Transcript THE TROJAN WAR

THE TROJAN WAR
Troy was a rich and powerful Bronze Age
city in Asia Minor (modern Turkey)
Its ruins were discovered and excavated in the 19th century
but the myths and legends surrounding it had been central to
Western literature and art for at least 2,500 years before that
This is a reconstruction of how the city might really
have looked at the height of its power in the 12th
century B.C.
According to Greek and Roman legend, a Trojan prince, Paris, was asked to
judge a beauty contest between three goddesses – Juno (queen of the gods),
Minerva (goddess of wisdom) and Venus (goddess of love). He gave the
prize to Venus because she promised to make the most beautiful woman in
the world fall for him.
The woman considered most beautiful at that time was Helen,
wife of the King Menelaus of Sparta in southern Greece
Paris visited Sparta and, while a guest at the royal court,
persuaded Helen to desert her husband and return with him to
Troy
Enraged, Menelaus sought the help of his brother
Agamemnon, who was king of Mycenae, the most powerful
city in Greece at this time.
The previous slide showed the `Lion Gate’, the most famous
part of the ruins of Mycenae. Here you see a reconstruction of
how the city might have looked at the supposed time of the
Trojan War.
Led by the two brothers, Agamemnon and Menelaus, the Greeks
states sent a great army to compel the Trojans to return Helen
.
In the tenth year of the war, a priest of Apollo came to the
Greek camp to beg Agamemnon to release his daughter,
who the king had captured and was keeping as a
concubine.
The king refused and the priest prayed to Apollo for
revenge. The god sent a terrible plague which killed many
in the Greek army.
The Greeks debated what to do and Achilles, greatest of the
Greek warriors, demanded that Agamemnon return the priest’s
daughter. Agamemnon reluctantly agreed, but insisted that in
compensation Achilles should hand over to him his own
concubine, Briseis.
Achilles had to obey but, in his anger, refused to take any more
part in the fighting. When the Trojans began to get the upper
hand, Achilles finally agreed to let his best friend, Patroclus,
help the Greeks. Patroclus was killed by Hector, Paris’s brother
and Achilles (seen here with his friend’s body) was griefstricken
Achilles himself now went into battle and killed Hector. In
this Greek vase painting of the duel, the names of both
men are written besides them.
Achilles at first refused to return Hector’s body to the
Trojans, but he relented after King Priam, father of Hector
and Paris, visited the Greek camp to plead with him.
The war finally ended when the Greeks tricked the Trojans by
pretending to sail away but leaving a great wooden horse on
the shore. The priest Laocoon realised this was a trap but, after
he struck the horse with his spear, great serpents appeared
from the sea and killed both him and his sons.
Believing the horse was a holy object which could protect
them, the Trojans pulled it into their city with great rejoicing
In fact, the horse was full of Greek soldiers, who emerged
at night to open the gates and let in the rest of the Greek
army. The city was destroyed and is people killed or
enslaved.
There were also many legends about the later adventures of the heroes
who had fought in the war. The most famous Greek poet, Homer, who
perhaps wrote in the 8th century B.C, told the story of the quarrel between
Agamemnon and Achilles in the Iliad, and, in the Odyssey, described the
return of a Greek leader Odysseus (Ulysses) to his home on the island of
Ithaca off the west coast of Greece.
The family of Julius Caesar claimed that they were descended from
Aeneas, a Trojan leader who escaped from the city carrying his father
on his shoulder and (in the version of the story shown in this coin
issued by Caesar himself) the Palladium (sacred statue of
Minerva/Athena) in his hand.
In his epic poem the Aeneid, the Roman poet Virgil, who wrote
under the patronage of Caesar’s nephew, Augustus, described
both the destruction of Troy and Aeneas’s quest to found a new
city in Italy.
THE BEGINNING OF
VIRGIL’S AENEID
(http://www.rhapsodes.fll.vt.edu/audiofiles/aeneis1.mp3)
• Arma virumque canō, Troiae quī prīmus ab
arms man also
• Italiam
Italy-to
fato
sing-I Troy’s who first
profugus
fate-by refugee
• Litora. multum ille et
coasts-to much
• vi
Laviniaque
ōrīs
from shores
venit
Lavinian-also came
terris iactatus et alto
he both land-on harassed and sea-at
superum saevae memorem Iunonis ob iram.
force-by gods’
cruel
memorable
Juno’s from anger