John Keats (31 October 1795 – 23 February 1821) was an English Romantic poet. He was one of the main figures of the second generation of Romantic poets, along with Lord Byron and Percy Bysshe Shelley, despite his works having been in publication for only four years before his early death from tuberculosis at the age of 25.
Although his poems were not generally well received by critics during his lifetime, his reputation grew after his death, and by the end of the 19th century, he had become one of the most beloved of all English poets. He had a significant influence on a diverse range of poets and writers.
Jorge Luis Borges stated that his first encounter with Keats' work was the most significant literary experience of his life.
The poetry of Keats is characterised by sensual imagery, most notably in the series of odes. This is typical of romantic poets, as they aimed to accentuate extreme emotion through an emphasis on natural imagery. Today his poems and letters are some of the most popular and most analysed in English literature. Some of the most acclaimed works of Keats are "Ode to a Nightingale", "Sleep and Poetry", and the famous sonnet "On First Looking into Chapman's Homer".
On First Looking into Chapman's HomerThe sonnet "On First Looking into Chapman's Homer"
Much have I travell'd in the realms of gold,
And many goodly states and kingdoms seen;
Round many western islands have I been
Which bards in fealty to Apollo hold.
Oft of one wide expanse had I been told
That deep-browed Homer ruled as his demesne;
Yet did I never breathe its pure serene
Till I heard Chapman speak out loud and bold:
Then felt I like some watcher of the skies
When a new planet swims into his ken;
Or like stout Cortez when with eagle eyes
He star'd at the Pacific — and all his men
Look'd at each other with a wild surmise —
Silent, upon a peak in Darien.
October 1816
It wasn't Cortez though!
It was another killer, Vasco Núñez de Balboa
Following Balboa's "discovery" of this "South Sea", it was not long before the ocean itself was "claimed" by Spain. This was not to be an open sea, a "free sea", but a "closed sea", a possession a "Mare clausum".
The "sighting" of the sea, is translated into "possession". Lands and sea, visible, and stretching to the horizon are to be possessed, not shared. Silence, in the face of this huge European psychological, political and geographic projection, seems appropriate. But there is no silence, and these lands and oceans are not empty.
The sonnet was written by Keats in October 1816. It tells of the author's astonishment while reading the works of the ancient Greek poet Homer as freely translated by the Elizabethan playwright George Chapman.
Keats' poem has become an often-quoted classic, cited to demonstrate the emotional power of a great work of art, and the ability of great art to create an epiphany in its beholder.
George Chapman (1559 – 1634) was an English dramatist, translator, and poet. He was a classical scholar whose work shows the influence of Stoicism. Chapman has been speculated to be the Rival Poet of Shakespeare's sonnets by William Minto, and as an anticipator of the metaphysical poets of the 17th century. Chapman is best remembered for his translations of Homer's Iliad and Odyssey, and the Homeric Batrachomyomachia.
With England at war with Spain in 1585, English privateers had set out to raid Spanish and Portuguese possessions and shipping, and conduct illicit trading. Sir Walter Raleigh had enjoyed several years of high esteem from Queen Elizabeth I, which stemmed in part from his previous exploits at sea which included the famous Capture of the Madre de Deus. Soon after, however, Raleigh suffered a short imprisonment for secretly marrying one of the Queen's ladies-in-waiting, Elizabeth Throckmorton, and bearing her a child.
In a bid to restore his influence with the Queen, Raleigh, having promised a "gold-rich empire more lucrative than Peru", had set up an expedition under John Whiddon to find the fabled city of gold known as El Dorado, following one of the many old maps which indicated the putative existence of the city. Raleigh aimed to reach Lake Parime in the highlands of Guyana (the supposed location of the city at the time).
This Muisca raft figure is on display in the Gold Museum, Bogotá, Colombia.
