CC 303/352: Lecture Outline, November 13, 2001

The Trojan War

Reminder: CC 352 papers due 5:00 PM Nov. 21

I. The myths

A. Events leading up to the War

• Oath of Tyndareus
• Wedding of Peleus and Thetis: Golden Apple
• Judgement of Paris
• Rape of Helen
• Attempts to escape by Odysseus and Achilles
• Sacrifice of Iphigenia at Aulis
• Philoctetes bitten by snake and left on Lemnos
• Troy besieged

B. Events of Homer's Iliad

• Plague: Agamemnon takes Briseis
• Achilles refuses to fight
• Hector kills Patroclus
• Achilles kills Hector
• Priam ransoms Hector

C. Events through the end of the War

• Paris and Apollo kill Achilles
• Debate over who will get Achilles' arms: Odysseus wins and Ajax kills himself
• Prophecy: three things necessary for Greeks to take Troy

1. Palladium (captured from Troy by Odysseus and Diomedes)
2. Neoptolemus, Achilles' son (brought from Scyros)
3. Philoctetes and Heracle's bow (retrieved from Lemnos)

• Trojan horse

D. Destruction of Troy and Events after the War

• Trojans

1. Aeneas escapes: leads other survivors to Italy
2. Trojan women enslaved
3. Astyanax (Hector's son) thrown off wall of Troy
4. Polyxena (Hecuba's daughter) sacrificed to Achilles
5. Polydorus (Hecuba's son) slaughtered by Polymester
6. Hecuba blinds Polymester and kills his sons
7. Hecuba turns into a dog

• Greeks: "Homecomings" (Nostoi)

1. Ajax son of Oileus rapes Cassandra in temple of Athena
2. Athena makes great storm as Greeks try to sail home: Ajax of Oileus killed in storm
3. Almost all have troubles
4. Agamemnon murdered by Clytemnestra and Aegisthus
5. Menelaus and Odysseus return home after much wandering

E. Principal characters

• Greeks

1. Agamemnon
2. Menelaus
3. Achilles
4. Patroclus
5. Phoenix
6. Neoptolemus
7. Odysseus
8. Ajax son of Telamon
9. Ajax son of Oileus
10. Diomedes
11. Nestor
12. Philoctetes

• Trojans

1. Priam
2. Hecuba
3. Cassandra
4. Paris
5. Helen
6. Hector
7. Andromache
8. Astyanax
9. Aeneas

• Gods

1. On Trojan side: Aphrodite, Apollo, Ares
2. On Greek side: Hera, Athena, Poseidon
3. Overseeing it all: Zeus

II. Perspectives

• history: Excavations in Bronze Age Troy

1. Heinrich Schliemann (1880's)
2. Wilhelm Dörpfeld (1890's)
3. Carl Blegen (1930's)
4. contemporary excavations

• functions / recurring elements / folktale motifs
• Troy as paradigm for war in Greek literature

1. Homer, Iliad
2. Aeschylus, Oresteia
3. Sophocles, Ajax, Philoctetes
4. Euripides, Iphigenia in Aulis, Rhesus, Hecuba, Trojan Women, Andromache, Helen

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