Here’s my list of 10 things that I learned over the course of studying Greek classical literature and history. Many (or most) of this would not be surprising for those who have read it, of course, but they were new to me. Most of this information comes directly from the epics themselves, as well as from tragedies that were based on the Trojan war.
Here they are:
1. The Trojan horse is in neither of Homer’s epics. The Iliad describes what happens towards the end of the Trojan war, but stops right before what would have been the story of the Trojan horse. The Odyssey contains some brief flashbacks to the fall of Troy, but not much in detail. Most of what we know of the fall of Troy comes mostly from The Aeneid by Virgil, who was writing it centuries after, after the Romans have conquered Greece and was under the rule of Augustus (Octavian) Caesar as well as the Roman poet, Ovid, with his Metamorphoses.
2. The Aeneid is an unofficial sequel to The Iliad. It’s a bit terrible to suggest that, but in a way it would be like someone making Star Wars Episodes VII, VIII and IX in the year 2100. Aeneas was a character mentioned in The Iliad, who was son of the goddess Aphrodite (aka Venus) and a mortal Anchises. Thus, Aphrodite promised that Aeneas would survive the Trojan War and go on to found a city of his own. Virgil took this story and ran with it, making Aeneas the mythical founder of the Roman civilization, and the distant ancestor of the Caesars. Supposedly, after Aeneas escapes from Troy, he flees to what is Rome today. Incidentally, this gets a bit confusing because Romulus was also said to be the founder of Rome. Virgil explains this by saying that Aeneas is just the ancestor of the Romans, but not the founder of the city.
3. The Judgment of Paris. This is not directly mentioned by Homer, although it is mentioned by the Greek tragedians. According to the myth, there was a prophecy that said that the son of the goddess, Thetis, will eventually overthrow his father. The gods, who did not care for that, gave Thetis to the mortal king, Peleus. To avoid any unpleasantness during the wedding night, the wedding planners decided to snub Eris, the goddess of discord, which turned out to be a big mistake. Eris decided to crash the party and present an apple that was to be given to the goddess judged to be the most beautiful of them all. Hera, Athena and Aphrodite stepped forward to claim it, and it fell to Zeus to make the judgment. Zeus, not wanting to get in trouble, assigned the Trojan prince Paris to do the judging. Each of the goddesses tried to bribe Paris with something: Hera offered to give him power and make him king, Athena offered him glory and skill during battle, and Aphrodite offered him the most beautiful woman in the world (three temptations? sounds familiar) Not surprisingly (but surprising according to Greek tradition, which is all about glory), Paris chose Aphrodite. Alas, the most beautiful woman in the world was Helen, a Spartan woman who was already married to Menelaus. Thus, Helen was abducted or seduced (there are different versions) by Paris, with help from Aphrodite, and doomed his entire race.
4. Paris and Helen. In The Iliad, Paris (who, for some reason, is also called Alexander) was a bit of a wuss. He showed moments of courage, such as when he volunteered to fight mano-a-mano with Menelaus, but was whisked off by Aphrodite back to his bed chamber. Helen did not care for Paris, and it was only under Aphrodite’s spell that they got along, if only barely. Incidentally, Paris does end up killing the most powerful hero of the Greeks, Achilles, but is himself killed by Philoctetes, who almost didn’t make it to the Trojan War because of a snake bite. For more, see Sophocles’ Philoctetes.
5. Time Inconsistencies. There was some bizarre time gaps, by the way, in the legend, if the Judgment of Paris was really the catalyst of the Trojan war. You see, Thetis and Peleus gave birth to Achilles, which means that Paris was probably a bit older than Achilles. Moreover, Achilles’s son, Neoptolemus (aka Pyrrhus, go figure) also took part in the Trojan war. So, either Helen and Paris were all quite old when the Trojan War happened, or something’s not right.
6. Alternate Endings. The ancient Greeks would have been happy that so many of our DVDs give us alternative endings or director’s cut of movies, as they seem to have a fondness of it themselves. As many of you know, Helen was taken by Paris to Troy, hence the Trojan war. But, in some versions, it was not Helen who was taken to Troy, but a doppelgänger. According to these versions, while on their way home, Menelaus and doppelgänger Helen were blown off course to Egypt, where the real Helen was hanging out (actually, she was taken there by Hermes. Menelaus eventually discovered that the real Helen was in Egypt all along, but under the protection-turned-abduction of King Proteus, then his son, King Theoclymenus. Menelaus and Helen manage to trick Theoclymenus into letting them escape. The Egyptians’ official version, according to Herodotus, is that Paris and Helen were blown off-course to Egypt while on their way to Troy. King Proteus found out that Helen was abducted, and told Paris to leave Egypt and leave Helen and the stuff he stole. In the mean time, the Greeks had already amassed their armies and matched to Troy, demanding the return of Helen. When King Priam told them she was in Egypt, they didn’t believe him, thinking it was a ruse to protect his son, so they laid waste to Troy. After finding out Helen wasn’t there, they sailed for Egypt and got Helen back. Another alternate version has to do with Iphegenia, daughter of King Agamemnon, who had been ordered by Artemis to sacrifice her daughter at Aulis or else the winds won’t blow them to Troy. The official version is the Iphegenia gets sacrificed, but in the alternative versions, she gets whisked away by Artemis and it stuck at Tauris until she is rescued by her brother, Orestes. For more, see Euripides’ Helen and Iphegenia at Tauris, Herodotus’ The Histories.