Raleigh's fascination began when he captured Pedro Sarmiento de Gamboa, the Spanish governor of Patagonia, in a raid in 1586, who, despite Spain's official policy of keeping all navigational information secret, shared his maps with English cartographers. The biggest discovery was Gamboa's account of Juan Martinez de Albujar, who had taken part in Pedro de Silva's expedition to the area in 1570, only to fall into the hands of the Caribs of the Lower Orinoco. Martinez claimed that he was taken to the golden city blindfolded and was entertained by the natives, then left the city but could not remember how to return, only remembering a large lake which was nearby. Raleigh wanted to find the mythical city, which he suspected was an actual native Indian city named Manoa near a large lake called Parime. In addition, he hoped to establish an English presence in the Southern Hemisphere that could compete with that of the Spanish and to try to reduce commerce between the natives and Spaniards by forming alliances.
Raleigh's El Dorado expedition, also known as Raleigh's first voyage to Guiana, was an English military and exploratory expedition led by Sir Walter Raleigh that took place during the Anglo–Spanish War in 1595. The expedition set out in February 1595 to explore the Orinoco River on the northeast tip of South America in an attempt to find the fabled city of El Dorado.
Raleigh first captured the Spanish settlement of San José de Oruña on the colony of Trinidad, along with the Governor Antonio de Berrío, who was also looking for the city. After questioning De Berrío, Raleigh and the English held the place and used it as a base for their exploration. Despite the presence of a Spanish force shadowing him, Raleigh successfully navigated the river and inlets, penetrating some 400 miles (640 km) into the Guiana highlands.
No gold or lost city was ever found. Raleigh arrived in England but he was received with lacklustre praise. Cecil was disappointed with the lack of booty and gold considering he had invested so much in the expedition. A London Alderman had the rocks brought back by the expedition examined and considered them worthless even though they contained reliable assays of gold. He was accused by others that he had hidden the gold in remote regions in Devon and Cornwall.
With these claims Raleigh was infuriated and decided to then write and publish an overblown account of the expedition under the title of The Discovery of rich and beautiful empire of Guiana, a work that somewhat exaggerated the whole region. Despite this the book became popular not just in England but France and the Netherlands. His work helped popularize the myth of El Dorado, which continues to appeal in fantasy oriented entertainment. The Dutch map contains echoes of the Travels of Sir John Mandeville, with "outlandish" depictions. Sir John's methods, regarding his travels, are discussed in the Montage of Attractions.
Still, the expedition resulted in an important alliance with the natives of the region, which would have a lasting impact on future colonization of the area.
Chapman's poem De Guiana, Carmen Epicum (1596) begins:
What work of honour and eternal nameThe reference to Clio is germane. In Greek mythology, Clio (Greek: Κλειώ, Kleiṓ; "made famous" or "to make famous"), is the muse of history, or in a few mythological accounts, the muse of lyre playing. Like all the muses, she is a daughter of Zeus and the Titaness Mnemosyne, goddess of memory. In her capacity as "the proclaimer, glorifier and celebrator of history, great deeds and accomplishments," Clio is the namesake of various modern brands. This poem is clearly operating in the same vein, an application of the useful arts of flattery, usefully balanced so that praise bestowed on Raleigh would be further doubled upon Queen Elizabeth. In praising Raleigh, once a court favourite, but now in declining favour, the poet praises her, and in doing so, supports Raleigh's reputation and his own.
For all the world t' envy, and us t' achieve,
Fills me with fury, and gives armed hands
To my heart's peace, that else would gladly turn
My limbs and every sense into my thoughts
Rapt with the thirsted action of my mind?
O Clio, Honour's Muse, sing in my voice;
Tell the attempt, and prophesy th' exploit
Of his Eliza-consecrated sword,
That in this peaceful charm of England's sleep
Opens most tenderly her aged throat,
Offering to pour fresh youth through all her veins,
That flesh of brass and ribs of steel retains.
Riches, and conquest, and renown I sing,
Riches with honour, conquest without blood,
Enough to seat the monarchy of earth,
Like to Jove's eagle, on Eliza's hand.
Guiana, whose rich feet are mines of gold,
Whose forehead knocks against the roof of stars,
Stands on her tip-toes at fair England looking,
Kissing her hand, bowing her mighty breast,
And every sign of all submission making,
To be her sister, and the daughter both
Of our most sacred Maid; whose barrenness
Is the true fruit of virtue, that may get,
Bear and bring forth anew in all perfection,
What heretofore savage corruption held
In barbarous Chaos; and in this affair
Become her father, mother, and her heir.
