Event Date
The Templeton Lecture
The Walls of Troy
Land and Sea in Homer’s Iliad
Sheila Murnaghan (U. Penn) | Alex Purves (UCLA)
The stories of Homer’s characters are shaped by the environments -- whether naturally present or built by humans — in which they find themselves and on which they in turn leave their mark. This pair of talks will bring out the significance of two key features of the Iliad’s Trojan eco-system. We will start with Troy’s fabricated walls, which ground and protect the city and set it off from its natural surroundings, but which also rise and fall with the fortunes of its inhabitants. We will then consider the Trojan shoreline, the narrow strip of land between those walls and the sea, where the invading Greeks beach their ships, set up their camp, and meet their Trojan opponents, and where the volatile realms of earth and water overlap and collide.
