Troy and Other Ten-Year Problems

There's a conundrum I've been puzzling over for, ironically, ten years. I have never been able to figure it out. And it's a little embarrassing, as a fan of mythology, not to have a good reason for it. But nevertheless, it stands.

You know those two epic poems that provide some of the most basic foundations for Western society? The Iliad and the Odyssey? Well, I've read them both. I like them both a lot. I especially like Odysseus, the quintessential lovable trickster. He and Nestor provide the most reliable voices of reason in the Iliad, which makes it great fun to watch him really act out in the Odyssey. I don't really like any of the Iliad's characters as much as I like - no, let's do this right, love - Odysseus.

But despite the fact that many of its main characters are morally deplorable creatures who whine, mope, and pet their own egos, and despite the fact that the Odyssey is a far more thoughtful and touching character study... I like the Iliad better.

Let's be clear. My favorite character in the Iliad alternates between Hector, Diomedes, and Aeneas, depending on the mood I'm in that hour. Menelaus doesn't get enough screen time, Agamemnon's obnoxious, Helen's underused, Zeus is a bitch, and do not get me started on Achilles. I cannot with the glorification of a whiny self-absorbed mama's boy. I just cannot. And the characters I do like? Well, Hector is Hector, i.e. Living Awesome, but sometimes the sheer wow factor gets overwhelming. (Is there anything wrong with him? Anything at all?) Aeneas, to my surprise, turned out to be a very active participant in the war; before I read the Iliad, I thought of him as the sequel guy, and I enjoyed seeing him kick ass before Dido and Virgil got hold of him. And Diomedes... okay, he has basically one chapter, but in that chapter he makes Achilles look like a wuss, gives Aphrodite the bladed bitch-slap we all wanted her to get, and sends the freaking god of war crying home to Dad, in what is arguably the funniest scene in literary antiquity. Including everything in Lysistrata. If you can only have one chapter in which to shine, this is the one to have.

There's really no comparison with Odysseus. He's charismatic, brilliant, fast-thinking, and good at what he does. (Which is everything.) He knows exactly what he's worth, but unlike Achilles or Paris or any of the other entitled "heroes" of the Iliad, he doesn't sit around waiting for the world to give it to him. He goes after it, and if he fails the first time, he comes back with a better plan.

Calypso Takes Pity on Odysseus,
Henry Justice Ford

And oh yeah - he fails sometimes. Big time. He is the only man on his flagship (at least; he took eleven others to Troy) to make it back to Ithaca; that's one lousy rate of retention. He dozes off among his suspicious men, leaving Aeolus' bag of winds carelessly unguarded. Worst of all, he basically gives his address and phone number to an enraged and blinded Cyclops whose father rules the sea, right before he starts off on a long sea voyage. But he pays the price for those failures. He loses the men whose safety is in his keeping; he spends ten years trying to get home; he nearly dies about a million times. And he learns. By the time he gets back home, he's able (with some help from Athena) to diffuse a civil war in the making. He has the best character arc of anyone in Greek mythology.

But I confess it: when I read the Odyssey, I was bored.

Telemachus Arming, Luigi Bienaime

Maybe it's because Odysseus' adventures have crossed so deeply into popular culture that I already knew the whole story. The suspense of his escape from Polyphemus, the seductive threat of Circe, the innocent relief of Nausicaa and the Phoenician episode, all lost their full impact because I already knew how it ended. "Okay, Odysseus, you stabbed the Cyclops in his one eye. Good for you. Can you tell me something new, please?" (Full credit, by the way, to the d'Aulaires, who valiantly refrained from spoiling the Odyssey. That being said, I would have LOVED to read a d'Aulaire version.) What did make an impression on me were the Telemachus side plot and the reunion of Odysseus and Penelope. Telemachus surprised me just as Aeneas did; I kind of knew he was there somewhere, but I hadn't expected him to be

Odysseus and Penelope, John Flaxman

energetic and enterprising and very much a worthy son to Odysseus. And even though I knew the plot summary of that reunion, I was utterly unprepared for the exquisite language it's written in, and the aching sweep of love and shock and joy that carries it forward. When I read the Odyssey, I read Penelope's speech to Odysseus aloud. I can't help it. There are sentences that exist to be spoken. I had thought of that scene as the standard capper to the hero's journey; I had never envisioned it as the emotional climax of lovers estranged for twenty years. That scene broke me in all the wonderful ways literature is supposed to break you.

