The Logos of Odysseus - A Veteran's Anti-War Speech.

So, thanks to the work of Shahryar I have managed to get ahold of a digital copy of The Logos of Odysseus. I have deliberately avoided as many spoilers about this, and literary analyses, to better understand the piece without the gilding of ages. So, first of all, a HUGE thank you to Shahryar for the hard work, and link to a Thesis which contained Antisthenes work in toto. It's much appreciated and this essay is my way of doing a bit of homework on the piece. I'll try to keep it as much in plain and honest reactions as possible.

[video:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TX5FgDJnyN8]

For those interested in the original pieces, they are in the appendix of this Thesis paper.
https://ses.library.usyd.edu.au/bitstream/2123/16595/1/Kennedy_WJ_Thesis...
Starting on Page 325 for this piece.

First off, the entire piece is a part of a group of speeches from veterans of the Trojan War, speaking to an assembly, presumably of the other heroes of the war. The tone of the two surviving pieces, the speeches of Ajax and Odysseus, paint a picture of men extremely familiar to our modern eye, in the caricatures of combat veterans.

Odysseus points out that the actions that he undertook were for the sole purpose of ending the war. He points out many times that his actions, while not considered honorable, had the net effect of ending the war faster and more decisively. He reproaches the others for benefiting from his actions, and reproaching them.

For it was not to fight against the Trojans that
we came here, but to recover Helen and capture Troy.

Odysseus also calls into sharp relief the desire for fame and glory of the other heroes of the Trojan War. He even mocks their obsession with Armor and weapons, which I find particularly humorous, considering that our MIC still has not learned this lesson. Another rather amusing but subtle point he makes is that the people are not protected by a strong military, rather the soldier is protected by a strong military.

Do you think there is any difference between bearing such arms
and being ensconced within a city-wall? For you alone there is no wall – so you say. Yet
in fact it is you alone who go around with a seven-ox-hide wall wrapped around yourself.

In addition, Odysseus speaks very sternly about the need for first hand knowledge of a situation. He quite obviously has a great deal of distaste for those who rely upon merely the word of others.

I know what is going on here and among the enemy, and not because I send another spying

Finally, Odysseus speaks about the differences between bravery and stupidity. There really is no need for me to restate his position, as it's much better worded than I would put it.

Are you ignorant that cleverness and bravery in battle is not the same thing as being strong? Stupidity is the greatest evil to those who have it.

Reading over this piece again, just pointing out the most interesting bits feels a bit cheap, to be honest. It's really meant to be performed, and this speech practically screams tired and bitter veteran who just wants to go the fuck home. It's really a shame that much of Antisthenes work has not survived. Just from the Logos of Ajax and Odysseus, it seems that this could have been part of an epic performance, and that thought is strangely appealing.

I admit that I'm being a bit speculative at this point, but I truly feel that this piece may have been the Greek equivalent of an anti-war expose. Antisthenes puts far too much feeling of betrayal, anger and exasperation into the speech for it to be anything but a paraphrasing of something he heard during his own war. The use of older wars to tell current war stories is nothing new in the modern day, and it's not inconceivable that a Greek veteran might not want to have the city leaders pissed at him more than they already were.

Laertius in particular mentions only that his "Works are Preserved in Ten Volumes" Which he never elucidates on further, save to name the various titles. Since this means that these may have been the only ones that saw wide dissemination, and in addition, considering that Laertius was writing 500 years later, It means even he was working from third or fourth hand information from the start.

The fact that much has not survived suggests that it may have hit a bit close to home for somebody powerful. The only two that survived were of course tied to EXTREMELY popular characters in the Iliad, and as a result would suggest that they were part of the current "Fan Canon" as it were. Considering the state of Greek Drama at the time, a satirical play could easily be mistaken for simple rhetoric years later, especially if it was a piece that was repeatedly performed due to its power.

However, I can't help but think that a man who lectured at a gym specifically for outcasts from society may have had his heart in the right place. At least, I see enough of my own demons in his work that I cannot simply accept the words of "Older and Wiser" heads on his irrelevance.

[video:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NiE5-II0v7w]

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yellopig's picture

Plus c’est la même chose.

In a history book, I read a letter (to his wife) from an Egyptian soldier shipped up the Nile (i.e., south) in mumble-mumble BCE, and he said:

"The food is lousy. The officers are idiots. I can't wait to get back home. I hope that you and the kids are well…"

The lesson will be repeated until the student can demonstrate mastery.

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“We may not be able to change the system, but we can make the system irrelevant in our lives and in the lives of those around us.”—John Beckett

detroitmechworks's picture

@yellopig but the classes are empty of those who make the decisions regarding war.

