I mean, what do we take of, or what kind of observations can we make of this picture that Plato gives us?

So I just want to, I have a couple of quick comments and then I'll pass it off.

First of all, Plato never actually refers to it or Plato via Socrates never refers to it as a mania.

Now, that's in the Phaedrus he does.

Here he doesn't.

What he uses instead is this very interesting expression that I came across, ekphron.

Now, phrain is the Greek word, you're nodding, Jack.

I mean, what was it that we think we're trying to actually discover here? And to what degree were we successful?

that the more that you know, the more of you actually love wisdom, the more you know around you, the better the liar you're actually going to become, which is, I think, an interesting appetizer to the rest of this dialogue because the philosopher, Socrates, we can ask, is he being honest with us throughout this entire dialogue?

Yeah, I think, Deacon, you raise a good point.

There are many strange things that Socrates says in this dialogue that That caught me by surprise.

And maybe we'll get to them.

But like one in particular is if, you know, if your listeners are familiar with some of the other dialogues that Plato wrote, like the Protagoras and Mino, Socrates in those dialogues takes a very definitive position that knowledge is virtue or virtue is knowledge.

And so if you know the good, then you will by necessity perform the good.

Because the question would be, well, if you know what's right, why would you do what's wrong? And then Aristotle, you know, he has a big problem with this and he raises this issue in the Nicomachean Ethics in his discussion of weakness of will.

And I also think it's a difficult question for Christianity.

I mean, what are some things that we can say to kind of set up the conversation, the preliminaries of this dialogue? Well,

Deacon, you and I, we were chit-chatting before the recording, and one of the questions that the reader has to ask himself is, for whom is this dialogue intended? So there is within the framework of the dialogue itself.

So is he trying to appeal to the two young men, the so-called rival lovers, or is he trying to appeal to the boys because they're also witnesses or spectators of this exchange? But then there's, of course, the interlocutor outside the scope of the dialogue, the person to whom the dialogue is being narrated.

And so I think that this does raise this question, okay, Who is this? What is Socrates really trying to do? Is he trying to convert the rival lovers to philosophy? Is he trying to convert the boys whom we meet early doing these little scientific drawings? Is he trying to convert them or is he trying to convert this unnamed interlocutor? One other thing I would mention too, and then I'll certainly hand it off to Dr.

Larson, is the title itself is interesting.

I've given this a lot of thought, and I don't want to read too much into it, but the title of the dialogue is not rival lovers, but lovers.

The word rival lover does appear a couple of times.

He's asking that question because he's going to set him up for yet another slam.

I guess one way to look at it is, would there be any bridles on this type of love of gain? Could Hipparchus just keep doing this without limits? And would that actually be bad? Can you seek too much wisdom? And could you share too much wisdom with those around you? Would there ever have to be a bridling of this particular love of gain? And I think the answer to that is no.

I want to return to your observation that the friend, the companion, is a representative of the democratic Athenian.

So your average bloke on the streets.

So, I mean, if the companion is the appetitive man, I would have expected him to actually think of love of gain as a good thing.

You feed your appetite, you pursue wealth.

In fact, if you go back to Republic Thrasymachus, and I was curious, so Thrasymachus does talk about pleonexia as being something that is natural.

Greed is something that is natural, and it's good.

And then I think there's also a foreshadowing to Socrates, which Plato is apt to do in his works.

And this again brings up that concept of to what degree can people actually see that it's Odysseus, and is there a loyalty here? Like, what is it, like with Argos, is there-- what is it that allows people to see that this beggar is reminiscent of Odysseus? And if the cowherd can do this immediately, has not Penelope been able to do this? And I think we're gonna see a few hints in this book in the way that she acts, that she at least intuits that something more is going on than she realizes.

No, it is quite no-noteworthy, Deacon, that Homer, um, he elevates these, what we would consider common folk, these salt of the earth, uh, these farmers, these, these, um, uh, husbandry men, and, and, and, and also, uh, Theoclymenus, the, the prophet who has confessed to being a murderer.

Uh, these are not ordinarily whom we would think to be part of the Magnificent Seven or the Justice League.

