After Mycenae, the incoming Greeks came into a landscape rich in tombs and memories and myths of male and female heroes of a past age: of extraordinary figures whose stories had to be told and retold. We will explore their challenging lives and ‘heroic’ values through Homer, tragedy, art and sculpture. What makes Achilles, Hector, Agamemnon or Odysseus a ‘hero’? How and why do Medea, Oedipus, Antigone and Electra still fascinate today?
We will explore their challenging lives and ‘heroic’ values in and through Homer and Greek tragedy, setting these iconic figures against those whose stories question the very nature of ‘heroism’ – Hecuba, Helen, The Trojan Women. Throughout we will discuss the representation of ‘the hero’ in art, sculpture and tragedy as well as epic: how did the sophisticated democrats of Classical Athens regard these exceptional individuals? What, if anything, did the first radical democratic – and today’s diverse – audiences recognise in these ‘representations’, this mimesis?
We will start with Achilles’ story – ‘the greatest hero of all’ - interweaving with those of the Greeks and Trojans, his victims and the gods, goddesses and women who care for them. Then we follow Odysseus, the storyteller, travelling 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’? In the Faculty of Classics’ Museum of Classical Archaeology we will trace the development of Greek sculpture in the image of ‘golden boys’ (kouroi) and girls (korai) to the heroes on the Parthenon frieze and athletes’ victory statues.
Finally we will look to the ‘tragic heroes’ whose stories are so variously explored and questioned by Aeschylus in the Oresteia, by Sophocles in Oedipus the King, Antigone and Electra and by Euripides in Medea and The Trojan Women. Attending the Theatre of Dionysus was a democratic duty, like sitting on the jury and on the town council. We will discuss the clash between heroic individualism and civic values debated in the theatre in front of the first democracy, so proudly claiming itself to be the ‘School of Greece, the glory of the present and a wonder for later ages’ (Thucydides The Peloponnesian War II 41 4, from ‘Pericles’ Funeral Oration).
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