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Anarchism. Hague, 1872. The major reason lay in fundamentally different approaches on how the workers would emancipate themselves. Marx was advocating for the creation of a political party to take part in electoral struggles whereas Bakunin thought that the whole set of Marx's thinking was very authoritarian. Bakunin is famous for predicting that if such a party would gain power by Marxist's terms, it would end up to be the new tyrant of workers. After being expelled from the IWA, anarchists formed the St. Imier International. Under the influence of Peter Kropotkin, a Russian philosopher and scientist, anarcho-communism overlapped collectivism. Anarcho-communists, | 12 | 300 |
Anarchism. who drew inspiration from the 1871 Paris Commune, advocated for free federation and distribution of goods according to one needs. The major argument of anarcho-communism was that Bakunian perspective would lead to antagonism among collectives. At the turning of the century, anarchism had spread all over the world. In China, small groups of students imported the humanistic pro-science version of anarcho-communism. Tokyo was a hotspot for rebellious youth from countries of the far east, pouring into Japanese capital to study. In Latin America, São Paulo was a stronghold, and anarchosyndicalism was the most prominent left-wing ideology. During that time, a | 12 | 301 |
Anarchism. minority of anarchists embarked into utilizing of violence in order to achieve their political ends. This kind of strategy is named as propaganda of the deed. The dismemberment of the French socialist movement into many groups and the execution and exile of many Communards to penal colonies following the suppression of the Paris Commune favoured individualist political expression and acts. Even though many anarchists distanced themselves from those terrorist acts, anarchists were persecuted and were given bad fame. Illegalism, stealing the possessions of the rich because capitalists were not their rightful owners, was another strategy some anarchist adopted during the | 12 | 302 |
Anarchism. same years. Anarchists took part enthusiastically in the Russian Revolution. During the revolution, anarchists had concerns, but they opted for the revolution rather than supporting the Whites. However, they met harsh suppression after the Bolshevik government was stabilized. Anarchists in central Russia were either imprisoned, driven underground or joined the victorious Bolsheviks. Anarchists from Petrograd and Moscow instead fled to Ukraine. The Kronstadt rebellion and Nestor Makhno's struggle in the Free Territory were the most notable examples. With the anarchists being crashed in Russia, two new antithetical currents emerged, namely platformism and synthesis anarchism. Platformists sought to create a coherent | 12 | 303 |
Anarchism. group that would push for the revolution while the latter were against anything that would resemble a political party. The victory of the Bolsheviks in the October Revolution and the resulting Russian Civil War did serious damage to anarchist movements internationally. Many workers and activists saw the Bolshevik success as setting an example and communist parties grew at the expense of anarchism and other socialist movements. In France and the United States, members of the major syndicalist movements of the General Confederation of Labour and Industrial Workers of the World (IWW) left the organisations and joined the Communist International. In | 12 | 304 |
Anarchism. the Spanish Civil War, anarchists and syndicalists (CNT and FAI) once again allied themselves with various currents of leftists. Spain had a long anarchist tradition and anarchists played an important role in the Civil War. In response to the army rebellion, an anarchist-inspired movement of peasants and workers, supported by armed militias, took control of Barcelona and of large areas of rural Spain where they collectivised the land. The Soviet Union provided some limited assistance at the beginning of the Civil War, but as Joseph Stalin tried to seize control of the Republicans the result was a bitter fight among | 12 | 305 |
Anarchism. communists and anarchists (i.e. at a series of events named May Days). Section:History.:Post-World War II anarchism. In the first years after World War II, the anarchist movement was severely damaged. However, the 1960s witnessed a revival of anarchism. The main causes of such a revival may have been the perceived failure of Marxism–Leninism and the tension build by the Cold War. During this era, anarchism was mostly part of other movements critical to both the state and capitalism such as the anti-nuclear, environmental and pacifist movements, the New Left, or the counterculture of the 1960s. Anarchism was also associated with | 12 | 306 |
Anarchism. the punk rock movement as exemplified by bands such as Crass and the Sex Pistols. Although feminist tendencies have always been a part of the anarchist movement in the form of anarcha-feminism, they returned with vigour during the second wave of feminism in the 1960s. Around the turn of the 21st century, anarchism grew in popularity and influence as part of the anti-war, anti-capitalist and anti-globalisation movements. Anarchists became known for their involvement in protests against the meetings of the World Trade Organization (WTO), Group of Eight (G8) and the World Economic Forum (WEF). Some anarchist factions at these protests | 12 | 307 |
Anarchism. engaged in rioting, property destruction and violent confrontations with the police. These actions were precipitated by "ad hoc", leaderless, anonymous cadres known as black blocs—other organisational tactics pioneered in this time include security culture, affinity groups and the use of decentralised technologies such as the internet. A significant event of this period was the confrontations at the WTO conference in Seattle in 1999. Anarchist ideas have been influential in the development of the Zapatistas in Chiapas, Mexico, and the Democratic Federation of Northern Syria, more commonly known as Rojava, a "de facto" autonomous region in northern Syria. Section:Anarchist schools of | 12 | 308 |
Anarchism. thought. Anarchist schools of thought had been generally grouped in two main historical traditions (individualist anarchism and social anarchism) which have some different origins, values and evolution. The individualist wing of anarchism emphasises negative liberty (opposition to state or social control over the individual) while those in the social wing emphasise positive liberty to achieve one's potential and argue that humans have needs that society ought to fulfil, "recognising equality of entitlement". In a chronological and theoretical sense, there are classical—those created throughout the 19th century—and post-classical anarchist schools—those created since the mid-20th century and after. Beyond the specific factions | 12 | 309 |
Anarchism. of anarchist thought is philosophical anarchism which the theoretical stance that the state lacks moral legitimacy without accepting the imperative of revolution to eliminate it. A component especially of individualist anarchism, philosophical anarchism may accept the existence of a minimal state as unfortunate and usually temporary, necessary evil, but argue that citizens do not have a moral obligation to obey the state when its laws conflict with individual autonomy. One reaction against sectarianism within the anarchist milieu was anarchism without adjectives, a call for toleration first adopted by Fernando Tarrida del Mármol in 1889 in response to the bitter debates | 12 | 310 |
Anarchism. of anarchist theory at the time. In abandoning the hyphenated anarchisms (i.e. collectivist-, communist-, mutualist- and individualist-anarchism), it sought to emphasise the anti-authoritarian beliefs common to all anarchist schools of thought. The various anarchist schools of thought or currents are not distinct entities, but intermingle with each other. Section:Anarchist schools of thought.:Classical. Collectivist and communist anarchism and anarcho-syndicalism are all considered to be forms of social anarchism. Mutualism and individualism were the other notable anarchist currents through the 19th and early 20th century. Social anarchism rejects private property, seeing it as a source of social inequality (while retaining respect for | 12 | 311 |
