“The Iliad, at one level, is all about scarcity: scarcity of goods, of women, of honor, of life-time, and, ultimately, the scarcity of fame.”
Are you teaching the Iliad or reading it? Check out this excellent blog post from the great blog Sententiae Antiquae, where they discuss a way of looking at the Iliad that you may not have thought about. I’ve been teaching the Iliad for years, and I’m very much concerned with the history of people’s attitudes towards scarcity, and I’d never put this together in quite this way.
For quick background, you can also read some of our Iliad articles:
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