The Homerathon
It was the golden hour of a Friday in resplendent spring — you could have called it “bucolic,” given the goat.
We were parading the horned fellow to the tune of bagpipes, to which the ladies of campus added cries of dismay like strange counterpoint. I could not hold it against them, however. After all, the goat was going to be slaughtered in the morning twilight…
*
Let me explain.
I went to a very small Catholic liberal arts college, which steeped its students in the best of wisdom, both sacred and profane. The beginning of the former — as everyone knows — is the fear of the Lord, but the beginning of the latter is the love of Homer. The Iliad is the first book on the reading list, which means that the first thing everyone has in common — beyond Catholicism — is Homer, with all his rough and tragic majesty. While the curriculum obliged us to move on soon to the study of other, arguably better authors, and to the careful refinement of our minds, Homer retained an unsurpassed place in our hearts. The music of his words haunted those first halcyon months in Lady Philosophy’s eccentric entourage.
Melodramatic? Without a doubt. Foolish? Perhaps, but for the sake of something you love, wouldn’t you just as soon don the weeds of folly?
The story begins in my junior year, when we welcomed a distinctly raucous freshmen class. As juniors, we fancied ourselves the elder statesmen of our dorm, and took it upon ourselves to tame our younger companions. Yet like the elder statesmen of yore, we were unsuccessful — that is, until one of our own struck on an idea.
“We cannot,” he observed, “suppress their energy; why not direct it?”
“At what?” we asked.
Then he spoke as one inspired: “The Homerathon.”
The word struck us each with a wild surmise.
This mastermind proposed that we set before the dorm the task of reading the Iliad from beginning to end without stopping, beside a roaring fire which would burn as long as the reading continued.
“And why not…” he stammered, “why not conclude with a feast to rival the feasts in Homer? Let there be roast meats in abundance; let no one be denied his fair portion; let the wines flow from the mixing bowls; let the tales of heroes be sung!” As he spoke, we began to hear — quietly at first, but soon swelling to a paean — the voice of that blind, brilliant rhapsode echoing in the hills around campus, reminding us of our own spirited days as freshmen…
We were the Argives and this mantic mastermind was our Nestor. We resoundingly agreed to the plan.
*
The idea took to the freshmen like sparks to stubble: for months the talk was of nothing but the Homerathon.
Who was to tend the fire?
How big was it going to be? (Could it be bigger?)
The nerds — who at this school are wondrous legion — pondered reading their portions in Greek.
The scope of the event expanded in the heat of their enthusiasm, giving rise at last to the wildest promise of all: the goat. One of my classmates “knew a guy,” and was confident he could obtain a goat from him, no questions asked. Another classmate assured us he had the skill and wherewithal to slaughter the goat, and still another recounted his past exploits with spit-roasted barbecue. What had begun as a ploy to tame the freshmen consumed us all.
Rumors of the madness thrilling our dorm soon spread across the small campus, and the other students raised their eyebrows — at the whole idea, certainly, but especially at slaughtering and roasting the goat. (The school administration was less concerned, although they did forbid us to slaughter the goat on campus. We complied.) In the weeks leading up to the night itself, many tried to call our bluff; others thought we’d chicken out; still others, when apprised of our plans, simply kept their distance.
We were uncowed. The goat was procured; the roaring fire was prepared; the spit was ready: at long last, the destined Friday dawned. Classes crawled like snails. At 3:30, when at last we were free, we raced en masse to the dorm. There, at the gate, was the goat on a leash, standing between the mastermind and the procurer of the goat. As we arrived, the most zealous freshman of all burst from the dorm with a set of bagpipes. Somehow, we knew: this is how it must be. He struck up a tune, and together we marched forth in a tour around campus, the goat in the lead.
*
Thus you meet us, in that bucolic Friday gloaming, perplexing the guys and dismaying the girls, marching the goat to his fate.
In the courtyard, beside the great fire, we took our seats, and the mastermind undertook the inaugural reading: “Sing, goddess, the anger of Peleus’ son Achilles, and its devastation…” And so it continued, deep into the night. The audience waned as the twilight melted into darkness and the sky began sparkling with spring stars, but there were always at least two of us there: one to read, and one to tend the fire.
We wove the wrath of Achilles into a weird tapestry in the ersatz loom of our combined voices. One guy read the catalog of ships with the overwrought force of Nick Bottom; another recounted the rampages of Ajax and Diomedes as flatly as a reading at Mass; one sped casually through the death of Sarpedon; another lingered painstakingly with the shield of Achilles. And all this time, night slipped discreetly away, until at last dawn’s rosy fingers crept over the eastern hills heralding the sunrise.
We had assumed the reading would last twenty-four hours, since there are twenty-four books in the Iliad, and none are terribly short — certainly not, when you give each delicious word its due. But we were wrong. The plan was to convene the whole dorm for the reading of Book 24, to be read by several of our professors, who would join us for the feast of goat to commence immediately thereafter. But as last lines of Book 23 echoed into Saturday morning, the goat was freshly slaughtered, and no professors were in sight.
*
The hitch was, in the end, minimal. None of us were dismayed: the reading fire was kept alive; the goat was affixed to the spit and suspended over the cookfire; the best parts of the poem were re-read, and re-read again. Other students passing by shook their heads at the smoky, disheveled courtyard and its smoky, disheveled occupants. Some saw the goat carcass, wheeling slowly over the coals, and gaped at us: “They really did it,” their dumbfounded stares seemed to say.
The sun arced to noon and down to dusk again. We watched the goat sizzle to a golden-brown while the sky resumed the azure-unto-indigo hue of twilight. We showered, donned our finery, and then returned to the courtyard. One by one, the invited professors arrived — only three came, in the end, but that was enough. We sat wherever we could, as silence fell on the hills and the spring stars returned to prick the cloudless night. The book was opened slowly, the pages buckled and crackling, worn from the many hands that had turned them and creased its paperback spine. Then our professors began to read.
Book 24 features no battles, no high-spirited adventure. It depicts, instead, Priam’s quest to rescue Hector’s corpse from Achilles’ ruthless treatment, and give it proper burial, and the encounter between Priam and Achilles; the moment when Achilles relents and yields to the will of the old man, who momentarily reminds him of his own father; and, at the last, Hector’s funeral. It was a privilege to hear those somber words spoken by the voices, not of college students, but of men —resonating with the overtones of raw experience, of ambitions thwarted, of loneliness and love, of fatherhood, of decades spent in the search for God… what we could only recite, those voices recounted.
In the light and heat of the seething embers of the reading fire, I remember weeping suddenly, and uncontrollably, as Priam kissed Achilles’ hands. My tears flowed steadily until Andromache had wailed over the corpse of her husband. My eyes were dry and the chills settled down my back, the catharsis complete, when at last the Trojans had accomplished the burial of Hector, breaker of horses.
Silence followed, like the silence that follows the final note of a symphony. Then, still somber, we rose and took our places at the tables, where the goat was dispensed. Merriment soon bubbled to the surface of our heavy mood. The feast unfolded just as our mastermind had prophesied: under the supervision of our professors, the wine did indeed flow; tales of heroes were indeed sung; and no man was denied his fair portion. The goddess Sleep soon made our eyelids heavy, and our company — worn with our daylong exertions — slowly dissolved. Our professors left with simple farewells. We went each to his own room and slipped into slumber.
We woke to face a monochrome world, knowing that once we had lived in color.
Thus was ended the Homerathon.