Anarchism. personal property) and emphasises cooperation and mutual aid. Section:Anarchist schools of thought.:Classical.:Mutualism. Mutualism began in 18th-century English and French labour movements before taking an anarchist form associated with Pierre-Joseph Proudhon in France and others in the United States. Proudhon proposed spontaneous order, whereby organisation emerges without central authority, a "positive anarchy" where order arises when everybody does "what he wishes and only what he wishes" and where "business transactions alone produce the social order". Proudhon distinguished between ideal political possibilities and practical governance. For this reason, much in contrast to some of his theoretical statements concerning ultimate spontaneous self-governance, Proudhon | 12 | 312 |
Anarchism. was heavily involved in French parliamentary politics and allied himself with the socialist factions of the workers movement. During his life of public service, he began advocating state-protected charters for worker-owned cooperatives and promoting certain nationalisation schemes. Mutualist anarchism is concerned with reciprocity, free association, voluntary contract, federation and credit and currency reform. According to the American mutualist William Batchelder Greene, each worker in the mutualist system would receive "just and exact pay for his work; services equivalent in cost being exchangeable for services equivalent in cost, without profit or discount". Mutualism has been retrospectively characterised as ideologically situated between | 12 | 313 |
Anarchism. individualist and collectivist forms of anarchism. Proudhon first characterised his goal as a "third form of society, the synthesis of communism and property [which] we call LIBERTY". Section:Anarchist schools of thought.:Classical.:Collectivist anarchism. Collectivist anarchism, also referred to as revolutionary socialism or a form of such, is a revolutionary form of anarchism, commonly associated with Mikhail Bakunin and Johann Most. At the epicentre of collectivist anarchism lies the belief in the potential of humankind for goodness and solidarity which will flourish when oppressive governments are abolished. Collectivist anarchists oppose all private ownership of the means of production, instead advocating that ownership | 12 | 314 |
Anarchism. be collectivised. This was to be achieved through violent revolution, first starting with a small cohesive group through acts of violence, or propaganda by the deed, to inspire the workers as a whole to revolt and forcibly collectivise the means of production. However, collectivisation was not to be extended to the distribution of income as workers would be paid according to time worked, rather than receiving goods being distributed according to need as in anarcho-communism. This position was criticised by anarcho-communists as effectively "uphold[ing] the wages system". Collectivist anarchism arose contemporaneously with Marxism, but it opposed the Marxist dictatorship of | 12 | 315 |
Anarchism. the proletariat despite the stated Marxist goal of a collectivist stateless society. Anarchist, communist and collectivist ideas are not mutually exclusive—although the collectivist anarchists advocated compensation for labour, some held out the possibility of a post-revolutionary transition to a communist system of distribution according to need. Section:Anarchist schools of thought.:Classical.:Anarcho-communism. Anarcho-communism, also known as anarchist-communism, communist anarchism and libertarian communism, is a theory of anarchism that advocates abolition of the state, markets, money, private property (while retaining respect for personal property) and capitalism in favour of common ownership of the means of production, direct democracy and a horizontal network of | 12 | 316 |
Anarchism. voluntary associations and workers' councils with production and consumption based on the guiding principle: "From each according to his ability, to each according to his need". Anarcho-communism developed out of radical socialist currents after the French Revolution, but it was first formulated as such in the Italian section of the First International. The theoretical work of Peter Kropotkin took importance later as it expanded and developed pro-organisationalist and insurrectionary anti-organisationalist sections. To date, the best known examples of an anarcho-communist society (i.e. established around the ideas as they exist today and achieving worldwide attention and knowledge in the historical canon), | 12 | 317 |
Anarchism. are the anarchist territories during the Spanish Revolution and the Free Territory during the Russian Revolution. Through the efforts and influence of the Spanish anarchists during the Spanish Revolution within the Spanish Civil War starting in 1936, anarcho-communism existed in most of Aragon, parts of the Levante and Andalusia as well as in the stronghold of Catalonia. Along with the Republicans, it was crushed by the combined forces of the Francisco Franco's Nationalists, Adolf Hitler and Benito Mussolini as well as repression by the Communist Party of Spain (backed by the Soviet Union) and economic and armaments blockades from the | 12 | 318 |
Anarchism. capitalist countries and the Spanish Republic itself. Section:Anarchist schools of thought.:Classical.:Anarcho-syndicalism. Anarcho-syndicalism is a branch of anarchism that focuses on the labour movement. Anarcho-syndicalists view labour unions as a potential force for revolutionary social change, replacing capitalism and the state with a new society democratically self-managed by workers. The basic principles of anarcho-syndicalism are workers' solidarity, direct action and workers' self-management. Anarcho-syndicalists believe that only direct action—that is, action concentrated on directly attaining a goal as opposed to indirect action such as electing a representative to a government position—will allow workers to liberate themselves. Moreover, anarcho-syndicalists believe that workers' organisations | 12 | 319 |
Anarchism. (the organisations that struggle against the wage system which in anarcho-syndicalist theory will eventually form the basis of a new society) should be self-managing. They should not have bosses or business agents—rather, the workers should be able to make all the decisions that affect them themselves. Rudolf Rocker was one of the most popular voices in the anarcho-syndicalist movement. He outlined a view of the origins of the movement, what it sought and why it was important to the future of labour in his 1938 pamphlet "Anarcho-Syndicalism". The International Workers Association is an international anarcho-syndicalist federation of various labour unions | 12 | 320 |
Anarchism. from different countries. The Spanish CNT played and still plays a major role in the Spanish labour movement. It was also an important force in the Spanish Civil War. Section:Anarchist schools of thought.:Classical.:Individualist anarchism. Individualist anarchism refers to several traditions of thought within the anarchist movement that emphasise the individual and their will over any kinds of external determinants such as groups, society, traditions and ideological systems. Individualist anarchism is not a single philosophy, but it instead refers to a group of individualistic philosophies that sometimes are in conflict. In 1793, William Godwin, who has often been cited as the | 12 | 321 |
Anarchism. first anarchist, wrote "Political Justice", which some consider the first expression of anarchism. Godwin was a philosophical anarchist and from a rationalist and utilitarian basis opposed revolutionary action and saw a minimal state as a present "necessary evil" that would become increasingly irrelevant and powerless by the gradual spread of knowledge. Godwin advocated individualism, proposing that all cooperation in labour be eliminated on the premise that this would be most conducive with the general good. An influential form of individualist anarchism called egoism, or egoist anarchism, was expounded by one of the earliest and best-known proponents of individualist anarchism, the | 12 | 322 |
