The Siege of Troy - Notes

Homer

To the ancients the poet was foremost a seer, an inspired artist capable of revealing hidden truths to his race or nation. No bard greater exemplifies this than Homer, the man credited with composing the most outstanding of Greece's epic poems, the Iliad and theOdyssey. Who was Homer? No one knows for sure. Later Greeks believed that he was a blind minstrel from the island of Chios. In ancient times his authorship of both epics was undisputed. Modern investigation of Homer's texts showed many inconsistencies of fact, style, and language between the two poems and led to serious questions about authorship. Today, however, most scholars believe that both poems were conceived in a unified way and reflect the creative process of a single author who shaped traditional material into an inspired masterpiece which "... revealed the Hellenic people to itself in the lucid and clear nobility and beauty of an uplifting of life and an artistic sense of the humanity and divinity of man." (Sri Aurobindo — The Future Poetry)

Homeric epics

The Homeric epics were composed between 900-700 BC. These poems describe legendary events that in all likelihood can be traced to real historical struggles for control of the waterway leading from the Aegean Sea through the Sea of Marmara to the Black Sea. Such skirmishes would have taken place as early as 1200 BC — many years before Homer told his tale to Greek audiences. It is obvious that the Greeks of Homer's time were familiar with his stories, their heroes

and the outcome of their adventures. Surely Homer was a rhapsodist. These were wandering bards or minstrels who were the historians, entertainers and at their best — the mythmakers of their time. These minstrels travelled from village to village singing of recent legendary events, and of the doings of heroes, gods, and goddesses

Modern scholars have studied the living oral tradition in Eastern Europe and have come to the conclusion that stories like the Iliad were probably first told aloud following a basic story line, but freely improvised according to the capacity of the individual bard. The oral storyteller is apt to have a stock of story-telling formulas ready in his memory. Such formulas abound in Homer and are called epithets. These are short descriptive phrases which are used repeatedly by the poet. For example: the sea in Homer's epics is always 'wine dark' and the goddess Athene is always 'gray-eyed.' This technique is characteristic of Homer's epic style and has a unifying effect on the story. Besides that, it may also help the story-teller by giving him a breathing space during which he can inwardly prepare the next portion of the tale.

Homer was first of all a great story teller. His descriptions "seem poetic to us; yet they are of an inexpressible naturalness, though delineated with a purity and intimacy never equalled. Even the strangest and most fantastic of the described occurrences have an inevitable naturalness. The ancients represent life itself; we commonly describe its effects." (Goethe) His story is one of epic proportions. He gave a hitherto unknown power of word and structure to the epic form. Homer was the first to imagine a hero whose spirit would triumph amid self-destruction. He expresses an attitude that came later to be known as typically Greek: that what is most worth having in Life can often be had only at the peril of life itself. "Beauty, like glory, must be sought though the price be tears and destruction. Is not this thought at the very center of the Trojan War? For its hero Achilles, the very perfection of Greek chivalry, was given precisely this choice by the gods. They offered him a long life with mediocrity or glory with an early death" (H.D.F Kitto — The Greeks)

What is an epic?

An epic or heroic poem is a work that is characterised by being a long, narrative poem on a great and serious subject, one that is told

in an elevated style, and is centered on a heroic or quasi-divine figure on whose actions depends the fate of a tribe, nation, or the human race. Most traditional epics are shaped by a literary artist who uses historical and legendary materials which have been developed in the oral traditions of his nation, usually during a period of expansion and warfare. In an epic often the hero performs super human deeds in which super-physical powers (the gods) are involved. The setting of an epic is vast and the actions that occur within that setting are of great (and even cosmic) importance.

Notes on Ilion: a modern poem

A selection from a modern rendering of a portion of the story of the siege of Troy demonstrates that Homer's contribution to western civilization is still vibrant in its impact on the modern sensibility. Sri Aurobindo's poem, Ilion, gives a lucid poetic description of the powers at work behind the curtain of history and proposes some suggestions about the historical meaning of this particular power struggle between men of conflicting cultures and values. He reveals that Hellas will rise to power, but that it, too, will eventually fall and make way for other races who will take their turn in leading man's evolutionary march. In this passage Zeus, the chief of the Greek gods, encourages his fellow gods to set aside their sentiments in the face of the suffering that war inevitably causes and to remember their unwavering aim: to work out the Divine Will on the lower planes of manifestation.

"Now too from earth and her children voices of anger and weeping

Beat at our thrones: 'tis the grief and the wrath of fate-stricken creatures.

Mortals struggling with destiny, hearts that are slaves to their sorrow.

We unmoved by the cry will fulfill our unvarying purpose.

Troy shall fall at last and the ancient ages shall perish.

You who are lovers of Ilion turn from the moans of her people.

Chase from your hearts their prayers, blow back from your nostrils the incense,

Let not one nation resist by its glory the good of the ages.

Twilight thickens over man and he moves to his winter of darkness.

Troy that displaced with her force and her arms the luminous ancients,

Sinks in her turn by the ruder strength of the half-savage Achaians. They to the Hellene shall yield and the Hellene fall by the Roman. Rome too shall not endure, but by strengths ill-shaped shall be broken,

Nations formed in the ice and mist, confused and crude-hearted. So shall the darker and ruder always prevail o'er the brilliant Till in its turn to a ruder and darker it falls and is shattered. So shall mankind make speed to destroy what was mighty creating."

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Glossary