126 Calder 1980, 146–48.
127 For this approach to Greek myth, see Graf 1993, 22–34. Key proponents of the approach in the nineteenth century included Karl Otfried Müller, Jane Ellen Harrison, and James George Frazer.
128 Anon 1874, 296. Müller here refers to the Niebelunge, a dynasty of mythical kings featuring in traditional German myth and epic poetry.
129 Trigger 1989, 80–87.
130 Increasing professionalism and the greater use of scientific approaches characterizes not only mainstream archaeology at this time (see Trigger, op. cit.), but also classical archaeology, and in particular in Germany where there was a refinement of stylistic analysis developing from Winkelmann’s more subjective aestheticism (Marchand 1996, 75–115).
131 Traill 1995.
132 E.g. Moorehead 1994.
133 For the ‘Homeric Question’ and issues concerning the historicity of the Trojan War, see Mac Sweeney 2018. For a concise statement of the problems with a historicist approach to myth, see Osborne 2014, 36.
134 English edition: Schliemann 1875, 344.
5
Claiming Identities
In the final chapter of this volume, we consider another key theme running through the Trojan War tradition and Iliadic receptions – that of heritage, identity, and claims of cultural ownership. We explore this theme in two composite texts that derive from the post-antique Trojan War tradition: Godfrey of Viterbo’s Speculum Regum (c. 1183) and the Hollywood film Troy (2004), directed by Wolfgang Petersen. Both of these case studies employ mixed artistic forms – in the case of the Speculum, this constituted poetry and prose; while in the case of the film, Troy, this is the mixed medium of cinema.
In the first section, Naoíse explores Godfrey of Viterbo’s Speculum Regum (‘Mirror of Princes’), a work that offers a history of the world by tracing the origins of contemporary royal lineages back to the Trojans. Claims of Trojan ancestry were common in medieval Europe, and a crucial means by which Europe’s Latin ‘West’ articulated not only its cohesion and internal dynamics, but also its difference from the Byzantine Greek ‘East’. But as well as claiming a Trojan heritage for his patrons, Godfrey also sought to establish a connection between himself and Homer, thereby constructing his own authorial identity, and positioning himself in relation to one of the major figures of literary history. The next section considers the Hollywood film Troy (2004). Jan begins the discussion by exploring its most overtly Homeric quality: the emphasis on glory and fame. The discussion then considers the film’s identity politics. In a reversal of the medieval situation, in the early twenty-first century when the film was produced, America and the ‘West’ claimed a classical Greek heritage in opposition to the Trojans of the Oriental ‘East’. Jan also highlights the subversive nature of the film, in which the Greeks occupy the traditional ‘baddie’ role, and argues that this is firmly grounded in the political upheavals of the early twenty-first century, notably the so-called ‘War on Terror’.
Both of these cases explore questions of politics and cultural identity as played out in relation to the Trojan War story. Throughout history, different groups have aligned themselves variously with the Achaeans/Greeks or with the Trojans, positioning themselves as the cultural (or literal) heirs to one or other side of the conflict. In the case of the Speculum, this enabled a competitive jockeying for status amongst related dynasties, using the common language of Trojan ancestry to create ever more complex and innovative mythic genealogies. In the case of the film Troy, the common cultural assumption of alignment between America and ancient Greece allowed for a cinematic critique of contemporary government policy and a subversion of popular expectation.
Crucially, both the examples we have chosen in this chapter reflect inwards on their own ‘side’ of the war – the Speculum is concerned with the relationships between different branches of the Trojan family tree, while Troy offers political commentary on American foreign policy. This is not, of course, the only way that myths of the Trojan War could be incorporated into identity politics – the war could just as easily be framed as a ‘clash of civilizations’, and identity claims linked to one side in the war could be set up in opposition to the ‘Other’. Within the ancient world, a widely discussed example of this is the classical period in Greece, at Athens in particular. Specifically, there seems to have been a dramatic shift in the portrayal of Trojans after the Persian Wars in the middle of the fifth century BCE. Whereas Trojans had previously been depicted in much the same way as the Achaeans, both iconographic and literary portrayals now tended to represent them as oriental ‘Others’, aligned with Persians and other non-Hellenic ‘barbarians’.1 The Trojan War therefore became a way of thinking about ‘us’ and ‘them’, with the Hellenes of the fifth century claiming a Western, European, and Achaean heritage in opposition to the Persians who could be linked with an Eastern, Asian, and Trojan heritage. This and other cases of the Trojan War being used in the oppositional construction of identity are well covered in the existing scholarly literature, and so we have opted instead to explore the use of the Trojan War tradition in other kinds of cultural identity politics.
