Odysseus’ War Crimes in Troy Explained | Harvard’s Gregory Nagy
The Heart of Epic is Grief
Odysseus weeps like a woman when he hears stories about the Trojan horse. Why?
At the Phaeacian court, still under disguise, Odysseus listens to a bard sing of the Greek victory at Troy, specifically of his genius with the Trojan horse. This should have been his moment of great glory. It is the ambition of every hero to be immortalized in song. And yet, Odysseus does not glory but instead begins to cry. Nolan’s Odysseus is ashamed of the Trojan horse, but not Homer’s Odysseus who revels in his trickster identity. So why does he weep? Homer’s answer is a lot deeper and darker than Nolan’s.
Homer describes Odysseus crying like a woman who has collapsed over her dying husband’s body as her city is sacked and she is about to be dragged off to slavery when he hears of the Trojan horse. The brilliance of this simile is that the sacker of the city is compared to a victim of the sacking. My guest Harvard’s Gregory Nagy will break down this critical scene and what Odysseus’ crying has to teach us about the genre of epic.