Lecture Series - Thomas Palaima

The Iliad of Homer is the end result of centuries of songs being sung about wars, how and why they are fought, and what effects they have on human beings and human societies. In the twentieth and twenty-first centuries, the Iliad has been read both as a pacifist document revealing how the force of war destroys and dehumanizes human beings and as glorious proof of “why men love war“ and always will. In this talk, Thomas G. Palaima, will present the contexts in which early songs in the epic tradition must ha