Book contents
- Achilles beside Gilgamesh
- Achilles beside Gilgamesh
- Copyright page
- Dedication
- Contents
- Additional material
- Preface
- Diagrams
- Figures
- Abbreviations
- Sources for primary texts
- 1 Introduction
- 2 Divinity, humanity and wisdom
- 3 Gilgamesh and glory
- 4 Gilgamesh confronts death
- 5 Interlude on Homer and the Muse
- 6 The race of half-gods
- 7 The plan of Zeus
- 8 The coming of Achilles
- 9 The strife of the Iliad
- 10 Achilles looks inward
- 11 The death of the friend
- 12 Achilles responds
- 13 From lamentation to vengeance
- 14 Achilles like a lion
- 15 Mortality and wisdom
- 16 The truths of lamentation
- Conclusion The slender-winged fly
- Bibliography
- Index of Passages Cited
- General Index
2 - Divinity, humanity and wisdom
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 07 November 2019
- Achilles beside Gilgamesh
- Achilles beside Gilgamesh
- Copyright page
- Dedication
- Contents
- Additional material
- Preface
- Diagrams
- Figures
- Abbreviations
- Sources for primary texts
- 1 Introduction
- 2 Divinity, humanity and wisdom
- 3 Gilgamesh and glory
- 4 Gilgamesh confronts death
- 5 Interlude on Homer and the Muse
- 6 The race of half-gods
- 7 The plan of Zeus
- 8 The coming of Achilles
- 9 The strife of the Iliad
- 10 Achilles looks inward
- 11 The death of the friend
- 12 Achilles responds
- 13 From lamentation to vengeance
- 14 Achilles like a lion
- 15 Mortality and wisdom
- 16 The truths of lamentation
- Conclusion The slender-winged fly
- Bibliography
- Index of Passages Cited
- General Index
Summary
Civilisation is a tired word, but if it means anything it means a sense of communal social identity with the rule of law, systematic government, and public order rising above the uncontrolled forces of the natural world, and with a place for visual and verbal artists to respond creatively to those issues. In antiquity, those things were expressed above all in the life of the city: a centre of population and power surrounded by walls and typically asserting itself as the head of a state or polity, led by a king and protected by its own gods.1 Our concern here is not with the historical realities but the artistic responses.
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- Achilles beside GilgameshMortality and Wisdom in Early Epic Poetry, pp. 35 - 56Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2019