Anarchism. German Max Stirner. Stirner's "The Ego and Its Own", published in 1844, is a founding text of the philosophy. According to Stirner, the only limitation on the rights of individuals is their power to obtain what they desire without regard for God, state, or morality. To Stirner, rights were "spooks" in the mind and he held that society does not exist, but "the individuals are its reality". Stirner advocated self-assertion and foresaw unions of egoists, non-systematic associations continually renewed by all parties' support through an act of will, which Stirner proposed as a form of organisation in place of the | 12 | 323 |
Anarchism. state. Egoist anarchists argue that egoism will foster genuine and spontaneous union between individuals. "Egoism" has inspired many interpretations of Stirner's philosophy. It was re-discovered and promoted by German philosophical anarchist and homosexual activist John Henry Mackay. Josiah Warren was a pioneer American anarcho-individualist, who drew inspiration from Proudhon. Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862) was an important early influence in individualist anarchist thought in the United States and Europe. Thoreau was an American author, poet, naturalist, tax resister, development critic, surveyor, historian, philosopher and leading transcendentalist. He is best known for his books "Walden", a reflection upon simple living in natural | 12 | 324 |
Anarchism. surroundings, as well as his essay, "Civil Disobedience", an argument for individual resistance to civil government in moral opposition to an unjust state. Benjamin Tucker later fused Stirner's egoism with the economics of Warren and Proudhon in his eclectic influential publication "Liberty". From these early influences, individualist anarchism in different countries attracted a small yet diverse following of Bohemian artists and intellectuals, free love and birth control advocates (see anarchism and issues related to love and sex), individualist naturists and nudists (see anarcho-naturism), freethought and anti-clerical activists as well as young anarchist outlaws in what became known as illegalism and | 12 | 325 |
Anarchism. individual reclamation (see European individualist anarchism and individualist anarchism in France). These authors and activists included Oscar Wilde, Emile Armand, Han Ryner, Henri Zisly, Renzo Novatore, Miguel Gimenez Igualada, Adolf Brand and Lev Chernyi, among others. Section:Anarchist schools of thought.:Post-classical and contemporary. Anarchist principles undergird contemporary radical social movements of the left. Interest in the anarchist movement developed alongside momentum in the anti-globalization movement, whose leading activist networks were anarchist in orientation. As the movement shaped 21st century radicalism, wider embrace of anarchist principles signaled a revival of interest. Contemporary news coverage which emphasizes black bloc demonstrations has reinforced anarchism's | 12 | 326 |
Anarchism. historical association with chaos and violence, though its publicity has also led more scholars to engage with the anarchist movement. Anarchism continues to generate many philosophies and movements, at times eclectic, drawing upon various sources and syncretic, combining disparate concepts to create new philosophical approaches. Anticapitalism stays prominent within contemporary anarchism, continuing the tradition of classical anarchism. Insurrectionary anarchism is a revolutionary theory, practice and tendency within the anarchist movement which emphasises insurrection within anarchist practice. Critical of formal organisations such as labour unions and federations that are based on a political programme and periodic congresses, insurrectionary anarchists instead advocate | 12 | 327 |
Anarchism. informal organisation and small affinity group based organisation as well as putting value in attack, permanent class conflict and a refusal to negotiate or compromise with class enemies. Green anarchism, or eco-anarchism, is a school of thought within anarchism that emphasises environmental issues, with an important precedent in anarcho-naturism and whose main contemporary currents are anarcho-primitivism and social ecology. Writing from a green anarchist perspective, John Zerzan attributes the ills of today's social degradation to technology and the birth of agricultural civilization. While Layla AbdelRahim argues that "the shift in human consciousness was also a shift in human subsistence strategies, | 12 | 328 |
Anarchism. whereby some human animals reinvented their narrative to center murder and predation and thereby institutionalize violence". According to AbdelRahim, civilization was the result of the human development of technologies and grammar for predatory economics. Language and literacy, she claims, are some of these technologies. Anarcho-pacifism is a tendency that rejects violence in the struggle for social change (see non-violence). It developed mostly in the Netherlands, Britain and the United States before and during the Second World War. Christian anarchism is a movement in political theology that combines anarchism and Christianity. Its main proponents included Leo Tolstoy, Dorothy Day, Ammon Hennacy | 12 | 329 |
Anarchism. and Jacques Ellul. Religious anarchism refers to a set of related anarchist ideologies that are inspired by the teachings of religions. While many anarchists have traditionally been sceptical of and opposed to organized religion, many different religions have served as inspiration for religious forms of anarchism, most notably Christianity as Christian anarchists believe that biblical teachings give credence to anarchist philosophy. Other examples include Buddhist anarchism, Jewish anarchism and most recently Neopaganism. Synthesis anarchism is a form of anarchism that tries to join anarchists of different tendencies under the principles of anarchism without adjectives. In the 1920s, this form found | 12 | 330 |
Anarchism. as its main proponents the anarcho-communists Voline and Sébastien Faure. It is the main principle behind the anarchist federations grouped around the contemporary global International of Anarchist Federations. Platformism is a tendency within the wider anarchist movement based on the organisational theories in the tradition of Dielo Truda's "Organisational Platform of the General Union of Anarchists (Draft)". The document was based on the experiences of Russian anarchists in the 1917 October Revolution which led eventually to the victory of the Bolsheviks over the anarchists and other groups. The "Platform" attempted to address and explain the anarchist movement's failures during the | 12 | 331 |
Anarchism. Russian Revolution. Post-left anarchy is a recent current in anarchist thought that promotes a critique of anarchism's relationship to traditional left-wing politics. Some post-leftists seek to escape the confines of ideology in general also presenting a critique of organisations and morality. Influenced by the work of Max Stirner and by the Marxist Situationist International, post-left anarchy is marked by a focus on social insurrection and a rejection of leftist social organisation. Post-anarchism is a theoretical move towards a synthesis of classical anarchist theory and poststructuralist thought, drawing from diverse ideas including post-left anarchy, postmodernism, autonomism, postcolonialism and the Situationist International. | 12 | 332 |
Anarchism. Queer anarchism is a form of socialism which suggests anarchism as a solution to the issues faced by the LGBT community, mainly heteronormativity, homophobia, transphobia and biphobia. It arose during the late 20th century based on the work of Michel Foucault's "The History of Sexuality" (1976). Left-wing market anarchism strongly affirm the classical liberal ideas of self-ownership and free markets while maintaining that taken to their logical conclusions these ideas support strongly anti-capitalist, anti-corporatist, anti-hierarchical and pro-labour positions in economics; anti-imperialism in foreign policy; and thoroughly radical views regarding such cultural issues as gender, sexuality and race. Anarcho-capitalism advocates the | 12 | 333 |
Anarchism. elimination of the state in favour of self-ownership in a free market. Anarcho-capitalism developed from radical American anti-state libertarianism and individualist anarchism, drawing from Austrian School economics, study of law and economics and public choice theory. There is a strong current within anarchism which believes that anarcho-capitalism cannot be considered a part of the anarchist movement due to the fact that anarchism has historically been an anti-capitalist movement and for definitional reasons which see anarchism as incompatible with capitalist forms. Anarcho-transhumanism is a recently new branch of anarchism that takes traditional and modern anarchism, typically drawing from anarcho-syndicalism, left-libertarianism, or | 12 | 334 |
