Learning Lessons From The Trojan War (Academic Journal From Ebsco Host) )

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Learning Lessons from

the Trojan War:
Briseis and the Theme of Force
Casey Due
ow is it that we still today find so much

powêr in an ancient epic poem? It
seems that every generation reads the
Iliad with fresh eyes. I have argued in a recent
book that tlie significance of the Trojan War
and the lessons taught by it have changed
with each r.ew era of history, and that today
no less than in the fifth century BCE, when
Athenian tragedy flourished, do we look to
the legendary past in an attempt to make
sense of present conflict. ^ In this essay I look
at several modern attempts to learn lessons
from the Trojan War, including the example
provided to us by the French philosopher
Simone Weil's remarkable essay, "The Iliad, or
the Poem oi'Force," which she wrote in 1939
during th<; war between France and
Germany and just before the occupation of
France by tlie Nazis. Ultimately, I am going
to compare some of the arguments made in
Weil's essay about the theme of force in the
Casey Dui is associate professor

of Classical Studies in the
Department of Modern and
Classical Languages at the
University of Houston. Her publications include Homeric
Variations on a Lament by
Briseis (2002) and The
Captive Woman's Lament in
Greek Tragedy (2006).
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College Literature 34.2 [Spring 2007]
Iliad to some of the underlying assumptions of the 2004 blockbuster film

Troy, with which the essay has a remarkable af&nity. In this way I hope to show
that this movie, the most spectacular of instances to date of reading the Iliad in
the twenty-first century, ^ is only the latest example of a type of reading that
stretches back as far as the seventh century BCE, and perhaps even earlier.
Before coming to either of those works, however, it is necessary to
examine the way that the Iliad presents war, since it is the Iliad that is the ultimate source text for both the movie-makers and Simone Weil, This essay is
divided, therefore, into two parts. In the first, I argue that the Iliad, the first
and paradigmatic representation in literature of conflict between East and
West, has a remarkable appreciation for the consequences of war for both
sides, and especially for its victims: the warriors on tlie losing side, the
women that get taken captive, and their children. By highlighting the mortality of the hero and the death of warriors at the peak of their youth and
beauty, the laments, imagery, and similes of Homeric epic mourn both sides
equally. In the second part of the essay, I trace the continuum of this equanimity in the literary, artistic, intellectual, and performance traditions of later
centuries that seek to learnfiromHomer, In the end, I will compare the way
in which both Weil and the makers of Troy have used the character of Briseis
to grapple with the conflicts of their own times, highlighting the effects of
war on the powerless by way of her character. My conclusion speculates
about the nature of the Iliad as a didactic text and why so many generations
of audiences have sought truth in the Iliad.
I The Victims of War
In Greek literature, appreciation for the consequences that war brings
about for its victims has a long history, beginning with the Homeric Iliad and
Odyssey.^ This is particularly true of the plight of the female victims of war.
In Book 8 of the Odyssey, Odysseus is famously compared to a lamenting
woman, fallen over the body of her husband, as she is being dragged away
into captivity.
The renowned singer sang these things. But Odysseus melted, and \vet the
cheeks below his eyelids with a tear. As when a wôman laments, falling over
the body of her dear husband who fell before his city and people, attempting to ward off the pitiless day for his city and children, and she, seeing him
dying and gasping, falling around him wails with piercing cries, but men
from behind beating her back and shoulders with their spears force her to
be a slave and have toil and misery, and with the most pitiful grief her
cheeks waste away. So Odysseus shed a pitiful tear beneath his brows,**
{Odyssey 8,521-31)
Casey M
The simile is so striking because the generic woman of the simile could
easily be on<; of Odysseus' own victims,^ Although the woman of the simile
does not actually speak, the language of the simile has powerful associations
with the larientation of captive women elsewhere in epic, with the result
that the listener can easily conjure her song,^
An equally striking simile is applied by AchiUes to his own situation in
Iliad 9:
Like a bird that brings food to her fledgHng young in her bill, whenever she
finds any, even if she herself fares poorly, so I passed many sleepless nights,
and spent: many bloody days in battle, contending with men for the sake of
their wives, {Iliad IX,323-27)
Achilles too draws on the suffering of captive women in order to articulate
his own sorrow, as he struggles against his mortality and the pleas of his comrades that he return to battle. By using a traditional theme of women's songs
of lament, that of the mother bird who has toiled to raise her young only to
lose them, Achilles connects on a visceral level with the women that he himself has widc'wed, robbed of children, and enslaved,^
The setting of the Iliad is the Trojan War, a war in which Greeks besiege
and ultimately destroy a foreign city. The poem is remarkable for the way that
its preoccupation with mortality and the human condition extends even to
the enemy. In the words of Simone Weil, who was struck by the equity of
compassion with which the suffering of the Greeks and Trojans is narrated:
"The whole of the Iliad lies under the shadow of the greatest calamity the
human race can experiencethe destruction of a city. This calamity could not
tear more at the heart had the poet been born in Troy, But the tone is not different when the Achaeans are dying, far from home" (Benfey 2005, 31),
The enslavement and sexual violation of women and the death of husbands are realities of war that are neither condemned nor avoided in epic
poetry,^ As ^4ichael Nagler has shown, the taking ofTroy is expHcitly compared in the Iliad to the tearing of a woman's veil and hence characterized as
a rape,^ In Iliad 11, Diomedes mocks Paris for the minor wound that he has
infiicted on him:
I don't careit's as if a woman or senseless child struck me. The arrow of
a worthless coward is blunt. But when I wound a man it is far otherwise.
Even if I just graze his skin, the arrow is piercing, and quickly renders the
man lifeless. His wife tears both her cheeks in grief and his children are
fatherless, while he, reddening the earth with his blood, rots, and vultures,
not women, surround him, {Iliad XI,389-96)
The horror that Diomedes describes, culminating in an unlamented corpse
that will be eaten by vultures, will in fact be the fate of countless Trojans, But
the Iliad is not without lamentation. The laments of such figures as
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Andromache and Hecuba are some of the most memorable passages in the
entire poem, and yet the suffering they highlight is most often that of the
Trojans, not the Greeks,
The Farewell of Hektor and Andromactia
The first lament of the Iliad is not actually a song of lament for the dead,
but, as John Foley has shown, it actually conforms in every way to the traditional patterns and structure of a Greek lament (1999,188-98), In this scene,
the Trojan Hektor comes back to Troy briefiy from the battlefield and meets
his wife Andromache there, together with their infant son Astyanax. Our
impression is that this is the last time they will ever see each other, I print
Andromache's words here in three parts, refiecting the typical three-part
structure of traditional laments,
(I) Andromache stood near to him, shedding a tear,
and she reached toward him with her hand and spoke a word and addressed
him:
"What possesses you? Your own spirit will destroy you, neither do you pity
your infant son nor me, ill-fated, I who will soon be
your widow. For soon the Achaeans will kill you,
making an attack all together. It would be better for me
to plunge into the earth if I lost you. For no longer wiU there be any
comfort once you have met your fate,
but grief
(II) Nor are my father and mistress mother still alive.
For indeed brilliant Achilles killed my father,
and he utterly sacked the well-inhabited city of the CiUcians,
high-gated Thebe, And he slew Eetion,
but he did not strip him, for in this respect at least he felt reverence in his
heart,
but rather he burned his body together with his well-wrought armor,
and built a funeral mound over him. And mountain nymphs,
the daughters of aegis-bearing Zeus, planted elms around him,
I had seven brothers in the palace;
all of them wênt to Hades on the same day.
For briUiant swift-footed Achilles killed all of them
among their roUing-gaited cattle and gleaming white sheep.
Casey Due 233

But my :mother, who was queen under wooded Plakos,
he led h(;re together with other possessions
and then, released her after taking countless ransom,
and Artemis who pours down arrows struck her down in the halls of her
father,
(III) Hektor, you are my father and mistress mother,
you are my brother, and you are my flourishing husband,
I beg you, pity me and stay here on the tower,
don't ms.ke your child an orphan and your wife a widow, (//larfVI,405-32)
Upon Hektor's departure, moreover, Andromache returns home and initiates an antiphonal refirain of lamentation among her serving women:
So he spoke and brilliant Hektor took up his helmet of horse hair. And his
dear wi; went home, though frequently she turned back, shedding abundant tears. And when she quickly reached the well-inhabited house of manslaying Hektor, and found inside her many attendants, she initiated lamentation in all of them. They lamented Hektor in his own home, although he
was still alive, (//ifl(fVI,494-500)
Hektor and Andromache are the subject of one of Weil's most notable comments in her essay on the Iliad. She quotes the hnes in Iliad 22, which come
soon after the account of the death of Hektor:
She ordered her bright-haired maids in the palace
To place on the fire a large tripod, preparing
A hot bjith for Hector, returningfi-ombattle.
Foolish woman! Already he lay, far from hot baths
Slain by grey-eyed Athena, who guided Achilles' arm, {Iliad XXII,442-46)
Weil c o m m e n t s : "Far from bot baths he was indeed, p o o r man. A n d n o t
alone. Nearly all the Iliad takes place far from w a r m baths. Nearly all h u m a n
life, t h e n and now, takes place far from hot baths" (Benfey 2005, 4),
The Laments of Iliad 24
W e hav(; just looked at the tender farewell between H e k t o r and his wife
A n d r o m a c h e and their baby son. T h e killing of H e k t o r in Iliad 22 is a v i c t o ry and a m o m e n t of extreme satisfaction for the central hero of the Iliad,
AchiUes, and yet the epic camera immediately shifts, as we witness the g u t w r e n c h i n g reactions of Hektor's mother, father, and wife to his death.
Similarly the Iliad ends w i t h the funeral, not of Achilles, the Iliad's central figure, but instead with the funeral of Hektor, Achilles' o w n short life and c o m -
234

