Return to Troy
Editors-in-Chief
Almut-Barbara Renger (Freie Universität Berlin) Jon Solomon (University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign) John T. Hamilton (Harvard University)
Editorial Board
Kyriakos Demetriou (University of Cyprus) Constanze Güthenke (Princeton University) Miriam Leonard (University College London) Mira Seo (University of Michigan)
VOLUME 5
The titles published in this series are listed at brill.com/srca
New Essays on the Hollywood Epic
Edited by
Martin M. Winkler
LEIDEN | BOSTON
Cover illustration: Image courtesy Daniel Petersen.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Return to Troy : new essays on the Hollywood epic / edited by Martin M. Winkler. pages cm -- (Studies in the reception of classical antiquity ; 5) Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 978-90-04-29276-5 (hardback : alk. paper) -- ISBN 978-90-04-29608-4 (e-book) 1. Troy (Motion picture) 2. Trojan War--Motion pictures and the war. I. Winkler, Martin M., editor.
PN1997.2.T78R48 2015 791.43’72--dc23
2015008273
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issn 2212-9405 isbn 978-90-04-29276-5 (hardback) isbn 978-90-04-29608-4 (e-book)
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Editor’s Acknowledgments vii List of Photographs viii Notes on Contributors ix
Introduction: Troy Revisited 1 Martin M. Winkler
1 Wolfgang Petersen on Homer and Troy 16 Martin M. Winkler
2 Live from Troy: Embedded in the Trojan War 27 Daniel Petersen
Photographs: Behind the Scenes of Troy 49
3 In the Footsteps of Homeric Narrative: Anachronisms and Other Supposed Mistakes in Troy 65 Eleonora Cavallini
4 Petersen’s Epic Technique: Troy and Its Homeric Model 86 Wolfgang Kofler and Florian Schaffenrath
5 Troy and the Cinematic Afterlife of Homeric Gods 108 Martin M. Winkler
6 Achilles and Patroclus in Troy 165 Horst-Dieter Blume
7 Odysseus in Troy 180 Bruce Louden
8 A New Briseis in Troy 191 Barbara P. Weinlich
9 The Fall of Troy: Intertextual Presences in Wolfgang Petersen’s Film 203 Antonio M. Martín-Rodríguez
10 Homer’s Iliad in Popular Culture: The Roads to Troy 224 Jon Solomon
Coda: On Cinematic Tributes to Homer and the Iliad 255 Martin M. Winkler
Bibliography 265 Index of Films and Television Productions 278 General Index 281
I am chiefly indebted to all contributors, my laoi Trôikoi kinêmatographikoi, as they might be called in not-quite-Homeric Greek, for their unwavering dedica- tion to this volume. I owe special thanks to Wolfgang Petersen for his willing- ness to answer my questions and to his assistant Barbara Huber for serving as intermediary between him and me. Daniel Petersen was so generous as to make his entire treasury of photographs taken during the production of Troy available to me for this book. A small selection of his images can be found in the color insert; the one on the book’s cover is his as well. In view of the cost involved in reproducing these photographs, I have proposed, and my contribu- tors have kindly agreed, not to include additional illustrations such as stills or screenshots of Troy in individual chapters. Since both the theatrical release and the director’s cut of Troy are readily available in home-video formats, we hope that our readers will approve of the rationale behind this decision. I am grateful to the editors of Metaforms for including this book in their series and, at the press, to Tessel Jonquière and Kim Fiona Plas for their ready cooperation. Special thanks to Jon Solomon. He knows why.
1 Model set of Troy 51 2 Malta. City wall and gate (extreme r.) of Troy with camera crane 52 3 Malta. Preparing the set of Priam’s palace, with blue screen and camera 53 4 Malta. Filming Achilles (Brad Pitt, top r.) on board his ship 54 5 Mexico. The deserted plain of Thessaly 55 6 Mexico. Part of the Greek army 56 7 Mexico. Director Petersen (l., in white shirt and hat) with camera crew and Trojans 57 8 Mexico. Not all Trojan warriors are real or digitally created 58 9 Mexico. Part of the beach set for the Greek ships 59 10 Mexico. Director Petersen (r.) and Patroclus (Garrett Hedlund) ready for his dying close-up, with chest plate and plastic tube for fake blood 60 11 Malta. The Wooden Horse waiting for its cue inside Troy 61 12 Mexico. The Wooden Horse on the beach outside Troy 62 13 Mexico. Another fall of Troy: the city walls after the hurricane 63 14 Mexico. A suitably melancholic sunset on the Trojan beach 64
Horst-Dieter Blume is Professor Emeritus of Classics at the Westfälische Wilhelms-Universität in Münster, Germany. He is the author of several books on ancient theater prac- tice and the comedy of Menander and has written Homer auf der tragischen Bühne. He has translated Menander’s Dyskolos, Euripides’ Iphigenia at Aulis, and Aeschylus’ Seven against Thebes.
Eleonora Cavallini is Professor of Greek Language and Literature at the Department of Cultural Heritage, Bologna University—Ravenna Campus (Italy), where she also teaches History of Classical Tradition in Modern and Contemporary Culture and Historical Anthropology of the Greek World. From 2002 until 2005 she was vice-dean for the Faculty of Preservation of Cultural Heritage at Bologna University. She is responsible for the international research project Mythimedia and director of the book series Nemo: confrontarsi con l’antico for d.u. Press, Bologna. Her latest major work is the edited volume La Musa nascosta: Mito e letteratura greca nell’opera di Cesare Pavese.
Wolfgang Kofler is Professor of Classics at the Leopold-Franzens-Universität in Innsbruck, Austria. He has published on Hellenistic and Augustan poetry, epic, and epi- gram. He also works on aspects of classical reception, especially the most recent periods, and on Neo-Latin literature.
Bruce Louden is Professor of Classics at the University of Texas at El Paso. He is the author of The Odyssey: Structure, Narration, and Meaning; The Iliad: Structure, Myth, and Meaning; and, most recently, Homer’s Odyssey and the Near East. He has also published on Gilgamesh, Ugaritic myth, Greek tragedy, Roman comedy, Virgil’s Aeneid, the Bible, Beowulf, Shakespeare, and Milton.
Antonio M. Martín-Rodríguez is Professor of Latin and Dean of the School of Philology at the University of Las Palmas de Gran Canaria (Spain). His books include El campo semántico de dar en latín, De Aedón a Filomela: Génesis, sentido y comentario de la versión ovidiana del mito, Fuentes Clásicas en Titus Andronicus de Shakespeare, and El mito de Filomela en la literatura española. He is the editor of El humanismo
Daniel Petersen was personal assistant to Wolfgang Petersen on Troy. He is the author of “Troja”: Embedded im Troianischen Krieg.
Florian Schaffenrath is Associate Professor of Classics and Neo-Latin Studies at the Leopold- Franzens-Universität and director of the Ludwig Boltzmann Institute for Neo- Latin Studies, both in Innsbruck, Austria. His research and publications encompass Cicero and Silius Italicus, the history of Latin literature, especially epic, and classical receptions.
Jon Solomon is Robert D. Novak Professor of Western Civilization and Culture and Professor of Cinema Studies at the University of Illinois. He is the author of numerous publications on classical literature and culture and on the classical tradition, among them The Ancient World in the Cinema and, as co-editor, Ancient Worlds in Cinema and Television: Gender and Politics.
Barbara P. Weinlich is Visiting Assistant Professor of Classics at Eckerd College. Her interests include late republican and early imperial Roman literature, epigraphy, literary and critical theory, and classical reception. She is has published a monograph on Ovid’s Amores and a number of articles on Roman love elegy and on classi- cal reception in visual media.
Martin M. Winkler is University Professor and Professor of Classics at George Mason University. He is the editor of Troy: From Homer’s Iliad to Hollywood Epic, among other essay collections on historical films, and the author of books, articles, and book chapters on classical literature, classics and cinema, the classical tradition, and related topics. His most recent book is Arminius the Liberator: Myth and Ideology.
Martin M. Winkler
“There are an awful lot of Greeks in it.” Harry Cohn, boss of Columbia Pictures and Hollywood barbarian par excellance, had Homer’s number right from the start when he was contemplating a film adaptation of the Iliad, the founding text of Western culture. Cohn’s now classic verdict prompted me to pose a particular question about films of the Iliad at the beginning of my “Editor’s Introduction” to an essay collection on Wolfgang Petersen’s Troy, the first blockbuster Hollywood epic on an ancient Greek subject made in the twenty-first century.1 My question was this: Too many Greeks for the American public? Before asking it, I had quoted the anecdote that led to Cohn’s insight into the Iliad. But I never provided a direct answer. Instead, I pointed to the recurring presence of the Iliad in American history and culture since the nineteenth century and then turned to the main topic of the book. Now, a decade after its initial release, Troy has established itself as an impor- tant and timely contribution to, and indeed further impulse for, the new lease on life that classical antiquity has found on our large and small screens world- wide. And so my question has virtually answered itself. Today even the shade of Harry Cohn might agree that, yes, there are an awful lot of Greeks in the Iliad, but, no, they are not too many for the American public to handle, even if all adaptations omit numerous minor characters. Heinrich Schliemann, the discoverer of Troy, had himself come in for a moment of homage, as it were, in Columbia’s own 1955 thriller 5 Against the House. A law student eager to achieve “a big first” adduces him as just such an achiever: “You guys ever hear of a man named Schliemann? …He dug up the ancient city of Troy in Greece.” (Actually, in Turkey, but why quibble?) A smart-aleck college friend retorts: “Hey, what a cat to dig Troy!” Harry Cohn could hardly have put the case better. And this is to say nothing of the public virtually everywhere else on earth half a century later.2
1 Martin M. Winkler (ed.), Troy: From Homer’s Iliad to Hollywood Epic (Oxford: Blackwell, 2007). Except for the Bibliography, abbreviated references to this book will from now on be given as TROY. 2 And this includes serious readers. Here are a few examples. Lawrence Freedman, Strategy: A History (New York: Oxford University Press, 2013), proudly displays the wooden horse from Troy on its front cover. Sir Lawrence, Professor of War Studies at King’s College, London, and a Fellow of the British Academy, had been foreign policy advisor to Tony Blair and was a member of the Chilcot Inquiry into Great Britain’s part in the Iraq War. By contrast, the
© koninklijke brill nv, leiden, 2015 | doi 10.1163/9789004296084_002
Readers who come across a book titled Return to Troy may ask another question: Why a second essay collection on Petersen’s film? Were this book’s editor from Sparta, he might take recourse to laconic Spartan rhetoric and might simply retort: “Why not?” The question deserves a more detailed answer, however, or several answers. Here are some possibilities, addressed not only to cats who dig Troy.
1 Troy in Retrospect
In May of 2004, Troy was the first giant epic on a Greek theme to come out of Hollywood in decades. It caused controversy chiefly for two reasons. First, the plot of the Iliad and, with it, the mythology of the Trojan War as we know it from ancient sources was radically altered. Secondly, the gods do not appear on screen except as statues, with one brief and deliberately understated excep- tion: Achilles’ mother. She is, however, not identified as divine and not named. These changes and others, on which more below and in several of the present book’s contributions, were enough to bring the wrath of various guardians of the classical flame down on the head of director Petersen and his principal screenwriter, David Benioff. One aspect of the plot of the Iliad that Troy did not tamper with was held against the film as well: its Achilles and Patroclus were not portrayed as lovers. Apparently the fury of Achilles against Hector over the death of Patroclus could, in some quarters, no longer be sufficiently explained on the basis of their close friendship as it had been in the Iliad. Or this friend- ship could no longer communicate to audiences the emotional intensity required for a complex and harrowing plot that would culminate in Hector’s death, Achilles’ own death, vast slaughter, and the destruction of a mighty city. Or the two cousins’ friendship was considered part of middle-brow squea- mishness over homoeroticism and a throwback to a time in cinema history— actually, most of cinema history—when the love that dared not speak its name also dared not show its face on the screen.
American (but not the original British) publisher of David Gemmell, Troy: Shield of Thunder (2006; rpt. New York: Ballantine Books, 2007), also featured on the book’s cover a huge and dark wooden horse that is clearly modeled on, but (for copyright reasons?) not identical to, the horse on view in Petersen’s film. Undergraduate students in Classics could see Petersen’s Horse (the one in Turkey) on the cover of Stephen Esposito (ed.), Odysseus at Troy: Ajax, Hecuba, and Trojan Women (Focus: Newburyport, 2010), a textbook with translations of, and essays on, plays by Sophocles and Euripides and with a few additional translations of related classical texts.
On the other hand, Troy has been instrumental in bringing, to cinephiles and readers who have fallen under Homer’s spell, repeated intellectual and academic debates concerning the way in which a modern mass medium could, should, or should not adapt a classic work of literature that is also a beloved and nearly sacrosanct text. One particular instance, rather vitriolic but for that reason unintentionally amusing, may serve to illustrate how easily the keepers of the classical flame are apt to lose their equipoise as soon as they deal with something as commercial or low-brow as they commonly regard the cinema to be. Here is a revealing statement delivered by an internationally highly respected (and deservedly so) Cambridge don: “Troy, I thought, was so unutter- ably bad. There comes a point where, as a paid-up professional classicist you can take many things, but not f***ing about with the plot of the Iliad. For a professional…there’s a boundary that once you cross you cannot take it seriously.”3 The paid-up professional seems to have forgotten that even in antiquity people, including revered authors, had been f***ing about with the plot of the Iliad. Here are a few famous examples. Aeschylus made Achilles and Patroclus lovers and started a trend that is still continuing.4 Euripides had Helen in Troy and in Egypt in different plays. Such infamous offenders as Dares and Dictys rewrote the Trojan War myth, and any number of vase painters changed or invented details as they saw fit. But this development goes back even further, to the Epic Cycle of poems on the Trojan War.5 In the late nine- teenth century a scholar concluded about the poet of the Little Iliad: “Lesches conducts himself toward [or is related to] the heroic world [of Homer] just as later, among the tragedians, Euripides.”6
3 Quoted from Sam Leith, “Pecs and Violence,” Financial Times (May 15–16, 2010), 17; asterisks and ellipsis in original. 4 A modern example is Madeline Miller, The Song of Achilles (New York: HarperCollins, 2012), a (near-) juvenile novel. Of greater interest is the ongoing graphic-novel series Age of Bronze by Eric Shanower, published in book form since 2001 and intended to tell the entire tale of the Trojan War, incorporating all ancient sources. On the latter see Chiara Sulprizio, “Eros Conquers All: Sex and Love in Eric Shanower’s Age of Bronze,” in George Kovacs and C.W. Marshall (eds.), Classics and Comics (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2011), 207–219. See further Eric Shanower, “Twenty-First Century Troy,” in Kovacs and Marshall (eds.), 195–206, and “Trojan Lovers and Warriors: The Power of Seduction in Age of Bronze,” in Marta García Morcillo and Silke Knippschild (eds.), Seduction and Power: Antiquity in the Visual and Performing Arts (London: Bloomsbury, 2013), 57–70. 5 On this see Jonathan S. Burgess, The Tradition of the Trojan War in Homer and the Epic Cycle (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2001; rpt. 2003). 6 Theodor Bergk, Griechische Literaturgeschichte, vol. 2; ed. Gustav Hinrichs (Berlin: Weidmann, 1883), 51: “Lesches verhält sich der heroischen Welt gegenüber gerade so, wie später unter den
What was the Iliad coming to? But then, none of these Greeks was a paid-up professional.7 And not even the Homeric poet or poets, as one theory holds, was or were above such f***ing about: “the Homeric poems themselves attest to the malleability of myth.”8 The crucial quarrel between Achilles and Agamemnon that sets the plot of the Iliad in motion is mentioned in the Odyssey, the later of the two Homeric epics. There, however, Demodocus is reported to have sung about a quarrel between Achilles and Odysseus. Agamemnon is delighted because an oracle from Apollo had foretold him that after this quarrel the defeat of Troy was near.9 No such quarrel is attested any- where else. A scholar explains it like this: “the oracle must [!] have been invented with a view to the quarrel of Agamemnon and Achilles in the Iliad…. The Odyssey poet substitutes Odysseus for Agamemnon because Odysseus is in Demodokos’ audience.”10 In spite of all the objectionable f***ing about with Homer that can be seen in Troy, the book on the film’s original release version inspired new and valu- able scholarship on the film, on Homer’s epic, and on the aesthetic, cultural, and political background of the film’s production and reception.11 Now there
Tragikern Euripides.” The original is quoted, with approval, by M.L. West, The Epic Cycle: A Commentary on the Lost Troy Epics (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2013), 171. The translation here given is mine. 7 For an eye-opening account of the whole phenomenon see Jon Solomon, “The Vacillations of the Trojan Myth: Popularization & Classicization, Variation & Codification,” International Journal of the Classical Tradition, 14 (2007), 482–534, especially 490–499 on various ancient Greeks f***ing about. 8 So Jonathan S. Burgess, “Achilles’ Heel: The Historicism of the Film Troy,” in Kostas Myrsiades (ed.), Reading Homer: Film and Text (Madison: Fairleigh Dickinson University Press, 2009), 163–185; quotation at 163. Burgess, 164, sensibly observes: “Classicists, having artificially reconstructed for themselves the knowledge of the ancient audience, some- times lose sight of Troy’s responsibilities toward its modern audience. But the movie mak- ers did not spend millions on the film for academics; the general public was naturally regarded as the film’s intended audience.” 9 Odyssey 8.72–82. 10 Quoted from West, The Epic Cycle, 98 (on Cypria, Arg. 4a). West believes that the poet of the Iliad was someone other than that of the Odyssey. Further basic information, including references, on this Odyssey passage is given by J.B. Hainsworth in Alfred Heubeck, Stephanie West, and J.B. Hainsworth, A Commentary on Homer’s Odyssey, vol. 1: Introduction and Books I–VIII (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1988; rpt. 1990), 351–352. 11 Modesty requires me to refrain from listing any of the (nearly unanimously positive) reviews of the book, but curious readers might wish to look at the comments by Jonathan Burgess, “Recent Reception of Homer: A Review Article,” Phoenix, 62 (2008), 184–195, at 189–191. Burgess, 189, seems to regard the cinema as belonging only to “low culture.” The
most important scholarship about Troy that has appeared after the earlier essay collec- tion is referred to at appropriate moments in the present volume. 12 This film’s 2014 sequel, 300: Rise of an Empire, presents more of the same in its story of Themistocles, Artemisia, Xerxes, and the Battle of Salamis. Very little history was harmed in the making of this motion picture because it contains almost none.
2 Troy: The Director’s Cut
Petersen returned to his film in 2007 for a director’s cut, which introduces a number of significant alterations, all of them for the better. Gone is the obtru- sive female vocalise that threatened to drown emotional scenes in a tonal soup of pseudo-lamenting exoticism, an import from Gladiator, where it had not worked, either, and from various other films with ancient or non-Western settings. Gone is Helen’s pronouncement to her cowardly lover Paris about not wanting a hero but someone to grow old with, the original version’s most ridi- culed line. Some scenes are re-edited or dropped; some are added. Altogether, the film is a little over half an hour longer than it was before. In his introduc- tion to the new cut on home video, Petersen states: “I could now do the film I really envisioned all the time.” This version, he adds, comes “very, very close” to his own original cut.13 One new scene at the beginning and the film’s expanded ending are especially noteworthy.
13 A few errors that might have been easily removed remain. A Thessalian is not a “Thessalonian.” Phthia is still misspelled in the opening text cards. References to weeks are anachronistic, as is Agamemnon’s statement about Achilles as “a man who fights for
The Iliad shows us the pattern according to which archaic epic composi- tions began. The poet invokes the Muse, his inspiration, and announces the subject of his epic: the wrath of its protagonist. In this case, however, a stark comment on the result of that wrath follows immediately:
Sing, goddess, the anger of Peleus’ son Achilleus and its devastation, which put pains thousandfold upon the Achaians, hurled in their multitudes to the house of Hades strong souls of heroes, but gave their bodies to be the delicate feasting of dogs, of all birds, and the will of Zeus was accomplished since that time when first there stood in division of conflict Atreus’ son the lord of men and brilliant Achilleus.14
The greatest hero causes the greatest loss of lives—and to his own side much more than to the enemy. The horrors of war, a major aspect throughout the Iliad but especially in its last third, outweigh any glorious feats of arms, as the undig- nified treatment that the bodies of the fallen receive from wild dogs and carrion birds on the battlefield attests even before listeners or readers encounter any of the military action that will follow in the story. From the first, the poet empha- sizes the immorality of war. The dead, friend and foe alike, are due their ritual burial. The violation of corpses either by humans, as will happen to Hector’s body, or by animals through lack of burial, is a sign of the barbarism to which human nature is capable of sinking. The Iliad thus begins with the poet focusing on the victims of war even before the poem’s chief hero swings into action. The formation of two large armies in preparation for a decisive encounter replaced by a ferocious duel had opened Troy in its original version. The direc- tor’s cut begins on a radically different note. Initial texts with a map of the eastern Mediterranean still introduce us to Agamemnon, Menelaus, and Achilles. We are told that Agamemnon’s drive for total dominion has been exerting immense pressures on the Greek military alliance. Simultaneously we hear overly dramatic music and then the tread of soldiers on the march. This sound becomes ever louder. Then Petersen fades in on an empty desert plain. Now a dog appears and moves across the deserted landscape. The buzzing of flies that becomes audible on the soundtrack alerts us to the presence of dead
no flag.” Achilles’ mother should not tell her son that stories will be written about him even if they will be. 14 Iliad 1.1–7. The translation is by Richmond Lattimore, The Iliad of Homer, new ed. (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2011), 75.
I always liked it. It was in the script like that, but we never used it. I liked it because it said so much about the tragedy of the whole situation…. [The dog] finds some bloody remnants of obviously a fierce battle, and then finally he sees the crows up there and finds [his] dead master…and then he looks up, and here’s already the dreaded stomping [of boots] again…that means the next battle is coming…. no words, nothing, but it says…everything about the insanity of this all, and the tragic tone.
Devastation, multitudes of dead heroes, birds (but not dogs) feasting on corpses—Petersen’s opening sequence effectively expresses these Homeric aspects without forcing viewers to endure the aftermath of excessive blood- shed and carnage and the desecration of dead bodies. Such restraint works well, not least since most of the time we see only what the dog sees, often in close-up. This contrasts with the perspective of the omniscient narrator in the Iliad, who tells us about the carnage of war in the verbal equivalent of a high- angle (or bird’s-eye view) panoramic long shot. Homer’s summary language in the proem is more gruesome than are Petersen’s images of details, but Petersen turns the impersonal bloodshed reported in Homer’s proem into something more powerful to us by making it personal, indeed presenting it from a non-human perspective. It is altogether fitting, then, that toward the end of the film another dog should unexpectedly appear among the corpses littering
15 The sorrow of dogs for dead masters appears in an epic simile in Quintus of Smyrna, Posthomerica 2.575–579. The simile is not warlike (dogs mourn for a hunter killed by boar or lion), but its context is. It occurs after Achilles has killed Memnon the Aethiopian in a duel. No earlier example of this simile exists. The context is poignant, for in Book 3 Achilles himself will die.
3 Petersen’s Epic Heroes: Das Boot and Troy
Das Boot (1981) is adapted from an autobiographical novel by Lothar-Günther Buchheim about his experiences as a war correspondent for the German navy in World War II. Both novel and film tell the story of a German submarine on its dangerous journey in the Atlantic and Mediterranean.17 Its Captain and crew survive all dangers, often by a hair’s breadth. The main reason is the Captain’s sea-faring experience and his ability to keep cool and show grace under pressure. The submarine manages to return to the port of La Rochelle in France, from which it had begun its odyssey. Viewers have by now become emotionally involved with the men’s fate. But a wholly unexpected Allied air strike destroys the submarine and kills most of the men, including the Captain. Screenwriter and director Petersen shows different sides of warfare: heroism and horror, excitement and boredom, and the impossibility of “moral clarity,” to adduce an expression much touted in the u.s. during the time Petersen made Troy. The main advertising slogan on German posters announced Das Boot as showing Eine Reise ans Ende des Verstandes: a journey to the ends of the human mind and of rationality and sanity. Although it came more than two decades later and despite obvious differences between ancient myth and mod- ern history, Troy, Petersen’s second war epic, echoes Das Boot in several respects. This is best seen in the character of the Captain Lieutenant (Kapitänleutnant), the submarine’s commander, who is a modern relative, as it were, of Petersen’s Achilles. Like Achilles in Troy, the Captain of Das Boot is not committed to, or even interested in, the war or his country’s supposedly glorious cause; he is con- cerned primarily with and for his men. Much like Achilles, he does his job; unlike Achilles, however, he is uninterested in personal glory although he is a hero who has been awarded the Iron Cross. He informs his men that the
16 See also Federick Ahl, “Troy and Memorials of War,” in TROY, 163–185. 17 Das Boot exists in different cuts, the longest of which ran to six hours. The film was origi- nally released to theaters in a two-and-a-half-hour version; five-hour versions were broad- cast in Europe in 1984, 1985, and 1988. For theatrical showings in 1997, Petersen prepared a “Director’s Cut” running three and a half hours. An almost five-hour version appeared on home video as “The Original Uncut Version.” The following comments are based on the director’s cut.
A later sequence brings a counterpart and comments on the one just described. The Captain and some of his officers are on board a German supply ship. They neither pay attention to nor return the Nazi salute with which they are greeted. The ship’s captain mistakes a uniformed officer for the Captain, who is not in uniform and looks thoroughly unheroic, and welcomes the wrong man: “a hero in person; I’m thrilled” (ein Held, leibhaftig; bin begeistert). He is clueless about what the men have been through, something he has never expe- rienced himself. Soon he wants to hear all about the gallant exploits of “the heroes of the deep, the gray wolves” (die Helden der Tiefe, die grauen Wölfe), as he calls them. As is expected of him, he proposes a toast to the German subma- rine fleet and “our beloved Führer.” After being interrupted, he does not insist on the toast or the expected formula. He now realizes that empty heroics and patriotism cut no ice with these men. The war correspondent on board the submarine is modeled on Buchheim and, to readers and viewers of Das Boot, serves as a figure of identification: someone who at first only observes but is then drawn ever deeper into what he watches and records. Petersen gives him a brief speech to explain why he is there:
I wanted this for myself. To stand, once in my life, before the Implacable. Where no mother looks after us. Where no woman crosses our path. Where only Reality rules, brutal but great.18
Now Petersen cuts to a close-up of the Captain. The stony expression on his face tells us that he knows just what the reporter is talking about, something that he himself may have believed once as an eager or romantic young man. The reporter then comments on his own words: “I was completely drunk on that kind of talk” (Ich war ganz besoffen davon). This, too, may apply to the Captain’s former self. By now, of course, he has lost all illusions. In Greek myth (but not in the Iliad), Achilles dies rather ignominiously at the hands of Paris, a far inferior fighter. It is really Apollo who kills Achilles by using Paris as his tool. In Troy, Achilles has a memorable death scene that results from his attempt to save the woman he loves during the night of Troy’s fall. This is not Homeric, but it makes for an effective and emotionally satisfy- ing conclusion to the story of the film’s greatest hero. In Das Boot the Captain, mortally wounded, watches the submarine sink. Dying, he falls below and
18 The original German is more powerful: “Ich habs ja selbst so gewollt. Einmal vor Unerbittlichem stehen. Wo keine Mutter sich nach uns umsieht. Wo kein Weib unseren Weg kreuzt. Wo nur die Wirklichkeit herrscht, grausam und groß.”
19 Here Petersen is in good cinematic company when he shows the death of the hero. Sam Peckinpah had closed Ride the High Country (1962), his elegy on the death of the West and its last old-timer hero, in a comparable way. 20 The Kapitänleutnant of Buchheim’s novel is based on Heinrich Lehmann-Willenbrock, commander of U-96. Buchheim had accompanied him on his patrol in 1941. 21 The film has several English-language titles: The Wooden Horse of Troy, The Trojan Horse, and War of the Trojans. My comments here are taken from the English subtitles of a French release now on dvd. I examine Ferroni’s film in connection with Troy in Martin M. Winkler, Cinema and Classical Texts: Apollo’s New Light (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2009; rpt. 2011), 109–111.
4 About This Book
As with the earlier volume on Troy, so here, too, its editor and its contributors, with two exceptions, are scholars of classical antiquity with serious interests in the cinema, not least as medium of epic storytelling. The exceptions are Wolfgang Petersen, who agreed to a kind of long-distance interview with the editor (Chapter 1), and Daniel Petersen, who reports on the production process of his father’s film (Chapter 2). These begin the present book. Chapters 3 and 4 examine major aspects of Petersen’s presentation of Homer: supposed errors and anachronisms and the director’s epic technique. Chapter 5 deals with the film’s treatment of the gods. Since this is the chief point of criticism leveled at Troy, the subject deserves a detailed examination. But the topic has wider ram- ifications, too, both for the presentation of gods in ancient epic (and else- where) and for that in different kinds of films. For these reasons Chapter 5 is the longest in the book, even though it does not exhaust its topic. Chapters 6 to
22 I briefly discuss the hero of Ridley Scott’s Gladiator (2000) from a comparable perspective and in connection with yet other films in Martin M. Winkler, “Gladiator and the Traditions of Historical Cinema,” in Winkler (ed.), Gladiator: Film and History (Oxford: Blackwell, 2004), 16–30, at 25–26.
8 then turn to some, but not all, of the film’s prominent individuals. Chapters 9 and 10 place Troy into wider contexts, first within cinema history, a topic that has been dealt with in some of the earlier chapters as well, and then within modern cultural history. The chapters on Homer, Troy, and related films and literary or historical themes reflect their authors’ different but mutually complementary perspec- tives and invite intellectual and emotional engagement from the book’s read- ers. Such engagement need not only take the form of agreement. Of course, all contributors hope for at least a measure of sympathetic interest from readers, but reasoned and spirited disagreement, especially if it eventually finds its way into print, is useful as well. It serves to advance our understanding of the com- plexities inherent in the translation of an ancient literary work into a modern visual medium. To address as wide a readership as possible, one that ranges from specialists via lovers of antiquity and cinema to students in such aca- demic disciplines as Classical and Film Studies, Comparative Literature and Cultural Studies, to name only a few, contributors have refrained from all aca- demic and obfuscating jargon. All Greek terms have been transliterated, and passages from Homer or other classical authors appear in translation. No single study can exhaustively demonstrate the importance of Homer, the composer or creator of the earliest surviving stories from antiquity, for the cin- ema, the most influential modern medium of storytelling. The present volume, then, stands as a small tribute to Homer’s influence and some of its ramifications in one particular, and particularly noteworthy, case. From different perspectives but united in this one starting point, the book’s interpretive chapters will attempt a new critical evaluation of the film, chiefly based on its director’s cut.
Martin M. Winkler
The following is the edited version of an “interview” conducted long-distance by e-mail in the winter of 2010. It is meant to supplement more general inter- views of, and conversations with, director Petersen that were published in newspapers and magazines in connection with the theatrical release of Troy in 2004. The most important of these are listed in the bibliography of Troy: From Homer’s Iliad to Hollywood Epic; some of them are quoted in excerpts in that volume as well. An overview of Petersen’s career as a filmmaker up to Troy is provided in my “Editor’s Introduction” to that volume on pages 4–9, with quo- tations from interviews. Below, editorial annotations have been added in square brackets. The prose translation of the Iliad from which Petersen quotes is by Samuel Butler.
You learned Greek and Latin at a traditional German high school and read parts of the Homeric epics in the original. Could you briefly describe the role these courses played in your education and later life? As a teenager, did you actually like the ancient cultures?
I would imagine that no thirteen- or fourteen-year-old student anywhere really “likes” to learn Latin or Greek. It is quite cumbersome to learn an ancient lan- guage that nobody speaks anymore and on top of it uses a completely different alphabet. At that age you don’t trust your teachers and parents when they tell you that all of this actually does make sense and will pay off at some point in the future. All the talk about training the brain, logical thinking and such—no teenager believes any of that. But there is no doubt that, once we actually got to the literature, the fun part, things changed for me. Particularly the epic sto- ries with plenty of gruesome action and heroes of all stripes proved enough to rope in the heart of a fourteen-year-old with plenty of fantasy and energy to spare. Achilles was definitely my hero. I’m not sure how much influence Greek and Latin had on my adult life, with the exception of this quasi built-in love for heroes and their stories. And that definitely helps when you are a film director!
In your career as a film director, were there moments during your work on a script or while shooting that reminded you of analogies to characters or themes you had
© koninklijke brill nv, leiden, 2015 | doi 10.1163/9789004296084_003
Up to then I was never really aware why I like duels in films: mano-a-mano stories as in One or the Other [1974; Petersen’s first thriller, made in Germany] or In the Line of Fire [1993], with Clint Eastwood vs. John Malkovich, or even my never realized concept for Batman vs. Superman. But who knows, maybe that affinity really does reach back into the existential conflict of ambivalence—as Goethe says: “Two souls, alas, reside within my breast”—and with that all the way back to my first experience with Achilles and Hector.
One of your most controversial German films, Die Konsequenz (1977), could be characterized as a modern tragedy, while Das Boot (1985) is an epic with tragic overtones and a tragic ending. Did either of these films remind you of classical parallels or archetypes when you were working on them? If so, did such remem- brances influence you in terms of the films’ content or style?
To me those films seem to have much more to do with the, generally speaking, sober German character and approach to life rather than with classical arche- types. As has been duly noted a few times before, Germans seem to have a strong affinity for tragedy. We are not exactly known for our comedic nature. Once you dive into all that ponderous Angst as a young person, you’ll never get that out of your blood, I guess. That’s perhaps why everybody always complains that I tend to kill most of my characters off! The Perfect Storm [2000] was a record in that regard: all six of my heroes die.
In the Line of Fire, Outbreak (1995), and The Perfect Storm are heroic stories in the tradition of action and adventure cinema, but below the surface they reveal aspects of a more tragic nature, such as a protagonist’s failure and flaws like stub- bornness or hubris. Were you thinking back to classical epic or tragedy when you made these films? If not, do you think that it is legitimate today for classical schol- ars to look for such parallels?
Again, it is very well possible or even probable that my sense for stories that are tragic in nature has been planted, or rather reinforced, through this intense contact with classical literature.
When you first read David Benioff’s script for Troy, you probably noticed immedi- ately how much Homer’s Iliad had been changed. Did this new version of the
Trojan War story appeal to you, or would you have preferred a storyline that kept closer to the Iliad? Were you concerned about how extensive and even radical the changes were?
I was very aware of the radical changes made and I fully supported them, even though my assistant wouldn’t stop nagging me to leave it open if Agamemnon dies or not. As you noticed, Benioff did not call his script Iliad, he called it Troy and based on the Iliad, and he did that for good reason. My intent was always to tell the story as it could have happened in reality, before it was relegated by the centuries to a more mythical realm. When Homer composed the Iliad, the events depicted, or the series of related and even unre- lated events, were already hundreds of years old. So what could have really happened in a world populated by humans, humans that have a very close rela- tionship to their religion and their gods? The gods are always present, just not in the flesh, but as ideas and guiding principles in their heads. There were also very practical reasons for changing the peripherals of the story:
1. A work of literature, even one that is passed along in history in oral form, is in a different category than film. They have different rhythms and rules. It very rarely happens that literature can be translated “literally.” Just as a translation can only be an approximation of the original, a film can only be an approximation of a book, or script in this case. 2. The original Iliad was most likely told in a series of events for many hours at a time. A film has two to three hours to cover the same ground— impossible. 3. The Iliad in its original has 240 characters, some even with identical names (Ajax!), and the story covers two different worlds with two differ- ent sets of characters—who will be able to keep track? 4. Who could possibly portray a god without looking ridiculous?
How closely did you work with Benioff on the screenplay before and during pro- duction? Did you change the script on your own?
We were in almost daily contact all the way through the production process, and David constantly made changes because it is a relatively fluid process with ever-changing parameters. On rare occasions I had to make changes on the spot without being able to talk to him first. Example: Scene at the beach, night; Achilles and Eudorus; Achilles sends his men home. The first few takes made it clear that the scene was just a tad too expositional, and we decided to shorten and improvise right there and then.
Before Troy, Warner Bros. had produced another epic film about the Trojan War, Robert Wise’s Helen of Troy (1956), to which Troy bears a number of similarities. Were you familiar with Wise’s film? If so, did it in any way influence you, either positively or negatively?
I’m sorry, but I have never seen that one. I always try to avoid other films with themes similar to what I’m dealing with so as not to get influenced, however subconsciously.
The city of Troy in Wise’s film was completely modeled on the Minoan palace of Knossos, while your Troy combines a number of diverse architectural styles: archaic Greece, Egypt, the Near East. Was there a thematic reason for this, for instance to point to the “multiculturalism,” as we call it today, of early antiquity? Even Hittites are mentioned in your film.
Minoan culture had already ceased to exist by the time the Trojan War is sup- posed to have taken place. Consequently, our set designer set out to create architecture that had to adhere to two principles: First, it had to be big enough to make an impact on the big screen. On television you can probably get away with the actual size of the buildings of the time, but in this case the buildings—for example the temple by the beach—had to be able to stand up to the epic story and the action. Secondly, the Trojan empire of the time, politi- cally speaking, stood at the crossroads of various cultures. We assumed the Minoan culture to be the basis. The proximity of the Hittite empire made for possible influences. The only other empire of considerable size and influence all the way up to Asia Minor was Egypt, so elements form this side worked their way into the concept, too. Since nobody knows exactly what the buildings would have looked liked, we took artistic license to create our own architec- tural canon.
The only other American film about the Trojan War after Wise’s and before Troy was the 2003 television film Helen of Troy, directed by John Kent Harrison and produced in anticipation of your film. Are you or were you familiar with that ver- sion of the story? If so, what is your opinion of it?
I had (and have) not seen that version, and I wasn’t interested in seeing it, either. I always intend to make any story I choose to tell entirely “mine” (so to speak), rather than produce a film in opposition or contrast to another one. (Especially when it is made for an entirely different medium, as is television.)
Troy begins with the romance of Helen and Paris, but then the love story of Achilles and Briseis begins to overshadow it, as viewers probably did not expect. There is also the marital love between Hector and Andromache. Was it difficult to balance three major romances without letting them get in the way of the film as a whole, which is about war and heroism?
To keep the focus on all the different aspects is very difficult, especially with a film of such magnitude and scope. I was constantly worried about the audi- ence and if I was possibly asking too much of them; there are so many different characters, storylines and destinies to keep track of. That is one of the reasons I’m so much happier with the director’s cut because it gave me about thirty more minutes to focus and deepen those diverging aspects.
After Troy was released, a number of critics and scholars pointed out modern parallels. You did so yourself on several occasions, drawing particular attention to Agamemnon’s similarities to President George W. Bush. Did you at the time also have in mind the similarity between Hector, who realizes that the war he is forced to fight is based on an unjust case, and American soldiers in Iraq, who may have realized that the justification for the war they were engaged in was also questionable?
It is certainly true that the ambitions of a few can bring great suffering to many. That was true then, and it is true now. I’m sure that any number of examples can be found in our more recent history, not just in Iraq. Unfortunately, it seems to be a human trait.
Achilles and Hector both face what might be called a hero’s dilemma: fighting and eventually dying for their country in a war that to them seems unjustified. In your view, does love of one’s country trump all reasons not to fight? Do you agree or disagree with the oft-quoted line of the Roman poet Horace: “Sweet and fitting it is to die for your country”?
This is a very difficult question, especially for me as a German. Unabated love for one’s country to the point of sacrificing one’s life had been so horribly per- verted during the Hitler years that it has become a very tainted feeling, tainted to the point of aggravation. So the contemporary German experience in terms of love for the Fatherland is a very difficult one. Even hearing the German national anthem being sung still has something almost unpleasant to it, and up to very recently the sight of a sea of flags with the German colors created a certain very deep-seated unease in me. To me our current reality is indivisible
One of the most gripping scenes in Troy is Paris’ duel with Menelaus. Dramatically, it is a pivotal moment and prepares the way for Hector to prove his greatness as hero, brother, and defender of Troy. But at the same time it must have been quite a shock to viewers who remembered a heroic Orlando Bloom from the Lord of the Rings films and now see a complete opposite. Could you describe how and why you emphasized the cowardice of Paris to such a degree?
I do not think I particularly over-emphasized Paris’ cowardice. Looking at the corresponding passage in Book 3 of the Iliad, Homer himself describes Paris very much as such: “Paris quailed as he saw Menelaus come forward, and shrank in fear of his life under cover of his men. As one who starts back affrighted, trembling and pale, when he comes suddenly upon a serpent in some mountain glade, even so did Paris plunge into the throng of Trojan war- riors, terror-stricken at the sight of the son of Atreus.” And a few sentences later, Hector says: “‘Will not the Achaeans mock at us and say that we have sent one to champion us who is fair to see but who has neither wit nor cour- age?’” Aside from that, I really admire any actor who readily accepts such a difficult task. Orlando was well aware of the fans’ possible dismay when he signed on, but as an actor he was looking forward to the professional challenge.
In ancient myth Achilles dies from Paris’ arrow to the heel, a circumstance that has prompted a number of rational explanations. His death scene in Troy is quite ingenious because you show us both a realistic death—Achilles is mortally wounded by several arrows—and a convincing explanation of the way the famous “Achilles’ heel” version may have come about. Was this manner of Achilles’ death intended simultaneously to affirm, deny, and explain the myth?
My goal was always to tell a realistic story, even though I didn’t want to drop the mythical aspect but rather give it a nod. I’m very proud of this solution, and whenever I watch Achilles’ death I’m moved. It really is realistic and still has the air of myth. The combination just works in this scene.
One of the most notable and most often criticized differences between the Iliad and Troy is the absence of the gods as characters. You explained the reason for this absence on several occasions, and a leading contemporary scholar of Homer, Joachim Latacz, has defended it. Troy actually adheres to the ancient epic
She is Achilles’ mother and as such bound to the “real” world, the world of humans. In Troy she is the only god straddling these boundaries. She is also there to ground Achilles’ and his initial hubris. Her insight into his fortunes formulates his fundamental life choice: quiet peaceful life or eternal fame. As such she has a pivotal role within the arc of the story I wanted to tell.
The similes in the Iliad often compare battle scenes to natural phenomena or disasters. Troy contains an exact visual equivalent of one such simile (Iliad 4.422– 456), when you showed a clash between Greeks and Trojans as if a wave were crashing down on top of something. How, and more importantly why, did you come up with this extraordinary shot, which, stylistically, is the most highly Homeric moment in the film?
Easy answer: it is a wonderfully expressive passage in the Iliad itself, which David [Benioff] replicated almost verbatim in the script. And it translates spectacularly to film.
You once spoke of a “tree of storytelling,” whose trunk is Homer and on which Troy represents one leaf. In ancient Rome, the Augustan poet Manilius used a comparable metaphor: the mouth of Homer is a spring from which all later rivers of stories flow. What prompted you to use the image of the tree to characterize Troy?
It is just a beautiful visual, and I felt it was very fitting. Homer is the seed from which all other literature grows, so the tree is a natural image to me.
Great narrative literature possesses strong visual qualities and has often been regarded as inherently cinematic, even if it was composed long before the inven- tion of the film camera and projector. Sergei Eisenstein, for example, considered certain passages in Paradise Lost as virtual blueprints for a screenplay, with directions for camera placement and editing provided in the text. Do you think such a perspective applies to Homer as well? Assuming that you read the Iliad again in preparation for Troy, did you notice any particular passages in the text that struck you as cinematic? While reading, could you already imagine how you might film a particular episode?
All throughout the preparation phase I had a condensed version and particular songs [i.e. books of the Iliad] with me. I can’t go into the minutiae here, but it is certainly true that everything in the Iliad appears almost to be written for the screen. That alone was a reason for me to make the film because there are [in Homer] so many cinematic scenarios with images of such power and intensity. It most certainly is no coincidence that a tale that was performed for many days in sequence would evoke images of such force to sustain the necessary momentum. These visuals would have been almost seared in everybody’s mind. And David Benioff took the best parts of it and integrated them into the screenplay. Nobody can possibly say that the Iliad is short on visuals. It’s all there, right for the taking.
The director’s cut of Troy is over thirty minutes longer than the original release version. In your introduction on the dvd you say that this is “the film I really envisioned all the time” and that the studio had imposed restrictions on you for length, violence, and nudity. How seriously did the compromises you had to make affect the earlier version of Troy?
When I created the Director’s Cut version with my editor Peter Honess, I was already aware how much more lively and how much more powerful it would be and how much better the understanding of the story is. The Director’s Cut is much closer to Homer in my understanding: more violent, emotional, and intense. I was already painfully aware how much of its essence we had lost with the theatrical version.
Was there anything in the first version that you were especially unhappy with? Besides adding and re-editing for the director’s cut, did you take anything out of the release cut?
Yes, we did take one scene out of the release cut. It is a scene in Paris’ bedroom with Helen closing the gaping wound in Paris’ thigh and Hector forgiving him for his cowardice. I felt that the scene didn’t work very well, neither from the acting nor from the directing point of view. Other than that we only added to it, the missing opening scene with the dog looking for his master, for example. It is a beautiful scene. And Priam’s wonder- ful scene that explains his blind devotion to the gods fell, too, and I’d missed it terribly. It gives so much more meaning to his decisions. In terms of violence, there had to be a compromise for the rating. The director’s cut is much closer to the blow-by-blow violence and quite graphic cruelty of Homer.
The opening of the Iliad states that the dead bodies of the Greeks became, in Richmond Lattimore’s translation, “the delicate feasting/of dogs, of all birds.” The opening of the director’s cut adapts this statement and expands on it, although the Trojan War has not yet begun. A stray dog roams over a battlefield, sniffs at corpses lying around, barks at the crows perched on one of them, and so finds its master, whose face it licks. This is a highly effective opening to an epic film about a devastating war. Why then was the scene with the dog, which lasts less than a minute and a half, cut from the release version?
The audience in the first test screening objected very strongly to it; they hated it with a vengeance. They did not understand that it signified a terrible, pro- longed conflict coming to a head with the following battle.
What else could you tell us about the director’s cut that you think is especially important or worth noticing?
I was particularly impressed with the grandiose work of music editor Roy Prendergast. He took the original score by James Horner and massaged it with great skill and talent to fit this new version. After all, we had to score thirty new minutes to fit seamlessly, without becoming repetitive. The only cue of Horner’s music that I didn’t like—the cue for the big duel—was consequently replaced with a piece that Prendergast fitted together from two or three pieces of temp music we had to buy. It’s a truly brilliant piece of music editing.
The original release version of Troy showed surprisingly little blood in its fighting sequences, although they were still intense. The director’s cut is more graphic. Why is there such a significant difference in your depiction of war- fare in the two versions? Did you try to be as realistic as possible in your battle scenes?
From an economic point of view the rating of a film is of enormous importance to the studio. The “younger” a film is rated, the better the earning potential because of the inclusion of a whole age group. We were going for a pg-13 rating, which precluded the use of a lot of blood and/or graphic violence. I made all the requested cuts, with the exception of one. I refused to cut the most crucial scene in the film: Achilles dragging Hector’s corpse behind his chariot. It is my opinion that the artistic integrity of the entire film would have been irrepara- bly compromised had this scene been cut. This is ultimately the reason that the original cut did not get the pg-13 rating in the end.
The Iliad is horrendously violent in its later books, with minute descriptions of dying and death and even grotesque details of bodily mutilation. Since it is a text, listeners and readers see such scenes in their imagination, whereas the cinema puts everything before the viewers’ eyes. What is your opinion about showing explicit acts of violence in a film like Troy?
In Troy there is nothing gratuitous about the violence. As you mentioned yourself, Homer goes to great lengths to describe it. It has certainly been an integral part of war at the time and thus is justified as reality. It is also the background to the dark side of Achilles’ character, the part that doesn’t care but goes about his bloody business: his plan to become immortal in people’s memories. And it is the background to Hector’s life. Hector wishes for noth- ing more than to live the quiet life that Achilles rejected but is drawn into the tragedy, anyway.
Achilles’ duels in Troy are highly stylized; the one with Hector could even be called a fighting ballet. Were you aesthetizing violence or at least running the risk of doing so? Were you concerned that viewers, especially teenagers, might regard this as a glorification of killing?
