This chapter considers the prominence of and play with temporality in imperial Greek epic through a reading of three poems which thematise time in particularly self-conscious ways: Quintus of Smyrna’s Posthomerica, Triphiodorus’ Sack of Troy and Colluthus’ Abduction of Helen. These epics all return directly to the world of Troy, resurrect Homer’s idiolect and style, and locate their plots before or in-between the timespan of the Iliad and Odyssey. Analysing some key moments of temporal reflexivity in these poems, the chapter outlines the specific ‘imperial Greek temporality’ that they share, which connects these otherwise very different poems and renders them distinct from, for instance, Apollonius’ Alexandrian epic as analysed by Phillips. These poets proudly return to the literary distant past and use this past to convey their own imperial identities, revelling in their paradoxical positions as both pre- and post-Homeric.

This chapter analyses the presentation of space in relation to the story narrated in the two Homeric epics. Tsagalis’ study is divided into two parts: in the first, he explores simple story space, i.e. how the narrator views the space in which the plot is unravelled in both the Iliad and the Odyssey. In the second part, he treats embedded story space, i.e. the way characters, functioning as thinking agents with stored experiences, perceive what is taking place in the story-world. The structure of this chapter locates and highlights for the readers the similarities and differences between the Iliad and the Odyssey with respect to these two categories of space and suggests the ways in which these categories could be taken up and manipulated by later proponents of the genre.

This chapter traces the shadow that ancient Greek epic, and the Homeric poems most particularly, have cast over the modern nations of Greece and Turkey, using case studies with a specific focus on how the epics came to figure in the nation-building work of both countries. Greece presents a unique case for the reception of these poems for two related reasons: Homeric Greek can be integrated into modern Greek literature without transl(iter)ation, and a long-standing national discourse casts the Greek heroes of the Iliad and Odyssey as the ancestors of Greeks living today. On the other hand, Turkey, whose borders encompass the ancient site of Troy, made different use of the Homeric tradition. During the self-conscious process of Westernisation in the twenty-first century, the Homeric poems were among the first great works of ‘Western’ – not Greek – literature to be translated by translators working in the employ of the state. Hanink uses these contrasting studies of the national receptions of ancient epic in the ‘Homeric lands’ to point to the range of ways that Homeric poetry has been invoked in modern nation-building projects.

Philoctetes is the most ethically complex of all Sophocles’ plays. Philoctetes, Odysseus and the background figure of Achilles present various paradigms for the young Neoptolemus, who must decide in the course of the play which, if any, to adopt as his model. Philoctetes and Odysseus are both endowed with established convictions, but Neoptolemus’ moral character is still in the process of formation. Moral argument and choice take on a peculiarly dynamic role in the plot as we see him exposed to the influence of each of the two older men in turn. Odysseus has come to Lemnos to steal Philoctetes’ invincible bow, which, according to the oracle of Helenus, is necessary for Greek success at Troy. But he knows that Philoctetes hates him bitterly (75f.), so his plan requires the cooperation of Neoptolemus. Odysseus characterises the scheme as a joint one (25), but also makes his own controlling role quite clear. Neoptolemus is to serve (15), and to listen while Odysseus explains his plan (24f.).

This chapter revolves around the famous story of how the Greeks managed to get into the city of Troy concealed in a gigantic wooden horse – and thus won a long and drawn-out war. The chapter follows this story and dismantles the odd human/animal hybrid at its core in the ultimate aim to explore how notions of animality define the human at war. Moving away from the ‘othering’ at work in the previous chapter, this one illustrates an area of existence in which analogies between human and animal prevail. Fighting emerges as an area of life in which our animal side comes to the fore.

The first chapter is dedicated to the origin stories that depicted the birth of the Franks and their leading family. Gregory of Tours was reluctant to discuss the topic, privileging other axes of identity. While he chose to downplay the importance of Frankish identity, his treatment of the arrival and establishment of the Franks betrays an understanding of distinct phases of Frankish history. The Trojan origin myth made its first appearance in the Chronicle of Fredegar. The second section is dedicated to the Trojan myth in Fredegar and the LHF and the possible reasons for its inclusion and for the rejection of competing origin myths. The third section discusses the Trojan comment in Paul the Deacon’s Gesta episcoporum Mettensium, which offered an idealized ancestry for Charlemagne and a curious reworking of Merovingian history. In the final section, the discussion will turn to the Trojan story found in the thirteenth-century Roman des rois. The process whereby the story was made to conform to contemporary royal and Dionysian ideologies will be presented, alongside a discussion of Primat’s usage of Childeric to explore Capetians' relations with their aristocracy.