The case studies considered in previous chapters of this book have all displayed a more or less detailed interaction with the content of the Iliad. In this chapter, however, the discussion considers two texts that are notably less concerned with the content of the poem. Both stem from periods when engagement with the Greek text of the Iliad was either rare or non-existent. At the time that Godfrey was writing, the Homeric poems were not accessible in western Europe and knowledge about the myth of Troy came entirely through other sources – the non-Homeric Trojan War tradition. And yet, the idea of the Homeric remained powerful, despite there being no real way of knowing what actually was Homeric. The early twenty-first century when the film Troy was produced offers a comparable, although less extreme, situation. Knowledge of both ancient Greek and the precise contents of the Iliad was once again limited, despite a general awareness of the Trojan War story being widespread. Then, as now, popular ideas about the Trojan War were shaped primarily by a range of other sources, including films, television programmes, and children’s storybooks, rather than by the Homeric poems. Hence, while Chapter 4 explored two examples from periods where the Iliad occupied a central and unassailable position at the heart of the Trojan War tradition, this chapter presents the alternative view – two examples from periods when the Iliad was peripheral.
Naoíse: Godfrey’s hall of mirrors
DE PRINCIPIO REGUM, UNDE ORTUS FUIT HERNICUS:
Principium regum, quo descendisse videris,
Et genus imperii Troianaque tempora queris:
Hec si metra geris, certiorandus eris.
Imperiale genus quod et unde sit, ecce feremus;
Que species regnum fuerit primeva, canemus.
Urget, ut instemus, Romulus atque Remus.
Gentis Hebreorum loca, tempora, regna tacemus,
Vertimur ad Grecos, gentilia gesta canemus,
Unde sit imperii linea, norma, genus.
ON THE BEGINNING OF KINGSHIP, AND FROM WHAT DESCENT CAME HENRY:
You ask of the beginning of kingship, and about the Trojan race
And the empire and era from where you will be seen to descend.
If you read these lines, you will be the wiser.
Look, we will tell what was the imperial race and from whence it came;
We will sing of what kind of kingship was the first.
We will consider, as suggested, Romulus and Remus.
We will touch on the place, time, and kingdom of the Hebrew people,
Turning to the Greeks, of the deeds of the people we will sing,
And from where comes the imperial line, customs, and race.
Godfrey of Viterbo, Speculum Regum 1.22
Kingship begins at Troy. At least, this is what is claimed in the Speculum Regum (‘Mirror of Princes’), a history of the world in both poetry and prose written c. 1183 CE.3 Its author
was Godfrey of Viterbo, a notary working for the Hohenstaufen Holy Roman Emperor Frederick I ‘Barbarossa’; and the Speculum was addressed to Frederick’s son and heir, Henry.4 Having recounted the descent of all humanity from Noah in his first poem, Godfrey immediately launches into this programmatic statement in the second. The Speculum, he boasts, offers its royal reader the chance to peer into the past and to gaze at visions of kingly power that reflect his own. And the first image in Godfrey’s literary mirror was that of Troy.
