As a society,
we have a poor understanding of Greek mythology, and that's why I called my
blog 'Sacker of Cities' (also, achillesrocks was taken).
'To sack', of
course, means to destroy a city, that kind of wearisome, old-fashioned
destroying people used to do before we had missiles and drones. Put it simply,
you go house by house, kill or enslave everyone inside (at this point, you've
probably defeated an army already, so we're talking about old men - kill, women and girls - rape and enslave, boys - possibly rape, definitely enslave and
children - kill), take anything you
like and torch the rest. The verb is related to the noun 'sack', which means
'bag', so the whole idea idea is probably about taking everything you like and
put it in a bag.
(Which is the
same meaning it has in US football, apparently, but don't take my word for it.
I don't know the first thing about it, never remember if it's supposed to be
soccer, rugby, or something else, and I find it strange they have a rule about
bags, but there you go. Sports are strange sometimes.)
Famous
ancient sacks include the Sack of Troy (both fictional and historical, dated
around 1190 BC), the Sack of Rome (in 390 BC – the worst disaster in the history of the city, but a happy silver
lining was the destruction of the archives, which would eventually cause Virgil
to write the Aeneid) and the Sack of
Carthage (the Romans were their usual overzealous selves: they sold 50 000
people into slavery and leveled the city to the ground to grow spinach and
turnips in its place).
This to say,
sacking is a messy, violent job and it takes messy, violent men to do it. And
possibly a bit insane, did I mention insane? Because this is not about pressing
a button and making things explode, it's about bashing infants' heads against
the walls.
So, why am I
calling this blog 'Sacker of Cities'?
Because this
was someone's nickname in ancient literature. Not sure if it was meant as a
compliment or not, though probably yes. Sort of.
Now, half of
Greek heroes were empty-minded psychopath (think about Heracles, who slept with
fifty different girls thinking it was always the same one, or Tydeus who was
denied immortality because he ate someone's brains out of his freaking skull) – half of them, but not
this guy.
Our Sacker of
Cities is Odysseus, or, as he's more often known, Ulysses. If you know anything
about Greek mythology, you know that Odysseus was the clever one, the crafty
one, the one who didn't want to go to war. The guy from the Odyssey. This guy:
In Troy, he was played by a loveable,
level-headed Sean Bean (aka Boromir,
and no, he didn't die in this movie, so there) facing off Brian Cox, an
incredible (but invented from scratch) Agamemnon who spent half the movie
foaming at the mouth and throwing things. So, am I saying that you have it
wrong, and Odysseus isn't clever? No, because he was. All I'm saying is that he
is a perfect example of how badly we are taught how mythology works. They give
us oversimplified things. Odysseus is clever, Agamemnon is brutal, Achilles a
ladies' man and so on.
Reality is,
things are grey. Odysseus is clever, but he's also a very good warrior, a
pirate, a sacker of cities. After the war, when most Trojans are dead and the
Greek commanders embark on the happy task to divide the captive women among
themselves, Odysseus gets Hecuba, the old queen of Troy, widow of Priam, mother
of Hector. This is a strong woman – we have seen her in the Iliad trying to get Helen stoned
(metaphorically speaking) and, when Achilles killed Hector, she threatened to
jump off the city's walls and chew out his liver in revenge. Nonetheless, when
she is assigned to be Odysseus' slave, she is terrified. This is her reaction:
"Oh, oh!
Now smite the close-shorn head! Tear your cheeks with your nails! Ah me! I have
fallen as a slave to a treacherous foe I hate, a monster of lawlessness (...).
Oh weep for me, you Trojan women! Lost and ill-fated! Ah woe! a victim to a
most unhappy lot!"
Granted, her
fate is not as bad as Andromache's (she'll marry Achilles' twisted, murderous
son) or Polyxena's (she'll be sacrificed at Achilles' grave), but Hecuba is
still distraught. Distraught at the idea of falling into the hands of the man
most of us admire and like, the man we think of as a brave adventurer, a kind
of William Wallace-meets-George Clooney kind of figure (well, I'm thinking
about Danny Ocean here, but you see the point – rugged good looks, thieving tendencies).
So here you
have it.
Odysseus,
Sacker of Cities.
What bugs me
is, of course things to be simplified, because Greek religion, like everything
else, is complicated, but here we are talking about oversimplified. We are talking about Herakles becoming a Disney
cartoon, and leading people to think all Greeks worshipped an adulterous god
who turned into birds and bulls to have sex with women. It is misleading, it
prevents us from understanding our past and our history (most European art and
literature is heavily influenced by Greek mythology) and it doesn't help anyone
– all it means is that movies will eventually look like this:
It is, yet
again, a way to mess with our minds and make us believe in a black and white
world, a world where some people do the right thing and others giggle
maniacally while stepping on kittens, a world where you're either with me or
against me, that sort of thing. And this isn't true. So, for me, studying Greek
mythology properly is about saying no to a black and white world and yes to a
world with shades of grey (though maybe not fifty of them).
[Sources: have fun watching Homer call Odysseus a ‘sacker
of cities’ here (but there are a lots more), Hecuba act out here and here, Hecuba
lament her fate here, Herakles mix up his girls here, Tydeus go full cannibal
here. And if you’re still not reading SMBC, you should start, like, now.]
Up Next: Why
Everything You Know about the Odyssey Is Wrong.
