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This chapter discusses Pindar's Paean 6 and its mythology in the light of contemporary art, especially sculpture. The Aphaia pediments and Pindar's poem enhance Aegina's heroes, while engaging with the mythology of the fall of Troy. The Aphaia pediments rethink the pictorial conventions of the last night of Troy, and put the pairing of pediments of equal scale to good semantic use to suggest that the first Trojan War was at least as significant as the famous second campaign. With Paean 6 there was no denying Apollo's involvement in the deaths of Achilles and Neoptolemos; but by emphasizing Apollo's interest in Troy as a motivation for his actions, it was possible to avoid mention of the ugliest deeds attributed to those two heroes. Pindar also tightened the links between the Trojan War, the Delphic Theoxenia, and the Aeginetan cult of Zeus Hellanios, through emphasis on the pious Aeginetan culture-hero Aiakos.

This chapter examines the allusions in the Histories to what we nowadays call the ‘myth’ of the Trojan War. It first attempts to define its status: where should it be placed on Herodotus' scale of credibility, with muthoi undeserving of belief on the one end and plain historical facts on the other? Does Herodotus, in this respect, differentiate between a spatium mythicum and a spatium historicum? Next, it explores Herodotus' strategies in demythologizing the stories of the Trojan War and offers a suggestion about the deeper purpose behind his rationalizing agenda. It then addresses the role that excerpts of the Trojan War myth play in the rhetoric ascribed to Herodotus' characters, especially in the context of individual and collective propaganda. Finally, it investigates Herodotus' own rhetorical use of these mythical stories as an exemplum in a work that, in Herington's words, ‘stands exactly at the frontier where two great literary eras meet, the era [of] poetry and legend…and the era of prose, of history’. For as in archaic poetry or Attic tragedy, the myth of Troy reverberates throughout the work and helps us to understand the more recent past (the Persian Wars) as well as the present (the Peloponnesian War).

In the fifth century, traditional myths about gods and heroes of a remote age still constituted a shared cultural language for speaking about a variety of more or less specific current issues of a philosophical, ethical, social, and political nature. Other than tragedy and epinician poetry, we should especially remember the role of myth in Thucydides, whose ‘Archaeology’ sets down his fundamental, and ideologically charged, view of history. It is time to reassess Herodotus' participation in this contemporary coded discourse and examine the ways in which he uses the mythical past as well as the cases when he appears to signal his choice not to use it. One dismissive passage in Herodotus (3.122) confirms the significance of Minos — the focus of this chapter — in fifth-century discourse as a precursor or rival of Athenian thalassocracy (Thucydides and Bacchylides). But two additional mentions, in Books 1 and 7 respectively, connect Minos in more interesting ways to present realities of Greeks and non-Greeks in the East and West. How is the treatment of Minos in the Histories representative of Herodotus' ‘myth-speak’?

This chapter discusses the portrayal of Menelaus in the Iliad. Menelaus is among the most important heroes in the Iliad, mentioned by name or making an appearance in seventeen out of the twenty-four books. Menelaus’ stature does not primarily depend, however, on the frequency of his appearances. The scholia note Homer’s evident sympathy for Menelaus, observing that Menelaus is, like Patroclus, ‘kindly’. Menelaus expresses concern for the sufferings of others; he takes pity on an enemy and swiftly comes to the aid of others, even at potential harm to himself. Moreover, Menelaus yields to his friends, not out of weakness, but regard. Ultimately, his ‘sympathetic’ personality arises from an acute awareness of his own responsibility for the Trojan War. Homer portrays this special trait of Menelaus’ character, his sympathy, through repeated actions and marked language. Indeed, Homer fashions Menelaus as a memorable and unique character within the traditional diction and rhetoric of his craft.

This chapter focuses on book 2 of Paradise Lost. In book 2, Milton continues the story of the demilitarization of the fallen angels and of his epic more generally when he bases all of its action around the figure of Ulysses, the hero of eloquence and fraud, whose own epic comes in the aftermath of the Trojan War. The chapter demonstrates that the Odyssey, imitated and parodied in Satan's voyage through Chaos to God's newly created universe in the book's last section, is just one of the classical stories about the career of Ulysses that Milton evokes as models for its different episodes. The various parts of book 2 are held together by this pattern of allusion, as well as by the Odyssean figures of Scylla and Charybdis, the emblem of bad choices, or of loss of choice itself.

The citadel with which the name Troy is associated lies in the north-west corner of Anatolia in the region called the Troad, so named by Graeco-Roman writers who believed that the whole area was controlled by Troy. For almost 3,000 years, the story of the Trojan War pitting the Trojans against the Greeks has provided one of the western world's richest sources of inspiration in the realms of art and literature. However, the question remains: did the Trojan War really happen? This chapter considers possible Anatolian sources on Troy including Hittite texts, the discovery of a bronze seal bearing a brief inscription in Luwian hieroglyphs during excavations in 1995, Troy's role in Anatolian Affairs, Troy VIh as the more likely candidate for Homeric Troy, and the making of Homer's epic Iliad.