Godfrey was not content, however, to describe the transfer of empire through the ages from Troy until his own day. In the rest of the Speculum, he went on to set out a specific genealogy for his Hohenstaufen patrons, tracing their bloodlines back to the house of Priam. In itself, this project was unremarkable: twelfth-century Europe was awash with groups who either claimed Trojan ancestry, or who had Trojan origins attributed to them. They included the British, the Normans, the Franks, the Saxons, the Teutons, various cities in Italy, and, according to the Icelandic author of the Prose Edda, even the Norse gods.5 Coupled with this historical mania for Trojan descent, works that more generally recounted the myths of Troy also enjoyed a blockbuster-like popularity. Chronicles, poems, and chansons de geste (songs of great deeds) dealing with myths of the Trojan War proliferated in the twelfth century. Written both in scholarly Latin and various vernacular languages, these often cast the Trojan tales in a romantic and chivalric light.6
In this section, I do not seek to explain the craze for all things Trojan in twelfth-century Europe, as this is already the subject of a rich body of scholarly literature.7 It is worth noting, however, that interest in the Trojan War in this period was not primarily driven by a desire to create oppositional identities of ‘self’ and ‘other’. Rather, as we shall see below, the common and shared nature of Trojan ancestry was a means by which different groups could negotiate their relationships with each other, rather than separating themselves from those with Greek ancestry. This changed only at the start of the thirteenth century with the Third Crusade, where crusaders from Western Europe sacked Constantinople. At this point, the Latin ‘West’ used its Trojan heritage to justify the treatment of the Greek ‘East’ – the sack and looting of Constantinople by the heirs of Troy portrayed as revenge for the sack and looting of Troy by the Achaean ancestors of medieval Byzantium.8 In the twelfth century, however, the claim of a Trojan heritage was primarily used as a means of relating to others, rather than a means of distancing them.
This section focuses on two aspects of Godfrey’s work that relate to the idea of a Trojan or Homeric heritage as a means of creating relationships: first, the claims of Trojan ancestry he made on behalf of his patrons; and second, the relationship he implied between himself and Homer. Godfrey of Viterbo’s Speculum Regum, I shall argue, was a mirror not only for princes but also for poets, with Godfrey using it to reflect on his own scholarly practice and literary ambition. In both the Speculum and his later works, Godfrey sought to position himself within an intellectual and literary tradition – one that connected him to Homer no less than it connected his patrons to the kings of Troy.
The heirs of Troy
As evident from the passage quoted at the start of this section, in the Speculum Godfrey claimed Troy as the place of origin, not only for the institution of kingship in the abstract, but also for the lineage of his Hohenstaufen patrons specifically. The poem presents Godfrey’s headline argument in lyrical rhyming verse. By this point, however, Godfrey has already set out the basic parameters of the argument in a prose prologue, offering a brief summary of the genealogy that he would later give at length in verse. In this summary, Godfrey highlights the key points of the genealogy. Although the relevant passage is lengthy, it bears reading in its entirety.
Sane cum Romanorum et Theutonicorum regum et imperatorum ingenuitas ab una Troianorum regum stirpe procedat eademque Troiana progenies a primo rege Atheniensium trahat originem, ad maiorem rei evidentiam a diebus filiorum Noe post diluvium libellus iste orditur, et inde expressis omnium gestis atque nominibus per seriem generationis de patribus in filios ad reges Athenienses descendit, et ab Atheniensibus usque ad reges Troianos, scilicet Anchisem et Priamum, cognationis linea derivatur. In Priamo autem et Anchise prosapia regum in duo dividitur. Ex Anchise enim Eneas et Ascanius omnesque reges et imperatores Ytalici oriuntur usque ad Karolum regem Magnum; a Priamo autem iuniore, nepote magni Priami ex sorore, universa Theutonicorum nobilitas usque ad eundem Karolum patenter emanat. In ipso Karolo utriusque propaginis genus concurrit. Mater enim eius Berta, cum esset filia filie imperatoris Eraclii, de genere imperatorum Romanorum et Grecorum fuit, Pipinus autem pater eius, rex Theutonicorum, a genere Troiano descendit. Fuit itaque Karolus Magnus patre Theutonicus et matre Romanus.
Indeed the nobility of the kings and emperors of the Romans and of the Teutons comes from the same root – the king of the Trojans, and this same lineage of the Trojans takes its origin from the first king of Athens. For clarity, this little book lays out even older things, from the days of the children of Noah after the Flood. From there it explains the deeds and the names of all, going down in order through the generations, from fathers to sons down to the kings of Athens, and from those Athenians to the kings of Troy, especially Anchises and Priam, from where our lineage is derived. But from Priam and Anchises the line of kings was divided in two. From Anchises sprang Aeneas and Ascanius and all the Italian kings and emperors through to king Charlemagne; from the younger Priam, the nephew of the older Priam by his sister, clearly the entire nobility of the Teutons is descended through to the same Charlemagne. In this Charlemagne, the blood of both lines ran together: as his mother Berta was the daughter of the daughter of the emperor Heraclius, and therefore born of Roman and Greek emperors; but his father Pipin, the king of the Teutons, was descended from the Trojans. Charlemagne was therefore a Teuton by his father and a Roman by his mother.
