Transcript (pt. 2)
Homer’s epics tell of the late Bronze Age from around 1200 BC. It is a time full of conflicts and crises in which one of the most powerful and highly advanced civilizations perishes: the Mycenaeans. The stories of wars, heroes, and gods are passed on through the centuries by rhapsodes, Greek singers. Among them is the poet Homer and his depiction of the Greek world.
These were texts that serve to define one’s own culture, oneself, one’s location, one’s reflection. Actually, these were extraordinarily complex processes from a cultural-historical point of view. I think it’s hard for us to imagine this mythical world. What remains for the people of the time is the memory of their own past.
The Trojan horse is a myth. It is a myth that Homer tells, and he tells this myth on the basis of many hundreds of years of oral tradition. In the period around 1200 BC, the Bronze Age, Mycenaean advanced civilization collapsed. At this time, we already have an advanced civilization with palaces, with kings, with trade relations, and all the trimmings.
But it collapses. It loses its written form. It loses its structures, its trade contacts, its economic system, and it falls back to a much simpler civilizational level. After the collapse of this golden era, the time of the so-called dark centuries begins. It is not until more than 400 years later that Homer enters the world stage. He is the first to write down the stories of the Greeks. The Iliad and the Odyssey are written. His epics become the myth of the century. They continue to pose riddles to this day.
In the course of this oral tradition, elements of each person’s own reality of life naturally come into play. With everything that Homer writes, we have to consider whether it actually refers to something that has been handed down from the Bronze Age or to the reality of life in Homer’s time. Both are in there.
Homer’s work establishes a typically European material that is still present: the hero’s journey in search of fame and glory at any cost. The heroic epic in its original form. This is how we still tell our stories today. And the Trojan horse also still fascinates us. It represents cunning and treachery on the one hand, but also shows how easy it is to trick people on the other.
The horse is a fantasy object, just like the leather sack where he keeps the winds. Those are fantasy objects. It’s a wonder. Even during antiquity, the image of the Trojan horse changed through different depictions, copies, and translations, and the originals of Homer’s texts are no longer available.
Early copies are very carefully preserved so that only rarely anyone gets to see them. Perhaps the oldest copy of the Iliad is in London. It dates from the 1st century AD and is in Greek. The papyrus contains the narrative that has captivated us like no other for over 2,500 years, recorded in 24 books and over 15,000 verses.
Perhaps it was a battering ram, but with the cylinder hollowed out to hold a few Greek soldiers. The Greeks left the device at the gate and withdrew like they were going to use it tomorrow. The Trojans see it and sneak out at night and haul it in to keep the Greeks from using it. During the night the soldiers hidden inside the cylinder exit the device and overpower the Trojan gate guards and the rest is history...........
The Trojan Horse is not in the Iliad. The Iliad ends with the death of Hector.
That Troy existed is beyond dispute. Troy is a fact. Probably the “Trojan War” which resulted in the city’s destruction is a fact, but that’s not as certain as the fact that Troy was a city.
I don’t believe the Trojan Horse is mentioned in the Illiad. It is mentioned in Virgil’s Aeneid.
My favorite movie is still HELEN OF TROY from 1956.