Homer s epic The Iliad and Euripides s great work The Women of Troy are based on the

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1 Aarushi Pendharkar Humanities Essay 3 Section C November 24, 2015 Homer s epic The Iliad and Euripides s great work The Women of Troy are based on the Trojan War, a war that was fought for ten years between the Greeks and Trojans in order to restore the beautiful Helen to her husband, Menelaus. The profound emotional sweep of the characters in both the books is both timeless and time-bound, making these classics much more than war stories. The Iliad and The Women of Troy accord dignity to both sides and communicate the universality of human nature amidst the most trying circumstances. The environments and dialogues in the Iliad: Book Six and The Women of Troy offer strong perspectives on the impacts of war, the role of women, and the power of the gods in Greek and Trojan societies. The Iliad: Book Six explores what war looks like for the men engaged in battle whereas The Women of Troy looks at the war through the eyes of the women left behind after the war. In the Iliad, war is accepted as part of the human experience. It is not vilified. War is a means by which men prove themselves worthy of their aristocratic privileges and statuses. Nestor is seen building the morale of his soldiers by encouraging them to slaughter as many men as they can at that moment and then plunder the perished corpses at their leisure. Let us kill the men now, and afterwards at your leisure all along the plain you can plunder the perished corpses. So he spoke, and stirred the spirit and strength in each man. By performing heroic deeds on the battlefield and risking death, the soldiers achieve the kind of fame and glory that makes them immortal in the eyes of their fellowmen. Achilles is the battle s brilliant and bloodthirsty warrior as Andromache points out. He killed Andromache s father and brothers and took her mother a

2 prisoner. Because of his prowess on the battlefield, Helenos refers to him as the leader of men who they say was born of a goddess. When Agamemnon sees Menalaos hesitating to kill Adrestus, he tells him forcefully, Let us not spare a single one of them- not even the child unborn and in its mother's womb; let not a man of them be left alive, but let all in Ilius perish unheeded and forgotten. The lust to achieve glory drives the warriors. Similarly, when Andromache appeals to her husband Hektor not to fight he places his duty as a warrior at the forefront. Hector makes it clear to Andromache that he has learned to be valiant and would rather die winning glory than live as a coward when he says, And to fight always among the foremost ranks of the Trojans, winning for my own self great glory, and for my father. Hektor, a family man, is forced to fight a war not of his doing in order to uphold his epic values as a warrior. The scene where Hektor bids his young wife good-bye and holds up his infant son to the gods, praying that the boy will one day be a better man and warrior than Hektor himself was, depicts raw emotions of what it means to be a man, husband, and father. In the Women of Troy, war is attacked and ironized in the monologues and dialogues of the women as vile. By vocalizing their fears and suffering, the women protest the very act of war. While the warriors seek glory in war, the women lament about the war and what will happen to them and their city. For example Menelaus talks about the joys of the Greek victory and why he came to Troy in the first place He boasts that the man who stole his wife has paid for it and so has his country, which now lies in ruins. The women have no illusions about the war or what the warriors are fighting for. Cassandra, for example, is sarcastic about the war and what it brings. She cynically states that had the Greeks not crushed Troy, Hector would not be a hero. She is not impressed by how a man is deemed a hero. This is apparent when she asks, Even in Hector s death, mother, I can see more than sorrow; for he did not die till he had made himself a hero s name; and this came

