THE STORY:  (53 minutes)   Agamemnon’s 100,000-strong army finally makes it to the beaches of Troy, and readies itself for one day of glorious, decisive, "winner-take-all" battle against Hector’s Trojan army.  But the Trojans appear to have other plans.  And it soon becomes clear that the Greek troops will not be making it home for Christmas – at least not for any Christmas in this decade.

THE COMMENTARY:  WEAPONS, ARMOUR & BATTLEFIELD REALITIES c. 1250 B.C.E.  (30 minutes; begins at 53:00)   Some episodes ago I spent the post-story commentary shamelessly geeking out on Greek vs. Trojan warships and naval tactics.  In this episode I turn my equally geeky attention to Bronze Age weapons, armour and military tactics.  But rather than contrasting Greeks vs. Trojans, I instead contrast “warlord heroes” vs “cannon-fodder grunts”.  First I discuss the “warlord heroes” as presented by Homer and his contemporaries:  heroes like Achilles, Ajax, Hector, Odysseus and Agamemnon.  I review the sort of armour that they wore, and the weapons that they would have most preferred.  Then I note the protein-rich diet, and the lifetime of professional training, that these warlord heroes would have benefitted from, and that made them seem so “larger than life” to the common foot soldiers on the battlefield.  Next I turn my attention to those common foot soldiers --the men who would have comprised the overwhelming majority of fighting forces on the plains of Troy.  I note that if there actually were 100,000 Greeks on the Trojan beach, then well over 99,500 of them are not beneficiaries of the “Homeric epic treatment” in Bronze Age accounts of this war.  I explain that these common foot soldiers would have been poorly fed, poorly trained, poorly armoured and poorly provisioned.  They would have gone into battle with what bits of armoured protection they could cobble together (often nothing but hardened leather), and for weapons would have utilized whatever was readily at hand.  Finally I turn to the horrifying realities of injury, mutilation and dying on a Bronze Age battlefield:  a battlefield with no anaesthetics, antibiotics or accurate understandings of surgical procedure.  Not a pretty picture.

Jeff

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THE STORY:  (46 minutes)   Ten years into the siege of Troy a priest of Apollo arrives at the command tent of Agamemnon, Commander in Chief of the Greeks.  The priest makes a simple request of Agamemnon. Agamemnon refuses, and Greek soldiers die in the thousands.  And then things turn truly ugly…

THE COMMENTARY:  DID A GUY NAMED HOMER EXIST, & DID HE WRITE THE ILIAD?  (16 minutes; begins at 46:00)  This particular episode of Trojan War: The Podcast brings our story arc into Homer’s Iliad itself.  I use the post-story commentary to discuss “all things Iliad” including:  who was/was there a Homer; how was the Iliad composed; and why do we have copies of the Iliad today?  I begin by reminding listeners that the first ten episodes of Trojan War: The Podcast are not found in Homer’s Iliad.  Rather, they are part of what scholars refer to as the Trojan War Epic Cycle:  a jambalaya of stories, bits of stories, accounts of bits of stories, and references to accounts of bits of stories, that have managed to survive, some from as early as the Bronze Age, up to now.  Those stories collectively “set the stage” for the events accounted in Homer’s Iliad:  events which only last a matter of months in this multi-decade war.  I then remind readers that - some episodes from now - our story will leave the Iliad, and continue on with more episodes drawn from the Trojan War Epic Cycle.  I then turn our conversation to the current academic consensus that there was no Homer, in the sense of a solitary author who created an original artistic work drawn completely from his own imagination.  The current consensus is that events recounted in the Iliad are drawn from centuries of oral storytelling tradition that predates Homer.  So “Homer”, it turns out, was either a brilliant compiler, editor and re-teller of existing stories from the oral tradition, which he then assembled into an artistic masterwork titled the Iliad (a group of Homeric scholars called “unitarians” subscribe to this view), or alternately, “Homers” was a collection of less-than-brilliant compiler(s) who assembled existing stories from the oral tradition into a great (but flawed) work titled the Iliad (the view held by Homeric scholars called “separatists” or “analysts”).  I confess to finding the arguments of unitarians and separatists/analysts equally compelling, depending on what section of the Iliad I am reading when I think about the question.  Then I get on with detailing how the Iliad managed to survive intact from creation (c. 700 B.C.E.) to the present day.  Finally, I confess to some trepidation in beginning to tell episodes drawn directly from the Iliad: one of the masterworks of Western literature.  I conclude by encouraging you to go read the Iliad for yourself – it’s a pretty good story!   Jeff

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THE STORY:  (58 minutes)   Hector proposes an audacious “exit strategy” to Agamemnon: a deal to end the war with just one man dead.  Intense diplomatic negotiations follow.  And just when it appears that Greek and Trojan have agreed to terms, a third, more powerful party, enters the conversation.

