Chapter Twenty, Lecture Two
Was there really a Trojan War?
Was there really a Trojan War?
• The Hellespont always a critical chokepoint between East and West
• Nine levels of historic Troy, beginning in
3000 BC.
• Troy VII (1150 BC) mostly likely Homer’s
Troy
– Crowded housing, stockpiles of food, other
evidence of seige
Was there really a Trojan War?
• Recent work shows extensive settlement
around the citadel of Troy with ditch and
palisade, effective against (Greek?)
cavalry
• Typical Anatolian fortress
• Place-names and personal names are
from the Hittite language
– Was Troy a Hittite city?
Was there really a Trojan War?
• The story of Troy is not Homer’s (800 BC),
and even specific elements of it go back to
the Late Bronze Age
• Classical Greeks didn’t doubt the
historicity of the war
– The Locrian maidens and the Temple of
Athena in Troy
• Xerxes, Alexander at Troy
Agamemnon’s Return
Agamemnon’s Return
• Nostos (Nostoi)
• Aeschylus’s Oresteia : the return of
Agamemnon
– Agamemnon
– The Libation Bearers
– The Eumenides
The Murder of Agamemnon
Murder of Agamemnon
• Agamemnon returns from Troy with
Cassandra, who is to be his mistress
• Clytemnestra, meanwhile, had been
colluding with Aegisthus, son of Thyestes
– Clytemnestra vengeful because of the
sacrifice of Iphigeneia
– Aegisthus wishes to avenge the “Banquet of
Thyestes”
Murder of Agamemnon
• Agamemnon and Cassandra murdered by
Clytemnestra
Orestes’ Revenge
Orestes’ Revenge
• Orestes, taken from Mycenae after the
regicide, is now grown and returns to
avenge his father’s death
– Ordered even to murder his own mother by
the Delphic Oracle
• Finds his sister, Electra, who will help
Orestes’ Revenge
• Orestes kills both, but is immediately
driven insane and pursued by the Furies
– They punish the spilling of familial blood
The Trial of Orestes
The Trial of Orestes
• Delphi: Apollo orders Orestes to go to
Athens to stand trial for the matricide
• In Athens, Athena establishes a new court,
the Court of the Areopagus, to try the case
• Apollo represents Orestes, the Furies
prosecute their case against him
• In the end, Orestes is acquitted; the Furies
are appeased and become protective
spirits (the Eumenides)
The Trial of Orestes
• Other sources: Orestes rules peacefully
over Mycenae
– But to marry Hermionê, he had to have her
first husband, Neoptolemus, murdered
Myth of Civic Progress
Myth of Civic Progress
• Oresteia written as Athenian democracy
was still extending itself
• Ends cycle of blood vendetta
• Establishes civil courts – the Areopagus –
with the approval of the gods
• Judicial authority of families curtailed
• Written law replaces oral law
Myth of Civic Progress
• Tames the ancient ones – the Furies (the
Eumenides in the end) – and puts the
impulse for revenge to work in the system
of civil authority
• This reworking of traditional myths shows
how the Greeks would not hesitate to
modify them for reflection on
contemporary issues
End