Anarchism. libertarian socialism, and combines it with transhumanism and post-humanism. It can be described as a "liberal democratic revolution, at its core the idea that people are happiest when they have rational control over their lives. Reason, science, and technology provide one kind of control, slowly freeing us from ignorance, toil, pain, disease and limited lifespans (aging)". Some anarcho-transhumanists might also follow technogaianism. Section:Anarchist schools of thought.:Post-classical and contemporary.:Anarcha-feminism. Anarcha-feminism, also called anarchist feminism and anarcho-feminism, combines anarchism with feminism. It generally views patriarchy as a manifestation of involuntary coercive hierarchy that should be replaced by decentralised free association. Anarcha-feminists believe | 12 | 335 |
Anarchism. that the struggle against patriarchy is an essential part of class struggle and the anarchist struggle against the state. In essence, the philosophy sees anarchist struggle as a necessary component of feminist struggle and vice versa. Anarcha-feminists espoused to a detailed analysis of patriarchy and claim that oppression has its roots to social norms. Anarcha-feminism began with the late 19th-century writings of early feminist anarchists such as Emma Goldman and Voltairine de Cleyre. Mujeres Libres was an anarchist women's organisation in Spain that aimed to empower working class women, based on the idea of a double struggle for women's liberation | 12 | 336 |
Anarchism. and social revolution and argued that the two objectives were equally important and should be pursued in parallel. In order to gain mutual support, they created networks of women anarchists. The second wave of anarcha-feminism arose in the 1960s. Section:Internal issues and debates. As anarchism is a philosophy that embodies many diverse attitudes, tendencies and schools of thought and as such disagreement over questions of values, ideology and tactics is common, its diversity has led to widely different use of identical terms among different anarchist traditions which has led to many definitional concerns in anarchist theory. For instance, the compatibility | 12 | 337 |
Anarchism. of capitalism, nationalism and religion with anarchism is widely disputed. Similarly, anarchism enjoys complex relationships with ideologies such as Marxism, communism, collectivism and trade unionism. Anarchists may be motivated by humanism, divine authority, enlightened self-interest, veganism, or any number of alternative ethical doctrines. Phenomena such as civilisation, technology (e.g. within anarcho-primitivism) and the democratic process may be sharply criticised within some anarchist tendencies and simultaneously lauded in others. On a tactical level, propaganda of the deed was a tactic used by anarchists in the 19th century (e.g. the nihilist movement), with some contemporary anarchists espousing alternative direct action methods such | 12 | 338 |
Anarchism. as nonviolence, counter-economics and anti-state cryptography to bring about an anarchist society. About the scope of an anarchist society, some anarchists advocate a global one while others do so by local ones. Section:Topics of interest. Intersecting and overlapping between various schools of thought, certain topics of interest and internal disputes have proven perennial within anarchist theory. Section:Topics of interest.:Anarchism and free love. An important current within anarchism is free love. In Europe, the main propagandist of free love within individualist anarchism was Emile Armand. He proposed the concept of "la camaraderie amoureuse" to speak of free love as the possibility | 12 | 339 |
Anarchism. of voluntary sexual encounter between consenting adults. He was also a consistent proponent of polyamory. In Germany, the Stirnerists Adolf Brand and John Henry Mackay were pioneering campaigners for the acceptance of male bisexuality and homosexuality. More recently, the British anarcho-pacifist Alex Comfort gained notoriety during the sexual revolution for writing the bestseller sex manual "The Joy of Sex". The issue of free love has a dedicated treatment in the work of French anarcho-hedonist philosopher Michel Onfray in such works as "Théorie du corps amoureux. Pour une érotique solaire" (2000) and "L'invention du plaisir. Fragments cyréaniques" (2002). Section:Topics of interest.:Anarchism | 12 | 340 |
Anarchism. and education. English anarchist William Godwin considered education an important aspect. He was against state education as he considered those schools as a way of the state to replicate privileges of the ruling class. Godwin thought that education was the way to change the world. In his "Political Justice", he criticises state sponsored schooling and advocates for child's protection from coercion. Max Stirner wrote in 1842 a long essay on education called "The False Principle of our Education" in which Stirner was advocating for child's autonomy. In 1901, Catalan anarchist and free thinker Francesc Ferrer i Guàrdia established modern or | 12 | 341 |
Anarchism. progressive schools in Barcelona in defiance of an educational system controlled by the Catholic Church. Ferrer's approach was secular, rejecting both the state and church involvement in the educational process and gave pupils plenty of autonomy (i.e. on setting the curriculum). Ferrer was aiming to educate the working class. The school closed after constant harassment by the state and Ferrer was later on arrested. Ferrer's ideas generally formed the inspiration for a series of modern schools in the United States, Russian Christian anarchist Leo Tolstoy established a school for peasant children on his estate. Tolstoy's educational experiments were short-lived due | 12 | 342 |
Anarchism. to harassment by the Tsarist secret police. Tolstoy established a conceptual difference between education and culture. He thought that "[e]ducation is the tendency of one man to make another just like himself. [...] Education is culture under restraint, culture is free. [Education is] when the teaching is forced upon the pupil, and when then instruction is exclusive, that is when only those subjects are taught which the educator regards as necessary". For him, "without compulsion, education was transformed into culture". A more recent libertarian tradition on education is that of unschooling and the free school in which child-led activity replaces | 12 | 343 |
Anarchism. pedagogic approaches. Experiments in Germany led to A. S. Neill founding what became Summerhill School in 1921. Summerhill is often cited as an example of anarchism in practice. However, although Summerhill and other free schools are radically libertarian, they differ in principle from those of Ferrer by not advocating an overtly political class struggle-approach. In addition to organising schools according to libertarian principles, anarchists have also questioned the concept of schooling per se. The term deschooling was popularised by Ivan Illich, who argued that the school as an institution is dysfunctional for self-determined learning and serves the creation of a | 12 | 344 |
Anarchism. consumer society instead. Section:Topics of interest.:Anarchism and the state. Objection to the state and its institutions is "sine qua non" of anarchism. Anarchists consider the government as a tool of domination and it is illegitimate regardless of political tendencies. Instead of people being able to control the aspects of their life, major decisions are taken by a small elite. Authority ultimately rests solely on power regardless if it is open or transparent as it still has the ability to coerce people. Another anarchist argument against states is that some people constituting a government, even the most altruistic among officials, will | 12 | 345 |
