Did Homer tell the 'truth' about the Trojan War? If so, how much, and if not, why not? The issue was hardly academic to the Greeks living under the Roman Empire, given the centrality of both Homer, ...the father of Greek culture, and the Trojan War, the event that inaugurated Greek history, to conceptions of Imperial Hellenism. This book examines four Greek texts of the Imperial period that address the topic - Strabo's Geography, Dio of Prusa's Trojan Oration, Lucian's novella True Stories, and Philostratus' fictional dialogue Heroicus - and shows how their imaginative explorations of Homer and his relationship to history raise important questions about the nature of poetry and fiction, the identity and intentions of Homer himself, and the significance of the heroic past and Homeric authority in Imperial Greek culture.
Like the male heroes of epic poetry, Helen of Troy has been immortalized, but not for deeds of strength and honor; she is remembered as the beautiful woman who disgraced herself and betrayed her ...family and state. Norman Austin here surveys interpretations of Helen in Greek literature from the Homeric period through later antiquity. He looks most closely at a revisionist myth according to which Helen never sailed to Troy, but remained blameless, while a libertine phantom or ghost impersonated her at Troy. Comparing the functions of contradictory images of Helen, Austin helps to clarify the problematic relations between beauty and honor and between ugliness and shame in ancient Greece. Austin first discusses the canonical account of the Iliad and the Odyssey: Helen as the archetype of woman without shame. He next considers different versions of Helen in the Homeric tradition. Among these, he shows how Sappho presents Helen as an icon of absolute beauty while she defends her own preference of eros over honor and her choice of woman as the object of desire. Austin then turns to three major authors who repudiated the traditional Helen of Troy: the lyric poet Stesichorus and the dramatist Euripides, who embraced the alternative myth of Helen's phantom; and the historian Herodotus, who claimed to have found in Egypt a Helen story that dispenses with both Helen and the phantom. Austin maintains that the conflicting motives that prompted these writers to rehabilitate Helen led to further revisions of her image, though none have endured as a credible substitute for the Helen of epic tradition. Like the male heroes of epic poetry, Helen of Troy has been immortalized, but not for deeds of strength and honor; she is remembered as the beautiful woman who disgraced herself and betrayed her family and state. Norman Austin here surveys interpretations of Helen in Greek literature from the Homeric period through later antiquity. He looks most closely at a revisionist myth according to which Helen never sailed to Troy, but remained blameless, while a libertine phantom or ghost impersonated her at Troy. Comparing the functions of contradictory images of Helen, Austin helps to clarify the problematic relations between beauty and honor and between ugliness and shame in ancient Greece. Austin first discusses the canonical account of the Iliad and the Odyssey : Helen as the archetype of woman without shame. He next considers different versions of Helen in the Homeric tradition. Among these, he shows how Sappho presents Helen as an icon of absolute beauty while she defends her own preference of eros over honor and her choice of woman as the object of desire. Austin then turns to three major authors who repudiated the traditional Helen of Troy: the lyric poet Stesichorus and the dramatist Euripides, who embraced the alternative myth of Helen's phantom; and the historian Herodotus, who claimed to have found in Egypt a Helen story that dispenses with both Helen and the phantom. Austin maintains that the conflicting motives that prompted these writers to rehabilitate Helen led to further revisions of her image, though none have endured as a credible substitute for the Helen of epic tradition.
Elaine Fantham provides here a fresh Latin text of Seneca's Traodes and an English version, with an extensive introduction and critical commentary--the first separate treatment of the play in English ...since Kingery's 1908 edition. Arguing that the Troades was not intended for stage production, the author also discusses the atmosphere of Rome at the time the play was written, when both political and poetic life were felt to be in decline. Although Seneca's plays reflect his experience of tyranny, corruption, and compromise, they are enriched by his contract with the nobler world of poetry. Demonstrating how Seneca loved and imitated the Augustan poets, Professor Fantham reveals the originality that is part of his imitation. Professor Fantham discusses not only the particular characteristics of Seneca's generation but the interplay of his moral and poetic concerns in relationship to his subject--the Trojan captivity.By analyzing his reactions to accounts of this theme in Homer, Euripides, and Augustan epic, she explains his methods and motives in composition. Comparison of the play with Seneca's other works and with other drama exposes some inconsistency, formulaic writing, and excess of ingenuity. It also reveals the influence of epic in loosening his dramtic form and makes apparent his immense vitality. Elaine Fantham is Professor of Classics at the University of Toronto and author of Comparative Studies in the Republican Latin Imagery (Toronto).
Originally published in 1983.
ThePrinceton Legacy Libraryuses the latest print-on-demand technology to again make available previously out-of-print books from the distinguished backlist of Princeton University Press. These editions preserve the original texts of these important books while presenting them in durable paperback and hardcover editions. The goal of the Princeton Legacy Library is to vastly increase access to the rich scholarly heritage found in the thousands of books published by Princeton University Press since its founding in 1905.