ing death resonate throughout the laments that are sung for his deadliest
enemy. The Iliad ends with the haunting songs of women who are soon to
be the Greeks' captive slaveswidowed, foreign, old and young, they are the
antithesis of the Greek citizen ideal, the ultimate other, l" But the grief they
initiate is a communal grief, a communal song of mourning that on the surface laments Hektor, but, from the perspective of the Iliad's Greek audience,
is even more fundamentally Achilles's own song of sorrow, l'
First and foremost there is the lament of Andromache, Hektor's wife and
chief mourner:
When they had carried the body within the house, they laid it upon a bed
and seated professional mourners round it to lead the dirge, whereon the
women joined in the sad music of their lament. Foremost among them all
Andromache led their wailing as she clasped the head of mighty Hektor in
her embrace. "Husband," she cried, "you have died young, and leave me in
your house a widow. And our son is still very much a child, the one whom
you and I, ill-fated, bore, nor do I think that he will reach manhood. For
sooner will this city be utterly sacked.You, its guardian, have died, you who
protected it, you who shielded its cherished wives and helpless children,
those who will soon be carried off in the hoUow ships, and I among them.
And you, my child, will either follow me and perform unseemly tasks, toiling for a cruel master, or else one of the Achaeans wiU hurl you from a
tower, taking you by the handa miserable deathangry because Hektor
killed his brother or father or maybe even his son, since very many of the
Achaeans bit the dust with their teeth at the hands of Hektor. For your
father was not gentle in the midst of sorrow-bringing battle. Therefore the
people grieve for him throughout the city, and you, Hektor, have brought
unspeakable lamentation and sorrow upon your parents. But for me especially you have left behind grievous pain. For when you died you did not
stretch out your arms to me from our marriage bed, nor did you speak to
me an intimate phrase, which I could always remember when I weep for
you day and night." {Iliad XXIV.719-76)
All the things that Andromache fears come true (as we know from Proclus's
summaries of the now lost Epic Cycle and other attested myths).
Andromache's words are reproachful, as is typical of Greek laments for the
dead, and tell Hektor of the suffering that she and their son will have to
endure, now that Hektor has abandoned them in death. But at the same time
her lament estabhshes the memory of Hektor as the guardian and sole protector ofTroy for all time. His death means the city's destruction, the death
of the men, and the enslavement of the women and children. But these same
words initiate his heroic kleos, his glory that will live on after him in song.
Her grief, and the city's grief, are Hektor's glory.
Casey M
The laments of Andromache and the other women of the Iliad therefore
have a dual function. On the level of narrative they are laments for the dead,
the warrior husbands and sons who inevitably fall in battle. They protest the
cruel fate of the women left behind, and narrate the bitter consequences of
war. The grief expressed by these women is raw and real. But for the audience of ancient epic the laments for these husbands and sons are also the prototypical laments of heroes, who, for them, continue to be lamented and
mourned on a seasonally recurring basis.^^ The poetry of epic collapses the
boundaries between the two forms of song.l^
In the .Iliad, grief spreads quickly from individual to community. As each
lament comes to a close, the immediately surrounding community of
mourners antiphonally responds with their own cries and tears. It is not
insignificant then that the final lament of the Iliad and indeed the final lines
of the poem, sung by Helen (who is the cause of the war), ends not with the
antiphonal wailing of the women (as at IUadVl.499, 19.301, XXII.515, and
XXIV.746),, but of the people: "So she spoke lamenting, and the people
waUed in response" (XXIV.776).
The Iliad looks at humanity without ethnic or any other distinctions that
make peop^ê want to kill each other. It is not a poem that is anti-war: war
was a fundamental and even sacred part of Greek culture. But it is poem that
can transcend ethnicity and lament the death of heroes in battle, whether
they are Greek or Trojan, and it can even lament the death of the greatest
Greek hero of them all, Achilles, by lamenting the death of his greatest
enemy. It is a poem that can view Achilles through the eyes of his victims,
through the sorrow that he generates, and at the same time experience and
appreciate his own never-ending sorrow.
Ttietis's Lament fDr Achilles in /fed XVIII
Achilles too, of course, is lamented directly throughout the poem. His

own upcoming death is constantly being foreshadowed, even though he
doesn't actually die in our Iliad. One of the ways that his death is foreshadowed is through the death of his nearest and dearest companion Patroklos,
who goes into battle in his place, wearing his armor, and who dies in the
same way that Achilles will die. 14 Notice the reaction to Patroklos's death:
A dark cloud of grief fell upon Achilles as he listened. He filled both hands
with dust from off the ground, and poured it over his head, disfiguring his
lovely face, and letting the refuse setde over his shirt so fair and new. He
flung himself down all huge and hugely at fuU length, and tore his hair with
his hands.
The women whom AchiUes and Patroklos had taken captive screamed
aloud for grief, beating their breasts, and with their limbs failing them for
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sorrow. Antilokhos bent over him the while, weeping and holding both his
hands as he lay groaning for he feared that he might plunge a knife into his
own throat. Then AchiUes gave a loud cry and his mother heard him as she
was sitting in the depths of the sea by the old man her father, whereon she
screamed, and all the goddesses daughters of Nereus that dwelt at the bottom of the sea, came gathering round her . . . . The crystal cave was filled
with their multitude and they all beat their breasts while Thetis led them in
their lament.
"Listen," she cried, "sisters, daughters of Nereus, that you may hear the burden of my sorrows. Alas how I am wretched, alas how unluckily I was the
best child bearer, since I bore a child that was faultless and strong, outstanding of heroes. And he shot up like a sapling. After nourishing him like
a plant on the hiU of an orchard I sent him forth in the hoUow ships to Ilion
to fight with the Trojans. But I will not receive him again returning home
to the house of Peleus." {Iliad XVI11.22-60) 15
As soon as Patroklos is dead everyone starts lamentingnot just for
Patroklos, but also for Achilles. This is because now AchiUes's own death is
inevitable. He is now officially "the most unseasonal of them all," as he calls
himself in XXIV.540. He is going to go back to battle to avenge the death
of Patroklos, at the cost of his own life.
Briseis, the captive concubine of Achilles, likewise laments Achilles on
the occasion of lamenting Patroklos.^^ In fact these are the only words she
speaks in the entire poem, and we must tease out almost everything we know
about her from these few words:
Then Briseis like golden Aphrodite, when she saw Patroklos torn by the
sharp bronze, falling around him she wailed with piercing cries. And with
her hands she struck her breast and tender neck and beautiful face. And
then lamenting she spoke, a woman like the goddesses: "Patroklos, most
pleasing to my wretched heart, I left you alive when I went from the hut.
But now returning home I find you dead, O leader of the people. So evil
begets evil for me forever. The husband to whom my father and mistress
mother gave me I saw torn by the sharp bronze before the city, and my
three brothers, whom one mother bore together with me, beloved ones, all
of whom met their day of destruction. Nor did you allow me, when swift
Achilles kiUed my husband, and sacked the city of god-like Mynes, to weep,
but you claimed that you would make me the wedded wife of god-like
Achilles and that you would bring me in the ships to Phthia, and give me
a wêdding feast among the Myrmidons.Therefore I weep for you now^ that
you are dead ceaselessly, you who were kind always." So she spoke lamenting, and the women wailed in response, with Patroklos as their pretext, but
each woman for her own cares. {Iliad XIX.282-302)
Casey Due 237
Briseis's lament for Patroklos mourns in advance her would-be husband

