This lecture was slightly truncated due to the need to perform a SET/SEM review – a student evaluation of the module. I’ve yet to process the results, but most of the criticism seems at first glance to be constructive.
We looked at the remained of the Trojan myth, from the end of the Iliad to the departure of the Greeks for home at the end of the war. This gave an opportunity to work with some lesser-known texts, namely the fragments of the Epic Cycle, which often get mentioned in various scholarly works, but don’t often get studied. Major points of interest were the death of Achilles and the contest for his arms, the Trojan horse and the sack, and the assignment of the captives.
What came out most in the course of this was the hubris of the victors. Rape, arson and pillage are about par for the course in the sack of a city, but the Greeks were responsible for several outrages against the gods – Neoptolemus’ murder of Priam at the altar of Zeus and Ajax’s rape of Cassandra in the temple of Athena – that were inexcusable even by their victory. This transgression is continued by the infanticide of Astyanax and the sacrifice of Polyxena, and the resulting wrath of the gods, particularly Athena, sets the scene for the Nostoi, or ‘return stories’.
Tags: Greek gods, Greek literature, Greek myth, human sacrifice, teaching, Trojan War
