Dakota
Do you think the gods intervention turns the human characters into puppets of do the humans still make choices that affect their fate?
Answer
The characters are true to themselves in _The Iliad._ The gods don't make them into puppets. In Book IV Helen is more or less forced to make love to Paris, whom she has come to despise. But she wanted to do that before the war began; she was by nature licentious. When Hector runs from Achilles in XXII, that is the dread he has been feeling throughout the story. When Achilles kills Hector it is the culmination of the slaughter he started in Book XXI. Hector has all the advantages on his side: Achilles has to fight his way to get to him. He still is inadequate to Achilles as a fighter. In many other ways he is better--loving and civilized--but in this one way, where it counts in the war, he is deficient.
The characters are true to themselves in _The Iliad._ The gods don't make them into puppets. In Book IV Helen is more or less forced to make love to Paris, whom she has come to despise. But she wanted to do that before the war began; she was by nature licentious. When Hector runs from Achilles in XXII, that is the dread he has been feeling throughout the story. When Achilles kills Hector it is the culmination of the slaughter he started in Book XXI. Hector has all the advantages on his side: Achilles has to fight his way to get to him. He still is inadequate to Achilles as a fighter. In many other ways he is better--loving and civilized--but in this one way, where it counts in the war, he is deficient.
In Dante's book Paradiso, what would happen to him if Beatrice smiled?
Armand P
to whose fate was this compared to?
Answer
If Beatrice had smiled as they ascended to Saturn, Dante would have died and turned to ashes from too much light; the same fate that Semele met.
http://www.readprint.com/chapter-
210/Dante-AlighieriCanto XXI
Paradiso - by Dante Alighieri
"Paradiso: Canto XXI
Already on my Lady's face mine eyes
Again were fastened, and with these my mind,
And from all other purpose was withdrawn;
And she smiled not; but "If I were to smile,"
She unto me began, "thou wouldst become
Like Semele, when she was turned to ashes.
Because my beauty, that along the stairs
Of the eternal palace more enkindles,
As thou hast seen, the farther we ascend,
If it were tempered not, is so resplendent
That all thy mortal power in its effulgence
Would seem a leaflet that the thunder crushes.
We are uplifted to the seventh splendour,
That underneath the burning Lion's breast
Now radiates downward mingled with his power.
Fix in direction of thine eyes the mind,
And make of them a mirror for the figure
That in this mirror shall appear to thee."
If Beatrice had smiled as they ascended to Saturn, Dante would have died and turned to ashes from too much light; the same fate that Semele met.
http://www.readprint.com/chapter-
210/Dante-AlighieriCanto XXI
Paradiso - by Dante Alighieri
"Paradiso: Canto XXI
Already on my Lady's face mine eyes
Again were fastened, and with these my mind,
And from all other purpose was withdrawn;
And she smiled not; but "If I were to smile,"
She unto me began, "thou wouldst become
Like Semele, when she was turned to ashes.
Because my beauty, that along the stairs
Of the eternal palace more enkindles,
As thou hast seen, the farther we ascend,
If it were tempered not, is so resplendent
That all thy mortal power in its effulgence
Would seem a leaflet that the thunder crushes.
We are uplifted to the seventh splendour,
That underneath the burning Lion's breast
Now radiates downward mingled with his power.
Fix in direction of thine eyes the mind,
And make of them a mirror for the figure
That in this mirror shall appear to thee."
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