Anarchism. unavoidably seek to gain more power, leading to corruption. Anarchists consider the argument that the state is the collective will of people as a fairy tale since the ruling class is distinct from the rest of the society. Section:Topics of interest.:Anarchism and violence. Anarchist perspectives towards violence have always been perplexed and controversial. On one hand, anarcho-pacifists point out the unity of means and ends. On the other hand, other groups of anarchist are for direct action that can include sabotage or even terrorism. Emma Goldman and Errico Malatesta, who were proponents of limited use of violence, were arguing that | 12 | 346 |
Anarchism. violence is merely a reaction to state violence as a necessary evil. Peace activist and anarchist April Carter argues that violence is incompatible with anarchism because it is mostly associated with the state and authority as violence is immanent to the state. As the state's capability to exercise violence is colossal nowadays, a rebellion or civil war would probably end in another authoritarian institute. Section:Anarchist strategies and tactics. Anarchist tactics vary considerably. A broad categorization would be the preference of revolutionary tactics to destroy oppressive States and institutions or aiming to change society through evolutionary means. Revolutionary methods can take | 12 | 347 |
Anarchism. violent form as they did in past insurgencies (i.e., in Spain, Mexico, Russia) or during violent protests by militant protestors such as the black bloc, who are generally much less violent than revolutionary movements a century ago. Anarchists also commonly employ direct action, which can take the form of disrupting and protesting against unjust hierarchies, or the form of self-managing their lives through the creation of counterinstitutions such as communes and non-hierarchical collectives. Often decision-making is handled in an anti-authoritarian way, with everyone having equal say in each decision, an approach known as horizontalism. Another aspect of anarchist tactics is | 12 | 348 |
Anarchism. their aim to strengthen social bonds through common actions. Reclaiming public space by anarchists is another method of creating social spaces and creating squats in order to organise themselves. During important events such as protests, when spaces are being occupied, they are often called "Temporary Autonomous Zones" (TAZ). Section:Criticisms. Moral and pragmatic criticism of anarchism includes allegations of utopianism, tacit authoritarianism and vandalism towards feats of civilization. Section:Criticisms.:Allegation of utopianism. Anarchism is evaluated as unfeasible or utopian by its critics, often in general and formal debate. European history professor Carl Landauer argued that social anarchism is unrealistic and that government | 12 | 349 |
Anarchism. is a "lesser evil" than a society without "repressive force". He also argued that "ill intentions will cease if repressive force disappears" is an "absurdity". However, "An Anarchist FAQ" states the following: "Anarchy is not a utopia, [and] anarchists make no such claims about human perfection. [...] Remaining disputes would be solved by reasonable methods, for example, the use of juries, mutual third parties, or community and workplace assemblies". It also states that "some sort of 'court' system would still be necessary to deal with the remaining crimes and to adjudicate disputes between citizens". Section:Criticisms.:Tacit authoritarianism. The anarchist tendency known | 12 | 350 |
Anarchism. as platformism has been criticized by Situationists, insurrectionaries, synthesis anarchists and others of preserving tacitly statist, authoritarian or bureaucratic tendencies. Section:Criticisms.:Anarchism and civilization. In his essay "On Authority", Friedrich Engels claimed that radical decentralization promoted by anarchists would destroy modern industrial civilization, citing an example of railways: In the end, it is argued that authority in any form is a natural occurrence which should not be abolished. Section:List of anarchist societies. Section:See also. Section:See also.:Foundational texts of anarchism. Section:Further reading. Section:External links. | 12 | 351 |
Swing. Swing Swing or swinging may refer to: Section:Apparatus. Section:Arts, entertainment, and media. Section:Arts, entertainment, and media.:Films. Section:Arts, entertainment, and media.:Music. Section:Arts, entertainment, and media.:Music.:Groups and labels. Section:Arts, entertainment, and media.:Music.:Albums. Section:Arts, entertainment, and media.:Songs. Section:Arts, entertainment, and media.:Songs.:Styles. Section:Arts, entertainment, and media.:Other uses in arts, entertainment, and media. Section:Politics. Section:Sports. Section:Transportation. Section:Other uses. Section:See also. | 157629 | 352 |
Achilles. Achilles In Greek mythology, Achilles or Achilleus ( ; , "Achilleus" ) was a hero of the Trojan War, the greatest of all the Greek warriors, and is the central character of Homer's "Iliad". He was the son of the Nereid Thetis and Peleus, king of Phthia. Achilles' most notable feat during the Trojan War was the slaying of the Trojan prince Hector outside the gates of Troy. Although the death of Achilles is not presented in the "Iliad", other sources concur that he was killed near the end of the Trojan War by Paris, who shot him in the | 305 | 353 |
Achilles. heel with an arrow. Later legends (beginning with Statius' unfinished epic "Achilleid", written in the 1st century AD) state that Achilles was invulnerable in all of his body except for his heel because, when his mother Thetis dipped him in the river Styx as an infant, she held him by one of his heels. Alluding to these legends, the term "Achilles' heel" has come to mean a point of weakness, especially in someone or something with an otherwise strong constitution. The Achilles tendon is also named after him due to these legends. Section:Etymology. Linear B tablets attest to the personal | 305 | 354 |
Achilles. name "Achilleus" in the forms "a-ki-re-u" and "a-ki-re-we", the latter being the dative of the former. The name grew more popular, even becoming common soon after the seventh century BC and was also turned into the female form Ἀχιλλεία ("Achilleía"), attested in Attica in the fourth century BC (IG II² 1617) and, in the form "Achillia", on a stele in Halicarnassus as the name of a female gladiator fighting an "Amazon". Achilles' name can be analyzed as a combination of (') "distress, pain, sorrow, grief" and (') "people, soldiers, nation", resulting in a proto-form "*Akhí-lāu̯os" "he who has the people | 305 | 355 |
Achilles. distressed" or "he whose people have distress". The grief or distress of the people is a theme raised numerous times in the "Iliad" (and frequently by Achilles himself). Achilles' role as the hero of grief or distress forms an ironic juxtaposition with the conventional view of him as the hero of "" ("glory", usually in war). Furthermore, "laós" has been construed by Gregory Nagy, following Leonard Palmer, to mean "a corps of soldiers", a muster. With this derivation, the name obtains a double meaning in the poem: when the hero is functioning rightly, his men bring distress to the enemy, | 305 | 356 |
Achilles. but when wrongly, his men get the grief of war. The poem is in part about the misdirection of anger on the part of leadership. Another etymology relates the name to a Proto-Indo-European compound "*h₂eḱ-pṓds" "sharp foot" which first gave an Illyrian "*āk̂pediós", evolving through time into "*ākhpdeós" and then "*akhiddeús". The shift from "-dd-" to "-ll-" is then ascribed to the passing of the name into Greek via a Pre-Greek source. The first root part "*h₂eḱ-" "sharp, pointed" also gave Greek ἀκή ("akḗ" "point, silence, healing"), ἀκμή ("akmḗ" "point, edge, zenith") and ὀξύς ("oxús" "sharp, pointed, keen, quick, clever"), | 305 | 357 |
Achilles. whereas ἄχος stems from the root "*h₂egʰ-" "to be upset, afraid". The whole expression would be comparable to the Latin "acupedius" "swift of foot". Compare also the Latin word family of "aciēs" "sharp edge or point, battle line, battle, engagement", "acus" "needle, pin, bodkin", and "acuō" "to make pointed, sharpen, whet; to exercise; to arouse" (whence "acute"). Some topical epitheta of Achilles in the "Iliad" point to this "swift-footedness", namely ποδάρκης δῖος Ἀχιλλεὺς ("podárkēs dĩos Achilleús" "swift-footed divine Achilles") or, even more frequently, πόδας ὠκὺς Ἀχιλλεύς ("pódas ōkús Achilleús" "quick-footed Achilles"). Some researchers deem the name a loan word, possibly | 305 | 358 |