But no one spoiled the Iliad for me. I mean, I knew Hector died, but I didn't know Diomedes was a badass, or that there was so much divine machination, or that Helen gave Paris a verbal emasculation that rivals Lady Macbeth. No one told me about the agony of the fight over Patroclus' body. I was unprepared for the scene where Priam begs Achilles for his son's corpse. And most of all, I was stunned to find that the war epic to end all war epics is actually anti-war.

Achilles Triumphant, Howard David Johnson

Really, who does that? Who paints a masterpiece of how art sucks, or compiles a complete and working investment portfolio illuminating all the flaws of Wall Street? The guts and the vision to decry war while writing the war story astounded me. People who dismiss the death lists and the catalogue of ships completely miss the point. For chapter after chapter, the Iliad sets you up with all the glorious claptrap, applying epithets to the war leaders, giving us gorgeous details like the red bows of the Ithacan fleet, the pathetic offering of three ships from Nireus the pretty boy, and Ajax of Salamis' seven-layer shield covered with bronze.

Hector Brought Back to Troy, artist unknown

And then they die. Then they all pour onto the beach and start fighting, and we see all the men who die in their last moments. "The end of death covered over his eyes and nostrils." "The spear-point went right through [his helmet] and smashed the bone, and all his brains were spattered inside, and the man brought down in his fury." "He shrieked as the life breathed from him, and fell screaming in the dust, and his spirit flitted away." These are visceral, claustrophobic moments, rendered with sympathy for the dying and an implicit condemnation of the reason they died. It happens over and over. The Iliad is relentless. It will trick you into thinking you're reading something golden and glorious, and then it'll throw a chapter of death lists in your face and dare you to believe, after all that, that war is a good thing.

I had no idea. And I could not put the thing down.

Ulysses and the Sirens, Roman mosaic, 3rd century CE

The Odyssey, in comparison, is structurally far simpler: it's a quest, told with unusual timing but still straightforward. Odysseus starts at Point A, zigzags through a maze of adventures, and ends up at Point B. The Iliad starts exactly where it ends: two great nations, both with admirable and appalling people, destroying each other. There's no journey, no revelation, no catharsis. Achilles manages to find his humanity in the end, but that's a hollow victory, because we all know he too is soon to die; his emotional progress matters not a jot. Come the next day, these flawed and brave and blind people we've come to know so well are going to go back to that beach and keep killing each other. The Odyssey is the emotional arc of three complicated characters, disguised as a simple story; the Iliad is a message disguised as a series of episodes.

The Procession of the Trojan Horse in Troy, Domenico Tiepolo

And I have no reason for why I like one better than the other. The secrets that both were hiding blew me away. They're both seminal pieces of Western culture; I wouldn't want to live in a world without them. But the one that moves me most is the story of despair at human nature, not the uplifting and adventurous yarn. Odysseus is the best of all traveling companions, but he's only one man. The Iliad tells me hard truths about human nature, using beautiful language to create horrific images. And in that very act, it affirms the good as well as the bad in humanity: no matter how low we sink, there will always be voices like Homer's, to tell us with such blunt grace what we're doing wrong.

A Gold-Digger's Nightmare

If things work out right, being a fairy tale heroine is a sweet gig. You can rise overnight from nobody to royalty. You can make your fortune through luck, wits, or virtue, without having to compromise or scratch anyone's back. You can guarantee your safety for the rest of your life.

Unless you happen to have married an absolute freakshow. And trust me. They're out there.

Bluebeard, Hermann Vogel

Take, for instance, the obvious Bluebeard. Here's a guy rolling in money and power who gets his kicks by playing on his impressionable bride's curiosity and cutting off her head when she dares to disobey him in one way. Lather, rinse, and repeat ad nauseam until karma catches up with him and he marries a girl with rather aggressive brothers. Are wealth and security really worth putting up with such an abusive control freak?

I'd like to say no, but then I run into Shahryar, whose wife's infidelity broke his brain so much that he went on a marry-and-murder spree, decimating the young female population of his own country to prevent himself from being deceived in love again. While it's clear that no one besides Shahryar is in favor of this policy, the fact remains that girls kept marrying him every day for three years.