Godfrey of Viterbo, Speculum Regum Prologue 21–22.
The culmination of the genealogy, we are told, is Charlemagne, the first Holy Roman Emperor and the founder of the Carolingian dynasty. This is perhaps unsurprising given that the Hohenstaufen dynasty celebrated Charlemagne as their ancestor.9 Claiming Charlemagne allowed the Hohenstaufens to justify their imperial ambitions, and also served as a kick in the teeth to their neighbours and rivals, the Capetian dynasty of France. The Capetians, although they had ruled France for several generations, were sometimes characterized as usurpers who had unseated the Carolingians.10 The Hohenstaufen appropriation of Charlemagne was therefore a direct ideological challenge to the Capetians – one of several that can be found in the pages of the Speculum, as we shall see below. For Godfrey, then, making Charlemagne the climax of the Trojan genealogy was a clear statement of support for the Hohenstaufen dynastic project. Godfrey claimed in no uncertain terms that Charlemagne was the true heir of Troy, making the Hohenstaufens, by extension, the rightful possessors of the Trojan kingly heritage.
Following the prologue, Book 1 of the Speculum comprises thirty-eight short poems recounting tales from antiquity, in particular that of the Trojan War and the transfer of Trojan power to ancient Rome (for which see below). Godfrey returns to the question of genealogy, however, in the poems of Book 2. Here, the Trojan genealogy is used for more than just the elevation of the Hohenstaufen family into a position of dynastic privilege – it is used to comment more generally on ethno-cultural distinctions within Europe.
Godfrey is careful to respect the familiar Italian claim to Trojan heritage, not only that of Rome but also those of other Italian cities.11 He is keen, however, to place the Trojan claims of the Teutons on an equal footing. As he explains in the introductory preamble to Book 2: ‘the offspring of the Trojan seed is divided in two: | One took up the crown of Rome in Italy, | the other rules the blessed Teutonic kingdom’ (In duo dividimus Troiano semine prolem: | Una per Ytaliam sumpsit dyademata Rome, | Altera Theutonica regna beata fovet, Speculum 2.preamble). Following on from this, the first poem
recounts in some detail how the younger Priam led his half of the Trojan survivors, first through Thrace and Pannonia, and then into the lands that became Germania, changing the name of the people along the way: ‘the Trojan people sought for themselves the name of Germans’ (Gens Troiana sibi Germanica nomina querit: Speculum 2.1); while the second describes how the Romans and Germans were allies, on seemingly equal terms, due to their shared blood (Speculum 2.2). These assertions of brotherhood between Romans and Teutons spoke to some very contemporary concerns. When Godfrey penned the Speculum in the early 1180s, Frederick had already fought several campaigns in Italy and waged a long and bitter war against Pope Alexander III. Frederick had reconciled with the pope only in 1177, and tensions remained until the Peace of Constance was signed between Frederick and the Italian Lombard League in 1183.12 In this context, the conspicuous protestations of ancestral friendship between the Italians and the Germans gain an urgent new meaning.
The third poem in the book goes on to explain how the Franks got their name. According to Godfrey, they were a group of Germans who came to the aid of their Roman allies by fighting the Alans. The complete defeat of the Alans led to the name of the ‘Franks’ being bestowed on the group to signal their ferocity (Speculum 2.3). The true Franks of this story, Godfrey is at pains to stress, went on to occupy the lands around the Rhine, while the contemporary kingdom of France was a subordinate and secondary part of the realm.
Cetera Francigene limina pauca tenent,
Parisius patria, quondam Gaudina vocata,
Subdita per Francos, est Francia parva vocata,
Homer’s Iliad and the Trojan War Page 21