The quest for gold and power
For Raleigh, his Queen, and the Spanish Conquistadores, regardless of cultural and religious difference and division, it is the same story, the desire and quest for gold and power.
Gold (Spanish: Oro) is a 2017 Spanish historical drama film directed by Agustín Díaz Yanes. The film is based on a short story by Arturo Pérez-Reverte and depicts a 16th century Spanish expedition during the Colonization of the Americas aiming at locating El Dorado. It is loosely inspired on expeditions by conquistadors Lope de Aguirre and Nuñez de Balboa.
Aguirre, the Wrath of God ( Aguirre, der Zorn Gottes), known in the UK as Aguirre, Wrath of God, is a 1972 West German epic historical drama film written and directed by Werner Herzog. Klaus Kinski stars in the title role. The soundtrack was composed and performed by West German kosmische band Popol Vuh. The story follows the travels of Spanish soldier Lope de Aguirre, who leads a group of conquistadores down the Amazon River in South America in search of the legendary city of gold, El Dorado.
Lope de Aguirre (8 November 1510 – 27 October 1561) was a Basque Spanish conquistador who was active in South America. Nicknamed El Loco ('the Madman'), he styled himself "Wrath of God, Prince of Freedom, King of Tierra Firme". Aguirre is best known for his final expedition down the Amazon river in search of the mythical golden Kingdom El Dorado.
Together with his daughter Elvira, Aguirre joined the 1560 expedition of Pedro de Ursúa down the Marañón and Amazon Rivers with 300 Spaniards and hundreds of natives; the actual goal of Ursúa was to send idle veterans from the Spanish conquest of the Inca Empire away, to keep them from trouble-making. When Ursúa would not allow Aguirre's mistress on the expedition, Aguirre conspired with another officer, Fernando de Guzman, to use this rejection as a pretext to start a riot in which they assassinated Ursúa and seized power a year later Aguirre, having participated in the overthrow and killing of Ursúa, then killed Ursúa's successor, his fellow offier Fernando de Guzmán, whom he ultimately succeeded. He and his men reached the Atlantic (probably by the Orinoco River). On 23 March 1561, Aguirre urged 186 officers and soldiers to sign a statement acknowledging him as "Prince of Peru, Tierra Firme and Chile".
In 1561, he seized Isla Margarita and suppressed any opposition to his reign, killing the governor. When he crossed to the mainland in an attempt to take Panama, his open rebellion against the Spanish crown came to an end. He was surrounded at Barquisimeto, Venezuela, where he murdered his own daughter, Elvira, "because someone that I loved so much should not come to be bedded by uncouth people". He also killed several followers who intended to capture him. He was eventually captured and shot to death; his body was beheaded and cut into quarters with pieces being sent to nearby towns as a warning.
From the murderous to the sublime?
The phrase or proverb "From the sublime to the ridiculous" originates from the French expression: Du sublime au ridicule il n'y a qu'un pas. Although sometimes attributed to the French diplomat Tallyrand (1754-1838) or Napoleon, the expression is used much earlier by French historian Jean Francois Marmontel (1723-99) and later by Thomas Paine in The Age of Reason (1793).
The sublime is also a concept applied to imagery in the visual arts.
Aguirre was mad. Whether Balboa or Raleigh were also mad, in their different ways, and in the separate instances of their participation in massacres, massacres in Ireland and the New World, prosecuting state power, the reality is that these were "normalised" human behaviours. How else do you build empires? Violence, dispossession, conspiracy, intrigue, betrayal and an ever present lust for gold, glory and power become part of the abiding narrative.
Keats transforms the experience of "seeing" as discovery of this new sea, by a roguish Spanish conquistador, and killer of many indigenous people of Darién, into a "vision", and a "moment", of poetic discovery, but also of a type of psychological "possession".
In a paper by Dana Van Kooy (Director of English and Liberal Arts, Humanities, and Associate Professor, English in Transnational Literature, Literary Theory and Culture, Michigan Technological University, USA), published in THE KEATS-SHELLEY REVIEW (Vol. 29 No. 2, September 2015, 128–145), titled: Darien Prospects in Keats’s ‘On First Looking into Chapman’s Homer’, she begins with a situation very familiar to the theoretical and methodological framework of the LODE and Re:LODE project:
In a world where satellites traverse the skies and GPS navigation systems direct our travels, it is easy to conceive Western culture and its accompanying technology in terms of ‘a wandering eye [or] a traveling lens’.This is a good place to start. Google Earth provides this internet user with the capacity to search for the geographic area where the peak in Darién is likely to have been, and to capture that image in a Screenshot, so that you may look down upon the peaks of Darién.