THE COMMENTARY:  EVERYTHING YOU NEED TO KNOW ABOUT OLYMPIAN GODS, IN UNDER 13 MINUTES!  (12 minutes; begins at 58:00) I dedicate all of this post-story commentary to the Olympian Gods:  Zeus, Hera, Athena, Aphrodite, Apollo and the lot.  The gods require our consideration because, though they have clearly been players since Episode One: The Apple of Discord, they now begin to aggressively assert themselves into the plot.  I start with a reminder that the Olympian gods are a fundamentally different sort of deity than are the god(s) worshipped in the 21st century.  The Olympian deities are not the authors of creation, but are instead - like humans, animals, and plants - just another sort of life inside of creation.  The Olympian deities did not create humanity, and as a consequence, they have no particular love, concern or sense of responsibility for us.  In fact, the Olympian deities mostly view humans as poor, mortal wretches: “For there is nothing as miserable as humans among all the creatures that live and breathe on the earth” (Iliad Book 17, 443) is how Zeus sums us up. Which is possibly why the Olympian deities spend most of their eternal time treating human life with cavalier disregard:  our lives, our families, our cities and our great conflicts are, from the perspective of a god’s timeless/ageless immortality, simply inconsequential.  But on occasion we humans do provide splendid “entertainment” for the Olympians:  “But now I (Zeus) will sit here at ease on a ridge of Olympus where I can watch, to my heart’s delight…” the human carnage on the battlefield below. (Book 20, 22).  Not simply content to watch of course, the gods sometimes go “down to the fighting, on different sides” (Book 20, 31), and do their very best to manipulate the outcome of our inconsequential human wars.

After my (and I think, Homer’s) indictment of the gods, I briefly explore three differing contemporary “storyteller” approaches to dealing with these gods inside of the Trojan War Epic story.  Some modern tellers choose to redact the gods from the storyline entirely, and present listeners with a Trojan War Epic grounded exclusively in human agency.  In these versions, the Trojan War becomes simply another story of human geopolitics.  Other tellers choose to include the gods in the story, but only as stand-in manifestations of human psychological conditions.  So, for example, when the angry Achilles is ordered by Athena to not kill Agamemnon, tellers from this school explain that Athena, the Goddess of Wisdom, isn’t “really there” speaking to Achilles.  Rather, Achilles’ own “wisdom” causes him to reconsider his plan to kill Agamemnon.   And Helen isn’t “actually hit” by an erotic arrow shot by Aphrodite:  she’s just a teenage girl overwhelmed by horniness for a really hot guy!   Finally, some storytellers opt for an approach called over-determinism.  These tellers attempt to explain every event in the story through two different sorts of causation:  human agency, and, deific agency.  So the plague in the Greek camp is caused by 100,000 men living in close quarters without adequate sanitation facilities, but is also caused because Apollo is shooting plague arrows into the camp.  I confess that this is my preferred approach.  I find that it allows me to keep the story contemporary and engaging for a modern listener (by grounding it in human geopolitics), but also allows me to include the agency of the gods, at places in the plot where the story makes no sense without them.  Let me know what you think.  Do the gods add to, or detract from, the power of the story?  Jeff

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THE STORY:  (56 minutes)   As Greek and Trojan forces openly clash on the plains of Troy the goddess Athena imbues a Greek warlord – Diomedes – with fearsome, godlike powers of combat.  So with the Trojan forces in disarray and on the verge of wholescale panic, Hector decides on an audacious plan to save his army.  But can Hector survive his own plan?

