Achilles’, Odysseus’, Aeneas’ fate was shaped by the Trojan War. Whether triumphing or dying on the battlefield or surviving and wandering, displaced, Homer and Virgil reflect on the costs of warfare, for the heroes and victims, and the women and gods who care for them.
Virgil was charged with the ultimate commission: to celebrate the first Roman Emperor by telling the story of his ancestor, Aeneas, his wanderings from Troy and his battle to establish Rome. In retelling Homer’s Odyssey and the Iliad as a story of the founding of an Empire, Vergil reflects on the costs of the heroic values in Greece’s foundational epic.
We will start with Achilles’ story interweaving with those of the Greek commanders, his companion Patroclus, his victims, his Trojan opponent and the gods and goddesses who care for them.
Then we follow Odysseus, the storyteller, as he travels in many senses away from Troy to the home, wife and now grown up son he left. The Greeks’ first question, today as in Homer’s day, is ‘who are you, where are you from?’ When Odysseus arrives home, the question is, who is he, now? What will it mean to be recognised as ‘Odysseus’?
Homer’s heroes choose their own fate; Aeneas has to do what the Empire requires. That is his tragedy, and those whose lives he touches – Dido, Lavinia, Turnus.
We will follow the idea of the hero from Troy battlefield to an all-experiencing wanderer returning to rocky Ithaca, Penelope and Telemachus and to the trials and renunciations of a hero shouldering the weight of Empire. But in all three epics, the viewpoints of minor characters, the uninvolved gods and the very involved mothers and lovers, cut across and enrich the heroes’ stories.