Uh, so, so yeah, I think Homer's doing something here that's, that, that's quite interesting and maybe even quite subversive, uh, for his audience, where, you know, we expect some, you know, again, to, to reassemble the great heroes that sieged Troy.

And, and, and, and now instead what we are getting are the people who would be listening to the poem as it was being recited.

And, and I think too it's, it's, it's worth noting, and I'm sure Deacon and, and Thomas, I mean, y-you'll remember that Eumaeus is often referred to by Homer in the second person.

Right? There are these moments where Homer will say, "You swineherd, uh, Eumaeus." Uh, and it, that's a very strange turn of ph- Like, why, why does he, why does he shift from the third person to the second person? And, and there must be something to that.

But can you just buy the gods off with sacrifices? I think the, I think Homer is presenting that as a hard no.

And again, arranged by the anti-news, by the anti-intellect.

Yeah, I think...

So this fight allows Homer, so it's this device, the way I read it, it's a device that allows Homer to bring Odysseus back into contact with the suitors and to give them maybe perhaps another chance to save themselves.

So again, I don't want to jump too far ahead.

Of course, there's this fight.

Odysseus just wrecks them.

Just... utterly wrecks him and then he gets as his reward these fatty sausages and then in addition a couple of loaves of bread that Infinimus So, yeah, we're jumping ahead a bit and certainly we can go back.

of Ithaca and she is incredibly open with this beggar incredibly open and you wonder if that itself is a test of offering all this stuff the certain intimacy the certain openness to see then how he will react and of course then in the midst of all this intimacy and also the test that she devises like the clothing and things like this Odysseus can nail all these because that he actually is who he is right he can actually say that he's seen Odysseus and all these things because he knows what to answer And so, you know, my overall arching question here is just how much does she actually suspect in this whole, you know, back and forth?

But his overall arc in the Odyssey overall, he is a role that I'm still not terribly settled with.

Before pressing into Eumaeus' story, I was wondering if you found at all interesting the questions that proceed, the questions that Odysseus asks.

Because I was trying to remember, and even in the previous paragraph...

So Odysseus invites Eumaeus to tell his story.

These are very strange questions, right? Was your city sacked? Were you all alone herding your sheep and cattle when pirates kidnapped? I mean, of course, Deacon, you recall in some of our previous conversations how Odysseus often lets things slip.

For instance, in Featia, when he was engaging in the athletic contests, he mentions that he competed in Troy in some sort of archery contest.

And so that was a moment where if the Featians were actually paying attention, they would have asked, well, what do you mean you were in Troy? because that wasn't at all part of the story of his life that he revealed.

I mean, there's an imprint of the Euthyphro dilemma on this as well, right? How do we discern what's good here? It's 100% what the gods will.

I mean, what, what do you think is going on in this passage?

Well, if I, I'd like to jump in just briefly and, and, and, and rewind a bit to, to line, I guess it'd be around 215.

And so you can, you didn't mention this, but, but I think it's important to highlight that when he arrives, he doesn't recognize where he's at.

And we're told that Athena has showered him with a mist.

And, and the mist actually serves a twofold purpose.

So firstly, it, it disguises him, right? She might change his appearance from head to foot in the Fagles translation.

So this mist is, um, not allowing others to penetrate his t- true identity.

Mm-hmm.

Better to reign in hell than serve in heaven." And the whole tradition has taken up this question and has never put it down, and it all begins with Homer, who had this, such a clear vision into what's important to human nature.

Yes, I, [clears throat] and what I'd say too, um, is I think H- I think Homer is engaging in a very clever met- meta-narrative here, um, where we're beginning to see the values of the Iliad collide with the values that Homer's putting forth in The Odyssey.

Um, and, and, and I've mentioned this on previous podcasts, Deacon, but, but I, I really see Homer when writing the Iliad as posing many of the questions that he attempts to answer in The Odyssey.

I think this is all very deliberate.

Uh, and so Homer, in a sense, is undergoing his own descent, his own descent into himself, where he's trying to wrestle with these existential questions, uh, having to do with the meaning of life and what brings life, what truly brings life value.