Achillesmuch as Andromache laments Hektor while he is still alive. As we
will see, this is an important passage for Weil, who interprets it slightly differently than I do here. Weil's interest in Briseis is as a captive woman, a slave
subjected to the force of her Greek captors. For her, the passage shows us that
slaves are not given the opportunity to weep for their own cares except when
their masters suffer loss. I cite it here, however, as yet another example of the
conflation of the deaths of Patroklos and Achilles in the Iliad.
The preparations for Patroklos's funeral too are merely a prelude to
Achilles's ovm. In fact, they will be buried together. In Iliad XXIII, the soul
of Patroklos comes to Achilles in a dream and accuses him of neglecting his
funeral rites:
"One prayer more will I make you, if you will grant it; let not my bones be
laid apart from yours, Achilles, but with them; even as we were brought up
together in your own home... let our bones lie in but a single urn, the twohandled golden vase given to you by your mother." (Iliad XXIII.82-92)
This urn is a symbol of Achilles's future immortality as an immortalized hero,
and Patroklcis is asking for a share in that when he asks that their bones be
combined after their deaths.i'^ So when the Greeks build Patroklos's tomb
they are also building it for Achilles: "AU who had been cutting wood bore
l o g s , . . they threw them down in a line upon the seashore at the place where
Achilles would make a mighty funeral mound for Patroklos and for himself"
PCXIIL123-26).
Ttie Death of Euphorbus
The theme of the hero as a plant that blossoms beautifully and dies
quickly is important in Greek lament traditions, as we saw in Thetis's lament
for Achilles. 1^ It is also a metaphor that encapsulates what glory means in the
Iliad. One oli" the primary metaphors for epic song in the Iliad is that of a
flower that v/ill never wilt:
My mottier the goddess Thetis of the shining feet tells me that there are
two ways in which I may meet my end. If I stay here and fight around the
city ofTroy, my homecoming is lost, but my glory in song [kleos] will be
unwilting;: whereas if I reach home my kleos is lost, but my Hfe will be long,
and the outcome of death will not soon take me. (Iliad IX.410-16)
Here Achilles reveals not only the crux of this choice of fates around which
the Hiad itself is built, but also the driving principle of Greek epic song. The
unwilting flower of epic poetry is contrasted with the necessarily mortal
hero, whose death comes all too quickly, l^
The Iliad quotes within its narration of Achilles's kleos many songs of
lamentation i;hat serve to highlight the mortality of the central hero as well
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as underscore the immortality of song. The traditional imagery of these quoted laments, as sung primarily by Thetis, spills over into epic diction itself,
with the result that similes, metaphors, and other traditional descriptions of
heroes are infused with themes drawn from the natural world.
The depiction of the death of the Trojan warrior Euphorbus in the Iliad
is one such place where epic diction draws on the botanic imagery that pervades Greek laments for heroes. Euphorbus, like Achilles, is compared to a
young tree: Euphorbus topples like a tree that is overcome by a storm.Ô
The point went straight through his soft neck. He fell with a thud, and the
armor clattered on top of him. His hair was soaked with blood, and it was
like the Graces, as were his braids, which were tightly bound with gold and
silver. Just like a flourishing sapling of an olive tree that a man nourishes in
a solitary place where water gushes up in abundance, a beautifiil sapling
growing luxuriantlyblasts of every kind of wind shake it and it is full of
white blossoms, but suddenly a wind comes together with a furious storm
and uproots the tree so that it is stretched out on the groundeven so did
the son of Atreus, Menelaus, strip the son of Panthoos, Euphorbus with the
ash spear, of his armor after he had slain him. {Iliad XVII.49-60)
The plant imagery in this passage is intensified by two references to blossoms.
In the simile, the tree to which Euphorbus is compared blossoms with white
flowers. Moreover, scholia in medieval manuscripts of the Iliad reveal that this
comparison between Euphorbus and the tree with its blossoms is even closer than might appear at first glance. According to the schoha, kharites, translated here as "the Graces," means in the Cypriote dialect of Greek "myrtle
blossoms."2i The flecks of blood in Euphorbus's hair look like myrtle blossoms. Since the Arcado-Cypriote dialect layer of Homeric diction contains
some of the oldest elements of the oral poetic system in which the Iliad and
Odyssey were composed, it is hkely that in the most ancient phases of the Iliad
tradition Euphorbus's hair was understood to look like myrtle blossoms.^2
Thus we find that the comparison of a dying warrior to a flower is an ancient
theme at the core of the Greek epic tradition.
I have argued that the death of glorious young men in battle and the sadness of that death is a central theme of the poem. This theme is something
that, as we will see,"Weil seizes on in her essay But one point on which I disagree wîth Weil is her denial that the Uiad also celebrates those deaths as the
most glorious way to die.23 So I will conclude this section of my essay with
one final passage from the Iliad:
TeU me now you Muses that have homes on Olympus, who was first to face
Agamemnon,whether of the Trojans themselves or of their renowned allies?
It was Iphidamas son ofAntenor, a man both brave and of great stature, who
was raised in fertile Thrace, the mother of sheep. Cisses brought him up in
Casey Ou6 239
his own house when he was a childCisses, his mother's father, the man
who begot beautiful-cheeked Theano. When he reached the fuU measure of
glorious manhood, Cisses would have kept him there, and wanted to give
him his daughter in marriage. But as soon as he had married he left the
bridal chamber and went off to seek the kleos of the Achaeans with twelve
ships that followed him. (Iliad XI.218-28)
Unlike Hektor, Iphidamas is not lamented by his bride in our Iliad. Instead
his compressed life history, with its account of his recent marriage, serves as
the lament for this doomed bridegroom. 24 The narrator points out something very important. Iphidamas gave it all up to become part of the kleos of
another man. It was worth it to him to become a part of the unwilting song
that is our Iliad. Hektor of course chooses likewise, and Achilles too, motivated as he is by the death of Patroklos. Achilles's withdrawal from battle, his
struggle with the value he places on his own life and his articulation of the
choice that he has between a homecoming and glory in song, as well as such
memorable passages as Hektor's farewell to Andromache, and finally the
laments that women sing for their dead warriors, are the best illustrations of
all these young men have to give up to become a part of that song. But they
accept it as worthy compensation for their brief lives.
II The Lessons of War
On a large funerary pithos dated to around 675 BCE from the island of
Mykonos, one of the very earliest surviving representations of the fall ofTroy
in art, a series of panels shows the Trojan women taken captive and their children slain before their eyes.^^The creator of that pithos knew what war was
and depicted it with perfect clarity. Already in 675 the experiences of the
Trojan women were iconic and emblematic of wartime suffering. Concern
for the victims of war, as exemplified by the Trojan women, is one of the
many continuities that unite Archaic and Classical Greek poetic and artistic
traditions. As I noted at the beginning of this essay, the significance of the
Trojan War and the lessons taught by it have changed with each new era of
history, and yet the emotional dynamic that I have traced in Part I remains
remarkably constant.
In my recent book I explored the significance of the Trojan War for
Classical Athens. There I pointed out that recent scholarship has shown that
such vital cultural institutions and monuments as Greek tragedy, the
Parthenon, and other monumental art on the acropolis did not celebrate the
Greek victory at Troy, but rather explored the horrors of war, very often from
the perspective of the defeated Trojans. The destruction ofTroy is consistently represented in Athenian hterature and art as a sacrilege that rouses the retribution of the gods.26 In fact, in the wake of the Persian sack of Athens in
240
480 BCE the Athenians seem to have identified more with the Trojans than
with the Achaean Greeks.
Greeks of the fifth century BCE seem to have been all too aware that in
the act of sacking a city one is particularly susceptible to committing hubristic outrage.^'^ The historian Herodotus marked the Persians as exemphfying
this kind of excessive violence when they sacked Sardis, the capital city of the
Lydians (Herodotus 1.89.2).The Athenians themselves were in position to act
as the Persians did on many occasions over the course of the fifth century
BCE, as they developed their own aggressive naval empire. In 475, after
besieging and capturing the city of Eion, they sold the entire population into
slavery and established a colony there. Eion was the first of many cities to be
enslaved by the Athenians in the fifth century, with some victories more brutal than others.Thus the sack ofTroy must have resonated with the Athenians
on many levels. On the one hand it prefigures the sack of their own city and
the desecration of their temples at the hands of a foreign aggressor. On
another level, the myth is a warning against the excesses of brutality that
often come with victory and empire.
In the remainder of this essay I would hke to turn my attention from
ancient Athenian attempts to apply the Trojan War to their own experiment
with empire, and focus instead on modern attempts to draw lessonsfiromthe
Trojan War.This war still today seems to be emblematic of all war, and specifically, as it was for the ancient historian Herodotus, the ultimate paradigm for
understanding the divide between East and West. Before focusing on Simone
Weil's essay and its World War II context, however, I'd like to set this essay in
context by looking briefly at a few other examples. These examples are
intrinsically connected with wars of the twentieth and twenty-first centuries:
World War I, the Vietnam War, and the current on-going hostihties in Iraq.
They are offered as snapshots of history, selected episodes that I think have
important connections with the reading of the Hiad I have presented so far.
Gallipoli
A modern poem that resonates with the foregoing discussion of Achilles

is the following by Patrick Shaw-Stewart, a British officer who was killed in
action in France in 1917 during World War I. He wrote this poem on leave
from Galhpoli, the site of some of the bloodiest batdes of the war. The
Peninsula of Gallipoli is located just across the Dardanelles from Troy
I saw a man this morning
Who did not wish to die
I ask, and cannot answer.
If otherwise wish I.
Casey Due 241
Fair broke the day this morning

