The Iliad The Male Totem

This is a truly ground breaking analysis of Homer's Iliad. The author, a natural scientist, embarks on a journey through this eternal masterpiece employing an arsenal of conceptual tools from Anthropology (ethnology), Ethology, Psychoanalysis, Neuroscience, and Philosophy. A terrifying and at the same time tender look into the darkness of the male soul. Seldom has Homer emerged so majestic and insightful. A landmark in Homeric scholarship. The new concept of the male totem that this book creates is destined to provide insights into the pressing problems our world faces today, for example, conflict of Islam with western ideas, Sharia, and Jihad.

This is a truly ground breaking analysis of Homer's Iliad. The author, a natural scientist, embarks on a journey through this eternal masterpiece employing an arsenal of conceptual tools from Anthropology (ethnology), Ethology, Psychoanalysis, Neuroscience, and Philosophy. A terrifying and at the same time tender look into the darkness of the male soul. Seldom has Homer emerged so majestic and insightful. A landmark in Homeric scholarship.

The male totem has been energizing and guiding males, and civilization, through the ages; this has been the backbone of history. In our times, the male totem is riding majestically across all continents, staging the same act it staged in the Iliad and in klepht songs. It is alarming that while this majestic and horrific eternal torrent has been shaping civilization across the face of the earth, narrow-minded political science and sociological analyses proliferate in ignorance.

Stories of tender and terrible deeds of men in relation to other men, the raw content of the soul of man, a vast lagoon of dream fragments of the male unconscious, haunted with eternal shadows that compete, strut, fight, kill and rape, and above all seek the approval of other men.

The Iliad is about "klea andron", the glorious and terrible deeds of men in relation to other men, the raw content of the soul of man, but not of woman. It is a vast lagoon of dream fragments of the male unconscious, haunted with eternal shadows that compete, strut, fight, kill and rape, and above all seek the approval of other men. In this book, I have traced the history of the Iliad from papyrus, to parchment, to paper, to e-book. Next, I have looked critically into the first ten lines of Book 1 of the Iliad in the Latin, French, Greek (vernacular), and lastly English translations, beginning with the first translations of Hall, and Chapman. New translations of passages recovered from papyri and parchment, done by the present author, are included. Lastly, a theory of translation of poetry is attempted.

We still read Homer’s epic the Iliad two-and-one-half millennia since its emergence for the questions it poses and the answers it provides for our age, as viable today as they were in Homer’s own times. What is worth dying for? What is the meaning of honor and fame? What are the consequences of intense emotion and violence? What does recognition of one’s mortality teach? We also turn to Homer’s Iliad in the twenty-first century for the poet’s preoccupation with the essence of human life. His emphasis on human understanding of mortality, his celebration of the human mind, and his focus on human striving after consciousness and identity has led audiences to this epic generation after generation. This study is a book-by-book commentary on the epic’s 24 parts, meant to inform students new to the work. Endnotes clarify and elaborate on myths that Homer leaves unfinished, explain terms and phrases, and provide background information. The volume concludes with a general bibliography of work on the Iliad, in addition to bibliographies accompanying each book’s commentary.

This is a new reading of Heraclitus by a natural scientist who challenges the traditional view of Heraclitus as the philosopher of flux. A parallel analysis of Heraclitus and Parmenides removes the alleged enigmas and obscurity of their thought, and reveals groundbreaking epistemological thinking. Heraclitus' work is simply an epistemological essay, an essay on method in natural science.

An analysis of the poem of Parmenides from a natural science perspective shows that it is based on Heraclitus' book. Imagery, philosophy, and even words were borrowed from Heraclitus. The new picture that emerges warrants the conclusion that Parmenides paraphrased Heraclitus in verse.