Achilles. from a Pre-Greek language. Achilles' descent from the Nereid Thetis and a similarity of his name with those of river deities such as Acheron and Achelous have led to speculations about him being an old water divinity (see below Worship). Robert S. P. Beekes has suggested a Pre-Greek origin of the name, based among other things on the coexistence of "-λλ-" and "-λ-" in epic language, which may account for a palatalized phoneme /l/ in the original language. Section:Birth and early years. Achilles was the son of the Nereid Thetis and of Peleus, the king of the Myrmidons. Zeus and | 305 | 359 |
Achilles. Poseidon had been rivals for the hand of Thetis until Prometheus, the fore-thinker, warned Zeus of a prophecy (originally uttered by Themis, goddess of divine law) that Thetis would bear a son greater than his father. For this reason, the two gods withdrew their pursuit, and had her wed Peleus. There is a tale which offers an alternative version of these events: In the "Argonautica" (4.760) Zeus' sister and wife Hera alludes to Thetis' chaste resistance to the advances of Zeus, pointing out that Thetis was so loyal to Hera's marriage bond that she coolly rejected the father of gods. | 305 | 360 |
Achilles. Thetis, although a daughter of the sea-god Nereus, was also brought up by Hera, further explaining her resistance to the advances of Zeus. Zeus was furious and decreed that she would never marry an immortal. According to the "Achilleid", written by Statius in the 1st century AD, and to non-surviving previous sources, when Achilles was born Thetis tried to make him immortal by dipping him in the river Styx. However, he was left vulnerable at the part of the body by which she held him: his left heel (see Achilles' heel, Achilles' tendon). It is not clear if this version | 305 | 361 |
Achilles. of events was known earlier. In another version of this story, Thetis anointed the boy in ambrosia and put him on top of a fire in order to burn away the mortal parts of his body. She was interrupted by Peleus and abandoned both father and son in a rage. However, none of the sources before Statius make any reference to this general invulnerability. To the contrary, in the "Iliad" Homer mentions Achilles being wounded: in Book 21 the Paeonian hero Asteropaeus, son of Pelagon, challenged Achilles by the river Scamander. He cast two spears at once, one grazed Achilles' | 305 | 362 |
Achilles. elbow, "drawing a spurt of blood". Also, in the fragmentary poems of the Epic Cycle in which one can find description of the hero's death (i.e. the "Cypria", the "Little Iliad" by Lesches of Pyrrha, the "Aithiopis" and "Iliou persis" by Arctinus of Miletus), there is no trace of any reference to his general invulnerability or his famous weakness at the heel; in the later vase paintings presenting the death of Achilles, the arrow (or in many cases, arrows) hit his torso. Peleus entrusted Achilles to Chiron the Centaur, on Mount Pelion, to be reared. Thetis foretold that her son's | 305 | 363 |
Achilles. fate was either to gain glory and die young, or to live a long but uneventful life in obscurity. Achilles chose the former, and decided to take part in the Trojan war. According to Homer, Achilles grew up in Phthia together with his companion Patroclus. According to Photius, the sixth book of the "New History" by Ptolemy Hephaestion reported that Thetis burned in a secret place the children she had by Peleus; but when she had Achilles, Peleus noticed, tore him from the flames with only a burnt foot, and confided him to the centaur Chiron. Later Chiron exhumed the | 305 | 364 |
Achilles. body of the Damysus, who was the fastest of all the giants, removed the ankle, and incorporated it into Achilles' burnt foot. Section:Birth and early years.:Other names. Among the appellations under which Achilles is generally known are the following: Section:Birth and early years.:Hidden on Skyros. Some post-Homeric sources claim that in order to keep Achilles safe from the war, Thetis (or, in some versions, Peleus) hid the young man at the court of Lycomedes, king of Skyros. There, Achilles is disguised as a girl and lives among Lycomedes' daughters, perhaps under the name "Pyrrha" (the red-haired girl). With Lycomedes' daughter | 305 | 365 |
Achilles. Deidamia, whom in the account of Statius he rapes, Achilles there fathers a son, Neoptolemus (also called Pyrrhus, after his father's possible alias). According to this story, Odysseus learns from the prophet Calchas that the Achaeans would be unable to capture Troy without Achilles' aid. Odysseus goes to Skyros in the guise of a peddler selling women's clothes and jewellery and places a shield and spear among his goods. When Achilles instantly takes up the spear, Odysseus sees through his disguise and convinces him to join the Greek campaign. In another version of the story, Odysseus arranges for a trumpet | 305 | 366 |
Achilles. alarm to be sounded while he was with Lycomedes' women; while the women flee in panic, Achilles prepares to defend the court, thus giving his identity away. Section:In the Trojan War. According to the "Iliad", Achilles arrived at Troy with 50 ships, each carrying 50 Myrmidons. He appointed five leaders (each leader commanding 500 Myrmidons): Menesthius, Eudorus, Peisander, Phoenix and Alcimedon. Section:In the Trojan War.:Telephus. When the Greeks left for the Trojan War, they accidentally stopped in Mysia, ruled by King Telephus. In the resulting battle, Achilles gave Telephus a wound that would not heal; Telephus consulted an oracle, who | 305 | 367 |
Achilles. stated that "he that wounded shall heal". Guided by the oracle, he arrived at Argos, where Achilles healed him in order that he might become their guide for the voyage to Troy. According to other reports in Euripides' lost play about Telephus, he went to Aulis pretending to be a beggar and asked Achilles to heal his wound. Achilles refused, claiming to have no medical knowledge. Alternatively, Telephus held Orestes for ransom, the ransom being Achilles' aid in healing the wound. Odysseus reasoned that the spear had inflicted the wound; therefore, the spear must be able to heal it. Pieces | 305 | 368 |
Achilles. of the spear were scraped off onto the wound and Telephus was healed. Section:In the Trojan War.:Troilus. According to the "Cypria" (the part of the Epic Cycle that tells the events of the Trojan War before Achilles' wrath), when the Achaeans desired to return home, they were restrained by Achilles, who afterwards attacked the cattle of Aeneas, sacked neighbouring cities (like Pedasus and Lyrnessus, where the Greeks capture the queen Briseis) and killed Tenes, a son of Apollo, as well as Priam's son Troilus in the sanctuary of Apollo Thymbraios. However, the romance between Troilus and Chryseis described in Geoffrey | 305 | 369 |
Achilles. Chaucer's "Troilus and Criseyde" and in William Shakespeare's "Troilus and Cressida" is a medieval invention. In Dares Phrygius' "Account of the Destruction of Troy", the Latin summary through which the story of Achilles was transmitted to medieval Europe, as well as in older accounts, Troilus was a young Trojan prince, the youngest of King Priam's and Hecuba's five legitimate sons (or according other sources, another son of Apollo). Despite his youth, he was one of the main Trojan war leaders, a "horse fighter" or "chariot fighter" according to Homer. Prophecies linked Troilus' fate to that of Troy and so he | 305 | 370 |
Achilles. was ambushed in an attempt to capture him. Yet Achilles, struck by the beauty of both Troilus and his sister Polyxena, and overcome with lust, directed his sexual attentions on the youth – who, refusing to yield, instead found himself decapitated upon an altar-omphalos of Apollo Thymbraios. Later versions of the story suggested Troilus was accidentally killed by Achilles in an over-ardent lovers' embrace. In this version of the myth, Achilles' death therefore came in retribution for this sacrilege. Ancient writers treated Troilus as the epitome of a dead child mourned by his parents. Had Troilus lived to adulthood, the | 305 | 371 |
Achilles. First Vatican Mythographer claimed, Troy would have been invincible. Section:In the Trojan War.:In the "Iliad". Homer's "Iliad" is the most famous narrative of Achilles' deeds in the Trojan War. Achilles' wrath (μῆνις Ἀχιλλέως, "mênis Achilléōs") is the central theme of the poem. The first two lines of the "Iliad" read: The Homeric epic only covers a few weeks of the decade-long war, and does not narrate Achilles' death. It begins with Achilles' withdrawal from battle after being dishonoured by Agamemnon, the commander of the Achaean forces. Agamemnon has taken a woman named Chryseis as his slave. Her father Chryses, a | 305 | 372 |