Against the Dardanelles;
The breeze blew soft, the morn's cheeks
Were cold as cold sea-sheUs
But other shells are waiting
Across the Aegean sea.
Shrapnel and high explosive.
Shells and hells for me.
O hell of ships and cities.
Hell of men like me.
Fatal second Helen,
Why must I follow thee?
Achilles came to Troyland
And I to Chersonese:
He turned from wrath to battle.
And I from three days' peace.
Was it so hard, Achilles,
So very hard to die?
Thou knowest and I know notSo much the happier I.
I will go back this morning
From Imbros over the sea;
Stand in the trench, Achilles,
Flame-capped, and shout for me.29
The geographical proximity of GaUipoh to the generally accepted site ofTroy
inspires Shaw-Stewart to compare his own brief respite from war to that of
Achilles in the Iliad. The poem, moreover, is packed with allusions to Greek
hterature that go far beyond the Iliad. Most notable is the play on Helen's
name, a clever imitation of a similar play on the name in Greek in Aeschylus's
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Agamemnon 681-90. Like Achilles, the author of this poem struggles with an
unwillingness to die, coupled with an intense questioning of the purpose of
the fighting. Both will ultimately return to battle after a brief withdrawal,
Achilles to his certain death, and the author of this poem to an uncertain fate.
As for Achilles, it is Shaw-Stewart's confrontation of his own mortality, in the
spot where so many heroes of epic died in song, that inspires his questioning
of the war.
The campaign of Gallipoli, in which the British attempted to seize control of the Dardanelles, and which lasted almost eight months, had many
important historical consequences, including, at least in part, the weakening
of the British empire. Another consequence was the astronomical rise to
power of a Turkish officer, Mustafa Kemal, later known as Attaturk, the enormously influential leader who is now viewed as the father of modern Turkey.
Attaturk had a memorial set up at Gallipoli with the following remarkable
inscription:
You, the mothers, who sent their sons from faraway countries, wipe away
your tears. Your sons are now lying in our bosom and are in peace. After
having lost their lives on this land, they have become our sons as well. (Ari
Burnu Memorial, Gallipoli)
In an incredible recognition of the commonality of their suffering, Attaturk,
speaking for Turkey as a nation, shares in the grief of the mothers of Turkey's
attackers and embraces the British war dead as though they were his own
sons. But once again, the tradition of the Trojan War looms large, and we find
that this kind of compassion was conceived of long before Attaturk.
As I have been trying to argue throughout this essay, and as we will
explore again when we come to Simone Weil, the Iliad's portrayal of war is
so affective on an emotional level even today in large part because both sides
are portrayed with a compassion that does not distinguish between attacker
and attacked, winner and loser, Greek and foreigner. Greek tragedy, though
composed and performed in a world in which the Persian Empire dominated the Anatolian peninsula and had become Athens' greatest enemy in the
first half of the fifth century BCE, inherits and extends epic's treatment of
the defeated Trojans. An extraordinary passage in Euripides' Hecuba goes even
further. The chorus of Trojan women, as their city smolders not far away,
imagine and pity the suffering of the Greek women who have lost their
loved ones in war:
"Pain and compulsion, even more powerful than pain, have come full circle; and from one man's thoughtlessness came a universal woe to the land
of Simois, destructive disaster resulting in disaster for others. The strife was
decided, the contest which the shepherd, a man, judged on Ida between
three daughters of the blessed gods, resulting in war and bloodshed and the
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ruin of my home; and on the banks of the beautifully flowing Eurotas river,
some Spartan maiden too is full of tears in her home, and to her grey-haired
head a mother whose sons are slain raises her hands and she tears her
cheeks, making her nails bloody in the gashes." {Hecuba 638-56)
Here the distinction between Greek and Trojan is blurred and even subverted.30 Not only that, the Athenians watching this drama are in the midst of
the decades of hostilities with Sparta that we call the PeloponnesianWar.The
Athenians in the audience, therefore, are being asked to witness the grief of
the Trojan women as they empathize with the grief of their attackers, the
Spartans, who just so happen to be, many centuries later, the Athenians' current foe and longstanding rival in the Greek world. And we must remember,
too, that it is non-professional Athenians acting in the role of this chorus of
Trojan women.î More than twenty-three centuries after Euripides's drama,
Attaturk's appreciation of the grief of the British mothers is yet a further
extension of the Iliad's ultimate humanitas.
Vietnam, Iraq
As the French scholar Nicole Loraux has meditated upon quite recently, in 1965, the French existentialist novelist, philosopher, and playwright
Jean-Paul Sartre produced his version of Euripides' Trojan Women (Loraux
2002,1-13). He made a number of adaptations to the ancient Greek play in
order to give it meaning for his contemporary audience. The adaptations he
made added an explicit anti-war message to the play, and specifically an antiVietnam War message. Now, one could argue that the Trojan Women in its
original fifth-century BCE form is anti-war, and specifically antiPeloponnesian War. The play has often been understood that way, because it
focuses so directly on the effects of war on women, and presents an unfiltered look at the lamentation and suffering of the wives and mothers of the
Trojans.32 It is easy to read the play as protesting the actions of the Greeks of
the play (that is, the victors in the Trojan War), who might easily be equated
with the Athenians of Euripides' audience.
I and many others have argued that the play is much more subtle than
that,33 but there have been many productions of this play that with httle to
no adaptation are nonetheless anti-war in their sentiment. The Royal
Shakespeare Company's 2005 production of Euripides' Hecuba, which likewise dramatizes the grief of the Trojan women after the sack ofTroy, had
merely to put some American-style camouflage tents in the background to
suggest the Iraq War. It did not have to go much further than that.34 Loraux
points out that what Sartre did by contrast was to excise the long songs of
lament that comprise the bulk of the play, and replace them with speeches
and dialogue dominated by exphcitly political, anti-colonialist rhetoric. In so
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244
doing Sartre made the play much less moving, and therefore much less effective as an anti-war statement.This was certainly not his intention. But hy tying
the play too closely to contemporary events, Loraux notes, Sartre limited its
universality, and its emotional force, a force that transcends politics.
The Royal Shakespeare Company's 2005 production of the Hecuba was
hy no means an isolated event. Indeed, in that summer there were major productions in New York City and Washington, D.C., of Euripides's Trojan
Women and Aeschylus's Persians. ^5 Each of these productions sought to connect with its audience hy adding an anti-Iraq War twist. Clearly, audiences of
the twenty-first century are ahle to view Greek tragedy as relevant to current events. Arguahly it is these plays' status as "classics" that makes them seem
hoth universal in their emotional impact and educational in their ultimate
effect. The producers and directors of contemporary productions of these
tragedies do not seem to question the original anti-war intent of these
tragedies, despite the fact that they are hy no means always understood this
way by scholars.^^ Many classicists do in fact argue that Athenian tragedy was
necessarily didactic and civic in nature (while not denying the creativity and
autonomy of the playwrights), hut there is Httle agreement as to what individual tragedians and particular plays sought to teach the Athenian citizens
in the audience.^^ It seems clear that each play likely evoked a multiplicity
of responses, and that no one message would have heen ohvious. This seems
to he the crucial difference hetween modern productions that seek to protest
a specific war (whetherVietnam or Iraq) and the ancient dramas, which must
have resonated with contemporary events hut were not explicitly tied to these
events.
There is another contemporary genre that is perhaps hetter suited to the
didactic goals of the more obviously politically motivated revivals of Greek
tragedy: the newspaper editorial. On the eve of the 2003 American invasion
of Iraq, Nicholas Kristof published in the NewYork Times "Cassandra Speaks,"
in which the Americans' strategic use of Turkey as a launch point leads him to
argue that Troy and the Trojan War should he a warning to the United States:
The instruments of war have changed mightily in 3,200 years, but people
have not; that is why Homer's "Iliad," even when it may not be historically true, exudes a profound moral truth as the greatest war story ever told.
So on the eve of a new war, the remarkably preserved citadel of Troy is an
intriguing spot to seek lessons.^^
By culling a variety of mythological sourcesfiromantiquity, Kristof manages
to connect episodes in the Trojan War to such central and controversial issues
as the use/misuse of intelligence, the importance of allies, and the so-called
"Bush doctrine."
Casey Due 245

Also in the NewYork Times, Edward Rothstein's "To Homer, Iraq Would
Be More of Same" (June 4, 2004), explores the Iliad and the actions of its
central hero Achilles as a lesson in "being human" that has important messages for those engaged in the current conflict. Rothstein's piece takes as its
occasion both the sixtieth anniversary of the D-Day invasion of Normandy
and the premier of Wolfgang Petersen's Troy. Much as Loraux does with
Sartre's take on the Trojan Women, Rothstein criticizes Petersen for the superimposing of the Iraq War on the Homeric Troy, but then goes on to suggest
the ways in which we can legitimately learn from the Iliad. Both Kristof's
and Rothstein's editorials are remarkable in the way in which they seek to
place the Iraq war into a continuum that stretches far back into antiquity and
suggest ways in which we could use the lessons ofTroy to do things differently.
World War II
In 1939, Simone Weil embarked upon a similar exercise. Weil, who graduated first in her class at the Ecole Normale Superieure in philosophy, was a
pacifist with an ascetic drive that impelled her to share in the sufferings of
others. Just after France declared war on Germany (after the invasion of
Poland) and just before the occupation of France by the Nazis, Weil composed and published "The IUad, or the Poem of Force," a philosophical essay
that never explicitly refers to contemporary events, but which no less clearly than the editorials cited above seeks to understand current conflict in light
of the Trojan War. This was one of many essays inspired by the Iliad that Weil
composed between 1939 and her death in 1943 at the age of thirty-four.^^
The essay begins straightforwardly with Weil's bold thesis about the true
subject of the Iliad:
The true hero, the true subject matter, the center of the Iliad is force. Force
employed by man, force that enslaves man, force before which man's flesh
shrinks away. In this work, at all times, the human spirit is shown as modified by its relations with force, as swept away, bUnded, by the very force it
imagined it could handle, as deformed by the weight of the force it submits
to. For those dreamers who considered that force, thanks to progress, would
soon be a thing of the past, the IUad could appear as an historical document;
for others, whose powers of recognition are more acute and who perceive
force, today as yesterday, at the very center of human history, the Iliad is the
purest and loveliest of mirrors. (Benfey 2005, 3)
Weil builds her essay around the argument that the Iliad is not, at its heart,
about the Trojan War or the anger of Achilles, but rather about a much more
abstract concept: force. Equally important for Weil is her assertion that the
force that is at the center of the Iliad is the same force driving all of human
history, including the events of the current day. We can see from these intro-
246

