Transcript Lecture 2
Chapter 21 Lecture Two of Two ©2012 Pearson Education Inc. Was there really a Trojan war? OBSERVATIONS ©2012 Pearson Education Inc. Was there really a Trojan War? • The Hellespont always a critical choke-point between East and West • Nine levels of historic Troy, beginning in 3000 BC. • Troy VII (1150 BC) mostly likely Homer’s Troy – Crowded housing, stockpiles of food, other evidence of siege ©2012 Pearson Education Inc. By permission of the artist, Christoph Haußner ©2012 Pearson Education Inc. Was there really a Trojan War? • Recent work shows extensive settlement around the citadel of Troy with ditch and palisade, effective against (Greek?) cavalry • Typical Anatolian fortress • Place-names and personal names are from the Hittite language – Was Troy a Hittite city? ©2012 Pearson Education Inc. Was there really a Trojan War? • The story of Troy is not Homer’s (800 BC), and even specific elements of it go back to the Late Bronze Age • Classical Greeks didn’t doubt the historicity of the war – The Locrian maidens and the Temple of Athena in Troy • Xerxes, Alexander at Troy ©2012 Pearson Education Inc. Fig. 21.7 The Lesser Ajax and Cassandra The Art Gallery Collection/Alamy ©2012 Pearson Education Inc. AGAMEMNON’S RETURN ©2012 Pearson Education Inc. Agamemnon’s Return • Nostos (Nostoi) • Aeschylus’s Oresteia : the return of Agamemnon – Agamemnon – The Libation Bearers – The Eumenides ©2012 Pearson Education Inc. The Murder of Agamemnon AGAMEMNON'S RETURN ©2012 Pearson Education Inc. Murder of Agamemnon • Agamemnon returns from Troy with Cassandra, who is to be his mistress • Clytemnestra, meanwhile, had been colluding with Aegisthus, son of Thyestes – Clytemnestra vengeful because of the sacrifice of Iphigeneia – Aegisthus wishes to avenge the “Banquet of Thyestes” ©2012 Pearson Education Inc. Fig. 21.8 Murder of Agamemnon Agamemnon murdered by Clytemnestra and Aegisthus Photograph © 2011 Museum of Fine Arts, Boston ©2012 Pearson Education Inc. Shakespeare's Troilus and Cressida PERSPECTIVE 21.2 ©2012 Pearson Education Inc. Shakespeare's Troilus and Cressida • Mediaeval scholars accepted the fake stories of the Trojan war – Ephemeris belli Troiani and De excidio Troiae historia, hence the stories such as the one Shakespeare developed into his play, which have little or nothing to do with the original body of myth. ©2012 Pearson Education Inc. Orestes’ Revenge THE RETURN OF AGAMEMNON ©2012 Pearson Education Inc. Orestes’ Revenge • Orestes, taken from Mycenae after the regicide, is now grown and returns to avenge his father’s death – Ordered even to murder his own mother by the Delphic Oracle • Finds his sister, Electra, who will help ©2012 Pearson Education Inc. Orestes’ Revenge • Orestes kills both, but is immediately driven insane and pursued by the Furies – They punish the spilling of familial blood ©2012 Pearson Education Inc. The Trial of Orestes THE RETURN OF AGAMEMNON ©2012 Pearson Education Inc. The Trial of Orestes • Delphi: Apollo orders Orestes to go to Athens to stand trial for the matricide • In Athens, Athena establishes a new court, the Court of the Areopagus, to try the case • Apollo represents Orestes, the Furies prosecute their case against him • In the end, Orestes is acquitted; the Furies are appeased and become protective spirits (the Eumenides) ©2012 Pearson Education Inc. The Trial of Orestes • Other sources: Orestes rules peacefully over Mycenae – But to marry Hermionê, he had to have her first husband, Neoptolemus, murdered ©2012 Pearson Education Inc. Myth of Civic Progress OBSERVATIONS ©2012 Pearson Education Inc. Myth of Civic Progress • Oresteia written as Athenian democracy was still extending itself • Ends cycle of blood vendetta • Establishes civil courts – the Areopagus – with the approval of the gods • Judicial authority of families curtailed • Written law replaces oral law ©2012 Pearson Education Inc. Myth of Civic Progress • Tames the ancient ones – the Furies (the Eumenides in the end) – and puts the impulse for revenge to work in the system of civil authority • This reworking of traditional myths shows how the Greeks would not hesitate to modify them for reflection on contemporary issues ©2012 Pearson Education Inc. The Trojan War in European Art PERSPECTIVE 21.1 ©2012 Pearson Education Inc. Fig. 21.1a From Raoul Lefèvre's Recueil ©2012 Pearson Education Inc. Bibliothéque Nationale de France, Paris; MS. Fr. 22552, fol. 27v Fig. 21.1b The Judgment of Paris by Cranach the Elder Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York; photograph by Schecter Lee ©1986 ©2012 Pearson Education Inc. Fig. 21.1c El Greco, Laocoön National Gallery of Art, Washington, DC ©2012 Pearson Education Inc. Fig. 21.1d Leighton, Captive Andromache Manchester City Art Galleries, Manchester, England ©2012 Pearson Education Inc. End ©2012 Pearson Education Inc.