Achilles. priest of Apollo, begs Agamemnon to return her to him. Agamemnon refuses, and Apollo sends a plague amongst the Greeks. The prophet Calchas correctly determines the source of the troubles but will not speak unless Achilles vows to protect him. Achilles does so, and Calchas declares that Chryseis must be returned to her father. Agamemnon consents, but then commands that Achilles' battle prize Briseis, the daughter of Briseus, be brought to him to replace Chryseis. Angry at the dishonour of having his plunder and glory taken away (and, as he says later, because he loves Briseis), with the urging of | 305 | 373 |
Achilles. his mother Thetis, Achilles refuses to fight or lead his troops alongside the other Greek forces. At the same time, burning with rage over Agamemnon's theft, Achilles prays to Thetis to convince Zeus to help the Trojans gain ground in the war, so that he may regain his honour. As the battle turns against the Greeks, thanks to the influence of Zeus, Nestor declares that the Trojans are winning because Agamemnon has angered Achilles, and urges the king to appease the warrior. Agamemnon agrees and sends Odysseus and two other chieftains, Ajax and Phoenix, to Achilles with the offer of | 305 | 374 |
Achilles. the return of Briseis and other gifts. Achilles rejects all Agamemnon offers him and simply urges the Greeks to sail home as he was planning to do. The Trojans, led by Hector, subsequently push the Greek army back toward the beaches and assault the Greek ships. With the Greek forces on the verge of absolute destruction, Patroclus leads the Myrmidons into battle, wearing Achilles' armour, though Achilles remains at his camp. Patroclus succeeds in pushing the Trojans back from the beaches, but is killed by Hector before he can lead a proper assault on the city of Troy. After receiving | 305 | 375 |
Achilles. the news of the death of Patroclus from Antilochus, the son of Nestor, Achilles grieves over his beloved companion's death. His mother Thetis comes to comfort the distraught Achilles. She persuades Hephaestus to make new armour for him, in place of the armour that Patroclus had been wearing, which was taken by Hector. The new armour includes the Shield of Achilles, described in great detail in the poem. Enraged over the death of Patroclus, Achilles ends his refusal to fight and takes the field, killing many men in his rage but always seeking out Hector. Achilles even engages in battle | 305 | 376 |
Achilles. with the river god Scamander, who has become angry that Achilles is choking his waters with all the men he has killed. The god tries to drown Achilles but is stopped by Hera and Hephaestus. Zeus himself takes note of Achilles' rage and sends the gods to restrain him so that he will not go on to sack Troy itself before the time allotted for its destruction, seeming to show that the unhindered rage of Achilles can defy fate itself. Finally, Achilles finds his prey. Achilles chases Hector around the wall of Troy three times before Athena, in the form | 305 | 377 |
Achilles. of Hector's favorite and dearest brother, Deiphobus, persuades Hector to stop running and fight Achilles face to face. After Hector realizes the trick, he knows the battle is inevitable. Wanting to go down fighting, he charges at Achilles with his only weapon, his sword, but misses. Accepting his fate, Hector begs Achilles, not to spare his life, but to treat his body with respect after killing him. Achilles tells Hector it is hopeless to expect that of him, declaring that "my rage, my fury would drive me now to hack your flesh away and eat you raw – such agonies | 305 | 378 |
Achilles. you have caused me". Achilles then kills Hector and drags his corpse by its heels behind his chariot. After having a dream where Patroclus begs Achilles to hold his funeral, Achilles hosts a series of funeral games in his honour. At the onset of his duel with Hector, Achilles is referred to as the brightest star in the sky, which comes on in the autumn, Orion's dog (Sirius); a sign of evil. During the cremation of Patroclus, he is compared to Hesperus, the evening/western star (Venus), while the burning of the funeral pyre lasts until Phosphorus, the morning/eastern star (also | 305 | 379 |
Achilles. Venus) has set (descended). With the assistance of the god Hermes (Argeiphontes), Hector's father Priam goes to Achilles' tent to plead with Achilles for the return of Hector's body so that he can be buried. Achilles relents and promises a truce for the duration of the funeral, lasting 9 days with a burial on the 10th (in the tradition of Niobe's offspring). The poem ends with a description of Hector's funeral, with the doom of Troy and Achilles himself still to come. Section:In the Trojan War.:Later epic accounts: fighting Penthesilea and Memnon. The "Aethiopis" (7th century BC) and a work | 305 | 380 |
Achilles. named "Posthomerica", composed by Quintus of Smyrna in the fourth century AD, relate further events from the Trojan War. When Penthesilea, queen of the Amazons and daughter of Ares, arrives in Troy, Priam hopes that she will defeat Achilles. After his temporary truce with Priam, Achilles fights and kills the warrior queen, only to grieve over her death later. At first, he was so distracted by her beauty, he did not fight as intensely as usual. Once he realized that his distraction was endangering his life, he refocused and killed her. Following the death of Patroclus, Nestor's son Antilochus becomes | 305 | 381 |
Achilles. Achilles' closest companion. When Memnon, son of the Dawn Goddess Eos and king of Ethiopia, slays Antilochus, Achilles once more obtains revenge on the battlefield, killing Memnon. Consequently, Eos will not let the sun rise, until Zeus persuades her. The fight between Achilles and Memnon over Antilochus echoes that of Achilles and Hector over Patroclus, except that Memnon (unlike Hector) was also the son of a goddess. Many Homeric scholars argued that episode inspired many details in the "Iliad"s description of the death of Patroclus and Achilles' reaction to it. The episode then formed the basis of the cyclic epic | 305 | 382 |
Achilles. "Aethiopis", which was composed after the "Iliad", possibly in the 7th century BC. The "Aethiopis" is now lost, except for scattered fragments quoted by later authors. Section:In the Trojan War.:Achilles and Patroclus. The exact nature of Achilles' relationship with Patroclus has been a subject of dispute in both the classical period and modern times. In the "Iliad", it appears to be the model of a deep and loyal friendship. Homer does not suggest that Achilles and his close friend Patroclus were lovers. Despite there being no direct evidence in the text of the "Iliad" that Achilles and Patroclus were lovers, | 305 | 383 |
Achilles. this theory was expressed by some later authors. Commentators from classical antiquity to the present have often interpreted the relationship through the lens of their own cultures. In 5th-century BC Athens, the intense bond was often viewed in light of the Greek custom of "paiderasteia". In Plato's "Symposium", the participants in a dialogue about love assume that Achilles and Patroclus were a couple; Phaedrus argues that Achilles was the younger and more beautiful one so he was the beloved and Patroclus was the lover. But ancient Greek had no words to distinguish heterosexual and homosexual, and it was assumed that | 305 | 384 |
Achilles. a man could both desire handsome young men and have sex with women. Many pairs of men throughout history have been compared to Achilles and Patroclus to imply a homosexual relationship. Section:In the Trojan War.:Death. The death of Achilles, even if considered solely as it occurred in the oldest sources, is a complex one, with many different versions. In the oldest one, the Iliad, and as predicted by Hector with his dying breath, the hero's death was brought about by Paris with an arrow (to the heel according to Statius). In some versions, the god Apollo guided Paris' arrow. Some | 305 | 385 |
