Straightforward E-Book

Marcus Attwater

• Herausgeber: Mijnbestseller.nl
• Kategorie: Geisteswissenschaft
• Sprache: Englisch

Seitenzahl: 1298

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2020

Beschreibung

When asked to name an archetypal love story, most people will reply 'Romeo & Juliet', although some say 'Tristan & Isolde' instead. Very few will come up with a classical example, and the reason for this is simple: when you say archetypal, it is assumed you mean love between a man and a woman, and instances of this in classical accounts are rare. The reason for this is also not hard to find: as it does now, 'love' in the ancient world meant the affection of equals, and given the inferior position of women in Greek and Roman society, between the sexes is not usually where love is to be found. Straightforward examines how we got from there to here. It is a study not of the loves of real people, but of the ideal of love as it found expression in stories, stories which were often retold and reimagined by new generations and new cultures. By following these stories and the changes they underwent through the centuries Straightforward attempts to answer two related questions: 'When and why did the heterosexual ideal become normative in our narrative tradition?' and 'What was there before?' We begin in archaic Greece, with a story which was already old when Homer composed his epics...

Leseprobe

Straightforward

The Narrative Construction of Heteronormativity from HomertoThe Hobbit

MarcusAttwater

ISBN:9789403600383

Copyright© M. Attwater 2019

Cover:Two Brothers, One Sister, based onan illustration inAlexandre de Laborde,

Prelude:The Heroes and the Playwrights

You would think it couldn't be plainer.

'And if the dead forget their dead in the house of Hades, yet even there shall I remember my dear companion', Achillessays in Homer'sIliad, after his beloved Patroclushas been killed fighting against Troy.[1]There was no one more important in the hero's life, and his last promise - made to the ghost he tries in vain to embrace - is that they shall be buried together, for Achilles himself will not live long now.

And yet, later writers found much was left unexplained by Homer's description, and the Athenian tragedians felt free to fill in the details themselves. Aeschylus- we have only fragments - seems to have portrayed Achillesas passionately in love with Patroclus, but, says Phaedrusin Plato'sSymposium, 'Aeschylus talks nonsense when he says that Achilles was Patroclus' lover: he was more beautiful than Patroclus (indeed, he was the most beautiful of all the heroes), and he was still beardless, as well as much younger than Patroclus, as Homer tells us.'[2]Young men were supposed to pursue good-looking youngsters, and well-brought-up youngsters, however responsive, did not seize the initiative. Clearly two such exemplary characters as Achilles and Patroclus would not have subverted the norm in the way Aeschylus suggests.

From the perspective of long centuries, the discussion may seem rather silly. There were two-hundred years or more between Aeschylusand Homer,another five-hundred between Homer and the Trojan War­- of course half-mythical heroes did not conform to the customs of classical Athens. Phaedruscould not see beyond the confines of his own time, and we - somewhat smugly - conclude that the debate may teach us more about that particular layer of Attic society than about Achilles. And, provided that we take nothing Platosays as precisely representative, we may be right. There is nothing to be learned about the heroes in the loose interpretations of much later writers.

Apart, that is, from the obvious.

Some twenty-six centuries after Homer, another weaver of tales set in a mythical past told a story to his sons, about a group of dwarves trying to reclaim their lost kingdom.The Hobbitwas a small-scale story, clearly intended for children, and the grand sweep of the history of Middle-earthwhich Tolkienwas already developing hardly intruded upon it. But when, seventy-five years later, the tale was turned into a trilogy of films, it was treated in the same grand mode as had beenThe Lord of the Rings. A historic background, mostly taken from Tolkien's other writings, gave the originally rather mercenary company of dwarves a noble purpose, a mighty enemy gave them a heroic one. The epic elements, even those not taken from Tolkien's own works, are in a manner he would certainly recognise. But the filmmakers added something else as well, an episode with no precedent in Tolkien. When the company is taken captive in Mirkwood, Kili, one of the younger dwarves, falls in love with the elf-woman Tauriel, and she with him, despite the tentative understanding she already has with one of her fellow elves, despite the traditional enmity between elves and dwarves. Love is not bound by these restrictions. When, in the great final battle, the dwarf dies, as warriors do, it is she who weeps at the injustice of Fate. It is a predictable addition to the material - and a necessary one, I think, since the original lacks female characters altogether - and there is nothing unexpected to us in these scenes. Isn't that the oldest story of all?

It isn't, of course. Ubiquitous is not the same as universal, and that we have heard the same story many times before does not mean it was always told in that way. Like the Athenians, we have forgotten that our ancestors fitted life into very different, even unrecognisable, frameworks. Somewhere between Achillesweeping over the body of Patroclusand Taurielweeping over Kili's, something changed, and changed so completely that we have forgotten it ever used to be different.

Let's find out what.

