A memo that will teach you how to distinguish between Homer's characters and help you look at them from a different perspective

2024 Author: Richard Flannagan | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-15 23:55

Every Soviet teenager was probably familiar with the plots of the Iliad and the Odyssey - two poems by Homer and the adventures of the ancient Greeks. It just happens that only Odysseus is accurately identified, and in the rest of the characters they are a little confused. A memo from "Culturology" will refresh the memories of who is who. And at the same time it will make you look at them in a new way.

Elena the beautiful

The adventure began with this girl. When one king decided to marry his daughter, he invited many heroes to compete with each other for her hand and heart. And then he got scared that, firstly, he didn’t understand which of them was better, and secondly, when he understood and said about it, the rest would tear him to pieces. In the end, Elena's father simply asked who she liked. It turns out that it was possible! And before announcing her (that is, officially his) choice, he made the suitors swear that everyone would support the young husband and no one would declare war on him. So Elena's wedding brought no problems to anyone.

Paris

Young prince of Troy, a developed city-state of the Bronze Age. Once, three goddesses were asked to judge which of them was beautiful. To the winner, Paris had to hold out an apple. But the competition was thoroughly corrupt: each goddess promised to give something if she was chosen as the winner. Paris chose the goddess of love. In return, she told him where to steal the most beautiful woman in the world. It was Elena, long-married. Naturally, the goddess of love planted love for Paris in her heart. Free will? In ancient Greece, they did not hear about this.

After the theft of Elena, all her ex-suitors, in alliance with her ex-husband, declared war on Troy. It all ended sadly for Paris. He died. From the arrow.

Menelaus

The young son of the Mycenaean king, forced to flee his homeland. He served at the court of Elena's father. It is not surprising that it was him that the girl chose to take as her husband when she was asked. By the way, it was in honor of their daughter Hermione that one of the heroines of the Harry Potter saga received the name. Hermione was one of the few heroines of ancient Greek myths, born to a couple, who developed without violence from the groom or parents. So the name tells us that the English fairy Hermione was born into a family where love reigns.

Odysseus

One of the most popular characters from The Iliad and The Odyssey. It was he who prompted to marry Elena off for the one who fell in love with her, because his wife loved him too. Favorite of the goddess of war Athena. He loves war so much that he tried to pretend to be insane so as not to participate. All the most ingenious decisions belong to Odysseus. After the victory over Troy, he wandered across the seas and distant countries for a long time, until he could return home.

Myths provide an interesting continuation of the adventures of Odysseus described in the poems. According to them, he led the life of a bigamist; in the end he was killed by his second wife's son. After that, the son-killer married the first wife of the father, and the son of the first wife of the father married the second wife of the father. Oddly enough, there were still several centuries before the invention of Indian cinema.

Athena

Goddess of war and wisdom, patroness of Troy, one of the participants in the beauty contest, which was judged by Paris. It is believed that it was for an insult inflicted by Paris - a refusal to recognize her as the most beautiful - she left Troy as her patronage. But the city did not lose immediately. He had to be taken by cunning: to build a huge wooden horse in which the soldiers would hide. This horse was offered to be donated to the temple of Athena. The Trojans, who really needed Athena's support, happily brought him into the city. The Greeks got out of the horse and defeated everyone.

Achilles

Another favorite of Athena, the son of a nymph. As a child, he was immersed in a magical source, which made him invulnerable. True, at the same time his mother held him by the heel, so that Achilles could be killed by launching, say, an arrow into the heel. And so it happened.

Mother tried not to let Achilles go to war, hiding among the girls in women's clothing and with a spinning wheel. The Greeks could not tell the boy from the girls by sight, and Odysseus arranged a trick. He laid out various goods in front of the girls, among them a sword, and then sounded a battle alarm. The girls rushed to hide, and Achilles grabbed his weapon. By that he gave himself away.

However, it is still unclear, perhaps the Greeks actually took away some very decisive girl, and Achilles spun the rest of his life on the female half. Homer would not approve of such an interpretation, but history shows that anything is possible.