A Tale of 1001 Nights, Gustave Boulanger

By the time Scheherazade comes up with her plan to save her fellow women, it's explicitly stated that Shahryar has gone through every girl but our heroine and her little sister. Some were smuggled away; some families fled wholesale. But the most Shahryar's subjects do is pray for deliverance. There's no rebellion of outraged fathers who've had enough. The privilege of being sultana, even if only for a day and a night, was so substantial that it kept a steady stream of girls going into the palace to die.

Of course, not all abuse is as physical as Shahryar's and Bluebeard's. The medieval archetype of the perfect wife was Griselda, whose classic rags-to-riches story is the final tale in The Decameron. Beautiful peasant girl catches the eye of nobleman, who does the right thing and marries her. And then, because he's an emotionally manipulative asshole, he decides to test his wife's virtue and see if she's worthy of the great honor of being raised so high.

The Clerk's Tale, Janet Harvey Kelman

First he tells her that his people are upset that she's only given birth to a daughter. She apologizes. So he has their baby taken away and tells Griselda that he's going to have their daughter killed, when in fact he sends her secretly away to be fostered. When Griselda has a son, he says that his people don't want a peasant's grandson to rule over them, so he has the boy sent away and tells Griselda the same story. She never complains.

Fast forward about 10 years. Lord Bastard McEviljerk isn't done yet.

He tells Griselda that their marriage is over and sends her back to her father's hut. She asks only for a shift in which to return. Then her sort-of ex-husband announces his engagement to a properly noble girl

The Story of Patient Griselda, Master
of the Story of Griselda

and orders Griselda, who knows the running of his castle better than anyone, to prepare the wedding feast for her replacement. Which she does, without complaint.

Of course, the "new bride" is in fact Griselda's long-lost daughter, accompanied by her brother. All is revealed, Griselda is reinstated, and my brain is broken almost as badly as Shahryar's, because for the love of God, why is this a happy ending?! The lord is despicable even within the context of the story; his people scold him for his rank mistreatment of his wife. Griselda's virtues are all of her time; she's not a character, she's a medieval idealization of submission, with no will of her own. There is no way to make this story palatable for modern audiences. Not when the nominal hero is an appalling abuser, and the heroine either too spineless or too intimidated ever to speak out in her own defense. The payoff - raising Griselda back to nobility - is as condescending as the setup, coming as it does from the husband who did everything he could to destroy the wife who never gainsaid him. Even mass-murdering Shahryar has the two key moments of realizing his crime and feeling true remorse. Griselda's husband never even admits that he did anything wrong. He's the Chris Brown of folklore.

The Farmer's Clever Daughter, Gina Biggs

There's a far more enjoyable, but ultimately just as frustrating, version in which the poor girl wins the king's heart by her surpassing cleverness. He's perfectly happy with her until she proves that she's smarter than he is. In a fit of pique, he sends her back to her father's house, allowing her to take only one thing - the thing she loves best - back with her from the palace. The girl promptly drugs her husband's wine and carries him back with her. When he asks her to explain, she gives him the cute and obvious line that since she loves him best of everything in the palace, naturally she took him. This so flatters his injured ego that he reinstates her as queen and promises to listen to her. On the surface, it's the same idea of virtue rewarded; underneath, you still have a woman shackled to a man who doesn't deserve her. In this case, the heroine actively pursues her lousy mate, even when he's proved how small he really is. Is he really what she loves best? Or does she want her privileged life back again, whatever the cost?

Helen and Menelaus at the Sack of Troy, c. 440-430 CE

I know I wrote a panegyric on Menelaus a couple weeks ago. I stand by it. But even he has his awful spots. During the Sack of Troy, he's prepared to kill Helen until, at the last moment, she convinces him to spare her life. His change of heart is most often attributed to her seductive powers. As a Menelaus apologist, I don't think we should rule out the chance of a terrified plea, or an appeal for forgiveness, being just as likely to influence an estranged but fascinated husband. Nor can I reconcile the more complex character of the Iliad with the straightforward Man Wronged Seeks Vengeance at the Sack. But there it is, part of the legend, and we have to deal with it. Helen convinces a man ready to kill her to take her back. Why?

