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Notes on video lecture:
Background of the Trojan War
Notes taken by Edward Tanguay on May 9, 2015 (go to class or lectures)
Choose from these words to fill the blanks below:
Menelaus, kings, 1250, tariff, Horace, ships, writers, Ilium, replaced, raiding, copper, fine, Mycenean, prisoners, high, Princip, swords, bellicose, corn, victims, Owen, 3000, WWI, Peloponnese, fortress, Paris, horror, small, particular, suffering, gold, lie, city, happened, Achaeans, literate, recover, war
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the Greeks have left us extraordinary testimony about       
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they were as                    as any people who ever lived
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they were also highly                 
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and some of their greatest                wrote about war
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Wilfred          (1893-1918)
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greatest poet of       
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Anti-war poem which ends with the words, "It is          and honorable to die for your country"
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a quotation from the Roman poet             
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Owen calls this phrase, "The old       "
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Homer isn't an anti-war poet, but like Owen, he emphasizes the              of war and the terrible sacrifices that young men make
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war is both universal and                     
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the Vietnam War was not the same as the Iraq War or as the Korean War or as WWII
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universal
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                   is pretty much of the same intensity
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horrors are committed
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there are heroes and cowards
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innocent people become               
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particular
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the mode of fighting
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the arms
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the resources
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the treatment of                   
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the ideology of driving people to fight
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what is unique about the Trojan war
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fought between
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                 Greeks
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Homer calls them                  or Argives
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all the leaders of the states that participate are described as           
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but a state at that time was primarily a "                 surrounded by land"
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loose collection of states under Lordship of Agamemnon
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has his fortress in the                       
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the most powerful of the fortresses
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"Mycenae rich in         " says Homer, and indeed much gold has been found there
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Trojans
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inhabit Troy
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also know to Homer as           
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a war between a multi-state invading force and a single walled          which exercised some control around the surrounding region
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we don't actually know that it                 
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not as important as the fact that we have Homer as a witness
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if it took place then
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Bronze Age
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bronze used for all purposes from cooking pots to             
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however Homer mentions that both iron and bronze are being used
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iron                  bronze because it was much harder
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         BCE: bronze had been invented in Mesopotamia
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         BCE most probably when the Trojan War took place
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cause of war
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mythological reason
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theft of Helen, the wife of                 , brother of Agamemnon by the Trojan prince Paris
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insult to Greek, to the people of Mycenae
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           had violated the law of hospitality
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he had been a guest at the palace of Menelaus
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Menelaus put pressure on his brother Agamemnon to organize an expedition to recover his wife
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the most beautiful woman in the world
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whose face launched a thousand           
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we have tablets which indicate the Mycenaean                parties conducted raiding parties along the Turkish coast
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one of the women who was abducted was          born, like Helen
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we know that a            incident lead to a full-scale war
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e.g. the First World War began as a result of the assassination of the arch duke Francis Ferdinand, heir presumptive of the Austro-Hungarian throne
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shot by Gavrilo               
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structural reasons
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Troy lies where the Aegean and the Black Sea meet
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commercial and strategically important location
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perhaps due to Greece's insatiable appetite for
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imported          from the Black Sea region
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tin and             , the raw ingredients to make Bronze
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which Troy was blocked their access of
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perhaps Troy was imposing heavy              on Greek ships
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around Troy was a rich, agricultural plain
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Homer doesn't mention any reason of the war other than to                Helen
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sources
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Iliad
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deals with the battle front
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Odyssey
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deals with absense and home coming

People:

Wilfred Owen (1893-1918)
English poet and soldier and one of the leading poets of the First World War who wrote shocking, realistic war poetry on the horrors of trenches and gas warfare
  • in October 1915, he enlisted in the Artists' Rifles Officers' Training Corps
  • he held his troops in contempt for their loutish behaviour, and in a letter to his mother described his company as "expressionless lumps"
  • in battle, he was blown into the air by a trench mortar, and spent several days lying out next to what he thought was the remains of a fellow officer
  • in the hospital, he met Siegfried Sassoon, an encounter that was to transform Owen's life
  • in July 1918, Owen returned to active service in France
  • at the end of August 1918, Owen returned to the front line
  • Owen was killed in action on 4 November 1918 during the crossing of the Sambre–Oise Canal, exactly one week before the signing of the Armistice
  • he was promoted to the rank of Lieutenant the day after his death and was awarded the Military Cross for courage and leadership in battle
  • among his best-known works are "Dulce et Decorum est", "Insensibility", "Anthem for Doomed Youth", "Futility" and "Strange Meeting"

Spelling Corrections:

Pelopenese ⇒ Peloponnese
Meneleas ⇒ Menelaus
Agememnon ⇒ Agamemnon
Mycenean ⇒ Mycenaean
tarif ⇒ tariff
Mycenea ⇒ Mycenae
Background of the Trojan War
Was the Trojan War a Historical Event?
How Was the Iliad Poem Born?
The Homeric Question and the Trojan War
The Structure of the Iliad
Homer, the Heroic Code, and the Wastage of War
The Warrior's Experience of War