Summary
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the great epic poem attributed to Homer, telling the story of an intense episode in the Trojan War. It is framed by the wrath of the Greek hero Achilles, insulted by his leader Agamemnon and withdrawing from the battle that continued to rage, only returning when his close friend Patroclus is killed by the Trojan hero Hector. Achilles turns his anger from Agamemnon to Hector and the fated destruction of Troy comes ever closer.
With
Edith Hall Professor of Classics at King's College London
Barbara Graziosi Professor of Classics at Princeton University
And
Paul Cartledge A.G. Leventis Senior Research Fellow and Emeritus Professor of Greek Culture at Clare College, Cambridge
Producer: Simon Tillotson.
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | This is the BBC. |
| 0:30.0 | The film is composed in the 8th century BC and attributed to Homer. |
| 0:40.0 | He has been in the history for a long time, perhaps 400 years before. |
| 0:44.0 | In the midst of a bronze age when immortal gons had mortal children. |
| 0:48.0 | Everywhere we see the consequences of that mortality. |
| 0:52.0 | We meet to discuss the Iliad Ar Edith Hall, Professor of Tasks as King's College London. |
| 0:58.0 | Paul Cardlidge, Age Elementist, Senior Research Fellow and Emeritus Professor of Greek Culture, |
| 1:03.0 | and Claire College, Cambridge. |
| 1:05.0 | Paul Cardlidge, what's the wider story of the Trojan War of which this is a part? |
| 1:09.0 | It's a very big question and if we were to take the whole context, |
| 1:15.0 | it would be something like nine centuries that we have to think of, |
| 1:18.0 | roughly between 1600 BCE and about 700 BCE. |
| 1:23.0 | And within that, something is alleged to have happened, namely a massive great war, |
| 1:28.0 | out of which comes this one surviving artifact, which is quite extraordinary, |
| 1:33.0 | nearly 16,000 lines of ductilic hexameter epic attributed to one composer, |
| 1:41.0 | but scholars are very, very divided on whether there was ever anybody called home or any one monumental composer. |
| 1:50.0 | And the core is an alleged ten-year, I defy anybody to believe that there was such a ten-year siege, |
| 1:58.0 | at Troy and Troy is located by the ancients, as well as by us on the Dardanelles or the straight between Europe and Asia. |
| 2:08.0 | And there was indeed a big city there, it's been excavated over many, many years, |
| 2:13.0 | going back to the 19th century, and there's no doubt that if there was a real Troy, |
| 2:18.0 | then this is the site. But after that, pretty much everything is in doubt, |
| 2:22.0 | and I'm speaking here as a historian. |
... |
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