ductory statements therefore that Weil's essay is as much ahout contemporary
events as it is ahout the Hiad.'^^
We can summarize Weil's principal arguments about force hriefly as follows. First and foremost, it dehumanizes. Force turns humans into ohjects. A
person w h o has heen made a thing through force is denied agency, and the
freedom to express his/her will, thoughts, and emotions. According to Weil,
"memory itself harely lingers o n " (Benfey 2005, 9). At several points in the
essay Weil uses the captive concuhine of Achilles, Briseis, to illustrate her
points. As an example of how force denies agency to the individual, Weil cites
the wailing of the captive women mentioned earlier in this paper, w h o
respond to Briseis's lament for Patroklos in Iliad X I X with antiphonal cries:
And what does it take to make the slave weep? The misfortune of his master, his oppressor, despoiler, pillager, of the man who laid waste his town and
killed his dear ones under his very eyes. This man suffers or dies; then the
slave's tears come. And really why not? This is for him the only occasion on
which tears are permitted, are, indeed, required. A slave will always cry
whenever he can do so with impunityhis situation keeps tears on tap for
him. (Benfey 2005, 9)
Weil at this point goes on to examine why slaves feel love for their masters,
arguing that in part hecause all other outlets for emotion are barred, and in
part hecause the master can offer the hope of becoming a person again
(instead of an object), a slave like Briseis is able to forget the horrors inflicted upon her: "To lose more than the slave does is impossihle, for he loses his
whole inner life. A fragment of it he may get back if he sees the possihility
of changing his fate, but this is his only hope" (10).
Secondly, force operates in a cyclical fashion, affecting hoth winner and
loser equally:
Force is as pitiless to the man who possesses it, or thinks he does, as to its
victims; the second it crushes, the first it intoxicates. The truth is, nobody
really possesses it. The human race is not divided up, in the Iliad, into conquered persons, slaves, suppliants, on the one hand, and conquerors and
chiefs on the other. In this poem there is not a single man who does not at
one time or another have to bow his neck to force. (Benfey 2005, t l )
Weil cites the hero of the IUad himself, Achilles, as an example of a man suhjected to force when Briseis is taken from him by Agamemnon. But the halance of power soon shifts, and Agamemnon fmds himself begging Achilles for
forgiveness. The intoxicating nature of force is such that those who have it
don't realize they will soon lose it and be subject to force in turn:
These men, wielding power, have no suspicion of the fact that the consequences of their deeds will at length come home to themthey too will
how the neck in their turn. . . . For they do not see that the force in their
Casey M 247
possession is only a limited quantity; nor do they see their relations with
other human beings as a kind of balance between unequal amounts of
force. (Benfey 2005,14-15)
Here Weil is speaking primarily in reference to those who fight the battles,
but the imphcation of her arguments is that Briseis, too, will have her day.
"Moments of grace," as "Weil calls them, are scattered throughout the
poem, in which the pure love of sons for parents, parents for children, and
brothers for one another, the friendship of comrades, and even the friendship
of enemies are "celestial moments in which man possesses his soul" (Benfey
2005,29-30).These moments, striking because they are few and far between,
serve to impress upon us, by their very contrast, what force does to people it
acts upon in war, namely that it turns a person into "stone."^! As I have indicated already, what I find striking about "Weil's reading is her insight into the
equity of compassion with which Greeks and Trojans are portrayed, and her
attempt to find the reasons for this. The theme of force and the way it affects,
according to "Weil, everyone in war equally puts the victors and the vanquished over the course of time on a level plain, or at least in an alternating
cycle. In this reading, the distinction won in war is not glorified by the Iliad,
because it is in fact the purpose of the Iliad to reveal that that distinction is
short lived at best, and won at the expense of the humanity of the loser.
It is not my purpose here to evaluate the merits and weaknesses ofWeil's
unique interpretation of the Iliad, an interpretation which has been long
admired even if not universally agreed with. Many Classicists have praised it
as a beautiful intellectual and spiritual exercise.'^2 i would not go so far as to
assert that "Weil's reading can be "correct," by which I mean only that it cannot have been Homer's intention (however Homer is conceived) to compose
the Iliad in order to teach us about the concept of force. That the Iliad does
teach, however, seems to me irrefutable. So far we have explored many uses
of the poem as a source of wisdom in troubled times, from the Peloponnesian
War in the fifth century BCE to conflict in Iraq in the twenty-first century
CE. Weil reflects on what she perceives to be the continued use of force
through the centuries, culminating in the force that was dominating the
Europe of 1939, namely the Nazi party. Though she never names it directly,
we can only assume from her opening statement that the warning implicit in
her arguments about the cychcal nature of force is aimed squarely at Hitler.43
In the final section of my essay I propose to look at one last example of finding lessons in the Trojan War that perhaps offers the same warning, this time
aimed squarely at us.
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III Force and the Movie Troy
Does the 2004 blockbuster Troy try to teach us anything about war? I'm
not certain that it is actually attempting to do so, but there are many aspects
of the film that connect directly with the themes of the Iliad that I have discussed and with Weil's arguments about the theme of force in the Iliad.
Moreover, as New York Times columnist Edward Rothstein points out, in
interviews with the press the director of Troy, Wolfgang Petersen, has firequently made explicit comparisons between the Trojan War and the war now
being waged in Iraq. I will quote Rothstein's synthesis of some of Petersen's
most telling statements here:
Last month, before the film's premiere in BerHn, its German director,
"Wolfgang Petersen, said: "It's as if nothing has changed in 3,000 years." In a
German interview, he said of the Homeric epic, "People are still using deceit
to engage in wars of vengeance." And he argued: "Just as King Agamemnon
waged what was essentially a war of conquest on the ruse of trying to rescue the beautiful Helenfi-omthe hands of theTrojans, President George "W.
Bush concealed his true motives for the invasion of Iraq.'"*''
I now propose to explore how Petersen's (and screenwriter David Benioff's)
recreation of the characters of Agamemnon and Briseis, heavily based on the
Homeric Agamemnon and Briseis but with significant changes to their story,
exemphfies both the cyclical and dehumanizing nature of force described by
Weil.45 As we will see, Petersen and his team, in order to tell the "true story"
of the Trojan War, have made the tale one of force and its consequences.
The True History of the Trojan War
In addition to having a political subtext that is, as we have seen, common