For the same reason as the clever farmer's daughter drugs the king. At that point in time, he is the only future she will ever have. No one will risk another war for Helen, not after the devastation of Troy. She's infamous, whether deservedly or not. Her only chance at regaining a life worth living is to make her life part of Menelaus's. It's a play for survival, and against all the odds it works. If she was his upgrade when they married, the tables have decidedly turned.

At what point does the man himself become identified with the status he represents? The distinction is murkier in the stories where the heroine is reunited with her abusive husband at the end; we're supposed to believe that the triumph here is one of love, not of successful social

King Cophetua and the Beggar Maid, John Byam
Liston Shaw

climbing. But it's hard to imagine fulfilling happiness for Griselda, unless she's willing to endure a creep for the sake of the wealth and ease he represents. (In which case she's hardly virtuous for the sake of virtue, which defeats the point of the whole story.) Assuming the king keeps his promise to the clever farmgirl, they might be happy, but he's fickle enough that that's a big assumption to make. We see Helen and Menelaus post-Troy in the Odyssey, and find out that Helen's happiness is contingent on endless self-deprecation; she apologizes constantly for having caused the Trojan War, even though Homer already showed us that she played her part unwillingly and under divine coercion. Shahryar's contrition seems real, but what if he relapses? Only Bluebeard's final bride doesn't have to face the prospect of further abuse, and even she has to deal with the trauma of having married and nearly been a victim of a serial killer.

The scariest part is, in almost every case the woman knows what she's getting. With the exception of Bluebeard's bride, by the time of the reinstatement every discarded or endangered wife knows exactly what her husband's capable of. And they still go back. Something makes it worthwhile for them.

It could be that they've each fallen in love with weak men who abuse them to regain a sense of control. Or it could be the prospect of the life they offer, a more comfortable life than these women would have otherwise, a life of privilege and security that makes it worth tolerating devastating abuse.

Either way, it says something scary.

In Defense of Menelaus

As a rule of thumb, I cheer for the underdog. Watching someone beat the odds is a marvelous thing. It gives you hope for yourself, for the future, for the world in general. The big guys don't always win, and the little guy who cares can actually stand up and show them what's what.

And I have never seen a more under underdog than Menelaus.

Helen and Paris, Howard David Johnson

Everyone knows how this goes. We saw a preview for it in Aphrodite and Hephaestus' disastrous marriage, but even the gods couldn't outdo the mortals on this one. Anyone planning to hook up with The Most Beautiful [fill-in-the-blank] Ever should take note: there will always be an upgrade. Menelaus is the guy Helen had to marry; Paris is the guy she wanted to marry. Or at least the guy she shacked up with for a decade and (according to Homer) had pretty awesome hate sex with. Menelaus is the guy with metaphorical egg on his face who has to fight his wife's boy toy, who quite possibly has non-metaphorical afterglow in his hair. Someone is losing here, big time.

Rubbing salt in that ten-year wound, no one can say a nice word about Menelaus' appearance. Helen's beauty goes without saying; Paris is called "godlike" by Homer, who otherwise has no time for the whiny little brat. The best Menelaus gets in terms of physical description is that he

The Sacrifice of Iphigenia (detail of Menelaus), Roman
copy of the painting by Timanthes

has red hair. Damned by faint praise if anyone ever was. If Paris is Helen's upgrade, it's hard not to imagine that Helen was Menelaus's. The younger brother of an ambitious king could expect very little in Bronze Age Greece, but marriage to Helen got Menelaus a kingdom, prestige, and an incredibly hot wife all in one stroke. All of a sudden it makes a bit more sense why he'd fight so devastating a war to get her back: she's the ticket to his future, and possibly his self-esteem too.

But that's not enough. This humiliation conga's just beginning. Menelaus is very clearly subordinate to his brother for the entirety of the war, despite having the most at stake. Hera and Athena are nominally on his side, but they have to remind themselves to help him out, while Aphrodite springs into action when Paris is in danger. And in every adaptation of the story since Homer, he's recharacterized as unsavory: neglectful, abusive, careless, vengeful, anything to make him seem unworthy of the prize that is Helen.

So why do I cheer for him? Because he's awesome, that's why.