THE COMMENTARY:  CAN WAR BE BOTH TERRIBLE and GLORIOUS?  (17 minutes; begins at 56:00) This post-story commentary examines both the “glorious” and the “terrible” faces of the Trojan War.  I first review the arestia of Diomedes, which dominates much of the story in this podcast episode.  I point out that Diomedes’ arestia (or moment of supreme excellence in battle) follows the usual arestia pattern found in Homer's Iliad.  The hero is first imbued with god-like powers; the hero’s armour and weapons are then imbued with god-like radiance (the helmet “burns like a fire”; the bronze spear tip “is like a gleaming star”); the hero racks up an impressive kill count against worthy opponents; the hero receives a setback or injury, but recovers quickly; and the hero goes on to even greater glories before the arestia ends, and the hero becomes “normal” again.  I note that in Homer only heroes are granted an arestia – rank and file foot soldiers are never so lucky.  I then observe that the arestia can be understood as a “compensatory gift” from the gods to a worthy human – the compensation being necessary because the human, no matter how worthy, is ultimately doomed to die.  Finally I observe that sometimes an arestia ends with the death of the hero:  when a hero forgets, at the critical moment, that he is not really a god.

I then launch into an exploration of arestia in contemporary movies, noting that I could find plenty of examples of arestia in superhero or fantasy genre films, but very few arestia in movies based on real human warfare.  This leads me to some hypothesizing about whether, in the 20th and 21st century, we are culturally uncomfortable celebrating “glorious war” – possibly the machine guns and poison gas of World War One dampened our enthusiasm a little?  I then turn to Homer’s treatment of war in the Iliad, and observe that it is remarkably neutral and even-handed.  Homer spares us none of the graphic, gory realities of the battlefield (save for a total absence in Homer of any long term, lingering, or psychological injuries), and Homer is brutally clear-eyed on the civilian price of war (rape, slavery, butchery and death).  But Homer equally paints a picture of fighting men exulting in the sheer, giddy pleasure of knowing “how to step in deadly dance of hand to hand combat”.  I turn the final words of my post-story commentary over to Bernard Knox, a Homer translator; because I think he says it best:   "Three thousand years have not changed the human condition in this respect. We are still lovers and victims of the will to violence, and so long as we are, Homer will be read as its truest interpreter." Homer, tr. Robert Fagles, intro. Bernard Knox, The Iliad (Penguin Classics, 1991)

Jeff

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THE STORY: (57 minutes) This episode, pivotal to the entire Trojan War Epic, features philosophy, bedroom farce, and genuine tragedy -- all in equal measure.  Temptation plays the lead:  Agamemnon tempts Achilles; Hera tempts Zeus; and Patroclus tempts Deadly Destiny.

THE COMMENTARY:  WERE ACHILLES & PATROCLUS LOVERS? (20 minutes; begins at 57:00) I dedicate this entire post-story commentary to the Achilles/Patroclus relationship:  a relationship which has confounded scholars, storytellers, and listeners for the past 3500 years.  The central question up for debate is whether the relationship between Achilles and Patroclus had a sexual component. I begin my conversation by stating the fact that all scholars, tellers and listeners agree on: Achilles and Patroclus were exceedingly close - best friends, dearest of companions, soul mates, brothers in arms – use what terms you will.  Of that there is no doubt.  And when Patroclus is killed by Hector, everybody agrees that Achilles’ response to that death is the pivotal turning point in the epic.

Then I turn to a question on which scholars, tellers and listeners quite disagree.  Following are the three contending theories on the Achilles/Patroclus relationship.

Most Homeric and Bronze Age scholars argue that the Achilles/Patroclus relationship was asexual.  They point to the text of the Iliad, which offers not a single reference or even allusion to a sexual relationship between the two men.  They further point to the Iliad to show that Achilles and Patroclus clearly have heterosexual relations with women.  The scholars in this camp suggest that what causes some readers to “infer” a sexual element to Achilles/Patroclus is the written language of Homer’s Iliad.  By our contemporary standards (and clearly by the standards of other time periods too), the verbal communication when Achilles and Patroclus speak to, or about each other, is romantic, florid, passionate and intimate – in a way that most societies reserve exclusively for communications between lovers.  But, scholars argue, many Bronze Age works are characterized by similar language and depths of passion between males, especially between male comrades in arms.  In the Hebrew story of David and Jonathan (2 Samuel 1:26), David claims that the love he had for Jonathan surpassed even the love of women.  It is our contemporary sensibilities, scholars argue, that erroneously grafts a sexual meaning onto David’s claim, but there is nothing in the text to support such an interpretation.