Western literature and history are replete with characters defined by their global peregrinations and a culturally embedded hegemonic gaze that sees without being seen.So, it must be said, there is a significant element of this "hegemonic gaze" embedded in the situated knowledge, and methods of the LODE project. This is because it is, as an artwork, to some degree, part of a genre of landscape art - World Landscape. Van Kooy continues with a series of connections that this page finds very helpful.
While the hilltop is prominent in many Georgic and Pastoral poems as well as more than a handful of Romantic-period sonnets, its seemingly static positioning veils the shifting directionality and fragmentary nature of its vision. Foucault’s discussion in Discipline and Punish makes clear how this gaze represents a formidable matrix of power and knowledge that we increasingly associate with colonialism, imperialism, and capitalism.
Paul Virilio takes Foucault’s critique a step further in Speed and Politics, where he argues that geographical impediments and boundaries (rivers, mountains, oceans) are no longer relevant because technol-ogy effectively flattens global topography into a GPS screen. Satellites, missiles, and instant communication systems negate the relevance of the global terra-aqueous land-scape because these technologies allow individuals and governing bodies to navigate it through virtual dimensions of space and outer space. Modern and contemporary pros-pects appear more sinister, even inviolable, and yet, they also promise more people access to more precise information. This basic contradiction, which does not amount to a contrast between the technology and nature or art and technology, raises impor-tant questions about the prospect’s various forms and the available interpretive frame-works, especially when considering those prospects created on the cusp of modernity.
The idea of the prospect informs cultural narratives and provides ways of seeing, knowing, and making. Paintings, poems, prison architecture, and weapons and navigational systems make visible technical, historical, cultural, political, and philosophical epistemes and as such the prospect represents a cultural and aesthetic practice that shapes how people view and interpret information. Foucault’s and Virilio’s work suggests that the prospect shapes cultural fantasies, particularly imperial fantasies that span historical periods and encompass large geographical expanses. Prospects provide viewers with a means of perceiving cultural topography but, as W.J.T. Mitchell suggests in his discussion of imperial landscapes, this perspective invariably suppresses or occludes those ‘fractured images of unresolved ambivalence and unsuppressed resistance’. Fully to comprehend the ideological and the historical signifi-cance of the prospect, one must, according to Mitchell, examine both the prospect’s view as well as the less visible ‘fractured images’. Together, he writes, they constitute a landscape that ‘might be seen more profitably as something like a “dreamwork” of imperialism, unfolding in time and space from a central point of origin and folding back on itself to disclose both utopian fantasies of the perfected imperial prospect and fractured images of unresolved ambivalence and unsuppressed resistance’. Mitchell’s idea of an imperial landscape or dreamscape is most easily comprehended as a net-work of cultural practices and codes that both represent and function as a medium wherein cultural histories and utopian possibilities are formulated and contested.
Mitchell’s approach to landscape offers an alternative in-road to prospect poetry and, in particular, to John Keats’s famous sonnet, ‘On First Looking into Chapman’s Homer’, first published in Leigh Hunt’s ‘Young Poets’ article in The Examiner on 1 December 1816. Keats’s poem reconstructs and reformulates the prospect poem as a vital aesthetic technology that allowed for the transformation of a poetic tradition into a more obvious method of reproducing and reconfiguring historical and literary knowledge. The poetics of Keats’s ‘Chapman’s Homer’ sonnet are revelatory and anticipatory rather than nostalgic. The poem invokes the past and simultaneously breaks with it in its reproduction of multiple imperial ‘dreamwork[s]’; it thus creates opportunities for audiences to formulate new and alternative spaces in which to imagine the future. In order more fully to understand how and why Keats composes this poem, I begin this essay with an examination of how the eighteenth-century prospect poem evolved into the Romantic-period prospect sonnet. William Lisle Bowles was arguably the first writer to compose these sonnets in his 1789 Fourteen Sonnets, writ-ten chiefly on Picturesque Spots during a Tour. Wordsworth and Coleridge adapted this sonnet form and subsequently influenced how Keats wrote his sonnets. In his ‘Chapman’s Homer’ sonnet, Keats creates an impression of spatial coincidence that collapses historical eras into the space of a moment, into ‘now’. Like a GPS device, the sonnet ‘flattens’ a vast geohistorical landscape, revealing imperial fantasies along with the more subversive and fractured images to which Mitchell refers. In the time it takes to speak or read fourteen short lines of poetry, Keats depicts three related sea-centered empires: the classical and imperial Mediterranean world of the Greeks and Romans; the trans-Atlantic empires of Spain and Britain; and an alternative future represented by the Pacific.