to so many modern revivals of the Trojan War theme, I suggest that Troy is in
many respects emblematic of a modern obsession with the historicity of the
Trojan War myth, an obsession that goes hand in hand with the search for lessons that has been the subject of this essay. The obsession with proving the
historicity of the Trojan War began with Heinrich Schliemann, the self-educated businessman turned archaeologist who in the 1880s was the first to
excavate the site that we now call Troy.^^ It is well known among scholars,
even if not often admitted, that we have very Uttle evidence that would lead
us to think that the Trojan War was an historical event or that Troy was a real
place, other than the fact that the later Greeks thought that it really happened
and because we admire the Iliad so much as a work of Hterature that we want
it to be history as well.'*'? At the site we call Troy, there is no inscription or
archaeological evidence of any kind labeling it as Troy, and the evidence for
a destruction by siege is sketchy at best. Nevertheless, we persist in believing
it was all truewell, but not all of it, right? We think going to war over
Casey M
Helen is not very believable, and of course we can't beHeve in the pagan gods
and their motivations for starting the warthe judgment of Paris, and all that.
To be fair, the makers of Troy have not, to my knowledge, claimed outright that their film narrates history, ;?er 5e. In the production notes pubhshed
on the official website for the movie, the director, Wolfgang Petersen, speaks
of the authenticity of characters and emotions, not historical fact.'*^ In discussing the differences between Troy and the Iliad, he corrmients:
I don't think any writer in the last 3000 years has more graphically and
accurately described the horrors of war than Homer . . . But in his epic
works, the human drama was overshadowed by the brutality. A contemporary audience needs to come into the story through the lives and the passions
of the real people caught up in this terrifying experience, (my emphasis)
Producer Diana Rathburn makes similar assertions about the goals of the
movie in these same production notes:
It is very hard sometimes to relate to classic literature as it feels distant, of a
different time, a different world, but there's something about this story that's
so easy to connect with, it's about emotionswhether they were experienced thousands of years ago, or today.
Petersen and Rathburn make a claim for a reality within the history and legend ofTroy that consists of real people and real emotions. Neither claims to
know whether the Trojan War actually took place (this topic is discussed in
the production notes without giving a definitive answer to the questions
raised), but they nevertheless assert that there is a "reality" that can be found
in the legend.
In keeping with this quest for the reahty behind the legend, Troy leaves
out the gods from the action, and instead tries to show the viewer an historically plausible version of the Trojan War. Petersen notes on the film's website:
One respect in which we diverged from Homer's telling is that our story
does not include the presence of the gods. The gods in the Iliad are directly involved in the storythey fight, they help out, they manipulate. Not in
our story. The religion is there, the belief is there, but the gods are only
mentionedthey are not made a part of it. It wouldn't have been in line with
the level of realism we wanted to achieve in the film, (my emphasis)
Even Achilles's divine lineage is suggested as being rumor which may or may
not be true. It is this assertion of realism that I wish to explore further now.
The way the film is constructed is in fact a fine example of finding the truth
behind the legend. Helen is the pretense for going to war, but what Troy is
really about is Agamemnon's desire to amass an empire that includes Troy and
its trade routes through the Dardanelles. The character, motivations, and fate
of Agamemnon in particular comprise a major portion of the plot of the
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250
film. This plot exemplifies in fascinating ways some ofWeil's central ideas
about force.
Agamemnon's Empire
One of the first scenes in the movie Troy shows Agamemnon on the
point of conquering Thessaly with a massive army. (Thessaly was an historical region of Greece, but since it is the area that AchiUes was believed to have
been from in Greek myth, I feel compelled to point out this odd choice on
the part of the filmmakers.) The opposing king says, "You can't have the
whole world, Agamemnon." This scene sets up the driving theme of the
movie, namely Agamemnon's ambition to do just that. Agamemnon is already
a sinister and unlikable (not to mention unattractive) figure, and this portrayal
only intensifies as the film continues.
We are shown next the festivities that result when Sparta (the kingdom
of Agamemnon's brother Menelaos, and of course Helen) concludes a peace
treaty with Troy. But once Helen has been stolen Agamemnon has his chance
to conquer this city too. Agamemnon says to Menelaos, consoling him after
the departure of Helen, "Peace is for the women and the weak. .. . Empires
are forged by war." Later, alone with his personal counselor, he says "I always
thought my brother's wife was a foolish woman, but she's proved to be very
useful." By now it is clear to the viewer that Agamemnon, Darth-Vaderesque in his evil intensity, does indeed want to conquer the whole world, and
that his greed is destined to bring him to a bad end.
Agamemnon's opportunity is nearly lost when the less than war-like
Paris offers to settle the whole matter with a one-on-one duel after the
Greeks have landed at Troy and gained the upper hand over the Trojans in
the first day of battle. Whoever wins gets Helen, and everyone else can go
home. Enraged at the prospect, this time Agamemnon states his true motivations outright: "I didn't come here for your pretty wife, I came here for Troy."
This proposed duel is inspired by the duel between Paris and Menelaos that
takes place in Iliad 3, though much changed.^^ In her essay, Simone Weil
points out that in the Iliad too the Greeks cease to be content with the return
of Helen, once all ofTroy seems within their grasp.
At the end of the first day of combat described in the Uiad, the victorious Greeks were in a position to obtain the object of all their efforts, i.e.,
Helen and all of her riches. . . . In any case, that evening the Greeks are no
longer interested in her or her possessions:
"For the present, let us not accept the riches of Paris;
Nor Helen; everybody sees, even the most ignorant.
That Troy stands on the verge of ruin."
He spoke, and all the Achaeans acclaimed him.
Casey Due 251

What they want, in fact, is everything, (Benfey 2005, 16)
Helen is by no means the only woman used as a prize in this way. Just as
the phght of Achilles's captive concubine Briseis was of great interest to Weil
as she sought to illustrate the operation of force on the individual, so too in
the movie Troy does Briseis become in many ways emblematic of the victims
of war. In general, the film focuses a great deal of attention on the women
of Troy, especially Briseis and Andromache, the consummate lamenting
women of the Iliad. As I have pointed out elsewhere in connection with the
Iliad, Briseis is a woman of royal birth who has been widowed by Achilles
and made his captive concubine, and yet in her lament of Iliad X I X she constructs him as an erotic figure and indeed her bridegroom-to-be (Due 2002,
67-81), The Iliad's plot is initiated by the taking of Briseis from Achilles by
Agamemnon, Troy makes the romance of Achilles and Briseis and her seizure
by Agamemnon central elements of the plot, Andromache's story parallels
that of Briseis, but in the film her story proceeds in the reverse direction. She
is the beloved royal bride of the Trojan champion Hektor for the moment,
but we are all too aware that she is destined to share the captive fate of
Briseis,The IUad,Weil, and the filmmakers are thus united in their concern
for these characters,
I would hke to suggest that Briseis's killing of Agamemnon in the movie,
an invention on the part of the filmmakers that occurs nowhere in Greek literature, is a perfect illustration ofWeil's ideas about how force comes full circle. Before exploring this thought further, I must point out that the character of Briseis in the movie is actually a conflation of two women in the Iliad
and (very hkely) one woman of the larger epic tradition as well: she is Briseis
and Chryseis and Cassandra all in one, Chryseis in the Iliad is the daughter
of a priest of Apollo, a captive woman assigned as a prize to Agamemnon,
The Iliad begins with the refusal of Agamemnon to accept a ransom for her
from her father. For a modern audience at least Agamemnon comes off very
cruel and selfish in his refusal: "I will not free her. She shall grow old in my
house at Argos far fi-om her own home, busying herself with her loom and
visiting my bed" (1,29-31), W h e n Apollo sends a plague indicating his displeasure, it is Achilles w h o insists that Agamemnon give Chryseis back, thereby provoking Agamemnon into taking Achilles's prize, Briseis, The Trojan
Cassandra on the other hand is not featured in our Iliad, but in other works
of archaic Greek hterature and art she plays an important role in the events
surrounding the fall ofTroy as a priestess of Apollo,50 She is eventually
assigned to be the prize of Agamemnon, and he brings her home to
Mycenae, where they are both killed by Agamemnon's wife, Clytemnestra,5i
The Briseis of Troy is, like Cassandra, a priestess of Apollo; she is captured by Achilles's men in the temple of Apollo when they first storm the
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shore. Early in the film Agamemnon takes Briseis from Achilles as a way of
pulling rank on him, then treats her very cruelly, giving her to the men to
do with as they wish. This act, which perhaps more than any other is
emblematic of Agamemnon's merciless, rapacious, and above all powerobsessed character, comes to completion for the viewer at the very end of
the film, when Agamemnon finds Briseis alone, praying in the sanctuary of
Apollo as Troy is being sacked. Grabbing her by the hair, he hisses: "You'll
be my slave in Mycenae, A Trojan priestess scrubbing my fioors. And at
night,,,," Briseis stabs Agamemnon in the neck at this moment and he falls
dead, Agamemnon's words in this scene about scrubbing fioors in Mycenae
and his unfinished threat of what will happen at night are no doubt meant
to be the equivalent of what Agamemnon says about his prize woman
Chryseis in Iliad I,
Petersen and screenwriter David BeniofF have taken the seemingly
minor character of Briseis in the Iliad and constructed a whole new story line
for her, in order to provide a satisfying culmination of their characterization
of Agamemnon,52 J^^^^ perhaps unintentionally they have also made the
movie perfectly illustrate one of Simone Weil's central arguments about the
Iliad, that it is about force, about how war and its reliance on force turn
people into objects, and about how no one escapes force's effects. Those
who seem to have force under their command soon lose it. The slave and
concubine Briseis becomes symbohc of this principle in Wolfgang
Petersen's interpretation,
Agamemnon is Hitler; Agamemnon is George W, Bush,Two very different works have dealt with the compassion that the Iliad has for the Trojans
by making the work a moral lesson, a lesson whose didactic reach extends
through millennia, Weil never removes the Iliad from the realm of literature
in her examination. For her, it was a poem that had a great deal of insight
into the human condition. But if I may go back to the essay's opening words,
we can see that Weil is grappling with the Iliad from an historical perspective
as well:
For those dreamers who considered that force, thanks to progress, would
soon be a thing of the past, the Iliad could appear as an historical document;
for others, whose powers of recognition are more acute and who perceive
force, today as yesterday, at the very center of human history, the Iliad is the
purest and loveliest of mirrors, (Benfey 2005, 3)
The creators of Troy seem just as eager to show the Trojan War as history.
Their artistic and plot choices are driven by this goal, and though the emphasis in their own production notes is on the universal truth of human emotion in war, a comment like, "It's as if nothing has changed in 3,000 years,"
suggests that there is more to Petersen's assertions of realism. Unlike
Casey Due 253
Athenians of the fifth century BCE, we in the twenty-first century beheve

