I taught the Iliad to Chinese teenagers

Re:I taught the Iliad to Chinese teenagers by PeterisP on Monday February 19, 2024 @02:09AM (#39426938)

> For example, in parts of Iliad bronze is given as a valuable gift. In other parts, it’s thrown away on the heads of spears and arrows. So was it composed before or after the fall of the Bronze Age?

I'm confused by what paradox do you see there - the most useful metal you can get always gets put on spears and arrows, it's not "throwing things away", it's the most important usage for high quality metal, and it is a valuable gift exactly because it allows you to make more or better spearheads and arrowheads. What would they be saving for otherwise? Shovels are important, but your spear is literally a matter of life and death and does get priority.

Also, it's not generally destroyed or discarded, all the valuable stuff does get picked up from battlefield afterwards.

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Re:I taught the Iliad to Chinese teenagers by hnbad on Monday February 19, 2024 @03:56AM (#39427486)

For a modern analogy: we treat gold as a luxury good we convert into prized jewelry and yet we use it to make disposable technology we carelessly throw away once no longer fit for use.

And although of course the amounts of precious metals in modern hardware are minute compared to that in luxury jewelry, we still send that hardware scrap over to underdeveloped countries where the precious metals are extracted with great harm to health and lives. If anything, picking up the arrows, spears and swords off a battlefield is a much easier, safer and more rewarding process, making the use of precious bronze for those wares much less wasteful and frivolous.

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