Quintus' epic, written probably in the third century after Christ, is the only extant literary work from antiquity that gives a connected account of the events of the Trojan War. It tells what happened to Achilles and to Troy, and of the fatal enterprises of the Queen of the Amazons and the King of Ethiopia, the funeral games held in honor of Achilles, the victory of Odysseus in his contest with Aias, the death of Paris, the strategy of the wooden horse, and the capture and sack of Troy.
The ancient Greek poet Homer tells of the wealthy city of Troy and its defeat in the Trojan War. Since the classical period there has been much debate about whether this is a poetic fiction or a memory of historical reality. Earlier excavations at the hill of Hisarlik, in Turkey, brought no answer, but in 1988 new excavations, under the direction of Manfred Korfmann, led to a radical shift in understanding. In this book Joachim Latacz, one of Korfmann's closest collaborators, shows how this new research has shed light on what is now known about Troy and the Trojan War.
The ancient Greek poet Homer tells of the wealthy city of Troy and its defeat in the Trojan War. Since the classical period there has been much debate about whether this is a poetic fiction or a memory of historical reality. Earlier excavations at the hill of Hisarlik, in Turkey, brought no answer, but in 1988 new excavations, under the direction of Manfred Korfmann, led to a radical shift in understanding. In this book Joachim Latacz, one of Korfmann's closest collaborators, shows how this new research has shed light on what is now known about Troy and the Trojan War.
It was the Age of Heroes Valiant warriors like Hector, Ajax, wily Odysseus, and brave Achilles, their exploits in battle, their secret passions and hidden strengths, their friendships and rivalries -these are what legends are made of. It began with a stolen kiss and the abduction of the beautiful Helen, wife of a king. Diplomacy gave way to insults, and soon it fell to Agamemnon to restore the honor of his brother, Menelaus of Sparta, by leading an army of heroes to the gates of the enemy fortress. Combat raged for nine years, neither side able to dominate the other. Until a brave Spartan dreamed up a desperate and daring gambit that just might turn the tide of battle in Sparta's favor. Intrigue, deception, betrayal, and the love of a woman whose face launched a thousand ships brought two great armies to war. The place was Troy . . . and this is the epic story known as The Iliad. At the Publisher's request, this title is being sold without Digital Rights Management Software (DRM) applied.
No city has captured the imagination like Troy does. Since the famous poet Homer wrote the Iliad and the Odyssey in the eighth century BC, many peoples have sung, edited, studied and appropriated the stories of the city, the war between Greeks and Trojans and the famous Trojan horse. Roman emperors and many European monarchs have traced their roots to Trojan or Greek heroes. Troy was a legendary city, a city of poetry, paintings, operas and films. But the city really existed: in 1871 the German archaeologist Heinrich Schliemann found the remains of Troy during excavations in Turkey. Since the end of the nineteenth century, teams of archaeologists exposed the history of the city. In this handbook, with contributions from numerous experts from the Netherlands and Turkey, the latest insights and discoveries about both the historical and legendary Troy are presented.0Exhibition: Allard Pierson Museum, Amsterdam, The Netherlands (7.12.2012-5.5.2013).
In this perceptive retelling of The Iliad, a young Greek teacher draws on the enduring power of myth to help her students cope with the terrors of Nazi occupation. Bombs fall over a Greek village during World War II, and a teacher takes her students to a cave for shelter. There she tells them about another war—when the Greeks besieged Troy. Day after day, she recounts how the Greeks suffer from thirst, heat, and homesickness, and how the opponents meet—army against army, man against man. Helmets are cleaved, heads fly, blood flows. And everything had begun when Prince Paris of Troy fell in love with King Menelaus of Sparta's wife, the beautiful Helen, and escaped with her to his homeland. Now Helen stands atop the city walls to witness the horrors set in motion by her flight. When her current and former loves face each other in battle, she knows that, whatever happens, she will be losing. Theodor Kallifatides provides remarkable psychological insight in his version of The Iliad, downplaying the role of the gods and delving into the mindsets of its mortal heroes. Homer's epic comes to life with a renewed urgency that allows us to experience events as though firsthand, and reveals timeless truths about the senselessness of war and what it means to be human.
Helen of Troy: From Homer to Hollywood is a comprehensive literary biography of Helen of Troy, which explores the ways in which her story has been told and retold in almost every century from the ancient world to the modern day. Takes readers on an epic voyage into the literary representations of a woman who has wielded a great influence on Western cultural consciousness for more than three millennia Features a wide and diverse variety of literary sources, including epic, drama, novels, poems, film, comedy, and opera, and works by Homer, Euripides, Chaucer, Shakespeare Includes an analysis of a radio play by the prize-winning author of The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time and a Faust play by a contemporary Scottish playwright Explores themes such as narrative difficulties in portraying Helen, how legal history relates to her story, and how writers apportion blame or exculpate her Considers the aesthetic and narrative difficulties that ensue when literature translates myth
Homer's stories of Troy are part of the foundations of Western culture. What's less well known is that they also inspired Ottoman-Turkish cultural traditions. Yet even with all the historical and archaeological research into Homer and Troy, most scholars today rely heavily on Western sources, giving Ottoman work in the field short shrift. This book helps right that balance, exploring Ottoman-Turkish involvement and interest in the subject between 1870, when Heinrich Schliemann began his excavations in search of Troy on Ottoman soil, and the battle of Gallipoli in 1915, which gave the Turks their own version of the heroic epic of Troy.
