The Trojan Story intro and cultures behind the Iliad and Troy

 

The Intro

The blog you are about to enter is about the differences behind the epic poem,The Iliad made by the great poet Homer and the movie Troy Directed by Wolfgang Peterson. The two are similar in the fact that they are about the same story but written in different times making the two have differences due to the time in which they were made and the differences in culture. This blog will explain these differences and the cultures behind them both.In the next few posts I will describe the differences between the battle of Hector and Achilles, The love affair between Paris and Helen and I'll also describe a few of the main characters of the Ilaid and the movie Troy. Also i will explain messages conveyed between the Iliad and the movie Troy.

The cultures behind the storys

               The Iliad and Troy the cultural differences

The Iliad was written by the great poet of ancient Greece, Homer, who wrote about the battle of troy in circa 9^th to 8^th century B.C.E were as the Battle of Troy actually occurred around circa 1250 B.C.E a few hundred years after the actual battle of Troy. Homers audience who would have read his books were people who believed heavily on the god’s divine interventions and the view on society was much evolved around the warfare, duty, honour and bravery of men who had to have these qualities’ to be a true man.

 Masculinity of men in ancient Greece compared to the 21st century

The masculinity of men was described as being brave, having honour, doing his duty towards the state, and going to war to earn these traits was a must and having traits such as ‘a great lover’ & a ‘gallant sight’ were thought as unmanly  which is what Homer describes Paris in the Iliad. The bow was considered cowardly because you were fighting away from battle and not confronting his enemy head first which may have been the reason for Paris to have fought with a bow and arrow in the Iliad. ‘There is no greater glory for a man to die in the heat of battle’, this is what the Greeks taught and thought about a man,as depicted by this video from Troy.

 were as in the 21^st century we now think of battle as a tad barbaric and war as an insight into evil, and many people think that a man does not need to be  a warrior and having a trait, for instance, gallant sight or great lover as great qualities and we also see that no one has to abide by this types of stereotypical ways of thinking, many if not all have the right to be their own person. These qualities are what lead to the many differences between the Iliad and the 21^st century Troy.

With the differences in the cultures the audiences want to hear different things such as Homers Iliad the Greeks would have wanted to hear a story about how great the Greeks are and how the Trojans are cowards and how the Greeks were favoured by the Gods more than the Trojans, Book III Iliad, ‘Zeus wonders if there is still a way to get Helen back to Menelaos without utterly destroying the city of Troy. Hera expresses her displeasure at this idea and Zeus backs off, Hera asserts her own ancestry and suggests a compromise: the war will go on but the Trojans will be the first to break the truce’ this is written by Homer to symbolise that the god’s were in favour of the Greeks rather than the Trojans.

http://www.articlemyriad.com/masculinity-warrior-culture-iliad-homer/