I looked here, but I didn’t see Cassandra listed.
Now, I’m going to see this movie, just because it’s got Brad Pitt and Orlando Bloom in it, but I’m curious.
Maybe I’ve read Firebrand once too often, but I thought Cassandra was a rather important character, being a seer and Paris’s twin. Is she not considered a major character, outside Marion Zimmer-Bradley’s universe?
Cassandra is a minor character in the Illiad. I think she’s mentioned twice…first, in a passage talking about Othryoneus of Cabesus:
and then mourning Hector
Is the movie supposed to be a retelling of the Iliad, or a retelling of the Trojan War? It’s a big difference, because the Iliad ends in the middle of the war.
The Trojan Horse story isn’t in the Iliad, and Cassandra’s major role is during that episode, so if Troy ends right where the Iliad does, Cassandra doesn’t have much of a part to play. If Troy is the story of the whole war, though, Cassandra should be in there trying to warn the Trojans.
I TRIED to warn you all that this would happen, but nobody believed me!
Plus, considering the story of the movie seems to be cutting out all godly involvment, how would you fit in both the SEEING and the NOT BELIEVING? It seems to me like it’d be rather awkward.
It also begins in the middle of the war, as I recall.
Really, The Iliad is to the Trojan War what The Battle of the Bulge is to World War II.
That’s sort of true, but the Illiad certainly covers more than one battle. I mean, it’s weird many of the most famous events of the Trojan War (the Trojan horse, the death of Achilles) actually DO NOT happen in the poem. That being said, those things are hinted at to an extent, and referenced back to in the Odyssey.
I to am curious. Does this new movie cover the war, or the poem?
Okay, I’ll admit it…I haven’t gotten around to reading the Illiad. Where does the story of the Trojan Horse come from if not from this poem?
The best known account of the Trojan Horse is in the Aeneid, by Vergil. The story is told from the point of view of Trojan prince Aeneas, one of the few Trojans to escape from the Greeks.
Frankly, reading Firebrand once is once too much. What a godawful book.
Doesn’t The Odyssey mention the Horse, too? I know it mentions the death of Achilles.
Who cares who it leaves out? It’s got Brad Pitt and Orlando Bloom in those little loincloth thingies. It could be two hours of them standing around (with brief bouts of bending and stretching, of course), and I’d pay $8 to see it.
astorian, I can not even begin to express how furious I am with you for getting this joke in before me! The only reason I clicked on this Thread was so that I could use that joke!
Horrible things will happen if you continue to steal jokes from bienville. Don’t believe me?
I liked it, although Mists of Avalon is better.
Yeah, you suck, man.
I was going with…
“I HATE people who give away the endings!”
The Iliad only covers a very small part of the Trojan war. It doesn’t tell us about the beginning or the end of the conflict. The Iliad begins with a lull in the action (as Achilles sits, sulking, in his tent) and ends with the funeral of Troy’s greatest warrior, Hector. But the war did NOT end with Hector’s death.
There are many legends of how the war started, of what happened in the early stages of the war, and what happened after the death of Hector. Most legends say the war continued for several years after the point where the Iliad ends. Supposedly, before the war ended, Achilles was killed by Paris, who got him in the heel with a poisoned arrow.
The legend of the Trojan Horse long predates Vergil, but his account of it, in the Aeneid, is the best known.
Were my eyes deceiving me or was that Brad Pitt climbing into the Trojan horse?
Doesn’t the Odyssea say that the war lasted a total of ten years, and doesn’t the Iliad take place nearly ten years into the war? Together, that would mean that the war ended fairly quickly after the events of the Iliad, certainly less than “several years”.
Also, I’m pretty sure that there’s at least a rudimentary account of the Horse in the Odyssea, which would well predate Virgil, and is probably at least as well known.
Yes, the Odyssey contains the famous description (from the section where Telemachus, Odysseus’ son, is visiting Helen and Menelaus at home after the war) of Helen walking around the Trojan Horse imitating the voices of the wives of the men inside to try and rile them up (for what purpose is unclear). However, astorian is correct that the account of the Trojan Horse in the Aeneid is the most complete and famous in ancient literature.
It bases itself around the poem to cover the rest of the war. As Empire magazine just said, “…ancient Greek homosexuality is not the stuff of modern international blockbusters”.
Anyway, how is Cassandra so enormously significant? Her role in the war goes thusly:
CASSANDRA: Don’t do that, or we’re all doomed!
OMNES: Shut up, you dopey cow!