>Thus railed Thersites, but Ulysses at once went up to him and rebuked him sternly. "Check your glib tongue, Thersites," said be, "and babble not a word further. Chide not with princes when you have none to back you. There is no viler creature come before Troy with the sons of Atreus. Drop this chatter about kings, and neither revile them nor keep harping about going home. We do not yet know how things are going to be, nor whether the Achaeans are to return with good success or evil. How dare you gibe at Agamemnon because the Danaans have awarded him so many prizes? I tell you, therefore- and it shall surely be- that if I again catch you talking such nonsense, I will either forfeit my own head and be no more called father of Telemachus, or I will take you, strip you stark naked, and whip you out of the assembly till you go blubbering back to the ships."
>On this he beat him with his staff about the back and shoulders till he dropped and fell a-weeping. The golden sceptre raised a bloody weal on his back, so he sat down frightened and in pain, looking foolish as he wiped the tears from his eyes. The people were sorry for him, yet they laughed heartily, and one would turn to his neighbour saying, "Ulysses has done many a good thing ere now in fight and council, but he never did the Argives a better turn than when he stopped this fellow's mouth from prating further. He will give the kings no more of his insolence."
What the fuck was their problem?
Homer was preforming in front of aristocrats. The fact that Thersites didn't have his family lineage stated, and the fact he's an insubordinate soldier and not some Prince which Odysseus can't slap around, implies he apart of the common class. These aristocrats probably loved it when the pleb scum are displayed as getting put back into their place when acting out, even though they aren't slaves.
>>1651212
>plebs
You realize the Greeks didn't call their lower classes, plebs, right?
>>1651218
yes, I just didn't want to be a special snowflake fag and call them the hoi polloi, as plebs is more familiar with board culture.
>>1651229
>as pleb is more familiar with board culture
Your Roman bias is leaking, Romaboo.
>>1651232
do people not use pleb anymore on this site anymore? I swear it was still one of those funny ironic meme phrases here. I guess I need to get with the times.
>>1651012
That's how Homer put a social critic to the useless Troyan war without going full frontal against the ruling authority
>>1651012
TALK SHIT
GET HIT
>>1651229
We should start using hoi polloi more often desu
>>1651263
It's been thrown about since the dawn of the internet, but we've since graduated onto "hoi polloi."