Patroclus

Achilles' childhood friend and, it seems, his lover. In ancient Greece, this was considered indecent: connections were encouraged only between adult men and youths, there was no trace of such peers. He died from a blow to the groin with a spear, but vicious ties have nothing to do with it: the blow was struck by one of the Trojans.

Agamemnon

The elder brother of Menelaus, who fled from Mycenae with him and later became king of Mycenae. He married the elder sister of Elena the Beautiful, Clytemnestra, and after he had killed her husband and son. He later sacrificed their own daughter. Arrogant, quarrels with everyone, because of which the army of the Greeks almost lost the help of Achilles. Achilles, in fact, twice quarreled with Agamemnon over women. The first time was when Agamemnon captured the Trojan horse Chryseis as a concubine and refused to let her go, despite the anger of the gods. The second - when Agamemnon took the Trojan Briseis allocated to Achilles as part of the prey. Probably, Agamemnon reasoned in the spirit that Achilles already has Patroclus.

In general, Agamemnon was an unpleasant person, and it is not surprising that at home his wife was waiting for him with impatience and loyal people. His head was cut off when he was leaving the bathhouse after a long trip for Elena the Beautiful.

Hector

The elder brother of Paris, a prince and a giant, as well as a caring husband and father. For his strength and beauty, the Trojans revered him as a god and considered him the main defender of their city. It was Hector who killed Patroclus in battle, for which Achilles later killed him, taking the spear of Athena. The young hero drove the body of the giant in front of the city, dragging across the field tied to his chariot, and then nevertheless agreed to exchange it for a heap of gold. The hero who is the most pity in this story: he did not steal, deceive, or rape anyone, and he was also an excellent family man.

Cassandra

Sister of Paris and Hector, endowed with foresight and a curse, because of which no one believed her prophecies. I tried to explain to Paris how the kidnapping of Elena would turn out. I tried to warn that a wooden horse from the Greeks would bring death. She tried to warn Agamemnon, who, after the murder of the Trojan royal family, took her away as a concubine, about death at the hands of his wife. She was killed by order of Queen Clytemnestra. Her first rapist after the capture of Troy, however, was not Agamemnon, but Ajax. He did this at the foot of the sacred statue of Athena, after which Athena left her patronage to the Greeks of the Trojan campaign and began to take revenge on them.

Penelope

The faithful wife of Odysseus. While he went to war, and also wandered the sea, she raised their common son Telemachus. In the end, Penelope was besieged by numerous suitors with the requirement to choose one of them as their husbands. Penelope agreed on the condition that she did it when she finished weaving (according to another version - knitting) a shroud for the old father-in-law, Odysseus's father. Every day she knitted a piece of the shroud and every night she dismissed it back.

When Odysseus returned home, both he and Penelope were already old. But after Odysseus was able to assure Penelope that it was him, Athena returned them youth and beauty so that they could enjoy each other. As for the suitors, Odysseus killed them all, so after the family reunification, all sorts of troubles began. But that's a completely different story.

Polyphemus

Cyclops, who was met by Odysseus and his comrades during their wanderings. Polyphemus was going to eat the Greeks, having found them in his cave, but they, while he was sleeping, gouged out the giant cyclops his only eye with a red-hot iron stake. Polyphemus did not give up and stood at the exit of his cave to make sure that he was letting only his sheep out of it: he felt the sheep's backs blindly. At the instigation of Odysseus, the Greeks passed under the belly of the sheep.

Circe

The sorceress who became the second, illegal, wife of Odysseus in his wanderings. She turned the men who came to her island into pigs. In fact, Odysseus accepted her offer of cohabitation and housekeeping in exchange for disenchanting his friends back. In total, Odysseus and Circe lived together for a year, and later the cunning favorite of Athena persuaded him to let him go home. How bigamy eventually turned out for him has already been described in the section on Odyssey.

Generation after generation, old Greek myths are taken from a new angle, and the story of how how Athena the Beautiful became the daughter of Zeus.