Troy: The Greek Myths Reimagined (Stephen Fry's Great Mythology #3)

by Stephen Fry

There is a story that King Philip II of Macedon (father of Alexander the Great) besieged the city and threatened them thus: “If I defeat you, we will raze your city to the ground. We will kill every man and boy in the city and take every woman and girl into slavery.” The Spartans sent a one-word reply. “If . . .” This is often thought to be the original laconic reply.

Evans was what we would recognize as a true archaeologist, whereas Schliemann . . . Well, his practices were regarded as somewhat drastic even in his own day. We are all familiar with the gentle, achingly slow digging and delicate brushing that archaeologists insist upon. Every site painstakingly pegged out with string, every layer preserved and minutely cataloged. Schliemann had no patience for that kind of thing; he swung his spades with a violent zest that approached vandalism.

Boring old historical truth and evidence were more or less irrelevant to this outrageous fudger, fantasist, fabricator, and outright smuggler,

It’s a long and fascinating story, the development of this line of thinking. The formulaic nature of so many Homeric epithets and images has inclined scholars to the thought (inspired by a study of extant forms of oral poetry in the Balkans) that the bards (known as rhapsodes) used these prefabricated tropes as modules with which they could build the poem’s structure as they recited. Think of jazz. The rhapsodes knew the melody and the key, as it were, and could therefore vamp at will.