Keats invokes the first of these imperial landscapes through allusions to Homer’s The Odyssey. As many readers are aware, ‘On First Looking into Chapman’s Homer’ celebrates an evening when Charles Cowden Clarke and Keats sat down with a ‘beautiful copy of the folio edition of Chapman’s translation of Homer’. George Chapman (1559–1634) and Alexander Pope (1688–1744) provided Keats with a choice of translations through which to consider this cultural foundation for empire in the Western hemisphere. Clarke’s account of this evening high-lights his and Keats’s discussion of specific passages from The Odyssey. Comparing these translations as Clarke and Keats did on that fateful evening, it becomes clearer how the opening octave of Keats’s sonnet offers audiences a set of contrasting narratives, which depicted, and, in the case of Chapman’s translation, countered the imaginative and ideological superstructure that sustained Britain’s early colonial ventures as well as its nineteenth-century imperial ambitions. Keats locates a second sea-centered empire in the sestet of his sonnet, where he focuses on the European trans-Atlantic empires that began in the sixteenth century with Spanish conquests in the New World. Since the appearance of Tennyson’s note in Francis Palgrave’s The Golden Treasury, literary critics have focused on Keats’s ‘mistake’ of identifying Cortez instead of Balboa as the conquistador who discovered the Pacific. Charles J. Rzepka has traced the extensive critical legacy of the ‘Cortez/Balboa crux’ and has suggested that we consider the ‘Darien tableau’ as signaling ‘the belatedness of the poet’s own sublime ambitions’. The ‘Darien tableau’ represents the poem’s final scene. Here, the poet/speaker identifies with ‘some watcher of the skies’ — an astronomer — or ‘stout Cortez’ standing with ‘eagle eyes’ and staring ‘at the Pacific […] with a wild surmise […] upon a Peak in Darien’. This final prospect, like the poem itself, intensifies the experience of temporal and spatial immediacy to a point located geographically on the Isthmus of Panama. As with the opening octave, Keats presents readers with a familiar imperial narrative that contains — includes, accommodates, and restrains — the seductive and terrifying acts of discovery and conquest. The difference between Homer’s account and the violent history of conquest in the New World is both a matter of genre and historical perspective. Difference is not marked by contrasts — choosing between Balboa and Cortez, for example — but rather it is measured in terms of variance and possibilities.
From this medial point, readers can gaze back across the fraught history of the Atlantic corridor, a place where slavery and empire merged as they never had before. Connecting the traditions of Europe to the New World, ancient history to the modern world, and linking two continents (North and South America), the Darien peak educes — in the sense of drawing disparate elements together and condensing them rather than diminishing them — a vast geohistory to a point, where audiences can survey an expansive cultural history and compare imperial narratives. From this vantage point, one can — as many of Keats’s contemporaries did — imagine Napoleon imprisoned on St. Helena in the South Atlantic. Britain’s former colonies of North America appear to the North. The United States still haunted some of Keats’s readers who had advocated for the War of 1812 and still believed the young country could be subjugated. For others like Leigh Hunt, the new coun-try’s independence offered proof that ‘people can discover what is best for them’. Looking far to the East, one sees Africa in the distance and a trail of tears to the New World, particularly to the West Indies, where the violent legacies of conquest persisted in the brutal practice of slavery. In the closing lines of the poem, however, Keats encourages his readers to turn their gaze to the West. Displacing Balboa with Cortez and much of Britain’s imperial history with the Spanish trans-Atlantic empire, Keats directs his audience to look toward the Pacific, literally, towards peace. In the aftermath of Napoleon’s defeat at Waterloo, peace, which had been deferred for more than three decades, was now. As Keats’s poem demonstrates, peace, like war, did not constitute a single event, but rather, ‘a condition of eventfulness’. Keats had already hailed the advent of peace after Napoleon’s first abdication in his son-net, ‘On Peace’ (1814), declaring;
‘let not my first wish fail,
Let the sweet mountain nymph thy favorite be,
With England’s happiness proclaim Europa’s liberty. […] Give thy Kings law — leave not uncurbed the great;
So with the honors past thou’lt win thy happier fate’.