No, I wasn’t. It is the expression of these two characters’ destiny in life. Achilles is the born fighter, so elegant, so graceful, and dancing a kind of Dance of Death, in total control. In contrast to Hector: strong, but much less graceful, driven only by the wish to live an honorable life and defend what’s important to him. Whereas Achilles is gifted, Hector is a hard worker, duty-bound and honest to the end.
Zack Snyder’s 300, released by Warner Bros. three years after Troy, is a war epic about ancient Greece that is very different in tone and style from your film. It is, for one thing, far more explicit in its on-screen violence. Both you and Snyder used state-of-the-art computer-generated images to show huge armies, battles, and slaughter, but Troy is far more restrained. How would you characterize the differ- ence between these two films?
300 is much more stylized and cartoonish in its tone and images. It is, after all, based on a cartoon. And cartoon audiences have a very different acceptance level. If you are as stylized as 300, then you can get away with much more. Troy has been set up as a very different film, much more realistic, and the violence has a very different weight. It is more direct and affecting.
Many critics and viewers have taken the appearance of Aeneas at the end of Troy as a way to introduce a possible sequel. Is this a correct assumption?
Of course I had Virgil in my hand and thought about this. I even talked to Benioff about it. But Troy was such an enormous undertaking, and, thinking about all the hard work and the physical toll it took on everybody, I think I should probably leave it alone. In addition, it is rare to do a sequel and attain the same level of satisfaction as with the original work. The fear to repeat your- self is always there, too. Maybe I should just leave that one alone.
Troy is one of the most successful epic films about antiquity, and Greek myth and history are back on our cinema screens, in large part because Troy did for Greece what Ridley Scott’s Gladiator had done for Rome. Do you think that a sequel to Troy may yet be made? If so, would you want to direct it? Are there any other clas- sical subjects that might interest you?
There is another story, the Odyssey, by the same gifted author! It also is and has forever been one of my favorite stories. But so far I haven’t seen a scripted version that has inspired me. Still, never say never.
Daniel Petersen
Shepperton Studios, London. The set decorator guides us through an exquisite exhibition of objects from the late second millennium bc. Their range and rela- tively good condition astonish us. There are bronze tripods, leather belts, leather bags, leather stools, leather chairs, votive figurines, libation vases, even an example of the kind of two-handled cup (depas amphikypellon) mentioned by Homer (Iliad 1.584), along with earthenware mugs, earthenware cutlery, golden plates, bowls of various sizes, a waist-high bronze statue from the clas- sical Greek period, a miniature of Poseidon’s statue in the National Museum in Athens—these two must have been placed here temporarily on their way to another department. They were followed by a procession of regal wooden cabinets ornamented with well-preserved decorative paintings, oil lamps and massive lamp holders, wooden and stone-fired animal figurines, earthenware trays decorated with cuneiform letters; sparkling gold objects resembling coins. Finally an entire battery of more than man-high royal scepters, each different from the other, grouped in threes. Each group carries a name: “Agamemnon,” “Nestor,” “Priam,” and so on. One will be chosen for its designated recipient. In an adjoining hall all those precious relics are being fabricated by the dozen. Catalogues from museums all over the world lie open on the worktables, sets of Mycenaean winged figures, all alike, are being hand-painted. Simon Atherton, the head of the special props department, is exceedingly nice and doesn’t look like the kind of man you’d imagine traveling the globe, attending weapons trade shows, fairs, and exhibitions and, as soon as he’s home, rebuilding whatever weapons have caught his fancy. He explained to me later that weapons were his passion but that he had absolutely no desire to use them in real life. The only thing to do was to use them in a virtual reality, where the only blood that flowed was fake. He shows me around, obviously proud of his accomplishments, and explains that he has to make spears, battle axes, and shields in his workshop for about 3,000 Greeks and Trojans. They are made in part from metal so they will look great on screen and in part from plastic so they can be carried around—and to make sure that the number of extras fallen in battle doesn’t rise unnecessarily. Holding a sword in my hand, I think our ancestors must have been much stronger than us. Simon has made dis- tinctly different designs for Greeks and Trojans to keep the warring parties from decimating their own kind. Using basic guidelines—Greeks round,
© koninklijke brill nv, leiden, 2015 | doi 10.1163/9789004296084_004
Trojans angular—Simon has forged individual designs for swords, shields, and spears to identify each people participating in the war: Myrmidons, Ithacans, Thessalians, Mycenaeans, Spartans, and whoever else was in the war. Every single piece had to be painstakingly executed, quite apart from the fact that the swords, daggers, or shields specially made for leading characters like Achilles, Agamemnon, Hector, Odysseus, and others had to have their own individual designs. Simon admits to getting carried away by this titanic assignment, creat- ing the armaments for two entire Bronze-Age armies. It could be risky to equip just a few warriors fighting in the foreground with clearly identifiable weapons and those in the background only with toy swords. The reason is the chance, even if it is only remote, that in the heat of battle the props in the foreground will get battered, nicked, or otherwise banged up. In that case they can be exchanged for undamaged props from the background. Simon has to pay close attention to another problem. The weapons really have to work the way they are intended to. According to him, some of the shapes for the shields shown on Greek vases, for example, are not suitable for battle. They are designed for exhibition and for showing off. The shield of Achilles, for instance, is an aesthetic creation that nobody in his right mind would use to ward off lethal blows. Its weight alone would have made lifting it the bearer’s toughest job. The current version of this shield has been properly slimmed down and cleaned up. Simon doesn’t want to give up on the narrow band of images around the center because it is so striking. His images show episodes from the Trojan War, an insider gag that exhibits an elegant cascade of self-reflection and divine intervention. Achilles carries a shield into a battle whose entire history and future are already carved onto it. Simon shows me a finished but now discarded shield in his office. The costume designer said: “No, no; it doesn’t match the colors of the costumes.” Too bad, since Simon thinks this shield is actually more beautiful than the one being used. Later, during breaks in the set changes, I get to talk to Lesley Fitton, the British Museum expert on the late Bronze Age who is present on several days partly as adviser, partly just for fun. In view of the historical inaccuracies, not huge but still noticeable, I expected her, if not to faint, then at least to object, but she finds everything exciting and quite amusing. I ask her to explain to me the gifts presented to Zeus that are lying at the feet of his statue. She is very happy that some of them are accurately Anatolian and fitting for the time period we’re dealing with. Various other objects, however, are more Assyrian or Persian and don’t really belong here, but at least they look pretty good. Finally Lesley asks, rather cautiously, what might happen to these props after filming. I’m amazed: here’s somebody surrounded every day by the real things who is interested in our fakes.
INT. Palace of Troy: Priam’s Throne Room. C Stage, Shepperton Studios. This is the first day of shooting in Priam’s impressive throne room. A massive statue of Zeus glares down into the spacious hall, which is not quite ready, though. Helping hands are flying around fixing up a few places. Awe-inspiring statues of the gods line a long, sparkling pool of water. Poseidon’s trident is so heavy that invisible nylon threads hanging from the ceiling are needed to hold it in place. Stone seats for Priam’s noblemen and high priests are meticulously lined up. The heavy, thick columns and solemn faces in the scenery seem stony, eter- nal, and massive, even though they have warning labels affixed behind their knees: Fragile. Handle with care. Busy temple servants have devoted various golden gifts to Zeus, the Father of the Gods: sphinxes, winged lions, bearded heads of steers. The combination of predominantly Minoan elements, such as the octopus painted on several large vases, with the architecture, which shows Hittite influences such as the winged sun under Zeus’ feet and the tribute procession by his side, is less an indiscriminate mixture of styles, with everything tossed together from what picture books of the Archaic Period had to offer, than a curious historic and dramatic constellation. Troy was within the Hittite sphere of influence at the time of the war. But the Minoans could not have had any noteworthy contact with Troy in those years. So the production design corresponds to the authen- tic history of Troy by using Hittite forms and shapes, while the echoes of archaic Crete embody a self-contained, purely aesthetic bridge linking the Trojans to the Minoans, who, according to one theory, may themselves have been overrun by the Mycenaeans two hundred years earlier. The most elegant example of all this syncretism is the cuneiform inscription over Zeus’ head, which quotes from a Homeric Hymn. What a pity the audience won’t be able to notice these details. INT. Mycenae: Agamemnon’s Throne Room. D Stage, Shepperton Studios. This throne room leaves no doubt about who has gone over to the Dark Side in this story. This monster of monolithic mass was necessary for its dramatic expres- siveness. In Troy, King Priam sits almost on a level with his aristocrats. At Mycenae, a visitor who seeks an audience with Agamemnon has little choice but to mount the stairs that lead up to him and, even if he is himself a king, to extend his greetings while standing a step below the level of the Great King. In Troy, all kinds of precious offerings are lying at the foot of the statue of Zeus; at Mycenae, they are jam-packed alongside the ascent to Agamemnon’s throne. In council, Priam and his noblemen gather around a common center, the pool, which reflects the assembly back on itself. Agamemnon’s hall is not designed to hold conferences of any kind. The king presides in the shadow of the two growling Mycenaean lions high above on the wall. The more people are in the
Agamemnon; the blade will be digitally inserted into the shot later. His eyes wide with fear, Agamemnon sinks to his knees. That hurts the first time because nobody pushed the cushion under his knees that Briseis had squatted on at the start of the shot. Roger will be responsible for this from now on as well. When this set up is completed, Agamemnon is sent away. When he comes back, he looks the same as before except for the gaping wound in his neck. A colorfast flap of neck, made from gelatin with a stab wound modeled on, has been glued onto Brian. Inside, there’s a hidden tube for blood that runs down beneath his armor and connects with some sort of oxygen cylinder that can be pumped by hand to make the blood spurt from the wound. And: “Action!” Rose goes for it, pulls back the handle, Brian slumps to his knees. It looks good on the monitor, but shouldn’t blood be spurting from the wound? “It is. It’s all over Roger.” Everyone looks at Roger who’s wiping himself and the floor with paper tissues. Why don’t we see it in the frame? They try it with more blood. This works better, but it takes longer to set up again. What’s going on? “A blood clot,” Brian says. Assistants fiddle around with the tube. Blood drips through here but is stopped there. Brian finally gets a bypass that leads directly from the wound over his back to the pump. Now the blood spurts and gushes the way it’s supposed to. EXT. Troy: Battlefield. Cabo San Lucas, Mexico. Paris turns to Menelaus and takes a few measured steps towards him since he doesn’t want to trip over the rails that have been laid out for the camera dolly. As Paris comes closer, the old trick of zooming out at the same time makes Paris’ determined face bulge out from the plane of the image. When he briefly tilts his head up towards the sun, we have all we need. The camera turns around to face his opponent, and we have an unobstructed view of the Greek army. Menelaus can hardly wait. We see the scene from Paris’ point of view, staring from under his helmet at Menelaus, who is huffing, puffing, and stamping his feet. Then Paris looks up at Helen and back, as Menelaus is already right in front of his nose and takes a whack at him. The camera movement takes too long; Menelaus would have had plenty of time to chop Paris’ head off. Paris can only keep his eyes on Menelaus. That’s still enough time for the angry giant to whack at him so pow- erfully that his sword misses the Steadicam by a hair. “Perfect,” says Wolfgang, but he wants a few more grunts and groans. He doesn’t need to tell Brendan that twice. Brendan scraps poor Orlando all over the place, grunting and groan- ing until he finally steps on him. The Steadicam operator who is closely follow- ing behind has to take care that Orlando doesn’t bump into the camera. It looks pretty scary a time or two. Bathed in sweat, Brendan and Wolfgang review the manoeuver, and Brendan suggests to Wolfgang how he could whack Orlando more effectively. Wolfgang buys it. Right before seven o’clock, Brendan stomps
We’re hurrying to complete the long shot of tiny Achilles driving his chariot up to the enormous walls of Troy from the side of the field. Brad pulls in the reins, stops the chariot, and climbs down. But before he can say anything, the horses decide to run off, the chariot bumping along behind them. People run, ride, and drive after them to catch them and calm them down. But that was it for this shot. We continue with two other dark horses; the first ones need rest. Now their heads aren’t in the frame, and they can easily be held in place. This is the close shot of Brad climbing down from the chariot and yelling for Hector, and every- thing goes as planned. In between, completely out of order, we shoot Paris’ low-angle point-of-view glance up to the grandstand at Helen or, if you look closely, her double. This close to the finishing line, we take everything we can. On the next and last day of shooting for the main unit we start off with yes- terday’s leftovers, first the pov from the grandstand down to tiny Achilles approaching. The ride over the dunes has been cancelled because the sand won’t support the chariot. Then the shot from the side, where the horses had run off. Today they stay, so Brad can climb down confidently and yell for Hector. The sun hides behind a cloud at the end of the first take. The cloud is not huge but very thick. Nothing to be done. Time leap. Achilles has killed Hector and ties his body to his chariot to drag him through the dirt to his camp. It’s still cloudy, this time with a larger and darker cloud. A few drops of rain are falling. They set up the next shot as if nothing were wrong. Not long after, the sun comes back. The make-up girl sprays some sweat on Achilles’ muscles, Hector’s double takes his position, and three cameras shoot a couple of takes. Then the continuation: Achilles lashes his horses, takes a victory lap in front of the grandstand, and drives off towards the beach, with Hector behind. Several cameras follow his every move. During the rehearsals a professional drove the chariot, dragging a dummy, one of those foam manikins that have been lying around on the battlefield by the dozen. But it was only a rehearsal dummy, to be replaced when a take is scheduled. The other one bears a close resemblance to Eric. It has the wobbly but strong consistency of a human body and is artificially weighted. Wolfgang will join the Second Unit to inspect the duel between Achilles and Hector. Stunt and Second Unit director Simon Crane and his people cho- reographed the fight a long time ago and rehearsed it with the actors until they dropped. It just has to be shot. After the main unit is finished, the Second Unit still has about ten days to go: a few follow-up shots and about a week for the fight Achilles vs. Hector, which Wolfgang is planning only to “supervise,” whatever that means. The fight may be at the heart of the movie, but since Simon and his stunt people have choreographed it independently
Fortunately this is okay, for the discovery of the Trojan Horse in the morning doesn’t need bright sunlight. The scene is supposed to be shot in one day. Wolfgang had always believed it would take two. But after a visit to the beach he began to think they could shoot it in one day if the action guidelines in the script could be tightened up. One extreme long shot of the empty beach with the Trojan Horse on it, to be the point of view of a guard posted on the wall of Troy, would have gone anyway, since you can’t see the beach from the city. We can let a sentry on horseback convey the news that the Greeks have departed, riding like crazy from the beach up to Troy. It would also be too repetitive to show the approaching Trojans on the sand dunes, climbing off their horses and, slack-jawed, standing next to the wooden horse and delivering their lines. We just cut the first part, which saves us the time necessary to shoot on the dunes, and start down on the beach instead. We can save a day of filming and a bundle of money by not shooting footage that might well have wound up on the cutting room floor. It’s much more effective to show the Horse and the amazed Trojans in one fluid shot. Now it works like this: after Achilles’ dialogue with Eudorus at night we see a rider dashing over the plain who seems to have something to report. Then we cut to the rulers of Troy, who hesitantly approach the massive soot-blackened Trojan Horse—just as the apes in 2001 approached the monolith. That’s all you need. At least that’s the theory. The location itself looks great. The horse alone is breathtaking, all the more so in that it’s towering, in lonely splendor and men- ace, over the deserted beach with a roaring Pacific, charred remains of tents, grotesquely twisted bodies, and smoldering skeletons of ships. The horse imparts a post-apocalyptic atmosphere to the scenery. Further down the beach, towards the temple, the ships, tents, and the other props that had been here are crowed together; after all, the Second Unit is still filming the Battle of the Barricades at night. Bulldozers have moved enough sand to make a broad hill across the beach that will hide all that. When we’re finished here, every- thing will be set up exactly as before. The ships’ masts that stick out above the hill will have to be removed digitally. Considering the effort it takes, the actual shooting goes relatively quickly. Put a couple of cameras on rails, set the lights, dismiss the stand-ins, get the actors, and have them walk to the horse and stare. According to the position of the sun, we look first in the direction of the temple and the hidden ships. Next up is the dialogue, right after lunch. How will things go from here? Not easy to say, since the present position of the sun is tricky. A camera tilt over the dead bodies and across the ground up to the living won’t leave much room for the boom or its shadow. The other side of the beach is next. A reverse shot means that everything—cameras, video village, make-up bags, catering coolers, and
Translated by Martin M. Winkler
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Photographs: Behind the Scenes of Troy 51 Troy. Model set of
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and plastic tube for fake blood. and plastic tube for fake Mexico. Director Petersen (r.) and Patroclus (Garrett Hedlund) ready for his dying close-up, with chest plate with chest plate close-up, for his dying ready Hedlund) (Garrett and Patroclus (r.) Petersen Director Mexico.
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Photo 12 Mexico. The Wooden Horse on the beach outside Troy.
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Eleonora Cavallini
Despite many critics’ negative views, Troy has now been discussed, taught in schools, colleges, and universities, and written about for well over a decade, especially after the video release of the film’s director’s cut in 2007. A superfi- cial blockbuster can be quickly and easily forgotten, but this has not been the case for Troy. It will be useful for us to remember, and to take as our starting point, the well-balanced judgment by Joachim Latacz of the film’s original version:
Notwithstanding some weaknesses in dialogue or plot construction, Petersen’s film will be a surprising achievement for anybody who knows the Iliad. Petersen and [screenwriter David] Benioff should not be criticized that, in order to achieve such effects, they sometimes changed the sequence of events…or invented connections between and among char- acters and events about which our texts say nothing at all. The filmmak- ers are actually in excellent company. For example, Aeschylus, Sophocles, and Euripides, besides many other playwrights in fifth-century Athens, had done just that. They surprised their audiences with variants of the venerable matter of Troy, which was a recurring subject of their tragedies.1
Again and again, critics have written about the filmmakers’ choice to exclude the gods from the action. Here is an early example, commenting on an early draft of the script:
1 Joachim Latacz, “From Homer’s Troy to Petersen’s Troy,” in Martin M. Winkler (ed.), Troy: From Homer’s Iliad to Hollywood Epic (Oxford: Blackwell, 2007), 27–42; quotation at 41.—This chapter is based on my earlier “A proposito di Troy,” Quaderni di Scienza della Conservazione, 4 (2005), 301–334; also in Eleonora Cavallini (ed.), I Greci al cinema: Dal peplum ‘d’autore’ alla grafica computerizzata (Bologna: d.u. press, 2005), 53–79.
© koninklijke brill nv, leiden, 2015 | doi 10.1163/9789004296084_005
the ‘Gods’ are not in evidence throughout this script. The war between the Greeks and Troy is an affair of men, not their Gods and, although a number of the characters defer to the judgment of the Gods, others, such as Achilles and Hector, are contemptuous and dismissive of these predi- lections. Achilles and Hector depend on their own skill with weapons rather than the intercessions of Zeus or Apollo.2
This choice indicates that the filmmakers intended to impute to men, and to men only, all of the responsibility of war in opposition to the widespread but dangerous ideology of a Holy War: a war inseparable from religion. In contrast to the opinion quoted above, and with greater insight into the characters of Troy, Latacz writes: “one of the main charges critics have leveled against Petersen—that he omitted the gods from his narrative—is wrong. The gods are present in Troy. They are inside the humans.”3 On the following pages I examine some of the principal aspects and charac- ters of Troy that deserve a more dispassionate assessment than critics, includ- ing film and classical scholars, have shown the film.
1 The Trojan War in the Iliad and in Troy
A fundamental point for us to keep in mind is the following: to speak of histori- cal mistakes in Troy is nonsense. The film is inspired by a myth which, in turn, is the result of a process of imaginative amplification and transformation of some historical events. The Trojan saga and many other Greek myths were subjected to continuous re-writing for many centuries, again and again affected by changes in ethical and aesthetic codes and in social and political situations. During the Roman imperial age (1st to 3rd centuries ad) many writers, such as Dares the Phrygian (i.e. the Trojan), Dio of Prusa, and Dracontius, interpreted the story from a pro- Trojan point of view and no longer addressed a Greek but rather a Roman audience. Some of these works tended to secularize the myth by removing supernatural events or at least by reducing them to a rational level. An extreme
2 Frederick J. Chiaventone, “Troy Script Review,” dated May 24, 2004; at http://www.tnmc.org/ Untitled-Deadpool-Column/troy-script-review.html. Chiaventone is an American military historian and historical novelist. 3 Latacz, “From Homer’s Troy to Petersen’s Troy,” 42. On Petersen’s intention to re-imagine the influence of gods on human actions see also Jon Solomon, “Viewing Troy: Authenticity, Criticism, Interpretation,” in TROY, 85–98, at 97–98.
4 On the wider context see now Lawrence Kim, Homer between History and Fiction in Imperial Greek Literature (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2010), especially 85–139 (chapter titled “Homer the Liar: Dio Chrysostom’s Trojan Oration”) and 175–215 (chapter titled “Ghosts at Troy: Philostratus’ Heroicus”). 5 Maurizio Bettini, in Maurizio Bettini and Carlo Brillante, Il mito di Elena: Immagini e racconti dalla Grecia a oggi (Turin: Einaudi, 2002; rpt. 2008) back cover; my translation. 6 So Pierre Lévêque, The Greek Adventure, tr. Miriam Kochan (London: Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 1968), 50–52. 7 Apollodorus, Library of Mythology 3.32–35. 8 Cf. Iliad 11.670–762, where Nestor narrates in gory detail an old-style military expedition, replete with cattle theft, sharing of loot, and punitive expeditions.
9 Cypria, Frg. 23 (Bernabé) Cf. Iliad 9.145–287. 10 Cypria, Frg. 19 (Bernabé); Apollodorus, Library of Mythology 3.13.8; Iliad 11.780–782. 11 They are described at Iliad 24.448–456. On the Achaean camp as described by Homer see Paul Faure, La vie quotidienne en Grèce au temps de la guerre de Troie (1250 a.c.) (Paris: Hachette, 1975), 142–144.
As when the shudder of the west wind suddenly rising scatters across the water, and the water darkens beneath it, so darkening were settled the ranks of Achaians and Trojans in the plain.13
The duel between Hector and Achilles, told through an interplay of intense stares and lightning-quick movements and jumps on the ghostly background of an empty battlefield, is particularly accomplished.14 Any anachronisms that can be detected in the war tactics are already present in the original text, which is partially based on what early Mycenaean bards had described. Homer knew almost nothing about the Mycenaeans’ way of fighting, except for what had been reported in archaic poems in stereotyped and rigidly crystallized ways. For this reason combat techniques in Homer are not always the same. Ajax is the only hero who fights in the Mycenaean style, whereas Achilles and the Myrmidons fight according to more recent hoplite technique, which is described as follows:
as a man builds solid a wall with stones set close together for the rampart of a high house keeping out the force of the winds, so close together were the helms and shields massive in the middle. For shield leaned on shield, helmet on helmet, man against man, and the horse-hair crests along the horns of the shining helmets touched as they bent their heads, so dense were they formed on each other.15
Achilles’ armor is a hoplite panoply like the one he wears in the film. By contrast, Ajax’s armor and his use of an old-fashioned shield reflect Mycenaean custom.16
12 On the ships see, e.g., Iliad 1.300 and 18.3. The Homeric term orthokrairos means “with upright horns” because bow and stern were higher up than the rest of the vessel and looked like bull horns. 13 Iliad 7.63–66; quoted from Richmond Lattimore, The Iliad of Homer, new ed. (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2011), 188. 14 On Achilles’ jumps see especially Iliad 20.164 (comparison with a lion), 353, and 381–382. 15 Iliad 16.212–217 (Lattimore, The Iliad of Homer, 336). 16 Cf. Iliad 7.219–223.
The Homeric war chariots (harmata) show us that some Mycenaean war tactics are combined with later ones. A trace of their original function can be found only once in the Iliad, where the old king Nestor arranges his troops according to the old Mycenaean tactics, which consisted of lining up infantry behind chariots, from which warriors were given full freedom to fight and move while a charioteer took care of the driving:
First he ranged the mounted men with their horses and chariots and stationed the brave and numerous foot-soldiers behind them to the bastion of battle, and drove the cowards to the centre so that a man might be forced to fight even though unwilling. First he gave orders to the drivers of horses, and warned them to hold their horses in check and not be fouled in the multitude: ‘Let no man in the pride of his horsemanship and his manhood dare to fight alone with the Trojans in front of the rest of us, neither let him give ground, since that way you will be weaker. When a man from his own car chariot encounters the enemy chariots let him stab with his spear, since this is the stronger fighting. So the men before your time sacked tower and city, keeping a spirit like this in their hearts, and like this their purpose.’ Thus the old man wise in fighting from of old encouraged them.17
Nestor himself emphasizes the effectiveness of such an arrangement. But everywhere else in the Iliad these tactics seem to have been nearly completely abandoned. John Chadwick points out that war chariots had become obsolete weapons by Homer’s time and that their former use was no longer known: “In Homer chariots seem to be little more than taxicabs taking the warriors into and out of battle.”18 Chariots were the prerogative of princes and heroes, any- way. In his combat scenes Homer mostly moves his warriors according to the latest hoplite tactics, which are often reproduced in Troy; we can also see a battle array similar to the one Nestor suggested. The film’s scenes of warfare imply an accurate reading of Homer, even including the use of the cumber- some chariot-taxicab. The differences between Homeric fighting and that seen in the film are mainly intended to make the action scenes appear more realis- tic to modern viewers.
17 Iliad 4.297–310 (Lattimore, The Iliad of Homer, 138). 18 John Chadwick, The Decipherment of Linear B (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1960), 109.
2 Architecture
The matter concerning buildings and monuments is much more complicated. The reconstruction of Agamemnon’s gloomy palace at Mycenae looks satisfac- tory, with the famous Lions’ Gate the inspiration for the large lion statues deco- rating the wall of a large hall (megaron). The palace is a bare fortress endowed with a single entrance, the high-ceilinged megaron, and a double portico but without a central altar (eschara). Many furnishings are noteworthy for their craftsmanship. Other implements are made with materials of great value, such as the bull’s head with gilded horns, whose original was found at Mycenae. The impregnable walls of Troy—Homer calls it “the sheer city of Ilion” and “steep Ilion”—are most impressive.19 They have been reproduced according to Homer and on the basis of certain archaeological finds that date back to the Mycenaean age, for example earthenware representing walled towns whose towers are topped by merlons. Layout and appearance of the city itself is substantially plausible, with one portico copied from a fresco at Mycenae. This Troy, impres- sive and sumptuous as it looks, has been chiefly inspired by Homer’s descrip- tions, which follow some typical shapes of Late-Helladic palatial architecture. For instance, the excavations of the palace at Pylos reveal long sequences of square rooms thronged around a court. Dwellings are in the lower town and in the shade of Priam’s palace, which occupies an outstanding—literally and figuratively—position according to Mycenaean practice now confirmed by recent excavations on the site of Troy. Priam’s palace is briefly described in the Iliad:
Now he [Hector] entered the wonderfully built palace of Priam. This was fashioned with smooth-stone cloister walks, and within it were embodied fifty sleeping chambers of smoothed stone built so as to connect with each other; and within these slept[,] each beside his own wedded wife, the sons of Priam. In the same inner court on the opposite side, to face these, lay the twelve close smooth-stone sleeping chambers of his daughters built so as to connect with each other; and within these slept, each by his own modest wife, the lords of the daughters of Priam.20
Priam’s palace in the film exhibits such Mycenaean architecture, with an irregular shape and several storeys, even if individual rooms are quite
19 Iliad 9.419 and 13.773 (Lattimore, The Iliad of Homer, 227 and 312). Cf. Iliad 9.402, quoted below. 20 Iliad 6.242–250 (Lattimore, The Iliad of Homer, 177).
21 Iliad 6.88–92 and 292–311. 22 Cf. Iliad 10.430 (after Thymbra, a region in the Troad); the sanctuary of Apollo stood near the place where the rivers Skamander and Thymbrius met. Early Greek sources are Cypria, Frg. 41 (Bernabé), and Ibycus, Frg. S 224 (Davies). For later sources see, e.g., Euripides, Rhesus 224; Strabo, Geography 13.1.35; Virgil, Georgics 4.323 and Aeneid 3.85. See further J.M. Cook, The Troad: An Archaeological and Topographical Study (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1973; rpt. 1999), 117–123.
3 The Heroes: Appearance and Costumes
Long discussions have centered on the physical appearance of the Achaean heroes in the film. Unlike the Trojans who are, like Homer’s Hector, dark-haired,
23 Iliad 16.698–711. 24 Iliad 19.1–2 (Lattimore, The Iliad of Homer, 414).
25 On Hector’s hair color see Iliad 22.401–402. 26 Helen: Sappho, Frg. 23.5 (Voigt). “Golden-haired” (xanthos) is a standard epithet of Menelaus in the Iliad, beginning with 3.284, although several other heroes are also blond. Odysseus: Odyssey 13.399 and 431. Cf. Bernard Knox, “What Did Achilles Look Like?” in Bernard Knox (ed.), Backing into the Future: The Classical Tradition and Its Renewal (New York: Norton, 1994), 48–55; published previously as “The Human Figure in Homer” in Diana Buitron-Oliver (ed.), New Perspectives in Early Greek Art (Washington, d.c.: National Gallery of Art, 1991), 93–96. 27 The Achaeans were an Indo-European people who came down from the Balkans at the beginning of the second millennium bc, so it is possible that tall and fair- or red-haired people were still existing at the time of the Trojan War and could be so described by Homer. Some archaeological finds, in particular the skeleton of a man taller than 182 cm that was found in Circle A of the tombs of Mycenae, bear this out. About the iconographi- cal and anthropological problems connected with the poetic representation of gods and heroes in Greek mythology see in general Faure, La vie quotidienne en Grèce au temps de la guerre de Troie (1250 a.c.), 48–51. 28 FGrH 392 F 5b = Athenaeus, Deipnosophists 13.81 (604b). The quotation is taken from C.D. Yonge (ed. and tr.), The Deipnosophists or Banquet of the Learned of Athenaeus, vol. 3 (London: Bohn, 1854), 964. The poet referred to is Pindar (Olympian 6.71).
Archaeological research has revealed the presence, during the Mycenaean age, of cone-shaped helmets similar to the ones that Hector and other Trojan warriors wear in Troy. They also wear short skirts decorated with metal studs similar to the ones painted on the Warrior Vase discovered by Heinrich Schliemann at Mycenae and dating back to the Sub-Mycenaean age.29 On the other hand, Achilles’ armor recalls a later type from the eighth to the seventh century: Corinthian helmet, metal shin-guards, and a round and historiated shield. This armor is, however, compatible with the one Hephaestus forges for Achilles—excluding, of course, its scenic decorations.30 Homer, as we have seen, is by no means free of anachronisms and often refers to the military equipment of his own time rather than to the arms and armors of the Mycenaean age. In particular, Achilles’ shield as described in Book 18 is inlaid with metals of different colors, comparable to the daggers found in Mycenaean tombs, although Hephaestus’ technology is iron-working. On the other hand, Achilles’ costumes are highly stylized. They are dark blue (kyanos) and so allude to his origin: they were a gift from his mother Thetis, a sea goddess.31 Red, ochre, and yellow tones predominate in the other characters’ costumes. These colors are generally prevailing in Greek figurative arts, starting from the Mycenaean age. In particular, women’s dresses are partly inspired by Mycenaean frescoes but can also be linked to later iconography. Homer him- self constantly speaks of peploi.32 Some of the dresses worn by Helen and Andromache look very similar to those of some figures at Mycenae and Thera- Santorini, and their jewelry reproduces some Mycenaean pieces.
4 Achilles
Criticisms of Troy have not been limited to comparison with the Homeric text. A lot of superficial irony has been expended on other aspects of the film,
29 The vase, which can be dated to shortly after 1,200 bc, reveals the impoverishment of Mycenaean society during the last phase of its history, both because of its second-rate quality of painting and and because of the poor humble look of the figures painted on it. Anthony M. Snodgrass, Arms and Armor of the Greeks (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1999), 34, points out that it depicts an “antidote to the poetic glories of the Iliad.” 30 Iliad 18.478–608. 31 In Homer kyanochaitês (“with dark-blue hair”) is an epithet of Poseidon, the god of the sea (e.g. Iliad 20.144). At Iliad 24.94 Thetis wears a dark-blue (kyaneos) veil. The Greeks did not seem to have had an exact idea about the real color of the sea, which Homer often calls “black” (Iliad 24.79) or “wine-faced” (e.g. Iliad 23.316 and, especially famously, in the Odyssey). 32 First at Iliad 5.194 (chariot cover), 315 (Aphrodite’s garment), and 734 (Athena’s).
33 John Tzetzes, Commentaries on Lycophron 178. The view that Brad Pitt with his generous lips should not have played Achilles has been advanced by well-known classicist Eva Cantarella, “Ma Achille non può avere la faccia di Brad Pitt,” Corriere della sera (March 23, 2004), 1.39; available at http://archiviostorico.corriere.it/2004/marzo/23/Achille_non _puo_avere_faccia_co_9_040323008.shtml. This newspaper article has misled reviewers of the film and students of mythology, who often think that Achilles, the most handsome of all Greek heroes (cf. below), was actually rather ugly. Cantarella also affirms that Homer nowhere mentions Achilles’ killer, but this assertion is incorrect; cf. Iliad 22.358–360. 34 Achilles’ handsome appearance: Iliad 2.673–674 and 24.629–630; his hair color: 1.197 and 23.141.
For not worth the value of my life are all the possessions they fable were won for Ilion, that strong-founded citadel, in the old days when there was peace.38
Achilles has abandoned the battlefield because of his conflict with Agamemnon and threatens to return to Phthia with all of his Myrmidons, although after Patroclus’ death he will be reconciled with Agamemnon, showing that his soul belongs to the Greek army. Achilles pays no attention to social hierarchies but assigns the greatest importance to personal relations and outstanding fame. Besides, cunning intelligence (mêtis), although associated in the Homeric epics primarily with the hero of the Odyssey, appears already in the Iliad, as is shown by Hera’s beguilement of Zeus in Book 14 or by Antilochus’ victory over
35 Iliad 1.176 (Lattimore, The Iliad of Homer, 79). 36 Achilleid 1.269–270 and 480–481. Cf. Jonathan Burgess, “Achilles’ Heel: The Death of Achilles in Ancient Myth,” Classical Antiquity, 14 (1995), 217–244, especially 222. For the wider context, and incorporating earlier analyses, see now Jonathan S. Burgess, The Death and Afterlife of Achilles (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2009). 37 Iliad 21.166–167. 38 Iliad 9.401–403 (Lattimore, The Iliad of Homer, 227). The expression “unperishing glory” (kleos aphthiton, 9.413) defines the Homeric concept of heroism. At 9.410–416 Achilles reports Thetis’ prophecy that he can choose to remain at Troy and go to his glorious death or go back to his homeland and live a long but inglorious life. According to the ancient commentary (schol. Iliad 19.326), Achilles was destined to die, anyway, if he should leave for Troy. It is essential that Homer gives him a chance to survive nearly until the end in order to make his story more fascinating and his characterization of Achilles more incisive.
Menelaus in Book 23. In his dialogue with Odysseus, Achilles shows himself to be no less clever than his interlocutor. At the stage of epic composition which is represented by Homer’s poems, the most valiant and charismatic hero reveals certain anti-hero features. We are not that far from the seventh century bc, when Archilochus will declare, with no shame, to have abandoned his shield to save his life.39 Achilles leaves the fighting for the sake of a slave and concubine whom he declares to love with all his heart.40 He returns to the battlefield with the sole aim of avenging his beloved Patroclus, toward whom he feels a deep affection. In Homer their relationship is not homoerotic, but it will turn to homosexuality in the fifth century with Aeschylus’ Myrmidons.41 This impli- cation is suggested in the film by some details that undoubtedly derive from Homer, as when Achilles “laid his manslaughtering hands over the chest of his dear friend.”42 In the film, before landing on the beach outside Troy, Achilles holds the head of Patroclus, who is wearing Thetis’ talisman, in his hands. This amounts to a visual equivalent of the moment near the end of the Iliad when Achilles addresses Patroclus’ ghost, which appears to him in a dream, with the words “o hallowed head of my brother.”43 As I will show later, the accusation, often advanced, that Troy is homophobic is groundless. The film’s representation of Achilles can be fully defended from a Homeric perspective, except for his tenacious, irreducible hatred of Agamemnon, the villain whom Hollywood’s Manichaeism has deprived of any spirit of justice or loyalty. Among the multifarious problems that screenwriter and director had to face, an important role concerns the reconstruction of those parts of the myth that are related neither by Homer nor by other significant literary sources but are known only from short and very simple summaries written by late mythog- raphers. One of the most difficult tasks for the filmmakers was representing Achilles’ landing on the beach of Troy and his conquest of Apollo Thymbraeus’ temple. Screenwriter Benioff reconstructs the first stage of this legendary enterprise in the following way:
39 Archilochus, Frg. 5 (West). 40 Iliad 9.343. 41 The erotic nature of the relationship between Achilles and Patroclus is confirmed by Plato, Symposium 180a, and by Aeschines, Against Timarchus 1.141–151. Xenophon, Symposium 8.31, denies it. On the subject see the contribution by Horst-Dieter Blume in the present volume. 42 Iliad 18.317 (Lattimore, The Iliad of Homer, 405). 43 Iliad 23.94 (Lattimore, The Iliad of Homer, 474).
Hundreds of arrows whistle through the air. Four of the Myrmidons climbing down cry out as arrows hit them; they tumble into the sea. Other arrows rip into the packed sand or zip harmlessly into the water. The Myrmidons, clustered together and holding their shields above their heads, look to Achilles. Achilles makes a hand signal. Half his men split off and run to the fortifications on their left, howling like wolves as arrows rain down.44
Very little of this scene could be drawn from our scant mythographic sources.45 This means that Benioff had to look elsewhere. But if the description of the Myrmidons “clustered together” like a phalanx derives, as we saw, from Homer, the sequence in its entirety seems to be inspired by a modern literary work, in which a deep knowledge of classical myth coexists with an extremely loose and personal employment of this myth, which is manipulated and adapted to the writer’s purposes. In Christa Wolf’s short novel Cassandra, a polemical reinterpretation of the Trojan saga from a feminist (and Trojan) point of view, we read:
A formation of Greeks in close array, wearing armor and surrounding themselves with an unbroken wall of shields, stormed onto land like a sin- gle organism with a head and many limbs, while they set up a howl whose like had never been heard. Those on the outlying edges were quickly killed by the already exhausted Trojans, as no doubt it had been intended that they should be. Those toward the center slew altogether too many of our men. The core reached shore as they were meant to, and with them the core’s core: the Greek hero Achilles.46
The image of the compact wall, derived from Homer, has been utilized for one of the most spectacular sequences in Troy. The Myrmidons avoid the Trojans’ arrows by huddling together, protected by their shields. But Wolf’s text appears to underlie other passages of the screenplay as well. One of the most disquiet- ing and provocative scenes in the film shows Achilles beheading Apollo’s statue:
44 David Benioff, Troy (draft dated February 21, 2003), 48; italics added. 45 For instance Apollodorus, Epitome 3.31, merely states: “Achilles lands and kills Cycnus by beating his head with a stone.” 46 Christa Wolf, Cassandra: A Novel and Four Essays, tr. Jan van Heurck (New York: Farrar Straus Giroux, 1984; rpt. 1988), 72; italics added.
Achilles nods and walks over to the towering statue of Apollo in front of the temple. Eudorus watches in horror as Achilles climbs atop the statue and beheads Apollo with a swing of his sword.47
There is no reference to such a sacrilege in ancient myth. According to the tradition, the offense to Apollo consists of Trojan prince Troilus’ murder inside Apollo’s sanctuary, where Troilus had taken refuge as a suppliant.48 In Wolf’s novel Achilles, portrayed as an awful symbol of inhumanity, decapitates an unarmed and defenseless Troilus in front of his terrified sister. But if such bru- tality reflects Wolf’s emphasis on the hero as the villain of her story, the film rejects her negative characterization of Achilles. His aggressiveness turns into an act of irreverent iconoclasm. Far from being as respectful towards the gods and implacable to his human enemies as Homer’s Achilles had been, the hero of Troy is less fierce towards humans and contemptuous of gods. This is consis- tent with the film’s reduction of the gods’ role and of Homer’s archaic mysti- cism. And it underscores from a modern perspective, which is nevertheless not entirely in contrast to Homer’s, the irreplaceable value of human life.
5 Paris and Patroclus
The mythical tradition in general, and not only Homer, presented Paris in a bad light. Yet the young Trojan prince should be the true holder of royalty, not a bare subordinate of his pugnacious brother Hector, whose name means “Holder, Preserver.” After all, Paris had married the semi-divine Helen, and in some Mycenaean documents as perhaps in some Hittite ones Paris appears to have had a more prominent role than Hector. Moreover, the fact that Priam entrusts him with the task of negotiating with Menelaus at Sparta underscores the political importance of this character.49 Troy shows us an immature and irresponsible Paris even when he gets ready to deal with Menelaus, as in the
47 Benioff, Troy, 53. 48 Apollodorus, Epitome 3.32. 49 It is worthwhile to mention in this context the fascinating, if controversial, identification of Paris with Alaksandu, the king of Wilusa as preserved in the archives of Hattusha, the Hittite capital. In the Greek tradition—cf. Apollodorus, Library of Mythology 3.12.5, on Euripides’ lost play Alexander—it is Paris, not Hector, who completes the path of initia- tion that belongs to a hero’s career: parting from his original family unit, being nursed by a wild beast, and being trained by a tutor who lives on the fringes of society; finally receiv- ing a new name (Alexander) and returning home. Similarities with Achilles’ youth are self-evident.
Iliad. In the film, Paris is saved from Menelaus by human help from Hector, not by Aphrodite’s interference. This re-reading of Paris’ character is not entirely new. In the Posthomerica by Quintus of Smyrna of the fifth century ad, Paris takes over the reins of government after Hector’s death and displays great ora- torical skills. Dares and Dio of Prusa fundamentally rethought Homer’s Paris, whose shortcomings are now noticeably diminished. Paris changes from a weak, cowardly, and amorous fop into a responsible defender of the city, a function implied in his other name, Alexandros, and so deserves to replace Hector in the government of Troy. After the fall of Troy Paris sees to it that Helen and Andromache in particular are safe, and he stays behind rather than fleeing with them. In the director’s cut, however, we then see him as part of an orderly evacuation of the burning city. The fact that Paris is the one who has the honor to kill Achilles is well known to the Iliad, although there Paris acts as Apollo’s tool. Hector, just before dying, foretells Achilles’ destiny:
Be careful now; for I might be made into the gods’ curse upon you, on that day when Paris and Phoibos Apollo, destroy you in the Skaian gates, for all your valour.50
In the film, Achilles’ death is the fatal consequence of the absurdity of war and of the useless chain of revenge that it causes, as Odysseus had practically prophesied with his cautionary words to Achilles before the latter’s quarrel with Agamemnon: “War is young men dying and old men talking. You know this.” In the myth, the slaying of Achilles by Paris has something inglorious about it, above all the version in which the great hero was a victim of a treach- erous ambush set by Paris and Polyxena with the help of Apollo. (Cf. below.) In contrast to Paris, the character of Patroclus is left largely undeveloped. In the Iliad Achilles’ companion was not yet his lover; their homosexual relation- ship became explicit with Aeschylus’ Myrmidons. According to the mythical tradition, Patroclus was a long-standing guest at the house of Peleus, Achilles’ father, and has family ties with him. There also seems to have been family ties between Achilles and Patroclus, for in the version attributed to Hesiod the two really are the cousins they are in Troy.51 An ambiguous relationship between
50 Iliad 22.358–360 (Lattimore, The Iliad of Homer, 467). 51 As early as Hesiod (Frg. 212 Merkelbach-West), Patroclus’ father Menoetius was the brother of Achilles’ father Peleus. In other sources the degree of their relationship changes. Menoetius is the son of Actor, whose wife Aegina is the mother (by Zeus) of Achilles’ grandfather Aeacus; cf. Diodorus, Library of History 4.72.5; Pausanias, Description of Greece 2.29.2; Apollodorus, Library of Mythology 3.12.6. At Apollodorus 3.13.8 Patroclus
Patroclus and Achilles is perceivable in the film, although barely suggested. According to Homer, Patroclus is slightly older than Achilles.52 He is such a brave warrior that he kills Zeus’ son Sarpedon in battle and assaults the walls of Troy. But his most significant character traits are altruism and kindness, which he shows not only towards his companions but also towards Briseis and even to Achilles’ horses, which are entrusted to his custody. In a context as cruel and merciless as the Trojan War, Patroclus is an exceptional character, one that would have been worth far greater development in Troy than he receives. But the film’s Patroclus fulfills another purpose: to demonstrate how an evil fascination with warfare can affect young brains. Patroclus is tormented by a misconceived love for his homeland and does not hesitate to sacrifice his own life, deceiving Hector and causing Achilles’ vengeful rage. The film pre- serves Patroclus’ essential role as scapegoat whose death will decisively influ- ence the outcome of the war.53
6 The Chief Female Characters
Women in the Iliad are few, and their personalities are quite indefinite; never- theless they carry great importance because they influence men’s deeds. In the film, which is intended to satisfy modern audiences, the mythic heroines resemble modern women as much as possible. They are strong-willed and can interact and negotiate with their partners. In the case of Helen, the difference between her Homeric and cinematic representations is quite evident. A daugh- ter of Zeus in the mythical tradition, she is a disquieting and mysterious figure, always in the balance between human and divine. Historically, in Sparta and some other places Helen was worshipped as a goddess.54 In Homer Helen is presented as a mortal woman, but she keeps some significant features that
is the son of Menoetius and Achilles’ stepsister Polymele and seems to be younger than Achilles. 52 Iliad 11.786–789. 53 On this see Eleonora Cavallini, “Patroclo ‘capro espiatorio’: Osservazioni sul libro XVI dell’Iliade,” Mythos, n.s. 3 (2009), 117–129. 54 On the cult of Helen at Therapne near Sparta see Herodotus, Histories 6.61.3, and Pausanias, Description of Greece 3.19.9. Pausanias also mentions a temple dedicated to Helen as “goddess of trees” on Rhodes, but at Sparta Helen was worshipped in the shape of a plane tree, as can be deduced from Theocritus, Idylls 18.38–48. About Helen’s divine character in the Spartan tradition see Fernand Chapouthier, Les Dioscures au service d’une déesse: Étude d’iconographie religieuse (Paris: de Boccard, 1935); in general see now M.L. West, Immortal Helen (London: Bedford College, 1975).
55 Iliad 3.156–160. 56 Iliad 3.383–420. 57 See Eleonora Cavallini, “Afrodite Melenide e l’etèra Laide,” Studi classici e orientali, 48 (2003–2004), 239–256, with bibliography. 58 Iliad 3.161–263. 59 On the temple dedicated to Menelaus at Therapne cf. Pausanias, Description of Greece 3.19.9. At Odyssey 4.561–569 Proteus prophesies Menelaus that he will become immortal in the Elysian Fields as Helen’s husband and Zeus’ son-in-law. On Menelaus’ avoidance of other women in the Iliad see Athenaeus, Deipnosophists 13.3 (556d–e).
from me alone of all the Achaians he has taken and keeps the bride of my heart. Let him lie beside her and be happy. Yet why must the Argives fight with the Trojans? And why was it the son of Atreus assembled and led here these people? Was it not for the sake of lovely-haired Helen? Are the sons of Atreus alone among mortal men the ones who love their wives? Since any who is a good man, and careful, loves her who is his own and cares for her, even as I now loved this one from my heart, though it was my spear that won her.61
Achilles’ comparison of his and Menelaus’ positions seems to imply a provoca- tive intent. The affront the king of Sparta has suffered when his wife eloped is so serious as to involve the mobilization of an impressive army against Troy, but Achilles maliciously insinuates that the offended person’s brother in turn did not hesitate to offend the bravest of the warriors engaged in this war. The use of the word alochos is significant. The word generally means “legal bride.”62 But here it refers to Agamemnon and Menelaus’ wives and to Briseis. In this way Achilles puts Briseis on the same level as Clytaemnestra and Helen. We may have legitimate doubts about the seriousness of Achilles’ intention towards Briseis. Not much later he disdainfully refuses to marry one of Agamemnon’s daughters but declares himself disposed to marrying a girl chosen by his father Peleus, provided he, Achilles, should succeed in returning home after the war.63
60 Iliad 2.688–693 and 19.295–296. 61 Iliad 9.335–343 (Lattimore, The Iliad of Homer, 225). 62 At Iliad 1.114 it refers to Clytaemnestra, Agamemnon’s wife. 63 Iliad 9.388–400. On this see now Eleonora Cavallini, “La mêtis di Achille,” in Umberto Bultrighini and Elisabetta Dimauro (eds.), Homeron ex Homerou saphenizein: Omaggio a Domenico Musti (Lanciano: Carabba, 2013), 123–127.
