The Trojan War Literature and Legends from the Bronze Age to the Present Second Edition D ia n e P. T h o m p s o n McFarland &. Company, Inc., Publishers Jefferson, North Carolina, and London 8. Transmission o f Troy Stories to the M iddle Ages 103 8 Transmission of Troy Stories to the Middle Ages In the gradual transition from the classical pagan world of Augustus and Virgil to the solidly Christian world of the European Latin Middle Ages, two major world-historical events affected the continuing tradition of Troy stories. The first event was the establishment of Christianity as the official religion of the Roman Empire in 312 CE. Christians hated the pagan gods and Homer’s Iliad and Odyssey were full of pagan gods, so Homer’s version of the Trojan War did not appeal to an increasingly Christian civilization. The second event Rome, Constantinople and Troy was the division of the Roman Empire into the Greek-speaking East and the Latin-speaking West in 395 CE. This split of the Roman Empire left the Greek East still reading Homer as or junior emperor, who was his adopted son and heir apparent. This system of four rulers part of their own cultural heritage, while Virgil’s Aeneid and a so-called eyewitness account was called the Tetrarchy. In 324 CE Constantine eliminated his co-emperor Licinius and of the Trojan War by Dares became the main versions of the Troy story transmitted in the became the single ruler of both East and West (Millar 175-77; Chuvin 23). In 330, Con­ Latin West. Oddly, the pagan gods in the Aeneid did not seem to bother medieval European stantine founded Constantinople, the New Rome, on the European side of the Bosporus, Christians, who adopted Virgil as a sort of honorary almost-Christian. a narrow water passage between the Mediterranean Sea and the Black Sea (Cameron 7). In the Greek-speaking Christian East, Homer continued to be studied in the schools, Constantine chose an ancient city, Byzantium, as the site for Constantinople; it was only a along with other classical Greek literature. Homer’s deceitful, wrathful heroes and lies about few miles away from the site of ancient Troy. the gods were tolerated because he was such an important figure in Greek literary history After the death of Constantine, the separation between East and West increased, and (Geanakoplos 393-403). In the Latin-speaking West, however, Homer was increasingly in 395 the Roman Empire was officially divided between the two sons of Emperor Theo­ disapproved of and/or forgotten, especially as people no longer learned to read Greek (Ber- dosius, Honorius and Arcadius. While the government of the East grew stronger over time, schin 18-19). the government of the West grew weaker (Cameron 12-16). The fifth century was a disaster The Latin Aeneid continued to be read in the West, but its narrative of the Trojan War in the West. Rome was sacked by northern barbarians in 410 CE. After the sacking of Rome, was incomplete because it started at the fall of the Troy. Furthermore, Virgil explained the the “Western Empire underwent a brutal collapse, during the course of which the great importance of the fall of Troy in terms of the rise of Rome, but in the early European cities disappeared. ... [Wjith the cities a culture was destroyed” (Chuvin 84). In 476 CE Middle Ages, Rome gradually ceased to be seen as the center of the civilized world. It was the last Roman emperor, Romulus Augustulus, was deposed, which officially ended the left to two supposed eyewitnesses, Dictys the Cretan (a Greek) and Dares the Phrygian (a Roman Empire in the West (Cameron 33). Over the next few centuries, the so-called Dark Trojan), to transmit the central stories of the Troy Cycle to the Latin Middle Ages (Baswell Ages, life in the West became still poorer, less urban, less civilized. This left the Greek­ 18). speaking Byzantine East as the only “Roman” Empire, although far east of Rome itself, with its capital at Constantinople. The Byzantine Roman Empire remained, thriving more or less, until the Ottoman Turks finally conquered it in 1453 (Geanakoplos 13). The Roman Empire Split into East and West By the end of the third century CE, the Roman Empire usually had two senior emper­ Christianity and Culture, East and West ors, one for the West and one for the East. Each emperor, or “Augustus,” had a “Caesar,” The not-yet-divided Roman Empire had officially become a Christian empire in 312 CE, after Constantine converted to Christianity (Boardman et al. 860). While the Greek 102 East and Latin West were separating politically, they also were diverging religiously over 104 T he T rojan W ar __________________8. Transmission o f Troy Stories to the M iddle Ages 105 various questions of doctrine and practice. Once Christianity became the state religion, The many pagan gods were readily available to their worshippers. Pagan gods had bitter disputes