This chapter develops in more detail the analysis of Euripides’ differing responses to the epic and tragic poets begun in the earlier chapters (especially in Ch. 2). Focusing on Euripides’ major Trojan War plays it is argued that Euripides positions his dramas as continuations of events from Homer or the Cyclic epics transposed into new contexts, and simultaneously as rivals to earlier tragic versions of the same episode by Aeschylus and by Sophocles. Trigger words, such as deuteros ‘second’, dissos ‘double’, kainos ‘new’, in addition to mythos ‘fiction’ are used to mark these relationships. The Euripidean tragedies discussed in most detail are Philoctetes, Andromache, Hecuba, and the Trojan Trilogy (Alexandros, Palamedes, Trojan Women). The satyr‐drama Cyclops, discussed at the end of the chapter, is uniquely cast (in contrast to the Trojan War tragedies) as a rival version of a Homeric episode with new contemporary implications.

This chapter examines Helen of Troy’s three major appearances in Herodotus’s Histories. The historian takes a rationalistic, demythologizing approach to the Trojan War, but the threat of Helen’s superhuman beauty remains latent in his narrative and becomes increasingly apparent with each appearance. The “Persian” account in Book 1 trivializes both Helen and the Greek values of reciprocity and guest-friendship. The power of female beauty does appear, however, in the tale of Candaules’ wife, which serves as a rewriting of Helen’s story. The narrative of the Trojan War in Book 2 provides a pro-Greek perspective, which reaffirms the importance of Greek values but persists in ignoring Helen’s beauty; the divine power of that beauty is, however, conveyed tacitly by the existence of her Egyptian temple. In Book 6 Herodotus tells the story of Demaratus’s mother, whom the goddess Helen beautifies in her own image, with predictably destructive consequences. Though Herodotus limits transgressive eros, in general, to “barbarian” kings, this story implies that Greeks are not immune to the threat posed by female beauty.

This chapter concerns the encomium of Helen of Troy by the fourth-century rhetorician and educator Isocrates. Isocrates gives Helen’s beauty a value that is symbolic and transcendent, in order to make her, via the Trojan War, both an emblem of Panhellenic masculine achievement and a totemic symbol of Greece itself. He also introduces Theseus, Helen’s first abductor, to provide a mythic foundation for the Athenian hegemony characterizing his particular brand of Panhellenism. In order to make Helen a worthy emblem of Hellenic manhood the heroes’ desire for her is de-eroticized, their passion transferred to glorious combat, thus saving them from emasculation. Treating Helen as a figure for beauty as such, rather than an erotically compelling woman, also allows Isocrates to draw on homoerotic paradigms of heroic male glory. These strategies result, however, in a lack of serious attention to Helen herself. She becomes an untainted symbol of heroic glory at the cost of trivialization.

When the Lindians erected the stele with its inventories of votives and epiphanies by 99 BC, oral tradition about the antiquity and wealth of the sanctuary or city was not sufficient, as the Greek world was developing new ways of using written sources and discovering new texts to use in its study of the past. The Lindians had played a role in the adventures of Herakles, the Trojan War, the colonization to the coast of Asia Minor and to Magna Graecia, the Persian Wars, and the conquests of Alexander the Great. They bask in the reflected glory of their goddess, Athena Lindia, who is indisputably resident on their acropolis. The citation of sources reveals the Lindians grafting new ways of thinking onto traditional storytelling patterns. Pride in their past of military victories, colonising expeditions, and great heroes may have helped to compensate the Lindians for their place in the present.

This chapter introduces the story of Helen of Troy in Greek mythology: her conception by Zeus, her abduction by Theseus, the oath of the suitors, her marriage to Menelaus, the Judgment of Paris, her abduction by Paris, the Trojan War, and her retrieval by Menelaus, who raised his sword to kill her but dropped it at the sight of her beauty. This narrative is elaborated with attention to the particular concerns of this book, especially gender issues, the question of Helen’s agency in her elopement, and the Greek values underlying the Trojan War (notably guest-friendship). The chapter goes on to describe Helen’s role as a divinity in hero cult, where she was worshiped especially as an iconic figure of the bride. As a cult heroine, she enjoys a posthumous relationship with Achilles, who is the most beautiful and mighty of the Greeks, and as such Helen’s closest male equivalent. The chapter ends with a discussion of Helen’s divine, timeless beauty and the resources for representing it in art and literature.