War, despite its hideous evil, is a social activity. Those that beg off participation, yet demand the right to make the rules are beyond foul. Of course, that's the point that Antisthenes was trying to make, which is why I like this so much.

Half tempted to Reread the Iliad and the Odyssey in the hope of recreating Antisthenes thought pattern. It's clear that he was a fan of the work, at least the Iliad, and so as a result seeing the war through a cynics eyes would naturally lead to Odysseus being a figure strongly associated with the Cynics.

There are some clues already, and some thoughts that are percolating with regards to how some of the other heroes would speak. (Right now I really want to write the Logos of Paris, with the speech given by the Ghost of Paris towards the entire assembly of heroes, Greek and Trojan. It would need to have a proper balance of regret and sadness, yet still present his case as if it was justified. Honestly, it should read similar to any tyrant or chicken hawk, with lots of flowery language to justify the indefensible based on the claim that it was his right, decreed by Aphrodite herself.)

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I do not pretend I know what I do not know.

enhydra lutris's picture

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That, in its essence, is fascism--ownership of government by an individual, by a group, or by any other controlling private power. -- Franklin D. Roosevelt --

detroitmechworks's picture

@enhydra lutris And I must say that while the book I got is good, it is rather... badly written. I mean, for an academic text it's AWESOME, but for trying to read to learn and understand rather than hunt down the historical lineage of the information... it becomes a bit harder.

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I do not pretend I know what I do not know.

It is the distinction in Persian as well as Greek philosophies between the necessary and the noble, and how far this is separate from the base (merely necessary), and how the base should be "unlearned" (199):

CYRUS
CD13a-c. The fact that the same fragment is attributed both to Cyrus and to Antisthenes
suggests that many of the statements attributed to 'Antisthenes' originally started life as
words he gave to one of the participants in his dialogues.
If the reference to 'Cyrus the king' here is accurate, it must be to Cyrus the Great. As there
is no trace of a dialogue attributed to Antisthenes featuring non-contemporary historical
characters, one plausible explanation is that Cyrus the Great is being quoted by a speaker in
a dialogue. If so, this comment would have fit quite naturally into the sort of discussion
that was imagined between Archelaus, Cyrus the Younger, and Alcibiades in the discussion
above on CD9a-b. Cyrus the Younger, for example, could have used this expression in
order to distinguish the king from himself.
The ethical nature of the comment given to Cyrus in this fragment, that the most essential
knowledge is to 'unlearn base things', is quintessentially Antisthenic in nature. For a
collection of Antisthenes comments warning against 'base men' and 'base deeds' (often
κακοί and κακά) see the discussion in ch. 2.ii section A. The ethical opposition between
what is noble and what is base in this group of fragments is made particularly clear when
the term ἀναγκαιότατον, 'most necessary' in CD13a-b, is replaced by ἄριστον, 'most noble'
or 'best' in CD13c.
199

That's what we need, an Antisthenic for all that is base in Realpolitik.

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detroitmechworks's picture

@leveymg Just picked up Susan Prince's book today (The Reed College Interlibrary loan went through), which has many more of his fragments and gives a clearer picture to me of him.

From that source it appears that the only reason the two Logos we have survived is because they were considered to be examples of early rhetorical speaking by the Byzantines. (Prince even believes that the Laertius references were a direct transcription of the indexes of collections of his work, which I personally believe were suppressed by the church due to the fact they put direct lie to the supposed "immorality" of the pagans/agnostics.)

I'm also finding it interesting that there are references to Antisthenes made in other "Lost" works about the Trojan war, and it's suspected that he may have been a playwright or at least an epic poet himself since he mirrors the style of Homer in his criticisms of war. (At least that's my reading of it.)

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I do not pretend I know what I do not know.

Pluto's Republic's picture

@leveymg

...in this series, but this comment hooked me into commenting; all of it, not just the final line:

That's what we need, an Antisthenic for all that is base in Realpolitik.

In looking up the word Antisthenic I somehow re-interpreted this fragment as a discussion of the distinction between the 'noble' and the sometimes 'necessary' in the actions of leaders. Essentially, I fell down a nuanced rabbit hole. So I'm commenting, to ask what 'antisthenic' means as you use it; a synonym, perhaps? Was Antisthenes about virtue for virtue's sake; or about replacing vices with virtues? I suspect it's less shallow than it seems.

I really should delete this heavily-edited (at this point) comment. But my misspelling of Antisthenic did lead me to a brand new nootropic, Sulbutiamine (Anti-Asthenic Drug Fights Low Energy & Social Anxiety), which looks very promising to me. Thought I'd share.

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____________________

The political system is what it is because the People are who they are. — Plato