In the film, Homer’s submissive Briseis is replaced by a proud and strong- willed woman, who combines some features of Cassandra, Apollo’s virgin prophetess, and, most of all, of Polyxena, a daughter of Priam.64 Polyxena, being loved by Achilles, agrees to meet him in Apollo’s temple. Here, with the help of the god who is angry with the hero for an old offence, Paris succeeds in shooting Achilles with a deadly arrow.65 The film’s representation of Achilles’ end, with its sentimental implications, seems to be chiefly inspired by the Roman de Troie of Benoît de Sainte-Maure written after 1165 and in turn inspired by the Latin versions of the tales of Dares and Dictys. Significantly, the Roman was dedicated to Eleanor of Aquitaine, a formidable queen in her own right. In this work the hero, blinded by amour fou for Polyxena, throws caution to the winds and falls into Paris’ trap. This version of the story was very successful in the Middle Ages and influenced even Dante’s imagination:
Helen I saw, for whom so many ruthless Seasons revolved; and saw the great Achilles, Who at the last hour combated with Love.66
Love conquers all: this is the poet’s warning, recalling a famous Virgilian phrase and an Ovidian mood.67 In late-classical and medieval imagery the cruel and absurdly late vengeance of Apollo on Achilles yielded to other, more charming scenarios, of which the filmmakers have opportunely availed themselves.
64 Cassandra is mentioned in the Iliad only at 13.365 and 24.699, but without any reference to her role as a priestess. 65 Ibycus, Frg. S 224 (Davies), recalls Troilus’ death (cf. above). Several sources place Polyxena at the ambush set for Achilles. The later tradition ascribes to Polyxena, offered to Achilles as an exchange for a suspension of the siege, a conclusive role in his death; cf. Hyginus, Fables 110; Philostratus, Heroicus 51.1–4; Tzetzes, Posthomerica 385–423. Cf. M.L. West, The Epic Cycle: A Commentary on the Lost Troy Epics (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2013), 241–243, on Polyxena in the Iliou Persis, with additional references. According to some sources, Polyxena may have been unaware that Paris was using her as a tool for his machi- nations; according to others, she was his accomplice. Philostratus, Heroicus 51.6, has her return Achilles’ love, even commit suicide on his grave. This romantic version is an adjust- ment of the traditional legend, according to which Achilles’ ghost would have demanded Polyxena’s sacrifice, as at Euripides, Hecuba 35–46, or Ovid, Metamorphoses 13.441–480. 66 Dante, Inferno 5.64–66. The translation is quoted from The Works of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, vol. 9: The Divine Comedy of Dante Alighieri: Inferno (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1886), 45. 67 Virgil, Eclogues 10.69: omnia vincit amor (“love conquers all”).
Wolfgang Kofler and Florian Schaffenrath
Film adaptations of literature have always had to face tough criticisms. The most likely reason is the continuing influence of the age of Romanticism and its concept of artistic quality: only a completely original work of art can be valuable or significant. Anything that is likely to raise objections of some kind or other is suspected of being mediocre, a deviation from an earlier and higher level of creativity, ingenuity, imagination, and overall greatness. Rarely are crit- ics willing to entertain, much less concede, an argument to the opposite: that works need not be contemptible because they are copies of originals believed to be vastly superior. Creators of works of the latter kind usually strive to pre- serve a measure of artistic and creative independence from their models. They may wish to avoid any slavish adherence to or simple imitation of the original works; they may further develop traits, ideas, or other concepts inherent in these models they may even succeed in improving on their models in certain regards. The artistic impulse for innovation or improvement, however, gener- ally goes unrewarded. Artists of the kind here outlined are quickly charged with misunderstanding a beloved model or with falsifying it beyond recogni- tion. Such is the case most frequently when the original work goes back such a long time that it has by now become part of our common cultural heritage. The closer a work of art is to the very roots of our civilization, the more we tend to treasure it. In some cases it may even acquire an aura of mystical or quasi- religious reverence. This process is especially noticeable with works of litera- ture. Whoever tampers with them is quickly charged with profaning them. Change, any change, is tantamount to sacrilege. Texts dealing with religion are a case in point, for these carry their own baggage, as it were, being weighed down by taboos. As foundational texts of Western culture, the Homeric epics have by now acquired a nimbus of such inviolability. Wolfgang Petersen’s film Troy, inspired by the Iliad, was therefore a risky undertaking from the beginning. For this reason it is downright astonishing that the film could achieve an overall positive reception despite negative criticism from a number of reviewers and scholars. It is quite possible that Petersen profited from the newly awakened interest in epic films set in antiquity that came in the wake
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I grew up with Homer…. I was in Hamburg in Germany, where I grew up; I was at school [Gymnasium, i.e. high school], where we learnt actually ancient Greek and Latin, so I actually read Homer’s work in the original ancient Greek language. So I was very close to it, very familiar.4
1 A survey can be found in Martin M. Winkler, “The Trojan War on the Screen: An Annotated Filmography,” in Martin M. Winkler (ed.), Troy: From Homer’s Iliad to Hollywood Epic (Oxford: Blackwell, 2007), 202–215.—The present chapter is a revised and updated version of Wolfgang Kofler and Florian Schaffenrath, “Petersens epische Technik: Troja und seine Homerische Vorlage,” in Stefan Neuhaus (ed.), Literatur im Film: Beispiele einer Medienbeziehung (Würzburg: Königshausen & Neumann, 2008), 313–330. 2 On this see Jon Solomon, “The Vacillations of the Trojan Myth: Popularization & Classicization, Variation & Codification,” International Journal of the Classical Tradition, 14 (2007), 482–534. 3 So according to the Internet Movie Database at http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0332452/ releaseinfo#akas. 4 Quoted from Troy in Focus, part 1: “Adapting Homer” on the director’s cut dvd edition of Troy.
Petersen’s words encourage us to regard Troy as a filmic adaptation of a literary text and to ask two main questions. These concern the extent to which Troy was really “inspired” by the Iliad, as a text card states, and the narrative strate- gies that Petersen employed to take into account his viewers’ knowledge, if any, of the ancient epic and their expectations in order to achieve a successful translation of a work of classical literature into the film medium. (The final credits of Troy list Homer immediately after director and screenwriter, both of whom in this way become Homer’s direct successors.) In answering the ques- tions here raised, we will equally consider aspects of content and form. In this, too, Petersen himself is our guide:
Name any dramatic plot turn, name any ingenious principle of portray- ing characters—Homer already applied them all, 3000 years ago. If there is something like a tree of storytelling, on which each book, each film, is a tiny leaf, then Homer is its trunk.5
1 Iliad 1.1: The Anger of Achilles
The greatest difference between the Iliad and any of its screen adaptations lies in the fact that films tend to tell the story of the entire Trojan War, whereas Homer’s epic does not. The Iliad deals with the anger of Achilles, his mênis, and this, the epic’s very first word, announces its theme. Homer limits himself to a number of episodes from the war’s last year. Girolami’s Fury of Achilles is, in this regard, comparable, for the film excludes the death of Achilles and the fall of Troy. By contrast, Troy presents a more panoramic view. It begins with the abduction, more willy than nilly, of Helen from Sparta and ends with the Trojan Horse, the city’s fall, and Achilles’ funeral. Still, Achilles’ anger is at its very center. This is true for the director’s cut even more than it was for the origi- nal release version. Petersen himself rightly emphasizes the greater depth of his new version, which allows for more detailed portrayals of his main charac- ters. He singles out the new opening and Odysseus’ first appearance on screen (on which below), then adds: “There are so many other moments. The relation- ship between Paris and Helen—their desperate love is so much more
5 Cited, in translation, from Tobias Kniebe, “Homer ist, wenn man trotzdem lacht: ‘Troja’- Regisseur Wolfgang Petersen über die mythischen Wurzeln des Erzählens und den Achilles in uns allen,” Süddeutsche Zeitung (May 11, 2004); at http://www.sueddeutsche.de/kultur/ artikel/607/31576/print.html.
Achilles, considered the greatest warrior ever born, fights for the Greek army. But his disdain for Agamemnon’s rule threatens to break the fragile alliance apart.
The film’s first sequence culminates in the duel between Achilles and the Thessalian warrior Boagrius. Here the festering animosity between Achilles and Agamemnon is especially noticeable. Achilles, sleeping off the effects of a night of lovemaking, has to be summoned to appear on the battlefield. Terse exchanges of words between Agamemnon and Achilles ensue. Agamemnon’s taunt (“Perhaps we should have our war tomorrow, when you’re better rested”) leads to Achilles’ truculent reply regarding Boagrius: “Perhaps you should fight him.” And: “Imagine a king who fights his own battles. Wouldn’t that be a sight?” Although he obeys and fights, Achilles makes Agamemnon, the commander in chief, look bad. Agamemnon’s reaction to Nestor is telling: “Of all the warlords loved by the gods, I hate him the most.” These words are an almost verbatim translation of Iliad 1.171.7 Later, the quarrel over Briseis leads to an open break between the two. This sequence even contains elements from the Homeric text that modern viewers who have a rudimentary knowledge of ancient poetry may well regard to be incompatible with the sublime pathos of classical epic. Agamemnon’s leering taunt that he will force Briseis to give him a bath that very night causes Achilles to retort with an angry “You sack of wine!” This very charge Achilles levels against Agamemnon in the Iliad, calling him oinobarês (“heavy with wine,” Iliad 1.225). For good measure Achilles adds “with the eyes of a dog, the heart of a deer” in the same line. The literal translations given here, however, hardly express the roughness of Achilles’ insults, which are more like our colloquial expressions such as drunkard or wino, treacherous dog, and coward or, even more colloquially, chicken.8 Related animal imagery recurs later as well. To
6 Quoted from Troy Revisited: An Introduction by Wolfgang Petersen on the director’s cut dvd of Troy. 7 On this and other such adherences to the original text see Georg Danek, “The Story of Troy through the Centuries,” TROY, 68–84, especially 76–77. 8 On the exact connotations of these Greek terms see Joachim Latacz, René Nünlist, and Magdalene Stoevesand, Homers Ilias: Gesamtkommentar, vol. 1: Erster Gesang (A), part 2: Kommentar, 3rd ed. (Berlin: De Gruyter, 2009), 80 and 96–97.
Odysseus, Achilles calls Agamemnon a “pig of a king.” The tone of the entire passage struck even ancient readers as an insult, as is evident from the fact that in the third century bc the Alexandrian philologist Zenodotus started a debate about their authenticity.9 Achilles’ anger becomes crucial for the entire plot of Troy, as three of the film’s sequences illustrate especially well. These are Patroclus’ death, the duel between Achilles and Hector, and the ransoming of Hector’s body. The first of these in particular gives us important clues about how Petersen proceeds in bridging the gap between text and film.
2 The Death of Patroclus
Near the end of Book 15 of the Iliad, the Greeks’ military situation is nearly desperate. Obeying a command by Zeus, Poseidon withholds his support from the Greek army, and the Trojans have advanced into the camp of the Greeks. Hector, protected by Apollo, is advancing, and there is no one to stop him. In addition, the Greeks are weaker than usual because Achilles, still angry over the loss of Briseis and the insult to his honor, is refusing to fight, together with his Myrmidons, the Greek army’s elite force. At the begin- ning of Book 16 Patroclus, worried about the current crisis, confronts Achilles and remonstrates with him, calling him harsh and pitiless. He begs Achilles to allow him to borrow his armor and weapons and to lead the Myrmidons against the Trojans, even though Achilles himself is to stay behind. Achilles agrees. He gives Patroclus a detailed command, here quoted in abbreviated form:
So do you draw my glorious armour about your shoulders; lead the Myrmidons whose delight is battle into the fighting, if truly the black cloud of the Trojans has taken position strongly about our ships, and the others, the Argives, are bent back against the beach of the sea…. But even so, Patroklos, beat the bane aside from our ships; fall upon them with all your strength; let them not with fire’s blazing inflame our ships, and take away our desired homecoming. But obey to the end this word I put upon your attention so that you can win, for me, great honour and glory….
9 On this see G.S. Kirk, The Iliad: A Commentary, vol. 1: Books 1–4 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1985; rpt. 2001), 75–76.
When you have driven them from the ships, come back… you must not set your mind on fighting the Trojans, whose delight is in battle, without me.10
Achilles then helps his men to prepare for battle and gives them instructions while his charioteer Automedon harnesses the horses. Patroclus ascends the chariot; all depart. Achilles now prays to Zeus for the Greeks’ success in turning back the Trojans and for Patroclus’ safe return. The Homeric narrator matter- of-factly comments: “The father granted him one prayer, and denied him the other.”11 Before he joins the fray, Patroclus delivers an encouraging speech to his men, then begins his aristeia; that is to say, a killing spree during which the hero proves himself the best—aristos in Greek—of all heroes. The end of Book 16 brings the decisive encounter between Patroclus and Apollo. The god, cham- pion of the Trojan cause, attacks Patroclus from behind and sends him reeling; he then strikes off Patroclus’ helmet. The hero next loses spear and shield before Apollo breaks the corselet that protects Patroclus’ chest. A Trojan’s spear hits Patroclus in the back. Hector, who has been approaching, stabs Patroclus in the belly with his spear, finishing him off. Fighting over Patroclus’ dead body and the armor of Achilles that he has been wearing takes up Book 17. Petersen’s version of this episode proceeds from one major and decisive change: no one except Patroclus himself knows of the deception to be practiced on Greeks and Trojans alike. Although Petersen’s Patroclus does attempt to make Achilles change his mind about returning to battle, the part of their conversation in the Iliad in which Patroclus suggests to fight in Achilles’ place is omitted. Instead, Achilles sticks with his earlier command to ready his ships to sail home to Phthia the next day. When the Trojans attack the Greek camp and when, to everybody’s surprise, the Myrmidons, who are immediately recognizable by their black armor, storm forward, viewers are just as ignorant about the identity of the black-clad warriors’ leader as Hector is. After a brief but intense duel Hector succeeds in slitting his opponent’s throat. Hector then removes the helmet of the fallen hero, who is gasping for breath and struggling for words. Only now does Hector, as do we, realize that he is facing Patroclus, not Achilles. He is also immediately aware of the dire consequences of this deadly duel and, with Odysseus’ consent, proclaims an end to all fighting for this day.
10 Iliad 16.64–68, 80–84, 87, and 89–90; quoted from Richmond Lattimore, The Iliad of Homer, new ed. (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2011), 353. The entire speech of Achilles is at 64–100; its very length emphasizes what is at stake during this crucial moment. 11 Iliad 16.250 (Lattimore, 358).
Petersen uses a variety of strategies to get viewers to believe that it is indeed Achilles who is now leading his Myrmidons back into battle. In Homer Patroclus rides into battle on Achilles’ chariot; in Troy he races into action on foot—this is the very kind of movement we associate primarily with Achilles. (More on this below.) On the soundtrack we hear the same kind of music we heard when the Myrmidons were the first of all Greek contingents to reach the Trojan beach and when they were fighting their way to the temple of Apollo. It is therefore rather ironic that Achilles had forbidden Patroclus to participate in that first battle. Now the cheering and calling out of Achilles’ name that had accompanied the earlier heroic exploit is heard again. Moreover, first Odysseus and then Hector exclaim “Achilles!” Patroclus, who in the Iliad is given much to say while on the battlefield, here remains utterly silent. All this serves to uphold to the last possible moment the illusion among the armies on screen and the viewers in the theater that it was none other than Achilles who has been killed. The revelation of who really was fighting in Achilles’ armor comes as a shock to all, including the viewers. Unlike Petersen, Homer never had the opportunity to direct his plot to such an unexpected and climactic moment, for he had to proceed from the assump- tion that his listeners or readers were fully conversant with the tale of Achilles and Patroclus and with everything that surrounded this part of the Trojan War myth. By contrast, Petersen takes advantage of his viewers’ diminished, perhaps in some cases non-existent, knowledge of the myth to achieve an additional arc of suspense, one that is resolved in a moment of shock. Even so, Petersen does not neglect those in the audience who have retained a measure of mythical knowledge, for he prominently includes in this sequence someone who serves as a figure of projection, as it were, for those who remember their Iliad. Petersen achieves this aspect of his retelling by purely cinematic means. The entire scene here under discussion takes up no more than about four minutes of screen time, from the arrival of the Myrmidons in battle until the temporary armistice that is agreed upon after Patroclus’ death. During this time Petersen cuts to close-ups of Odysseus several times, although Odysseus has no active part in the proceedings and serves no dramatic purpose at all until the armistice. But in the glances of Odysseus that we observe we detect an ever-increasing mea- sure of concern and then doubt about the result of the duel in progress. This might well be for the sake of those viewers who may not know exactly what is wrong at this time in the plot but who may suspect that all the indications pointing to Achilles as the hero in black are actually meant to deceive. In this context a glance at the way in which Girolami previously staged this scene in Fury of Achilles is instructive. As he did elsewhere in his film, Girolami adhered more closely to Homer than Petersen was to do four decades later.
This circumstance is especially noteworthy in regard to the advance knowl- edge of the Iliad that viewers of the 1960s could be expected to bring to the theater. Girolami shows Patroclus putting on Achilles’ armor. Like Homer, Girolami reveals from the beginning who will lead the Myrmidons into battle and fight side by side with them. Nevertheless, one specific detail in Fury of Achilles practically prepares the way for the scene in Troy, for Girolami’s Achilles, like Petersen’s, is completely in the dark about Patroclus’ intentions. In Girolami’s version Achilles, drowsy from heavy drinking, barely registers Patroclus’ attempt to talk to him about the military situation. Differently from the common version, however, Girolami’s Patroclus does not suggest to Achilles to fight in his place; rather, he suggests that Achilles could save face, as it were, by fighting dressed in his, Patroclus’, armor! Only after Achilles has sunk back into deep sleep does Patroclus’ eye happen to fall on his friend’s near-by armor. The rest we know.
3 “Swift-footed Achilles”
Let us now turn to the question how Troy attempts to follow its Homeric model in regard to its manner of presentation. Here certain stylistic features of Homeric epic become important. Modern readers of the Iliad will doubtless first notice its composition in verse, although modern translators routinely abandon the original hexameter and substitute some other kind of versifica- tion or occasionally none at all. Another major feature of archaic epic composi- tion to be noticed is that of formulaic language. It points us to the era in which bards (aoidoi) improvised their oral recital of mythical material. The Homeric epics belong to the moment in history at which the transition from oral poetry—i.e. from the oral tradition, as it is commonly called—to literary poetry—i.e. poetry that is written down—was in progress or, perhaps more accurately, was reaching its conclusion. For this reason the Iliad and the Odyssey preserve the formulaic nature that was a key feature of oral recitals and have made it canonical for later, even highly literate, Greek and Roman epic. The formulae that appear in Homeric epic can be distinguished primarily by their length. Among the longest are the “typical scenes,” as scholars call them, which describe recurrent situations in standardized language that varies only slightly from occurrence to occurrence. Such scenes describe someone rising in the morning or turning in at night, preparations for and consumption of a meal, or other daily activities. In addition, longer text passages are repeated when a command is being transmitted by means of an intermediary. In such cases we are first informed about a command’s wording as told to a messenger
12 Iliad 10.423 and 554 (Lattimore, 247 and 251), 14.64 (Lattimore, 317) and 19.184 (Lattimore, 419).
13 Exact figures about these and all other Homeric epithets may be found in James H. Dee, Epitheta hominum apud Homerum: The Epithetic Phrases for the Homeric Heroes: A Repertory of Descriptive Expressions for the Human Characters of the Iliad and the Odyssey (Hildesheim: Olms-Weidmann, 2000). 14 Cf. Solomon, “The Vacillations of the Trojan Myth,” 486: “near the opening we see a duel between Achilles and the [Thessalian] Boagrius, which serves to establish the former as swift of foot and sure of hand.”
4 “Resourceful Odysseus”
Petersen’s use and awareness of Homeric epithets is not limited to Achilles. The director’s cut of Troy contains a crucial scene missing from its release
15 Homer’s other term for “swift-footed” (podarkēs) is applied solely to Achilles. The occur- rence of the same word as the name for Protesilaus’ brother does not invalidate or even diminish this circumstance.
First Ambassador: Greetings, brother. We were told King Odysseus is hid in the hills. Odysseus: Odysseus? That old bastard drinks my wine and never pays. Second Ambassador: You ought to respect your king, friend. Odysseus: Respect him? I’d like to punch him in the face. He’s pawing at my wife, trying to tear her clothes off. (The ambassadors turn around and are about to leave.) Odysseus (calling after them and petting his dog): I hope Agamemnon’s generals are smarter than his emissaries. (The ambassadors stop and turn around.) First Ambassador: What did you say? Odysseus: You want me to help to fight the Trojans? Second Ambassador: You’re—? First Ambassador: Are you—? Odysseus laughs. First Ambassador: Forgive us, King Odysseus. Odysseus (in close-up with his dog): Well. (He pauses slightly.) I’m gonna miss my dog.
Odysseus’ best-known epithets in the Homeric epics are polymêtis and polymêkhanos; both mean “clever, cunning, wily.”16 With the verbal hide-and- seek game that Odysseus plays with, or on, Agamemnon’s ambassadors, Petersen has Homer’s clever hero display just that side of his character. This parallels the earlier moment when Achilles gets to demonstrate his speed. Both scenes cleverly introduce their respective protagonists in cinematic ways that are at the same time in keeping with the spirit of Homer. Odysseus’ clever- ness is in evidence throughout Troy. In the very next sequence Odysseus is such an accomplished rhetorician that he succeeds in persuading Achilles to join the Greek forces, although Achilles’ contempt for Agamemnon remains undiminished. In connection with the crucial scene in which Achilles con- fronts Agamemnon over Briseis, Odysseus counsels the young hero by trying to
16 Dee, Epitheta hominum apud Homerum, provides details.
5 Heroic Duels
Homer’s highly formulaic language includes similes and ecphrases— i.e. detailed verbal descriptions, especially of works of art—among its most significant aspects alongside its epithets. That epithets are capable of being translated or adapted into the visual language of the cinema we have just seen; that the other two characteristics are equally adaptable has recently been shown as well.17 We can therefore turn to the typical scenes, already mentioned in passing, that present us with another impor- tant stylistic feature of the Iliad. As a rule, such scenes are much longer and more detailed than similes or ecphrases; they include, importantly, the long battle sequences in which one particular hero goes to fight a series of enemy heroes, whom he defeats and usually kills. In such scenes the hero in question embarks on his aristeia. “Best of the Achaeans” (aris- tos Akhaiôn) is therefore another important epithet in the Iliad. Unlike “swift-footed” and some other epithets that are limited to specific bearers, several heroes can take turns proving themselves the best at certain moments. Diomedes, Menelaus, Agamemnon, Patroclus, and especially Achilles—each of them embarks on his own aristeia in the course of the Iliad. For an example of the way Homer presents such an aristeia to his listeners or readers, we turn to a passage from the aristeia of Achilles, the longest and bloodiest in the entire epic. We would expect nothing less from its central hero. At the end of Book 20 we follow Achilles working his gruesome way through the battle raging all around him:
with the spear full in the neck he stabbed Dryops so that he dropped in front of his feet. He left him to lie there and with a spear thrown against the knee stopped the charge of Demouchos, Philetor’s son, a huge man and powerful. After the spearcast with an inward plunge of the great sword he took the life from him. Then Achilleus swooping on Dardanos and Laogonos, sons both of Bias, dashed them to the ground from behind their horses, one with a spearcast, one with a stroke of the sword from close up. Now Trios, Alastor’s son: he had come up against Achilleus’ knees, to catch them and be spared and his life given to him if Achilleus might take pity upon his youth and not kill him;
17 On these see Martin M. Winkler, “The Iliad and the Cinema,” in TROY, 43–67, at 52–57 (similes) and 57–63 (ecphrases).
fool, and did not see there would be no way to persuade him, since this was a man with no sweetness in his heart, and not kindly but in a strong fury; now Tros with his hands was reaching for the knees, bent on supplication, but he stabbed with his sword at the liver so that the liver was torn from its place, and from it the black blood drenched the fold of his tunic and his eyes were shrouded in darkness as the life went. Next from close in he thrust at Moulios with the pike at the ear, so the bronze spearhead pushed through and came out at the other ear. Now he hit Echeklos the son of Agenor with the hilted sword, hewing against his head in the middle so all the sword was smoking with blood, and over both eyes closed the red death and the strong destiny. Now Deukalion was struck in the arm, at a place in the elbow where the tendons come together. There through the arm Achilleus transfixed him with the bronze spearhead, and he, arm hanging heavy, waited and looked his death in the face. Achilleus struck with the sword’s edge at his neck, and swept the helmed head far away, and the marrow gushed from the neckbone, and he went down to the ground at full length. Now he went on after the blameless son of Peires, Rhigmos, who had come over from Thrace where the soil is rich. This man he stabbed in the middle with the spear, and the spear stuck fast in his belly. he dropped from the chariot, but as Areïthoös his henchman turned the horses away Achilleus stabbed him with the sharp spear in the back, and thrust him from the chariot. And the horses bolted.18
Enough already? It may have been for Homer, for after these lines there comes a pair of similes to underscore Achilles’ irresistible and inhuman fury in battle from poetic rather than martial perspectives. The lines quoted above make it immediately evident that there is not much of a difference between the emotional impact of such a passage on its readers and the extensive carnage we witness today on our cinema screens. Where graphic violence is concerned, Homeric and later classical epic in the tradition of the Iliad, such as Virgil’s Aeneid and Lucan’s Pharsalia, is in no way inferior to modern film in its detailed attention to death and gore. In particular, several of the lines above correspond to close-ups in films on moments of slaughter, severed body parts, gushing blood, and collapsing corpses. The mayhem in the Iliad and that on the screen is comparable or, despite the obvious
18 Iliad 20.455–489 (Lattimore, 438–439).
6 Arming for Battle
Homer frequently describes scenes in which the greatest heroes put on their armor before going out on the battlefield. It is immediately noticeable that his descriptions are greatly enhanced by formulaic language, which signals to listeners or readers the special importance of the fighting that is to follow. Scholars refer to these and comparably formulaic scenes as being typical of Homeric epic; they function as kinds of building blocks for larger narrative units.19 Formulaic language and typical scenes, especially those that describe heroes arming themselves or fighting a duel, can readily be transposed into cinematic styles of storytelling. Achilles rejoins the Greek army after the death of Patroclus and after receiving from his mother Thetis a new set of armor wrought by Hephaestus, the divine smith. Having provided a detailed ecphrasis of Achilles’ shield at the end of Book 18, one of the most famous passages in the entire work, Homer does full justice in the following book to the moment in which Achilles readies himself:
First he placed along his legs the fair greaves linked with silver fastenings to hold the greaves at the ankles. Afterward he girt on about his chest the corselet, and across his shoulders slung the sword with the nails of silver, a bronze sword, and caught up the great shield, huge and heavy next, and from it the light glimmered far, as from the moon…. And lifting the helmet he set it massive upon his head, and the helmet crested with horse-hair shone like a star, the golden fringes were shaken about it which Hephaistos had driven close along the horn of the helmet. And brilliant Achilleus tried himself in his armour, to see if it fitted close, and how his glorious limbs ran within it, and the armour became as wings and upheld the shepherd of the people. Next he pulled out from its standing place the spear of his father, huge, heavy, thick, which no one else of all the Achaians could handle, but Achilleus alone knew how to wield it, the Pelian ash spear which Cheiron had brought to his father from high on Pelion, to be death for fighters in battle.20
19 On this side of Homeric epic see especially Bernard Fenik, Typical Battle Scenes in the Iliad: Studies in the Narrative Technique of Homeric Battle Descriptions (Stuttgart: Steiner, 1968), 73–74 (the goddess Athena), 78–79 (Agamemnon), and 191 (Patroclus). 20 Iliad 19.369–391, omitting the simile at 375–380 (Lattimore, 424).
Achilles’ horses and chariot are brought up next. The hero is ready. The equivalent of this scene in Troy begins at dawn with Achilles, morose or even depressed, staring at the mound on which the mortal remains of Patroclus had been burned the night before. Achilles then rallies and strides to his tent, before which his faithful companion Eudorus is lying. “I need my armor!” Achilles declares and vanishes inside. Now a cut to a bed, in which Hector’s wife Andromache is sleeping; next to the bed is little Astyanax’ crib. We realize at once that we are in the royal palace of Troy. The camera, pulling back steadily, reveals, after a couple of seconds, a side- ways view of Hector, turned screen right, in medium close-up. Standing in front of a kind of rack on which his suit of armor is hanging, he is in the process of pulling an arm guard onto his right forearm. Suddenly we get a new view. A second arm guard, seen from the left, is being taken down from a similar rack in close-up. The different view and the darker color of this piece allow attentive viewers to deduce that they are not now observing Hector. Petersen immediately provides certainty, for his following shot shows Achilles standing inside his tent. He is putting on his left-arm guard. But we do not stay with him for long, for another cut shows us a leg guard being pushed down over a knee. Since the warrior in question is again fac- ing right, we are back with Hector. Quickly, however, the camera takes us back to Achilles, who is putting on a leg guard as well, still turned screen left. Then back to Hector, looking at the rack and placing one hand on the shoulder piece of his armor. Next Achilles, taking down and putting on his armor. Now Hector again: he takes his helmet in his hand and reaches for his shield. Even before he can finish lifting it up, however, we see Achilles putting on his helmet. After this we are in Hector and Andromache’s bedroom for the last time, with the husband casting a final glance at his wife across their baby’s crib and going out. At that moment Andromache awakens and looks after Hector. The sequence ends outside Achilles’ tent. His chariot is being driven up; Achilles mounts. “Rope!” he commands, laconically and ominously. Not even Briseis and her desperate pleas can hold him back. It is immediately evident that this scene follows the model of Homer’s lines quoted above, but it does so with noticeable differences. A verbal description has been translated into its visual and entirely wordless equivalent.21 The
21 Evidence that ancient visual arts had shown the same kind of scene appears on the tondo of a Laconian kylix (ca. 550–525 bc), which shows two Spartan warriors arming for battle. A photograph may be found, and in a cinematic context at that, in Carmine Catenacci, “Le Termopili, i ‘300’ e l’archeologia dell’immaginario,” in Roberto Andreotti (ed.), Resistenza del Classico (Milan: Rizzoli, 2009), 160–172, at 165 (Fig. 1).
22 The subtitle of a well-known study of the Iliad is therefore apropos: James M. Redfield, Nature and Culture in the Iliad: The Tragedy of Hector, expanded ed. (Durham: Duke University Press, 1994; rpt. 2004). Cf. further Solomon, “The Vacillations of the Trojan Myth,” 486–487. 23 On the duel, and especially Achilles’ balletic movements, see Stephen Scully, “The Fate of Troy,” in TROY, 119–130, at 129–130.
24 Contrast, for example, Daniel Mendelsohn, “A Little Iliad,” The New York Review of Books (June 24, 2004), 46–49; rpt. in Daniel Mendelsohn, How Beautiful It Is and How Easily It Can Be Broken: Essays (New York: Harper, 2008; rpt. 2009), 111–123, with Joachim Latacz, “From Homer’s Troy to Petersen’s Troy,” in TROY, 27–42.
Translated by Martin M. Winkler
Martin M. Winkler
In 1954, half a century before the release of Wolfgang Petersen’s Troy, Homer’s Odyssey made a triumphant return to Italian high and popular culture in print and on the screen. Alberto Moravia published his novel Contempt (Il disprezzo), and Dino de Laurentiis and Carlo Ponti released Ulysses (Ulisse), directed by veteran filmmaker Mario Camerini and starring Kirk Douglas. This Italian- American co-production was the first adaptation of Homeric epic in the sound era, filmed on attractive locations in widescreen (1.66:1) and color and even in 3-D. (It went into general release in a shortened and flat version.) The film established, or rather re-established after a considerable hiatus, classical antiq- uity as a popular and lucrative subject for the cinema. Some years ago Hanna Roisman, an experienced Homer scholar, wrote a brief appreciation in a jour- nal intended for professionals and general readers alike. She called the film’s screenplay “tersely cogent and yet entertaining” and its scenery “absolutely captivating.” The film, she concluded, preserves “the spirit of fantasy and adventure of the ancient epic” in spite of significant alterations to and conden- sations of Homer. Her review ends with the verdict: “This is one of the best film versions of the Odyssey.”1 Contempt, the other influential reappearance of Homer that year in Italy, is, however, more important. Moravia had started writing about cinema in 1933; from 1944 on he regularly wrote film reviews and essays.2 By 1954 he had col- laborated on several screenplays, with and without credit. A number of his novels, sometimes with his script participation, were made into outstanding films. Best known are Vittorio De Sica’s Two Women (1960) and Bernardo Bertolucci’s The Conformist (1970). In between came Jean-Luc Godard’s adapta- tion of Contempt (1963), to which I will turn later.
1 Hanna M. Roisman, “Film Reviews: Ulysses (1954),” Amphora, 1 no. 1 (2002), 10–11. Details about the film are in Hervé Dumont, L’antiquité au cinéma: Vérités, légendes et manipulations (Paris: Nouveau Monde/Lausanne: Cinémathèque suisse, 2009), 203–204. A 2013 edition of this essential book is available electronically from its author at www.hervedumont.ch. 2 His writings on the cinema are now collected in Alberto Moravia, Cinema italiano: Recensioni e interventi, 1933–1990, ed. Alberto Pezzotta and Anna Gilardelli (Milan: Bompiani, 2010). The book is over 1,600 pages long.
© koninklijke brill nv, leiden, 2015 | doi 10.1163/9789004296084_007
1 Spectacle vs. Psychology: The Debate about Gods in Moravia’s Contempt and Its Importance for Film
Riccardo Molteni, the narrator of Moravia’s Contempt, is a novelist and occa- sional screenwriter. He is looking back on the disintegration of his marriage while he was involved with a film version of the Odyssey that emphasized the marriage of Odysseus and Penelope. Molteni is eloquent about the complexi- ties that arise when a classic work of literature is to be adapted in a modern medium for contemporary audiences. What, decades later, a Homer scholar observed in connection with Troy about epic audiences at any time in and since antiquity fits Molteni’s context equally well: “to a large degree audiences dictate the way that a story is told. Audiences take their own preconceptions and expectations to a narrative; responsibilities and opportunities as well result for the storyteller.”3 To this we might add: audiences also come with their prior knowledge or ignorance of that story. Moravia modeled Molteni largely on himself, for what Molteni reveals about filmmaking could easily have been said or written by his creator from both his cinematic and marital experiences.4 Molteni’s observations about the gods in Homer and what could or should be done with them are important for any screen adaptation of Homer. They appear to derive from Moravia’s observa- tions about Camerini’s film. While preparing an initial treatment, Molteni stumbles over a question prompted by the very first scene in the Odyssey: “whether or not it was suitable
3 Quoted from Jonathan S. Burgess, “Achilles’ Heel: The Historicism of the Film Troy,” in Kostas Myrsiades (ed.), Reading Homer: Film and Text (Madison: Fairleigh Dickinson University Press, 2009), 163–185; quotation at 164. 4 The close analogies between Molteni and Moravia are well-documented. See, e.g., Renzo Paris, Moravia: Una vita controvoglia (Florence: Giunti, 1996), 143–144 and 234–236. Paris, 234, speaks of “Alberto-Riccardo.” What Moravia later said about his screenwriting experiences could have come from Molteni: “I always had the sensation that I was giving something pre- cious, for money, to someone who would exploit it for his own ends…. The scriptwriter…gives himself totally to the script, but the director’s name is on the movie.” Quoted from Alberto Moravia and Alain Elkann, Life of Moravia, tr. William Weaver (South Royalton, Vt.: Steerforth Italia, 2000), 151.—Moravia may have visited Camerini on location for Ulysses, at least accord- ing to Laura Mulvey, “Le Mépris (Jean-Luc Godard 1963) and Its Story of Cinema: A ‘Fabric of Quotations’,” in Colin MacCabe and Laura Mulvey (eds.), Godard’s Contempt [sic]: Essays from the London Consortium (Chichester: Wiley-Blackwell, 2012), 225–237, at 227. Cf. Michel Marie, “Un monde qui s’accorde à nos désirs (Le Mépris, Jean-Luc Godard, 1963),” Revue belge du cinéma, 16 (1986), 24–36, at 27. The writings collected in Moravia, Cinema italiano, mention Camerini on a few occasions, mainly concerning earlier films of his, but never refer to Ulysses.
Cutting out the council meant cutting out the whole supramundane aspect of the poem, eliminating all divine intervention, suppressing the figures of the various divinities, so charming and poetical in themselves. But there was no doubt that Battista [the producer] would not want to have anything to do with the gods, who would seem to him nothing more than incompetent chatterboxes who made a great fuss about deciding things that could perfectly well be decided by the protagonists. As for Rheingold [the director], the ambiguous hint he had given of a “psycho- logical” film presaged no good towards the divinities: psychology obvi- ously excludes Fate and divine intervention; at most, it discovers Fate in the depths of the human spirit, in the dark intricacies of the so-called subconscious. The gods, therefore, would be superfluous, because neither spectacular nor psychological.5
No one has ever put the matter with greater concision than Moravia did here through his Molteni. If you keep the gods, you have to hire actors to portray them, build a sumptuous set—Mt. Olympus—to put them in, and provide them with something to do and say that is important enough to justify their presence and your expenses. And you must make absolutely clear who all these characters with supernatural powers are. This is not an easy thing to pull off in an age of significantly decreased familiarity with classical religion, myth, litera- ture, and culture. Additional explanatory dialogue becomes unavoidable. Gods on screen tend to have a lot more to say than to do. Desmond Davis’s Clash of the Titans (1980) provides a telling example of gods who do little more than stand around talking. The gods in Don Chaffey’s Jason and the Argonauts (1963) suffer much the same fate, although a few of them are integrated into that film’s plot. The following words by Wolfgang Petersen about this side of epic filmmaking are therefore fully justified:
5 The preceding quotations are taken from Alberto Moravia, Contempt, tr. Angus Davidson (New York: New York Review Books, 1999; rpt. 2004), 98 and 98–99. Davidson’s translation is slightly different in this edition from its original version published under the title A Ghost at Noon (New York: Farrar Straus and Young/London: Secker & Warburg, 1955). The variant English title derives from the novel’s pre-publication title Il fantasma di mezzogiorno.
Do you remember how Laurence Olivier as Zeus in Clash of the Titans came down from the clouds? Today, seeing this, sixteen-year-old movie- goers would only giggle or yawn. They want to watch how Brad Pitt as Achilles takes his own fate in hand, they want Orlando Bloom [as Paris] to fight and then run away because he is a coward and not because the gods command him to.6
On another occasion Petersen was even more explicit: “I think that, if we could consult with him…, Homer would be the first today to advise: ‘Get rid of the gods.’”7 Earlier, Greek writer-director Michael Cacoyannis, who made three films based on plays by Euripides—Electra (1962), The Trojan Women (1971), and Iphigenia (1977)—had been equally clear on the subject, virtually provid- ing the rationale for Petersen’s view: “To show them [the gods] on the screen would be alienating to modern audiences, who should identify with the char- acters and be as moved as Euripides intended his audiences to be.”8 In principle, there is nothing new here. As has been observed about ancient epitomes of the Homeric epics:
In the Iliad and Odyssey there is much preparation by means of debates at the divine or human level and much prompting of action by the inter- vention of individual deities. A prose epitomator eliminates this sort of thing: he is concerned to describe the action itself and how the story moved on from one decisive event to the next.9
6 Quoted, in my translation, from Frank Arnold, “Wolfgang Petersen: Keine Welt in Schwarz und Weiß,” Kölner Stadtanzeiger (May 14, 2004); http://www.ksta.de/kultur/ wolfgang-petersen--keine-welt-in-schwarz-und-weiss,15189520,14068132.html. The Zeus of Clash of the Titans does not actually leave Olympus. 7 Quoted, in my translation, from Peter Zander, “Deutscher Härtetest: Wolfgang Petersen hat ‘Troja’ verfilmt—und fand in den Sagen Parallelen zu George W. Bush,” Berliner Morgenpost (May 12, 2004); http://morgenpost.berlin1.de/archiv2004/040512/feuilleton/story677622.html. 8 Quoted from Marianne McDonald and Martin M. Winkler, “Michael Cacoyannis and Irene Papas on Greek Tragedy,” in Martin M. Winkler (ed.), Classical Myth and Culture in the Cinema (New York: Oxford University Press, 2001), 72–89; quotation at 79. Gods appear in Euripides’ Trojan Women but not in Electra or Iphigenia in Aulis. Cacoyannis directed several Greek trag- edies on the stage in Europe and the United States. On the problems of the appearance of gods (and other supernatural beings) in the modern theater see now the overview in Simon Goldhill, How to Stage Greek Tragedy Today (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2007), 189–222. 9 Quoted from M.L. West, The Epic Cycle: A Commentary on the Lost Troy Epics (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2013), 51.
Such an epitome is not the epic it is based on, and no one ever mistook the one for the other or became incensed at the changes. Petersen’s and Cacoyannis’s films are not, and were not meant to be, their originals and no one has ever mistaken the ones for the others. But this has not always saved such films from the ire of scholars. Taking one’s fate in hand and acting in a certain way because one is a hero or a coward—this is the kind of psychological approach that is important to Moravia’s Rheingold and that enables a director to avoid all the divine chat- terboxes that Molteni’s producer does not want. But what does his producer want? Molteni has no illusions about this; the fact that the matter comes up for discussion several times in Contempt reveals that it was also important for Moravia. “Homer’s poetry is always spectacular,” Battista opines, “and when I say spectacular I mean it has something in it that infallibly pleases the public.”10 Polyphemus, for example, is to Battista a kind of ancient King Kong. Later Battista elaborates on this analogy:
Now…, Molteni, let it be quite clear that what I want is a film as much like Homer’s Odyssey as possible. And what was Homer’s intention, with the Odyssey? He intended to tell an adventure story which would keep the reader in suspense the whole time…a story which would be, so to speak, spectacular. That’s what Homer wanted to do. And I want you two [Molteni and Rheingold] to stick faithfully to Homer. Homer put giants, prodigies, storms, witches, monsters into the Odyssey—and I want you to put giants, prodigies, storms, witches and monsters into the film.11
Later yet, Rheingold gives a concise summary of Battista’s viewpoint: “a mas- querade in technicolor [sic] with naked women, King Kong, stomach dances, brassières, cardboard monsters, model sets!”12 Much of this kind of filmmaking is on view in Camerini’s Ulysses. But brassières and naked women? Battista had drawn special attention to this when he emphasized the spectacular that infal- libly pleases the public. At that point he had continued: “Take for example the Nausicaa episode. All those lovely girls dressed in nothing at all, splashing about in the water under the eyes of Ulysses…. There, with slight variations, you have a complete Bathing Beauties scene.”13 King Kong and Bathing Beauties: small wonder that Battista’s company is called Triumph Films!
10 Moravia, Contempt, 86. 11 Moravia, Contempt, 154; last two ellipses in original. 12 Moravia, Contempt, 206. 13 Moravia, Contempt, 86.
Contemporary readers of Contempt who had recently watched Camerini’s Ulysses or would watch it soon after reading the novel may well have been struck by how closely the discussion in the book fits the images on the screen. Ulysses is exactly that: a spectacular adventure story that keeps its viewers if not in suspense then at least not bored, what with its giant monster, witch, storm, and lovely girls. The latter could not possibly have been naked, but Nausicaa’s companions are as daringly close to naked as any producer could have hoped to get away with. Their loose-flowing and semi-diaphanous clothes clearly reveal their well-rounded personalities. No brassières are in evidence. All this is spectacularly attractive, but it is hardly Homer. It is doubtful that Ulysses is one of the best films of the Odyssey. Then there is the absence of the gods from Ulysses. A statue of Athena in the courtyard of Odysseus’ home on Ithaca tells us about his and Penelope’s sense of religion, but a statue of Neptune (Poseidon) is first toppled during the fall of Troy and then thrown from Odysseus’ ship during a storm, both times on Odysseus’ command. Odysseus’ boasts about his heroism as invincible sacker of Troy and his defiance of Poseidon cause the god’s persecution, not Odysseus’ blinding of Poseidon’s son Polyphemus. To paraphrase Molteni: what in Homer the god decides about the protagonist is decided in the film by the hero. This Odysseus is practically asking for a storm. The purely human motivation for the reason why Odysseus is being persecuted recurs in a later adaptation, Andrey Konchalovsky’s television film The Odyssey (1997), in which Odysseus is even more daring than he had been in Camerini’s version and boasts about his invincibility to Poseidon himself. Closely connected to such a change concerning the divine, or perhaps even a necessary result of it, is the exclusively human and realistic motivation for the origin of the Trojan War in several films, including Troy. The narrator of Robert Wise’s Helen of Troy (1956), another American-Italian coproduction, informs viewers that “Troy grew prosperous, a tempting prize of war for the Greek nations.” The Greek kings are assembled at Sparta, contemplating a campaign against Troy even before Paris arrives. “You can have the glory; I’ll take Troy’s gold,” Menelaus declares, and Odysseus’ first words to the others are: “Greetings, fellow pirates!” Agamemnon rebukes him for his levity, calling the war they are contemplating “righteous” and, in an astonishing display of Orwellian double-speak, “a war of defensive aggression.” There will be more along these lines later in the film. Such militarism and greed contrast with the pacifism of the Trojans, “a happy people in love with beauty,” as the narrator describes them. Troy’s “industrious citizens were enjoying the works of peace.” A voice-over at the beginning of Cacoyannis’s The Trojan Women, an inter- national production, tells us that “Troy’s wealth was legend” and that “for years
You think that the elders of Greece go to war for you and your honor. They just wanted an excuse, and you gave it to them on a platter. Their dreams of invasion are getting wilder because of Troy’s gold.
Similarly, in John Kent Harrison’s television film Helen of Troy (2003) Agamemnon tells his “little brother” Menelaus about his aims after Helen’s elopement with Paris: “You may have the Trojan [Paris] and your whore. I will take Troy. You’ll share no spoils.” Much the same is the case a year later in Troy. It is solely Agamemnon, routinely called “King of Kings,” whose dream of inva- sion is getting limitless. Agamemnon lusts after more and more power. “I didn’t come here for your pretty wife,” he tells Menelaus, “I came for Troy.” Such ruth- less Realpolitik smacks more of twentieth-century imperialism than of ancient literature, but it nevertheless reflects what we know about Bronze-Age history and what at least one classical historian in the fifth century bc thought about Agamemnon. Here is a modern scholar’s summation, based on the pre- classical literary and archaeological record:
It is unlikely that the war was actually fought because of Helen’s kidnap- ping, even though that may have provided a convenient excuse. The real motivations were probably political and commercial, the acquisition of land and control of lucrative trade routes, as were most such wars in the ancient world.15
And here is what Thucydides, the great Athenian historian, wrote about Homer’s (and history’s) Agamemnon:
14 That victory in the Trojan War brought immense wealth to the Greeks is, of course, not to be denied. Quintus of Smyrna, Posthomerica 14.354–360, is a convenient summary state- ment of the fact. 15 Quoted from Eric H. Cline, The Trojan War: A Very Short Introduction (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2013), 52. Apparently the point is important enough for Cline to restate it later (107–108).