Keats’s elision of the past and present as well as myth and history in this encomium to peace reflects his realization that any future reform relies upon reformulating a complex and violent cultural inheritance.
The naming of a "peaceful" ocean
The first contact of European navigators with the western edge of the Pacific Ocean was made by the Portuguese expeditions of António de Abreu and Francisco Serrão, via the Lesser Sunda Islands, to the Maluku Islands, in 1512, and with Jorge Álvares's expedition to southern China in 1513, both ordered by Afonso de Albuquerque from Malacca.
The east side of the ocean was discovered by Spanish explorer Vasco Núñez de Balboa in 1513 after his expedition crossed the Isthmus of Panama and reached a new ocean. He named it Mar del Sur (literally, "Sea of the South" or "South Sea") because the ocean was to the south of the coast of the isthmus where he first observed the Pacific.
In 1519, Portuguese explorer Ferdinand Magellan sailed the Pacific East to West on a Spanish expedition to the Spice Islands that would eventually result in the first world circumnavigation.
Magellan called the ocean Pacífico (or "Pacific" meaning, "peaceful") because, after sailing through the stormy seas off Cape Horn, the expedition found calm waters.
Journeys belong to our mental life!
The world landscape, a translation of the German Weltlandschaft, is a type of composition in Western painting showing an imaginary panoramic landscape seen from an elevated viewpoint that includes mountains and lowlands, water, and buildings. The subject of each painting is usually a Biblical or historical narrative, but the figures comprising this narrative element are dwarfed by their surroundings.
The world landscape first appeared in painting in the work of the Early Netherlandish painter Joachim Patinir (c. 1480–1524), most of whose few surviving paintings are of this type, usually showing religious subjects, but commissioned by secular patrons.
"They were imaginary compilations of the most appealing and spectacular aspects of European geography, assembled for the delight of the wealthy armchair traveler", giving "an idealized composite of the world taken in at a single Olympian glance".The compositional type was taken up by a number of other Netherlandish artists, most famously Pieter Bruegel the Elder. There was a parallel development by Patinir's contemporary Albrecht Altdorfer and other artists of the Danube school. Although compositions of this broad type continued to be common until the 18th century and beyond, the term is usually only used to describe works from the Low Countries and Germany produced in the 16th century.
The German term Weltlandschaft was first used by Eberhard Freiherr von Bodenhausen in 1905 with reference to Gerard David, and then in 1918 applied to Patinir's work by Ludwig von Baldass, defined as the depiction of;
"all that which seemed beautiful to the eye; the sea and the earth, mountains and plains, forests and fields, the castle and the hut"
Landscape with Charon Crossing the Styx, Joachim Patinir, c. 1515–1524, Prado
This painting by Patinir shows a figure from the mythology of ancient Greece and Rome, Charon, crossing the river Styx. Charon or Kharon (/ˈkɛərɒn, -ən/; Greek Χάρων) is the ferryman of Hades who carries souls of the newly deceased across the rivers Styx and Acheron that divided the world of the living from the world of the dead.
A coin to pay Charon for passage, usually an obolus or danake, was sometimes placed in or on the mouth of a dead person. Some authors say that those who could not pay the fee, or those whose bodies were left unburied, had to wander the shores for one hundred years.
The obol, literally a "nail", or "metal spit" for roasting meat (Latin: obolus) was a form of ancient Greek currency and weight.
