better to recommend people to read books about war than watching movies about war.

• 17:08Speaker 00

  It's a very interesting observation that so much of our, um, popular culture is about violence.

• 17:17Speaker 00

  A friend of mine, a rabbi, was in the hospital for a procedure and he didn't own a television. And so in his hospital room, there was a TV going 24/7, which is often the case in American hospitals. And I asked him what it was like to watch TV. I mean, he didn't like close his eyes. He watched it. He was, he's a pretty, pretty, um, morally serious person. I said, what, what did you think about it? He said, ah, he shrugged. He said, a lot of kissing and killing. And the, the iliad, there's a little bit of kissing, not much, uh, but it's mostly killing. But there's a lot more than just kissing and killing, I would say.

• 17:55Speaker 00

  The other thought I have about popular culture is that, uh, there are many, many times in this book when, uh, I think about superheroes. It's not just, these are not normal soldiers. The, these are superheroes. Achilles is, is Superman. He's Spider-Man. He's Daredevil. Hector on the Trojan side. Achilles is Greek, uh, Hector's Trojan. Uh, Hector is invincible. He, he has the, or at least seems invincible. So he faces another superhero. But these are people who, the normal rules of combat don't apply to them.

• 18:34Speaker 00

  And so, so when we watch the Avengers, say, uh, and this team of, of, of gods and goddesses come into war, uh, or into battle, uh, that all, it's straight out of Homer. It's, it's just, it's a, it's, I felt like I was reading the Avengers a number of times that I'm reading this book.

• 18:53Speaker 01

  Right, but you get the lesser version when you watch The Avengers. With all due respect, I of course say, but many, many psychologists, starting, I assume, with Freud and then with Jung, Rollo May in America, were speaking about the need for myth, and even the desperate need for myth after the Enlightenment, after burying the big myth, myth, right, it became a synonym synonymous to a lie. But that was not the truth in the beginning.

• 19:30Speaker 01

  A myth is a way to say something about the world in a very, very deep way, which sometimes you cannot say in a realistic novel. So again, if we're dealing with it anyhow, I think that these books are offering us a much serious way to think about aspects of our lives than the commercial cinema.

• 19:56Speaker 00

  It's a fantastic point about myths. Yeah, that's, it's so, it's so true. Let's, um, let's talk a little bit about a part of the book I just, I didn't expect. Again, my education is inadequate. I thought the book was about, first of all, I thought it was about the Trojan War. It's, it's not. It's about an episode in the Trojan War that takes place nine years after the war started. So it's kind of in the middle and you don't get much about how that we got here from there. Got, yeah, got here from there. But the other fascinating piece about this, when you read the book for the first time,

• 20:40Speaker 00

  and I want to alert readers to it and listeners, is the role of the gods. Now...

• 20:48Speaker 00

  There's one of our, one of my favorite children's books is called Something from Nothing. And it's about a family that, the father's a tailor and he's constantly salvaging and repurposing clothing. So what starts as a shirt turns out to be a vest and then it's a handkerchief, and then a tie, then a handkerchief, then a, I can't remember all the steps, doesn't matter. But in the version I like, under the floorboards of the house, there's a family of mice. And they're leading their own lives while the, the humans are doing their thing in the, in this, in this situation. The mice are also trying to repurpose things and they pick up scraps at a thread here and a thread there and they're doing stuff. And

• 21:32Speaker 00

  this book, the Iliad, has the same bizarre, two-tiered motif. The human beings are struggling, doing the best they can. They're fa, they're failing constantly. At the same time, there's this incredible conflict going on in Olympus between the gods, who are also sparring and fighting and negotiating and maneuvering, like the humans are. And their fights, which are often quite petty, spill over into the pettiness of human affairs. So talk about the role of the gods in this book.

• 22:08Speaker 01

  I'm, I'm of course speaking from my point of view. It's not clear that that was exactly the point of view of the ancient Greeks. But let's start with explaining to the listeners that if they are coming to it with the expectations of monotheism, doesn't matter whether, what kind of monotheism they believe or disbelieve, but they know, they are familiar with monotheism, this is polytheism in its best, I think. And the gods are not the creators of the world. Let's start with that. And the gods, and that's what usually is very much amazing, are not in charge of morality. They do not care for morality. On the contrary, human beings are

• 22:53Speaker 01

  much more interested in morality or in need for morals in order to live together. The gods are powers. They are not just natural powers, they are much beyond that. We can think about them today as psychological powers, or even beyond that. And understanding that, in a way, if one wants to describe, or even to understand better the world, one has to take into account the fact that there are powers beyond our power, or beyond a human being. This is, I think, what they can give us again back,

• 23:36Speaker 01

  something which was the notion of every man and woman before the great break of the great religions. So let's take, for example, Aphrodite. Aphrodite is a very, very important character in this book, because basically she started everything. So let's start from the beginning. Let's tell something about the background. The background is what is called the Judgment of Paris. But it started a little bit before that. So let's start really from the beginning. So it starts with Thetis. What I'm telling right now, part of it is discovered during the book, but that was a common knowledge to the readers.

