[Milton-L] Zeus's self-exculpatory voice

[jfleming at sfu.ca]

very good, John! although I suspect that Nietzsche, if reminded what Zeus
says there, might respond: "Well he would, wouldn't he?" 

And while I perhaps generalized egregiously re: "Greek religion," perhaps no
less egregious is our man M when he suggests, in the DDD passage you quote,
that the _Odyssey_, of all texts, is an epic of free will and stop blaming
immortals. Best, JDF
 
On Fri, 10 Oct 2008 08:33:51 -0400 milton-l at lists.richmond.edu wrote:
> John Rumrich suggests that Homer's Zeus, like Milton's God, employs "the 
> free will defence," to which James Fleming replies:
> .
> 
> 
> > But in Greek religion -- as Nietzsche points outs somewhere -- is it not
> > precisely the case that the gods made you do it (whatever it was)? "He 
> > must
> > have been deceived by a god," say the Greeks, at the downfall of a great
> > man.
> 
> "Greek religion" may well express this view, some of the time, as did 
> "seventeenth-century Protestantism" (some Protestants, sometimes).
> But John 
> Rumrich was not speaking off the top of his head.  He was recalling
> Milton's 
> words on Odyssey 1.32, where Zeus does blame mortals for blaming the gods.

> Milton quotes these lines alongside Prov. 19.4 at the end of Christian 
> Doctrine I.4 to make the point that God blinds those who blind themselves,

> so sinners have only themselves to blame.  Milton refers to the same
> Homeric 
> passage in DDD:
> 
> "That mans own freewill self corrupted is the adquat and sufficicent cause

> of his disobedience besides Fate; as Homer also wanted not to expresse 
> both 
> in his Iliad and Odyssei" (YP. 2.294).
> 
> There's my one post for the day.
> 
> John Leonard
> 
> 
> 
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James Dougal Fleming
Associate Professor
Department of English
Simon Fraser University
778-782-4713
cell: 604-290-1637

Nicht deines, einer Welt.