Achilles. retellings also state that Achilles was scaling the gates of Troy and was hit with a poisoned arrow. All of these versions deny Paris any sort of valour, owing to the common conception that Paris was a coward and not the man his brother Hector was, and Achilles remained undefeated on the battlefield. His bones were mingled with those of Patroclus, and funeral games were held. He was represented in the "Aethiopis" as living after his death in the island of Leuke at the mouth of the river Danube. Another version of Achilles' death is that he fell deeply in | 305 | 386 |
Achilles. love with one of the Trojan princesses, Polyxena. Achilles asks Priam for Polyxena's hand in marriage. Priam is willing because it would mean the end of the war and an alliance with the world's greatest warrior. But while Priam is overseeing the private marriage of Polyxena and Achilles, Paris, who would have to give up Helen if Achilles married his sister, hides in the bushes and shoots Achilles with a divine arrow, killing him. In the "Odyssey", Agamemnon informs Achilles of his pompous burial and the erection of his mound at the Hellespont while they are receiving the dead suitors | 305 | 387 |
Achilles. in Hades. He claims they built a massive burial mound on the beach of Ilion that could be seen by anyone approaching from the Ocean. Achilles was cremated and his ashes buried in the same urn as those of Patroclus. Paris was later killed by Philoctetes using the enormous bow of Heracles. In Book 11 of Homer's "Odyssey", Odysseus sails to the underworld and converses with the shades. One of these is Achilles, who when greeted as "blessed in life, blessed in death", responds that he would rather be a slave to the worst of masters than be king of | 305 | 388 |
Achilles. all the dead. But Achilles then asks Odysseus of his son's exploits in the Trojan war, and when Odysseus tells of Neoptolemus' heroic actions, Achilles is filled with satisfaction. This leaves the reader with an ambiguous understanding of how Achilles felt about the heroic life. According to some accounts, he had married Medea in life, so that after both their deaths they were united in the Elysian Fields of Hades – as Hera promised Thetis in Apollonius' "Argonautica" (3rd century BC). Section:In the Trojan War.:Fate of Achilles' armour. Achilles' armour was the object of a feud between Odysseus and Telamonian | 305 | 389 |
Achilles. Ajax (Ajax the greater). They competed for it by giving speeches on why they were the bravest after Achilles to their Trojan prisoners, who after considering both men, decided Odysseus was more deserving of the armour. Furious, Ajax cursed Odysseus, which earned him the ire of Athena. Athena temporarily made Ajax so mad with grief and anguish that he began killing sheep, thinking them his comrades. After a while, when Athena lifted his madness and Ajax realized that he had actually been killing sheep, Ajax was left so ashamed that he committed suicide. Odysseus eventually gave the armour to Neoptolemus, | 305 | 390 |
Achilles. the son of Achilles. A relic claimed to be Achilles' bronze-headed spear was for centuries preserved in the temple of Athena on the acropolis of Phaselis, Lycia, a port on the Pamphylian Gulf. The city was visited in 333 BC by Alexander the Great, who envisioned himself as the new Achilles and carried the "Iliad" with him, but his court biographers do not mention the spear. However, it was shown in the time of Pausanias in the 2nd century AD. Section:In the Trojan War.:Achilles, Ajax and a game of "petteia". Numerous paintings on pottery have suggested a tale not mentioned | 305 | 391 |
Achilles. in the literary traditions. At some point in the war, Achilles and Ajax were playing a board game ("petteia"). They were absorbed in the game and oblivious to the surrounding battle. The Trojans attacked and reached the heroes, who were saved only by an intervention of Athena. Section:Worship and heroic cult. The tomb of Achilles, extant throughout antiquity in Troad, was venerated by Thessalians, but also by Persian expeditionary forces, as well as by Alexander the Great and the Roman emperor Caracalla. Achilles' cult was also to be found at other places, e. g. on the island of Astypalaea in | 305 | 392 |
Achilles. the Sporades, in Sparta which had a sanctuary, in Elis and in Achilles' homeland Thessaly, as well as in the Magna Graecia cities of Tarentum, Locri and Croton, accounting for an almost Panhellenic cult to the hero. The cult of Achilles is illustrated in the 500 BC Polyxena sarcophagus, where the sacrifice of Polixena near the tumulus of Achilles is depicted. Strabo (13.1.32) also suggested that such a cult of Achilles existed in Troad: The spread and intensity of the hero's veneration among the Greeks that had settled on the northern coast of the Pontus Euxinus, today's Black Sea, appears | 305 | 393 |
Achilles. to have been remarkable. An archaic cult is attested for the Milesian colony of Olbia as well as for an island in the middle of the Black Sea, today identified with Snake Island (Ukrainian Зміїний, "Zmiinyi", near Kiliya, Ukraine). Early dedicatory inscriptions from the Greek colonies on the Black Sea (graffiti and inscribed clay disks, these possibly being votive offerings, from Olbia, the area of Berezan Island and the Tauric Chersonese) attest the existence of a heroic cult of Achilles from the sixth century BC onwards. The cult was still thriving in the third century AD, when dedicatory stelae from | 305 | 394 |
Achilles. Olbia refer to an "Achilles Pontárchēs" (Ποντάρχης, roughly "lord of the Sea," or "of the Pontus Euxinus"), who was invoked as a protector of the city of Olbia, venerated on par with Olympian gods such as the local Apollo Prostates, Hermes Agoraeus, or Poseidon. Pliny the Elder (23–79 AD) in his "Natural History" mentions a "port of the Achæi" and an "island of Achilles", famous for the tomb of that "man" (portus Achaeorum, insula Achillis, tumulo eius viri clara), situated somewhat nearby Olbia and the Dnieper-Bug Estuary; furthermore, at 125 Roman miles from this island, he places a peninsula "which | 305 | 395 |
Achilles. stretches forth in the shape of a sword" obliquely, called "Dromos Achilleos" (Ἀχιλλέως δρόμος, "Achilléōs drómos" "the Race-course of Achilles") and considered the place of the hero's exercise or of games instituted by him. This last feature of Pliny's account is considered to be the iconic spit, called today "Tendra" (or "Kosa Tendra" and "Kosa Djarilgatch"), situated between the mouth of the Dnieper and Karkinit Bay, but which is hardly 125 Roman miles (c. 185 km) away from the Dnieper-Bug estuary, as Pliny states. (To the "Race-course" he gives a length of 80 miles, c. 120 km, whereas the spit | 305 | 396 |
Achilles. measures c. 70 km today.) In the following chapter of his book, Pliny refers to the same island as "Achillea" and introduces two further names for it: "Leuce" or "Macaron" (from Greek [νῆσος] μακαρῶν "island of the blest"). The "present day" measures, he gives at this point, seem to account for an identification of "Achillea" or "Leuce" with today's Snake Island. Pliny's contemporary Pomponius Mela (c. 43 AD) tells that Achilles was buried on an island named "Achillea", situated between the Borysthenes and the Ister, adding to the geographical confusion. Ruins of a square temple, measuring 30 meters to a | 305 | 397 |
Achilles. side, possibly that dedicated to Achilles, were discovered by Captain Kritzikly in 1823 on Snake Island. A second exploration in 1840 showed that the construction of a lighthouse had destroyed all traces of this temple. A fifth century BC black-glazed lekythos inscription, found on the island in 1840, reads: "Glaukos, son of Poseidon, dedicated me to Achilles, lord of Leuke." In another inscription from the fifth or fourth century BC, a statue is dedicated to Achilles, lord of Leuke, by a citizen of Olbia, while in a further dedication, the city of Olbia confirms its continuous maintenance of the island's | 305 | 398 |
Achilles. cult, again suggesting its quality as a place of a supra-regional hero veneration. The heroic cult dedicated to Achilles on "Leuce" seems to go back to an account from the lost epic "Aethiopis" according to which, after his untimely death, Thetis had snatched her son from the funeral pyre and removed him to a mythical Λεύκη Νῆσος ("Leúkē Nêsos" "White Island"). Already in the fifth century BC, Pindar had mentioned a cult of Achilles on a "bright island" (φαεννά νᾶσος, "phaenná nâsos") of the Black Sea, while in another of his works, Pindar would retell the story of the immortalized | 305 | 399 |