• 24:19Speaker 01

  So Homer didn't have to put all the introductions, because they knew it, they believed in it. That was the culture. So on the background, we have the upper, the Olympian gods. Above them all, of course, Zeus, his brother Poseidon, who is in charge of the seas, and Hades, which is in charge of what beneath earth, which is, of course, the realm of the dead. And they all fall in love with Thetis, which is a sea goddess. But that's a prophecy. That the son of Thetis is going to be stronger from his father. And that's of course a huge threat for any ruler.

• 25:03Speaker 01

  So they decide among themselves to not let her marry a god, because then they will have a super god, which is not good for them, of course. But she is going to be married to a human being, to a mortal. Another word in Greek for gods is e-mortals. That's exactly what defines them as unique and not like human beings. We are mortals, they are e-mortals. And that of course affects everything, from character to what they are looking for in the world. And they decide to take her to Pelias. She's getting married and of course they do not invite Strife, which is a goddess, to the wedding.

• 25:47Speaker 01

  She is, of course, you know it, I assume from The Sleeping Beauty. It recounts the same, the same basic story. And during the wedding, Strife throws in, into the palace or wherever this wedding is taking place, a golden apple, which upon it is written, "To the fairest of them all." And three goddesses are at war. Who has to take the apple? It's Aphrodite, it's Hera, and it's Athena. And so let's say something about the three of them. So Aphrodite usually is considered to be the goddess of beauty, but she is the goddess of sex.

• 26:31Speaker 01

  She is the goddess in charge of the impulse that drives human beings and animals to meet and to have children. And we are familiar with this drive, right? You can call it the genes, right? The genes which moves us towards the other sex in order to have more children. You can see it, right? If you, if you look at the animals, you can see it everywhere. So she is in charge of this, she is this power. And beauty of course serves this power. This is why she's connected to beauty, but it's not beauty for itself. Hera is the ruler, she is the woman ruler.

• 27:14Speaker 01

  And they could imagine a woman ruler, she's the wife of Zeus, but she's also the queen of Asia. And Athena is very unique because Athena is a woman, and this is clear, but her sexuality is a non-issue. We have almost no records of partners, of sexual partners of Athena. She is very smart, she is the goddess of smartness, of strategy, wisdom. And of weaving together. So it's a good question, right? Who deserves, who is more important, right? The one who drives us to have children? The one who gives us the option to be rulers?

• 27:55Speaker 01

  Or the one who gives us strategy and power in war? And the power to organize our homes? Which is what she gives to women. So instead, to judge, the gods don't want to judge between them. They send Paris, who is Alexandros, who is the young prince of Troy. And this is how it starts. Every goddess offers him something, because it's not a real competition. It's more about what would the young ruler choose to do with the power he got, right? Aphrodite promises him the best sex ever,

• 28:41Speaker 01

  which means being together with Helen, which is the most beautiful woman on earth, who is married. But of course Aphrodite is not interested in marriage. Marriage are an arrangement, are a social arrangement. Hera is in charge of marriage. Because she's interested in politics, in society, in the ways a society holds together. Then you need rules, right? Then you need laws of marriage. But Aphrodite is not interested in that. And again, everyone who involves with sex knows that sex doesn't know rules. So this is Aphrodite, and she promises, and he chooses him, which is a poor decision, right?

• 29:24Speaker 01

  For a young prince to choose, to use his power in order to enjoy life, instead of giving something to the society he's going to be, one day, the ruler of. And he's going to visit Menelaus, which lives in Sparta, right? It's across the sea. Troy is on the shores, in the eastern shores, eastern, right? Western shores of Turkey today. This is the place we think they were. So if you cross the sea, you go to Sparta, which is part of the Plaponess. And then he is a guest of Menelaus, the king of this place. And when Elaus one day goes out of home, so Paris takes his beautiful wife Helen

• 30:08Speaker 01

  and goes back with her to Troy. And this is how the whole story begins. So when he brings her home, of course, Menelaus calls his brother Agamemnon and all the other kings who rules, you know, small cities all around Greece. And they go together in order to bring back the wife of Menelaus. And this is how the Trojan War starts. But all of this is the background, and it's not in the book itself.

