achilles starved for war

[arisha]

Movie Documentary series!

Terry Jones' Barbarians (2006)
Quite an interesting four-part series covering the groups of people (the Celts, the Goths, the Parthians, the Vandals, the Huns, the Greeks?!) that the Romans considered barbarians. It was pretty interesting and, I'll admit, was more intelligent than I thought it would be (I didn't expect that one of the guys from Monty Python would be a historian!). I liked when they paired modern-day footage with Jones' narration of historical events (like, he'd be discussing some ancient battle and meanwhile you're watching tourists wander around Rome), because, as usual, I love me some juxtaposition. So yeah, it was pretty good, although as usual I don't think I retained anything. :3

Book!!

The War That Killed Achilles, Caroline Alexander
So my review of this book can be summed up the same way almost all of my Trojan War-related reviews can be summed up: this book is FASCINATING. Now, for all I know it could be filled with information that everyone else already knows; I heart the Trojan War but it's only recently that I've started reading academic works about it, as opposed to novels. But oh man this book was amazing and if I didn't have such a huge pile of library books to get through I would totally have started rereading it already.

The subtitle of this book is The True Story of Homer's Iliad and the Trojan War, which I don't think fits it. This book isn't about finding out the historical truth behind the Iliad; rather, it's about breaking down the idea that the poem glorifies war. Alexander makes the case that the poem has a very bleak view of war, telling as it does the story of a man who "will die in a war that holds no meaning for him whatsoever." (It's kind of funny to me that she felt this was something that needed to be argued - although maybe it is, I don't know - when one of the very first impressions left on me by the Trojan War story was that war leaves everyone involved with an unhappy ending.) Along the way, she also takes down other false impressions people have about the Iliad - like, for example, the idea that Achilles was a wuss for "sulking in his tent" (she argues that it was brave of him to stand up to his inept commander - which is definitely a good point, although I'm not sure it was thaaat brave, considering the amount of authority Achilles had within the army).

I really enjoyed the parts of the book where Alexander gathered together little pieces of information that are scattered throughout the Iliad and attempted to make a clearer story out of them. I'd never seen so much attention paid to Peleus before*, but Alexander creates a really interesting character profile for him that she then uses to highlight some of the repeating themes in the poem. Seriously guys, I feel like I say this all the time, but all of the different characters and plotlines and levels and themes in this poem, the way it was touched by so many different poets and yet managed to emerged as a cohesive whole that just works, the way I can read article after article and book about book about it and always see something new, it just blows my mind. (Of course, I say this with my friends' "Sarah why did you buy a Spanish version of the Iliad it is the most boring book ever!" fresh in my mind. Geeze, guys! I never read the Catalogue of Ships either but that doesn't mean the poem as a whole is worthless!!)

* Not counting when I read Euripides' "Andromache" and basically spent his entire scene going "OH MY GOD PELEUS IS SAVING ANDROMACHE'S LIFE WHAT IS THIS. WHAT IS THIS I DON'T BELIEVE IT MY ENTIRE WORLD IS UPSIDE DOWN."

Also also, this is totally random but I was pretty excited to see that I'm not the only person who gets freaked out by Patroclus' death scene. Seriously! Everyone focuses on the scene where Zeus gets bored with watching Troy and looks away, but to me that scene is not even a quarter as scary as the death of Patroclus. For those who haven't read it, Patroclus is in the thick of battle when Apollo lands on the plain, unseen, and just starts ripping off his armour, opening him up to attacks. Says Alexander: Of the many deaths the Iliad records, no other resembles that of Patroklos. Nowhere is the pitiful vulnerability of a mortal so exploited as it is by the savage malevolence of Apollo's blow and the hounding of the wounded man as he tries to shun death among his companions. Ugh, exactly. That scene is terrifying.

I also really liked this bit, when Alexander is talking about how Achilles is willing to call a truce so that the Trojans can mourn Hector properly:

Priam and Achilles meet in the very twilight of their lives. Their extinction is certain and there will be no reward for behaving well, and yet, in the face of implacable fate and an indifferent universe, they mutually assert the highest ideals of their humanity.

So in conclusion: this book was awesome and pointed out a ton of stuff I'd never noticed before, and I definitely want to reread it and then seek out all her sources and read them too, and now if you'll excuse me I think that last quote has left me with a bit of dust in my eye. ;_;

The Iliad is SO not boring what are you talking about I need new friends obviously. >:|