But Classical Greek scholars and readers disagree.  They argue that the Achilles/Patroclus relationship was pederastic.  This way of seeing the Achilles/Patroclus relationship originated (or at least was popularized) during the Classical and Hellenistic Greek period (c. 480-146 BCE) when pederasty was socially accepted and possibly even commonplace amongst upper class Greeks.  Pederasty involved an older man entering into a relationship with a young man in his teens.  The older man served as a “mentor” to the younger man, introducing him into adult male society.  The relationship lasted for a few years, until the younger man came of age, at which point the relationship would end.  Both men either had, or would go on to have, wives and children.  The pederastic relationship sometimes included a sexual element, in which the older man achieved sexual pleasure by rubbing his erect penis between the thighs of the younger man.  Anal penetration does not appear to have been common in these relationships.  Scholars who argue that Achilles and Patroclus were pederasts include:  the philosopher Plato (in the Symposium); the playwrite Aeschylus (in The Myrmidons) and many other prominent Greek and later Roman historians.  Replying to the objection that Achilles and Patroclus are never actually depicted in the Iliad engaged in sexual activity, these proponents argue that a pederastic relationship is clearly implied and obvious to anyone who examines t...

THE STORY  (65 minutes)   Homer’s Iliad opens with the storyteller’s invocation to the Muse: “The wrath of Achilles – sing it now, goddess, sing through me ….”  When Achilles learns that his beloved Patroclus is dead – at the hands of Hector –Achilles “snaps”.  What follows is a powerful, disturbing and truly horrifying podcast episode.

THE COMMENTARY:  WHAT HAPPENS TO US AFTER WE DIE?  (25 minutes; begins at 1:05) This post story commentary is dedicated to Bronze Age beliefs about death and the afterlife.  I explore what warlords like Hector, Achilles, Agamemnon and Odysseus would have believed about death, about funeral rites and burial, and about what was waiting for them “on the other side”.  To do so I follow the psyche (soul, spirit) of a man from the moment of imminent death (when the living man gains the gift of prophesy), through the dying man’s final breath (when the psyche is exhaled through the mouth), and then on to the psyche’s journey to the entrance to Hades – the land of the dead.  I provide a bit of mythological back story on Hades the deity, who rules over Hades the place.  I offer a caution to my listeners raised in the Judeo- Christian tradition -- Hades the deity is not Satan, Mephistopheles, or any other form of malevolent horned demon – we need to take care to not graft onto one mythology the beliefs of another.  Once at the gates of Hades, we follow the dead man’s psyche across the river (Styx or Acheron: sources vary, and we are regrettably short on empirical evidence) via the assistance of the able ferryman Charon.  Our dead man’s psyche then enters the Fields of Asphodel, where it spends eternity in the company of every other human being who has ever lived.  I note that the Bronze Age Greeks did not believe in any sort of post-life judgement by a god, followed by some sort of eternal reward or punishment.  All psyches spend eternity on the Fields of Asphodel, a grey place of eternal blandness. I do note that some psyches (usually humans whose parent was a god) get to travel instead to a place called Elysium, which, apparently, offers a significant upgrade in post-death accommodations from those offered in Asphodel.  But very, very few individuals every make it there:  even the greatest of Homer’s warlords were ultimately destined to the Fields of Asphodel.  I then discuss the other afterlife option:  a place of eternal torment and suffering called Tartarus.  But I again warn my Judeo-Christian listeners that this is not Hell (a place for people who are particularly bad or unrepentant on Earth). Rather, Tartarus is reserved as a series of personal, customized “hells”, designed by Zeus for particular individuals who personally annoyed Him.  I provide examples of such individuals - Tantalus, Sisyphus and Prometheus – and describe their various customized “hells”.  Finally, I discuss the Bronze Age Greek belief that a dead man’s psyche could not depart from the land of the living and travel to the land of the dead, unless the dead man’s body had been provided with the appropriate funeral rites (cremation first, followed by internment of the bones).  A man mutilated and killed in battle, or killed and then mutilated, was doomed to spend eternity “trapped” in the land of the living in ghost form, wounds and all, until the appropriate funeral rites were performed.  Which, I conclude, explains why the threat, or the actual deed, of desecrating corpses and refusing to allow appropriate funeral rites for those corpses, was of such deep concern to men like Hector and Patroclus.