• 30:48Speaker 00

  And the king of Troy is Priam or Priam. He has an enormous number of sons. He has many wives, obviously. The most prominent sons and their role in the book. Remember, this is Troy. So it's going to be a war between Troy, the Trojans, and the Greeks. His most prominent sons as warriors are Hector, who's a superhero, as I suggested earlier, and Paris. But he has others, and they play a role in the book, which we may or may not get to. But the book opens. Let me read the opening of the book. Tell listeners what the opening of the book is called.

• 31:31Speaker 01

  We call it, yes. It is a poem. It is a poem. It's the invocation of the muse, the poet, which is a human being, presents himself like the prophets presented themselves as just, you know, a tunnel for the godly voice. So the poem, the beginning, is the introduction, but it is the calling for, it's a summoning of the muse to come and speak through the throat of the poet to tell the story.

• 32:02Speaker 00

  And it's proem, P R O E M. And it's a, tell me if I have this right. It's a poetic prologue. Is that correct?

• 32:12Speaker 01

  Right. Pro is before. It's before the story starts.

• 32:17Speaker 00

  So it's fun to read. I have many editions, but we're, as I said before, we're going to read the translation of Robert Fagels, which I find particularly grand and I enjoy very much. And I'm, I left my hard copy at home, so I am now scrolling through my Kindle version, which is hard to find, by the way. If you buy the, if you want to read the Iliad on your Kindle, there's some, if you go to the Fagels paperback or hardcover and you go to the Kindle version, it's not always the actual Fagels translation in the Kindle version. So we will put a link up to the Kindle version of the Fagels translation. But here's how the Iliad starts.

• 33:00Speaker 00

  And I just want to remind listeners that Paleus, as you mentioned, is the husband of Thetis. Thetis is a goddess. Paleus is a mortal who's her husband because that way their child will not be that dangerous. And that's going to be Achilles. So let me just say one other thing.

• 33:22Speaker 00

  Like the Bible, there are many times in Homer where people are identified by their parents, typically their father. Zeus is often called the son of Cronus. Achilles is called the son of Paleus. Agamemnon and Menelaus are brothers. Their father is, I think, Atreides. So they're

• 33:45Speaker 01

  They're Atreides because they are the sons of Atreus.

• 33:48Speaker 00

  So again, if you're reading this for the first time, it's a little bewildering. You just keep reading, folks, and eventually it straightens out. The Fagels edition, by the way, has an enormous glossary, very frightening. How many people are in the glossary roughly?

• 34:03Speaker 01

  I don't remember the glossary, but in the book itself, there are more than thousand private names.

• 34:08Speaker 00

  But most of them.

• 34:10Speaker 01

  I think the glossary doesn't mention all of them.

• 34:12Speaker 00

  So don't be alarmed by that, but it does have a bit of the Russian novel problem that at first, not only are people sometimes identified by their father's name, which is also very Russian, by the way, they're patronimic, but they have multiple names. But it's not that complicated. You figured out pretty quickly, and I'll just mention this now to have it. The Greeks are called the Achaeans, they're called the Argives, they're called the Danons, they're all the same. They're people besieging Troy, trying to get Helen back from having been stolen, kidnapped, and taken by Paris. Okay. Now, here's the opening.

• 34:55Speaker 00

  Rage goddess, sing the rage of Paleus's son Achilles, murderous, doomed, that cost the Achaeans countless losses, hurling down to the house of death. So many sturdy souls, great fighter souls, but made their bodies carrion, feasts for the dogs and birds, and the will of Zeus was moving toward its end. Begin muse, when the two first broke and clashed, Agamemnon, lord of men, and brilliant Achilles. End of quote. Why is that important? That opening?

• 35:40Speaker 01

  I assume that for the original audience, the background is known, the story is known, and it's very important for the bard, right, for the singer, for the person who is enacting right now the poem, because it was a tradition of enacting it in front of audiences, and of course remembering it by heart, but also putting modifications into it when there's no, right, it's not one bard who sings like the other.

• 36:15Speaker 01

  So it starts with telling us exactly what is he going to focus on. And this is a small part, as you said, from the whole big story. So the background is a background. The Trojan War is the background of the story itself. But here we are going to focus. And the focus is the first word, rage. This book is going to deal with rage and a specific rage, the rage of Achilles. This is the beginning and the whole book is about what happens, how it starts and how it ends.