Agamemnon, it seems to me, must have been the most powerful of the rulers of his day; and it was for this reason that he raised the force against Troy…. The descendants of Pelops became more powerful than the descendants of Perseus. It was to this empire that Agamemnon suc- ceeded, and at the same time he had a stronger navy than any other ruler; thus, in my opinion, fear played a greater part than loyalty in the raising of the expedition against Troy. It appears, if we can believe the evidence of Homer, that Agamemnon himself commanded more ships than any- one else and at the same time equipped another fleet for the Arcadians…. Homer calls him: Of many islands and all Argos King. As his power was based on the mainland, he could not have ruled over any islands, except the few that are near the coast, unless he had a considerable navy.16
The Agamemnon of Troy fits this description to a surprising degree. Neither Wise’s nor Petersen’s films contain the divine beauty contest among Hera, Athena, and Aphrodite that led to the Judgment of Paris, to Paris’ abduc- tion of Helen, and to the Trojan War. Even when it is not entirely absent, as is the case in Harrison’s Helen of Troy, the supernatural is largely de-emphasized. Harrison’s film includes the Judgment of Paris because it increases the roman- ticism of its story. Even so, the cause of the goddesses’ rivalry remains untold. A far shorter, indeed radically abbreviated, version had appeared on Italian screens more than nine decades before. In Luigi Romano Borgnetto and Giovanni Pastrone’s The Fall of Troy (1911), an elaborate (for its era) epic of about thirty minutes’ running time, Paris arrives at Sparta as ambassador from Troy while Menelaus is absent. He is immediately smitten with Helen. She, surprisingly, is at first shocked at his advances but almost instantaneously falls for his sweet talk. He is also handsome and younger than her husband. Then we see the two strolling around the countryside. An intertitle identifies Paris as “Venus’ favorite,” and the goddess herself appears on screen in a double expo- sure next to the lovers. She holds her cloak or large veil over the two as an indication that it is she is who is engineering their affair. Why Paris should be her favorite is left unexplained.
16 Thucydides, The History of the Peloponnesian War 1.9; quoted from Rex Warner (tr.), Thucydides: History of the Peloponnesian War, rev. ed. (Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1972; several rpts.), 39–40. The Homeric passages to which Thucydides refers are Iliad 2.569– 580 (Agamemnon commands a hundred ships and rules the most peoples) and 603–614 (he furnishes the Arcadians with sixty ships). Thucydides’ quotation is from Iliad 2.107–108.
In Contempt, Molteni seems to agree to omitting the gods from his script for the sake of greater realism and a more psychologically convincing—that is to say, modern—presentation of human characters. Apparently the actual direc- tors of all the films mentioned above shared the fictional Rheingold’s and Battista’s views on the matter. Evidently, Roisman agrees with Camerini and his writers when they did the same in Ulysses, as did Wise and his writers, one of whom had worked on Camerini’s film. And nobody has ever seriously criti- cized Cacoyannis for adhering to the same attitude. We may conclude that it has been entirely acceptable to experts and to lovers of classical literature that gods should be left out of films—until Troy.
2 Varieties of Religious Appearance: Athena’s Theophany to Achilles (and Odysseus)
The gods in Troy are conspicuous by their absence as characters and by their presence as statues. The Trojans in particular revere them; they mention the gods, especially Apollo, on numerous occasions. Briseis, here a member of the Trojan royal family rather than Homer’s Lyrnessian princess, is Apollo’s most important priestess. Achilles’ mother, the eternally young sea goddess Thetis, does appear on screen, but she is never referred to as a goddess or identified as Thetis. And she is played by an actress old enough to be actor Brad Pitt’s actual mother—another turn toward realism: “to audiences who are unaware of Thetis’ divinity in Homer, Troy does nothing to suggest that she is anything other than a worried, intuitive mother.”17 Scholars have repeatedly focused on the gods in Troy and the film’s merits or demerits that result from their omission. Here I summarize three verdicts by Homer scholars. I will then advance a different perspective in order to demon- strate that the entire matter is both more complex and more Homeric than most of the film’s critics have realized. Stephen Scully reports his ambivalence about the quality of Troy as epic film at the beginning of his essay “The Fate of Troy.”18 Concerning the gods, however, Scully is not at all ambivalent:
17 Quoted from Joanna Paul, Film and the Classical Epic Tradition (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2013), 108. Paul’s previous assertion on the same page that “Thetis appears as a named deity” is therefore misleading. Thetis is named in the script, not in the film. 18 Stephen Scully, “The Fate of Troy,” in Martin M. Winkler (ed.), Troy: From Homer’s Iliad to Hollywood Epic (Oxford: Blackwell, 2007), 119–130, at 119: “the film’s overall design, on which my view is mixed.”
Troy, to its peril, has done away with Homer’s gods, although Achilles’ mother Thetis does make an odd cameo appearance as an aging goddess. The absence of divine machinery and its mundane dialogue keep Troy from achieving epic greatness…. Cutting the gods out of his film, Petersen significantly domesticates plot and motivation. His recourse is to make a story of true love [Paris and Helen’s] on the one hand and of naked impe- rialism [Agamemnon’s] on the other. How pale compared with what Homer gave him! It is crucial to the broad canvas of epic that some force larger than human contain man. In ancient epic the gods fulfill this role, but it need not always be so. In Tolstoy’s War and Peace history functions in much the same way. Without such framing, the hero looms too large.19
To this we could add that the gods did not make it into each and every epic even in antiquity. In Lucan’s Pharsalia, a Roman epic composed during the reign of Nero that deals with the Civil War waged by Julius Caesar and Pompey the Great, the gods are absent and no longer play the important part that they did in Homer. History has decisively functioned in literature long before Tolstoy. Times change; epics change. Long before Lucan and other Roman poets, Greek epics had been changing since the time of Homer.20 As has been concisely observed about later Hellenistic epic and its influence on Roman epic, especially Ovid’s Metamorphoses:
Since it was ingrained in the nature of Alexandrianism to regard gods and heroes not so much from a reverent distance but to move them closer to the sensibilities of modern man, a poet like Ovid in particular would have had to deny his own nature if he had granted his characters nothing but that sublimity which the grand genre [i.e. epic] naturally demanded but which not even Homer himself had observed throughout.21
19 Scully, “The Fate of Troy,” 120 and 124. 20 The comments by Albert Severyns, Le Cycle épique dans l’école d’Aristarque (Liège: Vaillant- Carmanne/Paris: Champion, 1928; rpt. 1967), 352, on the epic technique followed by the poet of the Little Iliad, one of the works from the Epic Cycle about the Trojan War, are useful for our context. West, The Epic Cycle, 171, quotes Severyns with approval. 21 Quoted, in my translation, from Hans Herter, “Ovids Kunstprinzip in den Metamorphosen,” American Journal of Philology, 69 (1948), 129–148; quotation at 132. The original reads: “Lag es schon im Wesen des Alexandrinismus, Götter und Heroen nicht so sehr aus ehrfürchtiger Ferne zu betrachten, sondern dem Gefühle des modernen Menschen näher zu rücken, so hätte ein Ovid erst recht sich selbst verleugnen müssen, wenn er seinen Gestalten immer die Erhabenheit gewahrt hätte, die die grosse Form eigentlich erfor derte, aber nicht einmal Homer selber durchweg beobachtet hatte.”
Modernization is unavoidable and necessary. If the ancients themselves did not see anything wrong in moving gods closer to modern sensibilities, why should we? In contrast to Scully, consider now what Joachim Latacz has said on the same topic. From the scene that contains the film’s most controversial state- ment about the gods, when Achilles tells Briseis that they envy humans, Latacz concludes:
The scene reveals that one of the main charges critics have leveled against Petersen—that he omitted the gods from his narrative—is wrong. The gods are present in Troy. They are inside the humans.
Latacz then gives a concise characterization of Petersen’s Achilles and reaches an overall assessment of the film that may astonish more traditionally inclined scholars:
Petersen has understood Homer. Following the examples of Homer and other ancient poets, he did the only right thing: he emphasized several, if not all, of the themes that had already been important to Homer and his audiences.22
Important to Homer and his audiences: evidently Latacz has understood Petersen. If, as we saw, epics changed even in antiquity, so did audiences. From Homer to Tolstoy and beyond, the great epic poets and novelists composed their works for their own listeners and readers. In our age of visual storytelling, epic filmmakers compose their works for their own contemporaries, their viewers. As Latacz observes, Petersen has emphasized themes important at Homer’s time. Many of these are still important in our time. Their substance— war and peace, heroism and cowardice, love and lust; duty, honor, mortality— remains unchanged, even if their outward appearances are different. After Scully and Latacz, Charles Chiasson has attempted to “stake out a third position…since the status of the gods in Troy is more complex…than the bare binary opposition of ‘presence’ and ‘absence’ would suggest.”23 This is a
22 Joachim Latacz, “From Homer’s Troy to Petersen’s Troy,” tr. Martin M. Winkler; in TROY, 27–42; quotations at 42 (ellipses in original). 23 Charles C. Chiasson, “Redefining Homeric Heroism in Wolfgang Petersen’s Troy,” in Myrsiades (ed.), Reading Homer: Film and Text, 163–185, with section “Heroism and the Gods” (195–203); quotation at 197. A more recent examination of heroism in Troy is in
Petersen’s gods exist as utterly debased versions of their Homeric counter- parts—as paradoxically impotent deities who prove powerless both to punish the humans who are disrespectful to them and to protect the humans who revere them. In other words, these are gods who lack what the ancient Greeks considered the essence of deity, namely, power: effective and indeed transcendent power. While such divine fecklessness would have mystified and indeed scandalized those ancient Greeks who held tra- ditional religious views, it has little impact upon a modern audience, for whom the Olympian pantheon is no longer part of a living belief system. In this new cultural context, the relationship between heroes and gods assumes a different significance, whereby the very fact of belief or disbelief in the gods becomes one index of heroic stature…. Petersen’s Troy could be said to represent the logical conclusion of the modern tendency…to aggran- dize the heroes of Greek mythology at the expense of the Greek gods.24
Not everyone might regard the gods of Troy as being quite as debased as Chiasson does. But all of the preceding analyses make it advisable to reopen the topic. I do not wish to have the last word on this subject, let alone on the Homeric gods, but I hope that the argument I present on the following pages will advance future debates about the ways in which the complexities of clas- sical myth and literature may be portrayed in our visual media. I begin with the first interaction between a human and a god in Book 1 of the Iliad: the appearance to Achilles of Athena during Achilles’ quarrel with Agamemnon over Briseis. The Homeric passage is a masterpiece of verbal mise-en-scène: “The quarrel itself is treated…with extreme brilliance, through a careful and deeply dramatic presentation of the speeches and counter- speeches in which the two protagonists drive themselves into destructive
Paul, Film and the Classical Epic Tradition, 108–110. Especially valuable is the discussion by Burgess, “Achilles’ Heel,” 170–174. 24 Chiasson, “Redefining Homeric Heroism in Wolfgang Petersen’s Troy,” 197. He adduces in this context Mary Lefkowitz, Greek Gods, Human Lives: What We Can Learn from Myths (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2003; rpt. 2005), a book useful to general readers for its narrative overviews of epic and tragedy.
Characteristically Homeric is the notion of “double motivation,” by which many decisions and events are given one motivation on the divine level and one on the human…. This “over-determination,” as it has been called, allows the poet to retain the interest of human characterization and action while superimposing upon it, for added dignity, the concern of the divinities.27
Human motivation is explained in connection with something divine, such as a theophany, a god’s epiphany. The gods of early epic are externalizations and anthropomorphic visualizations of human states of mind. Here now the decisive moment in Achilles’ reaction to Agamemnon’s demand for Briseis; I omit a few descriptive details that do not affect my argument:
So he [Agamemnon] spoke. And the anger came on Peleus’ son, and within his shaggy breast the heart was divided two ways, pondering whether to draw from beside his thigh the sharp sword…and kill the son of Atreus, or else to check the spleen within and keep down his anger. Now as he weighed in mind and spirit these two courses and was drawing from its scabbard the great sword, Athene descended from the sky…. The goddess standing behind Peleus’ son caught him by the fair hair, appearing to him only, for no man of the others saw her. Achilleus in amazement turned about, and straightway
25 G.S. Kirk, The Iliad: A Commentary, vol. 1: Books 1–4 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1985; rpt. 2001), 47. 26 Kirk, The Iliad: A Commentary, vol. 1, 75 (on 1.215–218), appropriately speaks of “the dra- matic force of the main argument between the two leaders.” 27 Mark W. Edwards, Homer: Poet of the Iliad (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1987; rpt. 1990), 135, with examples discussed here and elsewhere in his book. The classic study of the matter is Albin Lesky, Göttliche und menschliche Motivation im homerischen Epos (Heidelberg: Winter, 1961).
knew Pallas Athene and the terrible eyes shining. He uttered winged words and addressed her: ‘Why have you come now…? …’ Then in answer the goddess grey-eyed Athene spoke to him: ‘I have come down to stay your anger—but will you obey me? … Come then, do not take your sword in your hand, keep clear of fighting, though indeed with words you may abuse him, and it will be that way. … Hold your hand then, and obey us.’ Then in answer again spoke Achilleus of the swift feet: ‘Goddess, it is necessary that I obey the word of you two, angry though I am in my heart. So it will be better. If any man obeys the gods, they listen to him also.’ He spoke, and laid his heavy hand on the silver sword hilt and thrust the great blade back into the scabbard nor disobeyed the word of Athene. And she went back again to Olympos.28
Achilles is torn between an emotional impulse (I will yield to my anger and kill him for his insults) and rational thought (I will control my anger because I should not kill my commander-in-chief). At this critical moment Athena appears and seems to decide the issue for him. But does she? Although she tells him clearly what she expects from him, she leaves the decision to him, as her question (will you obey me?) makes evident. One might even put the matter in Freudian terms: Achilles’ id is his impulse to attack Agamemnon; his ego makes him hesitate; his superego is Athena. Achilles knows that it is necessary for humans to obey gods, but he also understands that Athena and Hera, who sent her, are not threatening or forcing him. They advise, although strongly; but the out- come depends on him. The decision between the two courses of action that Achilles is pondering is entirely his own:
It is important to note exactly what the poet has Athena do here. She does not put anything into the hero’s mind, or exercise any superior power over his thinking…. the decision is his.29
28 Homer, Iliad 1.188–221; quoted from Richmond Lattimore, The Iliad of Homer (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1951; new rpt., 2011), 80–81. Cf. on this passage the detailed observations by Kirk, The Iliad: A Commentary, vol. 1, 73–76, and Edwards, Homer: Poet of the Iliad, 178–182. 29 Edwards, Homer: Poet of the Iliad, 181. In the passage here quoted in an excerpt Edwards’ view differs somewhat from the one by Bruno Snell adduced below and from my own.
Athena is the external manifestation of what is going through Achilles’ mind; her words could be the equivalent of an interior monologue in modern lit- erature. Her presence serves to underline the importance of this crucial moment. Had Achilles decided differently, he would have provoked a crisis in military leadership and seriously jeopardized the Greeks’ chances of win- ning the war. That decision would have changed the entire plot of the epic, which is just getting under way. Athena’s appearance furthermore makes the scene vivid and exciting. It is the best means to let listeners or readers fully realize what is at stake. The moment could not have been made more effec- tive or more immediate. It illustrates what Edwards observed about double motivation: Athena’s presence superimposes added dignity on a common human phenomenon, a change of mind. And it is inherently dramatic, even visual: “the description of his [Achilles’] internal struggle is made more graphic by the addition that it took place within his ‘shaggy chest’.” And: “she [Athena] gave it [Achilles’ hair] a good tug…to gain his attention with- out delay.”30 But is the Homeric scene realistic? The kings who witness Achilles and Agamemnon’s quarrel see Achilles, hand on sword already partly drawn, sud- denly checking himself, abruptly turning around, and speaking to—apparently nobody, for Homer takes care to inform us that only Achilles can see Athena. Achilles seems to be listening, speaks again—to no one in view—and puts his sword away. Then he turns around to face Agamemnon once more. If we imagine ourselves among the kings, we might well wonder what is going on since we are not let in on anything. Why is Achilles behaving inexpli- cably or irrationally, talking to himself, as it seems? If we cannot see Athena, presumably we cannot hear her, either. If we can, the scene is even more bizarre, with a disembodied voice, a woman’s at that in this all-male gathering, suddenly coming from nowhere. If, however, we imagine ourselves as com- plete outsiders or spectators who are not directly involved, we are at an even greater loss to understand what is happening, for then we simultaneously observe Achilles’ strange behavior and the others’ incomprehension. Homer does not tell us how the kings react, and this is the key to the scene’s effective- ness. Its point of view is severely restricted. It is, as it were, entirely sealed off from realism since it is presented exclusively from Achilles’ perspective. Homer is silent about any reaction such as surprise or bafflement on the part of the kings. The scene may at first strike us as an objective report on a past event since it comes from an omniscient third-person narrator. Instead, it is wholly
30 The quotations are from Kirk, The Iliad: A Commentary, vol. 1, 73 (on 1.188–192) and 74 (on 1.197).
Der Dichter bedurfte an dieser Stelle keines “Götterapparates”: Achill bezwingt sich einfach, und daß er nicht gegen Agamemnon losstürzt, ließe sich auch aus seinem Inneren erklären: das Eingreifen der Athena stört für uns eher die Motivation, als daß es sie plausibel macht.32
The poet, we feel, had no special need of the divine apparatus at this juncture; Achilles simply controls himself, and it would have been suffi- cient to explain his failure to rush upon Agamemnon from his own men- tal processes. From our point of view, the intercession of Athena merely confuses the motivation rather than making it plausible.33
31 On this see especially Mieke Bal, Narratology: Introduction to the Theory of Narrative, 3rd ed. (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2009). The theory has repeatedly been applied to Homeric epic, especially by Irene J.F. de Jong, Narrators and Focalizers: The Presentation of the Story in the Iliad, 2nd ed. (Bristol: Bristol Classical Press, 2004); A Narratological Commentary on the Odyssey (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2001); and Narratology and Classics: A Practical Guide (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2014), On “focalization” see in particular the overviews by Bal, 145–165 (chapter “Focalization”), and de Jong, Narrators and Focalizers, 29–40 (chapter “A Narratological Model of Analysis”). I return to this theory below. 32 Bruno Snell, Die Entdeckung des Geistes: Studien zur Entstehung des europäischen Denkens bei den Griechen, 6th ed. (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1985). Later reprints, called “editions” by the publisher, are unchanged; the first edition appeared in 1946. The title of Chapter 2 is “Der Glaube an die olympischen Götter” (“Belief in the Olympian Gods”; 30–44 and 298–299 [notes]). The passage quoted is on pages 35–36. 33 Bruno Snell, The Discovery of the Mind: The Greek Origins of European Thought, tr. T.G. Rosenmeyer (Cambridge: Harvard University Press/Oxford: Blackwell, 1953; several rpts.). The translation is based on a much earlier German edition than the one I use. Its latest reprint (New York: Dover, 1982) has The Discovery of the Mind in Greek Philosophy and Literature as its title. The original title of Chapter 2 has been simplified to “The Olympian Gods,” (23–42 and 311 [notes]). My quotation is from page 31. E.R. Dodds, The Greeks and the Irrational (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1951; numerous rpts.), 14, echoes Snell: “We find it [i.e. “that machinery of physical intervention to which Homer resorts so
Modern readers of Homer can easily imagine the scene in their mind’s eye. And that may have been its very purpose. As E.R. Dodds explained in his classic study The Greeks and the Irrational:
ought we not…to say…that the divine machinery ‘duplicates’ a psychic intervention—that is, presents it in a concrete pictorial form? This was not superfluous; for only in this way could it be made vivid to the imagi- nation of the hearers…. [Athena appearing to Achilles] is the projection, the pictorial expression, of an inward monition.34
Pictorial expression: Dodds’s emphasis on the visual is crucial for our topic and goes to the heart of the matter already broached in connection with Moravia’s Contempt. But how would a stage or screen version of the moment in which Achilles changes his mind affect its viewers? Modern spectators are outsiders; they observe Achilles’ irrational behavior and the others’ incomprehension and inaction. Actors playing Agamemnon and the kings would have to remain immobile; the effect on them is one of time standing still. This is also the impression on viewers in the theater because Homer takes no fewer than eigh- teen lines (1.201–218) to tell us about Achilles and Athena’s exchange of words. About thirty to forty-five seconds are necessary for such a dialogue to take place in real time. Are the kings simply sitting idly through it all? It is unlikely that most modern audiences should know the warrior-like woman who is unexpectedly dropping in from the sky or should be aware why
constantly”] superfluous because the divine machinery seems to us in many cases to do no more than duplicate a natural psychological causation.” The passage from Dodds that I quote below then follows. The chapter on Athena in Hartmut Erbse, Untersuchungen zur Funktion der Götter im homerischen Epos (Berlin: De Gruyer, 1986), 116–155, is worth con- sulting in our context. Erbse dedicated his book to Snell, his teacher. Erbse, 137–139, dis- cusses the appearance of Athena to Achilles and observes (139) that only the personal epiphany of a divinity could have explained the reasons for Achilles’ sudden decision not to kill Agamemnon. Cf. Erbse, 142. Erbse was convinced that the Iliad and the Odyssey were composed by different poets; as a result, he examined the similarities and differ- ences between the portrayals of certain divinities, including Athena, in either epic. This side of his argumentation does not pertain to my topic. For a related but anthropologi- cally influenced restatement see, e.g., Jean-Pierre Vernant, Myth and Society in Ancient Greece, tr. Janet Lloyd; rev. ed. (New York: Zone Books, 1990; rpt. 1996), 101–119 (chapter titled “The Society of the Gods”), especially 103–104. 34 Dodds, The Greeks and the Irrational, 14. He says soon after: “The poets did not, of course, invent the gods…. But the poets bestowed on them personality” (15).
Athena tends to help heroes in moments of crisis. An adaptation would have to provide this essential information in order to establish her identity and to ensure that the cause and importance of her appearance are justified. The result: boring background verbiage (I am Athena, goddess of such and such, and I am appearing to you because of this and that). Even worse, a director would have to cut away from the excitement and suspense of impending violent action to two talking heads. All talk and no action—the very death of visual storytelling. This is not a problem the Homeric narrator had to worry about. His focus could remain on Achilles and Athena, and he could neglect their sur- roundings. A film director could not, for the surroundings are present on the screen. It is therefore doubtful that Athena’s epiphany to Achilles can be made to look convincing on film. A worthy but not entirely successful attempt to keep the goddess in the pic- ture both literally and figuratively is instructive. Director Marino Girolami, a prolific veteran of Italian cinema, made Fury of Achilles (L’ira di Achille) in 1962, with American bodybuilder Gordon Mitchell as Achilles. Girolami’s two-hour color and widescreen epic is generally dismissed as yet another example of the muscleman cinema that was cashing in on the sensational success of Pietro Francisci’s recent Hercules films with Steve Reeves (Hercules [Le fatiche di Ercole], 1958; Hercules Unchained or Hercules and the Queen of Lydia [Ercole e la regina di Lidia], 1959). And at first sight Girolami’s film is just that: a colorful spectacle with brawny men and buxom ladies, action and romance, and fanci- ful costumes and sets. But the film stays unexpectedly close to the Iliad in sev- eral sequences. The one of Achilles’ quarrel with Agamemnon is a case in point. We have seen the devastation in the Greek camp wrought by Apollo’s plague, and the narrator tells us that on the tenth day Achilles calls the kings to an assembly, just as Homer had him do, but without any mention of Hera, who had put the suggestion in Achilles’ mind.35 Again as in Homer, Achilles opens the discussion and calls on the seer Calchas for an explanation (57–67). The dialogue is not particularly poetic, but it is to the point and informs viewers about what is at stake. Still as in Homer, Calchas is fearful to speak and calls on Achilles for protection, which he is promised (68–91). Calchas now reveals the cause of the plague (92–100). Agamemnon’s harsh reaction to his words sticks closely to what Homer’s Agamemnon had said (106–120). Now Achilles addresses Agamemnon. Their antagonism begins to heat up when Agamemnon replies sullenly and suspiciously. Here the film’s dialogue is more condensed and deviates from Homer (121–147). Agamemnon, for instance, suspects Achilles to have told Calchas what to say. His demand for Briseis precipitates
35 Iliad 1.53–56. Further line references to Book 1 will appear in parentheses in my text.
Achilles’ angry reply, a long speech in Homer (148–171) that is curtailed in the film. This change, however, is fully justified; Homer conveys Achilles’ anger verbally, as he must; Girolami does so visually, as he should, with a medium close-up on the two kings. Achilles is, as we say today, in Agamemnon’s face almost literally; he dominates the center of the screen. But the essence of his words is preserved. Achilles threatens to sail home with his men. As Homer’s Agamemnon does, Girolami’s Agamemnon taunts him that greater heroes will take his place. Homer’s Agamemnon then threatens that he will personally take Briseis away (172–187), and this precipitates Achilles’ fury. The lines that now follow in the text have been quoted and discussed above. At this moment Girolami introduces another change. Achilles is in the process of leaving the assembly, which has been taking place in Agamemnon’s tent. In a long shot we see him walking toward the exit while Agamemnon threatens him. Agamemnon does not mention Briseis but insults Achilles: “Bastard son of a goddess!” (Bastardo di una dea!) The camera rapidly travels close to Achilles, who has stopped in his tracks and is turning around. He is seething. An ominous musical chord on the soundtrack underscores the dramatic moment. Without a cut the camera tilts down and advances into a close-up of Achilles’ sword being drawn from its scabbard. Nestor and some of the kings rise in shock and horror. Achilles, hand on sword hilt, begins to rush on Agamemnon in long shot while others, including Patroclus, attempt to hold him back. Achilles loses control of himself, screaming and pushing the kings out of his way. Agamemnon, we believe, is doomed. At this moment Athena appears, but not exactly as she does in Homer. Girolami cuts to a medium close-up of Achilles center right, facing Patroclus screen right, who is still holding Achilles by the arm. Other kings are visible screen left and at the right edge. The tent, brightly lit during the entire assem- bly scene, is suddenly darker. A black area is visible on the top left of the wide- screen image. This would be a bad composition if it did not prepare the goddess’s epiphany. Momentarily all is silent. Then an unfamiliar and super- naturally sounding organ is heard on the soundtrack. Achilles turns his head toward the center of the screen, and a double exposure brings Athena into view, screen left behind Achilles and filling the black space. He keeps turning his head slowly. Athena tells him not to kill Agamemnon; if he restrains himself now he will be better off later. Then she vanishes. Cut to a long shot in the tent, lit realistically again, with Achilles turning back to Agamemnon. Since Athena did not specifically permit him to abuse Agamemnon verbally, Achilles does not do so. His hostile words to Agamemnon in the Iliad (225–244) are condensed to their climax: Agamemnon will be responsible for the Greek blood that Hector will shed (240–244). Then Achilles
36 Quoted from André Bazin, “The Life and Death of Superimposition,” in André Bazin, Bazin at Work: Major Essays and Reviews from the Forties and Fifties, ed. Bert Cardullo; tr. Alain Piette and Bert Cardullo (New York: Routledge, 1997), 73–76; quotations at 76 and 74.
Here a comparison with a later filmmaker’s approach to showing his viewers a highly emotional moment in which someone nearly superhuman appears to a mortal while time is suspended is instructive. John Kent Harrison’s Helen of Troy was made in anticipation of the release of Troy. Harrison, like Petersen, tells the story of the entire Trojan War. At one moment during intense fighting below the walls of Troy, Menelaus, in medium close-up, is pushing a defeated Trojan to the ground. He is surrounded by other warriors. Arrows are flying audibly through the air. Unexpectedly the film slows down, and both the sounds of battle—clanging of swords, whooshes of arrows—and the accom- panying music stop. Slowly Menelaus turns around and looks up. All back- ground action has come to a standstill: a warrior is unmoving, an arrow is stationary in midair. Gentle strings in the high register and an ethereal choir now become audible on the soundtrack. A cut to Menelaus’ point of view shows us, also in slow motion, Helen approaching the battlement on top of the wall of Troy and looking down at the melée in progress. Trojan archers on either side of her do not move; their arrows are stopped in midair. The super- natural music continues as Harrison cuts back to the battlefield, with various Greeks and Trojans frozen in motion and only Menelaus moving slowly and as if in a daze while looking at Helen. In another shot the camera circles around him, showing fighters engaged in duels and other kinds of combat, all standing still in mid-fighting. A female solo voice now begins to intone a kind of word- less chant, conveying an exotic aura. In close-ups Menelaus looks at Helen, and she looks at him. A high-angle long shot then shows the battlefield. For special emphasis, the camera circles around a little, primarily to bring several arrows arrested in flight to viewers’ attention. Menelaus, still in slow motion, turns away from Helen; no one else is moving. The music ebbs away. Now everything and everybody, including Menelaus, comes to life again at regular speed of movement. After the eerie music and a moment of silence before the battle recommences, the cranked-up sound of arrows resuming their flight comes as a shock. This moment does not, strictly speaking, involve a theophany—Helen, although a daughter of Zeus, is mortal—but it does present an epiphany. Unlike Petersen’s Menelaus, who is a brute of a husband, Harrison’s is hope- lessly in love with his unfaithful wife. Menelaus, unexpectedly seeing Helen, focuses only on her; all else surrounding him fades from his consciousness. Harrison shows us his state of mind—or state of feeling—from an outsider’s perspective, for we still see what Menelaus no longer notices, the battlefield around him. The unmoving fighters and weapons and Menelaus in slow motion all combine realism with subjectivity. The moment of arrested time is unreal- istic. But as an illustration of Menelaus’ psychology it is wholly appropriate.
Cinematically the moment is a success because we accept it as an expression of the power that his love for Helen still has over Menelaus. It works particu- larly well as spectacle, for its unreality is presented realistically. The opposition of spectacle and psychological realism that Moravia’s Contempt revealed as being crucial for any film adaptation of the Odyssey applies to those of the Iliad as well. Fury of Achilles shows us one attempt to take both sides into account. But because Girolami sought to combine two incompatibles, the moment does not fully succeed on either level. The super- natural undermines realism; the director’s sense of what will work for his audi- ence diminishes the spectacular, for Athena’s theophany is not eye-popping enough. By contrast, Helen’s epiphany is. Harrison’s way of arresting time works far better than Girolami’s; this is why the realistically unreal can last for almost one minute. Harrison could avail himself of a technical advantage that Girolami did not have, for the moment in which time is arrested was created by digital effects.37 We can only speculate how Girolami might have shown Athena’s appearance, had he had access to the same kind of technical support. How does Petersen handle the quarrel between Achilles and Agamemnon? The changes from Homer and even from Girolami are significant, because Petersen opts for wholesale realism, as he must do in an age of seriously dimin- ished audience familiarity with Greek literature, religion, and myth.38 Petersen resembles Moravia’s Rheingold, the director committed to realism and modern psychology. Calchas, for example, appears nowhere in Troy. And there is not even an assembly left in Agamemnon’s hut when Achilles arrives. “Leave us,” Agamemnon commands the other kings when he notices Achilles. Their quar- rel is not about Briseis, at least not initially, since there has been no plague caused by Apollo; it is about military victory and heroic glory. Then Achilles finds out that Agamemnon has already had Briseis taken from him. She is now being dragged into the tent. “The spoils of war,” Agamemnon comments
37 The technical effect is an example of “bullet time,” as it is generally called. On it see Bob Rehak, “The Migration of Forms: Bullet Time as Microgenre,” Film Criticism, 32 no. 1 (2007), 26–48. 38 This circumstance is nicely, and tellingly, illustrated by the very look of the Wooden Horse of Troy. It is evidently built from ships’ planking and not from wood cut on Mt. Ida outside Troy, as ancient sources report; cf. West, The Epic Cycle, 193–195 (on the Little Iliad). The result is a horse simultaneously eerie in its black bulk and weirdly attractive. Cinema his- tory has shown a veritable herd of Trojan Horses; that in Troy is one of the most memo- rable. It is outdone in sheer menace only by the emaciated-looking Horse in Franco Rossi’s Odissea (1968). Other noteworthy Horses can be seen in Manfred Noa’s Helena (1924), Giorgio Ferroni’s La guerra di Troia (The Trojan Horse or The Wooden Horse of Troy, 1961), and Harrison’s Helen of Troy.
39 Iliad 1.225 begins “You wine sack” (Lattimore, The Iliad of Homer, 81).
40 Pedro Luis Cano, “El ciclo troyano: ‘Helena’ (1924),” in Los generos literarios: Actes del VIIè simposi d’estudis clàssics, 21–24 de Març de 1983 (Bellaterra: Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona, 1985), 75–93, provides an outline. 41 This is a faint, and doubtless wholly unintended, echo of Achilles’ secret meeting with Helen during the Trojan War (Cypria, Arg. 11b), whose underlying cause may be the for- mer’s amatory interest in the latter. On this see West, The Epic Cycle, 118–119. West, 119, rejects the possibility that they had “a romantic attachment” or made love, as has been suspected, but grants the Cypria enough influence to have given rise to “a tendency towards a romantic pairing of Achilles and Helen” (286). But there was more. According to Pausanias, Description of Greece 3.19.11–13, Achilles and Helen were said to have lived as husband and wife on the White Island in the Black Sea, his cult place. Exhaustive details, including variations, in Guy Hedreen, “The Cult of Achilles in the Euxine,” Hesperia, 60 (1991), 313–330.
There are…three familiar ways of signifying subjectivity within the first- person narrative field: to present what a character says (voice-over), sees (subjective focus, imitative angle of vision), or thinks. The term I propose for this final category is mindscreen, by which I mean simply the field of the mind’s eye…. the mindscreen can present the whole range of visual imagi- nation…. mindscreens belong to, or manifest the workings of, specific minds. A mindscreen sequence is narrated in the first person…. Mindscreen, as a term, attempts to articulate [the] sense of the image as a limited whole, with a narrating intelligence offscreen. This intelligence…selects what is seen and heard; it is a principle of narrative coherence. The film is its visual field, made accessible to an audience through the technology of projec- tion…. Even when it depicts a fantasy in the mind’s eye, then, the mind- screen remains a medium of first-person visual narration…. It presents a personalized world…. it is both an agency of visual telling and an expres- sion of mind in the world; in short, it is the eye as I, the vision of Vision.43
Much of this can be applied to Achilles’ vision of Athena, which presents the whole range of the former’s visual imagination and manifests the workings of his mind, although it is not narrated in the first person. Still, the divine epiph- any presents, and represents, a personalized world—Achilles’—from which the surrounding characters—the assembled kings and Agamemnon—are excluded. The theophany is an expression of Achilles’ mind in his, but also in the Homeric, world, the externalized vision of an inner Vision. This cinematic side of narrative might be juxtaposed to the idea of “focaliza- tion” advanced in modern narrative theory.44 What a pioneering scholar wrote
42 Bruce F. Kawin, Mindscreen: Bergman, Godard, and First-Person Film (1978; rpt. Normal, Ill.: Dalkey Archive, 2006). Kawin begins his analyses at the dawn of cinema (1903). 43 Kawin, Mindscreen, 10–12, 55, and 84 (emphases in original); cf. Kawin, 18–19. His concep- tion of mindscreen is applied best to complex modern rather than traditional filmic nar- rations, as in European art cinema since the 1960s. 44 It is telling in this regard that Bal, Narratology, follows her chapter “Focalization” with one titled “Visual Stories” (165–175). The term focalization is derived from photography and
If the focalizor [Achilles] coincides with the character [Achilles], that character will have an advantage over the other characters [the assem- bled kings]. The reader watches with the character’s eyes and will, in principle, be inclined to accept the vision presented by that character.45
On the problem in our scene concerning who hears what is said by Athena and Achilles, consider the following about characters’ spoken and unspoken words:
Here…lies a possibility for manipulation [on an author’s part] which is often used. Readers are given elaborate information about the thoughts of a character, which the other characters do not hear. If these thoughts [in our case, the words of Athena and Achilles] are placed in between the sections of dialogue [as spoken to or before the assembly, such as Calchas’ words, Achilles’ to Agamemnon, and Agamemnon’s to Achilles], readers do not often realize how much less the other character knows [or the other characters know: the kings] than they do. An analysis of the per- ceptibility of the focalized objects supplies insight into these objects’ relationships.46
To summarize:
The text [in our case, the Iliad]…is the result of the narrating activity (narration) of a narrator [the omniscient storyteller, who need not be identical to Homer, even if there was a Homer]. That which the narrator tells…is a…story, consisting of a fabula (see below) looked at from a cer- tain, specific angle [and] the result of the focalizing activity (focaliza- tion) of a focalizer. Focalization comprises not only “seeing”, but [also] ordering, interpreting, in short all mental activities. That which the focal- izer focalizes…is a…fabula, consisting of a logically and chronologically
film (Bal, 147). As she says, “attention to visuality is tremendously enriching for the analy- sis of literary narratives” (166). Cf. Bal, 167, on adapting novel (and, we might add, epic) to film. 45 Bal, Narratology, 149–150. The spellings “focalizor” (Bal) and “focalizer” (de Jong and gen- erally) carry no difference in meaning. 46 Bal, Narratology, 157. Cf. Bal, 156, on what is “visible only inside the ‘head,’ ‘mind,’ or ‘feelings’.”
related series of events [brought about] by characters in a fictional world…. We, the hearer/reader [sic], are always confronted with a filtered view, i.e. selection and evaluation, of the events and this filtering is due to a focalizer. For this vision to become accessible to us, it must be put into words by a narrator.47
Despite its terminology and high level of abstraction, all this is elementary and sensible. A combination of the concepts of focalization and mindscreen, then, may be useful for a screenwriter or director who wants to incorporate Athena in a sophisticated film version of the quarrel between Agamemnon and Achilles. How exactly this may be done is a question fascinating to contemplate but too complex to be pursued here. Still, one fundamental consideration of why the cinema with its inexhaustible toolkit of special effects is especially well suited to depictions of the supernatural and the fantastic, of subconscious and unconscious states such as dreams or nightmares, and of other related phe- nomena is worth keeping in mind. What André Bazin had written in 1946 may, to us, be a pertinent comment on Molteni’s, Rheingold’s, and Petersen’s view of the gods in epic film:
The opposition that some like to see between a cinema inclined toward the almost documentary representation of reality and a cinema inclined, through reliance on technique, toward escape from reality into fantasy and the world of dreams, is essentially forced…. The fantastic in the cin- ema is possible only because of the irresistible realism of the photo- graphic image. It is the image that can bring us face to face with the unreal, that can introduce the unreal into the world of the visible…. What in fact appeals to the audience about the fantastic in the cinema is its realism—I mean, the contradiction between the irrefutable objectivity of the photographic image and the unbelievable nature of the events that it depicts.48
Bazin then goes on to observe that Hollywood cinema has already begun “creating the supernatural in a more purely psychological manner.”49 A few comments about another appearance of Athena to a hero she pro- tects will be apposite here. Her epiphany to Odysseus in Book 13 of the Odyssey
47 Quoted from de Jong, Narrators and Focalizers, 31 and 32–33. 48 Bazin, “The Life and Death of Superimposition,” 73. 49 Bazin, “The Life and Death of Superimposition,” 74.
50 Suzanne Saïd, Homer and the Odyssey, tr. Ruth Webb (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2011), provides an attractive introduction to the epic. A detailed and highly insightful examination of Book 13 may be found in Erbse, Untersuchungen zur Funktion der Götter im homerischen Epos, 116–124. 51 Odyssey 13.287–288; quoted from Richmond Lattimore, The Odyssey of Homer, rev. ed. (New York: Harper and Row, 1967; several rpts.), 205. 52 Odyssey 13.291–295. 53 Erbse, Untersuchungen zur Funktion der Götter im homerischen Epos, 121, on Odyssey 13.296–299: “Hier wird ganz deutlich, daß diese Athene nach dem Vorbild ihres menschli- chen Lieblings konzipiert ist.” On this below. 54 Erbse, Untersuchungen zur Funktion der Götter im homerischen Epos, 124 (“verständlich und erzählbar”).
If Athena in the Odyssey illustrates the fact that, in the common saying, the Greeks created the gods in their own image, then we can better understand Latacz’s observation about the gods in Troy—that they are inside the humans. If any omission of the Homeric gods is by its nature non-Homeric, must it also be anti-Homeric? Scholars are familiar with the fate of the gods during the apex of Greek civilization in the fifth century bc. The development from myth to reason, from mythos to logos, brought the decline of religion and the advances of philosophy. Snell aptly comments:
Allerdings hat dies Fortschreiten des Denkens zur Philosophie diese Götter selbst zum Opfer gebracht. Sie verloren ihre natürliche und unmit- telbare Funktion, je stärker der Mensch seiner selbst als eines geistigen Wesens bewußt wurde. Hatte Achill seine Entscheidung noch als Eingriff der Göttin gedeutet, so trug der Mensch des 5. Jahrhunderts im Bewußtsein eigener Freiheit selbst die Verantwortung für die von ihm selbst getrof- fene Wahl; das Göttliche, von dem er sich gelenkt und vor dem er sich verantwortlich fühlte, wurde immer stärker bestimmt von der Vorstellung der Gerechtigkeit, des Guten, des Anständigen, oder wie immer man das nennen will, wonach man sich bei seinem Handeln richtet.55
progress of thinking towards philosophy was effected at the sacrifice of the gods themselves. They lost their natural and immediate function in propor- tion as man became aware of his own spiritual potential. Whereas Achilles had interpreted his decision as an intercession of the goddess, fifth century man, proudly convinced of his personal freedom, took upon himself the responsibility for his choice. The deity whose guidance and authority he rec- ognized with ever increasing assurance was formulated as the concept of jus- tice, or the good, or honesty, or whatever else the norm of action be called.56
This progress presents what we might call, in rather abstract terms, a re- internalization and de-visualization of mental processes.57 If such was a
55 Snell, Die Entdeckung des Geistes, 41–42. 56 Snell, The Discovery of the Mind, 39. 57 Cf. on this the classic account by Wilhelm Nestle, Vom Mythos zum Logos: Die Selbstentfaltung des griechischen Denkens von Homer bis auf die Sophistik und Sokrates (Stuttgart: Kröner, 1940; 2nd ed., 1942, with several rpts.). See further Snell, Die Entdeckung des Geistes, 178–204 and 310–313 (chapter titled “Gleichnis, Vergleich, Metapher, Analogie: Der Weg vom mythischen zum logischen Denken”) = The Discovery of the Mind, 191–226 and 316–318 (notes; “From Myth to Logic: The Role of the Comparison”).
common phenomenon in antiquity, we should not expect it to be absent from modernity, least of all when modern artists re-imagine an ancient work of lit- erature in a modern medium and all its contexts. The story of the Trojan War is no exception. It was not an exception in antiquity, not even given the hallowed status of the Homeric epics. By the first century ad, for example, things had already changed drastically. (Lucan’s Pharsalia may have pointed the way.) In Statius’ Thebaid, a Roman epic on Greek myth, the gods “yield to many pres- sures. Their claims to authority exploded, they surrender the moral stage… to the human actors. Further, the poet deprives them of the right to fulfill their proper epic modes of action.”58 A telling illustration is the short speech that Minerva, the Roman Athena, addresses to the hero Tydeus.59 It is evidently modeled on our scene in the Iliad, but it differs from it significantly. A scholar explains:
Minerva here is human wisdom, given a voice, and a compelling philo- sophical rhetoric—‘undisguisedly a state of Tydeus’ mind’, as Lewis puts it. The care which Statius lavishes on this effect begins with his refusal even to figure Minerva in the action…. Statius is so far from having her appear that he contrives to introduce her words without using an actual verb of speech…. The appearance of Athene to Achilles…is the obvious model for Statius’ scene, yet the departure from Homer’s procedure is radical…. The attenuation of the goddess’s personality in Statius, the absence of any narrative dynamic or interchange, are astonishing if one reads his scene immediately after reading Homer’s.60
Nor was this the only instance of radical departure from Homer. A work about the fall of Troy composed centuries after Homer and ascribed to Dares the Phrygian is telling. In antiquity, he was even identified with the Dares who is named in the Iliad.61 In Dares’ version of the Trojan War, “the pagan gods did not have the same omnipresence they had [had] in the Iliad.”62 Dares was
58 Quoted from D.C. Feeney, The Gods in Epic: Poets and Critics of the Classical Tradition (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1991; rpt. 1993), 364. 59 Statius, Thebaid 2.682–706. 60 Quoted from Feeney, The Gods in Epic, 365–366. He quotes C.S. Lewis, The Allegory of Love: A Study in Medieval Tradition (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1936; numerous rpts.), 52. 61 Dares is named at Iliad 5.9 and 27. 62 Quoted from Jon Solomon, “The Vacillations of the Trojan Myth: Popularization & Classicization, Variation & Codification,” International Journal of the Classical Tradition, 14 (2007), 482–634; quotation at 507.
3 Gods, Humans, and the Meaning of Life
Achilles’ observation to Briseis in Troy about gods’ envy of humans has become especially controversial and has furnished many with ammunition or, as they see it, definitive proof that the film fails as an adaptation of Homer. Early on, Achilles told Briseis of his suspicion that Apollo’s failure to avenge the deaths of his priests and the desecration of his temple and statue indicates divine indifference or even worse: “I think your god is afraid of me.” Achilles’ question about Apollo that comes soon after is therefore inevitable: “Where is he?” Briseis calls Achilles “nothing but a killer” who “wouldn’t know anything about the gods.” Here is his reply:
I’ll tell you a secret—something they don’t teach you in your temple. The gods envy us. They envy us because we’re mortal, because every moment might be our last. Everything’s more beautiful because we’re doomed. You’ll never be lovelier than you are now. We will never be here again.
Chiasson’s verdict on this speech, which he quotes, is representative: Achilles’ “perception of the relationship between gods and mortals” is “emphatically un-Homeric” because “Achilles effectively subverts the metaphysical justifi cation for heroic warfare argued by Sarpedon” in Book 12 of the Iliad, a passage Chiasson has examined earlier in his essay.63 I will turn to it below. But at the beginning of Book 22, when Achilles encounters Apollo himself on the battlefield, the exchange between the two tells us something different from what Chiasson here argues. Unlike Diomedes in Book 5, who stops fighting gods as soon as he realizes that Athena, whose presence had sanctioned his
63 The quotations are from Chiasson, “Redefining Homeric Heroism in Wolfgang Petersen’s Troy,” 200.
You have balked me, striker from afar, most malignant of all gods, when you turned me here away from the rampart, else many Trojans would have caught the soil in their teeth before they got back to Ilion. Now you have robbed me of great glory, and rescued these people lightly, since you have no retribution to fear hereafter. Else I would punish you, if only the strength were in me.65
Achilles does not fight Apollo because no mortal on his own can fight a god. To him, it is as simple as that, and this obvious circumstance is the only reason he retreats. It is evident that Homer’s Apollo is by no means afraid of Achilles. It is equally evident that Achilles is not afraid of, and fears no retribution from, the very god who will eventually kill him, using Paris and his arrow as his tool. (Homer’s ancient listeners and readers were aware of this.) A modern com- mentator calls Achilles’ answer to Apollo “angry and defiant” and goes on to observe: “His readiness to defy Apollo contrasts with the helplessness of both Diomedes and Patroklos in the face of this god” in Books 5 and 16. It is a mea- sure of the unusual or unique nature of Achilles’ words that they were “cen- sored…as morally reprehensible” even in antiquity.66 In the Republic, Plato has Socrates quote Achilles’ first and last lines as examples, among several others, of a human’s irreverent behavior toward the divine.67 So not everything in Homeric epic may have been as clear-cut as Chiasson presents it. In particular, Achilles’ impulsive decapitation of Apollo’s golden statue early in Troy, an undeniably shocking sacrilege, takes on a somewhat different meaning in light of the opening scene in Book 22, a passage about which Chiasson is silent. In antiquity, corroboration of Achilles’ attitude toward Apollo came later. His defiance of Apollo in the Iliad was the model for an encounter between god
64 Iliad 22.8–10 and 13 (Lattimore, The Iliad of Homer, 457). 65 Iliad 22.15–20 (Lattimore, The Iliad of Homer, 457). 66 Both quotations are from Nicholas Richardson, The Iliad: A Commentary, vol. 6: Books 21–24 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1993; rpt. 2000), 107 (on 22.15–20). 67 Plato, Republic 3.4 (391a). Cf. Jasper Griffin, Homer on Life and Death (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1980; rpt. 2009), 188–189, on the Homeric scene and its contexts.
