The Trojan War is one of the most famous wars that maybe really happened. Verifying its historical origins, however, is secondary to all the literature written about it in Ancient Greece. Homer’s The Iliad is an epic where the gods of Olympus play favorites with mortals to satiate their own pride, where heroes and villains are split between the two factions until the reader doesn’t know which side to root for.
It all starts with stealing Helen of Troy…wait, no, it
all starts with the Judgment of Paris…wait, no, that’s still wrong. It all starts with the Wedding of
Thetis. And, like a fairy tale, everyone
knows that when you forget to invite the evil fairy, something bad is going to
happen. Eris, goddess of discord,
crashes the party by throwing a golden apple with “To The Fairest” engraved on
it.
(Unfortunately this was before Snow White was born, so the decision was a lot harder than it would’ve been in other circumstances.)
(Unfortunately this was before Snow White was born, so the decision was a lot harder than it would’ve been in other circumstances.)
Hera (wife of the king of Olympus, Zeus), Athena (goddess
of wisdom), and Aphrodite (goddess of love) start catfighting over the thing,
then decide to have the shepherd boy (and secretly the abandoned prince of
Troy) Paris decide. Aphrodite cheats and
so he picks her, and as reward she gives him the love of the most beautiful
woman in the world, Helen. One hitch:
she’s already married. Now if Paris were
any decent guy, he’d stay up in the mountains content with the knowledge that
he could make the most beautiful woman in the world fall in love with him. Instead he decides to go see this Helen. They fall in love instantly and unavoidably,
and he takes her away to live under the protection of his true father, Nestor
of Troy.
This plunges Troy into a war that lasts for years and
kills off almost all the characters I like. Finally, because the majority of gods are against the Trojans, and
because Odysseus is a sneaky trickster, Troy falls, Helen goes back to
Menelaus, and everyone goes back home.
That’s where The
Odyssey begins. Originally there
were lots of “spinoffs” following the homecomings of not only Odysseus, but the
other surviving Greek heroes like Agamemnon (of which a few tragedies like The Oresteia survive) and Menelaus. In fact, Homer’s works were once a trilogy,
and one of those books was lost among all the other loose sequels. Once again time has stolen so much that I would hold dear
if only I knew what it was. Fortunately The Odyssey has survived. In tone it’s much lighter and in structure
it’s more episodic than The Iliad
(leading me to explain the Star Trek spinoff to my literary-minded friends as “Deep Space Nine = The Iliad, Voyager = The Odyssey. Yes. Bibliophiles and
Trekkies unite!).
Odysseus must get home to his faithful wife Penelope and
son Telemachus, to keep his kingdom of Ithaca from falling into the hands of
ruffians posing as Penelope’s “suitors.”
Facing the wrath of Poseidon for killing his Cyclops children, Odysseus
and his crew face monsters, enchantments, and jealous nymphs at every
turn. Even when Odysseus gets home, it’s
not over until he’s reunited with his son, confirmed his wife’s fidelity
(though he hasn’t been as sterling in that area himself), and kicked all the
freeloading thugs out of his house.
The Iliad and The Odyssey are important books to read
for anyone serious about reading classic literature. Ancient Greek literature is famous for its
use of epithets for characters (“grey-eyed” Athena, for example) and complex,
drawn-out metaphors, such as:
“Sometimes in farmyards when the cows return
well fed from pasture to the barn, one sees
the pens give way before the calves in tumult,
breaking through to cluster about their mothers,
bumping together, bawling. Just that way
my crew poured round me when they saw me come—
their faces wet with tears as if they saw
their homeland, and the crags of Ithaka,
even the very town where they were born.”
(Book 10, lines 456-464, translation by Robert
Fitzgerald)*
Thus it is fitting that such symbolic-rich literature
would impact our own language. If you
want to understand a character’s “Achilles’ heel,” or you’re tempted by a
“Siren’s call,” or want to know why you should beware Greeks coming with gifts,
or someone tells the “Cassandra truth,” look no further.
Recommended Reading Age: High School. Re-tellings are better suited for younger
children, such as Rosemary Sutcliff’s Black Ships Before Troy and The Wanderings of Odysseus.
These books are tactful without glossing over plot points, and are beautifully
(if sometimes graphically) illustrated by Alan Lee (of Lord of the Rings
fame).
Parental Notes: Boy, did those Ancient Greeks like to
describe gore in all its…uh…gory detail. And The Odyssey isn’t much
better on that score. There's also the whole extramarital affairs thing, which isn't graphic but still objectionable.
Availability: It’s safe to say that Homer’s lost his
copyrights, so there is a free Kindle edition of The Iliad and The Odyssey. These epics, being originally oral stories,
are pretty cool to listen to on audio book (The Iliad and The Odyssey audio books can be found on Amazon as well).
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