• 36:55Speaker 01

  And what happens during the time that Achilles is angry. And we know from the beginning what happened. A lot of people were killed, his brothers. It doesn't speak about the Trojans, eh, which are dying because of his anger. It is about his brothers in arms who are dying because of his anger. So it's more about what happens within the Greek army. When one of the most important fellows is going out because he's very angry. What happens to them and especially what happens to him? Again, what breaks the anger?

• 37:37Speaker 01

  And what would eventually bring him back to fight with his partners? But again, not until the end. The end doesn't matter in this book. How it ends? You will have to read the Odyssey, which would recount backwards. What happened before Odysseus went to his journey home?

• 37:57Speaker 00

  Before we talk a little bit more about the, his rage. And this is a very outdated concept, but you cannot understand the book without it. I haven't, you and I having talked about it elsewhere. The role of women in, in this culture.

• 38:19Speaker 00

  It's a warrior culture. It's very hard for us to understand. But you can't really understand the book without understanding their role. There is love. There's lust. Women have power. But they also play a very, a role as objects. That's very, very uncomfortable for the modern, for the modern readers. So talk about that.

• 38:44Speaker 01

  Women are part of the eutrophies. When you sack a city, you're taking everything therein, right? You will kill the combatants, the men, because they are a threat to you. But you will use the women as slaves, sometimes even sex slaves. So it's very hard for us to understand. But this is at the heart of the quarrel that initiates, ignites the whole book, the whole plot of this book.

• 39:16Speaker 00

  So I wanted to take us one step forward with another plot development. I hope this isn't too complicated for listeners. But basically, in a previous engagement, Achilles has, remember, he's a superhero. He's Greek, so on the Greek side. He, he's in a war. He, he takes a woman, Bresius. Now, Bresius, she kills, Achilles kills her husband, kills her brothers, takes her as a war prize. And so when the story opens, Bresius is, belongs to Achilles.

• 39:56Speaker 00

  And Agamemnon, this we don't have to go into, but he's, he has a war prize also, and he has to give her up. So he decides, because he deserves it, he's the, he's the king. He takes Bresius from Achilles. And this is what causes Achilles to be angry. And strangely, perhaps, as we'll see when we look at some other decisions people make, he, he refuses to fight. And more than that, he watches his comrades be slaughtered by Hector, sometimes by the gods, in their intervention.

• 40:38Speaker 00

  The gods intervene constantly in the, in pursuit of their own political economy goals.

• 40:45Speaker 00

  And I want to read.

• 40:51Speaker 00

  I want to read the passage where Agamemnon

• 40:59Speaker 00

  justifies stealing Achilles' compensation. He says the following about Bresius.

• 41:09Speaker 00

  No, excuse me, about the woman he lost. Chrissis. Chrissis, the woman he lost. He says, this is going to be a very costly speech for him. You're going to talk about it. He says the following. "I prefer her by far, the girl herself. I want her mind in my own house. I rank her higher than Clytemnestra, my wedded wife. She's nothing less in build or breeding, in mind or works of hand. But I'm willing to give her back. Even so, if that is best for all, what I really want is to keep my people safe, not see them dying. But fetch me another prize and straight off to else I alone of the archives go without my honor. That would be a disgrace. You're all witnesses.

• 41:52Speaker 00

  Look, my prize is snatched away." So he's basically saying, you know, I'm an altruist. Sure, I want to do the right thing, but surely I deserve what I'm entitled to. And then Homer continues, which is an unbelievable speech from an economist's point of view. He says, "But the swift runner," and this is a common adjective for Achilles. He's often called the swift runner.

• 42:19Speaker 00

  "But the swift runner Achilles answered him at once. Just how Agamemnon great field marshal, most grasping man alive. How can the generous archives give you prizes now? I know of no troves of treasure piled, lying idle anywhere. Whatever we dragged from towns, we plundered, all's been portioned out. But collected, call it back from the rank and file? That would be the disgrace. So return the girl to the God, at least for now. We, Akhenates, will pay you back three, four times over if Zeus will grant us the gift somehow, someday, to raise Troy's massive ramparts to the ground." So this is a scene, and we're gonna see another version of it a little bit later, that I hope we'll get to today.

