Chapter 21 Lecture Two of Two ©2012 Pearson Education Inc.

Chapter 21Lecture Two of Two

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OBSERVATIONSWas there really a Trojan war?

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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

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©2012 Pearson Education Inc. By permission of the artist, Christoph Haußner

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?

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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

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Fig. 21.7The Lesser Ajax and Cassandra

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The Art Gallery Collection/Alamy

AGAMEMNON’S RETURN

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Agamemnon’s Return

• Nostos (Nostoi)• Aeschylus’s Oresteia : the return of

Agamemnon– Agamemnon– The Libation Bearers– The Eumenides

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AGAMEMNON'S RETURNThe Murder of Agamemnon

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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”

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Fig. 21.8 Murder of AgamemnonAgamemnon murdered by Clytemnestra and Aegisthus

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Photograph © 2011 Museum of Fine Arts, Boston

PERSPECTIVE 21.2Shakespeare's Troilus and Cressida

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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.

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THE RETURN OF AGAMEMNONOrestes’ Revenge

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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

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Orestes’ Revenge

• Orestes kills both, but is immediately driven insane and pursued by the Furies – They punish the spilling of familial blood

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THE RETURN OF AGAMEMNONThe Trial of Orestes

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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)

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The Trial of Orestes

• Other sources: Orestes rules peacefully over Mycenae– But to marry Hermionê, he had to have her first

husband, Neoptolemus, murdered

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OBSERVATIONSMyth of Civic Progress

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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

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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

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PERSPECTIVE 21.1The Trojan War in European Art

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Fig. 21.1aFrom Raoul Lefèvre's Recueil

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Fig. 21.1bThe Judgment of Paris by Cranach the Elder

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Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York; photograph by Schecter Lee ©1986

Fig. 21.1c El Greco, Laocoön

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National Gallery of Art, Washington, DC

Fig. 21.1d Leighton, Captive Andromache

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Manchester City Art Galleries, Manchester, England

End

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