We have reached our last Mythology class. That went by way too quickly! Last class was fantastic; you guys went above and beyond with your acting, your audience-ing, and your photography! Don’t forget to read and come to the Masters class for The Odyssey retelling on March 19. That will give us a Mythology encore! Then we can find out what happened after the Trojan War ended.
Let’s jump into the war. I know you’ve heard of this one–the original “fairest of them all,” in a couple of different senses; your “Achilles heel”; the Trojan Horse. There’s so much in this story of heroism and great tragedy that has lasted over time. I’m warning you in advance that there are plenty of sad incidents–it’s a war, after all, but through the sad parts we can see the cost of pride and sin, and the inevitable longing for home and peace. We are going to attempt to go over the basic structure of the story and become familiar with some of the most famous parts.
Homework
- Read about where this story comes from and the first part of the story in MYTHOLOGY: Timeless Tales of Gods and Heroes, pages 197-200, but stop on page 200 after ” . . . and go to the Greek camp with him.” It’s around the middle of the page.
- Listen to this retelling of the main bulk of the war and which heroes clashed with which, and which gods were helping who. There is also the whole story written out under the audio player, so you can follow along or refer back to the parts of the story you need for your mini project (#5 below).
- Listen about the conclusion of the war HERE. Same story as #2, you can refer back to the written version below the audio player.
- Watch this short video about one of the most famous ancient sculptures, which drew inspiration from the incident of the “white bearded old priest” we listened about. If you like this sculpture, you could sketch part (like maybe a face) or all of it in your timeline/Book of Centuries in the “Century Artifacts” section on the page for the 2nd century BC, when it may have been sculpted, although the exact date is unknown, or in the 16th century AD, because it was unearthed/discovered in AD 1506:
5. Pick one incident of the war that captured your attention, and create something to tell us about it in some way. Here are some ideas: you could write out and read aloud to us a dramatic retelling of that moment, you could create a poem, a song, a rap, write a script, create a comic or comic panel, or an art piece like a drawing, painting, or sculpture, write a “letter home” from one character to another, build a prop or symbol and tell us its meaning, or anything else you can think of. We will share these in class! Sign up HERE for the episode you would like to do. It’s fine to have more than one person on the same one, but let’s try to have at least one person on each so we’ll have a complete story. You will have about 2 minutes for this.
6. We have a few different sources for the various parts of the Trojan War story. Add these writers to your timeline:
-Homer (The Iliad (Trojan War), The Odyssey (Parts of the Trojan War and trip home) A Greek–the exact dates of his life are unknown, but it was around the 8th or 9th century BC, so stick him in one of those.
-Virgil (The Aeneid, another story about the trip home after the war) A Roman, he lived in the 1st century BC.
-Euripides (wrote the tragic play The Trojan Women about what happened to the women of Troy after their husbands lost the battle, from whence comes the Judgement of Paris story) A Greek who lived in the 5th century BC.
Further Reading
Here’s a list of some further reading you might enjoy if you’ve liked what you’ve read for class (in addition to the rest of the books we read from). Many of these have free audiobook versions available on librivox.org. I’m including some sources for Norse Mythology as well that John recommends:
GREEK:
D’Aulaire’s Book of Greek Mythology
Tanglewood Tales by Nathaniel Hawthorne
A Wonder Book by Nathaniel Hawthorne
The Heroes by Charles Kingsley
Bulfinch’s Mythology: The Age of Fable by Thomas Bulfinch
The Children’s Homer by Padraic Colum
The Golden Fleece by Padraic Colum
NORSE:
The Children of Odin by Padraic Colum
D’Aulaire’s Book of Norse Mythology
Thank you so much for making this class amazing! I wish we had more classes because there is so much more I would love to go into, but what we have done has been epic, both literally and figuratively. 🙂 Thank you.