• 43:03Speaker 00

  It's a negotiation. Basically, Agamemnon's saying, you know, I'm sorry, this woman I got is causing so much trouble. I'll give her back, but you gotta compensate me. And I want what you've got Achilles. And Achilles, he says, you'll get something else. And he says, well, where am I gonna get that from? Where's the stuff laying around that hasn't been handed out yet? Everything's been parceled out, baby. We've already handed out all the booty. So that's not gonna work. You'll get yours someday, you know, if we win. There'll be other spoils down the road. So that's where they're at in the negotiation. But of course, Agamemnon does not find that persuasive. And talk about what happens.

• 43:46Speaker 01

  Achilles doesn't find it persuasive. So just one remark about the dirty talk of Agamemnon, which might be a dirty talk of soldiers, of course, about women. You can hear soldiers speaking about wives and women in this way, but again, this is not the major topic. The major issue is that this is not a writing society. They do not write. The only way to understand who's more important than the other is to watch, and again, this is the same as today. If you're going to visit a high-tech company, and you enter through the garage, right, the

• 44:28Speaker 01

  common garage, you would immediately know where the head of the company parks, right? It would be nearest to the elevator, of course, and he will have the newest model of whatever car they give the workers. So it is still very, very important. This is hierarchy. And we still think through hierarchy, and still hierarchy is very important. And let's think right now that the head of the company has a licking roof in his...

• 44:58Speaker 01

  Beautiful office. And he has to evacuate the office. So do you think he's going to sit in the kitchen? He's not going to sit in the kitchen, right? He's going to evacuate the next in line from his office in order to have the best office available right now. So if you think about it like that, you understand that this is very rational. And as you talked about it, Agamemnon knows how to present his case, right? He makes it even much, right? He raises the price of what he's giving up on in order to convince the others that he's really justified that you will take another one instead, as long as his was taken from him.

• 45:42Speaker 01

  So it's still, I think, important even today.

• 45:45Speaker 00

  So just bring in my favorite Smith quote. Man naturally desires not only to be loved, but to be lovely. And to be loved is to be honored, respected, admired. And in this society, the beauty of your wife is the sign that you are a high achiever and that you are loved by people who look up to you and want to know what you're thinking and what you're doing. And Agamemnon wants the best one.

• 46:17Speaker 01

  And Agamemnon is a kind of an insecure leader because, again, he's not the king of all the others. He was just chosen to lead this battle. So he's basically, you know, first among equals. And he's insecure. And he's very much afraid of the fact that he will give up on his very, very important prize or car or an office. People would look at him and will see that Achilles or Odysseus or Aias or all the other important commanders has better women in their tents than him, and they will disrespect him.

• 47:00Speaker 01

  So he's very much afraid of the way people are treating him. And this is very important when you're part of war.

• 47:11Speaker 00

  And I just want to read just because this is another incredible moment of economic thinking.

• 47:20Speaker 00

  We spend a lot of time in economics talking about rationality and people acting in their own self-interest and cost-benefit analysis. And as I've gotten older, I'm a little more tolerant of imperfection. So, almost halfway through the book, through the story of the Iliad, the Greeks are taking a terrible beating. Hector's leading the Trojans and people are dying and it looks like they might have to head home with total failure and humiliation. So Agamemnon finally decides he's got to get Achilles into the fight. Now, it's book 10, I think, so, or 9, but, and there's 24. So, we're pretty sure it's not going to work

• 48:05Speaker 00

  because then the story would be pretty much over. So, but it's hard to imagine how it's not going to work. So I'm going to read what Agamemnon says and what he's going to offer Achilles to get him back into the fight. And to, appearing, appears to offer a submissive offer. So, Agamemnon concedes that, that he was wrong. He says the following, "Mad, blind I was, not even I would deny it. Why, look, that man is worth an entire army. The fighter Zeus holds dear with all his heart. How he exalts him now and mauls Achaeus' forces. But since I was blinded, lost in my own inhuman rage, now at last I am bent on setting things

• 48:47Speaker 00

  to right. I'll give a priceless ransom, paid for friendship." And pausing here, I just sort of mentioned, this is what he's going to give Achilles to get him to forgive him for stealing his woman and to get it back in the fight. "Here before you all, I'll name in full the splendid gifts I offer. Seven tripods, never touched by fire, ten bars of gold, twenty burnished cauldrons, a dozen massive stallions, racers who earn me trophies with their speed." He is no poor man who owns what they have won, not strapped for goods with all that lovely gold. What trophies those high-strung horses carried off for me?