The great god gave a terrible shout, to deter Achilles From the battle for fear of the supernatural voice Of a god and so to save the Trojans from being killed: “Back off, son of Peleus, away from the Trojans. No longer May you inflict the evil Fates [of death] upon your foes, Or one of the deities of Olympos may destroy you.” But Achilles did not quail at the god’s immortal voice; Already the merciless Fates were hovering over him. So without respect for the god he shouted back at him: “Phoibos, why do you rouse me, even against my will, To fight against gods, in order to save the arrogant Trojans? Once before you tricked and decoyed me from the fighting…. Back off now, far away, and join the rest of the gods At home, or I will strike you, immortal though you are.”68
This is an astonishing reply, for Achilles even throws Apollo’s own words back in his face. The god now becomes so irate that he shoots Achilles on the spot. (No Paris is involved.) Readers ancient and modern may well agree with Apollo’s characteriza- tion of Achilles’ state of mind as exhibiting “such insane defiance of the gods.”69 Altogether, then, what Petersen’s Achilles says to Briseis about Apollo may not be quite as emphatically un-Homeric (or un-Greek) as Chiasson believes. Chiasson concludes:
Homeric warriors aspire to the immortality and eternal potency of the gods, but since they themselves are bound to die, they must settle for
68 Quintus of Smyrna, Posthomerica 2.37–48 and 51–52. The quotation is from Alan James (ed. and tr.), Quintus of Smyrna: The Trojan Epic: Posthomerica (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2004; rpt. 2007), 44. Apollo’s trickery and the two lines here omitted refer to Achilles’ encounters with Hector (Iliad 20.441–454 and 21.596–22.20). 69 Quintus of Smyrna, Posthomerica 2.59 (James [ed. and tr.], Quintus of Smyrna: The Trojan Epic, 44).
immortal existence in the memories of men, the result of extraordinary military prowess. The gods of Troy, by contrast, are such that they envy humans their transience and mortality.
Chiasson then calls Achilles’ view of the gods a “startling ‘secret’.”70 Is it really all that startling? Chiasson well summarizes the Homeric warriors’ views of heroism (even if potency in the above quotation may be an infelicitous word choice) and con- trasts Troy with the Iliad. But is the film’s Achilles, especially in this one regard, wholly incompatible with ancient Greek thought about life and death as it is presented in Homeric epic, even despite major changes? Petersen’s Achilles, for instance, tells Briseis that he did not choose to lead a great warrior’s life: “I chose nothing. I was born, and this is what I am.” Homer’s Achilles did choose something: he chose what he was.71 Although we should not expect any profound understanding of Greek reli- gion or the archaic Greek mind in a film intended for international modern viewers, we can nevertheless find several indications that the Iliad and the Odyssey can prompt the kind of view Achilles espouses in Troy. The sort of critical inquiry into the nature of myth and religion that came with the rise of science and philosophy and reached a great height in fifth-century Athens could well have led a rational-minded ancient Greek to conclude something comparable about human and divine existence and the limitations inherent in the latter from reading Homer. Troy, perhaps only serendipitously, is not all that far removed from a possible line of thought about the gods that the Homeric epics may have prompted in classical times.72
70 Both quotations are from Chiasson, “Redefining Homeric Heroism in Wolfgang Petersen’s Troy,” 200. Chiasson, 206 note 20, rightly adds that it would be wrong to regard this as a restatement of the Greek belief in the gods’ envy (phthonos) toward mortals as it occurs in some well-known semi-historical tales. 71 Standard studies on this and related matters are Griffin, Homer on Life and Death, and Seth L. Schein, The Mortal Hero: An Introduction to Homer’s Iliad (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1984). On the fall of Troy see especially Michael J. Anderson, The Fall of Troy in Early Greek Poetry and Art (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1997). 72 Rational or rationalizing interpretations of Homer’s gods have long been a staple of clas- sical scholarship. A prominent example is Walter F. Otto, Die Götter Griechenlands: Das Bild des Göttlichen im Spiegel des griechischen Geistes (1929; rpt. Frankfurt: Klostermann, 2002); in English: The Homeric Gods: The Spiritual Significance of Greek Religion, tr. Moses Hadas (1954; rpt. New York: Octagon Books, 1978). The roots of such views go back to antiquity, not least to the philosopher and mythographer Euhemerus, who regarded the gods as humans whom later generations had deified.
The gods’ happiness and immortality are attractive to mortals, primarily to those who are engaged in warfare and put their lives on the line at virtually all times. But on a deeper level the gods’ eternal bliss is unsatisfactory and ulti- mately pointless.73 If this were not the case, the gods would be concerned pri- marily or exclusively with maintaining their unblemished and happy existence and would not be as deeply involved in the lives of humans as they are. They would keep themselves removed or aloof from human suffering, misery, and death. They would have no need to leave Olympus. A particular passage in the Odyssey tells us why. In Book 6 Athena appears to Nausicaa in a dream as part of her strategy to ensure Odysseus’ safe reception by the Phaeacians; then she returns to Olympus:
So the gray-eyed Athene spoke and went away from her to Olympos, where the abode of the gods stands firm and unmoving forever, they say, and is not shaken with winds nor spattered with rains, nor does snow pile ever there, but the shining bright air stretches cloudless away, and the white light glances upon it. And there, and all their days, the blessed gods take their pleasure.74
Such a vivid description of the weather on Olympus relieves the poet of the task of describing the interior of the gods’ actual abode. The lines quoted strongly imply the beauty of the divine residence.75 The blessed gods have no need ever to abandon their eternal pleasure even for short periods of time. But they do. Other passages alert us to the shortcomings inherent in the very bliss the gods enjoy. Calypso’s existence on Ogygia, described in Book 5 of the Odyssey,
73 Lorenzo F. Garcia, Jr., Homeric Durability: Telling Time in the Iliad (Cambridge: Center for Hellenic Studies/Harvard University Press, 2013), deals with the topic at hand with great sensitivity and provides extensive primary and secondary references, but he does not reach the position that I argue below. Still, his chapter “The Impermanence of the Permanent: The Death of the Gods?” (159–229) is valuable for the present context. 74 Odyssey 6.41–47; quoted from Lattimore, The Odyssey of Homer, 103. In his comment on these lines J.B. Hainsworth, in Alfred Heubeck, Stephanie West, and J.B. Hainsworth, A Commentary on Homer’s Odyssey, vol. 1: Introduction and Books I-VIII (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1988; rpt. 1990), 296, calls them a “fine description” that was imitated by Lucretius (On the Nature of Things 3.18–22), Lucan (Pharsalia 2.271–273), and Seneca (On Anger 3.6). He further observes that the authenticity of this passage has been suspected. Rainer Spieker, “Die Beschreibung des Olympos (Hom. Od. ∫ 41–47),“ Hermes, 97 (1969), 136–161, argues for it carefully and convincingly. 75 An impressive passage in Roman epic is the description of the sun god’s palatial hall or throne room (regia) in Ovid, Metamorphoses 2.1–18.
There was a growth of grove around the cavern, flourishing, alder was there, and the black poplar, and fragrant cypress, and there were birds with spreading wings who made their nests in it, little owls, and hawks, and birds of the sea with long beaks who are like ravens, but all their work is on the sea water; and right about the hollow cavern extended a flourishing growth of vine that ripened with grape clusters. Next to it there were four fountains, and each of them ran shining water, each next to each, but turned to run in sundry directions; and round about there were meadows growing soft with parsley and violets, and even a god who came into that place would have admired what he saw, the heart delighted within him.76
Here, too, the natural beauty surrounding the cave implies a comparably attractive indoors. The Homeric narrator makes sure that we do not miss Hermes’ admiration, for he tells us about it two more times in the two lines immediately following the passage here quoted. And small wonder: as many scholars have pointed out, this is one of the earliest descriptions of a locus amoenus, the paradisal “pleasing place” of love and tender passion, of harmony between man and nature.77 The passage reveals to listeners and readers the easy and, on the surface, happy existence of “an island fit for the habitation of a goddess.” Yet, “the sociable Greek might discern a sinister overtone: there are no people in this paradise; Odysseus is both marooned and utterly alone.”78 But so is Calypso—or would be if Odysseus had not been driven off course to her shore. And, we may well wonder, how often does anyone land there? Odysseus himself will later point out Calypso’s solitude to the Phaeacian queen: with the exception of himself, Calypso has never had anyone for
76 Odyssey 5.63–74 (Lattimore, The Odyssey of Homer, 90). 77 The sequence set on Calypso’s island in Franco Piavoli’s little-known film Nostos: Il retorno (1989) beautifully and poetically illustrates this very point. 78 Both quotations are from Hainsworth in Heubeck, West, and Hainsworth, A Commentary on Homer’s Odyssey, vol. 1, 262.
‘Shaker of the earth, you would have me be as one without prudence if I am to fight even you for the sake of insignificant
79 Odyssey 7.246–247. 80 Odyssey 5.199. 81 Odyssey 5.118–144. 82 Calypso’s offer is mentioned at Odyssey 5.135–136, 7.256–257, and 23.335–336. West, The Epic Cycle, 148–149 (on Aethiopis, Arg. 2e) and 306 (on Telegony F6), however, argues for a different kind of immortality from that of gods (and as generally taken by readers). 83 Chiasson, “Redefining Homeric Heroism in Wolfgang Petersen’s Troy,” 200–201. 84 Iliad 21.436–460.
mortals, who are as leaves are, and now flourish and grow warm with life, and feed on what the ground gives, but then again fade away and are dead. Therefore let us with all speed give up this quarrel and let the mortals fight their own battles.’ He spoke so and turned away, for he was too modest to close and fight in strength of hand with his father’s brother.85
Apollo’s behavior is appropriate, and his comparison of human life to the exis- tence of leaves on trees is stark and vivid. It takes up, with momentous change, the famous simile of the leaves in Glaucus’ words to Diomedes.86 Glaucus included the annual rebirth or regeneration of leaves in nature because it is a comfort to the heroes who are surrounded by death on all sides. To Apollo, the point of the simile is the brief existence of individual leaves or generations of leaves, a power- ful image to contrast the shortness of human life with the eternity of the gods’ lives. Small wonder Apollo calls humans insignificant, not worthy of a duel between gods. His words, however, strongly contrast with his earlier behavior as a fighter in the war. In Book 16 Apollo saved the city of Troy from a decisive Greek attack led by Patroclus. Three times Apollo threw Patroclus down from the wall he was climbing; the fourth time an angry Apollo threatened and warned Patroclus to desist.87 Patroclus obeyed. So did Diomedes in Book 5. He had charged the Trojan hero Aeneas three times but was rebuffed by Apollo. In his frenzy Diomedes then attacked the god himself. He desisted when Apollo warned him off.88 In these episodes and elsewhere, Apollo is fully invested in the Trojan War. Apollo’s reply to Poseidon and his reaction raise a serious question concern- ing Apollo’s presence in battle: if what Apollo says is true, as it evidently is from his point of view, why then is he there in the first place? This question remains fundamentally unanswered.89 Does Apollo realize how insignificant mortals are only at this moment? If we take Apollo’s reason not to fight Poseidon to its logical conclusion, the gods should never have become involved in this
85 Iliad 21.461–469 (Lattimore, The Iliad of Homer, 452–453). 86 Iliad 6.146–149. 87 Iliad 16.698–711. 88 Iliad 5.431–446. 89 Garcia, Homeric Durability, 166–168 and 240–241, examines the scene but does not raise this question. An obvious reply is that Zeus instigates the gods to fight at Iliad 20.4–31. Poseidon’s surprised reaction to Zeus’ summons of the gods is instructive; he asks if Zeus is concerned for the Trojans and the Greeks (16–18). To this Zeus agrees (20–21). But is this a good enough reason? The narrator sensibly closes his report on this brief assembly on Olympus by observing, matter-of-factly, that Zeus here causes an endless war among the gods (31). What sense then does the battle of god against god make?
And yet Apollo’s action or rather inaction, his declining to fight even though he is immortal, implicitly underscores the courage of those human beings who do choose to fight at the risk of their lives. Thus the Homeric Apollo’s decision not to fight for the sake of mortals manifests both superhuman power—he need not fight to achieve immortality—and inferiority to heroes who must strive to overcome the limitations of the human condition.90
This is both accurate and sensible. And yet, when Chiasson detects inferiority to mortals in the Homeric gods, a more sympathetic approach to Troy might have prompted him to push such a thought further. But the question posed above does not occur to him. Achilles’ “We will never be here again” may be linked to the reason Odysseus does not accept Calypso’s offer of immortality. The words with which a classical scholar has summarized Odysseus’ perspective closely fit Achilles’ worldview in Troy:
Humans have ties to each other, and to their homeland and property, and the intensity of these ties is all the stronger precisely because they cannot last…. Also, it is the excitement of living that appeals to him [Odysseus], as opposed to the continual sameness of existence on Calypso’s island. In contrast to the change and uncertainty that is characteristic of human life, there is the eternal comfort of the lives of the gods…with all their wants supplied.91
90 Chiasson, “Redefining Homeric Heroism in Wolfgang Petersen’s Troy,” 201. He then turns to Apollo’s “impotence in failing to punish Achilles” in Troy. 91 Lefkowitz, Greek Gods, Human Lives, 90–91, 111, and 112.
Eternal bliss is eternal boredom. The gods’ ties to their home and property are necessarily far looser than mortals’ ties are to theirs. Hector’s farewell from his wife and son in Book 6 of the Iliad, one of its most moving scenes, illustrates that very point. Who among the gods could ever experience such profound emotions as Hector and Andromache do here? Only Zeus’ anguish over the imminent death of his son Sarpedon in Book 16 comes close. But that moment is as powerful as it is because it hinges on the death of a mortal. For gods, all is different:
Exemption from death…does not exempt the gods from passion, though it strips them of its tragic consequences…. Deathless, they cannot risk their lives for anything more precious than life, be it honor, the love of a friend, or the love of home. Their inability to sacrifice themselves for something higher constitutes a limitation on the gods…. it is through their involvement with their inferiors, earthbound men, destined to die, that the gods acquire a measure of earnestness. The superhuman, then, turns out to be less than the human in an essential respect.92
Ancient Greeks, and presumably Homer himself, whoever he was, realized these things. Death is the meaning of life. Petersen’s Achilles knows this; so did Homer’s. In the last book of the Iliad Achilles tells King Priam, who has come to ransom the dead body of Hector from his son’s killer:
Such is the way the gods spun life for unfortunate mortals, that we live in unhappiness, but the gods themselves have no sorrows. If Zeus who delights in thunder mingles these and bestows them on man, he shifts, and moves now in evil, again in good fortune. But when Zeus bestows from the urn of sorrows, he makes a failure of man, and the evil hunger drives him over the shining earth, and he wanders respected neither of gods nor mortals.93
These words movingly illustrate our topic. According to Achilles, Zeus grants humans gifts only from the urn of blessings or good fortune when these are mixed with evils and sorrows; we never receive pure blessings. Not all scholars may agree with what I have outlined above. Still, the preced- ing view of Homeric epic is worth contemplating when classical literature has
92 Quoted from Jenny Strauss Clay, The Wrath of Athena: Gods and Men in the Odyssey (1983; rpt. Lanham: Rowman & Littlefield, 1997), 139 and 140–141. 93 Iliad 24.525–533 (Lattimore, The Iliad of Homer, 511).
94 Lefkowitz, Greek Gods, Human Lives, 88. 95 So Saïd, Homer and the Odyssey, 328, who then lists instances. Saïd, 345 and note 78, observes that Odysseus and Athena already had their “special relationship” in the Iliad. 96 Lefkowitz, Greek Gods, Human Lives, 90. Lefkowitz, 112, astutely observes that “their [the gods’] affections [for humans] are tempered by the security of their existence.” 97 A darker view of Book 13 is advanced by Clay, The Wrath of Athena, 186–212 (chapter titled “The Encounter of Odysseus and Athena”), with references to related scholarship. 98 Especially Odyssey 13.221–352.
Odysseus dies? Will she ever find anyone similar? Or is she condemned, much like Calypso, to remember or pine for the one mortal about whom she cared the most and who gave her existence its greatest purpose? Will the virgin god- dess who can never have a husband or son be condemned to eternal loneliness once all the generations of heroes from Heracles and Jason, Achilles and Diomedes, to Odysseus and Telemachus are gone? Is this the kind of happiness anyone would want to aspire to? Had Athena ever offered Odysseus immortal- ity, might he not have accepted it in spite of his love for Penelope, the mortal wife for whose sake he had rejected Calypso’s offer? This is no more than a hypothetical question about something that could never have taken place in Greek myth and remains outside the Homeric understanding of the divine and human worlds. But the greatness of the Odyssey justifies at least raising the question. If Athena will have to give up Odysseus to the natural limitations of his exis- tence, why then is she setting herself up for the inevitable loss—his death, foretold in the Odyssey?99 The reason must be that a close association of per- fect beings with beings who are far more limited in their capabilities, knowl- edge, and existence is the very thing that gives meaning to any divine existence. With appropriate changes, we may apply what has been said about gods and heroes in the Iliad to Odysseus and Athena in the Odyssey, or at least we may contemplate certain similarities:
The gods love great heroes, but that love does not protect them from defeat and death. The heroes…who are doomed…[are] whom the gods love. As they come nearer to that terrible transition [i.e. death], the shin- ing eyes of Zeus are fixed on them all the more attentively; he loves them because they are doomed.100
Conversely, what humans strive for—a long, healthy, easy, luxurious life—the gods already have in abundance. They live in splendid palaces (or attractive caverns), wear fancy clothes, and possess wealth and beauty. But the gods real- ize that all material and other possessions are insignificant in themselves. If you are immortal, why should you value riches that highly? A telling illustra- tion, although from the opposite perspective, can be observed on screen. In Jason and the Argonauts, a film already mentioned, the seafaring heroes land
99 At Odyssey 11.134–137, Tiresias tells Odysseus about his death in old age. On this prophecy in connection with the Telegony, the fragmentary epic in which Odysseus’ son Telegonus kills his father, see West, The Epic Cycle, 307–315. 100 Quoted from Griffin, Homer on Life and Death, 87.
101 Their sacrilege awakens the bronze giant Talos, whose statue had guarded this particular treasury. I analyze the Talos sequence of this film in “Greek Myth on the Screen,” in Roger D. Woodard (ed.), The Cambridge Companion to Greek Mythology (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2007), 453–479, at 462–463. 102 Quintus of Smyrna, Posthomerica 4.272–283, reports that two each of four women whom Achilles had captured were given to Diomedes and Ajax as prizes during the funeral games in Achilles’ honor. They were valuable because they excelled in domestic tasks, and Achilles had taken great pleasure in them (277). It is obvious that Achilles’ pleasure was not limited to observing the young women carrying out their chores. It is equally obvious that they meant nothing to him personally or emotionally, not least since they are said to have been not as excellent as Briseis (275–276). 103 On this side of the myth and its afterlife in Greek and Roman literature see now Marco Fantuzzi, Achilles in Love: Intertextual Studies (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2012), 99–185, especially 143–157. Burgess, “Achilles’ Heel,” 176–177, links the Achilles-Briseis romance in Troy to Achilles’ love for Polyxena in ancient sources, as have a few others.
Man, supposing you and I, escaping this battle, would be able to live on forever, ageless, immortal, so neither would I myself go fighting in the foremost nor would I urge you into the fighting where men win glory. But now, seeing that the spirits of death stand close about us in their thousands, no man can turn aside nor escape them, let us go on and win glory for ourselves, or yield it to others.104
It is extremely poignant that Sarpedon will soon be killed by Patroclus, who in turn will be killed by Hector, who in turn will be killed by Achilles. Petersen’s Achilles is weary of slaughter, has no personal interest in the outcome of the war, certainly takes no joy in the glory of the Greeks’ victories, and leads a largely pointless life before Briseis makes it possible for him to change. Girolami had already presented a comparable portrait of Achilles. As played by Gordon Mitchell, a bodybuilder beyond his prime, Achilles is initially not much more than a haggard-looking killing machine without serious purpose and tired of endless slaughter. Briseis changes him. The Homeric epics themselves had changed Achilles. In Book 11 of the Odyssey Odysseus descends to the Underworld, where he meets the shades of several dead heroes, among them Achilles. Odysseus reminds him of the great honors Achilles received from the Greeks during his lifetime and calls him “more blessed” (makarteros) than any other mortal. He uses a form of the adjective that in Homeric epic regularly describes the gods. Odysseus comforts Achilles, who died before his time, by reminding him of his royal status both on earth and among the dead. Achilles will have none of it:
104 Iliad 12.322–328 (Lattimore, The Iliad of Homer, 286). Chiasson, “Redefining Homeric Heroism in Wolfgang Petersen’s Troy,” 187–188 and 198, summarizes the importance of this crucial scene.
O shining Odysseus, never try to console me for dying. I would rather follow the plow as thrall to another man, one with no land allotted him and not much to live on, than be a king over all the perished dead.105
So much for all heroic valor and glory. The Achilles of the Odyssey knows that the Achilles of the Iliad made the wrong choice: a heroic short life on earth with everlasting glory after death.106 If we measure the later by the earlier Achilles, must we conclude that the later one is un-Homeric because he is radi- cally different from the former? No answer seems necessary. Overall, then, we ought not simply to dismiss the way Troy portrays Achilles. His words to Briseis are appropriate. The film focuses on humans who do not have gods appearing to them or helping them as they did in the Iliad. Instead, the divine is in the humans, as Latacz has argued.107 Hence Hector’s religiosity in Troy, which contrasts with the Greeks’ greed and cynicism, especially Agamemnon’s. Once again Snell’s observations about the Homeric gods are to the point. He characterizes their existence in the following terms:
Diese Götter sind die rheia zôontes, die Leichtlebenden; ihr Leben ist besonders lebendig, da das Dunkle und Unvollkommene ihnen fehlt, das der Tod in das Menschenleben bringt; vor allem aber, weil es ein bewußtes Leben ist, da ihnen Sinn und Ende [i.e. Ziel] ihres Tuns anders gegenwärtig ist als den Menschen…. Tod und Dunkel ist überhaupt so weit wie möglich an den Rand dieser Welt geschoben….Da allem Lebendigen eine Grenze gesetzt ist, findet auch das freie Leben der Götter seine Schranke in dem, was, wenn auch nicht nach einem blinden Fatum, so doch nach einer bestimmten Ordnung geschehen muß, daß z. B. Sterbliche sterben müssen.108
The gods are the rheia zoontes, they live at ease; their life is especially vital in as much as they are not touched by the darkness and the imperfection which death engenders in the human life, but even more so because
105 Odyssey 11.488–491 (Lattimore, The Odyssey of Homer, 180). Cf. Odyssey 4.76–112, where Menelaus, although now reunited with Helen, surrounded by great wealth, and celebrat- ing a double wedding, confesses to grieve for his lost friends and companions in arms almost constantly. By this time the Trojan War has been over for a decade. 106 Iliad 9.410–416. 107 As was Erbse, Latacz is a student of Snell’s. 108 Snell, Die Entdeckung des Geistes, 38. The Greek words here transliterated appear in Greek letters.
theirs is a fully conscious life. The gods know the meaning and the end [i.e. goal, aim] of their existence as human beings can never hope to…. Darkness and death have been pushed to the furthest limits of this world…. Since all life has its boundaries, even the free life of the gods is limited, if not by a blind fate, at least by a fixed order or universal law such as that which compels all men to die.109
4 Man as the Measure of Gods
The greatest film adaptation of Homer until today is Franco Rossi’s Odissea.110 Its ending is pertinent for my subject. The narrator, who had accompanied us throughout this six-hour film, quotes, in measured Italian prose, Homer’s description of the serenity that characterizes the gods’ abode on Olympus. These lines I quoted above. Classical Beckmessers could grumble that this end- ing is not strictly Homeric because the Odyssey does not end with this passage. The narrator’s words accompany a series of impressions of an actual building that stands in for the gods’ palace. This is Athena’s temple on the Acropolis of the city whose patron and guardian she is. The ending of Rossi’s Odissea presents a synthesis. We agree with the narrator’s—really, Homer’s—words and their application to, or illustration by, one of the greatest works of classical architecture. We come to realize that the divine perfection that eludes us in our lives has become humanized in the artistic perfection made possible by our own species’ ingenuity. After all, as the Sophist Protagoras famously observed, man is the measure of all things.111 And, we might add, of all gods.
109 Snell, The Discovery of the Mind, 34–35. 110 Brief appreciations of this extraordinary film, produced for television, are in Arthur J. Pomeroy, “Then It Was Destroyed by the Volcano”: The Ancient World in Film and on Television (London: Duckworth, 2008), 67–72, and in Martin M. Winkler, “Leaves of Homeric Storytelling: Wolfgang Petersen’s Troy and Franco Rossi’s Odissea,” in Eleonora Cavallini (ed.), Omero mediatico: Aspetti della ricezione omerica nella civiltà contempora- nea, 2nd ed. (Bologna: d.u.press, 2010), 153–163, at 157–161, and “Three Queens: Helen, Penelope, and Dido in Franco Rossi’s Odissea and Eneide,” in Marta García Morcillo and Silke Knippschild (eds.), Seduction and Power: Antiquity in the Visual and Performing Arts (London: Bloomsbury, 2013), 133–153, at 134–143. 111 Protagoras, Fragment 80.B1 (Diels-Kranz). The classic scholarly source on Protagoras (life, ancient testimonies, and fragments) is Hermann Diels, Die Fragmente der Vorsokratiker, ed. Walther Kranz; vol. 2, 6th ed. (Zurich and Hildesheim: Weidmann, 1952; rpt. 1992), 253–271, especially 263; in English: Rosamond Kent Sprague (ed.), The Older Sophists (1972; rpt. Indianapolis: Hackett, 2001), 3–28 (tr. Michael J. O’Brien), especially 18.
The following conclusion about Homeric gods, derived from a specific passage in Athena’s encounter with Odysseus in Book 13 of the Odyssey, is revealing:
Die zitierten Verse sind für die Frage, wie das eigentliche Wesen der homeri schen Götter zustandegekommen sein könnte, von einzigartiger Bedeutung: Sie zeigen, daß die Dichter bei ihren Konzeptionen jeweils von der Beobachtung menschlicher Eigenschaften ausgegangen sind und daß sie diese Wesenszüge dann auf die allgemein bekannten Götter über- tragen haben. Immer aber geschah das so, daß der Gott Gefallen an sei- nem menschlichen Ebenbild finden und gleichzeitig eine glaubwürdige Rolle in der olympischen Gesellschaft spielen konnte. Es wird sich auch weiterhin herausstellen, daß die gottesfürchtigen Verfasser der beiden großen Epen in erster Linie vortreffliche Menschenkenner waren.
The lines quoted [Odyssey 13.296–299] are of singular importance for the question how exactly the essential character of the Homeric gods came about. They demonstrate that each of the poets took observations of human qualities for his starting point as he conceived of them and then attributed these character traits to the gods with whom everybody was familiar from before. This process always occurred in such a way that the god concerned could delight in his human mirror image and, at the same time, could play a credible and authentic part in the company of the Olympians. It will become evident again and again that the god-fearing composers of these two great epics were, first and foremost, excellent judges of human nature.112
The Homeric poet knows and understands the nature of gods because he understands that of humans. But when knowledge of human nature—and of nature in general—increased, understanding or knowledge of gods frequently decreased. In his lost work On the Gods Protagoras admitted: “Concerning the gods, I cannot know either that they exist or that they do not exist, or what form they might have, for there is much that prevents one’s knowing: the obscurity of the subject and the shortness of man’s life.”113 Protagoras did not think or believe the way Homer did. In this he was not alone, as, for example, the plays of Euripides make abundantly clear. The gods in fifth-century Greece were no longer what they had been in Homeric culture. Nor were the heroes, as Aeschylus’ new conception of the reason for Achilles’ uncontrolled anger over the death of Patroclus in his lost Myrmidons makes equally clear.
112 Quoted from Erbse, Untersuchungen zur Funktion der Götter im homerischen Epos, 121; emphasis in original. The English translation is mine. 113 Protagoras, Fragment 80.B4 (Diels-Kranz); quoted from Sprague (ed.), The Older Sophists, 20.
Jean-Luc Godard’s film of Moravia’s Contempt points us in a similar direc- tion.114 Differently from the novel, here it is the director of the film that is being made who upholds the integrity of the Odyssey against the radically modern view held by the screenwriter. Godard attributes Rheingold’s vision of what the Odyssey means to Paul Javal, his equivalent of Moravia’s Molteni, and to Jerry Prokosch, the equivalent of Battista. The fictional director in Godard’s film is played by Fritz Lang and called Fritz Lang. The real Lang had had extensive experience with mythic-epic cinema, although not in connection with classi- cal antiquity. Lang made the two-part epic Die Nibelungen in 1924 and the futuristic Metropolis in 1927; both are milestones of epic filmmaking. The Fritz Lang of Contempt is furthermore meant as an Old World counterpoint to his producer, whom Godard changed to an American.115 Lang speaks German, English, French, and Italian and readily quotes Dante, Brecht, and Hölderlin. He explains his approach to Homer by telling Prokosch: “Here, it’s the fight of the individual against the circumstances; the eternal problem of the old Greeks…. I don’t know if you are able to understand it, Jerry; I certainly hope you can.” (No such luck.) But then Lang adds: “It’s the fight against the gods.”116 Over images of fake statues of Athena and Poseidon, Lang explains that these
114 Much has been written about this film. The chapter on Contempt in Richard Brody, Everything is Cinema: The Working Life of Jean-Luc Godard (2008; rpt. New York: Picador, 2009), 156–173 and 645–647 (notes), may serve as a detailed first orientation. For brief comments by Moravia on the film see Moravia and Elkann, Life of Moravia, 216–217. 115 In passing we may note that Carlo Ponti, co-producer of Camerini’s Ulysses, was co-producer of Contempt. So was, albeit without credit, Joseph E. Levine, who had made Steve Reeves as Hercules an international phenomenon. Levine’s name has become a byword for a wheeler- dealer producer and distributor interested in moneymaking, not in the art of cinema. 116 Lang immediately adds, making the connection to the film he is directing: “The fight of Prometheus and Ulysses.” Mythologists will realize that this is a slight imprecision since the Titan Prometheus was a god himself. (He did have a major conflict with Zeus, as is shown in Aeschylus’ Prometheus Bound.) These words appear to be from Godard’s screen- play rather than to come from (the authentic) Lang, who may have known better. The following statement by Sam Rohdie, Promised Lands: Cinema, Geography, Modernism (London: bfi [British Film Institute] Publishing, 2001), 16, about the statues in Contempt is, however, misleading: “In Le Mépris, the Greek statues are also those that Ingrid Bergman gazes at in the museum in [Roberto Rossellini’s] Viaggio in Italia, are the gods of Langian fatalism, are the excavations of Schliemann at Troy.” The second of these proposi- tions by fiat may be correct, the first and the third are not. Rossellini’s film, whose English release title Voyage to Italy is incorrect, is certainly important for Godard’s Contempt. But the statues in the Naples museum, where the sequence Rohdie mentions was filmed, are authentic, not obvious props as those in Contempt. To link either kind of statuary to Schliemann and Troy is more than far-fetched.
Furchtlos bleibt aber, so er es muß, der Mann Einsam vor Gott, es schützet die Einfalt ihn, Und keiner Waffen brauchts und keiner Listen, so lange, bis Gottes Fehl hilft.
Fearless, however, Man remains, if he must, lonely before God; straightforward simplicity guards him, and there is no need for any weapons or any ruses, until the moment that God’s absence aids him.
This is the final stanza, lines 61–64, of Hölderlin’s poem Dichterberuf (“The Poet’s Vocation”).117 The man—or Everyman—of Hölderlin’s poem in part resembles Odysseus: fearless, at least most of the time; lonely before divine powers when these are hostile (Poseidon), friendly (Athena, Hermes), or ambiguous (Circe, Calypso). Presumably this is why Lang quotes this stanza. But Odysseus is anything but simple or guileless. And he needs and uses his weapons on Ithaca. Is he aided by God’s—or a god’s—absence? Lang then dis- cusses, in French, the poem’s final line, whose meaning, he says, is obscure. Lang explains (and quotes in German) that Hölderlin originally wrote so lange der Gott nicht da ist (“as long as the god is not there”) but then changed it to so lange der Gott uns nah ist (“as long as the god is close to us”) before adopting the published version that Lang quotes.118 This exegesis, however, is not strictly
117 I quote Hölderlin in the modern-spelling edition of the two-volume Studienausgabe (“study edition”) by Detlev Lüders (ed.), Friedrich Hölderlin: Sämtliche Gedichte, vol. 1: Text (Bad Homburg: Athenäum, 1970), 248–250; quotation at 250. Friedrich Beissner (ed.), Hölderlin: Sämtliche Werke, vol. 2: Gedichte nach 1800, pt. 1: Text (Stuttgart: Kohlhammer, 1951), 46–48, provides an old-spelling version. Hölderlin’s is an Alcaic ode. My prose trans- lation can provide only a vague impression of the original’s elegance. 118 The English subtitle for the French translation of so lange der Gott nicht da ist on the Criterion Collection edition of Contempt reverses the meaning: “So long as God is not absent” (for not present). This makes nonsense of the entire point and of the next subtitle: “So long as God is close to us.”
119 Beissner (ed.), Hölderlin: Sämtliche Werke, vol. 2: pt. 2: Lesarten und Erläuterungen, 476– 483, provides the ode’s textual variants. 120 Lüders (ed.), Friedrich Hölderlin: Sämtliche Gedichte, vol. 2: Kommentar, 213–214, gives an explanation of the final line. Beissner, Hölderlin: Sämtliche Werke, vol. 2, pt. 2, 485–486, comments on the last three stanzas. 121 Moravia, Contempt, 79–80: “Rheingold was a German director who, in the pre-Nazi film era, had directed, in Germany, various films of the ‘colossal’ type…. He was certainly not in the same class as the Pabsts and Langs, but, as a director, he was worthy of respect.” Das Rheingold is the first of four operas in Richard Wagner’s Der Ring des Nibelungen, so Moravia’s choice of name for his invented filmmaker is meant to evoke Lang, who had made Die Nibelungen. Godard once said: “Moravia’s character [of Rheingold] was mod- eled after Pabst because he was talking about a second-rate director.” Quoted from Gene Youngblood, “Jean-Luc Godard: No Difference Between Life and Cinema” (transcript of series of 1968 panel discussions), in David Sterritt (ed.), Jean-Luc Godard: Interviews (Jackson: University Press of Mississippi, 1998), 9–49, at 25. It is doubtful that Georg Wilhelm Pabst was a second-rate director. But Godard may have considered someone like Camerini as such. As Dumont, L’antiquité au cinéma, 204, reports, Pabst had been intended as the original director of Ulysses and had spent several years working on the script and on pre-production.
Because it is a text which is called ‘The Poet’s Vocation’ and because in Le Mépris Lang symbolizes the poet, the artist, the creator. So it was appro- priate that he should speak a poem about the ‘poet’s vocation.’ That the text is strange, that’s certain; I don’t understand it. And Lang doesn’t understand it any better…. I chose Hölderlin because Lang is German and also because Hölderlin wrote many poems about Greece…. I wanted, through it, to imply the Odyssey and Greece. I chose Hölderlin because of this fascination that Greece and the Mediterranean exert on him.123
Godard’s direct inspiration to include Hölderlin in his film was literary theo- rist, philosopher, and novelist Maurice Blanchot’s brief essay “Hölderlin’s Itinerary,” in which the final stanza of “The Poet’s Vocation” is quoted.124 As a result, it is not at all strange (and very true) that God’s absence should receive such prominent treatment in Godard’s Contempt. (There is no Hölderlin in Moravia’s Contempt.) Ironically, however, the very absence of God—or, of the gods—may be only temporary, for the poem does not exclude the possibil- ity of His or their eventual return, a return prepared by heroic men—or heroic Man—of the future.125 In an interview he gave during filming, Godard described Lang as someone “tranquil and serene, who had meditated at length and finally understood the
122 Patrick McGilligan, Fritz Lang: The Nature of the Beast (1997; rpt. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2013), 449 and 450: “Godard’s reverence for Fritz Lang was explicit…. Encouraged to come up with his own dialogue, the director wrote some of his lines as the camera rolled.” 123 Godard added: “But the poem must be taken as a poem. One doesn’t ask Beethoven what his music means.” My translations are taken from Jean Collet, Jean-Luc Godard, 2nd ed. (Paris: Seghers, 1967), 109–110.—Besides poems, Hölderlin also wrote dramas on classical topics. Best known are Antigone and the fragmentary The Death of Empedocles. 124 An English translation of this essay is available in Maurice Blanchot, The Space of Literature, tr. Ann Smock (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1982), 269–276. The French original had appeared in 1955. See further Oliver H. Harris, “Pure Cinema? Blanchot, Godard, Le Mépris,” in MacCabe and Mulvey (eds.), Godard’s Contempt, 96–106. Tom Gunning, The Films of Fritz Lang: Allegories of Vision and Modernity (London: Palgrave Macmillan/British Film Institute, 2000; rpt. 2009), 481 note 14, suspects yet another (unidentified) source of inspiration for Godard. 125 So, e.g., Lüders (ed.), Friedrich Hölderlin, vol. 2, 213–214.
The world of Homer is a real world. And the poet belonged to a civiliza- tion that developed in harmony, and not in opposition, with nature. And the beauty of the Odyssey lies precisely in this belief in reality as it is…and in a form that cannot be broken down and that is what it is. To take it or leave it.
This, too, reflects Godard’s own views. As he said about the reality of Homer: “it’s the opposite of the modern world, which seeks to accommodate itself to everything. We say ‘maybe, not exactly’ and no longer ‘yes or no.’”127 Such various pronouncements may be correct up to a point, but they do not seem to be consistent with each other or with Homer’s epic. It is for us to take them or leave them. But how are we to understand Godard’s points as expressed by Lang? In his earlier statement the gods, as antagonists of the Greeks, appear to take a back seat to the humans, the protagonists of Greek literature. In the later the gods seem to be more inside the humans, as Latacz put it in regard to Troy. Ironically, the rushes of Lang’s Odyssey film that Godard puts on the screen in Contempt fit neither perspective. Rather, they express Godard’s own contempt for the commercial cinema against which the New Wave filmmakers had rebelled. It is often overlooked that the title of the adaptation of Homer that Godard’s Lang is filming is not The Odyssey but Odysseus, as is evident
126 Quoted from McGilligan, Fritz Lang, 450. 127 Quoted, in my translation, from Jean Collet, Jean-Luc Godard, 111. Godard will summarize Contempt from this very perspective a little later (Collet, 111).
Cinema replaces the gaze of the gods. It comes close [to us]. The gods never did anything other than to come close to men. The Greek gods became mortally bored far away from men, they came down all the time, they were in love with the people below, they would join them or have them near them, protect them. This is the essence [le propre] of all the gods, or of God if you prefer.128
Is cinema the new god—or God if you prefer—in our secular technological age? Has it replaced the classical gods (or the Judeo-Christian God)? Asked about the meaning of the statues in Contempt, Godard once replied:
No meaning. They were the Greek gods. Usually you see them always white. But in ancient Greece they were painted psychedelic colors. So I painted them to remind people how it was in ancient Greece. That’s all.129
But is that really all? Is there no meaning? Or do Godard’s words, a little glib as they are, reinforce Hölderlin’s final stanza—which, in this way, would lose at least a measure of its incomprehensibility? As Godard, alluding to Proust, put it the year he made the film:
In short, Contempt could be called In Search of Homer…. The subject of Contempt are the people who look at and judge each other, then in turn are looked at and judged by the cinema, which is represented by Fritz Lang playing himself; in sum, the conscience of the film, its honesty…. Whereas the odyssey of Odysseus was a physical phenomenon, I filmed a
128 Quoted, in my translation, from Jean Collet, Jean-Luc Godard, 111. 129 Quoted from Youngblood, “Jean-Luc Godard,” 44.
moral odyssey: the gaze of the camera on the characters in search of Homer replaces that of the gods on Odysseus and his companions.130
Now we can answer the earlier question: yes, the cinema is a new god, perhaps also a new God. Homer is the godfather of film. The camera which approaches the viewers of Contempt during the film’s opening sequence—its credits are spoken, not superimposed on the screen—and then gazes down at them from above with its Cyclopean eye, had already hinted at this.131 The statement that follows the credits, here given in my translation, is apropos as well:
The cinema, said André Bazin, substitutes to our gaze an alternate world that corresponds to our desires. Contempt is the story of this world.
Godard may have wrongly attributed the first sentence to the godfather of the New Wave filmmakers, for apparently no such statement is to be found among Bazin’s writings.132 Godard may, however, remember hearing Bazin utter it.133 Regardless of its source, Godard was right to adduce this sentiment. The Homeric world of Contempt is both ancient and modern.134 The ancient epic has been made modern by the film camera and the projector, which, in the earliest age of filmmaking, had been one and the same apparatus. Different filmmakers, both fictional like Moravia’s Battista, Molteni, and Rheingold, and real like Camerini, Girolami, Rossi, Petersen, Godard and yet others, have kept the ancient epics alive. The Sophist Alcidamas, Gorgias’ student, may have been one of the earliest to explain artists’ and readers’ (and viewers’) undying
130 Quoted, in my translation, from Jean-Luc Godard, “Le mépris,” Cahiers du cinéma, 146 (August, 1963), now available in Alain Bergala (ed.), Jean-Luc Godard par Jean-Luc Godard, new ed., vol. 1: 1950–1984 (Paris: Éditions de l’Étoile/Cahiers du cinéma, 1998), 248–249; quotations at 249. 131 On this see Jean-Louis Leutrat, “Le cinéma, art cyclopéen, ou: dans le sillage d’Homère…,” Gaia, 7 (2003), 573–584. 132 On this see Jonathan Rosenbaum, “Trailer for Godard’s Histoire(s) du Cinéma,” Vertigo, 1 no. 7 (Autumn, 1997), 13–20, at 19 (author and source reference); more easily accessible now in Jonathan Rosenbaum, Goodbye Cinema, Hello Cinephilia: Film Culture in Transition (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2010), 305–318; there 314. 133 On an audio recording promoting his film A Woman is a Woman (1961), Godard says: “… said Bazin, the cinema substitutes itself to our gaze to offer a world that corresponds to our desires….” Quoted, in my translation, from Jean-Luc Godard, “Une femme est une femme” (transcription of recording), in Bergala (ed.), Jean-Luc Godard par Jean-Luc Godard, vol. 1, 210–215; quotation at 211. 134 Godard, “Le mépris,” in Bergala (ed.), Jean-Luc Godard par Jean-Luc Godard, vol. 1, 249, eloquently made this point himself.
135 The saying is preserved by Aristotle, Rhetoric 3.3.3 (1406b). 136 On this side of Contempt see, e.g., Jacques Aumont, “The Fall of the Gods: Jean-Luc Godard’s Le Mépris (1963),” tr. Peter Graham, in Susan Hayward and Ginette Vincendeau (eds.), French Film: Texts and Contexts, 2nd ed. (London and New York: Routledge, 2000), 174–188, at 176 and 186 note 3 (“Mussolini Ponti” and “King Kong Levine”). 137 On Homer’s presence on the silent screen see the filmographic listings in Dumont, L’antiquité au cinéma, 177–201 (Trojan War, Iliad) and 201–209 (Odyssey); updates in the 2013 electronic book are at 655–657. See now also Pantelis Michelakis, “Homer in Silent Cinema,” in Pantelis Michelakis and Maria Wyke (eds.), The Ancient World in Silent Cinema (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2013), 145–165. 138 Quoted, in my translation, from Tobias Kniebe, “Homer ist, wenn man trotzdem lacht: ‘Troja’-Regisseur Wolfgang Petersen über die mythischen Wurzeln des Erzählens und den Achilles in uns allen,” Süddeutsche Zeitung (May 11, 2004); at http://www.sueddeutsche. de/kultur/petersen-interview-homer-ist-wenn-man-trotzdem-lacht-1.429599.
A recent translator of the Iliad has made a related point. Characterizing himself as “a translator interested in holding a wider than academic audience,” he observes:
There is no turning back the trend, the huge flood tide, that is taking all of us ever deeper into [a situation in which] the reading of books [is] giv- ing way to television and movies, a long-established reading culture reorienting itself to audio and audiovisual experience. Only mass media could accomplish this.139
Troy is one leaf on the tree of Homeric storytelling. It is not the Iliad and was never intended to be. Petersen’s Achilles does not think or believe completely the way Homer’s Achilles did. Nor could he. As a result, Troy may be more Sophistic than Homeric. But scholars who cannot accept Troy as being at least partly in the spirit of Homer can still agree that it is at least partly in that of Protagoras and Alcidamas. Consequently, Troy expresses more of the ancient Greek outlook on life and death than may appear to casual or hostile viewers. The film rewards multiple viewings, not least in its definitive version.
139 The quotations are from Stanley Lombardo, “Translating the Iliad for a Wider Public,” Classical World, 103 no. 2 (Winter 2010), 227–231, at 227 and 231. His translation: Stanley Lombardo (tr.), Homer: Iliad (Indianapolis: Hackett, 1997; rpt. 2000).
Horst-Dieter Blume
Among the many kings and princes who follow Agamemnon from all over Greece on his campaign against Troy, Achilles and Patroclus stand out as a pair of close friends who maintain a high degree of independence in the army. In this regard the Iliad established a fixed tradition, so Achilles and Patroclus have been named together ever since, besides other famous pairs of mythological friends such as Orestes and Pylades or Theseus and Pirithous.1 Wolfgang Petersen and his screenwriter David Benioff did not altogether disregard this tradition, yet they present Achilles as rather a solitary character, someone who stands and fights for himself only. The introduction of Patroclus therefore caused them some problems since Patroclus, an outstanding warrior in Homer, plays only a minor part in Troy. By eliminating the gods as active participants from his plot, Petersen reduced the siege of Troy to a realistic affair of human power politics. At the beginning we learn that Greeks and Trojans already have been rivals for years, struggling for predominance in the Aegean Sea. In this, Agamemnon is the driving force: by and by he has subdued the local rulers of Greece, aspiring to absolute power and supremacy. The kidnapping of his brother’s wife Helen gives him a most welcome pretext of gathering a pan-Hellenic army against the mighty city of Troy, his rival. All Greek leaders except Achilles feel obliged to fight in revenge of the violation of Menelaus’ honor but really for the ambition of his powerful brother. King Priam, on the other hand, who after many wars over several decades had been anxious to secure peace, has finally realized, with bitter resignation, that his efforts have been for nothing. War and peace are depicted on an equal level of importance for human soci- ety at the beginning of Troy. War is then shown gaining the upper hand, whereas the peace treaty between Trojans and Spartans will not keep its valid- ity beyond even one day after being agreed upon. The film’s opening scenes stress the cruelty of war by introducing to the audience its two chief promot- ers: Agamemnon, who has led his conquering army against Triopas, king of Thessaly, and young Achilles, who has joined the campaign although we are
1 Cf. Plutarch, On Having Many Friends 93d-e; Lucian, Toxaris, or On Friendship 10. The friend- ship of Achilles and Patroclus remains proverbial over centuries in tragedy (Sophocles, Philoctetes 434), philosophy (Plato, Symposium 179e–180a), and elegy (Ovid, Tristia 5.4.25).
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Agamemnon to win Achilles for their new campaign. Without him, Nestor argues, the Greek army will never be able to overcome a city as mighty as Troy. Reluctantly Agamemnon agrees, and they decide to entrust Odysseus with the task of persuading him. Straight away two messengers are sent to Ithaca, who somewhere in the mountains stumble upon a man dressed like a shepherd and with a dog at his feet. They are none too smart—this circumstance may be meant as an indirect comment on Agamemnon—so it takes them some time to realize that the smiling man is King Odysseus himself. Their mission ends with a humorous touch. The dog here is a clever allusion to a moving scene in the Odyssey, where Odysseus’ dog Argus is the first to recognize his master even though Odysseus is disguised as a beggar when he returns home after an absence of twenty years.2 Quickly hereafter, the scene shifts to Phthia, the home of Achilles. An ideal- istic and idyllic setting creates the ambience that is appropriate for the most outstanding hero of Greece. We are shown remains of an archaic building situ- ated high up above the sea, with a few touches of a Cretan palace added. Among the broken pillars Achilles and his cousin Patroclus, like two high- spirited colts, jump and bound at each other, fighting with wooden swords and practicing their quick reactions. Achilles is the elder of the two, the teacher and an experienced fighter, as we know from the first scene. Yet here, in his youthful appearance, he does not much differ from the ephebe Patroclus. Their long aristocratic locks, still unshorn, and their beardless faces distinguish both of them from the rest of the Greek kings and heroes. As we may guess from a short remark by Odysseus, Patroclus, when his father had died, was sent to king Peleus of Phthia to be brought up there together with his cousin Achilles, but Peleus, too, died before his time. Achilles’ divine descent is not altogether elim- inated, though. Viewers versed in Greek myth can still make out that Achilles’ mother Thetis was an immortal Nereid, a daughter of the sea god Nereus. Petersen, in contrast to Homer’s Iliad, does not grant her an active part in the plot of Troy; indeed her name is not mentioned at all. She appears only once, and in her hereditary element. In a solitary grotto by the seaside she meets her son for the last time, not a goddess of eternal youth but an elderly melancholic woman with the gift of prophecy. More briefly than she does in the Iliad, Thetis informs Achilles about his fate if he goes to Troy: he will gain honor in battle and everlasting fame, but he will never return home; staying in Larissa, he will lead a peaceful yet inglorious life with a loving wife and children by his side.3 She offers him a choice but knows well enough which decision he will make.