[1]Homer,Iliad22:389-90, trans. Hammond

[2]Plato,Symposium, trans.Gill

Introduction:Boy Meets Girl

0.1 The same old story

A few years ago I made a list of the seven basic plots for someone. It doesn't matter here which they are, or whether there are really seven, only that one of them is always said to be 'Boy meets Girl'. While I was copying the list I noticed that while all the other plots were given classical examples, this one hadRomeoand Juliet, a much later story. Surely there must be earlier exemplary male-female couples? But although the one that immediately sprang to mind was Lancelotand Guinevere, from the twelfth century, I was hard put to come up with anything from before that time. There did appear to be a scarcity of straight love stories from antiquity, while I could think of several male-male couples. Thinking that this might be a product of my own focus on the Middle Ages (or male-male couples), I asked a number of people without a medievalist bias to name one or two archetypal love stories.[3]The resulting list was instructive. Romeo and Julietwere the most named couple, with Tristanand Isoldesecond. There were a number of classical pairs, with Parisand Helenthe stand-out example, but few of those would stand up to scrutiny as a love story (Jasonand Medea- really?). This alerted me to the amount of reinterpretation that goes on when dealing with these old stories. The subconscious reasoning goes roughly like this: 'you get married to someone of the opposite sex after you've fallen in love with them; Jason and Medea got married, so they must have been in love'. It is rarely as simple as all that now, but for a long time, for centuries, it wasn't even true. Most of the examples from antiquity are stories of desire and necessity, and the - one-sided - desire is as often for land or gold as for a person. There are a few classical couples I would allow on the list, such as Hero and Leander, but those are not the ones of which we still tell the stories. For the recognisable and the reciprocal we must turn to Lancelot and Guinevere and the other couples of the French High Middle Ages. Love has even been called an 'invention of the twelfth century'.[4]That was always going to be too sweeping as statement, even when narrowed to 'heterosexual love' as it is in this case, and it has been contested from the first moment it was put forward, all in a tangle with the notions of 'courtly love' and 'chivalry'. It would be ridiculous to suggest that love between men and women did not exist prior to ca. AD 1155 (and no one is arguing that), but there is something to be said for the newness at that time of celebrating heterosexual love in fiction, of presenting it as an ideal. If this is indeed the case, the idea did not appear out of thin air, and neither was it immediately complete and unchangeable. Consequently, this study seeks to propose answers to two related but distinct questions:

when and why did the heterosexual ideal become normative in ournarrative tradition?what was there before?

The investigation proceeds from the premise that retellings in particular, in their additions and omissions, can show us what their public found important and desirable, as we saw in the prelude with the addition of TaurieltoThe Hobbit. So, starting with theIliadin archaic Greece, we shall follow a growing number of love stories through the ages to find what they have lost and gained in their various tellings, and whether a pattern emerges over the long term. This is a personal quest, not an academic study, and as such it is inevitably skewed towards the fields I am most familiar with. My aim is to be neither exhaustive nor absolute, but to give the reader an impression of how my thoughts developed along the way. I have not sought out others' answers to my questions, but set out to find my own, taking the different versions of the stories as my starting point rather than the learned discussions about them. Thus I have undoubtedly reinvented a good many wheels along the way, but, I hope, also arrived at fresh insights.

I believe my reading of the whole sits well with the available evidence, but I am aware that it is only one of many possible readings. That is part of my point. What follows - apart from the specifically historical chapters - is concerned with fiction, and the relationship between fiction and real life is complicated. Fiction is wish-fulfilment, example positive or negative, and in the very nature of the thing, not real. It may provide escape even where it is intended to constrain. The reader should remember that although stories illuminate for us the times they spring from, they never give a clear reflection, and, then as now, there have always been resistant readers.

0.2 Narrative love

Apart from fiction, this investigation involves two other concepts which appear quite self-evident in my thoughts but are difficult to catch in words. One is the 'narrative tradition' referred to above. At the risk of sounding impossibly grandiloquent, this study is limited to western Indo-European stories from the last three millennia. This may appear to be casting the net too wide (it certainly felt like that at times), but they do form a natural set providing both the variety and the uniformity needed to make sense of my questions. The twelve branches of the Indo-European language family cover much of the Eurasian landmass, and secondarily, most of the Americas as well. Of these we are concerned here with the Greek, Italic (Romance), Celtic and Germanic. The cultures that go with these languages all share basic narrative assumptions, and their worldviews overlap. Together they have made the storytelling culture I grew up with in the European West, and which is now globally familiar through the American film industry. So familiar and natural does it appear that we often assume that our modern, Western narrative assumptions are universal, that this is what all stories are like. A good look at Egyptian myth or Native American folktales should put paid to that idea. And of course our narrative tradition did not develop in isolation, and elements from other traditions may be identified wherever one of the Indo-European cultures met and mingled with another, for example the Greek with those of Asia Minor. It was, however, dominant in Europe, and remained so even with the advent of the originally Middle-Eastern Christian religion. Although I may have some things to say about the influence of the Church, with one conspicuous exception I ignore biblical influence on the stories under discussion, for two reasons: first, although biblical narratives were widely known and retold, due to their sacred nature they were mostly kept in their original shape; and secondly, the uneasy commingling of Indo-European with Semitic tradition in Western culture is an enormous and fascinating subject which could easily fill a book by itself.

The other concept which needs some clarification is 'love'. I am not proposing a definition of the thing itself here, but of its somewhat simpler fictional image. I call this 'narrative love' to distinguish it from the many other ways in which love has been categorised (romantic, platonic, companionate etc.). Deeply felt, mutual and enduring, narrative love is not predicated on sexual attraction or familial love, although it excludes neither. In reading the many stories that went into the making of this book, I have identified seven indicators which signal that a couple are lovers in this sense:

both partners enter the relationship freely (no love potions or forced marriage)partners are outspoken in their dealings with each otherthe relationship is exclusive (neither has a similar association with someone else)partners are rarely and reluctantly partedthe couple's names are associated in the minds of othersthe relationship lasts until outside forces end itthe couple are still together in death (buried in the same grave, or seen together in theunderworld)

Note that the presence or absence of sexual relations and the narrator's use of the word 'love' are not indicative, and that there is no natural connection between love and marriage. We shall return to the interconnectedness of love, sex and marriage, and our contemporary confusion about them, throughout the book.

Although in theory narrative love might be found anywhere, in practice the subjects and objects of narrative love which we shall encounter are almost exclusively high-born individuals, or even gods and goddesses. This is a product of the circumstances in which the stories that have come down to us were told: only noble households had the leisure for such entertainment and only they had the money to maintain the poets who provided it. The aristocrats themselves would have it that only the nobly born are capable of such a refined emotion as love, the reality was, of course, that the lower classes just got on with their loves without making a song and dance about it. We shall regularly catch glimpses of this more everyday life carrying on beyond the world of stories, but it is the song and dance we will concentrate on. For it is this outward show which very early on, with the first stories we hear, teaches us what we are supposed to feel and what we had better hide away. Love in the stories is how we think love should be, and we measure our own lives against it. But narrative love is only the representation of feeling, and it is important to remember that although they often become inextricably linked, both representation and feeling may exist independently. So real life couples may model their love on fictional ones, like Alexanderthe Greatand Hephaestionfamously did on Achillesand Patroclus. Conversely, they may not even use the word 'love' to themselves because their time defines love differently, for example limiting it solely to male-female couples. And people may also go through the motions of courtship or companionage while inwardly indifferent. In the chapters that follow we will learn how different love could be from what we call by that name, but the fictional indicators listed above are transhistorical.