Obols were used from early times. According to Plutarch they were originally spits of copper or bronze traded by weight, while six obols make a drachma or a handful, since that was as many as the hand could grasp. Heraklides of Pontus in his work on "Etymologies" mentions the obols of Heraion and derives the origin of obolos from obelos. This is confirmed by the historian Ephorus on his work On Inventions. Excavations at Argos discovered several dozen of these early obols, dated well before 800 BC.
They are now displayed at the Numismatic Museum of Athens. Archaeologists today describe the iron spits as "utensil-money" since excavated hoards indicate that during the Late Geometric period they were exchanged in handfuls (drachmae) of six spits, they were not used for manufacturing artifacts as metallurgical analyses suggest, but they were most likely used as token-money.
Plutarch states the Spartans had an iron obol of four coppers. They retained the cumbersome and impractical bars rather than proper coins to discourage the pursuit of wealth.
In Classical Athens, obols were traded as silver coins. Six obols made up the drachma. There were also coins worth two obols ("diobol") and three obols ("triobol"). Each obol was divisible into eight "coppers" (χαλκοί, khalkoí). During this era, an obol purchased a kantharos and chous (6 pints or 3 liters) of wine. Three obols was a standard rate for prostitutes.
Katabasis or catabasis (Ancient Greek: κατάβασις, from κατὰ "down" and βαίνω "go") is a descent of some type, such as moving downhill, the sinking of the winds or sun, a military retreat, a trip to the underworld, or a trip from the interior of a country down to the coast. The term has multiple related meanings in poetry, rhetoric, and modern psychology.
The trip to the underworld is a mytheme of comparative mythology found in a diverse number of religions from around the world.
The hero or upper-world deity journeys to the underworld or to the land of the dead and returns, often with a quest-object or a loved one, or with heightened knowledge. The ability to enter the realm of the dead while still alive, and to return, is a proof of the classical hero's exceptional status as more than mortal. A deity who returns from the underworld demonstrates eschatological themes such as the cyclical nature of time and existence, or the defeat of death and the possibility of immortality.
Katabasis is the epic convention of the hero's trip into the underworld. In Greek mythology, for example, Orpheus enters the underworld in order to bring Eurydice back to the world of the living.In the catabasis mytheme, heroes – such as Aeneas, Dionysus, Heracles, Hermes, Odysseus, Orpheus, Pirithous, Psyche, Theseus and Sisyphus – journey to the underworld and return, still alive, conveyed by the boat of Charon.
Most katabases take place in a supernatural underworld, such as Hades or Hell. However, katabasis can also refer to a journey through other dystopic areas, like those Odysseus encounters on his 10-year journey back from Troy to Ithaca. Pilar Serrano allows the term katabasis to encompass brief or chronic stays in the underworld, including those of Lazarus, and Castor and Pollux (Serrano, Pilar González (1999), "Catábasis y resurrección"). In this case, however, the katabasis must be followed by an anabasis (a going or marching up) in order to be considered a true katabasis instead of a death.
In the 11th book of the Odyssey, Odysseus follows the advice of Circe and consults Tiresias in the land of the dead. During Odysseus' visit, the souls of many appear to him. The first to appear to Odysseus is Elpenor, his crew member who died prior to leaving Circe's island. Elpenor asks Odysseus to give him a proper burial, and Odysseus agrees. The next to appear to Odysseus is his mother, Anticlea. As Odysseus has been away fighting the Trojan War for nearly 20 years, he is surprised and saddened by the sight of her soul.
The Shade of Tiresias Appearing to Odysseus during the Sacrifice (c. 1780-85), painting by Johann Heinrich Füssli, showing a scene from Book Eleven of the Odyssey.
Tiresias, the soul whom Odysseus came to see, next appears to him. Tiresias gives him several pieces of information concerning his nostos (homecoming) and his life after. Tiresias details Poseidon's anger at Odysseus' blinding of Polyphemos (and the coming troubles as a consequence), warns Odysseus not to eat the livestock of the god Helios, and prophesies Odysseus' return home to Ithaca and his eventual death "far from the sea it comes" at an old age. After Tiresias instructs Odysseus to allow the spirits he wants to talk to drink the sacrificial blood he used to find Tiresias, he is again given the chance to see his mother, and she tells him of the suffering of his family as they await his return home. As his mother leaves, Odysseus is then visited by a string of souls of past queens. He first sees Tyro, the mother of Pelias and Neleus by Poseidon.
