Why the Title of the first European Book may be:

ΜEΝΙS (“Divine Wrath”)

Joannes Richter

The “Rosebud”-label is a nasty code word, which may dominate one the first scenes in the movie
Citizen Kane (directed by Orson Welles, 1941) an the topside of a sled. Rosebud is the last word,
which is spoken by a dying rich man:
In a mansion called Xanadu, part of a vast palatial estate in Florida, the elderly Charles
Foster Kane is on his deathbed. Holding a snow globe, he utters his last word,
"Rosebud", and dies.

A journalist is ordered to find out the meaning of Kane's last word, Rosebud, but his investigation
fails. The only persons who may solve the riddle are the spectators of the film....
A similar code word is the first word of the first European book “Μῆνιν ἄειδε θεὰ ...” which
belongs to the memories of students of the classical gymnasiums, who may remember their
vocabularies and the reading of Homer's Iliad.
In analogy to “Rosebud” the word “Μῆνιν” may vaguely be remembered as the word for the
“anger”, which had hit the hero by the loss of his she-slave Briseis and immediately halted his
Myrmidonic army's contributions to the warfare.
This was an anger, which lasted, until Hector killed Achilles' childhood friend Patroclus. In school I
remembered the “Μῆνιν” anger was supposed to be an anger of Achilles to the king Agamemnon,
who had ordered Achilles to hand over the girl.
In an overview the initial word “Μῆνιν” in the Iliad symbolized two events of anger for Achilles,
which both belonged to the wrath of Achilles:
1. The anger for the loss of Briseis, who had to be hand over to king Agamemnon
2. The anger for the loss of numerous heroes, who had been killed by the absence of Achilles
The first anger seemed to be a private anger, which could not be punished by the deity Themis, but
the loss of numerous heroes must have been a serious crime, which had to be punished by the death
of the Achilles' childhood friend Patroclus.
It took me so many years to understand the initial wording of the first line Μῆνιν ἄειδε θεὰ ... of the
Iliad:
Μῆνιν ἄειδε θεὰ Πηληιάδεω Ἀχιλῆος
οὐλομένην, ἥ μυρί’ Ἀχαιοῖς ἄλγε’ ἔθηκεν,
πολλὰς δ’ ἰφθίμους ψυχὰς Ἄιδι προίαψεν
ἡρώων, αὐτοὺς δὲ ἑλώρια τεῦχε κύνεσσιν
οἰωνοῖσί τε πᾶσι, Διὸς δ’ ἐτελείετο βουλή,
ἐξ οὗ δὴ τὰ πρῶτα διαστήτην ἐρίσαντε
Ἂτρείδης τε ἄναξ ἀνδρῶν καὶ δῖος Ἀχιλλεὺς.

Goddess, sing me the anger, of against Achilles, Peleus’ son,

that fatal anger that brought countless sorrows on the Greeks,
and sent many valiant souls of warriors down to Hades,
leaving their bodies as spoil for dogs and carrion birds:
for thus was the will of Zeus brought to fulfilment.
Sing of it from the moment when Agamemnon, Atreus’ son,
that king of men, parted in wrath from noble Achilles. 1.

The Μῆνιν is not the anger of Achilles, Peleus’ son, but the divine wrath against Achilles, which
had activated the goddess Themis. The first 8 lines of the Ilias describe the introduction which
accurately define which criminal behavior of Achilles had motivated Themis to develop the divine
wrath: the countless sorrows on the Greeks, and the numerous valiant souls of warriors who were
sent down to Hades. It was initiated by a quarrel, but ended in a war with endless losses. The
quarrel may have been started with the loss of the girl, which might have been solved by a private
anger (θυμός). The war and its vast losses had to be punished by a divine wrath (Μῆνιν) of the
goddess Themis against Achilles.
To me this insight had been inspired by the pentagrams, which describe how and why things happen
in our world. It must be the virtues of the “Μῆνις” (divine wrath, ΜΗΗΝΙΣ), the first consort “Metis”
(wisdom, METIS) and the second consort “Themis” (justice, ThEMIS [ΘEMIΣ]) of Zeus, who was
responsible for the justice in the Greek society.
Divine wrath has to take care to balance justice in modern wars, in which the judges, laws and
courts seem to be extinct.
That is what is said in the initial word “Μῆνις” in the first European book.... The title “Iliad” may as
well be “MENIS” (divine wrath”).

The pentagrams in the etymology of wrath

I felt no surprise to identify the words *WRAITh- and *WREIT- as pentagrams. After all these
divine wraths may have helped to experience justice in a barbaric world without honest judges and
independent courts:
Old English wrað "angry" (literally "tormented, twisted"), from Proto-Germanic
*WRAITh- (source also of Old Frisian wreth "evil," Old Saxon wred, Middle Dutch
wret, Dutch wreed "cruel," Old High German reid, Old Norse reiðr "angry, offended"),
from *WREIT-, from PIE root *wer- (2) "to turn, bend."2

1 Bk I:1-21 Invocation and Introduction

2 wroth (adj.)
Briseis and Mynes
The Trojan princess Briseis had been married to a husband named Mynes.
I noticed the typical antipodes of the pentagrams:
Mynes (MINES) ↔ “Μῆνις” (the divine anger, ΜΗΗΝΙΣ).
Both antipodes contain one letter for all five phonetic sources3 for the human voice.
Briseis was married to Mynes4 (MINES), a son of the King of Lyrnessus, until Achilles
sacked her city and enslaved her shortly before the events of the poem. Being forced to
give Briseis to Agamemnon, Achilles refused to reenter the battle.[35] 6

In the Ilias I found two quotations of the name Mynes:

book 2, card 653: ... wasted Lyrnessus and the walls of Thebe, and laid low Mynes and
Epistrophus, warriors that raged with the spear, sons....

book 19, card 276: ... slew my husband, and laid waste the city of godlike Mynes,
wouldst not even suffer me to weep, but saidest …

In Greek mythology the usage of antipodal names for closely related persons seemed to be a regular
tradition. Of course I thought it would help the poets to remember the related names such as Jason
(Old-Greek: Ἰάσων, Iásôn), the son of king Aison (Greek: ΑἼΣΩΝ):
Jason (ἸΆΣΩΝ) ↔ Aison (ΑἼΣΩΝ).
In this case only two letters had to be switched their locations.
Also the first and second consorts for Zeus (Metis and Themis) had been identified as antipodes, in
which the same five letters of one pentagram may have been reordered to display another
pentagram:
Themis ThEMIS [ΘEMIΣ] ↔ Metis METIS [ΜΗΗΤΙΣ]

3 The five phonetic sources are: the tongue, the palate, the throat, the lips and the teeth.
4 (Ancient Greek: Μύνητ᾽ ) - Iliad, book 2, card 653: ... wasted Lyrnessus and the walls of Thebe, and laid low Mynes
and Epistrophus, warriors that raged with the spear, sons
5 Roman, Luke; Roman, Monica (2010). Encyclopedia of Greek and Roman Mythology. Infobase Publishing. p. 105.
ISBN 978-1-4381-2639-5.
6 Briseis