Well, it's Panay Day...sorta like Pearl Harbor Day...which by the way was hardly noticed in the SF Chronicle...little story buried inside under the CIA video tape destruction...hmmph...anyway...I got to thinking about the Sword of Troy in the movie Troy...as I had never heard of such a thing!...and indeed no previous Troy tale mentions it...ancient or modern...in the scene a bronze sword is handed to Aeneas and he's told to gather the remaining Trojans and begin again...this alludes, I think, to the Trojan diaspora..most famously told by Virgil in the Aenead...the Romans thought themselves descended from the Trojans...or maybe fancied...as did later the Britons...and some Scandinavian kingdoms...and having stumbled on this awhile back...and while thinking about the Jewish diasporas...and languageNations...well...let me just do a side by side with two things I found just in the last two days...the first from yesterday...a quote from a class syllabus I believe...
quote
Troyhttp://english.uwaterloo.ca/grad-courses07-08.htm
You saw the movie in 2004; you read The Iliad; you think you know the story of Troy. However, Homer provides less than half of it. In fact, from about the fourth century to Shakespeare’s time, the main genre that told Europeans the famous narrative of the fall of Troy was the romance, not the epic, in Latin and French, not Greek, and the story took the side of the defeated Trojans, not the victorious Hellenes. Troy was the origin of the most powerful and lasting diaspora legend in European history — as important as the Jewish diaspora in the Old Testament and comparable to later narratives of the African diaspora — because for a thousand years European nations, including England, traced the ancestry of their kings back to fleeing Trojan survivors. Their mutual Trojan ancestry bound European monarchies together and underlay the ideological elaboration of feudalism and aristocratic culture; the Trojan diaspora of the middle ages is one of the central foundation myths of the west, creating a genetic link back to the classical past. This course will provide an overview of the medieval tradition of Troy, in Latin, French, Italian and English, in order to contextualize Geoffrey Chaucer’s original and psychological contribution to the tradition, his poem Troilus and Criseyde, the first and only love story of the Trojan war. The complete text of Troilus will be read in Middle English and language instruction will be provided. Readings in other languages will be in translation. Students are strongly encouraged to read The Iliad (any translation) before the course begins for the sake of comparison. Senior undergraduates in English with demonstrated competence in Middle English and graduate students from other humanities departments are encouraged to contact the instructor if interested in this course. Please do so as early as possible. Admission will be subject to the discretion of the Graduate Committee. Two oral presentations and a 5000-word research paper will be required.
You saw the movie in 2004; you read The Iliad; you think you know the story of Troy. However, Homer provides less than half of it. In fact, from about the fourth century to Shakespeare’s time, the main genre that told Europeans the famous narrative of the fall of Troy was the romance, not the epic, in Latin and French, not Greek, and the story took the side of the defeated Trojans, not the victorious Hellenes. Troy was the origin of the most powerful and lasting diaspora legend in European history — as important as the Jewish diaspora in the Old Testament and comparable to later narratives of the African diaspora — because for a thousand years European nations, including England, traced the ancestry of their kings back to fleeing Trojan survivors. Their mutual Trojan ancestry bound European monarchies together and underlay the ideological elaboration of feudalism and aristocratic culture; the Trojan diaspora of the middle ages is one of the central foundation myths of the west, creating a genetic link back to the classical past. This course will provide an overview of the medieval tradition of Troy, in Latin, French, Italian and English, in order to contextualize Geoffrey Chaucer’s original and psychological contribution to the tradition, his poem Troilus and Criseyde, the first and only love story of the Trojan war. The complete text of Troilus will be read in Middle English and language instruction will be provided. Readings in other languages will be in translation. Students are strongly encouraged to read The Iliad (any translation) before the course begins for the sake of comparison. Senior undergraduates in English with demonstrated competence in Middle English and graduate students from other humanities departments are encouraged to contact the instructor if interested in this course. Please do so as early as possible. Admission will be subject to the discretion of the Graduate Committee. Two oral presentations and a 5000-word research paper will be required.
unquote
And in this second, Catiline, of the Catiline Conspiracy uncovered and prosecuted literally to the hilt by Cicero, is shown to have Trojan ancestry.
quote
Catiline was born in 108 BC to one of the oldest patrician families in Rome. Although his family was of consular heritage, they were then declining in both social and financial fortunes. Virgil later gave the family an ancestor, Sergestus, who had come with Aeneas to Italy, presumably because they were notably ancient; but they had not been prominent for centuries.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Catiline
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Catiline
unquote
lemego see who Sergestus is...brb...a Trojan warrior, friend of Aeneas, and ancestor of the Catilina?...the spelling I'm questioning here...is that how a family is indicated...change Cataline to Catilina?...brb...oh just the Latin spelling...and no relation I gather to Catalina!
Tool Time star turned Santa Claus was on....now some Xmas concert...
Well, that instructor has an interesting notion of the European aristocracy latching on to a Trojan myth...
Oh, it's the White House concert...
I've spent a bit a time here looking up the Romance of Troy by Benoit de Ste. Maure...there might not be a modern translation!!...this is a whole area of Story I'll keep in the "sometime" que!
Dr. Phil is a demagog.
DavidDavid
Tree in the Door
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