CLA 10 Lecture Notes - Lecture 12: Torys, Thyestes, Atreus
Document Summary
Many heroes, back stories, repercussions: greeks: menelaus, agamemmnon, achilles, patroclus, odysseus, ajax (lesser and greater), philoctetes, diomedes, nestor, waves: helen, clytemnestra, penelope, tecmess, deidamia, first trojan war, heracles and telamon. Euripides, trojan perspective on the end of war. Herodotus, writing at the same time thinks about mistakes that could have been. Sophocles, focuses on middle of war, greeks fighting each other averted during the long battle. Greeks and romans offered different accounts of why the war started: people, gods romance, commerce. Athena, aphrodite, hera all offered paris gifts: athena offered an army/aphrodite the most beautiful woman/hera offers power, helen was already married to someone. Prophecy that son of thetis would be greater than father, she is married to mortal. Leads to birth of achilles (greatest fighter of war) Only takes up about 50 days in the last year of the war. Achille"s anger and its resolution provides the poem with its narrative shape.