7. The Fall of Troy. After the Greeks infiltrate the city of Troy with the Trojan horse scheme, they commit a series of atrocities that is the reason why so many of the Greek heroes have trouble getting home after the war. Firstly, when Priam, the king of Troy, was hiding in the temple of Athena, which was a sanctuary where no one is supposed to get hurt, Neoptolemus (son of Achilles) drags him out of the temple and kills him. Priam’s grandson, Astyanax, and the son of Andromache and Hector, was thrown from the walls of Troy; in some versions, the baby’s dead body was used to beat Priam to death, although Virgil and Shakespeare goes with the version where he is stabbed. Cassandra, brother to Hector and Paris, and son of Priam and Hecuba, was also hiding in the temple of Apollo. She was raped on the altar by Ajax (a big no-no), then becomes concubine of Agamemnon. As mentioned before, these atrocities led to most of them being punished by the gods. Ajax goes nuts and commits suicide. Odysseus gets lost for ten years. Menelaus (and Helen) gets blown off course to Egypt. Neoptolemus gets ambushed by Orestes (son of Agamemnon…long story…) at Delphi and murdered. Agamemnon gets what’s coming to him, too (see below). For more, see Euripides’ Andromache, Hecuba; Sophocles’ Ajax; Homer’s The Odyssey.
8. Agamemnon Gets What’s Coming to Him. Agamemnon is from the House of Atreus, which is just like your average dysfunctional family, except with more cannibalism and incest. The whole sacrificing of his daughter, Iphegenia thing did not sit well with his wife, Clytemnestra, who decided to have an affair with Agamemnon’s brother, Aegisthus. Upon his return, Agamemnon introduces his already-ticked-off-wife to his new concubine, Cassandra, who being a prophetess of sorts, foresaw that things weren’t going to end well that night. As it turns out, Agamemnon gets hacked to death by Clytemnestra while taking a bath, and Cassandra gets killed too. Orestes, his son, comes back from abroad and has to face the dilemma of avenging his father and committing matricide. This becomes the basis of Aeschylus’ The Orestaie. For more, see also Sophocles’ Electra; Euripides’ Electra, Orestes, Iphigenia at Tauris.
9. Achilles’ Heel. The whole notion of Achilles’ Heel was probably later added on, as if he was that invincible, there probably wouldn’t be that much hoopla raised over the shield that the god of metalworks, Hephaestus, made for him. Supposedly, his mother, Thetis, wanted to protect baby Achilles by depicting it in the River Styx, but she missed the part where she was holding onto him. Oops.
10. Historical Basis. For a long time, classical historians had believed that the story of the Trojan war was mythology that the ancient Greeks used to demarcate the time between the Age of Heroes and the Age of Men. The ancient Greeks believed the Trojan war to be true, though, and treated it as such. Herodotus, talking to Persian wisemen, describes a de-mythologized version where a bunch of women are kidnapped in the ancient past and sowed the roots of discord that would lead to the Persian wars. In the 19th century, a self-made and somewhat infamous archaeologist (archaeology was still a new field at the time) by the name of Heinrich Schliemann had the conviction that the Trojan war was based on real history, and set out to search for Troy. Unbelievably, he found it, in what is modern-day Turkey. The site shows that there had been many other cities built upon it, and that it had once suffered a major attack. Not only that, but many other sites that were believed to be mythology, such as Minos, where Theseus slayed the Minotaur, were also discovered, hence leading many to believe that there are some historical bases for these myths (and is probably why many believe in the historical city of Atlantis). Note that this issue is still under debate, and those who do believe in the historical locations of Troy usually do not believe that the Trojan war happened the way it had been depicted in the epics. However, they do believe that there might have been a huge war in the past that turned into legend, then to myth…hey, maybe we can find Middle Earth too. (See also Herodotus’ The Histories).
Posted by Aaron Chia Yuan Hung at 02:28 PM. Filed under: Greek •
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