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

People:

######################### (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:

PelopenesePeloponnese
MeneleasMenelaus
AgememnonAgamemnon
MyceneanMycenaean
tariftariff
MyceneaMycenae
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