Besides telling stories, people in earlier times also thought about love theoretically, in the contexts of religion, philosophy and politics. In the conclusions to the chapters the contemporary theories of love are taken into account and compared with the view we get from narrative. These theories are mainly attempts to make sense of and regulate two different feelings which appear to be beyond human control and therefore disruptive: sexual desire and unselfish affection. There are two ways you can go about domesticating such overwhelming feelings: condemning them as dangerous and to be resisted by the virtuous, or elevating them as ennobling and exclusive to the virtuous. Singly and combined desire and affection have been subject to both treatments, with the church's blanket condemnation of non-procreative sex as sinful at one extreme, and our own society's devaluing of non-sexual relationships at the other. But theories are a poor reflection of practice, and we shall see that the image provided by the stories and the theoretical view do not always accord. It is assumed here that stories have a much greater influence on the public at large than theoretical works, which were always read only by a few, and only a fewmenat that.

0.3 A note on words

The terminology of love is confused if not downright unhelpful, and our modern words ill suit ancient ideas. To a lesser extent, the same goes for more transparent-seeming concepts like 'family'. Rather than provide a glossary, I have chosen to highlight different understandings of terms where they are relevant, while always attempting to be as precise as possible in my choice of words. A few notes may be useful nonetheless:

by 'heteronormativity' I mean the assumption that unless explicitly stated otherwise all people - in the context of this study, characters in stories - are sexually attracted to and desire to be loved by the opposite sexthe word 'homosexual' is used meaning 'physically attracted to thesame sex' without this implying a specific identity or lifestyle (for which 'gay')I use 'companion' for half of a male couple, which need not imply a sexual relationship, and 'lover' for half of an unmarried couple who are assumed to be sexually involved'Romance' with a capital 'R' refers to the European languages descended from Latin, 'romance' with a lower case 'r' denotes the courtly stories written in the Middle Ages which take their name from the languagesinteresting though it is, I am not concerned here with authorship, so the composer of theIliadis Homer, Marie de Franceis Marie de France without qualification, and anonymous authors are 'the narrator', without going into questions of composition, compilation and copyingI have for each name selected the spelling most familiar in its context, without attempting to apply consistent rules, which is difficult at the best of times but impossible when dealing with versions hundreds of years apart

The book is arranged chronologically, each chapter beginning with a section introducing a dominant genre of the period in question. What the chosen genres have in common is not only their popularity in their day and their current availability, but also that they were all meant for an audience, as opposed to a readership. The tales under discussion were almost all chanted, acted, sung, or read as bedtime stories. There is an important implication in this: instead of private enjoyment, stories were a communal event, and anyone listening or watching would not only absorb their lessons, but know that the others would have learned the same. These communal stories thus had a greater normative force than the novels we read singly and accept or reject as we see fit. It is much harder to demur if everyone else agrees thatthatis how the story should go, and moreover, it hasalwaysbeen told that way.

But stories do change in the telling, and after the introduction, each chapter has four sections examining a specific instance of narrative love (or its absence) in the genre under discussion and our modern response to it, where possible picking up stories that we have already seen in other ages. Only the first chapter, where we lay the groundwork, and the fifth, about the momentous twelfth century, fall in two parts of four sections each. The chapters close with a comparison of the tales with the theoretical love ideal of the time. In addition to the chronological chapters there are two chapters 'Outside Time' on stories that do not fit the historical framework, and three chapters 'Inside Time' about the specific historic background of the narrative tradition, including the final chapter, which attempts an answer to my first question. The whole must stand as my answer to the second.

References may be found in the endnotes, and all original research undertaken in the course of this study is detailed in the appendices.

[3]The question was asked on the Dutch forum of the yearly writing initiative National Novel Writing Month, so there was a literary bias. Twenty respondents together came up with 38 couples, 22 without doubles, all of them male-female, and about equally divided between classical, medieval, early modern and modern examples.

[4]Charles Seignobos quoted in Zumthor,An overview, p.18

1-A Thousand Ships, a Thousand Faces

Archaic and Classical Greece

1.0 Introduction: epic and the double past

We begin almost three millennia ago, in what is now Greece, where poets sang epic tales of a great war fought even further in the past. The short definition of an epic is 'a heroic narrative, usually in verse and of some size, set in an imagined past'. It is a form encountered in all Indo-European languages and has always been both popular and prestigious. The first Indo-European epics still extant are the GreekIliadandOdyssey, traditionally ascribed to Homerand dating from the seventh century BC,[5]of which the first has become the standard by which all later examples are measured. But although Homer's poems were probably always unique in their length and quality, they formed part of a much larger cycle of stories about the Trojan War and its aftermath which have not survived, but of which we have enough citations and summaries in later works to give an idea of their contents. Together these are called the Epic Cycle. There were also Greek epics unconnected to the cycle, about other heroes and other cities, but none as long or as popular as the two great works ascribed to Homer. These two became canonical at Athens in the sixth century, when they were recited in their entirety at the quadrennial Great Panathenaea festival by a relay team ofrhapsodestaking four days in all. The standard division of both epics into 24 books probably originates in this practice.[6]

All Greek epic was composed in hexameters (lines of six feet containing either two long, or one long and two short syllables each), a verse form which evolved from an Indo-European one which also gave rise to the characteristic shape used in the SanskritVedas(sacred literature) and has been identified in the Iranian languages as well. The Sanskrit exponents of epic, theMahābhārataandRamayana, although written down later, share subject matter as well as style with their Greek counterparts, and it was the similarities between the grammar of Sanskrit and Greek which first led scholars to posit a shared parent language. Older epics were originally composed orally, but by the time theIliadandOdysseywere given their present shape writing had been reintroduced to the Greek world, although it is disputed whether their poet(s) made use of it in composing the epics. Later Greek writers were in constant dialogue with their great predecessor: lyric poets used Homer's characters as easily understood allusions, tragedians examined and expanded on single episodes, and scholars debated the meaning of obscure passages. Of all this much is lost, but we still have a wealth of material to study.