He next talks to Antiope, the mother of Amphion and Zethus (the founders of Thebes) by Zeus. Then, he is visited by Alcmene, the mother of Heracles by Zeus, and Heracle's wife Megara. He is also visited by Epicaste, the mother of Oedipus, and Chloris, the queen of Pylos. Odysseus is then visited by Leda, the mother of Castor and Polydeuces and Iphimedeia, mother of the Aloadae by Poseidon. Odysseus then sees a list of women whom he only briefly mentions: Phaedra, Procris, Ariadne, Maera, Clymene, and Eriphyle, all also lovers of gods or heroes. Next to visit Odysseus is Agamemnon, the king of Mycenae. Agamemnon tells Odysseus of his death by his wife, Clytemnestra and her lover Aegisthus. He warns Odysseus to return to Ithaca in secret and be wary of his own wife.
Odysseus then encounters Achilles, who asks after the well being of his father, Peleus, and his son, Neoptolemus. Odysseus reassures Achilles of his son's bravery in fighting the Trojans. Odysseus then begins seeing figures of dead souls who do not talk directly to him: Ajax, Minos, Orion, Tityos, Tantalus, and Sisyphus. Odysseus ends his visit with Heracles, who asks about Odysseus' intention in Hades. Odysseus begins to get fearful as he waits for more heroes and leaves.
Tiresias' prophecy of Odysseus' last task, another journey - carrying an oar into the hinterland, and leaving the sea behind.
“Then there came up the spirit of the Theban Teiresias, bearing his golden staff in his hand, and he knew me and spoke to me: `Son of Laertes, sprung from Zeus, Odysseus of many devices, what now, hapless man? Why hast thou left the light of the sun and come hither to behold the dead and a region where is no joy? Nay, give place from the pit and draw back thy sharp sword, that I may drink of the blood and tell thee sooth.’
“So he spoke, and I gave place and thrust my silver-studded sword into its sheath, and when he had drunk the dark blood, then the blameless seer spoke to me and said: ‘Thou askest of thy honey-sweet return, glorious Odysseus, but this shall a god make grievous unto thee; for I think not that thou shalt elude the Earth-shaker, seeing that he has laid up wrath in his heart against thee, angered that thou didst blind his dear son. Yet even so ye may reach home, though in evil plight, if thou wilt curb thine own spirit and that of thy comrades, as soon as thou shalt bring thy well-built ship to the island Thrinacia, escaping from the violet sea, and ye find grazing there the kine and goodly flocks of Helios, who over sees and overhears all things. If thou leavest these unharmed and heedest thy homeward way, verily ye may yet reach Ithaca, though in evil plight. But if thou harmest them, then I foresee ruin for thy ship and thy comrades, and even if thou shalt thyself escape, late shalt thou come home and in evil case, after losing all thy comrades, in a ship that is another's, and thou shalt find woes in thy house—proud men that devour thy livelihood, wooing thy godlike wife, and offering wooers' gifts. Yet verily on their violent deeds shalt thou take vengeance when thou comest.
"`But when thou hast slain the wooers in thy halls, whether by guile or openly with the sharp sword, then do thou go forth, taking a shapely oar, until thou comest to men that know naught of the sea and eat not of food mingled with salt, aye, and they know naught of ships with purple cheeks, or of shapely oars that are as wings unto ships. And I will tell thee a sign right manifest, which will not escape thee. When another wayfarer, on meeting thee, shall say that thou hast a winnowing-fan on thy stout shoulder, then do thou fix in the earth thy shapely oar and make goodly offerings to lord Poseidon—a ram, and a bull, and a boar that mates with sows—and depart for thy home and offer sacred hecatombs to the immortal gods who hold broad heaven, to each one in due order. And death shall come to thee thyself far from the sea, a death so gentle, that shall lay thee low when thou art overcome with sleek old age, and thy people shall dwell in prosperity around thee. In this have I told thee sooth.’
THE ODYSSEY BOOK 11, TRANSLATED BY A. T. MURRAY
The novelist and editor Anna North discusses the Odyssey’s timeless lesson about leaving the comforts of home. Joe Fassler (May 19, 2015)