2 Odyssey 17.290–327. 3 Achilles himself tells this story at Iliad 9.410–416.
In antiquity a number of places were called Larissa, and one of them later, although not yet in Homeric times, was identified with Phthia. This is Larissa Kremastê, the “Hanging Larissa” on the slope of Mount Othrys in southern Thessaly. On the other hand, the city of the same name in the wide plane of Thessaly that still exists today lies too far off in the north to fit the story. Achilles, a Thessalian hero, makes the first sequence of Troy implausible, for why should he help Agamemnon subdue his own country or even a nearby region? A king with the non-Homeric name Triopas could easily have been transferred to another, more distant part of Greece for greater accuracy. The main purpose of Thetis’ appearance in the film is to predict Achilles’ fateful death as an inevitable outcome of his participation in the Trojan War. In the literary tradition the fact that he is free to choose between two different ways of life but at the same time becomes fully aware of his impending death made Achilles a tragic figure, but his tragic existence is hardly recognizable in Troy. This Achilles is mortal—“I wouldn’t be bothering with the shield then,” he replies to a young boy who speculates about his mother’s divinity—and he would not have it otherwise. As he explains to Briseis: “The gods envy us… because any moment might be our last. Everything is more beautiful because we are doomed.” For him, immortality therefore can only mean not to be for- gotten even after thousands of years. In battle Achilles presents himself as a one-sided character, someone almost exclusively keen on fighting and gaining fame. Patroclus, among the Myrmidon soldiers at Achilles’ command, follows him to Troy as his protégé and devoted friend. Petersen makes it obvious from the beginning that Achilles does not readily fit into the pan-Hellenic fleet of a thousand ships but will undertake his own military campaign. He has just a single ship at his disposal, manned by fifty warriors; in the Iliad he had commanded a contingent of fifty.4 However, by means of the well-trained rowers who, spurred on by his ambition, prove to be the fastest of all, they land on the coast of Troy before the others. Achilles is the first to jump ashore, ahead of his soldiers; he will distinguish himself from the very beginning as the outstanding individual fighter in the Greek army. Young Patroclus is being kept away: although he has been a quick disciple in Phthia, he is, Achilles tells him, “not a Myrmidon yet” and receives a strict order not to fight but to guard the ship. By contrast, Homer’s Achilles calls Patroclus “the best of the Myrmidons.”5 In keeping with the later tradition, still current, Troy treats what is originally no more than the name of a Greek tribe as if it denoted a special type of elite soldiers. In Troy it is not Patroclus but Eudorus
4 Iliad 2.685. 5 Iliad 18.10.
6 Iliad 16.179–192. 7 Iliad 16.419–507. 8 Iliad 1.8–52.
Myrmidons could easily have killed him, but Achilles intervenes and sends him back to his city, not from an impulse of magnanimity but in order to have a better chance of defeating him in single combat later, in full view of the two armies. This is quite an independent and thoroughly modern way of looking at the mythological tradition. Achilles makes use of the Trojan War simply to sat- isfy his personal desire for glory and immortality and begins fighting even before Menelaus and Agamemnon have set their feet on Trojan soil. This war is marked from the very beginning by a brutal act of sacrilege, committed by a man who has no plausible reason at all to fight against the Trojans. Achilles’ actions anticipate the atrocities of the final capture of the city. Afterwards the Greek leaders gather in Agamemnon’s tent. When the King of Kings claims victory for himself, Achilles is the only one seen to refuse to pay abject homage to the man who had disdained to fight in the front line at the risk of his life. Their personal animosity ends in open hostility when, at a wave of Agamemnon’s hand, two of his soldiers drag in Briseis, who had been vio- lently taken from Achilles’ tent. Drawing his sword, the young hero is about to rush at the man he hates and despises. Only Briseis, who will have no more blood shed for her sake, can stop him. Feeling humiliated, dishonored, and overcome by anger, Achilles swears to stay away from the fight. Here the action of the film has arrived at the crucial conflict that constitutes the subject matter of the whole Iliad, but what in Homer does not happen before the tenth year of the siege of Troy occurs on its very first day. The Homeric Agamemnon felt degraded when the seer Calchas proclaimed that he must give back to her father, a priest of Apollo, a captured princess he had received as his spoils of war while all the other kings would keep their prizes. This situation made him demand recompense and take Briseis from Achilles. In the film the conflict is much simpler, arising on a purely personal level: Agamemnon is not forced to give up anything himself but acts from sheer greed and arrogance, which makes him all the more repulsive. When, on the second day, the two armies line up for battle, Achilles and his warriors are missing. They look down upon the plain from the top of a hill, uninvolved. The stereotypical scene of Homeric teichoscopia—the look from the walls upon a dramatic action—is thus doubled here: not only Priam, the Trojan elders, and Helen watch and comment on the fight from the city walls, but Achilles and the Myrmidons do so as well, from a nearby hill.9 Deprived of the strength and the zeal of their best fighter and, in addition, shocked by the sudden and unforeseen death of Menelaus after his duel with Paris, the Achaeans suffer heavy losses. Huge Ajax is slain by Hector, and many Greeks
9 Iliad 3.146–244.
10 Iliad 22.254–259. 11 Iliad 22.262.
12 Ambrosia and nectar are the food and drink of the gods, which render immortal not only those who take them but also those who get in contact with them. A few drops given by Thetis are sufficient to keep the corpse of Patroclus from decaying (Iliad 19.38–39). 13 Telamon, king of Salamis, became father of Ajax, the best fighter in the Greek army after Achilles. In Troy Ajax is killed by Hector; in the Iliad (7.287–307) their duel ends in friend- ship and with an exchange of gifts.
14 Iolcus, modern Volos, is famous as the home of Jason and the starting point for the voyage of the Argonauts. It is situated near Mt. Pelion. 15 Iliad 24.619. 16 Euripides, Iphigenia at Aulis 1036–1079. 17 Iliad 23.141–142.
18 Iliad 2.681–685. Cf. Edzard Visser, Homers Katalog der Schiffe (Stuttgart: Teubner, 1997), 644–661. “Argos” is the name of several regions: “Achaean Argos” (i.e. the Argolid) is Agamemnon’s home. “Pelasgian Argos” suggests a pre-Hellenic origin. Patroclus was born in Locris. 19 On this see K. Friis Johansen, “Achill bei Chiron,” in Krister Hanell (ed.), Dragma: Martino P. Nilsson A.D. IV Id. Iul. MCMXXXIX dedicatum (Lund: Ohlsson, 1939), 181–205. 20 Iliad 11.832. 21 Iliad 9.438–443. 22 Iliad 11.786–789 and 16.220–224.
23 Iliad 9.668. 24 Iliad 11.767–782.
25 Iliad 18.88–96. 26 Iliad 23.164–177. 27 Patroclus’ wish (Iliad 23.91–92) was fulfilled (Odyssey 24.72–77). A monument existed on Cape Sigeum in the Troad. 28 Hesiod, Fragm. 212a Merkelbach-West. 29 Aeschylus, Myrmidons, in Stefan Radt (ed.), Tragicorum Graecorum Fragmenta, vol. 3: Aeschylus (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1985), 239–257; where see Fragm. 135–137. At Iliad 19.4 Thetis finds Achilles lying on the floor, embracing his dead friend. 30 W.M. Clarke, “Achilles and Patroclus in Love,” Hermes, 106 (1978), 381–396; quotation at 395. 31 Cf. K.J. Dover, Greek Homosexuality, updated ed. (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1989), 196–203. For additional details and references see David M. Halperin, One Hundred
Years of Homosexuality: And Other Essays on Greek Love (New York: Routledge, 1990), 75–87; Pantelis Michelakis, Achilles in Greek Tragedy (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002), 22–57 (chapter on Aeschylus’ Myrmidons); Manuel Sanz Morales and Gabriel Laguna Mariscal, “The Relationship Between Achilles and Patroclus According to Chariton of Aphrodisias,” The Classical Quarterly, n.s. 53 no. 1 (2003), 292–295, especially 292; Gabriel Laguna-Mariscal and Manuel Sanz-Morales, “Was the Relationship between Achilles and Patroclus Homoerotic? The View of Apollonius Rhodius,” Hermes, 133 (2005), 120–123; and, in particular, Marco Fantuzzi, Achilles in Love: Intertextual Studies (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2012), 187–265 (chapter titled “Comrades in Love”). Andreas Krass, “Over His Dead Body: Male Friendship in Homer’s Iliad and Wolfgang Petersen’s Troy (2004),” in Almut-Barbara Renger and Jon Solomon (eds), Ancient Worlds in Film and Television: Gender and Politics (Leiden: Brill, 2013), 153–173, discusses ancient sources (Aeschylus, Plato, Aeschines) in conenction with Homer and Troy. Krass, 168–170, sees “queer moments” in the film.
Bruce Louden
In spite of sweeping changes to the larger plot of the Trojan War—compression of time, radical excision of the gods, combining multiple characters into one— Troy presents an Odysseus who remains largely Homeric.1 But Wolfgang Petersen’s Odysseus combines his chief characteristics from the Iliad with sev- eral of his defining roles and functions from the Odyssey. The use of material from the Odyssey may result from the filmmakers’ decision to present a version of the Trojan War slightly less tragic than Homer’s, one that places greater emphasis on survivors and on some of the central characters’ romantic relationships.2 I begin by considering what is perhaps Petersen’s most surprising move but also one of his most Homeric, Odysseus’ first appearance in Troy. Proceeding in chronological order, which is, on the one hand, a non-Homeric tendency but on the other a concession to simplifying an extremely complex backstory, Troy depicts the reasons why Odysseus takes part in the war, a subject outside of the plots of both the Iliad and the Odyssey. Thus, by including Agamemnon’s ambassadors as they are looking for him on Ithaca, Troy appears to glance at the episode, recounted in the Cypria, of Odysseus’ feigned madness. This was a ruse by which he attempted to avoid having to go to Troy. At his first appear- ance on screen Odysseus pretends to be another man, outraged at the behavior of none other than Odysseus:
Odysseus, that old bastard, drinks my wine and never pays.… Respect him? I’d like to punch him in the face. He’s pawing at my wife, trying to tear her clothes off.
1 On this see Georg Danek, “The Story of Troy through the Centuries,” in Martin M. Winkler (ed.), Troy: From Homer’s Iliad to Hollywood Epic (Oxford: Blackwell, 2007), 68–84, at 82. The resultant length of the war in terms of actual days of fighting is curiously close to that in the Mahabhârata. Cf. further Danek, 78, on this as an established characteristic of earlier adapta- tions of the Trojan War story, and Alena Allen, “Briseis in Homer, Ovid, and Troy,” in TROY, 148–162, at 149–151, on Briseis as a combination of Cassandra, Polyxena, and even Clytaemnestra with Homer’s original. 2 On these as general characteristics of Petersen’s film see Charles Chiasson, “Redefining Homeric Heroism in Wolfgang Petersen’s Troy,” in Kostas Myrsiades (ed.), Reading Homer: Film and Text (Madison: Fairleigh Dickinson University Press, 2009), 186–207.
© koninklijke brill nv, leiden, 2015 | doi 10.1163/9789004296084_009
However, the details are less reminiscent of the Cypria and closer to Odysseus’ use of disguise and extended role-playing in the Odyssey. The brief dialogue in this scene pointedly conjures up references to multiple episodes in the Odyssey, especially its depictions of the suitors in Odysseus’ palace, with their attempts at engaging Penelope (1.366 = 18.213) and their slovenly behavior with the maidservants (16.108–109, 20.318–319), which includes sex with Melantho and several others (20.6–13). In Troy, as the bewildered ambassadors prepare to leave, Odysseus makes an offhand remark that reveals his true identity: “I hope Agamemnon’s gener- als are smarter than his emissaries. You want me to help you fight the Trojans.” The encounter thus turns into that most Odyssean of episodes, a recognition scene.3 The film now lingers on a close-up of Odysseus as he affectionately han- dles a dog. Odysseus offhandedly signals his agreement to serve Agamemnon’s cause, declaring: “Well, I’m going to miss my dog.” Informed members of the audience will think of the Odyssey’s unexpectedly moving recognition scene in which Odysseus’ faithful dog Argus, barely alive, is the only mortal character who immediately penetrates Odysseus’ beggar disguise after his twenty-year absence (17.290–327). Neglected, sitting on a dung heap, and infested with ticks (17.300), Argus embodies all the damage the suitors have inflicted on Ithaca and Odysseus’ family and possessions during his absence. Wagging his tail in recognition, he dies. Troy in this way masterfully serves up a brief vignette that captures a kernel of the whole Odyssey but sets it before any of its depic- tions of scenes from the Iliad. I will consider below the inclusion of other ele- ments from the Odyssey, but turn first to a brief analysis of the Iliadic Odysseus in Troy. What are Odysseus’ chief functions and characteristics in the Iliad? Understanding of his role has all-too-often been sidetracked by contemporary (and some ancient) commentators’ misplaced emphasis on an imagined con- flict between him and Achilles. There is, however, no evidence in the Iliad for such a quarrel other than the implausible assumption that Achilles targets Odysseus, not his hated commander, with his famous line “For as hateful to me as the gates of Death is he who hides one thing in his heart but speaks another.”4 As Achilles well knows, Odysseus, on this occasion, serves as Agamemnon’s mouthpiece, a function he regularly fulfills throughout the Iliad. In a parallel episode in Book 1, Achilles similarly recognizes that the embassy that comes to take Briseis away from him is not acting of its own accord and is not itself to
3 For recent discussion and analysis of all the Odyssey’s recognition scenes see Bruce Louden, Homer’s Odyssey and the Near East (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2011), 72–92. 4 Iliad 9.312–313. All translations from Homer are my own.
5 For full discussion of this passage see Bruce Louden, The Iliad: Structure, Myth and Meaning (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2006), 127–130. 6 Cf. Ruth Scodel, Listening to Homer: Tradition, Narrative, and Audience (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2002; rpt. 2009), 164: “There is no real evidence that Odysseus and Achilles were traditional enemies—indeed, the epics make them friends.” 7 On these as his general functions in the Iliad see especially Louden, The Iliad: Structure, Myth and Meaning, 120–134 and 141–148. See Malcolm Davies, The Greek Epic Cycle, 2nd ed. (London: Bristol Classical Press, 2001; rpt. 2003), 53, on the likelihood that the Aethiopis depicted Odysseus’ relationship with Achilles in a similar manner. 8 Bryan Hainsworth, The Iliad: A Commentary, vol. 3: Books 9–12 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1993; rpt. 2000), 81.
9 Cf. Louden, The Iliad: Structure, Myth and Meaning, 120. 10 On this see Bruce Louden, “Epeios, Odysseus, and the Indo-European Metaphor for Poet,” The Journal of Indo-European Studies, 24 nos. 3–4 (1996), 277–304, at 290, and Nicholas Richardson, The Iliad: A Commentary, vol. 6: Books 21–24 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1993; rpt. 2000), 202–203 and 249. 11 See especially W.G. Thalmann, “Thersites: Comedy, Scapegoats, and Heroic Ideology in the Iliad,” Transactions of the American Philological Association, 118 (1988), 1–28; cf. Louden, The Iliad: Structure, Myth and Meaning, 142–143. 12 Thalmann, “Thersites,” 19: “Thersites is Achilles’ comic double.”
13 Thalmann, “Thersites,” 17 (“Thersites, through his defiance and the reaction it provokes, involuntarily performs a healing function for his society”) and 19 (“The Thersites scene has performed the socially integrative function typical of comedy”). I partly disagree with Thalmann’s interpretation that Thersites is “a scapegoat” for “all the emotion and poten- tial violence…over the ten years of war” (21) and would restrict his function to being a scapegoat for the problems Agamemnon has himself just now caused. 14 Note that both Thersites and Hephaestus are singled out for being lame (2.217; implicitly in 1.591) and falling short of the physical ideals of the Greek aristocracy and the Olympians. Cf. Thalmann, “Thersites,” 24, on their parallels as scapegoats.
His insistence, before battle against the Trojans resumes, on the public transfer of Agamemnon’s gifts and a common meal serves to instill order in the troops. All this is necessary for the Greeks’ morale after the general ill will the quarrel between Agamemnon and Achilles has provoked and especially after the disas- trous turn of events since Achilles withdrew from the fighting.15 For the most part, Troy depicts an Odysseus who fulfills his important func- tions in the Iliad. Throughout, Odysseus balances the opposing and even con- tradictory forces of Agamemnon and Achilles, nudging both men into an involuntary teamwork of sorts. Odysseus appears in several intimate council scenes with Agamemnon, but he also advises—handles, really—Achilles, with whom he has a closer relationship than in Homer. The film’s portrayal of him builds logically on the relationship that the Iliad depicts between the two and even deepens that relationship. Odysseus and Achilles have four dialogue scenes in the film. The first, and lengthiest, builds on an episode merely alluded to in the Iliad (11.766–789): Nestor recounting to Patroclus how he and Odysseus came to recruit Achilles for the war. The film portrays the event not as a flashback but in the present, full of forward-looking allusions that comment on the Iliad’s central issues. The episode carefully balances Achilles’ potential for unrestrained, individual violence (he hurls a spear into a tree as the delegation Odysseus is leading approaches), against Odysseus’ larger view of the war and how it could be suc- cessful for them as individuals and for Greece as a whole. Odysseus carefully avoids Achilles’ pointed questions (e.g. “Are you here at Agamemnon’s bid- ding?”) and focuses instead on how Achilles could earn honor for himself. Odysseus’ observation “You have your sword, I have my tricks” exemplifies how, as commentators have noted, the two characters embody the different means by which Troy might be sacked.16 These are biê (“force”) and mêtis (“cunning”), an opposition that runs throughout the Trojan War myth and to which Achilles himself alludes (Iliad 9.423). When Odysseus attempts to provoke Achilles’
15 Of course, no thrashing of Achilles occurs, nor is it necessary or could occur. Still, the thematic parallels with Odysseus’ handling of Thersites in Book 2 are evident. See Louden, The Iliad: Structure, Myth and Meaning, 144–146, for further discussion of the larger paral- lels between Odysseus’ thrashing of Thersites in Book 2 and his prevailing over Achilles in Book 19. For additional support on links between the episodes in Books 2 and 19 see Mark W. Edwards, The Iliad: A Commentary, vol. 5: Books 17–20 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1991, rpt. 2000), 263, on 19.233–237: “This is the Odysseus who disciplined the troops as they ran for the ships in book 2.” 16 On this see especially Dan Petegorsky, “Context and Evocation: Studies in Early Greek and Sanskrit Poetry” (dissertation; University of California, Berkeley, 1982). The remark quoted loosely resembles Odysseus’ observation at Iliad 19.216–219.
17 See especially Iliad 9.189 (as Odysseus and the embassy approach, Achilles is singing of “the fames of men”) and 9.413 (Achilles relates Thetis’ prophecy concerning his own “unperishing fame”).
18 The Odyssey includes three brief retrospective accounts of the Wooden Horse: 4.272–289, 8.492–521, and 11.523–532. 19 Louden, “Epeios, Odysseus, and the Indo-European Metaphor for Poet,” 278.
However, Troy determinedly incorporates significant features of Odysseus’ character from the Odyssey. The film opens by implicitly referring to the Iliad’s proem (1.4–5), as a dog and birds pick at a warrior’s corpse. The first voice we hear is that of Odysseus. With a few broad strokes he deftly sketches a majestic, big-picture frame for the war to come:
Men are haunted by the vastness of eternity, and so we ask ourselves: Will our actions echo across the centuries, will strangers hear our names long after we are gone and wonder who we were, how bravely we fought, how fiercely we loved?
While this opening, spoken in retrospect, echoes themes central to Homeric epic in general, especially the epic hero’s desire for immortal fame, the choice of Odysseus as narrator clearly points to the Odyssey, in which he serves as major internal narrator and transmitter of his own fame.20 His opening words may remind viewers of another epic film, Ridley Scott’s Gladiator (2000), whose hero had at one point exclaimed: “Brothers, what we do in life echoes in eternity.” Troy has Odysseus reprise this role, again offering framing comments, at its conclusion. At Achilles’ funeral he anachronistically places coins on the slain warrior’s eyes, and the camera follows the smoke from the funeral pyre as it ascends to the sky. A subdued if still proud Odysseus declares:
If they ever tell my story, let them say I walked with giants. Men rise and fall like the winter wheat, but these names will never die. Let them say I lived in the time of Hector, breaker of horses; let them say I lived in the time of Achilles.
The winter wheat neatly suggests a Homeric simile (Iliad 11.67–71; cf. 19.221– 224), and “Hector, breaker of horses” bestows closure on Troy by quoting from the Iliad’s final line (24.804). The mention of giants points ahead to the naming of Hector and Achilles as the greatest heroes in the Trojan War, but it also alludes to his own future adventures on his return from the war, off the map in
20 Cf. also, in the Odyssey, his exchange of narratives with Eumaeus (14.192–359, 14.469–502, and 15.403–484), his interactions with the Phaeacian singer Demodocus (8.485–499), and the importance of his sparing the Ithacan singer Phemius (22.330–256). Cf. Robert P. Creed, “The Singer Looks at His Sources” Comparative Literature, 14 (1962), 44–52, on how that episode exemplifies a traditional theme also extant in Beowulf, whereby the epic protagonist has a face-to-face encounter with an epic singer.
Barbara P. Weinlich
Aside from Menelaus’ death at the hands of Hector, the refashioning of Briseis as a devotee of Apollo, defiant captive of Achilles, and murderess of Agamemnon may be the most significant variation that either version of Troy makes to the ancient myths of the Trojan War. Yet, compared to the theatrical release version, the director’s cut highlights a different aspect of Briseis. As he displays her emotions more comprehensively and even intensifies them, Petersen now grants Briseis greater capacity to act decisively than the theatri- cal release version had done. Now, emphasis is less on her rather passive role as Achilles’ woman and more on her actions and reactions and on the values by which these are guided. As a result, the director’s cut significantly modifies the profile of Briseis in both the ancient myth and the theatrical release version. It also places the heroine in a noticeably different narrative and, by extension, in a different contemporary context. In this chapter I hope to show how the direc- tor’s cut reframes Briseis and her actions, how these changes re-shape the ancient myth’s war narrative, and how these modifications endow the film with a political dimension, even ideology, that was—and still is—particularly appealing to American audiences of the early twenty-first century. In view of the defenseless temple virgin’s evolution to a woman who is ready to preserve her autonomy at all cost, the director’s cut adds a new dimension to her narra- tive, that of good—i.e. morally justifiable—violence by the weaker as opposed to bad violence of the stronger. Through Briseis and her story the director’s cut evokes the dream as well as the paradox of what we might call the empowered powerless. In doing so, it also touches on contemporary politics. The work of Alena Allen and Robert Rabel on the theatrical release version of Troy may serve as a backdrop for the approach that this chapter will choose.1 Allen focused primarily on Briseis’ profile in the literary tradition and identified four aspects in the Briseis of Troy that stem from different ancient narratives. Like
1 Alena Allen, “Briseis in Homer, Ovid, and Troy,” and Robert J. Rabel, “The Realist Politics of Troy,” both in Martin M. Winkler (ed.), Troy: From Homer’s Iliad to Hollywood Epic (Oxford: Blackwell, 2007), 148–162 and 186–201. Earlier versions of this chapter were presented at Monash University and the Freie Universität Berlin. I am grateful for both audiences’ helpful suggestions, and I would like to thank Jane Montgomery Griffith and Almut-Barbara Renger in particular.
© koninklijke brill nv, leiden, 2015 | doi 10.1163/9789004296084_010
2 Allen, “Briseis in Homer, Ovid, and Troy,” 161. 3 Rabel, “The Realist Politics of Troy,” 186. 4 Richard Ned Lebow, The Tragic Versions of Politics: Ethics, Interests and Orders (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003), 14; previously adduced by Rabel, “The Realist Politics of Troy,” 186. 5 Rabel, “The Realist Politics of Troy,” 187. 6 Rabel, “The Realist Politics of Troy,” 201.
7 Laura Mulvey, “Film, Feminism and the Avant-Garde,” in Laura Mulvey, Visual and Other Pleasures, 2nd ed. (Houndsmills: Palgrave Macmillan, 2009), 115–131, at 125; quoted in turn from the editorial “Feminism and Film: Critical Approaches,” Camera Obscura, 1 (1976), 3–10, at 10.
Achilles: What’s your name? Did you not hear me? Briseis: You killed Apollo’s priests. Achilles: I have killed men in five countries. But never a priest. Briseis: Then your men did. The Sun God will have his vengeance. Achilles: What’s he waiting for? Briseis: The right time to strike. Achilles: His priests are dead and his acolyte’s a captive. I think your god is afraid of me.
The crucial piece of information about Briseis manifest during this shot is her devastated state of mind and, more specifically, her inability to come to terms with what has happened in the temple of Apollo. Far from cringing at the obvious sexual innuendo of Eudorus’ remark, she appears to be neither in distress about her own situation nor intently listening to what is being said. What is on her mind and what she finally blurts out, instead of giving her name, is the sacrilegious manslaughter that she witnessed. Having watched her struggling to hold back the words “You killed Apollo’s priests,” the audience may perceive Briseis’ statement not so much as an aggressive accusation but possibly as an expression of help- lessness, of her disorientation after her religious values have been shattered. Yet this focus on Briseis’ mental and emotional state and on the complexity of the situation in which she finds herself offers more than one strong point
8 For a discussion of the representation of gender in contemporary mainstream media see Roberta Sassatelli, “Rappresentare il genere,” Studi culturali, 7 no. 1 (2010), 37–50, and Roberta Sassatelli, “Interview with Laura Mulvey: Gender, Gaze and Technology in Film Culture,” Theory, Culture and Society, 28 no. 5 (2011), 123–143. 9 On the traditional framing of women as erotic objects for the characters within the screen story and the male spectators in the audience see Laura Mulvey, “Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema,” in Mulvey, Visual and Other Pleasures, 14–27. Cf. now also Celina Proch and Michael Kleu, “Models of Masculinities in Troy: Achilles, Hector and Their Female Partners,” in Almut-Barbara Renger and Jon Solomon (eds.), Ancient Worlds in Film and Television: Gender and Politics (Leiden: Brill, 2013), 175–193.
10 Allen, “Briseis in Homer, Ovid, and Troy,” 160.
Briseis: Am I still your captive? Achilles: Captive is a harsh word. You’re my guest. Briseis: In Troy, guests can leave whenever they want. Achilles: You should leave then. Briseis: Would you leave this all behind? Achilles: Would you leave Troy?
In the director’s cut this conversation receives a different meaning partly because the brief preceding episode with Helen and Paris is left out. Instead, Petersen devotes more time to the display of Achilles’ and Briseis’ lovemaking and pays greater attention to Briseis’ initial reluctance. In addition, the Myrmidons’ preparation for departure is shown in more detail. In this new context the dialogue appears to stress Achilles’ awareness that his wish to leave with Briseis may be disappointed. He seems to be realistic and to infer that Briseis would prefer to go back and remain in Troy to joining him in Greece. Briseis’ sigh at his last question quoted above seems to confirm his concern. But all this will soon change in view of a more pressing issue, Hector’s slaying of Patroclus.
Briseis’ prominence at the end of the film is the logical consequence of Petersen’s deliberate act of turning her into what Laura Mulvey defines as a true heroine, a female character at “the centre of the narrative arena.”11 Or, at least, almost. There is no doubt that Achilles dominates the main plot in either version of Troy, but in the director’s cut Briseis’ story, a major subplot that cru- cially intersects with the main narrative, now carries considerably greater weight. A telling example of how Briseis’ new profile changes the main narrative early on is her now more powerful appearance and intervention in the tent of Agamemnon. In both versions Briseis speaks the same words: “Stop! Too many people have died today. [To Achilles:] If killing is your only talent, that’s your curse. But I don’t want anyone dying for me.” The director’s cut provides the audience with a larger picture, both literally and metaphorically. Briseis is shown full-length not only before her outburst but also afterwards. Her words seem to reverberate in her swaying body, which reveals her outrage at Achilles’ ready and fast resort to murderous violence. In notable contrast to Achilles, who is restrained by the swords drawn around him—Agamemnon snidely comments: “Mighty Achilles, silenced by a slave girl!”—Briseis stands up for her ethical values, not entirely free but with the guards shaken off. Being a kind of passive commodity to be exchanged between men is not how she sees her- self; it is the killing frenzy of war that has to be stopped. Moreover, by showing her full body and not just her face immediately after she has finished her speech, the director’s cut makes Briseis’ outburst a larger part of the picture. Petersen now frames the alternating close-ups on Briseis and Achilles with a long shot before and afterwards, and the viewer gets the impression that Briseis restrains not Achilles alone but also everyone else in the tent. In contrast to the earlier version, Briseis’ words “If killing is your only talent, that’s your curse” sound noticeably less contemptuous, while her state- ment that she does not want anyone dying for her sounds more frustrated. Clearly, Briseis’ appearance is here geared towards increasing and displaying her power over the whole group, even granting her a measure of control over the greatest warlord, Agamemnon. In this way Briseis’ intervention in Agamemnon’s tent is emblematic of Petersen’s new presentation of her whole story. The latter fuses a non-combatant’s experience of war and her grappling with personal values and ideals into the story of a young woman who is reach- ing maturity and attaining personal empowerment after encountering a man who is powerful in himself. The clash of two strong personalities, Achilles and
11 Laura Mulvey, “Afterthoughts on ‘Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema’ Inspired by King Vidor’s Duel in the Sun,” in Mulvey, Visual and Other Pleasures (1946), 31–40, at 31.
Briseis, starts this process and eventually changes them both. A closer look at the balance of power between Briseis and Achilles in the two versions of Troy may clarify this argument. In the theatrical release version Briseis had played an important but only ancillary part in expanding Achilles’ purpose in life. As he falls in love with her, he gains a new perspective on the Trojan War and on his obsession with heroic glory and starts pursuing a new goal. He is ready to abandon the war, give up immortal fame, and return home with Briseis. “You gave me peace in a lifetime of war,” he tells her, thereby giving her credit for the change that she has brought about in him. At the same time, however, his words reinforce a rather stereotypical image of women. By contrast, in the director’s cut this conven- tional image of Briseis coexists with, and even outweighs, one that captures a contemporary feminist spirit of a beautiful woman on a quest for meaning. From the beginning, Petersen dramatizes the learning process that Achilles makes Briseis undergo by emphasizing Briseis’ emotions in response to his acts of violence. The audience thus witnesses Briseis’ painful awakening from the illusion that there is a universally shared respect for the gods during her first encounter with Achilles. Equally important is her realization after Achilles’ duel with Hector that anybody, good or bad, may be fated to die in a war. Even previously implacable killers can have their justification for slaughter, and even those fighting in defense of their home and country can be merciless in battle. Petersen subtly prepares us for Briseis’ own, and only, act of violence when she encounters Agamemnon again during Troy’s fall. It is now easier for us to grasp the significance of Briseis’ killing of Agamemnon, a surprising plot turn to viewers familiar with Greek myth. As Allen rightly pointed out, Briseis “fulfills Achilles’ threat…that he would see Agamemnon dead. As she strikes Agamemnon, Briseis uses Achilles’ sweeping arm motion when he killed Boagrius and Hector.”12 In the director’s cut Briseis’ act nearly elevates her to the heroic level of an Achilles. Far from appearing as a woman who does un-womanly things, she demonstrates that she has under- gone, and now completed, a learning process. In both her intervention in Agamemnon’s tent and her killing of Agamemnon Briseis demonstrates that a strong and spirited woman has the capacity to act in a decisive manner. This circumstance is reinforced by the fact that Achilles did not have such a capac- ity in Agamemnon’s tent when he found himself checked by the very same concept with which he checks others: violence. Briseis’ achievement lies in attaining the power to act in war, unlike Helen or Hector’s wife Andromache, who remain passive. Briseis earns the audience’s approval because of the inner
12 Allen, “Briseis in Homer, Ovid, and Troy,” 161.
Paris: Then I’ll make it easy for him to find me. I’ll walk right up to him and tell him you’re mine. Helen: You’re very young, my love. Paris: We’re the same age! Helen: You’re younger than I ever was.
What Helen expresses in words, Briseis expresses in action. Both women show maturity in their knowledge of what can and should be done in a given situa- tion and what cannot. Since Briseis and Helen share this capacity, it is there- fore fitting that they sit to the right and left of Andromache during Hector’s funeral ceremony. In this way they frame the only woman whose thoughts have been least grounded in reality. A comparison with the theatrical release version shows that Andromache, too, has been changed. She is rather more egocentric and less receptive to what is going on around her. Once she has stated that she is not ready to lose her husband, she represses the idea of his death to such an extent that she initially does not understand why Hector even gives her instructions on how to escape from Troy once it has fallen. At Hector’s funeral, the camera turns from the pyre and tightly frames the faces of the three women. Andromache is fighting tears, the others are sad but composed, and beautifully so. Helen holds Andromache’s son on her lap. In retrospect, it
13 Marco Fantuzzi, Achilles in Love: Intertextual Studies (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2012), 99–185, surveys the Greek and Roman reception history of Briseis and Achilles. 14 Livy, From the Foundation of the City 1.58–59 and 3.44–48. 15 Cf. Patricia Klindienst Joplin, “Ritual Work on Human Flesh: Livy’s Lucretia and the Rape of the Body Politic,” Helios, 17 (1990), 51–70.
16 Joplin, “Ritual Work on Human Flesh,” 53. See also Sandra R. Joshel, “The Body Female and the Body Politic: Livy’s Lucretia and Verginia,” in Amy Richlin (ed.), Pornography and Representation in Greece and Rome (New York: Oxford University Press, 1992), 112–130. 17 Petersen said so repeatedly in interviews given in 2004; reviewers and film scholars have made the same point. Cf. Martin M. Winkler, “Editor’s Introduction” to TROY , 1–19, at 7–8, with quotation from Petersen and additional references.
Antonio M. Martín-Rodríguez
Wolfgang Petersen’s filmic version of the Trojan War and the fall of Troy is likely to be the most popular point of reference for at least a generation, con- sidering that those who consume audiovisual materials nowadays are far more numerous than those who study classical texts and know firsthand the myths that form the basis of our culture. A talented director, an exciting story, and a spectacular cast have made Achilles’ image inseparable for many from that of dashing Brad Pitt, just as Hector has become associated with responsible and reliable Eric Bana. Criticized by purists and scholars at first, Troy deserves seri- ous attention because of its immense popular success, its intrinsic cinematic quality, and its ability to revive worldwide interest in a topic that, by and large, had been buried in dusty libraries.1 The first collection of essays on the film appeared three years after its première.2 The contributions to that volume ana- lyzed sources of Troy, suggested comparative parallels, and identified precur- sors, both filmic and literary. My contribution here continues in that vein, as I propose to study the audiovisual narrative of the fall of Troy in Petersen’s film by focusing on two types of sources, literary texts familiar to academic audi- ences and cinematographic titles from popular and mass culture. Concerning the former, I will concentrate on Book 2 of Virgil’s Aeneid. Though mentioned as a source in the earlier collection of essays, no detailed analysis of this con- nection exists. As for the latter, I will highlight connections to several earlier films, even if some of them are not related to the Trojan myth. I approach the study of these sources as part of a dynamic process by which the classical tradition renews itself not through the repetition of well-known, untouchable canonical texts, but through the perpetual transformation and
1 However, as Jonathan S. Burgess, “Achilles’ Heel: The Historicism of the Film Troy,” in Kostas Myrsiades, (ed.), Reading Homer: Film and Text (Madison: Fairleigh Dickinson University Press, 2009), 163–185, reports at 178 note 6: “I have found undergraduate students to be the harshest critics of Troy; recent initiates can be the fiercest guardians of antiquity.”—I would like to thank Prof. Manuel M. Martín-Rodríguez for the English translation of this chapter. 2 Martin M. Winkler, (ed.). Troy: From Homer’s Iliad to Hollywood Epic (Oxford: Blackwell, 2007).
© koninklijke brill nv, leiden, 2015 | doi 10.1163/9789004296084_011
1 Classical Tradition and Popular Culture
The expression “classical tradition” does not primarily refer to elements of modern culture that originated in Greece or Rome but rather to the process by which they have reached us. The Latin noun traditio conveys action or process. It derives from the verb tradere in the sense of “transmitting from hand to hand or from generation to generation.” In consequence, when we speak of the clas- sical tradition it is important for us to take into account the process of trans- mission as much as the contents transmitted. We commonly refer to the classical tradition as if it were a torch that passes from hand to hand. While the torch in this metaphor remains the same, the materials transmitted are subject to continuous transformation. In that sense, a better image might be the inges- tion of food. In this process, the flavors of the foods we consume linger for a while in our mouths, while the nutriments are broken down in our system and, mixed with other foodstuff, are eventually absorbed into the blood stream, thus becoming part of ourselves. The classical tradition, likewise, has ensured the intergenerational transmission of numerous Greco-Roman elements that have become firmly implanted in our culture, even if their origins are not eas- ily recognizable. In the process, classical materials have fused with others of diverse origin to form the popular tradition as a whole. In this sense, tradition may be defined as the genetic code of a culture. In the case of Western culture, the classical tradition and Christianity are its two main genetic codes. But since Christianity first expanded under the guidance and guise of Greek cul- ture and as part of the Roman world at just the moment when the Mediterranean
3 Cf. Martin M. Winkler, “The Iliad and the Cinema,” in TROY, 43–67, at 43: “Classicists tend to reserve their greatest scorn, however, for adaptations of ancient masterpieces to modern mass media. Cinema and television, they believe, only turn sacred texts into fodder for the undiscriminating millions.” 4 Virgil, Aeneid 6.298–301. 5 As Martin M. Winkler, “Editor’s Introduction,” in TROY, 1–19 at 14, observes: “such free adapta- tions are nothing new. Even in antiquity, alternate versions of myth spread far and wide throughout literature and the visual arts…. Modern visual media have only taken this tradi- tion further.” Georg Danek, “The Story of Troy Through the Centuries,” in TROY, 68–84, pro- vides a detailed analysis in the case of the Trojan story. 6 Ovid, Amores 3.12.24 and 6.13; Metamorphoses 4.677 and 729–730. 7 See Salomon Reinach, “Pégase, l’Hippogriffe et les Poètes,” Révue d’Archéologie, 11 (1920), 207–235. A possible antecedent may be Hesiod, who calls Perseus a “rider” (Shield 216).
Ovid’s epic and is found both in high culture (Ben Jonson, George Peele, Thomas Heywood, William Shakespeare, Pierre Corneille, and others) and now in popular culture (Clash of the Titans). The screenwriters of this film, therefore, invented nothing by making Perseus Pegasus’ rider. On the other hand, the screenwriters of Disney’s Hercules in all likelihood were inspired by Clash of the Titans to make Hercules ride Pegasus. For all of these reasons it is easy to understand why a film like Troy has received much critical attention. As a prime example of the conscious appro- priation of classical themes in popular culture, Troy is likely to imprint a dis- tinct image of the Trojan War and its main protagonists on an entire generation. In that light, I will devote the rest of this chapter to examining the sources of Troy from the double perspective of high and popular culture.
2 Troy and Book 2 of Virgil’s Aeneid
Asserting that Troy is not a film version of the Iliad but a narrative inspired by, and expanding, Homer’s epic poem has by now become a commonplace. But, as one scholar rightly observes, “Petersen’s Troy, claiming only to be ‘inspired by Homer’s Iliad’, contains more Iliadic material than most works of art of the past three millennia.”8 Since the film deals with events that precede Achilles’ wrath and extend beyond the funeral of Hector, the opening and closing epi- sodes of the Iliad, it is clear that the film goes far beyond the Homeric storyline. In fact, screenwriter David Benioff has acknowledged in interviews that the Iliad was not his only source; he also cites, for instance, the Odyssey, the Aeneid, and Ovid’s Metamorphoses. According to Benioff, Troy is more a retelling of the entire Trojan War than an adaptation of the Iliad. Wolfgang Petersen, as many have noted, read Homer’s poem in its original lan- guage during his studies of the humanities in Europe, although apparently with- out much enthusiasm.9 Given this first-hand knowledge, critics have observed that changes to the canonical text in Troy cannot be attributed to ignorance but are due to authorial intention, audience expectations, and the film industry’s proverbial need to turn a profit. Thus, one scholar has observed about one of the most controversial aspects of the film, the exclusion of gods: “The decision to
8 Jon Solomon, “The Vacillations of the Trojan Myth: Popularization & Classicization, Variation & Codification,” International Journal of the Classical Tradition, 14 (2007), 482–534, at 482. 9 On this cf. Petersen’s own words in the present volume (Martin M. Winkler, “Wolfgang Petersen on Homer and Troy”). On the importance of Petersen’s background in classical antiquity see Winkler, “Editor’s Introduction,” in TROY, 5.
10 Kim Shahabudin, “From Greek Myth to Hollywood Story: Explanatory Narrative in Troy,” in TROY, 107–118, at 107–108. For a nuanced analysis of the role of the gods in Troy see Charles Chiasson, “Redefining Homeric Heroism in Wolfgang Petersen’s Troy,” in Myrsiades (ed.), Reading Homer: Film and Text, 186–207, at 195–203. Cf. further Joachim Latacz, “From Homer’s Troy to Petersen’s Troy,” in TROY, 27–42, at 42. 11 On this see Danek, “The Story of Troy through the Centuries,” 79, and Monica S. Cyrino, “Helen of Troy,” in TROY, 131–147, at 144. For Jon Solomon, “The Vacillations of the Trojan Myth: Popularization & Classicization, Variation & Codification,” International Journal for the Classical Tradition, 14 (2007), 482–534, at 486, the innovation of Hector killing Menelaus and Ajax “establishes Hector as a more worthy opponent of the invincible Achilles.” In any case, as Solomon, 504, suggests, Dio Chrysostom in his Eleventh (Trojan) Oration surpasses all of Petersen’s narrative transgressions by having Hector kill not Menelaus or Ajax but Achilles himself. The matter of authenticity in the retelling of the Trojan tale, in fact, rarely seems to have been of concern for thousands of years (Solomon, 534). 12 Shahabudin, “From Greek Myth to Hollywood Story,” 113. Jon Solomon, “Viewing Troy: Authenticity, Criticism, Interpretation,” in TROY, 85–98, at 90, analyzes the financial motivation of the film. 13 On the film’s use of material from the Epic Cycle see Cyrino, “Helen of Troy,” and Burgess, “Achilles’ Heel.” On Dares and Dictys see, e.g., Danek, “The Story of Troy through the Centuries.” 14 Cf. Shahabudin, “From Greek Myth to Hollywood Story,” 112: “The entire story of the fall of Troy is borrowed from the Aeneid, too, in adapted form.” Frederick Ahl, “Troy and Memorials of War,” in TROY, 163–185, at 171 and 184, acknowledges that the film is indebted
to Virgil’s Aeneid and that the sequence of events in the final part of the film recalls the Aeneid rather than the Iliad. 15 Quoted from http://www.screenwritersutopia.com/modules.php?name=Content&pa =showpage&pid=2686. 16 As Ahl, “Troy and Memorials of War,” 184, notes: “If Petersen’s education followed the typi- cal European pattern, his first encounter with an ancient version of the Trojan War would have been in Virgil, not Homer.” 17 Peter Jones, Reading Virgil: Aeneid I and II (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2011), provides a useful recent commentary on the first two books of the Aeneid for students and non-specialists, providing essential bibliographical information and offering some alter- nate versions of the fall of Troy reported in the extant ancient sources.
Thymoetes, perhaps a member of a fifth column, suggests bringing it into the city, but Capys and the more reasonable citizens would rather throw it into the sea or burn it. At the least they want to pierce its side to see what it might contain. With the arrival of the furious priest Laocoon, who advises the destruc- tion of the horse, Capys’ suggestions gain momentum. When his lance hits the horse, an ominous metallic sound is heard. The unexpected appearance of the traitor Sinon, an alleged Greek fugitive, once again changes the Trojans’ minds. Sinon makes them believe that the Greeks left the horse in atonement for their theft of Athena’s Palladium from Troy and that they built it so huge that it could not be brought into the city. Now the Trojans favor bringing the horse into their city, especially after two giant serpents have killed Laocoon and his sons and sought refuge in the temple of Athena.
In the third and final part, the Trojans take the horse into their city despite Cassandra’s dreadful prophecies. They pay no heed to the fact that the horse got stuck four times on the threshold of the gate and that these moments pro- duced an ominous metallic sound. The surviving summary of the Iliou Persis makes evident that it had influ- enced Virgil, although with a slight difference, easy to understand: Aeneas’ journey with his people to Mount Ida after the death of Laocoon:
The Trojans, deeply suspicious of everything to do with the wooden horse, stood round it debating what they ought to do. Some thought they ought to throw it over the cliff, others to set fire to it, while others said
they ought to offer it up to Athena. The last option finally prevailed, and they turned to joyful feasting, as if the war were over. But at this very moment two serpents appeared and destroyed Laocoon and one of his two sons. Aeneas’s followers, deeply concerned at this omen, left for Mount Ida.18
In Petersen’s film a horseman appears at full gallop, screaming “Open the gates!” Priam, Paris, Glaucus (the principal Trojan commander after the death of Hector), the influential priest Archeptolemus and others verify that the Greeks have sailed away, leaving the shore full of corpses; in all likelihood, a plague is the cause of death. Benioff added this motif to render the Trojans’ gullibility more plausible. Later it becomes clear that this is a false epidemic, since the marks of the disease disappear from a corpse when a dog licks its face. At the same time, however, the scene may be inspired by the epidemic in Book I of the Iliad or even by The Little Iliad, in which Sinon convinced the Trojans to bring the Wooden Horse into Troy by saying that the Greeks, fearing the plague, had returned home. Whatever the case, Archeptolemus interprets the plague as divine punish- ment for the desecration of the temple of Apollo, and he considers the horse “an offering to Poseidon in a pray for a safe return home,” which thus should be taken to the god’s temple.19 Petersen omits the characters of Thymoetes, Capys, Laocoon, and Sinon, but the controversy appears in the subsequent dialogue. Paris and Glaucus take the part of those who support the destruction of the horse, but the priest finally convinces Priam:
Paris: I think we should burn it. Priam: Burn it? Another Trojan: My prince, this is a gift to the gods. Glaucus: The prince is right. I would burn the whole of Greece if I had a big enough torch. Priest: I warn you, good men, be careful what you insult. Our beloved prince Hector had sharp words for the gods and a day later Achilles’ sword cut him down. Paris: Father, burn it.
18 Quoted from Jones, Reading Virgil, 298. 19 Chiasson, “Redefining Homeric Heroism in Wolfgang Petersen’s Troy,” 202, notes: “This marks a significant variation from the best-known version of this incident, in the second book of Vergil’s Aeneid, where the Trojan priest Laocoön shrewdly urges that the horse be destroyed.”
Priest: Forgive me, my king, I mean no disrespect but I don’t want to see any more sons of Troy incur the gods’ wrath. Priam: I will not watch another son die.