Greek (literary) history is conventionally divided into the Archaic period (eighth to sixth century BC), the time of the epics; followed by the Classical period (fifth to fourth century), the time of the tragedians and philosophers such as Socratesand Plato; and the Hellenistic period (from the conquest of Alexanderthe Greatin 323 BC into the period of Roman dominance), when the centre of the literary world moved from Athens to Alexandria. We shall consider the Archaic period in the first half of this chapter and the Classical in the second. My use of the word 'Greeks' for people from all these periods and its many places is both inaccurate and anachronistic, but it remains a convenient and easily understood label. The people themselves would have used the demonym of theirpolis, or if speaking of the wider Greek world, called themselvesHellenes. HomerusesDanaansorAchaeanswhen speaking of the enemies of the Trojans.

The generally agreed outline of the story of the Trojan war is as follows:

To the wedding of the sea-goddess Thetisand the mortal hero Peleusthe uninvited goddess of discord brings a golden apple inscribed with the words 'for the fairest'. The three Olympians Hera, Athenaand Aphroditefall to quarrelling over it, and their dispute is resolved by the Trojan prince Paris, son of Priam, who assigns the apple to Aphrodite in exchange for the most beautiful woman on earth. This is Helen, and despite the fact that she is already married to Menelaus, Paris carries her off to Troy.

Because he feared the choice would be contentious, when selecting a husband for his daughter, Helen's father Tyndareus, on the advice of the cunning Odysseus, had made all her suitors swear that they would come to the aid of his chosen son-in-law if he was ever at war. So now Menelaussummons the many Greek kings to arms, and they plan to sail for Troyto get back Helen and the treasure that was stolen with her. The names and numbers of the entire fleet are detailed in theIliad. Thetis, fearing for the life of her mortal son Achillesshould he go to war, hides him at the court of king Lycomedesof Scyros, dressed as a girl. But when wily Odysseus comes to the court disguised as a pedlar, the king's daughters all select jewellery from his wares, while Achilles grabs a sword.Thus discovered, the hero joins the Greek expedition.

For a time the fleet is becalmed at Aulis because their leader Agamemnon, brother to Menelaus, has offended the goddess Artemis, and it is only after the sacrifice of his daughter Iphigenia- summoned on the pretext of marriage to Achilles- that they set sail. The Greeks besiege Troyfor nine long years, and the Olympian gods take sides and even join in, with Athenasupporting the fleet and Apolloaiding the city. The Iliadbegins at this stage of the war, when Chryses, the priest of Apollo, wishes to ransom his captive daughter from the Greeks, and is haughtily denied by Agamemnon. The god visits a plague upon the camp, and when its cause is discovered, the girl is sent back to her father. This leaves Agamemnon without a concubine, and he claims in her place another captive, the woman Briseiswho had been assigned to Achilles, leader of the Myrmidons. Insulted by this slight to his honour, Achilles retires to his shelter, refusing to fight until Agamemnon has given him his due. The other Greeks, knowing how much they need their best fighter, plead with him in vain. Finally, Achilles' companion Patroclusasks at least to be allowed to lead their men into battle wearing Achilles' armour. He fights bravely, but is killed by Priam's son Hector. Achilles is beside himself with grief, and re-joins the fighting to avenge Patroclus, not caring that this will mean his own death. He kills Hector and mutilates the body before relinquishing it to Priam. Here the Iliad ends, but the story continues. Achilles himself dies by a shot from Paris' bow, guided by the hand of Apollo, and his ashes are placed in the same urn with the remains of Patroclus. The Greeks, pretending to retreat, leave the famous wooden horse in front of the gates of Troy and are brought inside with it, the city is sacked, and Helenreturned to Menelaus. Few of the Greek leaders have an easy voyage home after the expedition, and their wanderings were told in the epicNostoi, 'Returns'. Odysseustakes a full ten years to reach his home in Ithaca, having many adventures on the way while his wife Penelopecleverly resists a band of boorish suitors who want her husband declared dead so she can marry one of them. This is the subject of theOdyssey.

The Trojan War story is the first Indo-European plot we can confidently outline, and going back as it does for 2700 years and more, that is remarkable enough. But the MesopotamianEpic of Gilgameshpredates it by about a millennium, and a quick comparison with this tale from a different tradition may be illuminating. At first glance, the heroic exploits of King Gilgameshand wild man Enkidudon't seem so different from stories in the Greek mould, and indeed, some of the Greek stories may have been influenced by Mesopotamian ones. But when Enkidu dies, although Gilgamesh laments his companion's passing in much the same way as Achilleswill, his reaction otherwise is very different. Achilles knows that with Patroclus' death, his own life is over, and he goes back into battle knowing he will meet his end there. Gilgamesh, on the other hand, goes in search of the source of eternal life, almost succeeds, but eventually acknowledges the pointlessness of it all. Enkidu's young death - in bed, not in battle - is a waste, Gilgamesh's realisation of his own mortality resigned. Their deaths are mourned, not celebrated.

But Achilles, even before the fateful events at Troy, knows he will die in war. He has been told, by his divine mother, that if he stays at home in Phthia he will live a long, contented life in obscurity, but if he goes to Troy he will die young and never be forgotten. And Achilles chooses this fate, for the greatest good of Indo-European epic is glory. From India to Ireland, numerous names attest to this obsession, containing derivatives of the element *k̂léwes-, meaning 'glory' or 'fame', Patroclushimself being the most apposite example, with a name deriving from the Greek for 'father' andkleos.