And so he allows Achilles, who in the Iliad was motivated solely in pursuit of Kleos here, an opportunity to reflect upon his life.

Uh, and not only does he teach Odysseus a lesson about where true value lies, but, but Homer through, uh, Achilles and Agamemnon for that matter, because both Agamemnon and Achilles are very different men than, uh, whom we, we encountered in the Iliad.

His cleverness is, uh, tethered to self-preservation, and then the men are presented as these kind of like mutinous, obtuse individuals that really kind of deserved what happened to them.

Like, who are the Phaeacians?

Well, the f- the, the Phaeacians are act-- We're introduced to them a little earlier in Book 5.

Um, this is, um, if you're using the Fagles translation on 153, they just get a mention.

But it, it's, it's an interesting way that they're described by Zeus.

So on line 39, Zeus tells us that, um, he'll eventually land on this island, the land of the, of the Phaeacians, close kin to the gods themselves.So [clears throat] right, right from the start, they're, they're strange people because they're somehow related to the gods, unlike the other Greeks that we've met, Odysseus.

I mean, some of the Greeks are related to the gods, uh, these heroes like Aeneas, for instance, the Trojan, he's, uh, related to, uh, the goddess Aphrodite.

Uh, Achilles has a goddess for a mother.

Okay, so what do you like, what do you like about this book?

But here, like, so what's the import? Like, what's the takeaway if Athena is actually copying verbatim Mentor's speech?

Well, that's a very good question.

Um, so [clears throat] I, I think what we, you see here, we see this contrast in, in both cases in Ithaca at the beginning of Book 5, we have these two councils.

Um, we have the council of the Ithacans.

It's very dysfunctional.

We've talked about this in the previous podcast, very dysfunctional polis.

Um, yeah, I, I, I think what really stood out to me, gentlemen, is that, um, [clears throat] Mentor actually addresses the council prior to us learning about, uh, Athena becoming incarnate.

Now, Dr. Grabowski, does this not just solve the problem for your students? They're just like, "Oh, okay, he got dragged into this," or what, what do they do with that line?

And if you remember, even in the Iliad when Menelaus and Paris have their one-on-one duel, Menelaus asks Zeus to deliver Paris into his hands so that all the world could see what happens to a guest that violates and strikes out against his host.

Now, you, you bring up xenia i-i-uh, or hospitality, a-a-and I think that, that xenia in particular just permeates these four books, both, uh, the presence of or the absence of.

And so something I think just to add on to what you've said, which, which was brilliant, is that, uh, I think xenia r- is really the barometer by which we can judge the health of a polis.

Um, you know, later when we encounter the Cyclops, right, he displays a lack of xenia, and so you know instantly that this is not a human, that this is a monster, that this is someone who is not civilized.

Or we've seen the suitors, uh, their lack of hospitality, uh, again, aside from them be-th-being rude, eating the cattle, eating the sheep, uh, drinking the wine of their hosts, um, without repayment.

But, but yes, they're plotting to kill Odysseus, uh, as well as Telemachus.

Uh, but then we shift as Telemachus travels, uh, in, in search of news of his father.

So there's this really interesting parallel in which you can take the Homeric texts and parallel them to the gospels and see if there's some kind of interplay going on there.

Dr. Grabowski, anything on your end?

Um, no, I would, I would just say that, you know, the, the, the fact that the, uh, Iliad opens with, with menace, this, this emotion that, that is really reserved for the gods, right? So this is a very intense form of rage that, that Homer is attributing to, um, to Achilles.

Um, and the fact that, yeah, the Odyssey begins with the word, um, aner.

Uh, so it is about a man, but it's about all of us because as the, as the proem concludes, Homer says, at least in the Fagles translation, "Launch out on his story, Muse, daughter of Zeus, start from where you will, sing for our time too." And so I think that this, this is Homer's way of saying that this, you know, s- sing to me, Muse, but, but sing for all of us.

That, that this is not just about a man, but it's about the universal man.

Um, and then of course we could, we could transition to the other very interesting word, which I think is the most interesting word in the first line, which is polutropos.

And so if you don't mind me, maybe we can just briefly...

So who wants to kind of sally forth about Zeus' commentary here about man and fate?