Priam’s words end the argument, and the horse is brought into the city amid general joy and without any of the disturbing omens present in Virgil’s Aeneid. In the meantime, a Trojan horseman discovers the entire Greek fleet moored in a well-protected bay. The horseman readies himself to ride back to Troy but is hit and killed by several arrows. As mentioned, the second part of the Virgilian account, told from Aeneas’ point of view, focuses on nightfall, the city’s destruction, and Aeneas flight. It may be summarized as follows:
Hector appears to Aeneas in a dream and advises him to seek safety with his family, taking the household gods of Troy with him. A clatter of arms awakens Aeneas. He watches Troy in flames from the top of his house. Panthus, a priest of Apollo, arrives with the sacred objects. Aeneas joins the fight with a few loyal companions and after numer- ous vicissitudes arrives at the palace of Priam. A description of the brave defense of the palace ensues. Achilles’ son Pyrrhus finally breaks down the doors and kills Priam. Venus deters Aeneas from killing Helen and persuades him to flee, while helping him get back home. Anchises, Aeneas’ father, refuses to leave until two divine prodigies convince him otherwise. Aeneas flees, carrying his father on his shoulder and holding his son by the hand. His wife, Creusa, is lost. Aeneas returns to the city to search for her, but in vain. Eventually her ghost appears to him and encourages him to leave Troy.
In Troy, once night falls and everything is quiet, the Greeks emerge from the Wooden Horse. They kill the sleeping sentinels, the Greek army enters Troy, and a terrible massacre ensues. Achilles searches frantically for Briseis. Priam climbs to the rooftop of his palace and, in tears, watches his city engulfed in flames. Andromache convinces Helen to flee through an underground passage whose entrance Hector had revealed to her. While Paris refuses to leave and so to abandon Priam, a very young Aeneas appears, holding an exhausted older man, his father, in his arms.20 In a dialogue that critics rightly consider incongruous,
20 A source for this passage may be Aeneid 2.657–658, where Aeneas refuses to leave Troy without his father.
Paris gives Aeneas the Sword of Troy, a sort of talisman that guarantees the survival of the Trojan race. It is an obvious substitute for the mythical Palladium, a small wooden image of Athena believed to have fallen from the sky, with an additional medieval hint at the Arthurian sword Excalibur.21 Paris asks Aeneas to lead the fleeing Trojans:
Paris: What’s your name? Aeneas: Aeneas. Paris: Do you know how to use a sword? Aeneas: Yes. Paris: The Sword of Troy [handing him the sword]. As long as it remains in the hands of a Trojan, our people have a future. Protect them, Aeneas. Find them a new home. Aeneas: I will. Paris: Hurry. Quick.
The Greeks, led by Odysseus, manage to enter the royal palace that Glaucus was defending. Agamemnon kills Priam and captures Briseis. Agamemnon captures her while she prays kneeling in front of an altar. This is a clear reminder of Robert Wise’s Helen of Troy (1956), in which Ajax apprehends Cassandra in the same manner. Before Achilles can protect her, Briseis plunges her dagger in Agamemnon’s neck and kills him. When Paris arrives and sees Briseis in Achilles’ arms, he discharges a veritable rain of arrows on the Greek hero. Before succumbing, Achilles manages to pull them all out, except for the one that struck him in the heel.22 Paris and Briseis flee into the secret passage, and Achilles dies. Finally, the third part of the Virgilian account tells how Aeneas joins his people in the outskirts of Troy at dawn and how they flee towards the mountains. Likewise, in Troy, the fugitives escape through a steep pass in the moun- tains. The broad outline of events logically coincides in both versions: the Trojans bring the horse into their city, the concealed warriors open the gates for the Greek army, Troy is sacked, the king is killed, and a few Trojans led by
21 Cf. Stephen Scully, “The Fate of Troy,” in TROY, 119–130, at 121, and Ahl, “Troy and Memorials of War,” 176. In Wise’s Helen of Troy Priam charges Aeneas, whose role in this film is more significant, to take care of his daughter-in-law and grandson. 22 According to Burgess, “Achilles’ Heel,” 176–177, this scene is based on the version of Achilles’ death in which he is shot by Paris when he has met Polyxena in a temple of Apollo. On this see especially the chapter by Eleonora Cavallini in the present volume. A possible cinematic intertext is Wise’s Helen of Troy, at whose end a dying Paris bids fare- well to Helen in Menelaus’ presence.
Aeneas manage to escape. But the differences are equally obvious. In Troy Achilles participates in the city’s capture and dies in the process; Odysseus rather than Pyrrhus breaks down the defenses of Priam’s palace; Agamemnon, not Pyrrhus, kills the king; Briseis kills Agamemnon; Paris, Helen, Briseis, and Andromache with her son join the fleeing Trojans; and Aeneas is a youngster, not an experienced warrior. Petersen and Benioff have taken various liberties in their retelling of the fall of Troy as described in ancient texts, but their ver- sion retains traces of the Virgilian account—no matter how liberally trans- formed and regardless of the fact that characters and circumstances have been altered. Thus in Troy it is Priam and not Aeneas who watches the burning city from the rooftop, and the Sword of Troy corresponds to, and is equivalent to, the Trojan Penates and sacred objects. Virgil’s Aeneas does not dare to carry the latter because his hands are tainted with blood, and so he gives them to his father Anchises.23 In Troy, likewise, Paris, become a warrior at last, gives the sacred articles to Aeneas, a young and innocent lad with little military experi- ence and no involvement in combat. The surreptitious way in which Aeneas enters the palace under siege is substituted in the film by a scene in which Achilles climbs the walls of the palace to save his beloved.24 The murder of Polites by Pyrrhus and the ensuing killing of Priam, enraged by this incident, in Virgil is replaced in Troy by a scene in which Archeptolemus the priest is killed in front of an altar and his body is hurled over the balustrade. Priam then condemns the Greeks’ dishonorable actions and confronts Agamemnon, who treacherously kills him. The image of the sword buried to the hilt in the old man’s body seems a clear reference to the Virgilian text, although there the sword enters Priam’s side, not his back: “with his right [he] drew his gleaming / Sword which he then buried up to the hilt in the flank of the old king.”25 Archeptolemus’ words before being hurled over the balustrade—“Beware, my friends. I am a servant of the gods”—likewise appear borrowed from Virgil. Aeneas says about the death of Panthus: “your utterly righteous life and Apollo’s / Ribbons of priesthood gave you no protection when you began stum- bling…”; then: “as you fell.”26 Additionally, the scene in which Aeneas sees Helen and conceives the idea to kill her, although he then pardons her, becomes
23 Aeneid 2.717–720. 24 Aeneas does so by way of a back door that Andromache had frequently used to go from her house to that of her in-laws’ (Aeneid 2.453–457). This passageway may have suggested to the screenwriters the secret passage that Hector brings to Andromache’s attention. 25 Aeneid 2.552–553; quoted from Frederick Ahl, (tr.), Virgil: Aeneid (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2007; rpt. 2008), 45. 26 Aeneid, 2.428–432; quoted from Ahl, Virgil: Aeneid, 41.
Achilles: Briseis—where is she? Where? Soldier: I don’t know. Please, I have a son. Achilles: Then get him out of Troy.
Finally, Aeneas’ frantic search for Creusa in the midst of the slaughter is com- parable to Achilles’ search for Briseis in Troy. In the former, Creusa’s ghost appears to Aeneas and convinces him to leave the city, find a new wife, and start a new life; in the latter, a dying Achilles asks Briseis to flee the city with Paris to begin a new life: “Go. You must. Troy is falling. Go. Begin anew.”27 Some of the correspondences between Troy and the Aeneid are conscious borrowings. Others may be the result of coincidence. Yet others are examples of unconscious apprehension of classical elements without knowledge of their origin. This is the case with the burning of Troy, which has begun while the Greeks are still in the process of conquering it. At first glance this may seem a logical consequence of the fall of a city, but the simultaneity of fire and conquest is Virgil’s invention. Other sources state that the city was burned down only after the Greeks’ takeover.28 Early films about Troy repeated the motif from the Aeneid, as is the case with Wise’s Helen of Troy. Benioff adopted it as well, probably unaware that he was pouring old wine into a new skin.
3 Visual Subtexts
Many of the images that make a strong impression on our minds frequently do so on an unconscious level. It follows, then, that many of the conceivable visual references in a film may not be conscious to its makers or may be the product of an unconscious association of ideas in the viewer’s mind. In the latter case
27 Purists may consider the image of Achilles dying in the arms of Briseis outrageous. Still, a modern reader of Propertius could easily imagine such a scene since Propertius, Elegies 2.9.9–10, presents Briseis embracing the dying or dead Achilles as a prime example of fidelity, thus contrasting Briseis and Cynthia. Moreover, Propertius 2.15.13–14, where the love-stricken Paris watches a naked Helen getting out of Menelaus’ bed, might have inspired the moment in Troy in which a naked Helen, in bed after consummating again her adulterous affair with Paris, receives a pearl necklace from the enraptured Trojan prince. 28 Cf. Jones, Reading Virgil, 234, with further reference.
29 On the former see Ahl, “Troy and Memorials of War,” 181. For Mendelsohn, “A Little Iliad,” 47, the second of these two sequences is “shamelessly lifted” from Spielberg’s film. Cyrino, “Helen of Troy,” 136, suggests that the computer-generated image of the massive Greek armada is intended to evoke Marlowe’s description of Helen: “the face that launched a thousand ships.” Shahabudin, “From Greek Myth to Hollywood Story,” 113, suggests that the burning missiles catapulted into the Germans in Gladiator influenced the Trojan night attack on the Greek ships in Troy, but the final battle in Stanley Kubrick’s Spartacus (1960) is a closer parallel. 30 On the affinities between Petersen and Lucan in the representation (or absence thereof) of divinities see Ahl, “Troy and Memorials of War.” 31 Cf. Danek, “The Story of Troy Through the Centuries,” 68, and Ahl, “Troy and Memorials of War,” 173. In any case, Achilles’ words to Briseis seem to contain an allusion to Thetis’ divine nature: “I know about the gods more than your priests. I’ve seen them.”
The same rationalization is allowed in the episode of the death of Achilles. Shot several times, Achilles succeeds in removing all arrows but the one in his heel, which the Greek soldiers see when they find his corpse.32 This is a deli- cate way of suggesting a rationalizing origin for the legend of Achilles’ invul- nerability.33 The hero himself had denied his invulnerability at the start of the film when he answers a child’s question about this very thing: “I wouldn’t be bothering with the shield then, would I?” This technique of allusive explana- tion for the creation of legends is, of course, not exclusive to modern culture. An ancient example may be the curious incident in Book 2 of the Aeneid, in which Coroebus convinces Aeneas to switch armors with those of the Greeks they have just killed in order to inflict further punishment on their enemies. This may be Virgil’s subliminal version of certain ancient traditions according to which Aeneas betrayed the Trojans, and it would explain why Aeneas had been seen in Troy apparently fighting on the Greek side.34 Critics have suggested several further classical intertextual presences in Troy.35 I would like to adduce a few other possible instances which, although less obvious than those cited above, are equally suggestive. Troy omits the non- Homeric episode in which a young Achilles, disguised as a girl, initially avoids the war by hiding in the women’s quarters of King Lycomedes’ palace. The film may contain a playful iconic reference to that episode when Agamemnon pre- pares to eliminate the last vestiges of resistance to his power in northern Greece. Thessalian king Triopas and Agamemnon agree to avoid battle by a duel of their champions, the formidable giant Boagrius and Achilles. But Achilles fails to show up. And where is he? Far from the battlefield in his tent, in bed with two women. The formulaic character of Homeric language, full
Chiasson, “Redefining Homeric Heroism in Wolfgang Petersen’s Troy,” 206–207 note 19, concurs. 32 Two different intertextual allusions are possible here. One is the death of Ajax at the hands of Hector in Troy itself. The other, suggested by Danek, “The Story of Troy through the Centuries,” 70, is the passage in Homer in which Diomedes during Achilles’ absence from combat receives multiple arrow wounds and promptly removes all arrows before seeking a cure in his camp (Iliad 11.369–400). The first of these allusions permits us to think of Paris as a hero comparable to Hector, as he chooses to stay and confront Achilles in order to save Briseis. 33 On this Danek, “The Story of Troy through the Centuries,” 69; Shahabudin, “From Greek Myth to Hollywood Story,” 117; Ahl, “Troy and Memorials of War,” 173. Burgess, “Achilles’ Heel,” 174–177, gives a detailed analysis of this scene. 34 Cf. Jones, Reading Virgil, 245. 35 So Winkler, “The Iliad and the Cinema,” 51 and 54; Scully, “The Fate of Troy,” 129; Cyrino, “Helen of Troy,” 136 and 144; Ahl, “Troy and Memorials of War,” 179.
36 Cf. Burgess, “Achilles’ Heel,” 177: “Homeric epithets…appear occasionally throughout the film, apparently in order to suggest a grandiose if stilted protocol at work among prehis- toric royalty.” 37 So Scully, “The Fate of Troy,” 120 and 129. For Solomon, “The Vacillations of the Trojan Myth,” 486, the duel between Achilles and Boagrius “serves to establish the former as swift of foot and sure of hand.” The name of Boagrius, an invented character, corresponds to that of a Locrian river (Iliad 2.533), as Solomon, 486 note 17, has noted. 38 On this Mendelsohn, “A Little Iliad,” 47; Ahl, “Troy and Memorials of War,” 179. According to Shahabudin, “From Greek Myth to Hollywood Story,” 113, this absence may be due to pressure exerted by the studio to protect the popularity of their stars. On the matter see the relevant comments by Eleonora Cavallini in this volume and especially the chapter by Horst-Dieter Blume. 39 So, for example, Shahabudin, “From Greek Myth to Hollywood Story,” 113; Burgess, “Achilles’ Heel,” 172. 40 On this Alena Allen, “Briseis in Homer, Ovid, and Troy,” in TROY, 148–162, at 160. According to Burgess, “Achilles’ Heel,” 180 note 29, this successive offering of the necklace from Thetis to Achilles to Patroclus to Briseis might allude to the fate of the first armor of Achilles, which is passed on from Peleus to Achilles to Patroclus to Hector.
41 So Winkler, “Editor’s Introduction,” 17: “In both plot and visual style, for instance, Troy is reminiscent of the first American widescreen epic on the same subject, Robert Wise’s Helen of Troy (1956), also produced by Warner Brothers.” See now also Martin M. Winkler, Cinema and Classical Texts: Apollo’s New Light (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2009; rpt. 2011), 210–250 (chapter titled “Helen of Troy: Marriage and Adultery According to Hollywood”), on affinities among Wise’s, Harrison’s, and Petersen’s films.
Aragorn: Is there no other way for the women and children to get out of the caves? Is there no other way? Captain: There is one passage. It leads into the mountain….
Likewise, the scene in which the Trojans under Glaucus’ command resist the final Greek attack inside Priam’s palace is reminiscent of the final defense of Theoden’s Eorlingas in Helm’s Deep against the Uruk-hai. And the source of the scene in which Achilles beheads Apollo’s statue may well be Achilles’ slaughter of Troilus at the altar of Apollo.43 But it also may remind us of The
42 So Danek, “The Story of Troy through the Centuries,” 75. 43 Burgess, “Achilles’ Heel,” 167. The point is argued in greater detail by Eleonora Cavallini elsewhere in this volume. According to Chiasson, “Redefinig Homeric Heroism in Wolfgang Petersen’s Troy,” 205–206 note 17, the conversation between Achilles and
Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King (2003), in which Aragorn does the same with the Mouth of Sauron in front of the Black Gate. This potential influ- ence is complicated, however, by the fact that the scene only appears in the film’s extended version. Nevertheless it would be difficult to dismiss the influ- ence of The Lord of the Rings on Troy out of hand. Orlando Bloom, the actor who plays Petersen’s Paris had been cast as the formidable archer elf Legolas in Jackson’s trilogy, and many of the features of Petersen’s Hector, played by Eric Bana, seem modeled on Jackson’s Aragorn, played by Viggo Mortensen, whom Bana somewhat resembles. Benioff himself has referred to The Lord of the Rings when describing Troy: “It’s not the epic battle of good versus evil. It’s not humans versus orcs” (sic).44 This type of inspiration results in casting as a par- ticular character an actor who had played the same or a similar character before. This is the case, for instance, with Steve Reeves, who played Aeneas in Giorgio Ferroni’s The Trojan Horse (1961) and its sequel, Giorgio Rivalta’s The Avenger (1962). These films came after Reeves had twice played Hercules, had practically won the Battle of Marathon (in Jacques Tourneur’s Giant of Marathon, 1959), had survived the eruption of Vesuvius (in Mario Bonnard and Sergio Leone’s The Last Days of Pompeii, 1959), and had appeared as compara- ble saviors and rescuers in other historical fiction films.
4 Conclusion
Classical topics and motifs persist not only in the realm of academia but also, and most significantly, in that of mass culture. Although the Iliad continues to be the main point of reference for the Trojan War myth, every century and even every generation has been able to tell the story again and differently, infusing an old tale with new blood. For Homer the main episode was that of Achilles’ wrath, which provokes the events that culminate with the death of Hector, the main defender of Troy. Virgil emphasized the destruction of Troy, which results in the exile of Aeneas and the eventual foundation of Rome. Dictys and Dares offered alternate eyewitness accounts, which they presented as being closer to the truth than Homer. Benoît de Sainte-Maure’s twelfth- century epic Le roman de Troie reads much like a novel, although written in elegant verse. Shakespeare focused on the love episode of Troilus and Cressida
Eudorus before the beheading of the statue is reminiscent of Euripides, Hippolytus 88–120. 44 Quoted from http://www.screenwritersutopia.com/modules.php?name=Content&pa=sh owpage&pid=2686.
Jon Solomon
In my 2007 publication “The Vacillations of the Trojan Myth: Popularization & Classicization, Variation & Codification,” I responded to the criticism that Wolfgang Petersen’s Troy failed to reproduce faithfully Homer’s Iliad by survey- ing the Iliadic and broader Trojan War tradition from the era of Homer to the present.1 In doing so I observed that in ancient Greece and Rome the Iliad, insofar as it was an artistic work worthy of imitation and capable of inspiring subsequent artists, was overshadowed for the most part by the Cyclic Epics. The predominant number of dramas (the extant tragedies that involve the families that fought in the Trojan War), vase paintings, and mural paintings that depended on the Trojan War tradition featured pre- and post-Iliadic events and characters. Even those that depicted characters from the Iliad were often extra-Homeric, such as the Sosias Painter’s depiction of Achilles bandag- ing the wounds of Patroclus and the thirty-seven vases painted by Exekias, the Andocides Painter, and others of Achilles and Ajax playing dice.2 During the Roman era the Iliad was relatively neglected, denigrated, and then contra- dicted by authors of the Second Sophistic movement and supplanted entirely by the vulgar narratives of Dictys and Dares, which inspired subsequent artists until the end of the Renaissance.3 By that time the Iliad had finally been trans- lated into various European vernacular languages and was available for wider dissemination and imitation, but painters, sculptors, playwrights, and opera librettists chose to draw their narratives from the much broader corpora of Greco-Roman mythology and history.4 In the eighteenth century, under the
1 Jon Solomon, “The Vacillations of the Trojan Myth: Popularization & Classicization, Variation & Codification,” The International Journal of the Classical Tradition, 14 (2007), 482–534. 2 limc I.1, “Achilles” 468 (Berlin F 2278) and 391–427. 3 The Hyginus collection of myths provides an example of neglect, assigning just one of 257 fables to the Iliadic material. Dio Chrysostom, 11.95–96 and 123–124, has Hector kill Achilles and claims that the Trojans were ultimately victorious. For Dictys and Dares see Stefan Merkle, “Telling the True Story of the Trojan War: The Eyewitness Account of Dictys of Crete,” in James Tatum (ed.), The Search for the Ancient Novel (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1994), 183–196, and “The Truth and Nothing But the Truth: Dictys and Dares,” in Gareth L. Schmeling (ed.), The Novel in the Ancient World (Leiden: Brill, 1996), 563–580. 4 Claudio Monteverdi, for instance, during the years 1640–1643, produced in succession the first operas based on Homeric and Vergilian epics, Il ritorno d’Ulisse in patria (1640) and Le
© koninklijke brill nv, leiden, 2015 | doi 10.1163/9789004296084_012
1 Background
Some procedural matters first. The study of popular culture, particularly the study of the legacy of Classics, does not by nature submit to the same scholarly methodologies as does the long-practiced study of antiquity. The products of popular culture as commonly defined today—primarily commer- cialized products designed for widespread dissemination, as well as ambitious amateur or alternative works tailor-made for demographically determined target audiences—lack the two millennia or more of study focused upon the mostly non-commercial artistic products of classical antiquity. This often means that, while we have comprehensive and frequently revised lists of all the important works produced in a given period during antiquity, we have less com- plete and less reliable lists of modern works which lack the two-millennium vetting process and, by nature, tend to be more numerous, scattered, and of lower profile. This chapter, therefore, cannot pretend to be complete. Also, most of the artistic products of antiquity became canonical when later schol- ars and artists selected, judged, adapted, or discarded them according to the preferences of the period. By contrast, the success and survival of popular
nozze d’Enea e Lavinia (1641), as well as L’incoronazione di Poppea (1643), based on the Annals of Tacitus. The absence of an opera based on the Iliad is notable. 5 For details, examples, and statistical evidence, see Solomon, “The Vacillations of the Trojan Myth,” 521–530.
2 Schliemann’s Legacy
Heinrich Schliemann had begun excavating in earnest the historical site of Troy at Hisarlik, Turkey, in 1871, and by the time of his death in 1890 the city had
6 http://www.leesmovieinfo.net/wbotitle.php?t=2341.
Dr. Schliemann’s theory…has done much to make the story of his labors interesting. It throws a halo of romance over what would else have been but a record of archaeological explorations such as have of late become somewhat monotonous. It also shows the explorer himself, not in the character of an antiquarian overturning the earth in search of what ancient treasures he may find, but as an enthusiastic admirer of Homer seeking a foundation for the story of his poet-hero, and leaving no effort unmade to point out to the world the scene of that wondrous tale.7
After Schliemann’s death, work at Troy was continued by the less charismatic and more precise Wilhelm Dörpfeld and confirmed the ancient city’s less appealing historicity. In 1896 The New York Times reported on Dörpfeld’s standing- room-only lecture at Columbia University without the slightest hint at myth or romance. Now there was no question that this was “Homer’s Troy,” but Homer’s Troy had become merely a historical city and an archaeological site:
The question of the site of Homer’s Troy was reviewed by the lecturer…. On the site now proved to be the place where Homer’s Troy stood the excavations have revealed nine strata of earth and ruins, representing recognizably distinct periods in the history of the three cities that have there been built—first the prehistoric, before Homer’s time; then the Greek, the City of Priam; lastly, the Roman city…. The citadel of Troy he held to be the most interesting group of ruins now accessible to the inves- tigator of classical antiquity and of ruins still more remote.
The article mentions the Iliad only once, and in conjunction with Helen:
7 “The Land of Homer,” The New York Times (December 19, 1880), 4.
In the sixth stratum have been found the remains of the Homeric Troy, the city of which the siege and capture, with varying fortunes of the war for the punishment of Helen’s ravisher, formed the subject of the Iliad.8
Troy’s popular legacy reflects these different traditions: the legacy of the Iliad, especially when compared to the legacy of the Odyssey; the legacy of Helen, and the legacy of Schliemann himself. For this portion of our survey, let us take as a starting point Jane Davidson Reid’s The Oxford Guide to Classical Mythology in the Arts, 1300–1990s. This compendium contains an enormous list of works that treat Greco-Roman mythology in the fine arts, music, dance, and litera- ture. Derived from hundreds of previous scholarly compilations and studies, Reid’s compendium is not complete or error-free, but it will serve our purpose as a standard for comparison. The dearth of Reid’s entries under such headings as “Trojan War: General List” and “Achilles” is striking. Under the former are listed only seven entries between 1870 and the 1920s, a period which produced hundreds upon hun- dreds of poems, novels, paintings, etchings, drawings, operas, ballets, musicals, songs, plays, dramatic spectaculars, and films involving classical myths. And of these seven, most have little to do with the plot of the Iliad, none had a large concept or any significant influence, popular impact, or lengthy shelf life, and one was never completed and another never published. The first, a polyptych by the Pre-Raphaelite Edward Burne-Jones called “The Story of Troy,” depicted only pre- and post-Iliadic events (“Helen Carried Off by Paris,” “Judgment of Paris,” “Helen Captive at the Burning of Troy”). Begun at the outset of an uncharacteristically unproductive seven-year period in Burne- Jones’s life, the project was commenced in 1870 (just as Schliemann was peti- tioning for his Troy excavation) but never finished, although Burne-Jones heard a lecture by and even had a private discussion with Jane Ellen Harrison on the subject.9 The second, Aubrey De Vere’s poem “The Theater at Argos” (1884), is a son- net, whose fifth line refers merely to “The old Homeric hosts, with spear and lance.” The third, Otto Goldschmidt’s setting of The Tale of Troy, was hardly an “opera,” as listed in Reid. It provides additional evidence that towards the end of the nineteenth century the Iliad did not lend itself easily or often to dra- matic adaptation, remained primarily in the academic environment, and usu- ally played a secondary role to the Odyssey. The work was written as a fundraiser
8 “Ruins of Ancient Troy,” The New York Times (November 10, 1896), 3. 9 Lady Georgiana Burne-Jones, Memorials of Edward Burne-Jones, vol. 2: 1868–1898 (New York: Macmillan, 1904; rpt. 1906), 157.
“for the creation of a new department in King’s College for the higher educa- tion of women” and was performed once in English and once in ancient Greek. George Charles Winter Warr, who would publish a translation of the Oresteia in 1900, wrote the libretto. Even the writer for The Times recognized the prob- lems apparently inherent in rendering a dramatic adaptation of the Iliad:
As the narrative of the Trojan war and the events springing out of it is voluminous, and as, moreover, no ingenious commentator has ever suspected Homer of writing for the stage, it is manifest that the task of casting the “Tale of Troy” into dramatic shape is one demanding the exer- cise of sound judgment. Professor Warr has performed it in the manner least likely to offend scholastic prejudice, and at the same time most con- ducive to dramatic effect.10
Much of the performance consisted of tableaux that required nearly eighty volunteer players, of whom only a handful spoke or sang. The program con- sisted of an initial tableau, “The Pledge of Aphrodite,” and concluded with a lengthy series of songs and tableaux derived from the Odyssey. In between there were four scenes inspired by the latter portions of the Iliad: “Helen at the Scaean Gate, the Parting of Hector”; “Priam on his Way to the Achaean Camp”; “Priam in the Tent of Achilles”; and “The Mourning for Hector at the Scaean Gate.” The tableaux were interspersed with three songs—“Prayer to Athene,” “Elegy for Patroclus,” “Dirge for Hector”—composed not by Goldschmidt, who set only the initial tableau, but by Walter Parratt. The work was performed once more in 1886 and then published in 1888 as Echoes of Hellas, essentially a libretto with descriptions and piano reductions. Iliadic material comprises only six of its sixty-five pages, the majority of which are dedicated to “The Story of Orestes,” added in 1886. In his review of Echoes of Hellas, classical scholar Richard C. Jebb addressed the particular difficulties he observed in excerpting epics and dramas but voted in favor of this experimental Iliadic adaptation:
An epic is perhaps a more favourable subject than a drama for the pur- pose of representation by excerpts. When the dramatiser places before us the great scene between Achilles and Priam, he is doing a thing different in kind from what the poet has done, and is vivifying that portion of the epic narrative in a new way. But when scenes are detached from the tex- ture of a play, each scene inevitably loses something of the effect which,
10 “The Tale of Troy,” The Times (May 30, 1883), 10.
in the dramatist’s conception, belonged to it as part of “a single action.” Prof. Warr has done all perhaps that could be done to surmount this dis- advantage; and if, in the result, we prefer the “Tale of Troy” to the “Story of Orestes,” it must be allowed that the latter, in the shape given to it here, forms at least a splendid series of impressive pictures.11
The fourth, Edward Bowles’ “Troy Again,” performed first at St. George’s Hall in London on March 13, 1888, was by genre an “extravaganza,” as Reid specifies, but the source she cites, Allardyce Nicoll’s six-volume A History of English Drama, makes clear that it was an amateur production.12 The fifth, Samuel Butler’s 1898 translation of Homer’s Iliad, preceded his Odyssey translation by two years but followed upon his much more widely disseminated and influen- tial book The Authoress of the Odyssey of 1897, which developed his earlier hypothesis that Nausicaa was the author of the epic.13 The sixth, Max Klinger’s “Die Geburt von Trojas Unheil” (“The Birth of Troy’s Misfortune”), was a pen- and-ink drawing published in 1907 in Epithalamia. It illustrated a text by his companion Elsa Asenijeff that was termed a “masterpiece” in Burlington Magazine.14 The seventh, Rupert Brooke’s fragment “And Priam and His Fifty Sons,” was unpublished. The Collected Poems of Rupert Brooke includes the poem “Menelaus and Helen,” but this offers only two stanzas on the love tri- angle involving Helen, Menelaus, and Paris.15 Similarly, under “Achilles: General List” Reid lists another five, under “Achilles: Wrath of Achilles” another eight, and under “Achilles: Return to Battle” none. Most of these are minor works as well. Of note is only Karl Goldmark’s opera Die Kriegsgefangene (“The [Female] Prisoner of War”), the premiere of which was conducted by Gustav Mahler at Vienna’s Hofoperntheater
11 Richard C. Jebb, review of George C. Warr, Echoes of Hellas (London: Ward, 1887), Classical Review, 2 (1888), 248–249. 12 Allardyce Nicoll, A History of English Drama, 1660–1900, vol. 5: A History of Late Nineteenth Century Drama, 1850–1900 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1946), 271; cf. Walter Hamilton (ed.), Parodies of the Works of English and American Authors, vol. 6 (London: Reeves & Turner, 1889), 343. 13 Samuel Butler, The Authoress of the Odyssey, Where and When She Wrote, Who She Was, the Use She Made of the Iliad and How the Poem Grew Under Her Hands (London: Longmans, Green, 1897; several rpts.); cf. Samuel Butler, L’origine siciliana dell’ Odissea (Acireale: Donzuso, 1893). His hypothesis was earlier espoused in Butler, A Lecture on the Humour of Homer (Cambridge: Metcalfe, 1892). 14 Hans Wolfgang Singer, “Art in Germany,” The Burlington Magazine for Connoisseurs, 12 (1907), 116–118, at 118. 15 Rupert Brooke, The Collected Poems of Rupert Brooke (New York: Lane, 1920), 76–77.
16 Goldmark had originally intended to name his opera Briseis until he learned that Chabrier had already used that name for his incomplete opera (the plot of which is set during the reign of Hadrian and does not include a role for Achilles); cf. Henry-Louis de La Grange, Mahler (Garden City: Doubleday, 1973), vol. 1, 921 note 11. 17 Cf. the summary in Arthur Elson, Modern Composers of Europe (Boston: Page, 1904), 65–66. 18 Roger Dettmer, “Goldmark: Die Königin von Saba,” Fanfare, 4 (1981), 122. 19 La Grange, Mahler, vol. 1, 500. 20 La Grange, Mahler, vol. 1, 500. 21 Andrew Lang, Helen of Troy (London: Bell/New York: Scribner’s, 1882). 22 Andrew Lang, Walter Leaf, and Ernest Myers, The Iliad of Homer (London: Macmillan, 1882); Lang, Homer and the Epic (London: Longmans, Green, 1893).
23 Brian Rees, Camille Saint-Saëns: A Life (London: Chatto & Windus, 1999), 355; cf. James Harding, Saint-Saëns and His Circle (London: Chapman & Hall, 1965), 205. See Alexander Faris, Jacques Offenbach (London: Faber & Faber, 1980), 112–114, for Saint-Saëns’ statement that “Paris took leave of its senses” and for criticisms from the eminent French drama critic Jules Janin, who lamented La Belle Hélène as “a sacrilege, a desecration of antiquity.” 24 “Operatic Notes,” Punch, or the London Charivari (June 29, 1904), 463. 25 Cf. “Herr Bungert’s ‘Odysseus’,” The Musical Times, 38 (February 1, 1897), 104 and 113. 26 See Christoph Hust, August Bungert: Ein Komponist im Deutschen Kaiserreich (Tutzing: Schneider, 2005), 291–350, for a recent analysis and 478–486 for the Iliad material in par- ticular. For Goldmark and Bungert, see “Tagesgeschichte: Musikbrief,” Musikalisches Wochenblatt, 30 (February 2, 1899), 82–84.
27 On the Odyssey tradition see Bernd Seidensticker, “Aufbruch zu neuen Ufern: Transformationen der Odysseusgestalt in der literarischen Moderne,” in Bernd Seidensticker and Martin Vöhler (eds.), Urgeschichten der Moderne: Die Antike im 20. Jahrhundert (Stuttgart: Metzler, 2001), 249–270. 28 H. Rider Haggard and Andrew Lang, The World’s Desire (London: Longmans, Green, 1890), takes Odysseus on an adventure in Egypt where he encounters Helen.
Sophie Schliemann’s photograph to the end of the century, just twenty-seven years, there were an additional thirty works, or more than one per year. We have already seen the importance of the Helen character in Burne-Jones’ polyptych, Warr’s The Tale of Troy, Rupert Brooke’s poetry, and Saint-Saëns’ Hélène. She also plays an important role in Lang’s Helen of Troy and in The World’s Desire. Schliemann himself became a celebrity, especially in the latter half of the twentieth century. We are moving now beyond the original fifty-plus year period, but a considerable number of light biographies and novels appeared in which Schliemann was the romantic lead: Robert Payne’s The Gold of Troy (1959), Marjorie Braymer’s The Walls of Windy Troy (1960), Lynn and Gray Poole’s One Passion, Two Loves (1966), Arnold C. Brackman’s The Dream of Troy (1974), Irving Stone’s The Greek Treasure (1975), Piero Ventura’s and Gian Paolo Ceserani’s In Search of Troy (1985), Giovanni Caselli’s In Search of Troy (1999), and Laura Schlitz’ The Hero Schliemann (2006). By 1986 Schliemann had even become the subject of popular controversy, not just in the accusation that he suffered from severe personality disorders but also in the judgment that his archaeological method was unscientific and unethical.29 Popular focus shifted again in 1993 when the Trojan gold, which Schliemann had smuggled out of Turkey in 1873 and later donated to a museum in Berlin but which had disap- peared in May of 1945, unexpectedly reappeared in the Pushkin Museum in Moscow and was put on public display in 1996. The following year brought attempts by the governments of Turkey and Germany to have the Trojan treasure returned to their rightful owners. All of this press coverage kept Schliemann, Troy, and, to a lesser extent, Homer in the limelight, but not nec- essarily the Iliad.30 The period after Schliemann’s first landing at Troy in 1870 is critical for our investigation. Most of the genres of popular culture were thoroughly reformu- lated, and most of the new media by which popular twentieth-century art
29 Especially William M. Calder III, “Schliemann on Schliemann: A Study in the Use of Sources,” Greek, Roman, and Byzantine Studies, 13 (1972), 335–353; and William M. Calder III and David A. Traill (eds.), Myth, Scandal, and History: The Heinrich Schliemann Controversy and a First Edition of the Mycenaean Diary (Detroit: Wayne State University Press, 1986). 30 Cf. Caroline Moorehead, The Lost Treasures of Troy (London: Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 1994) = Lost and Found: The 9,000 Treasures of Troy: Heinrich Schliemann and the Gold That Got Away (1996; rpt. New York: Penguin, 1997), and Vladimir Tolstikov and Mikhail Treister, The Gold of Troy: Searching for Homer’s Fabled City, tr. Christina Sever and Mila Bonnichsen (New York: Abrams, 1996).
31 Examples include 42nd Street (1933) and Gold Diggers of 1933, which were followed the same year by Roman Scandals.
3 Screen History
The twentieth century and the first decade of the twenty-first would eventually integrate the Iliad into popular culture. We may conveniently divide this era into eleven periods. This chronological division will serve to organize my dis- cussion for the remainder of this chapter.
3.1 Before and After 1900: Experimental Short Silent Films This period includes such experimental shorts as Edison’s Cupid and Psyche (1897) and Robert W. Paul’s The Last Days of Pompeii (1900). The latter film is lost, while the former provides a single tableau with two dancers and lasts less than one minute. Similarly, Georges Hatot’s Le jugement de Pâris (“The Judgment of Paris,” 1902) runs for less than one minute, during which the three goddesses present themselves one after the other to Paris. The Iliad is not rep- resented on screen in this period. In the world of theater, however, Stanislaw Wyspiański spent many months during 1903 writing his third mythological play, Achilleis. To prepare, Wyspiański made a study of the Iliad along with Wilhelm Heinrich Roscher’s mythological Lexicon and several works by Nietzsche and produced a series of drawings as well. However, the play was not produced on stage until more than a decade later.
3.2 1907 to the Early 1920s: Ambitious Italian and American Silents The period begins with the American Ben-Hur (1907) and the Italian The Last Days of Pompeii (1908). Chariot racing and a volcanic eruption presented film- makers with the opportunity for visual excitement they could realize via live action or editing effects. In the five years following the innovative Ambrosio/ Maggi film, several different versions of The Last Days of Pompeii would be pro- duced in Italy,32 and even Giovanni Pastrone’s blockbuster Cabiria (1914) would feature a volcanic eruption just a few minutes into the film. The years 1901–1914 produced more than a dozen historical films ranging in ancient subject matter from the ancient Near East to the Roman period. Three films derived from the Odyssey: Charles Le Bargy’s French Le retour d’Ulysse (1908), Giuseppe De Liguoro’s Odissea (1911), and Theo Frenkel’s English Telemachus (1911). Although Pastrone’s La caduta di Troia (“The Fall of Troy,” 1911) begins with a depiction of Homer reciting his verses, its story concerns mostly the romance between Paris and Helen, the Trojan Horse episode, and a fiery climax à la The Last Days of Pompeii.33 In the United States the choice of subject matter was similar. Most films set in antiquity were taken from history or theater. Of the few that were mythological, it was the Odyssey and not the Iliad which was represented. The Triumph of Venus (1918) dramatized the romantic entangle- ment of Venus, Mars, and Vulcan in the eighth book of the Odyssey. In the 1920s, several films featured parallel ancient and modern stories, often using the latter as a morality play echoing the former. But in Robert Z. Leonard’s Circe the Enchantress (1924), based on the novel by Vicente Blasco Ibáñez, again it was the Odyssey, not the Iliad, that provided the inspiration.
3.3 Mid- to Late 1920s: Mature Silents The economic boom that had begun by the mid-1920s helped to finance a number of epic films, including the 1925 version of Quo Vadis? directed by Gabriellino D’Annunzio and Georg Jacoby, and mgm’s Ben-Hur (1925), directed by Fred Niblo at a cost of almost $4 million. The year before, Manfred Noa
32 E.g. Gli ultimi giorni di Pompei, directed by Eleuterio Rodolfi, and Ione, o gli ultimi giorni di Pompei, directed by Giovanni Enrico Vidali. See Maria Wyke, “Screening Ancient Rome in the New Italy,” in Catharine Edwards (ed.), Roman Presences: Receptions of Rome in European Culture, 1789–1945 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999; rpt. 2007), 188–204, at 196–198. 33 A number of dramatic plays were written during this same period in Europe: Nausikaa (1906) and Achill (1910), two German verse tragedies by Ernst Rosmer (pseudonym of Elsa Bernstein); Der Zorn des Achilles (1909), a German verse tragedy by Wilhelm Schmidtbonn; and Phoenix (1923), an English tragicomedy by Lascelles Abercrombie. None were partic- ularly successful on stage.
3.4 1930 to 1945: The Great Depression and World War II The horrors of World War I, “the War to End All Wars,” and the looming threat of the next one returned warfare to public and intellectual consciousness and pro- vided the circumstances for a different kind of adaptation of the Iliad in Europe. This was Jean Giraudoux’s 1935 play, La guerre de Troie n’aura pas lieu (The Trojan War Will Not Take Place). Once again Homer’s original yields to romance, but Giraudoux also recalibrated Homer’s war epic by infusing a call for peace. Pre-figuring Petersen’s Hector, who attempts to speak against war to both Paris and Priam, Giraudoux turns Hector into a pacifist. Giraudoux contaminates the Iliadic tradition as well by depicting Helen as the alluring temptress of Troilus. He thereby develops one of the Trojan saga’s leading female (and feminine) characters, who has only a relatively small and barely romantic part in the Iliad,
3.5 1949 to 1965: The American Studio Era In 1947 Colgate-Palmolive-Peet introduced Ajax cleanser, which was to be described as “stronger than dirt.” The allusion to the strongest Greek warrior at Troy, albeit by his Latin name, reflects the relatively serious attitude towards the Iliad which Schliemann’s excavations had brought about.36 The product, of course, is common and commercial, but the idea that a very strong commer- cially advertised product was named after the strongest Greek in the Iliad con- forms to the state of late-1940s popular culture.
34 http://www.joblo.com/scripts/TabbsTROY-Final.pdf, accessed 9-24-2011. 35 a.d.s., “An Italian Production,” The New York Times (February 23, 1931), 21. 36 In 1917 the B.J. Johnson Soap Company renamed itself Palmolive after its successful line of soaps made from palm oil and olive oil. Their magazine advertisements often featured modern women imagining themselves or receiving beauty counsel from Cleopatra, but not Helen. See Sandra Vandermerwe and J. Carter Powis, “Colgate-Palmolive: Cleopatra,” Harvard Business School Cases (January 1, 1990; March 18, 1993), 1–24.
In popular drama, a contemporary example of this relatively serious approach was the cbs television program You Are There, originally a 1947 radio program [“cbs Is There”] reconfigured for television in 1953 and hosted—or rather, “reported”—by “anchorman” Walter Cronkite. Historical events were dramatized as if they were occurring live, with cbs correspondents reporting from the scene. The first radio series, originally a brief summer replacement of only seven episodes, began with “The Assassination of President Lincoln” and ended with “The Last Day of Pompeii.” When it returned in the winter as a regular series, the eighteenth episode was “The Assassination of Julius Caesar,” the twenty-second “The Death of Socrates,” and the twenty-seventh “The Fall of Troy,” broadcast on April 25, 1948. The television version aired on December 20, 1953. The Iliad would also provide the basis for an episode of Omnibus during the Golden Age of American television, when all three networks were regu- larly producing adult educational programming. Sponsored in part by the Ford Foundation, Omnibus focused on the arts and sciences, included inter- views with celebrity artists (particularly Leonard Bernstein), and occasionally offered original dramas. Its Iliad episode, broadcast on April 3, 1955, had a script by Andrew K. Lewis, a veteran television writer. But it was not well reviewed:
Omnibus set out heroically to recreate Homer’s Iliad, and for 90 minutes the poetry was mostly drowned out in a clatter of tin swords on tin shields as Trojan and Greek struggled on the plain and seashore of Troy. The Trojans lost the war, but they won what few acting honors were available: Frederick Rolf displayed both majesty and grief as King Priam, while Michael Higgins’ doomed Hector seemed far more a man and soldier than his rival, Achilles.37
This was also the period in which Giraudoux’s play was performed on stage and on live television, the latter adapted by British playwright Christopher Fry. His version, called Tiger at the Gates, opened in London in June, 1955, and in New York the following October.38
37 “Radio: The Week in Review,” Time (April 18, 1955), 80. Also quoted in William Hawes, Filmed Television Drama, 1952–1958 (Jefferson: McFarland, 2002), 18. 38 “‘Tiger at Gates’ Opens in London,” The New York Times (June 3, 1955), 27; “‘Tiger at the Gates’,” The New York Times (September 11, 1955) Sunday Magazine, 20. The television ver- sion was broadcast in New York and Los Angeles in 1960 and 1961, for which see Val Adams, “‘Tiger at Gates’ Is Listed for tv,” The New York Times (January 26, 1960), 67. The play was
In 1950 Albert Kanter, the founder and publisher of the “Classics Illustrated” series, published The Iliad as the 77th novel adapted to comic book format. (Some printings have “Homer’s Iliad” on the cover.) The post-war period, at least at first, brought an Iliad renascence to relatively well-educated Americans. One of the best-selling poetic translations in the history of American academic publishing emerged at this very time, the University of Chicago edition of the Iliad translated by Richmond Lattimore, published initially in 1951. As with more popular artistic products, the timing of its release was ideal in that there was a sizable and expanding demographic, particularly students and educated adults, eager for a new and critically acclaimed product that was enjoyable, affordable, and accessible and suited contemporary interests. In 1961 Folkways Records issued Album FL9985, on which J.F.C. Richards, Associate Professor of Greek and Latin at Columbia, read selections of Homer—the encounters between Hector and Andromache (Iliad 6.391–496) and Achilles and Priam (Il. 24.468–570), and additional selections from the Odyssey—in ancient Greek.39 This demonstrates how the serious nature and tradition of the Iliad gave it a special place on the commercially educational fringes of American popular culture. Nonetheless, before Folkways felt com- fortable recording and releasing an album in ancient Greek, they first had Richards issue such albums as “Essentials of Latin” (2), “Odes of Horace,” “Selections from Virgil,” and “Selections from Ovid,” and, for their first Greek album, “Ancient Greek Poetry—Tragedy, Comedy, Lyric, Elegiac and Iambic Poetry.” It is difficult to estimate the extent to which the educational and high-brow underpinnings of the Iliad tradition in the middle of the twentieth century enabled the proliferation of films that followed the commercial success of DeMille’s 1949 Biblical spectacle Samson and Delilah for the next sixteen years. Certainly many factors were involved, not least DeMille’s re-introduction to the screen of the biblical element, which tended to dominate over purely his- torical and pagan mythological films. As for the historical films, this period revived many of the subjects from the first two decades of the century. Now Alexander the Great (1956) and Hannibal (1959) were rendered cinematically along with Julius Caesar (1953), Spartacus (1960), and Cleopatra (1963), as well as the protagonists of such historical novels as Ben-Hur (1959), which featured Emperor Tiberius, and Quo Vadis (1951), in which Nero plays an important role.
revived as a Vietnam allegory in 1968; cf. Clive Barnes, “Theater: Jean Giraudoux’s ‘Tiger’ Returns With Fewer Teeth,” The New York Times (March 1, 1968), 30. 39 Odysseus and Nausicaa (Od. 6.41–71 and 85–136), the Cyclops (Od. 9.437–463), Circe (Od. 10.203–243, and Odysseus’ mother’s shade (Od. 11.150–208).
Helen once again became a title character in Helen of Troy (1956), the plot of which is set before, during, and after the Iliadic timeframe. This was a major CinemaScope production that employed an entirely European cast, headlined by the hitherto unfamiliar Italian actress Rossana Podestà. The film features the romance between Helen and Paris, portrays the Greeks, particularly Achilles, as the villains (like the late-Roman model), and reduces several important scenes from the Iliad to very brief segments, e.g. the argument between Achilles and Agamemnon and the domestic encounter between Hector and Andromache. This was the era of blond bombshells like Marilyn Monroe, Jayne Mansfield, Mamie Van Doren, and Brigitte Bardot, who played a minor role in Helen of Troy. Nonetheless, just a few years earlier Hedy Lamarr, a brunette, had played Helen in the tripartite The Love of Three Queens (1953), a film with very limited release in the United States and England (two years later, as The Face That Launched a Thousand Ships). In Irwin Allen’s The Story of Mankind (1957), blond model Dani Crayne played Helen in a minor role. In the romantic com- edy It Happened in Athens (1962) Jayne Mansfield played a modern Eleni who offers to marry whoever wins the marathon at the first Olympic Games in 1896. The poster advertising the film included the tagline: “When Jayne decides to rival Helen of Troy…it’s a madcap marathon for Olympic Heroes and Grecian Glory!” Popular culture tends to proliferate in a variety of media and demographic sectors. A concept that sells in one market can influence or reappear in another and another. The same era that revived Troy on the operatic stage, with Sir William Walton’s Troilus and Cressida (1954) and Michael Tippett’s King Priam (1962), also produced The Three Stooges Meet Hercules (1962), in which the Stooges land their time machine in the midst of the Trojan War, where Achilles makes a brief appearance mostly for the joke they make out of his full name: “Achilles the Heel.” Three years later, abc television broadcast a one-hour pilot, “Hercules and the Princess of Troy,” starring Gordon Scott and produced by Joseph E. Levine. This story took place among the mythological generation before the Trojan War. Episode seven of Irwin Allen’s science-fiction television series The Time Tunnel, which abc broadcast on October 21, 1966, was called “Revenge of the Gods” and transported modern time-traveling scientists into the midst of the Trojan War. They encounter Ulysses and Helen as well as Paris, but not Achilles. This was the same year Star Trek debuted. Thematically, the series offered Odyssey-like adventures in that an unpredictably clever, Ulysses-type commander led a ship and crew beyond the borders of the known world and encountered a variety of alien creatures. Blending this concept with the
40 John Meredyth Lucas was the only writer to direct his own Star Trek episode. He was the son of Bess Meredyth, the continuity writer for Ben-Hur (1925) and the adopted son of Michael Curtiz (Noah’s Ark). In addition, the role of Petri, the Troyian ambassador, is played by Jay Robinson, who created a memorable Caligula in both The Robe (1953) and Demetrius and the Gladiators (1954). 41 http://www.ssa.gov/OACT/babynames/.