Cattle die, kinsmen die,

the self must alsodie;

but glory never dies[7]

This was written down in Iceland in the thirteenth century AD, but it would have raised no eyebrows with Achillesand his compatriots. Glory, the sung glory which disregards death, is what a true hero longs for and earns. In contrast, Gilgameshonly wants glory when he is alive to enjoy it, and does not naturally link it with falling in battle. He is notlofgeornost,[8]'most yearning for fame', as Indo-European heroes without exception are.

With that yearning for glory comes the need for poets to spread the hero's name far and wide, and make it last through the ages. It is thanks to poets like Homerthat Thetiswas proved right: up until now her son's fame hasn't died. In the epics themselves we find poets singing of earlier heroes, and with no fighting to do, Achilleshimself indulges in this pastime. It is a constant feature of epic that it is always set in a past when there were still real heroes, not like the weaklings of today. Actually, it is a little more subtle than that. The heroes of epic perform their feats in an age which is already in decline, and thepoets in the epicstell stories of a past when there were still real heroes, not like the weaklings of yesterday. Old Nestorin theIliadreminisces about the men he fought with in his youth, and the young warriors encamped before Troyare not a patch on them. The Heroic Age of Greek myth ended with the Trojan War, or at the latest, with the children of its heroes.

This double past is found in other epics as well. After Beowulfhas fought Grendelin Heorot- an impressive enough feat, one would think - one of Hrothgar's men sings of Sigemundthe dragonslayer, a true hero of the earlier days. The events of theMahābhāratamark the change from the third (Dvāpara) to the present, and much inferior age (theKali yuga).[9]Even Tolkien'sThe Lord of the Ringstakes place in the third Age, when the high deeds of the past are constantly referred to in story and song but no longer feasible, and the end of the war is the start of the fourth Age. I believe this curious doubling of the past serves to bring the larger-than-life figure of the hero closer to the audience. In their imperfection, epic heroes are easier to recognise and emulate than the lofty and incomprehensible gods or the impossibly perfect men of the first, golden age, but being part of an unchanging past, neither can they be encountered face to face, losing their glamour or their power to inspire a younger generation.

The poets singing of the past inside the epic point to another important feature of the genre. These stories were part of an oral tradition before they were written down, and continued to be retold and improved upon. The Attic tragedians, to which we will turn in the second part of this chapter, extensively reworked episodes from the epics, and these are often the versions that have come down to us. But evidence of variant readings is plentiful for all periods. Sometimes Iphigeniadies, sometimes a hart dies in her place. Sometimes Helenis in Troy, sometimes it is the phantom sent by Aphrodite. But there is a limit to this variety: no version asserts that Agamemnonrefused to sacrifice his daughter or that Helen stayed at home. The core of the story is handed on unchanged, and the interest is in how it is told. The poets who performed epic stories in the halls of kings were great artists, with a large repertoire, which they knew by heart or could reconstruct from the poetic building blocks of formulaic phrases when they did not. But the trick of remembering long narratives is not only in rhythm, rhyme and formulaic phrases. It lies also in an attentive audience. The listeners would have heard the story before, and would be quick to correct any slips on the narrator's part, or to curb any flights of fancy that were felt to depart too far from the 'canonical' version. In this way plots and stock phrases could be preserved even though the shape of the whole drifted slowly apart from its first telling, and some elements were repeated long after they had ceased to make sense. The historical events which were later called the Trojan War are lost in time, but they were a little less lost to Homer, who did not invent the details of the heroes' Bronze Age armour. So even the first story we have is a retelling, an interpretation through which we see only indistinct shades about whose actions and motivations we can make at best educated guesses.

1.1 Insult and reparation: the stories of theIliad

The long poem that has come down to us as theIliadtells the story of the warrior Achilles, set during the Trojan War, which presupposes the seizing of Helen. But these three things, twisted together as they are, did not start out as parts of the same story. In this section we will try to discern how the different strands came to be part of the same thread, and identify some of the problems posed by the epic. The next two sections will deal with the tales of Helen and Achilles in more detail.

Whether the poet of theIliad(henceforth 'Homer', although that was probably not his name) composed his long epic orally or with the help of writing is disputed, but for us this does not matter so much as that we may consider it the work of a single poet.[10]It is not a cobbling together of a number of shorter ballads (Einzellieder), as nineteenth-century scholars assumed, but an original composition which makes some use of earlier material, by a poet who knew what he was doing. That said, it has long been recognised that theIliadas we know it contains many interpolations by others. It is generally agreed that Book 10, a self-contained episode known as theDoloneia, is an addition by someone else, and there are many more additions of a few lines here and there. The single mention of Achilles' son Neoptolemusmay be one of these, for example, as the poet shows no awareness of his existence otherwise. Conversely, other parts which were once dismissed as extraneous on grounds of poetic quality, perceived impropriety or narrative discontinuity are now regarded as genuine.

The basic framework of theIliadis what could be called theAchilleis, the tale of the hero's wrath, his withdrawal from the fighting, his comrades' entreaties for him to return, Patroclus' death fighting in Achilles' armour, and Achilles' revenge by slaying Hectorand mutilating his body, followed by his yielding the body to Hector's father Priam. But Homergreatly expands this story by looking at the battles which take place in Achilles' absence and at what happens in the city, as well as showing the machinations of the gods which will eventually bring about the hero's return and the fall of Troy. Many of the events before and after, such as the gathering at Aulis or the sack of the city are not recounted, but must have been known to Homer and the audience of his poem. TheIliadis an episode in a much larger story already familiar, and it could not have been structured the way it is without presupposing the surrounding events.