Jeff

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THE STORY (50 minutes)   This episode traces the personal griefs of two bitter enemies:  Achilles, who has lost his best friend and soul mate, Patroclus; and King Priam, who has lost his son and his heir, Hector.  Both Achilles and Priam are inconsolable, until Zeus and Deadly Destiny unite them, under the roof of one tent. What transpires in that tent is truly remarkable.

THE COMMENTARY:  WHAT HAPPENS NEXT & WHY DOES HOMER END THE ILIAD HERE? (19 minutes; begins at 50:00)   With this podcast episode I conclude telling those episodes of the Trojan War Epic which are found in Homer’s Iliad.  Trojan War: The Podcast will continue, of course, but without benefit of Homer’s remarkable text.  In this post story commentary I pause to address a question commonly asked by first-time readers through Homer’s Iliad:  why does Homer end his story with the funeral of Hector, when there are clearly so many “what happens next?” questions left to answer?  To wit:  what happens to Paris; to Helen; to Achilles; to the Greek army; to the city of Troy itself?  The beginning of an answer to this question starts by reminding my podcast listeners that Homer’s original audience (c. 700 B.C.E.) already knew the answer to every “what happens next” question.  The story of the Trojan War was the foundational cultural document of the Greeks, from the days of the war itself (c. 1250 B.C.E.) right up through Homer’s own time, and then for another seven centuries or so afterwards.  So when Homer constructed the Iliad, he did not have to worry about addressing questions of “what has already happened”, or questions of “what will happen afterwards”.  His audience already knew.  Instead, Homer could leap into his story in medias res (the middle of things) and then, 24 books later, leave his story still in medias res.  And since Homer could confidently assume his listeners knew the plot, he could instead focus his artistry on other concerns, namely character.  And so the Iliad has no intention of being the complete story of the Trojan War, but instead is the story of one man’s experience of a few short weeks during that war.  The Iliad is primarily the story of Achilles; of his transformative journey from the day he loses Briseis, through to that day on which he returns Hector’s body: a story that unfolds over a matter of mere weeks, in an epic that unfolds over decades.  Right from the Iliad’s opening lines, Homer makes his subject clear.  Homer opens not with the invocation: “Sing goddess, of the terrible Trojan War ….”, but instead with “Sing goddess, of the rage of Achilles …” (That Homer manages, through his story of Achilles, to accomplish so much more - to show us terrible/glorious war; to make us believe in the gods and Deadly Destiny; and to breathe compelling characters into life – well those accomplishments are simply additional testament to Homer’s storytelling art).   I conclude the post story commentary by noting that Trojan War:  The Podcast is not in the “great art” business, but rather in the more pedestrian “what happens next?” business.  And my own guiding rule, since way back in Episode One:  The Apple of Discord, is to respect that many of my listeners do not know “what happens next”.  So I have done my best to navigate, dance, bob and weave around all possible plot spoilers.  So, listen to Trojan War:  The Podcast for the fun of the story; but then go back to Homer’s Iliad for the pleasure of the art!

Happy Listening,

Jeff

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THE STORY  (59 minutes)   With Hector dead, the desperate Trojans grasp on to increasingly ridiculous deus ex machina solutions to save their city from the Greeks.  And then old King Priam hatches the most hair-brained (or brilliant) scheme of them all…..

THE COMMENTARY  HOW DID ACHILLES DIE and WHO KILLED HIM? (15 minutes; begins at 59:00)   With this podcast episode we leave behind Homer`s account of the Trojan War, and once again delve into that jambalaya of accounts, fragments, partial references and contradictory content that served as our source materials in Episodes One through Ten.   I remind listeners that the death of Achilles does not appear in Homer – though Homer clearly predicts it and even tells us who will kill Achilles (Paris), and even where Achilles will die (on the Trojan Plain).  I then raise the perennial and frustrating debate on whether or not Achilles was immune from physical injury.  I note that Homer’s Achilles is vulnerable to injury (a Trojan arrow draws blood in Book 21 of Iliad; and Achilles needs armour when entering battle).  But on the other hand, the Achilles of the River Styx story (you will recall that Thetis immersed her infant son in that river) is clearly immune from physical injury.  I note that a storyteller cannot have it both ways.  Either Achilles is immune, due to his Styx-dunking, or he is not immune.  I defend my personal storyteller choice of “immune Achilles” on the grounds that the Styx-dunking is an established and popular part of the Trojan War Epic canon, and in my view makes for a more satisfying story.  Homer, I note, did not include the Styx story, because it had not yet been written down (or even created?) until 100 A.C.E., by a writer named Statius (in The Achilleid).  Next I explore whether a poison arrow, if lodged into Achilles’ left heel, could have actually caused his death.  Here I cite The Trojan War: A New History, by Barry Strauss, 2006,  who argues “yes”.

