‘A Thousand Ships to Troy’ recounts the greatest war in mythology – 12/27/2023 – Darwin and God

“War is not a sport, to be decided in a quick match on a small strip of disputed land — war is a web, which stretches to the most distant parts of the world, dragging everyone into it. I will teach this him before he leaves my temple.” The soaring words come from the mouth of the goddess Calliope, one of the Nine Muses — the Muse of eloquence and epic poetry. This version of Callíope — indignant, ironic, scathing — is in “A Thousand Ships for Troy”, a book by British classicist Natalie Haynes that recently arrived in Brazil.

I’m biased when talking, since I’m a huge admirer of Haynes’ other books and podcast, about which I interviewed a few months ago for this Sheet. In any case, trust me: your book on Troy is a great achievement. I dare say that it is perhaps the most exciting in the excellent crop of recent works that revisit Greek mythology in recent years, among which books by Madeline Miller also stand out, such as “Circe” and “The Song of Achilles”.

Haynes is not interested in “glory”, as the quote above suggests. Her emphasis is on the human cost of war and the intimate and personal dramas it causes. And the voice of the muse Calliope – impatient with the epic poets who want to once again glamorize the carnage and crown themselves with laurels thanks to her divine inspiration – sets the tone of the narrative, along with several other female voices.

One of the inspirations for this has an impeccable classical pedigree. These are the “Heroides”, imaginary letters written by the great women of Hellenic mythology to their husbands composed by the Roman poet Ovid, probably in the 1st century BC. One of the most famous letters in this collection, that of the patient Penelope to the traveler Odysseus/Ulysses, inspires the “grand finale” of the book. Read.

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