The hero Achilleswas not part of the muster of the Greeks when the story of the war was first told, although he had probably been appended to it before Homerembarked on his narrative. He is never mentioned among the suitors of Helen- which later writers explained away by saying he had been too young - and his exploits before theIliadopens, sacking cities and acquiring booty, although they are recounted as having taken place on the way to Troy, happen in the wrong place for this to be plausible, and must have started out as freestanding narratives. But placing so great a hero, mortal son of an immortal mother, on the winning side of the greatest conflict must have been irresistible. Whether Patrocluswas already part of Achilles' story before it merged with that of Troy is unclear. Some scholars consider him a character invented for theIliad, which would be interesting if the case, though it is not readily verifiable.[11]But Achilles certainly already possessed his other outstanding properties: great stature and beauty, special armour and a weapon only he could wield, and a boundless lust for glory. Once Achilles is placed at Troy, he becomes indispensable, both in the sense that his not fighting is disastrous for the Greeks, and in the sense that without him there is no story.

The connection between the abduction of Helenand the Trojan War probably goes back further, but here there is little we can say with certainty. There may have been a conflict between Mycenae and the Hittites of Anatolia at the end of the second millennium BC which took on epic proportions in the telling, but we cannot say when or why (it would have been surprising for two such great powers not to have been occasionally in conflict). There was a Hittite king called Alaksandu of Wilusa in the thirteenth century BC who may be identified with Paris(= Alexander) of Troy(= (W)Ilios). This is interesting and suggestive, but it is where our knowledge starts and ends.[12]Whatever the nature of the conflict, it was not fought for a woman called Helen. A parallel to her story in theIliadoccurs in theMahābhārata, where the princess Draupadichooses Arjunaas husband from among a large host of suitors, is stolen away by his enemy Jayadratha, and has to be recovered by Arjuna and hisfour brothers. Like Helen on the walls of Troy, Draupadi identifies the enemy's warriors for her new family. A wife carried off by a rival is of course not a difficult plot to invent (it is also central to theRamayana), but the last detail suggests that these two stories may have had a common ancestor. In theMahābhārataDraupadi is married to all five brothers (because when they announced to their mother that they had won a great prize, she told them to share equally), and the awkward memory of something like this may underlie the curious prominence of Agamemnonin the wooing and recovery of his brother's wife: it is he who offers the bride price to Tyndareus, and he who rallies the Greeks on Menelaus' behalf. But the parallel between the women is not exact, and in some ways Draupadi has more in common with Briseis: both are known by their father's names (Drupada, Brises), and both are quarrelled over in public.

In the so-called Dark Ages of Greece, between the fall of Mycenae around 1200 BC and the reintroduction of writing in the eighth century, the story of the stolen woman and the story of the great war grew inextricably into one great tale. And preserved in Homer's epic, this tale has continued to be told ever since. In the last fifteen years alone there have been ten new translations of theIliadinto modern English, and they tend to proclaim the relevance and timeless character of the epic, one introduction speaking of its 'universal appeal' even while acknowledging the poem's difficult subject matter.[13]But I wonder if this spate of translations - surely one competent rendering per decade should suffice? - is not an unconscious acknowledgement that the opposite is the case (see Appendix A for a further analysis). Far from being universal in its appeal, theIliadis a difficult, even alienating book. Modern readers are impatient with repetition, and disconcerted by the poem's habit of announcing what is going to happen before it does, it lacks the story arc we expect. Much of the action consists of graphic and varied descriptions of young men meeting horrible ends, and it is hard not to conclude, with Simone Weil, that the poem's true protagonist is 'Force'.[14]And the elements which are urged upon us as universal are nothing of the sort: the relationships between its men and women are so skewed as not to deserve the name, and the insistence on men's powerlessness against fate, though perhaps salutary, stands in sharp contrast to our own society's belief in self-determination.

I leave aside here the appeal of its poetry, with which the translators are much occupied, since this is simply inaccessible to readers without Greek. But I do wish to draw attention to an element of the writer's technique: theIliadis a poem of parallels. When Achillesis maintaining his resolution not to fight, his old tutor Phoenixtells him the story of Meleager, another headstrong young man who refused to fight, and was only persuaded to join battle by his wife Cleopatra. The comparison falls down, as Achilles is not persuaded to fight by Patroclus(Cleopatra's name was chosen to be a deliberate inversion of 'Patroclus'), but the parallels are never exact, they are there to invite us to think over the alternatives. When Andromacheis anxious her husband Hectorwill not return from battle, he gently instructs her to return to her woman's work, and let him do a man's. But when Achilles is anxious Patroclus will not return from battle, well, shouldn't he have been doing that job himself? The greatest parallel of all is that between the first scene and the last: high-handed Agamemnonwould not allow the girl Chryseisto be ransomed, thus setting in motion a fatal chain of events, but great-hearted Achilles releases Hector's body to his father, knowing the events will soon be brought to a close by his own death.

The poet of theIliadis interested in character and personal interaction, but within a framework which makes it easy for us to misinterpret these. When Agamemnontakes away his prize, Achilles' honour is insulted, and he takes drastic action to maintain his reputation as 'the best of the Achaeans'. Modern readers tend to feel Achilles is overreacting when he punishes the whole army for Agamemnon's crime, and compensate by assuming that Achilles cares so much because he cares about Briseis, 'whom he had come to love' as one translator puts it.[15]In the introduction to his translation E.V. Rieu called it the 'the central problem of theIliad', and considered that the first book presented the hero in a 'sordid light'.[16]