Finally, I confess that my “version” of the death of Achilles (via Priam’s plot to marry Achilles to his daughter Polyxena, and Paris’ assassination of Achilles in a temple of the god Apollo) holds together on the most gossamer of primary source threads.  But I invite (dare) storytellers to come up with a more plausible and satisfying account of Achilles’ death, given the paucity and contradictory nature of the surviving accounts.  I conclude by reviewing a series of “death of Achilles” accounts which I rejected in my version of the telling.  I conclude by inviting listeners to explore the source materials, and come up with their own best understanding of how Achilles died.

Happy Listening,

Jeff

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ACHILLES: MYTH VS REALITY by greekmythcomix

WHY WAS PARIS SUCH AN UTTER PLONKER by greekmythcomix

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ACHILLES' LAST STAND by Led Zeppelin, live 1979 YOUTUBE

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THE STORY  (50:00 minutes)   A dispute over honour leads to a leadership shift (and a profound tragedy) in the Greek army.  Meanwhile, Paris Prince of Troy discovers that “nemesis” is a word of particularly Greek origin.

THE COMMENTARY    THE OENONE STORY:  A PATRIARCHAL MARRIAGE PRIMER   (20 minutes; begins at 50:00)   I devote this post-story commentary to an exploration of the “Paris and Oenone” story.  I begin by reviewing the basic details of the story that seems to be agreed upon by all tellers down through the ages.  In short:  Paris is hit by Philoctetes’ poison arrow.  The Trojan priests discover that only the healing arts of a particular forest nymph can save Paris from painful and certain death.  Paris realizes that the nymph in question is Oenone, his former wife, who he abandoned some twelve or so years ago, having been promised (by Aphrodite) a much hotter and sexually obliging woman (Menelaus of Sparta’s wife Helen). At the time, Oenone had uttered some appropriately “fore shadowy” words: “Someday you will need me Paris…”.  Paris, now dying of aforementioned arrow wound, asks Oenone (either via an embassy acting on his behalf, or, in some accounts, in person) to save him and Oenone says something to the effect of:  “No.  Let your current wife save you.”  And Paris dies.

I briefly review the minor variations in this basic plot line, including: embassy begs for Paris’ life; Paris goes to Mt. Ida and begs for his own life; Helen – can you believe it! – begs for Paris’ life; Oenone travels to Troy, where the full royal family begs for Paris’ life.  But I note that in all cases, Oeneon says “No”.

Then I outline the scene that follows, and that appears in ALL versions of the story.  A scene, I note, that I find both implausible and deeply troubling.  In all accounts of the Oenone story, following her initial rejection of Paris’ plea for help, Oenone relents, and goes searching for Paris, in order to save his life.  And when she arrives too late, and finds Paris dead, Oenone, in all accounts, then takes her own life.  Oenone commits suicide: sometimes by throwing herself off of Troy’s walls, sometimes by hanging herself, but in most accounts by throwing herself into Paris’ arms as his dead body burns on the funeral pyre.

I spend the balance of the post story commentary exploring why storytellers through the ages – from Classical Greek times up through Victorian England – seem to adore the image of Oenone throwing her live body into her faithless ex-husband’s dead arms.  And though I acknowledge that I cannot help but see the Oenone story through my own culture’s values lens, I then go on to make my case.  I argue that the Oenone suicide appears to be a patriarchal society’s “polemic” or “primer” on the appropriate behaviour of wives, even the wives of faithless (and profoundly inadequate) husbands.  Instead of a more plausible plot line – that Oenone, an immortal, ageless forest nymph, would have “gotten over” the loss of her faithless/clueless husband twelve years after he had walked out on her – we are expected to believe that Oenone, on seeing her ex-husband dead, would have responded, to quote Tennyson as follows:

“ and all at once

The morning light of happy marriage broke

Thro’ all the clouded years of widowhood,

And muffling up her comely head, and crying

‘Husband!’ she leapt upon the funeral pile,

And mixt herself with him and past in fire.”  