Troy is fated to destruction so that Aeneas will fulfil World Fate in settling in Hesperia, as Hector and Creusa tell him, Venus and Creusa convincing him that his Homeric defence of Troy is contrary to fate. Latinus assents to Aeneas as the fated husband of his daughter Lavinia, but is forced to open the Gates of Janus against Aeneas by Amata, whose rejection of known fate sways the day. Turnus knows fate but resists it out of his Homeric sense of honour, which makes him commit mistakes on a general scale, as in the ambush on Aeneas’ troops. Ultimately, however, he comes to accept the importance of fate, and un-Homerically to face Aeneas alone as a sacrifice one-for-all. Aeneas gradually wishes to assent to fate, as when he follows the advice of Nautes to ‘follow’ where fate leads, and in particular when Anchises in the Underworld fires Aeneas with a desire for what is to be. He counters Turnus’ Homeric individualism by his focus on the wider vision of World Fate. However, when he kills Turnus he fails Stoicism, which commended clementia. He therefore remains a Stoic ‘progressor’, not a Sage, even though he does set the stage for World Fate and the formation of Rome.

A copy of the Ancient History until Caesar today in the Vatican includes an early depiction of the Rape of the Sabine Women, a violent event from the early history of Rome (more on this in Section 6.2).1 It was probably produced in Genoa or Naples around 1300. The scene is placed in front of a classicizing colonnade with slender columns and depressed arches, potentially an allusion to the antique historical setting. The imagery is minimalist and remains two-dimensional, and compositional decisions limit the exposition of gender-related violence. Altogether there are five pairs of women and men equally distributed under the arches of the colonnade (Figure 6.1). The coifs, hats, and robes of men, together with the circlets and dresses of women, transposes the event into an aristocratic–patrician milieu: We witness what noblemen do to noblewomen. The image has a strong symmetrical structure: The same compositions are repeated on the sides, around the central image. There appears to be a sort of amplification of the gestures. On the flanks, the Roman aggressor embraces the shoulders of the Sabine victim and perhaps touches her breasts. The women here raise their arms with the palms turned towards the outside, which may indicate acceptance.2 One would even be tempted to say that they smile – the approach is welcomed. Quite the opposite, in the inner couplets the men clearly hold the women’s wrists, which signals coercion and use of force. In the center the female victim is embraced, the hands of Romulus (?), with a golden hat, rest on her back and caress her chin. She does not reciprocate the gesture, and this may express her rejection of the imposed intimacy. In any case, the image shows a mixture of negative and positive reactions to the abduction. It displays the major question of the illustrations that accompany romances: Whether or not the female protagonists consented to their capture and the ensuing sexual intercourse? The stories of Helen of Troy, the Sabine women, or Lucretia all revolve around this central issue. Produced primarily for the aristocratic and financial elite in Italy, these French texts and their imagery provide an important backdrop to the communal condemnation of sexual violence and point toward the emergence of erotized representation after 1400.

The central chapters of this book focus on the development and growth of insular origin legends over time by studying a key subset of themes that came to take on particular significance within this corpus. Tracing the expansion and increasing centrality of these themes over time allows us to witness the influence that individual texts within the corpus of material containing early insular origin legends had on the development of these legends themselves. Chapter Two focuses on exile, first tracing the influence of the biblical myth of Exodus and the classical legend of the Aeneid on early medieval authors before examining contemporary evidence for exile in early medieval legal and historical texts. The chapter argues that as the corpus of insular works containing origin narratives grew and developed over time, the concept of exile took on central importance. Arising from Gildas’s foundational description of Britain as an island on the outermost fringes of the known world, the centrality of exile to insular origin stories grew after the ninth-century Historia Brittonum introduced the influential legend that Britain’s founding ancestor was Brutus, an exile from Troy. From there, the concept of exile gained increasing thematic importance within insular origin narratives.

The status of Rome vis-à-vis the Roman empire is analyzed. Fears that it might be replaced and the imperial capital would be transferred are reported from the first century BC onward. Foundation myths suggested that Rome originated in the East, in Troy, and it was suspected that the capital might move back to the East. These suspicions did not materialize for centuries but became reality under Constantine with the refoundation of Byzantium as Constantinople. The choice of Constantinople as (eastern) capital may not have been a matter of course from the start. Other cities seem to have been considered first, and it is not certain why it was chosen. Furthermore, there is no contemporary evidence that Constantine always conceived his new foundation as the eastern capital of the empire, or that he intended that it should replace Rome. Claims, made first by Christian authors, that Constantine’s city was conceived from the start as the new or second Rome and also as a purely Christian city cannot be confirmed. The city actually took time to develop into an imperial capital. The city became the undisputed centre of the late Roman empire only in the reign of Theodosius I.