that history, not myth, teaches. For Petersen, Troy had to be at the very least
believable and realistic or it could not convey the unstated moral message
behind the film. In my conclusion, I would like to explore this thought a httle further.
IV Conclusion; In Search of the Trojan War
Why does the historicity or ahistoricity of the Trojan War matter to us?
Note the attitude of Lord Byron, who addressed the question several times
in his published and unpublished work.^^ This poet and passionate philhellene who fought in the Greek war for independence, carved his name into
the temple of Poseidon at Cape Sounion, and swam across the Hellespont in
imitation of Leander, emphasizes the continuity ofTroy through the centuries:
High barrows without marble or a name,
A vast untiUed and mountain-skirted plain.
And Ida in the distance, still the same.
And old Scamander (if tis he) remain:
The situation seems stillformedfor fame
A hundred thousand men mightfightagain
With ease; but where I sought for Ilion's walls.
The quiet sheep feeds, and the tortoise crawls. (Don Juan Canto IV, 77)
We may compare: "I've stood upon Achilles' tomb, /And heard Troy doubted; time will doubt of Rome" (Don Juan Canto IV, 101). Byron's own diary
gives us a great deal of insight into these verses: "We do care about 'the
authenticity of the tale ofTroy'
I still venerated the grand original as the
truth o history (in the material Jacfi) and o( place. Otherwise it would have
given me no delight" [written in his diary in 1821].
Byron was writing in a world in which the emerging Homeric Question
was quickly becoming the fierce intellectual debate that it remains today. This
"question" (which is, in reality, many questions) was at first concerned with
authorship. Did the Iliad and Odyssey have the same author? If so, when did
he live? If not, how did the poems come to be in the form that we now have
them? Fierce opposition arose between scholars who beheved in Homer, a
single genius and creator of the two foundational epics ofWestern civihzation, and those who saw the Homeric texts as the products of potentially
many poets composing over many generations. But another branch of the
question was concerned with the relationship between myth, epic, and history. Did the Trojan War take place? If so, how closely does the Iliad reflect
what actually happened? In 1769, Robert Wood published his Essay on the
254
Original Genius of Homer, in which he made deductions about changes in the

topography of the area around the Hellespont since ancient times. Another
key thinker early in the debate was Jean Baptiste Lechevalier, who proposed
that the site ofTroy was at the Turkish mound known as Burnabashi. He
asserted the historicity of the Trojan War, thereby sparking fierce debate
throughout Europe. Those interested in the debate scrutinized the Iliad's
poetic accounts of the topography ofTroy, including such traditional epithets
as "well-walled," "steep," and "windy" as they searched for the historical Troy.
Nearly a hundred years after the birth of Byron, a self-made wealthy
businessman, Heinrich Schliemann, astonished the world when he uncovered the remains of a Bronze Age citadel, presumed to be Troy, in a mound
known as Hisarhk in northwestern Turkey. Soon after, he excavated the
wealthy Bronze Age citadel of Mycenae in mainland Greece, where
Agamemnon was said to have ruled. Schliemann had famously set out from
the beginning to find the Troy of the Homeric poems, claiming that he had
been determined to prove Homer's veracity since he was a young boy. He
quite literally bulldozed his way towards that goal, destroying most of what
would turn out to be Bronze Age Troy. Later, when he uncovered a corpse
covered in gold and wearing a gold mask in a Mycenaean tomb, he sent a
telegram to the king of Greece, proclaiming that he had looked upon the
face of Agamemnon.
The movie Troy, as have a spate of documentaries produced in the last
thirty years that claim to uncover the true history behind the Iliad, seems to
me to tap into this same feeling expressed by Byron and acted upon so
aggressively by Schliemann. We seem to think that if we take out the parts
that aren't believable to us, and replace them with contemporary concerns
about trade, empire, and politics, we can prove the historicity of the legend,
and just as importantly, we can learn from it. If I seem critical of such
attempts, it is not my intention. Myth is by nature a dynamic entity, evolving
and constantly being reinterpreted over generations. It cannot be static, or it
ceases to maintain its truth value.54 The Trojan War and its historicity have
become, in part because offilmslike Troy, an essential part of our own twenty-first-century global mythology. And so I wîll end my essay on a futuristic
note, with a quotation from StarTrek:The Next Generation.At the conclusion
of an episode in which Captain Picard has found a way to communicate with
a potentially hostile alien race that expresses itself solely via its own, culturally bound system of metaphor, Riker, Picard's second in command, finds
him reading the Homeric Hymns.^^ Picard explains that the Hymns are "one
of the root metaphors of our own culture":
Riker: "For the next time we encounter theTamarians . . ."
Casey Due 255

Picard: "More familiarity with our own mythology might help us relate to
theirs."
Indeed, more familiarity with our own "mythology" concerning the facts
about Troy and the truth in the Trojan War can help us to see how the truth
of the Iliad doesn't have to depend on it being "true" as historical fact. The
Trojan War may well have taken place; perhaps a king named Agamemnon
did once rule at Mycenae. But in the twenty-first century and beyond the
lessons that we learn fi-om the Iliad transcend the facts of any one time or
place. The poem urges us to view and seek to understand the plight of our
enemy, allowing us to appreciate the essential sameness of our experience in
war, and it does this regardless of whether or not the Trojan War really happened.56
Notes
^ See Due (2006). Portions of the first section of my essay have been adapted
from this book.
2 Of course, we are only 6 six years into this century. I expect there will be more
spectacle to come.
3 On this point see also "Death, Pathos, and Objectivity" in Griffin (1980,10343).
^ Translations in this essay are my own unless otherwise indicated.
5 On the internalized lamentation of Odysseus and the identification of the
lamenting woman see Nagy 1979 (100-01). On Odysseus as one of his own victims
see also H. Foley (1978, 7).
6 See Due (2002, 5-11) and the introduction and Chapter 1 in Due (2006),
where I discuss the traditional patterns in the form and themes of Greek lament from
the examples in ancient epic to those sung at modern day Greek funerals.
^ For this simile's associations with both women's lamentation for children and
also vengeance in the context of both epic and tragedy, see Due (2005 and 2006,
Chapter 5).
8 On this point, see also Scodel (1998), who cites Iliad 11.354-55: "Let no one
hasten to return home before sleeping beside a wife of the Trojans." It should be
noted, however, that this is said in the context of paying theTrojans back for the theft
of Helen (11.356: "and getting payment for his struggles and groans in connection
with Helen").
^ See Nagler (1974, 44-63) and Monsacre (1984, 68-69). See also Seven Against
Thebes 321-32, which likewise equates the tearing of a woman's veil with the capture of a city.
^^ Helen's lament is a special case. As I argue elsewhere, Helen (the wife/stolen
concubine of Paris) evokes the captive woman in a foreign land, longing for legitimate status. This is especially true when she laments Hektor. See Due (2002, 67).
256

11 See "Lamentation and the Hero" in Nagy (1979,94-117) and Due (2002,6781), both of which assert that laments for heroes are at the heart of Greek epic in
both form and function.
12 O n the history and archaeology of Greek hero cults, see Snodgrass (1987,
159-65).Two pathfmding general works on hero cults are Brelich (1958) and Pfister,
('1909-1912). Specialized works include Pache (2004) and Gallou (2005).
13 O n this point see also Thomas Greene, "The Natural Tears of Epic" (Tylus,
and Wofford 1999). Greene argues that lamentation in epic collapses the houndaries
between the audience and the heroic past, producing "a hallowed communion
between the two." He argues that in fact the goal [telos] of most of the European
poetry known as epic is tears, and that through tears the communion between past
and present is most accessible (195).
14 O n the death of Patroklos as a preview ofAchilles's death see Whitman (1958,
199-203), Nagy (1979, 33, 72, and 292-93), Sinos (1980), Lowenstam (1981), and
Due (2002, 6-7 and 76).
1^ Translation of this passage is based loosely on that of Samuel Butler (1898).
16 O n Briseis's lament for Patroklos as a lament for Achilles see Due (2002,
chapter 4).
1^ For more on this idea see Due (2001, 44-45) with further references to the
golden amphora and scholarship ad loc.
1^ O n plant imagery in laments for heroes and the death of Euphorbus, see also
Due (2006, 66-67).
1^ See especially Nagy (1979, 174-84). Nagy shows that the root phthi- in the
Greek word aphthiton ('unwilting') is inherently connected with vegetal imagery, and
means "wilt."
20 Comparison of the dead to a tree is one of the most common and ancient
themes in the Greek lament tradition. See Alexiou (1974,198-201), Danforth (1982,
96-99), Sultan (1999, 70-71), and note 18, above. Virgil takes this traditional image
for the fallen warrior and uses it for the death of the entire city ofTroy at Aeneid
2.626-631.
21 Makedones de kai Kuprioi kharitas legousin tas sunestrammenas kai oulas mursinas,
has phamen stephanitidas. See the forthcoming publication of the 2002 Sather Lectures
by Gregory Nagy.
22 For the best account of the dialectic layers that form the Homeric system see
Parry (1971, 325-64). See also Householder and Nagy (1972, 58-70).
23 See also note 42, below.
24 O n the pathos of this and other "bridegroom" passages in the Iliad, sec Griffin
(1980,131-34).
25 This pithos is more famous for the depiction on its neck of the wooden horse.
O n the Mykonos pithos see Ervin (1963), Caskey (1976), Hurwit (1985, 173-36),
and Anderson (1997,182-91).
26 Anderson (1997).The fall ofTroy is one of the most popular subjects in Attic
vase-painting from the mid sixth century BCE to the mid fifth century BCE, with
representations increasing significantly after 490 (the year of the first Persian inva-
Casey Du6 257

