What were the dominant ideals and values of Iron Age Greek culture?

What were the dominant ideals and values of Iron Age Greek culture?

This question is the focus of the paper. Your answer is going to be based on materials in Modules One and Two, especially the Odyssey, Oedipus the King, and the interpretive material in Finley, The World of Odysseus.

THE ODYSSEY BY HOMER HAS A PDF ONLINE OF THE FULL TEXT.
OEDIPUS THE KING HAS A PDF ONLINE OF THE FULL TEXT.

Here are questions to think about and work into the paper:

To whom did these values applywho was expected to live up to them? Support your answer with some examples from the myths and the play.

How were the cultural values related to the social structure of Iron Age Greece? (Finley will help with this.)

Were there contradictions or inconsistencies among the values? (You might think about whether you can also spot inconsistencies or contradictory ideals in our own culture.)

By the time Sophocles retells the Oedipus story as a play (it premiered in 429 BCE), Greek society is already very different from what it was in the Iron Age and the time of Homer (which Finley says is the context of the Odyssey). Are the older values still evident in Oedipus the King?

What are key differences between the values reflected in the myths of ancient Greece and those of our own society?

Do you know anyone who lives by a code or set of values similar to the ancient Greek one?

[You might want to integrate the legends of the Trojan War and the Iliadthe other epic poem attributed to the blind poet Homer and written in the 8th c.- Watch the movie Troy (director Wolfgang Petersen)focus on scenes starting with the plague sent by Apollo and ending with the meeting of Achilles and King Priam. Leave out the inaccurate and confusing death of Menelaus. These scenes correspond to the Iliad itself, a poem about crucial weeks in the last year of the 10-year war. The movie as a whole includes many of the legends of Troy beyond the Iliad; it retells parts of the story inaccurately and makes the ending PG. If you want to know what
really happened at the end of the war, read the myths or Euripides play, The Women of Troy. ]

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