Helen and Menelaus, 6th century Greek relief

Homer tells us right from the start that what Menelaus wants most of all is to defend Helen's honor. Don't forget, Homer's Helen isn't in love with Paris; the first time we see them together, she quite rightly bitches him out for his wimpiness, comparing him to Menelaus in devastating terms. No one listens, least of all Paris, but Helen is not happy in Troy. Who wants to protect her? Who wants to make her happy? Who wants to restore her good name? Menelaus. Her husband. After nine years of daily humiliation, his goal is still to please her. In a Big Manly Epic full of blood and death and talk of honor, that is just sweet.

But Menelaus isn't just all heart. He plans nighttime initiatives with Agamemnon. His most-used epithet is "master of the war-cry." Helen sings his praises as a fighter, and his battle with Paris more than proves her right. He never oversteps his boundaries as second-in-command, but when he needs to act, he brings it. He's a king you could be proud to follow, which in the Iliad is rare indeed.

Menelaus Supporting the Body of Patroclus, Roman copy
of Greek statue

And lest we forget, he carries Patroclus's body back to the Greek lines, weaponless and endangered for the sake of his dead comrade's honor.

This. Guy. Rocks.

I dare you to find a more well-rounded man in all of Greek mythology. Menelaus has it all. Plus he wins. Plus Helen is happy to be reunited with him and their daughter. (Hey, they had a daughter? That means they must have slept together! Crazy times!)

And he never brags about how awesome he is. He just is. And it's a crying shame that he's constantly belittled in favor of a spoiled manwhore who hasn't a fraction of Menelaus's qualities, or the grace with which he carries them.

Oh, princess, how they'll whisper your name...

Hands up if you knew Cassandra had a suitor. (Not counting Apollo, that is, or Ajax of Rapetown in the shire of Rapesly.) Two suitors, in fact. At least. Coroebus and Othronus, foreign princes who fought and died for Troy because they wanted to marry Cassandra.

Cassandra, Frederick Sandys

I wonder why so few Iliad adaptations mention that? What part of "feared and shunned prophesying madwoman" doesn't
scream dude magnet?

I like that Cassandra had suitors. It's a canon confirmation of how fascinating a character she's always been. We're not the only ones interested in a dead-on accurate and utterly ignored prophet. Even then, even among the people who stuffed their fingers in their ears, someone saw something in her that made them want to know more.

And in a serious way, too. It would be different if Coroebus came to Troy, saw a hot princess (Homer compares Cassandra to Aphrodite at one point), and decided she wasn't interesting enough to risk his life for. Instead, he made it all the way through the war fighting for Troy, only to die trying to defend Cassandra from Ajax of Locris.

Cassandra Dragged from Athena's Temple, Antoine Rivalz

Poor Othronus comes late and leaves early, arriving and dying in the Iliad. Homer takes the time to inform us that Othronus is there only so he can marry Cassandra, and that he would have married her even without a dowry.

We're not talking puppy love here. There was something about this woman. (Sure, at the beginning an alliance with Troy probably helped. But after ten years of war, with all its deprivations and losses, there was something else keeping them on that battlefield.)

So what is it about Cassandra that's so magnetic? Her own people don't like her, at least one god has a serious vendetta against her, and she cares very little for her own personal image, or she wouldn't be quite so prone to public screaming prophecies. I'm going to hazard a guess that whatever drew Coroebus and Othronus to her was not the prophetic gift that so enthralls modern readers. That particular blessing had very little value, either to Cassandra or to anyone who heard her. The benefit of hindsight makes it easier for us to appreciate Cassandra than it was for the Trojans.

Cassandra, Evelyn De Morgan

And she never stops fighting. In the face of scorn, ridicule, and disbelief, she never falters or betrays what she knows to be true. A Trojan, living day-to-day with an uncanny child prophet who grows more unhinged with each year, would not be kindly disposed toward her; an outsider, already prepared to like a rich and lovely princess, could easily be surprised and touched by her tenacity and her struggles. (Loyalty and courage being traits that ancient Greek society prized highly.)

But the repercussions of a lifetime of denial would have been very visible. Cassandra's a loner, a dreamer, a half-mad voice of reason at the mercy of unwanted powers.

So it's a lot to read into three characters who barely rate a mention in the Iliad. But it's a hard question to answer, and one that few people have even tackled. And in my head, at least, it gives Cassandra a measure of the sympathy and kindness that her people couldn't find for her.

And now you know what a softy I really am.

For extra fun: this song, from which I took the title of the post, might as well have been written by one of Cassandra's suitors.