The article discusses Pat Barker’s latest novel, The Silence of the Girls (2018), which follows the events of the Iliad from the perspective of Briseis and other women abducted and reduced to ...sex-slaves during the Trojan conflict. The main focus of the analysis are the ways in which Barker challenges the ellipses of the Homeric original. By freeing the silenced voices of unwilling and powerless participants in the epic events, she deconstructs one of the key myths of the Western civilization, exposing its inglorious, misogynistic underpinnings. Additionally, what comes under scrutiny is Barker’s exploration of the immediacy of sensory experience as she describes the viscera of war, as well as the messy realities of life in a rat-infested army camp. Artykuł omawia najnowszą powieść Pat Barker, The Silence of the Girls (2018), która stanowi przepisanie wydarzeń Iliady z perspektywy Bryzejdy i innych kobiet wziętych w niewolę i sprowadzonych do roli nałożnic w trakcie wojny trojańskiej. Głównym celem analizy jest prześledzenie sposobów, w jaki Barker rozprawia się z przemilczeniami homeryckiej opowieści. Uwalniając stłumione głosy bezsilnych kobiet, wplątanych wbrew woli w przedstawione w eposie konflikty, pisarka dekonstruuje jeden z kluczowych mitów zachodniej cywilizacji, odsłaniając jego niechlubne, mizoginiczne podstawy. Ponadto artykuł zwraca uwagę na wyeksponowanie bezpośredniości doznań zmysłowych podczas opisów okropności wojny, a także w obrazach życia w obozowisku wojskowym dotkniętym przez plagę szczurów.
Playful, popular visions of Troy and Carthage, backdrops to the Iliad and Aeneid's epic narratives, shine the spotlight on antiquity's starring role in nineteenth-century culture. This is the story ...of how these ruined cities inspired bold reconstructions of the Trojan War and its aftermath, how archaeological discoveries in the Troad and North Africa sparked dramatic debates, and how their ruins were exploited to conceptualise problematic relationships between past, present and future. Rachel Bryant Davies breaks new ground in the afterlife of classical antiquity by revealing more complex and less constrained interaction with classical knowledge across a broader social spectrum than yet understood, drawing upon methodological developments from disciplines such as history of science and theatre history in order to do so. She also develops a thorough critical framework for understanding classical burlesque and engages in in-depth analysis of a toy-theatre production.
The renowned Basler Homer-Kommentar of the Iliad, edited by Anton Bierl and Joachim Latacz and originally published in German, presents the latest developments in Homeric scholarship. Through the ...English translation of this ground-breaking reference work, edited by S. Douglas Olson, its valuable findings are now made accessible to students and scholars worldwide.
Through an extensive series of extracts and accompanying interpretative and contextual essays, this volume showcases the expertise in classical learning that flourished in medieval Gaelic Ireland. ...Providing translations of all excerpts, it situates better known ‘antiquity sagas’ in the Middle Irish language, such as Togail Troí (The Siege of Troy, based on Dares Phrygius), Imtheachta Aeniasa (The Wanderings of Aeneas, based on Virgil’s Aeneid), In Cath Catharda (The Civil War, based on Lucan) and Togail na Tebe (The Siege of Thebes, based on Statius), within the broader constellation of medieval Irish literature that references and engages with classical antiquity. Included are synchronistic poetry and world chronologies; lesser-known Irish poetry and prose recounting episodes from Graeco-Roman mythography and featuring, for instance, Jason and the Argonauts, Ulysses and Penelope, Agamemnon and Clytemnestra, Daedalus and the Minotaur; linguistic and metaphysical tracts; place-name lore; and medieval historiographies of Alexander the Great, Hercules, and warriors of Irish legend recast as classical heroes. Creating access to this body of texts and revealing the marked influences of classical concepts on the imaginative resources of medieval Ireland fills a conspicuous lacuna in our knowledge of classical reception in European literatures. The ebook editions of this book are available open access under a CC BY-NC-ND 4.0 licence on www.bloomsburycollections.com. Open access was funded by the European Research Council, grant no. 818366.
This article examines ancient depictions of the death of Troilus in art and literature and challenges the widespread belief that the Iliad implies an alternative version of the myth in which Troilus ...dies in battle. In particular, it argues that the death-in-battle interpretation is both insufficiently supported by the internal evidence and incompatible with the external evidence. Given the evident popularity of the story of Achilles’ ambush of Troilus in the Archaic period, it is hard to avoid the conclusion that the poet of the Iliad knew the story of Troilus’ death by ambush. That the poem's only reference to Troilus does not contradict this story, and possibly even alludes to it, should persuade critics of the strong likelihood that the popular story of Troilus’ ambush at the fountain was also the one in the poet's mind.
PDF