• 49:30Speaker 00

  Seven women I'll give him, flawless, skilled in crafts, women of Lesbos, the ones I chose, my privilege. That day, he captured the Lesbos citadel himself. They outclassed the tribes of women in their beauty. These I will give, and along with them will go the one I took away at first, Bryce's daughter, and I'll swear solemn oath, binding oath in the bargain. I never mounted her bed, never once made love with her. The natural thing for mankind, men and women join. Now, all these gifts will be handed to him at once. And it goes on and on. At the end, he says, he offers him special land with sheep and cattle. He says, "Honor him like a god with hordes of gifts, and beneath his scepters sway.

• 50:15Speaker 00

  Live out his laws in sleek and shining peace. All this I would extend to him if he will end his anger." So, you're reading this, you think, "Well, this is the ultimate offer you cannot refuse. It's everything you were, it's compensation. You get back what I took, plus an unimaginable cornucopia of women, wells, cattle, cities, his own daughter." And Achilles turns it down. Why?

• 50:49Speaker 01

  Let's just make clear what happened in the beginning. Again, after Agamemnon decided to take the prize, Briseis, from Achilles, then he swore that he won't come back to war, and he's going to ask his mother, to ask Zeus, to help the Trojans win the war in order for his friends come, you know, upon their knees to ask for his return, right? He feels that they dishonor him. Nobody is coming to help him against Agamemnon, so he feels alone. All the promises, everything he believed in is broken right now.

• 51:31Speaker 01

  It's a crisis for a person who were trained only for this moment. Were trained to be the best, to be the best warrior in order to get the best honor. And now, even though he was the best warrior, he doesn't get the best honor because, right? Politics is sometimes even stronger than war, but he's not a good politician, right? He is just a warrior. He thought that would be enough. So that's the plan of Zeus that was mentioned in the poem. The plan of Zeus is, of course, to have the Trojans, but not because he thinks the Trojans should win the war, but in order to make the Achaeans come to ask Achilles and to compensate him, like we see here.

• 52:14Speaker 01

  And that happens at the night after the second battle day. The whole book deals with four days of battle. The first one is, the end is pretty equal, both sides, but the second one is very, very dramatic. It flips the powers. It's the first time where the Achaeans are sleeping behind the wall near their ships and the Trojans are parking outside, which they have never done for the last nine years. So this is very dramatic. And when Agamemnon sees that and he understands that he disappoints the whole army, because he promised them to win the war, right?

• 52:58Speaker 01

  He led them to this war. He promised them. It's not enough that nine years have passed and they are away from home, away from the wives and the property, etc. And now he made Achilles retreat and they are losing the war like they have never lost. That, I think, explains how far he is willing to go in order to persuade Achilles to return.

• 53:25Speaker 01

  So it was a lot. It was much more than what he took from him. And of course, this is a lesson for any manager or a leader. Sometimes you will have to compensate so much for a very small mistake you've done in the past, which is connected straight to your ego. So this is very important. Achilles says no, and that's of course a great surprise to everyone, because that's exactly what he was asking for. But he asked for it a week ago, something like a week ago, because sometime passed between the days of battle. But what we learn now, when we see how he reacts to this offer, very, very generous offer, is that he has been changed.

• 54:11Speaker 01

  And this is again something we know today, especially again in combat. When you're in a combat, you have to trust and believe the structure, right? You have a set of beliefs that drives you to be willing to risk your life for. But sometimes if you take a break out, you time out, and you're going out, and we know it from our soldiers. One of our students told me is that while in Gaza, they could be there for weeks together and nobody would break down. But when they would go out for a vacation, even, you know, sometimes for a weekend, a few people would not return.

• 54:56Speaker 01

  Because the moment you're taking, you're going back and you're looking about it, you can say, "For what? It doesn't... Why should I do it?" And that's a moment which is very, very important for us as readers and both for the society within the book. Because Achilles, for the first time, is looking from the outside about the basic values that motivates his society. And he says, "Well, there are alternatives. We don't have just to be here involved in war, killed or kill and get the honor. We might have a different life. We might go, I would tell you usually, you know, to Australia

• 55:41Speaker 01

  and live in a caravan where nobody will ever know about us. We won't have honor. We won't have huge property, but we can live in peace."

• 55:52Speaker 01

  And that's, you know, that's amazing. That's a huge surprise for all the others for the last 10 years were totally invested in war.