3 through the Greek invasion had they stayed at home Where would be Hector s glory? Cassandra goes on to say, Indeed to avoid war is a wise man s duty; yet if war comes, it confers as much fame on his city as a coward s brings infamy. These lines of Cassandra are priceless for their satirical content that simply proclaim that war is a disaster, there is nothing good about it, and the glory that men seek from war is nothing short of a fool s paradise. Cassandra bemoans the futility of war and its devastation when she says, Alas for the toil, the toil of a City, worn unto death. The killing of Astyanax, the little son of Hektor and Andromache, by throwing him off the battlements of Troy is the culmination of the inhumanity of the Trojan War. The Greeks do not want the son of a great man like Hektor to be allowed to live. Thus, while the men go about brutally seeking glory and fame in war in The Iliad, the women in The Women of Troy express their hatred for war and their sorrow for its barbaric atrocities. Women are depicted as ardent and emotional but trapped in passive roles in both The Iliad and The Women of Troy. However, a feeling of frustrating helplessness and ineffectuality is conspicuous in the women of The Iliad. Helen, the woman over whom the war was fought, comes across as being fickle. When she first meets Hektor she talks deprecatingly about herself. It sounds as though she is taking responsibility for the havoc wrought; however she quickly blames it all on the gods and her husband Paris when she remarks to Hektor, Yet since the gods had brought it about that these vile things must be, I wish I had been the wife of a better man than is. Helen also comes across as being largely unaffected by the war and totally selfabsorbed when she asks Hektor to sit beside her and relax. The women are associated with the homes and communities that the heroes leave behind, homes that many of them will never enjoy again. The art of weaving is associated with the women in the Iliad. Hektor tells his mother Hecabe to take the loveliest of robes to Athena. Women are important prizes of war.

4 Andromache speaks of her mother being led away by Achilles along with all his other possessions after storming Thebes and killing Eeiton, her father. Women are important for maintenance of the household and for begetting sons and daughters to guarantee the future of the household. They are seen as obstacles that the male hero has to overcome to fulfill his glorious destiny. Andromache s emotional appeal to Hektor is a classic example of this. She tells him that he means everything to her; he is her father, mother, brother, young husband, and all. She urges him not to go for the sakes of their little child and her. An important role given to the women by virtue of being a survivor of the war is that of a keeper of memories. Women are good for preserving the memory of the men s achievements. For example Hektor consoles Andromache when he says, Someday seeing you shedding tears a man will say of you: his is the wife of Hector, who was ever the bravest fighter of the Trojans, breaker of horses in the days when they fought about Illion. The enslaved Andromache will thus be good for making others remember Hektor. In the Women of Troy, while the Trojan War carries on viciously around them, the women bemoan the horrors of war. A sorrowful Hecabe declares, I mourn for my dead world, my burning town/ my sons, my husband, gone all gone, This is not Troy; the kinds of Troy are dead. The women see themselves as being cursed by fate. Hecabe asks, How must I deal with grief? For those whom Fate has cursed Music itself sings but one note. Thus there is almost a parallel war going on for the women themselves in which they face the mortality of their families and the inescapable will of fate. The Trojan women despise Helen for it is she who has brought this suffering on them. The line Sworn to bring back hated Helen, the cursed wife of Menelaus, Sparta s shame and Castor s ruin, her whose sin struck down Priam depicts the intense hatred in Troy for Helen. According to Hecabe, the virtues of an ideal woman are having a quiet tongue, yielding authority to her husband when necessary, keeping a modest eye, and not slandering

5 others. When Menelaus announces his plans to kill Helen, the Trojan women agree because they see Helen as far from ideal and the source of their troubles. In the Women of Troy, the women depict the post-war conditions and the spoils of war. They dread the future because they know that the Greek ships will carry them away to a degrading way of life. The lines Oh! To what pitiless master shall I go? A slave? Where will my new home be? speak of their deep sorrow and despair. Talthybius further announces, You have all now been allotted- if this is what you feared These leans mean that each of the women has been assigned a master, an owner who will deal with her as he pleases. The misery of the women is endless as evinced when Hecabe proclaims, There is always more, my suffering has no limit none, and each new misery outdoes what went before. Women are also offered as sacrifices by the victors. Hecabe s daughter Polyxena is sacrificed at Achilles tomb. The women are left as booty for the victors. While fighting for glory and honor is primal in The Iliad, the women in The Women of Troy are vocal about the devastation of war as they lament the loss of husbands, children, and their city, and dread the thought of being slaves and concubines in a far-away land. The gods, their existence, their powers, and their ever-present possibility of intervening are taken for granted in both works of literature. The gods primary effects seem to be the enhancing and the denying of the heroes potential for performing beyond human capacity. The gods have favorites among humans and intervene in human affairs. They make decisions about who will win on a certain day. They are not the main players but rather the influencers or enablers. Helenos tells Hektor to go back to the city and have their mother Hecabe offer Athena the finest robe and twelve cows as a sacrifice and in turn beg her for victory over Diomedes. Hektor goes back to Troy and tells his men, Be men now, dear friends and remember your furious valor until I can go back again to Ilion and there tell elder men who sit as counselors and