No sooner had he signed Universal’s newest contractee than Henry arranged a meeting with the studio executives to come up with a new name for Merle Johnson. “I was off in this corner while Henry and a few men tossed out suggestions. At first they had Paris, the lover of Helen of Troy, in mind,” he said. “But I guess they thought they couldn’t name me Paris Donahue because there was already a Paris, France and Paris, Illinois.” Finally, Henry turned to him and, thinking back to his first meeting with the ex-con Frank Durgin, he exclaimed, “You’re Troy, Troy Donahue!” Let everybody else joke about the Henry Willson names. For Merle Johnson Jr., being called Troy Donahue meant he had been blessed… “Troy Donahue was a star’s name. Merle sounded like I ought to go out in the farmyard and do the chores. My mother and sister loved my new name from the start and never call me anything but Troy.”42
Willson had named Frank Durgin “Rory Calhoun” in the late 1940s, although he first tried to create the name “Troy Donahue” for him. Willson’s biogra- pher notes that of all Willson’s well known pseudonyms—Rock Hudson, Rory Calhoun, Tab Hunter, Troy Donahue—only “Troy” became a popular name for average people.43
3.6 1957–1965: European, Predominantly Italian, Sword-and-Sandal Films Like many of the 1950s and 1960s American films set in antiquity, Helen of Troy was filmed in Italy. Another was Mario Camerini’s Ulysses (1954), star- ring Kirk Douglas as Ulysses and including Rossana Podestà as Nausicaa. (Achilles appears briefly as the dour Achilles of Odyssey 9). The frequency with which American productions were filmed in Italy helped restore financial sta- bility and professional credibility to the post-war Italian film industry, and this
42 Robert Hofler, The Man Who Invented Rock Hudson: The Pretty Boys and Dirty Deals of Henry Willson (2005; rpt. New York: DaCapo, 2006), 303. 43 Hofler, The Man Who Invented Rock Hudson, 138.
3.7 1966–1970: Predominantly Italian Alternative and Art Films Art films that garnered international attention and were regularly exhibited in American cities and college campuses include Pier Paolo Pasolini’s Edipo re (Oedipus Rex, 1967) and Medea (1969), Fellini’s adaptation of Satyricon (1969), and, for public Italian television, Rossellini’s Socrates (1970). None of these tells an Homeric Iliadic tale, although Satyricon offers a mock recitation of a few lines of Homer during Trimalchio’s banquet. The American counterparts to these European directors—alternative imaginative directors like Russ Meyer (Faster, Pussycat! Kill! Kill!, 1965) and Brian De Palma (Dionysus in 69, 1970)— were more interested in the spirit of Erinyean and Dionysian violence than in Homeric epic.
Around 1970, the momentum provided by the huge financial success of Samson and Delilah, The Ten Commandments (1956), and Ben-Hur (1959) and by the introduction of the wide screen format had run its course. Nonetheless, a few feature films set in antiquity were still to be produced in the next two decades. Three of these were set in Troy, but none was Iliadic.44 All were European. Two were adaptations of Euripidean dramas by Michael Cacoyannis, The Trojan Women (1971) and Iphigenia (1977). The other was an Italian erotic parody by Alfonso Brescia, Elena si, ma…di Troia (Helen, Yes…Helen of Troy) (1973), which included footage from La guerra di Troia.
3.8 The 1970s and 1980s: American, British, and Italian Made-for-Television Miniseries New subgenres developed for commercial popular culture provided new and different outlets in the 1970s and 1980s. The success of multi-evening television miniseries presented a more relaxed format in which to dramatize lengthy pieces of literature. But again, despite the production of several high-profile miniseries in ancient settings—I, Claudius (1976–1977), Jesus of Nazareth (1977), Masada (1981), The Last Days of Pompeii (1984), and a.d. (1985)—the Trojan War lay at the fringes. In Europe Franco Rossi directed three ancient miniseries, but although two of them, Odissea (1968) and Eneide (1971), involve the Trojan War, they are not Iliadic. Federico Fellini and Anthony Burgess did experiment with producing a dramatic version of the Iliad in 1980, but their project was never fully developed, let alone produced.45 Rossi, too, did not make his version of the Iliad.46 Arnold Brackman’s The Dream of Troy (1974) and Irving Stone’s The Greek Treasure (1975), both novelized retellings of the excavation of Troy, reinforced the
44 In the category of popular music, rock guitarist Eric Clapton had vacationed in Greece in 1966 and was so inspired that he wrote the song “Tales of Brave Ulysses.” But it would not be until 1976 that a major popular group recorded an Iliadic counterpart, Led Zeppelin’s “Achilles Last Stand” [sic], although the lyrics are not at all Homeric. For the wider musi- cal context, including Homeric themes, see now Eleonora Cavallini, “Achilles in the Age of Steel: Greek Myth in Modern Popular Music,” Quaderni di Scienza della Conservazione, 9 (2009), 113–141, and “Cantare glorie di eroi, oggi: Achille nella ‘popular music’ contempo- ranea,” in Eleonora Cavallini (ed.), Omero mediatico: Aspetti della ricezione omerica nella civiltà contemporanea, 2nd ed. (Bologna: d.u.press, 2010), 217–235; and Elena Liverani, Da Eschilo ai Virgin Steele: Il mito degli Atridi nella musica contemporanea (Bologna: d.u. press, 2009). 45 Hollis Alpert, Fellini: A Life (New York: Atheneum, 1986), 276–279. 46 Martin M. Winkler, “The Iliad and the Cinema,” in Martin M. Winkler (ed.), Troy: From Homer’s Iliad to Hollywood Epic (Oxford: Blackwell, 2007), 43–67, at 46–47.
3.9 The 1980s and 1990s: Nostalgic Revival via Home Video Meanwhile, the video revolution was taking place, reviving interest in films of the previous generations through videotape and laserdisc sales and rentals from small stores, Blockbuster (which was founded in 1985), and supermarkets. Major metropolitan areas were being wired for cable television, which offered several channels continuously playing films out of current circulation. Films like Ben-Hur (1959) and Spartacus (1960) returned to the popular conscious- ness, as individuals could now easily watch, purchase, or even copy them. Camerini’s Ulysses reappeared on video as well, and Tokyo Movie Shinsha, a Japanese animation studio, issued a twenty-six episode version of the Odyssey (Ulysses 31) in 1981, the same year that pbs distributed its National Radio Theatre of Chicago dramatized version of the Odyssey to member stations and sold copies on audiocassette. But Warner Brothers’ 1956 version of Helen of Troy was nowhere to be found except for a bootleg black-and-white video ver- sion dubbed into French. No authorized English video of Helen of Troy was made available until June, 1996, and it was not until the release of Troy in 2004 that Warner Brothers finally issued a dvd of Helen of Troy.
3.10 The Late 1980s and Beyond: Classical Allusions in Films with Post-Classical Settings Part of the result of the revival of Ancients from the 1950s and 1960s was the broad dissemination of a fairly select list of popular icons from antiquity, par- ticularly in the cinema. Since the mid-1980s, in the absence of incentives or finances for making films set in antiquity, a significant number of filmmakers have been inserting classical themes and allusions into films with modern set- tings. More often than not a film contains only one specific allusion, e.g. a Latin phrase, a historical exemplar, a profound statement, or a joke. Sometimes these
47 By contrast, in 1979 the British made-for-television Of Mycenae and Men had dramatized events in the life of Helen (Diana Dors) after the war.
Education: — The computer in 2010 (1984), the sequel of 2001: A Space Odyssey, says that there are twenty-five definitions of “Phoenix,” but the only one it speaks out loud is “the tutor of Achilles.” — Lieutenant Raffaele Montini in the Italian film Mediterraneo (1991) tells a Greek priest that he was a teacher before the war and that he has read the Iliad and Odyssey. — Introducing the school master in Scent of a Woman (1992), the prankster students recite this rhyme: Mr. Trask is our fearless leader, A man of learning, a voracious reader. He can recite the Iliad in ancient Greek, While fishing for trout in a rippling creek. Endowed with wisdom, of judgment sound, Nevertheless about him, the questions abound. — In What Happened Was… (1994), writer-director-actor Tom Noonan tries to impress his date with his description of how he used to act out battles of the Iliad when he was young. — In Free Enterprise (1999), the “Iliad Bookshop,” according to the dvd commentary, stands next to “Odyssey Video,” where the two pro- tagonists intersect with their idol William Shatner, who plays himself. — The first act of Dirty Dancing: Havana Nights (2004) portrays its pro- tagonist as a young, underprivileged urban woman eager to improve her lot in life. The class she attends is reading the Odyssey, and she offers a fresh interpretation of the roles of Athena, Odysseus, and the suitors. A classmate asks her out. When she says that she is too busy, he responds: “I’m sure even Homer took some time off between the Iliad and the Odyssey.”
48 See Jon Solomon, “In the Wake of Cleopatra: The Ancient World in the Cinema Since 1963,” Classical Journal, 91 (1996), 113–140.
Epic Cycle and Romance: — In Mike Leigh’s Naked (1993) the protagonist reacts to a mantelpiece decorated with a number of Greek souvenirs by saying that he likes the Iliad. But then he holds up a copy of the Odyssey, rapidly rattling off such words and phrases as “Cyclops,” “Trojan Horse,” and “Helen of Troy,” but also “Achilles’ heel.” — In The Human Stain (2003), based on Philip Roth’s novel, Anthony Hopkins plays a classics professor who lectures on Achilles and the Iliad: “Sing, O Gods, the wrath of Achilles.” All of European litera- ture springs from a fight, a barroom brawl really. And what was Achilles so angry about? Well, he and King Agamemnon were quarreling over a woman, a young girl and her body, and the delights of sexual rapacity. Achilles—the most hypersensitive fighting machine in the history of warfare. Achilles—who because of his rage at having to give up the girl isolates himself defiantly outside the very society whose protector he is and whose need of him was enormous. Achilles has to give up the girl. He has to give her back. And that is how the great imagina- tive literature of Europe begins, and that is why 3000 years later we are going to begin there today. Later in the film, his lawyer calls him “Achilles on Viagra,” making it clear that screenwriter Nicholas Roth identifies his protagonist’s love affair and dismissal from college with this interpretation of Achilles.
War: — In Sommersby (1993), protagonist Jack Sommersby twice reads to his son from the Iliad. Both sessions concentrate on Hector and his successes, thereby emphasizing the value of a noble but futile vic- tory, the kind Sommersby himself will experience. Moreover, the uncertainty about Sommersby’s identity when he returns from the Civil War is increased in that his wife says that the Sommersby she married before the war never used to read Homer.49 — In John Singleton’s Higher Learning (1995), a member of a skinhead white supremacist organization on a college campus asks a student
49 For a detailed analysis see Justine McConnell, “Eumaeus and Eurycleia in the Deep South: Odyssean Slavery in Sommersby,” in Edith Hall, Richard Alston, and Justine McConnell (eds.), Ancient Slavery and Abolition: From Hobbes to Hollywood (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2011), 385–407.
what book he is reading. He replies: “The Iliad,” to which the skin- head responds: “That’s a good book; a lot of great battles in that book.” Singleton seems to be suggesting that the Iliad is a book inspirational to violence. — In The War at Home (1996), an anti-war and anti-Vietnam War ban- ner hangs on the right side of the screen, with an Iliad poster bal- ancing it on the left. — In Never Back Down (2008), a high-school martial-arts film, the protagonist demonstrates his intelligence by responding articulately in class to a question about the anti-war symbolism in the Iliad, add- ing a brief discourse on the pacifist element in the shield of Achilles. After class his love interest calls him a “Shield of Achilles.” This theme will be carried through to the film’s action-combat finale.
3.11 The Present: High-Profile Feature Films and Television Series Set in Antiquity Sam Raimi’s syndicated television series Hercules: The Legendary Journeys in 1994 became the most widely watched syndicated television series in the world, ran for six seasons until 1999, and inspired an extremely successful spin- off, Xena: Warrior Princess. The latter ran until June, 2001. The synthesis of Hollywood-style brawn in a sensitive 1990s man and a thinly clad athletic woman enacting heroic conquests in rustic settings with state-of-the-art com- puter-generated special effects attracted huge audiences, particularly among the younger viewers and their youngish parents. The application of cgi effects eliminated most of the logistical problems involved in producing ancient-style epics. It was primarily this new style of presentation that gave the ancient world a fresh start for the new century ahead. Even though there were 111 episodes of Hercules: The Legendary Journeys and another 134 of Xena: Warrior Princess, and even though most of them derived in various degrees from Greco-Roman myths, none involved the Iliad. In fact, it is quite clear that the plot and main characters of the Iliad were intentionally avoided. Three episodes involved Troy or the Trojan War to some extent. The second pilot film, Hercules and the Lost Kingdom (1994), sends Hercules on a mission to rescue the “lost city of Troy” from Hera’s tyranny, but the plot con- cerns Deianeira, Queen Omphale, and a fictional Gargan the Giant and has nothing whatsoever to do with Homer’s Troy. In the first season of Xena: Warrior Princess, the twelfth episode, “Beware Greeks Bearing Gifts” (1996), features Helen, who asks Xena to assist the Trojans during the last days of the war against the Greeks; the cast list includes not a single Greek warrior from the Iliad and instead features a romance between Xena’s sidekick Gabrielle
50 Before Helen of Troy (2003) and the successful My Big Fat Greek Wedding (2002), Meredith Cole had directed a modern romantic comedy about Greek Americans in Pittsburgh with the recognizable Iliadic title, Achilles’ Love (2000).
51 See Anja Wieber, “Vor Troja nichts Neues? Moderne Kinogeschichten zu Homers Ilias,” in Martin Lindner (ed.), Drehbuch Geschichte: Die antike Welt im Film (Münster: lit, 2005), 137–162. In the realm of popular literature, this period also produced Amanda Elyot, The Memoirs of Helen of Troy (New York: Crown, 2005) and Margaret George, Helen of Troy (2006; rpt. New York: Penguin, 2007).
Features” Petersen’s explanation of how this longer version more closely resembles his original vision. This first full-scale, high-profile cinematic ren- dering of the Iliad in a widely popular and widely distributed format is well worth examination by classical scholars, even aside from its astonishing com- mercial success. When modern media, especially audio-visual ones, return to the long-distant past, we can realize how much this past can still mean to the present. Considered together, the Trojan War myth, the Iliad, and now Troy are, in their different ways and in the course of various historical and cultural peri- ods, useful reminders of antiquity’s inexhaustible vitality.
Martin M. Winkler
In 1938 poet Cecil Day-Lewis, later Professor of Poetry at Oxford, translator of Virgil, and Poet Laureate of the United Kingdom, published, under the pseud- onym Nicholas Blake, his fourth mystery novel, The Beast Must Die. The novel was twice adapted for the screen, once in Argentina (La bestia debe morir; 1952) and once in France. Que la bête meure was directed in 1969 by Claude Chabrol from a screenplay by himself and Paul Gégauff, Chabrol’s regular co-scenarist. The film’s British release title was This Man Must Die (also Killer!), its American title was The Beast Must Die. This last is how the film is referred to most often in English today. The widowed father of a young child killed in a hit-and-run accident decides to search for the culprit, whom the police have been unable to find, and to kill him in revenge. Against all odds the father, a children’s book author and mys- tery writer, succeeds in tracing the murderer. He insinuates himself into the killer’s family to carry out his plot the more easily. His intended victim is an unfaithful husband and abusive father. Unavoidably, an emotional bond devel- ops between the father who lost his son and the teenage son who suffers from his own father’s brutal behavior toward his mother and himself. Chabrol and Gégauff changed the setting from England to France and added one telling scene that has no equivalent in Blake’s novel. The writer takes to helping the boy with his homework. One day the two are working on classical literature, and the writer gives the boy a brief lecture on Homer. Since the scene is not as well-known as it deserves to be, I quote at some length:
Most people prefer the Odyssey, but the Iliad is the most sublime thing that has ever been written…. Homer is much finer [plus beau, i.e. than, for example, Kafka]. There is a city talked about but never entered. And hun- dreds and hundreds of young heroes fight each other and die for this unreal, inaccessible thing. The theme is very simple…but treated with incomparable poetic detail. So, when a bad poet describes a death, he automatically employs clichés: eyes turning up, sweat beading the fore- head, the terrible inhuman grin. But not Homer. Each death he describes is distinctive, and even real. There is a moment when a young Trojan is pursued by Diomedes, and he receives the javelin in his neck, and the point protrudes from his mouth like a tongue of iron [metalle]. “And he
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rolls on the ground, biting the cold iron.” That’s pretty [beau] as an image, isn’t it?
The boy is appreciative: “I was completely lost with these Greeks and these Trojans.”1 The closeness between the man and the boy increases as a result. The origi- nal revenge plot, however, takes an unexpected turn. The film’s ending and our last glimpse of the writer after the death of his intended victim are ambiguous. The ending also makes evident that the specific Greek overtones which Chabrol and Gégauff added were not incidental. A policeman says about the teenage boy’s dead father: “An inhuman grin—it was really frightening to see.” Here is the very cliché that, according to the writer, the Iliad had avoided. The refer- ence to Diomedes is even more telling. In Book 5 of the Iliad Diomedes goes on a killing spree, and we are told that he brutally killed the sons of several Trojan fathers. Repeatedly Diomedes kills two brothers. Some of the Trojan fathers, we understand, are left as childless as the writer who tells the boy about Diomedes is himself.2 Blake’s novel deals with the ethics and the unavoidable entanglements resulting from acts of violence and revenge. What comes along in the guise of a melodramatic mystery story is really a tragedy.3 So, to its honor, is Chabrol’s film.4 At its end the writer looks back on what has happened: “What a beautiful [belle] revenge, isn’t it? It’s worthy of a Greek tragedy. A man kills a child, the child of this man will kill him in turn.” It fits that the final images of Chabrol’s film leave the writer’s eventual fate uncertain. He is more likely to perish than to survive. Chabrol and Gégauff’s incorporation of Homer, however, elevates the film to a higher level. In the words of a contemporary critic: “In one exqui- site scene Charles [the bereaved father] discusses The Iliad with Philippe [the teenage boy], with a great teacher’s patience and commitment demonstrating the lyricism and originality that Homer brings to his descriptions of death.”5 But Chabrol and Gégauff make the scene between Charles and Philippe even
1 The preceding translations of the film’s dialogue are taken from the subtitles of the 2006 Arrow Films dvd release of Que la bête meure in The Claude Chabrol Collection (vol. 1), with a few adaptations. 2 A death inflicted by Diomedes that includes the detail of his protruding javelin appears at Iliad 5.290–293. The exact parallel, however, to the writer’s words is Meges’ killing of Pedaios at Iliad 5.69–74. 3 Its very title makes this evident; cf. Ecclesiastes 3.19. 4 A brief appreciation may be found in Stephen Farber, “Melodramatic Truths,” The Hudson Review, 23 (1970–1971), 685–696, at 687–691. 5 Quoted from Farber, “Melodramatic Truths,” 689.
Dying, Orpheus gave poetry back to the gods. These, never having seen a woman so beautiful, held her prisoner, and the earth was without charm since poems [les chants], these rivers of the soul, no longer arise. Homer decided to charm poetry. His genius climbed Olympus; he delivered the captive, who descended back to earth. But like Prometheus he paid— with his eyes—for the theft from the gods which he had committed.
Related to this is Homer’s desire to understand the hidden nature of light. Gance adds a little later:
Like Prometheus stealing fire, he wanted to wrench from the sun the secret of its light, and he set about gazing at it for a long time. He stared
6 The point is made evident by Michael Walker, “Que la bête meure,” in Robin Wood and Michael Walker, Claude Chabrol (London: Studio Vista/New York: Praeger, 1970), 123–131, especially 126 and 127. This chapter, although brief, is essential. 7 Martin M. Winkler, “The Trojan War on the Screen: An Annotated Bibliography,” in Martin M. Winkler (ed.), Troy: From Homer’s Iliad to Hollywood Epic (Oxford: Blackwell, 2007), 202–215. 8 I have made this argument in Winkler, Cinema and Classical Texts: Apollo’s New Light (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2009; rpt. 2012), 298–303. 9 Abel Gance, Prisme: Carnet d’un cinéaste (1930; rpt. Paris: est, 2010), 71–83 (section titled “Divagations sur la lumière”; roughly, “Random Thoughts about Light”); my translation.
at it for hours, and progressively, to the degree that the great truth of living light is unveiled before him, his eyes are burned up…. When he left, his soul flooded by the sun, his eyes were dead. He was blind. From that moment on he could build his dream greater than reality. He could begin the Iliad.10
Evidently Gance himself has been kissed by Lady Poetry since he waxes poetic and symbolic at the same time. To Gance, light is the well-spring and quintes- sence of all nature and culture. As everyone knows, it is also the basis of all cinema. Homer’s physical blindness derives, for Gance, from his poetic genius that ascended to the realm of the gods to bring both light and poetry to earth. The cinema writes—i.e. tells its stories—with light and, on its highest level of artistry, becomes visual poetry—including epic poetry, as in Gance’s own body of work. The cinema is by nature Homeric.11 A particular, and particularly famous—or infamous—film bears witness to this pleasing fact. Tony Richardson’s The Loved One (1965) is an adaptation, as elegant as it is biting, of Evelyn Waugh’s 1948 satiric novel by the same title (and with the additional description An Anglo-American Tragedy). The screen- play was written by satirist Terry Southern and Christopher Isherwood. Novel and film satirize the Californian Way of Death and its cult, British expatriates in Hollywood, and the film industry at large. The main character, a British innocent abroad, is looking for a suitable burial site for his uncle at Whispering Glades, a high-class establishment for the Loved Ones who have left the Waiting Ones. Miss Aimée Thanatogenos (translate her first name literally!) guides him through the premises and a wide range of offerings. She informs him, piously and impressively, that several plots are available in Poets’ Corner “in the shadow of the prominent Greek poet Homer.” A large statue of the prominent poet is ruling over the residents of the quadrangle, which is lined with other and less prominent statues. The young man immediately realizes that this is just the place for his uncle, a painter. And why is this? “Homer used very visual imagery,” he tells Miss Thanatogenos. We knew it all along! The term
10 The preceding two quotations, in my translation, are from Gance, Prisme, 75 and 76–77 (ellipsis in original). 11 I present a similar argument, although Apollonian rather than Homeric, in Winkler, Cinema and Classical Texts, 1–19 (“Introduction: The God of Light and the Cinema Eye”). On cinema as poetry see Winkler, 50–57, primarily on the theory of Pier Paolo Pasolini. The visual side of Homeric epic has received much recent attention; a starting point for newcomers to the topic is Egbert J. Bakker, “Discourse and Performance: Involvement, Visualization and ‘Presence’ in Homeric Poetry,” Classical Antiquity, 12 no. 1 (1993), 1–29.
“Poets’ Corner” comes from Waugh, as do the pretty miss’s words in the film except for “in the shadow” in place of Waugh’s “under the statue.” But the rea- son why Uncle will feel right at home here is not in Waugh. It is an improve- ment over the novel and, of course, feels right at home in a film. Even the Greek poet might appreciate his enhanced prominence. Homer himself, not simply as a statue or bust, appeared on the cinema screen early on. Here are two examples from the same year and even the same month, April, 1911; both are films made in Italy on what was then an epic scale. In L’Inferno (Dante’s Inferno), co-directed by Francesco Bertolini, Adolfo Padovan, and Giuseppe de Liguoro, Virgil and Dante meet a distinguished group of ancient poets. A title card in the English-language version of the film tells us: “Homer, Horace, Ovid and Lucanus [sic] come forward to greet Virgil. He explains to them the nature of Dante’s mission in the Inferno.” Homer and the Romans except for Virgil have only a supporting role as extras and receive no dialogue. Astonishingly, however, Homer is just as impeccably dressed in a senatorial toga as are Horace, Ovid, and Lucan. Being the oldest, he has been given a walking stick. The four wear laurel wreaths on their heads. More aston- ishingly, all four give the Roman Salute, eagerly and repeatedly.12 But only churls will complain about this innocently charming scene. Homer came into his own, however, in La caduta di Troia (The Fall of Troy), directed by Luigi Romano Borgnetto and Giovanni Pastrone; the latter was to make film history three years later with Cabiria, a giant epic set at the time of the Second Punic War. The Fall of Troy was a lavish production by contemporary standards. The film opens with Homer giving a public recital: “Homer sings to the Greeks the deeds of the heroes in the Trojan War,” a card tells us. In his left hand Homer holds a large and elaborately wrought lyre. He declaims while vigorously gesturing with his right arm, but he never plucks the strings. What his on-screen audience hears him chant about we are then shown. The film’s story begins with Menelaus’ farewell from Helen in Sparta and the arrival of Paris as ambassador from Troy. None of this is part of Homeric epic. But then, neither is the fall of Troy. Only Beckmessers will complain.13
12 On the history of this modern gesture, for which no Roman and certainly no ancient Greek evidence exists, see Martin M. Winkler, The Roman Salute: Cinema, History, Ideology (Columbus: Ohio State University Press, 2009). 13 One unexpected mistake does occur, however. The Greek who cajoles the Trojans into taking the wooden horse into their city is identified as Sychaeus (in Italian, Sicheo) in an intertitle. He should have been called Sinone, Italian for Sinon. He later swims across the water to tell the Greeks that they should now storm Troy.
Films like The Fall of Troy, Troy, and others on the Trojan War, alongside vari- ous adaptations of the Odyssey, directly or indirectly take their inspiration from Homer. They are therefore worthy of our attention. As Gérard Genette has made clear, the Odyssey is the ultimate “hypotext,” as he calls it, for virtually the entire literary tradition, this epic’s “hypertexts,” in the history of the West.14 The same applies to visual narratives. In the words of Greek writer-director Theodoros Angelopoulos, who took much of his artistic inspiration from ancient Greek literature and myth: “I have a soft spot for the ancient writings. There really is nothing new. We are all just revising and reconsidering ideas that the ancients first treated.”15 The most important of these ancients as well as the earliest of whom we know is Homer. Here are two additional but radi- cally different examples of Homeric moments: one serious, one amusing. Both occur in the context of modern warfare. A number of the films made after World War ii in the German Democratic Republic attempted to come to terms with the horrors of the Nazi past in connection with soul-searching about guilt and responsibility (Vergangen heitsbewältigung). Kurt Maetzig’s Council of the Gods (1950) is a fictional retell- ing of actual facts as recorded, for instance, in the Nuremberg Trials after the war. Powerful German industrialists welcome the rise of Hitler, profit from the production of poison gas used in concentration camps, and continue business as usual with their American associates, who are as cynical and immoral as the Germans. (The film is, among other things, an important document of incipi- ent Cold-War propaganda.) Early on, we observe the biggest of the German bosses in a meeting with his board of directors at his home. A huge tapestry dominates one of his living-room walls. It shows a scene from the Trojan War in which some of the gods on top of the image watch a battle between Greeks and Trojans below. The painting is titled “Der Rat der Götter,” which is also the film’s original title. The industrialist’s daughter reveals that the board members refer to themselves by the same expression. Over a long shot of the painting and the board meeting below it, she comments to a newcomer: “See, isn’t it just as with the ancient Greeks, where the Olympian gods above the clouds, unaf- fected themselves, are holding the fates of the wildly brawling humans on earth in their hands?” To anyone in the film’s audience with the kind of educa- tion that could be taken for granted at the time, the analogy is so obvious as to
14 Gérard Genette, Palimpsests: Literature in the Second Degree, tr. Channa Newman and Claude Dubinsky (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1997). 15 Quoted from Theo Angelopoulos Official Website at http://www.theoangelopoulos.com/ voyagetocythera.htm. Angelopoulos said this in connection with his film Voyage to Cythera (1983).
16 Translations from the film’s dialogue are my own. 17 Robin Nisbet, “Horace: Life and Chronology,” in Stephen Harrison (ed.), The Cambridge Companion to Horace (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2007), 7–21 at 19–20, argues for 11 bc as date of publication for Book 2 of the Epistles. The following is identical in substance to my earlier discussions in Winkler, Cinema and Classical Texts, 68–69, and in “Leaves of Homeric Storytelling: Wolfgang Petersen’s Troy and Franco Rossi’s Odissea,” in Eleonora Cavallini (ed.), Omero mediatico: Aspetti della ricezione omerica nella civiltà contemporanea, 2nd ed. (Bologna: d.u. press, 2010), 153–163 at 161–162. It may be a sign of the times that the point bears or needs restating.
Here Horace speaks out, quite forcefully, against prejudices directed at modern poetry. Evidently it was just as fashionable at his time to disdain modernized versions of works by revered and usually long-dead authors, especially Homer, as it is today (and may be tomorrow). But to Horace those who judge nothing to be comparable to the old masters are in error. Their judgment is wrong because it is merely a prejudice. “I find it offensive,” Horace confesses, “when something is criticized…merely because it is new.” The main reason for his view is that unthinking adherence to everything ancient, combined with ready condemnation of everything modern, denies the great authors of the past one of their most important achievements, the creation of a never-ending tradi- tion of influence. “If the Greeks had hated anything new as much as we do now,” Horace asks, “what would now be old?”18 The answer is obvious. Horace previously observed that the earliest works of the Greeks are the greatest of all, so the attitude with which he takes issue, had it prevailed, would have made any literary creativity since the time of Homer impossible. All of Horace’s works, most famously his Odes, demonstrate how sensible his position was in balancing the old and the new and in finding praiseworthy qualities in both. Horace’s view on “the folly of archaism” applies not only to poetry but also to all creative endeavors in literature and the visual arts.19 It is worth our while to consider in this context the other side of the argu- ment, linked, however, to a much more balanced view of the old and the new than our dyspeptic classical scholar was able to muster. Manoel de Oliveira, cinema’s Nestor, rejects all the die-hard modernists:
Nowadays there is a frequent confusion about the word modern, as if it designated a new and improved morality, signifying, in and of itself, something good, better, as if that which is older were, in and of itself, some- thing bad, undesirable, and that which is modern something good, in life as well as in the arts. In a certain sense, we are losing fairness in criteria in a movement towards abstraction of the authentic values, thereby equat- ing modern and good in an absolute sense.20
18 Horace, Epistles 2.1.76–77 and 90–91 (my translations); see further 45–49 and 63–65. On the subject see especially C.O. Brink, Horace on Poetry, vol. 3: Epistles Book II: The Letters to Augustus and Florus (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1982), 57–132. 19 The quotation is from Brink, Horace on Poetry, vol. 3, 74. 20 Quoted from Absoluto (“[The] Absolute”), a long conversation, recorded on video, with writer-director Manoel de Oliveira about his work and about his philosophy of life and cinema. Its release version, edited to appear more like a monologue than an interview, is available on the dvd of his film The Strange Case of Angélica (2010), released by
All this is highly pertinent to our topic. Oliveira sounds virtually like a Horace of our own time, however, when he says a little later:
There is no old without modern, because the latter generates the old, and everything old was, in its own time, modern. Old or modern are made up of good and bad parts, and tradition is like sifting wheat, separating it from the chaff, time being the greater judge.
Nothing in excess: the classical saying on Apollo’s temple at Delphi is worth heeding in any discussion about the old and the new. The qualities of modern adaptations of classical works deserve to be evaluated critically, but also ratio- nally. Easy dismissal is as unhelpful as blind enthusiasm would be. Troy is not the Iliad—and what is or ever has been or will be?—but it is a notable example of what we might term posthomerica cinematographica.
The Cinema Guild. The preceding and the following quotations from Oliveira are based on the subtitles provided on the dvd, with slight adjustments.
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Achilles (short) 252 Face That Launched a Thousand Ships, The a.d. (tv) 247 see Love of Three Queens, The Agora 6 Fall of Troy, The 87, 115, 128, 238, 259–260 Alexander 5–6, 196 Faster, Pussycat! Kill! Kill! 246 Alexander the Great 242 Fatiche di Ercole, Le Argo 261 see Hercules (1958) Avatar 226 5 Against the House 1 Avenger, The 222 Free Enterprise 249 Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Beast Must Die, The 255–257 Forum, A 205 Ben-Hur (1907) 237–238 Fury of Achilles 87–88, 92–93, 125–128, 130, 246 Ben-Hur (1925) 238, 244n40 Ben-Hur (1959) 242, 247–248 Gangs of New York 95 Bestia debe morir, La 255 Giant of Marathon 222 Boot, Das 10–13, 17 Gladiator 6, 14n22, 26, 87, 95, 101, 189, 216n29, 252 Cabiria 238 Guerra di Troia, La 13, 130n38, 222, 246–247 Caduta di Troia, La see Fall of Troy, The Hannibal 242 Casablanca 14 Helena 87, 130n38, 131, 239–240 Centurion 5 Helen of Troy (1956) 19, 113, 213, 215, 219, Circe the Enchantress 238 243–245, 248 Cleopatra (1963) 242 Helen of Troy (2003, tv) 19, 87, 114–115, 129, Conformist, The 108 130n38, 219–221, 252 Contempt 108, 156–163 Helen, Yes…Helen of Troy Council of the Gods 260–261 see Elena si ma…di Troia Clash of the Titans (1981) 6, 110–111, 206–207, 216 Hercules (1958) 125, 156n116, 222, 246 Clash of the Titans (2010) 6 Hercules (1997) 205–207 Cupid and Psyche 237 Hercules (2014) 6 Hercules and the Lost Kingdom (tv) 251 Dante’s Inferno Hercules and the Princess of Troy (tv) 243 see Inferno, L’ Hercules and the Queen of Lydia Demetrius and the Gladiators 244n40 see Hercules Unchained Dionysus in 69 246 Hercules: The Legendary Journeys Dirty Dancing: Havana Nights 249 (tv) 251–252 Hercules Reborn 6 Eagle, The 5 Hercules Unchained 125, 156n116, 222, 246 Edipo re 246 Higher Learning 250 Electra 111, 247 Human Stain, The 250 Elena si ma…di Troia 247 Eneide (tv) 247 I, Claudius (tv) 247 Ercole e la regina di Lidia Île de calypso: Ulysse et le géant see Hercules Unchained Polyphème, L’ 233
* Wolfgang Petersen’s Troy is not indexed here.
Immortals 5–6 Odyssey, The (1997, tv) 113, 252 Inferno, L’ (1911) 259 Oedipus Rex In Search of the Trojan War (tv) 248 see Edipo re In the Line of Fire 14, 17 Of Mycenae and Men (tv) 248 Iphigenia 111, 114, 247 One or the Other 17 Ira di Achille, L’ Outbreak 17 see Fury of Achilles It Happened in Athens 243 Passion of the Christ, The 5 Perfect Storm, The 17 Jason and the Argonauts (1963) 110, Pompeii 6 150, 216 Private Life of Helen of Troy, The 239 Jason and the Argonauts (2000, tv) 252 Jesus of Nazareth (tv) 247 Queen of Sparta, The 240 John Carter 14 Que la bête meure Jugement de Pâris, Le 237 see Beast Must Die, The Julius Caesar (1953) 242 Quo Vadis? (1913) 237 Quo Vadis? (1925) 238 King Arthur 5 Quo Vadis (1951) 242 Konsequenz, Die 17 Rat der Götter, Der Last Days of Pompeii, The (1900) 237 see Council of the Gods Last Days of Pompeii, The (1908) 238 Regina di Sparta, La Last Days of Pompeii, The (1959) 222 see Queen of Sparta, The Last Days of Pompeii, The (1984, tv) 247 Retour d’Ulysse, Le 233, 238 Last Legion, The 5 Ride the High Country 13n19 Lawrence of Arabia 37 Robe, The 244n40 Legend of Hercules, The 6 Lion of Thebes, The (Il leone di Tebe) 246 Samson and Delilah 236, 242, 247 Longest Day, The 216 Satyricon (1969) 246 Lord of the Rings, The 21, 221–222, 226 Saving Private Ryan 95, 101, 216 Loved One, The 258 Scent of a Woman 249 Love of Three Queens, The 243 Seven Year Itch, The 205 Singe den Zorn 252–253 Masada (tv) 247 Socrates (tv) 246 Medea (1969) 246 Sommersby 250 Mediterraneo 249 Spartacus (1960) 216n29, 242, 248 Mépris, Le Star Trek (tv) 243–244 see Contempt Story of Mankind, The 243 Metropolis 156 Strange Case of Angélica, The 262n20 Mighty Aphrodite 205 Summer Place, A 245
Naked 250 Telemachus 238 Never Back Down 251 Ten Commandments, The (1956) 247 Nibelungen, Die 156 This Man Must Die Noah’s Ark 244n40 see Beast Must Die, The Nostos: Il ritorno 144n77 300 5, 25 Three Stooges Meet Hercules, The 243 Odissea (1911) 233, 238 Time Tunnel, The (tv) 243 Odissea (1968, tv) 130n38, 154, 160, 247 To Have and To Have Not 14
Triumph of Venus, The 238 War at Home, The 251 Trojan Horse, The What Happened Was… 249 see Guerra di Troia, La Woman Is a Woman, A 162n133 Trojan Women, The 111, 113–114, 247 Wooden Horse of Troy, The Two Women 108 see Guerra di Troia, La 2001: A Space Odyssey 46, 249 Wrath of the Titans 6 2010 249 Xena: Warrior Princess (tv) 251–252 Ulysses (Ulisse) 108, 112–113, 116, 156n115, 158n121, 163, 245, 248 You Are There (tv) 241 Ulysses 31 (tv) 248
Vikings, The 216 Voyage to Cythera 260n15 Voyage to Italy (Viaggio in Italia) 156n116
Achilleid (Aeschylus) 178 Astyanax 104, 190, 200, 214, 239 Achilles 2–4, 7, 9–10, 12–13, 16–18, 20–22, Athena 72, 113, 115, 119–128, 130–139, 143, 24–25, 28, 30–32, 37–44, 46, 66–69, 149–150, 154–157, 183, 188, 210–211, 213, 72–82, 84–85, 88–92, 94–106, 111, 229, 246, 249 116–128, 130–135, 137–142, 147–153, 155, 164–179, 181–203, 207, 212–224, 228–232, Bana, Eric 34, 38–39, 203, 222 239, 241–243, 245, 249–251, 253, 257, 261 Bazin, André 128, 135, 162 Aeneas 9, 13, 26, 146, 190, 197, 209–214, 217, Beast Must Die, The (Blake) 255–256 222, 246 Belle Hélène, La (Offenbach) 223, 232–233 Aeneid 100, 188, 203, 206–215, 217, 221, 246 Benioff, David 2, 17, 22–23, 26, 31–32, 65, Aeschylus 3, 65, 78, 81, 149, 155, 178–179, 78–79, 87, 98, 165, 178, 207, 209, 211, 206, 220 214–215, 222, 231 Aethiopis 174, 182n7 Benoît de Sainte-Maure 85, 222, 233, 240 Agamemnon 4, 7, 11, 13, 18, 20–21, 27–30, Beowulf 189n20 32–33, 36–37, 40–43, 45, 67, 71, 76–78, Blake, Nicholas (pseudonym) 255–256 81, 84, 89–90, 94, 97, 99, 102, 113–115, 117, Bloom, Orlando 21, 33–34, 111, 222 119–126, 128, 130–135, 151, 153, 165–171, Boagrius 41, 43–44, 89, 94–95, 166, 199, 173, 176n18, 177, 180–187, 192, 196–199, 217–221 201–202, 206, 208, 213–214, 217, 219–220, Briseis 9, 20, 32–33, 82, 84–85, 89–90, 97, 231, 243–244, 250 104, 116, 118–120, 125–126, 130–132, 139, Agamemnon (Aeschylus) 206, 220 141–142, 151–153, 168–173, 179, 181, 187, see also Oresteia 191–202, 212–215, 217n32, 218–220, 231, Ajax 18, 69, 102, 151n102, 170, 187, 213, 217n32, 233, 240, 246, 250, 253 219, 224 Bush, George W. 20, 202 Alcidamas 162–164 Butler, Samuel 16, 230 Alexander the Great 5, 196 Byrne, Rose 32–33 Allen, Alena 191–192, 196, 199 Andromache 9, 20, 75, 81, 83–84, 104, 148, Cacoyannis, Michael 111–113, 116, 247 199–201, 212, 214, 239, 242–243 Calchas 125, 130, 134, 170, 184 Angelopoulos, Theodoros 260 Calypso 143–145, 147, 149–150, 157 Anti-Homer 67 Camerini, Mario 108–109, 112–113, 116, Aphrodite 73, 81, 83, 115, 128, 205, 212, 156n115, 158n121, 162–163, 245, 248 229, 238 Cassandra 68, 85, 188, 192, 210, 213 Apollo 4, 12, 32, 66, 72–74, 78–81, 85, 90–92, Cassandra (Wolf) 79 96, 101–102, 116, 125, 130, 139–141, Chabrol, Claude 255–256 145–147, 169–172, 182, 191–192, 194, Chiasson, Charles 118–119, 139–142, 145, 147 196–197, 201, 211–212 219, 221, 244, 246, cgi see digital effects 258n11, 263 Clytaemnestra, Clytemnestra 84, 220, 232 Apollodorus 67 Coen, Ethan and Joel 233 Archilochus 78 Cohn, Harry 1, 261 architecture 19, 27, 29, 40–41, 71–73 Contempt (Moravia) 108–110, 112–113, 116, aristeia 91, 99–102, 192 124, 130, 156, 159 Aristotle 177 Cox, Brian 32–33, 45
* Troy, the Trojan War, Homer, and the Iliad are not indexed here.
Gance, Abel 257–258 Kazantzakis, Nikos 233 Genette, Gérard 260 Konchalovsky, Andrey 113, 136 Giraudoux, Jean 223, 239–241 Girolami, Marino 87–88, 92–93, 125–128, Lang, Fritz 156–161, 163 130–131, 152, 162 Latacz, Joachim 21, 65–66, 118, 137, Gleeson, Brendan 33–35 153, 160 Godard, Jean-Luc 108, 156, 158–163 Lattimore, Richmond 24, 242 gods 14, 66, 80, 83, 108–164, 199, 207–208, 212, Lesches 3 214, 243, 260 Little Iliad 3, 117n20, 188, 208, 211 see also individual names Livy 201 Goethe, Johann Wolfgang 17 Lucan 22, 100, 117, 138, 216, 259 Gorgias 162 Lucretia 201–202
Manilius 22 Pastrone, Giovanni 87, 115, 238, 259 Méliès, Georges 233 Patroclus 2–3, 30–31, 73, 77–78, 80–82, Menelaus 7, 21, 33–36, 74, 78, 80–81, 83–84, 90–93, 99, 103–104, 106, 126–127, 140, 99, 113–115, 129–130, 132, 153n105, 146, 152, 155, 165–171, 174n12, 176–178, 165–166, 170, 182, 187, 191, 197, 200, 208, 183–185, 187–188, 197, 216, 218–219, 224, 220–221, 230–231, 259 229, 239 mindscreen 133–135 Penelope 98, 109, 113, 150, 163, 181 Minoan 19, 29, 68, 72–73 Petersen, Wolfgang 2, 7–14, 16–26, 31–46, Monteverdi, Claudio 224–225n4 65–66, 86–107, 110–112, 115, 117–119, Moravia, Alberto 108–110, 112, 124, 130, 156, 129–131, 135, 141–142, 148, 151–152, 158–159, 162 162–165, 167–168, 171–173, 178, 180, 188, Mulvey, Laura 193, 198 190–191, 193, 195, 197–199, 202–204, Mycenae, Mycenaean 27, 29, 40–41, 67–76, 207–208, 211, 214, 219–220, 222–225, 229, 80, 166, 206, 220 252–254 Myrmidons (Aeschylus) 78, 81, 155, 178 Pharsalia 22, 100, 117, 138, 216 Philoctetes 186–187 narratology 123, 133–135 Philostratus 67, 85n65 Nestor 27, 41–43, 45, 68, 70, 89, 126, 166–167, Pindar 74n28 169, 171, 177, 185–186 Pitt, Brad 30–32, 38–39, 41–44, 76, 111, 116, 203 Noa, Manfred 87, 130n38, 131–132, 238, 240 Plato 140 Plautus 205 Odysseus 4, 9, 28, 31, 68, 74, 77–78, 81, 84, 88, Polyxena 81, 85, 151n103, 192, 213n22 90–92, 94, 96–98, 109, 112–113, 135–136, Poseidon 27, 29–30, 90, 113, 145–147, 156–157, 143–145, 147, 149–150, 153, 155, 156n116, 175, 211, 251 157, 161–163, 166–167, 171, 177, 180–190, Posthomerica 81, 141 192, 213–214, 216, 218–219, 221, 233, Priam 23, 27, 29–30, 37, 39, 71, 80, 83, 85, 148, 243–244, 249, 251 165, 170, 172–173, 188, 190, 192, 196, 211–214, Odyssey 4, 26, 74, 77, 93–94, 98, 108, 109, 219–221, 229, 231, 239, 241–242, 244 111–113, 124n33, 135–137, 142–143, Propertius 215n27 149–150, 153–156, 160, 163, 180–190, 205, Protagoras 154–155, 158, 164 207, 209, 228–230, 232–233, 238, 243, Ptolemy Chennus 67 248–250, 253, 255, 260 Offenbach, Jacques 223, 232–233 Quintus of Smyrna 81, 141 Oliveira, Manoel de 262–263 On the Gods 155 Rabel, Robert 191–193 O’Toole, Peter 37, 39 Reeves, Steve 125, 156n115, 222, 246 Oresteia 32, 149, 229 Republic (Plato) 140 overdetermination Roisman, Hanna 108, 116 see double motivation Roman de Troie, Le 85, 222 Ovid 85, 117, 192, 206–207, 209, 242, 259 Rossi, Franco 130n38, 154, 160, 162, 247 Owen, Wilfred 9 Sack of Troy Pabst, G.W. 158 see Iliou Persis Paradise Lost 22 Saddam Hussein 173 Paris 6, 9, 12, 20–21, 23, 33–36, 38, 80–83, 85, Sarpedon 82, 139, 148, 152, 169 88, 111, 113–115, 117, 128, 140–141, 151, 166, Schliemann, Heinrich 1, 75, 156n116, 173–175, 188, 190, 195–197, 200, 209, 225–228, 233–234, 237, 240, 252–253 211–215, 217n32, 218–220, 222, 230–231, Scott, Ridley 6, 26, 87, 189 238–239, 243, 245, 259 Scully, Stephen 116–118
Seneca 68 Trojan War Will Not Take Place, The 223, 239 Shakespeare, William 186, 207, 222, 240 Trojan Women, The 111n8, 201, 206 simile, epic 22, 99, 172 Tzetzes, John 76 Snell, Bruno 123, 136–137, 153–154 Socrates 140 Ulysses Sophocles 65, 74, 186 see Odysseus special effects see digital effects Venus Statius 77, 138–139 see Aphrodite Stone, Oliver 5, 196 Verginia 201–202 Virgil 26, 68, 85, 100, 128, 188, 203–204, Telegony 150n99 206–215, 222, 242, 255, 259 Thebaid 138 Vulcan Thetis 2, 22, 75, 77n38, 78, 103, 116–117, 128, see Hephaestus 167–168, 171, 173–176, 178n29, 186, 216, 218n14, 231, 246 War and Peace 117 300 (graphic novel) 252 Wise, Robert 19, 113, 115–116, 213, 215, 219–220 Thucydides 114–115, 192 Wolf, Christa 79–80 Tiger at the Gates (play after Giraudoux) 241 Wolf, Friedrich August 225 Tolstoy, Lev 117–118 Triopas 40, 43–44, 94, 165–166, 168, 217 Zenodotus 90 Troilus 80, 221, 239–240 Zeus 7, 28–29, 66, 82, 90–91, 129, 144–145, Troilus and Cressida 186, 222–223, 240 146n89, 148, 150, 169, 175, 184