More than three decades separate Isaac Newton’s explorations of astronomical chronology and his youthful engagement with problems of perception and measurement. By the time of his first computations in the area, shortly before the publication of the Opticks, Isaac Newton’s understanding of measurement had been refined through years of experimental and computational experience, not the least of which occurred as he worked on the motions of bodies in fluids during the 1680s. The previous decade had given Newton considerable familiarity with words from the past, and he had slowly developed a highly skeptical attitude toward ancient remarks that did not have a continuous textual ancestry, or that reflected what he considered to be unreliable “poetic fancies.” Thus, aiming to produce a compelling argument grounded in computation for his new chronology, Newton faced a treacherous triple problem: he had first to argue that the words with which he worked were originally produced near the time of the Trojan War; then he had to transform these words into astronomical data; finally, he had to deploy a technique for working with what he rapidly learned was a set of extremely discrepant observations. He labored over these problems until his death. This chapter follows Newton as he transformed words and calculated.

This chapter examines how the Iliad promotes the capacity of its audience as individuals to acknowledge and respect the essential humanity of every other individual. It explains how the Iliad enables its audience to get a glimpse of the Trojan War from the Trojans' perspective, as well as the surprisingly humanizing depiction of Hector within his city. The Iliad suggests that the recognition of multiple perspectives makes moral judgment possible. In addition to humanizing the enemy and perhaps promoting self-restraint and compassion, the Iliad delineates the spheres of men and women: warfare and politics for men; domestic activities, weaving, and child-rearing for women. The chapter concludes by arguing that the Iliad confronts its audience with the responsibility to reassess the conviction that the capacity for violence deserves the highest honors that the community can confer.

This chapter focuses on Homer’s Iliad, the most canonical version of the story of Helen of Troy and the Trojan War. It starts by discussing Helen’s similarity to Achilles, and epic techniques for portraying beauty, before moving to the different perspectives on her behavior supplied by various characters. She is objectified by the men, especially on the Greek side, in a way that helps to keep their struggle a heroic one, a task that is further aided by desplacing male desire away from Helen and onto revenge or warfare as such. But Helen’s own perspective challenges this picture. Her characteristic self-blame is both an exercise of power (in so far as it wins her sympathy and protection), and a retrospective assertion of agency in her elopement. The chapter includes a detailed treatment of her confrontation with Aphrodite in Book 3, which provides a window into Helen’s subjectivity, showing that despite the goddess’s power Helen is, in fact, responsible for her actions.

This chapter examines Helen of Troy in Homer’s Odyssey. Despite her redomestication after the Trojan War, the Odyssey’s Spartan scenes are replete with hints of the threat that Helen continues to pose to masculine control. She is not only unusually assertive and outspoken for a Homeric woman, but comes much closer to divinity than her counterpart in the Iliad. Among other things, she is endowed with a drug that erases negative emotions and a magical ability to mimick other women’s voices, both of which symbolize the power of her erotic beauty and especially of her voice. This supernatural dimension aligns her with "dread goddesses" like Circe and Calypso, whom the hero, Odysseus, must learn to resist in order return to his wife, the virtuous, self-controlled Penelope. Penelope is the opposite of Helen, whose marriage to Menelaus serves as a negative foil to the hero’s own. Yet even she has a beauty and manipulative skill that put her under the suspicion that hangs over all women.

This chapter offers a continuous, linear reading of Cassandra’s prophecy with the goal of illustrating the way in which individual passages are linked. In structure, the prophecy as a whole is divided into two major parts of unequal length: the first a sweeping account of the coming Trojan War and its aftermath (31–1282) and the second a broader treatment of the conflict between East and West of which it forms part (1283–1460). Both begin in the distant past and conclude with the ascendancy of the Romans, who thus represent the larger telos of the prophecy. Beyond this parallelism, the two halves of the prophecy not only have their own internal logic but are also linked to one another thematically and verbally.

This chapter examines Euripides's treatment of sex as the cause of the Trojan War. The first aspect of sexuality in Euripides that strikes us is the violence with which it assails its subjects—most often women—in excessive, perverse, and sometimes destructive forms. This violence is deployed in a particular way and has particular effects: it dislocates and dispossesses the self, making it a puppet of a drive that the subject often cannot clearly diagnose or identify. Eros is one of the most insidious and piercing instantiations of otherness and can ensnare the whole of a human being. This representation of sexual drive threatens Euripides's metaphysics, which gestures toward an imagined self, which, through its sophia, is able to build a solid and sure stronghold against forces that would pierce through it. This chapter discusses the debate between Helen and Hecuba in Troades and suggests that it represents a typical metalepsis of Euripides's sophia.

This chapter considers the well-established body of poetic tradition about the Trojan War which Homer inherited and from which he took his starting-point for the Iliad. It argues that the conception of the Trojan War reflected in the Iliad and the other epics of the early archaic period was not something that had been fixed for centuries but the outcome of a continuous process of development and growth, with new participants still being brought in after the Iliad was completed. The chapter then turns to Achilles, the central personality of the Iliad. It suggests that his association with the Trojan War was not original. Before he was incorporated into the Trojan saga, the various adventures of Achilles’ did not add up to a coherent story and could scarcely have been strung together in a single epic narrative. When he was attached to the Troy saga, his character underwent three stages of development, which are discussed in turn.