• 56:01Speaker 00

  So one of our students told me that, you know, when he came out of Gaza and he went into, walked into Tel Aviv and he sees people sitting, drinking coffee, having wine and he's thinking, what the hell are they doing? I mean, what is this life? It's so

• 56:18Speaker 00

  simple. It's so different. It's so alien to him. He couldn't relate to it. He said, I just, I couldn't process it. And then he's, the way he processed it was, he said, well, that's why I'm fighting. So people can sit and drink coffee and have conversations and connect with each other. But the gap between the warrior's life and the home front is, it can't be thought about. And when it is thought about, all of a sudden you're thinking, what am I doing? This is too painful. I'm doing things and seeing things I don't want to do.

• 56:52Speaker 00

  Even at the same time that they're proud to serve their country and they want to be next to their comrades and to their, their, their brothers in arms. But war is insane. There's no, there's no way around it. So here's the thing. Achilles comes across, you just made a nice defense of him. I like that. But to me is the first time reader, he seems a bit petty. He seems a bit self-absorbed. Do you respect him? Do you like him? Who do you like in this book? If anyone?

• 57:28Speaker 00

  We're watching human beings under, as you say, they're enmeshed in a system, a war machine that is unforgiving and chews them up. And this one extraordinary warrior gets to step out and sit in his tent for a while and think about it a little bit for the first time and realize the way you've at least portrayed it. But he doesn't come across that admirably. Is, is there anybody in this book you respect? Or that we respect as readers or you think Over wants us to respect?

• 57:56Speaker 01

  First of all, a great work of art is not judgmental. It gives you a lot, a lot of material to be the judge yourself. This is why it is a great training for a moral judgment. We can watch, we can understand the characters. More than that, what's beautiful with Homer and polytheism, it's not split into darkness and lightness and light. It's not that the Trojans are all bad and the Greeks are all good. We see now Achilles, which is not so admirable. For many years before the war,

• 58:38Speaker 01

  our students hated Achilles, I think, more than any other character in the book. But since the beginning of the war, they think about it differently. Because the breakdown of the soldier, and again, his commander betrayed him. His commander, the person he should have walked, you know, with closed eyes behind his back, knowing that he can fully trust this person to bring him into war and to take him out of war. This person betrayed his trust. This person broke down all the rules, everything he believed. Every respect he had was lost because of the ego of Agamemnon. So you can understand him.

• 59:20Speaker 01

  I don't say identify, I don't say admire him. But I think we can understand him. I learned a lot about it and I learned to understand Achilles better from the book that was written by Jonathan Shay. Jonathan Shay, he wrote a book called Achilles in Vietnam. He's a psychiatrist who worked for many years with veterans of Vietnam.

• 59:48Speaker 01

  And he reads the Iliad through the perspective of the soldier. And that's very important to say, because again, one can approach the Iliad and the Odyssey as classics, right, as something which is interesting but very foreign from us. But Jonathan Shay and the real experience I had here taught me to treat it as real human beings, like human beings like me and you, and the situations to think about in them not as classical, right? Operaic, even though sometimes it is very operaic, the way it is written, but as real, actual life situations.

• 1:00:30Speaker 01

  And Achilles is losing every trust he had. He's young, he's young, he's very good, he's young, and he's betrayed. His trust is broken. So I think we can understand him. I don't think we can identify. I wish I would act in a different way if I were instead of him, in his place, but I think we can understand him.

• 1:00:55Speaker 00

  But are you arguing that Achilles' refusal of Agamemnon's incredibly generous offer, which I took in my quick first time reading, to be ego and pride? You think it's more than that?

• 1:01:16Speaker 01

  Again, I think he lost, he lost the trust in the cause, right? The moral of the soldiers is falling down when they lose trust. And we see it, you know, in every war. Usually it starts well. The soldiers are enthusiastic. They truly believe, they follow their commanders. But with time passing, with being in the trenches, right in the mud in Vietnam, and having more friends killed or wounded, you're losing it. You're losing it, you're losing trust. And it happened in Vietnam, right? The, most of the soldiers and the public in America

• 1:02:01Speaker 01

  lost trust in the leadership. And when you're losing trust in your leadership, it's very, very hard to fight for it and to be willing to sacrifice your life.

• 1:02:12Speaker 00

  Well, then, let's talk, maybe in closing, about Hector. So Hector is the superhero on the Trojan side. He's also Paris's half-brother. They share a father, which is the king of Troy, Priam. And he despises Paris, Hector does. He is constantly blaming him for the war because he stole Helen from Menelaus. And worse than that, he is critiquing his courage, his honor. He treats him with disdain and says so.

• 1:02:57Speaker 00

  And Paris often agrees with him, which is also credibly one aspect of how people respond to that kind of criticism. But Hector sees his duty through. Talk about Hector.