Within a few thousand years, in at least six areas of the world, ancient civilization began.

The status of Rome vis-à-vis the Roman empire is analyzed. Fears that it might be replaced and the imperial capital would be transferred are reported from the first century BC onward. Foundation myths suggested that Rome originated in the East, in Troy, and it was suspected that the capital might move back to the East. These suspicions did not materialize for centuries but became reality under Constantine with the refoundation of Byzantium as Constantinople. The choice of Constantinople as (eastern) capital may not have been a matter of course from the start. Other cities seem to have been considered first, and it is not certain why it was chosen. Furthermore, there is no contemporary evidence that Constantine always conceived his new foundation as the eastern capital of the empire, or that he intended that it should replace Rome. Claims, made first by Christian authors, that Constantine’s city was conceived from the start as the new or second Rome and also as a purely Christian city cannot be confirmed. The city actually took time to develop into an imperial capital. The city became the undisputed centre of the late Roman empire only in the reign of Theodosius I.

The depiction of Troy and Carthage in Virgil’s Aeneid is influenced by the very recent events of the civil war between the future Augustus and Mark Antony and Cleopatra. The orientalising propaganda directed against Cleopatra and her city of Alexandria has left its mark on the depiction of Carthage and Dido, whose temptations for Aeneas recall the temptations of Alexandria and Cleopatra for Mark Antony. The victory at Actium over Antony and Cleopatra represents the defeat of a threat of a Roman reversion to their Eastern origins in Troy.

Examines Quintus’ use of memory as a device for literary recapitulation. Considers what happens when Quintus’ characters, who are ‘still in the Iliad’, remember the Iliad incorrectly. It is argued that rather than offering a correction of Homer’s version of events, Quintus uses the pliability of memory as a retrospective figure to defend and continue the act of poetic selectivity. He is therefore able to provide Homer’s response to charges of lying prevalent in revisionist strands of his imperial reception (e.g. in Dio Chrysostom, Dares, Dictys and Philostratus – who emerge as key players in this chapter).

In Sophocles’Eurypylus, known to us from extensive but lacunose papyrus fragments, the Mysian queen Astyoche receives news of the death at the hands of Neoptolemus of her son Eurypylus, whom she had sent to fight at Troy. Extant tragedy provides us with examples of ‘bad’ mothers, whose actions with regard to their children range from neglect to the extreme of murder. This chapter reads Astyoche through the intersection of maternal and patriotic values in what Cowan terms the ‘martial mother ideal’, whereby women send the sons whom they have nurtured off to battle for the sake of the city. In Eurypylus the mother’s motivation is perverted – she sends her son not out of civic duty, but as the result of a bribe – and the outcome is inverted, as Eurypylus’ resulting death does nothing to avert the fall of Troy. In drawing out the complex portrayal of Astyoche in relation to her role as mother, her manipulation of the categories of natal and marital family, and her violent self-condemnation, this chapter sheds new light on what must have been one of Sophocles’ most compelling female characters.

This essay presents a short biography of Carl Blegen, who excavated at Troy and the Palace of Nestor at Pylos, and who formulated ideas that still have a significant impact on the study of the Aegean Bronze Age today.

In the Iliad, the physical, material makeup of the city of Troy is never described for its own sake. Descriptions of the city are always utilized in order to articulate the tensions and cohesion that structure the community of the Trojans.

The essay discusses the Hittite literary evidence for the site of Wilusa, the location of Ahhiyawa, and wars fought in the region of Troy during the Late Bronze Age. It is suggested that Wilusa was the Hittite name for Troy; that their term Ahhiyawa was a reference to the Mycenaeans and, most likely, to mainland Greece; and that there were at least four wars in which the Hittites were either involved or knew of that were fought in the vicinity of Troy during the fifteenth to twelfth centuries b.c.e.

The Iliad draws on legends about destructions of cities that can be traced back to the Bronze Age, both in Greece and the Near East. The epic also provides evidence for alternate versions of the fall of Troy and an earlier historical framework in which Troy was one of a series of destroyed cities.