THE DEATH OF OENONE, 1829

I conclude the post-story commentary by reviewing the cultural values of Bronze Age and Classical Greek society concerning the appropriate roles and accepted behaviours of both married men and married women. And I highlight the profoundly double standard.  Finally I argue that Oenone, fulfilling her role in a “patriarchal primer story”, is required to suicide after she allows her husband Paris to die, because that is the only way she can atone for the marital sin that she has committed,

ODYSSEY: THE PODCAST - my 14 episode, 24 hour sequel to Trojan War: The Podcast - is now recorded and waiting for you. Subscribe through your usual podcast provider, or go to odysseythepodcast.com!

THE STORY   (60 minutes) Odysseus finally decodes the cryptic prophecy that “Troy’s walls will never be destroyed by an enemy force”, then sets to work on implementing the most audacious - and famous - “con” in the history of war.

THE COMMENTARY     WAS THERE EVER REALLY A TROJAN HORSE?  (20 minutes; begins at 1:00:06)

I begin this post-story commentary with a definitive:  “Yes, there really was a Trojan Horse”.  Homer’s Odyssey (c. 750 BCE) and Virgil’s Aeneid (c. 20 BCE) both tell us that there really was a giant wooden horse, and that is good enough for me.  Both Homer and Virgil employ “eye-witness” accounts of the famous horse; Homer’s witnesses were men hidden in the horse’s hollow belly, while Virgil’s witnesses were Trojans on the ground.  I note that the “canonical” version of the Trojan Horse story comes to us not via Homer, (who only mentions the horse briefly in the Odyssey) but via Virgil (who offers a detailed and compelling complete version of the entire horse caper in Book Two of the Aeneid).

Then I turn to the objections of the “wooden horse non-believers”. They fall into two broad camps.  Camp #1 argues that a wooden horse (as described by Homer and Virgil) could not have existed for logistical and mechanical reasons.  Folks in this camp first point out that it would have taken months to construct a horse of the size and “hollow belly capacity” required, and during those months the Trojans from their high walls would have had a clear view of the construction project taking place across the Trojan plain, and no doubt would have seen that the horse was hollow.  And, hence, would not have allowed it into their city.  The second argument in this camp is based on weight and mobility issues.  The gist of the argument goes something like this:  Bronze Age technology was incapable of constructing a structure large enough to house 30 soldiers, tall enough to be higher than Troy’s walls, but still mobile enough to be transported across the Trojan Plain, from construction site to those walls.  And therefore there could not have been a wooden horse as described in the canonical account.

This leads us to Camp #2 of the “wooden horse non-believers”.    These folks generally base their arguments against the wooden horse on the belief that “Even the Trojans could not have been THAT stupid!” And therefore, whatever is was that destroyed Troy, and whatever you wish to call it, it was certainly NOT a large hollow wooden horse on wheels.  So what was the “real” Trojan Horse?

The most popular argument is that the horse was simply a huge battering ram that somehow managed to affect a breach in Troy’s walls (or gates).  Apparently a contemporary Bronze Age culture (the Assyrians) routinely used battering rams in siege warfare – and this is intriguing – protected the soldiers doing the “ramming” by covering the battering rams in wet animal hides (horse hides anyone?).  Sometimes they even painted animal faces or images on to the rams (a horse face anyone?). So the Trojan “horse”, this argument concludes, was simply a gigantic, animal skin covered, possible painted, battering ram.

The preceding theory, however, of necessity has to abandon the prophecy that “the walls of Troy will never be destroyed by an enemy force”.  So I prefer the following, much more elaborate, hypothesis.

Archaeologists tell us that “Priam’s Troy” was most likely either Troy 6, or Troy 7a. Troy 6 was a large wealthy city destroyed c 1250 BCE; Troy 7a, a much smaller and less wealthy city, was destroyed by warfare and fire c 1184 BCE.  Now in this particular hypothesis, Troy 6 was Priam’s Troy.  And we know that Troy 6 was destroyed by an earthquake, at about the same date as some historians argue that Priam’s Troy fell.