• 1:03:10Speaker 01

  Hector is probably the most tragic and beloved character of the book. And again, this is the genius of Homer. Even though Homer is on the side of the Greeks, he can describe a wonderful character on the other side, which is not all darkness. And it might be that the tragic aspect of Hector is exactly the source of his power. His power, his source of power, is his loyalty. He is loyal. He's loyal to the laws of the city. He's loyal to his father, the king.

• 1:03:50Speaker 01

  And he will follow the orders of his father even though he does not believe in the cause of the war. He would have been... He would give Helen back because he thinks that's not right to do. But his father, which is a weak leader, he's old, he's weak. And he's following Paris, his father. It's a kind of maybe Jacob and Joseph, right? The beautiful younger son who moves his father and he causes his father to lose his understanding about the situation, the whole situation, and his loyalty to the others. So Priam is following Paris, and Paris is following,

• 1:04:35Speaker 01

  let's not, you know, mention here what exactly he's following, but it's not his brain.

• 1:04:41Speaker 01

  And Hector is angry, and he's critical about it, but he will continue fulfilling his duty. He will never break. He will fulfill his duty until his tragic end.

• 1:04:55Speaker 00

  And there's an extraordinary scene, you've written about it. And we've talked about it, where he, he's on a mission, takes him back to Troy away from the battle for a bit. And he takes the opportunity to visit his wife, Andromache, and his infant son. And his wife says, basically, "Don't go back. Stay here.

• 1:05:21Speaker 00

  There's no reason to go back. You're going to be killed. What's the point? You're going to be killed." And of course, she's right. He's going to be killed. So why does Hector go back?

• 1:05:35Speaker 01

  He answers her. He starts with saying, "I identify with you. I totally understand you. I think like you," which is, again, amazing, because she gives him strategic options, where to stand in order to be more protected, where he can see and command the army without being in danger. Again, that's not for a woman to say, but he accepts it. He does not disagree with her, but he says, "I could not look into the eyes of the other women, which I send their husbands and sons and fathers to war." And I am loyal. I was raised to take this position.

• 1:06:19Speaker 01

  This is my position. I am the commander in chief of the army. I have my duties. I am loyal to the laws of the city, even in the cost of losing my life and losing you and my son, Asdianax, which is present in this amazing scene.

• 1:06:39Speaker 00

  It's a fascinating reason. He doesn't say the standard brothers in arms argument. I can't let my comrades down. He says, I couldn't respect my... The way I take it, tell me if you agree, you know better than I do. I couldn't respect myself if I walked through this town and saw the wives of the men that I abandoned to their death and took the easy way out.

• 1:07:10Speaker 01

  Right. And the continuation of this amazing scene, when he speaks with her, he is fully armored, especially with the helmet, which covers half of his face. And then he speaks like he should speak, but then he moves to say goodbye to his son, to his little son. And the boy is, of course, afraid of this appearance. Again, a story I heard again and again from our students when they would come, return home, right? And would go to visit their young niece or nephew. They would, you know, run away from this person who now looks like a stranger after not being at home for a month or two months.

• 1:07:54Speaker 01

  And, you know, the face is a little bit changed by the war and the look of the battle dress. Then he removes the helmet and he smiles at the baby. And then the baby smiles back. And then he speaks in another, in different way. He speaks in a more hopeful way. And that's, again, a very, very deep moment because Homer can depict this.

• 1:08:21Speaker 01

  Very complicated situation where Hector is torn from within. He decides, he knows exactly what to do, but that doesn't say that he's not a robot. He's not a blind follower of the laws. He decides to follow the laws because he believes that this is the right way to do it. He's a great father. He is a man of his family. He loves his family. He loves civilian life. He would not choose to be a soldier. He was raised to be a soldier in order to protect the city. And now, when duty calls, he will go, even though he knows the price he pays for.

• 1:09:00Speaker 01

  But Homer have this ability to picture this in a very complicated and very touching-to-the-heart way.

• 1:09:12Speaker 00

  I hope everyone will join us in reading this book. And we'll have some additional episodes down the road with some different guests with their take. My guest today has been Ido Chivroni. Ido, thanks for being part of Econ Talk.

• 1:09:28Speaker 01

  Thank you very much.

• 1:09:35Speaker 00

  This is Econ Talk, part of the Library of Economics and Liberty. For more Econ Talk, go to EconTalk.org, where you can also comment on today's podcast and find links and readings related to today's conversation. The sound engineer for Econ Talk is Rich Goyette. I'm your host, Russ Roberts. Thanks for listening. Talk to you on Monday.