6 our wives to make their prayer to the immortals and promise them hecatombs. Hecabe offers a robe to Athena and the sacrifice of twelve heifers and begs her to protect the Trojans and their city, but the goddess is unrelenting. Hektor leaves after sensing the defeat of Troy since Athena has not granted them the request of vanquishing Diomedes. Thus the gods manipulate events to win honor for their favorite warriors. In The Women of Troy, the women become increasingly critical and skeptical about the powers of the gods. Helen, for example, declares that it is the goddess that made her behave the way she did, meaning she is not averse to blaming the Goddess or maligning her. Similarly, Hecabe questions her faith in the gods as well as man s dependence on them when she is made a prisoner of war. She says that the gods are treacherous allies. Being just and fair is not an expectation that the Trojan women have of the gods. Andromache declares that the gods have abhorred the Trojans since the day of Paris birth. The victims fates confirm the ingratitude of the gods and the pointlessness of worship. The gods are known to be headstrong and capricious. Athena, at first, is on the side of the Greeks and refuses Hektor a victory against the Greeks. She plans the defeat of the Trojans. However, when the Greeks offend her by not offering her a proper ceremony and forcing her beloved Cassandra to marry Agamemnon, she switches sides and turns against the Greeks. Even Poseidon is shocked at Athena s change of heart when she asks for help to now make the Greeks suffer. This is shown when Poseidon asks Athena, But why? Surely your change of affection is somewhat casual? Why this leaping at random between hate and love. In the end Athena s capriciousness and wrath brings devastation on the Greeks as they return home. The gods are, in some ways, very like humans in that they pursue rivalries and jealousies, the difference being they get to exist in perpetuity. Their actions mirror the trials and tribulations of the mortals they direct. The influence of the gods is the ultimate weapon or coup de grace for the Greeks and the Trojans.

7 Military glory over family life is the strong theme that emerges for the warriors in The Iliad whereas the women in Women of Troy bemoan this choice. War is both the bringer of glory to its young fighters and the destroyer of their lives. The characters are resigned to the fact that the gods and the world they control are impossible to predict. Human beings are condemned to live in a world with no power over their fates. The human emotions that rage because of the impacts of the war and the role of the women left destitute are in strong contrast to the portrayal of the immortal gods who are flippant, cold, and manipulative. When does war become murder is a question that emerges as the works become more complex and intertwined. The works tell us about the profound gulf between civilian existence in the towns left behind by the warriors and life on the battlefield, atrocities and indiscriminate slaughter, war s peculiar mercilessness to women and children, and friendships and sympathies across the battle lines. They tell us of the love between soldiers who fight together. Ultimately, they tell us about the irrevocable losses of war: of a soldier losing his closest companion, of a father losing his son, and of women losing their entire families, their way of life, and being forced into slavery and degradation. There is an important message here that human mortality gives our lives meaning, but ultimately this meaning is derived from tragedy and sorrow. The Iliad: Book Six and Women of Troy tell us that while war is a way of life for bestowing honor and glory to the men who fight in it, the price humanity pays for it is strongly rooted in its impacts, the whim of the gods, and the suffering of the women left behind.