Trojan War: Varying Interpretations Reflecting

Trojan War: Varying Interpretations Reflecting Changes in Western Culture and Values War is often in the news these days, the subject of great political and philosophical debate as well as the source of fairly obvious and more subtle practical effects for many of the individuals that experience war. Western civilization has been, for better or worse, largely built on war, and even the literature and art of successive generations of Western culture have been largely shaped by or even dependent on war.

One war in particular, the largely mythical Trojan War, was instrumental in shaping the ancient world and its literature, creating the trajectory along which literature and civilization would continue to develop. The stories that emerged form the Trojan War have, in fact, been revisited many times, and the varying interpretations and depictions of this war and some of its characters yields certain clues as to the cultures and civilizations that produced them.

The Iliad The first known written version of the Trojan War, and indeed one of the first literary works of Western civilization, was the tale of The Iliad attributed to Homer, who may or may not have existed around the eight-century B.C.E. Working from a poem of long-standing oral tradition, The Iliad recounts many of the key events that occurred at the end of the war, and through background explanations provides the full stories of some of the war's key characters.

It is not these characters themselves that are the most interesting actors in the work, however. Almost every event that occurs in the story as told in The Iliad comes as the result of intervention by the gods, either sought by various mortal characters or serving the direct purposes of the gods themselves.

In Book Ten, hardly a stanza passes that does not make some reference to Zeus or another of the Greek pantheon, with both the Trojans and the Greek army commanders calling on the gods to "be with me" and other similar exhortations. This makes it clear that this is a culture that largely depends on and reveres the gods, holding their will and their actions as clearly more important and more impactful than mortal intentions and actions (which are entirely ineffective if they are against the gods' wills).

Though the mortal heroes such as Achilles and Hektor are also of great importance in this version of the tale, the gods are clearly shown to be the real power horses driving the war and creating victory and defeat for the heroes and their armies. The Trojan Women Approximately half-a-millennia after Homer (or whoever) wrote down the tale of the Trojan War in the epic poem The Iliad, the Athenian playwright Euripides wrote The Trojan Women.

This play was written during another series of wars the Athenians were engaged in, and is often read as a piece of social commentary on this war and on war in general. It is not the violence of the struggle itself, but the attitude of the Greek victors immediately following the final battle, that is the subject of this play and Euripides' derision.

Though the characters in the play still call on the gods repeatedly throughout the action, it is more in an attempt to call down curses upon individual mortals for their choices and actions. More often, these characters call on each other or on other non-present characters, and often use the invocation of familial relationships such as "O mother of Hector" and "your daughter Polyxena is dead." This approach contrasts sharply to the constant calling out to the gods and the direct actions of the gods as presented in The Iliad.

Especially when read as a piece of social and political commentary, as it was very likely intended when written and first performed, it becomes clear that at this point in their history the ancient Athenians placed greater emphasis and value on the actions of people rather than the actions of the god. Civic responsibility and humanitarian action are valued above brute militarism and religious devotion, showing a clear contrast from the values that are implied in even the most cursory reading of The Iliad.

Though both of these works come from ancient Greece, there was obviously a great deal of change in the cultural values and perceptions of the Greeks during the intervening centuries. Troy Several more centuries -- millennia, in fact -- later, the Trojan War was once again revisited by performance artists. This time, it is filmmaker Wolfgang Petersen that develops his stylistic interpretation of the events of the war, again clearly demonstrating the values of the culture of which Troy is a part.

There is little focus on the gods, but there is a definite focus on militarism and other extreme versions of traditionally masculine characteristics. The Iliad, despite its clear insistence on the supremacy of the gods' wills and actions, also quite clearly makes heroes of the mortal warriors of each army -- Hector and Achilles stand out specifically, but many others can also be named.

Troy keeps this spirit of the complete veneration of its heroes, but without the tempering influence of the gods' clear direction of the action, making utter and unequivocal heroes out of the symbols of virility and masculinity that these heroes become. The camera becomes the main substitute for the pen in Petersen's film,.