Pick A War - Any War
If the Trojan War were a current affair, it would be on the front page of USA Today with headlines such as: When Will It Finally End, or: Greek Fleet’s Continued Presence on Troy’s Shores prompts U. N. Sanctions. There would be outraged commentaries by leading columnists, demanding the return of Helen to Menelaus or else defending a woman’s right to choose. Some of them would be citing irreversible loss of moral values as grounds for further support of the war. Others would assure the world that this conflict has to be won, in order to save the honor of a nation of decent seafaring men. The religious right would have had field days preaching how fire and brimstone were the well-deserved products of such sinful acts as infidelity, betrayal and murder. On public radio, one could listen to desperate reports smuggled out of Troy, a city under siege with no solution in sight. And, all over the world, peace-loving liberals would shake their heads asking how this war had been allowed to go on for ten long years.
Why Homer picks up the story of the Trojan War in its tenth year could be debated. One reason might be that only after ten years of ordinary fighting and laying siege to the city rather unsuccessfully, things were finally approaching the fulfillment of various prophecies connected with the main characters in this bloody myth. Hector, Andromache and her seven brothers, most of the inhabitants of Troy, and many of the heroes, whose sole misfortune of being one of Helena’s suitors had brought them into this senseless war, were all connected by the unbreakable bond of a divinely-spun web with twists and turns worthy of mankind’s first soap opera script.
The basis for the entire conflict appears to be a sense of honor so impossible to live up to that there can be no escape from failing, or from being punished for having done something Agamemnon incites Achilles’ wrath when he finds himself forced to return an abducted maiden, then chooses to replace her with one who is dear to Achilles. This insult spurs bitter words between them, each man certain of his rightful claim though neither girl was with them of her own free will. What makes this kind of conduct acceptable or praiseworthy? How can any self-respecting hero accuse another of committing the same deeds, which he, himself, had carried out in the past? It reminds of divine comedy, and perhaps it is. After all, the gods are always watching, scheming and trying to deceive one another, meddling in the affairs of men, playing favorites and planting the seeds of violence in entire family lines. Fathers against sons, wives against husbands, children against their parents, no one is safe from harm. Both the Iliad and the Oresteia Trilogy are brimming with such carnage that one question comes to mind. Have these people never heard of a happy ending for any tale? What about mankind learning from its mistakes and from all the pain afflicted in the name of honor, which seems to be just another word for pride, thus losing virtue? The imaginary New York Times headline on the front page, over which one had absolutely no influence because of what the old Greeks fondly called inescapable destiny. The mighty Agamemnon’s unfair treatment of Achilles, not to mention Briseis, seems no less dishonorable to the observer, than the sacrifice of his daughter Iphigenia to Artemis, at Aulis. And what of Odysseus, trying to avoid the draft by pretending to be mad, or the goddess Thetis, dressing down her son Achilles as a woman to spare him from the prophecy of certain death. Might this behavior point toward a more human aspect of these super heroes, who would otherwise be too incredible and too perfect? On the other hand, is it not this lack of perfection, which drove men to war then as well as now, seizing lands and possessions, capturing and violating each other’s women? Who is to say when such acts are honorable or despicable?
Agamemnon incites Achilles’ wrath when he finds himself forced to return an abducted maiden, then chooses to replace her with one who is dear to Achilles. This insult spurs bitter words between them, each man certain of his rightful claim though neither girl was with them of her own free will. What makes this kind of conduct acceptable or praiseworthy? How can any self-respecting hero accuse another of committing the same deeds, which he, himself, had carried out in the past? It reminds of divine comedy, and perhaps it is. After all, the gods are always watching, scheming and trying to deceive one another, meddling in the affairs of men, playing favorites and planting the seeds of violence in entire family lines. Fathers against sons, wives against husbands, children against their parents, no one is safe from harm. Both the Iliad and the Oresteia Trilogy are brimming with such carnage that one question comes to mind. Have these people never heard of a happy ending for any tale? What about mankind learning from its mistakes and from all the pain afflicted in the name of honor, which seems to be just another word for pride, thus losing virtue? The imaginary New York Times headline on the Trojan War – "No End in Sight!" – is universal and unanswerable. For thousands of years there have been good reasons to keep on fighting, so to ask, “why,” makes even less sense than demanding to know when it is going to stop. Be it for God, the fatherland, money, or revenge. Someone always needs satisfaction and, unfortunately, the means of getting it are limited, conceived of narrow, but manly, minds.
There seems to be a sense of longing in the words Homer placed so firmly in Achilles’ mouth about the existence of another, more benign possibility for his personal path through life. In the end, he chooses glory and immortality over living happily ever after with his hypothetical family of children, wife and children’s children. What Achilles failed to recognize was that there lay the potential for a different kind of infinite tribute in this rejected choice. He could have been the perfect hero, the one who put an end to these insane quests, by simply choosing life instead of death. He would have had to take the chance that his further accomplishments, based on some other less fatal set of values, would forever remind the world of the man who dared to say no and braved life in spite of his heel.
Homer realized that he had the story of the millennium; it was just a tad bit long, so he decided to let the first nine years be bygone. There was enough of the right stuff in the final chapter of Troy’s siege and the return of the surviving champions to keep the audience well entertained. The Iliad starts at the beginning of the end and, from this point onward, the people of ancient Greece, and those who came after them, were granted the chance to know all that occurred during the fateful conclusion of the Trojan War. Never before had there been a written account of such things and, although the details might be exaggerated and tainted by ancient superstitions and beliefs, it nevertheless provided a valuable insight into the minds of the individuals involved, including the writers themselves.
As for Agamemnon, he met bloody destiny at the hands of his own unfaithful wife, upon returning home from Troy in the company of a mistress taken by force. Instead of focusing on the repercussions of this predictable development, which most readers would be able to imagine by now, another turn in subject is much more tempting. The setting in motion of the so-called domino effect, started by the very first man who decided that all was fair in war and love, cannot be interrupted, it seems. And so life goes on, today as much as yesterday or two thousand years ago. There lives an odd creature in the society of men. He, or she, reports the events unfolding and hopes in vain that by telling the appalling story, enough peaceful souls could be inspired to resist the urge to tumble along when it is their turn to be one of the pieces in this intricate one-track game.
© 2006 Corinne Wesley
this is an essay i wrote for a Humanities course after returning to school in 2004. part of the syllabus were the Greek myths. i wanted to present my argument against war in general and picked the Trojan war as the "background".....
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