Homer seems to suggest that all the Achaeans converse in Greek and that the Trojans—while understanding Greek and speaking it to the enemy on the few occasions when they meet to parley or exchange messages—have to contend with allies who “bleat like sheep” in hundreds of languages, which means that Hector and his fellow generals are forced to rely on interpreters in the field to relay their messages and instructions. Modern philology proposes that the Trojans in reality spoke a Hittite language called Luwian.120 We will allow the convention begun by Homer and continued by Shakespeare and
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