It is clear that within the story even the hero's friends consider he is being unreasonably stubborn when he continues his strike after reparation has been offered. But his initial reaction is not out of proportion to the insult. A hero's honour was constituted in the courage of his body, the generosity of his spirit, the chastity of his women and the loyalty of his men. Should any of these be compromised, the result was shame. Modern notions of honourable behaviour, such as honesty or restraint towards women, did not figure in this complex, although they may have been valued for their own sake. Knowing your place in life meant showing proper respect for the gods, but humility in the face of other humans was not a virtue for an aristocratic male. Knowing your place in life also meant upholding your honour. Achilles' standing as a warrior is such that the Trojans daren't even take the field against him. Consider what would have been said, by both Greeks and Trojans, if Achilles had given in to Agamemnon's demand: ordered about like a common soldier, can't even defend his own property, not much of a hero, really. Honour is what you are seen to do and what is said about you. This is why characters in Greek tragedy so often seem to care more about what other people will think than about what they themselves believe is right. Shame is conscience externalised. The insult to Achilles' honour is real, and Homerleaves us in no doubt that Agamemnon is in the wrong. It should also be noted that Achilles is perfectly within his rights to withhold his men from the fighting. Agamemnon is at the head of a loose alliance of armies each with their own leaders, not the highest in a strict chain of command, and all decisions for the host as a whole are decided in the assembly, where wise old Nestorand wily Odysseushave at least as much influence on proceedings. That Agamemnon tries to assert absolute command over Achilles and the means he uses are serious missteps in a culture which considered the ability to distribute treasure fairly one of the hallmarks of a great leader, and his behaviour has serious repercussions as he alienates his most important asset. Both Achilles and Agamemnon, typically for high status males, don't know where the boundaries are: neither knows when to give in, and their friends are caught in the middle. Homer adds interest and pathos to this conflict by making the object of their quarrel a woman who, however briefly expressed, has feelings of her own. Even if it is a case of 'better the devil you know', she clearly would have preferred to stay with Achilles rather than go to Agamemnon. But although this serves to underline for the audience the wrongness of the situation, within the story Briseis' feelings are irrelevant. She is a spear-captive, and she goes where she is ordered. As West observes: 'the injury to Ach[illes'] honour would have been as great if the trophy confiscated from him had been a bronze tripod.'[17]

Which brings us to that other situation it is so easy to get wrong. West's observation about the bronze tripod holds for the greater story as well. Menelauswants his wife back, which we would consider motivation enough to go after her. But it is not so simple. If Parishad killed Menelaus in war, Helenwould have been rightfully his. But he carried her off while staying with Menelaus in Sparta, breaking the trust between host and guest. This was one of the most important relationships to the ancient Greeks, andxenia -'guest-friendship' - could be handed down through generations.[18]It has been described as an 'alternative to marriage in forging bonds between rulers'.[19]When Glaukos and Diomedesmeet on the battlefield in Book 6 of theIliadthey discover they are in such a relationship, initiated by their grandfathers, and, instead of fighting, exchange gifts. By carrying off Helen, Paris offends against such a bond, and it would have been no different if he had carried away only bronze and gold. When the Greeks demand the return of Menelaus' wife, they also ask for the treasure that was stolen with her. Clearly Paris has added insult to injury, and all Greece is up in arms as a result. Modern commentators tend to make the Greeks look like the aggressors and the Trojans peace-loving and put-upon, but this is a distortion. The killing sprees of the Greek heroes are more violent because they are more successful in the end, not for want of trying by their enemies, who only appear less warlike because we see them at home as well as in battle. Moreover, however sympathetic we are made to feel towards Hectorand his family, they are clearly in the wrong, since they persist in refusing to return Helen and make reparation.

Agamemnon, although he needs to be prodded by Nestor, eventually acknowledges the unfortunate results of his actions, and offers Achillesfull reparation: the return of Briseis, with tripods, cauldrons, horses and seven other women, as well as his daughter's hand in marriage.[20]It has been noted that he does not apologise or offer redress in person, but that is not the point. In a society which would otherwise descend into endless feuding, reparation for an insult, however grave, has to be possible, and needs to be accepted. By continuing in his monumental strop, it is now Achilles who is in the wrong, and he knows it. But the hero's proud nature will not allow otherwise. Why the Trojans continue to be stubborn is less clear, but then, throughout the poem it is difficult to determine why the characters act as they do. The ultimate and unsatisfactory answer is that they act as they do because the gods want them to. When Aphroditebids Helengo to Paris' bed, is that a personification of the woman's desire or is she powerless in the face of a higher order? When Athenastays Achilles' hand from killing Agamemnon when they first quarrel, is that the prompting of his own wisdom or a goddess preventing her favourite people from falling out fatally? The answer to both is 'both'. Throughout theIliadhuman actions are overdetermined by divine ones, and this makes psychological readings hazardous, although that has not prevented them from being offered. One should also not underestimate the force of narrative necessity. People act as they do because that's how the story goes, and without Achilles' insulted honour, without Paris' impetuous actions, there would be noIliad. Imagine an epic based on the following:

ParisRun away with me!

HelenI can't- I've a husband and child here.

ParisOh well, it was worth a try…

Leaving aside divine machination and actions essential to the plot, the relationships which motivate the actors, with one obvious exception, are those of negotiation and alliance, of patrilineal ties and guest-friendships, not of personal feeling. Hectorhas no patience at all with pretty-boy Paris, but this does not prevent him from fighting in his brother's cause. Menelaus' quarrel with Paris is about the rupture of a formal relationship between two men, not about the severing of a loving marriage bond. Nonetheless, it is to personal feelings we now turn: those which have been read into the poem, and those which have been overlooked.