over correct doctrine became increasingly matters of state and could be pun­ interacted with humans in Homer, and they continued to do so into late antiquity. The ished not just as heresy, but also as treason (Cameron 22). presence of pagan gods was often strongest in their temples, and especially in their plentiful, One major point of contention was the question of “whether, and if so, how, Christ enormous, gorgeous statues. Some statues were known to speak; some could even be ani­ had two natures; the Monophysites held that he had only a divine nature, while Nestorius, mated, by means of secret rites that drew the divine presence down into the statue. Christians and ‘Nestorians’ after him, emphasized the human” (Cameron 23). Both of these positions could not deny the disturbing presence of the statues or even their occasional animation. about the nature of Christ were officially condemned, but in the East many Christians were Consequently, a Christian theory developed asserting that the statues contained not gods, Monophysites, while the Papacy far away in Rome was not interested in compromise. Other but demons that hid under the statues and created illusions to trap and destroy humans differences between Christians in the East and the West included the liturgy (Greek in the (Fox 24-6). East, Latin in the West) and various customs such as the use of unleavened bread (West) Christianity did not so much refute the reality of the pagan gods as reclassify paganism or leavened bread (East) in the Eucharist (Geanakoplos 3, 5). “as a demonic system; it was most misleading when it seemed to be most effective. To deceive Political, religious and cultural separation between the Greek East and Latin West inten­ people, these demons worked mischief by curing and occasionally predicting the future, sified over the centuries. Alienation and hostility between East and West also intensified. These yet, finally, they would go bankrupt, however impressive their interim results” (Fox 326). East-West conflicts reached a peak in 1204, when European Christians sacked Christian As Christianity gained power, the pagan statues and temples became major targets of Chris­ Constantinople during the fourth crusade (Geanokoplos 5). One interesting consequence tian-inspired destruction and looting (Chuvin 69). of the increasing split between East and West was that Homer remained known and admired The struggle of developing Christianity against surrounding paganism intensified the in the Greek East, while his poetry became increasingly unavailable in the Latin West. old problem with Homer — he told pagan lies about pagan false gods. There was already a Although the Latin West had few educated people except clergy in the European Middle long tradition, going back as far as to the sixth century BCE, of explaining away the “gods” Ages, the Greek East had always had a number of educated laymen. Lay education in the in Homer. The myths of the gods could be interpreted philosophically as allegories, veiling East was based on study of the ancient Greek classics within a Christian framework. For deeper truths, or rationalized as historical stories of human beings (Ehrhart 28). example, students could profit from the examples of noble men performing noble deeds, The most influential rationalizer of myths was Euhemerus, a third-century BCE Greek. while avoiding the bad examples of wicked men and ignoring false tales of pagan gods and Euhemerus claimed to have found a column inscribed by a human being named Zeus. This other such evils. Children began their schooling by studying classical Greek grammar, and column explained that the Homeric gods were really historical human beings and only the Homer was central to this study (Geanakoplos 393-4, 401). Consequently, the Greek- ignorance of their worshippers made them seem divine. After Euhemerus, the practice of Byzantine East maintained cultural continuity with its Homeric and classical Greek past. explaining ancient myths as confused history became known as euhemerism. The historical Meanwhile, in the Latin West people ceased to read Greek and rejected pagan stories explanation of ancient myths allowed future authors to deal with the Homeric gods and such as those told by Homer (although they continued to read and approve of Virgil’s Latin their deeds as confused history. The challenge was not to deny the existence of the gods, Aeneid). Following Virgil’s pro-Trojan point of view, people in the Latin West condemned but to locate the true history lurking behind the false myth. This euhemeristic stance helped Homer’s Greeks as the villains of the Trojan War. When Homer was read in the West, it later Christian authors deal with Trojan War stories as part of their own universal history was in the form of the Latin Iliad or Ilias latina, “a crude condensation of the Ilia d in 1070 (Ehrhart 28-9).