Troy by Mac Sweeney Naoíse

Author:Mac Sweeney, Naoíse
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Bloomsbury UK

Figure 9.3 The Helios metope from the Hellenistic Temple of Athena at Troy.

Poets competed with each other to demonstrate their erudition and knowledge of Greek legend, and to include evermore obscure mythic details into their work.14 Many of these poets were also textual scholars, including the prolific Callimachus, who wrote hymns, elegies and epigrams as well as the Aitia (literally, ‘Causes’), a lengthy poem recounting myths which lay behind unusual rituals or cult practices. His colleague, Apollonius Rhodius, wrote a series of poems recounting the foundation of notable cities, as well as the Argonautica – an epic about Jason and the Argonauts. Another author, the mysterious Lycophron, penned the Alexandra – a long poem, ostensibly narrated by the Trojan prophet Cassandra, which touched on an encyclopaedic array of mythic episodes through riddling and obscure references.

In this context, the story of the Trojan War became evermore closely associated with Homer and the Iliad. The epic became a source of scholarly debate and bookish dispute, with the librarians at Alexandria pouring over different manuscripts of the texts, offering their comments and emendations. Indeed, many of the Homeric scholia date to this period – ancient commentaries on the text which contain vital information for understanding the poems and wider Greek myth. It is during this period that the Iliad was divided into twenty-four books and that accents and punctuation were added.

In keeping with this erudite interest in the obscure details of the Troy story, some of the best-known works of Hellenistic art take as their subject, not the main characters and heroes of the myth, but the lesser-known figures. The Trojan priest Laocoön is one such figure (Figure 9.4). According to myth, Laocoön tried to warn the Trojans not to bring the Wooden Horse into the city, but was dragged into the sea, along with his sons, by serpents. The famous statue of Laocoön known today is a Roman copy of a Hellenistic original, executed in the vibrant and dynamic style of the Pergamene School. It is unclear exactly what the Hellenistic original may have looked like – the Roman sculptors likely innovated on the design, and the surviving statue today has undergone many restorations from the renaissance to the present day.15

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.