sion, in which the Athenians defeated the Persians at Marathon). See, in addition to
Anderson, Ferrari (2000, 120). O n the fall ofTroy (including the death of Astyanax
and the capture of women) as a recognizable theme already in archaic art, see also
Friis Johansen (1967, 26-30 and 35-36).
27 C f J.Winkler (1985, 37) and Croally (1994, 47).
28 The geographical significance of Gallipoli and this poem's allusions to the
Trojan War have been pointed out by Michael Wood in his documentary and accompanying book, In Search of the Trojan War see Wood (1985/1998).
2^ For more on Patrick Shaw Stewart and this now well-known poem see the
historical website maintained by Balliol College, Oxford: http://web.baUiol.
ox.ac.uk/history/miscellany/shawstewart/index.asp.
30 The commonality between Greek and Trojan is also articulated by Odysseus
elsewhere within the Hecuba: "Among us are grey-haired old women and aged men
no less miserable than you, and brides bereft of excellent bridegrooms, whose bodies this Trojan dust has covered" {Hecuba 322-25).
^^ O n the experience of the non-professional chorus, young Athenian men
singing and dancing the role of captive Trojan women, see Due (2006, 23-25).
32 See Due (2006, chapter 5) for an overview of possible interpretations of this
play.
33 See especially CroaUy (1994, 253).
34 A few other aspects of the performance, including a reference to a "coalition
force," might be justifiably interpreted as direct allusions to the American invasion of
Iraq. See e.g., the review of Peter Marks in the Washington Post: "'Hecuba':
Redgrave's Blazingly Controlled Fire" (May 27, 2005).
35 O n productions of ancient tragedy in the United States see Thomas Jenkins's
forthcoming work, American Classics: Transformations of Antiquity in Postwar America.
For more on the reception of Greek tragedy from the Renaissance to the present (a
burgeoning academic field), see most recently Hall and Macintosh (2005), Hall,
Macintosh, Michelakis, and Taplin (2006), Martindale and Thomas (2006), and
Michelakis (2006).
36 See Due (2006, Chapters 2 and 5) for an overview of scholarly reactions to
these two plays.
37 O n the didactic nature of tragedy, see, e.g., GoldhiU (1986,140) and Gregory
(1991, passim).
38 "Cassandra Speaks," NewYork Times, 18 March, 2003.
39 O n the influence of the Iliad on Weil's writings, see Benfey 2005, x-xvi.Weil
died of heart failure brought on by a combination of tuberculosis and self-starvation.
For more on Weil's life and work see retrement 1976, Panichas (1985), and Nevin
(1991).
'^^ For similar arguments see Ferber (1981, 66), Summers (1981, 87), and Nevers
(1991 x; cited in Holoka 2003, 13, note 15).
^^ See WeU: "those who use it and those who endure it are turned to stone."
(Benfey 2005, 26).
^^2 For the cover of a recent critical edition of the essay (Holoka 2003), Jasper
Griffin has written: " T h e Iliad is arguably the most influential work in the whole of
258

Western literature. N o discussion of it is more precious than the passionate, profound, and penetrating essay of Simone Weil, who uses the Greek epic to illuminate
the human condition and the tragic theme of destruction and war." Cf. Macleod
(1982,1):"I know of no better brief account of the Iliad than this." Macleod's commentary on Iliad 24 argues for an interpretation of the poem that is similar to Weil's:
" T h e Iliad is concerned with battle and with men whose life is devoted to winning
glory in battle; and it represents with wonder their strength and courage. But its
deepest purpose is not to glorify them, and still less to glorify war itself. What war
represents for Homer is humanity under duress and in the face of death" (Macleod
1982, 8). I disagree with Weil's and Macleod's assertion that the Iliad does not glorify death in battle. See above, p. 238-39.
'^^ I don't mean to imply that it is as simple as that, or that the point of Weil's
essay is patriotic or nationalistic. I mean only that as the ascendant power in Europe,
Hitler was on the up side of a cycle that would inevitably turn downwards.
44 "To Homer, Iraq Would Be More of Same," NewYork Times, 5 June, 2004.
45 The screenplay for Troy was written by David Benioff, but it went through
many rounds of revision before and during filming. O n this point I am grateful for
R o b i n Mitchell-Boyask's presentation on the film's script(s) at the 2005 American
Philological Association annual meeting.
46 For more on the life and accomplishments of Schliemann, seeTraiU (1995).
47 See further below. A vividly narrated documentary and accompanying book.
In Search of the Trojan War, by Michael Wood (1985/1998), is a good introduction to
the many controversies surrounding the possible historicity of the Trojan War and the
possible locations of the historical Troy. See also the more scholarly work of Allen
1999. Latacz 2004 is a forcefully argued book that takes the opposite view of what
I have asserted here, namely that "Homer's backdrop is historical" and "There probably was a war over Troy" (the quoted phrases are from the table of contents of that
work, and are in fact the conclusions reached by the author after careful consideration of archeological and other evidence). I would have to write a book of my own
in order to fully explain why my view is so much more skeptical than that of Latacz.
Let me just say here that it is not that I can't believe that Troy was a real place, and
that we have found it, and that there was a war there. I am far more interested, however, in the way that the myth of Troy has a life of its own that is independent of any
historical event. Also, because I am a scholar w h o believes that the oral tradition in
which the Iliad was composed had a very long history, one that extended at least as
far back as the early Bronze Age if not earlier, I have difficulty accepting that a war
as late as 1200 BCE had such a definitive impact on tbe creation of our iZmJ. These
are highly controversial matters, however, that unfortunately cannot be fuUy engaged
here.
48 For the following quotes from the production notes of Troy, see the film's
official website at http://troymovie.warnerbros.com/.
49 Here as elsewhere in the film a crucial change is the removal of the gods from
the action. An even more radical departure in this particular case, however, is the
death in the film of Menelaos at the hands of Hektora death that has serious consequences for many other works of Greek literature!
Casey Due 259

50 For more on Cassandra's role in the sack ofTroy see D u e (2006, 143-45),
5^ This occurs most famously in Aeschylus' Agamemnon, but Agamemnon tells
the story in the underworld in Odyssey 11 and the deaths of Cassandra and
Agamemnon are also depicted o n several archaic Greek vases,
52 It is interesting to note that other modern adaptations of the Iliad have altered
Agamemnon's end in a similarly radical fashion, for the same element of satisfaction.
In the Helen of Troy miniseries that first aired on the U S A network in 2003,
Clytemnestra comes to Troy all the way from Mycenae and kills him in the bath as
he basks in his victory over the Trojans,
53 I am indebted to Michael Wood's (1985/1998) In Search of the Trojan War for
these quotations from Byron and for the title of this section,
54 For myth as a conveyor of a given society's truth values see Nagy (1992 and
1996,113-45),
55 In "Darmok," StarTrek.The Next Generation, episode 102,
5^ A collection of essays entitled Troy: From Homer's Iliad to Hollywood Epic v^'as
published in late 2006 (Oxford University Press, with a copyright date of 2007), after
this essay had been prepared for publication. Some of the themes discussed here are
also addressed in that volume, including the relationship between poetry and history and the use of the Trojan War as a lens through which to understand c o n t e m p o rary conflict, and I urge the reader to consult that volume for more on these topics.
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229

Learning Lessons from

ow is it that we still today find so much

Casey Dui is associate professor

College Literature 34.2 [Spring 2007]

Iliad to some of the underlying assumptions of the 2004 blockbuster film

College Literature 34.2 [Spring 2007]

Casey Due 233

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Achilles too, of course, is lamented directly throughout the poem. His

College Literature 34.2 [Spring 2007)

Casey Due 237

Briseis's lament for Patroklos mourns in advance her would-be husband

College Literature 34.2 [Spring 2007]

Casey Ou6 239

College Literature 34.2 [Spring 2007]

A modern poem that resonates with the foregoing discussion of Achilles

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Fair broke the day this morning

College Literature 34.2 [Spring 2007]

College Literature 34.2 [Spring 2007]

Casey Due 245

College Literature 34.2 [Spring 2007]

College Literature 34.2 [Spring 2007]

In addition to having a political subtext that is, as we have seen, common

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College Literature 34,2 [Spring 2007]

Casey Due 253

Athenians of the fifth century BCE, we in the twenty-first century beheve

College Literature 34.2 [Spring 2007]

Original Genius of Homer, in which he made deductions about changes in the

Casey Due 255

College Literature 34.2 [Spring 2007]

Casey Du6 257

College Literature 34.2 [Spring 2007]

Casey Due 259

College Literature 34,2 [Spring 2007]

C, 2001, "Achilles' Golden Amphora in Aeschines' Against Timarchus and the

Casey Due 261

College Literature 34.2 [Spring 2007]

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