1.2 Two brothers, one sister: Helen's prehistory

Let us start with the woman who started it all. Although a particular story about Helencame to stand at the centre of the conflict between Greeks and Trojans, there were earlier, older stories about her as well. For before Helen was a mortal bride, she was a goddess. Not Leda's husband Tyndareuswas her father, but Zeushimself, and the twins Castorand Pollux, one mortal, one immortal, were her brothers. The twins, together known as the Dioskouroi('god's boys') were so close that when Castor was killed, undying Pollux refused to live without his brother, and he was allowed to share his life with Castor on alternating days, with both being dead on the other. And so, when Helen stands on the walls of Troy, identifying Greek warriors for Priam, she does not see her brothers among the Greeks, because 'already the life-giving earth covered them'.[21]

Parisis not the first to carry her off. Theseusand Pirithous(for whom see section 1.4 below), in one of their more foolhardy exploits, decide that they are both going to marry daughters of Zeus, and abduct Helenfrom her mortal father's house, installing her with Theseus' mother Aethrauntil she is of marriageable age. But Castorand Polluxrescue her, and take Aethra away to be the girl's slave. The twins, incidentally, do not do this because they are opposed to the carrying off of young women in general. They themselves snatch the daughters of Leucippus, and their conflict with the two brothers who were promised these girls leads to the death of Castor and their shared-and-halved immortality. But the abduction which led to the war at Troyis the best known:

Helen's abductor Paris, also called Alexander, is a Trojan prince who has been exposed as a child because of a prophecy that he would cause the city to burn. He is found and raised in the countryside, and becomes a shepherd like his adoptive father. Guarding his flocks, he is spotted by the three goddesses quarrelling over the golden apple, and they decide that, since he will not know them (it is never explained why he won't), he can be their judge. Aphroditewins the prize by promising him the most beautiful woman on earth. Later, the shepherd's real mother Hecubarecognises her son and he is received back into Priam's family, which is how he comes to be visiting with Menelaus.

Paris' story belongs to a set of tales about exceptionally beautiful Trojan shepherd-princes whom the gods can't seem to leave alone. A few generations earlier Zeushad carried off Ganymedeto Olympus, the dawn goddess Eossnatched Paris' uncle Tithonusfor her own, and Aphroditeseduced their cousin Anchises, becoming the mother of the hero Aeneas. Perhaps Paris and Alexanderwere once two characters, one who encountered the goddesses and one who abducted Helen, and they merged so Aphrodite's promise provided a justification for an otherwise unexplained act.

For Helenwas always being carried off, always being taken in marriage, promised by Aphroditeor not. When she reaches marriageable age, more than thirty suitors vie for her hand, and her father is worried that those disappointed in their suit will turn violent. After Paris' death, some versions assert that she is given to his brother Deiphobus, while there were those who insisted that the real Helen had never been in Troyat all, Paris being deceived by a phantom, and that she spend the Trojan war in Egypt. There, you've guessed it, the local king pressured her to marry him. She clearly is the most desirable of girls, memorably described as 'a woman manned by many' by Aeschylus.[22]Helen's repeated and variously explained 'marriages' suggest that there is an older story behind them. So who was she?

In the same way that comparative linguists have reconstructed the Proto-Indo-European language from the evidence of its daughter-languages, comparative mythologists have attempted to get an idea of the myths of the Proto-Indo-Europeans. This is an enterprise fraught with danger, since stories and traditions carry over into other cultures so easily that it is often hard to tell whether they are ancient custom or recent import, and because the names for divinities are frequently subject to replacement because the real name is taboo. Nonetheless, comparative mythology has succeeded in identifying a number of divinities and fragments of stories which may confidently be called Indo-European. One of these is Father Sky, appearing as 'Zeus' in Greek, 'Dyaus' in the SanskritVedasand as the Latin compound 'Jupiter' (=Dyew-pater). The divine twins, his sons, also appear in many cultures, and they have one sister or consort, daughter of the sky or the sun.

The similarities between the Indian Aśvins, the horse twins, and Castorand Polluxhave long been noted. They find a parallel in the BalticDieva Dēli, who are among the suitors of the 'Daughter of the Sun', and more shadowy reflexes turn up in the Germanic and Celtic West. They are young warriors associated with horses and chariots, and, as we have seen, they both rescue and kidnap young brides. The Aśvins have a single sister, but also a single wife,Sū́ryasya duhítr(also 'daughter of the sun'), whom they carry off in their chariot. Helen, daughter of the sky god Zeusand sister to the Dioskouroi, is her Greek counterpart.[23]That the sun's daughter's original husbands/brothers were twins may be the source of the curious fact that Helen and Draupadiare won by sets of two and five brothers respectively, polyandry being otherwise unknown either in Greek or Indian myth.

A late but neat example of this scheme of two brothers and one sister is provided by Nor and Gor inOrkneyinga Saga. Their sister Goi disappears during a sacrifice, and they search up and down the country for her, in the process founding Norway. When, after years, their sister is found, abducted by a certain Hrolf of Bjarg, they make a settlement allowing her to remain with him in exchange for Hrolf's sister as a bride for Nor.[24]This somewhat paradoxical resolution - why take such trouble in the search if you're not getting her back? - points to the interpretation that the myth is a codification of the exchange of women by two different families or tribes, a classical example of women functioning as the counters by which men conduct their relationships with each other, and a way of proceeding which among the aristocracy would live on through the Middle Ages and beyond. A bride for a sister is a fair exchange.

While all this snatching and carrying off is thus unlikely to reflect the real practice of marriage by capture, it does point to an exogamous system in which women moved out of their own kingroup. For the young woman involved, whether she was taken or given, marriage in an exogamous and patrilocal society did mean dislocation from her father's to her husband's or his father's house, a new environment some brides must have wished their brothers would come and rescue them from.

But even when the marriage is endogamous, it is imagined as a more or less violent removal of a daughter from her father's house. A stark view of this is provided by the story of Persephone, daughter of the grain goddess Demeter.

While gathering flowers with her friends, Persephoneis carried off by Hades, the god of the dead, who has been promised her as wife by her father Zeus- but without bothering to consult her mother. Demeteris distraught, and agriculture comes to a halt while she searches for her daughter, while Hades doesn't see the problem: 'I shall not make you an unsuitable husband,' he tells Persephone, 'by being here, you will be mistress of everything that lives and moves'.[25]Eventually, a compromise is reached by which Persephone spends two-thirds of the year with her mother and one third (winter) with her husband in the realm of the dead.

This story - which I have very much abridged here - provides explanations for the religious rituals associated with Demeterand her daughter, the Eleusinian mysteries, while also, almost by the way, providing an aetiology for the seasons. It is also a narrative account of Persephone